Some people just never quit ... or have any shame.
These are British - but we have them here. They are people who are no better than those blood and gore flecked apologists of Nazis.
Simon Winchester finds time to disgorge this charmer (subscriber only);
... seeing how South Korea has turned out — its Koreanness utterly submerged in neon, hip-hop and every imaginable American influence, a romantic can allow himself a small measure of melancholy: North Korea, for all its faults, is undeniably still Korea, a place uniquely representative of an ancient and rather remarkable Asian culture. And that, in a world otherwise rendered so bland, is perhaps no bad thing.What a typical Leftist hypocrite. That British tool lives in the USA; MASS and NYC to be exact. Enjoy his writing, you paid for it - one of the teats he sucks off of is public radio.
The next useful idiot is a Brit too; Neil Clark.
Havel's anti-communist critique contained little if any acknowledgement of the positive achievements of the regimes of eastern Europe in the fields of employment, welfare provision, education and women's rights. Or the fact that communism, for all its faults, was still a system which put the economic needs of the majority first.Let them speak and by their words be d@mned.
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While the years following the liberation of eastern Europe from communism by Havel and his fellow dissidents are routinely portrayed in the west as one big success story, the reality is rather different.
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Lauding Havel is not only doing a disservice to the millions of ordinary people in eastern Europe who have not been served well by his politics, but to the innocent men, women and children killed by the western military adventures he supported
43 comments:
I see neither of these fellow travelers has once lived under the gentle benefits of true communism...
Communism is wonderful! Starvation, sub standard capabilities, repression and oppression. These tools are absolutely idiotic. Has the former author looked at the footage that leaked out of NORKO on CNN about 8 yrs ago? Holy Crap! The people there are practically eating dirt to survive.
Of course not -- "not for me but for thee" is the order of the day with these turds.
w/r, SJS
I think dirt would be a step up in the average Nork's daily routine...
w/r, SJS
In graduate school in Madison, WI years ago, I used to tell these sort of idiots that I had no problem with their desire to live in a Communist Paradise. My problem was that they wanted me to live there with them, and that I would be willing to kill to prevent it. No doubt these days that would be me expelled.
You know, it's got to be some kind of cosmic irony that George Orwell, himself a socialist, captured the totalitarian bent of his fellow travelers with such precision. The apologists for Communism are no better than an (warning, Godwin's law) apologist for Nazism. Both ideologies were virulently totalitarian and had at their core nothing less than the debasement of the human condition. As far as the shopworn "It just hasn't been tried hard enough" cliche; seeing as they're still finding mass graves in China from prople starved to death during the "great leap forward" and we're all waiting for the humanitarian disaster that is the DPRK to collapse, I can't imagine what "trying harder" would look like.
Those words could come from Sonia Sotomayor, or from Valerie Jarrett, or Anita Dunn, or Van Jones, or Frank Marshall Davis, or Bill Ayers, or Maxine Waters, or Donald Berwick, or any number of Ivy League professors and Hollywood intellectual dilletantes.
Or, in an unguarded moment, from Obama himself.
And, of course, most of the above will compare Guantanamo to this.
While Obama, the man who campaigned on closing of Gitmo, just signed a Defense Authorization Bill that permits indefinite imprisonment of US citizens.
You can show them the pictures, you can drag them through the camps, you can lock them into the same stinking barracks, they will deny it to the end.. Evil cannot recognize evil.
Ah yes......good intentions. Or so they claim. Everything that communists and democrats have touched has turned to crap, yet they still claim that they are the party that cares. Education? Turned to crap. Retirement? Crap. Unemployment? Crap. The black family? Broken (I don't call Americans crap). The only ones who have gotten rich under communism and liberal entitlements are unions and the politburo (i.e. elected officials). But, so long as they have $4 million vacations to hawaii, who gives a damn about everyone else? "We care."
And meanwhile, measuring anyone, including them, by results becomes "racist."
which is why I was so upset when we started killing Americans overseas and not revealing the "classified information" which proves that they are taking up arms against American citizens...
BTW it isn't signed yet. It is tied to the year long tax extension for the Social Security tax. We in DoD are still operating under a CR...
We jumped with both feet onto a slippery slope. And, with the Obama/Holder cabal, it was done intentionally.
Any debate to the contrary means "you be racissssssssss!"
We shouldn't hold known illegal combatants who are in league with the terrorists who captured trying to kill American soldiers. Because it is inhumane.
But we can kill Americans who are accused of doing the same.
Makes one think the desired precedent is not counter-terrorism, but the killing of Americans on classified pretenses.
Which explains the refusal to use the term "Islamic extremist", instead using "violent extremist". It leaves the subjective determination up to Holder/Obama. How convenient, should one want to couch their political enemies in those terms.
As someone who actually lived under communism, I only can facepalm...
On the other hand, there are realpolitiker on the other side of the political axis, always ready to support "the devil we know" because of "so we don't have to pump billions into rebuilding after the old regime collapses" and "who knows what (Islamic) extremists can get to power if dictator XYZ bites the dust".
Oh, and please stop putting sociaism (e.g. Sweden) in one bag with communism (e.g. N.Korea, Cuba), because this is like putting together "IKEA chair" with "electric chair"...
Thank goodness that North Korea still maintains its essential Korean-ness. I'm not sure which part is the essential part - is it the starvation or the mass executions?
Stalin wasn't so bad as long as you weren't one of his 36 million enemies of the state. Oh, actually, working in a factory or collective farm sucked too. Even being a party member put you at risk of being reported to the KGB by your children for insufficient dedication to Comrade Stalin. But, at least everyone suffered equally, except those who didn't.
Why don't these two move to North Korea?
ewok,
When I use the term "communism", it is the self-avowed philosophies of the people I mentioned below. Van Jones is a self-described communist and admirer of Mao, and Che Guevara. Anita Dunn is a Maoist. Valerie Jarrett is a self-described communist, in the mode of her father-in-law, Vernon, who was on the American Youth for Democracy council. William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn were members of the Weather Underground, and remain unrepentant communist terrorists. Frank Marshall Davis is conveniently described as a "poet and journalist" and "alleged"communist, but was in fact one of the leaders of the American Communist Party in Hawaii.
So please, ewok, when I use the word "communist", I am not talking about Sweden. I am using the same word these people used to describe themselves.
Brings to mind a lovely Middle Eastern proverb: It is easy to catch a snake with another man's hand.
Oh, they know those gentle benefits.
But when they hear the stories of the secret police knocking in the dead of night they don't mind. Because they're really sure which side of the door (and later the pistol) they are going to be on.
I read a book last year on Stalin's Russia which was compiled by a US professor using his own experieinces in Russia during a search of KGB files. These fellow travelers are hardcore believers in a system that methodically murdered millions. However brutal and inhumane it may have been, even eating its own, some would defend it to the graves that Uncle Joe was sending them to while forgiving him as being led off to the firing squad. Communism is a truly horrific system. I have seen it and its effects first hand and hold no illusions or "melancholy" feelings for it.
Greetings:
Since the federally-mandated analog-to-digital TV signal conversion, I've been watching a bit of the Korean Broadcasting System's KBS World broadcasts and I've read several books about Korean history and current events. Mr. WInchester's assertion about South Korea contains but a grain of truth. It is still a very Confucian culture in its morés though there are certainly cross-fertilized Americanisms. One aspect that I enjoy is the serial historical dramas that, although, somewhat fictionally, deal with the country's beginnings and progress. There's a good bit of the hoppy-choppy and slicey-dicey but what comes through less noticeably is the country's long struggle positioned as it is geographically between rather aggressive neighbors like China, Japan, and Mongolia. (Too bad that American TV can't emulate this.)
The current South Korean entertainment has many similarities with our American one. Rock 'n' roll is there to stay with tons of "boy" and/or "girl" bands pumping out their jams which often include smatterings of American lyrics. The Southerners are proud of their work and the way it is spreading beyond their homeland to Asia and even America. Two things that I have noticed about these entertainers is their commitment to hard work and their support of their countries military draft. They seem to follow the Way of Elvis in being quite willing to interrupt their lucrative careers to serve.
On the other hand, the Southerners are very conflicted by their separation from their cousins in the North. Like when your best buddy is in love with a evil woman, it's painful to see their emotional vacillations in trying to remedy the situation while suffering through the North's total lack of any moral code. Many of the modern day TV dramas reveal the underlying hope (via "good" North Korean characteters) that their country will eventually be re-united.
Oh, yeah, one more thing, they don't seem to eat much grass in the South.
They are also making some great manhwa - a similar brand of comics to japanese manga, with a quite a few animated in Japan. I am all for the idea of cultures crossbreeding like this :)
Having spent a year working as the Logistics Officer for the Joint Detention Group, I can personally attest that there are probably no prisoners (excuse me, detainees) who have it better than the gentlemen at GTMO.
there is the appearance that the country has been malnourished (hell starved) so long that their population is shrunken in physical size. its not because thier leaders are short that the population is almost all shrimps.
if you doubt what i say look up the size of their olympic basketball team, if they have one, what is the heighth of the "big man" 5'8"??????
C
when harry truman was president he set forth a presidental order that the united states government would provide a one way ticket to moscow for these people and that on arrival at said airport the persons passport would be confiscated by the state department and their citizenship revoked, permantly.
never heard how many takers he had.
C
there used to be an old western saying "Might as well be hung for sheep as goats" it referred to stealing live stock that was worth being hung for rather than stock that wasn't.
when are the good guys going to realize that no matter what they do they will be called raciest and get on with it???
C
Isn't it interesting that liberals get so upset with labels? "Don't label me, man!" Yeah.....don't call liberals communists, socialists, nazis, or fascists. Even though each group of people has a similar ideology, similar execution styles and similar desired end states.
But hey, don't label me, man!
While we may despise our maoists we are bound by the rules we deem more important, namely free speech, which sadly includes freedom to tell stupidities, lies and lies so stupid that they defy common sense :P
There is a size difference between NORKO and ROK people. Malnourishment has also, reportedly, affected their brain capabilities in NORKO.
The Black family is doing just fine, AOD. You have bad intel there. :)
"Evil cannot recognize evil."
That's exactly right, Mr T. The blindness is complete.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bw9CALKOvAI&ob=av3e
Yes because who wants to have the poor korean women submitted to that!!!!
What have we done!!
I believe the average hight difference stands at 5'10 or 6' for the average korean (Note koreans are pretty tall for asians) and 5'5 for the average Nork.
I'm confused. Ewok, are you saying that grouping socialists, communists, fascists and nazis together into one lump sum = "lies so stupid that they defy common sense?"
Socialism is like pregnancy. You is or you ain't. And only time differentiates between "socialism" and full blown naziism.
<span>I'm glad to hear it LCDR Black. Because from where I sat in the hood in philly this Christmas, it is severely hurting.</span>
Is it still unrevoked?
"Free speech" protects the speaker from censorship and retribution from the government. It does not protect them from criticism.
My point is that we should believe these people when they call themselves Maoists and communists. We seem to try and prevaricate when it comes to believing their own words, and almost universally call them "journalists" and "poets", and "activists".
Were someone on the political scene to have as a mentor someone who expressed admiration for Julius Streicher, or Alfred Rosenberg, or Hitler himself, he would be absolutely labeled a Nazi and carry that label for the rest of his very short political career.
No, ewok, these are not socialists in the AJP Taylor or Ramsay MacDonald mold. These are communists, whom, had they the means, would be in the Mao Tse Tung and Fidel Castro mold.
Madison is still run by the left, and is still an embarassment to the rest of the state. Governor Lee Dreyfus said it best, Madison is 50 square miles surrounded by reality.
I have met, and befriended, many people from eastern Europe and former Soviet states. Not a single one has ever expressed a similar sentiment.
No, you might have misundesrstood me... it is the maoists et consortes who tell "lies so stupid that they defy common sense" :)
I won't stop you from arguing like that, but nazism is born of nationalism and defines enemies by nationality, not class, as opposed to communism. They are very alike in conduct, but very different at the roots.
And political systems are all but 0-1, with wide variations inside single archetype. Compare the libertarian US democracy model, nation-state European model, and confucian culture model of Japan and S.Korea - all of them grounded on representative form of democracy, with partition of power and free media as watchdog, yet with distinct cultural flavors depending on localization.
Similarly even within old soviet bloc there were differences, for example in Poland strong attachment of farmers to the land derailed land collectivisation, and strong position of the catholic church was enough to stop communists from the worst of religion suppression - there were even military chaplains.
@Ewok, I enjoyed reading your post comment above. I believe that in the end, despite the many additives and "seasoning" that takes place to make political systems "unique" in their own right, we can distill all systems down to their binary roots: you are either of demos origin, or you are of totalis origin.
Great comment though, Sir. Sheesh. Always fun to comment with you.
I met one but she was an intellectual who seriously thought farming was just throwing some seeds on the ground and cutting the grain down. There are some people whose best years of their lives were under Communism and they want that security and order back. I can understand (but not excuse) their longing for Communism. Westerners longing for Communism is incomprehensible.
Mr. Winchester, You, Sir, are a moron. Go read "The Aquariums of Pyongyang" to get an idea of how the enlightened DPRK works. Request a visa from the "Young General" and tell you want to visit because you heard it was just like Martha's Vineyard. The only thing making anyone's life over there bearable in the slightest is the fact that they have never known anything else or anything better. To try to put an "old fashioned" gloss on it is idiotic. I don't see anyone from the South talking about wanting to go north. Stick to what you know...liberalism and left wing politics.
Probably it has been revoked. There seems to be some international law requiring countries to let their citizens back in if they haven't commited a serious crime.
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