FriendBesto
The US follows the Super Power playbook, which is, they will invent some ridiculous, random, flimsy reason as to why they can allow themselves to break International Law. I mean, what is anyone else going to do? Invade them?
I mean, is not like invading Iraq, Afghanistan, among others, and covertly helping overthrow dozens of democratically elected Heads of State since WWII was like, 100% Legal.
If anything, at least more people see the blatant hypocrisy, now more than ever.
They are tropes because they literally happened. How many millions died due to famines or ideological persecutions say, Russia, China or Khmer Rouge? Please, provide a number.
Are you going to claim that current China is not a surveillance State, on top of that? With property that can only be owned for 50 years and homeless outside main cities? I mean, I could go on and on, video does exist of this. The point is that I have looked. To say that some of these regimes did not have at least some positives is silly, simply put, the positives in most cases do not outweigh the oppressive, propaganda State negatives.
Dude, I lived in Canada, know people in the Nordics, I know what I am talking about. You are wrong. Saying it is “false” does not cancel reality. Most Canadians enjoy a standard of living higher than 90% of the rest of the world in the aggregate. I lived in a major city and got tired of the cosmopolitan living and moved a small city, I look into a river every morning. I am not rich, albeit a bit lucky.
In general, the Nordics have it better. You should go visit Iceland, albeit it is expensive, but at least you are not going to risk getting robbed as you would in many parts of Mexico or Honduras. Colonialism is a silly claim, all human beings, and most civilizations have done this since the beginning of time, just colonizing each other over resources. You think the while folk invented this? It has been done by all, often brutally. Did you think the Mongols, the British of the Muslims during the early Islamic conquests got where they get through hugs and kisses? Alexander the Great got to India by whispering sweet nothings into the armies they destroyed along the way? Surely. Africa and the Americas were killing each other all the time and had slaves before any white person got there. Who do you think sold black people to the Europeans? Other black people.
My point is that the Nordic countries can afford to have socialized services because they enjoy the protection of USA imperialistic or militaristic hegemony. Never said that was a good thing, nevertheless, that is just the current reality. They do not have to worry about paying for large standing armies because the USA would not allow it. Since it is simply not in their best geopolitical interest. Same reason why Costa Rica or Panama do not need large armies, either.
In a true Communist state, as in like what Stalin wanted and aimed for, there was no room for private enterprise. Mao and current China has their fingers into all so-called private companies. Not really private, really. What if your name is Jack Ma, and are a full blown billionare, and get a bit lippy in the wrong think, you just disappear for 3 months to be, straighten out. So, not sure if that is really “private.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64781986
Cooperatives operating in a capitalistic environment, is very different than one existing under a Marxist or Communistic one. I mean, I cannot believe that this has to be stated. So, no, your answer is as vague as every other communist/marxist/socialist/etc that I have honestly asked, who themselves usually throw all the tropes of some type of communist paradise that has never existed in the form they suggest, while ignoring major aspects of history, the human condition and how said humans actually work and exist because we are all very different people. With different abilities, and qualities and many do not like to play communism or Marxism. I mean, Marxist and more specifically Leninists do know this, otherwise, they would not have invented the underhanded concept of Vanguard parties in order to manipulate the populace in a particular direction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguardism
What is not rocket science is what has been done historically, and of how badly treated and persecuted people who did not want to LARP with their communist-minded citizens or who were found guilty of wrong-think. These stories can be found throughout most of the 20th century in Russia and Eastern Europe and, behind what we would call the iron curtain and China and elsewhere.
I was honestly asking a question, which you could have answered in good faith, rather than coming off defensively as if I had not done my homework. You do not know what I know, so you should perhaps not assume, friend. Keeps conversations better. Would you wager to try again?
What “I” believe is irrelevant. History is the point. So yes, tens of millions died during Communism. If you are focusing on Russia, sure, let’s go there. First and foremost, during the later part of the 20th century until the Fall, Russian was essentially a corrupt, authoritarian State. This is widely known. Plus, I have old Russian friends who lived there, so I will certainly trust them over some possible ideologue on the internet. You know that living while you are concerned of being on the States radar over wrong think is not necessarily something that I would call a quality life. I have Romanian friends whose parents lived under the shadow of communist, oppressive propaganda and forced group think. Russia is not unique but they were one of the most forceful. One of the things that many pro-Communists never like to talk about was what happened to the people who society who did not want to LARP along. Generally they were re-educated or considered traitors or enemies of the State. Feel free to look it up.
Regarding vacations, makes sense that since you were seen like a cog in a machine, that for most, vacations, mandated by the State would be given generally, all at once and time off depended on a number of factors. https://www.rbth.com/history/334213-soviet-union-month-vacations Worth noting that the above is a Pro-Russian site, so there is bound to be some bias.
Found this person who claims that some type of vacations given to workers would be booked, group vacations. Not my idea of a vacation, however, if you ask me.
https://reddit.simo.sh/r/AskHistorians/comments/pejfni/i_am_an_average_soviet_citizen_who_wish_to_go_on/
So, no, more time off is not necessarily the only metric that should matter.
Secondly, millions died due to political persecutions, like in the Great Purge, at least 1.2+ million Kulaks, just to mention one. Their crime being only slightly better off plebs. On top of that millions of others died of famines, in order to get the USSR “going.” Same happen under Mao, in fact way more died under Mao as they too played the class game as to label citizens into different bins. They called them the 5 different black categories, partly borrowed from the Russian approach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Black_Categories
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge https://allthatsinteresting.com/how-many-people-did-stalin-kill https://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/04/world/major-soviet-paper-says-20-million-died-as-victims-of-stalin.html https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2010/09/naimark-stalin-genocide-092310
The presumption that I would be dishonest is silly and reeks to bad faith. Do not just try to cherry pick a time period for what seems to be benefit. How many millions dead over governmental ideology shift does the US have? Also, would you not say that the standard of living in say, the USA was superior in the aggregate to Russia’s during the same time period, or would you deny that?
Friend the ignorant here seems to be you. Cheers.
Fair. should have been more clear. I use Betterfox with my own tweaks, essentially a mix of AK and BF. Since BF is just based off AK. The AK maintainer has stated in the past that he just steals it off him. However and as you said, when jumping to site to site, AK is more likely to break things, which requires a bit more troubleshooting. Which I do not need for work since I know most of the sites I will be on. So outright privacy is not the primary goal there.
I used BF and tweaked upwards, rather than to undo AK settings. It’s just less of a hassle.
If I want AK, I use LIbrewolf since it already uses a lot of Arkenfox, along with my own tweaks for personal use, where I take privacy more seriously. Each browser has different uses.
Use more than one.
On PC, my daily driver is Firefox Developer, patched with my CSS along with Betterfox for enhanced privacy over ArkenFox. I am an Admin and run a number of sites, so this helps.
Librewolf as general backup. Mullvad as second backup but I find that I am not the best use case for it, on top that I use different VPN services. It is for non-tech users, is not bad, just not the best tool for me but it is what I will tell people to use when using my PC since the other two have very UI minimal, heavy keyboard-centric setups. Tor for when I need more privacy/testing. Keep a copy of ungoogled Chromiu, mostly vanilla, only uBlock, again for testing and the off-chance fuzzy site but barely ever use it. They all, aside UG, sync bookmarks via Nextcloud instance so I do not need to sign into FF sync.
On Android, Mull, or CookieWeb Preview because the excellent extension management due to their pop-up window. Great for things like uBlock on medium mode, otherwise medium mode on mobile is a pajn to use, on Mull I keep it on Easy mode. Nevertheless, uBlock is a must in today’s internet. Tor for when travelling abroad and do not need to sign-on to anything. Keeping extensions to a minimum. Each browser connects to different DNS services to minimise overlap, along rotating VPN servers from non-5 eyes countries as the minimum. Sounds like a lot but once you set it up, it is mostly set-and-forget.
Is there an example in history where this has attempted and implemented as such and not devolved into straight up persecusion, authoritarianism, cult of personally or tens+ of millions dead? And general lower standards of living to most, outside the party or political class like the Politburo? Could not find any. The Nordics and Canada are capitalistic with some social services. They seem to have a good valance but that is only because the USA military protects them out of geopolitical interests.
I am all good with say, limiting wealth of the rich, they can be rich but not stupifyingly rich and some socialised healthcare and the like. Coming from a third world, I have seen that abolishing private property is just oppression with extra steps, overtime. Most 1st world people have no idea of what they are asking and of how it devolves, in practice.
In your mind, how would workers “own” the means of production? Shares? Votes?
The most annoying thing is that the peace accords back then where known to be derailed by the USA and UK, like it was 100% not a secret, absolutely public knowledge if you actually cared about the actual geopolitical region and were paying attention to what was going on outside general news media. Academics were saying the same as well.
The Western media utterly, and seemingly in conjunction decided to under report this to well, mostly to Americans. So your average Americans were kept in the dark of how instrumental they were in escalating this war. And painted anyone who stated actual reality as merely Putin puppets. The manipulation was strong since it seems to have worked wonders.
I fail to see how the USA and by extension the UK are any different when playing the disinformation and misinformation game. Everyone blames everyone else and claims they do not do any of it.
Nuland is just a war criminal but one that has the approval of the American military and political complex. I trust people have listensed to the leaked phone call from years ago where she cherry picks Ukrainian politicians to exalt into office? Go democracy.
Okay, and replace it with what, exactly?