Well done Uribe!

[KaskadskyjKozak]

mass graves for your political adversaries.

 

Like the ones your FreedomFighters built in El Salvador?

 

the body count from you ideology is undeniable and incomparable to any other. but keep on defending your comrades around the world.

 

[Fairweather]

Modern Commies. They don't like capitalism OR democracy, and their fucked-up ideas can't gain any traction with the locals--so they blow shit up, kill politicians and their families, kidnap children, grow and sell drugs, polish their Kalashnikov rifles while sittin' round the jungle campfire re-reading their little pamphlets--and when the shit comes down on them they run to the nearest cheap video cam documentary film maker and cry like little babies.

[akhalteke]

poor prole, always trying to rationalize his Marxist buddies around the world and their fucked up ideology.

 

Would that be the right to bargain collectively for benefits, wage increases and the like?

 

Yeah, 'cause that worked great for Cuba, Korea, USSR, ect.

[W]

But I'll ask this: To what degree would you resist having everything that you've worked hard for taken away by the hand of mob-rules government and redistributed? Would you fight--or kill?

 

 

A great example related to your question above was, again, in Chile. Allende was democratically elected (barely), but his policies of redistribution were an abject failure economically and socially. He angered the elite class and the military wing. The damage his policies were doing to the country might very well make the 1973 coup, on some levels, a defensible action. But getting back to the original point, there was nothing that Allende's regime did prior to his overthrow that could remotely justify the 17 year reign of terror that followed. Marxists were far from the only ones targeted, the net was cast wide to anyone with leftist views, to anyone who spoke against this extremist government's policies. I might add that elections were also cancelled in this case. The widespread hatred and paranoia of Marxism or anything remotely related to "leftist" ideology helped to fuel another coup and the even more horrifyingly genocidal regime of Jorge Videla in Argentina a few years later.

 

The class gap in most Latin American countries is and has been so profoundly more vast and pronounced than that which we have here in the United States. Much of this I think is rooted in wealth that has been passed down through generations of Spanish rule and then consolidated by the rule of military governments, or governments that were otherwise hopelessly corrupt. Additionally, given that, I think much of the wealth that has been generated independently over the years has come about through various forms of corruption and abuse of power, which seems historically to be the way things get done in those countries, unfortunately. Hence there is a tremendous amount of resentment in the lower classes, as well as the only recently booming middle classes. So I'm not sure that it is entirely accurate to compare many (not all, certainly) of the wealthy elite of Latin America to the average Joe who achieved the American dream by simply working hard.

 

Having said all that, it doesn't make redistribution of wealth a viable solution, economically or ethically. Take away a man's money and it will provoke the same reaction in him whether he got it through inheritance, graft, corruption, or hard work. Conversely, institutions designed solely to not only consolidate wealth but which actively interfere with and prevent others from access to opportunities are no better, and no less prone to invoking a violent insurrection. Until recently, in those two extremes you have much of Latin America's governing history.

 

There is no easy answer to your question. Every culture, our own included, has it's contradictory and simultaneous forms of submission to, and rebellion against, authority. Until humans resolve this issue on both individual and collective levels, conflicts will be inevitable. In the meantime, we're truly fortunate here that our particular mix of this has not resulted in a society where the free exchange of ideas is not possible without an attendant exchange of violence.

 

Happy 4th...

 

 

 

[Fairweather]

 

Thanks. Good comments. Have a happy Talkeetna 4th! Is the season about wrapped up?

Edited July 4, 2008 by Fairweather

[G-spotter]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article4270908.ece

 

The Times is reporting today claims that the "rescue operation" is just a coverup for a $20m ransom...

[Gary_Yngve]

the ransom doesn't make as exciting of a story; therefore I won't believe it.

 

they're also saying that senior Israelis were likely advising the Columbians. that makes a lot of sense, as this rescue mission had the brilliance and panache of Entebbe, and upped a notch with the absence of gunfire.