So now it's cool to be a communist. T-shirts of Che Guevara are one of the most popular t-shirts around. Che was a racist and mass murderer, yet we have schools banning kids from wearing American flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo. If we're going to ban shirts, how about the one with the communist killer on it? It's not offensive because no one looks at the history of what they did.
How else can you explain everything going on today that happens with little or no outrage? Things like the statue of Stalin going up in Virginia? How does that idea not cross someone — anyone's — desk who said, "This may not be a good idea"? It happens because no one knows who these communists really were anymore. It's just cool.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
The small town of Bedford, Va., is home to 21 men who sacrificed their lives on D-Day, June 6, 1944. It is now also the home of one of the world's few public memorial busts of communist dictator Josef Stalin.
Local citizens and organizations have expressed their outrage over the installation of the bust at the National D-Day Memorial, which honored the 66th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy over the weekend. The bust of the Soviet Union's wartime leader was unveiled last week to accompany existing busts of U.S. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman as well as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
"Having Stalin in our backyard, people are really upset about that," said Karl Altau, the managing director at the joint Baltic American National Committee that has helped in movements against the Stalin bust.
Stalin is infamous for his dictatorial rule of the Soviet Union, which ultimately led to the deaths of at least 20 million people, the largest number perishing during the terror famines he engineered in the early 1930s to collectivize Soviet agriculture. He also entered World War II on the side of Nazi Germany, and only became an ally of the Western democracies when Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941.
The erection of the statue is ironic to some because statues and images of the dictator have been torn down all over Europe since the 1950s denunciation of him by his successors in ruling the Soviet Union.
25 Jun 2010 07:20:52 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Margarita Antidze
GORI, Georgia, June 25 (Reuters) - Authorities removed a towering statue of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin from the central square of his hometown in the dead of the night on Friday, carting away the monument to Georgia's most famous native.
The 6-meter-high bronze statue will be moved to the courtyard of a museum dedicated to Stalin in his native Gori and replaced on the main square by a monument to victims of Georgia's 2008 war with Russia, a local official said.
In an unannounced operation that began after midnight and was over before dawn, municipal workers and police took the statue down from its stone pedestal in the small city 80 km (50 miles) west of the capital, Tbilisi.
"It was very unexpected," Lado Bichashvili, a journalist with local television company Trialeti, told Reuters. "I think many people will be very angry."
He said police tried to prevent journalists from filming the process, in some cases beating them.
"This monument will be moved to the courtyard of the Stalin museum," Zviad Khmaladze, a city council leader, said later in televised comments. "A new monument dedicated to victims of the Russian aggression will be erected at this place."
Outward signs of Stalin's pervasive personality cult were removed after his death in 1953 across Georgia and the rest of the Soviet Union, but he is revered by many in his hometown, where the monument was erected year before his death.
It was one of the few monuments to Stalin still standing anywhere.
"People from around the world used to visit Gori to see this statue and to pay their respects to Stalin," said Nugzar Lamazov, who lives in a nearby village.
Widely reviled as a dictator responsible for millions of deaths in political purges, labour camps and forced agricultural collectivisation, Stalin is held up as a hero by supporters who say the Soviet Union would not have defeated Nazi Germany or industrialized without him.
For many Georgians including pro-Western President Mikheil Saakashvili, the monument was a symbol of Moscow's lingering influence two decades after the small nation gained independence in the 1991 Soviet collapse.
Gori was the hardest-hit Georgian city in the five-day war with Russia in August 2008. Bombs hit the main square near the statue and buildings nearby.
Gori was occupied by Russian troops for weeks after the conflict, which erupted when Georgia sought to recapture the Russian-backed separatist province of South Ossetia, just north of the city.
After the conflict, some officials and prominent Georgians called for the monument's removal, saying its presence in Gori was immoral after the Russian bombardment and occupation.
The government will hold a competition for the design of the monument to the war victims, Culture Ministry spokeswoman Salome Macharashvili told Reuters.
Russia recognised South Ossetia's independence after the war and has strengthened its grip on the rebel region.
Gori also hosts some smaller statues and busts of Stalin as well as the museum dedicated to the late leader, who was born on December 21, 1879.
Mainly elderly supporters traditionally gather outside the colonnaded museum twice a year, on his birthday and the day of his death.
Stalin, whose real name was Dzhugashvili, ruled the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death.
(Editing by Myra MacDonald)
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