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Global warming -what’s the biggest cause?
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"Hasn't the world been heating up for millions of years? If it didn't we would still be in an ice age. " At least five major ice ages have occurred throughout Earth's history so it isn't as simple as the earth is just getting hotter. | |||
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"Hasn't the world been heating up for millions of years? If it didn't we would still be in an ice age. " No, the earths temperature fluctuates on 20,000 to 40,000 year cycles naturally. And it fluctuates on geological time scales. The rapid increase in greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere and the rapid increase in average global temperature since the industrial revolution has never happened to this planet since life existed here. | |||
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"Hasn't the world been heating up for millions of years? If it didn't we would still be in an ice age. No, the earths temperature fluctuates on 20,000 to 40,000 year cycles naturally. And it fluctuates on geological time scales. The rapid increase in greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere and the rapid increase in average global temperature since the industrial revolution has never happened to this planet since life existed here." You have no way of knowing that. The climate constantly changes. What has changed is the digital era & multiple ways of reading then broadcasting temperatures. There is the hysteria & lies behind the climate change agenda. I remember a few months ago, a drought in Madagascar, blamed on climate change. Nothing to do with the fact that the population has increased from six to twenty six million in just fifty years then? Yes we should all do our bit but let’s not get hysterical. | |||
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"Hasn't the world been heating up for millions of years? If it didn't we would still be in an ice age. No, the earths temperature fluctuates on 20,000 to 40,000 year cycles naturally. And it fluctuates on geological time scales. The rapid increase in greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere and the rapid increase in average global temperature since the industrial revolution has never happened to this planet since life existed here. You have no way of knowing that. The climate constantly changes. What has changed is the digital era & multiple ways of reading then broadcasting temperatures. There is the hysteria & lies behind the climate change agenda. I remember a few months ago, a drought in Madagascar, blamed on climate change. Nothing to do with the fact that the population has increased from six to twenty six million in just fifty years then? Yes we should all do our bit but let’s not get hysterical." When 97% of the scientist in a field agree on something, I am inclined to believe them. 97% of climate science agrees humanity is adversely affecting the globes climate. | |||
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"Hasn't the world been heating up for millions of years? If it didn't we would still be in an ice age. No, the earths temperature fluctuates on 20,000 to 40,000 year cycles naturally. And it fluctuates on geological time scales. The rapid increase in greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere and the rapid increase in average global temperature since the industrial revolution has never happened to this planet since life existed here. You have no way of knowing that. The climate constantly changes. What has changed is the digital era & multiple ways of reading then broadcasting temperatures. There is the hysteria & lies behind the climate change agenda. I remember a few months ago, a drought in Madagascar, blamed on climate change. Nothing to do with the fact that the population has increased from six to twenty six million in just fifty years then? Yes we should all do our bit but let’s not get hysterical." Or, we can read and understand the science behind climate change. So yes, I do have a way of knowing this, I read the scientific papers that are peer reviewed and published. There's no mystery here. It's well understood and documented. | |||
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"Hasn't the world been heating up for millions of years? If it didn't we would still be in an ice age. No, the earths temperature fluctuates on 20,000 to 40,000 year cycles naturally. And it fluctuates on geological time scales. The rapid increase in greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere and the rapid increase in average global temperature since the industrial revolution has never happened to this planet since life existed here. You have no way of knowing that. The climate constantly changes. What has changed is the digital era & multiple ways of reading then broadcasting temperatures. There is the hysteria & lies behind the climate change agenda. I remember a few months ago, a drought in Madagascar, blamed on climate change. Nothing to do with the fact that the population has increased from six to twenty six million in just fifty years then? Yes we should all do our bit but let’s not get hysterical. Or, we can read and understand the science behind climate change. So yes, I do have a way of knowing this, I read the scientific papers that are peer reviewed and published. There's no mystery here. It's well understood and documented. " It’s speculation. In fact, the time to question it is when scientists do all agree. I wonder why. Follow the money. We are going through the eight billion barrier this year. Over population is the problem. | |||
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"Hasn't the world been heating up for millions of years? If it didn't we would still be in an ice age. No, the earths temperature fluctuates on 20,000 to 40,000 year cycles naturally. And it fluctuates on geological time scales. The rapid increase in greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere and the rapid increase in average global temperature since the industrial revolution has never happened to this planet since life existed here. You have no way of knowing that. The climate constantly changes. What has changed is the digital era & multiple ways of reading then broadcasting temperatures. There is the hysteria & lies behind the climate change agenda. I remember a few months ago, a drought in Madagascar, blamed on climate change. Nothing to do with the fact that the population has increased from six to twenty six million in just fifty years then? Yes we should all do our bit but let’s not get hysterical. When 97% of the scientist in a field agree on something, I am inclined to believe them. 97% of climate science agrees humanity is adversely affecting the globes climate." You don't even have to "believe" them, you can read it and understand what's going on. That's the beauty of science. | |||
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"Hasn't the world been heating up for millions of years? If it didn't we would still be in an ice age. No, the earths temperature fluctuates on 20,000 to 40,000 year cycles naturally. And it fluctuates on geological time scales. The rapid increase in greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere and the rapid increase in average global temperature since the industrial revolution has never happened to this planet since life existed here. You have no way of knowing that. The climate constantly changes. What has changed is the digital era & multiple ways of reading then broadcasting temperatures. There is the hysteria & lies behind the climate change agenda. I remember a few months ago, a drought in Madagascar, blamed on climate change. Nothing to do with the fact that the population has increased from six to twenty six million in just fifty years then? Yes we should all do our bit but let’s not get hysterical. When 97% of the scientist in a field agree on something, I am inclined to believe them. 97% of climate science agrees humanity is adversely affecting the globes climate. You don't even have to "believe" them, you can read it and understand what's going on. That's the beauty of science."  | |||
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"I’m not qualified enough to say if the current record heatwave is caused by global warming, but I’m worried that most of the record temperatures have happened in the last 20 years. I’ve tried to do my little bit for the environment by not using a car, not flying for the last 22 years but I feel that it won’t make any difference because some countries aren’t doing enough to take the issue seriously. " The largest cause of climate change is the burning of fossil fuels - and it's only humans that do that. So, it's us. Luckily, we've examined the science, for decades, and come to the conclusion that we need to be doing something about it. Sadly, we're not doing enough - nor will we. The bottom line is that the advanced, rich nations will be able to afford to ride it out until such times as humanity does actually get its head out of its arse. The populous countries, like China, India, etc They will take their time about it all and absorb the casualties. It's brutal to say - but if each of them lost 100,000,000 due to climate related disasters, it wouldn't dent them much. The less populous, less rich countries - they're going to take a hammering whilst the rest of us wring our hands. COP 26 proved that. As for the current UK heatwave. That's either climate change, or it's God giving the Tories a lower temperature inkling of where every last one of them will spend eternity. | |||
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". The largest cause of climate change is the burning of fossil fuels - and it's only humans that do that. So, it's us. The." So nothing to do with nature, volcanoes, lightening strikes causing huge forest fires, that's good to know | |||
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"It's equally spread. One-fourth for power generation, one-fourth for transportation, one-fourth for industries and the remaining for agricultural and home emissions. As always, there isn't a single magic pill to it. Moving to electric cars and cleaner power sources is the way to go. " So if we get to zero for transportation we will have two fourths power generation then ? | |||
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". The largest cause of climate change is the burning of fossil fuels - and it's only humans that do that. So, it's us. The. So nothing to do with nature, volcanoes, lightening strikes causing huge forest fires, that's good to know "Correct. These natural phenomenon have been occurring before humans existed and the climate was stable. | |||
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"Meanwhile back in the real world China Russia Iran USA India are all pumping more shite out than the rest of the world. Not to mention all the deforestation that’s going on that we have no control over. It’s like if everyone went to the cost and pissed in the ocean is the same effect as the uk going broke along with the rest of us trying to virtue signal to the rest of the world. " That's why we have things like the Paris Climate agreement. Which is designed to make us tackle this on a global scale. It's piss poor, but it's a start. | |||
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"So nothing to do with nature, volcanoes, lightening strikes causing huge forest fires, that's good to know" "Correct. These natural phenomenon have been occurring before humans existed and the climate was stable." Do you mean stable on average, between all the ice ages? | |||
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"So nothing to do with nature, volcanoes, lightening strikes causing huge forest fires, that's good to know Correct. These natural phenomenon have been occurring before humans existed and the climate was stable. Do you mean stable on average, between all the ice ages?" Yep. The climate was running through stable cycles until the industrial revolution. | |||
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"Hasn't the world been heating up for millions of years? If it didn't we would still be in an ice age. No, the earths temperature fluctuates on 20,000 to 40,000 year cycles naturally. And it fluctuates on geological time scales. The rapid increase in greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere and the rapid increase in average global temperature since the industrial revolution has never happened to this planet since life existed here. You have no way of knowing that. The climate constantly changes. What has changed is the digital era & multiple ways of reading then broadcasting temperatures. There is the hysteria & lies behind the climate change agenda. I remember a few months ago, a drought in Madagascar, blamed on climate change. Nothing to do with the fact that the population has increased from six to twenty six million in just fifty years then? Yes we should all do our bit but let’s not get hysterical." We do. We take measurements of ice cores for example. You take a deep core of ice from Antarctica which when dated shows that the ice there fell as snow over thousands of years ago. Trapped in the ice are small air bubbles. You analyse the air bubbles to see what they contain. And they contain less CO2. But the one that have been trapped since industrialisation have started ti show more and more CO2 trapped. And that is just one piece of many, many types of evidence. Not understanding something is not the same as it not happening. Do you understand why electrons move at the speed of light? I'm guessing you don't. But you typed that response on a machine that functions because of that. You hold a scientific marvel in your hands. Believe the science. | |||
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"Hasn't the world been heating up for millions of years? If it didn't we would still be in an ice age. No, the earths temperature fluctuates on 20,000 to 40,000 year cycles naturally. And it fluctuates on geological time scales. The rapid increase in greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere and the rapid increase in average global temperature since the industrial revolution has never happened to this planet since life existed here. You have no way of knowing that. The climate constantly changes. What has changed is the digital era & multiple ways of reading then broadcasting temperatures. There is the hysteria & lies behind the climate change agenda. I remember a few months ago, a drought in Madagascar, blamed on climate change. Nothing to do with the fact that the population has increased from six to twenty six million in just fifty years then? Yes we should all do our bit but let’s not get hysterical. We do. We take measurements of ice cores for example. You take a deep core of ice from Antarctica which when dated shows that the ice there fell as snow over thousands of years ago. Trapped in the ice are small air bubbles. You analyse the air bubbles to see what they contain. And they contain less CO2. But the one that have been trapped since industrialisation have started ti show more and more CO2 trapped. And that is just one piece of many, many types of evidence. Not understanding something is not the same as it not happening. Do you understand why electrons move at the speed of light? I'm guessing you don't. But you typed that response on a machine that functions because of that. You hold a scientific marvel in your hands. Believe the science." Climate science is relatively simple too. Most people can understand it with an hour or two reading up on it. | |||
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"Meanwhile back in the real world China Russia Iran USA India are all pumping more shite out than the rest of the world. Not to mention all the deforestation that’s going on that we have no control over. It’s like if everyone went to the cost and pissed in the ocean is the same effect as the uk going broke along with the rest of us trying to virtue signal to the rest of the world. " Plus 1000's of Air Conditioners in Ukraine blown to pieces by Russia. The 1.2kg gas in them is 3000x more damaging to the planet and not absorbed by plants so will be around for a few hundred years. It's set us back years. | |||
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"Meanwhile back in the real world China Russia Iran USA India are all pumping more shite out than the rest of the world. Not to mention all the deforestation that’s going on that we have no control over. It’s like if everyone went to the cost and pissed in the ocean is the same effect as the uk going broke along with the rest of us trying to virtue signal to the rest of the world. Plus 1000's of Air Conditioners in Ukraine blown to pieces by Russia. The 1.2kg gas in them is 3000x more damaging to the planet and not absorbed by plants so will be around for a few hundred years. It's set us back years." Yup and the bombs rockets ect all adds up, and the uk expects to make a difference  | |||
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"Meanwhile back in the real world China Russia Iran USA India are all pumping more shite out than the rest of the world. Not to mention all the deforestation that’s going on that we have no control over. It’s like if everyone went to the cost and pissed in the ocean is the same effect as the uk going broke along with the rest of us trying to virtue signal to the rest of the world. Plus 1000's of Air Conditioners in Ukraine blown to pieces by Russia. The 1.2kg gas in them is 3000x more damaging to the planet and not absorbed by plants so will be around for a few hundred years. It's set us back years. Yup and the bombs rockets ect all adds up, and the uk expects to make a difference "UK is ranked 17th in the world in carbon emissions. Per capita we'd be a lot higher. So yes, the UK could do a lot to help. | |||
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"I’m not qualified enough to say if the current record heatwave is caused by global warming, but I’m worried that most of the record temperatures have happened in the last 20 years. I’ve tried to do my little bit for the environment by not using a car, not flying for the last 22 years but I feel that it won’t make any difference because some countries aren’t doing enough to take the issue seriously. " Capitalism | |||
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"Hasn't the world been heating up for millions of years? If it didn't we would still be in an ice age. No, the earths temperature fluctuates on 20,000 to 40,000 year cycles naturally. And it fluctuates on geological time scales. The rapid increase in greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere and the rapid increase in average global temperature since the industrial revolution has never happened to this planet since life existed here. You have no way of knowing that. The climate constantly changes. What has changed is the digital era & multiple ways of reading then broadcasting temperatures. There is the hysteria & lies behind the climate change agenda. I remember a few months ago, a drought in Madagascar, blamed on climate change. Nothing to do with the fact that the population has increased from six to twenty six million in just fifty years then? Yes we should all do our bit but let’s not get hysterical. We do. We take measurements of ice cores for example. You take a deep core of ice from Antarctica which when dated shows that the ice there fell as snow over thousands of years ago. Trapped in the ice are small air bubbles. You analyse the air bubbles to see what they contain. And they contain less CO2. But the one that have been trapped since industrialisation have started ti show more and more CO2 trapped. And that is just one piece of many, many types of evidence. Not understanding something is not the same as it not happening. Do you understand why electrons move at the speed of light? I'm guessing you don't. But you typed that response on a machine that functions because of that. You hold a scientific marvel in your hands. Believe the science. Climate science is relatively simple too. Most people can understand it with an hour or two reading up on it." Actually, most people can't. And here we are. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
"Hasn't the world been heating up for millions of years? If it didn't we would still be in an ice age. No, the earths temperature fluctuates on 20,000 to 40,000 year cycles naturally. And it fluctuates on geological time scales. The rapid increase in greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere and the rapid increase in average global temperature since the industrial revolution has never happened to this planet since life existed here. You have no way of knowing that. The climate constantly changes. What has changed is the digital era & multiple ways of reading then broadcasting temperatures. There is the hysteria & lies behind the climate change agenda. I remember a few months ago, a drought in Madagascar, blamed on climate change. Nothing to do with the fact that the population has increased from six to twenty six million in just fifty years then? Yes we should all do our bit but let’s not get hysterical. We do. We take measurements of ice cores for example. You take a deep core of ice from Antarctica which when dated shows that the ice there fell as snow over thousands of years ago. Trapped in the ice are small air bubbles. You analyse the air bubbles to see what they contain. And they contain less CO2. But the one that have been trapped since industrialisation have started ti show more and more CO2 trapped. And that is just one piece of many, many types of evidence. Not understanding something is not the same as it not happening. Do you understand why electrons move at the speed of light? I'm guessing you don't. But you typed that response on a machine that functions because of that. You hold a scientific marvel in your hands. Believe the science. Climate science is relatively simple too. Most people can understand it with an hour or two reading up on it. Actually, most people can't. And here we are." Honestly, they can. It's just easier to pretend it's not happy. | |||
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"Climate science is relatively simple too. Most people can understand it with an hour or two reading up on it." "Actually, most people can't. And here we are." "Honestly, they can." No, really, they can't. It's easy to explain a simplified version in an hour, but to get any sort of grasp on the details is not simple. I can't count the number of hours I've spent trying to explain what 'tonnes of CO2 equivalent' means, to people that think that it is actual carbon that's causing warning. | |||
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"Meanwhile back in the real world China Russia Iran USA India are all pumping more shite out than the rest of the world. Not to mention all the deforestation that’s going on that we have no control over. It’s like if everyone went to the cost and pissed in the ocean is the same effect as the uk going broke along with the rest of us trying to virtue signal to the rest of the world. Plus 1000's of Air Conditioners in Ukraine blown to pieces by Russia. The 1.2kg gas in them is 3000x more damaging to the planet and not absorbed by plants so will be around for a few hundred years. It's set us back years. Yup and the bombs rockets ect all adds up, and the uk expects to make a difference "Forgot the fuel storage on both sides, millions of litres of fuel burnt, tanks, aircraft, ships - Putin's responsibility for the damage to the planet is colossal. Rebuilding, cement, timber and other materials all needing to be fueled. | |||
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"Climate science is relatively simple too. Most people can understand it with an hour or two reading up on it. Actually, most people can't. And here we are. Honestly, they can. No, really, they can't. It's easy to explain a simplified version in an hour, but to get any sort of grasp on the details is not simple. I can't count the number of hours I've spent trying to explain what 'tonnes of CO2 equivalent' means, to people that think that it is actual carbon that's causing warning." Oh. Then my mistake. | |||
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"Climate science is relatively simple too. Most people can understand it with an hour or two reading up on it. Actually, most people can't. And here we are. Honestly, they can. No, really, they can't. It's easy to explain a simplified version in an hour, but to get any sort of grasp on the details is not simple. I can't count the number of hours I've spent trying to explain what 'tonnes of CO2 equivalent' means, to people that think that it is actual carbon that's causing warning. Oh. Then my mistake. " I won't call it a mistake - just over-optimism. | |||
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"I’m not qualified enough to say if the current record heatwave is caused by global warming, but I’m worried that most of the record temperatures have happened in the last 20 years. I’ve tried to do my little bit for the environment by not using a car, not flying for the last 22 years but I feel that it won’t make any difference because some countries aren’t doing enough to take the issue seriously. " I blame the carbon life forms who herd in millions who individually emit tons of co2 a year, and that is not including their pets.  | |||
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". The largest cause of climate change is the burning of fossil fuels - and it's only humans that do that. So, it's us. The. So nothing to do with nature, volcanoes, lightening strikes causing huge forest fires, that's good to know
Correct. These natural phenomenon have been occurring before humans existed and the climate was stable.
"Yep. Nothing do do with any of those things. They're factored in, so that the scientists can get an accurate idea of what we humans are contributing on top of any natural sources of climate change. If they didn't do that, they wouldn't know we were making any difference at all. And they do know - because they're very rigorous about the maths involved. Three things to bear in mind: 1. Science is true, whether you believe it or not. 2. The atmosphere absolutely can be affected, for the worse, by humans. 3. Agreeing with someone who is wrong, makes you wrong, too. | |||
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"Climate science is relatively simple too. Most people can understand it with an hour or two reading up on it. Actually, most people can't. And here we are. Honestly, they can. No, really, they can't. It's easy to explain a simplified version in an hour, but to get any sort of grasp on the details is not simple. I can't count the number of hours I've spent trying to explain what 'tonnes of CO2 equivalent' means, to people that think that it is actual carbon that's causing warning. Oh. Then my mistake. " My mistake too as I thought it was, 1 tonne of burnt carbon atoms, creates 3 tonnes of CO2? Burning the carbon in fossil fuels as an example creates the CO2. What are the missing details? | |||
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"My mistake too as I thought it was, 1 tonne of burnt carbon atoms, creates 3 tonnes of CO2? Burning the carbon in fossil fuels as an example creates the CO2. What are the missing details?" Basically you are correct. But there are other greenhouse gases. For example, burning one ton of methane (natural gas) will release about 3 tons of CO2. But methane itself is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, about 25 times more. So if you didn't burn your one ton of methane and instead just let it float away, you'd be releasing 25 tons of CO2 equivalent, or CO2e. "Tonnes of CO2 equivalent" just means 'stuff that will cause the same warming as 1 tonne of CO2'. In this case 40kg of methane released is 1 tonne of CO2e. The problem is that the media don't understand this, and regularly report stuff like "railway carriage crash releases 22,800 tons of carbon", and what they mean is that 1 tonne of sulfur hexafluoride was spilled. Sulfur hexafluoride does not contain any carbon, but it is an extremely potent greenhouse gas that has a rating of 22,800CO2e. I've simplified it a fair amount, there's a lot more detail to go into if you start digging. | |||
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"My mistake too as I thought it was, 1 tonne of burnt carbon atoms, creates 3 tonnes of CO2? Burning the carbon in fossil fuels as an example creates the CO2. What are the missing details? Basically you are correct. But there are other greenhouse gases. For example, burning one ton of methane (natural gas) will release about 3 tons of CO2. But methane itself is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, about 25 times more. So if you didn't burn your one ton of methane and instead just let it float away, you'd be releasing 25 tons of CO2 equivalent, or CO2e. "Tonnes of CO2 equivalent" just means 'stuff that will cause the same warming as 1 tonne of CO2'. In this case 40kg of methane released is 1 tonne of CO2e. The problem is that the media don't understand this, and regularly report stuff like "railway carriage crash releases 22,800 tons of carbon", and what they mean is that 1 tonne of sulfur hexafluoride was spilled. Sulfur hexafluoride does not contain any carbon, but it is an extremely potent greenhouse gas that has a rating of 22,800CO2e. I've simplified it a fair amount, there's a lot more detail to go into if you start digging." In essence, the creation of greenhouse gases are not only from carbon? Is carbon the headline big hitter and the other elements would only create confusion? | |||
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"People are the biggest cause. You can blame governments, you can blame corporations, rich folk and celebrities. When all is said and done, normal people are to blame, for rampant consumerism. There are 2 billion more people on the planet compared to 20 years ago and nearly every adult owns smart phone. The sad fact is nothing can stop people destroying this planet, certainly not governments or companies. Very hard times are ahead and most people won't know how to cope." Just 100 companies have been the source of more than 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. If they were to take the steps needed to cut down their emissions even by 20% it would have a globally noticeable effect. | |||
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"People are the biggest cause. You can blame governments, you can blame corporations, rich folk and celebrities. When all is said and done, normal people are to blame, for rampant consumerism. There are 2 billion more people on the planet compared to 20 years ago and nearly every adult owns smart phone. The sad fact is nothing can stop people destroying this planet, certainly not governments or companies. Very hard times are ahead and most people won't know how to cope. Just 100 companies have been the source of more than 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. If they were to take the steps needed to cut down their emissions even by 20% it would have a globally noticeable effect." A penny drop moment for me in understanding the impact of global warming came when I learnt it will take thousands of years for the earth to return back to temperatures before the industrial revolution. Even if we stopped the emissions of all greenhouse gases now, the ice caps will continue to melt and the world will continue increase in temperature. Future humans, may find a way to accelerate a slow down and return to a stabilised atmosphere, but we need to give them as much help as we can. | |||
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"People are the biggest cause. You can blame governments, you can blame corporations, rich folk and celebrities. When all is said and done, normal people are to blame, for rampant consumerism. There are 2 billion more people on the planet compared to 20 years ago and nearly every adult owns smart phone. The sad fact is nothing can stop people destroying this planet, certainly not governments or companies. Very hard times are ahead and most people won't know how to cope." I generally agree. The governments and corporations are driving the rampant consumerism. And we can beat this, the lack of political will is all that's holding us back. | |||
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"I’m not qualified enough to say if the current record heatwave is caused by global warming, but I’m worried that most of the record temperatures have happened in the last 20 years. I’ve tried to do my little bit for the environment by not using a car, not flying for the last 22 years but I feel that it won’t make any difference because some countries aren’t doing enough to take the issue seriously. " iirc its flatulent cows and other live stock bread for the food industry | |||
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"People are the biggest cause. You can blame governments, you can blame corporations, rich folk and celebrities. When all is said and done, normal people are to blame, for rampant consumerism. There are 2 billion more people on the planet compared to 20 years ago and nearly every adult owns smart phone. The sad fact is nothing can stop people destroying this planet, certainly not governments or companies. Very hard times are ahead and most people won't know how to cope. I generally agree. The governments and corporations are driving the rampant consumerism. And we can beat this, the lack of political will is all that's holding us back." I think the theory of planned obsolescence doesn’t help matters. My gran had stuff that lasted up to 40 years, I’m not sure anything made these days would last that long. I’m tried to not upgrade my phone every few years but keep them as long as possible until replacing them. The most I’ve ever got out of one is 5 years before something goes wrong with them. | |||
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"People are the biggest cause. You can blame governments, you can blame corporations, rich folk and celebrities. When all is said and done, normal people are to blame, for rampant consumerism. There are 2 billion more people on the planet compared to 20 years ago and nearly every adult owns smart phone. The sad fact is nothing can stop people destroying this planet, certainly not governments or companies. Very hard times are ahead and most people won't know how to cope." Yep this sadly | |||
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"In essence, the creation of greenhouse gases are not only from carbon?" They are lots of greenhouse gases that contain no carbon. Those that do contain carbon can have different effects, dependent upon how they get released. "Is carbon the headline big hitter and the other elements would only create confusion?" CO2 is the easiest to measure in the atmosphere, and is the largest single greenhouse gas. Yes, the current mess of notations and measurement systems is all an attempt to make it easier for people to understand. | |||
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"Just 100 companies have been the source of more than 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988." That's a bold claim. Can you back it up with some evidence? Would you like to tell us which companies they are? | |||
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"Just 100 companies have been the source of more than 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. That's a bold claim. Can you back it up with some evidence? Would you like to tell us which companies they are?" Literally google "100 companies 70% emissions" you will find articles reporting it and lists of the companies | |||
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"Just 100 companies have been the source of more than 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. That's a bold claim. Can you back it up with some evidence? Would you like to tell us which companies they are? Literally google "100 companies 70% emissions" you will find articles reporting it and lists of the companies" https://fullfact.org/news/are-100-companies-causing-71-carbon-emissions/ The statistic is correct but quite misleading. "This includes the emissions released when the fossil fuels they sold were subsequently used by their customers." Apparently all 100 companies listed are fossil fuel producers. This means they are adding the entirety of vehicular pollution to few fossil fuel producers who sell fuels that eventually get used by vehicles. Controlling vehicular pollution is not upto the fossil fuel producers but the ones using the fossil fuel. | |||
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"People are the biggest cause. You can blame governments, you can blame corporations, rich folk and celebrities. When all is said and done, normal people are to blame, for rampant consumerism. There are 2 billion more people on the planet compared to 20 years ago and nearly every adult owns smart phone. The sad fact is nothing can stop people destroying this planet, certainly not governments or companies. Very hard times are ahead and most people won't know how to cope. I generally agree. The governments and corporations are driving the rampant consumerism. And we can beat this, the lack of political will is all that's holding us back. I think the theory of planned obsolescence doesn’t help matters. My gran had stuff that lasted up to 40 years, I’m not sure anything made these days would last that long. I’m tried to not upgrade my phone every few years but keep them as long as possible until replacing them. The most I’ve ever got out of one is 5 years before something goes wrong with them. " Yeah definitely. Loads of sectors are like this. Tech, motor industry etc etc. Most I've got out of a phone is four years. Most start to fall apart after two or three. | |||
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"Just 100 companies have been the source of more than 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988." "The statistic is correct but quite misleading. "This includes the emissions released when the fossil fuels they sold were subsequently used by their customers."" I thought as much. The scope 3 emissions argument is one of the biggest reasons that environmental pressure groups get written off as 'the lunatic hippy fringe'. | |||
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"Hasn't the world been heating up for millions of years? If it didn't we would still be in an ice age. No, the earths temperature fluctuates on 20,000 to 40,000 year cycles naturally. And it fluctuates on geological time scales. The rapid increase in greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere and the rapid increase in average global temperature since the industrial revolution has never happened to this planet since life existed here. You have no way of knowing that. The climate constantly changes. What has changed is the digital era & multiple ways of reading then broadcasting temperatures. There is the hysteria & lies behind the climate change agenda. I remember a few months ago, a drought in Madagascar, blamed on climate change. Nothing to do with the fact that the population has increased from six to twenty six million in just fifty years then? Yes we should all do our bit but let’s not get hysterical. Or, we can read and understand the science behind climate change. So yes, I do have a way of knowing this, I read the scientific papers that are peer reviewed and published. There's no mystery here. It's well understood and documented. It’s speculation. In fact, the time to question it is when scientists do all agree. I wonder why. Follow the money. We are going through the eight billion barrier this year. Over population is the problem. " This is exactly why we are in the trouble we are. How do you break through such ignorance? When scientists all agree, its not because there is a world conspiracy, it's because the evidence all points the same way. But some can't even see the evidence in front of their nose, when London is on fire.... 'nothing to see here' | |||
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"My mistake too as I thought it was, 1 tonne of burnt carbon atoms, creates 3 tonnes of CO2? Burning the carbon in fossil fuels as an example creates the CO2. What are the missing details? Basically you are correct. But there are other greenhouse gases. For example, burning one ton of methane (natural gas) will release about 3 tons of CO2. But methane itself is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, about 25 times more. So if you didn't burn your one ton of methane and instead just let it float away, you'd be releasing 25 tons of CO2 equivalent, or CO2e. "Tonnes of CO2 equivalent" just means 'stuff that will cause the same warming as 1 tonne of CO2'. In this case 40kg of methane released is 1 tonne of CO2e. The problem is that the media don't understand this, and regularly report stuff like "railway carriage crash releases 22,800 tons of carbon", and what they mean is that 1 tonne of sulfur hexafluoride was spilled. Sulfur hexafluoride does not contain any carbon, but it is an extremely potent greenhouse gas that has a rating of 22,800CO2e. I've simplified it a fair amount, there's a lot more detail to go into if you start digging." The press made a big issue of Nitrous Oxide used for pain relief while giving birth. They are trying to or are banning it as it is lethal to the planet. Kids are getting high on it, you'll see silver canisters lying on paths and car parks, it's used in cream whipping devices and cream in a tin. Fridges, Air Conditioners all contain potent Greenhouse gasses hence legal FGas regs to install and decommissioning. Industrial and domestic solvents, the list goes on. It is not just CO2, every other gas is compared to it. Some are 1000's times more damaging and don't break down for 100s of years. The GHG inventory covers the seven direct greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Protocol: Carbon dioxide (CO2) Methane (CH4) Nitrous oxide (N2O) Hyd uorocarbons (HFCs)
Perfluorocarbons (PFCs)
Sulphur hexafluoride (SF6)
Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3)
These gases contribute directly to climate change owing to their positive radiative forcing effect. HFCs, PFCs, SF6 and NF3 are collectively known as the 'F-gases'.
In general terms, the largest contributor to global warming is carbon dioxide which makes it the focus of many climate change initiatives. Methane and nitrous oxide contribute to a smaller proportion, typically 20%, and the contribution of f–gases is even smaller (in spite of their high Global Warming Potentials) at 5% of the total.
Also reported are four indirect greenhouse gases:
Nitrogen oxides (NOx)
Carbon monoxide (CO)
Non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOC)
Sulphur dioxide (SO2)
Nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and NMVOCs are included in the inventory because they can produce increases in tropospheric ozone concentrations and this increases radiative forcing (warming of the atmosphere). Sulphur dioxide is included because it contributes to aerosol formation which can either warm (through absorption of solar radiation on dark particles) or cool (from forming cloud droplets and reflecting radiation) the atmosphere. | |||
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"I’m not qualified enough to say if the current record heatwave is caused by global warming, but I’m worried that most of the record temperatures have happened in the last 20 years. I’ve tried to do my little bit for the environment by not using a car, not flying for the last 22 years but I feel that it won’t make any difference because some countries aren’t doing enough to take the issue seriously. Capitalism" Yes. Capitalism. 100% | |||
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"Replace it with what? " With a system which isn't predicated on the need to drive profit at the expense of everything, at the expense of peoples lives, at the expense of the planet. We have a system which demands ever increasing growth. On a planet which is a closed system with limited resources, that can only result in one thing, and we are seeing it. You can have a system where we create what we all need to live happy lives, where what we produce and what we create is driven by what people need, or we can have capitalism, which drives all of this endless consumption. We design products with a short life span, with ever newer versions to upgrade to, not because we need them, but so the companies can continue to extract profits, time and time again. We could get our energy cheaper and cleaner from renewables, but there is far less profit in it, so we don't. Capitalism drives unsustainable consumption, and is driving the destruction of the planet. | |||
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"Literally google "100 companies 70% emissions" you will find articles reporting it and lists of the companies https://fullfact.org/news/are-100-companies-causing-71-carbon-emissions/ The statistic is correct but quite misleading. "This includes the emissions released when the fossil fuels they sold were subsequently used by their customers." Apparently all 100 companies listed are fossil fuel producers. This means they are adding the entirety of vehicular pollution to few fossil fuel producers who sell fuels that eventually get used by vehicles. Controlling vehicular pollution is not upto the fossil fuel producers but the ones using the fossil fuel. " Exactly. We all need food, which must be produced, and transported (sometimes overseas) and stored in a fridge which requires power. Then we go to collect it, in a car, and take it home and put it in our fridges. That's just an essential like food, never mind all the crap we buy as entertainment or for recreation. We bet in your own local areas your councils are knocking down perfectly useable buildings and replacing them with new nicer looking ones? That concrete costs a lot to produce you know, same goes for the energy and pollution involved in this massive house building drive the country is doing. People need homes, which means more energy use and pollution. A real solution is too dystopian and horrible to comprehend. | |||
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"Replace it with what? " with a system that works, which is the polar opposite of what we have now | |||
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"Replace it with what? with a system that works, which is the polar opposite of what we have now "Socialism? Like that worked great | |||
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"Replace it with what? with a system that works, which is the polar opposite of what we have now
Socialism? Like that worked great "Works fantastically well in Scandinavia | |||
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"Replace it with what? with a system that works, which is the polar opposite of what we have now
Socialism? Like that worked great
Works fantastically well in Scandinavia "It would be interesting to see what an actual socialist state was like. All the ones in the world today/in the past have some form of asterisk against the claim. | |||
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"Replace it with what? with a system that works, which is the polar opposite of what we have now
Socialism? Like that worked great
Works fantastically well in Scandinavia "Lol. When did Scandinavia become socialist? | |||
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"Replace it with what? with a system that works, which is the polar opposite of what we have now
Socialism? Like that worked great
Works fantastically well in Scandinavia
It would be interesting to see what an actual socialist state was like. All the ones in the world today/in the past have some form of asterisk against the claim."USSR was an actual socialist state. It doesn't work both in theory and practice. | |||
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"Replace it with what? with a system that works, which is the polar opposite of what we have now
Socialism? Like that worked great
Works fantastically well in Scandinavia
It would be interesting to see what an actual socialist state was like. All the ones in the world today/in the past have some form of asterisk against the claim.
USSR was an actual socialist state. It doesn't work both in theory and practice."LOL good one | |||
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"Replace it with what? with a system that works, which is the polar opposite of what we have now
Socialism? Like that worked great
Works fantastically well in Scandinavia
It would be interesting to see what an actual socialist state was like. All the ones in the world today/in the past have some form of asterisk against the claim.
USSR was an actual socialist state. It doesn't work both in theory and practice.
LOL good one"Are you saying USSR was not socialist? Or is it one of those "But socialism was never implemented properly" arguments in spite of the tens of millions of deaths it had caused all over the world in one century? | |||
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"Replace it with what? with a system that works, which is the polar opposite of what we have now
Socialism? Like that worked great
Works fantastically well in Scandinavia
It would be interesting to see what an actual socialist state was like. All the ones in the world today/in the past have some form of asterisk against the claim.
USSR was an actual socialist state. It doesn't work both in theory and practice.
LOL good one
Are you saying USSR was not socialist? Or is it one of those "But socialism was never implemented properly" arguments in spite of the tens of millions of deaths it had caused all over the world in one century?"in the same way that the uk is currently a falangist/fascist state. | |||
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"Replace it with what? with a system that works, which is the polar opposite of what we have now
Socialism? Like that worked great
Works fantastically well in Scandinavia
It would be interesting to see what an actual socialist state was like. All the ones in the world today/in the past have some form of asterisk against the claim.
USSR was an actual socialist state. It doesn't work both in theory and practice.
LOL good one
Are you saying USSR was not socialist? Or is it one of those "But socialism was never implemented properly" arguments in spite of the tens of millions of deaths it had caused all over the world in one century?"Russia seems to have kept the bad bits of communism & imported the worst buts of capitalism. Hitler & Stalin both used the term socialist to describe dictatorship | |||
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"Replace it with what? with a system that works, which is the polar opposite of what we have now
Socialism? Like that worked great
Works fantastically well in Scandinavia
It would be interesting to see what an actual socialist state was like. All the ones in the world today/in the past have some form of asterisk against the claim.
USSR was an actual socialist state. It doesn't work both in theory and practice.
LOL good one
Are you saying USSR was not socialist? Or is it one of those "But socialism was never implemented properly" arguments in spite of the tens of millions of deaths it had caused all over the world in one century?
in the same way that the uk is currently a falangist/fascist state. "How is that related to the post I made? Do you even know how what a fascist state is? | |||
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"Replace it with what? with a system that works, which is the polar opposite of what we have now
Socialism? Like that worked great
Works fantastically well in Scandinavia
It would be interesting to see what an actual socialist state was like. All the ones in the world today/in the past have some form of asterisk against the claim.
USSR was an actual socialist state. It doesn't work both in theory and practice.
LOL good one
Are you saying USSR was not socialist? Or is it one of those "But socialism was never implemented properly" arguments in spite of the tens of millions of deaths it had caused all over the world in one century?
Russia seems to have kept the bad bits of communism & imported the worst buts of capitalism. Hitler & Stalin both used the term socialist to describe dictatorship "They fucked up big time on the transition from Socialism and capitalism with the oligarchs making most out of it. But even with the worst bits of capitalism, they can somehow survive simply because they have lot of natural resources. It's only when the oil prices hit the bottom that they usually feel the pinch of it. | |||
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"Replace it with what? with a system that works, which is the polar opposite of what we have now
Socialism? Like that worked great
Works fantastically well in Scandinavia
It would be interesting to see what an actual socialist state was like. All the ones in the world today/in the past have some form of asterisk against the claim.
USSR was an actual socialist state. It doesn't work both in theory and practice.
LOL good one
Are you saying USSR was not socialist? Or is it one of those "But socialism was never implemented properly" arguments in spite of the tens of millions of deaths it had caused all over the world in one century?
in the same way that the uk is currently a falangist/fascist state.
How is that related to the post I made? Do you even know how what a fascist state is?"you clearly don't | |||
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"Replace it with what? with a system that works, which is the polar opposite of what we have now
Socialism? Like that worked great
Works fantastically well in Scandinavia
Lol. When did Scandinavia become socialist?"Nordic countries are on the socialist spectrum. Don't think there is a pure socialist country out there. Anyway, the current system is not working for the people or planet. Who knows if socialism would be better for the planet, probably. But we'll never find out as we're governed by people who work for the corporations and billionaires. | |||
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"These threads are like a weather forecast only much more predictable. Today most people will experience a communism, socialist mix up on posts they visit. Followed by a liberal scattering of the misplacement of fascist to make a point. This will continue over the weekend, with an expected change on Monday, as we expect hot air to sweep across all posts as a Trussunik enters the melee. "Lol. I'm hoping for a rogue climate change denier. | |||
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"Replace it with what? with a system that works, which is the polar opposite of what we have now
Socialism? Like that worked great
Works fantastically well in Scandinavia
Lol. When did Scandinavia become socialist?
Nordic countries are on the socialist spectrum.
Don't think there is a pure socialist country out there.
Anyway, the current system is not working for the people or planet. Who knows if socialism would be better for the planet, probably. But we'll never find out as we're governed by people who work for the corporations and billionaires."How many industries are owned by the government in Nordic countries? The defining factor of these countries is a high tax economy. Sweden for instance has municipal tax of 30% for everyone - not just the high earners. Anyone who earns higher than an equivalent of 42K GBP has to pay an extra 20% national tax. The current system is working well for the people. The standard of living has improved all over the world. A big percentage of people have been pulled out of poverty. The news makes us believe that the world is getting worse. But the truth is far from that. Try reading Factfulness by Hans Rosling. Of all the years of human history, this is the best time to be alive. I agree that it's worse for the planet but simply because we are doing good for the people. The biggest fear in the 1980s was that overpopulation was going to cause severe famine and drought with people killing each other. We are at a stage where obesity is a bigger problem in most developed countries. We were able to achieve this because of using fertilizers, pesticides, ability to transport goods across the world to make up for each other's shortage due to season effects. All this results in pollution. For your question on "Who knows if socialism would be better for the planet?", we already have the answer. We will have mass famines which results in millions of deaths which could potentially reduce pollution. It's not like socialism was never tried. India had a mostly socialist model from it's time of independence. It's only in the 90s that they realised how it is stagnating the economy and one leader had the guts and vision to liberalise the market. If he had not done that, with the population explosion that happened in the country, western countries won't be getting skilled immigrants from India, they would be getting refugees instead. Same with China. It's only after they started liberalising their markets, they started growing. We need to use science and technology to find a solution for global warming. Shifting the entire economic system is not the way forward. | |||
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"Hasn't the world been heating up for millions of years? If it didn't we would still be in an ice age. No, the earths temperature fluctuates on 20,000 to 40,000 year cycles naturally. And it fluctuates on geological time scales. The rapid increase in greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere and the rapid increase in average global temperature since the industrial revolution has never happened to this planet since life existed here." What about those Romans...what have they done to reduce global warming. They've done....... | |||
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"Replace it with what? with a system that works, which is the polar opposite of what we have now
Socialism? Like that worked great
Works fantastically well in Scandinavia
Lol. When did Scandinavia become socialist?
Nordic countries are on the socialist spectrum.
Don't think there is a pure socialist country out there.
Anyway, the current system is not working for the people or planet. Who knows if socialism would be better for the planet, probably. But we'll never find out as we're governed by people who work for the corporations and billionaires.
How many industries are owned by the government in Nordic countries? The defining factor of these countries is a high tax economy. Sweden for instance has municipal tax of 30% for everyone - not just the high earners.
Anyone who earns higher than an equivalent of 42K GBP has to pay an extra 20% national tax.
The current system is working well for the people. The standard of living has improved all over the world. A big percentage of people have been pulled out of poverty. The news makes us believe that the world is getting worse. But the truth is far from that. Try reading Factfulness by Hans Rosling. Of all the years of human history, this is the best time to be alive.
I agree that it's worse for the planet but simply because we are doing good for the people. The biggest fear in the 1980s was that overpopulation was going to cause severe famine and drought with people killing each other. We are at a stage where obesity is a bigger problem in most developed countries. We were able to achieve this because of using fertilizers, pesticides, ability to transport goods across the world to make up for each other's shortage due to season effects. All this results in pollution.
For your question on "Who knows if socialism would be better for the planet?", we already have the answer. We will have mass famines which results in millions of deaths which could potentially reduce pollution. It's not like socialism was never tried. India had a mostly socialist model from it's time of independence. It's only in the 90s that they realised how it is stagnating the economy and one leader had the guts and vision to liberalise the market. If he had not done that, with the population explosion that happened in the country, western countries won't be getting skilled immigrants from India, they would be getting refugees instead. Same with China. It's only after they started liberalising their markets, they started growing.
We need to use science and technology to find a solution for global warming. Shifting the entire economic system is not the way forward."I'm not a proponent of socialism. And I agree with a lot of what you say. Effective state ownership of industry and food production doesn't have to equal famine. I understand that the current system has allowed us to move forward and there is less of a gap between rich and poor than there has been throughout much of history. Personally, I think we're taking backward steps at the moment. What's going on in the US with women's rights. Brexit. Truss saying she will slash all the rights we have that were brought into law via the EU. Etc etc. Those are just a couple of examples. But the main point, while our government works for corporations more than it works for the people. We will only see token minimal efforts to tackle climate change. | |||
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"Replace it with what? with a system that works, which is the polar opposite of what we have now
Socialism? Like that worked great
Works fantastically well in Scandinavia
Lol. When did Scandinavia become socialist?
Nordic countries are on the socialist spectrum.
Don't think there is a pure socialist country out there.
Anyway, the current system is not working for the people or planet. Who knows if socialism would be better for the planet, probably. But we'll never find out as we're governed by people who work for the corporations and billionaires.
How many industries are owned by the government in Nordic countries? The defining factor of these countries is a high tax economy. Sweden for instance has municipal tax of 30% for everyone - not just the high earners.
Anyone who earns higher than an equivalent of 42K GBP has to pay an extra 20% national tax.
The current system is working well for the people. The standard of living has improved all over the world. A big percentage of people have been pulled out of poverty. The news makes us believe that the world is getting worse. But the truth is far from that. Try reading Factfulness by Hans Rosling. Of all the years of human history, this is the best time to be alive.
I agree that it's worse for the planet but simply because we are doing good for the people. The biggest fear in the 1980s was that overpopulation was going to cause severe famine and drought with people killing each other. We are at a stage where obesity is a bigger problem in most developed countries. We were able to achieve this because of using fertilizers, pesticides, ability to transport goods across the world to make up for each other's shortage due to season effects. All this results in pollution.
For your question on "Who knows if socialism would be better for the planet?", we already have the answer. We will have mass famines which results in millions of deaths which could potentially reduce pollution. It's not like socialism was never tried. India had a mostly socialist model from it's time of independence. It's only in the 90s that they realised how it is stagnating the economy and one leader had the guts and vision to liberalise the market. If he had not done that, with the population explosion that happened in the country, western countries won't be getting skilled immigrants from India, they would be getting refugees instead. Same with China. It's only after they started liberalising their markets, they started growing.
We need to use science and technology to find a solution for global warming. Shifting the entire economic system is not the way forward.
I'm not a proponent of socialism. And I agree with a lot of what you say.
Effective state ownership of industry and food production doesn't have to equal famine.
I understand that the current system has allowed us to move forward and there is less of a gap between rich and poor than there has been throughout much of history.
Personally, I think we're taking backward steps at the moment. What's going on in the US with women's rights. Brexit. Truss saying she will slash all the rights we have that were brought into law via the EU. Etc etc. Those are just a couple of examples.
But the main point, while our government works for corporations more than it works for the people. We will only see token minimal efforts to tackle climate change."It would be great if effective state ownership of industry happens. But the idea has been debunked both in theory and practice. Supply demand pricing model works much better in reacting to changes. When there is shortage of a particular resource, its price goes up thereby telling consumers to be careful with its usage. If the same thing is run by government, they have to think about their upcoming elections before doing the right thing. There is also this question of where to allocate a resource, something which free markets do fluidly but governments handle poorly because elections happen once every 5 years and they can get away with doing something that sounds great in words but reflects poorly on the economy. Capitalism is flawed. I don't deny that at all. The government has to interfere with the right regulations once in awhile. I agree with the US going backwards on social ideals. Trump victory is going to have a long lasting impact. It will take quite sometime for things to return to normalcy there. As for Brexit, it could work well in the right hands. But people were misled with the benefits of it when the real benefits lies elsewhere. Agree with government working for corporations. Political parties should never get funding from corporations. Don't know why it's still a thing. | |||
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"Anyone who thinks the USSR was a truly socialist state doesn't understand what socialism is. Or what the USSR was, one or the other." Please define socialism to us illiterate people and tell us why USSR wasn't socialist. | |||
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"Anyone who thinks the USSR was a truly socialist state doesn't understand what socialism is. Or what the USSR was, one or the other. Please define socialism to us illiterate people and tell us why USSR wasn't socialist." You have google | |||
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"Replace it with what? with a system that works, which is the polar opposite of what we have now
Socialism? Like that worked great
Works fantastically well in Scandinavia
Lol. When did Scandinavia become socialist?
Nordic countries are on the socialist spectrum.
Don't think there is a pure socialist country out there.
Anyway, the current system is not working for the people or planet. Who knows if socialism would be better for the planet, probably. But we'll never find out as we're governed by people who work for the corporations and billionaires.
How many industries are owned by the government in Nordic countries? The defining factor of these countries is a high tax economy. Sweden for instance has municipal tax of 30% for everyone - not just the high earners.
Anyone who earns higher than an equivalent of 42K GBP has to pay an extra 20% national tax.
The current system is working well for the people. The standard of living has improved all over the world. A big percentage of people have been pulled out of poverty. The news makes us believe that the world is getting worse. But the truth is far from that. Try reading Factfulness by Hans Rosling. Of all the years of human history, this is the best time to be alive.
I agree that it's worse for the planet but simply because we are doing good for the people. The biggest fear in the 1980s was that overpopulation was going to cause severe famine and drought with people killing each other. We are at a stage where obesity is a bigger problem in most developed countries. We were able to achieve this because of using fertilizers, pesticides, ability to transport goods across the world to make up for each other's shortage due to season effects. All this results in pollution.
For your question on "Who knows if socialism would be better for the planet?", we already have the answer. We will have mass famines which results in millions of deaths which could potentially reduce pollution. It's not like socialism was never tried. India had a mostly socialist model from it's time of independence. It's only in the 90s that they realised how it is stagnating the economy and one leader had the guts and vision to liberalise the market. If he had not done that, with the population explosion that happened in the country, western countries won't be getting skilled immigrants from India, they would be getting refugees instead. Same with China. It's only after they started liberalising their markets, they started growing.
We need to use science and technology to find a solution for global warming. Shifting the entire economic system is not the way forward.
I'm not a proponent of socialism. And I agree with a lot of what you say.
Effective state ownership of industry and food production doesn't have to equal famine.
I understand that the current system has allowed us to move forward and there is less of a gap between rich and poor than there has been throughout much of history.
Personally, I think we're taking backward steps at the moment. What's going on in the US with women's rights. Brexit. Truss saying she will slash all the rights we have that were brought into law via the EU. Etc etc. Those are just a couple of examples.
But the main point, while our government works for corporations more than it works for the people. We will only see token minimal efforts to tackle climate change.
It would be great if effective state ownership of industry happens. But the idea has been debunked both in theory and practice. Supply demand pricing model works much better in reacting to changes. When there is shortage of a particular resource, its price goes up thereby telling consumers to be careful with its usage. If the same thing is run by government, they have to think about their upcoming elections before doing the right thing. There is also this question of where to allocate a resource, something which free markets do fluidly but governments handle poorly because elections happen once every 5 years and they can get away with doing something that sounds great in words but reflects poorly on the economy.
Capitalism is flawed. I don't deny that at all. The government has to interfere with the right regulations once in awhile.
I agree with the US going backwards on social ideals. Trump victory is going to have a long lasting impact. It will take quite sometime for things to return to normalcy there.
As for Brexit, it could work well in the right hands. But people were misled with the benefits of it when the real benefits lies elsewhere.
Agree with government working for corporations. Political parties should never get funding from corporations. Don't know why it's still a thing."I agree with everything, except I think state ownership can work. NHS if properly managed. Rail networks and trains would work too. Statoil. There's a lot of instances that it can work. I think it's appropriate for some services and industries that work in the interests of the population, instead of working for shareholder profit. I certainly don't think it works as a blanket solution for everything. | |||
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"Replace it with what? with a system that works, which is the polar opposite of what we have now
Socialism? Like that worked great
Works fantastically well in Scandinavia
Lol. When did Scandinavia become socialist?
Nordic countries are on the socialist spectrum.
Don't think there is a pure socialist country out there.
Anyway, the current system is not working for the people or planet. Who knows if socialism would be better for the planet, probably. But we'll never find out as we're governed by people who work for the corporations and billionaires.
How many industries are owned by the government in Nordic countries? The defining factor of these countries is a high tax economy. Sweden for instance has municipal tax of 30% for everyone - not just the high earners.
Anyone who earns higher than an equivalent of 42K GBP has to pay an extra 20% national tax.
The current system is working well for the people. The standard of living has improved all over the world. A big percentage of people have been pulled out of poverty. The news makes us believe that the world is getting worse. But the truth is far from that. Try reading Factfulness by Hans Rosling. Of all the years of human history, this is the best time to be alive.
I agree that it's worse for the planet but simply because we are doing good for the people. The biggest fear in the 1980s was that overpopulation was going to cause severe famine and drought with people killing each other. We are at a stage where obesity is a bigger problem in most developed countries. We were able to achieve this because of using fertilizers, pesticides, ability to transport goods across the world to make up for each other's shortage due to season effects. All this results in pollution.
For your question on "Who knows if socialism would be better for the planet?", we already have the answer. We will have mass famines which results in millions of deaths which could potentially reduce pollution. It's not like socialism was never tried. India had a mostly socialist model from it's time of independence. It's only in the 90s that they realised how it is stagnating the economy and one leader had the guts and vision to liberalise the market. If he had not done that, with the population explosion that happened in the country, western countries won't be getting skilled immigrants from India, they would be getting refugees instead. Same with China. It's only after they started liberalising their markets, they started growing.
We need to use science and technology to find a solution for global warming. Shifting the entire economic system is not the way forward.
I'm not a proponent of socialism. And I agree with a lot of what you say.
Effective state ownership of industry and food production doesn't have to equal famine.
I understand that the current system has allowed us to move forward and there is less of a gap between rich and poor than there has been throughout much of history.
Personally, I think we're taking backward steps at the moment. What's going on in the US with women's rights. Brexit. Truss saying she will slash all the rights we have that were brought into law via the EU. Etc etc. Those are just a couple of examples.
But the main point, while our government works for corporations more than it works for the people. We will only see token minimal efforts to tackle climate change.
It would be great if effective state ownership of industry happens. But the idea has been debunked both in theory and practice. Supply demand pricing model works much better in reacting to changes. When there is shortage of a particular resource, its price goes up thereby telling consumers to be careful with its usage. If the same thing is run by government, they have to think about their upcoming elections before doing the right thing. There is also this question of where to allocate a resource, something which free markets do fluidly but governments handle poorly because elections happen once every 5 years and they can get away with doing something that sounds great in words but reflects poorly on the economy.
Capitalism is flawed. I don't deny that at all. The government has to interfere with the right regulations once in awhile.
I agree with the US going backwards on social ideals. Trump victory is going to have a long lasting impact. It will take quite sometime for things to return to normalcy there.
As for Brexit, it could work well in the right hands. But people were misled with the benefits of it when the real benefits lies elsewhere.
Agree with government working for corporations. Political parties should never get funding from corporations. Don't know why it's still a thing.
I agree with everything, except I think state ownership can work.
NHS if properly managed.
Rail networks and trains would work too.
Statoil.
There's a lot of instances that it can work. I think it's appropriate for some services and industries that work in the interests of the population, instead of working for shareholder profit.
I certainly don't think it works as a blanket solution for everything."That's where we disagree on. In my view, the moment you have a really large population, government run services fail to scale efficiently. But I do like the idea of NHS simply because in spite of its inefficiencies, it's important to give free at point healthcare for moral reasons. I have been on and off on private ownership of transport services. Switzerland which is the best in Europe when it comes to transport has public ownership while the privately owned services in UK eat a lot of money in both subsidies and ticket prices. The Swiss do invest a lot of tax money on it. Theirs is known to be much better still. On the other hand, Japan's public transport is completely privatised and they seem to do really well. I wonder how they managed to do it right compared to UK. | |||
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"Anyone who thinks the USSR was a truly socialist state doesn't understand what socialism is. Or what the USSR was, one or the other. Please define socialism to us illiterate people and tell us why USSR wasn't socialist. You have google" I have googled before. I have read the communist manifesto. I have also read a book published by the Bolsheviks themselves, which is a propoganda book with lots of outright lies but gives a brief history of how they operated. I don't see a reason to deny that USSR was socialist. Not communist, but definitely socialist. | |||
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"Anyone who thinks the USSR was a truly socialist state doesn't understand what socialism is. Or what the USSR was, one or the other. Please define socialism to us illiterate people and tell us why USSR wasn't socialist. You have google I have googled before. I have read the communist manifesto. I have also read a book published by the Bolsheviks themselves, which is a propoganda book with lots of outright lies but gives a brief history of how they operated. I don't see a reason to deny that USSR was socialist. Not communist, but definitely socialist." The usssr was a socialist state. Communism is the goal of a socialist state where the state itself is abolished and that to each according to his needs is met. Socialist countries attempt to reach communism but it remains a utopian ideal state which marx himself admitted may take hundreds of years to achieve. | |||
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"The biggest cause is Corporate sponsored inaction by the governments of the world." This The vast majority of pollution is caused by large corporations, who are by and large above regulation because the bribe, sorry, sorry, LOBBY government | |||
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"Anyone who thinks the USSR was a truly socialist state doesn't understand what socialism is. Or what the USSR was, one or the other. Please define socialism to us illiterate people and tell us why USSR wasn't socialist. You have google I have googled before. I have read the communist manifesto. I have also read a book published by the Bolsheviks themselves, which is a propoganda book with lots of outright lies but gives a brief history of how they operated. I don't see a reason to deny that USSR was socialist. Not communist, but definitely socialist. The usssr was a socialist state. Communism is the goal of a socialist state where the state itself is abolished and that to each according to his needs is met. Socialist countries attempt to reach communism but it remains a utopian ideal state which marx himself admitted may take hundreds of years to achieve. " The Soviet Union was formed on Marxist-Leninist principles (as it overthrew the tsar by an armed revolution) and declared itself a communist nation. On the basis of stated policies, it was socialist (on paper) but it was actually an oligarchy (a regime controlled by a few powerful, often rich individuals) | |||
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"Anyone who thinks the USSR was a truly socialist state doesn't understand what socialism is. Or what the USSR was, one or the other." "Please define socialism to us illiterate people and tell us why USSR wasn't socialist." "You have google" I went to Google and it gave me this: https://iea.org.uk/but-that-wasnt-real-socialism-part-1/ It's a bit of a read, but the basic idea is that socialists thought that the USSR was socialist when it started, and all was going well. But when things started going badly, socialists changed their minds and decided it wasn't real socialism after all. Considering that the second 'S' in 'USSR' stood for 'Socialist', it does seem as though that's what they were aiming for. | |||
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"Anyone who thinks the USSR was a truly socialist state doesn't understand what socialism is. Or what the USSR was, one or the other. Please define socialism to us illiterate people and tell us why USSR wasn't socialist. You have google I went to Google and it gave me this: https://iea.org.uk/but-that-wasnt-real-socialism-part-1/ It's a bit of a read, but the basic idea is that socialists thought that the USSR was socialist when it started, and all was going well. But when things started going badly, socialists changed their minds and decided it wasn't real socialism after all. Considering that the second 'S' in 'USSR' stood for 'Socialist', it does seem as though that's what they were aiming for." I agree they started with the intent of being socialist, I just disagree that the country everyone thinks of when they think the USSR was in fact socialist. It was an Oligarchy | |||
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"Anyone who thinks the USSR was a truly socialist state doesn't understand what socialism is. Or what the USSR was, one or the other. Please define socialism to us illiterate people and tell us why USSR wasn't socialist. You have google I have googled before. I have read the communist manifesto. I have also read a book published by the Bolsheviks themselves, which is a propoganda book with lots of outright lies but gives a brief history of how they operated. I don't see a reason to deny that USSR was socialist. Not communist, but definitely socialist. The usssr was a socialist state. Communism is the goal of a socialist state where the state itself is abolished and that to each according to his needs is met. Socialist countries attempt to reach communism but it remains a utopian ideal state which marx himself admitted may take hundreds of years to achieve. The Soviet Union was formed on Marxist-Leninist principles (as it overthrew the tsar by an armed revolution) and declared itself a communist nation. On the basis of stated policies, it was socialist (on paper) but it was actually an oligarchy (a regime controlled by a few powerful, often rich individuals)" You still haven't told what socialism is in your perspective. State ownership of means of production is socialism. What kind of the state that is shouldn't affect whether you call it a socialist state or not. The moment you give so much power to the state, you are setting yourself up for tyranny and that's what happened with Soviet Union. | |||
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"Replace it with what? with a system that works, which is the polar opposite of what we have now
Socialism? Like that worked great
Works fantastically well in Scandinavia
Lol. When did Scandinavia become socialist?
Nordic countries are on the socialist spectrum.
Don't think there is a pure socialist country out there.
Anyway, the current system is not working for the people or planet. Who knows if socialism would be better for the planet, probably. But we'll never find out as we're governed by people who work for the corporations and billionaires.
How many industries are owned by the government in Nordic countries? The defining factor of these countries is a high tax economy. Sweden for instance has municipal tax of 30% for everyone - not just the high earners.
Anyone who earns higher than an equivalent of 42K GBP has to pay an extra 20% national tax.
The current system is working well for the people. The standard of living has improved all over the world. A big percentage of people have been pulled out of poverty. The news makes us believe that the world is getting worse. But the truth is far from that. Try reading Factfulness by Hans Rosling. Of all the years of human history, this is the best time to be alive.
I agree that it's worse for the planet but simply because we are doing good for the people. The biggest fear in the 1980s was that overpopulation was going to cause severe famine and drought with people killing each other. We are at a stage where obesity is a bigger problem in most developed countries. We were able to achieve this because of using fertilizers, pesticides, ability to transport goods across the world to make up for each other's shortage due to season effects. All this results in pollution.
For your question on "Who knows if socialism would be better for the planet?", we already have the answer. We will have mass famines which results in millions of deaths which could potentially reduce pollution. It's not like socialism was never tried. India had a mostly socialist model from it's time of independence. It's only in the 90s that they realised how it is stagnating the economy and one leader had the guts and vision to liberalise the market. If he had not done that, with the population explosion that happened in the country, western countries won't be getting skilled immigrants from India, they would be getting refugees instead. Same with China. It's only after they started liberalising their markets, they started growing.
We need to use science and technology to find a solution for global warming. Shifting the entire economic system is not the way forward.
I'm not a proponent of socialism. And I agree with a lot of what you say.
Effective state ownership of industry and food production doesn't have to equal famine.
I understand that the current system has allowed us to move forward and there is less of a gap between rich and poor than there has been throughout much of history.
Personally, I think we're taking backward steps at the moment. What's going on in the US with women's rights. Brexit. Truss saying she will slash all the rights we have that were brought into law via the EU. Etc etc. Those are just a couple of examples.
But the main point, while our government works for corporations more than it works for the people. We will only see token minimal efforts to tackle climate change.
It would be great if effective state ownership of industry happens. But the idea has been debunked both in theory and practice. Supply demand pricing model works much better in reacting to changes. When there is shortage of a particular resource, its price goes up thereby telling consumers to be careful with its usage. If the same thing is run by government, they have to think about their upcoming elections before doing the right thing. There is also this question of where to allocate a resource, something which free markets do fluidly but governments handle poorly because elections happen once every 5 years and they can get away with doing something that sounds great in words but reflects poorly on the economy.
Capitalism is flawed. I don't deny that at all. The government has to interfere with the right regulations once in awhile.
I agree with the US going backwards on social ideals. Trump victory is going to have a long lasting impact. It will take quite sometime for things to return to normalcy there.
As for Brexit, it could work well in the right hands. But people were misled with the benefits of it when the real benefits lies elsewhere.
Agree with government working for corporations. Political parties should never get funding from corporations. Don't know why it's still a thing.
I agree with everything, except I think state ownership can work.
NHS if properly managed.
Rail networks and trains would work too.
Statoil.
There's a lot of instances that it can work. I think it's appropriate for some services and industries that work in the interests of the population, instead of working for shareholder profit.
I certainly don't think it works as a blanket solution for everything.
That's where we disagree on. In my view, the moment you have a really large population, government run services fail to scale efficiently. But I do like the idea of NHS simply because in spite of its inefficiencies, it's important to give free at point healthcare for moral reasons.
I have been on and off on private ownership of transport services. Switzerland which is the best in Europe when it comes to transport has public ownership while the privately owned services in UK eat a lot of money in both subsidies and ticket prices. The Swiss do invest a lot of tax money on it. Theirs is known to be much better still. On the other hand, Japan's public transport is completely privatised and they seem to do really well. I wonder how they managed to do it right compared to UK."Fair enough. I guess I like the idea of public transport being provided as a paid for service by the government. To keep the country running well, it helps if people can move to work and other places easily. Once it's made private, non profitable routes get scrapped or with reduced service leaving people stuck. I think we agreed on the government not being run by political parties being sponsored by corporations. To my mind, this is a barrier to bringing in greener policies, as they would likely be detrimental to said corporations profits, in the short term anyway. | |||
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"The biggest cause is Corporate sponsored inaction by the governments of the world. This The vast majority of pollution is caused by large corporations, who are by and large above regulation because the bribe, sorry, sorry, LOBBY government " This is a big part of why governments are so slow to bring forward legislation to curb co2 emissions. | |||
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"I agree they started with the intent of being socialist, I just disagree that the country everyone thinks of when they think the USSR was in fact socialist. It was an Oligarchy" But that's the whole problem with socialism - it has to work with humans, and humans are lazy, greedy, and vain. As soon as a lazy person gets a chance to slack off, they will. Meaning that discontent spreads through the others that have to take up the slack. As soon as a greedy person gets a chance to take something, they will. Meaning that stuff doesn't get distributed evenly. As soon as a vain person gets a chance to gain status, they take it. Meaning that the rulers will always be those that want to be seen to be better than others. That's why socialist countries always slowly devolve into oligarchies or dictatorships. And every time socialists get upset and say "well, it wasn't proper socialism". | |||
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"Anyone who thinks the USSR was a truly socialist state doesn't understand what socialism is. Or what the USSR was, one or the other. Please define socialism to us illiterate people and tell us why USSR wasn't socialist. You have google I went to Google and it gave me this: https://iea.org.uk/but-that-wasnt-real-socialism-part-1/ It's a bit of a read, but the basic idea is that socialists thought that the USSR was socialist when it started, and all was going well. But when things started going badly, socialists changed their minds and decided it wasn't real socialism after all. Considering that the second 'S' in 'USSR' stood for 'Socialist', it does seem as though that's what they were aiming for. I agree they started with the intent of being socialist, I just disagree that the country everyone thinks of when they think the USSR was in fact socialist. It was an Oligarchy" That's just not true. An oligarchy is what happened when the soviet union collapsed, the soviet union was run by the party not by the business class. It was actually Putin who took on the power of the oligarchs and reestablished the authority of the state. Something which the west has constantly used against him accusing him of being a ruthless dictator. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
"I agree they started with the intent of being socialist, I just disagree that the country everyone thinks of when they think the USSR was in fact socialist. It was an Oligarchy But that's the whole problem with socialism - it has to work with humans, and humans are lazy, greedy, and vain. As soon as a lazy person gets a chance to slack off, they will. Meaning that discontent spreads through the others that have to take up the slack. As soon as a greedy person gets a chance to take something, they will. Meaning that stuff doesn't get distributed evenly. As soon as a vain person gets a chance to gain status, they take it. Meaning that the rulers will always be those that want to be seen to be better than others. That's why socialist countries always slowly devolve into oligarchies or dictatorships. And every time socialists get upset and say "well, it wasn't proper socialism"." Socialist countries do not develop into oligarchies or dictatorships. That's just plain wrong. Socialist countries are however ruthlessly attacked by capitalist countries and are constantly in a state of potential coups and unrest, this is often why they have to become authoritarian. A perfect example being Cuba under castro which has been constantly attacked by imperialist forces of the United States Also you don't understand the nature of socialist economies, its nothing to do with slacking and everything to do with efficiency and rationality in the workplace.. If you think socialists are lazy I would like you to compare the work effort of a soviet labourer under stalin with a work labourer under thatcher. You would be shocked at the difference in both attitude and endeavour. | |||
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"Replace it with what? with a system that works, which is the polar opposite of what we have now
Socialism? Like that worked great
Works fantastically well in Scandinavia
Lol. When did Scandinavia become socialist?
Nordic countries are on the socialist spectrum.
Don't think there is a pure socialist country out there.
Anyway, the current system is not working for the people or planet. Who knows if socialism would be better for the planet, probably. But we'll never find out as we're governed by people who work for the corporations and billionaires.
How many industries are owned by the government in Nordic countries? The defining factor of these countries is a high tax economy. Sweden for instance has municipal tax of 30% for everyone - not just the high earners.
Anyone who earns higher than an equivalent of 42K GBP has to pay an extra 20% national tax.
The current system is working well for the people. The standard of living has improved all over the world. A big percentage of people have been pulled out of poverty. The news makes us believe that the world is getting worse. But the truth is far from that. Try reading Factfulness by Hans Rosling. Of all the years of human history, this is the best time to be alive.
I agree that it's worse for the planet but simply because we are doing good for the people. The biggest fear in the 1980s was that overpopulation was going to cause severe famine and drought with people killing each other. We are at a stage where obesity is a bigger problem in most developed countries. We were able to achieve this because of using fertilizers, pesticides, ability to transport goods across the world to make up for each other's shortage due to season effects. All this results in pollution.
For your question on "Who knows if socialism would be better for the planet?", we already have the answer. We will have mass famines which results in millions of deaths which could potentially reduce pollution. It's not like socialism was never tried. India had a mostly socialist model from it's time of independence. It's only in the 90s that they realised how it is stagnating the economy and one leader had the guts and vision to liberalise the market. If he had not done that, with the population explosion that happened in the country, western countries won't be getting skilled immigrants from India, they would be getting refugees instead. Same with China. It's only after they started liberalising their markets, they started growing.
We need to use science and technology to find a solution for global warming. Shifting the entire economic system is not the way forward.
I'm not a proponent of socialism. And I agree with a lot of what you say.
Effective state ownership of industry and food production doesn't have to equal famine.
I understand that the current system has allowed us to move forward and there is less of a gap between rich and poor than there has been throughout much of history.
Personally, I think we're taking backward steps at the moment. What's going on in the US with women's rights. Brexit. Truss saying she will slash all the rights we have that were brought into law via the EU. Etc etc. Those are just a couple of examples.
But the main point, while our government works for corporations more than it works for the people. We will only see token minimal efforts to tackle climate change.
It would be great if effective state ownership of industry happens. But the idea has been debunked both in theory and practice. Supply demand pricing model works much better in reacting to changes. When there is shortage of a particular resource, its price goes up thereby telling consumers to be careful with its usage. If the same thing is run by government, they have to think about their upcoming elections before doing the right thing. There is also this question of where to allocate a resource, something which free markets do fluidly but governments handle poorly because elections happen once every 5 years and they can get away with doing something that sounds great in words but reflects poorly on the economy.
Capitalism is flawed. I don't deny that at all. The government has to interfere with the right regulations once in awhile.
I agree with the US going backwards on social ideals. Trump victory is going to have a long lasting impact. It will take quite sometime for things to return to normalcy there.
As for Brexit, it could work well in the right hands. But people were misled with the benefits of it when the real benefits lies elsewhere.
Agree with government working for corporations. Political parties should never get funding from corporations. Don't know why it's still a thing.
I agree with everything, except I think state ownership can work.
NHS if properly managed.
Rail networks and trains would work too.
Statoil.
There's a lot of instances that it can work. I think it's appropriate for some services and industries that work in the interests of the population, instead of working for shareholder profit.
I certainly don't think it works as a blanket solution for everything.
That's where we disagree on. In my view, the moment you have a really large population, government run services fail to scale efficiently. But I do like the idea of NHS simply because in spite of its inefficiencies, it's important to give free at point healthcare for moral reasons.
I have been on and off on private ownership of transport services. Switzerland which is the best in Europe when it comes to transport has public ownership while the privately owned services in UK eat a lot of money in both subsidies and ticket prices. The Swiss do invest a lot of tax money on it. Theirs is known to be much better still. On the other hand, Japan's public transport is completely privatised and they seem to do really well. I wonder how they managed to do it right compared to UK.
Fair enough.
I guess I like the idea of public transport being provided as a paid for service by the government. To keep the country running well, it helps if people can move to work and other places easily. Once it's made private, non profitable routes get scrapped or with reduced service leaving people stuck.
I think we agreed on the government not being run by political parties being sponsored by corporations. To my mind, this is a barrier to bringing in greener policies, as they would likely be detrimental to said corporations profits, in the short term anyway." | |||
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"I agree they started with the intent of being socialist, I just disagree that the country everyone thinks of when they think the USSR was in fact socialist. It was an Oligarchy But that's the whole problem with socialism - it has to work with humans, and humans are lazy, greedy, and vain. As soon as a lazy person gets a chance to slack off, they will. Meaning that discontent spreads through the others that have to take up the slack. As soon as a greedy person gets a chance to take something, they will. Meaning that stuff doesn't get distributed evenly. As soon as a vain person gets a chance to gain status, they take it. Meaning that the rulers will always be those that want to be seen to be better than others. That's why socialist countries always slowly devolve into oligarchies or dictatorships. And every time socialists get upset and say "well, it wasn't proper socialism". Socialist countries do not develop into oligarchies or dictatorships. That's just plain wrong. Socialist countries are however ruthlessly attacked by capitalist countries and are constantly in a state of potential coups and unrest, this is often why they have to become authoritarian. A perfect example being Cuba under castro which has been constantly attacked by imperialist forces of the United States Also you don't understand the nature of socialist economies, its nothing to do with slacking and everything to do with efficiency and rationality in the workplace.. If you think socialists are lazy I would like you to compare the work effort of a soviet labourer under stalin with a work labourer under thatcher. You would be shocked at the difference in both attitude and endeavour. " Socialist governments turning into dictatorship or oligarchy has a lot to do with how the socialist government was established. If you are taking a country where individuals owned production means and want to convert it into socialist model, you obviously need a strong army to take away the means of productions from the individuals. The power of such an army leads to tyranny in one form or the other. The thing about rationality and efficiency is that what socialists want is completely different from what they end up achieving. It usually boils down to a matter of incentives. In a free market, if an employee doesn't work well, the company will take action on the employee. Why does the company do that? If there are enough number of slackers, it will be eaten alive by the competition. In case of government run businesses, there is no such incentive. If there is no democracy, they don't care at all. If there is democracy, an election is only once every five years and people can be easily deceived by other things. Growing up in a country with plenty of public owned services which are now privatised, I have seen people abhor having to interact with public service employees. These things are usually brushed aside as socialism wasn't implemented properly. Another example that applies more to communism but a little bit to socialism too. I have lived in three apartment buildings so far in UK and India where they began by having shared Water bill. Inevitably, all three had concerns around excessive usage and then they had to install water meters. One hand, there are nefarious people who waste water intentionally. On another hand, there are people who wouldn't care enough to fix a leaking tap in a house just because the impact doesn't show proportionally on their water bill. These ideas usually work in a group of 10 people. If you even have a group of over 100 people, you will see the greedy and selfish ones starting to get away with everything. Then there is a whole chapter on how the economy reacts to change in supply/demand. Free markets react by communicating well through supply/demand pricing. Socialist economies don't react at all. This leads to a really inefficient economy that leads to famines. | |||
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"I agree they started with the intent of being socialist, I just disagree that the country everyone thinks of when they think the USSR was in fact socialist. It was an Oligarchy But that's the whole problem with socialism - it has to work with humans, and humans are lazy, greedy, and vain. As soon as a lazy person gets a chance to slack off, they will. Meaning that discontent spreads through the others that have to take up the slack. As soon as a greedy person gets a chance to take something, they will. Meaning that stuff doesn't get distributed evenly. As soon as a vain person gets a chance to gain status, they take it. Meaning that the rulers will always be those that want to be seen to be better than others. That's why socialist countries always slowly devolve into oligarchies or dictatorships. And every time socialists get upset and say "well, it wasn't proper socialism". Socialist countries do not develop into oligarchies or dictatorships. That's just plain wrong. Socialist countries are however ruthlessly attacked by capitalist countries and are constantly in a state of potential coups and unrest, this is often why they have to become authoritarian. A perfect example being Cuba under castro which has been constantly attacked by imperialist forces of the United States Also you don't understand the nature of socialist economies, its nothing to do with slacking and everything to do with efficiency and rationality in the workplace.. If you think socialists are lazy I would like you to compare the work effort of a soviet labourer under stalin with a work labourer under thatcher. You would be shocked at the difference in both attitude and endeavour. Socialist governments turning into dictatorship or oligarchy has a lot to do with how the socialist government was established. If you are taking a country where individuals owned production means and want to convert it into socialist model, you obviously need a strong army to take away the means of productions from the individuals. The power of such an army leads to tyranny in one form or the other. The thing about rationality and efficiency is that what socialists want is completely different from what they end up achieving. It usually boils down to a matter of incentives. In a free market, if an employee doesn't work well, the company will take action on the employee. Why does the company do that? If there are enough number of slackers, it will be eaten alive by the competition. In case of government run businesses, there is no such incentive. If there is no democracy, they don't care at all. If there is democracy, an election is only once every five years and people can be easily deceived by other things. Growing up in a country with plenty of public owned services which are now privatised, I have seen people abhor having to interact with public service employees. These things are usually brushed aside as socialism wasn't implemented properly. Another example that applies more to communism but a little bit to socialism too. I have lived in three apartment buildings so far in UK and India where they began by having shared Water bill. Inevitably, all three had concerns around excessive usage and then they had to install water meters. One hand, there are nefarious people who waste water intentionally. On another hand, there are people who wouldn't care enough to fix a leaking tap in a house just because the impact doesn't show proportionally on their water bill. These ideas usually work in a group of 10 people. If you even have a group of over 100 people, you will see the greedy and selfish ones starting to get away with everything. Then there is a whole chapter on how the economy reacts to change in supply/demand. Free markets react by communicating well through supply/demand pricing. Socialist economies don't react at all. This leads to a really inefficient economy that leads to famines. " The soviet economy was a model of efficiency as is the current Chinese economy. In terms of incentive Russia webt from a third world feudal economy in 1900 to the power house of industry and scientific progress by 1960 including pioneering space flight. Their economic growth has only been surpassed by the Chinese who under communism is now set to become the world's leading economy. Free market economies caused the great depression of 1929, and a boom and bust cycle of recession ever since including the 2007 2008 financial crash.it has also led to the greatest wealth inequality in the United States which was last seen in the days of the pharaohs of Egypt. | |||
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" The soviet economy was a model of efficiency as is the current Chinese economy. In terms of incentive Russia webt from a third world feudal economy in 1900 to the power house of industry and scientific progress by 1960 including pioneering space flight. Their economic growth has only been surpassed by the Chinese who under communism is now set to become the world's leading economy. Free market economies caused the great depression of 1929, and a boom and bust cycle of recession ever since including the 2007 2008 financial crash.it has also led to the greatest wealth inequality in the United States which was last seen in the days of the pharaohs of Egypt. " The Soviet economy was far from being efficient. The only reason they survived that long was their oil reserves that made it affordable to be inefficient. A famine caused the death of about 5 to 8 million people. How is that efficient? Finally the moment oil prices crashed, their economy went into pieces. China became a superpower only after they allowed free markets to operate in the country. When things get worse for one reason or another, recessions happen. But under the same circumstances, a capitalist economy will perform way better than a socialist one. There is also the question of what caused the recession. If a recession happens now, capitalism is not to blame. It's just down to Putin. The great depression could probably be blamed on capitalism itself. Even when a recession happens, it usually leads to a reduction in standard of living for a few years after which the economy recovers. Compare that to socialism that causes death of millions when shit hits the fan. | |||
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" The soviet economy was a model of efficiency as is the current Chinese economy. In terms of incentive Russia webt from a third world feudal economy in 1900 to the power house of industry and scientific progress by 1960 including pioneering space flight. Their economic growth has only been surpassed by the Chinese who under communism is now set to become the world's leading economy. Free market economies caused the great depression of 1929, and a boom and bust cycle of recession ever since including the 2007 2008 financial crash.it has also led to the greatest wealth inequality in the United States which was last seen in the days of the pharaohs of Egypt. The Soviet economy was far from being efficient. The only reason they survived that long was their oil reserves that made it affordable to be inefficient. A famine caused the death of about 5 to 8 million people. How is that efficient? Finally the moment oil prices crashed, their economy went into pieces. China became a superpower only after they allowed free markets to operate in the country. When things get worse for one reason or another, recessions happen. But under the same circumstances, a capitalist economy will perform way better than a socialist one. There is also the question of what caused the recession. If a recession happens now, capitalism is not to blame. It's just down to Putin. The great depression could probably be blamed on capitalism itself. Even when a recession happens, it usually leads to a reduction in standard of living for a few years after which the economy recovers. Compare that to socialism that causes death of millions when shit hits the fan." Famines have always happened in Russia, it was only under the socialist programme of agricultural modernisation that famines stopped. Socialism in Russia and China improved the lives of all its citizens, they revolutionised the countries and turned them into super powers. Socialist countries always ride recessions better than Western economies, that's an economic fact as shown in how China bounced back from the financial crash of 2007. China is a socialist country, the ruling party is the communist party and they employ Marxist/leninist/maoist ideology. They are not capitalists yet they work with other capitalist countries so they have to be flexible. Recessions are a natural party of any economy, depressions are not, they are however a feature of all modern capitalist systems which have reached a monopoly stage as are wars and conflict. | |||
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"...you don't understand the nature of socialist economies, its nothing to do with slacking and everything to do with efficiency and rationality in the workplace. If you think socialists are lazy ..." You misunderstand me. I'm not saying that all socialists are lazy, greedy, and vain. On the contrary, a worker that isn't being exploited is much more likely to be happy, to put in the extra effort to make things work, and to be content with his lot. What I am saying that some of them are lazy, some of them are greedy, and some of them are vain. Even if it's only a small percentage of the population, those people start to ruin it for all the others. And once the system starts putting controls in place to make sure that the bad apples don't bring down the system, it all turns into an authoritarian nightmare. | |||
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" Famines have always happened in Russia, it was only under the socialist programme of agricultural modernisation that famines stopped. Socialism in Russia and China improved the lives of all its citizens, they revolutionised the countries and turned them into super powers. Socialist countries always ride recessions better than Western economies, that's an economic fact as shown in how China bounced back from the financial crash of 2007. China is a socialist country, the ruling party is the communist party and they employ Marxist/leninist/maoist ideology. They are not capitalists yet they work with other capitalist countries so they have to be flexible. Recessions are a natural party of any economy, depressions are not, they are however a feature of all modern capitalist systems which have reached a monopoly stage as are wars and conflict. " I just checked. The most serious crisis of 19th century Russia was in 1891 when about 375K to 500K people lost their lives. Then the 1920s famine took 5 million lives. The 1932 famine which was the result of push of collectivised farming resulted in an estimated 8 million deaths. I don't know what you mean by situation being bad and the Soviets somehow making the situation better
Mao implementated Marxist Leninist ideology in China. Again, this resulted in deaths of millions of people. Recent leaders of CCP party have moved on to privatise many sectors.
Even during the great depression, the mortality rate in countries affected were same as previous years. I don't know how anyone can even compare the tens of millions of deaths to the impact of recessions.
Anyway, I leave it there. The thread has already derailed from global warming debate to socialism vs capitalism debate. | |||
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"I’m not qualified enough to say if the current record heatwave is caused by global warming, but I’m worried that most of the record temperatures have happened in the last 20 years. I’ve tried to do my little bit for the environment by not using a car, not flying for the last 22 years but I feel that it won’t make any difference because some countries aren’t doing enough to take the issue seriously. Capitalism" And how does China’s emissions fit in to that theory... .  | |||
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". The largest cause of climate change is the burning of fossil fuels - and it's only humans that do that. So, it's us. The. So nothing to do with nature, volcanoes, lightening strikes causing huge forest fires, that's good to know
Correct. These natural phenomenon have been occurring before humans existed and the climate was stable.
"wrong... there have been may times where natural incidents have effected the climate considerably. We are one major eruption away from major change at any time | |||
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". The largest cause of climate change is the burning of fossil fuels - and it's only humans that do that. So, it's us. The. So nothing to do with nature, volcanoes, lightening strikes causing huge forest fires, that's good to know
Correct. These natural phenomenon have been occurring before humans existed and the climate was stable.
wrong... there have been may times where natural incidents have effected the climate considerably. We are one major eruption away from major change at any time "Okay, short term impacts from natural disasters. But we're talking long term permanent climate trends. In any case, no eruption can be blamed for the increase in CO2 and subsequent increase in average global temperature since the start of the industrial revolution. | |||
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". The largest cause of climate change is the burning of fossil fuels - and it's only humans that do that. So, it's us. The. So nothing to do with nature, volcanoes, lightening strikes causing huge forest fires, that's good to know
Correct. These natural phenomenon have been occurring before humans existed and the climate was stable.
wrong... there have been may times where natural incidents have effected the climate considerably. We are one major eruption away from major change at any time
Okay, short term impacts from natural disasters.
But we're talking long term permanent climate trends.
In any case, no eruption can be blamed for the increase in CO2 and subsequent increase in average global temperature since the start of the industrial revolution."I admire your persistence. To be fair, giving up explaining isn't an option. | |||
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". The largest cause of climate change is the burning of fossil fuels - and it's only humans that do that. So, it's us. The. So nothing to do with nature, volcanoes, lightening strikes causing huge forest fires, that's good to know
Correct. These natural phenomenon have been occurring before humans existed and the climate was stable.
wrong... there have been may times where natural incidents have effected the climate considerably. We are one major eruption away from major change at any time
Okay, short term impacts from natural disasters.
But we're talking long term permanent climate trends.
In any case, no eruption can be blamed for the increase in CO2 and subsequent increase in average global temperature since the start of the industrial revolution.
I admire your persistence. To be fair, giving up explaining isn't an option."
I'm not sure why so many people are anti-science. We're getting like the US. | |||
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" Famines have always happened in Russia, it was only under the socialist programme of agricultural modernisation that famines stopped. Socialism in Russia and China improved the lives of all its citizens, they revolutionised the countries and turned them into super powers. Socialist countries always ride recessions better than Western economies, that's an economic fact as shown in how China bounced back from the financial crash of 2007. China is a socialist country, the ruling party is the communist party and they employ Marxist/leninist/maoist ideology. They are not capitalists yet they work with other capitalist countries so they have to be flexible. Recessions are a natural party of any economy, depressions are not, they are however a feature of all modern capitalist systems which have reached a monopoly stage as are wars and conflict. I just checked. The most serious crisis of 19th century Russia was in 1891 when about 375K to 500K people lost their lives. Then the 1920s famine took 5 million lives. The 1932 famine which was the result of push of collectivised farming resulted in an estimated 8 million deaths. I don't know what you mean by situation being bad and the Soviets somehow making the situation better
Mao implementated Marxist Leninist ideology in China. Again, this resulted in deaths of millions of people. Recent leaders of CCP party have moved on to privatise many sectors.
Even during the great depression, the mortality rate in countries affected were same as previous years. I don't know how anyone can even compare the tens of millions of deaths to the impact of recessions.
Anyway, I leave it there. The thread has already derailed from global warming debate to socialism vs capitalism debate."You have no idea at all about life in pre revolutionary Russia. Zero notion. I'm of Russian heritage, I can tell you now that the communists improved life dramatically for ordinary people my grandfather said it was like jumping five centuries in one generation. You have no idea what it means to go from living in a hovel at the mercy of the Russian winters, no health care or education to living in modern housing, with education, modern farming and access to all the features of modern society. This was life under stalin. Who is regarded as a hero by Russian people. | |||
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" Famines have always happened in Russia, it was only under the socialist programme of agricultural modernisation that famines stopped. Socialism in Russia and China improved the lives of all its citizens, they revolutionised the countries and turned them into super powers. Socialist countries always ride recessions better than Western economies, that's an economic fact as shown in how China bounced back from the financial crash of 2007. China is a socialist country, the ruling party is the communist party and they employ Marxist/leninist/maoist ideology. They are not capitalists yet they work with other capitalist countries so they have to be flexible. Recessions are a natural party of any economy, depressions are not, they are however a feature of all modern capitalist systems which have reached a monopoly stage as are wars and conflict. I just checked. The most serious crisis of 19th century Russia was in 1891 when about 375K to 500K people lost their lives. Then the 1920s famine took 5 million lives. The 1932 famine which was the result of push of collectivised farming resulted in an estimated 8 million deaths. I don't know what you mean by situation being bad and the Soviets somehow making the situation better
Mao implementated Marxist Leninist ideology in China. Again, this resulted in deaths of millions of people. Recent leaders of CCP party have moved on to privatise many sectors.
Even during the great depression, the mortality rate in countries affected were same as previous years. I don't know how anyone can even compare the tens of millions of deaths to the impact of recessions.
Anyway, I leave it there. The thread has already derailed from global warming debate to socialism vs capitalism debate.
You have no idea at all about life in pre revolutionary Russia. Zero notion. I'm of Russian heritage, I can tell you now that the communists improved life dramatically for ordinary people my grandfather said it was like jumping five centuries in one generation. You have no idea what it means to go from living in a hovel at the mercy of the Russian winters, no health care or education to living in modern housing, with education, modern farming and access to all the features of modern society. This was life under stalin. Who is regarded as a hero by Russian people. "But they seem to have gone backwards since then. Other than Moscow and St Petersburg- seriously third world. Can’t even make a fridge that anyone wants to buy. High ownership of obscene super yachts though. | |||
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"I’m not qualified enough to say if the current record heatwave is caused by global warming, but I’m worried that most of the record temperatures have happened in the last 20 years. I’ve tried to do my little bit for the environment by not using a car, not flying for the last 22 years but I feel that it won’t make any difference because some countries aren’t doing enough to take the issue seriously. Capitalism And how does China’s emissions fit in to that theory... . "Would you rather China live in the medieval period? And us westerners continue to live in the modern era? China is moving on to become a world super power, why should it reduce emissions due to the west not cutting back its own emissions and polluting the world for a hundred years? That's not the fault of China. I belueve China will address its emissions once it has achieved its economic transition. Then it will radically reduce as unlike the United States it is not corrupted by thd fossil fuel industry | |||
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" Famines have always happened in Russia, it was only under the socialist programme of agricultural modernisation that famines stopped. Socialism in Russia and China improved the lives of all its citizens, they revolutionised the countries and turned them into super powers. Socialist countries always ride recessions better than Western economies, that's an economic fact as shown in how China bounced back from the financial crash of 2007. China is a socialist country, the ruling party is the communist party and they employ Marxist/leninist/maoist ideology. They are not capitalists yet they work with other capitalist countries so they have to be flexible. Recessions are a natural party of any economy, depressions are not, they are however a feature of all modern capitalist systems which have reached a monopoly stage as are wars and conflict. I just checked. The most serious crisis of 19th century Russia was in 1891 when about 375K to 500K people lost their lives. Then the 1920s famine took 5 million lives. The 1932 famine which was the result of push of collectivised farming resulted in an estimated 8 million deaths. I don't know what you mean by situation being bad and the Soviets somehow making the situation better
Mao implementated Marxist Leninist ideology in China. Again, this resulted in deaths of millions of people. Recent leaders of CCP party have moved on to privatise many sectors.
Even during the great depression, the mortality rate in countries affected were same as previous years. I don't know how anyone can even compare the tens of millions of deaths to the impact of recessions.
Anyway, I leave it there. The thread has already derailed from global warming debate to socialism vs capitalism debate.
You have no idea at all about life in pre revolutionary Russia. Zero notion. I'm of Russian heritage, I can tell you now that the communists improved life dramatically for ordinary people my grandfather said it was like jumping five centuries in one generation. You have no idea what it means to go from living in a hovel at the mercy of the Russian winters, no health care or education to living in modern housing, with education, modern farming and access to all the features of modern society. This was life under stalin. Who is regarded as a hero by Russian people. "Stalin? Hero?
I have heard opposite opinions from the Russian people I know. I just showed you how many millions died of famine during the communist rule. Of course, you won't want to talk about that. | |||
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" Famines have always happened in Russia, it was only under the socialist programme of agricultural modernisation that famines stopped. Socialism in Russia and China improved the lives of all its citizens, they revolutionised the countries and turned them into super powers. Socialist countries always ride recessions better than Western economies, that's an economic fact as shown in how China bounced back from the financial crash of 2007. China is a socialist country, the ruling party is the communist party and they employ Marxist/leninist/maoist ideology. They are not capitalists yet they work with other capitalist countries so they have to be flexible. Recessions are a natural party of any economy, depressions are not, they are however a feature of all modern capitalist systems which have reached a monopoly stage as are wars and conflict. I just checked. The most serious crisis of 19th century Russia was in 1891 when about 375K to 500K people lost their lives. Then the 1920s famine took 5 million lives. The 1932 famine which was the result of push of collectivised farming resulted in an estimated 8 million deaths. I don't know what you mean by situation being bad and the Soviets somehow making the situation better
Mao implementated Marxist Leninist ideology in China. Again, this resulted in deaths of millions of people. Recent leaders of CCP party have moved on to privatise many sectors.
Even during the great depression, the mortality rate in countries affected were same as previous years. I don't know how anyone can even compare the tens of millions of deaths to the impact of recessions.
Anyway, I leave it there. The thread has already derailed from global warming debate to socialism vs capitalism debate.
You have no idea at all about life in pre revolutionary Russia. Zero notion. I'm of Russian heritage, I can tell you now that the communists improved life dramatically for ordinary people my grandfather said it was like jumping five centuries in one generation. You have no idea what it means to go from living in a hovel at the mercy of the Russian winters, no health care or education to living in modern housing, with education, modern farming and access to all the features of modern society. This was life under stalin. Who is regarded as a hero by Russian people.
But they seem to have gone backwards since then. Other than Moscow and St Petersburg- seriously third world. Can’t even make a fridge that anyone wants to buy. High ownership of obscene super yachts though. "They were a victim of Western capitalism in the 1990s,see the shock doctrine, under Putin Russia is doing well, the economy is good and there is a good standard of living. Russians are not westerners, in my experience they are far more Conservative and traditional. Russia does have an affluent middle class, especially in the major cities but that is not representative of Russia as a whole | |||
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" Famines have always happened in Russia, it was only under the socialist programme of agricultural modernisation that famines stopped. Socialism in Russia and China improved the lives of all its citizens, they revolutionised the countries and turned them into super powers. Socialist countries always ride recessions better than Western economies, that's an economic fact as shown in how China bounced back from the financial crash of 2007. China is a socialist country, the ruling party is the communist party and they employ Marxist/leninist/maoist ideology. They are not capitalists yet they work with other capitalist countries so they have to be flexible. Recessions are a natural party of any economy, depressions are not, they are however a feature of all modern capitalist systems which have reached a monopoly stage as are wars and conflict. I just checked. The most serious crisis of 19th century Russia was in 1891 when about 375K to 500K people lost their lives. Then the 1920s famine took 5 million lives. The 1932 famine which was the result of push of collectivised farming resulted in an estimated 8 million deaths. I don't know what you mean by situation being bad and the Soviets somehow making the situation better
Mao implementated Marxist Leninist ideology in China. Again, this resulted in deaths of millions of people. Recent leaders of CCP party have moved on to privatise many sectors.
Even during the great depression, the mortality rate in countries affected were same as previous years. I don't know how anyone can even compare the tens of millions of deaths to the impact of recessions.
Anyway, I leave it there. The thread has already derailed from global warming debate to socialism vs capitalism debate.
You have no idea at all about life in pre revolutionary Russia. Zero notion. I'm of Russian heritage, I can tell you now that the communists improved life dramatically for ordinary people my grandfather said it was like jumping five centuries in one generation. You have no idea what it means to go from living in a hovel at the mercy of the Russian winters, no health care or education to living in modern housing, with education, modern farming and access to all the features of modern society. This was life under stalin. Who is regarded as a hero by Russian people.
Stalin? Hero?
I have heard opposite opinions from the Russian people I know. I just showed you how many millions died of famine during the communist rule. Of course, you won't want to talk about that."Stalin is regarded as a hero by the majority of Russian people, especially the older generation. I would say stalin is regarded by Russians as Churchill is by the English. Clearly not everyone is a fan of Churchill but the majority are. I'm happy to accept thd death of millions in famines, famines are a part of Russian life, millions died in famines throughout the history of Russia. Something which westerners cannot get their heads around. Russians did not have modern farming tools and had the harshest weather, when a Russian broke his leg, he had no access to a doctor, when his wife had a miscarriage she died. This was life for Russians, nobody could read or write, Russian peasant girls worked in the fields at the age of eight, and often died through malnutrition. Russias peasants were in a constant state of starvation. There was no education , just the church and landlords were like tyrants . You have no idea how backward and repressed Russian people were before the 1920s. Stalin and Lenin modernised the country. In doing so there were hardships but that is because they transformed the land. In doing so they stopped famines entirely, modern tractors now replaced children in back breaking work. | |||
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". The largest cause of climate change is the burning of fossil fuels - and it's only humans that do that. So, it's us. The. So nothing to do with nature, volcanoes, lightening strikes causing huge forest fires, that's good to know
Correct. These natural phenomenon have been occurring before humans existed and the climate was stable.
wrong... there have been may times where natural incidents have effected the climate considerably. We are one major eruption away from major change at any time
Okay, short term impacts from natural disasters.
But we're talking long term permanent climate trends.
In any case, no eruption can be blamed for the increase in CO2 and subsequent increase in average global temperature since the start of the industrial revolution."so what about all the other times the earth has warmed itself up before that...??? | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
". The largest cause of climate change is the burning of fossil fuels - and it's only humans that do that. So, it's us. The. So nothing to do with nature, volcanoes, lightening strikes causing huge forest fires, that's good to know
Correct. These natural phenomenon have been occurring before humans existed and the climate was stable.
wrong... there have been may times where natural incidents have effected the climate considerably. We are one major eruption away from major change at any time
Okay, short term impacts from natural disasters.
But we're talking long term permanent climate trends.
In any case, no eruption can be blamed for the increase in CO2 and subsequent increase in average global temperature since the start of the industrial revolution. so what about all the other times the earth has warmed itself up before that...??? "Over geological timescales? Yes that was the natural cycles. | |||
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" Famines have always happened in Russia, it was only under the socialist programme of agricultural modernisation that famines stopped. Socialism in Russia and China improved the lives of all its citizens, they revolutionised the countries and turned them into super powers. Socialist countries always ride recessions better than Western economies, that's an economic fact as shown in how China bounced back from the financial crash of 2007. China is a socialist country, the ruling party is the communist party and they employ Marxist/leninist/maoist ideology. They are not capitalists yet they work with other capitalist countries so they have to be flexible. Recessions are a natural party of any economy, depressions are not, they are however a feature of all modern capitalist systems which have reached a monopoly stage as are wars and conflict. I just checked. The most serious crisis of 19th century Russia was in 1891 when about 375K to 500K people lost their lives. Then the 1920s famine took 5 million lives. The 1932 famine which was the result of push of collectivised farming resulted in an estimated 8 million deaths. I don't know what you mean by situation being bad and the Soviets somehow making the situation better
Mao implementated Marxist Leninist ideology in China. Again, this resulted in deaths of millions of people. Recent leaders of CCP party have moved on to privatise many sectors.
Even during the great depression, the mortality rate in countries affected were same as previous years. I don't know how anyone can even compare the tens of millions of deaths to the impact of recessions.
Anyway, I leave it there. The thread has already derailed from global warming debate to socialism vs capitalism debate.
You have no idea at all about life in pre revolutionary Russia. Zero notion. I'm of Russian heritage, I can tell you now that the communists improved life dramatically for ordinary people my grandfather said it was like jumping five centuries in one generation. You have no idea what it means to go from living in a hovel at the mercy of the Russian winters, no health care or education to living in modern housing, with education, modern farming and access to all the features of modern society. This was life under stalin. Who is regarded as a hero by Russian people.
Stalin? Hero?
I have heard opposite opinions from the Russian people I know. I just showed you how many millions died of famine during the communist rule. Of course, you won't want to talk about that.
Stalin is regarded as a hero by the majority of Russian people, especially the older generation. I would say stalin is regarded by Russians as Churchill is by the English. Clearly not everyone is a fan of Churchill but the majority are.
I'm happy to accept thd death of millions in famines, famines are a part of Russian life, millions died in famines throughout the history of Russia. Something which westerners cannot get their heads around. Russians did not have modern farming tools and had the harshest weather, when a Russian broke his leg, he had no access to a doctor, when his wife had a miscarriage she died. This was life for Russians, nobody could read or write, Russian peasant girls worked in the fields at the age of eight, and often died through malnutrition. Russias peasants were in a constant state of starvation. There was no education , just the church and landlords were like tyrants . You have no idea how backward and repressed Russian people were before the 1920s.
Stalin and Lenin modernised the country. In doing so there were hardships but that is because they transformed the land. In doing so they stopped famines entirely, modern tractors now replaced children in back breaking work.
"From what I know, life before socialism was also bad. But the number of people who died during that period because of bad governance was much less compared to the ones who died due to socialism. The worst famine killed less than 500K people. As for technology, rest of the world developed the same without having to go through as many deaths. The great depression was nothing compared to the famines in Russia. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
" From what I know, life before socialism was also bad. But the number of people who died during that period because of bad governance was much less compared to the ones who died due to socialism. The worst famine killed less than 500K people. As for technology, rest of the world developed the same without having to go through as many deaths. The great depression was nothing compared to the famines in Russia." I dont know if you are being stupid on purpose or if you genuinely struggle to grasp historical concepts... I will repeat that famines were a regular part of Russian life, they happened every ten years or so and were a regular feature of the hardship of Russian life, as well as lots of other factors such as no health or education . The communists eradicated that, after the land reforms there were no more famines because they modernised farming. Get that into your thick head. Do not dare to compare a banking crisis with the end of feudal serfdom you complete idiot. It seems you just hate the concept that a country can adapt to a communist system. It's based on your own ignorance and fears. You ever visit Russia they will tell you in straight talk what I am struggling to get over to you .... Russia won the second world wAr, invented space travel, pionerreed women's rights,modernised the country, houses the people, the people are immensely proud of the achievements of communism and stalin is revered as a hero of the people. You start mouthing off to them that somehow the west is better then you will simply embarrass yourself and they will laugh at you and call you a puppet of the US imperialists and tell you to go listen to your American rock music. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
" From what I know, life before socialism was also bad. But the number of people who died during that period because of bad governance was much less compared to the ones who died due to socialism. The worst famine killed less than 500K people. As for technology, rest of the world developed the same without having to go through as many deaths. The great depression was nothing compared to the famines in Russia. I dont know if you are being stupid on purpose or if you genuinely struggle to grasp historical concepts... I will repeat that famines were a regular part of Russian life, they happened every ten years or so and were a regular feature of the hardship of Russian life, as well as lots of other factors such as no health or education . The communists eradicated that, after the land reforms there were no more famines because they modernised farming. Get that into your thick head. Do not dare to compare a banking crisis with the end of feudal serfdom you complete idiot. It seems you just hate the concept that a country can adapt to a communist system. It's based on your own ignorance and fears. You ever visit Russia they will tell you in straight talk what I am struggling to get over to you .... Russia won the second world wAr, invented space travel, pionerreed women's rights,modernised the country, houses the people, the people are immensely proud of the achievements of communism and stalin is revered as a hero of the people. You start mouthing off to them that somehow the west is better then you will simply embarrass yourself and they will laugh at you and call you a puppet of the US imperialists and tell you to go listen to your American rock music. " I am talking with statistics. There isn't any statistic that supports your claim that famines were part of life or they were as bad as the ones happened during soviet regime. It's not as stupid as saying "My Russian grandfather tolf me...." Farming modernisation happened in western countries without having a military force it on people and taking away people's land. I never compared end of serfdom with banking crisis. I compared a banking crisis with millions of deaths due to famines and outright brutal killings. All the developments that you said happened in socialist regime, happened elsewhere, without depending on oil reserves that Russia had, without having a dictator. As for people revering Stalin, it's probably just your grandpa and his mates. What's your response? More personal abuse because you are incapable of having a serious debate? Is that what your grandpa taught you? Sounds pretty much the socialist way of doing things. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
" From what I know, life before socialism was also bad. But the number of people who died during that period because of bad governance was much less compared to the ones who died due to socialism. The worst famine killed less than 500K people. As for technology, rest of the world developed the same without having to go through as many deaths. The great depression was nothing compared to the famines in Russia. I dont know if you are being stupid on purpose or if you genuinely struggle to grasp historical concepts... I will repeat that famines were a regular part of Russian life, they happened every ten years or so and were a regular feature of the hardship of Russian life, as well as lots of other factors such as no health or education . The communists eradicated that, after the land reforms there were no more famines because they modernised farming. Get that into your thick head. Do not dare to compare a banking crisis with the end of feudal serfdom you complete idiot. It seems you just hate the concept that a country can adapt to a communist system. It's based on your own ignorance and fears. You ever visit Russia they will tell you in straight talk what I am struggling to get over to you .... Russia won the second world wAr, invented space travel, pionerreed women's rights,modernised the country, houses the people, the people are immensely proud of the achievements of communism and stalin is revered as a hero of the people. You start mouthing off to them that somehow the west is better then you will simply embarrass yourself and they will laugh at you and call you a puppet of the US imperialists and tell you to go listen to your American rock music. " It’s a corrupt hell hole. As soon as anyone there makes any money they move it and their family out. Plus, I don’t see anyone crossing continents and beating a path to live there. A brutal regime that has wiped out opposition. No wonder the likes of the Baltic countries and most of Eastern Europe escaped the nasty shackles as soon as they could. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
" From what I know, life before socialism was also bad. But the number of people who died during that period because of bad governance was much less compared to the ones who died due to socialism. The worst famine killed less than 500K people. As for technology, rest of the world developed the same without having to go through as many deaths. The great depression was nothing compared to the famines in Russia. I dont know if you are being stupid on purpose or if you genuinely struggle to grasp historical concepts... I will repeat that famines were a regular part of Russian life, they happened every ten years or so and were a regular feature of the hardship of Russian life, as well as lots of other factors such as no health or education . The communists eradicated that, after the land reforms there were no more famines because they modernised farming. Get that into your thick head. Do not dare to compare a banking crisis with the end of feudal serfdom you complete idiot. It seems you just hate the concept that a country can adapt to a communist system. It's based on your own ignorance and fears. You ever visit Russia they will tell you in straight talk what I am struggling to get over to you .... Russia won the second world wAr, invented space travel, pionerreed women's rights,modernised the country, houses the people, the people are immensely proud of the achievements of communism and stalin is revered as a hero of the people. You start mouthing off to them that somehow the west is better then you will simply embarrass yourself and they will laugh at you and call you a puppet of the US imperialists and tell you to go listen to your American rock music. I am talking with statistics. There isn't any statistic that supports your claim that famines were part of life or they were as bad as the ones happened during soviet regime. It's not as stupid as saying "My Russian grandfather tolf me...." Farming modernisation happened in western countries without having a military force it on people and taking away people's land. I never compared end of serfdom with banking crisis. I compared a banking crisis with millions of deaths due to famines and outright brutal killings. All the developments that you said happened in socialist regime, happened elsewhere, without depending on oil reserves that Russia had, without having a dictator. As for people revering Stalin, it's probably just your grandpa and his mates. What's your response? More personal abuse because you are incapable of having a serious debate? Is that what your grandpa taught you? Sounds pretty much the socialist way of doing things." My response is that you have no idea what you are talking about. However this is common in the west when it comes to Russian history and in fact contemporary politics of Russia. Firstly famines were a regular part of Russian life, that's a fact. Not made up, a fact. Look it up. Secondly I'm not denying the deaths or famine in the early communist era. I accept that these occurred. I've explained to you why they occurred and how the Russians modernised farming. If you want to hate stalin that's up to you but dont say that Russians hate stalin, they don't. That's a fact. No western country had serfdom in 1917. There is no comparison between the Russian peasantry of 1917 with a farmer in England, France, Germany or the USA in 1917.Russia under the Tsars was a country frozen in the past. Developments in agriculture took place in the west from the elizabethan era with a slow steady pace. And yes farms were seized look at the enclosure acts of England and the highland clearances in Scotland. In autocratic tsarist Russia that simply did not happen. Oil was completely irrelevant. Russia was faced by the nazi party who (under the capitalist system) intended to murder every slav and occupy the land. Russia not only modernised to meet this threat but they defeated the Nazis. You want to talk about famines then look at the Irish potato famine, a famine which was encouraged by Britain and almost led to Irish genocide, but for their flight from the country. That happened under the watch of the principal capitalist nation. Talk to any Irish person that the Irish potato famine was nothing to worry about. As for brutal killings how many wars has America engaged in since ww2, how many deaths, how many killings. What did the United States do to its native American Indian population? So don't talk about brutal killings. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
" are immensely proud of the achievements of communism and stalin is revered as a hero of the people. You start mouthing off to them that somehow the west is better then you will simply embarrass yourself and they will laugh at you and call you a puppet of the US imperialists and tell you to go listen to your American rock music. It’s a corrupt hell hole. As soon as anyone there makes any money they move it and their family out. Plus, I don’t see anyone crossing continents and beating a path to live there. A brutal regime that has wiped out opposition. No wonder the likes of the Baltic countries and most of Eastern Europe escaped the nasty shackles as soon as they could. " I dont mean to sound rude but you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. If you want to talk about corruption then look at the role of the Americans in the baltic countries and in Ukraine. Look at hunter Biden. But I will leave you to your American cold War propaganda and Russiaphobia. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
" From what I know, life before socialism was also bad. But the number of people who died during that period because of bad governance was much less compared to the ones who died due to socialism. The worst famine killed less than 500K people. As for technology, rest of the world developed the same without having to go through as many deaths. The great depression was nothing compared to the famines in Russia. I dont know if you are being stupid on purpose or if you genuinely struggle to grasp historical concepts... I will repeat that famines were a regular part of Russian life, they happened every ten years or so and were a regular feature of the hardship of Russian life, as well as lots of other factors such as no health or education . The communists eradicated that, after the land reforms there were no more famines because they modernised farming. Get that into your thick head. Do not dare to compare a banking crisis with the end of feudal serfdom you complete idiot. It seems you just hate the concept that a country can adapt to a communist system. It's based on your own ignorance and fears. You ever visit Russia they will tell you in straight talk what I am struggling to get over to you .... Russia won the second world wAr, invented space travel, pionerreed women's rights,modernised the country, houses the people, the people are immensely proud of the achievements of communism and stalin is revered as a hero of the people. You start mouthing off to them that somehow the west is better then you will simply embarrass yourself and they will laugh at you and call you a puppet of the US imperialists and tell you to go listen to your American rock music. I am talking with statistics. There isn't any statistic that supports your claim that famines were part of life or they were as bad as the ones happened during soviet regime. It's not as stupid as saying "My Russian grandfather tolf me...." Farming modernisation happened in western countries without having a military force it on people and taking away people's land. I never compared end of serfdom with banking crisis. I compared a banking crisis with millions of deaths due to famines and outright brutal killings. All the developments that you said happened in socialist regime, happened elsewhere, without depending on oil reserves that Russia had, without having a dictator. As for people revering Stalin, it's probably just your grandpa and his mates. What's your response? More personal abuse because you are incapable of having a serious debate? Is that what your grandpa taught you? Sounds pretty much the socialist way of doing things. My response is that you have no idea what you are talking about. However this is common in the west when it comes to Russian history and in fact contemporary politics of Russia. Firstly famines were a regular part of Russian life, that's a fact. Not made up, a fact. Look it up. Secondly I'm not denying the deaths or famine in the early communist era. I accept that these occurred. I've explained to you why they occurred and how the Russians modernised farming. If you want to hate stalin that's up to you but dont say that Russians hate stalin, they don't. That's a fact. No western country had serfdom in 1917. There is no comparison between the Russian peasantry of 1917 with a farmer in England, France, Germany or the USA in 1917.Russia under the Tsars was a country frozen in the past. Developments in agriculture took place in the west from the elizabethan era with a slow steady pace. And yes farms were seized look at the enclosure acts of England and the highland clearances in Scotland. In autocratic tsarist Russia that simply did not happen. Oil was completely irrelevant. Russia was faced by the nazi party who (under the capitalist system) intended to murder every slav and occupy the land. Russia not only modernised to meet this threat but they defeated the Nazis. You want to talk about famines then look at the Irish potato famine, a famine which was encouraged by Britain and almost led to Irish genocide, but for their flight from the country. That happened under the watch of the principal capitalist nation. Talk to any Irish person that the Irish potato famine was nothing to worry about. As for brutal killings how many wars has America engaged in since ww2, how many deaths, how many killings. What did the United States do to its native American Indian population? So don't talk about brutal killings. " What happened during imperialism was bad. Wanting to expand and build empires was a common goal for all leaders around that time. It's not like the socialist government did not want to do it with the neighbouring countries. I don't justify serfdom. But in the process of moving on from serfdom, if Russia had become a liberal democracy with free markets instead of a socialist dictatorship, the country would have probably built an economy stronger than America or China of the current day given all its natural resources. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
"I’m not qualified enough to say if the current record heatwave is caused by global warming, but I’m worried that most of the record temperatures have happened in the last 20 years. I’ve tried to do my little bit for the environment by not using a car, not flying for the last 22 years but I feel that it won’t make any difference because some countries aren’t doing enough to take the issue seriously. Capitalism And how does China’s emissions fit in to that theory... .
Would you rather China live in the medieval period? And us westerners continue to live in the modern era? China is moving on to become a world super power, why should it reduce emissions due to the west not cutting back its own emissions and polluting the world for a hundred years? That's not the fault of China. I belueve China will address its emissions once it has achieved its economic transition. Then it will radically reduce as unlike the United States it is not corrupted by thd fossil fuel industry "My point was China is communist not capitalist | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
" are immensely proud of the achievements of communism and stalin is revered as a hero of the people. You start mouthing off to them that somehow the west is better then you will simply embarrass yourself and they will laugh at you and call you a puppet of the US imperialists and tell you to go listen to your American rock music. It’s a corrupt hell hole. As soon as anyone there makes any money they move it and their family out. Plus, I don’t see anyone crossing continents and beating a path to live there. A brutal regime that has wiped out opposition. No wonder the likes of the Baltic countries and most of Eastern Europe escaped the nasty shackles as soon as they could. I dont mean to sound rude but you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. If you want to talk about corruption then look at the role of the Americans in the baltic countries and in Ukraine. Look at hunter Biden. But I will leave you to your American cold War propaganda and Russiaphobia. " If you had to choose - where would you rather live - Russia or America? I’m no real fan of the USA by the way and I have been to Russia. I’ve also visited every country in Europe except Belarus. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
" are immensely proud of the achievements of communism and stalin is revered as a hero of the people. You start mouthing off to them that somehow the west is better then you will simply embarrass yourself and they will laugh at you and call you a puppet of the US imperialists and tell you to go listen to your American rock music. It’s a corrupt hell hole. As soon as anyone there makes any money they move it and their family out. Plus, I don’t see anyone crossing continents and beating a path to live there. A brutal regime that has wiped out opposition. No wonder the likes of the Baltic countries and most of Eastern Europe escaped the nasty shackles as soon as they could. I dont mean to sound rude but you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. If you want to talk about corruption then look at the role of the Americans in the baltic countries and in Ukraine. Look at hunter Biden. But I will leave you to your American cold War propaganda and Russiaphobia. If you had to choose - where would you rather live - Russia or America? I’m no real fan of the USA by the way and I have been to Russia. I’ve also visited every country in Europe except Belarus. " I have nothing against Americans, its not a question of one or the other. I'm pretty sure I'd adapt to life in either. Both are big countries with interesting cities, although I'd be genuinely scared in some American cities with its gun violence and crime. I'd actually prefer to live in China as that would be a major culture shock and a real life experience. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
" From what I know, life before socialism was also bad. But the number of people who died during that period because of bad governance was much less compared to the ones who died due to socialism. The worst famine killed less than 500K people. As for technology, rest of the world developed the same without having to go through as many deaths. The great depression was nothing compared to the famines in Russia. I dont know if you are being stupid on purpose or if you genuinely struggle to grasp historical concepts... I will repeat that famines were a regular part of Russian life, they happened every ten years or so and were a regular feature of the hardship of Russian life, as well as lots of other factors such as no health or education . The communists eradicated that, after the land reforms there were no more famines because they modernised farming. Get that into your thick head. Do not dare to compare a banking crisis with the end of feudal serfdom you complete idiot. It seems you just hate the concept that a country can adapt to a communist system. It's based on your own ignorance and fears. You ever visit Russia they will tell you in straight talk what I am struggling to get over to you .... Russia won the second world wAr, invented space travel, pionerreed women's rights,modernised the country, houses the people, the people are immensely proud of the achievements of communism and stalin is revered as a hero of the people. You start mouthing off to them that somehow the west is better then you will simply embarrass yourself and they will laugh at you and call you a puppet of the US imperialists and tell you to go listen to your American rock music. I am talking with statistics. There isn't any statistic that supports your claim that famines were part of life or they were as bad as the ones happened during soviet regime. It's not as stupid as saying "My Russian grandfather tolf me...." Farming modernisation happened in western countries without having a military force it on people and taking away people's land. I never compared end of serfdom with banking crisis. I compared a banking crisis with millions of deaths due to famines and outright brutal killings. All the developments that you said happened in socialist regime, happened elsewhere, without depending on oil reserves that Russia had, without having a dictator. As for people revering Stalin, it's probably just your grandpa and his mates. What's your response? More personal abuse because you are incapable of having a serious debate? Is that what your grandpa taught you? Sounds pretty much the socialist way of doing things. My response is that you have no idea what you are talking about. However this is common in the west when it comes to Russian history and in fact contemporary politics of Russia. Firstly famines were a regular part of Russian life, that's a fact. Not made up, a fact. Look it up. Secondly I'm not denying the deaths or famine in the early communist era. I accept that these occurred. I've explained to you why they occurred and how the Russians modernised farming. If you want to hate stalin that's up to you but dont say that Russians hate stalin, they don't. That's a fact. No western country had serfdom in 1917. There is no comparison between the Russian peasantry of 1917 with a farmer in England, France, Germany or the USA in 1917.Russia under the Tsars was a country frozen in the past. Developments in agriculture took place in the west from the elizabethan era with a slow steady pace. And yes farms were seized look at the enclosure acts of England and the highland clearances in Scotland. In autocratic tsarist Russia that simply did not happen. Oil was completely irrelevant. Russia was faced by the nazi party who (under the capitalist system) intended to murder every slav and occupy the land. Russia not only modernised to meet this threat but they defeated the Nazis. You want to talk about famines then look at the Irish potato famine, a famine which was encouraged by Britain and almost led to Irish genocide, but for their flight from the country. That happened under the watch of the principal capitalist nation. Talk to any Irish person that the Irish potato famine was nothing to worry about. As for brutal killings how many wars has America engaged in since ww2, how many deaths, how many killings. What did the United States do to its native American Indian population? So don't talk about brutal killings. What happened during imperialism was bad. Wanting to expand and build empires was a common goal for all leaders around that time. It's not like the socialist government did not want to do it with the neighbouring countries. I don't justify serfdom. But in the process of moving on from serfdom, if Russia had become a liberal democracy with free markets instead of a socialist dictatorship, the country would have probably built an economy stronger than America or China of the current day given all its natural resources. " NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES. The soviet union territory was just that. Russia has not gone on wars of imperialism and conquest in Africa, Middle East, Asia etc. Russia has not engaged in colonialism and oppression of people, quite the contrary it has encouraged liberation from colonialism. The Russian people did not want Liberal democracy which is just another way to say capitalism with a soft c. They rejected it and chose the communist party. In doing so they transformed the country into a world super power. Just like China has done under the communist party. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
"I’m not qualified enough to say if the current record heatwave is caused by global warming, but I’m worried that most of the record temperatures have happened in the last 20 years. I’ve tried to do my little bit for the environment by not using a car, not flying for the last 22 years but I feel that it won’t make any difference because some countries aren’t doing enough to take the issue seriously. Capitalism And how does China’s emissions fit in to that theory... .
Would you rather China live in the medieval period? And us westerners continue to live in the modern era? China is moving on to become a world super power, why should it reduce emissions due to the west not cutting back its own emissions and polluting the world for a hundred years? That's not the fault of China. I belueve China will address its emissions once it has achieved its economic transition. Then it will radically reduce as unlike the United States it is not corrupted by thd fossil fuel industry
My point was China is communist not capitalist "china runs under a state capitalism model so your point is diluted a great deal | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
" From what I know, life before socialism was also bad. But the number of people who died during that period because of bad governance was much less compared to the ones who died due to socialism. The worst famine killed less than 500K people. As for technology, rest of the world developed the same without having to go through as many deaths. The great depression was nothing compared to the famines in Russia. I dont know if you are being stupid on purpose or if you genuinely struggle to grasp historical concepts... I will repeat that famines were a regular part of Russian life, they happened every ten years or so and were a regular feature of the hardship of Russian life, as well as lots of other factors such as no health or education . The communists eradicated that, after the land reforms there were no more famines because they modernised farming. Get that into your thick head. Do not dare to compare a banking crisis with the end of feudal serfdom you complete idiot. It seems you just hate the concept that a country can adapt to a communist system. It's based on your own ignorance and fears. You ever visit Russia they will tell you in straight talk what I am struggling to get over to you .... Russia won the second world wAr, invented space travel, pionerreed women's rights,modernised the country, houses the people, the people are immensely proud of the achievements of communism and stalin is revered as a hero of the people. You start mouthing off to them that somehow the west is better then you will simply embarrass yourself and they will laugh at you and call you a puppet of the US imperialists and tell you to go listen to your American rock music. I am talking with statistics. There isn't any statistic that supports your claim that famines were part of life or they were as bad as the ones happened during soviet regime. It's not as stupid as saying "My Russian grandfather tolf me...." Farming modernisation happened in western countries without having a military force it on people and taking away people's land. I never compared end of serfdom with banking crisis. I compared a banking crisis with millions of deaths due to famines and outright brutal killings. All the developments that you said happened in socialist regime, happened elsewhere, without depending on oil reserves that Russia had, without having a dictator. As for people revering Stalin, it's probably just your grandpa and his mates. What's your response? More personal abuse because you are incapable of having a serious debate? Is that what your grandpa taught you? Sounds pretty much the socialist way of doing things. My response is that you have no idea what you are talking about. However this is common in the west when it comes to Russian history and in fact contemporary politics of Russia. Firstly famines were a regular part of Russian life, that's a fact. Not made up, a fact. Look it up. Secondly I'm not denying the deaths or famine in the early communist era. I accept that these occurred. I've explained to you why they occurred and how the Russians modernised farming. If you want to hate stalin that's up to you but dont say that Russians hate stalin, they don't. That's a fact. No western country had serfdom in 1917. There is no comparison between the Russian peasantry of 1917 with a farmer in England, France, Germany or the USA in 1917.Russia under the Tsars was a country frozen in the past. Developments in agriculture took place in the west from the elizabethan era with a slow steady pace. And yes farms were seized look at the enclosure acts of England and the highland clearances in Scotland. In autocratic tsarist Russia that simply did not happen. Oil was completely irrelevant. Russia was faced by the nazi party who (under the capitalist system) intended to murder every slav and occupy the land. Russia not only modernised to meet this threat but they defeated the Nazis. You want to talk about famines then look at the Irish potato famine, a famine which was encouraged by Britain and almost led to Irish genocide, but for their flight from the country. That happened under the watch of the principal capitalist nation. Talk to any Irish person that the Irish potato famine was nothing to worry about. As for brutal killings how many wars has America engaged in since ww2, how many deaths, how many killings. What did the United States do to its native American Indian population? So don't talk about brutal killings. What happened during imperialism was bad. Wanting to expand and build empires was a common goal for all leaders around that time. It's not like the socialist government did not want to do it with the neighbouring countries. I don't justify serfdom. But in the process of moving on from serfdom, if Russia had become a liberal democracy with free markets instead of a socialist dictatorship, the country would have probably built an economy stronger than America or China of the current day given all its natural resources. NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES. The soviet union territory was just that. Russia has not gone on wars of imperialism and conquest in Africa, Middle East, Asia etc. Russia has not engaged in colonialism and oppression of people, quite the contrary it has encouraged liberation from colonialism. The Russian people did not want Liberal democracy which is just another way to say capitalism with a soft c. They rejected it and chose the communist party. In doing so they transformed the country into a world super power. Just like China has done under the communist party. " How does them being a neighbouring countries make a difference when it comes to right and wrong? In the end, it's about getting into another country and taking power against their will. I don't agree that people rejected democracy and chose to live there. I know many people somehow justify dictatorship by saying that the people did like the government. If majority of people genuinely did, you can easily have a fair election and prove it. The whole point of using the military is to enforce their government on the people. You don't have to go about censoring news if you think people like what you are doing and are happy with it. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
" From what I know, life before socialism was also bad. But the number of people who died during that period because of bad governance was much less compared to the ones who died due to socialism. The worst famine killed less than 500K people. As for technology, rest of the world developed the same without having to go through as many deaths. The great depression was nothing compared to the famines in Russia. I dont know if you are being stupid on purpose or if you genuinely struggle to grasp historical concepts... I will repeat that famines were a regular part of Russian life, they happened every ten years or so and were a regular feature of the hardship of Russian life, as well as lots of other factors such as no health or education . The communists eradicated that, after the land reforms there were no more famines because they modernised farming. Get that into your thick head. Do not dare to compare a banking crisis with the end of feudal serfdom you complete idiot. It seems you just hate the concept that a country can adapt to a communist system. It's based on your own ignorance and fears. You ever visit Russia they will tell you in straight talk what I am struggling to get over to you .... Russia won the second world wAr, invented space travel, pionerreed women's rights,modernised the country, houses the people, the people are immensely proud of the achievements of communism and stalin is revered as a hero of the people. You start mouthing off to them that somehow the west is better then you will simply embarrass yourself and they will laugh at you and call you a puppet of the US imperialists and tell you to go listen to your American rock music. I am talking with statistics. There isn't any statistic that supports your claim that famines were part of life or they were as bad as the ones happened during soviet regime. It's not as stupid as saying "My Russian grandfather tolf me...." Farming modernisation happened in western countries without having a military force it on people and taking away people's land. I never compared end of serfdom with banking crisis. I compared a banking crisis with millions of deaths due to famines and outright brutal killings. All the developments that you said happened in socialist regime, happened elsewhere, without depending on oil reserves that Russia had, without having a dictator. As for people revering Stalin, it's probably just your grandpa and his mates. What's your response? More personal abuse because you are incapable of having a serious debate? Is that what your grandpa taught you? Sounds pretty much the socialist way of doing things. My response is that you have no idea what you are talking about. However this is common in the west when it comes to Russian history and in fact contemporary politics of Russia. Firstly famines were a regular part of Russian life, that's a fact. Not made up, a fact. Look it up. Secondly I'm not denying the deaths or famine in the early communist era. I accept that these occurred. I've explained to you why they occurred and how the Russians modernised farming. If you want to hate stalin that's up to you but dont say that Russians hate stalin, they don't. That's a fact. No western country had serfdom in 1917. There is no comparison between the Russian peasantry of 1917 with a farmer in England, France, Germany or the USA in 1917.Russia under the Tsars was a country frozen in the past. Developments in agriculture took place in the west from the elizabethan era with a slow steady pace. And yes farms were seized look at the enclosure acts of England and the highland clearances in Scotland. In autocratic tsarist Russia that simply did not happen. Oil was completely irrelevant. Russia was faced by the nazi party who (under the capitalist system) intended to murder every slav and occupy the land. Russia not only modernised to meet this threat but they defeated the Nazis. You want to talk about famines then look at the Irish potato famine, a famine which was encouraged by Britain and almost led to Irish genocide, but for their flight from the country. That happened under the watch of the principal capitalist nation. Talk to any Irish person that the Irish potato famine was nothing to worry about. As for brutal killings how many wars has America engaged in since ww2, how many deaths, how many killings. What did the United States do to its native American Indian population? So don't talk about brutal killings. What happened during imperialism was bad. Wanting to expand and build empires was a common goal for all leaders around that time. It's not like the socialist government did not want to do it with the neighbouring countries. I don't justify serfdom. But in the process of moving on from serfdom, if Russia had become a liberal democracy with free markets instead of a socialist dictatorship, the country would have probably built an economy stronger than America or China of the current day given all its natural resources. NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES. The soviet union territory was just that. Russia has not gone on wars of imperialism and conquest in Africa, Middle East, Asia etc. Russia has not engaged in colonialism and oppression of people, quite the contrary it has encouraged liberation from colonialism. The Russian people did not want Liberal democracy which is just another way to say capitalism with a soft c. They rejected it and chose the communist party. In doing so they transformed the country into a world super power. Just like China has done under the communist party. " It’s not a Super power’ it’s a thuggish kleptocracy. They didn’t encourage liberation in Eastern Europe. Nasty brutes, I hope living on borrowed time. | |||
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" are immensely proud of the achievements of communism and stalin is revered as a hero of the people. You start mouthing off to them that somehow the west is better then you will simply embarrass yourself and they will laugh at you and call you a puppet of the US imperialists and tell you to go listen to your American rock music. It’s a corrupt hell hole. As soon as anyone there makes any money they move it and their family out. Plus, I don’t see anyone crossing continents and beating a path to live there. A brutal regime that has wiped out opposition. No wonder the likes of the Baltic countries and most of Eastern Europe escaped the nasty shackles as soon as they could. I dont mean to sound rude but you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. If you want to talk about corruption then look at the role of the Americans in the baltic countries and in Ukraine. Look at hunter Biden. But I will leave you to your American cold War propaganda and Russiaphobia. If you had to choose - where would you rather live - Russia or America? I’m no real fan of the USA by the way and I have been to Russia. I’ve also visited every country in Europe except Belarus. I have nothing against Americans, its not a question of one or the other. I'm pretty sure I'd adapt to life in either. Both are big countries with interesting cities, although I'd be genuinely scared in some American cities with its gun violence and crime. I'd actually prefer to live in China as that would be a major culture shock and a real life experience. " It was a question of one or the other and you fudged it. | |||
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" It was a question of one or the other and you fudged it. " Its a question that a seven year old would ask. I didn't think you were being serious. If I had to choose I would probably choose Russia purely to improve my Russian and experience a different culture. So there | |||
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" It’s not a Super power’ it’s a thuggish kleptocracy. They didn’t encourage liberation in Eastern Europe. Nasty brutes, I hope living on borrowed time." I have no idea what you are talking about and neither do you. | |||
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" they transformed the country into a world super power. Just like China has done under the communist party. How does them being a neighbouring countries make a difference when it comes to right and wrong? In the end, it's about getting into another country and taking power against their will. I don't agree that people rejected democracy and chose to live there. I know many people somehow justify dictatorship by saying that the people did like the government. If majority of people genuinely did, you can easily have a fair election and prove it. The whole point of using the military is to enforce their government on the people. You don't have to go about censoring news if you think people like what you are doing and are happy with it." They didn't take power against their will, this was the soviet union. Those countries were willing participants. It depresses me that people in England are so misinformed about Russia and such victims of American cold War propaganda. Its genuinely embarrassing. Can we not think for ourselves or do we just repeat cold War lies and Russiaphobia. | |||
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" It’s not a Super power’ it’s a thuggish kleptocracy. They didn’t encourage liberation in Eastern Europe. Nasty brutes, I hope living on borrowed time. I have no idea what you are talking about and neither do you. " I’m now assuming you are just here for a laugh? | |||
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" they transformed the country into a world super power. Just like China has done under the communist party. How does them being a neighbouring countries make a difference when it comes to right and wrong? In the end, it's about getting into another country and taking power against their will. I don't agree that people rejected democracy and chose to live there. I know many people somehow justify dictatorship by saying that the people did like the government. If majority of people genuinely did, you can easily have a fair election and prove it. The whole point of using the military is to enforce their government on the people. You don't have to go about censoring news if you think people like what you are doing and are happy with it. They didn't take power against their will, this was the soviet union. Those countries were willing participants. It depresses me that people in England are so misinformed about Russia and such victims of American cold War propaganda. Its genuinely embarrassing. Can we not think for ourselves or do we just repeat cold War lies and Russiaphobia. " So the Soviet government uses army to occupy the neighbouring countries, forming the Eastern bloc. The moment USSR economy goes down the toilet, every country becomes an independent liberal democracy. But they all loved to be under a socialist rule? And we are the ones who are misinformed? If the people loved the government, they can have a free election and win it. They can't. Hence they use the army instead. In a country where people really loved to live, you don't have to block people from leaving the country. You don't need the government to censor news channels. These are the activities which a government spreading misinformation using propoganda would do. | |||
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" It’s not a Super power’ it’s a thuggish kleptocracy. They didn’t encourage liberation in Eastern Europe. Nasty brutes, I hope living on borrowed time. I have no idea what you are talking about and neither do you. I’m now assuming you are just here for a laugh? " You are denying Russia is a superpower? You think Russia is a thuggish kleptocracy without sighting any example.... Its you who is making laughable claims. Meanwhile Julian Assange is in prison, Wall Street are given trillion dollar bail outs and you talk of a kleptocracy in Russia. Open your eyes you dummmy | |||
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" they transformed the country into a world super power. Just like China has done under the communist party. How does them being a neighbouring countries make a difference when it comes to right and wrong? In the end, it's about getting into another country and taking power against their will. I don't agree that people rejected democracy and chose to live there. I know many people somehow justify dictatorship by saying that the people did like the government. If majority of people genuinely did, you can easily have a fair election and prove it. The whole point of using the military is to enforce their government on the people. You don't have to go about censoring news if you think people like what you are doing and are happy with it. They didn't take power against their will, this was the soviet union. Those countries were willing participants. It depresses me that people in England are so misinformed about Russia and such victims of American cold War propaganda. Its genuinely embarrassing. Can we not think for ourselves or do we just repeat cold War lies and Russiaphobia. So the Soviet government uses army to occupy the neighbouring countries, forming the Eastern bloc. The moment USSR economy goes down the toilet, every country becomes an independent liberal democracy. But they all loved to be under a socialist rule? And we are the ones who are misinformed? If the people loved the government, they can have a free election and win it. They can't. Hence they use the army instead. In a country where people really loved to live, you don't have to block people from leaving the country. You don't need the government to censor news channels. These are the activities which a government spreading misinformation using propoganda would do." What do you mean by using armies? These countries were part of the Eastern bloc. That means that the soviet union armies were there to stop them beinv attacked by nato forces. Neither could you leave western countries for the soviet union. It was a cold War. When you say news channels Re censored do you think western news channels aren't? The soviet union collapsed, there are many reasons why but it was primarily due to a willingness on the part of the soviet Regimr to end the cold War and become part of the western democracies. How niave they were. Most Russians suffered terribly under free market capitalism in the 90s which wrecked the Russian economy and led to thec rise of a western backed oligarchy. It was Putin who finally put an end to the corruption and re established govt control. That's why Putin had won every single election. | |||
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" they transformed the country into a world super power. Just like China has done under the communist party. How does them being a neighbouring countries make a difference when it comes to right and wrong? In the end, it's about getting into another country and taking power against their will. I don't agree that people rejected democracy and chose to live there. I know many people somehow justify dictatorship by saying that the people did like the government. If majority of people genuinely did, you can easily have a fair election and prove it. The whole point of using the military is to enforce their government on the people. You don't have to go about censoring news if you think people like what you are doing and are happy with it. They didn't take power against their will, this was the soviet union. Those countries were willing participants. It depresses me that people in England are so misinformed about Russia and such victims of American cold War propaganda. Its genuinely embarrassing. Can we not think for ourselves or do we just repeat cold War lies and Russiaphobia. So the Soviet government uses army to occupy the neighbouring countries, forming the Eastern bloc. The moment USSR economy goes down the toilet, every country becomes an independent liberal democracy. But they all loved to be under a socialist rule? And we are the ones who are misinformed? If the people loved the government, they can have a free election and win it. They can't. Hence they use the army instead. In a country where people really loved to live, you don't have to block people from leaving the country. You don't need the government to censor news channels. These are the activities which a government spreading misinformation using propoganda would do. What do you mean by using armies? These countries were part of the Eastern bloc. That means that the soviet union armies were there to stop them beinv attacked by nato forces. Neither could you leave western countries for the soviet union. It was a cold War. When you say news channels Re censored do you think western news channels aren't? The soviet union collapsed, there are many reasons why but it was primarily due to a willingness on the part of the soviet Regimr to end the cold War and become part of the western democracies. How niave they were. Most Russians suffered terribly under free market capitalism in the 90s which wrecked the Russian economy and led to thec rise of a western backed oligarchy. It was Putin who finally put an end to the corruption and re established govt control. That's why Putin had won every single election. " Think I'll suggest your next holiday, take a trip to Lithuania, Estonia and Poland and go see some of the KGB police stations where people were tortured and disappeared. Then take a look at The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that enabled those two powers to partition Poland between them. Then see how, even though Germany lost the War, Stalin continued hus snatching of European states and occupied them. Just like Ukrain, while occupied, Russians took residence, had children, settled and rooted into these countries as 'Russian speakers". Then when the native population take exception to these people, Putin goes in to defend 'Russian Speakers" by means of force. This is what you are seeing in Donbass, and Luhansk. Putin will continue to support Ethnic Russian wishes to be part of Russia again, with utter disregard for the native population which as you can see, bombed and murdered into submission. This can, and likely will continue in every ex Soviet country until the whole USSR has been recreated. August 23, 1939 It's an anniversary few in the Kremlin, or elsewhere in Russia for that matter, are keen to talk about -- let alone remember in some way. Eighty years ago, on August 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and Josef Stalin's Soviet Union inked a nonaggression treaty that ushered in World War II. Commonly known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, after Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, the agreement gave Adolf Hitler a free hand to attack Poland without fear of Soviet intervention. Behind the scenes, it was later determined, Hitler and Stalin had established secret protocols dividing Central and Eastern Europe into their respective "spheres of influence." The pact brought devastation to the states and regions that were carved up, resulted in the deportation and killing of thousands from those areas, and paved the way for the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe behind the Iron Curtain after the war's end in 1945. Hitler lost his share, Stalin snatched his and brutally occupied people's that had no choice. We know why Putin's won every election. His opponents are either in Prison, in exile or dead (poisoned mostly). | |||
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" It’s not a Super power’ it’s a thuggish kleptocracy. They didn’t encourage liberation in Eastern Europe. Nasty brutes, I hope living on borrowed time. I have no idea what you are talking about and neither do you. I’m now assuming you are just here for a laugh? You are denying Russia is a superpower? You think Russia is a thuggish kleptocracy without sighting any example.... Its you who is making laughable claims. Meanwhile Julian Assange is in prison, Wall Street are given trillion dollar bail outs and you talk of a kleptocracy in Russia. Open your eyes you dummmy " Don’t be so rude. Do you know, now I think of it, I’ve never met a Russian that I liked. I know it’s wrong to generalise and there must be some nice ones but I’ve not met them. | |||
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" It’s not a Super power’ it’s a thuggish kleptocracy. They didn’t encourage liberation in Eastern Europe. Nasty brutes, I hope living on borrowed time. I have no idea what you are talking about and neither do you. I’m now assuming you are just here for a laugh? You are denying Russia is a superpower? You think Russia is a thuggish kleptocracy without sighting any example.... Its you who is making laughable claims. Meanwhile Julian Assange is in prison, Wall Street are given trillion dollar bail outs and you talk of a kleptocracy in Russia. Open your eyes you dummmy Don’t be so rude. Do you know, now I think of it, I’ve never met a Russian that I liked. I know it’s wrong to generalise and there must be some nice ones but I’ve not met them." That's because you are clearly a closet racist. | |||
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" It’s not a Super power’ it’s a thuggish kleptocracy. They didn’t encourage liberation in Eastern Europe. Nasty brutes, I hope living on borrowed time. I have no idea what you are talking about and neither do you. I’m now assuming you are just here for a laugh? You are denying Russia is a superpower? You think Russia is a thuggish kleptocracy without sighting any example.... Its you who is making laughable claims. Meanwhile Julian Assange is in prison, Wall Street are given trillion dollar bail outs and you talk of a kleptocracy in Russia. Open your eyes you dummmy Don’t be so rude. Do you know, now I think of it, I’ve never met a Russian that I liked. I know it’s wrong to generalise and there must be some nice ones but I’ve not met them. That's because you are clearly a closet racist. " I’m now starting to think you really are a nasty piece of work. Proving my point perhaps. What is a ‘closet racist’? | |||
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" they transformed the country into a world super power. Just like China has done under the communist party. How does them being a neighbouring countries make a difference when it comes to right and wrong? In the end, it's about getting into another country and taking power against their will. I don't agree that people rejected democracy and chose to live there. I know many people somehow justify dictatorship by saying that the people did like the government. If majority of people genuinely did, you can easily have a fair election and prove it. The whole point of using the military is to enforce their government on the people. You don't have to go about censoring news if you think people like what you are doing and are happy with it. They didn't take power against their will, this was the soviet union. Those countries were willing participants. It depresses me that people in England are so misinformed about Russia and such victims of American cold War propaganda. Its genuinely embarrassing. Can we not think for ourselves or do we just repeat cold War lies and Russiaphobia. So the Soviet government uses army to occupy the neighbouring countries, forming the Eastern bloc. The moment USSR economy goes down the toilet, every country becomes an independent liberal democracy. But they all loved to be under a socialist rule? And we are the ones who are misinformed? If the people loved the government, they can have a free election and win it. They can't. Hence they use the army instead. In a country where people really loved to live, you don't have to block people from leaving the country. You don't need the government to censor news channels. These are the activities which a government spreading misinformation using propoganda would do. What do you mean by using armies? These countries were part of the Eastern bloc. That means that the soviet union armies were there to stop them beinv attacked by nato forces. Neither could you leave western countries for the soviet union. It was a cold War. When you say news channels Re censored do you think western news channels aren't? The soviet union collapsed, there are many reasons why but it was primarily due to a willingness on the part of the soviet Regimr to end the cold War and become part of the western democracies. How niave they were. Most Russians suffered terribly under free market capitalism in the 90s which wrecked the Russian economy and led to thec rise of a western backed oligarchy. It was Putin who finally put an end to the corruption and re established govt control. That's why Putin had won every single election. Think I'll suggest your next holiday, take a trip to Lithuania, Estonia and Poland and go see some of the KGB police stations where people were tortured and disappeared. Then take a look at The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that enabled those two powers to partition Poland between them. Then see how, even though Germany lost the War, Stalin continued hus snatching of European states and occupied them. Just like Ukrain, while occupied, Russians took residence, had children, settled and rooted into these countries as 'Russian speakers". Then when the native population take exception to these people, Putin goes in to defend 'Russian Speakers" by means of force. This is what you are seeing in Donbass, and Luhansk. Putin will continue to support Ethnic Russian wishes to be part of Russia again, with utter disregard for the native population which as you can see, bombed and murdered into submission. This can, and likely will continue in every ex Soviet country until the whole USSR has been recreated. August 23, 1939 It's an anniversary few in the Kremlin, or elsewhere in Russia for that matter, are keen to talk about -- let alone remember in some way. Eighty years ago, on August 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and Josef Stalin's Soviet Union inked a nonaggression treaty that ushered in World War II. Commonly known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, after Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, the agreement gave Adolf Hitler a free hand to attack Poland without fear of Soviet intervention. Behind the scenes, it was later determined, Hitler and Stalin had established secret protocols dividing Central and Eastern Europe into their respective "spheres of influence." The pact brought devastation to the states and regions that were carved up, resulted in the deportation and killing of thousands from those areas, and paved the way for the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe behind the Iron Curtain after the war's end in 1945. Hitler lost his share, Stalin snatched his and brutally occupied people's that had no choice. We know why Putin's won every election. His opponents are either in Prison, in exile or dead (poisoned mostly). " I do not disagree that the KGB got up to some nefarious stuff against political opponents. Of course this has been scandalised and exaggerated as our own security forces were also getting up to no good, mi5 has a long history of silencing political groups and as for the CIA well... Let's just say they have murdered and set up coups all over the world and most probably killed Kennedy and a host of other political opponents. So the KGB is no different other than that they didn't go around the world assassinating people. As for the molotov ribbentrip pact any scholar of history would tell you that the pact was necessary to save Russia. Before the pact stalin had attempted to make an alliance with both France and Britain, both declined. Stalin knew hitler hated Russia and was planning to invade, the pact gave Russia time. And allowed them to build up their defences to meet the nazi threat. I fully support the Russian military operation In the Ukraine. The ukranian situation is entirely the fault of the west. Anyone who is prepared to look into the history of thd Ukraine and recent events would feel the same. Its clear that with your wrong headed view of the situation you have a poor understanding and a child like grasp of thd situation. Educate yourself. I support Putin, he is a strong and able leader, far better than any current leader of the UK. The vast majority of Russians also support him, he has an approval rating of around 90%. | |||
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" they transformed the country into a world super power. Just like China has done under the communist party. How does them being a neighbouring countries make a difference when it comes to right and wrong? In the end, it's about getting into another country and taking power against their will. I don't agree that people rejected democracy and chose to live there. I know many people somehow justify dictatorship by saying that the people did like the government. If majority of people genuinely did, you can easily have a fair election and prove it. The whole point of using the military is to enforce their government on the people. You don't have to go about censoring news if you think people like what you are doing and are happy with it. They didn't take power against their will, this was the soviet union. Those countries were willing participants. It depresses me that people in England are so misinformed about Russia and such victims of American cold War propaganda. Its genuinely embarrassing. Can we not think for ourselves or do we just repeat cold War lies and Russiaphobia. So the Soviet government uses army to occupy the neighbouring countries, forming the Eastern bloc. The moment USSR economy goes down the toilet, every country becomes an independent liberal democracy. But they all loved to be under a socialist rule? And we are the ones who are misinformed? If the people loved the government, they can have a free election and win it. They can't. Hence they use the army instead. In a country where people really loved to live, you don't have to block people from leaving the country. You don't need the government to censor news channels. These are the activities which a government spreading misinformation using propoganda would do. What do you mean by using armies? These countries were part of the Eastern bloc. That means that the soviet union armies were there to stop them beinv attacked by nato forces. Neither could you leave western countries for the soviet union. It was a cold War. When you say news channels Re censored do you think western news channels aren't? The soviet union collapsed, there are many reasons why but it was primarily due to a willingness on the part of the soviet Regimr to end the cold War and become part of the western democracies. How niave they were. Most Russians suffered terribly under free market capitalism in the 90s which wrecked the Russian economy and led to thec rise of a western backed oligarchy. It was Putin who finally put an end to the corruption and re established govt control. That's why Putin had won every single election. Think I'll suggest your next holiday, take a trip to Lithuania, Estonia and Poland and go see some of the KGB police stations where people were tortured and disappeared. Then take a look at The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that enabled those two powers to partition Poland between them. Then see how, even though Germany lost the War, Stalin continued hus snatching of European states and occupied them. Just like Ukrain, while occupied, Russians took residence, had children, settled and rooted into these countries as 'Russian speakers". Then when the native population take exception to these people, Putin goes in to defend 'Russian Speakers" by means of force. This is what you are seeing in Donbass, and Luhansk. Putin will continue to support Ethnic Russian wishes to be part of Russia again, with utter disregard for the native population which as you can see, bombed and murdered into submission. This can, and likely will continue in every ex Soviet country until the whole USSR has been recreated. August 23, 1939 It's an anniversary few in the Kremlin, or elsewhere in Russia for that matter, are keen to talk about -- let alone remember in some way. Eighty years ago, on August 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and Josef Stalin's Soviet Union inked a nonaggression treaty that ushered in World War II. Commonly known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, after Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, the agreement gave Adolf Hitler a free hand to attack Poland without fear of Soviet intervention. Behind the scenes, it was later determined, Hitler and Stalin had established secret protocols dividing Central and Eastern Europe into their respective "spheres of influence." The pact brought devastation to the states and regions that were carved up, resulted in the deportation and killing of thousands from those areas, and paved the way for the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe behind the Iron Curtain after the war's end in 1945. Hitler lost his share, Stalin snatched his and brutally occupied people's that had no choice. We know why Putin's won every election. His opponents are either in Prison, in exile or dead (poisoned mostly). I do not disagree that the KGB got up to some nefarious stuff against political opponents. Of course this has been scandalised and exaggerated as our own security forces were also getting up to no good, mi5 has a long history of silencing political groups and as for the CIA well... Let's just say they have murdered and set up coups all over the world and most probably killed Kennedy and a host of other political opponents. So the KGB is no different other than that they didn't go around the world assassinating people. As for the molotov ribbentrip pact any scholar of history would tell you that the pact was necessary to save Russia. Before the pact stalin had attempted to make an alliance with both France and Britain, both declined. Stalin knew hitler hated Russia and was planning to invade, the pact gave Russia time. And allowed them to build up their defences to meet the nazi threat. I fully support the Russian military operation In the Ukraine. The ukranian situation is entirely the fault of the west. Anyone who is prepared to look into the history of thd Ukraine and recent events would feel the same. Its clear that with your wrong headed view of the situation you have a poor understanding and a child like grasp of thd situation. Educate yourself. I support Putin, he is a strong and able leader, far better than any current leader of the UK. The vast majority of Russians also support him, he has an approval rating of around 90%. " ‘Hitler hated Russia’ , France & Britain didn’t want an alliance. I wonder why? Must be the fault of the nasty Americans and the rest of free world. Nothing to do with the Russians of course. | |||
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"I fully support the Russian military operation In the Ukraine. The ukranian situation is entirely the fault of the west. Anyone who is prepared to look into the history of thd Ukraine and recent events would feel the same. Its clear that with your wrong headed view of the situation you have a poor understanding and a child like grasp of thd situation. Educate yourself. I support Putin, he is a strong and able leader, far better than any current leader of the UK. The vast majority of Russians also support him, he has an approval rating of around 90%. " Do you also support the poisoning of innocent people, and the murders of political opponents too? | |||
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"I fully support the Russian military operation In the Ukraine. The ukranian situation is entirely the fault of the west. Anyone who is prepared to look into the history of thd Ukraine and recent events would feel the same. Its clear that with your wrong headed view of the situation you have a poor understanding and a child like grasp of thd situation. Educate yourself. I support Putin, he is a strong and able leader, far better than any current leader of the UK. The vast majority of Russians also support him, he has an approval rating of around 90%. Do you also support the poisoning of innocent people, and the murders of political opponents too? " It’s safe to assume he does. He would deny this of course and claim it doesn’t happen. | |||
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" I do not disagree that the KGB got up to some nefarious stuff against political opponents. Of course this has been scandalised and exaggerated as our own security forces were also getting up to no good, mi5 has a long history of silencing political groups and as for the CIA well... Let's just say they have murdered and set up coups all over the world and most probably killed Kennedy and a host of other political opponents. So the KGB is no different other than that they didn't go around the world assassinating people. ‘Hitler hated Russia’ , France & Britain didn’t want an alliance. I wonder why? Must be the fault of the nasty Americans and the rest of free world. Nothing to do with the Russians of course. " Hitler hated Russia because he was a racist and thought the slavs an inferior race of sub humans, a view echoed by many Americans in the post war period as they persecuted the blacks. France and Britain had had alliances with Russia in the past but they were anti communist and at that late stage still hoped for peace with Germany. America had nothing to do with it as any student of history would tell you. The Americans themselves at the time were divided between supporting Hitler and wanting nothing to do with European affairs. At the time the klu klux klan were still burning and lynching blacks and sponsoring politicians who supported racial segregation. The majority of Americans in the South including politicians agreed with hitlers racial theories. Again any student of history would tell you this. The soviet union defeated the Nazis, every single military commander or historian would tell you that without the sacrifice of the soviet union the story might have been very different. The soviet union saved Europe from the Nazis and to that at least you owe Stalin a thank you. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
"I fully support the Russian military operation In the Ukraine. The ukranian situation is entirely the fault of the west. Anyone who is prepared to look into the history of thd Ukraine and recent events would feel the same. Its clear that with your wrong headed view of the situation you have a poor understanding and a child like grasp of thd situation. Educate yourself. I support Putin, he is a strong and able leader, far better than any current leader of the UK. The vast majority of Russians also support him, he has an approval rating of around 90%. Do you also support the poisoning of innocent people, and the murders of political opponents too? It’s safe to assume he does. He would deny this of course and claim it doesn’t happen. " No I do not agree with the murder of political opponents. Be that jfk, soloumani, Osama bin laden, Dr Kelly, bhuto, gadaffi or any others. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
"I fully support the Russian military operation In the Ukraine. The ukranian situation is entirely the fault of the west. Anyone who is prepared to look into the history of thd Ukraine and recent events would feel the same. Its clear that with your wrong headed view of the situation you have a poor understanding and a child like grasp of thd situation. Educate yourself. I support Putin, he is a strong and able leader, far better than any current leader of the UK. The vast majority of Russians also support him, he has an approval rating of around 90%. Do you also support the poisoning of innocent people, and the murders of political opponents too? It’s safe to assume he does. He would deny this of course and claim it doesn’t happen. No I do not agree with the murder of political opponents. Be that jfk, soloumani, Osama bin laden, Dr Kelly, bhuto, gadaffi or any others. " Do you find it difficult to live in the UK with your political beliefs? | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
"I fully support the Russian military operation In the Ukraine. The ukranian situation is entirely the fault of the west. Anyone who is prepared to look into the history of thd Ukraine and recent events would feel the same. Its clear that with your wrong headed view of the situation you have a poor understanding and a child like grasp of thd situation. Educate yourself. I support Putin, he is a strong and able leader, far better than any current leader of the UK. The vast majority of Russians also support him, he has an approval rating of around 90%. Do you also support the poisoning of innocent people, and the murders of political opponents too? It’s safe to assume he does. He would deny this of course and claim it doesn’t happen. No I do not agree with the murder of political opponents. Be that jfk, soloumani, Osama bin laden, Dr Kelly, bhuto, gadaffi or any others. Do you find it difficult to live in the UK with your political beliefs? " What are the tractor production figures for this week I wonder? | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
" And as is happening again, with zero compassion or concern for their own troops. A brutal corrupt regime. May their cruel days and ways soon end. I do not disagree that the KGB got up to some nefarious stuff against political opponents. Of course this has been scandalised and exaggerated as our own security forces were also getting up to no good, mi5 has a long history of silencing political groups and as for the CIA well... Let's just say they have murdered and set up coups all over the world and most probably killed Kennedy and a host of other political opponents. So the KGB is no different other than that they didn't go around the world assassinating people. ‘Hitler hated Russia’ , France & Britain didn’t want an alliance. I wonder why? Must be the fault of the nasty Americans and the rest of free world. Nothing to do with the Russians of course. Hitler hated Russia because he was a racist and thought the slavs an inferior race of sub humans, a view echoed by many Americans in the post war period as they persecuted the blacks. France and Britain had had alliances with Russia in the past but they were anti communist and at that late stage still hoped for peace with Germany. America had nothing to do with it as any student of history would tell you. The Americans themselves at the time were divided between supporting Hitler and wanting nothing to do with European affairs. At the time the klu klux klan were still burning and lynching blacks and sponsoring politicians who supported racial segregation. The majority of Americans in the South including politicians agreed with hitlers racial theories. Again any student of history would tell you this. The soviet union defeated the Nazis, every single military commander or historian would tell you that without the sacrifice of the soviet union the story might have been very different. The soviet union saved Europe from the Nazis and to that at least you owe Stalin a thank you. " | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
" they transformed the country into a world super power. Just like China has done under the communist party. How does them being a neighbouring countries make a difference when it comes to right and wrong? In the end, it's about getting into another country and taking power against their will. I don't agree that people rejected democracy and chose to live there. I know many people somehow justify dictatorship by saying that the people did like the government. If majority of people genuinely did, you can easily have a fair election and prove it. The whole point of using the military is to enforce their government on the people. You don't have to go about censoring news if you think people like what you are doing and are happy with it. They didn't take power against their will, this was the soviet union. Those countries were willing participants. It depresses me that people in England are so misinformed about Russia and such victims of American cold War propaganda. Its genuinely embarrassing. Can we not think for ourselves or do we just repeat cold War lies and Russiaphobia. So the Soviet government uses army to occupy the neighbouring countries, forming the Eastern bloc. The moment USSR economy goes down the toilet, every country becomes an independent liberal democracy. But they all loved to be under a socialist rule? And we are the ones who are misinformed? If the people loved the government, they can have a free election and win it. They can't. Hence they use the army instead. In a country where people really loved to live, you don't have to block people from leaving the country. You don't need the government to censor news channels. These are the activities which a government spreading misinformation using propoganda would do. What do you mean by using armies? These countries were part of the Eastern bloc. That means that the soviet union armies were there to stop them beinv attacked by nato forces. Neither could you leave western countries for the soviet union. It was a cold War. When you say news channels Re censored do you think western news channels aren't? The soviet union collapsed, there are many reasons why but it was primarily due to a willingness on the part of the soviet Regimr to end the cold War and become part of the western democracies. How niave they were. Most Russians suffered terribly under free market capitalism in the 90s which wrecked the Russian economy and led to thec rise of a western backed oligarchy. It was Putin who finally put an end to the corruption and re established govt control. That's why Putin had won every single election. Think I'll suggest your next holiday, take a trip to Lithuania, Estonia and Poland and go see some of the KGB police stations where people were tortured and disappeared. Then take a look at The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that enabled those two powers to partition Poland between them. Then see how, even though Germany lost the War, Stalin continued hus snatching of European states and occupied them. Just like Ukrain, while occupied, Russians took residence, had children, settled and rooted into these countries as 'Russian speakers". Then when the native population take exception to these people, Putin goes in to defend 'Russian Speakers" by means of force. This is what you are seeing in Donbass, and Luhansk. Putin will continue to support Ethnic Russian wishes to be part of Russia again, with utter disregard for the native population which as you can see, bombed and murdered into submission. This can, and likely will continue in every ex Soviet country until the whole USSR has been recreated. August 23, 1939 It's an anniversary few in the Kremlin, or elsewhere in Russia for that matter, are keen to talk about -- let alone remember in some way. Eighty years ago, on August 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and Josef Stalin's Soviet Union inked a nonaggression treaty that ushered in World War II. Commonly known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, after Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, the agreement gave Adolf Hitler a free hand to attack Poland without fear of Soviet intervention. Behind the scenes, it was later determined, Hitler and Stalin had established secret protocols dividing Central and Eastern Europe into their respective "spheres of influence." The pact brought devastation to the states and regions that were carved up, resulted in the deportation and killing of thousands from those areas, and paved the way for the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe behind the Iron Curtain after the war's end in 1945. Hitler lost his share, Stalin snatched his and brutally occupied people's that had no choice. We know why Putin's won every election. His opponents are either in Prison, in exile or dead (poisoned mostly). I do not disagree that the KGB got up to some nefarious stuff against political opponents. Of course this has been scandalised and exaggerated as our own security forces were also getting up to no good, mi5 has a long history of silencing political groups and as for the CIA well... Let's just say they have murdered and set up coups all over the world and most probably killed Kennedy and a host of other political opponents. So the KGB is no different other than that they didn't go around the world assassinating people. As for the molotov ribbentrip pact any scholar of history would tell you that the pact was necessary to save Russia. Before the pact stalin had attempted to make an alliance with both France and Britain, both declined. Stalin knew hitler hated Russia and was planning to invade, the pact gave Russia time. And allowed them to build up their defences to meet the nazi threat. I fully support the Russian military operation In the Ukraine. The ukranian situation is entirely the fault of the west. Anyone who is prepared to look into the history of thd Ukraine and recent events would feel the same. Its clear that with your wrong headed view of the situation you have a poor understanding and a child like grasp of thd situation. Educate yourself. I support Putin, he is a strong and able leader, far better than any current leader of the UK. The vast majority of Russians also support him, he has an approval rating of around 90%. " Thanks for your honesty, at least now those that despise your views like me can block and have nothing further to do with you. unfortunately you will find a few others like yourself on this site but thankfully not many. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
" I do not disagree that the KGB got up to some nefarious stuff against political opponents. Of course this has been scandalised and exaggerated as our own security forces were also getting up to no good, mi5 has a long history of silencing political groups and as for the CIA well... Let's just say they have murdered and set up coups all over the world and most probably killed Kennedy and a host of other political opponents. So the KGB is no different other than that they didn't go around the world assassinating people. ‘Hitler hated Russia’ , France & Britain didn’t want an alliance. I wonder why? Must be the fault of the nasty Americans and the rest of free world. Nothing to do with the Russians of course. Hitler hated Russia because he was a racist and thought the slavs an inferior race of sub humans, a view echoed by many Americans in the post war period as they persecuted the blacks. France and Britain had had alliances with Russia in the past but they were anti communist and at that late stage still hoped for peace with Germany. America had nothing to do with it as any student of history would tell you. The Americans themselves at the time were divided between supporting Hitler and wanting nothing to do with European affairs. At the time the klu klux klan were still burning and lynching blacks and sponsoring politicians who supported racial segregation. The majority of Americans in the South including politicians agreed with hitlers racial theories. Again any student of history would tell you this. The soviet union defeated the Nazis, every single military commander or historian would tell you that without the sacrifice of the soviet union the story might have been very different. The soviet union saved Europe from the Nazis and to that at least you owe Stalin a thank you. " And the September 1939 invasion of Poland was a joint German/Soviet Union operation. Any historian will tell you that. It was only after Hitler ratted on the Molotov/Von Ribbentrop pact in 1941 that Russia turned against him. Prior to that Stalin was quite happy with the status quo, and a just as enthusiastic persecutor of Jews. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
" they transformed the country into a world super power. Just like China has done under the communist party. How does them being a neighbouring countries make a difference when it comes to right and wrong? In the end, it's about getting into another country and taking power against their will. I don't agree that people rejected democracy and chose to live there. I know many people somehow justify dictatorship by saying that the people did like the government. If majority of people genuinely did, you can easily have a fair election and prove it. The whole point of using the military is to enforce their government on the people. You don't have to go about censoring news if you think people like what you are doing and are happy with it. They didn't take power against their will, this was the soviet union. Those countries were willing participants. It depresses me that people in England are so misinformed about Russia and such victims of American cold War propaganda. Its genuinely embarrassing. Can we not think for ourselves or do we just repeat cold War lies and Russiaphobia. So the Soviet government uses army to occupy the neighbouring countries, forming the Eastern bloc. The moment USSR economy goes down the toilet, every country becomes an independent liberal democracy. But they all loved to be under a socialist rule? And we are the ones who are misinformed? If the people loved the government, they can have a free election and win it. They can't. Hence they use the army instead. In a country where people really loved to live, you don't have to block people from leaving the country. You don't need the government to censor news channels. These are the activities which a government spreading misinformation using propoganda would do. What do you mean by using armies? These countries were part of the Eastern bloc. That means that the soviet union armies were there to stop them beinv attacked by nato forces. Neither could you leave western countries for the soviet union. It was a cold War. When you say news channels Re censored do you think western news channels aren't? The soviet union collapsed, there are many reasons why but it was primarily due to a willingness on the part of the soviet Regimr to end the cold War and become part of the western democracies. How niave they were. Most Russians suffered terribly under free market capitalism in the 90s which wrecked the Russian economy and led to thec rise of a western backed oligarchy. It was Putin who finally put an end to the corruption and re established govt control. That's why Putin had won every single election. Think I'll suggest your next holiday, take a trip to Lithuania, Estonia and Poland and go see some of the KGB police stations where people were tortured and disappeared. Then take a look at The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that enabled those two powers to partition Poland between them. Then see how, even though Germany lost the War, Stalin continued hus snatching of European states and occupied them. Just like Ukrain, while occupied, Russians took residence, had children, settled and rooted into these countries as 'Russian speakers". Then when the native population take exception to these people, Putin goes in to defend 'Russian Speakers" by means of force. This is what you are seeing in Donbass, and Luhansk. Putin will continue to support Ethnic Russian wishes to be part of Russia again, with utter disregard for the native population which as you can see, bombed and murdered into submission. This can, and likely will continue in every ex Soviet country until the whole USSR has been recreated. August 23, 1939 It's an anniversary few in the Kremlin, or elsewhere in Russia for that matter, are keen to talk about -- let alone remember in some way. Eighty years ago, on August 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and Josef Stalin's Soviet Union inked a nonaggression treaty that ushered in World War II. Commonly known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, after Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, the agreement gave Adolf Hitler a free hand to attack Poland without fear of Soviet intervention. Behind the scenes, it was later determined, Hitler and Stalin had established secret protocols dividing Central and Eastern Europe into their respective "spheres of influence." The pact brought devastation to the states and regions that were carved up, resulted in the deportation and killing of thousands from those areas, and paved the way for the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe behind the Iron Curtain after the war's end in 1945. Hitler lost his share, Stalin snatched his and brutally occupied people's that had no choice. We know why Putin's won every election. His opponents are either in Prison, in exile or dead (poisoned mostly). I do not disagree that the KGB got up to some nefarious stuff against political opponents. Of course this has been scandalised and exaggerated as our own security forces were also getting up to no good, mi5 has a long history of silencing political groups and as for the CIA well... Let's just say they have murdered and set up coups all over the world and most probably killed Kennedy and a host of other political opponents. So the KGB is no different other than that they didn't go around the world assassinating people. As for the molotov ribbentrip pact any scholar of history would tell you that the pact was necessary to save Russia. Before the pact stalin had attempted to make an alliance with both France and Britain, both declined. Stalin knew hitler hated Russia and was planning to invade, the pact gave Russia time. And allowed them to build up their defences to meet the nazi threat. I fully support the Russian military operation In the Ukraine. The ukranian situation is entirely the fault of the west. Anyone who is prepared to look into the history of thd Ukraine and recent events would feel the same. Its clear that with your wrong headed view of the situation you have a poor understanding and a child like grasp of thd situation. Educate yourself. I support Putin, he is a strong and able leader, far better than any current leader of the UK. The vast majority of Russians also support him, he has an approval rating of around 90%. " You should go live in Russia. Ukraine is complicated but frankly Brits who side with Putin should be considered traitors and treated accordingly. Ukraine will prevail. Putin will be humiliated by Christmas. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
" And as is happening again, with zero compassion or concern for their own troops. A brutal corrupt regime. May their cruel days and ways soon end. I do not disagree that the KGB got up to some nefarious stuff against political opponents. Of course this has been scandalised and exaggerated as our own security forces were also getting up to no good, mi5 has a long history of silencing political groups and as for the CIA well... Let's just say they have murdered and set up coups all over the world and most probably killed Kennedy and a host of other political opponents. So the KGB is no different other than that they didn't go around the world assassinating people. ‘Hitler hated Russia’ , France & Britain didn’t want an alliance. I wonder why? Must be the fault of the nasty Americans and the rest of free world. Nothing to do with the Russians of course. Hitler hated Russia because he was a racist and thought the slavs an inferior race of sub humans, a view echoed by many Americans in the post war period as they persecuted the blacks. France and Britain had had alliances with Russia in the past but they were anti communist and at that late stage still hoped for peace with Germany. America had nothing to do with it as any student of history would tell you. The Americans themselves at the time were divided between supporting Hitler and wanting nothing to do with European affairs. At the time the klu klux klan were still burning and lynching blacks and sponsoring politicians who supported racial segregation. The majority of Americans in the South including politicians agreed with hitlers racial theories. Again any student of history would tell you this. The soviet union defeated the Nazis, every single military commander or historian would tell you that without the sacrifice of the soviet union the story might have been very different. The soviet union saved Europe from the Nazis and to that at least you owe Stalin a thank you. " I take nothing away from the Soviet Union at that time. But it could also have been a very different story without the western allies. The British/American bombing of German infrastructure, the second front through Italy pinning down huge amounts of German men and equipment, an undefeated Britain pinning down much needed troops in France, the Arctic convoys sending equipment to the Soviets. And eventually the third front came with the Normandy invasion. Without Britain and America the Soviet Union could have actually (or probably) lost. Even as it was it was touch and go in the east and could have gone either way. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
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Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
" Thanks for your honesty, at least now those that despise your views like me can block and have nothing further to do with you. unfortunately you will find a few others like yourself on this site but thankfully not many." Feel free. I know I'm correct, if you choose to live in ignorance and take comfort in Western lies then that's your choice. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
" they transformed the country into a world super power. Just like China has done under the communist party. How does them being a neighbouring countries make a difference when it comes to right and wrong? In the end, it's about getting into another country and taking power against their will. I don't agree that people rejected democracy and chose to live there. I know many people somehow justify dictatorship by saying that the people did like the government. If majority of people genuinely did, you can easily have a fair election and prove it. The whole point of using the military is to enforce their government on the people. You don't have to go about censoring news if you think people like what you are doing and are happy with it. They didn't take power against their will, this was the soviet union. Those countries were willing participants. It depresses me that people in England are so misinformed about Russia and such victims of American cold War propaganda. Its genuinely embarrassing. Can we not think for ourselves or do we just repeat cold War lies and Russiaphobia. So the Soviet government uses army to occupy the neighbouring countries, forming the Eastern bloc. The moment USSR economy goes down the toilet, every country becomes an independent liberal democracy. But they all loved to be under a socialist rule? And we are the ones who are misinformed? If the people loved the government, they can have a free election and win it. They can't. Hence they use the army instead. In a country where people really loved to live, you don't have to block people from leaving the country. You don't need the government to censor news channels. These are the activities which a government spreading misinformation using propoganda would do. What do you mean by using armies? These countries were part of the Eastern bloc. That means that the soviet union armies were there to stop them beinv attacked by nato forces. Neither could you leave western countries for the soviet union. It was a cold War. When you say news channels Re censored do you think western news channels aren't? The soviet union collapsed, there are many reasons why but it was primarily due to a willingness on the part of the soviet Regimr to end the cold War and become part of the western democracies. How niave they were. Most Russians suffered terribly under free market capitalism in the 90s which wrecked the Russian economy and led to thec rise of a western backed oligarchy. It was Putin who finally put an end to the corruption and re established govt control. That's why Putin had won every single election. Think I'll suggest your next holiday, take a trip to Lithuania, Estonia and Poland and go see some of the KGB police stations where people were tortured and disappeared. Then take a look at The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that enabled those two powers to partition Poland between them. Then see how, even though Germany lost the War, Stalin continued hus snatching of European states and occupied them. Just like Ukrain, while occupied, Russians took residence, had children, settled and rooted into these countries as 'Russian speakers". Then when the native population take exception to these people, Putin goes in to defend 'Russian Speakers" by means of force. This is what you are seeing in Donbass, and Luhansk. Putin will continue to support Ethnic Russian wishes to be part of Russia again, with utter disregard for the native population which as you can see, bombed and murdered into submission. This can, and likely will continue in every ex Soviet country until the whole USSR has been recreated. August 23, 1939 It's an anniversary few in the Kremlin, or elsewhere in Russia for that matter, are keen to talk about -- let alone remember in some way. Eighty years ago, on August 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and Josef Stalin's Soviet Union inked a nonaggression treaty that ushered in World War II. Commonly known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, after Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, the agreement gave Adolf Hitler a free hand to attack Poland without fear of Soviet intervention. Behind the scenes, it was later determined, Hitler and Stalin had established secret protocols dividing Central and Eastern Europe into their respective "spheres of influence." The pact brought devastation to the states and regions that were carved up, resulted in the deportation and killing of thousands from those areas, and paved the way for the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe behind the Iron Curtain after the war's end in 1945. Hitler lost his share, Stalin snatched his and brutally occupied people's that had no choice. We know why Putin's won every election. His opponents are either in Prison, in exile or dead (poisoned mostly). I do not disagree that the KGB got up to some nefarious stuff against political opponents. Of course this has been scandalised and exaggerated as our own security forces were also getting up to no good, mi5 has a long history of silencing political groups and as for the CIA well... Let's just say they have murdered and set up coups all over the world and most probably killed Kennedy and a host of other political opponents. So the KGB is no different other than that they didn't go around the world assassinating people. As for the molotov ribbentrip pact any scholar of history would tell you that the pact was necessary to save Russia. Before the pact stalin had attempted to make an alliance with both France and Britain, both declined. Stalin knew hitler hated Russia and was planning to invade, the pact gave Russia time. And allowed them to build up their defences to meet the nazi threat. I fully support the Russian military operation In the Ukraine. The ukranian situation is entirely the fault of the west. Anyone who is prepared to look into the history of thd Ukraine and recent events would feel the same. Its clear that with your wrong headed view of the situation you have a poor understanding and a child like grasp of thd situation. Educate yourself. I support Putin, he is a strong and able leader, far better than any current leader of the UK. The vast majority of Russians also support him, he has an approval rating of around 90%. You should go live in Russia. Ukraine is complicated but frankly Brits who side with Putin should be considered traitors and treated accordingly. Ukraine will prevail. Putin will be humiliated by Christmas. "Well let's see what the situation is at Christmas. I would happily bet you any amount of money by PayPal that Russia will still be in Ukraine at Christmas and that their territorial gains will have increased since today . Put your money where your mouth is. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
" I do not disagree that the KGB got up to some nefarious stuff against political opponents. Of course this has been scandalised and exaggerated as our own security forces were also getting up to no good, mi5 has a long history of silencing political groups and as for the CIA well... Let's just say they have murdered and set up coups all over the world and most probably killed Kennedy and a host of other political opponents. So the KGB is no different other than that they didn't go around the world assassinating people. ‘Hitler hated Russia’ , France & Britain didn’t want an alliance. I wonder why? Must be the fault of the nasty Americans and the rest of free world. Nothing to do with the Russians of course. Hitler hated Russia because he was a racist and thought the slavs an inferior race of sub humans, a view echoed by many Americans in the post war period as they persecuted the blacks. France and Britain had had alliances with Russia in the past but they were anti communist and at that late stage still hoped for peace with Germany. America had nothing to do with it as any student of history would tell you. The Americans themselves at the time were divided between supporting Hitler and wanting nothing to do with European affairs. At the time the klu klux klan were still burning and lynching blacks and sponsoring politicians who supported racial segregation. The majority of Americans in the South including politicians agreed with hitlers racial theories. Again any student of history would tell you this. The soviet union defeated the Nazis, every single military commander or historian would tell you that without the sacrifice of the soviet union the story might have been very different. The soviet union saved Europe from the Nazis and to that at least you owe Stalin a thank you. And the September 1939 invasion of Poland was a joint German/Soviet Union operation. Any historian will tell you that. It was only after Hitler ratted on the Molotov/Von Ribbentrop pact in 1941 that Russia turned against him. Prior to that Stalin was quite happy with the status quo, and a just as enthusiastic persecutor of Jews." I told you what the situation was. Stalin was buying time, land in Poland was time. Molotov himself knew exactly what the nazi game plan was. Going to war with Germany in 1940 would have been suicidal for Russia, the wehrmacht was the supreme fighting machine the world had ever seen and they made no bones about what they would do with Russians. There would be no human rights or prisoners of war. I do not deny that Russians persecuted Jews, pogroms were a long part of Russian history but these also existed throughout Europe including in the UK. However many Jews fought for the Soviets, it was the Soviets who liberated the first death camps and to compare stalin treatment of Jews to Hitler is quite frankly a disgusting and didlsgraceful thing to say considering what Hitler did to Russian Jews. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
" I do not disagree that the KGB got up to some nefarious stuff against political opponents. Of course this has been scandalised and exaggerated as our own security forces were also getting up to no good, mi5 has a long history of silencing political groups and as for the CIA well... Let's just say they have murdered and set up coups all over the world and most probably killed Kennedy and a host of other political opponents. So the KGB is no different other than that they didn't go around the world assassinating people. ‘Hitler hated Russia’ , France & Britain didn’t want an alliance. I wonder why? Must be the fault of the nasty Americans and the rest of free world. Nothing to do with the Russians of course. Hitler hated Russia because he was a racist and thought the slavs an inferior race of sub humans, a view echoed by many Americans in the post war period as they persecuted the blacks. France and Britain had had alliances with Russia in the past but they were anti communist and at that late stage still hoped for peace with Germany. America had nothing to do with it as any student of history would tell you. The Americans themselves at the time were divided between supporting Hitler and wanting nothing to do with European affairs. At the time the klu klux klan were still burning and lynching blacks and sponsoring politicians who supported racial segregation. The majority of Americans in the South including politicians agreed with hitlers racial theories. Again any student of history would tell you this. The soviet union defeated the Nazis, every single military commander or historian would tell you that without the sacrifice of the soviet union the story might have been very different. The soviet union saved Europe from the Nazis and to that at least you owe Stalin a thank you. And the September 1939 invasion of Poland was a joint German/Soviet Union operation. Any historian will tell you that. It was only after Hitler ratted on the Molotov/Von Ribbentrop pact in 1941 that Russia turned against him. Prior to that Stalin was quite happy with the status quo, and a just as enthusiastic persecutor of Jews. I told you what the situation was. Stalin was buying time, land in Poland was time. Molotov himself knew exactly what the nazi game plan was. Going to war with Germany in 1940 would have been suicidal for Russia, the wehrmacht was the supreme fighting machine the world had ever seen and they made no bones about what they would do with Russians. There would be no human rights or prisoners of war. I do not deny that Russians persecuted Jews, pogroms were a long part of Russian history but these also existed throughout Europe including in the UK. However many Jews fought for the Soviets, it was the Soviets who liberated the first death camps and to compare stalin treatment of Jews to Hitler is quite frankly a disgusting and didlsgraceful thing to say considering what Hitler did to Russian Jews. " Hitler called them concentration camps, Stalin called them gulags. I have no problem comparing Stalin to Hitler. Maybe the names and some of the methods were different but they were just as evil as each other. Oh! And Putin is catching up fast. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
" I do not disagree that the KGB got up to some nefarious stuff against political opponents. Of course this has been scandalised and exaggerated as our own security forces were also getting up to no good, mi5 has a long history of silencing political groups and as for the CIA well... Let's just say they have murdered and set up coups all over the world and most probably killed Kennedy and a host of other political opponents. So the KGB is no different other than that they didn't go around the world assassinating people. ‘Hitler hated Russia’ , France & Britain didn’t want an alliance. I wonder why? Must be the fault of the nasty Americans and the rest of free world. Nothing to do with the Russians of course. Hitler hated Russia because he was a racist and thought the slavs an inferior race of sub humans, a view echoed by many Americans in the post war period as they persecuted the blacks. France and Britain had had alliances with Russia in the past but they were anti communist and at that late stage still hoped for peace with Germany. America had nothing to do with it as any student of history would tell you. The Americans themselves at the time were divided between supporting Hitler and wanting nothing to do with European affairs. At the time the klu klux klan were still burning and lynching blacks and sponsoring politicians who supported racial segregation. The majority of Americans in the South including politicians agreed with hitlers racial theories. Again any student of history would tell you this. The soviet union defeated the Nazis, every single military commander or historian would tell you that without the sacrifice of the soviet union the story might have been very different. The soviet union saved Europe from the Nazis and to that at least you owe Stalin a thank you. And the September 1939 invasion of Poland was a joint German/Soviet Union operation. Any historian will tell you that. It was only after Hitler ratted on the Molotov/Von Ribbentrop pact in 1941 that Russia turned against him. Prior to that Stalin was quite happy with the status quo, and a just as enthusiastic persecutor of Jews. I told you what the situation was. Stalin was buying time, land in Poland was time. Molotov himself knew exactly what the nazi game plan was. Going to war with Germany in 1940 would have been suicidal for Russia, the wehrmacht was the supreme fighting machine the world had ever seen and they made no bones about what they would do with Russians. There would be no human rights or prisoners of war. I do not deny that Russians persecuted Jews, pogroms were a long part of Russian history but these also existed throughout Europe including in the UK. However many Jews fought for the Soviets, it was the Soviets who liberated the first death camps and to compare stalin treatment of Jews to Hitler is quite frankly a disgusting and didlsgraceful thing to say considering what Hitler did to Russian Jews. Hitler called them concentration camps, Stalin called them gulags. I have no problem comparing Stalin to Hitler. Maybe the names and some of the methods were different but they were just as evil as each other. Oh! And Putin is catching up fast." What would you call George W Bush? | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
" Thanks for your honesty, at least now those that despise your views like me can block and have nothing further to do with you. unfortunately you will find a few others like yourself on this site but thankfully not many. Feel free. I know I'm correct, if you choose to live in ignorance and take comfort in Western lies then that's your choice. " I have no idea why you are living in the UK if you are such a fan of Russia.. However an educated guess could lead me to think that you like your creature comforts more than your ideologies. | |||
Reply privately (closed, thread got too big) | |||
