Killer Chic...

The problem is, Sven, the people Che fought against were always worse.  Whatever we can say about Cuba, we both know the Cuban people would not be better off if the "free market" types were running the place.

And contrary to the link's assertions, it isn't just the "Hollywood elite" that reveres Che.  Throughout Latin America, he's seen as the symbol of liberation and hope.  Nobody Reason Magazine approves of ever inspired that feeling in this hemisphere.

Plus, the equation of Che with Mao in the link was a way cheap shot.  Che never staged a Cultural Revolution that caused the unjust deaths of tens of millions of people and he never had children inform on their parents.

Finally, it was Fidel Castro that imposed the restrictions on jazz.  That wasn't Che's thing.  Che was dealing with public health issues and running the treasury.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly

These capitalists and their hirelings in government have never had to worry about feeding, housing, and employing a billion, mostly illiterate people post 1949 either. We can't even employ and house and fill   bellies with three squares a day of all of the few millions we do have. I can't imagine a billion people suddenly transplanted to North America and our fragile planned economies and stoogeocracies not ending with blood in the streets and protests everywhere. China's population here and now would most certainly represent a most vexing dilemma for our crooked politicians and Wall Street-Bay Street gangsters for sure for sure.

Thanks for posting Killer Chic. I am reminded of an article I read in the Globe a year or so ago on trendy "Russian" influences in contemporary TO. It was illustrated with a big colourful photo of a "Russian" restaurant there, all done up in opulent reds and golds. I was shocked that it also featured a framed poster of Cheka mass-murderer Felix Dzerzhinsky.

It's an odd phenomenon: Right wing killers are not chic (and shouldn't be) but many left wing killers are chic (but shouldn't be).  Hence, you'll find a "Mao's Kitchen" restaurant in America but not a "Hitler's Kitchen" restaurant in America.

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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!

Another Mobius strip.

Left wing killers were undisputedly the most prolific killers of the 20th Century. 

You mean John Negroponte was a Marxist?

Actually, on this point, what I think the record of the 20th century shows is that those on the far Right and those on the far Left are both dangerous, either to life and limb or to basic civil rights and freedoms.

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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!

Yes I am familiar with Negroponte's activities in Guatemala and hasn't he just been given some mass-murder worthy post somewhere in the Middle East, but I do not think his body count exceeds that of the Bolsheviks holocaust of the Russian Empire or that of their ideological stepchildren in Red China.

I agree Sven, a mass murderer is a criminal against humanity no matter what their extremist ideological stripe. 

It's unfair to compare Che to Mao in terms of body count.  Che, whatever you can say about those he had executed, was only responsible in that capacity for about 1200 deaths.  There's no way you can put him in the same league as Mao or Stalin or Pol Pot. 

Let me put this in an American context, Sven:

If you can't abide Che, are you also mortally offended at Abraham Lincoln?  He was responsible for a huge number of civilian deaths in the Late Unpleasantness.  If you say the "greater good" absolves Abe, don't you also have to say it absolves Che?

And remember,(since you and I are both Yanks) if our government hadn't murdered a left government in Guatemala in 1954 that obeyed all the rules you think "legitimate" states should observe, Che would likely never have used the tactics he used.  You can't act as if Che decided to kill people just for the hell of it.  These things are always in reaction to something else.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly

There is a direct correlation between Negroponte's appearance on the scene, and sudden "depopulations" going back to Vietnam.

Catholic popes are directly responsible for some 300,000 avoidable deaths per year of women in countries where abortion is maintained in illegality because of the Vatican's political meddling.

So give me 1,000 Ches and I'll trade you one more of your slimy misogynist Holy Fathers, Sven and Sephardi! (Please.)

I also find qualifying the death toll by limiting the time frame to the 20th century a little arbitrary. By the time 1900 rolled around most of the capitalist democracies had already unified and centralized their state structures, and wiped out dissent, and effective opposition by unwanted minorities.

The horrific American Civil War, often considered the first "modern war" by military historians was one part of this process. By 1900, the United States has quite effectively wiped out any opposition from the indiginous populations, and committed a mass slaughter numbering many many millions, as it solidified its existance as a modern "Nation State". China only began to undertake this homogenization process of building a centralized nation state at around the time Sun Yat Sen founded the Koumintang in 1906.

Yes, history is a sorry affair.

I suppose I should clarify things before anyone else tries to insult me on the basis that I am Catholic. My father was raised in the Catholic church but he had a falling out with them as a result of his experiences during WWII in Italy. Then he divorced his first wife and married my mother. Naughty, naughty.

Anyway they had the good sense to raise me and my siblings in the bush in rural BC - no churches, no problems. I loved my Bible story book though.

I was never baptized into nor am I a member of any church. In my heart, though, I am a Christian, that is, I believe that Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of the prophecies.

 And I am wondering if "the Mosiach" returns as all these fundamentalist nutbar Jews are hoping , what if he turns out to be the reincarnation of Yeshua ben Joseph? Will they accept him this time? 

If you're gentile, why do you post under the name "sephardi"?  And, fyi, Jews don't see the "Mosiach" as returning...that's Christians.  Jews are waiting for him to show up for the first time.

BTW, why did you think anyone thought you were CATHOLIC, of all things?

_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly

I use the name Sephardi because as I have already explained on another thread my family name is of Portuguese Sephardic Jewish origin, so I absolutely have a right to use it.

Technically the term Sephardic applies only to the Jews of Bibical Sephardia, Spain and Portugal, who are said to be descendants of the nobility of Jerusalem who emigrated there rather than being carted off to Babylon in 800 BC with all the tradesmen who then became corrupted by Babylonian Talmudism.

Interestingly enough, the modern AskenNazis have all but forgotten that and now refer to the Jews of North Africa and the Middle Easts as Sephardics because they adhere to the Sephardic rite. Technically these Jews are actually Mizrahim. 

I also mentioned that my family converted to Christianity and became part of Lord Baltimore's original colony in Maryland because it was the only of the thirteen original colonies that would take Catholics although there is some evidence that their presence in North America actually predates the establishment of the American colonies.

OK, thanks for the clarification. You could understand, I hope, why someone might wonder.  No offense intended.

Also, and let me ask this very carefully...did you MEAN to capitalize the middle "N" in "Ashkenazi"?   

_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly

Hmm . . . I seem to have used have two "n"s, one a capital and one not. 

Given all the historic analogies that are floating around right now, that one is such an opening. 

Having said all that, Sephs, do you have any response to any of the actual points I or anyone else had made in this thread?

_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly

I watched the video and threw in my two bits worth on odd "Russian" decorating touches in modern TO.

Then I opined  that "a mass murderer is a criminal against humanity no matter what their extremist ideological stripe."

You asked my why I called myself Sephardi and I explained but actually Ken Burch, I am not much interested in any of the "actual" points you made.