[mycroft]

I would also not put Castro in with the rest of your examples; very arguably his policies are good for the population (and would be better if the people-what-left because the revolution threatened to make them less rich hadn't already bought the U.S. government back when they controlled Cuba). Yes, there are repressions (but they aren't gas chambers either).

Thatcher was frustrated that something had happened to the robber baron era and wanted it back, and was able to do enough that we can elect Harper and the modern GOP - and the robber baron era redux isn't that far away. It would be okay for her...

Legitimately, the unions in England did have more power than perhaps they should have, but so did the mine owners - and had they been a little more flexible in their negotiations in the 40 years prior, the unions wouldn't have had all that power (because they wouldn't needed to have it).

The only good thing I can say about Thatcher (besides Bette Davis' famous quote re: Joan Crawford) is that what she said she was going to do was what she did. Same thing I say about Trudeau Sr. (and I disagreed with almost all of his policies, too). Makes a nice change from the current crop of politicians, business owners and spokespeople in general whose answer to a question is what they want to say, no matter whether it bears any resemblance to the question or not (I was listening to one discussion just recently about "oh, it's still an open consultation, you just have to fill out this 10-page form and get it approved in the next 3 weeks" - the person from the board had three things to say, and said them in order, no matter what the question was).

[Cyberyeti]

Quote

Well there are large areas of England (mining areas of Yorkshire for example) where in the view of the locals Thatcher wanted to "exterminate the miners" and that feeling persists there

 barmar, on 2013-April-11, 08:40, said:

But it's an obvious overreaction. Taking away people's jobs is a far cry from sending them to gas chambers.

Yes but some of the police brutality during that time went beyond merely taking the jobs away.

Quote

Maybe it's the culture. We don't have riots over here over football matches, either.

We don't very often now, there was a lot more in the Thatcher era, but IIRC in the NFL for example there is very little travelling support, you won't see thousands of away fans travelling together from their city on trains or buses as can happen here.

[mike777]

Castro exterminated thousands and thousands, stole their money and land and put thousands more in prison for political reasons. Wow you guys don't know this stuff.

The killing, stealing and jailing continues today.


Amazing how posters turn a blind eye to mass murder and genocide by Castro, scary.

[Cyberyeti]

 mike777, on 2013-April-11, 11:15, said:

Castro exterminated thousands and thousands, stole their money and land and put thousands more in prison for political reasons. Wow you guys don't know this stuff.

The killing, stealing and jailing continues today.


Amazing how posters turn a blind eye to mass murder and genocide by Castro, scary.

Depends who you believe, but still not on the scale of Stalin or Hitler. The people who allege tens of thousands usually have a right wing Castro bashing agenda. The indisputable number is in the hundreds (and Castro basically said that this was "his Nuremberg trials") any more than that is conjecture. As to land/money grabs, that's communism for you.

[onoway]

 mycroft, on 2013-April-11, 10:35, said:

The only good thing I can say about Thatcher (besides Bette Davis' famous quote re: Joan Crawford) is that what she said she was going to do was what she did. Same thing I say about Trudeau Sr. (and I disagreed with almost all of his policies, too). Makes a nice change from the current crop of politicians, business owners and spokespeople in general whose answer to a question is what they want to say, no matter whether it bears any resemblance to the question or not (I was listening to one discussion just recently about "oh, it's still an open consultation, you just have to fill out this 10-page form and get it approved in the next 3 weeks" - the person from the board had three things to say, and said them in order, no matter what the question was).

I also listened to that interview..it was clear that the agenda for this new 10 page APPLICATION to be allowed to make any representation at the "hearings" was to stop discussion and input from anyone with any concerns. They aren't even stand alone questions, people apparently have to cross reference with links to something not even on the application. It's absurd and clearly just a road block.Then the gov't will try to say that nobody came forward with opposition to what they are doing to do anyway. Typical of Harper.

Don't need to be shooting people to have a dictatorship in Canada these days, just a majority in the house, an ego the size of the galaxy, an eye for loopholes in the law that nobody with any ethical sense would ever think to look for much less take advantage of, and an obedient bunch of personally programmable Reform/conservatives MPs.

[aguahombre]

 mike777, on 2013-April-09, 12:12, said:

I see Scottish miners were dancing in the street

Don't tell the Baptists about that.

[mike777]

ahh the scots's miners are Baptists ok...dancing with glee at her death...got it.

[MickyB]

 Cyberyeti, on 2013-April-11, 08:26, said:

I think lumping Castro in with the others is [] ridiculous

I think this is a fairly standard US/RotW divide in perception. Certainly most in the UK wouldn't put him in the same class as the others.

[ggwhiz]

 Cyberyeti, on 2013-April-11, 11:36, said:

Castro bashing agenda.

While I don't agree with anything he has done I have a soft spot here. When the Maricans started welcoming Cuban people on the Florida shores he emptied the asylums and worst of his prisons and put them all on really well constructed rafts. Brilliant.

[MickyB]

I was slightly shocked by the celebrations of Thatcher's death. People could celebrate both 22 years ago and 16 years ago, quite what her death does for them now is unclear to me. I've seen multiple claims that she was evil [for having policies you disagree with and having the power/duty to implement them?] and misleading statistics like "she never secured more than one-third of the potential vote" [her party scored 54% more votes than any other in 1983, by that measure the most emphatic victory in the last 80 years].

[mike777]

I get it....Thatcher=Castro for most of the world.....


expect dancing in the streets...parties........fireworks......when Castro dies........


Thatcher help free millions....Castro......the not!

Clearly some feel just the opposite.

[barmar]

 MickyB, on 2013-April-11, 21:48, said:

I think this is a fairly standard US/RotW divide in perception. Certainly most in the UK wouldn't put him in the same class as the others.

Perhaps because he didn't host Soviet missiles that were pointed at you.

[PassedOut]

Jonathan Winters

[heyrocky]

Marv Harshman, former basketball coach at Pacific Lutheran University (my alma mater), Washington State University, and the University of Washington, and member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, and, on the same day, Frosty Westering, former longtime football coach at my alma mater, and member of the Football Hall of Fame.

[Mbodell]

Re: Thatcher. The most popular single on the UK chart this week is from the wizard of Oz: "Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead!". Many feel that sort of protest appropriate. Many feel that even playing that song in the normal countdown is inappropriate. BBC tries to find a compromise.

[Cyberyeti]

 Mbodell, on 2013-April-12, 15:48, said:

Re: Thatcher. The most popular single on the UK chart this week is from the wizard of Oz: "Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead!". Many feel that sort of protest appropriate. Many feel that even playing that song in the normal countdown is inappropriate. BBC tries to find a compromise.

Equally pathetic, some others are trying to get "I'm in love with Margaret Thatcher" by the not sensibles into the charts as well, a terrible song that I'm probably one of the 20 people that remembers from the first time round.

[barmar]

Good people should feel ashamed to chear the death of anyone, no matter how much they hated them. If the person is actively committing attrocities, and their death puts a stop to them, that may be reasonable justification (although it would be preferable to find a way to remove them from power and put them on trial -- when we took out Bin Laden instead of capturing him I felt we'd gone against American principles of justice). But Thatcher has been out of office for decades, her death doesn't change anything now, so there's nothing to celebrate.

[RMB1]

 barmar, on 2013-April-12, 11:18, said:

Perhaps because he didn't host Soviet missiles that were pointed at you.

Presumably hosting your own missiles targeted at other countries does not mean you are an evil dictator.

[Cyberyeti]

Pat Summerall

[mikeh]

 barmar, on 2013-April-12, 11:18, said:

Perhaps because he didn't host Soviet missiles that were pointed at you.

Many in the West either forget, or given the tendency of all media to slant the news, never knew that a major reason the Soviets wanted to put missiles in Cuba was that the US had put missiles in Turkey, which was pretty much as threatening to the USSR, in terms of reaction/warning times as would Cuba have been for the US.

I am no apologist for the USSR but the Cold War was not as black and white as we in the West sometimes feel. Castro, for example, was not presdestined to become a bogeyman until the US decided that it had to support the extraordinarily corrupt former government, openly friendly to the mafia, rather than the vast majority of Cubans who wanted a better quality of life and a fairer government.

The former government had allowed US interests, including mafia interests, largely free rein to act as they saw fit, in exchange for which the rulers got very rich. The vast majority of Cubans resented this, as who wouldn't? Thus Castro was extremely popular.

There was no compelling reason to think that he would have become a puppet for the USSR had the US welcomed his revolution. Yes, he was always going to nationalize some US companies, but so what? They were predatory enterprises who had bought their position through corruption. Castro's positions were in many ways closer to those of the American revolutionaries than to the Bolsheviks who took control in Russia in 1917-21. He led a genuinely popular, nationalistic rebellion against a foreign supported if not imposed regime.

The US response was to attempt to destroy the revolution by imposing draconian boycotts on Cuban products or aid to the country.

Castro was left with no real alternative but the USSR in order to keep his country fed, let alone develop it. And the USSR of course extracted changes in return, just as the US (and other Great Powers) have always done in similar circumstances.

The late 20th century was remarkable for one global reality. While the US continually preached its values, it consistently supported and in some cases installed dictators, whether it be in Iran, South Vietnam, Chile, Egypt or elsewhere, while the repressive USSR consistently supported nationalistic, albeit also usually communist, liberation movements. Of course, the USSR and China also installed and supported dictators, and the US supported democracies. On balance, given what happened in Eastern Europe and Asia, it seems to me that the US, on balance, was the better, but my point is that we tend to view these things far too simplistically, often overlooking or choosing to remain ignorant of facts that are inconvenient to our preferred point of view.