Berlin Wall Hype - Why ?

The Moscow intelligensia told US lefty Michael Parenti and other in the 1980's that they hated Soviet communism. Parenti said every time he mentioned 'America', their eyes would light up. They told Parenti that there was no poverty in America. When he and his colleagues quoted them statistics about African-American poverty and ill health, they told him, of course, and that blacks are lazy and immoral. And when Parenti and his colleagues showed them photos of white people living in poverty in Appalachia 30 years after Bobby Kennedy reported on the poverty there,  they had a fallback explanation for that as well. Parenti said the intelligentsia had nothing good to say about Soviet state socialism then and were actually desiring to scrap it by the mid to late 1970's, and thus began the slow but deliberate starvation of investment in Soviet infrastructure and public research and development, which like the US then and now is done mainly by or for military and for defence purposes.

In 2005, US Sovietologist and propaganda hawk Richard Pipes of Harvard University produced a report on attitudes in Russia. One of the startling statistics in the study said that 74% of Russians surveyed said they preferred life under Soviet communism than state capitalism since perestroika. And recent surveys reveal that 54% of East Germans prefer life the way it was before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Berlin Wall Hype - Why?

It's an approved anniversary. I suppose it's probably useful, as well, to remind the citizenry about socialism's failures at a time when capitalism is in a terrible crisis. "We don't want people looking at alternatives, do we?" said the bourgeois to his minion.

But there's one other thing worth mentioning. God forbid people should look at the current Apartheid wall between Israel and the occupied/controlled Palestinian territories. They might get some ideas ... like maybe it should come down.

Question: I wonder if an American President will go to the Israeli Wall and blather, "Tear down this wall, Mr. Netanyahu."

Answer: Not a f&*#ing chance. And it's probably educational to ask "Why Not?"

Palestinians break Israel's wall

Security walls divide Iraqis [4]

The walls of empire are crumbling.

Yeah, that's what the Mongols said.

I think probably the reason for the hype is because a lot of Germans are celebrating.  Including a lot of German-Canadians who escaped East Germany.

I remember watching the wall falling with my mother.  We were transfixed to the television.  It was incredible.  My Oma and Opa took a trip back home a year or two later and connected with relatives they hadn't seen in 40 years - couldn't visit them before that, and they couldn't visit us, of course.  It was amazing to discover an entire family I never knew before.

Doesn't mean that socialism would be a bad thing, of course.  Germany has amazing social programs, and they could be even better as far as I'm concerned.  But the Stalinist repression that characterized the regime in East Germany certainly isn't my idea of progressive socialism.

The tearing down of the Berlin Wall was a turning point in history that failed to turn.

What should have happened is the Cold War and tensions between West (largely the U.S.A.) and East (largely Russia) should have ended.

What we have now is a new Cold War, where instead of the "threat of the spread of global communism", we have the "threat of the spread of global Islamist terrorism". Once again, Russia is "the bad guy". The U.S.A. (the Pentagon with its tool NATO) is attempting to isolate Russia by inducting former Soviet (Russian) 'Republics' like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerebaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekhistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan into NATO or at least to buy cooperation with the U.S.A. at the expense and disquiet of Russia.

Consequently, as for the fall of the Berlin Wall, I consider it most unimportant and uninteresting, other than it's 'nice' that Germany was allowed to do something that, in this case, was natural - reunify.

American and former anti-communist William Blum once aspired to be a foreign service officer for the government. Like Philip Agee and a number of other consciencious objectors to the cold war, he became disillusioned with the dirty wars, assassination plots of foreign government officials in Latin America and former USSR,  and terrorist acts perpetrated by the NATO gang. He had this to say about Germany's reluctance to participate in colder war aggression:

Germany's Humanitarian Interventions in 1939 And 1999 [9]

My partner is from Berlin. At the time the wall came down I lived and worked in the Black Forest. It was amazing to see how quick the East German factories got gutted, and with that a lot of people lost their income. It was not just the Berlin wall that had come down but the whole iron curtain broke down. One encountered people from the whole of eastern Europe, who were trying to make a buck.

It was a good thing to see the Russians leave East Germany. It was too bad that the west Germans did not get the idea to get the Americans to leave also. I keep hoping that the Europeans will get rid of the Americans sooner rather then later.

The hype is meant to distract us from the corporate/banking kleptocracy that's running the West, by reminding us that we have the greatest political and economic system in the history of mankind.  It's also meant to show us that Margaret Thatcher was right; there is no alternative.

Furthermore, it gives neoliberal apparatchiks like Stevie-Boy the opportunity to be heard on CBC radio thanking God for giving us our holy democracy.

It's impossible to exaggerate the importance, from the point of view of preserving the system, of the (Thatcherite) ideology of "There is no alternative (to capitalism)". Impossible.

It'll be the 50 year anniversary of the creation of the wall in 2 years.  Why not propose a big celebration for that and see who comes?

The wall was up 28 years. By comparison, the Korean peninsula has been divided for more than half a century, and the North is still threatened with incineration by an aggressive nuclear-armed superpower parked on its border. Cold war's over, but NATO gangsters are still threatening other countries and with expansion and military occupations into Eastern Europe and former Soviet republics. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher assured the Soviets that this would not happen in a post-cold war world.

Surely you're not suggesting, Fidel, that the people of north Korea are better off than the people of south Korea.

Cold War anecdote: one of my classmates in school back in the '80s was months away from earning a master's degree in pharmacy in Poland when she and her husband had to flee.  Her husband was in Solidarity, and word through the grapevine was he was going to be arrested.  So they left and eventually made it to Canada.  She had many heart-warming stories of life behind the iron curtain, like mandatory May Day parades.  She tried to sit one out due to suffering from the flu, and her landlord begged her to go because he would be punished if any of his tenants didn't participate.

Surely the lesson of the 20th C is that you need a balance between capitalism and socialism - that way, neither the state, nor the private sector, has too much power.  You give too much power to one or the other, and there are abuses.

As for the people in Russia and East Germany who wish they could have communism back - ever heard the expression, "Better the devil you know..."?

Before you moisten your trousers further in your excitement over living in the Free World®...

Mr. Netanyahu, Tear Down This Wall

How could they be better off? How could Cuba be better off after losing all of its trading partners with dissolution of the USSR and having to endure genocidal trade sanctions? The same vicious trade sanctions were waged against VietNam and Cambodia.

By comparison, how would the US economy fare with losing just its largest trade partner, Canada?

Where is Lech Walesa and the solidarity movement today? Margaret Thatcher bought coal from Poland at a total savings of a piddling amount of money in order to put English coal miners out of work. Gdansk shipyards and British coal mines, Sheffield steelworks etc all mothballed today as a result of the war against unionized labour in Britain.

And the USSR produced more educated people with advanced degrees than the west in a short period of time. There was socialized medicine as well. These things are gone today in those countries except for socialized medicine in Czech Republic and few others.

Gorbachev said he believed that what they would be getting was a form of Swedish style market socialism. Maggie and Ronnie cheered on Yeltsin and Kravchuk from the sidelines and dared them to be dictators in the way that General Pinochet braved it out making Chile into a genesis fable for the new liberal capitalism.

Opinion polls in recent years reveal they preferred Soviet style state socialism to this, what they have now.

The answer is for ALL the lefts of Europe, West and East, to create a new model, one that at least retains the minimal social protections of state socialism, but discards its excessive and unnecessary militarism and state security apparatus(and before you mention Gladio, it needs to be said that neither of the above really did anything to slow Gladio down and that part of Gladio's objective was probably to provoke a paranoid response).

Now, we CAN have "socialism with a human face"(which Czechoslovakia could have been allowed to have in 1968 at NO risk to Soviet security)everywhere.  That's the goal.  Learn from the past, avoid repeating the mistakes.

Large componenents of the 1989 rebel movements(particularly in the DDR)were fighting for humane and genuinely radical socialism, not a capitalist restoration.  The restoration occurred because the Western financiers would allow nothing else.  No party was allowed to call for anything else(even the "former communist parties" ran on pro-austerity and pro-privatization platforms).   Perhaps now, the space for something else can be created.

The point of bringing down the wall was NOT to give Angela Merkel her big break in showbiz.

Can't say I blame them.  My main thing is, we shouldn't defend what is indefensible.  N. Korea, for instance, is a horrifying totalitarian state of its own accord.  

As many of your posts show, Fidel, it's entirely possible to criticize capitalism and American imperialism without downplaying human rights abuses in the past because they happened to take place in socialist countries.

Wide Dissatisfaction with Capitalism -
Twenty Years after Fall of Berlin Wall

I haven't read all the contributions carefully. My apologies if I missed a relevant remark. However, it may be of interest for some babblers to know that the ORIGIN of the Berlin Wall wasn't such a bad thing. What it evolved into was, of course, a different matter.

The wall originated as a response to the western (capitalist) attempts to undermine the subsidy that Germans in the DDR were getting. Lots of western spies, and scumbags, were speculating on the subsidized goods available in the Soviet Zone of Germany. So the wall was a way to combat this speculation. What a pity the East Germans weren't more creative in their subsequent policy. Fracken' idiots.

However, let's be clear about something else. The DDR never attacked anyone. OTOH, within 10 years of the restoration of capitalism in East Germany ... the Luftwaffe was bombing European targets in Belgrade. Freedom equals the right to bomb your neighbours. ooh rah. Who knew?

North Korea is protrayed by our newz media and politicians as a terrible place to live because it exists outside the liberal capitalist financial regime. We are led to believe that because North Korea finally has one or two nuclear weapons, that NK is a threat to world peace. Meanwhile, the US military has threatened NK with nuclear annihilation dozens of times since war in the 1950's in which more than 3 million Koreans died. Every building over one story in NK was razed to the ground by US bombers. And dozens of times since then, the US has blocked humanitarian aid to NK as well as Cuba and Vietnam and illegally according to the UN. Can anyone wonder why the iron curtain was raised in the FSU and maintained by North Korea?

Vietnam and Cambodians tried to recover from the genocidal bombings but have since been forced to take the capital road at the expense of socialism. Once a country's infrastructure is wrecked and depopulated from bombing, the scars remain for many years afterward. This was true of Russia and surrounding countries after WW II. And it was true of North Korea, a mainly mountainous Northern part of the country and about the size of the state of Mississippi. NK is vulnerable to inclement weather patterns, Typhoons sometimes flood the main farmlands situated by the sea. A CitiGroup financial report to Washington of several years ago revealed that NK is about as advanced with economic reforms as what China was by 1983 or so. And financial reforms are about where China was in the 1990's. The US and western alliance is moer fearful of a united Korea than a divided and militarily occupied Korea. Cold war rhetoric about NKorea and Cuba will continue for many years to come, we can be sure.

And at the same time we are not apologizing for the FSU, I think that we also have to recognize that while many of the human rights abuses and crushing of dissenting points of view in the iron curtain countries were a reality, far worse was happening here in the western world. Some of the war criminals we welcomed from Nazi Germany were given passage to countries like Brazil, Chile, Argentina etc. And a few years after their arrival, the first rightwing death squad governments emerged in South and Central America.

Victor Grossman has his say  .... 

Why Republics in quotes? I know many Balts who would object to being referred to as a "Republic" rather than the sovereign nations that they are. With the long and antagonistic relationship the Baltic states have had with Russia I don't blame them for joining the EU and NATO

I was referring to when Russia was the U.S.S.R. (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). "Republics" in that context meant provinces, not independent nation states.

Yes, the non Russian peoples of former regions of the U.S.S.R. cherish their independence and are fearful of (possibly) losing it to Russia. The U.S.A., the Pentagon and NATO play on this fear to the U.S.A.'s advantage.

Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians are fearful of Russian and have joined NATO. Georgia is fearful of Russia and look at how the Pentagon insiduously stirred up trouble between Georgia and Russia over Abkhazia and South Ossetia and is trying to get Georgia to join NATO.

Ukraine has always been fiercely independent/fearful of Russia. Look at how the Pentagon has played on this and is trying to get Ukraine to join NATO.

Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekhistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgystan and Kazakhstan, ethnically Asians and members of the Islamic faith, have traditionally been independent minded and fearful of Russia. These are oil rich countries, look at how the U.S.A. is trying to get Armenia and Azerbaijan to either join or cooperate with NATO and how the U.S.A. is trying to integrate the other countries through bilateral treaties and agreements to integrate into the U.S. dominated "global"(?) economy, etc.

They weren't fearful of Russia during the "civil war" when 25 international armies and mercenaries laid siege to Russia from all  directions in an attempt to put an anti-Semitic tsar back on the throne.

Fidel, for the love of Godlessness, please don't defend North Korea.  There's never been anything positive about what happened there.  That state was never about anything but defending the party for the sake of defending the party.  And it's worse now, since Lil' Kim decided that he had to throw in with the military hardliners on the weapons thing. 

Yes, there's a lot of horrible things in the west and in "anticommunism"(which is why I've never identified as an "anticommunist" for one thing).  Everyone on the left who criticizes the Stalinist heritage agrees with that.   Why do you act like we all sweep that under the rug?

1989 happened because the people in Eastern Europe found their lives intolerable.  They knew that it was possible to have social justice without a police state(and, indeed, to have more of it).  They were forced to settle for right-wing governments by the Western outsiders.  The answer is to work with them(and the rest of the world)to create social equality without repression.  This has always been possible.  It's even more possible now.  That's what we should be doing, not wasting our time on defending any part of Stalinism(a political system under which almost all babblers would have been rounded up and shot, btw).

Fidel, for the love of Godlessness, please don't defend North Korea.  There's never been anything positive about what happened there.  That state was never about anything but defending the party for the sake of defending the party.  And it's worse now, since Lil' Kim decided that he had to throw in with the military hardliners on the weapons thing. 

Yes, there's a lot of horrible things in the west and in "anticommunism"(which is why I've never identified as an "anticommunist" for one thing).  Everyone on the left who criticizes the Stalinist heritage agrees with that.   Why do you act like we all sweep that under the rug?

1989 happened because the people in Eastern Europe found their lives intolerable.  They knew that it was possible to have social justice without a police state(and, indeed, to have more of it).  They were forced to settle for right-wing governments by the Western outsiders.  The answer is to work with them(and the rest of the world)to create social equality without repression.  This has always been possible.  It's even more possible now.  That's what we should be doing, not wasting our time on defending any part of Stalinism(a political system under which almost all babblers would have been rounded up and shot, btw).

Ken, all we've ever heard throughout the cold war era how evil the evil empire was. We heard and read very little in mainstream corporate news media about the terrible atrocities committed in our own hemisphere as well as the frontline states and every thirdworld shithole under tutelage of the west between there and here. Very little.  We know now that a lot of the cold war news was propaganda and spin for the sake of political expediency. And the propaganda on the part of our newz agencies and politicians was both constant and pervasive.

Would you agree with that in general?

Russians wanted Soviet state socialism democratizing. I read that years ago in an article written by a former Soviet economist who was critiquing a book on the dissolution of the USSR written by American academic David Kotz and Canadian Fred Weir. Weir lived in Moscow for ten years leading up to 1989. And now opinion polls in Russia are supporting this general idea. Mind us, state capitalism in Russia or anywhere else in the world where tried never appealed to very many who've lived it. My father and his relatives lived through the 20's and dirty 30's and never talked about those years of their lives in very positve ways. There was no good economic model to follow for any world leaders then, including Stalin. who was actually busy preparing his country for western aggression against the revolution part two. Keynes and many other westerners travelled through Stalin's Russia and were impressed enough to write about what they saw happening in Russia in the late 20's and 30's. Meanwhile, laissez-faire state capitalism was flat on its behind throughout the western world, and especially in the US and Canada. 

What happened in Russia was a top-down revolution. The Moscow intelligensia and nomenklatura hated Soviet socialism. This is what they told your countrymen Dr Michael Parenti and his colleagues in academia in 1980. It was they who had nothing good to say about state socialism. And it was their eyes that lit up with dollar signs at thoughts of state capitalism and what would become the greatest theft of the commons since enclosure era England. It really was what Marx described as primitive accumulation. And they were ruthless motherfuckers about it - them, their European financier friends and US oil magnates now suing the oligarchs for leading them astray. Sure they were led astray, like babes in the woods. Do we feel sorry for them? Not one iota.

Same with the Chinese after Mao. And yet we were told that Tiananmen protesters were protesting in favour of capitalism. That was a lie, too. And we are still lied to constantly. Every day. I recognize the cold war machine set in motion again in recent news stories in the middle of our corporate-owned newspapers and magazines, radio etc. They're doing it again.

We don't have to defend Stalinism anymore than the right feels they have to defend McKinleyism, Teddy Rooseveltism, Truman or Eisenhowerism, doctor and the madman-ism, Carterism, Clintonism, or the latest war criminals, crazy George Bushs I&II and now Obama being manipulated by the warfiteers and military-industrial lobby doing their bidding. In fact, they are publicizing the torture and renditions occurring since WW II and declaring it official policy for all to observe and get used to it happening.

Ken, what will we do if the perfect revolution happens? Will the right leave us alone to build socialism in one country? Or will they plot and scheme against us?  Will they encircle us militarily and hire neo-Nazis to spy on us and orchestrate false flag terrorism against us? Will they tell lies about us? Will they tell everyone that they have to be afraid of us? Will they threaten us with nuclear annihilation dozens of times, like they've threatened North Korea illegally so since the 1950's and continue to do?

On Monday, CBC's The Current had a segment on the berlin wall.  Anna Maria Tremonte interviews a woman from the GDR. She said that reunification was a real blow to the people of East Germany.  Overnight, their education was useless, their way of life changed and their values were suddenly irrelevant.  She claimed that the people of the GDR wanted changes to socialism, not reunification.

Listen here. (part 3)

57% of East Germans prefer life the way it was under Soviet communism der Spiegel

The new liberal capitalism duller and greyer than Soviet communism?

That's a very interesting interview. I think I would feel like scooting back to Alexanderplatz station after that experience, too.

Did Keynes happen to make it into Ukraine in the 30s?

Obedient citizens don't get shot.

That 57 percent may prefer life under the old East Germany.  That does give them the right to imprison the other 43 percent by denying others the right to leave for the west.

I would be ticked off if the Canadian government told me that I could not leave Canada to go to another country.

That's something that Julian Gryshko, Nick Nargan and Peter Markunas could tell you.

Oh wait...

Who were you quoting Snert?

One of the nostaligic East Germans from the link in post #29.

Ah. Thank you.

Strengthens the point I made upthread, that the best system is a balance between public and private interests.  Too much power concentrated in anybody's hands leads to abuse of that power.

Actually it says the opposite.  A public police force was used as a mercenary army by wealthy private interests in Estevan.

Exactly. Perhaps this academic should go and share his wisdom with the Palestinians? All of those who think that the citizen removal of the walls is over-hyped should really consider the situation occuring in Palestine/Israel today. Why all the hype? The wall had to be built and it wasn't all bad! People should just follow the damn signs and stay inside the wall and everything will be fine and dandy and peaceful. Why the hell do they want to leave anyways?

Victor Grossman interviewed here by Sonali Kolhatkar. After the wall came down it was not unification says Grossman; rather many people who lived in the old DDR called it annexation or colonization.

Grossman: " ... hundreds of thousands of people were thrown out of work ... including half of the people in academia. All media people fired. ... a conscious policy of ruining the economy ... including modern factories were closed because they were competition to West German firms. ... All the books published in the old GDR ... including arts books ... thrown in the trash. ... There is now a terrific lack of security ... (from an economic point of view) ... and so many people have been re-thinking .... dissatisfied with the present system ... "

Wait. There's more.

Grossman: "... one thing that is interesting ... the wall DID keep out the Nazis. Before the wall went down, you NEVER saw a demonstration of marching Nazis really like old storm troopers from the Hitler days ... like the old Now you see it in 10, 20, towns and cities around Germany every weekend .. They passed me right near my home.... Men and women in these black clothing, shouting just like under Hitler. It was a very frightening experience  ... There are lots of anti-fascists as well ... usually the majority ... These Nazis were kept out (in the old GDR) ... as were the big companies and banks .. that financed Hitler... There are certain similarities to the past that is alarming and worrying to some people."

Probably not. And I don't know if he read Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath either. It was a time when tens of thousands of Americans and Canadians were thrown off the land their families had lived on for generations and taken possession of by the banks. There were hungry people in two countries with lush and arable farmland from one side of the continent to the other. Families travelling with all their worldly possessions on loaded onto trucks and cars were stopped at the California state line and told to turn back because there were no jobs.

And where they were able to, the US government under FDR instituted emergency measures. Government run farm collectives sprouted up all over the US to feed and house the destitute and provide work in the bad old days of the depression which raged on until the outbreak of world war. Boulder City and Rag Town were another form of state run collectives to provide the economic security for thousands that the private sector was unable to in those days. Governments around the western world were experimenting with a new way.

They were lucky to arrive at government operated farm collectives. Private farms tended to pay them subsistence wages, and living conditions were appalling. Some profited by the depression at the expense of the unemployed and down and out. Some even starved to death in the land of plenty. And Canada had its own labour camps in Northern B.C. under the reign of R.B. Bennett. Canadians wrote to him with stories of hardship and illness. Sometimes the Prime Minister would send them $20 dollars in the mail. And sometimes he just sent the RCMP out west to put down striking workers and protests.[/drift]

Surely you're not comparing the depression with the genocide Stalin perpetrated on the Ukrainians?  Seven to 10 million, depending where you look; Stalin was careful to erase records after he erased people such that we have no way of knowing how many he actually killed.

My point was and continues to be, it doesn't do the left any good to diminish or be apologists for monstrous acts of the past because the people perpetrating them have a passing acquaintance with a philosophy you agree with.  As your posts continue to show, there's plenty to criticize about the west without resorting to making excuses for actions of the Stasi, etc.

I think there is apologism in this thread discussion, which seems to have drifted from talk of East Germany and the wall to a specific period in Ukrainian history. The wall didn't exist in the 1930's to be clear.

Sineed, if you want to call me an apologist for Stalin, that's fine. It's not true but that's besides the point. But I refuse to call you an apologist for western world fascism. Because you have not attempted to apologize for any of the atrocities and deliberate mass murders perpetrated by democratic western world governments both before and after the Ukraine famine and continuing today as in the here and now. No I will not. I don't think you would tolerate that.

We'll join together, in solidarity and with passion to defend it, with our lives if necessary.  Why would that be harder than defending what happened in the USSR between the rise of Stalin(or perhaps between the defeat of the sailors and soldiers of Krondstadt)and 1991?

Why do you assume it's harder to defend a good revolution than a bad one?

I don't desire another first world war to create the conditions ripe for revolution. I don't desire a second international military effort to reverse the results of a popular revolution to get rid of an anti-Semitic tsar and oppressive setup that it would have to reach that point. 50 to 83 million dead and missing at the end of WW II. Russia took the brunt of depopulation in WW I and "civil" war, and again during western aggression against the revolution part II. No thank you.

Oh just all of the evidence and historical record emerging bit by bit since end of the cold war? I don't know, Ken? What, pray tell, leads you to believe that history would not repeat itself? I think, Ken, that the elite around the world are fully capable of starting another world war so as to maintain their way of life and purge the world of an idea. They've been trying to murder an idea and profit by it ever since the end of the last war to end all wars.

There have been soem recent media reports in Britain indicating that Margaret Thatcher opposed the Berlin Wall coming down.

Peter Lavalle hosts a discussion on the topic at Russia Today. The link it to a YouTube video of the discussion.

I had to go back atya about when you said Keynes found positive things in Stalinist USSR.  I totally don't think you're an apologists for Stalin, but if you say there were good things about the USSR under Stalin, people are going to find it hard to take.  And before you know it, we'll be neck-deep in Godwins.

Without wanting to be written off as an apologist, I will say that I think there was a difference between the mass starvation that occurred in Ukraine and what happened during the Holocaust in several European countries and Russia. Without intending to make excuses for Stalin, I think there is a difference between deliberate mass murder and a plan to physically eliminate people by insidious planning of mass murder,  and that of historical controversy concerning who caused a famine or whether there were avoidable circumstances surrounding one particular famine in Ukraine at a time when famines raged across Asia both before and after 1930. Hunger and malnutrition was nothing new in Asian countries and cut-down millions on an almost routine basis in imperialist Russia and China and especially British occupied India.  I don't think Stalin set out to plan a famine as his legacy to the FSU. I think that the Leninist new economic plan giving a green light to farmers to profit from their efforts wasn't working to prevent food shortages in Russia, nor was it working very well for peasant farmers in Ukraine who were taken advantage of by better off farmers namely the Kulaks. There was child labour under the NEP, and Kulaks took advantage of it yes they did. Destroying farm tractors sent from Russia and wobbling to refuse to plant crops also didn't work well in the end for millions of people involved.

However, given 20/20 hindsight of today, there are economists who've done their homework and state that Stalin's farm collectives contributed very little to the 500 percent overall increase in steel production necessary for rebuilding Russia's defences. And as 20-20 hindsight reveals today, Stalin was exactly right about western aggression against Russia part two. But I don't wish to be viewed as an apologist for Stalin's intentional crimes. Ordering 2 million farmers and kulaks be shipped east was plainly a violation of their basic human rights. And everyone has a right to food and water and to exist. Those basic human rights were not guaranteed in the early Stalinist years, and they are still not guaranteed today for far too many millions of people around the world, even in these modern times with advances in agricultural technology. That 56 million human beings starve to death every year today - and that there are now one billion chronically hungry people in the world is a human tragedy of colossal proportions allowed to happen in an age of computers. I think it's more than just bad arithmetic today in an age of unprecedented literacy and world-wide communications with infornation transmitted around the world at near speed of light. We have no alternative but to believe that these famines and this extent of hunger today is deliberate. Ignorance of these terrible things happening today is not a valid excuse for richest country leaders and our capitalist institutions foisting rules for market efficiency and fiscal austerity on poor countries that continue to be unable to feed masses of starving people, even with the luxury of 21st century hindsight.

56, 000, 000 human beings every year! That's like all the organized mass murder during WW II compressed into a one year time frame every trip around the sun as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow and every day that 35,000 innocent children are sacrificed on the altar of a merciless free market god.

It's an insult to humanity. They know things about starvation today that were not known at turn of the last century. It's an agonizing death that no human being should ever have to suffer. Hunger is a sharp thorn for an even an animal. What can we say for ourselves today? Come on baby don't fear the reaper? And I know that you are an educated person, and that that number is especially mind-boggling for you as it would be for any thinking, feeling human being capable of regret and remorse.

If there was anything positive that resulted from the crises of laissez-faire capitalism in the west and first economic plans of the former Soviet Union, it's that governments pledged to subsidize farming on a massive scale. Food production was once considered a national priority for governments until about the 1980s-1990's when globalization of the new liberal financial regime began. Food security is not considered a priority for neoliberal ideologues and their capitalist institutions forcing free market rules on developing countries. For a country to keep food reserves today is considered trade distorting by an illegitimate trade organization of appointed and hand-picked ideologues and thundering nit-wits who've never carried brown paper bags or lunchpails to work in all their lives. 25 years ago there were half a billion chronically hungry human beings. Today the number is estimated to be over one billion. It's a crime against humanity today just as much as it was in 1930's Ukraine except the numbers are much larger today and occurring every year on time every time. Today it really is planned and enforced genocide.

From an account by Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski:

I really think there's a qualitative difference between a deliberately perpetrated genocide, and modern economic policies that result in starvation.  If there's a commonality, it's that in both cases, monstrous acts are perpetrated in the name of an ideology.  Which is why, IMV, the greatest enemy of humanity is dogma.  

A number of countries have recognized famine in Ukraine as an act of deliberate genocide: USA, Canada, Australia, Italy, Poland, and Ukraine. The EU has acknowledged the famine as a crime against humanity but stopped short of labelling it an act of deliberate genocide targetting Ukrainians as there were several more ethnic grouos and nationalities who died of starvation in the same period as a result of Stalin's misguided and badly planned and enforced collectivization policies. The Russians claim that unlike Nazi policies for extermination of specific ethnic groups, there is no documented evidence that Bolsheviks gave written orders to cleanse Ukrainians specifically and intentionally. In fact, the Nazis murdered more people in a shorter period of time and more efficiently by deliberate blitzkrieg and organized exterminations and would surely have eliminated whole populations of ethnic groups had the Red Army and Russian people not stopped them.

Similarly, there have been US attempts by US scholars to have the Irish famine recognized as a deliberate English policy for genocide of Irish people specifically from 1845 to 1850. English parliament knew that there was famine in Ireland and passed corn laws, which were not actually enacted until a full two years later after millions had already starved to death and too little far too late. Pork and corn continued to be exported to "the market" from 13 Irish sea ports all the while millions perished. No one accused English or Irish landlords of intentionally purging a class of people much less a specific ethnic group. At least,  not until today. And surely the burning and razing to the ground of Scottish peasants' homes and farms were acts of intentional and deliberate genocide to physicially eliminate and-or displace a specific ethnic group from crofts and the best of farmlands. Apparently raising  sheep was suddenly realized to be more valuable and lucrative than gouging Scottish peasants for rent and stealing their labour. And there were food riots in England at the beginning of enclosure. Thousands starved to death as a direct result of skyrocketing food prices and from being displaced from the land.

And we could go on and on about the deliberately planned and enforced genocides of the free market system. More than 80 percent of chronically hungry nations export food to "the market" today as it was in 1847 Ireland. Hundreds of millions of human beings have starved to death due to genocidal free market rules before and since Black '47 on time every year without fail. On September 11, 2001, the WHO announced that somewhere in the neigborhood of 35, 000 children had died of malnutrition and related diseases. It didn't rate so much as a mention in most western world newzpapers.

But before we go on about them, you're going to show us the documented evidence that someone gave written orders to to cleanse ethnic groups specifically and intentionally, yes? Or is that standard defunct now, and any time people die it's a "genocide"?

It's all there in WTO, international financial instititions, and IMF's free market diktats for hare-brained trade "liberalization" It's well documented and outlined in binding trade deals signed by people who nobody elected to these illegitimate trade organizations and central banking institutions, and some of which have been in existence since they helped the Nazis launder money and gold stolen from plundered European countries during WW II. The heads of these illegitimate capitalist institutions and NATO gangsters should be arraigned on charges of crimes against humanity, lined-up against a cement wall at dawn and shot between the eyes.

Okay, that's all well and good.

But if, as you say, the standard for GENOCIDE includes documented evidence of intent, specifying particular ethnic groups specifically, then I guess we're all going to have to be a bit more rigorous about when and how we use the word genocide.

So please go ahead and take the lead.  Show us where the free market system documented their intent and their targets.  Can you?  If not, maybe it wasn't a GENOCIDE after all?  Maybe you're just using the word bombastically, perhaps?

Don't take my word for it. You can always ask any one of the millions of anti-globalization protesters worldwide what they think of the IMF and WTO, World Bank and Bank for International Settlements.

Meanwhile the organizers of these illegitimate trade negotitations continue to plan to hold them in ever more remote locations and behind closed doors, and guarded by fascist police and military outfits from public scrutiny.

Are you a robot or something?

I'm asking you to provide some kind of documentation that the free market system you describe, had killing as its intent, and targetted some specific ethnic group or groups.

You're the one who clarified what's required for a genocide, and you're the one who chose to then apply the word to free markets.  All I'm asking you to do is live up to your own standards.  I'm not asking your opinion of NAFTA here.  I'm asking for whatever documentation of INTENT leads to to ascribe genocide to free markets.  If you can't provide that, it would seem to me that as an honourable man, you need to stop throwing the word genocide around carelessly then.

No, are you?

It's all there in WTO rules for international trade and "structural adjustment programs" for thirdworld capitalist neardowells exporting food to "the market" cloud every month and every year.  

It's there in UNICEF and WHO, and World Bank statistics recorded so meticulously every year like so many records that weren't destroyed at the crematoriums near Kracow before an advancing Red Army was able to capture.

So don't be lazy and look it up for yourself this evidence of written policy for planned and enforced genocide.  And report back to us why there are 56 million dying of the capitalist economic long run, and not just once per decade or so far back as a 1932, but each and every year for decades either side of 1930 and continuing at a frenzied pace since 1994.

And the liberal-fascist policies have all been digitized and recorded for posterity's sake in modern times, signed by the illegit heads of the fascist trade institutions and annual results anticipated well ahead of time give or take some error of margin rounded up to the nearest millions of human beings.

I'm not being lazy. It's YOUR claim, so the onus is on YOU to support it or withdraw it.

And remember, the intent can't be "to encourage investment" or "to lower interest rates", the intent has to be "to kill people" -- specific people. I'm very eager to see this.

I don't have to withdraw anything.  There was some initial beating around the bush somewhere above that famine in Ukraine was an intentional genocide. I still haven't seenthe the written plan from the 1930's to exterminate Ukrainians and only Ukrainians. So as long as no one is withdrawing anything, we can all not withdraw together. Ice-cold drink anyone?

You said it, Snert, and not Eric Walberg who is a graduate of economics from Cambridge University. He gives more hints as to who are today's deliberate and colossal fuckups in the 21st century:

Fear and greed and herd mentality. And the herd insists that we sacrifice tens of millions of human beings on the altar of their merciless free market gods every year. It's called free market voodoo, and the only ones paying lip service to these false Roman gods of prosperity are those who profit by their own abominable trade rules and free market diktats.

Money has more value than human life.

I regret to say that I have to agree with this. And it dawned on me that when I listed those countries above recognizing the Ukraine famine as a deliberate genocide - at least one of them has since refused to recognize the right to food and other basic human rights declared by UN human rights signatory nations. And they would be our largest trade partners next door. There is no "shoot to kill" order in this case. Their intentions are implied.

 
Palestinians symbolically dismantle sections of the wall

I don't agree with everything that Reagan or Gorbachev did. But Gorbachev was the former Soviet Union's first visionary of the modern century. It had nothing to do with Reagan or tearing down walls. He, Gorbachev, was simply someone who believed that his nation was not going to do very well under decades of Communism and secret state surveillance of citizens.

He was watching the rest of the world progress economically and democratically. His nation was crumbling. His nation's economy was nothing more than a facade.

The fall of the Berlin Wall was a precendent for people who did not wish to live under the yolk of the Soviet empire. Just like people did not want to live under the British empire. Every empire collapses eventually.

Kanada2America

Yes, they could have had this from the beginning, an economic system that's falling down around our ears here in the west for the second time since 1929. Now comes the catastroika for good measure. We'll just have to learn to live with less and forget about all those colossal cold war era lies about middle class capitalism based on consumption.

Mr. Fidel bring down these walls of paranoia.

The Communist system has collapsed in on itself just like the capitalist system has. But unlike the Communist system, capitalism has found new ways to deal with it.

The problem with capitalism is that it allows people to break the limits of practicality beyond reason. The problem with Communism is that it does not.

Kanada2America

There are large numbers of people in the former USSR longing for a return to state socialism according to opinion polls. I don't think they want a return to exactly what they had before, but I think there are some valuable lessons learned from both systems. Like markets. It's been acknowledged that markets "create wealth", and markets are useful for distributing goods and services to large numbers of people somewhat efficiently. But now overall consumption has reached unsustainable levels, and there are still a couple of billion people who have next to nothing. I think we need planned economies and much more regulation. I think banking and finance and credit could be made a public utility. As Canada's Leo Panitch quoted a conservative economist in London saying recently, there is no real need for banks to be privately owned and controlled, or bailed out for what amounts to their gambling debts.

Well I suppose I come from a generation of watching overpaid Air Canada flight attendants and counter agents treat you like crap (Aeroflot?), while they snivelled and whined about their wages. I remember those years very well and could only wonder, how arrogant you need to be to think that you are providing a service to the taxpayer - and they better like it no matter what.

Well Air Canada collapsed in on itself once discount airlines found the new rubber tire market, called: "I'd rather fly than drive", but that doesn't mean I need to be treated like crap.

canadians should try flying Asiana, KAL, or JAL and see the difference - although I will tell you that those are unique cases unto themselves.

It's the same with canada's cell phone companies and plans. A loosely organized oligopoly which means there are no good deals to be had, other than pay-as-you-go plans. In the US, Europe, Africa and Asia? Completely different. And you don't need government to do it for you.

Banks? I don't care for canadian banks, but they are stable. I would not governmentalize them. That's just a whole new nightmarish bureacracy just waiting to tax you to death. You don't like banking fees and rules now? Wait until government gets a hold of it.

Basically canada is a free market economy. You can't rewind to the time of Marx or Engels and suddenly recreate a socialist economy in a world of capitalist ambitions. People won't stand for it.

Kanada2America

Soviet state socialism lasted 70 years through vicious cold war sanctions waged against them by two-thirds of the rest of the world, dirty wars and economic warfare. Yugoslavia of the 1970's was home to the world's largest middle class as a percent of the population according to World Bank economist Branko Milanovic. Everyone had an apartment or home, jobs whether they wanted one or not, and free higher education under Soviet socialism. Those are the things they remember so fondly today while struggling under economic oppression of debt-driven neoliberal capitalism in those countries today.

Laissez-faire capitalism collapsed in 1929 after just 30 years in near-perfect lab conditions. It collapsed again in Chile after just 16 years.

The new liberal capitalism: 1980-2008 RIP.

Three recessions in three decades. What do they call an L-shaped recession if they can't use the D word?

Capitalism has failed in various experiments around the world since 14th century Italy.

Scientists are saying today that if this model for just the narrow band of population earning true middle class incomes here in the west is exported to the other 85% of humanity, we would strip world resources bare in nothing flat and choke on the pollution.

That explains all those Germans climbing the wall from the West to the East. Brave souls, escaping a failed Capitalism and hitching their wagon to the bright promise of Totalitarianism.

Last summer I watched a neighbour painstakingly remove all the paint from his porch.  Using a combination of a heat gun and some nasty chemicals, he scraped and scraped for weeks until all the white paint was removed, the beauty of the natural wood exposed.  I thought he might protect it with a couple of coats of urethane to show off the wood's grain.  Or maybe a translucent stain.

But no.  After spending weeks removing every trace of white paint from his porch, he coated it with.....................white paint.

I liken the people who wish they could have totalitarianism back with my neighbour who would scrape off white paint in order to paint with white paint: it doesn't make any sense, but they don't know what else to do.

Interesting analogy sineed, much like those who paint rocks......

While East Germans shot a few thousand people climbing over a wall, Murder Inc. was busy orchestrating the slaughter and deliberate genocide of well over 100,000 indigenous people in one Central American country alone. CIA-backed rightwing death squads all over Latin America and thirdworld capitalist hellholes. Our largest trade partners are also the world's foremost exporters of terror and torture, and even today while incarcerating blacks at six times the rate that was true of Pic Botha's South Afreeka. And our stooges went right along with their policies of murder and oppression in this same hemisphere for many years with signing trade and other business deals with rightwing dictatorships [77] friendly to Uncle Sam and all his minions of doom. I refuse to buy Dole food products, Coca Cola and a lengthy list of items shipped from those countries by of what amounts to slave labour for gringo fruit and trading companies even today.

Notice also, when Uncle Sam's attention is diverted by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, most Latin American countries have moved politically to left of center governments - except Colombia, which is heavily invested in by the Pentagon?

True. Because the puppet regimes that were running them didn't see the long term future of having a balance of public and private interests, although I have to wonder about Chavez' long term viability if his country's economy tanks.

But briefly back to Communism vs Murder Inc. - are we ignoring the millions who died under Stalin's brutal regime from 1924 - 1953? Or Mao's cultural revolution?

Kanada2America

I think the error here is ignoring the root causes of all these massive human rights' abuses, which lies in human nature, IMV.  People will behave badly if they can, and they will abuse power if they can: "Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely," etc.  Doesn't matter what the ideology - if you've got a political system that concentrates massive amounts of power in the hands of a few, it always ends badly.

Whether it's the Stasi shooting people trying to get to West Berlin, or the police gunning down a homeless deranged man, or south American death squads funded by the US, all human rights' abuses need to be equally condemned, or we are hypocrites whose asses need a head-ectomy.

What the rich and powerful fear of Chavez is that he is offering the poor a better life but not what we have here in North America and Europe, which is an unsustainable cold war era lie of colossal proportions. The US-backed rightwing death squads bombed schools and hospitals built by Marxists and political neutrals all over Central and South America for a reason. And offering education and socialized medicine to the poor are Chavez' greatest crimes as far as the fascists are concerned. Modern capitalism shares many characteristics with old world imperialism in that colonies of cheap labour and raw materials must be maintained as a favour to kapitalist trading companies, fruit and sugar and coffee and mining companies etc. Sir Tony Benn said it himself:

~ A well educated and healthy population is a confident nation. And a nation of confident people is more difficult to govern.

Governments in Europe and Nordic countries are afraid of the people. Here it's the opposite in the last bastions of far right political conservatism. Former anti-communist William Blum said the CIA's dirty wars and support of brutal rightwing dictatorships was/is mainly about killing hope for millions of people. It's harder for the corporatocracy to take advantage of literate, healthy and confident people. This is why the CIA, Brits and other fascist shadow governments understand that they have no chance to win the minds of ordinary Cubans. And it's why 57% of East Germans polled said they prefer life the way it was under Soviet communism,

Yes the communists in Russia purged a few million hangers-on of the old imperialist regime. There were Russians and other ethnics who openly challenged Stalin's show trials and declared their opposition to the revolution. And yes, they were sent to the gulags and many were lined-up at dawn and shot to death.

What took place in China between 1958 and '61 was nothing less than a tragedy in a country where 80 plus percent of the population was illiterate, a legacy of Chinese imperialism. The modern west considered China a fourth world country in 1949 with mortality rates and social progress behind even democratic capitalist India. By 1976, the  year of Mao's death, infant mortality rates were better in China than for the average of all the democratic capitalist thirdworld. Chinese life expectancy was doubled in Mao's time.   

Kapitalism has produced,  by far, hundreds of millions more skeletons than the early years of Soviet and Chinese communism combined. If a body count for kapitalism was ever undertaken, the estimated numbers would be truly breathtaking. Kapitalism has been the kiss of death for humanity. It's time to move on the next phase of human development.

Why Socialism?

If such a count has never been undertaken, then on what, specifically, are you basing your claim??

That's like saying "there are more trees in the Northern hemisphere than in the Southern, though nobody has ever actually counted.

Also, are you counting as a "Kapitalist" death, pretty much any death that happens in a country whose system is Capitalism? Every soldier of every Capitalist country? That sort of thing? Or are you at least taking the time to factor out deaths that would occur regardless of socioeconomic system? This is a rather extraordinary claim, that, as they say, requires extraordinary proof. What's your proof of this, Fidel?

Harvard educated economist Amartya Sen said it himself. Every four or five years, democratic capitalist India produces as many skeletons as communist China did in all its years of shame, 1958 to 1961.

And such a body count should include the last 300 years or so of industrialisation in the west, and with millions of deaths and untold miseries caused since British enclosure period, Locke's private property laws constructed around a false argument for natural rights, and through to perestroika in Russia and the ongoing deaths of tens of millions of poverty-stricken people displaced from the land they've worked for centuries by globalizing capitalism.

Economic historians have rough ideas of the numbers, and that's why nothing has been published along the lines of a black book of kapitalism. Socialists have known for a long time that predatory kapitalism is a murderous ideology. 

World wars as a result of crises of capitalism could certainly be included. I think Chomsky says that the tally would be large enough with just including the annual infant mortality rates and adults dying prematurely in thirdworld capitalist countries. All those nations under economic tutelage of the west or occupied militarily, and all those countries in Africa and Latin America, Philippines etc which were simply abandoned to their own devices and transformed into natural resource colonies for corporations to raid at will after cold warriors prevented them from going communist in the last century.  Economists use mortality rates as general benchmarks for identifying failed nation states. The World Bank and UN have recorded the appropriate statistics for a number of decades, It's how we know things like longevity being doubled in China in Mao's time, and that infant mortality in China was better than democratic capitalist India's rate today by the time of Mao's death.  

So then the "proof" of your claim is that others have made the same claim.

Yeah, in this case the "others" are economists themselves and capitalist institutions that have kept fairly detailed records for the last several decades. And I haven't read of anyone on the lunatic rightwing fringe disproving what he's said either. But don't let that discourage you from looking. You have the power of the internet at your fingertips same as anyone.

Counting the Bodies Chomsky

Okay. So let's get back to basics. You live in a western industrialized capitalist society. You have lived in this society for about 20+ years? You have freedom of speech. So would you have freedom of speech in Stalin's, Castro's or fill_in_the_blank, Soviet Communist leader?

It seems to me, "thou dost prostests too much", Mr. Fidel. You are preaching from a western democracy. If you were actually to live in ohhh, North Korea, Cuba... heck even Venezuala... you would be spouting off like this in those countries right?

Kanada2America

I'm responding to this against my better judgment and in spite of the fact that you aren't talking to me. I have freedom of speech because what I say is no threat to the rulers. If my freedom of speech ever becomes a perceived threat, I will lose it very quickly.

That aside, there are many freedoms. I'd put food and shelter and health care and education, for example, way ahead of being able to spout off in some chat forum. But that does indeed seem to be the pinnacle of what capitalism has to offer. 

We don't live in a country where most of WW I's casualties were suffered. Canada wasn't laid siege to by 25 international armies and mercenaries in order to put a oppressive Tsar back on the throne. 30 million plus Canadians weren't slaughtered willy-nilly by fascist invaders at the time of western aggression against the Russian revolution part two.

And Canada has never been attacked by Cuban gladios and US military. Canadians don't know US-backed terrorism, at least not in these modern times. Canadians have never known what it's like to resist genocidal trade sanctions, or to make a collective stand for noble words, like freedom and democracy, and liberation from US-sponsored tyranny.

I am preaching from a country where the CCF/NDP and civil society groups fought tooth and nail for socialized medicine and few more things that have made living here more bearable for millions. This is where my family and friends live. It's not easy to pick up and move to another country and leave all you've ever known behind. Many people in Germany felt the same way during WW II. Fascism wasn't supposed to last. They could not afford to pick up and leave or were too old and frail. And many of their children refused to abandon them for greener pastures.

I think that if you really believe in America, then you should leave your medicare card at the border and move to a red have-not "right-to-work" US state. I doubt you will do that though much less choose to live in any of Uncle Sam's client states in Central America, Haiti, or Dominican Republic etc. I think you have no idea of what you're missing.

Do you actually feel that threatened for voicing your opinion?

I will say it again. Say these things in North Korea, Cuba or a number of African nations... including the one I grew up in.

Let's see if you want to live there and voice your freedom of speech. This chat forum? It's based in canada isn't it? I'm not a big fan of canada, but I do know that there is no rabble in North Korea, or Cuba or Africa. At least this western capitalist democracy allows you to do that, doesn't it? As does the USA.

Kanada2America

Uncle Sam's immigrants have done far better than you will ever know. You can keep bringing up the health care boogeyman. That is for people who watch way too much Michael Moore or CBC.

Again. If you love Communism so much, why talk about it from a society that is capitalist? As far as my personal situation? Yeah. I will go to America. I already have been there many times. What did I discover?

America and canada are very similar. Only America is better. Especially for immigrants like me.

Kanada2America

Cubans complain about the government all the time same as Canadians do here. There is no law against it there either. Ask the average Canadian on the street or coffee shop what they think about the government. You'll get an ear-full.

Kanada is a resource colony for corporate Amerika. Our stooges sold out to them long ago. There is no need to destabilize Kanada as our kleptocrats are in full compliance with the korporatocracy.

The US Military has threatened N, Korea with nuclear annihilation dozens of times since the 1950's "UN" war on the peninsula. And the largest threat to peace and security in the region is still the US Military. Koreans want a united Korea same as west Germans desired.

I must refer you to the Managed democracy thread The US and its telecoms have been spying on Americans for a long time. It's a thing with all the English-speaking countries.

In Canada, health care is a right of the people with the corresponding duty of the government to make it available to the people.

In America, health care is a commodity that is bought and sold (to the highest bidder) on the "free" market.

It's social Darwinism. Survival of the fittest. Where the most "fit" are the most rich. Natural selection: If you can't afford health care, then you are "weeded out". Only the "desirables" (the rich) are left.

That's insane kapitalism run amok. Welcome to the good ol' U.S.A., where if you still believe in the American dream, you need to wake up.

Very many of Uncle Sam's poor, tired, and huddled masses have fled countries where Uncle Sam and friends have made life a living hell through globalization policies. They've been chucked off prime farming land to make way for mechanized farming. Their corrupted stooges have signed on to IMF and WTO plans to pauperize those nations and paving the way for clear-cutting of forests and strip mining in order that they can run faster and faster on the treadmill of indebtitude to the west.

Canada isn't quite the same as America yet. Since the traitorous free trade deals, FTA and NAFTA, Canada is slowly being transformed into Bananada , a kind of Northern Panama except with a few Polar bears and lots of moose pasture. Our corrupt stooges told Canadians that we would be better off with opening our doors wide open to US investment and trade. What's happened since then has been nothing short of the rape of Canada and its natural resource wealth while losing hundreds of thousands of good paying jobs in the last few years.

And which African nation wasn't worth living in for you?

Health care in canada may be a right of the people. But is it accessible? You don't think canada's monopolistic system of health care rationing creates its own social Darwinism? You think everybody in canada gets equal access to public health care? Are you living in 1960's CCF land?

I can't get a family physcian right now. I can't even get my high blood pressure treated. An ambulance call to a location where my car crashed after someone cut in front of me cost me $247 last December! PERSONALLY BILLED TO ME. That was for: checking my blood pressure and saying, "hey you're okay, see ya later".

I have to pay for my own eyeglasses, my teeth are okay but not great - oh yeah, if I work for an employer who has some sort of PRIVATE dental plan, yeah it's covered but otherwise... no.

And you want to talk about how the Calgary Flames jumped the queue for H1N1 shots? Or Toronto Maple Leafs? Or how canadians are actually going to the USA for H1N1 flu shots? Where is your wonderful public health care now? Only three countries keep insisting on this type of system: canada, North Korea and Cuba.

Want to talk about the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver? Crack addicts? They got health care? Social Darwinism is working just great in North America's biggest drug ghetto, right?

Mr. Fidel. I was born in East Africa. My country was colonized by England. It adopted the traditions of England and the corruption of England. I was shipped over as a child to canada. Worst decision my family ever made. The years of racism and bigotry that have been my life tell me one thing only about canadians: England-lite, bigots, yob culture, nonsense thinking.

In my life Americans have been the best people. Friendly, outgoing and wonderful to be around. canadians have been miserable bigots, who have tried to make sure they tell me I am not canadian. Hence... I am not canadian. Self fulfilling prophecy.

Kanada2Amerca

Is it the CCF or even the NDP's fault today that our two stoogeocratic old line parties couldn't run a lemonade stand without screwing up?  

You should have been here in Canada before the CCF's medicare caught on in the rest of Canada. You could be billed more than a day's wages at the mill for your wife's hospital stay. And if you hadn't recovered and were unable to pay the bill, the doctor sent you home anyway. That happened to my mother twice from the late 1940's to 1950's here in Northern Ontario. She had hyperactive thyroid and wasted away to under 100 pounds. She needed help and my father was laid off at the mill again and no blue cross - three month waiting period for which you weren't covered. Lots and lots of bullshit like that.

This is not what TC Douglas and CCF had in mind for universal socialized medicine in Canada.

I suggest you hustle yourself down to a right-to-work/right-to-be-poor US state before you suffer any more such indignance here in the Northern Puerto Rico. And don't forget to leave your provincial health care card at the border, because you'll be paying the whole shot yourself for everything from that point forward. And good luck living the capitalist dream in a country that gave up on laissez-faire capitalism in the 1930's after a majority of Americans rejected leave it to the market ideology. They practice socialism for the rich while preaching free markets to the poor (Gore Vidal)

Did you know that the British are close allies of America?

Did you know that Uncle Sam supported South African apartheid for many years? Waged proxy wars in Angola and other countries while aiding and abetting UNITA against the ANC during years of dirty war ?

Did you know that the American CIA and Belgians both were responsible for the torture and murder of Patrice Lamumba in 1960's Cpngo?

Which countries' wealthy nationals do you think have re-colonized various African countries by oppressive debt and criminal levels of  interest owed to capitalist institutions, unscrupulous bondholders, and banks based in New York and London?

They discriminate based on colour in Amerika. Here the bigotry is a little more subtle and sometimes the spelling of your last name could mean the difference in who is hired and not. The Americans have been incarcerating blacks at six times the rate that was true of South Africa during the apartheid years. Best of luck to you just the same. I think you'll be making a mistake though if you choose to live in the US, depending on what your skills and education happen to be. It could be a decent life up to the point where you and your's grow older and need more health care, at which point the insurance companies won't want to insure you once you begin to actually need health care services in the USsA. 

I am older Mr. Fidel. I am older. I was hired in a wonderful job by Americans in Vancouver and Victoria by an airline that thrives on diversity. That airline and its wonderful American employees proved to me the value of people power.

Contrast that with how I have been treated by canadians in the last six years of my life. Second class garbage.

You really think that a country that has: Condy Rice, Colin Powell, Barack, and numerous other non-whites? Geez, I mean what did kanada do dude? Chretien? Harpie? Mulroney? Trudeau? Turner? Oh my gawd dude. Yours is an exclusive WHITE LIBERAL club. You just play at it. America does it.

You can keep talking about South Africa all you want. America actually stopped apartheid there. Saskatchawen potash was used in South African ammunition. canada supplied ammunition during the Vietnam War to America. Dirty secrets no?

Kanada2America

I have family in a Northern state and Florida. I have travelled through the states to Texas and headed south from there.  And I've seen some of the "backyard." Worked for a company based in Silicon Valley. Walked across the Golden Gate several time, toured the monument to inhumane treatment of human beings known as Alcatraz. And I visited Monterey and Salinas, John Steinbeck's home town. Most Americans are good people. It's the vicious republic most people have real issues with.

You wouldn't be the first non-white immigrant to Canada who realized a lack of job and other opportunities in Canada. We've had somewhere over 600, 000 first and second generation Asian emigres to Canada actually return to Asia since the late 1990's and citing every reason from a lack of job opportunities here to issues with discrimination. And very many of them are well educated, and many earning multiple degrees in Asia and North America. They love Canada's wide open spaces but realize they can't eat scenery so to speak. What's up with Canada, you might ask? 

Take Colombia as an example.  Colombia is now a frontline state in America's war on democracy. Uribe used to be governor of Medellin province. His job was to rubberstamp plane licences for the Colombian-US mafia-CIA drug ring. And the CIA and Cuban/US mafia would dearly love to use Cuba as a conduit for running drugs to the mainland, like they have used Haiti and other island hops for small aircraft and boats hauling drugs. Today Uribe is a respectable crook and US pawn in South America. What does this have to do with Canada besides Harper signing trade deals with Uribe's Colombia as a favour to Uncle Sam? Not a lot. But Colombia is a repressive hellhole that is also mineral and oil-rich, like Canada. The Yanks and their powerful friends in Colombia are sitting on most of Colombia's natural wealth for future US corporate needs, much like they do with Canada's natural resource wealth. Supranational US and other corporations have sought controlling interest in natural resources for a long time, and it works to create monopolies that are international in scope. They are able to manipulate the prices of oil and other mineral wealth. And in times of economic downturns, they sit on our stuff and put Canadians out of work while extracting the same commodities from other countries where labour is cheapest. That is some explanation as to how real capitalism works - and it works largely for capitalists. 

Most of these people share the same business interests in places like Africa, and especially the Congo where somewhere between five and six million human beings have been slaughtered by US proxies Rwanda and Uganda since 1998. The only thing some of those powerful and influential people might share with you is the colour of your skin. But don't be fooled into thinking you have common cause. They are not your friends and they could never be mine. They are for themselves and other rich and powerful people, but they wouldn't spit on you or me if we were on fire.

Canadian, US, and Congolese uranium was used in making the Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki by what I know. I am not defending Canada whatsoever here. Our so-called leaders in Ottawa have been mere toadies to a vicious empire for a long time.

Just debunking this particular bullshit - the US is the only industrialized nation that doesn't have single-payer health care.  The US is the odd one out, not Canada.  The American health care system is expensive, inefficient, and inhumane.  

Anyway, carry on, guys; it's an interesting discussion.

Fair enough. I agree with single payer - multiple provider systems such as Sweden, Denmark and Norway. I'm not saying the US system is paradise. But the Canadian system has to change too. It is unsustainable after being around for just over four decades. Having a government monopoly also brings inefficiencies to this system.

Trust me on that one. I worked in hospitals for three years in the early nineties and could tell you stories.

Kanada2America

You can thank FTA, NAFTA, neoliberal economist Prime Ministers starting from Mulroney. You can thank Harpo for bankrupting the federal treasury with his wasteful and useless Afghan war, 20 years worth of contracts to arms dealers worth close to half a trillion dollars and wasting money on a "Get tough on crime" bullshit for that. What next is our government going to needlessly waste money on? A Canadian nuclear arms arsenal and space program? I agree, our health care system has been eroded. We need people to elect leaders who will spend taxpayers' money on the right things like health care to ensure a healthy population, education and daycare for our children, homes for the homeless, pensions for our elderly, and proper land use and agricultural practices: there is no reason why anyone should go hungry in Canada, a proper unemployment insurance program and strategic planning of the economy: there is no reason why anyone should be jobless or destitute.

The U.S.A. is one of the few countries in the world that has a "free" market based health care system.

You think AmeriKKKa (U.S.A.) is any better? Is it the American dream or is it hypnosis?

That job was in Canada which means that it had to comply with Canadian laws. Were that job in the U.S.A., the work environment and its diversity would have been different. A lot different and mostly not in a good way.

Nope. Your fiction is not holding up very well to my real life. I went to Seattle, Boise, Bellingham during my time. I was treated exceedingly well by easy going Americans. Employees made the same or better on either side of the border. Saw more diversity in America than you would have ever seen with "white" Scare Kanada and Pestjet combined.

Diversity is a debating point to kanadians. In America it is debated to death. When you have a black Prime Minister, you get back to me.

And unlike you, I have spent a lot of time across the border. Funny. I see a lot of canadians doing the same. Why is that? If it's so bad, why don't you go to the home of the former Soviet Union, Russia and do all that crossborder shopping, vacationing and general drinking and partying?

Kanada2America

So Chretien, Turner and co. They had nothing to do with this? btw - why do canadians keep comparing their health care system to the "bogeyman" American health care system? Don't like to look at the rest of the world? Stephen Duckett runs Alberta's heath care system, but he's already been slammed. What do you expect from a bunch of $45/hr nurses who threaten strikes every three years?

Kanada2America

Ya they kill everything. They are so trigger happy,  there are no more Grizzly bears in America. And they have to come to Canada to see their national bird in the wild.

They are all the same Obomba in Warshington. And the USSA still incarcerates black people at several times the rate that was true of apartheid South Africa.

If you've spent so much time in the U.S.A., then you will have heard the talk about people comparing Barack Obama to John F. Kennedy, saying that he will be assassinated (simply because he is black) and speculating not on whether it will occur, but when. Don't forget, they also killed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

You've never experienced the "natural" seggregation of major cities like Boston, Philadelphia, New York City, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta? There are places in America's cities, where as a white person, you don't go. There are places in America's cities, where as a black person, you don't go.

You've never seen that America's poor, America's prisons and the soldiers in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq were/are over-represented by blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians? You've never noticed that the majority of rich blacks in the U.S.A. have been 'ghetto-ized' in (certain) sports and entertainment industries?

And you've never seen how kanada multi-segregates with its polite bigotry and calls it multiculturalism. You've never seen how entire neighborhoods in calgary or even edmonton are either black, East Indian, or Chinese. You've never seen low wage companies where the bulk of non-whites work.

You've never seen the "natural segregation" and "white flight" in canadian neighborhoods, because middle class white chicks don't want to shop in "that" Walmart in the north east part of the city; they want to go the nice "white" Walmart in the fancy south part of the city. It's because they don't like all those "smelly, rude, muslim-looking" non-whites in what used to be "their" neighborhoods.

You've never seen how a traditionally dressed African woman who happens to be muslim is denied even the slightest courtesy by white security guards in a downtown office tower even though she speaks better more polite english than those asshole white rednecks, but oh boy, they bend over for the friggin blonde who wants to use the damn phone.

You've obviously never ridden the bus in Seattle and seen how integrated it is and how polite everyone is, even when they know you are an out-of-towner. You've obviously never been to my America, that's for sure. And what wtf does JFK a rich white man have to do with Obama?

Kanada2America

And Amerika has an even larger low wage, non-unionized and low skilled workforce as a percentage of total than what we don't enjoy very much here in Bananada, a country that is wide open to controlling share ownership for corporate America since CUSFTA and NAFTA, and even before that. But you say Amerika is the torch-bearer of democracy and justice, so I'll have to think on that one again.

Ah! You've never seen the Robert Taylor Homes/ghetto(~1960's-2007) neighborhood in Chicago. And you weren't with me when I saw some really spaced-out homeless people begging for change on El Camino Real near San Jose. And you were never kept awake all night in a hotel room in Silicon Valley by poor people rummaging through garbage bins for aluminum cans and food thrown out by restaurants. And you've never seen down and out people and ramshackle houses within walking distance of the "Renaissance" building in Detroit. And your sister in law wasn't mugged coming from work at a hospital in Fort Lauderdale by gun-toting desperados. You'll find that the colour of the street tends to fade as you ascend the floors of corporate office towers in melting pot America. Obama does have a dream, and it's for black and white Americans to die in poverty together. Yes we can - no we won't! 

American woman gonna mess your mind
American woman, she gonna mess your mind
American woman gonna mess your mind
American woman gonna mess your mind
Say A,
Say M,

Well let's see, up to the 1950's, the U.S.A. had an official South Africa style apartheit system of seggregation called "Separate but Equal" enforced by federal and state laws. President Eisenhauer changed the federal laws. President Kennedy fought for a Civil Rights bill. LBJ enacted a Civil rights law. Many disenfranchised black people got on voters' lists for the first time. The odd lynchings still took place as recently as the 1960s. Ever heard of the race riots in major U.S. cities in the late 1960s?

Yeah! The Guess Who's? album "Born in Canada" came a good 10+ years before Bruce Springstein's "Born in the U.S.A"

Not that this has anything to do directly with the topic, just a bit of trivia.

When I lived in southern Maryland in the 1960s they still had "white" water fountains, and "colored" water fountains.  I went to one of the 1st desegregated kindergartens in 1969, but for the most part, the state was segregated.

My mother, a Canadian, remembers arguing with a shopkeeper in Maryland, who was on about the genetic inferiority of black people.  This guy said that the talent of basketball star Kareen Abdul-Jabbar was because of "the monkey in him coming out."

Maybe you don't want to believe me, but believe Spike Lee, who said that Canada is a less racist country than the US.  Considering how Canada is not exactly a post-racial paradise where all the people live in peace and harmony, I can't imagine how bad the States must be.

Just noticed this thread is over 100 posts; closing for length.