“Moscow had today more than 15.000 police and security people in the streets… and less than two thousand communists lost near an empty Red Square.”
“Moscow had today more than 15.000 police and security people in the streets… and less than two thousand communists lost near an empty Red Square.”
Heh – a cold spring day in central Moscow, with less than the total number of communists in Canada…marching against a backdrop of the sunny beaches of Portugal.
The 15,000 police and security people aren’t commies???
Fascism, as we all know, is a bad thing. We can look back in history at the regimes that were termed “fascist” and notes what bastards they were. As a result, any group or government that looks in the least bit fascist is instantly and roundly denounced.
But the history of communism is at least as bad. Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot… these were true monsters, as vicious as anything fascism has served up. Stalin, for instance, is estimated to be responsible for the death of 20 million of his own people. For Mao the count is far greater.
So how do people get away with proudly proclaiming their support for communism with hardly a whisper of complaint from the rest of us? Canada even has communist parties who enter candidates in elections. No fascist party would ever be able to get away with this, so why are we so tolerant of communists? Where is the outrage? Why the double standards?
A measure of Putin’s paranoia, 15,000 riot police for, what, a handful of nostalgic geriatrics. What more can be said of the destruction of freedom in Russia.
The gulags will be back.
Robert Amsterdam, a Canadian, one of Khordorkovsky’s attorneys, he was literally removed from the country, has a very informative blog here documenting Putin’s cravenness. It has Russian contributors with first hand accounts.
I friend of mine roped me into going to an NDP meeting here in Saskatoon a while ago, and they looked distressingly (or amusingly) similar to this group in Moscow: old, haggard, and sad. History still awaits its scientifically inevitable workers’ revolution and the new socialist man- or are these people it?
Nice shot, ET. Maybe they should try their luck in Portugal, where they’d at least be warm
Are you sure thats moscow? it looks kind of like SAN FRANCISCO
Too bad we weren’t allowed to hang the commies, that was the sentiment of entire country back in the reforms days.
I’m sure it’s being compensated for in Caracas….
Must be a slow news day at SDA. No vast left wing conspiracy to cover.
The best defeat of all….indifference.
“No fascist party would ever be able to get away with this, so why are we so tolerant of communists?”
Because we live in a free country, with freedom of choice and freedom of speech, and to question why we should be tolerant of communists shows you are no better than the fascists who would suppress these freedoms.
What Lenin, Stalin, and Pol Pot brought to the world was anything but communism. Communism supports human rights, freedom of speech and rights of the individual above all else and is not what we witnessed in countries that claimed to be communist during the twentieth century.
How do the views of Stalin differ from the views of Aaron above who stated: “Too bad we weren’t allowed to hang the commies, that was the sentiment of entire country back in the reforms days.”
Communism means all people equal, all people free and is nothing more than an unachievable dream. It is unfortunate that the communist utopia cannot exist, as it would require a completely altruistic society willing to make many personal sacrifices and an equal effort by all for the society they live in. Human nature dictates this is unattainable without forcing the people to comply and then it too easily falls into fascism.
However, there are times when nations must force their citizens to fall in line in order to achieve some stability within their boarders. Communism while respecting rights can be used as a temporary tool to rebuild a broken country. It can give back control of a nation to the people, as was the original intent of the Russian and French revolutions. An example today where communism can help a nation rebuild would be Haiti and Somalia. These two countries would be served well by a period of totalitarian communist rule in order to remove theocratic and warlord control over the people and their lands. It would allow these nations to start with a clean slate until they can rebuild their societies.
Other than someone’s grandkid in the centre, they are almost all senior citizens.
Personally I’d send Bobby Clarke in to give them all a good whack on the ankles. Shades of ’72!
The Ancient Albatross said:
“However, there are times when nations must force their citizens to fall in line in order to achieve some stability within their boarders [sic].” …-
Translation: “Systematic evil at work: evil without conscience.”
Herein the “boarders” of Communism’s Gulags: Dead Ghosts. The “boarders” have permanent “stability” in their graves.
““from Lenin to Stalin to Mao to Ho Chi Minh to Pol Pot, from Castro to the MPLA in Angola.””
…-
Utopia and its Discontents
by Juliana Geron Pilon
Paul Hollander, ed., From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence and Repression in Communist States […]
Paul Hollander, The End of Commitment: Intellectuals, Revolutionaries, and Political Morality […]
IF MORAL clarity graced our times, the publication of Paul Hollander’s comprehensive compilation of first-hand accounts by former communist victims, From the Gulag to the Killing Fields, would elicit a collective shudder of horror and sorrow.
“Systematic evil at work: evil without conscience.” So does Harvard University professor Harvey Mansfield describe the grotesque crimes the selections illustrate. The book provides “an indispensable experience for the understanding of our times.” No wonder it lingered in manuscript for several years: One publisher after another, simply reflecting readers’ priorities, turned down the project until finally the Intercollegiate Studies Institute saved the day. Having failed to predict communism’s collapse, our political experts now seem eager to forget about it altogether.
Indeed, as Hollander notes in his introduction, “it is difficult to identify a single American scholar specializing in Communist political violence, either as a comparative endeavor or as one focused on a particular Communist system.” The incomparable Robert Conquest of the Hoover Institution, among the first to expose the enormity of Soviet crimes, was born in Great Britain, and Anne Applebaum, whose breathtaking 2005 work Gulag: A History earned her a Pulitzer Prize, is a journalist. Hollander, who taught sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, was born in Hungary, which he fled after the abortive revolution of 1956. His tome demonstrates that comparative communist political violence is a field eminently ripe for academic study. It is also an impressive tribute to the most horrific event of the last century apart from the Holocaust….-
http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=13708
no, albatros, you are spouting rhetoric.
What does it mean – ‘all people free’. Free of what? Free to do what?
What does it mean – ‘all people are equal’?
Communism is not, by definition, supportive of the individual but of the collective, of the group. Group rights dominate over any and all individualism. Read Marx.
Actually, the only type of ‘society’ where communism ‘vaguely’ operates is the hunting and gathering band – a group of approximately 30 people, who live in an economy based on hunting ‘what’s there’ and gathering ‘what’s there’. They don’t develop their own food.
As soon as you get agriculture, you get a requirement for capital (seeds to plant, animals to nurture), then, your society becomes more complex and requires inequality of ownership over this capital.
I doubt if communism would help Haiti or Somalia. And you are now contradicting yourself; you are suggesting that these two nations would be helped by ‘totalitarian communist rule’ but the examples you give of totalitarian communism (Stalin etc), were, according to you ‘anything but communism’.
So?
OMG, albatross, how in hell do you know what communism really is, when no one have ever seen it? None of the real life communisms (Lenin’s, Stalin’s, Brezhnev’s, Pol Pot’s, Mao’s etc. etc.) is ever acknowledged as ‘true real’ communism by the commies like you. You, commies, always have a good excuse for murdering, stealing, lying and covering up – and it is an excuse that the communism is not the right one, the right one is a candy. Oh, YEAH! When I read stories like your posting, I always call the gun store and order another crate of ammo, just in case you would ever try to implement the ‘right’ communism on me.
Um, do you see and nude bodies?
However, there are times when nations must force their citizens to fall in line in order to achieve some stability within their boarders.
Define force?
Yet this is the life Taliban Jack and whatshisname the Liberal leader would have us adopt.
ET don’t take this as an endorsement of communism as a permanent form of government but more of a bridge to help developing nations.
“What does it mean – ‘all people free’. Free of what? Free to do what?
What does it mean – ‘all people are equal’?”
It means people are free to work and achieve. When I say achieve, there is more to achieving than simply getting rich. It means people are equal to each other, where all people can get an education, food or a roof over their heads whether or not they can afford it. Where you don’t have one person loosing out just because of their circumstances of birth forced to live in permanent poverty for him and his family, while another through simple sh-manure-it house luck can blow 20 million dollars to go for a joy ride to the ISS.
“Communism is not, by definition, supportive of the individual but of the collective, of the group. Group rights dominate over any and all individualism. Read Marx.”
By taking care of the collective you take care of the individual.
“Actually, the only type of ‘society’ where communism ‘vaguely’ operates is the hunting and gathering band – a group of approximately 30 people, who live in an economy based on hunting ‘what’s there’ and gathering ‘what’s there’. They don’t develop their own food.”
H&G societies works simply by chance, it’s self-organizing, but still ends up with a hierarchy. Communism must be achieved through purposeful determination.
“As soon as you get agriculture, you get a requirement for capital (seeds to plant, animals to nurture), then, your society becomes more complex and requires inequality of ownership over this capital.”
This is where state ownership comes in to set up until private ownership can take over once that country is under control and can sustain itself through private ownership.
“I doubt if communism would help Haiti or Somalia. And you are now contradicting yourself; you are suggesting that these two nations would be helped by ‘totalitarian communist rule’ but the examples you give of totalitarian communism (Stalin etc), were, according to you ‘anything but communism’.
So?”
No I’m not talking Stalinist rule, it’s closer to the Cuban example. Lessons have be learned from the twentieth century and we should be taking advantage of knowing the mistakes and successes of the past. We know that a nation recovering from communist rule, where everyone starts out equally generally has a better success than one that languishes in theological (Afghanistan) and a corrupt (half of Africa) dictatorship.
Hey, albatros39a, don’t scurry away without answering my question, a damn big one, as far as I’m concerned:
Define “force”?….as in your statement ” there are times when nations must force their citizens to fall in line in order to achieve some stability within their boarders”?
Give us some historical examples of application of that, will ya? I’ve got some.
Looks like a Labour Day parade in Hamilton.
Same old, same old.Off to the finish line for free beers and Trotskyburgers.
“Define force?
Posted by: penny at May 1, 2007 4:46 PM”
It depends on the nation, but excessive force must be avoided. What would be the minimum force required to stop the fighting between the Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq? One must balance force required to control the situation with not controlling it. Would force be justified that causes the death of ten people if saves fifteen people? Isn’t this usually the justification for so-called “just wars” these days, killing a few people in order to save the masses?
albatros39a – that’s a problem with the neighbors, not the context of your statement and my question.
Anyway, forget about it. You gave it your best shot. And, I’m proud of you.
Alby, explain to me what is the difference between the police state of Stalin and the police state of Cuba under Castro.
One of the marchers is wearing Adidas shoes and most of the others have jeans.
Not clothes you would find in the old Soviet Union…
Maybe I’m alone in this, but, it isn’t that a handful of disgruntled nostalgic commies staged a geriatric march, it’s that Putin sent in storm troopers in large numbers to intimidate these people.
We have moonbats eruptions in the public square in Canada and the US as a given. They shouldn’t be threatened by the state. The nostalgia for Communism is more complex in Russia than presented here.
I’m going with freedom of speech, freedom to be dumb and irrelevant, to my grave. It eventually gets sorted out in the right direction in a democracy.
I’m not buying it, bird-brain. I spent a chunk of grad school in Moscow and saw one of your ideal societies in action. Don’t try the nonsense about ideal societies being impossible, etc, etc., etc., ad nauseum. Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang, etc. are the NATURAL result of any attempt to implement your “ideal society.”
It’s the “boarders”, Comrade Tovarisch Albatross. The “boarders”. Da.
…-
Hayek & the intellectuals
By Roger Kimball
[…]
We were the first to assert that the more complicated the forms assumed by civilization, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become.
—Benito Mussolini
In fact, Benito, you weren’t the first. The palm for first promulgating that principle in all its modern awfulness must go to V. I. Lenin, who back in 1917 boasted that when he finished building his workers’ paradise “the whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory with equality of work and equality of pay.” What Lenin didn’t know about restricting the freedom of the individual wasn’t worth knowing. Granted, things didn’t work out quite as Lenin hoped—or said that he hoped—since as the Soviet Union lumbered on there was less and less work and mostly worthless pay. (Care to exchange some of those dollars for rubles, comrade?) Really, the only equality Lenin and his heirs achieved was an equality of misery and impoverishment for all but a shifting fraction of the nomenklatura. Trotsky got right to the practical nub of the issue, observing that when the state is the sole employer the old adage “he who does not work does not eat” is replaced by “he who does not obey does not eat.” Nevertheless, a long line of Western intellectuals came, saw, and were conquered: how many bien pensant writers, journalists, artists, and commentators swooned as did Lincoln Steffens: “I have been over into the future,” he said of his visit to the USSR in 1921, “and it works.”
Of course, you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. …-
http://www.newcriterion.com/archives/25/05/hayek-the-intellectuals/
Albatros
Have you ever actually been to Cuba lately?, I have. Sunny and bright, with happy young people helping the guests, people who are all going to University. Take a ride into the cities, in my case Santiago. Stores with nothing in the windows for show. You have to actually ask what they sell. and when they do make a sale it’s for US bucks. Also, everything you buy from the non-existent cars to a package of chewing gum comes with a chit in duplicate with one copy for Fidel. On the way to Santiago there is a small chicken farm transormed to a museum which was Castro’s headquarters before an attack on the millitary in Santiago that lost him 21 of his small band. In front of the farm, and down the road were small plots of ground, each given to the people to grow thier own food. Out of literally hundreds of plots I saw green in only two. Some peoples paradise, some communism.
“albatros – those are, in my view, naive ideals. People are not equal to each other; and your idealism is completely ignoring basic psychology.
People aren’t the same; some are smarter; some are dumb; some are thieves; some are not; some will leech off others, some will help others. Some are lazy and won’t work; some will work.
You are only comparing the inherited wealth to the lack of inherited wealth and completely ignoring the basic inequalities among humans – which are psychological rather than social.”
No, people are not the same and I’m not claiming they are, I’m saying people of a repressed and broken nations have to start from scratch and be given equal opportunity regardless of who they are or where they are born. In the situation that I am referring to in places like Haiti, Somalia or Afghanistan, in order to maintain control every person must be kept equal in wealth and everyone must be made to contribute for the good of that nation.
As far as advantages in birth, I’m not talking about inherited wealth, I’m talking about the situation they are born into. For example, in the US anyone who is unlucky enough to be born in the Mississippi Delta and is black is likely die on the Mississippi Delta, and remain uneducated. On the other hand, a white person in Malibu doesn’t share that same handicap, and simply through fate they automatically have an advantage in life. Every single person in Cuba is given the chance to go from kindergarten to PhD at no cost to him or her no matter where in Cuba they are born.
Yes there will be people with higher capabilities and those are your scientists and doctors. There will be those that don’t tow the line and must be put back in line if the society is to succeed. Laziness would have to penalized
“No, I disagree with your ‘by taking care of the collective you take care of the individual’. Absolutely disagree. The collective is a ‘symmetry-inducing’ force; it focuses on the average and looks for the lowest common denominator; it doesn’t like ‘wierdos’ – whether genius or idiot. The collective ideal is that of Mr. Average – and the psychological pressures to be just ‘Mr. Average’ prevent collectivist societies from innovation and enterprise.”
By ensuring that everyone in a collective is fed, has access to education, has shelter, warmth and healthcare, you have taken care of the needs of the individual. Remember I’m talking about a society in trouble and communism as a temporary solution to solve a bigger problem where a people are repressed and impoverished by other people that hold domination over them.
“No, there is no hierarchy in a Hunting and Gathering society. No leaders. And, no society operates ‘simply by chance’. They have their normative standards and rituals to provide stability and symmetry. “
Even in hunter gathering societies there will be some form of hierarchy, whether it be a shaman, big man or just somebody who is an elder, there will be someone who holds rank over another no matter how benign that hierarchy is, it will be there. Even chimpanzee society has a hierarchal society and you don’t get a much more basic hunter gather society than that. It’s simply in our genes.
“Why should ‘state ownership’ take over and take control? Why? Do you seriously think that an elite bureaucracy, which is what a state control is – would relinguish power to private owners? Heh.”
That is a major catch isn’t it and why nations who follow such a route would need to be monitored closely by a higher authority such as the UN. And yes the UN needs a major tune up first it could take on responsibility of nations rehabilitation like that.
“You say that ‘we know’ what happens after communist rule. But there has never been a ‘genuine’ communist society; all of them have been totalitarian and highly unequal. No-one has ‘started out equally’ in any communist rule. Again, there hasn’t been a non-totalitarian communist society.”
Q. How many “Stans” do we have problems with today?
A. The one the Soviets didn’t get.
Even though we didn’t see a genuine communist society (which I have already stated cannot exist for long), the communist economic system of state ownership was in place when the USSR collapsed. Those countries had a base in which to start from.
How is Afghanistan doing today? How is Sudan doing, How is Haiti doing? How is Iraq doing? How is Pakistan doing? What grade would you give these nations in their development?
Former Soviet states were left with a functioning infrastructure in place and an educated population. These countries are recovering well. Vietnam, though still a poor nation is running along quite nicely and in Asia has a GDP growing at a rate second only to China which is the ultimate example
Do you ever wonder what the world would be like if the Soviets were allowed to take over Afghanistan without American interference? Would we today have the Taliban? Would we have the War on Terror? Would we even have Al Queda? All of these things were initiated when Americans threw billions into Afghanistan against the Soviet takeover. It’s quite likely that if the Americans had kept their hands off Afghanistan would be just another former Soviet “Stan” and we would never have heard the name Osama bin Laden.
In fact if you look around the world where you have a country coming out of communist rule and compare it with a country where Americans have interfered since 1955, which ones do you think do better? Iraq and Afghanistan are pretty good examples.
Other than the Russian problems of today that connect to the leadership of that country rather than the former political system, former Soviet nations though far from perfect, aren’t doing too bad.
“So, Cuba wasn’t totalitarian?”
Of course it is, but this again is another country where the Americans have interfered. How would this country look today if the Americans had accepted Castro thirty years ago? It’s a country that has remained totalitarian through necessity for it’s own survival against the US.
“By taking care of the collective you take care of the individual”
Not. Even. Close.
The absurdity of the statement is what made that wacky old broad Ayn Rand foam at the mouth, and for good reason.
Not to get all Libertarian here, but no one has any right to profit from my successes unless I decide to let them. Likewise, I do not have the right to yoke my neighbour because I failed.
Dont use the old excuse that the troubles of Cuba are the U.S’s fault as Canada has done very well being a neighbor of the U.S.A. Cuba’s troubles are entirely Cuba’s and more pointadly of Fidel Castro’s making.There are idiots in Canada that would take us down Cuba’s road.
Victims of Communism
Memorial To Be Dedicated June 12
“The world has been reluctant to acknowledge the horrors of Communism… Now at last they will be memorialized.” – Washington Times
The Victims of Communism Memorial will be dedicated on Tuesday morning, June 12, 2007. Invited major speakers include President George W. Bush, honorary president of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Congressional leaders, members of the diplomatic corps, ethnic leaders, foreign dignitaries, and Memorial supporters are also expected to attend. …-
http://www.victimsofcommunism.org/
…everyone must be made to contribute for the good of that nation.
Alby talking gulags and re-education camps sanctioned by the UN.
It scares me shitless when communism wants to take care of me as an individual. I always remember my grandfather who had a close call with NKVD just after the WWII, because he was a prisoner of war for some time. His ingenuity saved him, but not millions of other NKVD victims, who ended up in GULAG. My grandmother did not have enough fingers when she counted her close friends who were prosecuted and sent to Siberia to never return for being ‘enemies of the people’.
That’s why the commies in LPC and NDG are trying their best to disarm us before they proceed with Canadian GULAG. Ain’t gonna happen, the lessons have been learned.
albatross – No.
Your romantic notion of Cuba is blinding you to facts. It is absolutely untrue that all Cubans are equally able to go to university. Ever heard of the ‘pioneros’? That’s the enforced brainwashing, marches, propaganda activities that a child must join, in order to be allowed to go to university. If he doesn’t do this – no university. How’s that for discrimination?
Communism is an action of repression and dominion over others. Don’t be so naive as to think that it’s a benevolent ‘in-between’ phase that will be dropped as soon as everyone is fine and dandy. You are also ignoring the FACT that not one communist regime has ever carried out these beneficial actions towards everyone. Instead, it has been one power-regime replacing another.
No, hunter gatherer societies do NOT have leaders or hierarchies. The terms and properties of ‘elder’, ‘shaman’ and ‘Big Man’ are only found in horticultural economies. The H&G societies go to great lengths to prevent hierarchical levels from developing. Again, there are NO hierarchies in H&G and NO leaders. Try reading the famous study of the Dobe !Kung by R. Lee, or Man the Hunter by Lee and Devore. You must differentiate a H&G society from an agricultural society – and you aren’t doing that. You are making the error of confusing the two types.
Again, you are naive, to think that a ‘higher authority’, eg, the UN would ever have the capacity to monitor a nation. It has shown itself incapable and even a ‘refurbished UN’ would be incapable. To even suggest such an authoritarian global infrastructure is naive. Your problem is that you are taking power out of the hands of the people, ie, you are removing sovereignty from the people and remodeling them into serfs. You are setting up distant hierarchies that dominate others who are without sovereign power. Incredibly naive. Read some history. These distant powers inevitably become self-serving, corrupt and focused on maintaining power.
Are you serious? Al Qaeda emerged because communism didn’t succeed in Afghanistan? Wow – that’s quite the supposition. Not a shred of evidence or even logic to support it.
For heaven’s sake, Islamic fascism is not due to the lack of a communist regime in Afghanistan. It is due to the tribal political structure in the ME. A tribal political structure is a hereditary two-class; in fact, it operates much like your fictitious ‘hierarchy’ where an elite power oversees the nations who must submit to that Overseer. Tribalism rejects the power of the people; it does not permit a middle class – and is disastrous in large populations in an industrial economy.
THAT sociopolitical dysfunctionality is the cause of Islamic fascism.
Sorry, but Islamic fascism is not due to the lack of communism in Afghanistan. Incredible. Sorry, but I’ve never heard such a frankly nit-witted theory.
No, the former Soviet states were not left with a functioning infrastructure. They have all had to deconstruct that infrastructure to set up a capitalist and democratic system. They were helped by this, in Europe, by the US presence and enormous financial aid. OK? That’s ‘American interference’. That’s why Europe is doing fine, because of that massive US aid, which you, focused on your anti-Americanism, selectively choose to ignore.
Cuba’s totalitarian nature is entirely due to its communism and its leader. Nothing to do with the USA.
Your incredible revisionist view of history, and your utterly naive, romantic view of communism – are quite astounding.
Wait…in the center there! Isn’t that Liz Nay and Borat Dijon??
communism managed in one ism to kill more than religion and all the other ism’s combined.
collectivisation was the biggest genocide ever.
Alby,
Any system that requires the crushing of the people’s individual rights for “their own good” is the purest form of evil. No one commits more atrocious crimes with more zeal and commitment than the ideologue who feels morally justified in their crimes.
I see you’re a sick person whose delusions and lust for control of others lead you to see the individual as expendable. That is the very reason that every communist/fascist/totalitarian movement is soaked in blood. They believe that their opinion is worth more than someone else’s life.
When you start to believe you have the right of force over other people, when you start to believe that crushing of others in your own society is justified, when you think that you have the right to impose your values on others who don’t wish to live in your so-called utopia, you cross into the territory of monsters.
That you don’t understand this makes you a dangerous monster.
You got your logic backwards. Crush the individual, crush society. Take care of the individual, take care of society. Humans are a collection of individuals, not the borg.
No society would benefit from totalitarianism of any sort. Not communist, not fascist, not the new muslim political fascism, not any of it. Order is the rule of law, not an ideology.
The French revolution failed to deliver liberty because it was taken over by the same types of people who join communist movements. They ran amuck with the vengeance and death of the terror instead of the liberty and prosperity of the US revolution (not that the United Empire Loyalists faired well.)
The Russian revolution couldn’t have ended up any different. It was started and led by monsters and made worse by the crass political calculation of the German Kaiser who allowed Lenin to cross Germany to get to Russia during the conflict of WWI. That the feudal system needed to be changed, that the needs of the INDIVIDUAL were not being met by inbred halfwit monarchs ruling Euroweenieland was obvious. That you don’t replace a bad system with a worse system is equally obvious. Given the society you live in now combined with an even rudimentary knowledge of the blood spilled history of totalitarianism of all stripes, you’d think it a no-brainer to see what society aligns the interests of both the individual and the collective most effectively. Again, it shows that you’re dangerous that you don’t understand.
ET: “Read Marx.”
What have you read by Marx, exactly?
” the communist death toll approaches 100 million people.”
May of Green Goebbels
E. May has written: “The evil of the Nazi regime is without parallel and stands alone for its deliberate, systematic and inhuman genocide.”
This evil person, one E. May, this Green Goebbels, wrote this Big Lie in her “apology”.
May is a thorough socialist-communist-fascist; a deceiver; a snake crawling on its belly in the green grass.
There is no court to weigh her deceit. Except for blogs. May is hereby charged with wilful lying.
Here is the first witness for the prosecution:
The Black Book of Communism
Book Review: The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression by Stphane Courtois et al.; translation by Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer
By Theodore Balaker
Harvard University Press
Review excerpt;
Black Book underscores the enormity of communism’s impact. Communism once stood on four continents, ruling one-third of humanity, always poised to expand. There was a clear line of inheritance from regime to regime. Each received material aid and ideological inspiration from its predecessor. Most important, individuals were as expendable as grains of sand. According to the authors, the communist death toll approaches 100 million people.
The authors’ research offers a rough exposition of the crimes of communism: USSR, 20 million deaths; China, 65 million deaths; Vietnam, 1 million deaths; North Korea, 2 million deaths; Cambodia, 2 million deaths; Eastern Europe, 1 million deaths; Latin America, 150,000 deaths; Africa, 1.7 million deaths; Afghanistan, 1.5 million deaths; the international communist movement and communist parties not in power, about 10,000 deaths.
Communism compiled a lengthy enemies list, which included political parties, clergy, intellectuals, shopkeepers, many ethnic groups, and other “socially dangerous elements.” Enemies were starved and worked to death; executed with bullets, shovels, and hammers; devoured by dogs; lit on fire; and made to kill one another for their capturers’ amusement.
More than bodies endured torture. Language was tortured: concentration camps became “re-education” camps. Minds were tortured: executions often followed “confessions” of guilt. The list of crimes punishable by death or imprisonment included criticizing the regime, owning a gun or radio transmitter, stealing a few ears of corn from the collective, and “taking part in commerce.”
Black Book puts to rest the odious fiction that has softened communism’s image for so long: that communism was the salvation of the downtrodden. Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” needed only two years to destroy tens of millions of peasants. Peasants often resisted communism more fervently than any group. In 1930 alone, nearly 2.5 million took part in approximately 14,000 revolts against the Soviet regime. Brandishing axes and pitchforks, peasants defended themselves against the Soviet wave. Sometimes they reclaimed their villages for a few days and quickly worked to reopen churches and markets, break up the collectives, and return stolen goods. …-
http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=2693