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» babble   » current events   » international news and politics   » Which Countries should be of greatest priority to "the Left" Part 2

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Author Topic: Which Countries should be of greatest priority to "the Left" Part 2
BetterRed
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posted 07 June 2007 08:44 AM      Profile for BetterRed     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Continued from here:Countries of Priority: Part 1

As Fidel wrote earlier:

quote:
According to William Rockler, former prosecutor of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia represented the most brazen attack of a sovereign country since the Nazis invaded Poland to protect Germans from "Polish atrocities." Rockler and others have said the bombing of Yugoslavia was raw imperialism. There were U.S. military aid packages sent in to Macedonia and to the KLA.

First came the economic hit men and neo-Liberalizing democratizers. Then came the ethnic strife as a result of the shitty economies. It snowballed from there. You know the routine...


The 1999 bombing campaign represented a climax of so-called liberal imperialism. Previously it was employed during the 1993 US intervention in Somalia and later in Bosnia and Haiti, 1995.

But this liberal imperialism has waned now, since Dumbya has made a mess of the Transatlantic alliance.
The Europeans have smartened up, and are less willing to support Uncle Sam's imperial projects.
Too bad the Harper govt. seems to become more enthusiastic about them - even more so than Tony Blair ever did.

Fidel is right on in his post.
We must see the whole picture. And it's never complete without taking a close look at the neo-liberal IMF "reforms" in vulnerable countries of Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe.
The 1999 war is relevant as it was the second manifestation of the New World Order. The Gulf War was the first one.
The Kosovo war, however shows that the neo-liberal elites will hammer down any country that tries to resist their plans for the world.

[ 07 June 2007: Message edited by: BetterRed ]


From: They change the course of history, everyday ppl like you and me | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
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posted 07 June 2007 08:56 AM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
As I said in my previous post, we should apply our principles to all countries equally, and not lie about some places because it is tactically convenient.

It is our principles which are "left", not the countries themselves.

I consider myself a "leftist" and not a "Cubanist". Similarly, it is not my job as a leftist to lie about Iran, or fail to respond to Iranian misbehaviour, because it's not convenient.

Actually, I don't think the people who adopt a foreign country as their ideal are really leftists. I think they are just garden-variety hypocrites. It's just that they differ from Scooter Libby because they are sycophants for the OTHER side.

Real leftists are sycophants for equality and democracy. They don't have to pretend that Cuba is a democracy. And they don't pretend Iran is in any way socialist, either.


From: toronto | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
ChicagoLoopDweller
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posted 07 June 2007 09:02 AM      Profile for ChicagoLoopDweller     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Jeff, I think you need to prepare yourself for replies about the evils of the United States. By the way Fidel, the Amnesty article, a long time ago I realize, mentioned 67 political prisoners. Human Rights Watch estimates that some 180,000-200,000 Cubans are in prison...although Cuba doesn't like to release the official numbers. When looking at Cuba's population, that would mean that Cuba actually incarcerates people at a higher rate than the US does. Which, of course (and I realize you will ignore this) doesn't mean that the US doesn't have problems with who it puts in jail, and why. But hey, why look at the facts when it comes to Cuba.
From: Chicago | Registered: Apr 2007  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
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posted 07 June 2007 09:13 AM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Oh don't worry, I know there will be the usual drivel about how we can't criticize Iran "now", because that is PRECISELY what George Bush wants!!!

Really it is the difference between abstract ethics and instrumental ethics.

Those whose "concerns" are really only an instrument to obtain power (for the Good of the Proletariat!) will ditch those concerns whenever it is convenient.

But if you are actually concerned about HUMAN RIGHTS and DEMOCRACY, then you will be critical whenever those things are in jeopardy. You won't shut your mouth just because it is Stalin, or Hitler, Bush or Ahmadinejad doing the crap.


From: toronto | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
BetterRed
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posted 07 June 2007 09:14 AM      Profile for BetterRed     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
As I said in my previous post, we should apply our principles to all countries equally, and not lie about some places because it is tactically convenient.
It is our principles which are "left", not the countries themselves.

I consider myself a "leftist" and not a "Cubanist". Similarly, it is not my job as a leftist to lie about Iran, or fail to respond to Iranian misbehaviour, because it's not convenient.


I agree with much of your post. Nevertheless, we should support some of these countries' efforts to resist US imperialism. Doesnt mean we automatically become apologists or "liars".

I wont go into this circular debate, but I'll close with a few questions:
If Cuba is really tyrannical as you claim, then why has there not been any serious discontent against Castro?? The country is certainly not a militarized barrack state like North Korea, but something else. So militray repression is not there.
Why hasnt Castro regime collapsed as so many US-backed fascist regimes collapsed all over the world, from 1984 Brazil to 1986 philippines and South Korea?
Could it be perhaps that Castro actually has support from a large majority of the people, and not from some gringo regime?


From: They change the course of history, everyday ppl like you and me | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged
BetterRed
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posted 07 June 2007 09:18 AM      Profile for BetterRed     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Human Rights Watch estimates that some 180,000-200,000 Cubans are in prison

Of course, if that figure is true then theyre all doing time for criticizing Castro, right?. Im sure the good folks from the HRW would visit each of them and establish that all Cuban prisoners are political.
Yeah, Im sure the Miami-based drug trade is a myth and the Tony Montana types are fictional.
So thats' that....


From: They change the course of history, everyday ppl like you and me | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged
Steppenwolf Allende
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posted 07 June 2007 09:53 AM      Profile for Steppenwolf Allende     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
This is quite productive topic, with most posters coming up with some good ideas and perspectives. It would be good to carry on this discussion.

N beltov from the last thread:

quote:
Well, I've always found it a little strange for some NDPers to habitually express more antagonism towards political views on their left than to political views on their right. Natural allies and all that. Perhaps they don't like the competition and really believe they can monopolize "the left".

It’s true that many NDPers are hostile to the non-NDP left. Then again, it’s just as true the non-NDP left is hostile to the NDP. It’s a obvious situation (if they weren’t opposed to each other, they wouldn’t be in separate organizations).

But, to be fair, in the NDP’s defense, it has, as a social movement, a far more credible track record—especially when compared to the Bolshevik “left” and its undying admiration for twisted state capitalistic schemes
and often brutally authoritarian regimes with violent imperialistic foreign policies and suppression of democratic socialist values and forces that these groups claim to believe in.

The NDP, like most western social democratic parties has become largely bogged down in left-liberal reformism. Reforms that were originally fought for as steps of economic democratization toward a socialist economy have largely become the ends themselves, rather the means to the ends.

However, the practical socialistic legacy of some of these organizations, like the CCF in Canada, have actually laid the groundwork for practical socialist economic development that modern day activists (whether in the NDP or not) can learn from and build on.

The fact is, the NDP/CCF legacy is this country is one of far more practical and honest socialistic efforts than just about anything that developed in the Soviet Union or eastern Bloc—efforts that were brutally suppressed and practically regulated out of existence by the Soviet corporate elite over the decades.

Although that practical socialist economic stance has become highly compromised in the last 30 to 40 years, there is still a lot of innovative socialistic initiatives either initiated or supported by the CCF/NDP, like co-ops, labour-sponsored enterprises, credit unions, various types of democratic community economic development.

These are all successful home-based economic democracy efforts that actually PROVE socialistic economic, even when overwhelmed by hostile capitalist economies, can thrive and work better (as in better for people overall) than our opponents’ age-old destructive capitalist scams.


From: goes far, flies near, to the stars away from here | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 07 June 2007 10:05 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by ChicagoLoopDweller:
By the way Fidel, the Amnesty article, a long time ago I realize, mentioned 67 political prisoners. Human Rights Watch estimates that some 180,000-200,000 Cubans are in prison...although Cuba doesn't like to release the official numbers.

I'm not aware of any human rights groups citing that many. All human rights groups that I know of are saying that Uncle Sam's USSA is the largest jailer of his own citizens for both sheer numbers as well as per capita.

Prisoners of ideology: America’s draconian approach to criminal justice is beginning to unravel

quote:
For the past thirty years, the United States has been on an imprisonment binge unprecedented in world history. In 1980, the total number of people incarcerated in the U.S. was 500,000. Today the number stands at 2.2 million, with a further 4.8 million on probation or parole. The total U.S. prison budget increased from $9 billion in 1980 to $61 billion by 2003

While the U.S. has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, it now has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. In other words, the country that often proclaims itself the freest in the world, imprisons its population at a rate over six times higher than the rest of the planet.


They're warehousing poor people in America for the sake of failing ideology. Social democracy would be cheaper than propping up a lucrative prison industrial complex and friends of the Republican Party taking advantage of taxpayer handouts.

ChicagoLoopDweller, I'm not sure what kind of information the state is encouraging you to know about Gitmo, but here are a few facts:

5 Myths About Guantanamo Bay's Torture Gulags

Imagine being abducted and sold to a foreign army and never charged formally with a crime. And imagine that all evidence against you is a state secret. Stop imagining, because this is the way it is at Camp X-Ray and other prisons so secret that they have no official names at Gitmo, Abu Graihb, Eastern Europe and around the world.

[ 07 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
N.Beltov
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posted 07 June 2007 10:39 AM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
jeff house: As I said in my previous post, we should apply our principles to all countries equally, and not lie about some places because it is tactically convenient.

It is our principles which are "left", not the countries themselves.


I guess what you mean by that is that capitalism is the end of history, there's no such thing as a socialist country, and comparisons of the sort of democracy we have in Canada versus the sort that exists in Cuba is not allowed. To you, there is one sort of democracy, probably some sort of liberal (bourgeois) democracy, in which a variety of political parties compete, making no substantial changes to the system, and the application of democracy to economic or social aspects of the society is irrelevant and possibly harmful.

To you, spending zillions of dollars in Afghanistan in the "elections" there is much more important that improving the lives of the people. And you will go to your grave thinking that. That's what abstract contextless "principledness" leads to. But anyone who knows anything about the Afghan "government" knows that Afghans derisively refer to Karzai as the Mayor of Kabul. As one wise saw says, Karzai is not President of Afghanistan. B-52 is President. The NATO administration of that "election" ensured that their puppet "won" and nothing substantial changed. To you, the results are sacred. To others, the well being of the people is sacred. Get the picture?

You just don't get it Jeff. It's a question of what "side" you're on, socially speaking. What social class you're partisan for. It's a question of what people you identify with, not simply what abstract principle, isolated from context and therefore quite possibly meaningless, you support. And no, this isn't a substantiation for Iran or whatever.

Here's an example. Just before Hong Kong went over to Chinese control, the British authorities took a number of steps to radically democratize the Hong Kong administration. It was a strategic move on the part of the British colonial authories. They were making Hong Kong more ungovernable for the Chinese. That's what colonial powers DO. It's not dissimilar to the Canadian Liberals who denounced the Conservatives for abandoning the Kyoto targets when they themselves did fuck all.

Anyway, to you the context is irrelevant. Democracy is democracy, you will say. The fact that the Brits did what they did, and ran Hong Kong like a fiefdom right up until they had to hand it back, and rightly so, to the Chinese isn't important to you.

I'm certainly no great fan of the fake Communism in China these days. But I'm crystal clear where I stand in relation to the (last dregs) of British colonialism and imperialism and my attitude towards the actions of that imperialist country. The "democratic" measures, introduced in a manner to disorganize social life in Hong Kong, had everything to do with the Brits wishing to retain some control, and influence, for their own nefarious reasons. To you, imperialism doesn't exist, it's just some incomprehensible slogan.

As I noted, you just don't get it.

quote:
Jeff H: Real leftists are sycophants for equality and democracy. They don't have to pretend that Cuba is a democracy. And they don't pretend Iran is in any way socialist, either.[/QB]

Iran as a socialist country is just you bayonetting another straw man. I can't say I've ever read any babbler take that position. Very impressive on your part. To you, the repressive regime in Iran deserves to get incinerated into the stone age, like Viet Nam or Iraq or any number of other victims of imperialism, because it's such a repressive regime. The consequences for the Middle East are irrelevant to you. And it is crystal clear that in relation to Cuba, your position is virtually identical to that of the US State Department.

You're not fooling anybody. But hey! Knock yourself out. I'm just getting my orders from Bejing or Moscow or whatever, right?


From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
Steppenwolf Allende
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posted 07 June 2007 10:41 AM      Profile for Steppenwolf Allende     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
The contrarianna wrote in the last thread:

quote:
Also what "left" person would really refer, even contemptuously, to China as being "leftist" (to emphasize the very real human rights abuses, a person actually on the left might refer to totalitarian State capitalism or even Stalinism --but not being "left" where the NDP still has valid roots).

Most NDPers, in my experience, don't refer to Stalinist/Maoist regimes as "left" or "communist." rather, they refer to them as "fascist" or "Stalinist" or "state capitalist."

While much of this results from superficial impression, the solid economic fact is, they generally are not wrong.

In terms of how we view the economies of the former Soviet Union/Eastern Europe, or China etc. is simply look to what the leaders and economic planners and architects of those economies actually described them as, and just let the truth speak for itself.

China:

Mao: State capitalism on Building the Economy-- Conference on Financial and Economic Framework 1953

Chinese Capitalism "under Socialism:" Deng Xiaoping 1979 barf!

China: state capitalism to private capitalism 2003

Soviet Union et al:

Lenin: Industrial Management under a State Capitalist Monopoly Framework

Progress Publishers, Moscow; Lenin: State Capitalism During the Transition to Socialism (Index)

Nikolai Bukharin--state capitalism and capitalizing enterprises for the transitional economy

Preobrazhensky, Soviet economic development minister--"socialist" accumulation, profit and commodities in the New economy(vomit)

Evsei Liberman, economics advisor to both the Brezhnev and Khrushchev administrations- Structure and Balance in an Industrial Company—role of profit, property and capital accumulation in Soviet Enterprises

The list goes on.

The Bolshevik model was supposedly to act as a transitional stage toward developing a socialist economy. But with the 1929 Stalinist coup that made that state capitalist model the permanent basis for the Soviet economy , as did the Maoist government in China after 1949.

There’s a world of difference between Marxism and "Marxism-Leninism."

The former is generally an analysis (quite a brilliant one) of the historic changes in the human condition and governance and the complex workings of capitalist economics and class society. It argued the change for the better is an historic inevitability, as humanity becomes more skilled, more efficient and socially conscious, it would by force of nature and evolution democratize itself to the point of a classless state less society.

The latter is, to put the best light on it possible, a model of restructuring for the capitalist economy intended to direct it toward the development of a socialist economy under the conditions that were specific to Russia after the 1917 revolution--a transition period between traditional capitalist society and a socialist economy via "state capitalism administered by the Soviet government." That transition, thanks largely to Stalinism, never happened.

I think what modern socialists need to do is liberate Marxism by de-hyphenating it from Leninism and let it stand on its own two feet again (which it did just fine before the rise of the Stalinist fraud).

The Venezuelan Bolivarian Coalition Government , which is in many respects the most "left" or socialistic-oriented of the newly elected South American center-left government, at least in terms of economic policy, has already rejected the Soviet state capitalist model even as a “transition stage.” We should do the same.


From: goes far, flies near, to the stars away from here | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 07 June 2007 10:59 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I think there are a number of third world nations friendly to U.S. interests that need democratizing. And the best way to affect democracy in those countries is to begin democratizing Uncle Sam's largest trading partner. Fully democratizing Canada and winning back some of the power and influence from our own plutocracy will have greater impact on the USA than nationalising the oil revenues in Venezuela or Bolivia. And again, what Maurice Strong said about helping America to become less dependent on cheap Canadian fossil fuels and Kyoto. Canada has obligations to the rest of the world wrt several important key aspects of democracy. Cuba is insignificant in terms of pushing for U.S. managed elections to happen there. Canada has the resources, direct trade relations and potential to make real differences for the largest and most influential threat to global democracy: the U.S.A Something has to be done about predatory capitalism, and Canada right now is just America's gas tank.

[ 07 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Steppenwolf Allende
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posted 07 June 2007 11:57 AM      Profile for Steppenwolf Allende     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
N. Beltov wrote:

quote:
I guess what you mean by that is that capitalism is the end of history, there's no such thing as a socialist country, and comparisons of the sort of democracy we have in Canada versus the sort that exists in Cuba is not allowed.

Well, in fact, in terms of a working economy, there are no socialist countries, since there are no predominantly socialist economies. All modern economies, at least on a national and international scale, have been predominantly capitalistic in varying forms, regardless of what various politicians may claim (positively or negatively).

On the whole Cuba question, I think Ken Burch dealt with it the best in his 10-point priority list at the very beginning of the last thread:

quote:
Cuba. A difficult balance. We should oppose all U.S. intervention, be cynical about U.S. intentions in calling for "free elections", but support a lessening of restrictions on free expression of opinion. We can justify this as calling for the full and humane realization of the Revolution, which is now possible thanks to the Cuban alliance with Venezuela and Bolivia.
We should regard Cubans living on the island as legitimate actor's in their countries destiny, but not those living in the right-wing bunker in Miami. They want dominance, not democracy.

Let's hold Senor Castro to his word. He's made some great speeches recently that obviously haven't always been followed up with reality.

The Cuban economy, like any other, apparently by Castro's recognition himself, is primarily capitalistic. However, there has also been a growth of cooperatives and similar democratic socialist ventures there in the last decade or so, as well as a growing defiant labour movement, which we should support

In short, we should give credit where it’s due (and not be naysayers about everything). But any government that is elected on a socialist ticket or making claims about supporting the development of socialist economics should be held to a basic set of minimum standards that socialists, wherever they may should expect:

--the democratization of the economy and business by their workers and/or communities

--efforts to move from a profiteering/capital accumulation/market monopolizing mode to a more sustainable development and long-term community well-being mode.

--protection and expansion of democratic rights, civil liberties, equality and combating discriminatory and oppressive prejudices and poverty, as well as universal health, education and social infrastructure and safety

--promoting international peace, human rights, cooperation and economic democracy, universal health and education, ecological well-being, relief from poverty, homelessness, famine and joblessness and calling for the development of international strategies to promote these.

In terms of calling for free elections, be it in Cuba or elsewhere, we should support this as a measure of building democracy. However, when the fraudulent fascists of the Royal Duchy of America call for “free elections,” we should see that as a call to do the same—only for the US.

While again, giving credit where it’s due, the US—or more accurately some parts of it—are relatively not too bad in the civil liberties sector, the US also has one of the most restrictive and stifling electoral systems in the industrialized world—a strict two-party closed system, where both organizations are dominated mainly by wealthy elite capitalist interests that severely limit the scope of mainstream political debate—accompanied by the corporate monopoly media that does much the same.

While Cuba may have a highly restrictive electoral system, the US has one that’s just as restrictive and in some ways more so. We should really make this an issue—especially with our progressive allies in the US--and demand the same for all of the puppet regimes under the US reign of control.

[ 07 June 2007: Message edited by: Steppenwolf Allende ]


From: goes far, flies near, to the stars away from here | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 07 June 2007 12:25 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
While again, giving credit where it’s due, the US—or more accurately some parts of it—are relatively not too bad in the civil liberties sector,

Americans have been arrested for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts. Hundreds were arrested for protesting the notorious "Skool of the Americas" school for training right-wing death squads throughout Latin America. And the USSA owns the largest gulag population in the world bar none, torture at Gitmo etc ad nauseum.

I think SA is trying to focus our attention off of Canada's largest trading partner, arguably a fully-fledged fascist nation in gross violation of more labour and human rights in its own country and third world capitalist allies, and onto "democratizing" socialist Cuba. Yes, Steppenwolf, Canada and democracy here is affected a lot moreso by the very repressive "USSA" and vice versa than we are by a tiny socialist island in the Caribbean.

Canadian Maurice Strong said in 2001 that Canada has an obligation to the rest of the world to help wean America off cheap Canadian fossil fuels and massive energy exports in total. And this is why we should be pushing our own weak and ineffective colonial administrators that are the Canadian plutocracy to stand up to big business and the corporatocracy with adherance to Kyoto, not just in Canada but wrt our massive energy exports to the colonial master nation. And if it helps those who are zeroing in Cuba, global warming affects all nations around the world, socialist and otherwise. Canadians are duty bound to the global community to fight for democracy and against global warming, the most pressing issue for economic sustainability and quality of life affecting the entire world and right here at home where it counts for Canadian and American workers and the world at large.

And by the way, this is not a thread to carry your haphazard arguments concerning dated Tony Cliff views on state-capitalism in to.

[ 07 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Stockholm
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posted 07 June 2007 01:15 PM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Americans have been arrested for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts.

How many? 2 or 3 out of a population of 300 million? and they would have been released almost instantly since it is so clearly against the law to arrest someone for a political expression.

You're clearly grasping at straws, trying desperately to find one or two obscure examples like this to deflect blame from how all these countries like Cuba and Iran torture and execute people at the drop of a hat for not cheering loudly enough when the Leader walks by.


From: Toronto | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 07 June 2007 01:25 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Stockholm:

How many? 2 or 3 out of a population of 300 million? and they would have been released almost instantly since it is so clearly against the law to arrest someone for a political expression.


Who knows how many with the hardline crackdowns on SOA protests, anti-Bush t-shirts, "the patriot" act, and the largest conservative party bureaucracy in the world for clamping down on civil liberties, the repressive Homeland Security apparatus.


44 anti-war protesters arrested 2007

Hey, didn't we condemn the Soviets for "invading" Afghanistan in 1979 ???

American Baseball fan plucked from the stands and hauled away by polizia 2005no more Bush-it

57 anti-war protesters arrested in hardline crackdown 2004

The US is World’s Leading Jailer of its own Citizens Prisoners of Ideology

Hardliner openly admits to Torture at Gitmo Cuba Gulag

We've got to hand it that US hardliner for being open about something

[ 07 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Stockholm
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posted 07 June 2007 02:01 PM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
These are all such minor insignificant anecdotes compared to the torture and execution that awaits absolutely anyone who criticizes the government in places like Cuba or Iran etc...

You can go to any American city and find a vast sub-culture of people who despise their own government and its foreign policy and they speak their minds, they have their own blogs, newsgroups, community newspapers, open-line radio shows etc...There are Americans who post on babble all the time - how many of them were ever sent to a forced labour camp in Alaska as a punishment for doing so?


From: Toronto | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 07 June 2007 02:06 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Well some people consider the USA's imprisoning black people at six times the rate of apartheid South Africa to be appalling and racist, Stockholm. How do you feel about such a large number of people of colour, Hispanics, women and children in general spending the prime of their lives in America's lockdowns and for-profit prison complex ?.

Texaw: The Conveyor Belt of Death Continues 1998 Amnesty

[ 07 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
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posted 07 June 2007 02:55 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
The common failure of supporters of fascist regimes, and quasi-fascist ones like Iran, is that they think they know what is happening there.

But given the fact that information is a state secret, they really know almost nothing about the abuses that go on there.

Of course, intentionally turning a blind eye helps a lot, too!

So, there's a big foofarah about the Cuba Five, members of the secret police of Cuba, living secretly in the US and working on military base there. They are charged, have lawyers, and get a trial by jury. The jury convicts. Cue the international campaign! They SHOULD HAVE been given a change of venue!! They shouldn't have been tried in Miami! (Inexplicably, people in Miami may not like the Cuban Secret Police.)

Now, take someone like researcher Haleh Esfandiari; first, she's subjected to house arrest in Iran, then jailed. No trail, no lawyer, no nothing. And silence from some of the critics of the US.

No silence from Noam Chomsky; no silence from Juan Cole. They're denouncing it.

No, the silence comes from those who DON'T believe in human rights, except as a tactic to denounce the other guy. Never their own side.


From: toronto | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
ChicagoLoopDweller
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posted 07 June 2007 03:06 PM      Profile for ChicagoLoopDweller     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
That is of course the other interesting thing with talking about some of these regimes: the statistics. Cuban infant mortality, Cuban literacy, etc., etc. Where do these numbers come from, who reports them. I always remember the stories from the Soviet Union: If a factory was supposed to make 1,000 shoes, it made 1,000 shoes. If it made 10 shoes, if made 1,000 shoes. Who is going to say, that's not right? The US is not transparent, but they haven't exactly made Gitmo a secret have they? No one knows how many prisoners there are in Cuba, because Cuba won't release the figures. Why would that be? Now Fidel, I await two or three examples of the US not releasing figures. Don't address the issues raised, simply point out problems elsewhere.

I think the fundamental problem is that people always think they are different from the guys on the other side. The differences of opinion may be there, but ultimately there are numerous similarities. It is amazing what people are willing to accept as ok when they believe in something.

[ 07 June 2007: Message edited by: ChicagoLoopDweller ]


From: Chicago | Registered: Apr 2007  |  IP: Logged
Pepper-Pot
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posted 07 June 2007 04:38 PM      Profile for Pepper-Pot        Edit/Delete Post
It's quite amazing how some will fracture the unity and exhaust the energy & resources of the left in order to promote a fallacy of false alternative(s).

The US vs. Cuba debate is a rather insane, erroneous and pointless distraction from identifying the epitome of true social democracy, which is recorded and verified as providing the most liberty, peace, opportunity, superior social statistics, economic prosperity AND economic equality in the history of mankind : the Nordic-Scandinavian region. It is an oscillating L2-L1 model which was able to reduce poverty rates to below 5%, while not criminalizing and polarizing the general populace. We can start things off, here in North America, by opposing Deep Integration (the Americanization of Canada), promoting pacifism, social tolerance, non-prohibitionism, progressive taxation, and proportional representation.


L5/L4/L3/L2/L1/C\R1\R2\R3\R4\R5


Why make it a "who is better ?" L5 vs. R5 debate, when you can transcend the extremism and find a viable alternative in the L1-L2 soft spot, by emulating, as much as we North Americans can, the Norwegian and Finnish models.

The US is an extreme manifestation of staunch ideological dogma in the form of Imperialistic Capitalism, and the Cuban model is not in fact their *perfect & volitional* socialist dreamworld, mainly because Cuba has had to live and adapt, in a reactionary manner, as a permanent TARGET of aggressive, conspiratorial and murderous US international policy. Imagine if your house was surrounded by neighboring attack dogs, focused on your family, so that your every move was more of a reactionary one of insulation, self-protection, and avoiding the clamp of the dog's jaws.

So really, BOTH countries contemporary manifestations can be discarded as examples NOT to emulate : because they are 2 mutually polarized and exacerbated extremes.

Let us change the political paradigms in Canada & the US, to find the Nordic-Scandinavian L1/L2 realm, and find alternatives to polarized ideological conflict, war, poverty, criminalization, secrecy and repression.

We need a 3rd alternative, which transcends the fallacious L5 vs. R5 debate, and when we support and promote that rational 3rd alternative, we will be able to help shift the North American political paradigm.

Our greatest focus, if you are indeed left of center, should be pulling the rope together, as a team, to shift North America to the left : somewhere it has *NEVER* been. That will help all of the 2nd & 3rd world countries find a way out of *their* negative scenarios, which are *mainly* the symptoms/effects/manifestations of greedy and murderous Neo-Conservative / Neo-Liberal economic, social and foreign policies.


From: Vancouver | Registered: Oct 2006  |  IP: Logged
kropotkin1951
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posted 07 June 2007 05:00 PM      Profile for kropotkin1951   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Cuba is not a paradise but I find it interesting that after one attack on the American homeland the US has adopted measures such as the Patriot Act. Imagine if they had been the subject of a 50 year embargo, an invasion, numerous attempts on its President not to mention a foreign government with far greater resources actively working to overthrow the government both within and without the country.

Comparing the imperialist regime of the US with any other country must take into account its record of subverting democracies in Iran, Guatamala, Nicaraqua, Chile, Venezula etc etc etc

And did I mention the School of the America's. Some democracy.


From: North of Manifest Destiny | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 07 June 2007 05:23 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by ChicagoLoopDweller:
That is of course the other interesting thing with talking about some of these regimes: the statistics. Cuban infant mortality, Cuban literacy, etc., etc. Where do these numbers come from, who reports them.

http://www.unicef.org/

Cuba infant and child mortality rates UNICEF 2003

U.S.A. "" 2003

It's interesting to note that the USA has just pulled even with Cuban infant mortality recently after several years of banana Republican-style economies under president Dubya's regime. That's very unimpressive for a country with so much wealth being shovelled to an elite three or four percent every year.

quote:
Originally posted by Jeff House:
So, there's a big foofarah about the Cuba Five, members of the secret police of Cuba, living secretly in the US and working on military base there. They are charged, have lawyers, and get a trial by jury. The jury convicts. Cue the international campaign! They SHOULD HAVE been given a change of venue!! They shouldn't have been tried in Miami! (Inexplicably, people in Miami may not like the Cuban Secret Police.

Yes, many members of the U.S.-backed mafia regime in Havana settled in the Miami area. They are the families of the bourgeois Cubans who decided that their privilege and status would mean little in a socialist country.

And there was nothing secret about them, except for the one Cuban anti-terrorist agent who was discovered working on a military base. You see, Jeff, most of the American society operates on a work will set you free sort of basis. There are few social programs like here. And if you had the choice of working for low wage capitalists or for government-funded outfit, where would you choose to work in order to pay rent and grocery bills?. You don't believe he was there to steal Pentagon secrets, do you ?.

The Cubans informed the American FBI three months ahead of time about the "secret agents" agenda in Miami. In fact, Clinton's FBI had been sharing information about Miami-based terroristas as part of an international cooperation between the two countries. You can imagine the Cubans surprise when they discovered the hypocritical stand taken by the Americans in light of 9-11. Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch are murderers and scum of the earth, Jeff. Why would you or the Americans want to protect and harbor known murderers and terrorists in general, Nazis and other war criminals living in the U.S. and Canada aside ?.

[ 07 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Pepper-Pot
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posted 07 June 2007 06:07 PM      Profile for Pepper-Pot        Edit/Delete Post
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=us+incarceration&meta=

The Republicultian USA, under Bush, has morphed into a prison-factory / murder-machine, if you look at it's domestic policy and foreign policy.

And they are exporting their tainted and destructive pseudo-democracy around the world.

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=secretive+cia+prisons&meta=


The operative political ideology is Neo-Conservatism. Neo-Con economic policy concentrates the wealth among the top 10% of the population. The foreign policy is based on preemptive war manipulations. The horrifically insane domestic SOCIAL policy, can be defined as rigidly hypocritical puritanical prohibitionism. This has helped the Bush-Clan to EXPAND the military-industrial complex, into a much larger rampaging monster : the Military-Industrial-Prison-Pharmaceutical complex.


http://www.talkleft.com/story/2005/04/15/105/09750


To build the US prison industry, and attain the highest incarceration rate on earth, they had to impose restrictive definitions on acceptable behaviour (according to their dogmatic, destructive and irrational Neo-Con cult). The more people they classify as behaviourally "evil", the more they get to incarcerate and attack, thereby growing the Military-Industrial-Prison-Pharmaceutical complex, which is currently, under the Bush led Neo-Con Republicult, a rampaging and oblivious monster.

The point is, the US could and should be different than that !!!


From: Vancouver | Registered: Oct 2006  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 07 June 2007 06:24 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Whoa whoa, PepperPot. We can't go around picking fights with imperialist countries "right" next door to us! We should be looking to insignificant countries in the Caribbean to scold and demockratize. Just look what Paul Martin and the Libranos did for Haiti just 50 miles from Cuban shores. Perfect. Ha, so now we've got that straight, keep the oil and natural gas and massive hydro-electric power spigots turned wide open!. But we can't simply criticize Goliath countries bigger than us for making mock of democracy and terrorizing the world with its corporate-sponsored military machine. WHAT were we thinking? WE're the guys who stand in the shadows and hand over our wallets and watch while the little guys get the crap kicked out of them.

[ 07 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
wage zombie
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posted 07 June 2007 06:46 PM      Profile for wage zombie     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Stockholm:

You're clearly grasping at straws, trying desperately to find one or two obscure examples like this to deflect blame from how all these countries like Cuba and Iran torture and execute people at the drop of a hat for not cheering loudly enough when the Leader walks by.

Wait a minute...are you saying that Cubans have been tortured and executed for not cheering loudly enough? Cubans are being executed at the drop of a hat for not cheering loudly enough?

I'm not sure if you think this kind of hyperbole is part of the give and take--but it's dishonest, and you use it as a crutch.


From: sunshine coast BC | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 07 June 2007 06:51 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
If that were even remotely true, as world traveler Marlon Brando once said, Warshington would have an excuse to invade and make a parking lot out of Havana in eight seconds flat.
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Pepper-Pot
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posted 07 June 2007 07:26 PM      Profile for Pepper-Pot        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Fidel:
Whoa whoa, PepperPot. We can't go around picking fights with imperialist countries "right" next door to us! We should be looking to insignificant countries in the Caribbean to scold and demockratize. Just look what Paul Martin and the Libranos did for Haiti just 50 miles from Cuban shores. Perfect. Ha, so now we've got that straight, keep the oil and natural gas and massive hydro-electric power spigots turned wide open!. But we can't simply criticize Goliath countries bigger than us for making mock of democracy and terrorizing the world with its corporate-sponsored military machine. WHAT were we thinking? WE're the guys who stand in the shadows and hand over our wallets and watch while the little guys get the crap kicked out of them.

[ 07 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


Heh heh, your blood pressure goes up, and you become exponentially exasperated and passionate when someone kicks at Cuba, I understand this. You have legitimate justification. Sarcasm too ! WOOP !

But as you know, I will not be lumped into the "WE", for I am my own thinker, as are you, as is every other individual. Anyone who votes Liberal or Conservative during the next Canadian election, is a destructive perpetrator of the current secretive, exploitative and murderous economic, social and foreign policy implementations/manifestations.

You and I are pulling the paradigm rope to the left, in order to dismantle and destroy the current Neo-Liberal/Neo-Conservative monopoly in Canada. The only way for Cuba to be free of the visable AND invisible shackles, is to get Canada (and hopefully the US) to the L1/L2 position.... left of center for the first time in it's history.

...and I won't stop pulling until I see that outcome.

I'm sick of the R4 Bushian model. So sick and disgusted in fact, that I will pull this rope with 10,000 lbs. of pressure per day for 50 years.

In that way, I'm sort of a Chomsky-Lite.


From: Vancouver | Registered: Oct 2006  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 07 June 2007 08:01 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I know, we should appease Herr Bushler, and war party number two soon to be tapped as cosmetic government right on schedule, and sign a non-aggression pact. nssuh! I almost forgot, our colonial administraitorships since former PM P.M. have been working on exactly that with North American UNION and SPP talks in closed door meetings with Uncle Sam and the corporate sham. It's like Bushler and the shadow gov pull the strings, and our lap dogs in Ottawa yip and yap and do embarrassing tricks for them without so much as a cue.

[ 07 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Pepper-Pot
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posted 07 June 2007 08:38 PM      Profile for Pepper-Pot        Edit/Delete Post
I've never seen such sardonic wit, cynical sarcasm, defeatism and negativity from Fidel yet...

Snap out of it Fidel !


There. I think he's back.

(I think he needs a Cappucino and a lukewarm shower... maybe even a hoot or a lite beer..)


From: Vancouver | Registered: Oct 2006  |  IP: Logged
Stockholm
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posted 07 June 2007 08:41 PM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Well some people consider the USA's imprisoning black people at six times the rate of apartheid South Africa to be appalling and racist, Stockholm. How do you feel about such a large number of people of colour, Hispanics, women and children in general spending the prime of their lives in America's lockdowns and for-profit prison complex ?.

Guess what? Men are 50% of the population of the US, but 80% of the prison population is male. Is that an example of sexism? or is it simply that men commit more crime than women?


From: Toronto | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 07 June 2007 08:47 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
The statistics say that the bulk of the increase in the U.S. prison population has been women, minorities and juveniles. About 80 percent of them are non-violent criminals. As the Socialist International piece went on to say, black youth in America have almost come to expect to be warehoused by the for-profit prison complex at some point in their lives.

[ 07 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Pepper-Pot
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posted 07 June 2007 08:52 PM      Profile for Pepper-Pot        Edit/Delete Post
Stockholm ? You are simply trying to defend the Republican social policy, and provoke those who see their incarceration machine for what it is... a system where the more money you have = greater chance of leniency. Blacks have much higher poverty rates, much lower average annual incomes, and other far inferior social & economic statistics than whites, so they do more time for the same crime. You can wear the blindfold of oblivion all you want.

The *current* US system is one of greed and hyper-incarceration. Only those on the mid to far right part of the spectrum would insist on defending or rationalizing it.

The sequence induced by the right-wing Republicult is : Greed, Poverty, Crime, Incarceration.

Repeat the sequence.


http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=blacks+incarcerated+us&meta=


________________________________________________

The Republicultian USA, under Bush, has morphed into a prison-factory / murder-machine, if you look at it's domestic policy and foreign policy.

And they are exporting their tainted and destructive pseudo-democracy around the world.

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=secretive+cia+prisons&meta=


The operative political ideology is Neo-Conservatism. Neo-Con economic policy concentrates the wealth among the top 10% of the population. The foreign policy is based on preemptive war manipulations. The horrifically insane domestic SOCIAL policy, can be defined as rigidly hypocritical puritanical prohibitionism. This has helped the Bush-Clan to EXPAND the military-industrial complex, into a much larger rampaging monster : the Military-Industrial-Prison-Pharmaceutical complex.


http://www.talkleft.com/story/2005/04/15/105/09750


To build the US prison industry, and attain the highest incarceration rate on earth, they had to impose restrictive definitions on acceptable behaviour (according to their dogmatic, destructive and irrational Neo-Con cult). The more people they classify as behaviourally "evil", the more they get to incarcerate and attack, thereby growing the Military-Industrial-Prison-Pharmaceutical complex, which is currently, under the Bush led Neo-Con Republicult, a rampaging and oblivious monster.


From: Vancouver | Registered: Oct 2006  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 07 June 2007 08:58 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Good one, PepperPot

Warehousing Poor People for Profit

HRW:CIA Ghost Prisons


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
wage zombie
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posted 07 June 2007 09:04 PM      Profile for wage zombie     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
This (and the first one) has been a great thread. Countries that i think the left in Canada should focus on:

1. Canada

2. USA

3. Mexico -we have lots of allies in Mexico and with the SPP coming up we need to work together a lot more closely. Mexico is our neighbour, and we don't have a lot of neighbours.

4. Afghanistan

5. Israel/Palestine

6. Venezuela -Chavez has now become a symbolic anti-bush. There is a major rift between the USA and South America and Canada and Mexico are going to have to mediate (assuming we can stop putting in leaders who will just suck up).

7. Haiti -since the Canadian military was involved with toppling the government.

8. Guatemala -Canadian mining companies are wreaking havok in here.

9,10 Pick 2 poor countries and actually try to help them out.

This list is pretty America centric--let's prioritize our backyard. I realize that there's been great left success in Scandinavia but that doesn't make those countries a high priority. Probably China and India and Brazil and any other future superpowers should be seen as big priorities, but especially China seems like it's poised for such explosive development that there may not be much for the left to do.

I guess i thought about it as, what should left parliamentarians prioritize, but that can be limiting. On an individual level (and this thread is an example) leftists should travel to get a sense of what's really going on in some other countries (like Cuba).

I think it's hard to prioritize what's going on internationally ahead of what's going on in our own communities though, so it's a tricky question.


From: sunshine coast BC | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 07 June 2007 09:18 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Hear-hear! Think globally and act locally. Cubans and Latin Americans in general are weary of Gringos with good intentions, and I think we have the establishment, military and multinationals to thank for that.
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Pepper-Pot
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posted 07 June 2007 09:50 PM      Profile for Pepper-Pot        Edit/Delete Post
If you reside in Canada... it's as Wage Zombie stated...

1. Canada

2. USA

3. Mexico


We must realize that we reside in the home base, the *mitochondrion* of the Neo-Conservative/Neo-Liberal impetus (which beams it destructive ray at every single country around the world), this North America.

To truly liberate and elevate those in 2nd & 3rd world countries, we must help shift the political paradigm here at HOME.

/L5/L4/L3/L2/L1/C\R1\R2\R3\R4\R5

The Neo-Liberals gave us the R2\R3 political paradigm, the Neo-Conservatives "fixed" that with the R4\R5 scenario. North America has been entirely deficient in genuine L3/L2/L1 social democracy, and the time has come for us to change that.


From: Vancouver | Registered: Oct 2006  |  IP: Logged
Stockholm
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posted 07 June 2007 11:09 PM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
But why are so many more men than women in jail in the US? This stinks of sexism! Since women are 50% of the population there is no reason why they shouldn't be 50% of the prison population.
From: Toronto | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 07 June 2007 11:26 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
What percentage of the incarcerated were men in apartheid South Africa ?. British penal colony Australia ?.

Too, I think with corporate America taking some advantage of prison labour, stamping out car parts for GM etc, they might desire male labour over female, i don't know. It would be an interesting thing to know. I imagine the increase in American women in prisons could be to fill a need for textile workers with fine motor skills for things like sewing "Made in USA" labels on clothing coming in from El Salvador or Honduras etc.

And I don't think it really matters what percentage of the six million plus Americans embroiled in the legal system are male or female. Because USian unemployment statistics don't include them anyway, nor or they allowed to vote in elections. And which is likely part of the intended result for political reasons.

You know what Canadian reports in recent years have said about poor people in general tending not to exercise their right to vote, or tending not to desire post-secondary education based on lower family income levels or parental achievement. Well in the U.S., there's real proof of that, because it's so much easier to be disenfranchised in America than it is to be a participant. There are a range of colours on American streets, like here. Visitors to the USA have commented that with every floor of a corporate or government building ascended, the colour of the street seems to fade somewhat.

[ 07 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Pepper-Pot
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posted 08 June 2007 12:07 AM      Profile for Pepper-Pot        Edit/Delete Post
Obviously Stockholm is ignoring the fact that women commit a MINUTE percentage of violent criminal acts. He is also ignoring the fact that for the same crime, an impoverished black man can get decades in the slammer, while Willie Nelson gets a slap on the wrist.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/317682_blackfamily30.html

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003576050

No one is saying that the percentile correlation should be *exactly* the same, but a vast discrepency is evidence of a tilted justice system for the wealthier whites.

The wealthy can basically PURCHASE more lenient sentences, and since more whites possess much more wealth, they get to serve less time for the same crime.

http://news.google.ca/news?hl=en&q=black+teen+oral+sex&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&sa=N&tab=wn


Free at last...

http://news.google.ca/news?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&tab=wn&q=paris+hilton+free


Y'see, Stockholm, the Falwellian doctrine implemented by the Republicult is persecuting young impoverished blacks for smoking the evil weed and having oral sex. And since Blacks have less per capita wealth, they get harsher sentences. Wealthy white Willy and wealthy white Paris get off scott free, impoverished Black man does not.

But I guess the local apologist for the Bushian paradigm is wearing the blindfold of oblivion in order to ignore reality.

Just like Bush.


From: Vancouver | Registered: Oct 2006  |  IP: Logged
Stockholm
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posted 08 June 2007 05:51 AM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
You're being totally ridiculous. There is probably no one hear who loathes Bush more than I do. I just happen to believe in social DEMOCRACY as a top priority. That means I believe in free, fair MULTIPARTY elections, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of and freedom from religion, freedom of the press etc... No economic system has any value whatsoever, unless all those things are included. You can throw all the useless stats you want about infant mortality rates in Cuba - unless people there can freely vote for ANY party they want and can freely demounce the government without fear of repercussion - it is all worthless.
From: Toronto | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 08 June 2007 08:45 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Believing in democracy and the tooth fairy is all fine and noble, Stockholm. But free and fair elections are few and far between where U.S. interests are concerned. Cuba has few natural resources coveted by the empire. I think the fact that Cubans themselves have resisted any and all efforts by the U.S. to reverse the revolution is symbolic of a nagging thorn in the side of imperialists since Bay of Pigs.

Some of the original constitutionalists had high hopes for the U.S. They wanted to create a new country that did not exist to serve a monarchy, financial elite and centuries-old banking system. Instead they aspired to create a country that existed for and run by the people. Something else happened along the way. The real power in the U.S. is Wall Street and the military-industrial complex. The U.S. doesn't have democracy. Don't blame Bush, because his authority is only symbolic. When Bush goes, another plutocrat will be elected to head the cosmetic government. It's all a charade even moreso than here.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Steppenwolf Allende
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posted 08 June 2007 09:01 AM      Profile for Steppenwolf Allende     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
You're being totally ridiculous. There is probably no one hear who loathes Bush more than I do.

"Hear" or "here?" We here hear you.

quote:
I just happen to believe in social DEMOCRACY as a top priority. That means I believe in free, fair MULTIPARTY elections, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of and freedom from religion, freedom of the press etc...

I don’t think anyone here, except the Stalinist, disagrees with any of this. The only thing that some folks here (me included) are concerned about is falling into the trap of being associated with the bogus factless rhetoric of the US regime/Corporate America drivel that hides behind these slogans in order to advance its brutal imperialistic agenda.

It’s obvious via history that what the US ruling elite considers “democracy” is similar to what the Stalinist elites in China, former Soviet Union (and Russia today, except going by new US-style rhetoric and terminology) call “building socialism:” authoritarian puppet regimes ripe for exploitation and graft that bust unions, deny basic freedoms to the working class, butcher the environment and generally treat their people as second class citizens in their own countries all to enrich a parasitic capitalistic elite of some kind.

quote:
No economic system has any value whatsoever, unless all those things are included.

Fine, but two points here. First, that's why socialism is so desperately needed, since without economic democracy and control of industry and businesses by workers and their communities, these other rights and freedoms continue to be restricted and constantly under threat of being taken away by state bureaucracies and corporate funded political forces that we have to control over.

Second, your otherwise honourable claims ring pretty hollow when you repeatedly hurl out apologies for US-backed authoritarian regimes all over the place (like South Korea), even in the face of links to facts and sources showing you these places aren’t the free and democratic havens you make them out to be (including the US itself, which has among the most restrictive and unaccountable electoral and political system in the world).

quote:
You can throw all the useless stats you want about infant mortality rates in Cuba - unless people there can freely vote for ANY party they want and can freely demounce the government without fear of repercussion - it is all worthless.

First, as a long-time socialist and labour and co-op movement activist, as well as a caring parent and grandparent, I say reducing infant mortality is NEVER worthless, no matter what kind of regime governs and nation or economy.

Second, while we can all dump the Stalinist religious cultism and its garbage about “socialist Cuba” (especially since even its leader has admitted it doesn’t have a predominantly socialist economy—or at least not yet), we can certainly condemn the repression and lack of various freedoms there WITHOUT writing the whole country off and not recognizing some of the actual improvements that may have been made over the years—things like universal health care and education, good public infrastructure, etc., that we generally feel a freer society should hang on to and improve on more.

Finally, it’s totally obvious, and again I think Ken Burch pointed this out very well, that we need to clearly and constantly spell out the total separation of the issues of demanding greater freedoms and rights for people, whether in Cuba or elsewhere, and the issues of condemning imperialistic aggression, whether it’s the US or anyone else (UK, China, or, for that matter, Canada as well, since this country is complicit in imperialistic activity), under any circumstances—particularly since history shows that imperialistic aggression NEVER results in greater democracy and socialist economic development in any country that’s invaded or conquered.


From: goes far, flies near, to the stars away from here | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 08 June 2007 09:44 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Can a truly democratic socialist country co-exist with U.S. imperialism in this hemisphere ?.

Over 70 percent of Haitians elected a social democratic president, and Haiti is still a desperately poor country just 50 miles from Cuba. Haiti and Guatemala and Nicaragua are home to the poorest people in this hemisphere. And the people have fought so hard for social justice in their own countries only to be denied by hired mercenaries of U.S. imperialism.

Venezuela also had a near miss with a CIA-backed military coup in this same decade. And this all happened while U.S. imperialists were focused on a resource grab in Iraq and imperialism in Afghanistan. Donald Rumsfeld announced increased military aid to Latin America several months ago. Corrupted military leaders have tended to side with the ruling elite in Latin America over the years.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
contrarianna
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posted 08 June 2007 11:32 AM      Profile for contrarianna     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Stockholm:
You're being totally ridiculous. There is probably no one hear who loathes Bush more than I do. I just happen to believe in social DEMOCRACY as a top priority. That means I believe in free, fair MULTIPARTY elections, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of and freedom from religion, freedom of the press etc... No economic system has any value whatsoever, unless all those things are included. You can throw all the useless stats you want about infant mortality rates in Cuba - unless people there can freely vote for ANY party they want and can freely demounce the government without fear of repercussion - it is all worthless.

Considering your constant deflection of criticism of US human rights and murderous foreign imperialism, there can't be too many on this board who believe your statement that you "loathe George Bush more than anyone on this board"--any more than they believe your claim to vote for any NDPer, no matter what.

As for repeatedly stating you are a "Social Democrat". That is frequently the "moral" justification given by neoconservative ideologues who justify "regime change" imperialism.--but I'd guess you'd know that.


From: here to inanity | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
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posted 08 June 2007 12:02 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
One of the ways that the Communist POarty got discredited in Canada was its habit of calling everyone a "fascist" who opposed Soviet policy.

That, of course, led to calling social democrats "social fascists", and that led to Communist Party support for Hitler.

Every formulation which requires such black and white thinking is entirely unnecessary. Actually, I think the formulation which demands "choose us or George Bush" is about the only way one might be driven to support these discredited alternatives.

Bush used to do this, too. "You're with us or the terrorists!"

Luckily, one can be neither Bush nor Stalin, neither Blair or Ahmadinejad, and still have a substantial political impact.


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Stockholm
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posted 08 June 2007 12:14 PM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Is there a reason why it's impossible to have low infant mortality rates AND freedom of speech, free multiparty elections, an independent press etc...? We seem to have the best of both worlds in Canada and so do most European countries and Japan. What's Cuba's problem?
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Fidel
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posted 08 June 2007 01:00 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by jeff house:
One of the ways that the Communist POarty got discredited in Canada was its habit of calling everyone a "fascist" who opposed Soviet policy.

That, of course, led to calling social democrats "social fascists", and that led to Communist Party support for Hitler.


Tommy Douglas was the first western politician to speak out against Hitler having visited Germany in 1938. It's important to remember that politicians from around the world had met with and spoken with various members of the Nazi regime in the early going, especially American businessmen who the U.S. ambassador to Berlin said at the time were tripping over one another in Germany while the economic depression lingered on in North America.

British conservatives and rich and influential people had investments in Germany, and everybody knew then that Hitler was rebuilding for war in violation of a WWI treaty. Chamberlain and Deladier were the great conservative appeasers who gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler. A German coup plot saw German ambassadors to Downing Street turned away, because Neville Chamberlain referred to them at the time as "anti-Nazis" and "were not to be trusted."

I think people like Jeff do a great disservice to the truth surrounding fascist history by trying to shift blame from the powerful to the powerless as he proceeded to do above and for what were arguably deliberate mistakes made by the corporate and banking cabal during the years of global fascist threats. Franco's fascists tookover Spain in the 1930's, and western leaders did nothing to restore or encourage democracy in that country either. Later on the western so-called democracies closed their doors to European Jewry while special licences were granted to industrialists by western governments to continue doing business with the enemy up to the late stages of the war of annihilation against communist Russia.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Stockholm
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posted 08 June 2007 01:03 PM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Meanwhile Communists and their fellow-travellers in North America doggedly followed the Stalinist line and dismissed WW2 as an imperialist war in the wake of Stalin and Hitler signing a non-aggression pact and carving up Poland and the Baltic states between them. It was only after Hitler invaded the USSR in 1941 that members of the Stalinist "cult" suddenly decided that maybe WW2 was worth fighting after all!
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Fidel
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posted 08 June 2007 01:34 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Stalin pleaded with Roosevelt and Churchill for a second front for over two years. The calls fell on deaf ears though.

A Russian veteran of the war said in an interview on History channel that Stalingrad was a beautiful, green city stretching over 30 km along the Volga River. It was a city where people could go and work, learn and live life. Over 400 thousand people were entombed at Stalingrad as the corporate-sponsored military machine laid siege to it.

About 50 thousand Red Army and Jewish partisanis turned the tables on the Nazis at Leningrad. And then the Red Army rose from the ashes and surrounded the enemy at the caldron, and they fought with every ounce and shred of their being against the fascist enemy at the gates. The terrible, terrible Stalin guns rained death, humiliation and defeat on a corporate-sponsored military machine and what was left of General Paulus' army, commanded by Hitler to fight to the death for his honor and megalomaniacal ego. Churchill and Roosevelt were afraid the Russians would liberate Europe by themselves. And then it was Churchill and Roosevelt who were the beggars at Yalta.

How's that for cult worship?.

Volga, Volga our pride,
Mighty stream so deep and wide.
Ay-da, da, ay-da!
Ay-da, da, ay-da!
Mighty stream so deep and wide.
Volga, Volga you're our pride.

[ 08 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Webgear
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posted 08 June 2007 01:48 PM      Profile for Webgear     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Fidel:

Stalin pleaded with Roosevelt and Churchill for a second front for over two years. The calls fell on deaf ears though.



I doubt that the Allies could have created a second front before 1943 especially in Europe.

Given that the British and American forces were already fighting in three theaters of war. There were not enough troops and equipment, developed tactics, to create an effective secondary European front to remove pressure of the Russian military.


From: Montgomery's Tavern | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 08 June 2007 02:14 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Webgear:


I doubt that the Allies could have created a second front before 1943 especially in Europe.


The western leaders stalled for time. That's been established by even western historians. It was yet another crisis of capitalism. There were western industrialists investing money and time in building Hitler's war machine. Germany was considered a flashpoint for the spread of communism to the west.

Meanwhile, things weren't so good at home with "the crisis." Canadian and American army recruiters said they'd never seen so many emaciated young men unfit for combat. Laissez-faire capitalism had weakened our societies so badly that, yes, it was questionable as to whether we could mount an offensive. Stalin referred to the disasterous landings at Dunkirk as the "sideshow in the Mediterranean."

But Canadians and Americans had decided well ahead of our leaders that they wanted to fight fascism in Spain, and they wanted to fight fascism in Europe. There was no holding them back.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
contrarianna
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posted 08 June 2007 02:23 PM      Profile for contrarianna     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by jeff house:
One of the ways that the Communist POarty got discredited in Canada was its habit of calling everyone a "fascist" who opposed Soviet policy.

That, of course, led to calling social democrats "social fascists", and that led to Communist Party support for Hitler.
unnecessary.


Obviously I was not referring to all, or really ANY real social democrat. Only those who call themselves "social democrats" while supporting bloody imperialism--such as those in the current "Social Democrats USA" incarnation which produced the likes of Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz.
Social Democrats USA

The relation of that particular type of militant "social democracy" to neoconservatism is mentioned here:
Neoconservative

[ 08 June 2007: Message edited by: contrarianna ]


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Stockholm
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posted 08 June 2007 03:15 PM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
What do you think of the Russian imperialism that led to the brutal invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia and the oppression of East Germany and Poland etc... for so many years?
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Stockholm
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posted 08 June 2007 03:17 PM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Stalin pleaded with Roosevelt and Churchill for a second front for over two years. The calls fell on deaf ears though.

Stalin was just a cry-baby. He gleefully cooperated with Hitler in the dismemberment of Poland in 1939 and he thought he had a deal whereby he and Hitler would carve up the world together. Then Hitler doublecrossed him and then he started wailing that the other Allies should bail him out.

I'm sure Britain and France would have liked Russia to have opened a second front against Germany in 1940 - but that wasn't going to happen because Russia was busy being an ally to the nazis at that time.


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Fidel
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posted 08 June 2007 03:30 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
French Conservatives laid right down for the Nazis, and British workers were exhausted fighting fascism in Spain in spite of the travel restrictions imposed on them by the pro-Franco conservatives. Churchill wanted the army calling in to fire on striking British coal miners in 1925, the fat old pervert. Churchill even expressed admiration of Franco's union-busting fascist ways.

Stalin read Mein Kampf after Hitler seized power. The History Channel said Stalin meticulously underlined all the references to Bolsheviks and Jews. Stalin trusted no one, and especially not Hitler. Everybody was fascist west of Russia.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Stockholm
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posted 08 June 2007 03:52 PM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I give up. This is like trying to argue with a member of the Flat Earth Society or with a member of the Unification Church.
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Fidel
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posted 08 June 2007 04:09 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Ya, a cold wind has just blown over me.

[ 08 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Webgear
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posted 08 June 2007 04:53 PM      Profile for Webgear     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Fidel

What do you think about the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-1940?

Soviet-Finnish War


From: Montgomery's Tavern | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 08 June 2007 06:18 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I think the decision to invade Finland was a mistake. Finland admitted its own mistake later in siding with the Nazis and ended up having to fight them as well. Finland had better relations with Russia later on and bartering manufactured goods to Russia for raw materials.

About the pact with Hitler, Stalin is said to have had two choices:

1. if Stalin aligned with Britain, Russia would end up fighting Hitler for Poland and could not spare soldiers or equipment in a foreign country, just as they couldn't spare anything to fight fascism in Spain but did send some military equipment and advisors there anyway.

2. If Stalin appeased Hitler with a pact, Russia would get half of Poland, and time to prepare for the coming war with Germany. Stalin knew that there would be war with Germany. And Everybody knew that Hitler was preparing for western aggression against the revolution part two.

Stalin began to question the reliability of the spies warning of impending invasion and believed Hitler would not do a Napoleon by invading before the start of Russian winter. Hitler was smart if he invaded in spring. In fact, barbarossa was delayed by Tito and his anti-fascist Serb-Montenegrin/multi-ethnic guerilla fighters in Yugoslavia. In short, the Nazis ended up running out of gasoline because of the guerilla attacks on supply lines coming from Romania and Turkey through Yugoslavia. The Croats and Nazis went on a killing frenzy in Yugoslavia because of that resistance. There are strangers we owe a great deal of gratitude who were key in the battle against global fascist domination all those years ago.

ETA: Fascists have a habit of marching into sovereign countries and declaring local people enemies of freedom and democracy. Sound familiar?

[ 08 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Webgear
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posted 08 June 2007 07:55 PM      Profile for Webgear     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I had a chance to visit one of Tito's Headquarters in Bosnia many years ago.

A German raid came close to capturing him in 43 or 44 in a village called Drvar.

He was within 100 meters of being capture, he escaped by crawling away through a drainage ditch under small arms fire.


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Steppenwolf Allende
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posted 08 June 2007 08:12 PM      Profile for Steppenwolf Allende     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
What do you think of the Russian imperialism that led to the brutal invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia and the oppression of East Germany and Poland etc... for so many years?

The fact is, ever since its first Five Year Plan, the Stalinist regime was looking to expand its sphere of influence beyond its own borders by securing access to greater markets to expand its state capitalist economy.

The Stalin-Hitler Pact allowed the Stalinists to consider much of Eastern Europe within "within the Soviet Sphere of influence." That's when the Stalinist regime not only co-invaded Poland with the Nazis, but used the opportunity to re-conquer the nations once under the Czarist’s imperial rule that gained their independence after the Russian Revolution.

That included Finland. But while Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, western Ukraine and Moldavia fell to Soviet armies and stayed under Russian rule until the Soviet break-up, the Finns fought back and held off the Soviets.

They so badly hammered the invading Russian army that it is speculated that the Nazis figured it would be easy to beat the Russians in a blitz. Then came Operation Barbarossa. Man, were they wrong! (The Russian Front was the main cause for the Nazis’ defeat in Europe).

Finland’s an interesting place (I was there in the early 80s). While no national economy has ever been predominantly socialist (capitalistic laws of value and motion, to varying degrees, are still pretty dominant just about everywhere), Finland, much like Sweden and Norway, has always had a large degree of practical socialism in its economy--far, far more than the Soviet Union, where most socialistic development was restricted and eventually persecuted and forced under the domination of various state capitalist enterprises and sectors.

And many communists, anarchists and socialists fleeing Stalin's purges and persecutions ended up in Finland andformed militias to help defend the country from Soviet attack.

But after Hitler turned on Stalin, Finland and Russia were forced into an alliance to fight off the common enemy. Sadly, Finland was mostly conquered by the Nazi armies, which then used it a one route to attack Leningrad.

After World War II, Finland was able to fend off both Soviet and US expansion and is still today one of the few fairly non-aligned nations in the world, with among the most democratic, fairly egalitarian and prosperous socialist-influenced economies.


From: goes far, flies near, to the stars away from here | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged
Steppenwolf Allende
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posted 08 June 2007 08:46 PM      Profile for Steppenwolf Allende     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Obviously I was not referring to all, or really ANY real social democrat. Only those who call themselves "social democrats" while supporting bloody imperialism--such as those in the current "Social Democrats USA" incarnation which produced the likes of Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz.
Social Democrats USA

Good points by contrarianna. I, for one, clearly understood you were not slagging social democrats.

But I laughed at the real blast from the past (when I was living in the US) when I read your reference to the so-called "Social Democrats USA."

SDUSA of course has nothing to do with social democrats or social democracy. Basically it is a front group for the US government/Corporate America and is closely tied to other CIA-funded groups like Freedom (that's a laugh) House, which has earned them the title of "State Department Socialists."

While the group fraudulently claims to be the successor to the old Socialist Party of Americaof Eugene Debs, it's in fact a bunch of sell-out Democrat congress people and bureaucrats and some house-trained union reps (George Meany and Lane Kirkland were both members) who use the groups to get tax money for whatever.

I remember one of their many publications was almost entirely dedicated to attacking the much larger and more credible Democratic Socialists of America, accusing them of being influenced by "radical extremists," "Moscow informants" and other "anti-American forces" and "dangerous idealists and anarchists." It would also denounce many European and Asian social democratic parties for being “too pro-Soviet” because they kept attacking the Reagan Administrations foreign policies (if you can imagine a supposedly “social democratic” group protesting social democrats attacking Neo-Cons, it don’t get much goofier than that!).

While it was offensive, it was so unbelievable it was a huge laugh riot. I was a member of The Wobblies--IWW then, and we used to get together with SDUSA, some Stalinist, Maoist and Trotskyist literature and have what we would call a laugh party, where we would just read the BS, get drunk and howl away at the pseudo-socialist garb!

Now I see they are buying into UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s so-called “Third Way” BS and defending the US regime’s slaughter in Iraq. Some things don’t change—especially when they’re funded by the US taxpayer (involuntarily of course).

Thanks for the memories!!!


From: goes far, flies near, to the stars away from here | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 08 June 2007 09:04 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:

The fact is, ever since its first Five Year Plan, the Stalinist regime was looking to expand its sphere of influence beyond its own borders by securing access to greater markets to expand its state capitalist economy.


That's strange, because your first link doesn't mention state-capitalism in Russia at all. And you make it sound as if Russia was the aggressor not the fascist invaders who were actually purged from Eastern Europe, Belgrade, Kiev, Warsaw, Kracow, Silesia etc by the Red Army in 1944-45. tsk-tsk

"In fact", they are in need of a few democratic socialists in Haiti and Guatemala right now. Don't forget to bring: kaopectate, a copy of the social democrat manifesto, and lots of money to bribe the soldiers with machine guns, local cops and wealthy rancheros suspicious of northerners talking about change in general. I'm thinking you're the kind of social democrat who goes where angels fear to tread.

[ 08 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Pepper-Pot
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posted 08 June 2007 09:34 PM      Profile for Pepper-Pot        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Stockholm:
You're being totally ridiculous. There is probably no one hear who loathes Bush more than I do. I just happen to believe in social DEMOCRACY as a top priority. That means I believe in free, fair MULTIPARTY elections, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of and freedom from religion, freedom of the press etc... No economic system has any value whatsoever, unless all those things are included. You can throw all the useless stats you want about infant mortality rates in Cuba - unless people there can freely vote for ANY party they want and can freely demounce the government without fear of repercussion - it is all worthless.

Now you are simply flailing away, while donning the Blindfold Of Oblivion. (BOO !)

Gosh, Fidel should get $50,000/yr. for trying to present objective reality to the (few) dismissive Neo-Con/Neo-Lib apologists around here (aka babble babysitting). He could pocket $5000 and give the rest to a US seniors group that just got bankrupted due to medical expenditures.

Again, instead of the fallacious Cuba (L5) vs. US (R5) debate, let's stop the pointless bickering and build social democracy in North America, for the first time in it's history.

That means all uf us.

If we can't, then a probable penalty is a Harper Neo-Con majority, and possibly Mitt Romney as Harper's American Idol president.

There's obviously a social democratic alternative 3rd alternative to the US vs. Cuba trap. We must not be blinded the polarity contained in the reactionary communism vs. imperialistic capitalism debate.

A 3rd alternative exists in the form of Norway, Finland, Sweden and Denmark.

The probable penalty for not seeing and striving for that 3rd alternative is a Harper & Romney tandem for NA. And to think the Cuba vs. US debate polarized us and disrupted us enough to bicker amongst ourselves while the Neo-Cons and Neo-Libs kicked our asses. Again. And Again. And AGAIN.

Tragic. Utterly tragic.

Almost as tragic as the Republicans labelling themselves as pro-life while their trillions in wealth go towards killing 100,000+ innocent middle east civilians instead of providing adequate US health care infrastructure, 39% child poverty rates in Michigan, very high infant mortality rates, 10's of 1000's of murders per year, most by guns, the highest incarceration rate on earth, 50 year prison sentences for selling pot seeds, 10 year prison sentences for oral sex, $500,000,000 bonus checks for CEO's, more evidence of secretive CIA prisons currently being covered by ABC news, there is hope...

...let's just hope Mr. Moore doesn't get persecuted by the Bush-Nazi's...


From: Vancouver | Registered: Oct 2006  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 08 June 2007 09:41 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Pepper-Pot:
...let's just hope Mr. Moore doesn't get persecuted by the Bush-Nazi's...

Sicko on YouTube

50 million in US lack health insurance


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Pepper-Pot
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posted 08 June 2007 10:00 PM      Profile for Pepper-Pot        Edit/Delete Post
"We must not be blinded and distracted by the polarity contained in the reactionary communism (Cuba) vs. imperialistic capitalism (US) debate."


It is also imperative that we support Michael Moore (buy his dvd's, especially "Sicko" when it's released). He, Bill Maher, Dennis Kucinich and Bernie Sanders have spoken truth to power from *within* the house that Bush built.

_____________________________________________

Apparently Bush & Cheney got a little "sick" today, with stomach and heart problems. But judging by their suits, and connections, they get top-notch care and treatment.

Health care should be an absolute individual right, not a monetary privilege.

(We're all sick of the Bush clan by now... and the cure is genuine social democracy)


From: Vancouver | Registered: Oct 2006  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 08 June 2007 10:17 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Yes, all Republican senators and congressmen and warmongering war mongers in general accept taxpayer-funded health care in the U.S. It goes without saying.
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Steppenwolf Allende
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posted 08 June 2007 11:04 PM      Profile for Steppenwolf Allende     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
There's obviously a social democratic alternative 3rd alternative to the US vs. Cuba trap. We must not be blinded the polarity contained in the reactionary communism vs. imperialistic capitalism debate.

How true! However, let's not continue to slander " communism " by associating it with what is in fact totalitarian state capitalism, as directly expressed by the leaders and architects of those oppressive and destructive models.

Capitalism of every variety is what stands in the way of what you want to do (and I am already trying to do).

Continuing to be expected to blindly accept bald-faced lies about “socialism” or “communism” in China, former Soviet Union, etc., trotted out by fraudulent political power cliques, mass-murder/exploitation-condoning apologists and moronic romanticists in deep denial, is an insult to the socialist movement and the millions of dedicated people who have died fighting for democracy and dignity for working people under oppressive capitalistic tyrannies (whether they are avowedly capitalist or allegedly socialist). Remember, we can’t plot a future unless we know our past.

quote:
let's stop the pointless bickering and build social democracy in North America, for the first time in it's history.

Ok, now I hope this thread will actually take on a practically useful character. Social and economic democracy are the biggest keys to developing a socialist economy. What do you see as the next step in doing this?

I’m quite heavily involved in the labour and cooperative movements, as well as independent media, and advocating for sustainable economic democracy via the NDP (as well as in the labour movement).

A couple general examples related to this stuff:

Labour-sponsored Investments Funds

Eco-Socialism and environmental Economics

Economic democracy--Practical Socialism in Action

CCA--cooperative development

Social Investment Organization

quote:
A 3rd alternative exists in the form of Norway, Finland, Sweden and Denmark.

These are the economies with the greatest amount of practical socialism, and, although still a minority of the total capitalist-dominated economy (every national economy has been pretty much capitalist-dominated), the pay-offs in high living standards, personal and social freedoms and sustainability are immense.

But there are also some good examples right here in Canada to learn some things from:

Canadian Cooperative Association

Working Opportunity Fund

Smartgrowth

International Society for Ecological Economics

Shareholders Association for Research and Education--workers getting control of their pension funds

New West Community Development Society

Solidarity Fund

Worker Buyouts Strategies

While these are all limited and fairly compromised, they all have a founding philosophy of democratizing the economy and moving it away from the capitalistic profiteering/maximum wealth accumulation/market monopolization and brutal exploitation and destruction, to a more long-term sustainable economic prosperity for all.

And these are just a few examples.

Other parts of the globe, especially in Europe, there are some big-time socialistic developments we can learn from and promote:

Emilia Romagna regional democratic socialist development, Italy

Mondragon Cooperative CED Spain

Worker-run businesses and self-management


From: goes far, flies near, to the stars away from here | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged
ceti
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posted 09 June 2007 05:29 AM      Profile for ceti     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
The left has traditionally stood against imperialism, militarism, capitalism, and colonialism and for international solidarity, self-determination, social and economic justice, and the broadest definition rather than the circumscribed set of human rights that are half-heartedly promoted in liberal democracies.

All else flows from these principles.


From: various musings before the revolution | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged
Stockholm
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posted 09 June 2007 06:57 AM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I guess your definition of human rights would have to be very, very creatively broad if it accepts one party police states.
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bohajal
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posted 09 June 2007 07:35 AM      Profile for bohajal   Author's Homepage        Edit/Delete Post
Pardon me if I believe that human rights are universal and comprehensive and should not be the reserve of whoever a state or administration appoints as their sole beneficiaries, such as:

- In Israel: Jewish citizens of Israel,
- In the USA: white anglo-saxons and (if there is
room) American citizens

- In Ontario (under the ONDP) white anglo-saxons.

The rest can take a hike !

For that is your definition that I infer from your discourse on the topic of human rights and your defence of said regimes.

[ 09 June 2007: Message edited by: bohajal ]


From: planet earth, I believe | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
Stockholm
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posted 09 June 2007 07:41 AM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Why don't you bore us all by recounting again how exactly it is that ONLY white anglo-saxon Protestants have ANY human rights whatsoever in Ontario?

Last time I checked there were plenty of Catholics, and non-Anglo-Saxons and people of various colours voting in elections, criticizing the government, being in positions of power..

Or maybe there are secret prison camps near Kapuskasing for all non-WASPs in Ontario that no one knows about?


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bohajal
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posted 09 June 2007 08:12 AM      Profile for bohajal   Author's Homepage        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Why don't you bore us all by recounting again ..

Who appointed you to talk on behalf of others ? Your arrogance ?

quote:
Last time I checked there were plenty of Catholics, and non-Anglo-Saxons and people of various colours voting in elections, criticizing the government, being in positions of power..

And there are Arabs who vote in Israel and who hold positions of MK

And there are Blacks and Hispanos who vote and hold positions of power in the USA..

What does that mean ?

Stockholm: The more and wider you open your mouth the deeper your foot goes and the more your arguments are shown as shallow and weak.

[ 09 June 2007: Message edited by: bohajal ]


From: planet earth, I believe | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 09 June 2007 09:11 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
Continuing to be expected to blindly accept bald-faced lies about “socialism” or “communism” in China, former Soviet Union, etc., trotted out by fraudulent political power cliques, mass-murder/exploitation-condoning apologists and moronic romanticists in deep denial,

But at the same time, those countries were overwhelmed by mass murdering fascist invaders who were either backed by western governments or the fascist-industrialist cabal. It's important to actuallt understand history and not be fooled by naive(or moronic, take your pick) apologists with a blindspot for fascism.

They need democratic socialism in Haiti, Guatemala and more countries than those, and it's not for a lack of effort on the part of regular people voting in elections or trying to overthrow repressive right-wing regimes and U.S.-backed militaries. Of course, we can always blame it all on some obscure bogeyman known as "state-capitalism" State-capitalism doesn't just happen, someone and group of people tend to make it happen even when nobody voted for it.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Stockholm
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posted 09 June 2007 09:12 AM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
So, please explain your theory that all non-WASPs in Ontario have been stripped of their human rights and are brutally oppressed.

I'm not a WASP and I never knew that i had no human rights in Ontario and that i was brutally oppressed. Thanks for enlightening me!

[ 09 June 2007: Message edited by: Stockholm ]


From: Toronto | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
Stockholm
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posted 09 June 2007 09:29 AM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
They need democratic socialism in Haiti, Guatemala and more countries than those,

Since when does "Fidel" care about the DEMOCRATIC part of "democratic socialism"?? I thought that all that mattered was socialism at all cost and to hell with silly bourgeois frills (sic.) like free elections and freedom of speech and freedom of the press and getting rid of torture and the death penalty.


From: Toronto | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
bohajal
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posted 09 June 2007 09:55 AM      Profile for bohajal   Author's Homepage        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
So, please explain your theory that all non-WASPs in Ontario have been stripped of their human rights and are brutally oppressed. -Stockholm

Please spare me your distortions. You are not on CanWest here !


From: planet earth, I believe | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 09 June 2007 10:48 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Stockholm:
... like free elections and freedom of speech and freedom of the press and getting rid of torture and the death penalty.

I'm too distracted at the moment to nail up another Meet the Friendly Dictators link. You'll just have to google for it yourself this time. And while you're at it, Stockholmer, google "Edward S Herman" and "U.S. managed elections." Pretty soon you'll be able to discover these things without my help/prodding.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
bohajal
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posted 09 June 2007 01:55 PM      Profile for bohajal   Author's Homepage        Edit/Delete Post
The only insighful -and exciting- statement Stockholm has ever come up with:

quote:
I give up.

From: planet earth, I believe | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
Stockholm
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posted 09 June 2007 03:14 PM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
I'm too distracted at the moment to nail up another Meet the Friendly Dictators link.

I condemn all dictators and all human rights abuses no matter if they are committed by countries that make some pretension to being rightwing or leftwing. If they jail people for criticising thre government and don't have free, fair multiparty elections - they are all bad. I consider Augusto Pinochet to have a place in the rogues gallery alongside other dicatators like Castro and Pol Pot and the Shah of Iran.


From: Toronto | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
Pepper-Pot
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posted 09 June 2007 03:49 PM      Profile for Pepper-Pot        Edit/Delete Post
Ah, what Stockholm simply fails to realize is that Bush, and the American system of gov't sets up a functioning totalitarian regime that masquerades as non-totalitarian and democratic.

Republicultian Bush-Wacko is, beneath the superficial surface of self-appointed labels and propoganda, a ruthlessly murderous imperialist, a domestic hyper-incarcerator, a constitutional violator, a promoter of homicidal gun culture, a hypocritical religious fundamentalist (Christo-Fascist), a deceiver, an evader, a liar, a vengeful maniac, a veto machine, a figurehead of a 2-party same-coin false alternative via disproportionate representation, a proponent of Diebold election fraud, a proponent of secretive Neo-Fascist torture chambers aroung the world, a perpetrator of elitist capitalism which insulates millionaires and billionaires from taxes that might infringe upon their inalienable right to absolute unfettered greed, a supporter of conspiratorial assasinations and manipulations directed towards any country which contradicts the US, a self-appointed international cop, a supporter of state-church fusion, a supporter of gov't-corporate integration, a proponent of a tax system which takes 50% of each tax dollar spent and put it towards rampant militarism, but other than that he's so utterly non-dictatorial...

And most of the previous US presidents have participated in the same system of totalitarian deception, manipulation, secrecy, hypocrisy and destruction.

Scratch the superficial layer of deception, and see the monster for what it IS.


From: Vancouver | Registered: Oct 2006  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 09 June 2007 05:47 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Stockholm:
I consider Augusto Pinochet to have a place in the rogues gallery alongside other dicatators like Castro and Pol Pot and the Shah of Iran.

And three out of four of those were dictators friendly to western governments.

The Shah was a U.S.-backed stooge and overthrown by Iranians for his brutal and repressive policies.

Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were aided and abetted by the CIA and Chinese both.

U.S.-backed Pinochet fired the Chicago School Economists after Chileans protested in the streets, no longer fearful of the fascists bullets after twelve years of right-wing death squads and true-to-form state-capitalism ended in complete failure. The dictator himself used New Deal socialist methods to revive the ailing ecomomy. The people rejected the U.S.-backed dictator a second time after allowing the first elections in 16 years.

Meanwhile, Fidel has survived over 600 CIA-mafia assassination attempts, Bay of Pigs invasion, cold war embargos and father time this far. The Cuban people have had many opportunities to overthrow Fidel and collude with the many CIA attempts to foment counter-revolution. The confident Cuban people have freely chosen Fidel and socialism not U.S. imperialism.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Pepper-Pot
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posted 09 June 2007 06:37 PM      Profile for Pepper-Pot        Edit/Delete Post
Apparently, Stockholm conveniently missed or ignored the picture of Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand in between 1970-1990. I have Chilean friends who lived through the Fascism of the Republican party, the right-leaning Democrats, and AT&T, facilitating and implementing Pinochetian Fascism, because it would strategically help defeat the "evil leftists", at least in the short-term.

The US creates and facilitates dictators who'll implement their short-term international manipulations, that is until long-term implications/complications arise and they have to instill a regime switch/change.

The US creates, facilitates and implements the monstrous Fascist dictatorships, according do Manifest Destiny doctrine, and then the US wears the Cloak Of Deception and fools those who wear the Blindfold Of Oblivion into concluding that the US is all for "freedom and democracy".


From: Vancouver | Registered: Oct 2006  |  IP: Logged
Boom Boom
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posted 09 June 2007 06:52 PM      Profile for Boom Boom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post

From: Make the rich pay! | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
bohajal
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posted 09 June 2007 07:37 PM      Profile for bohajal   Author's Homepage        Edit/Delete Post
Stockholm,

You are a fake NDPer. You are a fraud.

You may as well tell your headquarters the truth: Your mission of "re-educating the left" is not going well and you are the one that ended up being educated.


From: planet earth, I believe | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 09 June 2007 07:49 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Actually, I think Stockholmer is an above average person. He's here and at least chatting with us, isn't he?. How many Canadians are as progressive as babblers in general ?. There are some very uninformed people out there, and I find babblers in general to be more progressive than most. Then again, people who frequent this site seem to have a higher than average zest for political information and comraderie in general. I've learned so much from everyone here, including Stockholmer and Bohajal.
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Stockholm
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posted 09 June 2007 08:20 PM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
And three out of four of those were dictators friendly to western governments.

That's right. I wholeheartedly condemn all dictators - i don't care if they are pro-US or pro-Soviet or Islamist or whatever - I consistently condemn regimes that deny human rights - regardless of their ideology. I take no responsibility for and i make no apologies for murderous regimes that are friendly to "western governments". I only wish that some of the Stalinists on babble would take a similar attitude and stop being pathetic apologists for murderous tyrants who happen to mouth some leftwing platitudes that sound groovy.


From: Toronto | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
Pepper-Pot
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posted 09 June 2007 08:46 PM      Profile for Pepper-Pot        Edit/Delete Post
I agree with both Fidel and bohajal to a certain degree.

This site is infiltrated by Neo-liberal/Neo-Conservative apologists : oblivious to their (default) defenses of Blair, Martin, Bush, Harper, etc. policies. "Erikthehalfared" and "Stockholm" are 2 examples.

Either they are Neo-Con/Neo-Lib operatives with an agenda to shift the NDP and the North American left towards the right, or they are simply unwittingly and disproportionately attacking the 2nd/3rd world *targets* of the secretive US intelligence agents/manipulators/imperialists.


From: Vancouver | Registered: Oct 2006  |  IP: Logged
500_Apples
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posted 09 June 2007 08:50 PM      Profile for 500_Apples   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
[Thread-Drift]

I think it'd be funny if someone came up with the username Helsinki or Oslo and started posting just to troll Stockholm.

Not really relevent to anything, not personal to stockholm except his user name, and I've got no intention of doing it.


From: Montreal, Quebec | Registered: Jun 2006  |  IP: Logged
bohajal
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posted 09 June 2007 08:56 PM      Profile for bohajal   Author's Homepage        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
I only wish that some of the Stalinists on babble would take a similar attitude and stop being pathetic apologists for murderous tyrants who happen to mouth some leftwing platitudes that sound groovy. -STockholm

You meet Fidel's compliments to you with accusing him of being a "Stalinist" and "apologist for murderous tyrants" ?

He is amongst the few who still take you seriously and give you the time of day.

Again, are you counting How many Babblers so far have -rightly- questioned your belonging to the NDP or your leftist credentials ? Personally, I maintain that you are a plant with a mission to "re-educate the Canadian left". A failed mission, needless to say.


From: planet earth, I believe | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
Stockholm
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posted 09 June 2007 09:03 PM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Why don't you try to make your arguments without resorting to deranged ad hominem personal attacks on me and others.
From: Toronto | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
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posted 09 June 2007 09:03 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Again, bohojal, you are way out of line. Cut it out.
From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Erik Redburn
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posted 09 June 2007 09:22 PM      Profile for Erik Redburn     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Well, looks like everyone is now officially a fake NDPer. If Stockholm is then I guess we can all admit now.... No wonder they're in trouble now in Calgary and Quebec city.
From: Broke but not bent. | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 09 June 2007 09:24 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Stockholm:
That's right. I wholeheartedly condemn all dictators - i don't care if they are pro-US or pro-Soviet or Islamist or whatever - I consistently condemn regimes that deny human... I take no responsibility for and i make no apologies for murderous regimes ...

But the murderous dictators in this hemisphere have been ignored for the most part by western justice. SOA graduates and friendly dictators are rarely made to answer for their crimes, almost like here with some people focussing intensely on the one leader of a tiny Caribbean island nation while providing little commentary or critique of Uncle Sam and the manner in which that country's shadow government has subverted democracy all around Cuba. Haiti is just 50 miles away from Cuba, and the U.S. military has invaded and intervened in that country's democracy so many times I've lost count. Haiti is not an encouraging example for democracy in the general viscinity, even if we "Stalinist apologists" say so ourselves. I think it's a matter of the apologists for fascism apologizing by virtue of their silence on such glaring and entirely explainable absences of democracy.

I think where you are consistent is in showing up on time, right on time for any and all threads concerning Cuba. But you rarely, if ever, comment in threads criticizing any of the violations of basic human rights in Haiti, or El Salvador, Guatemala or any of Uncle Sam's close geographical and trading neighbors in this hemisphere. To ignore those realities, and to suggest that Cubans should allow U.S. managed elections to take place in Cuba, is not being very consistent at all. The Cubans have elections all the time, and young Cubans, like Elián González, are enthusiastic about Cuban democracy. In Canada, only two percent of Canadians hold membership in any political party. And we know that enthusiasm for voter participation dropped across Canada after the free trade betrayals of 1989 and 1994. The majority of Canadians democratic choices were effectively cancelled by autocrats acting through their own paternalism.

quote:
I only wish that some of the Stalinists on babble would take a similar attitude and stop being pathetic apologists for murderous tyrants who happen to mouth some leftwing platitudes that sound groovy.

And I only wish that such even-handed and unbiased posters such as yourself would sometimes applaud Cuba's socialist achievements, and yes, like owning the lowest infant mortality in Latin America and aiding countries like Costa Rica to do the same through co-operative efforts between the two countries. You've never once applauded Cuba for extending full medical school scholarships to thousands of students in poor countries as well as to several hundred black and Hispanic-American students every year whom cannot access the handful of mainly white medical colleges in the land of the free for financial reasons and-or "other barriers."

And you've never praised Cuba even once for leading all Caribbean nations in educational achievement. Cuba has begun helping Nicaraguans to repair the damage done by neo-Liberal-Washington consensus reforms of the 1990's that saw illiteracy in that country skyrocket from 13% to 39%. Cuba sends more than 17, 000 aid workers and doctors to 65 third world "state-capitalist" countries in desperate need of health care and emergency care every year. The Cubans were even there in Haiti and providing aid to desperately poor people while the CIA, and with Ottawa's helping hand, removed a democratically-elected leader in this decade.

I find that you only sometimes give credit where it's due. And in that way I suppose you are somewhat consistent, yes, Stockholmer.

[ 09 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Pepper-Pot
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posted 09 June 2007 09:38 PM      Profile for Pepper-Pot        Edit/Delete Post
bohajal spoke the truth.

It's time for the NDP, and left-wing sites, to cleanse themselves of Neo-Liberal/Neo-Conservative apologists.

Fidel is such a golden soul, that he'll donate 100,000 hours of his time trying to prove 2+2=4 to those wearing the blindfold of oblivion.

Once someone has been indentified as supporting and apologizing for Neo-Liberal or Neo-Conservative policies, they should be ignored and banned.

If not, then this site is not truly a left-wing discussion forum, and the NDP is doomed to permanent impotence.

Fidel is wasting his time by trying to reason with an oblivious "Stockholm".

"Stockhom" should be renamed "Austin", and "Erikthehalfared" should be renamed "Paulthe3/4blueelephant".


From: Vancouver | Registered: Oct 2006  |  IP: Logged
bohajal
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posted 09 June 2007 09:49 PM      Profile for bohajal   Author's Homepage        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Again, bohojal, you are way out of line. Cut it out. -Michelle

Michelle,

Could you please quote me where exactly I am out of line.

Haven't you read that he kept attributing to me things I have never said, like "The NDP is a White Supremacist Party" ?

Please be even-handed, Michelle!


From: planet earth, I believe | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
Erik Redburn
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posted 09 June 2007 09:51 PM      Profile for Erik Redburn     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Ya I'm a real big big rightwinger, what with my supporting immgration and progressive taxation, practically puts me in league with George W Bush, yep.

Quit youre pathetic troll baiting Pepper Pot, I truly hope youre not a socialist by the level of maturity youve shown the last two days. I don't agree with either Fidel or Stockholm here entirely, what else is new? So others don't buy everything you sell here either, join the long line.


From: Broke but not bent. | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
bohajal
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posted 09 June 2007 09:51 PM      Profile for bohajal   Author's Homepage        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Why don't you try to make your arguments without resorting to deranged ad hominem personal attacks on me and others. -Stockholm

Who are the "others", Stockholm ? Could you name them ?


From: planet earth, I believe | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
Pepper-Pot
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posted 09 June 2007 09:55 PM      Profile for Pepper-Pot        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by EriKtheHalfaRed:
Ya I'm a real big big rightwinger, what with my supporting immgration and progressive taxation, practically puts me in league with George W Bush, yep.

Quit youre pathetic troll baiting Pepper Pot, I truly hope youre not a socialist by the level of maturity youve shown the last two days. I don't agree with either Fidel or Stockholm here entirely, what else is new? So others don't buy everything you sell here either, join the long line.


The truth is , we are both trolling eachother equally, but you are blind to the truth.

And your deflective sarcasm indicates you are scared to identify and acknowledge your true Neo-Liberal leanings.

Your "halfared" is really "3/4blue".


From: Vancouver | Registered: Oct 2006  |  IP: Logged
unionist
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posted 09 June 2007 09:58 PM      Profile for unionist     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Pepper-pot: Please simmer down. This accomplishes nothing. Demolish people's opinions, if you like.

Sorry for lecturing you, but I'm trying to appeal to your better judgment.


From: Vote QS! | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
BetterRed
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posted 09 June 2007 10:01 PM      Profile for BetterRed     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
And I only wish that such even-handed and unbiased posters such as yourself would sometimes applaud Cuba's socialist achievements, and yes, like owning the lowest infant mortality in Latin America and aiding countries like Costa Rica to do the same through co-operative efforts between the two countries. You've never once applauded Cuba for extending full medical school scholarships to thousands of students in poor countries as well as to several hundred black and Hispanic-American students every year whom cannot access the handful of mainly white medical colleges in the land of the free for financial reasons and-or "other barriers."

Let him be, Fidel.
IF Stockholmer cant see that Cuba has the best democracy and social services that can possibly exist in a country thats under a state of permanent US blockade and war, then he will never get it. He's a well-fed Western liberal intellectual.
In my experience,I remember going to sleep at 9PM at candlelight, since the neo-liberal 'reforms' have destroyed my country's power grid. (Its working ok now, thanks)
He can spout platitudes if he wants. In real life, many people in third world would pick decent social programs, secure jobs and equality in the marketplace over glossed-out political parties.

Keep exposing neo-liberal lies and hypocrisy, bro. Help people see through the blinfold.


From: They change the course of history, everyday ppl like you and me | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged
Pepper-Pot
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posted 09 June 2007 10:02 PM      Profile for Pepper-Pot        Edit/Delete Post
erikthehalfared says he is for progressive taxation, yet he ignored these sites entirely...

http://blogi.kaapeli.fi/tjnnordic/doc/Nordic_Tax_Model/index_html

http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm

He then says he's for immigration, without elaborating. I stated that he supports the Neo-Liberal and Neo-Conservative immigration models, of non-integrative flooding, and he just says "if you reduce immigration to rates below the Neo-Liberal Canadian and Neo-Conservative levels you are a racist anti-immigrant xenophobe."

Apparently erikthe3/4blue fails to see he is in default support of the Neo-Con/Neo-Lib mainstream/status-quo paradigm when it comes to immigration policy AND taxation policy.


From: Vancouver | Registered: Oct 2006  |  IP: Logged
Pepper-Pot
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posted 09 June 2007 10:07 PM      Profile for Pepper-Pot        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by unionist:
Pepper-pot: Please simmer down. This accomplishes nothing. Demolish people's opinions, if you like.

Sorry for lecturing you, but I'm trying to appeal to your better judgment.


Sorry, no can do.

I've spent 3-4 of my 33 years in Europe, and I see what's wrong with the "left" here. No power. Ever.

And I know why... it's the timidity, compromising, and politeness when opposing (or not) Neo-Liberal and Neo-Conservative policy.

No social democracy in the history of North America, ever.

And believe it or not, I have evidence that there are many right wing operatives in media, gov't, the internet and society, to MAINTAIN the shutout.

That's an area where (intellectual) pacifism does NOT, I repeat, NOT work.


From: Vancouver | Registered: Oct 2006  |  IP: Logged
bohajal
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posted 09 June 2007 10:10 PM      Profile for bohajal   Author's Homepage        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Ya I'm a real big big rightwinger, what with my supporting immgration - EriKtheHalfaRed

Supporting immigration has never been a test of one's leftism or progressiveness. Right wingers do support immigration -sometimes with specification as to which race, culture or country of origin the new comers should be.

Your statement implies that immigration is a favour done out of the good heart, on humanitarian ground. This is a display of naiveté, if not utter ignorance of demographic considerations and economic necessities.

But again, some rightwingers do support immigration to enjoy having a class of citizens of the lower grade, if only to feel superior. They used to have them as servants in England.

I do not give a rat's ass whether EriKtheHalfaRed is or is not progressive. But to say that EriKtheHalfaRed supports immigration, ergo he is a progressive is absurd.


From: planet earth, I believe | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
BetterRed
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posted 09 June 2007 10:10 PM      Profile for BetterRed     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
And believe it or not, I have evidence that there are many right wing operatives in media, gov't, the internet and society, to MAINTAIN the shutout.

That's an area where (intellectual) pacifism does NOT, I repeat, NOT work


I guess many of these folks like to talk like Mayor Quimby:

Paraphrase:
"I oppose these (insert (persons,or country/ies), or political party/es) as undemocratic and violating MY principles"

[ 09 June 2007: Message edited by: BetterRed ]


From: They change the course of history, everyday ppl like you and me | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged
Pepper-Pot
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posted 09 June 2007 10:20 PM      Profile for Pepper-Pot        Edit/Delete Post
The only way for the North American left, and the NDP to succeed, is to purge itself of all Neo-Liberal and Neo-Conservative policies/apologists.

If you ignore the warning, prepare for "Harper Majority Gov't Meets President Mitt Romney" in Neon lights galore. Also, prepare for a rightward shift of the NDP.

There has been no leftist gov't in the history of North America. Ever. And if the floating, dreaming, oblivious status-quo continues, so will the electoral results.


From: Vancouver | Registered: Oct 2006  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 09 June 2007 10:36 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Pepper-Pot:

If you ignore the warning, prepare for "Harper Majority Gov't Meets President Mitt Romney" in Neon lights galore. Also, prepare for a rightward shift of the NDP.


The Liberals actually shifted to the right since Trudeau, and look where they are now ie. what happened to the Liberal dynasties?.

I think it's a matter of the NDP appealing to both the "centrists" as well as the left. And, all this "strategic voting" will eventually be made obsolete whenever Canadians decide they want advanced democracy.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Pepper-Pot
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posted 09 June 2007 11:24 PM      Profile for Pepper-Pot        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Fidel:

The Liberals actually shifted to the right since Trudeau, and look where they are now ie. what happened to the Liberal dynasties?.

I think it's a matter of the NDP appealing to both the "centrists" as well as the left. And, all this "strategic voting" will eventually be made obsolete whenever Canadians decide they want advanced democracy.



Let's be chronologically incremental.

After the post-Trudeau rightward shift, they eventually acheived an untouchable monopoly of the political scene, and subsequently imploded due to self-assuming corruption. They utterly maximized themselves as a right-leaning Neo-Liberal force, and self-destructed within their own corrupted monopolizing party-ego.

We agree about the NDP. But don't mistake Neo-Liberal policies for centristic ones.

L5/L4/L3/L2/L1/C\R1\R2\R3\R4\R5

the NDP should occupy the social-democratic soft spot, L2/L1.

The Neo-Cons are R4/R5.

The Neo-Libs are a very deceptive R2/R3 oscillation.

I think we're on the same page, and the revolution must begin at home.


From: Vancouver | Registered: Oct 2006  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 10 June 2007 11:50 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:

These are the economies with the greatest amount of practical socialism, and, although still a minority of the total capitalist-dominated economy (every national economy has been pretty much capitalist-dominated


That's complete nonsense. 1920's-style state-capitalism died about five years after Lenin passed on. And the resurgence of neo-Liberal capitalism since the 1980's is why we're having so much trouble today. If western economies had actually remained predominantly capitalist after 1929, then who knows what the world would look like today?. Apparently those still clinging to these dated and unproven theories of state-capitalism have no idea either.

Real capitalism is what existed in America from turn of the last century to its conclusion in 1929. A dollar a day was the average wage in the 1930s, and farmers couldn't afford to upgrade farm equipment. Tens of thousands of people across Canada and the United States were out of work, desperate and going hungry. There were stories passed down from generation to generation about the cruel realities of capitalism then and how state-capitalism failed millions of people around the western world.

There were thousands of runs on private banks as they collapsed. The mostly capitalist economy in the U.S. had produced a crisis of finance and investment bubbles in key areas of the economy. One of those crises was with over-investment in private utility companies and added to the snowball effect of collapse. Publicly-owned power companies in the U.S. and Canada would be required to electrify industrial expansion in provinces like Ontario, and a decades-long period of unprecedented prosperity and industrial expansion took place in Central Canada and made possible by strong, publicly-owned utilities and public spending on infrastructure. In the U.S., there were massive public power projects financed and employing thousands of workers who were idle for years after the last terrible crisis of predominantly capitalist economics in North America.

quote:
…..that quaint period, the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy. -- “The Glass Menagerie”, by Tennessee Williams

The defining features of the Friedmanite-Chicago School of Economics reforms which led to collapse of a predominantly capitalist economy in 1980's Chile were strikingly similar to those that contributed to the collapse of laisse-faire capitalism in 1929-30's America. These were two experiments in predominantly capitalist economies, with the first lasting about 30 years in America while the second right-wing Libertarian experiment in neo-liberal capitalism lasted just 16 years in post-Allende Chile. It's interesting to note that a democratically-elected socialist leader in Chile was removed from power by a CIA-fomented military coup on 9-11-1973. "Soup kitchen" state-capitalism is the true legacy of both economic experiments, and no one, not even capitalists themselves want a return to the bad old days of laissez-faire state capitalism described by Lenin.

Sixteen years of brutal and terrible fascism was the result of fascist maneuvering as it was with the western world attacks on the Soviet Union to reverse the workers revolution. They were not apologetic Liberals or soft leftists who planned operation barbarossa - they were fascists who had been propped up by capitalists for over ten years leading up to the Munich appeasement and fascist invasions of Eastern Europe and Russia. The soft left and "Liberals" can apologize all they want, but socialists understand the true nature of fascism, and that it hasn't just disappeared and will not go quietly when faced with democratic socialism. Recent history is proof of that.

They were unapologetic fascists who planned and executed operation 'Condor and operation cyclone from the 1950s through the 1980's in both this hemisphere and several time zones away.

Economist James Galbraith gives us clear insight into what really makes the American economy tick in post-laissez-faire America since New Deal socialism picked that country off its collective knees in the 1930's. The Real American model (pdf)

[ 10 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
rasmus
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posted 10 June 2007 03:04 PM      Profile for rasmus   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
It's the summer of threequels.
From: Fortune favours the bold | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged

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