Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Gates of Vienna News Feed 6/22/2010

Gates of Vienna News Feed 6/22/2010There was trouble with Christians again at this year’s annual Dearborn Arab International Festival in Michigan. Four evangelical Christians — some of them converted Muslims — were arrested for the disturbing the peace after they talked to Muslim festival-goers about their faith.

In other news, General Stanley McChrystal, the leading U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is in big trouble with the Obama administration for remarks he made in an interview with Rolling Stone. The article has not yet appeared, so no one knows precisely what Gen. McChrystal was smoking the day he decided to make disparaging remarks about various Obama people to a hip magazine reporter. But whatever it was, I wouldn’t mind copping a doobie or two of it — it must be dynamite stuff.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Insubria, JD, JP, Kitman, Lurker from Tulsa, TB, Zenster, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

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4 comments:

Jedilson Bonfim said...

As for the Stalin busts at the D-Day Memorial in VA, I have a better idea for a more suitable tribute... Public restrooms at the site could have toilets shaped like Stalin busts, with the lid and seats made up of the part of his head above his brow ridge. The inside of urinals could be adorned with his face too.

I guess only Russians and American commie traitors would present any kind of opposition to that.

Baron Bodissey said...

Jed --

I don't agree. I'll go off the reservation here and say that Stalin ought to be included as an equal partner with Chrurchill and Roosevelt.

That's because he was honored and acclaimed as such by us during the war. He was "Uncle Joe", a big affable Russian beloved by his people and a friend to the Western Allies. Communist Russia was depicted a almost like democratic America, except with red flags and babushkas and furry hats. No gulag. No Ukrainian famine -- Duranty told us it was a lie, and who could doubt Duranty?

All of this was one of the reasons why it was difficult to fire up the Cold War later on. We weren't a totalitarian state, and it was harder to do a 180 with the propaganda the way the Soviets did when necessary.

Besides, the USSR was crucial to the winning of the war. Hitler could not have been totally defeated without the destruction of much of his army on the Eastern Front.

I believe in honesty in history. Uncle Joe was there, and he was our ally. Recognizing him would be a welcome breath of historical accuracy in the thoroughly debased discipline of modern historiography.

laine said...

Shouldn't there be a little asterisk beside Stalin's name indicating that he instituted policies to kill tens of millions, including his own citizens, (presumably not the ones by whom he was beloved), engineered the Ukrainian holocaust by starvation etc.?

If you want to argue that war makes strange bedfellows and that Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to do business with a thug to stop what they perceived to be a worse thug at the time, then discovered that they'd let loose an ultimately larger mass murderer instead, fine. But that's not what your comment sounds like.

Context is everything, including a before in which Stalin signed a secret protocol with Hitler to divide up Europe (Molotov-Ribbentrop pact) and an after in which he outdid Hitler in inhumanity. That it suited his nefarious purposes to help defeat his erstwhile buddy who stabbed him in the back is hardly reason to hand him bouquets.

Baron Bodissey said...

Laine --

You've got the wrong end of the stick. I make no brief for Stalin, none whatsoever. He was a murderous thug.

What I am arguing against -- just as I always do -- is the use of an airbrush on history. We need to tell the whole historical truth.

Stalin was our ally. American and British propaganda lionized him during the war, made him into our buddy. This is a fact.

We should include him, and then tell the truth about him. The whole truth. What he really was, but why he was our best friend in 1942.

Facts is facts.