Just for the record:

Castro: Cuba Could Have Saved U.S. Victims
By ANITA SNOW, AP

HAVANA (AP) - President Fidel Castro on Monday lamented that the U.S. government had not still responded two weeks after he offered to send nearly 1,600 Cuban doctors to help Hurricane Katrina victims, saying the team could have saved lives.

The U.S. government has suggested there were sufficient American physicians to care for the ailing among those displaced by the storm across Louisiana and Mississippi.

An appeal for help from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services "has seen a robust response from the American medical community," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said earlier this month.

"It hurts to think about it," Castro told several thousand doctors gathered for a combined graduation and the formation of Cuba's new international disaster team of experienced health workers.

"Perhaps some of those desperate people, situated in the water and on the verge of dying, could have been saved," the Cuban leader said.

"That's a hard lesson for those whose false pride and erroneous concepts have driven them not to respond, even late, to our offer," Castro said of American officials.

A State Department spokesman in Washington said Monday night there was no immediate reaction to Castro's latest comments.

Washington and Havana have not had diplomatic relations for more than four decades and Castro's offer put U.S. officials in the uncomfortable position of deciding whether to accept help from a country they have described as an "outpost of tyranny."

Castro himself has routinely turned down offers of U.S. humanitarian relief for hurricanes and other disasters in Cuba. After Hurricane Dennis pummeled the island in July, he expressed gratitude but rejected Washington's offer of $50,000 in aid.

Che was an excellent writer though. Just read The Motorcycle Diaries before the political stuff.

Che was an excellent writer though. Just read The Motorcycle Diaries before the political stuff. [/b][/quote]Saladbar-

I don't know much at all about this Che guy. Yet I see t-shirts with his picture on it and have seen many posts here mentioning him.

Could you perhaps enlighten me with some information about him? I would really appreciate it.


Don Cardi

Well, he is a revolutionary icon and allegedly assassinated by the US. I suggest before getting any canned "Che" information about his life as a revolutionary in Mexico and Cuba that you read the Motorcycle Diaries and learn why he became who it was. You might actually like the youthful Ernesto Guevara and be less reactionary to his icon status.

Thanks Saladbar.


Don Cardi

Okay.

Quote:

Hitler started a war, so indirectly he caused many more deads.

[/quote]
When I say that massmurderer #1 is more despicable than massmurderer #2 because #1 caused more deads, then I'm giving #2 a free pass???

Strange thinking pattern you have there, JJ.

Enzo you just noticed? :rolleyes:

Nah, but this one was exceptional.

I'm just failing to see how you can say Hitler was "worse" than Stalin when in fact Stalin killed more. At the very least, I would think they would be of equal abhorrence.

We should throw Pol Pot in there too coming in third by numbers alone. Though if you say Hitler started World War 2, then his death count is between 36 and 40 million.

Hitler tends to be seen as the worst because though it is one thing to be killed because you spoke out against the government, it's another to be killed just because your grandma was a Jew. Hitler killed to wipe out and annihilate on the basis of race, Stalin/Pol pot killed because they was paranoid and because believed it would better their country in their own warped way. Hitler built the world's first industrial death factories. Plus he is looked down by the U.S. because he fought a bloody war with the United States and our allies, whereas Stalin killed millions of his political enemies. Hitler stills has a following (looks at some people on this BB), Stalin has few, if any, followers still.

Oh yea, and Nazis make better film villains.

Really, though, what difference does it make? The end result is the same: corpses. All three were profoundly evil people and just great role models for murderous megalomaniacal tyrants!

I wholeheartedly agree. I just think that it is important to understand how evil Stalin really was, and what he had done to much of Eastern Europe. Too often it is forgotten in favor of arguments of how the US was "paranoid" about the Soviets who simply wanted acceptance of their economic system.

While the fear of communism itself might be true to a degree, it is also important to remeber who was behind the regime in Russia, a genocidal paranoid who killed ally and enemy alike.

And yes, Pol Pot can be tossed in there as well. You could add Idi Amin as well.

BTW - Welcome back, I haven't seen you around in awhile. Always nice to see a familiar face.

And as far as movies go..."Triumph of the Will" should send shivers down anyones spine.

The biggest murderers according to this site:
Joseph Stalin Soviet Union 1929-1953 42,672,000
Mao Tse-tung China 1923-1976 37,828,000
Adolf Hitler Germany 1933-1945 20,946,000
Chiang Kai-shek China 1921-1948 10,214,000
Vladimir Lenin Soviet Union 1917-1924 4,017,000
Tojo Hideki Japan 1941-1945 3,990,000
Pol Pot Cambodia 1968-1987 2,397,000
Yahya Khan Pakistan 1971 1,500,000
Josip Tito Yugoslavia 1941-1987 1,172,000

Worth mentioning here is that the numbers of Stalin and especially Mao Tsetung are most likely greatly bigger than those given here. Also it is interesting that Pol Pot in a period of less than 5 years managed to murder 1/3 of his people (Cambodia had 6 million inhabitants).

I also wonder:
What is it that makes the US government of higher standard than the governments in Western Europe?

And would like to say that:
Nationalism is also something I think that we all should refrain from after we saw what happened in the 1900s.

Likely the intent and goals of our regimes, as well as the fact that the US doesn't explicitly kill civilians for political goals (we don't go around killing folks in Czech-Republic because we want to control their territory).

Yes, we have attacked civilians (firebombing Tokyo, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) but the United States is one of the few nations in the world that hasn't had a socio-political revolution (i.e. Bolsheviks in Russia, for example) and has had consistency throughout its lifetime as far as relative government stability. I think that because of this, we haven't had a dictatorial or totalitarian government that enforced its will upon the region through terror and violence. We haven't had a Stalin, or a Mao. In fact, we've had more weak leaders than strong figures that are easily remembered (William Henry Harrison, anyone?)

Not saying that is why, I'm just reasoning. I mean, I know I certainly wouldn't put Truman on the same level as Stalin in this case (though Christ may disagree and Harry S. might be pitching brimstone in Hell right now).

"Now who's beng nieve Kay?" j/k


Don Cardi

I doubt Stalin killed more than 42 million, even this number seems impossible.
Anyway, this site is incomplete because Belgian king Leopold II managed to kill somewhere between 2 and 7 million Congolese in the years he ruled Congo, being 1885 - 1908.

What about Ho Chi Minh?

Enzo Scifo (good player), if you read the headline of that site you see that this is about the stars of the 20th century...

Why is it impossible that Stalin killed 42 million? I think it is highly possible, farmers starved to death for several years in the 30s. In addition to that, the paranoid fucker sent several millions to Gulag and death (including Molotov's wife, actually).

Double-J, I don't see why all this gives your government a higher standard than the Western European?

In addition, I would say, even though I am a bit cautious because of the fact that there was communism to fight, that those who were murdered in Argentina and Chile don't agree that you didn't control the area by terror and violence.

Enzo, I would put it like this:
Communism == Fascism

On paper, they hate each other, in reality it's the same shit really. Both hate liberalism and democracy. Both generates unthinkable horrors and violence.

Well yes, the difference being that the idea itself of communism isn't evil or even insane. Just too unrealistic.

In practice, both regimes are the same however.

Here is a rather good example of a current debate I'm having over the Greenhouse effect. [/b][/quote]That's also an example of you making some (terribly unfunny) fart jokes

It's not. Think of the people who starved in the Soviet Union, Poland, and Ukraine just to name a few. He mass murdered all across eastern Europe.

I recommend you do some research into Stalin and you'll see exactly what we're talking about.

I didn't say it did. If you notice, I said:

Best,
Double-J