Re: CDR: Re: Re: Shunning, lesbians and liberty
-- At 02:05 PM 10/1/2000 +0300, Sampo A Syreeni wrote:
I believe death precisely of the kind described above do/did occur (e.g. the famines in Africa, often caused by those responsible for the production of food acting purely in their own interest)
That is nonsense. Famines in Africa are caused by communism and socialism, notably the famous Ethiopian famines that occurred under Mengistu, or by war, notably the famous Biafran famine. Famines are never caused by people acting in their own interests. They are most commonly caused by pious benevolent socialists imposing the greater good with whip and red hot irons, burning, torturing and killing because they love people so very much. Famines are most commonly caused by socialists whose care for the suffering of anonymous strangers is so deep and heartfelt, whose love and concern for the faceless oppressed masses is so vast, that they will hold a child's face in the flames to force her mother to reveal where the seed corn is hidden. After all, we cannot let those damned peasants look out for their own selfish interests, can we? We love them too much to permit them such wickedness, and the flesh burning off from the bone on the face of a child is proof of how vital our mission is to save the peasants from themselves, proof of how much the peasant's wicked greedy selfishness puts them in need of our vast benevolent virtue, kindness, and generosity. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG WHgM6bgCZEmn9Quy1QeqWHncZdBzSxBjw/Hx/QyQ 41uHa233d7BE6K/WL7V4TqV6ovKUt4romaxLWduGE
On Sun, 1 Oct 2000, James A.. Donald wrote:
That is nonsense. Famines in Africa are caused by communism and socialism,
Again, a simple-minded answer to a very complicated issue. There are political, racial, religous, and geographic issues that are involved here. ____________________________________________________________________ He is able who thinks he is able. Buddha The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
At 02:33 PM 01/10/00 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
On Sun, 1 Oct 2000, James A.. Donald wrote:
That is nonsense. Famines in Africa are caused by communism and
socialism,
Again, a simple-minded answer to a very complicated issue. There are political, racial, religous, and geographic issues that are involved here.
And they could be overcome, save for collectivist, totalitarian, and at times, even capitalistic elements. Reese
-- James A. Donald:
Famines in Africa are caused by communism and socialism, notably the famous Ethiopian famines that occurred under Mengistu, or by war, notably the famous Biafran famine.
At 0233 PM 10/1/2000 -0500, Jim Choate wrote
Again, a simple-minded answer to a very complicated issue.
So give an example of an important twentieth century famine not caused by socialism or war. It really is that simple. The commies did it. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG tbBYjHfydLTBu3hVBm2I+dVKybOHpU+RGP+BTDuO 420u0ce5VEiOiN2t/tkM3WcN1Sv8EAGydLBZWgLeD
On Mon, 2 Oct 2000, James A.. Donald wrote:
James A. Donald:
Famines in Africa are caused by communism and socialism, notably
At 0233 PM 10/1/2000 -0500, Jim Choate wrote
Again, a simple-minded answer to a very complicated issue.
So give an example of an important twentieth century famine not caused by socialism or war.
Um, changing the rules in the middle of the game are we... How did war get in there and why should I accept it as a synonym to communism? It is clear that war has more causes than communism or socialism. ____________________________________________________________________ He is able who thinks he is able. Buddha The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
At 23:35 -0500 10/2/00, Jim Choate wrote:
On Mon, 2 Oct 2000, James A.. Donald wrote:
James A. Donald:
Famines in Africa are caused by communism and socialism, notably
At 0233 PM 10/1/2000 -0500, Jim Choate wrote
Again, a simple-minded answer to a very complicated issue.
So give an example of an important twentieth century famine not caused by socialism or war.
Um, changing the rules in the middle of the game are we...
How did war get in there and why should I accept it as a synonym to communism? It is clear that war has more causes than communism or socialism.
Because the causes of war are suffeciently diverse and unpredicatable that including war in the pool muddies the waters enough to make things unclear. However I'll bite by asking the inverse of the question- name one large scale famine that occurred in any country not under some form of "forcible rule" (forcible rule being defined as some sort of communist, socialism, or dictatorship, for the purpose of this question). A less precise way of putting this is present one example of a country in which free election are/were taking place for a reasonable period of time, during which that country experienced mass starvation of a significant portion of it's population. -- "As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air--however slight--lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." -- Justice William O. Douglas ____________________________________________________________________ Kevin "The Cubbie" Elliott mailto:kelliott@mac.com ICQ#23758827
-- At 11:52 PM 10/2/2000 -0500, Kevin Elliott wrote:
However I'll bite by asking the inverse of the question- name one large scale famine that occurred in any country not under some form of "forcible rule" (forcible rule being defined as some sort of communist, socialism, or dictatorship, for the purpose of this question). A less precise way of putting this is present one example of a country in which free election are/were taking place for a reasonable period of time, during which that country experienced mass starvation of a significant portion of it's population.
You are putting ordinary dictatorships, like Pinochet's Chile or Park's Korea, in the same category as communist dictatorships, like Castro's Cuba or Mengistu's Ethiopia. That is ridiculouys. The difference between normal dictatorships and totalitarian regimes is enormous, vastly greater than the difference between dictatorships and ordinary democracies, and the distribution of famine (excluding famines caused by war) illustrates that difference. So let us go back to the original question: Where was there a significant twentieth century famine other than those caused by war or socialism? It is absurd to use categories that put normal dictatorships in the same category as totalitarian dictatorships. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG XA5dUKG3q6hJeBTz4HeNScT8fe/40IKiok46xSjj 4VMa7FUolej7nOJCk26xL8WmXqoVPFFufxonhuwhR
Someone calling themselves James dribbled:
You are putting ordinary dictatorships, like Pinochet's Chile or Park's Korea, in the same category as communist dictatorships, like Castro's Cuba or Mengistu's Ethiopia. That is ridiculouys.
You really are a prat aren't you? So it is OK to be killed by a fascist bullet but not by a communist one? There are a few million dead who would have been happy had they known that before the likes of Pinochet or Franco murdered them.
The difference between normal dictatorships and totalitarian regimes is enormous, vastly greater than the difference between dictatorships and ordinary democracies,
What a load of shit. When someone kicks you in the face do you ask them which cobbler made their shiny leather boot? This is just the typical excuse of Americans who support totalitarian dictators like Pinochet and his fellow murderers and want to sleep easy with themselves. You pretend to be "libertarian" and in favour of freedom but what you really mean is freedom for you and your friends to do as they like & the rest of us get to live with, or under, your police and your armies. You don't give a damn about dictators or oppressors so long as they are your dictators pissing out.
and the distribution of famine (excluding famines caused by war) illustrates that difference. So let us go back to the original question: Where was there a significant twentieth century famine other than those caused by war or socialism?
Why include the word "socialism"? Almost without exception, war is almost the only thing that ever caused a prolonged famine. The flavour of dictatorship in power at the time has very little to do with it.
It is absurd to use categories that put normal dictatorships in the same category as totalitarian dictatorships.
This being the Reaganite definition of "totalitarian" as "people who we don't like"? How many years did you spend in the CIA then? Yes, there is a distinction between "ordinary" dictatorships and the sort of utterly over-the-top government that isn't so much trying to rule a country as destroy it. Most dictatorships try to keep their victims at least reasonably peaceful and prosperous, if only so the rulers can carry on stealing from them (geese, golden eggs & all that). But a few seem to live to destroy. Some governments become unsupportable, they either have to be fought against or you die. Romania under Ceaucescu, anywhere under the Nazis, Pol Pot and his friends, Stalin's times in Russia, the Taliban right now. In places like that the government is in fact at war with the people. I hope whenever you Americans see on the news what is going on in Afghanistan you remember that your government paid for their weapons and their training, that those guys were educated in US-run schools and guerilla warfare training camps - all because Reagan and Bush came out with this shit about "totalitarian" being the only bad thing & non-communists couldn't possibly be "totalitarian". Whatever the Taliban were, they certainly weren't communists. So in goes the CIA, and the money, and the guns, and look what came out. These aren't necessarily "socialist" or claiming to be socialist. In fact "socialism" vs. "capitalism" is redundant in this context - they are words that describe economic systems and places like that are beyond economics. When the rapist is in your bedroom you don't wonder how he earns his living. When some Nazi gauleiter is turning your home town into a death camp there is no point asking him his opinion on Value Added Tax (or even anonymous internet bearer transactions.) "Ordinary" dictatorships aren't necessarily anti-socialist either. Most people, most of the time, get on with their own lives under constant interference and supervision by the government. You can get shot if you criticise the government. You get very restricted freedom as to where you can go to school, or live, or work. In other words just a more extreme, or more obvious, case of the kind of things that go on in any government. Think of almost any South or Central American statelet between the 1880s and the 1980s. (Although Paraguay in the 19th century & some central American places in the 20th got pretty near being death states), or almost any Middle Eastern country now (Iran is of course a representative democracy, the only functioning one in the Middle East). Cuba is by any sane standards an "ordinary" dictatorship as were Poland and Czechoslovakia before 1989. Ditto Serbia, or Iraq. Even Russia actually approached it in the 1960s & 70s, they cleaned up their act a lot. Loads of them paid lip-service to socialism, but loads of them claimed to be capitalist as well - like your CIA-inspired regimes in Indonesia and Pakistan and the Philippines and Chile and Guatemala and Nicaragua and Panama that you dropped like the smelly shit they were as soon as you don't need them to scare the Russians any more. And most of these places were better off as soon as you Americans stopped trying to enforce your favourite dictators on them in the name of "freedom". Some of them even turned themselves into reasonable facsimiles of democracies. Except for Pakistan of course. And their Taliban puppets that developed a life of their own in Afghanistan. To lump all those places together as "socialist" on the basis of which side they took (or were coerced into taking) in the squabble over spoils between the victors of WW2 (that we now call the "Cold War") is to ignore reality in favour of ideology. When someone is oppressing you does it really matter whether he is doing it with Czech guns bought with Russian money or British guns bought with US money? (apart from the fact that US money works a lot better than Russian) Of course, I forget, to you and your fellow so-called "libertarians" (why, oh why are so many of you so afraid of the word "anarchist"? (Tim May excepted of course) Maybe because you aren't really anarchists, or even libertarians. You don't want freedom for anyone except yourself and the rest of us can put up with your jackbooted thugs), to you and your fellow so-called "libertarians" words like "socialism" and "capitalism" aren't words about economics at all, you use them as words of moral approval or disapproval, you twist language away from meaning, these words are no longer used to describe things but just to explain how you feel about them, for you "socialism" just means "any government I don't like" (& therefore for some of you "any government at all" - which of course would make your original contention tautological) and "freedom" means "any state of affairs that I like". Empty rhetoric. I much prefer Tim's rants. At least he is honest about all this, and he has the decency to disassociate himself from some of the evil nonsense that your government (and my government - this is not an anti-American rant), have perpetrated over all these years. Ken
Ken Brown wrote:
Cuba is by any sane standards an "ordinary" dictatorship as were Poland and Czechoslovakia before 1989. Ditto Serbia, or Iraq.
Just to get off the point, Serbia isn't *actually* a dictatorship. It may be a pretty feeble example of a democracy, but they do hold real elections, and it is (constitutionally at least) possible to kick the ruling party out of power. Whether it or not it now *turns into* a dictatorship following Milosevic losing the elections is another matter entirely. mike.
-- James A. Donald:
You are putting ordinary dictatorships, like Pinochet's Chile or Park's Korea, in the same category as communist dictatorships, like Castro's Cuba or Mengistu's Ethiopia. That is ridiculous.
01:02 PM 10/3/2000 +0100, Ken Brown wrote:
You really are a prat aren't you?
So it is OK to be killed by a fascist bullet but not by a communist one? There are a few million dead who would have been happy had they known that before the likes of Pinochet or Franco murdered them.
Pinochet was not a fascist, not a totalitarian, and murdered only two or three thousand. Any communist ruler that murdered so few would be hailed as a living saint and the moral equivalent of Ghandi. Franco was a fascist, a totalitarian, but milder than most fascists, and most fascists are milder than most communists. Franco only murdered fifty to a hundred thousand, which would not quite qualify him for sainthood if he was a communist, but close enough. James A. Donald:
and the distribution of famine (excluding famines caused by war) illustrates that difference. So let us go back to the original question: Where was there a significant twentieth century famine other than those caused by war or socialism?
01:02 PM 10/3/2000 +0100, Ken Brown wrote:
Why include the word "socialism"? Almost without exception, war is almost the only thing that ever caused a prolonged famine. The flavour of dictatorship in power at the time has very little to do with it.
Only if you define socialism as war. Socialist famines are usually imposed once the proletariat have been completely disarmed, and all resistance has been shattered. The Ukrainian famine, the hungry ghosts famine, and the recent North Korean famine are all good examples of such famines. Socialist famines are incomparably more severe and prolonged than war famines, the two greatest famines of the twentieth century being the liquidation of the kulaks, and the hungry ghosts. Socialist famines are in a sense caused by war, in the sense that socialism tends to be unending war against a disarmed and already conquered populace. So let us go back to the original question: Where was there a significant twentieth century famine other than those caused by war or socialism? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG lnvt63+kFATuzbBdfp7sBHqo5VLNB3h9fUgBl0Kg 4lX0FbyttnyjptykIBLTgR2aDJiF2Ik1nFC8DF2QR
"James A.. Donald" wrote:
James A. Donald:
Famines in Africa are caused by communism and socialism, notably the famous Ethiopian famines that occurred under Mengistu, or by war, notably the famous Biafran famine.
At 0233 PM 10/1/2000 -0500, Jim Choate wrote
Again, a simple-minded answer to a very complicated issue.
So give an example of an important twentieth century famine not caused by socialism or war.
stupidity. while not exclusively 20th century, it's main area is the western hemisphere, and specifically the united states. and it's still spreading.
participants (8)
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James A.. Donald -
Jim Choate -
Jim Choate -
Ken Brown -
Kevin Elliott -
mike d -
Reese -
Tom Vogt