My America

[Taxi]

Originally Posted by Xenephex [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

And while I'm not going to try to defend Vietnam, which was mis-guided, massively mis-managed and completely mis-understood by almost everyone, have you ever wondered why it is that Taxi even has a 'Vietnamese neighbor?' Why so many of us have so many Vietnamese neighbors? Ask them some time.

It's because the North Vietnamese communists, who many in my generation hailed as 'freedom fighters', in the end turned out to the murderous thugs that almost every communist government turns out to be, and as a result a boatload (literally) of people in South Vietnam were willing to risk their lives and lose everything they had to get the hell out of there (and come here) once the communists took over. Double ditto for Cambodia.

I could almost deal with your incredibly simplistic world view, but the underlying ignorance you guys display makes it hopeless to even try to engage in a hostile dialogue.

Now look up who had to go invade cambodia and stop the Khmer Rouge.

The sole reason why there was a south/north vietnam, and north/south Korea is because the US prevented re-unification in both countries.

Ho Chi Minh was an american admirer and based his insurrection against the French colonialists on the american war of liberation against Britain.

Im tired but if you want ill look up the facts on why those are true and post them later on.

[ShadowWulf]

Originally Posted by Xenephex [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Jesus, Shadowwulf, do you even have the slightest inkling of the history of the Korean war? And while I'm not going to try to defend Vietnam, which was mis-guided, massively mis-managed and completely mis-understood by almost everyone, have you ever wondered why it is that Taxi even has a 'Vietnamese neighbor?' Why so many of us have so many Vietnamese neighbors? Ask them some time.

Im simply not as simple viewing or color blind as you are.

The cause and justification of the Korean, and Vietnam, wars was ostensibly to help a country in need, which one may consider just and fine.

The political need was not to help said country's at all but to facilitate the spread of western influence and power (not democracy, see Iraq, Afghanistan, Taiwan to name just a few for examples of this). The communists were at the same time engaged in the same activity, in other places of the world (BLOC countrys, China early on, Vietnam, Korea with Chinese help, Cuba).

So what you have is more or less the same acts going on all over the world, with roughly the same justifications, horrible acts, heroic acts, and propaganda tailored to each side's ideological system. The names and faces are different but the justification is identical on both sides. You simply cannot evaluate a conflict out of context or place and reasonably arrive at any kind of meaningful viewpoint. The whole conflict and most others between 1945-1990 are all interconnected and mired a political clash which is now being repeated, down to the same buzz words and propaganda in the media, on BOTH SIDES.

For the record I am not a communist, and am staunchly anti-authoritarian. I am a democratic socialist but even that label is a bit misleading, the entire socialist "idea" is so varied and diverse it boggles the mind how much good, and bad, can be arrived a through it. But it is an alternative meant to build upon and eventually replace (but not to DESTROY) capitalism and classic republican democracy. I personally believe in trying to get people to change their underlying way of looking around them, and at the world, than any particular political sentiment. Through a more well rounded and even viewpoint people can come to accomplish great things together, in any system, but first old molds and preconceptions and narrow mindedness needs to be shattered or at least, hopefully, cast in doubt.

[Xenephex]

Originally Posted by Taxi [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Ho Chi Minh was an american admirer and based his insurrection against the French colonialists on the american war of liberation against Britain.

Were you attending 'teach-ins' during the 60's? Cause I didn't think you were that old. I believed that stuff too; I'm stunned to learn that crap is still floating around. I'm sure you can find me an 'academic' source to back it up.

Ho was a communist before WW II. You might have to dig a little further than Wikipedia to get the real story on this one, but I am familiar with the myths.

[Taxi]

Originally Posted by Xenephex [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Were you attending 'teach-ins' during the 60's? Cause I didn't think you were that old. I believed that stuff too; I'm stunned to learn that crap is still floating around. I'm sure you can find me an 'academic' source to back it up.

Ho was a communist before WW II. You might have to dig a little further than Wikipedia to get the real story on this one, but I am familiar with the myths.

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VIET-NAM (SEPTEMBER 2, 1945)

https://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~e...dence-DRV.html

-------------

Ho Chi Minh's Speech, Ba Dinh Square, September 2, 1945



"All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.

The Declaration of the French Revolution made in 1791 on the Rights of Man and the citizen also states: "All men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights."

These are undeniable truths.

Nevertheless, for more than eighty years, the French imperialists, abusing the standard of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, have violated our Fatherland and oppressed our fellow citizens. They have acted contrary to the ideals of humanity and justice.

In the field of politics, they have deprived our people of every democratic liberty.

They have enforced inhuman laws; they have set up three distinct political regimes in the North, the Center, and the South of Viet-Nam in order to wreck our national unity and prevent our people from being united.

They have built more prisons than schools. They have mercilessly slain our patriots; they have drowned our uprisings in rivers of blood.

They have fettered public opinion; they have practiced obscurantism against our people.

To weaken our race they have forced us to use opium and alcohol.

In the field of economics, they have fleeced us to the backbone, impoverished our people and devastated our land.

They have robbed us of our rice fields, our mines, our forests, and our raw materials. They have monopolized the issuing of bank notes and the export trade.

They have invented numerous unjustifiable taxes and reduced our people, especially our peasantry, to a state of extreme poverty.

They have hampered the prospering of our national bourgeoisie; they have mercilessly exploited our workers.

In the autumn of 1940, when the Japanese fascists violated Indochina's territory to establish new bases in their fight against the Allies, the French imperialists went down on their bended knees and handed over our country to them.

Thus, from that date, our people were subjected to the double yoke of the French and the Japanese. Their sufferings and miseries increased. The result was that, from the end of last year to the beginning of this year, from Quang Tri Province to the North of Viet-Nam, more than two million of our fellow citizens died from starvation. On March 9 [1945], the French troops were disarmed by the Japanese. The French colonialists either fled or surrendered, showing that not only were they incapable of "protecting" us, but that, in the span of five years, they had twice sold our country to the Japanese.

On several occasions before March 9, the Viet Minh League urged the French to ally themselves with it against the Japanese. Instead of agreeing to this proposal, the French colonialists so intensified their terrorist activities against the Viet Minh members, that before fleeing they massacred a great number of our political prisoners detained at Yen Bay and Cao Bang.

Notwithstanding all this, our fellow citizens have always manifested toward the French a tolerant and humane attitude. Even after the Japanese Putsch of March, 1945, the Viet Minh League helped many Frenchmen to cross the frontier, rescued some of them from Japanese jails, and protected French lives and property.

From the autumn of 1940, our country had in fact ceased to be a French colony and had become a Japanese possession.

After the Japanese had surrendered to the Allies, our whole people rose to regain our national sovereignty and to found the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam.

The truth is that we have wrested our independence from the Japanese and not from the French.

The French have fled, the Japanese have capitulated, Emperor Bao Dai has abdicated. Our people have broken the chains which for nearly a century have fettered them and have won independence for the Fatherland. Our people at the same time have overthrown the monarchic regime that has reigned supreme for dozens of centuries. In its place has been established the present Democratic Republic.

For these reasons, we, members of the Provisional Government, representing the whole Vietnamese people, declare that from now on we break off all relations of a colonial character with France; we repeal all the international obligations that France has so far subscribed to on behalf of Viet-Nam, and we abolish all the special rights the French have unlawfully acquired in our Fatherland.

The whole Vietnamese people, animated by a common purpose, are determined to fight to the bitter end against any attempt by the French colonialists to reconquer their country.

We are convinced that the Allied nations, which at Teheran and San Francisco have acknowledged the principles of self-determination and equality of nations, will not refuse to acknowledge the independence of Viet-Nam.

A people who have courageously opposed French domination for more than eighty years, a people who have fought side by side with the Allies against the fascists during these last years, such a people must be free and independent.

For these reasons, we, members of the Provisional Government of the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam, solemnly declare to the world that Viet-Nam has the right to be a free and independent country - and in fact it is so already. The entire Vietnamese people are determined to mobilize all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives and property in order to safe guard their independence and liberty.



Source: Ho Chi Minh, Selected Works (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1977).

[Xenephex]

By the way, you're right the that U.S. was involved in the partition of Korea, but it took two to tango, just as it did in Europe. The alternative would have been communist rule of all of Korea, just as the alternative in Europe would have been communist rule of all of Germany (for example). I'm sure that would have been ok with you, but I suspect a large number of Koreans (and Germans) would have had a problem with that arrangement.

Vietnam is a little more complicated, but the real source of the problem there, post-war, was the French insistence that they have all of their colonies returned to them, even though they had collaborated with the occupiers (the Japanese in that case).

I will concede that the U.S. violated the Geneva accords in regard to re-unification (of course they hadn't signed them), and that was not a stellar moment in our history, and our subsequent history in Vietnam (even just politically) has a lot of ugly spots. No argument.

But... what would have happened had the accords been carried out at the time? What is clear is that the majority of people in the South Vietnam of 1955 did NOT want the communists to take over (a lot of them had fled the north), and chances are that what happened in 1975 would simply have happened in 1955, with the caveat that the majority would likely have had nowhere to go and there would have been that many more executions and that much more 're-education' and imprisonment.

What actually happened in those intervening 20 years makes all of that moot, but I don't think anybody at the time anticipated all that was going to happen. Yes, we were trying to establish our 'influence' in various places around the world, but....

...what has been almost completely forgotten, or ruthlessly mocked, over the years is the fact that the communists really were out to take over the world. They made no secret of it (See Krushchev / UN ). And they were almost universally pretty bad guys. With the possible exception of Yugoslavia, virtually every communist government in the history of the world has ended up being incredibly oppressive and ruthlessly violent towards any opposition. The Che's and the Trotsky's (the 'true believers') end up dead and the Stalins and the Maos end up in charge, and it ain't pleasant for whatever countries they ended up owning. Read the history of communism FROM the BEGINNING please, before you want to discount that threat.

So, in 1955, it is not unreasonable to make a case that we were at least trying to do the right thing - not just for us but for our allies and other peoples of the world - by opposing communist expansion. You can argue the results - you can argue the tactics and methods and I would end up conceding points in that discussion.

But you can't take this incredibly simplistic view of world history since WW II as some vast American plot to line our pockets and expect anyone with half a brain to take you seriously. We got from Korea... what was it again? We got from Vietnam... forgot that one too. If we were the bad guys - who were the good guys?

It's never that simple.

[Xenephex]

Taxi,

I never said Ho was a fool. But he was still a communist before World War II.

[Taxi]

So you completely ignored my posting of the vietnamese declaration of independence after saying that this "crap" was still floating around and that lol, please find me an "academic" source to back that up. Good job.

Im done for the night, dishonest interlocutor.

[Desert]

Alawen, I think you're wrong in that you assume those who aren't die hard flag wavers like yourself have given up on America.

Quite the contrary, I get the idea that people feel America has given up on Them. Nowadays, corporations are more important than human rights, Rogue nations that we are Allied with continue to tempt and threaten OUR peaceful existence by THEIR provocative actions towards their neighbors (israel was bad policy long before GW and 9/11). Do our votes even count anymore? How can you say that We have given up on America when it is so clear that, while America may not have given up on us, it's definitely forgotten.

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure."
Unfortunately for all of your hard work, founding fathers, our past few generations have turned us into a society that has lost our backbone. The only way out of this mess is by revolution (of varying degrees), BUT we're so complacent and brainwashed into believing ANY attack on america is an act of terrorism, even if said act would better our country as a whole by cleansing our wounds of dead and decaying matter.

That said, going back to my opening sentence, i personally haven't given up on America itself, only the Americans that live there. George Orwell had it wrong... Huxley is a prophet.

[Taxi]

17 minutes of footage that will prove that martial law is a real threat, at least in Canada but that is also the legal atmosphere in the western world in general where more and more democratic rights are being trampled and trivialized, notably in the UK and italy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kZwp...layer_embedded

[ShadowWulf]

Xenephex: Re-read my post, in no way did i play down communism as a threat towards what most would consider freedom, however what i did point out and you ignored is the fact that the so called "free nations" do the same exact things as the communists, just in a more acceptable, publicly friendly, and in some cases invisible manner.

In our own way were just as bad as the communists nations of yore, better in some ways, worse in others. My point isn't to harp on the known transgressions of communism but to instead point out the same acts under a different guise perpetrated by the US and other nations, but which are far FAR to easy to conceal, hide and re direct attention from in the modern world. And unfortunatly most government expansion in the 20th century has, like it or not, been driven by money, power and the desire to expand. The western world knows this, because without it a huge portion of our domestic spending would wither and die.

US, China, UK, soviet Russia were all the same just the mechanisms are a little different. I seek a new way apart from these. New ideas are needed or else well just keep rehashing the same shit every 10-20 years and giving it a new label (like the English, the Spanish, The Mexican Army, Red Menace then Terrorism for the same lines re used)

Also as of yet nobody has bothered to define this "Liberty" theyre speaking of, such a simple thing might actually help people see eye to eye since i do NOT believe people see or understand it the same wey. Often its the most common place and "universal" words that are up to so much misinterpretation by various points of view. Just a thought...

TAXI: You read anything off of Z-Net? You might like it, or not, but the articles are fascinating though some should be taken with a grain of salt. Several articles on the G20 as well just got posted. http://www.zcommunications.org/journ...jesse-freeston