The Political Thread

[Funt Solo]

Are we going to count the victims of Stalin + Mao + Castro vs the victims of unnecessary wars in the name of capitalism?  Not discrediting the latter, but the former has a pretty big death toll.

I'll admit that I used the back of an envelope* for this, but:

Death toll of Stalin + Mao + Castro would be something like 6m + 35m + 2K. Probably we'd get a better total if we shelved Castro here (as he's a bit embarrassed) and replaced him with Hitler, who brings in another 16m. That gets us up to 57 million. Hey, go Mao! (As in, go to hell, I mean.)

Now, Capitalism - 100 million. (Probably I'm cheating here by counting Hitler's death toll twice. But if we remove Adolf from the Commie side, as we maybe should, then that just makes the difference all the starker.)

Capitalism, as we should have guessed, wins easily. It's set up to win, of course, and win it does. That's a strong dollar, that capitalism dollar etc.


*Asking where I actually got these figures from will result in crows cawing, tumbleweeds tumbling and a soft, low wind whistling through the tall grass. For verily, I am not your research monkey. I belong to Mister Pops.

[milstar]

Castro? A weekend in Iraq in 2003 courtesy of "the world's largest economies" would put his lifetime total to shame. With none of the benefits.

Well, the effect of this comes pretty close.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article118282148.html

I'm not sure Scandi is particularly Centrist - or at least with regards how UK politics is run, its in line with Corbynism so "extreme left" by that measure!

They’re mixed economies. Plenty of capitalism and competition, but also with a stronger social underpinning than the UK has. That said, Scandi/Nordic countries often have a quite conservative core, and so vary quite a lot politically. (Iceland, for example, mostly returns coalitions led by politicians that in the UK would have sat somewhere in the Cameron-era Conservative Party.)

Not sure if you refer to Sweden by this, because Sweden is ultra liberal state. Perhaps the most on the planet.


As for capitalism vs communism, I don't think we should negate the victims of one system (of which there are inexcusably lot) in order to criticize the other. Ofcourse, these commie countries weren't the only one in existence; in fact, some today are still communist with the exception being China, that is very capitalist, yet with communist government (the one that would hang you if you dare to mention Mao, whose revolution almost destroyed the country). Both systems to me, are equally bad, but for different reasons. I can see that majority in UK is capitalist-oriented and despising communism. Same or even more so, can be applied to US. And likely, the rest of (western) world. I don't wanna now excuse capitalism, but the fact is that such system prevailed throughout, where communism ended up miserably. Imperfect capitalism is, both it and democracy need a reform.

[Professor Bear]

"My mum still refuses to admit Stalin put a foot wrong.  She used to say to me, you can't make an omelette without starving forty million people to death."  Alexei Sayle.


Each year 9 million people die by design, because artificial scarcity is the engine driving capitalism.  Homelessness and food poverty are required components of capitalism in order that it may function as intended, and I'm not one of them big city sums-doing lawyers, but even I am pretty sure that 9 million a year for a couple of centuries now is probably higher than whatever number is the death toll of communism this week.

One thing I always wondered about these "death toll" numbers, though, is since the death toll of communism includes Nazis killed by Russian soldiers and - double-dipping, but we don't let that stop us - Russian soldiers killed during WW2 BY Nazis, then where do we add the 3-5 million Bengalis who were starved to death by Winston Churchill?  Do they go on Hitler's tally, or on the UK's, or do we just add them to communism's death toll because some of them might have been left-wing?

[Mister Pops]

So today I learned that capitalism actually isn't because it doesn't, communism never isn't except that it wasn't.

Both have spread around the world, resulting in the deaths of load the  poorest and most vulnerable people exposed to them. LIKE THE CORONAVIRUS, DO YOU SEE THE SHIT METAPHOR?

Anyway, a young Earth creationist is now in charge of the DUP, and possibly the province. No not the one the allegedly use tax-payers money to buy gentleman's entertainments in a hotel, the one that used tax-payers money on a court case to block gays donating blood. Because he knew a guy that got his life saved with the gay blood and caught the notoriously infectious gay disease. No not AIDS, haemophila....HAEMOPHILIA! The man is a verifiable idiot.

And he has big stupid ears too.

[TordelBack]

Just to be clear, and then yield Edwin Poots the floor of his Flat Earth,  I don't give a flying shit for Stalin or Mao (or Pol Pot or George W Bush)  or the ideological smokescreen of any other mass-murdering prick, my point is solely that capitalism is in  charge and has been for several centuries now, has murdered and degraded countless millions just like the other guys, but perhaps more significantly is systematically working on killing us ALL to line the pockets of a statistically insignificant number of greedy pricks. On that basis the final scoreline doesn't look great. 

[JayzusB.Christ]

Anyway, a young Earth creationist is now in charge of the DUP, and possibly the province. No not the one the allegedly use tax-payers money to buy gentleman's entertainments in a hotel, the one that used tax-payers money on a court case to block gays donating blood. Because he knew a guy that got his life saved with the gay blood and caught the notoriously infectious gay disease. No not AIDS, haemophila....HAEMOPHILIA! The man is a verifiable idiot.

And he has big stupid ears too.

Not only a blinkered, bigoted, big-eared bellend, but a blinkered, bigoted, big-eared bellend with a name out of a Dickens novel.

[Funt Solo]

I don't see where anyone gets the idea that a suffering underclass is being exploited in order to elevate a privileged minority into positions of untold wealth.

Jeff Bezos and the secretive world of superyachts

[Funt Solo]

Wait - there's a real man really called Edwin Poots, who's really in charge, really has those thoughts and really has those ears?

Brain melting...

[JayzusB.Christ]

It's quite a Mega City 1 name too, when you think about it.  You can imagine someone with a name like that being stuffed by Jacob Sardini.  If only...

[Mikey]

Anyway, a young Earth creationist is now in charge of the DUP, and possibly the province...

It's just an embarrassment that clearly sets out how things will run from here on (again). Rumour I've heard postulates Givan for first minister, which is even worse in some ways to Poots. He's like the wee shite that hangs around with the bullies but wouldn't open his mouth when he's on his own. The foreman's half wit son if you will.

They're a pack a dirt in my opinion.

[Professor Bear]

Once you adopt PR on the mainland, you can have politicians just like ours.

I was on the BBC News website and out of curiosity I searched to see if anything interesting was happening in Israel, and holy crap they only have a big comic convention coming up this weekend, and a whole bunch of musical events in the coming months ahead LOL just kidding they're murdering children again.

[TordelBack]

...just kidding they're murdering children again.

The benefits of a world-beating vaccination roll-out: life's back to normal. You can barely hear the missiles over all the public health media frottaging that's been going on. A solid response to a pandemic could have saved Botha a lot of international hassle. 

[IndigoPrime]

Yes, Bear, because FPTP hasn’t resulted in a bunch of horrifying halfwit and genuinely scary Tory MPs barely a hair’s breadth from NF wannabes. PR isn’t the problem. And “on the mainland”, FPTP is nothing more than an enabler of multiple Tory governments and very occasional Labour governments that do not have the backing of a majority, while keeping our politics from being remotely representative and cooperative at the national level. (I see at local level, some councils are at least doing better, like Cambridgeshire’s anti-Tory coalition, but they are sadly anomalous.)

[Funt Solo]

I'm wondering if it's possible to mention China in any way that doesn't bring to mind the novel 1984, or the phrase Kafkaesque.

AI emotion-detection software tested on Uyghurs - installed at police stations, this modern marvel looks at you and detects whether or not you are nervous. Anyone who somehow remains calm is clearly an android and should be immediately destroyed.

John Cena: Fast and Furious star sorry over Taiwan remark backlash - this could so easily be "Man apologizes to China* for saying he liked Winnie the Pooh". It's a bit embarrassing that the BBC article toes the party line and also manages to avoid calling the country of Taiwan a country.

*Well, to their totalitarian government.

From protests to 'patriots': Why China is crushing Hong Kong dissent

[JayzusB.Christ]

Fecking hell. I've spent time in both Hong Kong and Beijing - really liked Hong Kong but Beijing looks like the movie version of MC1 (without the crime in fairness, but just as grim, grey and imposing).  I suspect the former will very soon be like the latter.

I taught a lot of Chinese people over there, and while they tend to be very patriotic, a lot of them will quietly tell you that they are not happy with the government suppressing their news and crushing dissent, although there's not much anyone can do about it - people tend to disappear in vans on a fairly regular basis.  I also noticed a belief that cracks in the firewall would some day force the government to change its oppressive ways, though I suspect that level of optimism has been dampened in recent years.