Kurds happy with US, Turkey disapointing.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Communism is not and never was an Atheist movement. The purpose of Communism was to found a collective state, atheism was only of secondary importance.Religion was only sporadically and poorly persecuted  because pragmatically when you persecute a religion you create martyrs and that incses the problems that the state has in organizing a country.

Atheism is certainly not a threat in any country to the citizens. Islam CAN clearly be a threat, since Mohammad taught that the ideal is for everyone to be a Muslim. I think that in the first years that the Muslims invaded and ruled Egypt, they tried to forceably convert the Copts and all they did was create martyrs and dissent. Asa result, Egypt has been around 10-14% Christian (Coptic) since around the 6th Century. Egyptians claim to be Arabs, and speak a variety of the Arab language, but genetically most Egyptians probably have more ancient Egyptian DNA than Arab DNA. I am not sure that tests are available to determine this, since Egypt has been conquered and ruled by so many non Egyptians, which resulted in scrambling the DNA  so much.

[Plane]

Communism is not and never was an Atheist movement. The purpose of Communism was to found a collective state, atheism was only of secondary importance.Religion was only sporadically and poorly persecuted  because pragmatically when you persecute a religion you create martyrs and that incses the problems that the state has in organizing a country.

     Severe error there.

       Was atheism optional to Communists in good standing?

        Were not the religious killed in great numbers in the USSR , China , Cambodia,Burma and Vietnam?

       If you want to say that there are a lot of non-Communist Atheists, or that there are Atheists who are good citizens of the USA I could accept this sort of assertion.

    But "Communism is not and never was an Atheist movement." seems like a complete error , reverse it for the truth.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Communism is a political movement, not a religious one.

Communism considers itself to be a scientific movement, and does not believe that Science and belief in God are rational.

[Plane]

That is just quibble.

The requirements of Communism include accepting the Communist attitude twards religion and magical thinking about economics.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I disagree with the statement about economics. Some Communists invested quite wisely in infrastruture, notably the Soviets before WWII and the Chinese after the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward proved to be a failure. East Germany was at least as prosperous in 1989 as Portugal and Greece.

Those currently running China are experts at capitalist investment They have been better at it than the experts in the USA.

Given a choice, I would opt for capitalist development rather than top-down Soviet style development, but a combination of free market competition enforced by making noncompete agreements and monopolies illegal would trump  both.

[Plane]

I disagree with the statement about economics. Some Communists invested quite wisely in infrastruture, notably the Soviets before WWII

Stalin ?  Never he was a severe wastrel prone to send his best human resources to Siberia for years , or just shoot them.

and the Chinese after the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward proved to be a failure. East Germany was at least as prosperous in 1989 as Portugal and Greece.

Those currently running China are experts at capitalist investment They have been better at it than the experts in the USA.

They are getting better, benefiting a lot from the education available in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Isn't this a separation from real Communism?

Given a choice, I would opt for capitalist development rather than top-down Soviet style development, but a combination of free market competition enforced by making noncompete agreements and monopolies illegal would trump  both.

  That is very interesting.
   I could just about agree .
     Having corporations that merge and cooperate so much that they become too big to fail seems to be a mistake , having a centrally planned economy isn't more virtuous just because the central planners are in boardrooms rather than politbureaus .

[Xavier_Onassis]

General Motors in the 1980's made mostly extremely forgettable, cookie-cutter cars. A Nova was an F85 was a Cadillac Cimarron, and none of them was all that good.
The Moskvich was even worse, and for the same reasons.

China's current leaders understand capitalism and the Chinese people very well.

Hong Kong was not at all democratic when the British were running  it. Elections were a recent thing in Hong Kong. Taiwan was also not democratic until the late 1980's. China's leaders are not in tune with the young people in Hong Kong, but there is not a lot of protests there coming from people over 30 years old. China's leaders want Hong Kong to be a cash cow, just as to was for the UK.