Mohammed Atta Commemorative Statue In Central Park
Or perhaps we should commemorate Charles Manson or Pol Pot? Most disgustingly, as Say Anything blogs, they've thrown up a statue to totalitarian mass murderer Che Guevara in Central Park. Picture at the link.
Here's Johann Hari in The Independent on the absolutely horrible man they're lauding:
When Che and Fidel Castro's guerrilla army seized power in Cuba, he was immediately - and to his delight - put in charge of the firing squads. He instituted a system of 'trials' that lasted just a few hours, with himself as sole judge. They invariably ended with the low-level functionaries of the Batista regime being lined up and shot. Che's public declarations from that time are blunt. "All right, it is dictatorship," he shouted at one point. "It's criminal to think of the needs of the individual." He even banned Santa Claus, saying he was an "American imperialist import."The friend who had travelled with Che on the famous motorcycle journeys, David Mitrani, was shocked when they met up in Havana after the revolution. He could not understand how Che's compassionate response to poverty all those years ago had led him to announce he now wanted to become an " effective, violent, selective, and cold killing machine".
Che's fanaticism reached its peak in October 1963, when he seriously advocated a course of action that would immediately end life on earth. Che had implored the Soviet Union to place nuclear missiles on Cuba. He knew the US would interpret this as an act of aggression and probably retaliate with nuclear weapons - but he said that "the people [of Cuba] you see today tell you that even if they should disappear from the face if the earth because an atomic war is unleashed in their names... they will feel completely happy and fulfilled" knowing the revolution had inspired people for a while. Che did not say how he knew the Cuban people would be delighted to die of radiation sickness, their hair burning on their heads and their skin slopping from their faces.
The Soviet Union followed Che's advice - and the world came closer to nuclear annihilation than at any point before or since. On the American side, maniacs like General Curtis LeMay implored Jack Kennedy to nuke Moscow immediately. On the Soviet side, Che Guevara played exactly the same role. He urged Khrushchev to launch a nuclear strike, now, against US cities. For the rest of his life, he declared that if his finger had been on the button, he would have pushed it. When Khrushchev backed down and literally saved the world, Che was furious at the "betrayal". If Che's recommendations had been followed, you would not be reading this newspaper now.
None of these facts are seriously disputed by historians; they are simply skidded over by Che's defenders, who stick to romantic generalities about how he stood for "honesty" and "revolution". But Che Guevara is not a free-floating icon of rebellion. He was an actual person who supported an actual system of tyranny, one that murdered millions more actual people.
Than Shwe is an idiot. Aung Saan Suu Kyi's Burmese democracy movement is one of the hottest causes around among the hip & fashionable, but that's only because the Burmese junta have allowed themselves to be portrayed as just a pack of tinpot military dictators. If Shwe declared today that Myanmar was a Revolutionary Socialist Republic and that all of his opponents were puppets of American imperialism, then tomorrow he could have Aung Saan burned at the stake and every monk in Burma boiled alive on world-wide TV, and the latte set everywhere would put away their "Free Burma!" stickers and start singing his praises.
Hugo Chavez is the crackpot who comes closest to being a modern-day Che. Hugo was riding high when oil was $ 140 a barrel. Now that his only real source of income has plunged below $ 50 a barrel, the foundations of his Bolivarian Socialism are crumbling. But he's still the loudest loudmouth on earth when it comes to denouncing the American Empire. When he sends the tanks out to roll over protesters in the streets of Caracas, he'll be much more likely to get his own statue in Central Park than to be unequivocally condemned by world-wide leftists.
I'll try my best to overlook the nauseating moral equivalence in Hari's piece. Khrushchev "saved the world" ?!? Oh well, he admitted that Cuba is actually a tyranny, and that's as good as it will ever get in the pages of The Independent.
Martin at November 22, 2008 9:33 AM
Johann Hari is a good guy, whatever his venue. And he's very young. You'll be reading his stuff for years to come. And counting on it, as Britain struggles through this century.
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at November 22, 2008 10:59 AM
The idea that Khrushchev "saved the world" is two things: exactly like claiming God™ saved somebody from cancer, having given it in the first place...
...and I know the skipper of the submarine looking at the first arms freighter after the embargo personally. He was ready to shoot when it turned around. He has a different take on who did what when.
Nuke wars don't start with one guy pushing a button. That's a movie myth, perpetuated by drama. Fiction. Get it?
And if you're going to start arguing cause-and-effect, you can go back to WW2 and the division of Europe. You can go back to spies working with Oppenheimer.
And this guy, however wonderful a writer, needs to recognize the state of nuclear armament vs. time. For most of the fifties, there were too few nukes to get to MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction - and so first strikes had tactical value. If you have a general (whatever you might think of Curtis LeMay) who doesn't recommend every option for selection by command authority, you have a useless mouth to feed. War is horrible, and it is not made nice by half-measures.
Now, all that remains is to blame this all on George Bush or Sarah Palin.
Radwaste at November 22, 2008 11:59 AM
Please, people cant be bothered to learn the truth about Columbus, why would they need learn anything about some one who most school history books dont even mention?
lujlp at November 22, 2008 12:15 PM
It is amazing to me, just how stupid some people are. In Portland, one of the regulars at the regular anti-Iraq war protests, would wear a shirt that had a picture of Castro on the front, Chavez on the back and was covered (around the picture) with pro-marijuana, anti-nuclear power, anti-war buttons (including several specific to the Iraq war), pro-spiritual development, pro-gay rights buttons.
I am quite sure that he (and a number if similarly minded folk in Portland) would be all about a statue of Guevara.
DuWayne at November 23, 2008 5:50 AM
Every time I see some moron wearing a Che t-shirt my blood begins to boil ...
Charles at November 23, 2008 9:25 AM
I think the "Che" should be celebrated. After all, since he's a prime seller of t-shirts, he keeps sweatshops around the world running! :D
This being said, There's people who want to be rebels only for the sake of being rebels. Those persons will latch out on anything who can stand up to "The Man", regardless of what these people did. I see it as a blatant lack of objective values in the modern society. In a world where all values are relative, how can you judge someone who killed a few thousand of people for the establishment a specific society?
As far as stupidity goes, I remember a live news-feed coming from the front of the White-House when Obama was declared winner of the presidential election. there was a USSR FLAG floating among the crowd! Regardless of that that person thought, I found the image jarring at best.
Toubrouk at November 23, 2008 9:27 AM
why not just steal the statute, cut it up into pieces, and redistribute it amongst the community?
farker at November 23, 2008 10:54 AM
lol
lujlp at November 23, 2008 8:09 PM
This man's birth country was Argentina, my mother's birth country (Italian immigrants). God forbid I am with my grandmother (who moved to Argentina at 19) when she sees a Che T-shirt. She's 84 and will tell the moron EXACTLY who this man did and what he is.
He learned everything he knew from the Nazi's that also immigrated there. He is a communist THUG.
He also was NOT a doctor. He never graduated. Ugh, the guy makes me sick.
Who ever doesnt think Socialism or Communism is dangerous, I'd be happy to recount the story of FIVE of my family members including a pregnant cousin and her infant and four year old snatched up one Sunday morning, drugged and thrown out a helicopter.
Feebie at November 24, 2008 10:32 AM
Leave a comment