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Maxtype
Minister of the Sacraments of Jabootu
USA
26 Posts |
 Posted - 02/20/2008 : 5:13:46 PM
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[url]http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080220/ap_en_mo/people_michael_moore;_ylt=AjDB0rFVQccQPOsK1lrh4M.s0NUE[/url]
Yeah.Nothing spices up fawning self-love like including a dictator.
This final mission will decide the fate of the human race.This is Operation:Final War |
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R. Dittmar
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
420 Posts |
Posted - 02/20/2008 : 5:40:01 PM
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| They'd have to wheel him in a pine box because that guy's been room temperature for months if not years. |
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Citizen Carrier
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
322 Posts |
Posted - 02/20/2008 : 7:53:49 PM
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At least if they were able to get Castro in the Oscars, we could end all pretense and obfuscation about mainstream Hollywood's sympathies. Castro probably wouldn't show. Oscar selection is supposedly done in a democratic fashion with voting. We wouldn't want to confuse and upset the old bastard with such an abstract concept.
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Edited by - Citizen Carrier on 02/20/2008 7:54:37 PM |
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Capt. Nemo
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
630 Posts |
Posted - 02/20/2008 : 10:13:15 PM
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And so soon after Speilberg told the Chi-comms to go screw themselves too.
________________________________________________________________________
"Ward, the Beaver blew up the 7-11 again."
"I'll have a talk with him Dear" |
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Sardu
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1126 Posts |
Posted - 02/20/2008 : 10:29:09 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by R. Dittmar
They'd have to wheel him in a pine box because that guy's been room temperature for months if not years.
Sure could be the case. If he's not dead, the official transfer of power today indicates he's so close that he might as well be. Old goat. There's Cuba, the last and greatest shining example of the utter ineffectiveness of pure ideological Communism I can think of (the ChiCom's hardly count anymore) and he's still a hero to so many who never had to live under it.
"Meeting you makes me want to be a real noodle cook"
--Tampopo |
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Neville
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Spain
1590 Posts |
Posted - 02/21/2008 : 03:00:54 AM
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Well, I for one I wonder if Cuba could have been economically successful if it hadn't been under blockade for several decades.
As for Moore, he's becoming a parody of himself so quickly he'd better learn to make good movies before it's too late. |
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R. Dittmar
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
420 Posts |
Posted - 02/21/2008 : 08:33:54 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by Neville
Well, I for one I wonder if Cuba could have been economically successful if it hadn't been under blockade for several decades.
This is highly doubtful given the fact that the only country embargoing Cuba is the U.S. Not only can every other country in the world trade with Cuba, I'm sure that many countries in Europe revel in it simply to show how much more enlighted they are versus the cretins in the U.S. If Cuba is so desperate to trade with the U.S. all they have to do is go to their European buddies and ask them to buy stuff for them like a teenager in a convenience store parking lot hitting up someone to buy them beer.
The only Communist countries that haven't either collapsed and/or turned into ghastly hell-holes are those that have allowed a minimum of free-market activity like China and Vietnam. And even there I think their long-run viability is increasingly in doubt. Western lefties loved this now deceased worm Castro but he was only marginally less evil and crazy than Kim Jong-Il. |
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Neville
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Spain
1590 Posts |
Posted - 02/21/2008 : 11:41:40 AM
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As a Western leftist of sorts, I think you're overstimating Castro's popularity in Europe. As the former colonial power, my country has a closer relationship with Cuba than other European countries, and neither Castro nor his regime are exactly popular in here. For decades we've seen the island become an attraction for sexual tourism, and testimonies of repressed dissidents are well known.
He does gather some sympathies because of his anti-U.S. views and the blockade, which here is seen by most as unfair, as it punishes the Cuban people instead of the Cuban dictatorship, but not enough for people to forget that he is a tyrant. |
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R. Dittmar
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
420 Posts |
Posted - 02/21/2008 : 12:43:07 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Neville
As a Western leftist of sorts, I think you're overstimating Castro's popularity in Europe. As the former colonial power, my country has a closer relationship with Cuba than other European countries, and neither Castro nor his regime are exactly popular in here. For decades we've seen the island become an attraction for sexual tourism, and testimonies of repressed dissidents are well known.
He does gather some sympathies because of his anti-U.S. views and the blockade, which here is seen by most as unfair, as it punishes the Cuban people instead of the Cuban dictatorship, but not enough for people to forget that he is a tyrant.
It’s hard to gauge how popular the man is exactly, but he must be very popular with certain segments of Europe and the Americas simply because I think that tourism is the only thing keeping the country afloat since the Russkies stop subsidizing them. The island produces next to nothing of any value – certainly nothing other than raw materials - so I’d wager that practically all of their foreign currency comes from Western tourists. Without tourism, I’d wager they’d be a half-starved basket-case like North Korea. For that matter, I’m not even sure that the island produces much of anything that the U.S. cares to buy even if they could.
I’m actually kind of torn about the embargo. My free-trading libertarian side tells me that trade is generally a good thing between countries. When people in Communist countries come in contact with the abundance of the West, you could argue that they’ll start to question their own system. On the other hand, I have heard some persuasive arguments that trade between the former West and East Germany staved off the Commie collapse far longer than necessary. Trade with Commies is going to go through the government, and the tyrants in charge are going to take a big piece of the action before anything trickles down to the people. And the piece they take is going to be used to perpetuate the tyranny and keep the masses enslaved. I don’t think it’s an easy call to make one way or the other if the trade-off for the Cuban people is semi-short-term deprivation followed by a Commie collapse on the one hand or the near-permanent enslavement that certain segments of Chinese society are consigned to on the other. |
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Ericb
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
648 Posts |
Posted - 02/21/2008 : 1:07:14 PM
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Well, while China is still a dictatorship it's a long way from the totalitarian hell is was before open trade with the West. It's actually developing the economic middle class essential for a democratic system and while democracy may not be around the corner it's probably much more likely than it would have been if the country had remained closed to Western trade.
"I reserve the right to look as well as be boring." - Robert Fripp |
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Ericb
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
648 Posts |
Posted - 02/21/2008 : 1:11:39 PM
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And as Russia is showing, the mere collapse of a Communist regime doesn't guarantee a democracy.
"I reserve the right to look as well as be boring." - Robert Fripp |
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R. Dittmar
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
420 Posts |
Posted - 02/21/2008 : 1:38:32 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Ericb
Well, while China is still a dictatorship it's a long way from the totalitarian hell is was before open trade with the West. It's actually developing the economic middle class essential for a democratic system and while democracy may not be around the corner it's probably much more likely than it would have been if the country had remained closed to Western trade.
I think this is also a hard call to make. It’s even arguable whether China has a middle-class in a meaningful sense of the term. Coastal elites with government connections are allowed to do business with the West as long as the central government gets a cut. It’s true that these people are getting wealthy, but no one without ties to the Communists is a part of this area of economic growth. They certainly have little interest in any kind of democracy because their wealth depends on their ties to the totalitarian regime. There are a lot of peddlers in the cities who sell things out of small stalls by the road. They might be the closest thing to an entrepreneurial middle-class that China has, but remember that they do their selling on sufferance. There are no property rights in China that would prevent the government from confiscating all that they own on the flimsiest pretext.
The majority of people in China are to this day little more than serfs. Although gadgets have reached the Chinese countryside, Chinese peasants still spend ten hours a day knee-deep in feces-filled rice patties doing back-breaking labor. They have no right to move to the cities. They have no right to an education. They don’t have the right to have children beyond what the government decrees. Finally, they have little right to the proceeds from their own labor as the government confiscates what it needs first and leaves only the scraps behind. Life in the countryside is only marginally better than it was 100, 200 even 300 years ago. In addition, there are good reasons to believe that a lot of the goods produced for trade to the West are literally the product of slave labor by political prisoners. Is it really moral to trade freely with a slave economy? It certainly didn’t hasten the end of the “peculiar institution” in the U.S. That required a horrific civil war.
I’m turning into a bit more of the devil’s advocate maybe than I should. I am honestly torn over the subject and can respect arguments on both sides. I think we have a tendency, however, to deny that we are dealing with the devil. We like to think we’re doing good by doing well. The men running China are truly evil and wicked, however, and we are kidding ourselves if we don’t consider the moral questions that go along with doing anything that might redound to their benefit. |
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Ericb
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
648 Posts |
Posted - 02/21/2008 : 1:50:30 PM
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quote:
The men running China are truly evil and wicked, however, and we are kidding ourselves if we don’t consider the moral questions that go along with doing anything that might redound to their benefit.
I don't doubt that and China is certainly in the offing for some social turmoil in the next century (I find predictions of China being the next superpower a bit overblown). Sometimes though, hell most times, one doesn't really have the luxury to do what is truly good but only what is least bad. Is it really any better to cut China off from trade and turn it into essentially a giant North Korea?
"I reserve the right to look as well as be boring." - Robert Fripp |
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Neville
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Spain
1590 Posts |
Posted - 02/21/2008 : 2:01:31 PM
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My personal gripes about the Cuban embargo is that it's not working from decades ago. The masses are hungry and miserable, the island is living on 1950s technology, yet Castro doesn't look an ounce thinner. As far as the island produces a dish of rice and a banana per day, it's gonna be for him or whoever takes his place.
Meanwhile, he can preach the same masses about the evils of Imperialism and blame it for the shortage of everyday products. Those who believe him will stay loyal, those who won't will end up either in a Cuban prison or in Miami.
Let's face it, not only is not working, it's also hurting the wrong people. |
Edited by - Neville on 02/21/2008 2:11:58 PM |
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Sardu
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1126 Posts |
Posted - 02/21/2008 : 6:55:34 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Neville
Let's face it, not only is not working, it's also hurting the wrong people.
Why in gawd's name would anyone think if there was no embargo the money would somehow wind up in the hands of the people and not the centralized coffers? Especially given that A) for years they had the full economic might (snicker) of the entire communist bloc behind them and B) as pointed out, can trade with pretty much the entire rest of the world now as it is?? You know who the embargo hurts- ME, that's who. I can't buy a good cigar unless it's contraband.
In any event, isn't saying that it's the fault of the American embargo that Cuba is dirt poor just a blatant admission that only capitalist dollars are plentiful and/or powerful enough to change the situation down there??
"Meeting you makes me want to be a real noodle cook"
--Tampopo |
Edited by - Sardu on 02/21/2008 6:55:56 PM |
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zombiewhacker
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1475 Posts |
Posted - 02/21/2008 : 7:13:06 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Neville
As a Western leftist of sorts, I think you're overstimating Castro's popularity in Europe. As the former colonial power, my country has a closer relationship with Cuba than other European countries, and neither Castro nor his regime are exactly popular in here. For decades we've seen the island become an attraction for sexual tourism, and testimonies of repressed dissidents are well known.
Not to mention the fact that one of Castro's heroes was Francisco Franco. I'm sure that goes over real well in Barcelona. |
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