The Arab Uprisings Have Gone Too Far

[Commissar]

@Monty

So, Commissar, you’re on Gaddafi’s side, huh? Well, then, you should be able to justify the bombing of an airliner over Lockerbie, right? Let’s hear it.

There is absolutely nothing at all tying the Colonel to the Lockerbie atrocity, Western blow-hard propaganda notwithstanding. Unless, of course, you are the kind of person willing to accept the self-interested statements of a single defector at face value. If you are, then intellectual debate with you would be quite impossible…

@Doughbag

But it makes perfect sense, since when the populus votes, the leader won’t get away with shooting the people in the streets.

You’re absolutely right. The Kent State Shootings and all the other massacres committed by purportedly democratic governments never actually happened. Revisionist history for the win!

Also, the recently deposed dictator Mubarak did not hold rigged elections in order to give his brutal regime the appearance of a democratic spirit. Because it’s quite impossible to corrupt a democratic system, or to rig elections for your own means… No, democracy is perfect!

@Agnostic_Pagan

There are many reasons why I am a self-avowed socialist, and not a communist. People like Commissar are one of them. The belief that the “dictatorship of the proletariat” leads to anything more than plain old dictatorship is another one.

I could understand being a die-hard supporter of the Soviet Union in the 1920’s and 30’s. Indeed, Soviet led industrialization is the main reason they could withstand Hitler’s invasion. The Czarist regime would have crumbled easily if it had still been in power. But as soon as Trotsky was assassinated by Stalin’s agents, it should have been apparent that the Communists were only concerned about their personal power, and did not give damn about the proletariat. Hell, Trotsky was probably the only Bolshevik who actually did.

Socialism depends upon democracy. It is not possible without it. Tyrants like Gaddafi who subvert it for their own purposes deserve to hung from the lampposts. And those who defend such tyrants - I’ll save those sentiments for the Pit.

I agree with your position on Trotsky (his assassination was a travesty and a great blow to the Communist cause), but with little else that you say.

Firstly, the “industrialization” that you approve of did not magically happen overnight. It required a concrete policy set and implemented by the central government - a policy that would have been impossible without an autocratic, heavily-centralized government (what you erroneously call a “dictatorship”). Rapid industrialization simply does not happen without heavy government involvement. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

Also, it’s ridiculous to argue that socialism requires democracy. Indeed, the latter is anathema to the prior. As I just mentioned, socialist policies require support and firm guidance from the central government. A system that makes it possible to change the government overnight essentially undermines its ability to carry out long-term plans. Once again, you can’t have it both ways. Much of Africa and Latin America have been trying to lift themselves out of the mud for decades using representative democracy. They’re still trying. Compare that to China and the Soviet Union; once you get down to it, my system works, and it works well. That’s something that you’ll have to address it attempting to rebut my political-economic ideals.

[wmfellows]

@xtisme

Actually, they are probably thrilled at this stage.
-XT

I read somewhere, maybe on the FP blog, that they’re actually quite disorientated and at a loss since - at least according to this blog writer - it wasn’t supposed to happen this way…

@Alessan

Let’s see what I remember from high school Arabic…

The first letter is a “hard K”, which is basically a K spoken from the back of the throat. It’s close to a G, but it’s still essentially a K. There are several ways of transliterating this sound; “Q” seems to be most popular.

The second letter is a “hard D”. It’s like a regular D, but with the back of your tongue against your upper teeth instead of just its tip. Usually written as “DD”.

The remaining letters are simply A-F-Y or A-F-I. Therefore, IMHO, the best way to write it would be “Qaddafy” or “Qaddafi”.

Of course, that’s Classical Arabic. I have no idea how it would be pronounced with a Libyan accent.

Hmmm I’m gonna guess since you say

The first letter is a “hard K”, which is basically a K spoken from the back of the throat. It’s close to a G,

that Libyan pronounciation is closer to the G, which would be a good explanation of the variations with G. So we have, according to Alessan’s rendition, basically four legitimate spellings: Qaddafy/i or Gaddafy/i.

Works for me.

[Steve_MB]

@Monty

He spells it correctly, of course, in Arabic:

معمر القذافي

Well, of course.

[QUOTE=Stephen Colbert]
To them, the curly fries are like alphabet soup.
[/QUOTE]

[Broomstick]

@Commissar

You’re absolutely right. The Kent State Shootings and all the other massacres committed by purportedly democratic governments never actually happened. Revisionist history for the win!

A major difference, of course, is that no one ever tried to deny the Kent State shootings occurred, or that the shooters were a members of the National Guard, and the ones who fired their guns were subjected to trials in the criminal justice system. So… calling it “revisionist” is just stupid and ignorant of the facts. Could you please stick to actual examples of what you are trying to illustrate?

[XT]

There is also the scale of the thing. IIRC, there were 4 protesters killed at Kent State…vs hundreds or even thousands in Libya. And, as Broomstick said, no one tried to deny that it happened. You see, that’s what a free press gives you. Vs the attempt by Libya to black out the news to the greatest extent possible.

-XT

[Commissar]

@Broomstick

A major difference, of course, is that no one ever tried to deny the Kent State shootings occurred, or that the shooters were a members of the National Guard, and the ones who fired their guns were subjected to trials in the criminal justice system. So… calling it “revisionist” is just stupid and ignorant of the facts. Could you please stick to actual examples of what you are trying to illustrate?

See what I mean about revisionist history? Your account is technically correct, and yet somehow manages to gloss over every single fact unfavorable to the Imperial regime and its decision to massacre its own people. To wit: the fact that Nixon openly called the protesters “bums” and agents of the Soviet Union, ultimately stooping to blaming the victims for their own deaths. Also, you make it seem like the justice system held the killers fully accountable for the crimes. Ha! Each and every charge against each and every shooter was dismissed without going to trial. You kind of forgot to mention that minor detail, eh?

When you’re rewriting history, it’s dead simple to claim that democracies are somehow more humane or less prone to violence than autocratic states. It’s also dead wrong. Contrary to the propaganda, democracies have not historically been known for their peaceful natures or non-violent policies. From the gas chambers of democratic Germany, to the massacres of Irish civilians in democratic UK, to the unprecedented mass-murdering imperialism of the democratic US - democracy seems to have a disproportionate volume of blood on its hands. Trying to hide that fact does not do anyone any good.

[XT]

But looking at this article from Cecil, I’m not seeing the disproportion:

Defining terms this way puts the Nazi slaughter in perspective. The following are Rummel’s 12 most murderous regimes (from his article in the Encyclopedia of Genocide, 1999): (1) USSR, 62 million deaths, 1917-'87; (2) People’s Republic of China, 35 million, 1949-'87; (3) Germany, 21 million, 1933-'45; (4) nationalist China, 10 million, 1928-'49; (5) Japan, 6 million, 1936-'45; (6) prerevolutionary Chinese communists (“Mao Soviets”), 3.5 million, 1923-'49; (7) Cambodia, 2 million, 1975-'79; (8) Turkey (Armenian genocide), 1.9 million, 1909-'18; (9) Vietnam, 1.7 million, 1945-'87; (10) Poland, 1.6 million, 1945-'48; (11) Pakistan, 1.5 million, 1958-'87; (12) Yugoslavia, 1.1 million, 1944-'87. Three additional “suspected megamurderers,” as Rummel puts it, are North Korea, 1.7 million deaths, 1948-'87; Mexico, 1.4 million, 1900-'20; and czarist Russia, 1.1 million, 1900-'17.

Rummel goes on to identify the top nine killers: (1) Joseph Stalin, 43 million dead, 1929-'53; (2) Mao Tse-tung, 38 million, 1923-'76; (3) Adolf Hitler, 21 million, 1933-'45; (4) Chiang Kai-shek, 10 million, 1921-'48; (5) Vladimir Lenin, 4 million, 1917-'24; (6) Tojo Hideki (Japan), 4 million, 1941-'45; (7) Pol Pot, 2.4 million, 1968-'87; (8) Yahya Khan (Pakistan), 1.5 million, 1971; (9) Josip Broz, better known as Marshal Tito (Yugoslavia), 1.2 million, 1941-'80.

Interesting that in both of these lists, the top killers are communists, and the majority of those on either list are communist.

What states murdered the most as a percentage of population? The undisputed leader is Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, which killed more than 8 percent of its people per year between 1975 and 1979, and 31 percent of its men overall. Runners-up: the Ataturk regime in Turkey (which continued to murder Armenians), 2.6 percent annually, 1919-'23 (703,000); Yugoslavia (Ustasha regime in Croatia), 2.5 percent, 1941-'45 (655,000); Poland, 2 percent, 1945-'48 (1.6 million); the Young Turk regime in Turkey (the triumvirate you mention), 1 percent, 1909-'18 (1.8 million — domestic killings only). The Soviet Union, just to give you a benchmark, killed 0.4 percent of its population annually between 1917 and 1987 — if America did the same, at current population levels that’d be over a million dead each year. Because Rummel’s compilation ends in 1987, it doesn’t include ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo (probably around 10,000, 1999) and the massacres in Rwanda (800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, 1994).

And the conclusion?

Rummel observes that communist and fascist regimes accounted for 84 percent of democidal deaths during the period studied, leading him to comment, “Power kills, and absolute Power kills absolutely.” But democracies aren’t innocent. For example, the United States military killed an estimated 300,000 during the subjugation of the Philippines, 1898-1902. Millions of Africans died during the four centuries of the transatlantic slave trade. The native population of North America, as large as 15 million in 1500, had been reduced to less than 250,000 by 1890. Granted, native mortality was due primarily to the inadvertent spread of European diseases, and didn’t all happen on America’s watch. Still, democracies kill fewer, not none.

-XT

[Tamerlane]

@FinnAgain

They are descended from the Arabs. Cairo was an Arab creation and much like the conquest of the Mongols in Asia, the Arab conquest of Egypt in the 7th century saw significant genetic mixing.

Probably not, actually. Unlike Libya which was very lightly populated both then and now and thus could be pretty profoundly affected by the kind of migrations I noted above, or Iraq and Syria, which did see very substantial population migrations ( Syria already had a large Arab population pre-Islam ), Egypt was both densely populated and did not experience substantial Arab settlement. Cairo was founded by the Fatimids, conquering back towards the center from Tunisia and at that time their supporters were very heavily Berber in character ( this was pre-extensive Arabization of the Maghreb ).

Cairo’s predecessor was the nearby city of Fustat which was founded by the Arab conquerors in mid-7th century. But Fustat was very much a garrison city and might be likened to Greek Alexandria under the Ptolemies - a little island of foreigners in a sea of natives. Arabic spread rapidly as a lingua franca ( almost certainly outpacing the adoption of Islam, which was probably a minority faith in Egypt as late as the early 10th century ), but Egypt was never heavily settled by Arabian populations except later by Bedouin migrants on the unproductive desert margins and then never in large numbers. Egypt’s population, both Muslim and Copt, are probably much more heavily descended from the pre-Arab Conquest population that neighboring Libya’s.

[Doughbag]

@Commissar

…From the gas chambers of democratic Germany, to the massacres of Irish civilians in democratic UK,…

German was not a democracy at that time in history - it’s called a national socialist totalitarian dictatorship - quite differnet to a democracy. He also killed of his oppenents, kind of reminds me of… eh… ah…Gadaffi

[Agnostic_Pagan]

@Commissar

I agree with your position on Trotsky (his assassination was a travesty and a great blow to the Communist cause), but with little else that you say.

So you agree that Trotsky cared about the proletariat while the rest of the Communist leadership only cared their personal power? Awesome.

Firstly, the “industrialization” that you approve of did not magically happen overnight. It required a concrete policy set and implemented by the central government - a policy that would have been impossible without an autocratic, heavily-centralized government (what you erroneously call a “dictatorship”). Rapid industrialization simply does not happen without heavy government involvement. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

Also, it’s ridiculous to argue that socialism requires democracy. Indeed, the latter is anathema to the prior. As I just mentioned, socialist policies require support and firm guidance from the central government. A system that makes it possible to change the government overnight essentially undermines its ability to carry out long-term plans. Once again, you can’t have it both ways. Much of Africa and Latin America have been trying to lift themselves out of the mud for decades using representative democracy. They’re still trying. Compare that to China and the Soviet Union; once you get down to it, my system works, and it works well. That’s something that you’ll have to address it attempting to rebut my political-economic ideals.

Hmmm, I’ll give you that mass industrialization does require a significant degree of government involvement. Japan used MITI, and the other Asian tigers used similar ministries. As far as I know they did not nationalize industries and their workforces, but gave rather significant incentives to follow certain policies.

And Latin America is doing rather well and stopped living in the mud awhile ago. Usually by overthrowing oligarchs that had the same “father knows best” mindset as Communists. While their living standards are not equal to the EU, they are catching up quickly.

Africa is next baby!!!

And true socialism is must be democratic since it entails the democratic control of enterprises - public, private and civic with the goal of promoting solidarity and equality above, but not at the expense of liberty. “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” (I just reverse the order. And I love the bit from Wikipedia: “Debates concerning the compatibility and order of the three terms began at the same time as the French Revolution.” And they will end about when the sun goes nova!) It is a balance that can only be achieved through democratic processes - not imposed by self-selected elites.

If that means less capability in long-term plans, good. In the long term we are all dead. What is more important is the ability to adapt and innovate in response to changes that make most such long-term planning irrelevant. Something that Communist regimes proved they are not capable of doing. It is why the newest car in Cuba is a 1959 Chevy, and China is trying to switch to the Japanese model of indirect coordination over direct control (though they would never admit that they are emulating their neighbors.)

The debate between capitalism and communism is over - guess who lost. The debate for this century will be between liberal democracy and social democracy - which will probably end in a tie as long as people have the choice to decide under which system they wish to live*. I could live with that.

But the days of tyrants are ending - no matter what cause they professed. Hopefully, their supporters will fade away as well.
Side note on the more interesting topic in this thread - Tamerlane, have there been any genetic studies done in those regions? I admit I thought the Egyptians were primarily Arabs also.

AP

*The greatest conflict is that both groups want to live in the same area, and want everyone who resides there to live under one system or the other. Problematic, but I don’t think insurmountable.

[Fuji]

@Commissar

Rapid industrialization simply does not happen without heavy government involvement. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

Complete nonsense.

[Fuji]

@Commissar

From the gas chambers of democratic Germany…

More nonsense.

[Monty]

@Alessan

Let’s see what I remember from high school Arabic…

The first letter is a “hard K”, which is basically a K spoken from the back of the throat. It’s close to a G, but it’s still essentially a K. There are several ways of transliterating this sound; “Q” seems to be most popular.

The second letter is a “hard D”. It’s like a regular D, but with the back of your tongue against your upper teeth instead of just its tip. Usually written as “DD”.

The remaining letters are simply A-F-Y or A-F-I. Therefore, IMHO, the best way to write it would be “Qaddafy” or “Qaddafi”.

Of course, that’s Classical Arabic. I have no idea how it would be pronounced with a Libyan accent.

For the Arabic alphabet (actually, it’s usually an abjad) values, I run to the Omniglot page on Arabic. The bracketed letters beneath the Arabic letters are the IPA values for said Arabic letters.

@Commissar

There is absolutely nothing at all tying the Colonel to the Lockerbie atrocity, Western blow-hard propaganda notwithstanding. Unless, of course, you are the kind of person willing to accept the self-interested statements of a single defector at face value.

Maybe you should pay more attention to the historical record. The investigation determined the responsible parties two decades before this defector you despise for his moral stance.

If you are, then intellectual debate with you would be quite impossible…

Insulting me outside The Pit does not assist your purported arguments. I do notice, though, that you are merely hand-waving away a convenient truth: that a murderous dictator you love simply because of his anti-American stance is a murderer. So long as you deny that he is murdering dictator, you can still consider him a great person.

There’s a problem with that approach. You may have noticed what it is recently. Around here we refer to that problem as “the video record of events actually happening in Libya today.” Perhaps you’ve seen them? After all, it’s not like news organizations around the world aren’t showing these events.

[Broomstick]

@Commissar

When you’re rewriting history, it’s dead simple to claim that democracies are somehow more humane or less prone to violence than autocratic states.

I in no way claimed that democracies were humane or non-violent, I pointed out that one of your examples was flawed in that you implied there was a cover-up when there wasn’t. Kent State wasn’t covered up. The final outcome is not one you agreed with, but nonetheless, there was no cover up and the legal proceedings were public. That is a marked difference from massacring people then pretending it never happened at all.

You even concede my account is technically correct. Again, what you disagree with is the outcome, not with my statement that there was no cover up.

[outlierrn]

@Commissar

There is absolutely nothing at all tying the Colonel to the Lockerbie atrocity, Western blow-hard propaganda notwithstanding.

Didn’t he pay over a billion dollars in reparations? But what, he crossed his fingers and said I didn’t do it? Commisar, have you ever seen Children of the Revolution? You remind me a lot of Judy Davis’ character.

[Tamerlane]

@Agnostic_Pagan

Side note on the more interesting topic in this thread - Tamerlane, have there been any genetic studies done in those regions? I admit I thought the Egyptians were primarily Arabs also.

There have been, yes. As might be expected Egypt shows a high affinity with both the neighboring ME/NA ( though more North Africa than the Middle East ) and sub-Saharan Africa, with the relationships being clinal along the Nile ( i.e. the farther up the Nile you travel, the more prevalent sub-Saharan markers are ). Here’s the wiki on the topic and my own expertise doesn’t really extend much farther. But I think I can safely say, after perusing seven or eight paper summaries quickly, that the debate in general remains unsettled ( i.e. one paper claiming that a 11% of a particular haplotype in NW Africa most likely represents Arab migration, another saying nope ).

[Commissar]

@Doughbag

German was not a democracy at that time in history - it’s called a national socialist totalitarian dictatorship - quite differnet to a democracy. He also killed of his oppenents, kind of reminds me of… eh… ah…Gadaffi

Once again, I cannot condone the rewriting of history for political ends. If you are going to be a democracy apologist, you are going to have to address the Third Reich rather than simply hand-wave it away. When you get to the heart of the matter, there is no denying the fact that Hitler rose through a democratic system and got a foothold in German politics using democratic means. Thus, an unbalanced monster that would have been marginalized by any autocratic system worth its salt was able to surf into power on the tide of mob mentality. And that, my friend, is the fatal flaw of democracy. A system that allows the uneducated masses to prop up the Hitlers, Bushes, and Sharons of the world is, quite frankly, a system not worth supporting.

@Monty

Maybe you should pay more attention to the historical record. The investigation determined the responsible parties two decades before this defector you despise for his moral stance.

The investigation (even assuming that it was conducted fairly and actually reached the publicized results), placed the blame on two Libyans rather than on the Libyan leader. You do see the difference, right? Much as I hate little Bush, I cannot in good faith blame him for every single crime committed by US citizens during his dark reign.

Insulting me outside The Pit does not assist your purported arguments.

Insulting you? Hardly, my friend. I merely point out that, if you are willing to make categorical statements based on rumormongering by an interested party, you essentially become a conspiracy theorist. In my experience, said conspiracy theorists are immune to rational debate on the merits. This is an observation rather than an “insult.”

I do notice, though, that you are merely hand-waving away a convenient truth: that a murderous dictator you love simply because of his anti-American stance is a murderer. So long as you deny that he is murdering dictator, you can still consider him a great person.

There’s a problem with that approach. You may have noticed what it is recently. Around here we refer to that problem as “the video record of events actually happening in Libya today.” Perhaps you’ve seen them? After all, it’s not like news organizations around the world aren’t showing these events.

Actually, no. The current news accounts reveal scenes of utter chaos with two armed sides locked in combat. Pretending that one side is unarmed and actively victimized by the other is disingenuous, to say the least. I’m sure that, when the dust settles, it will become clear that atrocities have been committed by both sides; that is how armed conflicts tend to play out. I find it interesting that democrats are never willing to admit that their fellow democrats are just as capable of horrible crimes as any autocrat…

[Yeticus_Rex]

@EvilTOJ

So… how DOES this soon-to-be-ex dictator spell his name? In that article about his virgin bodyguards the tags at the bottom show thirty two ways to spell it. His name is like the Hannukkkaaahh of dictators.

Let me add a 33rd way since he’s going to be an ex…Badoffi.

[Fuji]

@Commissar

Once again, I cannot condone the rewriting of history for political ends. If you are going to be a democracy apologist, you are going to have to address the Third Reich rather than simply hand-wave it away. When you get to the heart of the matter, there is no denying the fact that Hitler rose through a democratic system and got a foothold in German politics using democratic means. Thus, an unbalanced monster that would have been marginalized by any autocratic system worth its salt was able to surf into power on the tide of mob mentality. And that, my friend, is the fatal flaw of democracy. A system that allows the uneducated masses to prop up the Hitlers, Bushes, and Sharons of the world is, quite frankly, a system not worth supporting.

Aw, someone’s still a little cranky about that 3rd place finish.

You guys had your chance to “get your foothold”.

Losers.

[XT]

Here is a series of graphs from R.J. Rummel that pretty clearly show the difference between democratic, authoritarian and totalitarian regimes wrt democide. Of course, if you attempt to paint regimes like Nazi Germany as ‘democratic’, and then hand wave away the fact that totalitarian communist countries actually occupy the number 1 and 2 murderous regimes in history, well…you aren’t exactly well grounded in reality, at the least.

For anyone interested, here is the main Death By Government web page by Rummel.

-XT