Interpol: FARC files real

[Seedle]

Originally posted by Felch


Am I the only one who thinks that this is the lamest form of debate?

WOW, YOU'RE SO COOL BECAUSE YOU TOOK TWO WORDS OUT OF MY POST AND CHANGED THEM TO SOMETHING ELSE! I JUST HAD A LOLGASM!!!!!!!!!1!!1!!!!

What's funny is that capitalism doesn't look at people as social classes. It looks at them as willing, individual participants in an economy. So your correction was not only showed a lack of imagination, but it turned a valid (if opinionated) statement into gibberish.

Lack of imagination is true. Gibberish is not. The point is that your statement about communism could be equally (in my opinion, but you already admitted it is an opinionated statement) applied to capitalism. I just felt it was hypocritical to fault communism for the qualities you listed and not capitalism. I see how my post could be considered poor form, or non-additive to the discussion, but I don't see how it is gibberish.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Felch
Haven't heard of Haitians in Cuba myself. Why wouldn't they just hop across the border to the DR?

I'm assuming you aren't aware of the plight of Haitians in the DR, but it's pretty bad. Many are kidnapped and used as slaves in the sugar plantations. Also, the DR is about as willing as the U.S. to admit Haitians into their country, and so most of them there are illegal immigrants.

Not that it matter. Haiti is an anarchic gangster society. Saying it's capitalist is like saying the PRC is communist. Oh, look at that, I can pick and choose who gets to be on my team also.

It's not a matter of picking and choosing. Only an idiot or demagogue would look at the PRC today and claim that it wasn't capitalist. Private property, commodity production, the law of value, are the dominant mode of production. Those are the essential features of capitalism, not forms of government.

Why would people who live in a worker's paradise leave? Why would they uproot their families and sacrifice free medical care unless, perhaps, the Cuban government was tyrannical, and conditions weren't nearly as nice as your sources indicate.

I don't claim Cuba is a workers paradise. It is a poor country with few natural resources. That's the key, it's poor. People leave poor countries and go to richer ones. Why did millions of Irish flee Ireland? Was it a tyranny? Hardly. Even if Cuba were a free and "democratic" (by American standards) country, fully embracing the free market, it would be poor, and Cubans would still be coming to Florida to get jobs.

How do we victimize Cuba? We don't have anything to do with them. We have virtually no trade. We're certainly not exploiting them in some greedy evil capitalist way.

We've already established you don't know a lot about Cuba, so you might not wish to continue making blanket statements. First off, the U.S. is Cuba's natural trading partner. It costs Cuba more money to trade with other countries, so we are victimizing them with the embargo. I realize that many people claim that's just the U.S.'s right to exercise control over who it trades with, but an embargo is an act of war, and the U.S. traded with far, far more vicious countries (such as Guatemala, which killed 200,000 of its own people and drove two million into internal and external exile).

If we ignore the embargo, there there's the fact that the U.S. allows its territory to be used by anti-Cuban terrorist groups to attack Cuba. Alpha 66, Omega 7, the Brothers to the Rescue, etc. are all well known terrorist groups. Lius Posada Cariles, the Western Hemisphere's most infamous terrorist, who is wanted in connection with blowing up a Cuban airliner killing 73 people, many of whom were children (the Cuban national fencing team), and setting off bombs in Havana in the 90s, (which he admitted to doing in the New Yorks Times, though he has since recanted) killing an Italian businessman on vacation, and was convicted in Panama of attempting to set off a ton of explosives in a university hall where Castro was expected to speak (and which would have been packed), lives openly in South Florida, along with other well known criminals and terrorists, Felix Rodrigez, Orlando Bosch, etc.

GDR* also had a policy of shooting Germans who tried to leave. Not exactly a beacon of liberty in the world.

So it did, but I never claimed it was a beacon of liberty, only that people were willingly immigrating too it.

*Sometimes I forget which Germany was the one that ran a massive secret police force and shot people who tried to emigrate. Then I remember it's the "Democratic" one.

While West Germany didn't shoot people for trying to leave, it did have a massive police state and spied on its own citizens as well.

While we're digressing to East Germany, have you seen Lives of Others? Or is it just a bunch of imperialist lies?

I have no reason to believe The Lives of Others is inaccurate, but it is taken completely out of context. East Germany was the front line of the Cold War. Western agents in East Germany engaged in quite a bit of sabotage, what today we would call terrorism: blowing up bridges, burning the East Berlin bus fleet, destroying railroads, etc. The wall and border patrol wasn't just to stop people from getting out. It was to stop terrorists from getting in. The spying wasn't just because the society had control issues, but because there actually were spies and terrorists operating in the country, who were trained and funded and armed by the West.

The West has never faced anything like it. Our terrorists are stateless actors, generally disorganized, with little training or funding or material resources. Even Al Qaeda doesn't represent the threat to the West that the West was to the East.

I'm not writing this to excuse the governments of Eastern Europe, but if you ignore the context, if you ignore the virtual war being waged, then you can't really understand why those societies were such police states. The same is true of Cuba, though it's nowhere near the police state that West Germany was.

I highly recommend reading William Blum's Killing Hope. It's a (well documented) book about all the the things our government did that people think our government doesn't do. After you read that, you'll never ask the question, "Why do they hate us?"

[chequita guevara]

dp

[Felch]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
I'm assuming you aren't aware of the plight of Haitians in the DR, but it's pretty bad. Many are kidnapped and used as slaves in the sugar plantations. Also, the DR is about as willing as the U.S. to admit Haitians into their country, and so most of them there are illegal immigrants.

Well that explains why they're moving to Cuba. It's the lesser of two evils.

It's not a matter of picking and choosing. Only an idiot or demagogue would look at the PRC today and claim that it wasn't capitalist. Private property, commodity production, the law of value, are the dominant mode of production. Those are the essential features of capitalism, not forms of government.

I agree that the PRC is capitalist. What do you mean by "commodity production" and "law of value?" Commodity production sounds like something that happens everywhere, and law of value sounds like Marxist jargon.

I don't claim Cuba is a workers paradise. It is a poor country with few natural resources. That's the key, it's poor.

Hong Kong was poor with no natural resources, and in the grips of colonialism. But by pursuing an aggressively pro-market economic policy they became richer than Croesus. The situation is different for Cuba, but perhaps it wouldn't be so poor if people were free to produce wealth as they saw fit.

People leave poor countries and go to richer ones. Why did millions of Irish flee Ireland? Was it a tyranny?

Come on, ever heard of James Connolly? He's right up your alley.

As a side note, the 1840s famine was caused by fungus, but exacerbated by protectionist (anti-capitalist) agriculture policies in the UK.

Hardly. Even if Cuba were a free and "democratic" (by American standards) country, fully embracing the free market, it would be poor, and Cubans would still be coming to Florida to get jobs.

Yeah, what's wrong with that? I'm personally in favor of immigration and the freedom of people to migrate for economic reasons.

We've already established you don't know a lot about Cuba, so you might not wish to continue making blanket statements. First off, the U.S. is Cuba's natural trading partner. It costs Cuba more money to trade with other countries, so we are victimizing them with the embargo. I realize that many people claim that's just the U.S.'s right to exercise control over who it trades with, but an embargo is an act of war, and the U.S. traded with far, far more vicious countries (such as Guatemala, which killed 200,000 of its own people and drove two million into internal and external exile).

So are we doing poor countries a favor when we trade with them, or are we hurting them?

If we ignore the embargo, there there's the fact that the U.S. allows its territory to be used by anti-Cuban terrorist groups to attack Cuba. Alpha 66, Omega 7, the Brothers to the Rescue, etc. are all well known terrorist groups. Lius Posada Cariles, the Western Hemisphere's most infamous terrorist, who is wanted in connection with blowing up a Cuban airliner killing 73 people, many of whom were children (the Cuban national fencing team), and setting off bombs in Havana in the 90s, (which he admitted to doing in the New Yorks Times, though he has since recanted) killing an Italian businessman on vacation, and was convicted in Panama of attempting to set off a ton of explosives in a university hall where Castro was expected to speak (and which would have been packed), lives openly in South Florida, along with other well known criminals and terrorists, Felix Rodrigez, Orlando Bosch, etc.

First, I'm not personally in favor of bombing planes full of innocent people. I doubt though, that the cost of investigating and protecting against these criminals is the real reason Cuba is poor.

While West Germany didn't shoot people for trying to leave, it did have a massive police state and spied on its own citizens as well.

So shooting people who try to leave isn't a big deal? I know that's not what you said or meant, but you seem to brush it off rather casually.

Do you think that maybe some of that domestic spying had to do with Stasi and the Red Army Faction?

Not to mention the significant differences in political freedoms...

I have no reason to believe The Lives of Others is inaccurate, but it is taken completely out of context. East Germany was the front line of the Cold War. Western agents in East Germany engaged in quite a bit of sabotage, what today we would call terrorism: blowing up bridges, burning the East Berlin bus fleet, destroying railroads, etc. The wall and border patrol wasn't just to stop people from getting out. It was to stop terrorists from getting in. The spying wasn't just because the society had control issues, but because there actually were spies and terrorists operating in the country, who were trained and funded and armed by the West.

The West has never faced anything like it. Our terrorists are stateless actors, generally disorganized, with little training or funding or material resources. Even Al Qaeda doesn't represent the threat to the West that the West was to the East.

I'm not writing this to excuse the governments of Eastern Europe, but if you ignore the context, if you ignore the virtual war being waged, then you can't really understand why those societies were such police states.

I think you are writing to excuse the governments of Easter Europe. If the US had done anything near what they had done, well, you certainly wouldn't be free to pursue your anti-capitalist politics.

The purpose of a government is to preserve the rights of its people. The US government does a pretty lousy job of this, but compared to the old Warsaw Pact regimes, we're hitting home runs left and right.

The Easter European dictatorships tended to view the purpose of government as being the perpetuation of the government.

It's a good movie by the way. Won oodles of awards. Even beat out Pan's Labyrinth.

The same is true of Cuba, though it's nowhere near the police state that West Germany was.

Here's a quick quiz. How many political parties exist in Cuba? How many parties existed in West Germany?

I know you like to say that communism is economic and not political, but the historical facts seem to contradict you.

I highly recommend reading William Blum's Killing Hope. It's a (well documented) book about all the the things our government did that people think our government doesn't do. After you read that, you'll never ask the question, "Why do they hate us?"

I know why they hate us already. Because we bomb villages and poke our noses in other people's business. I'm not pro-imperialist, I'm pro-liberty.

I'm one of those Ron Paul drones

But if it makes you happy I'll keep an eye out for Blum nest time I'm at the library. I'd counter with a recommendation of The Black Book of Communism but you already have your mind made up.

Besides, propaganda doesn't do much to enlighten.

[Felch]

Originally posted by Seedle
Lack of imagination is true. Gibberish is not. The point is that your statement about communism could be equally (in my opinion, but you already admitted it is an opinionated statement) applied to capitalism. I just felt it was hypocritical to fault communism for the qualities you listed and not capitalism. I see how my post could be considered poor form, or non-additive to the discussion, but I don't see how it is gibberish.

Sorry about being a *****.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Felch


Quit assuming that "reasonably well governed" and "more or less competent" mean that I believe the US is perfect. There are systemic flaws and venal people at the top (like Sen. Ted Stevens), but a few bad apples aren't enough to make the country unlivable for most people. If you want to dispute what I'm saying, the burden of proof is on you.

What the hell does that have to do with not voting because you think all the candidates are equally competent. That's just incredibly stupid.

So there are two types of people who don't vote. People like me and people like you. I don't really call that a screaming haleluia for democracy in a capitalist system.

[Straybow]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

Wars and tribal conflicts, such as in Burma, Darfur, Congo, or Zimbabwe, are the principle reason for these sorts of famines. However, they have less to do with capitalism than with whose ancestors hated each other.

It's significantly more complicated than that. If the economies of those countries weren't at the pointy end of imperialism's spear, they'd have more resources of their own to go around, and those "tribal hatreds" wouldn't be so important. They only matter when there isn't enough to go around, and there has to be a decision as to who gets what. When there's enough for everyone, those hatreds have disappeared.

But they did have resources of their own... that's why the imperialists moved in and took over. While the imperialists ruled there was enough to go around. When they left (or were booted out) the nationals looted and destroyed much of the capital that was left behind.

And was it lack of food, or any other resource, that led Serbs to attack and slaughter their neighbors? No. There, for once, it was the commies who held things together against the tribal hatreds.

[McCrea]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Logic doesn't need to have a valid "source." It just needs to be logical.

Sorry to jump in out of the blue, but this statement is contrary to the culmination of my personal observations and experience, so I seized this opportunity to indulge in a wonderfully holistic perspective. More directly, I find it [the above quotation] possibly facetious, otherwise deluded.

Things that are, are. But to communicate about what is, we have defined words, terms and phrases to attempt to concisely relay information about these "things that are". These words, terms and phrases (and indeed everything defined), are not precise and can always fail (Godel), and I treat them as "things that are not". Logic is one of many things that does not exist outside of the definition we give it.

This concept didn't impress me until I encountered it in what I thought was a most unlikely place. I'd expect it to appear in psychology, philosophy (indeed, Pythagoras's following reportedly hinged on whether a circle actually exists), and certainly pure mathematics where it is often trivial to solve an conceptual problem by redefining the problem. Anyhow, I had the pleasure of running into "the assumptions of rationality" in a business management 102 course. It wasn't a new concept to me, but it was a pleasure to be in a roomful of young (19 year old) students. I only noticed one other, older, person who seemed to "intuitively" understand what the point was: it's never possible to make a rational decision. The majority of the class was actually outraged, and I'm certain most would still argue in favor of the existence of rationality. I wish more of them actively tried to understand it rather than fighting; they may have shaved 10 years of their learning curves.

Logic and rationality do not exist. In a more practical sense, logic means something different to every one. When I (attempt to) consider a situation logically, the process (and often the result) will frequently be quite different than another's. The truth is that logic doesn't make sense.

So, re-evaluating the quotation, the author suggests that logic (1) is preferred over a source (2). I argue that 1) logic is something that doesn't exist, and 2) the source of information does exist. I, personally, value the source more than any presented version of logic.

[Again, sorry for jumping in, but writing impromptu philosophic essays is something I enjoy. -- McCrea]

[Felch]

Originally posted by McCrea
[Again, sorry for jumping in, but writing impromptu philosophic essays is something I enjoy. -- McCrea]

You're a strange DL.

[Patroklos]

Why did millions of Irish flee Ireland? Was it a tyranny? Hardly.

It depends on the timeframe.

[McCrea]

Originally posted by Felch
You're a strange DL.

Thanks. Hope you enjoyed.

[Straybow]

Welcome McCrea!

[McCrea]

Lords, Straybow, thanks. I certainly did not expect the welcome wagon in this thread.

[Kidlicious]

No one ever expects the welcome wagon!

[McCrea]

Hi Kidicious. (waited a day to post because I didn't want to hijack.) Wellmet, but have to say you strike me as a big questionmark. Certainly a little greeting can go a long ways, though, heh.