Are the bad guys on the move again?

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Vic Dale
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by Vic Dale »

Yes we are trotting out all the reactionary guff which the "official history books" have said.

The Russian peasants were not a monolith there were various strata and it was the rich landed peasants who tried to circumvent the proper distribution channels and began hoarding and even destroying grain. During the war of intervention this amounted to a strategy designed to starve the Red army. In the first year of the USSR the Russian peasants consumed five times more of the grain they produced than at any time under the czar. That was just one of the gains that the peasants made from the socialist state. The whites were a minority split in the peasantry, aided from without by heavy supply of arms and military personnel. An alliance of European nations took the decision to send troops to Russia with no other purpose than to smash up the young socialist state. And the Bolsheviks, together with the massed ranks of the poor peasants and workers were supposed to take that lying down???

The armies of 16 nations were defeated by the one very new Red Army and that could not have happened had the Bolsheviks not had the support of the vast majority of Russian peasants and workers.

The sailors who complained about the Bolsheviks were not the sailors who were active in the revolution. According to Trotsky, the garrison at Kronstadt had been emptied five times over in order to feed the front line with fighting men. Those remaining were green and were being thoroughly misled by reactionary generals and admirals. They were the ones producing the anti Bolshevik slogans, not the men. When the fortress was seized by the officers and men there, they were given time to lay down their arms - three days in fact - and only after appeals for a peaceful outcome had been rejected, did Lenin reluctantly send in the troops. At the head of the movement were some very senior czarist officers, who were justly executed. The lower ranks were eventually freed and were given the chance to redeem themselves by working in factories supplying the Red Army.

At any place and at any time in history, has there a ever been acceptance that a mutiny in a military establishment should be tolerated? Only the Bolsheviks were expected to accept mutiny without so much as a murmur. Talk about double standards.

The Cheka, although originally installed by Lenin as a security measure was never built as a murder organisation. It was later thoroughly misused by Stalin, when he organised the red terror. Under Lenin there was no need for terror, simply because the revolution and all it stood for was popular with the working masses. It was the rich peasants and the old army officers who were causing trouble.

Raise your hand against your country in any part of the world during the first part of the 20th century and you would lose your life. Edward Snowden the US whistle blower was lucky not to face the death penalty for feeding Wikki Leaks with military information. He was charged with aiding the enemy. Had he actually taken up arms against the USA he would definitely have been executed. I am sure there are those here who would say he deserved to die for his actions. Now accuse him of hoarding or destroying food during a war, taking up arms against his countrymen and linking arms with the USA's enemies and then ponder on what should be done to him then. Only after that question has been honestly answered can a judgement be made about the USSR taking it's own traitors and a saboteurs to task.

Only the USSR was expected to let people take up arms against their government without resorting to force to prevent it.
Pandora
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by Pandora »

Vic, I suggest you watch Doctor Zhivago again.
Vic Dale
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by Vic Dale »

Zhivago is fiction
Celticmarine
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by Celticmarine »

What does everyone think of the Evacuation of the Embassies?
Pandora
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by Pandora »

Vic Dale wrote:Zhivago is fiction
yes but it illustrates very well how life was back then.
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RF
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by RF »

Celticmarine wrote:What does everyone think of the Evacuation of the Embassies?
Standard diplomatic proceedure.

More important is what is going on behindthe scenes.
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Vic Dale
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by Vic Dale »

The yanks are rattled by anything going on in the Middle East at present. They have put their foot in it more than once and despite all their attempts to down Al-Queada they have so far failed. They don't seem capable of learning from their mistakes.

The only tactic a government can deploy against terrorists is either to win over or terrify their base of support. No prize for guessing which option the yanks favour. As a result the yanks are now so universally hated, all they do stirs up more hatred. They cannot fight Al-Queada militarily, because they can chose their own battlefield and walk on to it and off at will, simply because they have mass support. So if a terror threat is suspected, all the yanks can do is pull out. I notice they got one of their juniors to deal with the delicate question of what is going on. Good training I suppose and there is likely to be plenty of demand for that particular skill in future.

"It isn't a pull out it is a reduction of staff." - Hah! We have heard that before. Pulling out the top dogs at the embassy reduces the value of the target, so an attack becomes less likely. Al-Queada must be rubbing their hands.

Pulling out staff from an embassy causes an embarrassing chain of events, because it says the hosts are not capable of keeping them safe. It is an embarrassment all round and suddenly it is time to send in the drones. Each time the yanks send in the drones it saves Al-Queada time and money. A drone is a diplomatic disaster and each time they are used it reinforces the USA's isolationist policy - from the outside. No one wants them.

The biggest economy, the biggest debtor nation and the biggest pariah - all in one. You can't blame Obama for all of that. The USA has been building it's position since the first world war and now it is reaping the benefits. The most heavily armed nation in the whole of history brought to it's knees by a ragtag army of misfits. Not that many of them either. What a hoot. Interesting to see what they do next.

If the people of the Muslim world were treated with respect and left to get on with their lives under whatever regime suits them and without predator nations trying to rob them of their natural resources, the likes of Al Queada would not get a look in. After all, their position is completely parasitic on the hatred reserved for the yanks and other nations who support them.
Vic Dale
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by Vic Dale »

Pandora wrote:
Vic Dale wrote:Zhivago is fiction
yes but it illustrates very well how life was back then.
It illustrates nothing except the pro czarist sympathies of the producers. It is clear that very few people know what Russia was like when the Bolsheviks took power. Think of Ethiopia in 1985 and that gives you an idea the mass starvation which the czar and his war had given millions of hard working Russian people. Think about the death squads sent in to kill the discontented asking for bread and the thousand plus dead who petitioned the winter palace when they were hungry, cut down by the pro-czarist Cossacks.

The revolution began to actually feed people. It ended the war and began to redistribute the land. Small wonder the landed gentry and the land rich peasants got upitty. They were the ones who fueled discontent and spread dissent among ignorant people. Had the revolution been left in peace to develop it's resources, without massed highly mechanised armies from predator nations being sent in to smash it up, the transition would have been a lot smoother. They might not have had to suffer under Stalin. Three years of terrible war which destroyed production and caused starvation among millions was not going to be overcome easily.

Taking it all in all and I do not for one minute support what Stalin did, the revolution took Russia from being the poorest nation in the whole of Europe and built it into the second most powerful economy in the world by 1945. The lives of the average Russian changed dramatically. For the first time they had guaranteed jobs, a roof over their head (though not luxurious) and sufficient food. They were never to starve again. That is just 28 short years, 25 if you don't count the war when things went backward. This represents the most fantastic achievement in the whole history of mankind though at a terrible cost. Capitalism for all it's trumpeting could never achieve that. Even the redevelopment of Germany out of the ashes of WWI was not a patch on the Russian achievement. The 1950s economic boom eclipsed by six times all that had ever been produced by mankind yet the Russian achievement is never mentioned, because it did far better than that, growing at 12.5% year on year until the 1960s.

By 1940, all that was left of the socialist revolution was the planned economy and it is thanks to this that Russia did so well.
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Dave Saxton
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by Dave Saxton »

Planned economies and central Gov planning in general has a very poor record. East Germany anybody? Cuba anybody? North Korea anybody? When it doesn't work, and it never really does very well, they try to make it work through enforcement policies. This only leads to a loss of freedom and civil liberties. Oppression! Obama's "5 year plan" approach is a dismal failure.
Entering a night sea battle is an awesome business.The enveloping darkness, hiding the enemy's.. seems a living thing, malignant and oppressive.Swishing water at the bow and stern mark an inexorable advance toward an unknown destiny.
Vic Dale
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by Vic Dale »

Dave Saxton wrote:Planned economies and central Gov planning in general has a very poor record. East Germany anybody? Cuba anybody? North Korea anybody? When it doesn't work, and it never really does very well, they try to make it work through enforcement policies. This only leads to a loss of freedom and civil liberties. Oppression! Obama's "5 year plan" approach is a dismal failure.
I couldn't agree more. A planned economy has to be decentralised and the best example of how decentralisation works is the medium we are using to communicate.

It was centralisation which eventually killed the Soviet economy. No committee can plan a million products.

I would favour works committees to be made up of thirds, one third from the local community so that the environment and peoples lives were not made a misery. One third from the workers themselves so they could have their say about production methods and safety at work. The last third would be made up of representatives from the central committee, regional committees and other workers organisations, which could present the overall picture about national and international production needs.

I would abolish the casting vote - no one deserves more say than the next person. If the committee can't agree they can come back the next day and look at it again. All officials would be elected and subject to short term recall. There would be no full time officials and all officials would be paid the average of those they represent.
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Dave Saxton
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by Dave Saxton »

Why go to such trouble? Free markets in free and open societies work.
Entering a night sea battle is an awesome business.The enveloping darkness, hiding the enemy's.. seems a living thing, malignant and oppressive.Swishing water at the bow and stern mark an inexorable advance toward an unknown destiny.
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RF
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by RF »

Vic Dale wrote: It was centralisation which eventually killed the Soviet economy. No committee can plan a million products.
True, but there was a lot more to it than that.

The contradiction facing any totalitarian society is the degrading effects of a loss of freedom, choice and initiative. It saps motivation. As the Chinese communist party has discovered you cannot have economic freedom without political freedom.

The USSR up to its demise was very efficient in producing weapons especially missiles. What ultimately sank the USSR politically is that it fell way beyond the West in technical innovation, labour productivity and initiative. It lost the Cold War and trying to carry on that way was economically unsustainable. It faced humiliating defeat in Afghanistan.
These degrading effects destroyed the legitimacy of the Soviet state - attempts to ''democtratise'' with ''perestroika'' and ''glasnost'' simply accelerated the break up of the Soviet empire from within.
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Byron Angel
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by Byron Angel »

IIRC, the late 80's catch phrase attributed to Soviet analysts in their assessment of the economic prospects of the USSR was that the USSR was headed toward becoming the equivalent of "Upper Volta with nuclear missiles".

B
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