Word: communisms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...stage and film versions of "Show Boat." He was a star in American and British movies, a magnetic concert basso, a sensation as Othello opposite Peggy Ashcroft in London and Uta Hagen on Broadway, a prescient advocate for African self-determination. He was also a stubborn apologist for communism, Stalin-style. In one Promethean personality were packed the power, glamour, pathos and tragedy of black dreams and leftist myopia in the 20th century...
...related and, I believe, obvious, points need to be made. One is that Soviet Communism was a dour, acquisitive tyranny; and leftists in the U.S. and Europe who believed in this failing light despite reams of damning evidence were, at the very least, lying to themselves. The other point is that a man should not be punished for saying what he thinks. If Robeson rejected a homegrown system of oppression to embrace another, more toxic one, that was his right. He should no more have been denied a passport then than he should be praised for stainless political acuity...
...Cohen credits this “beacon of liberty and prosperity” with enabling the growth of democracy (albeit flawed) in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, promoting “universal rights” and helping “liberate” countries from Japanese imperialism and communism. This is, of course, if you overlook Vietnam, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, suppression of the Filipino independence movement and other lesser “transgressions...
There's also a sense of history that rarely appears in American comix. Jacek Fras mixes collage with silly cartoon characters in a story that takes place during the Polish resistance against the Nazis. Jurcan & Cvek's "Condemned Ideas" examines the failure of ideologies from Fascism to Communism to Capitalism. But the most unifying trait turns out to be a kind of dark, absurdist sensibility. In Goran Feniks' "A Weird Story," a man takes care of some paperwork while plummeting to his death from an airplane explosion. There's ample amounts of satire and schadenfruede, but little humor...
...useful operatives in London mosques, and the British just did not. And some businesses make the same mistake, according to George Friedman, founder of STRATFOR, an intelligence firm in Austin, Texas. "The expat community in Iran missed the fall of the Shah. In Russia they missed the fall of communism," he says. "They tend to rely too much on their personal contacts. They think, 'If I know the Shah's brother-in-law, I'm well connected, and I know what's going on in the country.'" The story of oil development in the Caucasus, Friedman adds, "is littered with...