what if trotsky had won leadership

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Sand
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13 Sep 2009, 11:32 pm

ruveyn wrote:

Sand wrote:

Sure. It might even work as well as it does in Afghanistan. There are lots of so-called "prols" with guns and army training and a rather strong distaste for the police. If that's the kind of world you would like to see for your grandchildren. It's a lot easier, cheaper, and nicer and more effective to give desperate poor people food and shelter.

Think of the Hungarian Uprising put down firmly by Soviet machine guns and tanks. It works like a charm.

In the U.S. uprisings will happen in cities and there will be mobs of people to be gunned down in mass. Relatively unarmed people do not have a chance against heavy caliber weapons. Think of what the Chinese government did in Tsenamen Square. That is the model.

In Afghanistan there is maneuvering in the open and ambush in the mountains. That is not an uprising. It is an insurgent war. The cure for that is poison gas and carpet bombing or even worse.

ruveyn

The US tried carpet bombing in Viet Nam. They are trying the same in Afghanistan. They are sowing dragon's teeth and dragons bite back very hard. All your paranoid military horse manure is, in the long run, a manufacture of blow-back. American deprived people are not very aggressive at the moment but when the system disintegrates, as it is starting to do, the excrement will hit the ventilating system.

DentArthurDent
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14 Sep 2009, 2:17 am

Sand wrote:

For somebody who presumes himself monstrously intelligent ........

Further proof that IQ is far from an adequate means of quantifying intelligence , just because a person may be brilliant at calculus, and have a grasp of language does not necessarily mean they have more emotional intelligence and wisdom than the average gnat.

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ruveyn
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14 Sep 2009, 4:31 am

Sand wrote:

Johnson and MacNammara refused to bomb the dikes and starve the North Vietnamese. Also we did not use nukes. And for good reason. J and M figured that would start WW3.

ruveyn

Orwell
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14 Sep 2009, 8:58 am

ruveyn wrote:

Think of the Hungarian Uprising put down firmly by Soviet machine guns and tanks. It works like a charm.

How's the Soviet Union doing these days?

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ruveyn
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14 Sep 2009, 11:42 am

Orwell wrote:

ruveyn wrote:

Think of the Hungarian Uprising put down firmly by Soviet machine guns and tanks. It works like a charm.

How's the Soviet Union doing these days?

Badly if at all. Nevertheless the Soviets put down the Hungarian Uprising. The downfall of the Soviet Union had nothing to do with the Hungarian Uprising, which was a failure. More recently the Chinese government quashed the Tsieneman Square uprising. Tanks and automatic weapons vs unarmed people. It is not match. And even if the people were armed the army had the advantage.

All people are equal. However better armed people are more equal than worse armed people.

Bob Kolker

Sand
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14 Sep 2009, 11:52 am

ruveyn wrote:

Orwell wrote:

ruveyn wrote:

Think of the Hungarian Uprising put down firmly by Soviet machine guns and tanks. It works like a charm.

How's the Soviet Union doing these days?

The examples you give are an unorganized spontaneous rebellion against a prepared military. That's not the way successful revolutions are conducted. If and when the major part of the population rises against a small group of arrogant contemptuous elites there is a likelihood that the whole sequence of events will be much different. For one thing, the army may not side with those in power, as in Iran.

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19 Sep 2009, 4:41 pm

I think he would have made Hitler and Stalin look miniscule, and the U.S. would have surely nuked Moscow.

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