Val is stuck in the hospital and bedridden at home and so is poor President Uribe of Colombia. They both have an ear infection, who knows, maybe the same one. So I suppose they can relate. Especially when Val learns that Uribe’s was brought on just ahead of the prospect of having to meet Hugo Chavez, castro’s own mini-me. Coincidence? Who knows? But I can’t envy him having to meet this guy – can you imagine Hugo Chavez as your nextdoor neighbor – and then having to meet the thug? It’s enough to make anyone sick!
Which brings up an interesting news story I saw this morning. Val has exposed very well the eurotrash grovelling up to castro’s Cuba, fully covering Europe’s many specious reasons to excuse the brutal island dictator and treat him like a normal neighbor with diplomatic relations. As has Diplomad, who views it just as balefully.
But take a look at how these same castro-coddlers view President Uribe! Nothing he does is good enough for them! These are the same people who say anything castro does is perfectly acceptable. But Uribe, well, he needs to buck up.
To meet their tough (Hostess Twinkie!) standards!
These being Europeans, their idea of ‘tough’ standards means ‘double’ standards. Two sets of books! And for Uribe, they actually want to rewrite Colombia’s laws as a condition for giving the country aid. Let’s see them try that on fidel.
Back in the Reagan years, Jeanne Kirkpatrick wrote a book called Dictatorships and Double Standards noting the perennial eurotrash love for some of the world’s creepiest leftist dictators, while at the same time, the Zeropean flapdoodle and fluttering feathers about rightwing dictators the US (through Cold War necessity), had to get along with.
It’s worse than that now. President Uribe isn’t even a dictator! He’s a popular, democratically elected president and he’s got the right to pursue castroite terrorists (who are always turning up in Havana) any way he sees fit! He is in the middle of a war, not a crime wave! But, blind pig-stupid eurotrash say they have a right to rewrite Colombia’s laws or else they will leave him to fight these Marxist castroite narcoterrorists alone.
It seems that just being conservative is reason enough to earn Europeans’ bossiness, sanctimony, tut-tutting and loathing. To heck with that. I hope the U.S. just gives President Uribe what he needs and shuts out the castro-coddlers for good.
Does Uribe sleep under his desk?
Ahh yes, the right-wing dictators, or as Mora would call them, a Cold War necessity. Wait…there’s a term for that…hold on…ahh yes! Moral relativism!
One dictator good, another bad–moral relativism at its finest.
Martin
Martin, what about non-dictators who are rightwing, such as popular President Uribe? You’re begging the question.
I have no problem with Uribe other than the way he is demobilizing paramilitary forces, and possible links between elements of the Colombian Armed Forces and the paramilitary forces.
Puerquito: Be sure to ask him next time you see him!
Does the FARC bug you any, Martin?
What, the FARC? Why would the recruitment of child soldiers bug me? Or the kidnapping of civilians? Or the often indiscriminate use of force? (Note the sarcasm). Yes, the FARC bugs me.
I recognize that the FARC started as a rebel force with legitimate claims many decades ago, claims I think they all but abandoned when they became more a criminal enterprise and less a legitimate expression of grievances against a closed political system.
That being said, the AUC has caused roughly 80% of the human rights violations in the conflict since their inception, and have been closely linked to elements of the military and Colombia’s political class. I think fair is fair–fight the FARC and the AUC.
The Europeans don’t see Castro or his clones as dictators because he espouses the same things they do – the fact that he puts their philosophy into practice shouldn’t be any cause for alarm. Castro obviously can’t be a dictator, because dictators are bad, and bad people can’t be in agreement with the ever so enlightened Europeans.
Not all Europeans have that attitude towards Castro. They simply see more use in engagement then they do in isolation, which has been U.S. policy for over 40 years. Ironically enough, the U.S. seems to see more use in engagement with other dictatorial or less-democratic countries (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China, etc.) than they do with Cuba, in which internal U.S. politics have motivated an unwavering hardline.
This goverment are all the same. They do not forgive Pinochet because he save Chile from comunism, but, oh my God, how about Castro? No, not him, or his mini-me, Chavez. That stupid jerk now want to sell Citgo, even when that company made over 500 mill. profit last year. That’s why our countries in L.A. will never prosper, because no matter how much they try, they will allways elect a jerk who destroys everything and on top of that blame the United States.
I think Martin sells cigars. Quote me a price on a box of Ramon Allones Specially Selected.
David,
1) The sale of CITGO has so far been established to be a rumour, or so states the President of PDVSA (which owns CITGO).
2) Say what you will about Chavez and the economy, but check on which country posted some of the highest growth rates last year. And forget not that dictators were often no better at running the economies of their respective countries.
3) Pinochet may have saved Chile from “communism,” but at what expense? The 3,000-4,000 dissidents he disappeared or killed? And how about the Argentines? They saved their country from “communism,” didn’t they? And what did that cost? 30,000-40,000 dead? This is where some perspective is needed. Castro is an evil tyrant, but Pinochet is a savior whose violation of human rights was completely justified?
Only four thousand dead, and he saved an entire country from Communism, the form of government which has caused the most death and suffering in the history of the world?
Good trade. More Americans than that died in Vietnam.
Now, how about those cigars?
Steve,
So, how many people would you kill to extinguish the phantom of communism? Three thousand as in Chile, thirty thousand as in Argentina, or the two-hundred thousand plus that had to die in Guatemala? It’s a slippery slope you’re on, Steve–any leader can claim they are protecting their country from “communists” and use that excuse as a carte blanche to kill tens of thousands of innocent civilians.
Oh, and the cigars. Must say, you’re a witty guy! You must get that a lot, but I figure I’d reiterate! Good one, buddy!
Martin
Dear Mr. Martin ?angarita,
Stalin killed over 35 million (a conservative estimate)
Mao killed over 60 million chinese and over 50 thousand tibethans (starved by cultural revolution)
Pot Pol killed 2-3 million
Eastern Europe (bunches)
N.Korea (even more)
NVA and viet cong (loads of uncooperative farmers)
Tamil Tigers in Ceylon (over 40 thousand)
Russians killed over 1/2 Million Afhganis
Castro has killed over 125 thousand Cubans and is still going at it.
We have thousands in El Salvador
Same in Nicaragua
Che said that revolution has to kill some innocents.
Lenin said the same thing and then a bunch of their own were killed by their comrades’ own hands.
Trosky for one, Patricio Lumumba, Camilo Cienfuegos was another.
And CHE? Well, he was set up by the bearded Godfather, just another victim of his own warped philosophy, turned into an unwilling martir by those who knew what was “best” for him.
Hitler’s terrible holocaust as horrible as it was pales in comparison.
The 20th century has been the most bloody of all in human history, all others pale. Communism in the pursuit of their “new man” has been responsible for the majority of these, for way over 100,000, 000 souls were sacrificed at its altar.
Chile and Argentina’s dead, were trying to do what Chavez, the Farc, Sendero Luminoso and Che were and are still trying to do. To create many Viet-nams, destabilize economies, create chaos, demoralize the population, destroy the infastructure. Afterwards move in and gather the spoils of power.
The people exhausted and bankrupt from long years of killing and hardship will only give minimal resistance, the free world and their goverments, numbed by their own press, media and a well organized propagandists and activists movements, will clamor for closure having rationalized that their citizens will not politically support them if they persist.
It is a formula that they know works, and is still being masterfully exploited by the international communists, Fidel and his cloned buddies such as Chavez.
Martin, these are not rantings, they are verificable facts, the truth.
Get your left leaning head out of your anus before you chafe your colon. See the reality and how your country is losing its identity , its culture, its history and rapidly becoming a sub-satellite of Cuba, just as cuba was a satellite of the defunct soviet union, itself a failure, just like Kommunist Kuba. This will also be your fate if things go as planned.
Martin really walked into that one, didn’t he?
Damn, that was easy.
Martin: You neglect to remember that it was NOT UN declarations! Not ads to newspapers! Not protests in the streets! Not the stinking Hague court! Not lawyers! Not due process! Not any activist’s outrage! Not any of those things that finally got rid of Argentina’s Dirty War generals.
It was Lady Margaret Thatcher who put an end to the thuggery in Argentina.
Peace through superior firepower.
No more Galtieri.
Get down on your knees and thank Lady Thatcher!
I know communism as implemented by Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot was a murderous ideology, just as colonialism in Latin America, Africa, and Asia yielded millions of deaths in the name of progress. Regardless, the cases of Latin America were hardly Stalinist dictatorships in the making, and many of the right-wing dictators in the region used the threat of communism as an excuse for their own excesses.
Take Guatemala, for example. Jacobo Arbenz was popularly elected in 1951, and he undertook much needed progressive reforms, including land reform (with compensation to the land owners, mind you). His actions provoked the ire of the United Fruit Company, which was able to convince the U.S. government of the spectre of communism in the country. He was overthrown in 1954 and replaced by a right-wing military junta, resulting in 40 years of civil war between insurgents and right-wing dictators supported by the U.S. The total death toll reached almost 200,000 dead, the majority being the country’s indigenous. If you don’t believe me, go ahead a read “Bitter Fruit” by Stephen Kinzer and Stephen Schlesinger. This same story-line played itself out in many other countries of the region-left-leaning leaders, some of the popularly elected, overthrown by an increasingly narrow-minded U.S. government that equated reform with communism.
Interestingly enough, the coup in Venezuela followed a similar script. The junta that took power was dominated by right-wing businessmen (The Economist, no liberal magazine, even said so) who abolished all the country’s democratic institutions and started persecuting members of Chavez’s government. Another example of death and the violation of human rights in the name of preventing the threat of “communism.”
And Mora, Lady Thatcher’s role in ending the dictatorial rule of the general’s in Argentina was more by luck than anything. Had they not invaded the Malvinas, she wouldn’t have done anything, and they very well would have stayed in power longer. They were on the way out, anyhow–the economy was tanking and no one was happy with the situation.
My head is not up my ass, as you may imply. I am well aware of the course of Latin American history, and I simply do not believe that right-wing dictatorships that persecuted even the mildest forms of dissent were needed to prevent the threat of “communism.” I am happy that Pinochet is going to have to face his accusers n court soon, just as I am happy that Castro will have to when his time comes.
Steve–you may be witty, but you can’t make an argument for shit! Don’t just piggyback on other people’s posts and then smugly say “Hey, that was easy!”
Oh, Martin. Are you and your tiny little brain trying to challenge me? That’s cute. I beat people like you in court all the time. Let me know when you make a living arguing.
Cohetedude slapped you down worse than Lewis did Tyson; anything I could have added would have been superfluous. But if you prefer being bitch-slapped from both ends at once, I can accommodate you.
Your “argument” that it was stupid to resist Communism because the leftist regimes in Latin America were comparatively nice is facially absurd.
In the Martin world, you’re supposed to allow socialists to take over and then see if they’re nice socialists. Real life doesn’t work that way, bunkie. Castro was the great reformer when he came to power; now he puts people in jail and has them tortured for saying maybe the government isn’t perfect. And all things considered, the Cambodians probably regret allowing Communists to take charge. The Cambodians who are still alive, I mean.
No, Marty-mart. When Communism rears its ugly head, you have to snap it off fast, just like Cohetedude did yours. You don’t give yourself cancer just to see how big the tumor will get.
You whine about 4,000 people losing their lives to fight Communism. In global terms, that’s cheap. Freedom isn’t free, cupcake. But leftists have no balls; they think living on their knees is better than dying for freedom. Of course, the funny thing is, when you cave to Communists and let them take over, because you’re a coward who won’t fight for freedom, they end up killing more people than would have died fighting them off. See examples like Cambodia, the USSR, Cuba, and Red China.
Luckily, most Americans disagree with you, and they always will. I hope you don’t live here, infecting us with your cowardice. Canada would be a good choice for you.
And now I’ll lob the ball back to Cohetedude.
Steve,
So by saying you beat people like me in court all the time, I’m going to make the logical assumption that you’re a lawyer. Wow–academic standards at law schools must have fallen n recent decades.
I never said it was stupid to resist communism. What I said is that replacing progressive leaders that are identified by the U.S. as “communists” with right-wing generals who have absolutely no concern for human rights is a terrible trade-off, and has been historically. My example of Guatemala was clear, in this regard. The historic analysis of Arbenz is clear–he was no communist, much less was he hell-bent on collectivizing the country like Pol Pot and Mao did. El Salvador suffered a similar fate, and some of the hemisphere’s most brutal killers were members of the Salvadorean army and supported by the U.S. I challenge you to take your argment to those countries–argue that those 200,000 people died for the greater good of “freedom” in Guatemala, or the 30,000 in Argentina. Maybe if you pulled your head out of Florida’s ass you would be surprised to find that many Latin Americans wouldn’t buy your argument.
And Steve-o, a legal mind like yours should be able to differentiate between socialism and communism. Many European countries have survived peacefully for years with quasi-socialist systems (Sweden is a famous example)–should the U.S. invade them, kill their leaders, and stamp out all dissent in the name of freedom?
I am surprised that you think you speak in the name of all Americans–last I checked, Florida and the rest of the U.S. saw many things very differently (at the height of the Elian affair, almost 80% of the U.S. populace sided with sending him home). My opinions are hardly those of a coward–if anything, it takes a small man to yell “peace through superior firepower” and run for cover behind the people who will actually have to die to enforce that “peace.” That’s cowardice.
Beating a lawyer at his own game is satisfying, it really is. I’m not surprised that you’re handing off the argument to someone else–hell, if I argued as badly as you do, I would be handing it off quickly also.
Martin
You know what a straw man is, Marty? It’s what you make when you can’t beat the real enemy.
I got up from the keyboard and went about my business, waiting for this exact response from you. Cohetedude and I thrashed you on the point we were arguing, and there was no way out of your lonely little hole, so I knew you would try to pretend you and I were arguing about something else.
And here it is, just as I predicted. You are pretending I’m a part of your argument about supporting right-wing regimes. Oops! I’m NOT! Show me where I took a position on that.
You whined about the loss of 4,000 lives in a nation’s fight against Communism, and I pointed out, correctly, that that was a comparatively low figure. I never said we were right to support unpleasant right-wing regimes in Latin America. Perhaps we were, or perhaps the choice was so repugnant it was the only logical course of action, but that’s not what I was arguing about.
Nice sidestep, however. As you guessed, I am a lawyer. The way you dance, I assume you’re a showgirl. Your self-congratulatory remark about “beating a lawyer at his own game” is as funny as it is sophomoric. Did I mention that I’m also a physicist? Do you and the other showgirls do differential geometry down at the club?
I love slapping down liberal arts boys. It’s about as hard as cutting daisies with a Weed Eater.
A difference between “socialism” and “communism”? Spin, mostly. And completely irrelevant to what we were discussing. Marty, since you’re the big poli. sci. scholar (contradiction in terms, but still), can you tell me what the second “S” in “USSR” stands for? The left uses “socialism” when they know saying “communism” will spark resistance. You may split hairs if you wish. The communists in the USSR did not.
Assuming there is a huge difference between “socialism” and “communism,” perhaps you can explain how that makes it a good idea to allow your country to go communist to see if the regime will be humane, knowing that if it isn’t, you will never be able to get rid of it. Perhaps you can explain how it relates to the question of whether 4,000 is a reasonable number of men to sacrifice to save a country from the vile, oppressive, murderous system that killed over a hundred million people in the last century.
Good luck with that. I don’t see it happening, because in order to do those things, you would have to stay ON POINT, and that is a tactic you don’t have the guts to apply.
I love your argument that only people who serve in combat have a right to support the use of military force. In other words, FDR was a coward, and so was Truman, and so is, well, ANY public official who doesn’t serve in the military, yet supports its mission.
Unbelievably stupid. Leftists use this slimy tactic all the time. Funny thing, the troops–the people who actually fight–are much more in favor of using force than the pussies of the left. They’re much more conservative, too, which is why the Democrats fought so hard to keep their votes from counting in 2000 and 2004. It was particularly ironic in 2004, because at the time, soldiers were dying to buy the right to vote, not just for themselves, but for cowardly leftists who were actively seeking to disenfranchise them.
Leftists never like to acknowledge the flip side of this pathetic canard. What do you get in a state where only the military decides whether to use force? A MILITARY STATE. The same leftists who puke and whine all the time–correctly–that the military should always be subservient to civilian leadership somehow think we should put the military in charge of our strategy.
What’s that called? “HYPOCRISY.” A necessary subset of “LIBERALISM.”
Wow, it’s fun beating a showgirl at his own game. Now, go put some Glass Plus on your pole; you don’t know where the last girl has been.
By the way, it wasn’t your politics that bought you this beat-down. It was your bitch attitude.
“When Communism rears its ugly head, you have to snap it off fast,” or so says you. Sounds like the support that was always given to the right-wingers in Latin America, no?
And you never responded to the 200,000 dead in Guatemala. So go ahead, you’re a lawyer and a physicist (doesn’t this sound like the “Mine is bigger than yours!” game?), respond.
As a famous philoshopher once said, “Better a good showgirl than a bad lawyer!”
Martinsito, martinsito
You like to quote certain readings, but you ignore others such as the Black Book on Communisn, The Gospel behing bars, Salvador en Llamas, A Dagger in the Heart, None Dare Call It Treason, Treason, The Fourth Floor, Hungry Ghosts, and the list goes on, but you are really “YAWN” boring me lately. Your handlers must be really working hard to feed you the same littany of half truths laden with nebulous statistics that the left is so famous for.
Actually, you don’t even piss me off, why? Because I reserve that honor for two people. The priest that gave fidel sanctuary when the Colonel in charge of Moncada had him dead to rights, and my cousin’s ex-husband who had Chavez in his sights ready to kill him when he was a bum, a criminal, a thug, an ignorant and vicious indio futumayo troublemaker that nobody knew. But even back then, chaves was one that always displayed vicious hatred and resentment for those who have any amount of class and pedigree, in other words, a thug.
He was spared because the magistrate asked him to spare him, and because my cousin’s ex was a Christian and civilized human being. This is a belief system and set of qualities that elude commies
That misplaced kindness for these two, at two occassions, was a hell of a lot more than what fidel and chavez afford those under their thumb.
Martin:
No, Lady Thatcher’s role in ending the Argy Dirty War regime was not by ‘luck’ – it was through blood and treasure. It was expensive and intentional in every sense. Almost a thousand people died in that Falklands War. That was what it took to dislodge the tinpots. It was not a matter of luck. And the credit fully belongs to Lady Thatcher, not the leftwing whiners with their petitions. Are you trying to tell me that had the leftwing way of getting rid of these tinpots prevailed, there’d be a free Argentina that much sooner? Well, history shows there’s only one way to dislodge a thug and that’s through superior firepower.
There is one important detail you should think about as you admire Hugo Chavez: Thugs who abrogate property rights don’t take long to start abrogating human rights. That’s what happened in Dirty War Argentina. First, local property rights were destroyed. Second, human rights were destroyed. Third, another round of property rights violations extended abroad to the Falklands since this was what the tinpots were into. They crossed the line and were surprised they got war.
Chavez is already well into the violations of property rights and human rights. He’s likely to do the same thing to Colombia’s property and boy is he in for an unpleasant surprise.
That argument (the chickenhawk one) is like saying the only people who are tough on crime (or anti crime) are or were Police officers. Noone else need apply; they have no understanding or clear desire to ‘fight crime’.