Fidel Castro

Certainly SOME American people ARE a great deal freer as a result, Brian. Like those with black skins who were still segregated - remember? A lot of marching, singing, protesting and getting killed for your beliefs occurred in the USA in order to force change, and it worked. I was referring to the push for change coming from those areas, rather than from professional 'revolutionaries' being as - probably more - effective. The French students changed the archaic academic system in that country and out of the window went false deference. Without the concerted and cooperative efforts led by a largely academic and Arts-based intelligentsia, most of us in this country would still be living in deference to 'our betters' and I doubt very much indeed that female suffrage would have managed to have got to its still precarious position without firebrands like Germaine Greer and her like, here, in Europe, and in the USA.

I'm afraid we're winding out a long way from discussing an ailing Castro, but the fact is that revolution comes in many guises, and the most effective - that which creates a rolling programme of long-term benefit for the many - does not always begin at the point of a gun. Although sometimes its use backfires spectacularly, and what started as a crude attempt at stamping out a small protest ends up as the catalyst to national fury and sweeping change. The American police and military found that out following their brutal repression of the very mildly and silently protesting students at Kent State.
 


it must be a terrible country - thousands of happy tourists must be wrong every year.

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kri i have never discovered whether tourism is a vote of confidence in a countries leadership
after all tourism in south africa under the nationilist regime was quite active and of course under franco as he has been mentioned Spains tourist industry took of

dubai now believe it or not has a tourist industry that is not only larger than spains but will overtake the states soon does that mean that the rich (the toursit value of dubai tourists exceeds the value of spanish/usa tourists) have the ambition to live under corrupt autoratic muslim regimes

i think tourism has more to do with the weather sandy beaches cheap food than any vote of confidence in a countries leadership




Well Chile did democratically elect one one in 1972/73?, but so impressed were the Americans with the idea of democracy that they killed him
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in the same vein hitler was also democratically elected.

and both results were also dubious




I'm not sure I'd like to run an historical body count between Communism and Capitalism Suny. In fact I'm not sure you could calculate it, but I wouldn't want you to think that capitalism doesn't kills people too, whether it be through imperialist wars and oppression or the inequal distribution of wealth.
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well we could start off with the

20 millions or so ukrainians who died as a result of stalins policies

(and it was not a coincidence the dodgy atomic reeactor was built in the ukraine and not in mother russia)

or the 30 million or so chinese who died as a result of maos policies in the cultaral revolution

or the million russians that died fighting the finnish

or the millions of russians that died in the war becuase stalin refused to believe his ally hitler was going to attack him and refused any militry advice that didnt fall in line with his outlook


or are communist inspired tragedies to be merely placed in the dustbins of history and forgotton about
 
A lot to mull over there Kriz, and haven't got time at the moment, got to go off to be a wage slave. But a fundamnetal pillar of Marxist doctrine would be that history is made by people's rather than people, and so I'm not sure that it would necessarily constitute a contradiction.

SOWETO 1976 (Hector Peterson) would be another immediate example that springs to mind incidentally of a police action setting in train a whole chain of events that ultimately led to the beginning of the end for white rule in South Africa.

I think context is all important, which is what I'll come back to later tonight, especially with regards to the Che thing. I think what your describing is tantamount to more of an evolutionary process nearer to the anarchist model based on collective consciousness. Ghandi might be one name that comes to mind, and possibly people like John Ruskin provided the academic foundation. Mind you I haven't read as much on the likes of Bakunin, though have picked up on Kropotkin.

Must go, revolution to organise in Oxford today :D
 


a rich persons playground, and prostitution goes pretty well hand in hand.
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the one thing about prostitution is that it is classless allthough banned in many communist countries and in china the penalties are/were very harsh + the social stigma there were believe me plenty around

in the 18th and 19th century London was very much split the west side being were the wealthy lived and the east end where the poor and hungry were dumped the poverty at the time was of incredible levels but prostitution was rife there indeed most probably one of the largest employers of women and they wernt of the appearence that could get them "work" in the more wealthy areas of west london
 


Arabs, whether they're from North Africa, the Levant, or the Arabian Gulf, are also Semitic, something which many people either forget or don't know).

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it certainly hasnt stopped the arabs being the largest publisher of the ex russian forgery the protocols of the elders of zion copies of which are freely available in many arab countries

of course being the fact they are semitic didnt stop the grand mufti of jerusalam forming an "SS" brigade for his friend hitler in the war either

it hasnt stopped saudi from operating a complete bar on jews entering its state even making their protectors the american army agree not to use jewish personnel in the state
 
PR, I'm well aware of Saudi Arabia's anti-Jewish policies, since I worked there for 20 years, thanks! It is also supposed to be forbidden to import thousands of brands of goods from Jewish companies (including clothes from M&S - which is why we always removed the labels before returning to the country, as did the Arab women shopping in their stores) - not that it worked all the time, any more than the proscription against alcohol did, or does.

Which is why I'm also well aware that using a term like 'anti-Semitic' is pretty useless in the Middle East context, since there is no guarantee that people of the same racial group automatically love each other. It's as meaningless as all of the European wars and the First World War - being caused by, and against, Caucasians. Were they all supposed to love each other because of their racial origins? Did they hell. Do they hell.

Being a Muslim Palestinian living in then Palestine, however, didn't stop my Saudi work colleague's wife cooking for her Jewish neighbours on Yom Kippur every year, though. When Palestine - thanks to the eventual enactment of the Balfour Treaty - became Israel, they left to live in Jordan, and thence to Saudi, which has proved the economic refuge of thousands of otherwise dispossessed Palestinians, so don't for a moment try to con me that the country's all bad. I know it's Flavour of the Decade to see all Arab Muslims as the spawn of Satan, hence your strangely off-track posting, but fortunately some of us see beyond minority idiocies and note that there is a bigger picture.
 
Originally posted by krizon@Aug 7 2006, 12:18 AM
I was going to watch 'The Motorcycle Diaries' tonight but they'll come round again, I'm sure, when I will. I wonder whether beautiful, charismatic Che - such an icon of and for the times - was less important than we might have thought at the time, in any real revolutionary terms?
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Cracking film and surprisingly funny as well as moving.
 
Of course it is folly to glorify Castro, but it's the old story - as I keep reminding suny geo-politics isn't like a football match where you have to choose one side or the other. Batista was well up in the corruption league and was in the pay of the Mafia.

He spent his "retirement" years in Marbella, where he died at the age of 72.

Hold on a minute - a gangster associate who retired to Marbella? Are we sure that he wasn't British?

A bit of trivia - Raoul G. Cantero, III, born in Spain, naturalized in the US, a graduate of Harvard Law School, and the first ever Hispanic judge on Florida State Supreme Court, is the grandson of Fulgencio Batista.
 
But people glorifying Castro tend to use the crimes os Batista as a reason why Castro is great.

It smacks of the whole "regime change" that Bush and Blair seemed so keen on when rationalising making a complete horlicks of a country.
 
Can anyone imagine Castro arrested in an european airport as was Pinochet?

The answer is no, because all the european progresist love him in the same way they do with John Lennon,Gandhi and Bob Geldof.


They like very much to see the great revolution the comandante has implated in cuba while they smoke a cigar with aa whisky while saying how bad boys are the yankees.

There is a difference kind of judgement if you are in one side or another.


If you ask 10yo kid which one killed more people between Stalin and Hitler the answer will always be the later.


The nazis are banned in Europe and very well done, but I wonder why comunism is not treated in the absolute same way?




When I opened the topic I didnt do it to talk about Batista, but thats they way thiss developes.........left wing always change the subject of the discusiion when asked about their results or use euphemism to change the meaning of the words and minimize how they provide poverty to the countries in which is implanted.
 
Thankyou for your observations PR, I promise you I will indulge you tomorrow. I take it you've never been to the Soviet Union and never met survivours of the the siege of Leningrad? or Moscow for that matter? Short of dropping an atom bomb on central Europe, I think you'll find the Red Army defeated nazism (not John Wayne). They held Leningrad (probably the most amazing and moving story of defiance under extreme adversity I've ever come across) The defence of Moscow was critical. Stalingrad is well documented, and Kursk widely misappreciated. But that also tuend the fate of war decisively.

Basically a T34 could be produced and manned by people who believed in their revolution and baring in mind what the Nazis did (I won't use the word Germans because they are fundamentally different people at a different time to the slavic's they conquered - temporarily) are you surprised? War is brutal, simple as that.

I too have had the priviledge of travelling the world, and met many a Ukranian who will tell me a different story. My favourite though has to be this;

"The Germans lined a mine field and an artillery battery against us..... (pause) ... "but we had secret weapon" .....

"what was that?" I politely enquired

"We ran" :lol:

""all 100,000 thousand of us"
 
Originally posted by Warbler@Aug 7 2006, 11:11 PM
I think you'll find the Red Army defeated nazism (not John Wayne).
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I had read that somewhere.......... :lol:


Thank god the good guy Stalin won the war for the rest of countries.
 
Originally posted by prince regent@Aug 7 2006, 07:25 AM
or the millions of russians that died in the war becuase stalin refused to believe his ally hitler was going to attack him and refused any militry advice that didnt fall in line with his outlook


or are communist inspired tragedies to be merely placed in the dustbins of history and forgotton about
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I think before you take a look at the Molotov - Ribbentrop pact you need to consider on how many occasions the Soviets offered the West a pact gainst Hitler and were rebuked, before they made that pact (and lets be honest, it took the West by surprise).

They most certainly oofered it over Spain (1936), and after that on numerous occasions when the Nazis started expanding (Cezchoslovakia and before that the re-occupation of the Sedetan Lands). Unforutnately, (though you could argue it was a smart move given that we weren't prepared in 1938?) the French ourselves and the American Ambassador (Joesph Kennedy) systematically declined. I realise you're being deliberately provocative to describe Stalin as Hitlers ally, but if you wish to retain credibility can I respectably suggest you revise that? Surely you must have read enough to realise that the political philosophies are so diametrically opposed you can't possibly sustain that argument? I have read aspects of Mein Kampf and there can be little doubt as to the fact that the author held the slavic people and their system of government in total contempt, hardly an ally, unless of course you've perceived a different interperatition? If you have, I'd be more than curious?

It's a shame because you've otherwise made some valid(ish) points but that is plainly ridiclious. You know as well as I do that there was a degree of who would attack who first, and all sides were trying to engineer an element of who on to whom etc I think to denigrade the Soviet contribution to the defeat of Nazism as an ally, frankly does you no favours?

And as for your reference to the dustbin of history. I get it, but i'm not a Trot

As regards military advice, you could just as easily argue that Stalins spies in Japan made him aware of PH, which allowed him to switch some of his best winter troops to the defence of Moscow at a critical time. Was he really likely to tip the Americans off? Would you have done under the circumstances?
 
warbler

a well thought out reply i disagree with some tenets of it though


may i ask before i continue

im not disputing either the bravery of the russian PEOPLE and army and i acknowledge the great contribution they made to the defeat of hitler

but do you believe they fought for

aa russia (imho opinion) yes

or

bb for communissm (IMho) no they would have defended their country whom ever was in charge popular or otherwise

and a little points

aa the sudentanland out of all the lost territories adolf wanted back into the german fold this was the one he actually had no cliam on it has never been part of a germanic state or empire

and heres a trivia question for you

can u name a soldier of any rank who has one the highest award of 2 countries in the same war but on opposite sides
 
It's always amusing when suny accuses others of being one-sided in their views.

And somehow it's surreal to see John Lennon and Bob Geldof bracketed with the infamous totalitarian rulers.

Never mind who was responsible for most deaths out of Hitler and Stalin - though it's a strange way of measuring who had the better or worse philosophy - neither can hold a candle to Mao Tse-Tung (or Mao Zedong as we must call him now).
 
Originally posted by BrianH@Aug 8 2006, 11:22 AM


And somehow it's surreal to see John Lennon and Bob Geldof bracketed with the infamous totalitarian rulers.
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I dont place these 2 farsants in the same bracket of Castro, I just say both cause admirations to the Castro followers.
 
Brian

I know was the super Champion killer but what I questioned is why comunnism is still allowed nowdays?
 
Probably because the specific goals of communism do not require mass murder, whereas those of the nazi's did.

The fact that leaders calling themselves communists killed millions to maintain their power is irrelevant to this - the "manifesto" of communists does not require that they do so. It is morally correct that a manifesto which does require extermination should be reviled/banned.
 
All 'isms' are allowed in any civilised society until the views that they promulgate break the law or incite the breaking of the law. Totalitarian views on the extreme left and the extreme right have a nasty habit of shaking hands round the back when no-one is looking and producing the same result.
Why do people insist on seeing these things as black or white when life is 99% varying shades of grey.
 
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