I don’t think Iran has any issues with India, there was a rumour (or maybe it was a fact) that India was wanting to base some troops in Iran. Also the relationship between Iran and China is not that close, nothing like Pakistan and Chinas.

I think it’s for the best to begin distancing from Saudi Arabia as the basing of US troops there has caused nothing for trouble on both sides.

Germany no longer needs US troops as the cold war is long over, and the German borders are now surrounded by new NATO countries.

Turkey.. they came under intense pressure from France and Germany not to submit to US troops, ultimately I feel that the Turks are still reliable allies to the US, one must not totally judge a country solely on one incident.

I am being realistic, and I even stated that I believe China should allow the people to directly elect members in higher positions. I’m not from China, nor am I Chinese. All my knowledge of China is based numerous text books I’ve studied in the US that are published by American companies (trust me, I can spot Chinese propoganda and what is actually positive/negative). And I can point to you numerous positive and negative policies and events of China’s more recent system (the PRC’s government can best be divided down into 5 or 6 stages).

Since you’ve finally made it clear that your only discontent with the current China’s policy towards objective criticism. China has lately been more lenient towards protesting, and infact there’s a large rural protest (in the thousands) over the governments handling with SARS, now let’s see what happens there. Since the Tiannamen fiasco, China has beem more cautious towards objective criticsm on it’s domestic policies.

by the way I must applaud you for being a bit more civilized than other people whom i’ve debated with.

The problem that have been brought up in regards to communism cannot be applied to all countries as a whole, each country should be taken on an individual basis. Things that occur in the USSR, Cuba, and the PRC are different. Likewise different democracies are different from each other, can we say the US is the same as post Leopoldo Argentina or India?

As for “brainwash” in regards to “that’s not communism”. You can pick up any book of Karl Marx, and read for yourself his ideas and contrast it with the past and communist governments. None of these countries fit Karl Marx’s description of communism.

Also you have brought up Mao alot, and your points are right and any sane person can agree that Mao’s leadership was strongly authoritarian, stalinist, and very very clumsy and irresponsible. However those days of his rule are in the past and since then, his rival political group, the reformers have dominated control of the PRC. Of course i do believe that the people of CHina should be able to vote those trying to be premier and such instead of only being able to vote for lower level cadres, I do not believe that at the present time or within the past 5-10 years the PRC has murdered those who voted for another way (if you can give an example then please do). After all this is not Iraq.

China is still currently going through a process of political transformation, and with their economy growing very fast within a short period of time (China now is a big difference from that of 10 years ago), eventually there will be new problems in trying to adjust to the pluralist political system and income gap between rich and poor which will force the government to further change their policies..who knows..it might end up being as bad as Mao or a further democratic elements installed, there will still be many issues China will have to solve, but I’ve yet to see you point out positive traits of current PRC, just strictly the negative. even in regimes such as Qadaffi’s Libya where much freedom of speech is lacking, at least the Libyans have right of housing (meaning they are all entitled to a place with electricity and water) and health care. Every government has it’s good points and bad points, but it seems that many who attack China focus strictly on it’s bad points.

Also, and very important, can a person from China say anything positive about his/her government with out being labeled as “brainwashed”? Or are they only allowed to say negative things?

Originally posted by TTP
Plawolf,

No doubt you are a smart man, however when you say the “only reason people leave communist states, is to gain more material posessions” than I question your reasoning, but if its true you are from China, it is the result of brainwashing,over the years. Bottom line is this
I want freedom!
Give me freedom to dare greatly, even if I fail I will have tried!, I don’t want somebody else responsible for my life! I am not content to do as well as my neighbor, I want to strive to do better to reach the heights of my capabilities, not what level the government says I should aspire to! I am not content to work at a job the government says I should do, Maybe I would be a great Lawyer, but I want to fly Jets!! so I did, nobody told me I couldn’t! I will take care of my retirement, I will buy what I want where I want, I will travel anywhere I want to go, ask any question!!!!! Are you getting this yet??? any man who gives up his freedom, in return for a lifetime job, and a pension plan is a man who has not lived a worthy life!!! God Bless freedom! I don’t expect you to understand, hopefully someday all your fellow citizens and you will!

TTP, lets say for the sake of your arguement, that PLAwolf or whomever is thorougly brainwashed into believing whatever things the brainwasher has told him/her to believe. Now if this person is purely content with living his or her life in a brainwashed society, then are we right to intervene and say it’s wrong even though the person is content with their current state of being? This question isn’t to justify any type of government but rather to bring up an issue of values and ideals. A man who gives up his freedom for a life time job sacrifices his ability to move on to other fields and even sacrificing his/her ability to achieve higher positions but he/she also loses the uncertainty of the future. It all comes down to what values you support and which you don’t because there are many values that conflict with each other. Just like how Marx stated that specialization is “bad” and leads to a motononous life and that a man should be able to (in his words) “be a fisher in the morning, a farmer in the day, and a cook at night”, you have to put down one value to raise another.

Also you’re right that people should be allowed to be what they want to be, but like Vortex said, there are simply people who are butt lazy who don’t want to do anything, and then there are people who want to do things that conflict in the interests of others, like say a man who wants to go around creating cults, or killing people etc. Eventually certain laws would have to be placed to protect people from each other. Even Plato, in his work “the republic” agreed that too much freedom leads to anarchy (and infact that a democracy is a stage of a dying republic).

Originally posted by TTP
Sauron,

Thank You, I deal frequently with many Cubans, In fact my brother-in-law is Cuban. They strike me as very hard working and industrious, and they prosper here. I believe that when Castro is gone, Cuba will become a tourist mecca, and a very prosperous nation.
Wachenroder, I completely understand that “theoretical Communism” as espoused by Marx and engels is not what we have in countries like Cuba, North Korea, etc, the problem is ,its such a “utopian concept” that it is impossible to impliment in the real world, trouble is, it sounds very attractive to the vast majority of peoples in the world who have been living in poverty and injustice. I would like to know why this particular brand of governance seems to lead to tyrants, dictatorships and brutality? Like Abraham Lincoln said concerning Democracy,
“while far from perfect, it is the last best hope for man”
And when you look at the performance of democracies versus other forms of government, in the areas of economic power, the Arts, innovation, technology, literature, and standard of living it isn’t even close!!! Thats why I find it amazing that people to this day embrace these failed ideaologies.

Communism gained popularity in those countries because of political turmoil and not to be mean, but a mass of people ignorant towards politics. Russia just had their monarch overthrown and a majority of the population were serfs. China was even worse as their last dynasty was overthrown, ravaged by numerous foreign invaders, and the bulk of the peasants were illiterate, and in Cuba, very few were happy with Baptista’s control. I don’t think many of these people understood the ideas of communism either..and quite frankly.. Karl Marx’s books are very very hard to read (it took me several tries reading his books to get a gist of what he’s trying to talk about).

As for culture, arts, literature.. those things are usually established long before the ideas of capitalism, democracy and communism, especially in countries that have ancient civilizations.

I think Cuba could be better off, but the reason why Castro got power in the first place was mass discontent with Baptista.

Originally posted by TTP
Crobato,

Plawolf said in an earlier post that if it weren’t for the Communist party, or the government in place now, China would become a divided nation, much like what happened to the old USSR when all the different “states” sought independence, You on the other hand say the Chinese are very nationalisticSo which one of you are right??? Read one of Plawolf’s earlier posts on the subject.

The Situation between the USSR and the PRC is a bit different. In the USSR many of the major “minority” groups had their own “autonomous SSR” named after them and usually (but not always) had it’s own governer controlling it that was of that ethnic group..and in the USSR minorities made up at least 50% of the population.. and not to sound racist or anything but they were more “advanced”, almost all of those ethnicities were conquered recently around 50-100 prior to the establishment of the USSR and its people were strongly nationalistic and took advantage of the weakness in 91 and separated (although there were some autonomous areas in the USSR that decided to stay such as Tatarstan and Kalmykia.

As for the PRC, the minorities are only 10%, not 50% like in the USSR, so this gives alot of power to the majority.. also alot of the minorities in the PRC are “backwards” (again not to sound racist or anything), as many of them were still living in “simple” methods of living such as nomadisim, tribalism, etc while in comparison to the USSR’s minority, Latvia, Lithuania, etc were more modern. The only autonomous areas in the PRC that could seperate is Tibet (Xizang), Xinjiang (also known as Eastern Turkestan and Uighurstan), and Inner Mongolia. Tibet has calmed down in the past 10 years, and Inner Mongolia has been quiet as well, only Xinjiang represents the area that wants to break away as it has alot of activities even until today.

Speaking of Voting, the only country in the world to my knowledge that people have the most power when it comes to voting is Finland, which i consider a direct democracy. Where people directly vote on issues rather than vote for some one to go vote for them.

As for China, the way their voting system works is people can only vote for the lowest level, then that lowest level of party members vote for the next highest, then that next level vote for the next highest and so forth and so forth. The top guys are only voted by the next level below. I’m guessing this is the USSR way too, could anyone who knows more about the USSR’s voting system clarify please?