Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the much-anticipated first of three Presidential debates, this one from Hofstra University in New York, moderated by Lester Holt. Part 1 of 3.
This was SO awesome. Wes and Jimmy both laid out the real arguments for both sides. It’s nice to finally get a chance to thoroughly unpack what’s at stake.
The pre-debate debate between Jimmy and Wes about who to vote for was the most incisive I’ve seen. It was particularly refreshing to see both sides acknowledge how difficult this decision is. Wes makes the case for voting for Clinton far better than Ben, who in my view still has a disproportionate amount of faith in the Democratic party.
Agreed, far better. I don’t think Ben is a shill as many do, but there is something I couldn’t quite place about the way he advocates voting for Hillary. I understand Cenk’s view far better, and Wes even more so.
I don’t think Ben is a shill by any means; I just think he shows too much deference to American political institutions, Democratic ones in particular, for understandable reasons.
Agree completely. Watching Jimmy Dore debate Sam Seder and it was annoying. Jimmy saw Sam’s side, but Sam just basically called Dore ignorant and wouldn’t accept there was logic to his points. Jimmy and Wes had a debate, but both understood each other’s side. Was fantastic.
If you discard StateDep/MSM “reports” on Putin which are as truthful as their previous claims on how Saddam had WMDs and was tied to 9/11, Putin’s record is way better than Obama’s. (The most of Putin’s evil deeds claims not only do not have any evidence whatsoever, there is even no motive for Putin to carry them out.)
So unless Cenk would include Obama in the list of “wrong people”, and much closer to the top of the list, this coverage is not a “truth-telling”, “fair” or “principled”.
I also do not agree with Wesley’s opinion that the dictators he listed are incompetent. Hitler, Stalin, Mao were very well competent. Hitler has created a very effective machine, and the big reason why he has lost is his hubris, his Nazism towards Russians he thought were subhuman.
And I would not group them together since the results of their policies are diameter. For example, Stalin was internationalist socialist/communist, and it only thanks to him that Eurasia now is a not a Nazi Empire with Jews, Gypsis, LGBTs eradicated, Slavs enslaved/castrated. Stalin has installed standards of social security that the world have never seen. And he has turned a mostly agrarian country into a superpower that created the most powerful army that the humanity ever known. And yes, Stalin’s regime in thirty has executed about 680 thousand people, good chunk of whom were innocent (this is a documented figure from the archives, not Cold War propaganda about millions), but comparing to 30 years of USA or UK policies during that time this death toll is moderate.
Whatever sources you are getting this reading from, you better check them mate.
Soviet Russia is a major area of study for me so let me point a few things out here:
First of all on Stalin’s so called “achievments”: The collectivization of agriculture not only had state security shot several hundred thousand “kulaks” and deport well over 2 Million to Siberia where many of them too faced a horrible death, it also caused a famine which killed between 5 and 8 million people. Those peasents who remained where basically serfs like in feudal time which lead to the spectacular lack of productivity which haunted the Soviet economy for the rest of it’s exsistence. Even in 1987 per capita consumption of meat was still below the 1913-level.
And the “Great Terror” to which you are probably reffering with your 680.000 number was also a good deal more deadly. From all that we know about 700.000 has to be lowest possible estimate since these killing campaigns where conducted in such a chaotic manner that the authorities did not document all cases of people who just “dissapered”. Also this figure only covers people who where officially executed not those who died from the conditions of their imprisonment, torture etc.
On top of that Stalin also deported Millions of members of ethnic minorities in 1943/44 for being supposed “german collaborators”, as well as many returning Russian PoWs and people who had been kidnapped by the german occupation forces for forced labour, due to his paranoia that they might be foreign agents.
Even by conservative estimates it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that Stalins policies killed millions and vicitimised and persecuted tens of millions
The rapid industrilization of Stalin was once again based on massive compulsion and terror and due to it’s inefficent use of labour and capital was only able to achieve results by actually lowering the standard of living for the working classes. The universal social security you so laud was actually only introduced under Chrustchov and even then lagged far behind similar systems in Western Europe. Pensioners exspecially where notoriously over-represented among the poor of Soviet society since pensions did not automatically go up with the cost of living as it did in most western systems.
So can we please put this bogus narrative of the Great, who was an amazing and efficent, and who’s cruelty was necessary and calculated. Stalin was a tragedy for the people of Russia and Eastern Europe and a haunting warning to the dangers of totalitarianism and one-man dictatorship.
To close let me give some literary refference to what I’ve just said:
I wholeheardly recommend Oleg Chlevniuks recently published Stalin biography. Chlevniuk is one of the foremost experts of Stalinism as he has been working in the Moscow central archives for many years and thus works with numerous documents previously unavailable to western scholars.
For the social and economic history of the USSR Manfred Hildermeiers History of the Soviet Union, which is pretty comprehensive in it’s treatment of the subject although I do not know if it has ever been published in an English verison.
Thanks for a detailed answer, but, apparently, those couple of sources you are recommending are not that accurate, because:
1) the industrialization that Stalin carried out included building over 9000 of factories through out the USSR in just ten years. To make it happen, collectivization was needed to happen; it freed about 18 million people from their ties to the land and allowed them to move to the cities to work in those new factories, as well as to build giant infrastructure projects;
2) yes, the collectivization process included the fight against “kulaks” which were rentier that allowed peasants to borrow horses and equipment in exchange for the crops those peasants would harvest, as well as for the money — at outrageous rates as they were monopolists in their villages. Those kulaks even retained their punisher brigades to beat up the peasants who were unable to return the money/crops at the those crazy rates. This was de-facto an enslavement of the peasants, a servitude that Soviet government wanted to stop;
3) so yes, those kulaks as a class were stripped off of their excessive horses and equipment and deported from the places they milked, and yes, there were excessive and unfair deportations, not only well-deserved ones. Stalin even partially reverted the trend and allowed many to return back. The claimed number of death toll during deportation is not founded on actual researches in the archives, though, and it includes people dying of natural causes, accidents, epidemics (remember that it all was before penicillin was invented), so I can not discuss it;
4) the agriculture of the USSR has become times more effective after the collectivization. Even with 18 million people of the workforce left, it has started to produce much more food. The situation has become worse after death of Stalin since Khruschev has destroyed almost any interest in the quality and in the amount of crops that was harvested by starting to pay wages for the time and area of the land processed, not for the result as it was in Stalin’s times. It went to be so bad that rationing system has returned. Compare it to Stalin’s times, when USSR was the first war-affected country to cancel in 1947 (years before UK, for example);
5) 1931-1932 famine is a result of two bad years of crops in a row (that affected, by the way, some neighbouring countries that had nothing to do with socialism or collectivization whatsoever), as well as yes, of the gross mismanagement by some local leaders that were found to falsify reports on what is happening to protect and boost their careers, among other misdeeds. Those people had their trials for this. Accurate number of the famine’s death toll through out whole USSR was about 1 million (not from 5 to 8 million);
6) the NKVD had very detailed documentation, so that 680 thousand is not the lowest, but the accurate number, and it includes masses of Nazi collaborators from Ukraine and Baltics. So the number of innocent/purely political victims of Stalin’s regime is actually way below than this figure;
7) yes, Stalin deported some ethnic groups in 1944-1945. And yes, they were actual Nazi collaborators, the archives show that in a great detail, it is indisputable; Stalin did not deport nations just out of the blue (unlike, by the way, “the leader of the free world” Roosevelt who deported Japanese who did not actually do anything wrong). And yes, there were people among the deported who did not really support Nazi, and they suffered unjustly, but at the time there was simply no way to investigate and process all of those cases in details;
8) the working class before Stalin was so few in numbers (relatively) that it is hard to discuss that its standard of living has been lowered. Yes, some social security benefits were introduced only by Khruschev, but the bulk of it was done before him; the West had nothing similar at the time even remotely (only by the time of Roosevelt the USA got some of social security that was implemented in the USSR);
9) Stalin’s industrialization was not based on terror; no one thought that if they will not go to the city to work at a plant they would be killed or thrown in jail; this is a Cold War-era fantasy. The industrialization was based on the economic factors such as rural areas not needing this much people after the collectivization, as well as on propaganda and great enthusiasm of the Soviet people in building the Communist future (people honestly believed in that at the time, unlike 1970s-1980s, when the ideology in USSR was already in decay).
In the end, Stalin’s regime, of course, was ruthless and brutal, but its death toll was below what USA and UK did in thirty years of their time, and the net positive is giant since Stalin is the only reason why we do not have a Nazi Empire today. Milder Soviet leader that would develop USSR slower would ensure Hitler’s win (USSR did about 80% of the damage to the Nazis, so go figure what would happen is the USSR would lose). And yes, the collateral damage for this net positive was significant, though orders of magnitude less than what the Cold War propaganda claims.
This site is fucking worthless. Only thing that works is live stream, everything else is so choppy it isn’t worth watching. I’m cancelling my membership if this shit doesn’t improve quickfast.
It all plays fine for me…it could be your internet connection. Try using the download links under the videos and see if they play smoothly for you. If not, your computer is the issue and downloading the low-res or audio only versions might be your best bet.
Comments
This was SO awesome. Wes and Jimmy both laid out the real arguments for both sides. It’s nice to finally get a chance to thoroughly unpack what’s at stake.
Cenk is hyper as fuck
Wes is the best.
The pre-debate debate between Jimmy and Wes about who to vote for was the most incisive I’ve seen. It was particularly refreshing to see both sides acknowledge how difficult this decision is. Wes makes the case for voting for Clinton far better than Ben, who in my view still has a disproportionate amount of faith in the Democratic party.
Agreed, far better. I don’t think Ben is a shill as many do, but there is something I couldn’t quite place about the way he advocates voting for Hillary. I understand Cenk’s view far better, and Wes even more so.
I don’t think Ben is a shill by any means; I just think he shows too much deference to American political institutions, Democratic ones in particular, for understandable reasons.
Agree completely. Watching Jimmy Dore debate Sam Seder and it was annoying. Jimmy saw Sam’s side, but Sam just basically called Dore ignorant and wouldn’t accept there was logic to his points. Jimmy and Wes had a debate, but both understood each other’s side. Was fantastic.
SKIPPED. If I wanted to see a war hawk debate a headless chicken, I’d go talk to the most eccentric bird specialist in the world.
Cenk: “… praise the wrong people like Putin”
If you discard StateDep/MSM “reports” on Putin which are as truthful as their previous claims on how Saddam had WMDs and was tied to 9/11, Putin’s record is way better than Obama’s. (The most of Putin’s evil deeds claims not only do not have any evidence whatsoever, there is even no motive for Putin to carry them out.)
So unless Cenk would include Obama in the list of “wrong people”, and much closer to the top of the list, this coverage is not a “truth-telling”, “fair” or “principled”.
I also do not agree with Wesley’s opinion that the dictators he listed are incompetent. Hitler, Stalin, Mao were very well competent. Hitler has created a very effective machine, and the big reason why he has lost is his hubris, his Nazism towards Russians he thought were subhuman.
And I would not group them together since the results of their policies are diameter. For example, Stalin was internationalist socialist/communist, and it only thanks to him that Eurasia now is a not a Nazi Empire with Jews, Gypsis, LGBTs eradicated, Slavs enslaved/castrated. Stalin has installed standards of social security that the world have never seen. And he has turned a mostly agrarian country into a superpower that created the most powerful army that the humanity ever known. And yes, Stalin’s regime in thirty has executed about 680 thousand people, good chunk of whom were innocent (this is a documented figure from the archives, not Cold War propaganda about millions), but comparing to 30 years of USA or UK policies during that time this death toll is moderate.
Whatever sources you are getting this reading from, you better check them mate.
Soviet Russia is a major area of study for me so let me point a few things out here:
First of all on Stalin’s so called “achievments”: The collectivization of agriculture not only had state security shot several hundred thousand “kulaks” and deport well over 2 Million to Siberia where many of them too faced a horrible death, it also caused a famine which killed between 5 and 8 million people. Those peasents who remained where basically serfs like in feudal time which lead to the spectacular lack of productivity which haunted the Soviet economy for the rest of it’s exsistence. Even in 1987 per capita consumption of meat was still below the 1913-level.
And the “Great Terror” to which you are probably reffering with your 680.000 number was also a good deal more deadly. From all that we know about 700.000 has to be lowest possible estimate since these killing campaigns where conducted in such a chaotic manner that the authorities did not document all cases of people who just “dissapered”. Also this figure only covers people who where officially executed not those who died from the conditions of their imprisonment, torture etc.
On top of that Stalin also deported Millions of members of ethnic minorities in 1943/44 for being supposed “german collaborators”, as well as many returning Russian PoWs and people who had been kidnapped by the german occupation forces for forced labour, due to his paranoia that they might be foreign agents.
Even by conservative estimates it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that Stalins policies killed millions and vicitimised and persecuted tens of millions
The rapid industrilization of Stalin was once again based on massive compulsion and terror and due to it’s inefficent use of labour and capital was only able to achieve results by actually lowering the standard of living for the working classes. The universal social security you so laud was actually only introduced under Chrustchov and even then lagged far behind similar systems in Western Europe. Pensioners exspecially where notoriously over-represented among the poor of Soviet society since pensions did not automatically go up with the cost of living as it did in most western systems.
So can we please put this bogus narrative of the Great, who was an amazing and efficent, and who’s cruelty was necessary and calculated. Stalin was a tragedy for the people of Russia and Eastern Europe and a haunting warning to the dangers of totalitarianism and one-man dictatorship.
To close let me give some literary refference to what I’ve just said:
I wholeheardly recommend Oleg Chlevniuks recently published Stalin biography. Chlevniuk is one of the foremost experts of Stalinism as he has been working in the Moscow central archives for many years and thus works with numerous documents previously unavailable to western scholars.
For the social and economic history of the USSR Manfred Hildermeiers History of the Soviet Union, which is pretty comprehensive in it’s treatment of the subject although I do not know if it has ever been published in an English verison.
Thanks for a detailed answer, but, apparently, those couple of sources you are recommending are not that accurate, because:
1) the industrialization that Stalin carried out included building over 9000 of factories through out the USSR in just ten years. To make it happen, collectivization was needed to happen; it freed about 18 million people from their ties to the land and allowed them to move to the cities to work in those new factories, as well as to build giant infrastructure projects;
2) yes, the collectivization process included the fight against “kulaks” which were rentier that allowed peasants to borrow horses and equipment in exchange for the crops those peasants would harvest, as well as for the money — at outrageous rates as they were monopolists in their villages. Those kulaks even retained their punisher brigades to beat up the peasants who were unable to return the money/crops at the those crazy rates. This was de-facto an enslavement of the peasants, a servitude that Soviet government wanted to stop;
3) so yes, those kulaks as a class were stripped off of their excessive horses and equipment and deported from the places they milked, and yes, there were excessive and unfair deportations, not only well-deserved ones. Stalin even partially reverted the trend and allowed many to return back. The claimed number of death toll during deportation is not founded on actual researches in the archives, though, and it includes people dying of natural causes, accidents, epidemics (remember that it all was before penicillin was invented), so I can not discuss it;
4) the agriculture of the USSR has become times more effective after the collectivization. Even with 18 million people of the workforce left, it has started to produce much more food. The situation has become worse after death of Stalin since Khruschev has destroyed almost any interest in the quality and in the amount of crops that was harvested by starting to pay wages for the time and area of the land processed, not for the result as it was in Stalin’s times. It went to be so bad that rationing system has returned. Compare it to Stalin’s times, when USSR was the first war-affected country to cancel in 1947 (years before UK, for example);
5) 1931-1932 famine is a result of two bad years of crops in a row (that affected, by the way, some neighbouring countries that had nothing to do with socialism or collectivization whatsoever), as well as yes, of the gross mismanagement by some local leaders that were found to falsify reports on what is happening to protect and boost their careers, among other misdeeds. Those people had their trials for this. Accurate number of the famine’s death toll through out whole USSR was about 1 million (not from 5 to 8 million);
6) the NKVD had very detailed documentation, so that 680 thousand is not the lowest, but the accurate number, and it includes masses of Nazi collaborators from Ukraine and Baltics. So the number of innocent/purely political victims of Stalin’s regime is actually way below than this figure;
7) yes, Stalin deported some ethnic groups in 1944-1945. And yes, they were actual Nazi collaborators, the archives show that in a great detail, it is indisputable; Stalin did not deport nations just out of the blue (unlike, by the way, “the leader of the free world” Roosevelt who deported Japanese who did not actually do anything wrong). And yes, there were people among the deported who did not really support Nazi, and they suffered unjustly, but at the time there was simply no way to investigate and process all of those cases in details;
8) the working class before Stalin was so few in numbers (relatively) that it is hard to discuss that its standard of living has been lowered. Yes, some social security benefits were introduced only by Khruschev, but the bulk of it was done before him; the West had nothing similar at the time even remotely (only by the time of Roosevelt the USA got some of social security that was implemented in the USSR);
9) Stalin’s industrialization was not based on terror; no one thought that if they will not go to the city to work at a plant they would be killed or thrown in jail; this is a Cold War-era fantasy. The industrialization was based on the economic factors such as rural areas not needing this much people after the collectivization, as well as on propaganda and great enthusiasm of the Soviet people in building the Communist future (people honestly believed in that at the time, unlike 1970s-1980s, when the ideology in USSR was already in decay).
In the end, Stalin’s regime, of course, was ruthless and brutal, but its death toll was below what USA and UK did in thirty years of their time, and the net positive is giant since Stalin is the only reason why we do not have a Nazi Empire today. Milder Soviet leader that would develop USSR slower would ensure Hitler’s win (USSR did about 80% of the damage to the Nazis, so go figure what would happen is the USSR would lose). And yes, the collateral damage for this net positive was significant, though orders of magnitude less than what the Cold War propaganda claims.
This site is fucking worthless. Only thing that works is live stream, everything else is so choppy it isn’t worth watching. I’m cancelling my membership if this shit doesn’t improve quickfast.
It all plays fine for me…it could be your internet connection. Try using the download links under the videos and see if they play smoothly for you. If not, your computer is the issue and downloading the low-res or audio only versions might be your best bet.
First.
You have now made my mornin’.