The anti-people's regime of Stalin remained equally cruel and at the same time dogmatically narrow and blind in its cruelty. The killing of military and engineering officials before the war, the blind faith in the "reasonableness" of the colleague in crime, Hitler, and the other reasons for the national tragedy of 1941 have been well described … Stalinist dogmatism and isolation from real life was demonstrated particularly in the countryside, in the policy of unlimited exploitation and the predatory forced deliveries at "symbolic" prices, in almost serflike enslavement of the peasantry, the depriving of peasants of the simplest means of mechanization, and the appointment of collective-farm chairmen on the basis of their cunning and obsequiousness. The results are evident — a profound and hard-to-correct destruction of the economy and way of life in the countryside, which, by the law of interconnected vessels, damaged industry as well.
Andrei Sakharov
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The inhuman character of Stalinism was demonstrated by the repressions of prisoners of war who survived fascist camps and then were thrown into Stalinist camps, the anti-worker "decrees," the criminal exile of entire peoples condemned to slow death, the unenlightened zoological kind of anti-Semitism that was characteristic of Stalin bureaucracy and the NKVD (and Stalin personally), the Ukrainophobia characteristic of Stalin, and the draconian laws for the protection of socialist property (five years' imprisonment for stealing some grain from the fields and so forth) that served mainly as a means of fulfilling the demands of the "slave market."
Andrei Sakharov
Macro-economic policy had accelerated the "expulsion" of landless peasants from the countryside leading to the formation of a nomadic migrant labor force moving from one metropolitan area to another.
Michel Chossudovsky
German workers are the most reliable supporters of the Hitler regime. Nazism has won them over completely by eliminating unemployment and by reducing the entrepreneurs to the status of shop managers (Befriebsfihrer). Big business, shopkeepers, and peasants are disappointed. Labor is well satisfied and will stand by Hitler, unless the war takes a turn which would destroy their hope for a better life after the peace treaty. Only military reverses can deprive Hitler of the backing of the German workers. [¶] The fact that the capitalists and entrepreneurs, faced with the alternative of Communism or Nazism, chose the latter, does not require any further explanation. They preferred to live as shop managers under Hitler than to be "liquidated" as "bourgeois" by Stalin. Capitalists don't like to be killed any more than other people do. What pernicious effects may be produced by believing that the German workers are opposed to Hitler was proved by the English tactics during the first year of the war. The government of Neville Chamberlain firmly believed that the war would be brought to an end by a revolution of the German workers. Instead of concentrating on vigorous arming and fighting, they had their planes drop leaflets over Germany telling the German workers that England was not fighting this war against them, but against their oppressor, Hitler. The English government knew very well, they said, that the German people, particularly labor, were against war and were only forced into it by their self-imposed dictator.
Adolf Hitler
Somebody said [to Condell] recently, "Clearly you just don't understand what a person's faith actually means to them. For me," she said, "it's like the water of life." And I thought, what a great phrase - "the water of life", without which, of course, there can be no life. But even the water of life needs to be contained and properly managed, or it can run out of control, get into places where it doesn't belong and cause real damage. For example, if the water of your life gets together with the water of other people's lives, and they form a deluge, a rushing torrent of righteous certainty that sweeps all before it, including reason, well then it's not so much the water of life anymore, is it? It's rapidly turning into the water of death, as everything in its path is crushed - original thought, rational inquiry, free speech and their tattered remnants are strewn upon the rocks of scripture and blind dogma. What's needed here, obviously, is a dam to contain this water of death, convert it back into the water of life, and give us all a chance to switch on a lightbulb in our minds. And that's where secularism comes in. It's everybody's friend, believer and non-believer alike, which I think makes it the real water of life. At least almost as much as this stuff here - beer. Cheers. (Picks up a glass of beer and drinks from it) Mmmm! Now that's what I call the water of life. A merry Christmas to everyone, especially to all you Islamist crackpots who think celebrating Christmas is a sin. Of course it is - that's why it's fun! Peace.
Pat Condell
The Pythagoreans called the monad "intellect" because they thought that intellect was akin to the One; for among the virtues, they likened the monad to moral wisdom; for what is correct is one. And they called it "being," "cause of truth," "simple," "paradigm," "order," "concord," "what is equal among the greater and the lesser," "the mean between intensity and slackness," "moderation in plurality," "the instant now in time," and moreover they call it "ship," "chariot," "friend," "life," "happiness."
Iamblichus of Chalcis
Sakharov, Andrei
Saki
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