Most ex-USSR countries don't have a dedicated day along these lines, but in practice the Soviet WW2 victory day (May, 9) serves the same purpose.

"You know, so that the electorate can make electoral decisions based on actual information rather than fear-mongering?"

As if they would ever do such a thing. Most people are contemptibly stupid and deserve the politicians they CHOOSE to elect and support with such passion.

"Except that unobfuscated isn't a word."

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/unobfuscated

USA did, for example. And so did a good half of Europe, even not counting Nazis.

The PRC is gradually freeing up the political sphere, actually, it just happens from bottom up. They already have genuinely free elections on local level in many places, for example (also a part of Deng Xiaoping reforms).

Anyway, the reason why they don't allow free elections is pretty obvious - because the people who are in power want to stay in power. That's what it means to be an authoritarian country. It doesn't mean that those people are planning to "fully return to their Maoist ways", however.

Generally speaking, you seem to be confused because you stick to two extremes - in your view, the country is either free, or it's totalitarian. I would like to remind that the very word "totalitarian" was coined early in 20th century, and it certainly didn't mean to apply to any non-free political arrangement - it has certain very specific connotations. It applied to China during Mao's rule, but today it's just another run-of-the-mill authoritarian country, one of many in the world. It's not free, but it doesn't run your life, either.

Not really, no. There was no period in the history of Soviet Union when private ownership of, say, a factory was possible. Even during the "new economic policy".

As a side note, Lenin himself openly called NEP what it was - state capitalism - and said that the reason why they needed it was because Russia was not yet a state ready for socialism per Marxist theory (because it was not sufficiently industrially developed, and Marxist theory of revolution requires a strong class of industry workers - proletariat - to run its course).

However, NEP was always a temporary measure, declared by Bolsheviks as such from the outset of the policy - precisely because it was recognized as capitalism, and therefore at odds with the long-term goal of building communism. In practice, it only ran for 7 years. In contrast, "socialism with Chinese characteristics" is the official standing ideology of China, and is not described as some kind of temporary tactical retreat or anything; and it already runs for over 30 years without any signs of diminishing.

That's a matter of degree, not a fundamental difference. Many capitalist countries retain state ownership on industries they perceive as crucial for state security - usually this pertains to natural resources, though. Banking is another sector where this can be beneficial, though. Heck, many people in US were saying that, if we're bailing out failing banks, we might as well just nationalize them to avoid the same kind of epic fail further down the road.

I don't see the difference between forced abortion and forced sterilization. Either is state intervening into the reproductive life of the individual, and making very significant choices for them.

My point was that either you have to call Europe and US back during that period (i.e. WW1 to WW2) totalitarian based on your argument, or else you have to admit that forced abortions are not necessarily a sign of a totalitarian state. It's only a sign of a repressive state, and that in one particular sphere (totalitarian, by definition, encompasses all spheres).

Right wing is an arbitrary label that doesn't really correlate directly with any single ideology, but is most closely associated with conservatism (to remind, the term itself comes from the French Revolution, where "right wing" were the members of parliament who were sitting on the right side, who were mostly proponents of monarchy, tradition and clericalism).

Nazism is an ideology that blends revolutionary ideas with ultra-conservative ones. However, because the latter was the source of most grief - e.g. anti-semitism in Europe was a long-standing tradition )in contrast, Soviets were initially very anti-anti-semitic, and indeed disproportionally many original Bolsheviks were themselves Jews), and so was homophobia. Other notable right wing points were state support for religion and ethnic nationalism.

My guess is that they are targeting the low-end of the market that has a high-end feature phone now but can't afford a traditional smartphone. The kind with a texting keyboard, weak camera and limited internet access via carrier apps.

My guess is the idea is to provide a phone optimized for Facebook and picture taking but with low end enough specs that it can be sold very cheaply.

My guess is that there are a lot of people at this end of the market who use Facebook on PCs and who see a smartphone's primary purpose as being for Facebook or social media and who would take hardware more comparable to a real smartphone even if most of what it did well was Facebook.

Done well, Facebook could create an ecosystem of Facebook apps exclusive to this platform and along with their data mining sell the phones at cost and actually make money on the larger project.

Done poorly, it's a train wreck. Either way, I don't see any kind of Facebook phone taking Apple or Android's place.

OTOH if you're Active duty and not deployed to a combat zone at the time, you usually do get it off or get informal "comp" time if you pull holiday duty.

Explain to me again how barter is a superior system...

If you use money, your transaction cost increases by about 60% due to taxation. Money ought to be superior.