Central Planning

[Imperial Power]

Central Planning is another of the many failures of the Communist State. It was thoguht to be the way to prosperity through focused investment, but is now known inefficent and wasteful becasue no group of humans can predict next years demand for millions of products. Because they could not get production levels correct the order too much production of some goods wasting resources or too little of others leaving consumers undersupplied. All this leads to corruption and a black market. In the process honest people are turned into law breakers. The answer is the free market. By allowing the entire economy to repsond to local and foreign demand there are no surpluses or shortages. Another obvious victory for the Capitalism System.

[Moskitto]

:cough: Council Communism :cough:

[Supermodel]

Honest people are turned into law breakers? Imagine that.

Anyone who beleives in central planning, have you ever tried to do a project on a budget?

One of the problems with central planning, and with all leftist political theory, is the concept that the government knows better than the individual how to do everything. Elitist, arrogant, patronising, and demoralizing.

[La Resistance]

IP thinks a group of sane individuals gathering at an assembly can't rationally think up of a way to meet everyone's needs. Did you just have a meal of self-centered fries, with a bit of ethnocentrism cahjun to spice things up?

Oh , wait, I know, you're thinking that communist Russia spent so much on military power they forgot their people...

YOU'RE RIGHT, BUT what if they hadn't? What if there was a compassionate group of people who did everything for their people, and also took into consideration the entire world...???

Please refer to my other post about how communism was hijacked...

I SO hate repeating myself, since your ignorance of the facts is blatantly APPALING to everyone on this board, who shares a common cause(i need not explain that part, or maybe you still don't get that either?).

[Rosa]

Central planning a failure? Well, the russia had it, and was one of 2 most powerful states in the world. But... not all comunist countries had a system of central planning: Yugoslavia hadn't. So, central planning is not part of communist philosophy, and using it to argue against communism is wrong. CP was part of totalitaristic politics, and comunism in basic is NOT PHILOSOPHY THAT SUPPORTS TOTALITARISM. Lot of western European countries are becoming communist-like...so, that means that Marx was right when he said that communism will GROW AS NATURAL CONSEQUENCE OF...bah, why am I arguing with you, when you are not interested in facts, but in defending capitalistic system.
Bye, bye, and hold tightly your Barbie doll.

[peaccenicked]

There two forms of central planning, one is dictatorial
and ridiculous that is a practice of stalinism.
The democratic form has never been tried.
This is long overdue as capitalism becomes evermore
wasteful and a potential threat to the survival of the planet.

[reagan lives]

If you think that capitalism is dangerous for the planet, you should take a visit to Eastern Europe, where you can see what centrally planned economies do to the ecosystem.

[Rosa]

what has it done? Look at the Adriatic sea: the ex-social part of it has the clean sea, and look at the capitalistic Italian part: it's dangerous to swim in theese waters. Few nationl parks that are clean are not aprooving that whole capitalistic world has a better ecosystem then eastern Europe. No, no...Reminding you of Tokyo convention that USA refused to sign...

[vox]

As a Marxist, I'd really appreciate IP or SM or RL finding a quote in Marx that supports gov't ownership of the means of production. Not in Stalin, babes, but in Marx.

As for the free market theory, what about the crisis of overproduction which leads to recession? What, do you folks think that recessions just happen for no reason? Of course they don't. Capitalism has rules just like any other economic system. Overproduction is a key player in capitalist economics, and one I thought you capitalist sympathizers would know.

It seems that the market isn't such a great indicator of needs after all, huh? I mean, if it were, then why the need for layoffs? Demand spikes and demand valleys, of course.

It seems that you folks need to do a little reading about your favored system.

vox

[Rosa]

Kyoto, sorry, LAPSUS CALAMI
VOX: yes,...overproduction...I don't want to spend my life in overproducing some unneccesary things, ....
To reagan &co :One man that I met at the airport said: in Russia everybody is reading a book: in subways, in buses... they are all so well educated. So what if they can't afford to eat in fancy restaurants. That "money argument" is laisy one, if you want to change our wiews. It's a matter of choice: will you aperecciate the money above other things. And your "ecology argument " doesn't stand.

[MindCrime]

Central Planning is inefficent? While I do not think it is the ideal form of economic construction, it DID turn a nation of pesants based mainly on agriculture into a superpower with enough fierepower to blow the planet apart. Think of what that could do if you turned it towards social goods instead of military armament.

[Imperial Power]

Central planning is also what casued the self destruction of the Soviet Union Mindcrime.

[MindCrime]

Oh really? I though it was the ludicrous Arms Race that eventually dragged their economy down and made a Trillion dollar debt in America's....

[Imperial Power]

No if you'll read the start of this thread I explained why soviet business never became more efficent and resources were wasted so that they could not compete with a capitalist economy.

[peaccenicked]

most trotskyists agree with you IP

[reagan lives]

No answer for my point vox? Typical.

How pathetic, but then, these left-wingers are normally pathetic, aren't they?

Hee!

Brothers, you all see how vox fails to respond! The left-winger has choked on his own lies!

I win, and vox loses.

Worship me. Worship me.

[peaccenicked]

http://www.sacbee.com/static/archive/news/.../graphic1b.html (http://www.sacbee.com/static/archive/news/projects/environment/graphics/graphic1b.html)
The environment is a bigger than any national interests.
it is a pity any gov can not see this particularly the US
because it is undeniably the worlds biggest polluter.
do you want the 'boring' evidence?

(Edited by peaccenicked at 1:06 am on Feb. 22, 2002)

[Forever capitalism]

Sure central planning turned the USSR into a industrial might but at what cost and for how long? 30 million people were the sacrifice as well as people losing their individuality and life to the fields and factories they had become slaves too. The USSR's central planning has really paid dividens now hasn't it? Don't attempt to use the arms race as an excuse for the mismanagement of an economy as the U.S. were ardent participants and both suffered alike. However the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of communist/totalitarian economies manifested itself through the poor, hungry and tired Soviet citizens who eventaully overthrow the tyranny and escaped the yoke of communism/totalitarianism.

[Forever capitalism]

So, central planning is not part of communist philosophy

Rosa you just prove the ignorance of marxists worldwide. Obviously you haven't read Marx or anybody for that matter, that is why you are so ignorant to think that central planning is not?? part of communist philosophy. That is like saying classes have no relevance in a class war. Marx advocated central planning and through its failure you are trying to hide that fact, that your idol was wrong, wrong again about the failures of his totalitarian system.

[peaccenicked]

you have yet to prove that stalinism is communism
the words are opposites.

[Rosa]

central planning is not the part of communist philosophy. Communist philosophy says that everybody should do the bussines that he likes, and that everybody should have the things neccesary for phisical existence, and equal oportunity to acces things needed for satisfying other needs if wanted /education, art etc)
And in practice: showed you the examples of com.states that weren't practice Central economy. Some of them were practicising "self-deciding labour organisations", what is similar to free-market cap. system, but the decissions were made by all workers in the working org. (firm, company). And it went well.

[Forever capitalism]

That is completely wrong, any real communists here who are willing to reiterate that central planning is part of marxist theory?

[peaccenicked]

it was not true of tito,
but marx envisaged a democratic plan,
all democracies are centralised

[Moskitto]

Marxism is not mutually inclusive within Communism and Socialism. John Ball and Thomas More were Socialists centuries before Marx was born. Daniel Ortega who is a devout Christian is also a Communist yet Marx preached the end of religion.

[peaccenicked]

I have to agree, but i fear we are teaching history and elementary politics to people whose ideology is so entrenched that they hate stopping at red traffic lights.
assuming that 'red' means stop elswhere.

[Rosa]

Yes, but Daniel Ortega has lived in different context than Marx has: realisation of communism in Europe demands the end of religion bcs in Eur there are so many religions, and they are all conflicted. So, they are pushing people to fight one another, to hate one another, and all on religious basis. In South Am different nations has lived, but all of them were Christians. And the church had the different attitude to a society: it really was supporting an exploited ones.

[TheDerminator]

Imperial Power, the Communist State you refer to was a figment of your own miscomprehension, the primitive socialist State of the Soviet Union was never a Communist State.

Never mind your ignorance of socialist organisation is only comparative to your ignorance about capitalist organisation!

I mean, what is all this crap about you cannot predict demand.
I have a management degree, and you would not have passed my very first qualification in management never mind the degree, because you have no idea about one huge subject, one subject billions upon billions of dollars are invested into by all the major corporations, and that subject is Market Research.
Market Research predicts demand against supply, and if it could not provide this function, it would have no objective. It just means the neanderthal economics of Soviet Russia, had no conception of Market Research, just like neanderthal you. Scarey eh?

derminated.

[Forever capitalism]

Do communits in this forum clain that there has never in the entirety of history been a true socialist or communist regime? If so doesn't that mean that certain factors such as the actual theory itself prove it can not work?

[peaccenicked]

no.

[Moskitto]

There are different ideologies within Communism.

There have been Stalinist regimes, there have been Maoist regimes, There have been Kiminist regimes. But other communists would argue they weren't really communist.

There have not however been any Council Communist countries, Trotskyist countries or Democratic Socialist countries.

[Imperial Power]

Ahh The Derminator

You believe then that the USSR did not heavily research market trends and try to predict the next years demands? But they did, they invested billions of dollars attempting to predict the demand and resource allocation for production. But in the end it obviously didn't work.

On a side note instead of saying derminated you should say assimilated. You know like the Borg in Star Trek when they brain wash someone and make them part of the collective.


(Edited by Imperial Power at 11:35 pm on Feb. 23, 2002)

[peaccenicked]

The thing is about bureaucrats they dont predict demand
they dictate demand.
They have no need to judge the market because they are the supply line.
you are giving criticism of stalinism a bad name.

communists do it a lot better

[TheDerminator]

I think you do not know how market research works, you compare quality against quality, and you compare the best quality against your quality, it is called benchmarking in business terms.
You have to think globally, not stuck in backward Russia, and what a waste of billions of dollars on Market Research eh?
The benchmark is always the best globally, not just from canvassing the indigenous people within a country. What was the benchmark for tractors? A manufacturing plant in Siberia? Not how it works, pity you failed your business studies exam.

derminated [Resistence is Futile]

(Edited by TheDerminator at 7:23 pm on Feb. 23, 2002)

[Moskitto]

Dzukazvli

[Moskitto]

Actually Market Research is researching to see what products will sell within the market. The only part of market research which involves the quality and quantity of products is shop surveys.

[TheDerminator]

Moskitto
The Research bit includes the analysis of how consumers compare on product to another, the industry standard is the benchmark, and the research has to contain the question of how the product relates to the industry standard or you are thinking on a small scale, and that is not how the big boys operate.

Another point is that central planning is another misconception about socialist economy gained from primitive socialist states, democracy means as much decentralisation as possible something not part of the Soviet experiment, which was the most advanced form of primitive socialism, so the failure is in the primitive form of socialism, not in a democratic form of socialism and the latter is the only true form of advanced socialism.
derminated.

(Edited by TheDerminator at 8:07 pm on Feb. 23, 2002)

[Moskitto]

There are many ways of doing market research. They do not all involve comparing directly quality and quantity of products. Producing a batch and selling them does look at quantity and quality. However looking at secondary resources in libraries does not. It al depends on how you do your research.

The moral of the tale is, reseach thoughourly.

[TheDerminator]

You are at least consistent in missing the point
Moskitto, I am not answering you in the thread, I am answering Imperial Power in relation to the supply and demand in primitive socialist socities, and the specific Marketing Tool required cannot is not the kind provided by a resource centre unless that centre has done the field work.
Horses for courses, Moskitto horses for courses.
Something I should have added to my last post to Imperial Power is that unless your philosophy challenges the bourgeois international mindset, you are part of that mindset, and it does not matter how eclectic your sources are, you have been assimiliated into bourgeois ideology, and assimilitated into believing in selfish extreme individualism.
All these extreme individualists are all fucking robots walking about with their Gap sweaters on.
Mind the gap! Mind the gap!
derminated.

[Moskitto]

That's ok.

Anyway, why were we argueing about market research?

[Imperial Power]

Derminator

What is the ideal economy?

[Rosa]

the one that suplies with enough food for survival

[vox]

Reagan Lies,

I see you've attempted to mock me.

However, you answered NONE of my questions.

Indeed, I asked YOU about a quote for Central Planning, one that Marx wrote, and you didn't provide any.

Heck, Reagan Lies, I've always disagreed with a centrally planned enonomy, and you won't be able to find a quote here where I support it! It seems like your objection should be made to the Leninists and Stalinist here, not to me.

Regardless, you didn't answer a thing I wrote. If you need a reminder, here it is:

As a Marxist, I'd really appreciate IP or SM or RL finding a quote in Marx that supports gov't ownership of the means of production. Not in Stalin, babes, but in Marx.

As for the free market theory, what about the crisis of overproduction which leads to recession? What, do you folks think that recessions just happen for no reason? Of course they don't. Capitalism has rules just like any other economic system. Overproduction is a key player in capitalist economics, and one I thought you capitalist sympathizers would know.

It seems that the market isn't such a great indicator of needs after all, huh? I mean, if it were, then why the need for layoffs? Demand spikes and demand valleys, of course.

It seems that you folks need to do a little reading about your favored system.


I posted that on 2/21/02 and I still don't have a response, except for the monkey dancing that Reagan Lies provided for us.

If any right-winger here has an answer, give it. Otherwise, look at Reagan Lies as just another hysterical monkey.

vox

[vox]

He's answered another of my posts since, so it can't the the "vox resolution" in play.

Nope, I simply stumped him, I guess. Just another right-winger with nothing to say.

vox

[El Che]

RL is an arrogante bastard. Agravating sucker.

[AgustoSandino]

Quote: from Rosa on 4:24 pm on Feb. 27, 2002
the one that suplies with enough food for survival



Those are pretty light cirteria for the "ideal" economy. In that case, capitalism, which doesn't explicitly set out to provide this but does so is "ideal". I agree. Famine, as Amartya Sen points out is :

"best seen in terms of the failure of people to establish command over an adequate amount of food and other necessities ."

Or more simply put they are political.

Famines don't occur because there is no food, but because those in power choose not to distribute the food effeciently. Something which market mechanisms never fail to do. Point out all of the famines that have occurred in the 20th century, and in every case you will see intrusive government or war.

As a final note, I'd like to point out that capitalism not only provides "enough food for survival," but because of its material abundance instills the value that subsistance levels of consumption are undesirable. Capitalist have a more generous opinion of the ideal economic system.

[reagan lives]

What I am mocking, you jabbering simp, is your continued failure to respond to my points.

As for the absence of central control in Marxist theory...that's not the issue here. There has never, ever, ever been a serious attempt at any sort of communist project that did not involve at least provisional state control of the economy (see the "five-year plans."). Babe.

As for overproduction leading to recession, it happens. And "demand spikes and demand valleys" lead to layoffs. And it sucks when it happens. But it's still the best system economic system ever concieved and implemented in the histoy of the human race.

[AgustoSandino]

or this.

[vox]

Reagan Lies,

Layoffs are the best that we can do? Capitalist overproduction is the best that is possible?

I have to wonder, then, why it took so very long to reach this status. After all, slavery and indentured servitude seem much more compelling, profitwise.

As for your points, please point them out. I will, as always, happily answer any question you pose about Marxism. I've always done it before, and I will continue to do so.

Fact is, all you have said about the "best system economic system ever concieved and implemented (sic)" is that it "lead(s) to layoffs. And it sucks when it happens."

Now, in addition to telling me about the points you made, perhaps you could tell me about who, exactly, "concieved and implemented" capitalism?

See, to my way of thinking, capitalism grew organically from the social relations of production, but that's one of those Marxist ideas that you can't agree with, so you tell me, please, who the founder of capitalism was, and how he implemented it.

Thanks,

vox

[ArgueEverything]

Quote: from AgustoSandino on 8:44 pm on Mar. 3, 2002

Famines don't occur because there is no food, but because those in power choose not to distribute the food effeciently. Something which market mechanisms never fail to do. Point out all of the famines that have occurred in the 20th century, and in every case you will see intrusive government or war.



the strength of the marxist position is it can pinpoint the REASONS for 'intrusive government or war' - that is, capitalism needing to forcefully expand. ww1, for example, was a result of european powers becoming increasingly hostile to each other due to their increasing dependence upon colonialist outposts (of which there was a limited supply which had to be fought over) for resources and a market base.

[vox]

Agusto writes:

"Famines don't occur because there is no food, but because those in power choose not to distribute the food effeciently. Something which market mechanisms never fail to do. Point out all of the famines that have occurred in the 20th century, and in every case you will see intrusive government or war."


Actually, Agusto, Sen disproves you.

"Take the Bangladesh famine of 1974. Sen discovered that it "occurred in a year of greater food availability per head than in any other year between 1971 and 1976." What actually happened was that the floods that year hit rural landless laborers indirectly. Because they had no land, all their income came from transplanting rice for others. The floods prevented them from earning the meager amount that kept their families alive in most years. There did turn out to be enough food in Bangladesh that year, but the rural poor could not afford to buy it.

"Sen points out, chillingly, that large famines can strike down thousands of human beings without anyone's formal libertarian rights being violated. No dictator stole food from the Bangladeshi poor in 1974. The normal functioning of the economy, with property rights respected, led to their deaths."

You're wrong again, Agusto. Fact is, you've never been right. Your bold statemement here, undisguised as anything but straightforward, has been proven to be wrong.

vox (still right)

[El Che]

In reality augostos that sig of your mocks you more then it does him, because he is still right and you are still wrong. Muahahhahaha!

[AgustoSandino]

hahaha,

do you always run into traffic like that vox...

so you would agree that in bangladesh in 1974 there was enough food, according to sen "greater food availability per head than in any other year..."
So the famine wasn't caused by lack of food, as I stated.

Furthermore if you knew anything about history you would be aware that following independence Bangladesh was run by a socialist military junta. Despite the fact that you might find that term oxymoronic (while history sees socialist military junta as common) the military junta was hardly capitalistic and imposed tremendous amounts of price controls and agricultural restrictions in the spirit of socialist centralization.

So what have we learned here vox, not that I'm right and you're wrong, we knew that already. But that beyond wrong, you are so foolish that you don't even recognize when you agree with me.

Famines are not caused by lack of food, but by intrusive govt, ect. Bangladesh, as you demonstrate is a perfect example.

This just underlines a major problem of about every socialists here. You would prefer to uphold your ideology than help those your ideology was intended to help. Despite the fact that capitalism has, where it operates, erradicated famine, you'd rather get rid of it.

In another thread you state that socialism should and would provide basic needs. In your pseudo intellectual prentension you dismiss the fact that people want more than their needs. Capitalism provides not only those needs, but also those wants. And because of its success you'd like to see it replaced. You'd replace capitalism because it works, not for the sake of the "workers" but for the sake of socialism as an ideology as an end in itself. Fool.

[reagan lives]

"No dictator stole food from the Bangladeshi poor in 1974."
True enough, because Mujibar Rahman can't properly be called a dictator, but this is not for a lack of trying. Rahman (socialist) did, however, send out his army to arrest those who were "hoarding" rice, even though there was a surplus of rice being produced. This action, not the market left to its own devices, is what fueled the price surge, which gave life to a black market (which found a nice partner in the phenomenally corrupt [socialist] Rahman regime).

Please, vox, get your goddamn facts straight.

[peaccenicked]

An interesting interlude.
"Why Did the US Allow Pakistan
to Build Nuclear Weapons?

Back in October of 1964, the Chinese exploded their first hydrogen bomb, above ground, on a remote desert (though death-clouds of cancer-causing fallout do not recognize the word "remote."). Before then, back in 1962, there had been heavy fighting 'tween China & India after a three-year border dispute in the Himalayas near the border of Tibet. India was badly trounced in that battle.
So, hostility has continued since then, but without overt warfare, between India and China along India's northeast border.
On India's northwest border lies Pakistan, always a source of grrrr-ing and hostility since the creation of the two nations in the summer of 1947, when India and Pakistan ceased being a Crown Colony of the British Empire. Gandhi had been strongly against the partition of India and Pakistan, and in the creation of the two nations there was vast bloodshed as Muslims forced Hindus and Sikhs from Islamic Pakistan and Hindus and Sikhs forced Muslims from Hindu India. 10,000,000 thus migrated and a million perished during the initial formation of the nations.
During the 1970s, India completed plans for exploding its own nuke, which it did in May of 1974. At least it was done underground, in the Rajasthan desert.
Why didn't the United States prevent India from exploding its own nuke? It probably could have done so, even with the Soviet Union then still glowering in the background. The U.S. was able to position satellites to observe antiwar demonstrations in the 1960s, and certainly would have watched the Rajasthan desert as India prepared its underground blast. I think that, because of a kind of perverse money-groveling logic, that, setting aside the pious tsk-tsking of public officials over the spread of atomic bombs, the more countries that have nuclear weapons the better it is for the armaments business.
Nukes, strife, fear, paranoia, border-bashing, feuding factions and mini-wars stir up big arms deals and military contracts of every stripe or color, always a time of glorious profit for an important segment of the American economy. (The United States is the world's major arms exporter, an issue that rarely gets covered except in an occasional op ed piece in a newspaper. One op ed piece occurred in The New York Times in 1999 where Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias– the former President of Costa Rica– wrote "American-made arms are often turned against civilians or used to strengthen dictators. Indeed, the true weapons of mass destruction are the jet fighters, tanks, machine guns and other military exports that the United States ships to nondemocratic countries– a record $8.3 billion worth in the 1997 fiscal year." $8.3 billion in '93, I wonder what it is in 2001?)
Now, shift your attention from nuke-noia to the India/Pakistan enmity. During the ensuing decades the two nations have fought now and then over control of Kashmir, which lies on the northeast border of Pakistan and the northernmost portion of India. India controls it, but Pakistan wants it, and war seems never that distant.
Meanwhile by the early 1970s China had taken a meddling interest in the affairs of Pakistan. It was China's interest in Pakistan which apparently helped start the American "tilt" toward Pakistan (at the expense of India) during the Nixon era. Christopher Hitchens has recently retraced for us (in his recent book on Henry Kissinger) the ghastly "tilt" of secret U.S. diplomacy under Kissinger and Nixon in 1971, apparently in order to appease China, allowing Pakistan to conduct slaughter in the break-away country of Bangladesh. (Recall George Harrison's 1971 fund-raiser for the starving victims in Bangladesh). Nixon was then planning his '72 trip to China, and wanted to show China he would turn a stony face toward the transgressions of a Chinese client.
Meanwhile, the Soviets had their interests entangled in Afghanistan, that fierce country to Pakistan's northwest. Afghanistan during the counterculture '60s was the source of groovy clothing and fabrics. I recall Jimi Hendrix' gold-brocaded Afghan vest, and my wife Miriam to this day uses an elegant Afghan tote bag we purchased thirty-odd years ago in the Village.
By the end of the 1970s, as traced by Jeff Cohen's essay on page 5 in this issue of the Journal, the United States set a trap for the Russians in Afghanistan. Cohen writes of a "1998 interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, conducted by the French publication Le Nouvel Observateur (LNO). In the interview –translated by author and CIA critic William Blum – Brzezinski boasts that the CIA was supporting guerrilla activities inside Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention (of 1979), taking steps to 'induce' the Soviets to intervene." You should read Cohen's interesting piece.
So, the Soviets did take over Afghanistan, and the United States, in response, committed a huge karmic blunder. It allowed the CIA to fund and arm Islamic fundamentalists (including Osama bin Laden) and urge them to confront the Soviets in the name of religious purity. It was Allah vs. Atheism.
For much of the 1980s the "secret" war went on in Afghanistan. Why secret? Because the Reagan administration forced passage of the United States version of the ghastly British Official Secrets Act in the early '80s, which in effect sealed off from public knowledge such things as secret wars and secret military-intelligence activities. There had been, in the post-Watergate era of investigation and muckraking, a opening of the door to CIA and military foreign activities. Reagan shut it, and it has only been the horror of 9-11 and the ensuing war that has opened the door somewhat to the screw-ups of the CIA and the arming of Islamic extremists during the long secret campaigns of the 1980s.
By the early 1990s, after the Soviets had pulled out of Afghanistan, and at the advent of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the United States abandoned all its millions of landmines and its high-tech weaponry and equipment in Afghanistan, and turned its back, rather psychopathically, on what it had wrought. This was cruel psychopathy indeed, as those expensive, but very deadly weapons, in the hands of the factions of a country known for its warrior mentality, fueled further years of slaughter, and enabled the ghastly totalitarian government of the Taliban to take over. Leaving all that weaponry, after all, had been "good for business." You want to issue contracts for new weapons, don't you, rather than to collect and reuse "used" weapons? Thanks, CIA, thanks Carter, thanks Reagan, and thanks Bush the First.
Meanwhile, as the 1990s fueled forward, India and Pakistan certainly had not forgotten their mutual hostility. Afghanistan was taken over by the woman-hating freedom-hating music-hating image-hating Buddha-bombing totalitarians known as the Taliban, and international terror networks were fanatically forged out of the very factions that the CIA had urged and funded to burn the Soviets out of Afghanistan.
In India, in early 1998 a coalition lead led by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged as the largest party in parliament winning a total of 270 of 547 seats. The BJP was known for its threats to use nuclear weapons, and forced its will right away. On May 11 and 13, 1998, India set off five nuclear explosions 330 miles southwest of New Delhi.
Since the first Indian nuke-tests back in 1974, Pakistan had been striving to create its own nuclear weapons. It had plenty of help, especially from China. Canada, France, England, West Germany, and krytron tubes made in the U.S.A. (used for triggering the explosions) all helped Pakistan in its relentless lust for nuclear parity with its enemy India.
So, when India set off its nukes as a kind of "In Your Face!" statement after a right wing government took over in 1998, Pakistan responded.
US spy satellites observed activity at the Pakistani nuclear test site in the late spring of 1998 which caused intelligence agencies to believe that the Pakistanis were on the verge of testing a nuclear bomb. It would be the first Pakistani test ever (though it had claimed since 1994 that it had nuclear weapons).
Why did the United States and other nuclear countries in the West allow the moily nation Pakistan to become a nuclear power? If a nation, for instance, had nationalized its sugar industry, or, shudder shudder, it's oil companies (see the current situation in Venezuela) the US most likely would have tried immediately to topple it. So why didn't Bill Clinton do something about it, or urge his surrogate Tony Blair to do something? Clinton was probably too busy facing impeachment for getting blown by a female subordinate while eating pizza in the room where Franklin Roosevelt planned the Social Security legislation and where John Kennedy put together the Test Ban Treaty. And so, Pakistan set off a bunch of nuclear blasts, five in all, on May 28 and 30 of '98. They were atomic blasts, rather than h-bomb blasts. Small consolation.
Both India and Pakistan have missiles capable now of nuking each other.
Speeding forward to 2001, Pakistan apparently has more than 20 nuclear bombs and missile-tips, and the United States was forced to get an accurate fix on them because of the lust of Osama bin Laden to own one or more and send them against our nation.
All of this is very good for the U.S. arms, surveillance equipment, aircraft, ship, aircraft-supply and ship-supply business. Extremely good. It's good too for guys like John Ashcroft (who was too right wing even for conservative Missouri) who would like to wad up, if they could get away with it, and toss the Bill of Rights into the wastebasket.
And it's also good for the U.S. oil businessmen in Saudi Arabia so dear to the Shrub's vision of modern Manifest Destiny– "Own the oil and bomb the soil." Robert Kennedy, Jr. has recently pointed out that it wouldn't take much of a improvement in U.S. automobile fuel efficiency for the nation to obliterate totally the need for Saudi oil.
Why not just stop purchasing Saudi oil, or why not even close down Saudi oil production for a few years? It's pretty clear that the Saudis funded Osama bin Laden's terror network. You won't hear Laura Bush talk about the woman-hating regime of Saudi Arabia, or you won't hear the oil-batty minions of Mr. Bush and his father talk about blockading Saudi Arabia and bringing down its ghastly freedom-hating, anti-Semitic, and utterly corrupt regime, the paymasters of the attack on the United States.


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[Guest]

vox in another thread:
"PS Agusto, that little "calling out" you did failed, as do all your imitations of me. See, here's the trick. Wait until the person posts in another thread, first. Then wait a day or two, then do it."

Like this, vox?

[vox]

Actually, Agusto, the famine in 1974 had nothing to do with the government but with the floods hitting in a different fashion.

Really, you should read Sen before you attempt to disprove him. At least you'd know what he said, right? And that would give you something to argue. Remmeber, Sen came from the Chicago School.

vox