Communpedia:People's Congress

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Archive

North Korean internment camps for political prisoners
How should we handle the allegations in ? As well as the other material in that article. My impression is that most of these allegations have a factual basis despite being obtained from debriefing of refugees. This results in them being outdated by several years however and perhaps somewhat exaggerated. For your information, this is the North Korean position. User:Fred Bauder Talk 18:22, 22 August 2012 (MSK)
 * In the link you provided where does it say its position abput the prisons? I am trying to find as much info as I can on this. I am also trying to find out what makes a prison a 'camp', by comparing it to camps for political prisoners like Guantanamo, or to other prisons where prisoners are used for forced labor or experimentation. I will tell you my final opinion in a few days. 21:21, 24 August 2012 (MSK)


 * The official North Korean position is that the camps don't exist at all, which is why they are not discussed. They are large, is 60 square miles; they can be viewed on Google maps, see http://freekorea.us/camps/14-18/

http://hrnk.org/wp-content/uploads/HRNK_HiddenGulag2_Final_Web_v4.pdf is the most informative source. They are not prisons, although they contain prisons. Imprisonment is for life at hard labor; this is much harsher than the Soviet system where a typical sentence was 8 years, with some sentences of 25 years. User:Fred Bauder Talk 01:33, 25 August 2012 (MSK)


 * So their size is what makes them 'camps' and not prisons? Or imprisonment for life? Please explain further why they 'contain' prisons. This is not "extermination through labor", according to WP North Korea sees the prisoners as a valuable source of labor. Also I cannot access the second link. 04:04, 31 August 2012 (MSK)

es:Comunpedia:Congreso Popular


 * A prison has walls, bars, and cells. A camp, or prison camp, has cornfields, forests, coal mines, and factories. Sentences are life at hard labor; only one person is known to have escaped, a person born in a camp, http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/escape-from-camp-14-one-mans-remarkable-odyssey-from-north-korea-to-freedom-in-the-west-by-blaine-harden/2012/04/27/gIQAUvg4lT_story.html Which link can't you access? If it a PDF file I can send it to you. We need to treat the issue in both a better and more sensitive way than it is treated on Wikipedia. User:Fred Bauder Talk 17:15, 31 August 2012 (MSK)


 * Yes, I see they have taken it down. User:Fred Bauder Talk 17:43, 31 August 2012 (MSK)


 * There is no doubt about these camps do exist from any others than followers of Juche and some Stalinists. That about the camps MUST be included, as 200.000 people are sitting there, many of them children. Shall we support this? Most of the 200.000 people are sitting there because some of their relatives have protested against the regime. Is it fair that your relatives are being put in concentration camps because you've done something wrong? And in this case "something wrong" is to protest against one of the worst dictatorships who exist today! I think it's bad enough to put people in concentration camps for criminal offenses too, and what the capitalist regime in N.Korea do is horrible! --A young communist (talk|contributions) 21:14, 7 October 2012 (MSK)

Here is my opinion on this subject:
 * Labor camps exist in North Korea.
 * They are not extermination or concentration camps. People are not sent to die to the labor camps.
 * Some people have the opportunity to be released after reeducation while others are imprisoned for life.
 * Poor hygiene conditions and food rations are common in most prisons around the world, especially in developing countries.
 * Imprisonment for political reasons is also a widespread practice in western countries (I am not saying this is morally acceptable).
 * The number of prisoners cannot be accurately estimated.
 * Political prisoners are subject to guilt by association punishment. This is a violation of human rights and of socialist principles.

03:43, 4 December 2012 (MSK)


 * There are a number of re-education camps where release is possible, see Wikipedia:Template:Reeducation camps of North Korea and Human_rights_in_North_Korea. Ideological instruction is mandatory in the re-education camps, but not practiced in the camps for political prisoners. User:Fred Bauder Talk 06:34, 4 December 2012 (MSK)

There is movement on this with the United Nations, finally, taking action, see this on 38North. Lots of links in that. User:Fred Bauder Talk 12:43, 22 March 2013 (GMT)

Book on the Great Chinese Famine
An experienced journalist and communist party member has published a book on the Great Chinese Famine, an excerpt:"Mao had pronounced that the family, in the new order of collective farming and eating, was no longer necessary. Liu Shaoqi, reliably sycophantic, agreed: “The family is a historically produced phenomenon and will be eliminated.” Grain production plummeted, the communal kitchens collapsed. As yields dived, Zhou Enlai and other leaders, “the falcons and hounds of evil,” as Yang describes them, assured Mao that agricultural production had in fact soared. Mao himself proclaimed that under the new dispensation yields could be exponentially higher. “Tell the peasants to resume eating chaff and herbs for half the year,” he said, “and after some hardship for one or two or three years things will turn around.” The New York Times: 'Unnatural Disaster: ‘Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962,’ by Yang Jisheng' and, on Amazon Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962 You can look inside the book on Amazon. It was published, in Chinese, in Hong Kong, in 2008." There is a great deal of useful material here, the quote from Liu Shaoqi is priceless in its context. How can we integrate this material? User:Fred Bauder Talk 17:00, 9 December 2012 (MSK)

A new foreign language communpedia?
How would one go about creating a new foreign language communpedia? Are they on separate servers? Shok Teenik 20:08, 29 December 2012 (MSK)


 * I believe they are on the same server. You can request a new language edition for Communpedia here. 07:43, 30 December 2012 (MSK)

Enable RSS
I suggest that we enable the MediaWiki RSS extension, so as the 'International News' section on the main page does not require to be updated manually. The World Socialist feed would be one to consider. --Attlee talk 04:56, 3 February 2013 (MSK)
 * I think this is a good idea, however we need to make sure that the news source (or at least most of its articles) meet CP:CPOV 02:04, 6 February 2013 (MSK)
 * "Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)" User:Fred Bauder Talk 02:59, 6 February 2013 (MSK)
 * Portside is another possibility. That, more or less, originated with The Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism User:Fred Bauder Talk 03:12, 6 February 2013 (MSK)
 * I had the WSWS feed in mind as it seemed to concentrate on reporting news from a leftist angle, instead of just being commentary on the stories. Portside does look interesting though. --Red flag II.svg Attlee talk 19:03, 6 February 2013 (MSK)
 * There was a split in the Communist Party USA after the collapse of the Soviet Union and a portion of the membership reorganized as the Committees of Correspondence. I don't see much activity there anymore though. I used to subscribe to Portside, but eventually got sick of it (I do that with every "tendency" eventually), so I don't know how good the coverage is at this point. User:Fred Bauder Talk 20:24, 6 February 2013 (MSK)

Vector
Our Danish, Spanish, Dutch and Russian language comrades have switched to using Vector as a default skin. Should we consider doing the same? -- Attlee talk 19:03, 6 February 2013 (MSK)
 * It is rather arbitrary; you can chose your own skin at Special:Preferences. My usual choice is monobook. User:Fred Bauder Talk 20:25, 6 February 2013 (MSK)

Marxists Internet Archive
These are questions for discussion rather than a proposal. Are people here aware of Marxists Internet Archive and their work? Have people had firsthand experiences with them/us, be they positive or negative? Has there ever been consideration given for closer association between this Marxist wiki and that Marxist documents site? One thing that MIA has is good traffic. It is also making excellent use of Facebook (gross commercial entity that that is) to communicate with interested people around the world. It is easy to get lost on the internet and it feels as though this site is. Properly structured, it would not seem to be beyond the realm of possibility that some sort of close working relationship between Communpedia and MIA could be developed. I'm curious if there are past personal issues that would preclude that.

My initial reaction to this site is that there needs to be a rephrasing of what Communpedia is — just call it "Marxist" rather than offering a laundry list of -isms — and a focusing of what it trying to be accomplished. Is the site mirroring the left wing content of Wikipedia and then seeing where the fork leads? If so, to what end? Is the intent to provide content that for this reason or that Wikipedia can not or will not? Then why is there no focus on those topics instead of a massive generalist approach that will need many tens of thousands of volunteer hours to achieve in even a most basic way?

These are fundamental questions. Please do point me towards the previous discussions if they've already been mooted and archived somewhere. —Tim /// Carrite talk   16:05, 24 March 2013 (GMT)


 * See Communpedia:Common point of view. User:Fred Bauder Talk 18:07, 24 March 2013 (GMT)
 * Love Marxists Internet Archive and their work. The archived writings are great sources. User:Fred Bauder Talk 18:13, 24 March 2013 (GMT)


 * While Communpedia is, in essence, a Marxist encyclopedia, not all of our editors are Marxists. Regarding Wikipedia content, see Communpedia:Wiki datadumps. I personally believe that articles which relate directly to Marxist theory should "never" be imported from Wikipedia, however information on political parties, etc. is generally acceptable (especially if the article is in risk of being deleted at WP). Also articles which contain useful information and are clearly written from a leftist/anti-rightist perspective. For example, see State terrorism by the United States which was imported a year ago and compare it with the current Wikipedia article. Almost half of the information it originally included has been removed from the Wikipedia article. I have never tried to communicate with the people from Marxists Internet Archive, but I believe it would be very good for our website to associate with MIA in some way. Also, Communpedia does have a Facebook page, though I'm not sure what use we should make of it. If you have a FB account I can make you an admin there. https://www.facebook.com/Communpedia  19:37, 24 March 2013 (GMT)

Imports
We need a template for imports such as George Padmore. User:Fred Bauder Talk 22:41, 28 March 2013 (GMT)

Forum
Hello, comrades! Today we created a forum community. It is intended for discussion and coordination of community activities, exchange of experience of editors of the Communist encyclopedia and other things. Join us! Ateist (talk) 21:32, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Cutting back
I'm starting to have trouble with my wrists so will be greatly reducing routine editing. I'll continue to contribute but at a greatly reduced pace. User:Fred Bauder Talk 17:45, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry to hear about the wrists. Still, you should be able to turn book pages, carry a picket sign, talk to people at the local hangout, and do other things that are almost as important as communpedia. Until we bump electrons again, all the best. Tribal (talk) 20:53, 29 October 2013 (UTC)