(09-25-2011, 04:10 PM)kandrathe Wrote: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2046.html

According to the CIA world fact book, US has 12% (2004) living in poverty, Denmark has 12.1%(2007).

(09-25-2011, 04:32 PM)kandrathe Wrote: I am guilty of not reference checking the quote. I agree the quote took liberal license with the translation, and that they took it out of context.

(09-25-2011, 04:37 PM)Jester Wrote: You warn us about the problem of using relative vs. absolute measures of poverty, and then walk smack dab into that exact problem? The CIA world fact book explicitly states that these figures are not comparable...

By US "absolute" measures of poverty, Denmark has almost no poverty. By Danish "relative" measures of poverty, the US is a lot worse than 12%. (Actually, even by US standards, it's higher - about 15%. Remember the crisis?)

Poverty scarcely exists in Denmark, by absolute or most historical measures. In the United States, it's worse, although you're right to say that there is nothing like what exists in most third world countries, either in terms of inequality, or in terms of absolute deprivation.

Quote:

(09-25-2011, 04:32 PM)kandrathe Wrote: I am guilty of not reference checking the quote. I agree the quote took liberal license with the translation, and that they took it out of context.

That's not "liberal licence". Spanish is not that hard - sentences about millions of atomic casualties do not appear and disappear based on translation nuances! They are simply inventing things, whole cloth, in order to make their ideological opponents look bad.

Funny enough, the context is actually more or less correct. It is an address by Che, telling the people of the world they must nurture their hate as part of hardening themselves for revolutionary struggle - which is more or less the same context Conservapaedia et al. present it in. It's the content that's the problem...

(09-25-2011, 05:03 PM)kandrathe Wrote: It's not really invention, other than in construction. It is actually snippets of many statements made by Che, over time, then sewn together much like a Micheal Moore film.

(09-25-2011, 08:18 PM)Jester Wrote: P.S.: Even in the retraction, you can't help but take the shot at Michael Moore?

(09-25-2011, 08:18 PM)Jester Wrote: They change tone drastically, and create new, and false, meanings by putting (falsified, exaggerated) sentences together which were never meant to be attached to one another.

(09-25-2011, 08:18 PM)Jester Wrote: P.S.: Even in the retraction, you can't help but take the shot at Michael Moore?

(09-24-2011, 03:17 PM)kandrathe Wrote: When it comes down to the negotiation of care, ALL of my poor friends get the care they need, but maybe not the care they want. I'm reminded of a close friend who is a very poor artist. She needed a $30,000 (rock bottom price) surgery and didn't have insurance or that kind of money. She ended up negotiating a deal where she would make a sculpture in exchange. Barring that, her cadre of artist friends were willing to step in and help out too. By far, most of my personal experience and the stories of "denied" that I hear of are from people with insurance where the insurance company refuses to pay after the fact.

(09-24-2011, 03:17 PM)kandrathe Wrote: The question is not "Would you treat him?" The questions was, "Should someone be forced to treat him at their own expense?" And, people always get confused by this... insurance <> health care. Insurance is a financial product where you abate risk. I can afford to pay $13500 per year for health insurance to protect me from the rare chance I'll need millions of dollars of health care.

(09-26-2011, 04:13 AM)kandrathe Wrote: Well, no, Che said all those things. Just that it was over 10 years, and not in that one context. I'm sure if you cherry picked and arranged statements from any politician talking about wars or conflict, you could paint them as a monster. But, as I said, I was really just interested in the statement he made about fanning the flames of hatred to rile up the people into a revolutionary fervor. Which was from the conference cited.

Quote:Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy.

(09-26-2011, 12:48 PM)Jester Wrote: While that is no doubt closer to Che's intentions, he didn't say that part either. That's also from the false version. What he said was:

Quote:Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy.

(09-26-2011, 01:47 PM)kandrathe Wrote: Hatred was a tool for Che evidence in much of what he said and did, such as "This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate."

(09-26-2011, 02:20 PM)Jester Wrote: (Every once in awhile, I wonder if you're not intentionally trying to drive me crazy...)

At risk of sounding like a broken record, do you have a source on that? Wikiquote has that one as "disputed," being an unsourced assertion from an anti-Che article titled "Che Guevara: Assassin and Bumbler" by Humberto Fontova, a fierce anti-Communist partisan who "lathers himself into a rage" when it comes to Che. Read for yourself; is this man within a thousand miles of being objective?

Simply being "Che-ish" is not sufficient. Give the man his own words, please.

(09-26-2011, 03:02 PM)kandrathe Wrote: Fontova has no reason to be objective, and yes, he is not writing as a historian but more of a witness for the prosecution against Che. He is biased, as any exile who has lost family to the firing squads would be. He paints a more accurate picture of the bloody and ruthless mass murdering revolutionary guerrilla Che, than does the usual liberal sop painting him as the romanticized pop icon adorning t-shirts and inspiring college radical wanna-be's.

(09-26-2011, 03:34 PM)Jester Wrote: Regardless, whatever one thinks of him, neither he nor anyone else is allowed to pollute the historical record by making up "quotes" and putting them in the mouth of his enemies. One does not paint a "more accurate picture" by making stuff up. The credibility of the rest of his interpretation is called into question, as it would be for anyone fabricating evidence.

(09-26-2011, 03:48 PM)kandrathe Wrote: I tend to lend more credence to the victims, rather than the brute.

(09-26-2011, 03:50 PM)Jester Wrote: Truthiness is insufficient. Indeed, we should be *most* suspicious of unsourced or badly sourced claims that reinforce our preconceptions, because those are the ones most likely to get past our bullshit detectors.

(09-26-2011, 04:03 PM)kandrathe Wrote: I reject that. Documentation is good, when you can get it. But, "Truth" is often more elusive and requires one to see between the lines. Facts, and material evidence are great and usually incontrovertible, however, the crime scene is usually scrubbed clean over time.

By reviewing all the evidence for and against him, I find that Che was a barbaric war criminal who riled up his supporters into a murderous frothy rage.

How about; Che Guevara's Forgotten Victims.

(09-26-2011, 04:31 PM)Jester Wrote: And you are unworried by confirmation bias? Because it scares me to death, as a historian. And it should scare you too, if you're interested in being objective.

Quote:My argument is not that Che was a nice guy and did not kill people. Che was a violent revolutionary who believed the uncompromising use of force was the only viable way to attain social change - changes which I do not, by and large, believe in.

Quote:My argument is that *whatever* you want to say about Che, from making a saint of him to damning him utterly, it must be based on facts. You can "read between the lines" once you've got the lines straight, but the process is clear: evidence first, interpretation second. If your interpretation is already in place, colouring your "evidence," then you are at serious risk of falsifying the historical record.

Quote:Re: the Cuba Archive, I'll look into it. Although it is interesting to note that their tally is in the hundreds, not the tens of thousands, as regularly claimed. Once again, I have no doubts the Cuban revolutionaries executed plenty of people, and many of them with little or nothing in the way of a trial. But whether that's a couple hundred people killed during a revolution, or tens of thousands killed in massive political oppression, is a matter that needs to be settled historically, not by going with whatever our gut feelings tell us.

(09-26-2011, 04:58 PM)kandrathe Wrote: It appears the official history so far has been the opposite, falsely uplifting a murderous brute into a romantic hero. I'm willing to listen to those who are interested in setting the record straight, even when the evidence is third-party, such as the "he was often heard to say, " type of anecdotal testimony.

(09-26-2011, 05:36 PM)Jester Wrote: Down that road lies partisan madness. Even if something new comes to light that would ordinarily cause us to reinterpret our facts, we no longer can, because we've got our "picture" which feels true to us, not because the facts support it, but because we've allowed ourselves to be persuaded.

(09-26-2011, 06:07 PM)kandrathe Wrote: There is no magic "they" who have all the money and are willing to give it away to pay for all the wants or needs of everyone else indefinitely. But, I love the dichotomy of on the one hand portraying them as evil to justify taking their wealth, and on the other side expecting them to be benevolent to pay for all the whims of those who won't or can't provide for themselves.

It's the evil top 1%. We 99% can all side against them. Class warfare by degrees. How do you define peasant?

(09-26-2011, 06:48 PM)eppie Wrote:

(09-26-2011, 06:07 PM)kandrathe Wrote: There is no magic "they" who have all the money and are willing to give it away to pay for all the wants or needs of everyone else indefinitely. But, I love the dichotomy of on the one hand portraying them as evil to justify taking their wealth, and on the other side expecting them to be benevolent to pay for all the whims of those who won't or can't provide for themselves.

It's the evil top 1%. We 99% can all side against them. Class warfare by degrees. How do you define peasant?

And this way of thinking among many people is exactly why 'they' can continue enriching themselves.
Probably most 'tea-party voters' would if you give them choices between simple things without telling them who's opinion this is, relate much more with a left wing democrat ideology but they are imprinted to hate anything that is left wing. People are not rational. And that is what the filthy rich class uses to keep things going their way.

And don't forget, those top 1% you are talking about got the chance of becoming so rich because the way the society is build up favors them.
Say, you sell arms, and your friends in politics invade a few countries that benefits you tremendously. OF course going to war just to support oil and arms industry luckily never happens....
Anyhow...is it strange that you would be asked to support your fellow American citizen that can't support himself a bit? For example because he was send out to fight in Iraq because that was more or less the only choice he had, he became handicapped and when back he was left to arrange things all by himself which isn't easy because handicapped people are not really good employees is what they say?? (or at least think).

Of course it is a choice you make, and a choice I can respect....but what I don't respect is all the sweet talking around it to explain why some people deserve to have bad healthcare just because they were unlucky.