On 8/16/2015 11:13 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
and yes they were totalitarian and many atheists claim not to be. They
killed to
support atheism, which is indisputable,
It's not only disputable, it's unevidenced. They didn't care what people
believed
about the supernatural, just so they didn't oppose the regime.
Brent, I am not expert in these matters, but as everyone I heard frequent allusions to
the famous Marxist motto: "religion is the opium of the people".
The full quote is,/"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a
heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of
the people."/ He was not especially interested in denying people the comfort of religion
except that he saw it as an instrument of pacifying the peasants and supporting oppressors.
Wikipedia seems to disagree with you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union
"Soviet policy, based on the ideology <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology> of
Marxism–Leninism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism%E2%80%93Leninism>, made atheism
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism> the official doctrine of the Soviet Union.
Marxism-Leninism has consistently advocated the control, suppression, and the
elimination of religious beliefs <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion>.^[1]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union#cite_note-country-data.com-1>
"
Is this wrong? Can you point us to any credible historical sources that contradict these
claims?
The source you cite also says:
//Joseph Stalin revived the Russian Orthodox Church to intensify patriotic support for the
war effort and presented Russia as a defender of Christian civilization, because he saw
the church had an ability to arouse the people in a way that the party could not and
because he wanted western help.[5] On September 4, 1943, Metropolitans Sergius
(Stragorodsky), Alexius (Simansky) and Nicholas (Yarushevich) were officially received by
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin who proposed to create the Moscow Patriarchate. They received
permission to convene a council on September 8, 1943, that elected Sergius Patriarch of
Moscow and All Russia.[79] The church had a public presence once again and passed measures
reaffirming their hierarchical structure that flatly contradicted the 1929 legislation and
even Lenin's 1918 decree. The official legislation was never withdrawn, however, which is
suggestive that the authorities did not consider that this tolerance would become
permanent.[80] This is considered by some a violation of the XXX Apostolic canon, as no
church hierarch could be consecrated by secular authorities.[81] A new patriarch was
elected, theological schools were opened, and thousands of churches began to function. The
Moscow Theological Academy Seminary, which had been closed since 1918, was re-opened.//
So Stalin, who had studied to be a priest himself, saw religion as just another tool of
oppression. If they were on his side they were fine.
and out of loyalty to Mao, Stalin, and your pal Bamers, Oops! Did I say
that?
You mean President Obama, the guy passed universal health insurance
Perhaps a step in the right direction. I agree that universal access to health care
should be a low bar requirement for civilized countries in 2015. I do have the
impression that what he did was to make the slightly less poor pay for the health care
of the poor, while the interests of the super-rich are left untouched. Why is medical
care one order of magnitude more expensive in the US than in most other advanced
economies? That's the root of the problem!
It's not an order of magnitude more expensive - except on a binary scale. It's about
twice as expensive as other OECD countries. And remember that the numbers cited are just
the total spent on health care, divided by the population. So it's not just doctors and
medicine; the expentidure counts all kinds of administrative overhead. A big part of the
difference is the amount insurance companies spent trying to deny coverage by citing a
pre-existing condition. They hired staffs of doctors just to review medical records and
claims. Obamacare eliminates that. Another part is due to the complexity of the insurance
system. Medicare operates on about 2% overhead. Private insurance incurs about 20%
overhead: every doctor's office has to hire an insurance billing specialist to deal with
the complexity. And no doubt there is some over-treatment, motivated by wanting to pay
for expensive equipment, defensive treatment, or simple venality.
Let's also not forget that Obama signed-off on the greatest transfer of wealth from the
poor to the rich in the history of humanity, through the bailouts of 2007-09.
and ended U.S. occupation of Iraq
Bush's decision to invade Iraq was both absurd and criminal. Obama's decision to abandon
the Iraqi people to their own fate after the US destabilized such a delicate region is
perhaps also absurd and criminal.
It wasn't his decision. George W. Bush negotiated the withdrawal date with the Iraqi Prime
Minister Al-Maliki in 2006. Obama proposed to keep more troops and stay longer, but only
if the Iraqi's would continue to agree that American troops would be immune from
prosecution in Iraqi courts. Al-Maliki of course wouldn't agree (it would have been
politically impossible in Iraq then).
Now they have ISIS and other lunatics.
Yes, and you and Jeb are trying to blame Obama for a mess he inherited.
and has avoided getting us into a war in Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Syria,
I must be really confused, but what I seam to remember is that he wanted to go to war in
Syria but was eventually dissuaded by massive popular opposition to that idea.
No, that's revised history. He made some threats about "line in the sand" and doing
something if Assad continued to use poison gas and saying "Assad must go." But then Assad
agreed to get rid of the poison gas. Obama listened to his advisors that told him there
were no reliably moderate groups fighting Assad and decided against supporting any of the
rebels. He was then castigated by the Republicans for not sending planes and troops to
Syria to destroy Assad after saying "he must go". Then with the rise of ISIL he was
castigated for not sending planes and troops to fight ISIL.
Ukraine
Nobody in the US would possibly consider going to war in Ukraine. That would mean a
direct confrontation with Russia, which is out of the question.
It didn't seem to be out of the question for John McCain
Instead there was an indirect confrontation. The western powers wanted Ukraine to join
the EU and possibly NATO, and they covertly funded anti-russian groups in Ukraine. Putin
won that conflict and ended up expanding to Crimea. Putin is a murderous psychopath, but
he his also much smarter than this current generation of mediocre western leaders.
Now you're sounding like Donald Trump. What clever trick to you think superior western
leaders would have used to prevent Russia from taking the Crimea - an area that is on
their doorstep and which they've held for decades. The stupid part was trying to get them
into the EU and NATO in the first place.
and all those other places you'd like send your fellow citizens to attack?
I am on your side in being against war (unless for real defensive purposes -- no
preemptive strike bullshit). This is why I don't understand why you approve of Obama. He
is exactly like the others: he authorizes drone strikes that cause horrible collateral
damage to civilians.
I hardly know what to say when a rational person like you refers to "horrible collateral
damage". Drone strikes are extremely precise compared to almost any other form of
warfare: bombing, artillery, strafing, even machine gun fire. It's the typical human
reaction, well documented in psychology experiments, that if one innocent child little
girl is killed or endangered you get a lot of sympathy and concern for her. But if she
has a little brother alongside her the level of sympathy and concern drops. And in fact
every time you increase the number of people killed or threatened in the story, the
sympathy and concern drops a little more. So when a drone strike kills a terrorist
leader, three cohorts, two wives and five of his children, it's "horrible collateral
damage". But when a few simple ignorant soldiers are killed by artillery fire along with
30 other people who happened to be the same building, it's only war. There was even a
joke going around on that point during the Iraq war:
/George Bush and Dick Cheney are drinking at a bar. Cheney calls to the bartender to come
over. He says, "Bartender, what would you say if I told you we were going to bomb Iraq
and kill 200,000 Iraqis and a nun on a bicycle."//
//
//The bartender says, "Why a nun on a bicycle??"//
//
//Cheney turns to W and says, "See, I told you nobody would care about 200,000
Iraqis."/
It is unfortunate that the irrationality of human psychology makes more precise killing of
our enemies a propaganda benefit for their side, but I would expect you to have a clearer
picture of the ethics.
He's an accomplice to two horrible treasons on his own people: total surveillance and
the NDAA.
He didn't originate any of them and it's certainly not treason (it doesn't give aid and
comfort to an enemy in war; which is the definition of treason). Many people (including
my wife for example) think the collecting of telephone call records is perfectly
reasonable and useful in anticipating terrorist activity. Most courts have upheld the
practices, so you can't even say they're illegal. Obama has pulled back the surveillance
in response to Snowden's revelations; he has ordered the NSA not to maintain a database of
phone records, to require a court order to by specific phone number to research, and to
allow searches only two steps from that number instead of three.
He has been the most aggressive President so far in going after whistle blowers, and he
is an accomplice to the torture of Bradley/Chelsea Manning
I agree with that criticism.
as well as countless Guantanamo prisoners.
He order all practices that could be considered torture stopped. He did that soon after
taking office.
If you are a pacifist and a liberal you should applaud Ed Snowden, not Barack
Obama.
I applaud Ed Snowden for doing right thing. I applaud Barack Obama for doing about as
much of the right thing as the political system allows.
George W. Bush, Barack Obama and all of the current candidates for the next presidential
election, from both parties, are all part of the sickness. They are all clones of the
same robotic, opportunistic douchebag politician, except for Trump, who is an
independent douchebag.
Yes and that's an attitude which will guarantee typical politician will get elected. But
you're wrong. It's not opportunistic politicians, they're realitively benign. In fact
I'm funding Bernie Sanders campaign. It's the knowing-nothing, anti-intellectual,
bellicose, ideologues like Huckabee, Santorum, Trump, Walker, Carson that worry me.
Brent
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