Starbucks wins one
Mary Madigan
Here’s what the Troops out Now! march looked like approx. 4 pm. in Central Park, NYC. This is the "worldwide antiwar" movement?
The sponsors of this march bussed people into the city, but the the Starbucks' down the street drew a bigger crowd.
By now, we all know that this march's sponsor, ANSWER is pro-terrorist and pro-dictator. Even United for Peace and Justice figured this out and they’re not the sharpest tools in the shed.
ANSWER supports terror and totalitarianism. They openly hate our liberal Democracy. Heaven forbid that I should question anyone’s patriotism, but even the most sociopathic member of this group is willing to admit that they are NOT America’s allies. So, when they tell us that we must bring the troops home, and we must allow dictatorships to thrive, why on earth should we listen to them? They don't have our best interests at heart.
The most egregious part of this march was its enthusiastic support of President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Many protesters carried pre-printed signs that read "Chavez – dignity, sovereignty and true freedom." Chavez supporters were encouraged by speakers to stand at the front.
During the anti-Chavez election riots last year, Chavez’s police murdered one unarmed protester*, Jose Vilas, on the suburban streets of Caracas. These “anti-war” protesters enthusiastically support a man who murders people for the crime of dissent while simultaneously labeling Bush Hitler.
To these anti-war protesters, "sovereignty and true freedom"=nationalist authoritarianism and nationalist authoritarianism is a good thing. Nationalist authoritarianism is obviously what this “anti-war” protest is trying to sell us.
Other nationalist authoritarians like David Duke also support the drive to Bring our Troops Home.
No wonder people prefer Starbucks.
More photos at Exit Zero.
I wasn’t there during the entire march, but Scott from Slant Point and this Protest Warrior photographer was.
* warning, graphic photo
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Why are you opposed to the democratically elected government of Venezuela? Chavez is kind of a nutball, but he was elected in a fair and free contest and you should not be supporting the people trying to overthrow him. Unless you hate democracy, of course.
Your strange wording confuses me.
Chavez gained power by promising to do wonderful things for the poor in Venezuela. What has he done for them lately?
I base my opinons about last year's riots on reports that my husband sent me. He was in Caracas on business with PDVSA. My husband, a democrat who isn't entirely opposed to socialism, was disgusted by the actions of the Chavez regime. He was disgusted by what he saw there.
I suppose you'd agree with the opinions of Canadian writer Oscar Heck, who called the protesters:
"Uncivilized, irrational, arrogant, self-interested “sifrinos”
Heck justified the murder of Mr. Vilas by saying:
"Blocking-off streets and highway ramps, setting fire to tires on the streets, threatening people and shooting at people are criminal and illegal acts. By blocking-off roads, people who have to go to work cannot get to work. By blocking-off roads, people who need to get to hospitals, cannot reach hospitals. By shooting at people, people get killed ... as happened last Friday."
Mr. Vilas wasn’t shooting at anyone. He was running away.
Of course, Mr. Heck accuses Chavez's victims of being "sifrinos". He doesn't call them Totalitarians, a new low for the blame-the-victim crowd.
Have you head his latest line? Bush is supposedly trying to kill him, so if anything bad happens to him everyone is supposed to assume Washington's behind it. Never mind that countless everyday Venezuelans hate what he's doing to destroy their country and subvert democratic freedoms.
Just answer the two questions.
Godwin's Law has never so quickly been fufilled.
Answer these questions: are ALL those who demonstrate against Chavez "rioters?" And was everyone Chavez' thugs killed deserving of being shot? Is Chavez trying to subvert his own constitution and make himself dictator or is he not? And is he or is he not learly not both a nationalist and a socialist--the very definition of a fascist?
According to Benito Mussolin, the founder of modern facism:
...
... Fascism [is] the complete opposite of... Marxian Socialism, the materialist conception of the history of human civilization can be explained simply through the conflict of interests among the various social groups and by the change and development in the means and instruments of production....
Fascism, now and always, believes in holiness and in heroism; that is to say, in actions influenced by no economic motive, direct or indirect. And if the economic conception of history be denied, according to which theory men are no more than puppets, carried to and fro by the waves of chance, while the real directing forces are quite out of their control, it follows that the existence of an unchangeable and unchanging class-war is also denied - the natural progeny of the economic conception of history. And above all Fascism denies that class-war can be the preponderant force in the transformation of society....
... "The maxim that society exists only for the well-being and freedom of the individuals composing it does not seem to be in conformity with nature's plans.... If classical liberalism spells individualism," Mussolini continued, "Fascism spells government."
...
Both Marxism and Facism stand in opposition to Liberalism, but that does not mean that they are the same thing.
I am unfamiliar with the precise details of Mr. Vilas' death, so I cannot answer your questions regarding him directly. Mr. Chavez seems like an authoritarian thug to me. One with a terrible and misguided understanding of economics. But he also seems to be the legitimately elected leader of Venezuela. While he tried to keep a referendum on his rule from happening in 2003, he was unsuccessful, which more than anything proves that democracy in Venezuela is functioning adequately.
There are no angels here, but it doesn't exactly make Chavez's government look the devil either.
After Chavez’s democratically elected government shot the unarmed protesters, how long do you think it would take for ANSWER, the extreme Left and David Duke to begin blaming the victims and downplaying Chavez’s crimes? One New York minute? Two?
Reactionaries are predicatable.
In his book "The Anatomy of Fascism", Robert Paxton notes that when a political group loses power and feels humiliated or victimized, they can begin to lose faith in the democratic process. They become more willing to abandon democratic ideals.
In his book "The Anatomy of Fascism", Robert Paxton noted that when a political group loses power and feels humiliated or victimized, they can begin to lose faith in the democratic process. They become more willing to abandon democratic ideals. I think the extreme Left and the extreme right reached that point a long time ago.
Like a lot of people whose philosophies are very close to each others', the fascists and communists hated each other mostly because they agreed on so many things--their few disagreements truly infuriated them (not unlike Republicans and Democrats sometimes). Fundamentally, the only real difference between Marxian socialism and Fascist socialism is that fascists are hard-line nationalists who love strong leaders, whereas Marxists are internationalist socialists who reject nationalism and claim not to follow strongmen but always do follow them. There's otherwise no big difference between them. "Communism is fascism with a human face," as that shallow twit Susan Sonntag put it in one of her rare flashes of real introspection.
Yeah, of course Chavez was elected and so it's wrong to compare him to Saddam or Arafat or Hitler since none of them was ever legitimately elected to anything. But he's still a bruising thug who appears to be trying to subvert his own country's constitution and murder his political opponents. Come on, man. Don't stand up for this thug just because he mouths lofty sentiments and hates America.
Right after that Goering announced that said parties -by backing the NSDAP- had "voluntarily liquidated;" and hence no longer legally existed.
That was pretty dodgy.
As for another Ausman funny: "It appears pretty obvious that the pro-independence crowd was attempting to violently overthrow their democratically elected government [in Parliament] and were violently put down by pro-British forces."
Hmmmm... ;)
Not all totalitarian regimes are the same, though they make look that way from the far distance. Ask a resident of Singapore if their condition is indistinguisable from the Cambodians under Pol Pot.
Tell me Dean, who gets to define what fascism is?