Russia tread

[Zoraptor]

Trying to argue the relative evilness of totalitarian regimes based on their kill counts is simply stupid.

 

.. and during the Soviet Union years (whose genocidal policies and bodycount put Hitler to shame).

Hmmm. Do I feel a r00fles coming?

 

Mind you,there really isn't any objective measure to judge degree of evilness other than body count. I'm sure all the Indians who starved kept it in perspective and were comforted that they died in service to good old fashioned capitalism rather than dirty unclean communism, but a more cynical mind might speculate that it wasn't much comfort at all.

[Walsingham]

Several key differences:

 

1) I don't advocate a return to British Imperial rule. No one does (and I mean that quite literally). LoFoby does advocate a return to communist central party control and decimation of the kulaks etc. etc.

 

2) The communists took a country that wasn't experiencing any natural disaster, was feeding itself quite happily and turned it into a famine. As a matter of direct policy. Maladministration doesn't compare.

 

3) It's utterly nonsensical to add slave trade deaths to the tariff for Blighty. Britain was the first significant power to outlaw the slave trade, not just in its own territory but in general. At some points fully 1/3rd of its fleet was occupied in fighting slavery.

 

~~

 

In summary my defence of Great Britain is that it has learned a great deal from its mistakes.

[Tagaziel]

Hmmm. Do I feel a r00fles coming?

 

Mind you,there really isn't any objective measure to judge degree of evilness other than body count. I'm sure all the Indians who starved kept it in perspective and were comforted that they died in service to good old fashioned capitalism rather than dirty unclean communism, but a more cynical mind might speculate that it wasn't much comfort at all.

I don't think there's an inherent contradiction between stating that evil is evil and pointing out that Stalin's score beats Hitler's.

 

That said, I'd contest your theory of an objective measure of degree of evilness, as this can lead to bizarre results, such as declaring Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge less evil than Stalin or Hitler, because they killed less people in the course of their terror. As such, I simply cannot support using such a measure. Evil is evil. We can debate on the exact definition of what is evil, but not on whether one totalitarian regime is less evil than another simply because it killed less people or that the people it ruined the lives of and abused survived (eg. the prisoners in Soviet gulags).

 

Note that I wasn't advocating excusing imperial abuse. If a woman is raped and the child she bears brings value and happiness in her life, should the rape be excused? No, it should not.

[Walsingham]

Should the evil score - let's call the unit of evil one Romana - take into account years spent doing evil? I mean surely it should be some sort of average per year?

[Tagaziel]

Should the evil score - let's call the unit of evil one Romana - take into account years spent doing evil? I mean surely it should be some sort of average per year?

How delightfully British of you.

[Malcador]

They'd probably win on that list, too.

[Walsingham]

They'd probably win on that list, too.

 

It's not the winning the league of evil bastards, Malc.

 

It's the taking part.

[Zoraptor]

I don't think there's an inherent contradiction between stating that evil is evil and pointing out that Stalin's score beats Hitler's.

 

Contradiction, no. After all, to a certain extent it's exactly what I'm doing. Irony though, yes, if you're going to say that doing so is stupid when you did exactly that twelve hours ago.

 

 

Several key differences:

 

1) I don't advocate a return to British Imperial rule. No one does (and I mean that quite literally). LoFoby does advocate a return to communist central party control and decimation of the kulaks etc. etc.

 

2) The communists took a country that wasn't experiencing any natural disaster, was feeding itself quite happily and turned it into a famine. As a matter of direct policy. Maladministration doesn't compare.

 

1) You kind of do. From the other thread (or earlier this one, asterisked if I can keep it straight) you were talking about post colonialism stopping the UK from interventions and replacing people's governments- which is exactly how much of the British Empire was built and even administered, eg all the Raj statelets that persisted until 1948 and the White Man's Burden bringing of enlightened administration to the Zulus etc. If you're going into countries and replacing their governments, inevitably with 'ideologically pure' ones, then you are being a neo colonialist even if you don't think of it in those terms. Especially with the inevitable double standards that will come in to play where you have to save country X from oppression, but country Y which is already friendly is AOK to do the same things. That's just the Raj principality program with the serials files off and more nominal independence.

 

2) Evidence required for it being deliberate policy, and not the sort of evidence that has Stalin killing more people than Hitler by counting all the Russians Hitler killed in Stalin's column. Sure Stalin was a monumental asterisk, but if he wanted people dead he was more than capable of getting and frequently did get a metaphorical Mosin Nagant for a lethal lead injection. It wasn't specifically aimed at Ukrainians or anyone else, plenty of Russians and others died too during the same processes, the primary cause was continuing to export food even when in shortage which British India also did on several occasions during famines- as well as the small manner of being the biggest international drug pusher of all time! Of all time!! and producing opium while the population starved.

[Tagaziel]

Contradiction, no. After all, to a certain extent it's exactly what I'm doing. Irony though, yes, if you're going to say that doing so is stupid when you did exactly that twelve hours ago.

If that's the way that was received, then I phrased it badly. Those were two separate points, though I wasn't trying to say that Stalin was more or less evil than Hitler. Both were the dregs of humanity and murdering psychopaths.

[Walsingham]

 

I don't think there's an inherent contradiction between stating that evil is evil and pointing out that Stalin's score beats Hitler's.

 

Contradiction, no. After all, to a certain extent it's exactly what I'm doing. Irony though, yes, if you're going to say that doing so is stupid when you did exactly that twelve hours ago.

 

 

Several key differences:

 

1) I don't advocate a return to British Imperial rule. No one does (and I mean that quite literally). LoFoby does advocate a return to communist central party control and decimation of the kulaks etc. etc.

 

2) The communists took a country that wasn't experiencing any natural disaster, was feeding itself quite happily and turned it into a famine. As a matter of direct policy. Maladministration doesn't compare.

 

1) You kind of do. From the other thread (or earlier this one, asterisked if I can keep it straight) you were talking about post colonialism stopping the UK from interventions and replacing people's governments- which is exactly how much of the British Empire was built and even administered, eg all the Raj statelets that persisted until 1948 and the White Man's Burden bringing of enlightened administration to the Zulus etc. If you're going into countries and replacing their governments, inevitably with 'ideologically pure' ones, then you are being a neo colonialist even if you don't think of it in those terms. Especially with the inevitable double standards that will come in to play where you have to save country X from oppression, but country Y which is already friendly is AOK to do the same things. That's just the Raj principality program with the serials files off and more nominal independence.

 

2) Evidence required for it being deliberate policy, and not the sort of evidence that has Stalin killing more people than Hitler by counting all the Russians Hitler killed in Stalin's column. Sure Stalin was a monumental asterisk, but if he wanted people dead he was more than capable of getting and frequently did get a metaphorical Mosin Nagant for a lethal lead injection. It wasn't specifically aimed at Ukrainians or anyone else, plenty of Russians and others died too during the same processes, the primary cause was continuing to export food even when in shortage which British India also did on several occasions during famines- as well as the small manner of being the biggest international drug pusher of all time! Of all time!! and producing opium while the population starved.

 

 

1) It is a dangerous bloody business to go slapping names on things. Evocative. You sound a lot like the people calling Obamacare communist, because the communists had state healthcare. I believe one can deal in the business of influencing other nation states (using force, money, or diplomacy) without attempting an empire. Merely attempting to achieve security. If you assert not, then how the hell is a responsible government to deal with the World beyond its borders?

 

2) Better men than I have done this research. Do you want me to Google it for you? I'd almost prefer to see what you turn up.

[Zoraptor]

1) It is neocolonialism. You may not like the label but it is a real term with a real definition, and it does involve going in to non developed nations and replacing their governments with ones that are friendly towards yours, and which follow your economic models etc. Yes, it will be dressed up differently from that but it's always been dressed up as such because it's easier to sell to both Victorian and current audiences if it's in humanitarian and charitable clothes as well.

 

2) I'm perfectly capable of doing it, and indeed have done. I find the evidence unconvincing, and largely consisting of "Stalin was mean, therefore it must have been deliberate!" when in truth Stalin was mean, so much of the time (a) nobody had the courage to tell him anything bad (b) many appointments were made for ideological purity/ loyalty rather than ability reasons  © other organisations have done similar things through a similar mixture of callousness, incompetence and greed (East India Company and British Raj included) without it being a deliberate policy (d) if it was aimed specifically at Ukrainians he wasn't aiming anywhere near as well as he could, vis Chechens, Cossacks and other minorities he targeted accurately. It's also in part because I have a very negative reaction to some of the statistical methods used to generate the higher figures- often done on a purely ideological basis in order to get Stalin's kill score high enough to surpass Hitler- such as including birth rate decrease as well.

[Walsingham]

1) Perhaps it's easier to sell, because it's better?

 

2) Again, I'm interested to see what you turn up. But I recall from many years back several analyses citing numerous officials, and foreign fellow travellers all attesting to it being a deliberate measure. I mean we're talking about a regime that slaughtered millions _outside_ the Holodomor for thinking too much. Being a kulak is practically suicide by commissar in comparison.

[Gorgon]

 

Several key differences:

 

1) I don't advocate a return to British Imperial rule. No one does (and I mean that quite literally). LoFoby does advocate a return to communist central party control and decimation of the kulaks etc. etc.

 

2) The communists took a country that wasn't experiencing any natural disaster, was feeding itself quite happily and turned it into a famine. As a matter of direct policy. Maladministration doesn't compare.

 

3) It's utterly nonsensical to add slave trade deaths to the tariff for Blighty. Britain was the first significant power to outlaw the slave trade, not just in its own territory but in general. At some points fully 1/3rd of its fleet was occupied in fighting slavery.

 

~~

 

In summary my defence of Great Britain is that it has learned a great deal from its mistakes.

It's something to be proud of, to a point. The British Empire had refined the client state model to such a degree that it made more sense to have capable administrators 

who could rule by proxy and with the authority of the Empire than menial labor walking around in chains. Systematic exploitation was still the order of the day, but there was no one industry completely dependent on slave labor like there was in the US. 

[Malcador]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOTt8QZWSdw

[licketysplit]

Needs more Putin.

[Tagaziel]

In modern Russia you don't have booty. You have Pootyn.

Edited December 20, 2013 by Tagaziel

[Malcador]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25497013

 

Kalashnikov died, age 94.

[Meshugger]

R.I.P.

 

*salutes*

[Walsingham]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25497013

 

Kalashnikov died, age 94.

 

Again, reps for engineering skills. But the consequence of it was to provide the perfect weapon for any ragtag fool to have lethal force. I will salute the designer if I can curse his masters.

[Woldan]

Again, reps for engineering skills. But the consequence of it was to provide the perfect weapon for any ragtag fool to have lethal force. I will salute the designer if I can curse his masters.

As if murderous fools didn't have a million other ways to kill a bunch of people.

[Zoraptor]

Yep, may as well criticise the inventor of the machete, or go back to those heartless bastards in China who invented gunpowder in the first place. All Kalashnikov did was make a very popular and reliable version of something that had been around for centuries; if they weren't using AKs they'd be using some other gun. Or sticks and stones, we're very good at improvising violence with whatever we have to hand.

[Walsingham]

Yep, may as well criticise the inventor of the machete, or go back to those heartless bastards in China who invented gunpowder in the first place. All Kalashnikov did was make a very popular and reliable version of something that had been around for centuries; if they weren't using AKs they'd be using some other gun. Or sticks and stones, we're very good at improvising violence with whatever we have to hand.

 

 A firearm isn't just a firearm, it's training and maintenance and ammunition and where you can buy it. The AKM is a weapon that fits perfectly into the kind of tinpot civil wars that have killed more civilians than both world wars combined. Firearms prior to the AK were either precision tools or completely all over the place. Thus keeping force in the hands of relatively disciplined organisations.

 

I'm not saying you wouldn't have had fighting across Africa without the AK. Obviously you can, and people do. But any force that was organised and disciplined would have had such a pronounced advantage over its enemy that the situations would have stabilised.

 

It's a weapon for undisciplined morons. And no good was ever going to come from arming undisciplined morons.

[Malcador]

Is, say, the FAL that much more complex to use ?

[Walsingham]

Is, say, the FAL that much more complex to use ?

 

Ask Monte Carlo.

 

My own view is that it's not about just about pointing and firing, it's about the whole package. Before kalashnikov the weapons were either slow and reliable but needing a skilled user, complex and mechanical, and fast firing which needed a skilled team, or small and expensive.

 

Mind you, having said that, if I was a greenie then I'd be annoyed with Ford for making motor cars accessible to morons.

[Zoraptor]

If you have a conscript/ low skill army then you need a simple and easy to maintain weapon, hence as soon as automatic became important something like the AK was inevitable. If Kalashnikov hadn't done it someone else would have. The German's WW2 assault rifle type weapons had already pointed the way.