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Joker
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08 Jun 2012, 12:37 pm

Shatbat wrote:
So US presidents of the past have limited their genocide to countries besides their own.

From what I know about history, a lot of central and sounth-american dictators (Somoza, Trujillo, Batista, Pinochet) where endorsed by the U.S. on their anti-communist cruzades.


That is true but those geneocides are very small what Stalin did was massive.



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08 Jun 2012, 1:04 pm

Joker wrote:
Shatbat wrote:
So US presidents of the past have limited their genocide to countries besides their own.

From what I know about history, a lot of central and sounth-american dictators (Somoza, Trujillo, Batista, Pinochet) where endorsed by the U.S. on their anti-communist cruzades.


That is true but those geneocides are very small what Stalin did was massive.


Trujillo killed 20000 people in 5 days, in a country with a total population of 2.3 millions. Russia's population in the 50's was around 100 millions. I won't deny Stalin killed way more people, but that was because he had more people to kill. And I'm not mentioning the other dictators yet.


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08 Jun 2012, 1:09 pm

What about land reform?



Joker
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08 Jun 2012, 1:11 pm

Shatbat wrote:
Joker wrote:
Shatbat wrote:
So US presidents of the past have limited their genocide to countries besides their own.

From what I know about history, a lot of central and sounth-american dictators (Somoza, Trujillo, Batista, Pinochet) where endorsed by the U.S. on their anti-communist cruzades.


That is true but those geneocides are very small what Stalin did was massive.


Trujillo killed 20000 people in 5 days, in a country with a total population of 2.3 millions. Russia's population in the 50's was around 100 millions. I won't deny Stalin killed way more people, but that was because he had more people to kill. And I'm not mentioning the other dictators yet.


What about Pol Pot and Mao?



Shatbat
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08 Jun 2012, 1:33 pm

Joker wrote:
Shatbat wrote:
Joker wrote:
Shatbat wrote:
So US presidents of the past have limited their genocide to countries besides their own.

From what I know about history, a lot of central and sounth-american dictators (Somoza, Trujillo, Batista, Pinochet) where endorsed by the U.S. on their anti-communist cruzades.


That is true but those geneocides are very small what Stalin did was massive.


Trujillo killed 20000 people in 5 days, in a country with a total population of 2.3 millions. Russia's population in the 50's was around 100 millions. I won't deny Stalin killed way more people, but that was because he had more people to kill. And I'm not mentioning the other dictators yet.


What about Pol Pot and Mao?


In Mao's case at least, the argument of "a lot of people there to kill" still stands.

Taking some steps back though, what's the point of this specific argument? Communist dictators commited genocide and a lot of other nasty stuff, but capitalist leaders have dome bad things as well. If the communist leaders were worse that's because their absolute power let them do more, but some powerful US presidents have condoned mass murder as well in order to further their interests in other nations. They knew about it and chose to remain silent and keep supporting the puppet dictatorship that was in place, and enforcing it, as they feared that a successful revolution would lead to a socialist government against their commercial and ideological interests (sorry if I'm not using quite the right words, I lack some the specialized vocabulary in english). They weren't just as obvious about it.

And something that just came into mind, your education system is probably much better at teaching about the history of China and Russia and what their leaders did, and it probably chose to skip past the role of the United States in all what happened at central and south america, or even worse, it may give a positive image of what it did. I still remember at Niagara Falls, there was a room dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt, and in one wall were listed all his accomplishments, among them "Mediating in the construction of the Canal de Panamá, starting a new era in the internacional economy". Do you guys get taught that after a bloody, three year civil war in Colombia, the US government took it's chance to send troops to Panama and take it from us after we refused to give up complete jurisdiction to the US10 kilometers on either side of the channel when it was built, besides other also inacceptable requirements? They didn't do that for the "Liberty of Panama", that was purely out of greed, they even made a similar deal with them, just with 15 kilometers on either side. And what did Roosvelt say? "I took Panamá". It's just infuriating!

God that was a lot of text. The relevance is... living in the western world everything around us is probably biased towards believing we are good, and they are bad, and we don't learn about the bad thins our side has made through history.


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Joker
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08 Jun 2012, 1:42 pm

Shatbat wrote:
Joker wrote:
Shatbat wrote:
Joker wrote:
Shatbat wrote:
So US presidents of the past have limited their genocide to countries besides their own.

From what I know about history, a lot of central and sounth-american dictators (Somoza, Trujillo, Batista, Pinochet) where endorsed by the U.S. on their anti-communist cruzades.


That is true but those geneocides are very small what Stalin did was massive.


Trujillo killed 20000 people in 5 days, in a country with a total population of 2.3 millions. Russia's population in the 50's was around 100 millions. I won't deny Stalin killed way more people, but that was because he had more people to kill. And I'm not mentioning the other dictators yet.


What about Pol Pot and Mao?


In Mao's case at least, the argument of "a lot of people there to kill" still stands.

Taking some steps back though, what's the point of this specific argument? Communist dictators commited genocide and a lot of other nasty stuff, but capitalist leaders have dome bad things as well. If the communist leaders were worse that's because their absolute power let them do more, but some powerful US presidents have condoned mass murder as well in order to further their interests in other nations. They knew about it and chose to remain silent and keep supporting the puppet dictatorship that was in place, and enforcing it, as they feared that a successful revolution would lead to a socialist government against their commercial and ideological interests (sorry if I'm not using quite the right words, I lack some the specialized vocabulary in english). They weren't just as obvious about it.

And something that just came into mind, your education system is probably much better at teaching about the history of China and Russia and what their leaders did, and it probably chose to skip past the role of the United States in all what happened at central and south america, or even worse, it may give a positive image of what it did. I still remember at Niagara Falls, there was a room dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt, and in one wall were listed all his accomplishments, among them "Mediating in the construction of the Canal de Panamá, starting a new era in the internacional economy". Do you guys get taught that after a bloody, three year civil war in Colombia, the US government took it's chance to send troops to Panama and take it from us after we refused to give up complete jurisdiction to the US10 kilometers on either side of the channel when it was built, besides other also inacceptable requirements? They didn't do that for the "Liberty of Panama", that was purely out of greed, they even made a similar deal with them, just with 15 kilometers on either side. And what did Roosvelt say? "I took Panamá". It's just infuriating!

God that was a lot of text. The relevance is... living in the western world everything around us is probably biased towards believing we are good, and they are bad, and we don't learn about the bad thins our side has made through history.


Both have done bad things but I can't recall capitalists commiting mass geneocide.



androbot2084
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08 Jun 2012, 2:00 pm

Communism would work if there was no coercion involved.



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08 Jun 2012, 2:00 pm

Trujillo was capitalistic and commited the aforementioned killing of 1% of the total population of his country in five days. And more during his decades long dictatorship. I have a whole book laying somewhere back home about central american dictators, what their did, and the role of the united states in their rise to power.

Or If by proxy is not good enough, I've heard a lot of innocent vietnamese villagers were murdered at some point of history...

Or... I know it is of very, very poor taste to bring Hitler into a discussion, but he was more of a capitalist. Not comparing him to the US or saying that capitalism is as bad as him, definitely not that, but I find that sometimes showing an extreme point of view can be helpful.

I don't like arguing too much about the same thing, so for our convenience I'll state my points

- Communism is not inherently bad, on paper, but dictators under it's banner will most likely use their power for personal gain, at the detriment of others, and that should not be blamed on the ideology but in the people applying them (as what the capitalist dictators did is their fault, not capitalism.

- Capitalism is not the perfect economic model, incapable of evil, and the US the white knight in shining armor some people think it is. It is possible for people in power inside a capitalistic model to do stuff as nasty as their power will allow, and yet again the example of the dictators, who also commited genocide, and the US has done a lot of shady things to keep it's supremacy, at the detriment of other countries.

So... let's argue about them, and also please tell me what your beliefs about the matter are and what you're trying to prove. It will make things flow smoother :D


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Joker
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08 Jun 2012, 2:02 pm

I am not a pro captialist or do I have any views on communism I just look at which side has caused more death.



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08 Jun 2012, 2:03 pm

androbot2084 wrote:
Communism would work if there was no coercion involved.


I'll answer you with this

Raptor wrote:
...the implementation of that ideology (communism) ends up oppressive when the implementation of those ideologies hits the inevitable resistance.


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Joker
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08 Jun 2012, 2:05 pm

Communist leaders build themself up like Gods. They do how ever know how to create jobs but people like to own things you can't own things in a communist country.



Shatbat
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08 Jun 2012, 2:06 pm

Joker wrote:
I am not a pro captialist or do I have any views on communism I just look at which side has caused more death.


Oh well, in that case communism certainly has caused more deaths. But again, not by itself, but because capitalist countries tend to run democracies, and communist countries tend to run dictatorships, and dictatorships tend to be much worse than democracies. Correlation doesn't imply causation.


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08 Jun 2012, 2:07 pm

Shatbat wrote:
Joker wrote:
I am not a pro captialist or do I have any views on communism I just look at which side has caused more death.


Oh well, in that case communism certainly has caused more deaths. But again, not by itself, but because capitalist countries tend to run democracies, and communist countries tend to run dictatorships, and dictatorships tend to be much worse than democracies. Correlation doesn't imply causation.


No one can live happy lifes under a dictatorship unless they are in a place of power.



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08 Jun 2012, 2:11 pm

Joker wrote:
Communist leaders build themself up like Gods. They do how ever know how to create jobs but people like to own things you can't own things in a communist country.


Emperors, pharaohs, kings, dictators (guess what, Trujillo again) and other persons in a position of absolute power like to think of themselves as gods, descendants of gods, or enforcers of his will. That's not limited to communism.

And yeah, people like to own stuff. No way around that.


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08 Jun 2012, 2:14 pm

Joker wrote:
Shatbat wrote:
Joker wrote:
I am not a pro captialist or do I have any views on communism I just look at which side has caused more death.


Oh well, in that case communism certainly has caused more deaths. But again, not by itself, but because capitalist countries tend to run democracies, and communist countries tend to run dictatorships, and dictatorships tend to be much worse than democracies. Correlation doesn't imply causation.


No one can live happy lifes under a dictatorship unless they are in a place of power.


Yeah, I guess that's something I wanted to say too. Whichever economical model is being used, dictatorships suck.


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Joker
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08 Jun 2012, 2:16 pm

Shatbat wrote:
Joker wrote:
Shatbat wrote:
Joker wrote:
I am not a pro captialist or do I have any views on communism I just look at which side has caused more death.


Oh well, in that case communism certainly has caused more deaths. But again, not by itself, but because capitalist countries tend to run democracies, and communist countries tend to run dictatorships, and dictatorships tend to be much worse than democracies. Correlation doesn't imply causation.


No one can live happy lifes under a dictatorship unless they are in a place of power.


Yeah, I guess that's something I wanted to say too. Whichever economical model is being used, dictatorships suck.


America in my opinons runs like a fascist dictatorship.