RoR: Forum

Post 0

Sunday, January 21, 2007 - 5:30pm

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In the article Chavez reportedly said "Go to Hell, Gringos". Reading the article it sounded like Chavez was busily setting up his own socialist dictatorship in Venezuela getting his legislature to grant him, the President, the power to make law by decree. I read the last paragraph containing the above quote and I laughed out loud. It's occurred to him to worry about his own neck! I don't know, it makes me suspicious of what he has planned.

Post 1

Monday, January 22, 2007 - 6:22am

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Keep talking Chavez, one day you might make us give a damn about what you say and the last thing you'll see is a red dot dancing across your face.

Post 2

Monday, January 22, 2007 - 10:04am

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Let's hope that the people of Venezuela can give their tyrant the Saddam Hussein treatment.

Post 3

Monday, January 22, 2007 - 10:32am

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This man was also president of his country. This is a picture of him on Christmas 1989.

Post 4

Monday, January 22, 2007 - 12:13pm

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Is that Ceaucescu, my facial recognition is on the blink or maybe it's not?

Jim

Post 5

Monday, January 22, 2007 - 12:25pm

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I liked the Italian treatment of Mussolini. Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

On April 29 the bodies of Mussolini and his mistress were found hung upside down on meat hooks in Piazzale Loreto (Milan), along with those of other fascists, to show the population the dictator was dead. This was both to discourage any fascists to continue the fight and an act of revenge for the hanging of many partisans in the same place by Axis authorities. The corpse of the deposed leader became subject to ridicule and abuse by many who felt oppressed by the former dictator's policies.

Jim

Post 6

Monday, January 22, 2007 - 12:32pm

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Of course its Ceaucescu, just do the math. How many other dictators were assassinated that year?

I recently had a Romanian taxi driver who said that the Ceaucescu lynching was NOT a popular uprising but was staged by the Romanian KGB-analog in order to make it look like he'd been offed by the people. This allowed them to retain control of the country for a while. Heard this last December. Haven't looked into it, but thought it was interesting enough to post as an unsubstantiated claim.

My high school French teacher was a Romanian Jew. I offered to pay her to tutor me in Romanian, she said it was a filthy language and that she would never speak it, especially not for money. I was surprised, to say the least. Given that she had a NAZI tattoo on her arm, I have to assume that the Romanian regime collaborated with the Nazis. Now we just need that picture of Ahmadinejad...

(Edited by Ted Keer on 1/22, 12:34pm)

Post 7

Monday, January 22, 2007 - 12:39pm

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This is a good report on everything that happened in Romania:

http://danielsimpson.blogspot.com/2001_12_01_danielsimpson_archive.html

Post 8

Monday, January 22, 2007 - 12:43pm

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Romanian is an interesting language because it is actually a Romance language. Many Romanians have almost Spanish or Portuguese sounding names. However, Romanian does have a heavy Slavic influence and the language is interesting to listen to when spoken. I had a friend at my last job who was Romanian and it was very interesting to listen to him converse with his wife.

Jim

Post 9

Monday, January 22, 2007 - 1:51pm

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Yes the Rumanians were part of the Axis when they attacked Russia, though not without some cause, as the Russians had annexed portions of their country in early 1940 (i.e. they took it by force, but the Rumanians did not fight the annexation because they had no chance against Russia alone). Then in 1944, they switched sides and helped the Russians. So, they were not even loyal in their infamy, though of course I am sure various fascist then communist factions were in charge at the time, so I doubt their was much difference. The Hungarians hated them, and I recall my friend who had visited Hungary talking about how utterly horrible Ceaucescu was at the time (both he and his wife).

Post 10

Monday, January 22, 2007 - 2:22pm

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I was in Estonia in December 1989 helping to run the first free market conference behind the Iron Curtain. Ceaucescu and his wife were embattled, the only Eastern European country in which communism hadn't fallen. The Estonians were very pleased because they saw their freedom as next on the agenda. They were able to do it peacefully but Ceaucescu's fate was a "lesson" taught to all tyrants.

Post 11

Monday, January 22, 2007 - 2:32pm

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To give a dictator a terrible death is not only justice, but also serves as a deterrent for those who might do likewise. The message is: see the writing on the wall, don't drag your country through hell for your personal vanity and you will be held to account.

Jim

Post 12

Monday, January 22, 2007 - 6:04pm

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Romania and Hungary have long fought over Transylvania. This area includes both Hungarians and Romanians. Hungary temporarily annexed north Transylvania during WW2.

Romain took Moldova from the Russians after WW1. The USSR took it back in 1940. This was the reason for Romania wanting to attack the USSR. This was also why Finland was a reluctant member of the Axis.

Moldova has been independent since the breakup of the USSR. There is also the disputed area known as Transnistria. Transnistria's independence is not really recognized by anyone. It is on the east side of the Dneister River, while the rest of Moldova is west of it.

I first learned about it in Neil Strauss's book The Game. Apparently it is an area you should definitely avoid if you are an outsider.

Post 13

Wednesday, January 24, 2007 - 11:52pm

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Moldovan autonomy is only an artifact of the Soviet annexation. (Transnistria is a Ukranian majority province of Moldova that wishes to be annexed by Ukraine or to remain independent, depending on whom you ask, the people or the rulers.) The Moldavians were forced to use the Cyrillic alphabet for their Western tongue and while Romania (this is the preferred spelling) looked to other Western influences for new terms such as television, new terminology in Moldavia was Russified. After independence local cronyism has prevented reunification, although ethnically they are the same stock. Neither country is free in the western sense, although I can't say I've been keepin tabs on Romania recently.

The Hungarians, who long ruled Transylvania, which has a very substantial Magyar minority, hate Romania for the same reason that Serbs hate everyone. Hunggarians pride themselves as smart and industrious just like the Germans, and have never been forced to deal with their imperial past as has had Germany. Hungarians are notable for keeping their language as emmigrants. I lived in a Hungarian neighbourhood in New Brunswick, NJ. When addressed in Magyar, I always replied in Spanish. My Grandmother, a Ruthenian, said never let a Hungarian leave you house except through the same door by which they entered, so that any evil which they brought in would also leave with them. Many Ruthenians (Russians who live in Carpathian Austro-Hungary) Had the last name Toth (like "Tote") This was an insult, a word meaning "nothing" iven as an insult to peasants who applied for last names. The Enlish word "ogre" comes from the French fore Hungarian, "hongrois." Just as bugger and Bogeyman come from Bulgar.

Ed - according to my taxi-driver friend, the lesson tought by the events in Timsoara are that dictators should fear their henchman! But the execution of a murderer in any case is little offront to justice.

The history of SE Europe is a curse that keeps on giving, does anyone know why Gavrilo Princip was the most evil man of the 20th century?

Ted

Post 14

Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 8:24am

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I have wondered why Moldova didn't go back to Romania. I also wonder if there has been any movement to unite the Moldovan section of Romania with the rest of Moldova.

With regard to Princip, the only thing I know about him was that he was a Serb, who was involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife. Princip was the one who actually accomplished the goal, as there were seven assassins along the parade route.

While it is certainly true that the history of twentieth century Europe may have been different had this assassination not occurred, there are still too many other people who deserve the title of "most evil." At the time, this assassination did take place in territory (Sarajevo) that was controlled by the Hapsburgs.

Post 15

Friday, January 26, 2007 - 12:29am

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Speaking of Hugo Chavez, he 's now not only nationalizing, but threatening to throw out the US ambassador for asking for fair compensation to US companies for nationalized assets. It just keeps getting worse and worse.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070126/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/venezuela_us

Jim

Post 16

Friday, January 26, 2007 - 7:12am

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From the NY Times, Jan 24, 2007:

What exactly is Chavismo, the philosophical thrust inspiring Mr. Ch�vez? To get a glimpse, consider the brief of David Vel�squez, the president�s new minister of the popular power for participation and social development � a real job title.
Mr. Vel�squez, a bearded 28-year-old and the first member of Venezuela�s Communist Party to be named a cabinet minister, oversees one of Mr. Ch�vez�s most ambitious projects: the expansion of communal councils, local governing entities, to rival municipalities.
The councils are part of a plan to construct �socialist cities,� some from scratch in the empty interior, to be settled in part by cramped city dwellers in Caracas and Maracaibo. Mr. Vel�squez says he wants Venezuela�s state apparatus, as it exists now, to become �unnecessary.�
Some of Mr. Ch�vez�s critics compare the project to Pol Pot�s emptying of Phnom Penh in his bloody effort to remake Cambodian society in the 1970s. Mr. Ch�vez�s supporters in Congress say inspiration for the councils actually goes back further, by more than a century, to the Paris Commune of 1871, a short-lived effort to govern Paris under socialist ideals.
The Paris Commune? In 2007? In Venezuela, which is booming thanks to more than $30 billion in oil exports to the United States last year, no idea seems too fanciful to consider.

Post 17

Friday, January 26, 2007 - 7:13am

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Except for the post-soviet influences on Moldova, there was never any significant ethnic difference between it and the rest of Romania. There are more distantly related ethnic groups such as the Istro-Romanians of Croatia and the Vlachs of Northen Greece who speak dialects related to but distinct from Romanian proper. But the Transylvanians, Wallachians and Moldavians were never so diverse as the Germans, French, or Italians who all achieved national unity based on ethnic identity. For the Moldavian province of Romania to seek union with Moldova would make about as much sense as Seoul seeking to join North Korea; that is, none.

Post 18

Friday, January 26, 2007 - 7:15am

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But Mr Chavez wants to help the poor! The POOR! Doesn't anybody care about the poor?

Post 19

Friday, January 26, 2007 - 8:13am

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Barak Obama cares about the poor. He says that if elected president in 2008, he will make it a goal to have universal healthcare in the US by the end of his first term.

Bauer

(Edited by Bauer Westeren on 1/26, 8:17am)

(Edited by Bauer Westeren on 1/26, 8:20am)