laupäev, mai 24, 2008

take that, hans pöögelmann!

I used to think that Jüri Liim was a bit too intense for my taste. Sure, it was cute to see a guy in his mid-60s threaten to blow up the Bronze Soldier monument in 2006, because, in my heart, I didn't think that he would really do it.

Even better is that the stock photo of Jüri Liim used by most Estonian news organizations, as seen at left, is of Härra Liim looking down in a mix of sorrow, disgust, and vengeance, perhaps fantasizing about what old, rickety Soviet monument to take care of next. It is widely assumed that Liim is incapable of smiling, even on February 24, Estonian independence day.

But it gets better. This week Liim, presumably distressed that Prime Minister Andrus Ansip moved the Bronze Soldier to a military cemetery before he could blow it up, decided to drive around Tallinn with a crane and remove two other Soviet-era memorials to a nearby museum.

One of these monuments was to Estonian communist Hans Pöögelmann. Like all great Estonian leaders, from Lembit of Lehola to Jaan Tõnisson to Mart Laar, Pöögelmann was born in Viljandimaa in southern Estonia in 1875. Like many a good lefty, he spent some time in the journalism world before his political leanings got him a full-expenses-paid trip to Siberia courtesy of Tsar Nicholas II (whose portrait hangs in current Russian President Dmitri Medvedev's office).

After doing time in Siberia, Pöögelmann was released and fled to New York where he took in indie-rock concerts, tried ecstasy, and wrote Marxist poetry* until he returned to Tallinn in the heady year of 1917. Pöögelmann was "economic affairs minister" of the short-lived Estonian Workers' Commune, set up in Narva in November 1918, that lasted six months.

Unwilling to submit to the sinine-must-valge, Pöögelmann fled to Moscow in 1923 where he held various administrative positions in the Comintern and wrote nasty books about Estonian President Konstantin Päts until he, and his fellow Estonian Workers' Commune members-in-exile Jaan Anvelt, Johannes Käspert, Rudolf Vakmann, and Otto Rästas, were executed during Stalin's Great Purge in 1938.

For these reasons, Russian state-owned media outlets RIA Novosti and Russia Today have referred to Pöögelmann as a "Soviet war hero" or "Soviet soldier" and raised the possibility that Liim's actions might provoke some response on the part of the local Estonian Russian community, who it presumes to hold Pöögelmann and his socialist virtues in high esteem. They also have written Jüri Liim's name as "Yuri Lijm" for shits and giggles.

From my perspective, Liim is looking more and more like some kind of street performer than a rabid nationalist. I mean, how many Estonians even know who Hans Pöögelmann is? How many care if his memorial stone is in a museum or outside a university or part of the foundation for Jüri Liim's new sauna. Nobody cares.

This is the kind of crap that only news media and blogs will write about. The only unbelievable thing is how an Estonian communist who was executed by Stalin in 1938 is rendered a "Soviet World War II hero" in Russian state-owned media. Liars.

* Pöögelmann never tried ecstasy or listened to indie rock. I was just making that up. He did, however, publish a newspaper in New York, Uus Ilm.

83 kommentaari:

Bäckman ütles ...

The resemblance to Count Olaf is striking (just picture him driving a crane).

Jüri Liim's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

martintg ütles ...

I guess Jüri Liim has taken the "Teeme ära" campaign to heart.

Anonüümne ütles ...

Speaking of rabid people where is anuunomne ? I miss you/him. Come home anuunomne all is forgiven... You can bring your korean juice box too..

Rainer ütles ...

Puu has an imaginary friend :)))

Bäckman ütles ...

Anuunomne has retired and is living in Tuolomne.

Wahur ütles ...

In Soviet time Liim was widely considered a KGB provocator - together with his buddy Madisson. To my knowledge this company provided people with lifelong employment. So don't take him too seriously.

Ain Kendra ütles ...

I don't think he's paid guy. As well as Madisson (happen to know him through common friends). Well they both are - how to say - a little shifted.
And as far, as I understood, these statues were nobody's owned and Liim asked permission from landowners to move these statues to museum - what is exactly what he did.
Compare now the action of Liim transporting soviet statues to museum with soviets themselves who tried to destroy every old statue.

martintg ütles ...

puu ütles...
Speaking of rabid people where is anuunomne ? I miss you/him. Come home anuunomne all is forgiven...


Sounds like you are hooked Puu. The ancient courtship ritual of pigtail pulling has worked its charm once again. Succumb to this sweet seduction, and as sure as viinakuu follows heinakuu, there will be joyous sound of little Anuunomnes pulling the pigtails of little Puus.

And so the great wheel of life turns once again....

LPR ütles ...

Puu, mu arm, I've been watching you girl. Just watching.

Here's to you, kiddo.

My hot and bothered pruut, you little vaene vanemateta laps.


(Somehow, I now need to log in in order to post. Shucks!)

Unknown ütles ...

Well, actually one of the land owners filed a complaint to the police about Liim removing the statue. That's why he's facing criminal charges.

LPR ütles ...

I find his name kinda ironic. Liim. Can't think of the better word to describe this character.

Anonüümne ütles ...
Autor on selle kommentaari eemaldanud.
Kristopher ütles ...

Liim comes unglued

Obscure monument proves sticking point

Liim sticks it to Pöögelmann

Crazy glue: one man's mission

Super glue! (in a more sympathetic paper)

Vigilante's cut and paste job on history

Stuck on the past (The Economist-style)

LPR ütles ...

Kristopher - 10 points! :-)

Anonüümne ütles ...

HH creepy...Though I will be in a bar next weekend singing Brecht on a turned around chair if you really like to watch...

Giustino ütles ...

I still don't understand how a person can die in 1938 and be a "Soviet World War II hero" at the same time. Does that mean that I can be a Soviet war hero too, if Russian media decides that I am?

Anonüümne ütles ...

Also, if pigtail pulling implies foreplay then pigtail pulling between little sibling anunoomnes and little puus conceived Disney Lady and the Tramp style with representative clones of each parent in the litter implies incest somewhat. Which I suppose does happen in the circle of life... But just as John Dewey and Bishop Berkeley and Descartes seek to seperate themselve from political philosophy and seek the pure meaning of existance... I seek to seperate myself from the continual tumerescent effects of womanhood and engage in pure unadulterated debate about maniacs removing war monuments.

Anonüümne ütles ...

To begin with, Kant’s distinction between Juri Liim being contingent and particular knowledge, and monuments moving being universal and necessary knowledge, must be kept in mind. For if we merely connect Juri Liim and monuments moving together in a perceiving subject, the knowledge will always be subjective because it is derived a posteriori, when what is desired is for the knowledge to be objective, that is, for the two intuitions to refer to the object and hold good of it necessarily universally for anyone at anytime, not just the perceiving Itching for eestimaa in its current condition. Now what is equivalent to moving monuments but Juri Liim, that is to say, universal and necessary knowledge? Nothing, and hence before a monument can be moved, it must be incorporated under an a priori category of the Juri Liim.
For example, say a subject says “Juri Liim approaches the monument, the monument moves ”, which is all he perceives in perception. His judgment is contingent and holds no necessity. But if he says “Juri Liim causes the monument to move”, he subsumes the perception under the category of causality, which is not found in the perception, and necessarily synthesizes the concept Juri Liim with the moved monument, producing a necessarily universally true judgment.

Anonüümne ütles ...

The Decembrists are actually writing a song about Hans Poogelman, Hans Poogelman is a Soviet war hero because he got swallowed by a whale while trying to nationalize the fishing industry.
What I really want to know is what sort of a name is Hans for a Soviet War hero... is there their any more possibly Germanic name than Hans?

I mean imagine a childrens book : Hans the Soviet war hero, Hans of Stalingrad..WTF?

Though I'm discriminating...Hans sounds like a fun guy... I would preform my cabaret act for him..

Anonüümne ütles ...
Autor on selle kommentaari eemaldanud.
LPR ütles ...

Puu. Ah man. When a chick rambles off like that about Decartes and Kant, all trembly and corss-eyed - I can't help it - I get mucho horney.

Damn girl! You got the chops, bay-bee!

Philosophizing pole-dancer.

Anonüümne ütles ...

Again, HH TMI... Please, this is a family show ( childrens cabaret) keep your horniness to yourself...
I only love Hans Poogelman... He is the man of my dreams... You'll have to take this up with him..

Kristopher ütles ...

Kristopher - 10 points! :-)

I was going for douze.

It's a rare equine animal who lets out an appreciative whinny at glue-related (attempted) humour. Thx ;)

Anonüümne ütles ...

Hans Poogelman reminds me of a art school boyfriend I had in college. His political convictions were utopian and mostly harmless and the reason he railed against the establishment was because he discovered it was a good way to see the world and get grants from the Getty foundation. He was a lover not a fighter to put it mildly.Poogelman sounds like lots of people you encounter on the LES, I'm sure he would have liked Isadora Duncan.These type of people are usually idealists. It is unfortunate that they get appropriated by larger totaliatarian forces.
I think that Estonia needs to acknowledge the atrocities that occured during WWII but also not get into Macarthian histeria about communists, because too much of that and you get Pinochet and South Africa under Apartheid. It needs to follow the middle way. So yes this in particular is ridiculuous

Kristopher ütles ...

I know a secret or two about Puu
she won't mind if i tell you
I know a secret or two about Puu
I know a secret about Puu and you

and she sticks just like glue
and the boys say: "hey Puu what's new?"' hey Puu what's new?
my friend Puu just goes: "P.U."
my friend Puu just goes: "P.U."

-Sonic Youth, 1990

Anonüümne ütles ...

If you're friends with P then your friends with me.

Unknown ütles ...

"One time when nobody was looking I humped the leg of the Bronze man and gots serious wood [puu -eds.] and I got so aroused I made a mess all over the flowers and medals of some old babes. Cops arrested me and took me in for lewd conduct. Then they let me go. Thank you, Memorex."

-Eddie Savisaar, interview, Äripuu

"If Kristopher thinks he's such a fancypants poet, tell him to meet me in the men's room tomorrow at 21:15."

-Eddie Savisaar, [overheard]

Bäckman ütles ...

I've always wondered why the authorities always let Savisaar get off.

Giustino ütles ...

Savisaar got invited to go shake Myedvyedyev's hand next month. It will be Ilves, Ansip, and Savisaar, traveling together. Do you think they'll share a room?

Bäckman ütles ...

If you're friends with P then your friends with me.

If I'm friends with your tongue then I'm friends with you?!
:S

Couldn't we just stick to philosophy?

John Menzies ütles ...

To Mr. Giustino -- I'm glad you asked.

Since you mooted the idea, they have no choice but to share a room now.

It's damned if they do, damned if they don't.

If they get separate rooms, especially double room/single occupancy, they will be accused of wasting taxpayer money.

Now that you have popped the question, and it is clear that something sordid is going on here, sharing a room would also be controversial.

If I were a small white figure perched on the Estonian politicians' shoulder, which I am not, I would recommend that they hold a John Lennon-style bed-in with journalists in the room 24/7.

That would keep the visit verifiably platonic - though given the third party who knows -- and it has the side effect of preventing the Russians -- whatever their president's name was again -- from stealing the show on their home turf.

Anonüümne ütles ...

People need to polish their 1990's indie rock knowledge. Jees. I really don't understand why every time I make a comment I get references to sex with multi orgasmic korean women, frottage with war monuments, procreating with equestrians, and unseemly acts involving the former major of Tallinn and mens bathrooms. I mean has anyone even seen me... I would win US weeklies worst beach body hands down... my bottom looks like cottage cheese and saddle bags.. I have a major muffin top... my teeth are falling out ...It must be because as Alan Greenspan says power is a great aphrodisiac. I was in the Path the other day and there were these teenage girl squealing over a picture of Donald Trump in all his toupeed glory and saying " Ohhh my god he's so hot..." Like girls what have you been smoking... when has Donald Trumpp ever been hot. He can get you a hot apartment though... So I must have something people want to make everyone so hot and bothered... Information maybe? Hmmm...

Anonüümne ütles ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingria

Anonüümne ütles ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingria

LPR ütles ...

cottage cheese and saddle bags... so you DO have a sense of humor after all, eh?

LPR ütles ...

Othewise I was thinking it was just the meds talking. Kinda creepy.

Unknown ütles ...

Greenspan? They can brush up on their Indie rock knowledge, and you can get your apocryphal quotations and references straight. Henry the Horndog.

"Power is a big turn-on. But collecting dirt on my ambitious colleagues, storing it away and using it against them to get what I want? Now that's priceless. It makes me get a boner."

-Eddie Savisaar, interview, Eesti Playgirl

Anonüümne ütles ...

HH the only one taking meds is you...lay off the viagra will ya?
We all know you got the hots for Madeline Albright but you shouldn't let preformance anxiety push you into drug abuse, you will be able to please Ms. Albright just as you are...

Unknown ütles ...

I wonder when will blogger introduce comment moderation by rating. There are some real "-1.0 obnoxious" ones here. I can deal with the liberal element and the smut but some of this stuff isn't even funny.

plasma-jack ütles ...

word. sarcasm is not a weapon fit for amateurs.

Anonüümne ütles ...

Kissinger and Greenspan amd Savisaar and Ansip and Ilves were all sharing a room. Fine.

Anonüümne ütles ...

It just a sign of where journalism has gone in general.. nothing Guistinos's contributed too, but people think Paris Hilton's more important than global warming or monuments being moved in estonia ( the latter may be true). And often like
in the case of people like HH who would rather talk about feather brain stuff like korean call girls
and Britneys panties, you have to do some stooping to their level.

LPR ütles ...

OK, I give up. I was enjoying meta-blogging for awhile. That is to comment on people who comment on people who comment on life in their personal blogs. But it's getting old.

I don't know. Thea weather outside is darn beautiful too. What's it all worth anyway?

Anonüümne ütles ...

Meta blogging's fine but you need to observe some basic rules of etiquette. It's ok to share aspects of your personal life ( I certainly do), but you should do so in a way that respects others... if others don't like
what you are writing about, sex with multi-orgasmic korean call girls for example, you should take into account the feelings of other people in the group before attacking them.I am sorry about my disparaging remarks about Korean women and disrespecting women in general will get you much further than personal attacks on other bloggers. Such attacks result in open warfare, as demonstrated here and negatively affect the quality of the space in general.

Kristopher ütles ...

It's like the first twenty minutes of Fight Club here. What happened?

Frank ütles ...

Might be the opening line "Take that" has had an incentive quality ...

In true spirit one might add the question: anybody in favour of moving the Alexander Newski Cathedral on Toompea to a more befitting place?

Anonüümne ütles ...

While I'm officially being bitchy I just have to say in addition to his general misogyny that also all of HH's pseudo hip hop bay -be and laying pipe
and hush my muofth( that may have been someone else),is really lame, it's racist and condenscending and as bad if not worse than Don Imus. I'm not black but I know lots of people who are and noone talks like that. The people that talk like that are usually white and putting on some sort of minstral show, possibly on MTV. Or Kevin Federline, who despite his beliefs to the contrary is in fact white. If HH were to show his face in any public highschool in the five burroughs and talk like that he would very likely get his ass kicked, so being respectful pays in lots of ways. :)
I'm done for now. sorry about the mess.

Anonüümne ütles ...
Autor on selle kommentaari eemaldanud.
Anonüümne ütles ...

Seriously though you wouldn't want to move a church, lots of Estonians are old believers and Russians too. And moving monuments to estonian communists is silly too. And fight clubs a silly movie.
Lydia Koidula died in St Peterburg there is nothing wrong with old believers of old Russia, it just a monuments to a liberation were thousands died might be, and people need to leave it there.

Bäckman ütles ...

I'm not black but

Wait -- you're not black?

Unknown ütles ...

"Fight Club made Eddie horny. I'm no homo, but Brad Pitt is a goodlooking mees. Strip him down to the waist, let him beat on Ed Norton ("Ed"!!!), and then let the boner soar. Here's the thing about boners. Go to my party website. There is that picture and message imploring to remember and asking if you want to know more. Right? That is not addressing you. It was Eddie teasing the hot chick in glasses. Miss M's lips said 'no,' but her eyes said 'yes.' But your question was about Britney. I apologise for going off on a tangent half cocked."

-Eddie Savisaar, interview, The Economist (a.k.a. "Ed Lukas"!!!)

martintg ütles ...

Puu ütles...
And moving monuments to estonian communists is silly too


Marxist-Leninist ideology has proven to be misanthropic. So why would we want monuments to Estonian commies who supported the destruction of independent Estonia?

Unknown ütles ...

"Seriously though you wouldn't want to move a church, lots of Estonians are old believers and Russians too."

You would not suggest that the Alexander Newski Cathedral was built for religious reasons in the first place, would you?

According to what I have been told the idea was a demonstration of power and of the prospect of russification.

Anonüümne ütles ...

Yeah, but lots of churches have complicated histories.Just look at Hagia Sofia... symbol of a new rome, the Crusades and the power of Islam all in one. Or Churches in Jeruselem, which mean so many things to so many people. And destroying churches goes into Stalinist turning churches into movie theaters or taliban blowing up buddhas territory. And like I'm saying about Lydia Koidula most Estonians didn't have that much of a problem with Tsarist Russia, ( except of course my love Hans Poogelman).. yeah lots of people were serfs but that changed in the 1860s and slavophile movements could in some ways complement other nationalist movements, like estonian nationalism for example. Free speech and religious freedom should both be guarded,( which is why a synagogue opened up in Estonia last year). Though the current government in Russia uses this nostaligia for Tsarist times to its advantage to broker power.

Anonüümne ütles ...

Sven, marting , and bureau it's been lovely chatting...
excuse me for a moment while I talk to VK.

VK -So, eyes saying yes and lips saying no is no...and not listening to no is statuory rape in all states. Though, I understand your protagonist is involved in statuory statue humping so maybe he's just attracted to the word statue... Statue.. statue... statue... rhymes so nicely with statute. If you cool the Larry Flint persona,it will be greatly appreciated.

Anonüümne ütles ...

I personally am not that much against communists... in the sense of romantic internationalist as to totalitarianism which is what russian communism became. My grandpa's cousin was the head of a collective farm....He seemed like a nice guy. The Catholic church was one of the first romantic internalist movements, I was raised Catholic. Like when I see a plaque to Trotsky on a house where he used to live in the East Village I think that's interesting and romantic. Trotskys ok, here. He had sex with Frieda Kahlo ( HH or VK any comments on a Ed Frieda Kahlo Troksy Sandwich feel free)..I like her.. I don't especially object to people wearing Che T-shirts ( though I think the Cher ones are better). There are lots of Amercan celebrities, like Sean Penn railing against... america.. I still watch sean penn movies... I think Angela Davis has good points even though she said the communists dissenters in Czech Republic got what they deserved... She's certainly brave... It's a strange world. There are no absolutes. My godmother's picture is the Tallinn Linna museum carrying a sign that says freedom for estonia...as a teenager it's a really famous photo...iconic.. She now runs est type seminars with a guy who did development in the SSR and is probably tied to some of the Soviet mess.Chalk it up to rebellion What are you going to do... Poogelman might have written some stuff but he didn't hurt anyone... It's like removing a monument to Micheal Moore... or Frank Zappa, who cares either way...But it's not really incipant fascism either... just people sore from abuse and occupation.

Giustino ütles ...

I personally am not that much against communists... in the sense of romantic internationalist as to totalitarianism which is what russian communism became.

I've actually come to despise them, both in the past and in the present.

I used to be somewhat affiliated with the student left. The modern socialists and the communists were the most annoying group of self-important blowhards (outside the neoconservatives and, to some extent, the libertarians) that one will ever meet.

You see, they knew that no one would ever buy their BS (which they couldn't even agree upon themselves). So they had to wait for a "revolution", whereby they somehow would co-opt a genuine public movement and then force everyone else to live according to their fantasies.

Trotsky and Lenin quite obviously subscribed to this ideology. And there was nothing romantic about executing the Mensheviks or grinding little Aleksei Romanov's bones to shards to erase all memory of the royal family.

In other words, they suck. It's ok to have opinions about the past, Puu. In America we still are sore that Benedict Arnold sold us out for some limey money.

Anonüümne ütles ...

Yeah... in America we tarred and feathered tax collectors and expelled lots of native americans from their lands that wasn't our finest moment either.
It's a shame that British, Germans and even American troops weren't able to break through Turkey in 1917 in the hinge of history battle. Communism gave us Cambodia. The fight against communism gave the Chilean Junta. It's a mixed bag and once you start to formulate overarching statementsa( about what is bad ) you get into trouble.

Giustino ütles ...

It's a mixed bag and once you start to formulate overarching statements a (about what is bad) you get into trouble.

My statements are based on my experiences as a human being, not as a devotee to any particular ideology.

As I said, I have personal reasons to dislike communists. Most of the communists I have met in person have been disagreeable factionalists who fantasize about remaking the world in their image.

That doesn't mean I don't feel the same way about the neoconservatives. But there has been some linkage between the Trotskyite left and the neoconservative right for some time, hasn't there?

Anonüümne ütles ...

There's also been a link between the Trotskyite left and the fashion industry for sometime... leftist consumer capitalism (the link between the left and neo cons revealed, it's HBO and shoes). So? I don't personally own any Che Guevera gear but I don't run from the room if I see someone wearing it. I like Orwell... What are you going to do...

Anonüümne ütles ...

Also have you read the bible? What is that about if not making the world in ones image. For better or worse.

Giustino ütles ...

So? I don't personally own any Che Guevera gear but I don't run from the room if I see someone wearing it.

Neither do I. But I am saying don't be fooled by October Revolution romanticism. Those guys made the Tsar look like Santa Claus.

LPR ütles ...

So the above exchange is basically the example of what liberal arts majors produce in America. The irony is that as at least in the CCCP this kind of artsi-fartsi babble was taught for free while you yanks are up to your eyeballs in debt trying to pay your student loans for worthless trivia. Take that woman in my office. This never-married, over-worked, under-fucked, overweight ball of neuroses and hangups, broken and bankrupt is in her mid 40s and I hear her argue with her student loan officer. She's gonna be clear when she's 60 or something! And she's a securities law attorney.

No wonder US dollar is in the dumps. Its all because of this big meaningless babble. American babble. Hot air.

But who am I to crtiticize? I get paid basically for the same shit. For blowing hot air. I signed up with the same effin shit. Now bitching and biting the hand that feeds me. Puu is right to hate me. Because she hates herself just as well.

Oh, well. Life's ironies. They kill ya, man, they really do.

Anonüümne ütles ...

And your philosophy, HH, is ideologically closest to this guy's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_LaVey

Anonüümne ütles ...

Anton LaVey

Anonüümne ütles ...

Fixed the link sorry.

Giustino ütles ...

So the above exchange is basically the example of what liberal arts majors produce in America.

I have no idea what we were talking about. It started off with Communists and then somehow wound up at the Bible.

Anonüümne ütles ...

I get the " You make no fucking sense" thing alot. The thing is I just draw on a lot of different sources.
The thing is the communists were bad, they did make the tsar look like Santa Claus...but they came from a lot of romanticism... just read Turgenev Fathers and Sons for example... Everyone is brainwashed to some extent ( like HH, doing Chinese style lets have capitalism without political freedom and democracy rants)... but you are always going to have art and fashion and art and fashion may be stupid student loan increasing follies but they take the same debates and win the same battles that are often carried out at the point of a gun with no more loss of life than losing face or suffering middle school type humiliation.

LPR ütles ...

See!? What the fuck was THAT supposed to be? Just right now? What was that?

Jheeezh!

(Shaking head, folding the laptop in disgust)

ARK ütles ...

This is probably my own pathology surfacing, but I usually make a distinction between silly satire (even if crass) and more serious comments. Too bad that one has to step so carefully, or litter a posting with disclaimers, so as to avoid being taken wrongly, or unintentionally sidetracking the discussion.

Speaking of distinctions, a quick thought in response to puu:

Agreed, there are few absolutes. But there are some absolutes, or at least hard facts. Who was it that said, 'One who loves everything loves nothing'? (Bismarck?) The 'I'm okay, you're okay,' 'on the one hand this, on the other hand that' gets in the way of clear-eyed historical understanding. Kingsley Amis called this tendency (in the British press) "pernicious neutrality."

I've always found the continued romanticization of types like Trotsky and Che mystifying. Interesting historical figures worthy of attention, sure. But their bloody records speak for themselves.

I wonder if puu or others would be as tickled to pass by a building with a plaque informing passersby, 'Here Eva Braun urinated on Adolf Hitler during one steamy night of passion.'

Might want to keep on a theme, puu, rather than bouncing all over the place, from East to West, Trotsky to Bible. Maybe it's a matter of my own intellectual limitations, but it is hard to follow sometimes. Reads less like erudition-at-work than a ganja-fuelled carpet-ride. Otherwise, the off-beaten-path viewpoints are welcome; the sound of too manhy bloggers nodding in unison gets boring at times.

As for Hirnu-Hrnx!'s latest dump, I'm afraid that old Latin legal phrase res ipsa loquitur fits. The ad hominem extrapolation from puu's flight to American downfall says more about Hirnu-Hrnx!'s intellectual tack than the US postsecondary education. (One wonders why the flow of students is from east to west, and, with few idiosyncratic exceptions, not the other way around...) Not to mention Hirnu-Hrnx! missing that early-life training in how to be a European gentlemen ('overweight,' 'underfucked', etc.)

Oh, well.

Giustino's right: the Bolshies and Commies weren't very nice guys.

Lenin was a jerk. Stalin was a dick.

Che stunk. (Literally: he refused to wash, and was proud of that -- some political statement there. El chancho, indeed.)

I'd like to hear how G went from some affiliation with the student left to canvassing for John McCain. Sounds like quite an interesting ideological journey within the space of a few years.

Life is weird. The blogosphere is weirder still.

Why can't we all just get along?

Scratch that last question.

Anonüümne ütles ...

I'm not tickled but you have to be cogniscent of the fact that in American/world culture in general a type of Romantic Internationalism is held in high regard and if you stop addressing that, stop laying a claim on it then you lose a lot of people.People don't read they go to the movies. Fighting communists ( unless you are watching John McCain's movie... and I mean no disrepect to Congressman McCain...I think he's an extremely brave man and he got totally screwed in the 2000 election in Carolina) does not get good press in Hollywood for the most part. Let's just consider all the Che movies that are out. Or enemy at the gates...Bring up communists and you get the fact that the Reichstag burning was fingered as a communist plot as was imprisoning Nelson Mandela and students being attacked in the very fashionable riots in Paris in the 60's.It's all true. If you don't aknowledge these things as a centrist and try to extract some validity from them then you concede the whole game of defending socialistic ideas which as Scandinavia and other countries have shown have value to extremely pro- Moscow people like HH. Who sometimes also happen to be uncouth. You do have a whole generation in the former soviet union shaped by communism and then another whole generation in the western world, especially much reviled liberal arts colleges sympathetic to it though movies and fashion. Just telling them that the way they figured out to stick it to boring old suburban mom and dad isn't going to work. What's going on culturally needs to be acknowledged.

Anonüümne ütles ...

Just telling them that the way they figured out to stick it to boring old suburban mom and dad is the source of untold human suffering isn't going to work.

Anonüümne ütles ...

If you don't aknowledge these things as a centrist and try to extract some validity from them then you concede the whole game of defending socialistic ideas which as Scandinavia and other countries have shown have value, to extremely pro- Moscow people like HH.

Giustino ütles ...

Well, I think what you are getting at is how do we handle the Marxist legacy in the West, Puu.

That's a good question. Certainly a lot of my values or ideas have been shaped directly or indirectly by Marxist thought.

But here's my question in response: is it really Marxist thought, or is it something else? Marx wasn't an abolitionist. Marx didn't write the Declaration of Independence or the Rights of Man.

I would say that ideology is a bit of the problem. The workers movements of the late 19th century weren't formed because Marx wrote some nice theories. They were formed because working conditions stunk.

I'd like to hear how G went from some affiliation with the student left to canvassing for John McCain. Sounds like quite an interesting ideological journey within the space of a few years.

I am not canvassing for McSame, though I appreciate the link. I do have, at my heart, very social democratic tendencies. That is, it makes me very angry when people are denied health coverage or when old people spend the end of their lives in poverty. I think that a society that is whole, that invests in its people, eventually reaps the rewards. That's why when brains do travel east, they are headed for the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.

That's just one side of my feelings though. Obviously I am also warm to economically liberal thought. But I dislike the liberals because every time there's a question, they go running for the literature. "Oh, what do the great economic liberal philosophers say about this?!"

Plus the liberals steal blatantly social democratic ideas and then parade them around like they were their own. They say Rasmussen is more of a social democrat than the Danish social democratic party. I agree.

Kristopher ütles ...

Che was a Stalinist prick. So much of what went wrong after 1959 is due to him. Otherwise not only would you have a dictatorship with no cult of personality, itself novel, you might even have a revolution without disappeared people and tortured prisoners. Would Castro even have finally gone communist if not for that batistiano bore of a barbudo?

Discussion sounds like late night AM skip. Skip being a radio term.

ARK, I won't ever used to you calling Giustino "G" given the other, Latvian G. I keep on thinking he's entered the discussion and if this keeps up, he surely will.

Giustino ütles ...

Che was a Stalinist prick. So much of what went wrong after 1959 is due to him.

He's, mostly, an unknown to those who poster their walls in his image.

Guevara was from an upper-class Argentinian family, so his metamorphosis from journal-carrying, motorcycling youth to gun-toting revolutionary is inspirational to academics who dream of social change yet sit around at liberal arts colleges and write books about social change instead.

I think this was Che's appeal to the lefty intellectuals, because Che was of their same middle-to-upper class background and he was multilingual and, oh boy, did he look cool. He was like a Stalinist friggin' James Dean.

But I just don't get how despising your own political leadership leads some "revolutionaries" to fall in love with foreign leaderships that are just as bad, if not worse.

Sure, the Black Panthers (Angela Davis was cited before) had some reasons to despise the city of Oakland when they were formed in 1966. But how they got from "policing their own streets" to meeting with Mao is beyond me.

Ditto for Che. How he got from despising Latin American economic policies to touring Red Square is confusing at best. How anyone could read one book -- like Das Kapital or the Communist Manifesto -- and intrinsically believe that it was a) all correct and b) needed to be enforced by gun point, is perplexing.

Talk about opiate of the masses, hallucinogenic of the masses more like.

Anonüümne ütles ...

They got there because the soviet union was parroting the words of their discontent. It wasn't a
solution and the system( solution) was actually much worse than the system being criticised but a big part of the propaganda machine did push a seeming idealogical almost religious solution to the problem.
And people were drawn to that like hippies on a pilgrimage. The new age is just as bad for the most part.

Anonüümne ütles ...

Senator McCain and Larry Flynn sorry,

Bäckman ütles ...

or as the Flynt family members back in Kentucky spell it, Fleeun.

Anonüümne ütles ...
Autor on selle kommentaari eemaldanud.
Anonüümne ütles ...
Autor on selle kommentaari eemaldanud.
ARK ütles ...

KMR, dunno if you're being facetious about Che & Fidel. But methinks Che was the romantic emigre sucker who got screwed in the end. It was Che who wanted to go the more "purist" ideological route -- quite willing and able to break eggs along the way -- whilst Fidel is often (credibly) pointed to as having set up Furry-Stinky (Che) for his final demise in the Bolivian jungle. Methinks Fidel was in the driver's seat all along. But, I wasn't there (with a candle), so who knows? (Probably some dying Cuban in a track suit.)

Also, if, by nature, vacuums must be filled, then doesn't every hole need a G?

I feel oddly guilty for not offering up an Esto connection in this off-kilter thread.

So, here goes:

---> Jüri Liim has received coverage in the Canadian press. Okay, well, sort of: Eesti Elu.

---> Kristiina Ojuland, Estonia's one-time foreign minister, has been to Canada, I'm fairly certain. She got canned over FM documents going missing a couple years ago.

---> And, very recently, Canada's foreign minister got nudged over a similar offence, albeit under sexier circumstances.

So, there. Anyway, I tried.

What do you want me to say?

That Che, Trotsky and Savisaar once met in Rakvere to compare notes, and that they ate cheese together?

Kristopher ütles ...

Castro was certainly not the romantic of the two, that is for sure.

To me, it is hard to swallow that Casto would sell out anyone to the Americans, but my knowledge of Che's later campaigns is spotty.