Jump to content

RIP


Lobowolf

Recommended Posts

Castro bashing agenda.

 

While I don't agree with anything he has done I have a soft spot here. When the Maricans started welcoming Cuban people on the Florida shores he emptied the asylums and worst of his prisons and put them all on really well constructed rafts. Brilliant.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was slightly shocked by the celebrations of Thatcher's death. People could celebrate both 22 years ago and 16 years ago, quite what her death does for them now is unclear to me. I've seen multiple claims that she was evil [for having policies you disagree with and having the power/duty to implement them?] and misleading statistics like "she never secured more than one-third of the potential vote" [her party scored 54% more votes than any other in 1983, by that measure the most emphatic victory in the last 80 years].
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Marv Harshman, former basketball coach at Pacific Lutheran University (my alma mater), Washington State University, and the University of Washington, and member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, and, on the same day, Frosty Westering, former longtime football coach at my alma mater, and member of the Football Hall of Fame.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Thatcher. The most popular single on the UK chart this week is from the wizard of Oz: "Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead!". Many feel that sort of protest appropriate. Many feel that even playing that song in the normal countdown is inappropriate. BBC tries to find a compromise.

Equally pathetic, some others are trying to get "I'm in love with Margaret Thatcher" by the not sensibles into the charts as well, a terrible song that I'm probably one of the 20 people that remembers from the first time round.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good people should feel ashamed to chear the death of anyone, no matter how much they hated them. If the person is actively committing attrocities, and their death puts a stop to them, that may be reasonable justification (although it would be preferable to find a way to remove them from power and put them on trial -- when we took out Bin Laden instead of capturing him I felt we'd gone against American principles of justice). But Thatcher has been out of office for decades, her death doesn't change anything now, so there's nothing to celebrate.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Perhaps because he didn't host Soviet missiles that were pointed at you.

Presumably hosting your own missiles targeted at other countries does not mean you are an evil dictator.

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Perhaps because he didn't host Soviet missiles that were pointed at you.

Many in the West either forget, or given the tendency of all media to slant the news, never knew that a major reason the Soviets wanted to put missiles in Cuba was that the US had put missiles in Turkey, which was pretty much as threatening to the USSR, in terms of reaction/warning times as would Cuba have been for the US.

 

I am no apologist for the USSR but the Cold War was not as black and white as we in the West sometimes feel. Castro, for example, was not presdestined to become a bogeyman until the US decided that it had to support the extraordinarily corrupt former government, openly friendly to the mafia, rather than the vast majority of Cubans who wanted a better quality of life and a fairer government.

 

The former government had allowed US interests, including mafia interests, largely free rein to act as they saw fit, in exchange for which the rulers got very rich. The vast majority of Cubans resented this, as who wouldn't? Thus Castro was extremely popular.

 

There was no compelling reason to think that he would have become a puppet for the USSR had the US welcomed his revolution. Yes, he was always going to nationalize some US companies, but so what? They were predatory enterprises who had bought their position through corruption. Castro's positions were in many ways closer to those of the American revolutionaries than to the Bolsheviks who took control in Russia in 1917-21. He led a genuinely popular, nationalistic rebellion against a foreign supported if not imposed regime.

 

The US response was to attempt to destroy the revolution by imposing draconian boycotts on Cuban products or aid to the country.

 

Castro was left with no real alternative but the USSR in order to keep his country fed, let alone develop it. And the USSR of course extracted changes in return, just as the US (and other Great Powers) have always done in similar circumstances.

 

The late 20th century was remarkable for one global reality. While the US continually preached its values, it consistently supported and in some cases installed dictators, whether it be in Iran, South Vietnam, Chile, Egypt or elsewhere, while the repressive USSR consistently supported nationalistic, albeit also usually communist, liberation movements. Of course, the USSR and China also installed and supported dictators, and the US supported democracies. On balance, given what happened in Eastern Europe and Asia, it seems to me that the US, on balance, was the better, but my point is that we tend to view these things far too simplistically, often overlooking or choosing to remain ignorant of facts that are inconvenient to our preferred point of view.

  • Upvote 7
Link to comment
Share on other sites

my point is that we tend to view these things far too simplistically, often overlooking or choosing to remain ignorant of facts that are inconvenient to our preferred point of view.

 

Not Americans.

I don't want to start a flame war but I really don't understand this remark. Americans are particularly bad in this respect, Mike's summation of the Castro situation is one example.

 

Who gave the Afghan mujaheddin most of their weapons ? The US so they could fight the Soviets, this is also largely ignored.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I really don't understand this remark. Americans are particularly bad in this respect.

Sarcasm. I can't speak to the comparison with the rest of the world, but if Americans are not worse than most, that's too bad.

 

I have some suggestions for which segments of the American population are particularly bad in this respect, but that would surely result in a flame war.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I steered well clear of that too. Sorry, I missed the sarcasm.

I recognized it and thought it was an excellent way to accentuate the point.

 

It's hard not to feel superior when your country was for several generations considered one of the most succesful in the world, and where so many people are still trying to move in that immigration policy is one of the most thorny political issues we have. But everyone tends to view things through their own, biased perspective. To Americans, Russia was "the evil empire" during the Cold War. But I'm sure that they had similar opinions of us (but they still envied our bluejeens).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...