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**Giancarlo** · August 20, 2016, 23:12

Originally posted by The Mad Monk View Post

Private industry is more than capable of doing research and making advancements when the potential for profit is involved. The Specialty Chemicals industry is all about that.

But most advancements weren't because of the private sector... And many that could be were government funded.

**Giancarlo** · August 20, 2016, 23:13

Originally posted by Aeson View Post

Again, free trade is not mutually exclusive with investment into science. Pretending there is only one positive factor on technological advancement is obviously ludicrous.

Oh but it is. Again I am not against trade. I'm in favor of fair trade. Not free trade propaganda.

**Aeson** · August 20, 2016, 23:50

No, free trade is not mutually exclusive with internal investments. Don't be silly.

**Giancarlo** · August 21, 2016, 00:09

Originally posted by Aeson View Post

No, free trade is not mutually exclusive with internal investments. Don't be silly.

Free trade doesn't offer anything either except more poverty and misery.

**Dinner** · August 21, 2016, 00:12

You should go test your hypothesis by going to a completely closed society on some desert island some where. They we will come vack in 20 years and see how poor and miserable you are compared to everyone else.

**Giancarlo** · August 21, 2016, 00:17

And he's doing it again... sigh...

Right. Whatever you say. Cool Story.

**Aeson** · August 21, 2016, 03:15

Originally posted by Giancarlo View Post

Free trade doesn't offer anything either except more poverty and misery.

All free trade offers is reduced barriers to trade. You just don't understand what it is or what it's effects are, and have consistently conflated it with various other factors.

**Giancarlo** · August 21, 2016, 09:02

Originally posted by Aeson View Post

All free trade offers is reduced barriers to trade. You just don't understand what it is or what it's effects are, and have consistently conflated it with various other factors.

Free trade doesn't do that. It is a euphemism as I said previously. It is fake language. I do understand what it is very well. It reduces barriers so mega corporations can engage in their own form of colonialism.

It is a total lie.

**BeBMan** · August 21, 2016, 09:13

Originally posted by Ellestar View Post

Well, that's what you do. So it was meant to make you rethink about it. Unfortunately, it's hard to reach your brains through all that western brainwashing. But desperate times call for desperate measures.

Oh, no reason to be shy about it. Keep it up if you feel that resorting to racism etc. helps your cause. I'm sure it adds a great deal of plausibility to your stuff

Innocent? You're not innocent. You're accompices. You voted for a government that starts offensive wars and destroys other countries. If you put murderes in power, you're totally responsible for their actions. As i said, citizens of dictatorships can claim innoncence because they have almost no way to do something about what their government does. Citizens of democratic countries have no such excuse.

Repeating it does not make it less idiotic. What you write is not only contrary to basic concepts like *rule of law*, where guilt can be assigned only if ppl actually committed any offense/crime, and not just because they buy into a particular political stance (and express it by voting), it is also a convenient means to redefine things so that you have a - still ridiculous - justification for arbitrarily killing anyone you wish.

It is also remarkably similar to statements sometimes given by Islamist terrorist orgs to justify their murder of innocent civilians. But again, pls. keep it up, it certainly adds further credibility to your little tirades.

Same as NATO, members are supposed to defend each other. And?

Missing the point (or deliberately distorting it)

. The Warsaw Pact is a defensive alliance like NATO, yes, nobody has a prob with that, but that's not the issue.

The USSR did resort several times to military means to crush any development they did not like *within* other Warsaw Pact countries.

I don't know of comparable US invasions in NATO countries, but feel free to provide any details. But even if you do, pointing to the evil west does not make your claim of "independent" eastern block countries less absurd in light of the fact that they had independence only as long it did not collide with Soviet (or, as you write yourself further down) communist interests.

I said "in theory" so not to argue about practical things, but fine, let it be as you wish.

Oh I'm sure it's interesting to obsess about theoretical concepts 24/7, but since we were talking about the *actual situation in the Eastern block it's not a theoretical issue.

Let's begin from the fact that Hitler was capitalist. And Hitler made deals with other "non-Nazi" capitalists, and these "non-Nazi" capitalists even fed entire countries to Hitler, so all that "pact" propaganda is just that, anti-Soviet propaganda - capitalists were even worse. And capitalists traded with Nazi Germany through entire WW2. And we had "volunteer" divisions from all over Europe on our land, so it's not like only Nazi Germany was fighting us, it was actually Nazi Europe. So yeah, capitalists will find it hard to argue their moral superiorority even if you consider practical aspects.

And the only real difference between Nazi Germany and supposedly "Not Nazi" Western European civilization was that Nazi thought it's totaly ok to mass-murder and genocide whites, and the rest of Western European civilization thought it's totally ok to mass-murder and genocide non-whites. Need i remind you about what USA did in Vietnam, for example? Or what Western civilization did in colonies?

As for Vietnam etc. - I never excused or justified it, so yes, it was bad too. But great to read we all agree that the Nazis were bad, I was almost afraid after your excursion into racism etc. you'd start to excuse those too.

Of course if you think they're bad it remains a mystery why you'd just gloss over the Hitler-Stalin Pact and the pre-1941 coop with NS-Germany, or hold up claims for superior morals at work on the Soviet side in light of this. But feel free to remain purely in the theoretical realm - I have to conclude then that these - supposedly - superior morals had no real-life impact at all, so are worthless theoretical exercises.

Gulag mention is a funny thing because "democratic" USA has more prisoners right this instant than all Soviet prisons, including Gulag, ever had at it's peak in 1938 IIRC.

I agree it's funny, but more for the reason that you seem to think the Gulag system is somehow justified because of prisoners (of whatever numbers) elsewhere.

God-Emperor cult is also funny, given that all property of Stalin (other than a handful of nondescript clothing) was small enough to fit into a briefcase. That indeed was a poorest God-Emperor in the entire world history, i guess only fictional characters can beat that. That's an ultimate unbeatable proof that all he did was for the good of the country, how he understood that. Every later USSR leader was richer, and guess what, we're back to capitalism now. And of course every single filthy rich capitalist badmouths Stalin - that's the only thing he can do, after all - to badmouth a person who gave it all for the country, with absolutely nothing for himself. Hell, Stalin didn't even use his position to exchange his own son so to save him. Who of the western presidents can claim that he didn't use his position even to save his eldest son?

*wiping off the tears in memory of poor Stalin*

Joey was a very modest god-emperor who did not have enough time to make money because he was occupied with oppressing his ppl.

So, as you see, communism is morally superior to capitalism even in practice.

None of the stuff your wrote supports that

So? It's not like democracy and common people are shaping a majority of supposedly democratic countries (and that's, like, most of the world now?). Even most vocal "democratic" countries are actually shaped by capitalists. Yet, noone argues that democracy is a bad thing only because it doesn't work as good as it's supposed to. And in many countries it practically doesn't work at all. So what?

While most reasonable ppl would agree that democratic countries do have a number of issues, and lotsa things that can and should be criticized (and changed if possible) your desperate attempts to declare everything the same is both ridiculous and self-defeating.

And yes, ppl can make an impact in democratic countries in various ways, for example by voting out a government (which was impossible in many eastern block countries) they don't want, but also in other ways (for example suing their government and actually getting through with it - good luck with that under Stalin, or even post-Stalin eastern block countries).

But I really love how your whole line of "evil west" nonsense turns regularly into "but hey, it's the same like in the west!" when we talk about Russian/Soviet issues. Why do you even rant about the west when everything ends up being the same?

Western countries magically do? What about communist parties being banned in most capitalist countries?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communist_parties

You may find a couple which were banned, mostly temporarily from what I know, but it's certainly not *banned in most", and in a number of western countries they also made it into the coalition govs sometimes (France, Italy I vaguely recall, for example).

And btw that's called counter-revolution. Naturally, communists didn't welcome that.

Thanks for making my point that the so-called independence your were babbling about does not deserve this name and means merely "do what communists welcome only".

Another shining example for superior morals on your part

Just like capitalists resorted to coups, actual invasions and full-blown wars where millions have died to install their own form of society/economy/whatever - but hey, it wasn't in Europe, so it doens't count, right, my western Nazi friend? When it's Europe and whites, and it's done by non-"democracies", it's bad. When that's not Europe or non-whites, but it's done by "democracies", it's not even worth being considered. Come on, you gotta admit, that logic is totally Nazi-like, and should be dropped. Any decent person should think that all men are created equal, and you can't argue that things done in Europe and with Europeans are infinitely more important than things done in non-Europe with non-Europeans. I hope more and more people in the West will start to open their eyes.

I see, more of the "the USSR was better because capitalists did stuff too"! With such an impressive display of superior morals I have no doubt that ppl will mass-convert back to communism in no time.

Even USSR ran away from a Soviet block (the way it was), so it's hardly a proof of anything.

It's ample proof that the USSR/Soviet block was an experiment that may have started with high ideals decades before, but descended into a system of economic stagnation and political oppression in a historical rather short period of time until it finally fell apart because of its own shortcomings.

**Dinner** · August 21, 2016, 15:40

Originally posted by Aeson View Post

All free trade offers is reduced barriers to trade. You just don't understand what it is or what it's effects are, and have consistently conflated it with various other factors.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

**Ellestar** · August 22, 2016, 05:06