d4dev

KK, what an excellent case of double standards and shifting blame! Even if that product is sold to rogue states like Saddam's Iraq? Is that in defence of the Euros or the US?

Bush's Pakistan contradiction By Seema Sirohi http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FB13Df04.html ** Post Removed Due to Copyright Infringment ** Let's remember not to post entire articles in the forums. Copyright infringement is illegal on these forums. Therefore, please do not post articles in their entirety. When posting copyrighted material, please use the quote ( ) feature to highlight the important parts of the article and provide a throughout summary for others. You must also provide sufficient credit to the author and a link to the original article in your post. If the article cannot be found online, then at the end of the post provide an appropriate cite using any of the available citing formats, MLA, APA, etc.

How I wish people would read the history of Israel's suppression of the Palestinians and then take a balanced view of the situation!

Wrong again. Let me make the difference clear between socialism and communism. This is not communism we are talking about guys, socialist economies are the ones like Canada or Sweden or India or France; there is a difference between capitalist economies like the US and let's say Canada because the US wants to privatize whatever it has(thank God it has not privatized the armed forces until now) whereas in Canada, many enterprises are stll government owned, or in which the government has a majority 51% stake.

Guys, have anyone of you ever read Karl Marx's Das Capital? I have generally noticed that whatever the people know here about Communism is only what the US has been propagating about it since the cold war. Communism as a theory is based on the ideals of equality and humanism, redistribution and the benefit of the society and the state at large. That is why communist countries often achieve double digit growth rates as in the case of the USSR or China whereas even capitalist economies fail after years of market deregulation. The best ex of this are the so called "South East Asian tiger" economies of Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the like which faced an economic crisis around 4/5 yrs back because of too much deregulation. But anyway, this is not the topic of the thread so let's stay in topic guys.

Oh yeah? Back it up with evidence. Just rattling of some figures does not prove anything. Cite your source. I know that Gates donates, but also let me know what percentage of his income that is. And let me if it would have been better if he was in a socialist state and the government would have confiscated half of his profits and redistributed them amongst the poor. Then he would not be the richest man in the world and the poor people would have enjoyed a better standard of living.

Oh, so bless the rich, God! they are here save our souls! I have never heard such a ridiculous statement in my life. How many rich people donate to charity, and even if they do, what proportion of their income is it? Don't tell me that poor people like me have survived till today only because of the donations of the rich And are you saying that a government which is based on the principle of distribution of income and not the "Survival of the fittest" but the survival of all the citizens of the country contributes less to the welfare of the poor than the rich people in a capitalist country do in a year? You are mistaken maan! And are you saying that planned 5 yr economies are more likely to fail than unplanned ones? Do you know what planning is in the first place? Can you explain why the USSR took just 30 years after the revolution to become a superpower on par with the US which took 150 years to get there?

Of course anyone would howl at this. What does the US think of itself anyway? :angry: If it thinks it can meddle in any country on earth it wants to, it's got to bear the consequences! No wonder the Al-Qaeda and thousands of Muslims across the Muslim world rose in arms against the US! And no wonder the same US that helped these Muslim fanatics drive the USSR away of Afghanistan is now hard pressed to eliminate them. Did you know Btw that Bin Laden fought the USSR during Afghanistan's occupation?

"If the US went to Saudi Arabia and said "You have 1 yr to clean up your gov't, have a liberal press, stop the harassment of women, construct a liberal education system, reform your economy and open your markets" Hey Craig, Saudi Arabia is not a client state of the US and the US has not right to tell the Saudis that. That is what people hate about the US; it considers itself to be the nanny of the world! Can't the US stop poking it's nose into other people's affairs?

Is there? Well, you are mistaken then. Do you know the details of the "photographic evidence" that was shown to the Security Council? "The highlights of Powell's presentation were communication intercepts and satellite photographs.The intercepts, he alleged, caught Iraqi functionaries discussing an effort to hide weapons. But other, less damning interpretations seemed more likely. In one recording that occurred four days after the discovery of 12 empty chemical warheads in a warehouse, two Iraqi officers discuss "the possibility there is, by chance, forbidden ammo" at another site and the need to "clean out all the areas, the scrap areas, the abandoned areas." Clearly, this does not refer to known stores of weapons. But it could reveal an intent to search for and retain any remaining weapons. Or it could reflect an intent to search for and discretely destroy them. Another possible interpretation is suggested by the fact that the conversation occurred on the same day that Iraq announced it had found four more empty warheads, which it promptly turned over to UNMOVIC.16 As for the photographs: they showed activity at known weapons sites. At some sites, decontamination vehicles, cranes, or cargo trucks were evident. This, Powell asserted, implied the presence of proscribed weapons—but none were actually shown or tracked. Again, alternative interpretations seemed equally or more plausible. Hans Blix concluded that the activity "could just as easily have been a routine activity."17 And, indeed, Secretary Powell qualified his statement by saying, "We don't know precisely what Iraq was moving." Nor, apparently, could he say to where Iraq was moving the unknown items—although the US ability to spy from the sky was otherwise quite impressive. Subsequently, Iraqi officials took journalists to one of the sites in Powell's photographs, the Al Musayyib missile facility, and explained that the photographed activity involved moving al-Samoud missiles, which were regularly rotated to and from the facility for testing and calibration.18 (The al-Samoud missile was later found to marginally exceed the permitted range. Iraq was in the process of destroying them under supervision when the war began.) It is remarkable that Secretary Powell would openly state that "[w]e don't know precisely what Iraq was moving" in the context of making an argument for imposing serious consequences on Iraq—which no one doubted meant war. But the assertion fairly reflected his presentation as a whole, which served to raise suspicions about Iraq without settling them one way or the other.' Note 16: Ian Fisher, "Iraq Discloses 4 Warheads In What Arms Inspector Calls 'Constructive' Talks," New York Times, 20 January 2003, p. 12; and, Julia Preston, Inspectors Find Empty Warheads in an Iraqi Depot, New York Times, 17 January 2003, p. 1. Also see analysis of intercepts in Glen Rangwala, Claims in Secretary of State Colin Powell's UN Presentation concerning Iraq, 5th Feb 2003, MiddleEastReference (20 February 2003); available at: Back Note 17: "Key points: UN inspectors' report," BBC News Online, 17 February 2003. Back Note 18: Rajiv Chandrasekaran, "Iraq Shows Facilities Cited by Powell; Missiles Within U.N.'s Limits, Officials Assert," Washington Post, 8 February 2003, p. 14 And if you are saying that the US went to war to rid the world of Saddam, that does not hold ground does it? Because that was not the case for war. The only case for war was oil, which the US could not state openly.

I agree completely with Black Dog. The same reason China moved away from communism and opened it's market in the late 80's and 90's. As you said, no economy can be purely capitalist or communist. However, I believe that a country can make progress much faster if it starts out with socialism and then slowly converts to free market policies. The greatest eg of this is China; who can disagree with me that Chinese goods have flooded world markets and the word China has been ubiquitous with progress, after achieving nearly 7% to 8% yearly growth in the past 13 years?

It is obvious that when there is a free market, there will be capitalists who will try to maximize their own profits. They have no liability whatsoever towards the common man. Consider for eg. if I have to schedule daily flights between 2 places. The capitalist would only operate flights on the profitable routes and ignore the non-profitable routes. How do people then commute in the second instance? Of course there are many forms of transportation, but that's not the point. Here is where the state steps in and uses the profit it generates on one route to finance the other.

Are you saying that there is no social inequality in the US? Canada is much better off.

So capitalists, what is your reaction?

Exactly. Like Karl Marx said, religion is the opium of the masses. I know a better way. Why not eliminate all religions, and not keep even one?

Do you think the US is anyting different? Where Bill Gates is th erichest man in the world and at the same time, New York is having difficulty removing beggars from it's streets? Is that what you call equality? In my opinion, the government should work for the people; in this case, there should be a law which would make it mandatory for big buisnesses to contribute at least 10% of their yearly profits to social causes.

Anyone want to dispute the fact that unlike in the US, it is very rare in Canada to see beggars squatting on the streets? That is what is called a well planned economy, even medicines are cheaper than in the US. Canada does not go on an attacking spree around the world and so has more money to spend and disribute wisely among it's populace than the US does.

But how can anyone disagree that capitalism is only for the capitalists, not for the common man. The basis of socialism was the removal of the exploitation of workers by capitalists during the industrial revolution. The principle of capitalism as very often stated is similar to the law of the jungle" The fittest shall survive" whereas in Socialism, it is the responsibility of the state to provide for the basic needs of the entire population. How else can you explain the emergence of China as a major world power just 50 years after independance, similarly the USSR which became a superpower just 30 years after the revolution?

Ok, let's say Capitalist governments or Socialist governments.

Hey guys, which form of government do you think is the best? Socialist or Capitalist?

The logic of pre-emptive strike could be better understood if it is applied to countries who are really a threat to the US, China for eg. But the US does not have the guts to do that.

You know what, Howard Hampton was the best of the 3, I think.

Why does the US think that it is it's moral responsibility to police the world? In reality, the US only wants to protect it's own self interests. It went to war in Iraq because of the oil. It attacked Cuba and Vietnam because it felt that their well planned socialist economies were a threat to it's free-for-all economy. It continued with the expansion of NATO even after the fall of the USSR to encircle Russia and to threaten China.

And I don't know why Canada should support every foreign policy of the US as if it were it's own. In the world outside North America, the US is often seen as a dog, and Canada it's tail; the US can wag it whenever it wants to.

By the way, I am of the view that the US ignored the world community, went to war in contempt of nations like France, Germany, Russia, China, India, and the majority of the world and now, when it's claims were proven false and when it realised that it could not win the war on it's own, went begging to nations like Turkey, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh for troops and supplies, and when these nations insisted for a UN mandate, it went begging to the UN for it's mandate. The US is not going to stay a superpower for long, it is going to crumble soon due to it's own selfish and myopic policies.