DrumsofWar wrote:The President doesn't have to "work hard" since America is not a dictatorship, while China certainly was under the Communist regime for quite some time.
So by your logic, Kim Jong-il is the hardest working politician in the world and most certainly not a somewhat deranged hedonist who has "live lobsters and roasted donkey -- reportedly the North Korean leader's favorite food -- flown out to supply the train each day" while he was traveling? (source:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/09/09/nkorea.kim/)
A chief executive's job is to delegate and oversee, as well as conduct daily meetings. (Just check the White House's daily Youtube feed and you'll see he has to attend several meetings across the world every single day.)
Now I know why you tend not to cite sources: the ones you find usually turn out to be inconsistent with your arguments!
http://www.youtube.com/user/whitehouse
Activities of the past day:
"The President welcomes Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore to the White House"
"The President speaks to small business owners"
"Energy Secretary Steven Chu hosts a forum with clean energy stakeholders from across the country"
"The President speaks about the importance of signing the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act"
"The President recognizes the accomplishments of former Senator Edward William Brooke"
Not even one meeting "across the world," let alone "several."
Anyway, I still do happen to hold that Communism, maybe not as envisioned by Marx but certainly as realized in Moscow and Beijing, as one of the worst things to happen in human history. By direct body count compared to Western imperialism (Most place the number of Amerindians, Africans, and Indians killed by the US and UK's centuries of expansion at several million at best), Hitler's Hoolocaust, and Columbus' direct killing of the Arawaks, Communism outdaunts them. (Sorry, I'm not counting military conflicts here since you can easily blame any of the 4 sides in World War II for causing it.) You can't attribute nearly the loss of perhaps as many as 28 million lives to an "excess of the political system", as you put it.
You are incorrect, since I stated twice that I did not include military deaths in my counts. Also, I would like to see any historian claim that China, Poland, France, Britain, the Soviet Union, or the United States started World War II instead of Germany and Japan and still be taken seriously.
China has jailed the most amount of people by both percentage and raw numbers
Again, you are incorrect, as I have already pointed out: "The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London. China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison" (source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23prison.12253738.html).
and has killed 100 times more people by execution per year than the US ever did at its peak.
I fail to see how and why you use this fact to condemn China. Texas executes more people than any other United States state, so do you mean to say that Texas is the most brutal, dictatorial, and communistic state?
Like I said, you can point out whatever problems there are in the West, and there certainly are a lot of problems and a lot of blood on our hands, but it's come with progress while Communism only brings the former. Communism, as it was interpreted by Mao, stunted China's growth by decades and it's only beginning to recover now thanks to embracing a more Western economy and more openness in society as well as government.
Of course, China has adopted elements of Western thinking for the better. I am not denying this; in fact, I am arguing for it when I say Chinese society is not as uniform and the Chinese people not as brainwashed as you would like to think. However, the assertions that "Communism only brings" problems and that all of China's progress is due to Western influence are blatantly untrue.
First of all, you might think Mao heavily "stunted China's growth" by noting that while China, Japan, and South Korea all emerged from the Second World War in ashes, the latter two are far ahead of China today. However, you do not take into account the effects of the Chinese Civil War, which lasted until 1949, and the fact that the United States gave massive amounts of aid to Japan and South Korea while neglecting China from 1949 to 1979. Also, you seem not to realize that China is incredibly immense and that much of her people live in rural areas. Industrialization and modernization are inevitably slower. For example, India is well known as the world's largest democracy, so why is it lagging behind China? Furthermore, it was Communism that transformed Russia from a nation defeated by tiny Japan in 1905 into the industrial powerhouse that doomed the Third Reich in 1945 and afterward into a superpower feared and respected by all.
Second, China gained nothing from Western influence between the start of the Opium Wars in 1839 and Deng Xiaoping's reforms in 1979, a period of 140 years. The only legacies of these years were humiliation, civil strife, famine, disastrous and imperialistic "spheres of influence," "unequal treaties" and extraterritorial rights, colonialism, the plundering of national resources and treasures, sanction, rebellion, revolt, and war. No one ought to forget this when suggesting that foreign powers meddle in China's affairs, especially those who do so on supposed moral and humanitarian grounds.
Feel free to accuse me of hating China all you like but here in America, we are able to separate dissent with government from vitriolic hate against a people.
Just because you can does not mean you do.
IskatuMesk wrote:Hey Pseudonym, If you're the same nym I know...
Where the hell are you? I've been waiting for you on msn for weeks. You have status updates to report, geez.
I do not know who you are.
If not...
Please tell our Chinese Restaurants to stop trying to kill me.
The Chinese restaurants in North America do not even serve authentic Chinese cuisine. No one eats General Tso's chicken in China. Chinese restaurants are not killing you; your preference for unhealthy foods such as General Tso's chicken (and McDonald's, KFC, Taco Bell, etc.) is.
