BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old Guy
Date: 03 Aug 06 - 05:25 PM

Maybe they are better off that they were under Batista, The US supported the overthrow of Batista but when Castro turned socialist they no longer supported him.

I can grasp what you are saying. But what I am saying about Castro is that he is a dictaor, a tyrant and nobody wants him as the leader of Cuba except the high ranking communists that are treated differently that the average Cuban. He uses the US as an excuse for anything that is wrong in Cuba.

I have been to Mexico and Jamaica and I was damned glad to get back on US soil. I see people here bitching and whining about conditions and a government that the Cubans die for.

I have been to Canada several times and it is pretty good except Quebecois are assholes. I still don't want to live there because I am used to the US. I used to watch a Canadian news chanel before Google bought it. It was interesting but it showed a lot of animosity for the Canadian Government.

Way up in Maine there was a Walmart right near the border. People were streaming in from Canada to scarf up on that awful Walmart stuff.

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old Guy
Date: 03 Aug 06 - 05:42 PM

How does it benefit North Korea? How did it benefit the USSR?

Could a democracy have benefited the Cubans more than communisim? Ask the people that escaped.

Would you be better off living under communisim?

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Big Mick
Date: 03 Aug 06 - 06:39 PM

Old Guy/Woody/Fat Albert ..... whatever the hell you call yourself today, you wouldn't know a Socialist from a Trotskyite from a Marxist Leninist from a grape. All your comments are based on the Red Scare mindset. It takes away from whatever credibility you have and marks you as a McCarthy style mouth.

Fidel is no angel. He has murdered, and stole in the name of the Revolution. He has also brought some form of stability to his country and managed to outlive the USSR. History will judge him as a unique character. When he dies, most of his revolution will die with him in a mad dash to capitalism. But the seeds of socialist ideal will still be there. It's the way of the world.

For what it's worth, Old Woody Albert, there hasn't been a real "communist" society yet. The Stalinist era destroyed any chance of that. He was just another despot that got hold of a system and destroyed any chance it had of a real try.

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old Guy
Date: 03 Aug 06 - 07:02 PM

Mick:

Are you pro communisim/marxisim/leninisim/trotskyisim or what?

You sound pretty unsure of what doctrine to follow or do you flip flop around?

McCarthyism is the paranoid hunt for communist infiltrators in the US.

Do you think communisim is good or bad?

Here is my original post:

"Cuba trades with every other country in the world. How come trade with the US is such a essential thing to the well being of another country?

It's bullshit along with all the crap about what a utopia it is in Cuba.

Is North Korea a utopia too?"

A. Does Cuba trade with all the other countries in the world?
B. How does one country cause all of the problems in another country simply becasue it won't trade with them?
C. Is Cuba a utopia? In particulaer does Cuba have the best medical system as claimed for ALL Cubans?
D. has Communisim created a utopia in North Korea?

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Aug 06 - 07:16 PM

A liberal democracy and a prosperous modern society such as you and I are blessed with in North America are a huge benefit to anyone, Old Guy, but such alternatives have never been offered to people in many parts of the world. They have never had the option. And if someone offered it to them, they might not handle it successfully. The reasons for that go way, way back. All of Latin America is suffering the collective legacy of having been under tyrranical colonial rule by either the Spanish or the Portuguese for centuries...those were nations which were ruled by autocratic kings...absolute dictators. The societies now in Latin America came out of that legacy and were forged in the flames of violent revolution against colonial rule...amidst terrible poverty. The revolutionaries did not come out of a society benefiting from English common law and relative prosperity...which was the condition in the 13 colonies in the American revolution.

Having never experienced anything but autocratic rule from a tiny elite, most of the Latin American societies soon reverted to similarly autocratic rule by rich landowners soon after they threw out their colonial masters. Their attempts at democracy were generally pretty short-lived...or were badly compromised by the general lack of education and corruption in the political parties that arose. In Mexico, for example, there were brief periods of attempted reform by some leaders. Benito Juarez was one such. He was an idealist. But the rapid return to corruption and domination of society by a small number of wealthy families was seemingly inevitable.

You cannot just compare life in Cuba to life in the USA as if they started out on an equal playing field in history. They did not. People make this same error in regards to Russia. The Russians have also experienced a bitter history of autocratic, iron-fisted rule. To expect them at ANY point to suddenly, instantly, convert to the same type of open modern society we have, with all the rights and freedoms that we have in the English-speaking countries or in western Europe is just hopelessly naive. It can't be done, and it won't be done. There has to be a very gradual transition.

You can't look at what Castro did in Cuba and put it on the same level as if he had done those things in South Dakota or Ohio. He wasn't in South Dakota or Ohio. The situation was radically different.

He was in a country which threw off Spanish rule in 1898 after years of bloody revolution...which finally succeeded because the USA went to war with Spain. The USA went to war primarily because it saw easy strategic gains (deep water ports in the Caribbean and the Pacific to be taken for its new navy, and valuable lands to be taken in Cuba and the Phillipines). The propaganda reason given for the war was to avenge the sinking of the USS Maine and to prevent Spanish atrocities against the Cuban people. Believe me when I tell you that the US government didn't give a tinker's damn about Spanish atrocities against Cubans...but they saw a golden opportunity to scavenge some valuable stuff off a dying empire, and turn themselves into a transoceanic power.

At any rate, the Cubans (who may have sunk the Maine themselves...or maybe it exploded due to a smouldering coal fire in its bunkers) expected the Americans to leave after the Spanish were beaten. The Americans didn't leave. Surprise! ;-)

Cuba made a few sporadic attempts at liberal multi-party democracy over the years. All of those attempts failed, and were quickly replaced by authoritarian local governments of a despotic sort. Batista's was the last of the old style governments. If you read books about Castro's youth you would find it very interesting. He was the son of a wealthy family, part of the elite. He had seemingly nothing to gain by opposing the elite that ruled Cuba...and everything to lose...but he became a revolutionary anyway. His courage and his idealism in those days was utterly extraordinary. The fact that he won his revolution was extraordinary. It's a simply incredible story. It rivals anything that happened in the American revolution, and it took people with very similar ideals and the same amount of guts to do it.

I don't believe Castro could have created the kind of free multi-party society you and I enjoy in North America. Not with the best will in the world. If he had tried to, it would have fallen apart in 3 years or less, and been replaced by another dictatorship.

I think he was a pragmatist. He did what he believed would succeed, and that's what you must do in any country. You have to know the ground you're fighting on in order to win a battle.

After visiting Cuba, I became interested in their history. I read several books about it in the years following that visit. Cuba is a land filled with the passion of revolution, but it is not a land that seems to know how to settle down once the fighting is over...unless it does so under a very heavy hand. When you have a multiplicity of views expressed openly there you soon have a chaotic situation that becomes another revolution...or you shut it down...like putting a lid on a boiling pot...and it simmers quietly, waiting for someone to remove the lid.

Same deal in Russia. Putin can handle Russia, because he's tough enough to. He's willing to be ruthless. Gorbachev couldn't handle it. He gave them their freedom and they turned it into a total chaotic mess. Yeltsin pandered to the people's superficial appetites and expectations (which he could not fulfill), got drunk, and the mess deepened. They needed a strong man again, and now they've got one.

I'm telling you that if Castro had tried to be the kind of democratic be-nice-to-everyone guy you think he should be in Cuba...his government would have fallen very soon and it would have been replaced by something far worse.

Cuba is not Kansas.

You and I were lucky to be born in societies with a liberal-democratic, British common law tradition. It is to that that we owe our present freedoms...not to American capitalism or to socialism either, but to our common British tradition of law and open parliamentary society with elected officials. We are the sons of some of the most fortunate generations the world has ever known.

People in Latin America do not have that tradition to stand upon.

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old Guy
Date: 03 Aug 06 - 11:30 PM

America was a colony living under a king. America had a revolution and won it's independance.

How does that differ from the Latin American countries?

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Aug 06 - 11:57 PM

Well, I just explained that, didn't I? The American revolution was a revolution of equals against equals...basically English gentry against English gentry. It occurred amongst a population who were mostly well-educated, who were accustomed to ideas of social freedoms, liberal political notions, the right of assembly, forming a parliament, and so on. The disagreement among these English gentry was as to whether an obviously incompetent monarch who was very far away should still be running things (through his representatives) or whether the locals should do it through their own representatives.

After the revolution was won, a significant movement arose amongst the people to crown George Washington king of the new country! Washington rejected that notion. A King of England in those days, by the way, was far from being an absolute ruler, though he was the titular head of government. He had to contend with a lively and strong parliament, a pretty modern legal system, and all kinds of other checks and balances.

What you had in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies was a far more archaic, enormously less democratic society with an almost medieval authority system tied in with a truly medieval and very powerful Catholic Church...a radically more primitive situation than in the 13 colonies.

And under those colonial systems lived millions of poverty-stricken, illiterate peasants...mostly descendants of the Indians whom the Spanish had conquered or mixed blood peoples of European and Indian descent. Those peasants were the natural victims of the dictators to come.

Americans in the 1770's were a sophisticated population, well aware of the ideal of human equality and the rights of people in a free society. Latin Americans were in comparison a people who had barely been exposed to such notions at all...they were used to the iron hand of the church and the nobility.

Is it surprising, then, that modern democracies developed in the USA and Canada (which had no revolution) while what occurred from Mexico on down was mostly tyrranical rule by dictators and military governments?

When you are born into a tradition of democracy, you understand it intimately, you take it for granted, and it is natural for it to be set up and maintained. When you are born into a tradition of absolute rule by tryants, it is tremendously hard to make the leap into democracy...specially when people are too poor and uneducated to understand how to do it.

Castro was contending with a very different dynamic in Cuba than he would have been in America...if he had been born an American, he would never have seen reason for the kind of revolution he led in Cuba. He would probably have become a University student with radical notions and been a campus organizer or something instead.

You cannot judge Fidel Castro or the Cuban revolution by the standards of our North American life. It's a whole different scenario. And it's a whole different scenario in Russia too, and in China. What works here doesn't work there. It may work there someday, but not yet.

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Greg F.
Date: 04 Aug 06 - 10:21 AM

America was a colony living under a king. America had a revolution and won it's independance. How does that differ from the Latin American countries?

This and similar questions posed by Fat Old Woody - if not posted simply to shitstir- display such a fundamental ignorance of American and World History, of Economics, and of political/social movements of the last several centuries that discussion with him/her/them/it is really rather pointless.

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old Guy
Date: 04 Aug 06 - 06:19 PM

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Aug 06 - 06:21 PM

I only hope you are enjoying the subject of this thread as much as I am, Old Guy. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old Guy
Date: 04 Aug 06 - 10:57 PM

Yes.

But it seems to me that if the American revolution was successful because it was based on democracy, The proves that democracy is better than Communism.

And it seems to me that all of those Latin American revolutionaries believed in Communism which is why those countries are so screwed up.

You say Democracy won't work there. Where will it work? Where does it work?

Argentina
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Benin
Brazil
Bulgaria
Canada
Cape Verde
Chile
Croatia
Czech Republic
Denmark
Dominican Republic
El Salvador
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Japan
Kiribati
Latvia
Lesotha
Lithuania,
Mali
Mexico
Micronesia
Mongolia
Namibia
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Palau
Peru
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Sao Tome & Principe
Senegal
Serbia & Montenegro
Slovakia
Slovenia
South Africa
South Korea
Spain, Suriname
Sweden
Taiwan
Trinidad and Tobago
Tuvalu
Ukraine
United Kingdom
United States
Uruguay

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old Guy
Date: 04 Aug 06 - 11:42 PM

This is interesting:

http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/pdf/Charts2006.pdf

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old Guy
Date: 04 Aug 06 - 11:58 PM

Here's your bag LH http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_forms_of_government

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 12:32 AM

I am not defending Communism.

I'm all in favour of democracy, Old Guy, as long as it's real democracy. I'm not convinced that what you now have in the USA is real democracy...at the federal level. It certainly is real democracy at the local or the civic level, but that's a different kettle of fish. I don't frankly believe that our political parties (in Canada and in the USA) are actually representing the ordinary people anymore, and I don't know what the ordinary people can do about it.

(By the way, how come Russia was not on your list of democracies? They have multi-party elections now, after all, pretty much like we do. They have had them since the Soviet Union fell. According to you, a system like that is a democracy.) ;-)

I'm saying that it's one thing to have window dressing that looks like a democracy, it's another thing altogether to have real democracy.

You cannot have real democracy when all the major political parties in a country are funded and controlled by a very small rich elite...and that is what's happening in the USA and Canada.

In Cuba, you have a small Communist elite running the place...and they don't pretend otherwise...but they do have elections on a regular basis for local civic and government officials...and people vote for the local candidate they like best out of 2 or more alternatives.

In both cases, however, at the very top it's the controlling elite that calls the shots. The Republican and Democratic parties in the USA are owned by that controlling elite, and there is nothing that you, as an American voter, can do about it, because the only candidates you will ever be offered at the higher levels are those the elite hand-picked as its servants.

You can call that democracy if you want to, but it's just a stage play put on to make you think you really have a voice. You don't. Bush and Kerry work for the same $ySStem, and there's nothing you can do about that when you step into the polling booth.

The way I see it, both you and the Cubans...and us Canadians...are screwed. We can't change the controlling powers at the top. We have no way of doing that at all.

But...you and I are just somewhat luckier than Cubans. We were born in societies that are more prosperous than many other places and still relatively free, because they sprang out of a prosperous and relatively free British society and social tradition in the 1700's...and they have remained relatively advanced in that respect.

It's a holding pattern. Be glad it holds. The day Bush declares martial law because of some new "emergency" and starts arresting people and holding them without trial, your relative freedom will be over. And mine may be over not too long after that.

Of course, you can always opt to serve the $ySStem in that case, turn in your neighbours as subversives if they complain, and maybe even get to carry a gun for the ruling elite. Many would be happy to do that kind of work, I'm sure. Many were in Nazi Germany.

I'm telling you that your phony democracy is as brittle as an empty eggshell right now. Pray to God that it holds.

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 04:29 AM

Haven't read right through this thread yet so my points may already have been covered.
Earlier this year Irish television ran a film based on what would happen when Castro died (or left office - but preferably died).
Apart from the elderly and somewhat sad nutters who were itching to get back and take their revenge, it concentrated on the business opportunities that would be opened up, particularly the hotels that could be built to attract wealthy tourists. The speakers said that some adjustments would have to be made to Cuba's economy, the main ones being, a cessation of the welfare system, an end to free health care and education, and 'a move towards Cubans taking full responsibilty for their own lives'.
My early awareness of Cuba was when, under Batista, it was known as 'America's open sewer'. It would seem that there are those who would have it revert to that role.
Personally, I hope Castro lives to be a thousand; anybody who has given the finger to the most powerful and avaricious nation on earth for half a century has my undying respect.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old Guy
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 10:22 AM

Why isn't Puerto Rico America's open sewer?

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 01:04 PM

It probably is now that the Yanks haven't got Cuba any more.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 01:14 PM

I am 100% in agreement with you, Mr Carroll.

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old guy
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 01:22 PM

What does probably mean? Yes or no? Is or is not?

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old Guy
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 01:28 PM

Mr. Carroll *probably* sits around in his silk smoking jacket sipping a cup of Earl Grey with his pinkie raised and his hunting hound at his side saying "Those damned yanks, we had them under control at one point".

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 01:34 PM

That's what I do, Old Guy. Just like you say. I sit there in my hunting jacket in my Edwardian study with my old Empire Club pals, puffing on my Sherlock Holmes long pipe, sipping my Earl Grey tea with one pinkie sticking out, my faithful basset hound curled at my feet.

LOL!

You've got us figured out, eh, old chap? Capital! What say about a cup of hot toddy, old sport? Put some colour back in your cheeks, what?

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old Guy
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 01:35 PM

Old guy *probably* sits aound in his crusty BVDs gulping 16 oz Budwieser's and munching on BBQ pork rinds while flipping back an forth between the monster turck rally and Nascar on the dish and remarking "Those damned Limeys don't know shit"

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Les from Hull
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 01:44 PM

Well as I 'damned Limey' I had know to know what a BVD was. God old Google informed me it was Bovine Virus Diarrhoea. So for once you're right OG, we don't know shit!

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Greg F.
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 01:57 PM

the American revolution was successful because it was based on democracy

Hardly, Fat Old Woody, you're just displaying the inconquerable ignorance mentioned ptreviously.

Most Americans following the War Of Independence couldn't vote, Senators were selected by State Legislatures, there were substantial numbers of these pesky non-persons called Negro Slaves & on & on & on. Hardly a democracy by any measure.

Better hit them books for a few years & then get back to us......

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old guy
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 02:22 PM

Well what was it based on and why was it sucessfull? Learn me perfesser?

As far as I can see, those revolutionaries got together and wrote documents that formed a democratic government but you will sure have to correct me on that.


BVDs are sort of like Fruit of the Looms but with racing stripes.

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old Guy
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 02:36 PM

Bermuda is probably an open sewer now that the Limeys don't have Hong Kong any more. Eh wot?

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 02:46 PM

There were plenty of good, progressive ideas enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, and the American Bill of Rights. Quite advanced for the time. Some of those ideas had been inspired by the political and social ideals of the American Indians. Some had come from philosophical notions put forth by European writers. Some were the brainchild of social radicals among the founders of the new USA.

All of those people, those founding fathers of America, would be hated by the neo-conservative forces that are governing America if they were alive today...and they would probably be called "communists" or "terrorists" or something like that. ;-)

You see, the neo-cons are trying very hard to forget that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights ever existed. It gets in their way too much, as their desire is to implement a police state.

One way of getting around such legalities is to declare a supposedly temporary "state of emergency" and grant the executive office emergency powers that override the normal laws. That's what Hitler did after the burning of the Reichstag. That's what Bush would like to do. 911 helped these guys implement their foreign war plans, but it wasn't enough to do the whole job of taking over domestically. Something bigger and more shocking is needed for that...

Something considerably worse than 911.

Consider the possibilities. When and if it happens, its real architects will be the men you elected to power, but they'll blame it on someone else.

"terrorists"

And you'll probably buy it too.

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Les from Hull
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 02:47 PM

I hope those stripes were on there when you got them!

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old Guy
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 02:54 PM

Nope Budweiser first, stripes later.

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 02:58 PM

I've been to Bermuda, but not recently. It's nice enough. It's a very small place.

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old Guy
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 03:15 PM

Mr philosopher LH: What did Abe Lincoln do? Was he a Neocon?

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Wolfgang
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 03:52 PM

A Visit with Cuba's Persecuted (link to translation of article in DER SPIEGEL)

A glimpse into the life of Cuban dissidents, Cuban prisons in Guantanamo and why Cuban dissidents don't expect much from Bush.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old Guy
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 05:23 PM

The Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo cited normally reliable sources in the government in Brasilia as saying that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was notified from Havana about the elder Castro's medical condition. A leftist with lifelong good relations with the Cuban regime, Lula was supposedly told that Castro has a serious, malignant stomach tumour.

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 05:39 PM

Everything gets all of us eventually, Castro included. Don't gloat over other people's aging problems, that's my advice. It can come back to haunt you in time.

Abe Lincoln was an interesting fellow, Old Guy. I'm not sure whether or not he would be remembered as a great president if he had not served during the Civil War period. Sometimes men have greatness thrust upon them by extraordinary outer circumstances. Still, he did lead the Union very resolutely, and he came up with some powerful ideas.

No, he was most definitely NOT a neo-con, because he himself warned that the US government already in his day was in great danger of being taken over by powerful vested commercial/financial interests...and that if so, it would destroy American democracy.

His predictions in that regard have come true.

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old Guy
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 11:35 PM

Do you think Bush should lock up those pasky Democrats like Lincoln?

As the Civil War started, in the very beginning of Lincoln's presidential term, a group of "Peace Democrats" proposed a peaceful resolution to the developing Civil War by offering a truce with the South, and forming a constitutional convention to amend the U.S. Constitution to protect States' rights. The proposal was ignored by the Unionists of the North and not taken seriously by the South. However, the Peace Democrats, also called copperheads by their enemies, publicly criticized Lincoln's belief that violating the U.S. Constitution was required to save it as a whole. With Congress not in session until July, Lincoln assumed all powers not delegated in the Constitution, including the power to suspend habeas corpus. In 1861, Lincoln had already suspended civil law in territories where resistance to the North's military power would be dangerous. In 1862, when copperhead democrats began criticizing Lincoln's violation of the Constitution, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus throughout the nation and had many copperhead democrats arrested under military authority because he felt that the State Courts in the north west would not convict war protesters such as the copperheads. He proclaimed that all persons who discouraged enlistments or engaged in disloyal practices would come under Martial Law.

Among the 13,000 people arrested under martial law was a Maryland Secessionist, John Merryman. Immediately, Hon. Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States issued a writ of habeas corpus commanding the military to bring Merryman before him. The military refused to follow the writ. Justice Taney, in Ex parte MERRYMAN, then ruled the suspension of habeas corpus unconstitutional because the writ could not be suspended without an Act of Congress. President Lincoln and the military ignored Justice Taney's ruling.

Finally, in 1866, after the war, the Supreme Court officially restored habeas corpus in Ex-parte Milligan, ruling that military trials in areas where the civil courts were capable of functioning were illegal.

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Amos
Date: 06 Aug 06 - 01:18 AM

What a knowledgeable essay on habeus corpus, OG!! Cheers. DId you write that while in law school?

Say...doesn't that mean the use of military tribunals without other due process on the POWs down in Gitmo are...um...illegal?

Oh, say....



A

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Aug 06 - 01:26 AM

Are you kidding me? LOL! Why would Bush lock up Democrats? They work for the same military-industrial ruling $ySStem as the Republicans do. Your elections are a very expensive and drawn-out fraud, put on only to make you ordinary folks imagine you have a choice of some kind about who really rules you. You don't. A very rich elite rules you, through their political front men..."faces" like George Bush or Bill Clinton...and there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it.

There will always be struggles and differences of opinion in great issues, and there will always be some individuals who oppose and speak out against any official decision...but those individuals will not be allowed to stand long in the way of the main plan...and the main plan will have been decided before the debates ever occur, I assure you.

It's all about the $$$money$$$. Money is power. It's not about democracy, it's not about justice, it's not about ideals of any kind whatsoever, it's about the money.

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Aug 06 - 03:39 AM

Old Guy,
Have been going through your democracy list;

Argentina – taken over by military coup, thousands tortured, murdered and disappeared. Perpetrators never brought to justice but are waiting in the wings to answer the call if ever needed again.
Australia – slaughtered indigenous population for their land. Now busy kicking out asylum seekers
Brazil – murdering small farmers in order to tear down the rain forests.
Chile – see Argentina (coup leader personal friend of Margaret Thatcher)
Croatia – participated in genocidal war, culprits never brought to justice.
Czech Republic – sex tourism, including child prostitution now rife since return to democracy.
Greece – see Argentina and Chile
Ireland – broke its own neutrality laws and is now allowing US war criminals (and their victims) to use its airports.
Israel – slaughtering Palestinian civilians in particular the citizens of Qana in order to push its boundaries as far as the Litani River. Hiding behind the dead of Auschwitz to justify its actions.
Mexico – rigging elections like their American cousins
Serbia and Montenegro – see Croatia
South Africa – apartheid system under democracy was guilty of impoverishing, enslaving and murdering millions of its citizens.
United Kingdom – has crawled up the backside of US and now lies dormant awaiting orders. Would invade the Isle of Man if instructed to do so.
United States – (where to begin) Has invaded and/or bombed nearly sixty countries since end of WW2 (mostly 3rd world) using chemical weapons such as Napalm, Agent Orange and Phosphorus.
Clandestine organisations interfered in the policies of hundreds of countries freely using terrorism, torture and murder.
Is tearing the environment to shreds in order to drive around in SUVs.
Uses world as personal petrol pump and invades countries when fuel supplies look like they are running low.
Freely and openly uses illegal imprisonment and torture against prisoners of war.
Election rigging now an established tactic (particularly in Florida – 90 odd miles from that nasty undemocratic Cuba.
Etc, etc, etc.
However all is forgiven because by the year 2020 will have wiped out its own population thanks to its insane gun laws.

Run this democracy thing by me again; didn't I read somewhere that the Nazis were elected?
By the way, not an English gent but a simple electrician trying to make sense of this nasty world – we don't go in for smoking jackets in the west of Ireland! However, don't let this deter you, you're bound to get something right!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old Guy
Date: 06 Aug 06 - 02:21 PM

Now let's hear about the good countries with good gun laws and unrigged elections.

Cherio and Pip Pip my good man.

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Aug 06 - 02:24 PM

NEVER say "Cheerio and Pip Pip" to an Irishman, Old Guy!!!!! They don't like it. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Ebbie
Date: 06 Aug 06 - 02:33 PM

Very eloquent, Old Guy.

"A majority of Peace Democrats supported war to save the Union, but a strong and active minority asserted that the Republicans had provoked the South into secession; that the Republicans were waging the war in order to establish their own domination, suppress civil and states rights, and impose "racial equality"; and that military means had failed and would never restore the Union."


Did You Write This Too?

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old Guy
Date: 06 Aug 06 - 02:59 PM

The Republican party was formed to end slavery. And it did.

After the Democrats failed to keep slavery from being abolished, they formed thet KKK to keep blacks, Jews and Catholics in their place. And it did for a while. Just ask Mr. Byrd.

Now the Democrats accuse Republicans of being racists. Sheesh!

I did not write the stuff about the civil war. I cut and pasted it like Amos does about 50 times a day. I forgot to put in the URL but searching a string at Google will reveal that I didn't make it up.

I'll take back the Cherio and Pip Pip. I didn't notice he was Irish. A buddy of mine just called and said his brother in Bellahgy Ireland just died.

Now these Northern Irish, They know a thing or two about terrorisim don't they?

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Aug 06 - 04:09 PM

Terrorism has a long and glorious history in Ireland. It's called "terrorism" when the other guy does it, and "freedom-fighting" or "defending king and country" when your guys do it.

The usual story.

Terrorism, like beauty, exists in the eye of the beholder.

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Greg F.
Date: 06 Aug 06 - 06:36 PM

Well what was it based on and why was it sucessfull? Learn me perfesser?

Sorry, Fat Old Woody.

I'm not about to do your work for you. Get off your ass and actually read a book. Put in some effort towards becoming one of the "informed electorate" the founding fathers- whom you profess to revere- envisioned as a necessary precursor to & constituent of democratic government. Cutting and pasting crap you don't even begin to understand isn't worth shit.

The Republican party was formed to end slavery...
After the Democrats failed to keep slavery from being abolished... Now the Democrats accuse Republicans of being racists &etc.

Absolute bullshit- & your ignorance is showing, AGAIN. Only an idiot would contend that time has somehow been suspended for 150 years. That was then & this is now- and things ain't the same.

Pick up a book. And read it. For comprehension.

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old Guy
Date: 07 Aug 06 - 12:34 AM

I will read what I want and paste what I want. You don't present a whole lot except Wrong Wrong Wrong, Are you the Tom Daschle of Mudville?

In the early 1940s, when Byrd was approximately 24 years old, he joined the Ku Klux Klan, which he had seen holding parades in Matoaka, West Virginia, as a child, his father having also been a Klan member[4]. Byrd was unanimously elected as the Exalted Cyclops of his local chapter. [5] Byrd, in his autobiography, attributed the beginnings of his political career to this incident, though he lamented that they involved the Klan. According to Byrd's recollection, Baskin told him, "You have a talent for leadership, Bob... The country needs young men like you in the leadership of the nation." Byrd recalls that "suddenly lights flashed in my mind! Someone important had recognized my abilities. I was only 23 or 24, and the thought of a political career had never struck me. But strike me that night, it did." The KKK was seen as a stepping stone for aspiring southern politicians — one of the reasons attributed to Byrd's membership.

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old Guy
Date: 07 Aug 06 - 12:52 AM

In the fall of 1957, the school board of Little Rock, Arkansas, agreed to a court order to admit black students to Central High School. The governor of the state, Orville Faubus, called out the National Guard to prevent the students from entering, and when the court again ordered the students admitted, Faubus withdrew the troops. But when the students tried to enroll, a mob attacked the school and drove them off. Eisenhower could no longer sit by passively and watch federal authority flouted. He ordered a thousand paratroopers into Little Rock, put ten thousand Arkansas national guardsmen under federal control and used the troops to protect the black students and to maintain order in the school.

Bull Conner/George Wallace/Lester Maddox/Orville Faubus All Democrats

"George Bush is our Bull Connor."

Mr. Rangel's metaphoric linkage of Mr. Bush to the late Theophilus "Bull" Connor - who in 1963 turned fire hoses and attack dogs on blacks, including Martin Luther King Jr., demonstrating in favor of equal rights - met with wild applause and cheering at a Congressional Black Caucus town hall meeting, part of the organization's 35th Annual Legislative Conference.

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST,Old Guy
Date: 07 Aug 06 - 09:07 PM

Correction.
The purpose of the Republican party was to stop the spread of slavery to new states.

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Little Hawk
Date: 08 Aug 06 - 01:37 AM

Pardon me, Old Guy, I've been too busy elsewhere to give proper time to our ongoing dialogue. I have only time to mention that both the Republicans and the Democrats would happily enslave anyone including their own constituents' mothers if it kept them in power and made them rich.

It's all about the $$$money$$$. Be back tomorrow maybe to talk more. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Aug 06 - 08:45 PM

Horeshit and rhetoric are worthless. Would, if, should, goddamit I dont't want a fairytale from an idealist. Cold hard facts work fine unless you are trying to spining a yarn.

Get real.

Subject: RE: BS: Era Ends: Castro Steps Down
From: Old Guy
Date: 08 Aug 06 - 09:50 PM

That was me