The Hitler Store! Hitler t-shirts! Also Che Guevara?

[Formaldehyde]

Castro claims that he was simply too busy to assure the rights of homosexuals after the revolution, which he takes personal blame:

Fidel Castro takes 'responsibility' for persecution of Cuban gays

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro called years of official persecution of homosexuals under his Communist regime an "injustice." In an interview published this week in a Mexican newspaper, he said he takes responsibility for the repression.

"If someone is responsible, it is me," Castro told Carmen Lira, editor of the left-leaning daily La Jornada. Here's the second part of the Castro's interview in Spanish. La Plaza reported on the first part here.

After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the Communist government arrested gays and sent many to labor or "re-education" camps. Homosexuality is no longer criminalized on the island nation and Castro's niece, Mariela Castro (daughter of current President Raul Castro), is a prominent activist for expanding gay rights in Cuba.

Numerous books and films have depicted the period of persecution, including the novel Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas, later adapted into a film. Here's a video by the Guardian newspaper on the contemporary gay and transgender culture in Cuba.

In the interview, Castro said the repression against gays occurred in a tumultuous period while the Communist government was defending itself against "traitors" and the CIA. "But in the end, after all, if someone must assume responsibility, I offer my own," Castro told Lira. "I cannot blame anyone else."

Nor is there any mention that any of them were killed.

Ironically, Cuba's official attitude towards gays is far more lenient than that of many, if not most, evangelical, fundamentalist, and conservative Christians in the US despite homophobia still being far-too-present in their culture, much as it is our own.

Private, non-commercial sexual relations between same-sex consenting adults 16 and over have been legal in Cuba since 1979, although same-sex relationships are not presently recognized by the state as a possible marriage. Despite elements of homophobia in Cuba's history, Havana now has a lively and vibrant gay scene.[2]

Public antipathy towards LGBT people is high, reflecting regional norms. This has eased somewhat since the 1990s.[3] Educational campaigns on LGBT issues are currently implemented by the National Center for Sex Education, headed by Mariela Castro.

Cuban citizens can have sex reassignment surgery paid for by the government.[4][5]

Cuba has undertaken extensive campaigns against HIV/AIDS focusing on education and treatment, and in 2003 Cuba had the lowest HIV prevalence in the Americas and one of the lowest ratios in the world. According to the Cuban National Centre for Prevention of STDs and HIV/AIDS (November 2005) there were 5,422 persons living with HIV (3,968) or AIDS (1,454). 85% of these were homosexual or bisexual men (HSH – hombres que tienen sexo con hombres).

I find it quite revealing that many people in this thread who never seem to be able to find the time to criticize conservatives in the US and elsewhere for being homophobic have no such problem using it to vilify others with whom they happen to disagree.

 

[tonberry]

Likewise Che killed homosexuals simply because they were homosexuals.

Che kill homosexuals for the same reason he kill religious people and dissident. Because he beleive they were a threat to his revolution.

Formaldehyde, to be fair to Patroklos, he did only talk about the attitude of Che on homosexuals, not Cuba as a whole.

 

[Patroklos]

Now let’s say Che would be born a Czech in 1910. He become a revolutionnary after Hitler invade his country and successfully help overthrow the nazi. Would people care if he would be very harsh to the prisoner he capture? No, he would be viewed as a hero.

The Red Army doesn't have a good reputation from that time, fighting Nazis or not. They might have gotten away with it because they were fighting Nazis, but everyone but the Russians themselves knows they were despicable human beings as well.

So to a certain extent I agree with you, but not to the degree that we now have them plastered on T-shirts as symbols of freedom.

Che kill homosexuals for the same reason he kill religious people and dissident. Because he beleive they were a threat to his revolution.

So what does that tell you about Che that he identified homosexuals as automatically dissident? I believe Hitler had a theory about Jews automatically being part of a conspiracy too...

And homosexual and the religious are not apples and apples, you have the option to choose one but not the other. That does not justify oppressing either, but the circumstances are not at all the same.

 

[Borachio]

By what measure?


.

Any measure you choose really.

How about the number of people dying prematurely?

Still, this is just a guess. And probably won't do.

It is, I suppose, just a general feeling that revolutions really do not seem to improve the lot of the population as a whole in the short to medium term. It's not really a subject that I feel is worth going into a great deal of detail about.

Your take on the subject is no doubt entirely different.

If the metric you choose is so skewed that it must necessarily show an improvement...

 

[NedimNapoleon]

Unless you can show evidence that the British randomly killed Indians as a matter of policy for no reason whatsoever your claim is false. There are no claims of genocide during British rule of India. Could they be brutally violent and oppressive asses when dealing with rebellions or enforcing colonial policy and the like? Sure, but that's not the same thing as killing Indians simply because they were Indians.

The Great Famine in India 1876-1878, which also happened during one of the biggest catering events in the worlds history, the crowning of Victoria as Empress of India. The Famine killed up to 8.2 million people, and you might say, its a famine, they didn't mass kill them. Well the British authorities during the first year of the famine did almost nothing to aid the starving, so the famine continued to spread, then they put in the policy of relief workers. "Two kinds of relief were offered: "relief works" for able-bodied men, women, and working children, and gratuitous (or charitable) relief for small children, the elderly, and the indigent." So your starving, you have to work all day doing backbreaking jobs, live in a crowded camp and eat less calories than in Auschwitz. But a bit north the Brits were eating all they can and wasting tons of money on a ceremony. I've also read that this also had some roots in social Darwinism, but I wont take that as a fact. So I would consider this as killing or at least starving a population just because they were colonials aka Indians.

 

[Virote_Considon]

It's tramelled (to make up a word) capitalism which is the real problem.

No, bloatedcapitalism is the problem. Less capitalism; more capitalists. That is what's needed. The free market creates monopolies, the state helps break them.

In the free market, if you don't like what a capitalist offers you, you can just walk away. He won't like it but, if he wants your business, he is going to have to give you something approximating what you want.

Unless he monopolises the product he is offering; especially if it is a product everyone needs. In a true free market, what is there stopping a wily, successful businessman buying all competition out?

Enter the state into the mix, though, and things change, If he can use government power to prevent you from going to the competition, then you are stuck. If you don't deal with him then you have no alternative, And with Obamacare, you can't even refuse to buy any product at all!

The feck are you now on about Obamacare for? The world isn't Contemporary American Political Issues.

Then there are the bailouts. Hundreds of billions stolen from ordinary folk to dole out to billionaires. The Irish economy destroyed. That of the rest of the world thrown into recession. The solution to the recession, naturally, was throwing yet more money at the banksters and other government cronies.

Yeah, Irish economy destroyed. Totes.

The central purpose of the state is to provide a legal means to enable the rich and powerful to steal from the poor and the powerless. Secondarily, it enables the powerful to control the powerless.

 

[Patroklos]

I think you think that was relevant, but it was not. That's like saying I am an ass for using my electricity in Virginia yesterday when New Orleans had a black out.

The challenge was show where Churchill killed Indians for being Indians. Your post does not approach that bar in the slightest.

 

[tonberry]

There are no claims of genocide during British rule of India.

Oh god yes. Comparaisons (in both scope and intend) can be made between The Bengal famine of 1943 and the Ukraine one engineering by Stalin. And Churchill is personnaly responsible for that one.

 

[Patroklos]

Oh god yes. Comparaisons (in both scope and intend) can be made between The Bengal famine of 1943 and the Ukraine one engineering by Stalin. And Churchill is personnaly responsible for that one.

Sure, but not relevant ones. As you just stated one was engineered, the other wasn't. That is of course an example of Stalin killing Ukrainians because they were Ukrainian, but we aren't taking about Stalin.

See if you can find your famine on the list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history

The challenge was show where Churchill killed Indians because they were Indians.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Che kill homosexuals for the same reason he kill religious people and dissident. Because he beleive they were a threat to his revolution.

Formaldehyde, to be fair to Patroklos, he did only talk about the attitude of Che on homosexuals, not Cuba as a whole.

"To be fair" there is again apparently no evidence that the Cuban government under Castro killed homosexuals, much less "religious people", for merely being homosexuals or Christians.

And "to be fair", Patroklos and others who are condemning Che Guevera for his quite-typical attitudes towards homosexuals, especially back then, have had numerous opportunities to speak out against rampant homophobia in this forum on a variety of topics and have not done so.

 

[NedimNapoleon]

I think you think that was relevant, but it was not. That's like saying I am an ass for using my electricity in Virginia yesterday when New Orleans had a black out.

The challenge was show where Churchill killed Indians for being Indians. Your post does not approach that bar in the slightest.

In the post before you just said the British Empire, but I think the Bengal famine also applies, the point is that the authorities did absolutely nothing just because they were colonials, when New Orleans has a black out the state tries to return power as quickly as possible and you are not to blame for using power while they had none. But its the arrogance of the British rule that allowed this famine to continue and eventually kill 8,2 million people. Its not that there were absolutely no funds to sanitize it, its just the British government did not care about those people.

 

[red_elk]

The Red Army doesn't have a good reputation from that time, fighting Nazis or not. They might have gotten away with it because they were fighting Nazis, but everyone but the Russians themselves knows they were despicable human beings as well.

We probably need to educate American people that their army veterans were despicable human beings too. Because of war crimes in Vietnam, Tokio firebombings, the only use of nuclear weapons in human history, etc., etc.

 

[Patroklos]

In the post before you just said the British Empire, but I think the Bengal famine also applies, the point is that the authorities did absolutely nothing just because they were colonials, when New Orleans has a black out the state tries to return power as quickly as possible and you are not to blame for using power while they had none. But its the arrogance of the British rule that allowed this famine to continue and eventually kill 8,2 million people. Its not that there were absolutely no funds to sanitize it, its just the British government did not care about those people.

You made the eating in England while a famine was in India comment, not me.

The British Empire includes Churchill's tenure, and being colonials is not the same thing as being Indian. Also, are you claiming the British could have avoided the famine entirely? Your claim they did nothing is of course false, you proved that yourself.

The challenges was to find an example of killing Indians because they were Indians. There's an Indian, Churchill killed them for no other reason. Happy hunting.

 

[tonberry]

Like I said, I can’t tell why Churchill beleive that Indian should only be allowed to live under British boot heels and, if they try to peacefully protest agaisnt that, deserve to die by the millions.

Likewise, I don’t know the exact reason why Che though homosexual were a threat to the revolution.

If I have to guess for both, I would say that Churchill tough Indians to be inferiors people (but not as low as Jew were to Hitler) and would be better off under British rule. For Che, he probably thought that homosexual was a product of the bourgoisie and wasn’t natural (a rather common view at the time in Latin America)

 

[Borachio]

Look, the word is "thought" not "tough" - in the context that you keep on using it. I shouldn't point this out I know, but it's getting really tiresome to have to repeatedly do the adjustment in my head every 2 milliseconds.

 

[Patroklos]

We probably need to educate American people that their army veterans were despicable human beings too. Because of war crimes in Vietnam, Tokio firebombings, the only use of nuclear weapons in human history, etc., etc.

I will answer despite most of your utter failure of an attempt at equivalency not being war crimes...

If you wish to whitewash the Red Army's rape orgies and subsequent brutal subjugation of nearly all of Eastern Europe you can do so in another thread. Note, we are talking about the Red Army doing this to countries that were allies and were supposed to be liberating.

The inability of Russians to be honest with their WWII atrocities against their own countrymen let alone other nations is well known. The Red Army's reputation is as I describe and deserved. Besides the Nazis themselves there has never been a criminal organization as large or crimes committed on such a scale in modern times.

 

[NedimNapoleon]

You made the eating in England while a famine was in India comment, not me.

The British Empire includes Churchill's tenure, and being colonials is not the same thing as being Indian. Also, are you claiming the British could have avoided the famine entirely? Your claim they did nothing is of course false, you proved that yourself.

The challenges was to find an example of killing Indians because they were Indians. There's an India, Churchill killed them for no other reason. Happy hunting.

By north I did not mean England lol, I meant the Coronation of Victoria in Delhi, since the famine hit the south the most.

The Bengali Famine, churchill was directly involved, and policy failures led to this, and it spread because of the UKs government doing little to aid. I also quote Churchill on what he said about the famine: if food was so scarce, "why Gandhi hadn’t died yet." He failed to deliver food because he wasn't concerned with the Bengalis. Is that good enough?

 

[NedimNapoleon]

I will answer despite most of your utter failure of an attempt at equivalency not being war crimes...

If you wish to whitewash the Red Army's rape orgies and subsequent brutal subjugation of nearly all of Eastern Europe you can do so in another thread. Note, we are talking about the Red Army doing this to countries that were allies and were supposed to be liberating.

The inability of Russians to be honest with their WWII atrocities against their own countrymen let alone other nations is well known. The Red Army's reputation is as I describe and deserved. Besides the Nazis themselves there has never been a criminal organization as large or crimes committed on such a scale in modern times.

You say this like the Red Army did not liberate countries, but only the glorious US did. I live in a country that the Red Army LIBERATED, not subjugated or raped, pillaged or burned, but liberated with minimal destruction.

 

[red_elk]

I will answer despite most of your utter failure of an attempt at equivalency not being war crimes...

If you wish to whitewash the Red Army's rape orgies and subsequent brutal subjugation of nearly all of Eastern Europe you can do so in another thread. Note, we are talking about the Red Army doing this to countries that were allies and were supposed to be liberating.

The inability of Russians to be honest with their WWII atrocities against their own countrymen let alone other nations is well known. The Red Army's reputation is as I describe and deserved. Besides the Nazis themselves there has never been a criminal organization as large or crimes committed on such a scale in modern times.

If you didn't notice, my comment had nothing to do with Red army or the Russians. It's you who is trying to derail this thread into discussion of Red army.

I was speaking about despicable and disgusting crimes of American veterans.
Such as mass murders of innocent civilians.
American army's reputation is very well deserved.
I hope you enjoy such words about your beloved organization.

 

[Patroklos]

By north I did not mean England lol, I meant the Coronation of Victoria in Delhi, since the famine hit the south the most.

My mistake.

The Bengali Famine, churchill was directly involved, and policy failures led to this, and it spread because of the UKs government doing little to aid. I also quote Churchill on what he said about the famine: if food was so scarce, "why Gandhi hadn’t died yet." He failed to deliver food because he wasn't concerned with the Bengalis. Is that good enough?

No, as it has absolutely nothing to do with what I asked for. There was a famine, got it. Even though its irrelevant, noted.

You say this like the Red Army did not liberate countries, but only the glorious US did. I live in a country that the Red Army LIBERATED, not subjugated or raped, pillaged or burned, but liberated with minimal destruction.

I said no such thing.

For the most part the Soviets didn't liberate countries as a matter of fact, but instead subjugated them. Do you know what happened to Poland after Russia got there? You know Poland, that country who was a member of the allies with an exiled democratic government with whole divisions fighting on the allied side? Those guys? Yeah, those guys.