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Misguided Heroes.

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24567

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    #32
    Sergeant
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9,362 ✭✭✭Sergeant


    Femme_Fatale wrote: »
    I think there's a bit of a bandwagon going re Mother Teresa. She still did a lot more to help the poor and sick than most others did. And under extremely difficult circumstances in a hell-hole like Calcutta.

    Absolutely. She did devote her life to the place. Nothing is black and white. People are alive today because of her actions.

    It's the same with Guevara. I'm sure he believed in his vision of an egalitarian society, no matter how misguided, economically infeasible and tragic it turned out to be. But I fail to see how shooting a young father through the head without trial can be countenanced with his modern-day status as a hero.


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    #33
    kowloon
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2, Paid Member Posts: 14,191 ✭✭✭✭kowloon


    Prodigious wrote: »
    Hand he slept beside young girls to test himself?

    He didn't? The dirty old fecker! :eek:


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    #34
    padd b1975
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,913 ✭✭✭✭padd b1975


    The WWF (World Wildlife Fund)

    Seriously shady organisation in terms of how it's funded when you look beyond the pictures of cute pandas.


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    #35
    Gummy Panda
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,919 ✭✭✭✭Gummy Panda


    padd b1975 wrote: »
    The WWF (World Wildlife Fund)

    Seriously shady organisation in terms of how it's funded when you look beyond the pictures of cute pandas.

    The pandas wrestling in those shows were there of their own free will


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    #36
    Dimithy
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 351 ✭✭Dimithy


    Cathal Cloch wrote: »
    What actions?

    Allow me to pull you along by your nose into my trap.

    Something like this?
    playadeldick wrote: »
    Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che's imagination. In the famous essay in which he issued his ringing call for "two, three, many Vietnams," he also spoke about martyrdom and managed to compose a number of chilling phrases: "Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become …"— and so on


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    #37
    kowloon
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2, Paid Member Posts: 14,191 ✭✭✭✭kowloon


    padd b1975 wrote: »
    The WWF (World Wildlife Fund)

    Seriously shady organisation in terms of how it's funded when you look beyond the pictures of cute pandas.

    Too right.


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    #38
    kowloon
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2, Paid Member Posts: 14,191 ✭✭✭✭kowloon


    Gummy Panda wrote: »
    The pandas wrestling in those shows were there of their own free will

    Curses upon you, foiled again!


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    #39
    nervous_twitch
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 850 ✭✭✭nervous_twitch


    MYOB wrote: »
    When he could have got the plane down on a runway, and salvageable without risking life. Americans love a "hero" though.

    Can you link me to the 'reality' of this story please? I've never heard it and I'm interested.


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    #40
    TheUsual
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,288 ✭✭✭TheUsual


    Tom Cruise.


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    #41
    Karl Stein
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,687 ✭✭✭Karl Stein


    Dimithy wrote: »
    Something like this?

    This man's attitudes were formed by what he saw happening to people in South America. The US was running amok in the region installing anti-democratic puppet regimes at the behest of murderous corporations and ideologues. See United Fruit and Guatemala.

    Focussing on Che Guevara's violence without placing it in the wider context of inherently murderous imperialism is little more than useful idiocy.


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    #42
    Da Shins Kelly
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,047 ✭✭✭Da Shins Kelly


    I don't think there are any true "heroes". The whole notion comes from people liking to think that some people are perfect and morally upstanding and all the rest. Turning them into these idealized figures is only going to leave you disappointed. The fact is, they're only human.


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    #43
    Rayne Wooney
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 14,134 ✭✭✭✭Rayne Wooney


    Batman.


    Glorified vigilante who promotes revenge rather than the pursuit of justice


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    #44
    Mardy Bum
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,674 ✭✭✭Mardy Bum


    There is no such thing as a real life hero pure and simple although there are plenty of fictitious ones. Acts could be described as heroic but attributing heroism as a characteristic of a person is misguided in a post postmodern world.


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    #45
    The Backwards Man
    Closed Accounts Posts: 18,299 ✭✭✭✭The Backwards Man


    Da Shins Kelly wrote: »
    I don't think there are any true "heroes". The whole notion comes from people liking to think that some people are perfect and morally upstanding and all the rest. Turning them into these idealized figures is only going to leave you disappointed. The fact is, they're only human.
    Out of the ruins
    Out of the weeckage
    Can't make the same mistakes this time


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    #46
    Lando Griffin
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,952 ✭✭✭Lando Griffin


    Yitzhak Rabin wrote: »
    There were plenty of people fighting it. Their names were Isaac Butt, Charles Stewart Parnell a John Redmond. They were the ones who had the people's support.

    The other crowd consisted of men like Padraig Pearse who fantasised about bloodshed and boys arses.
    You forgot about the greatest hero of all the rising Dev.
    Went on to rule and govern a race of people who were uneducated, poor choiceless.


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    #47
    bnt
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,247 ✭✭✭✭bnt


    John F. Kennedy. Got all his education and built his political career with help from his dad's ill-gotten gains. (Allegations of bootlegging were never proved, but Joe Kennedy did make a mint by "shorting" the Stock Market in 1929.)

    JFK's adulterous affairs were legendary, too many to go in to here, but they continued while he was in the Oval Office. He gets too much credit for defusing the Cuban Missile Crisis, which had at least as much to do with advisers such as Robert McNamara (Secretary of Defense) and U Thant (UN Secretary General).

    At least his chronic back pain was a justification for his chronic drug use, which (allegedly) included having a major summit meeting with Nikita Khrushchev while high on amphetamines.

    Had JFK survived to the end of a second term, and escaped assassination, he wouldn't be as "beatified" as he is today. The way he died tends to overshadow the way he lived.

    Government resting upon the will and universal suffrage of the people has no anchorage except in the people's intelligence.

    — Grover Cleveland



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    #48
    Dimithy
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 351 ✭✭Dimithy


    Cathal Cloch wrote: »
    This man's attitudes were formed by what he saw happening to people in South America. The US was running amok in the region installing anti-democratic puppet regimes at the behest of murderous corporations and ideologues. See United Fruit and Guatemala.

    Focussing on Che Guevara's violence without placing it in the wider context of inherently murderous imperialism is little more than useful idiocy.

    In any context he was a butcher and a bigot.
    I'm guessing you'll only vilify one side though?


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    #49
    krudler
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 34,788 ✭✭✭✭krudler


    Femme_Fatale wrote: »
    I think there's a bit of a bandwagon going re Mother Teresa. She still did a lot more to help the poor and sick than most others did. And under extremely difficult circumstances in a hell-hole like Calcutta.

    She also maintained that living in poverty was a path to heaven and people died in her missions because they were left without proper medical care, she often left people to die in anguish rather than administer painkillers. to quote herself: "There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ's Passion. The world gains much from their suffering,"

    suffering, poverty and ill health were blessings in her eyes, although that didn't stop herself recieving healthcare in a first world hospital more than once. Funny how religious icons rarely practice what they preach, despite having a foundation with a river of money going through it any of that was rarely given to poor people, prayers and relgious medallions are what she gave rather than monetary aid.


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    #50
    Duggy747
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,295 ✭✭✭✭Duggy747


    Mother Teresa may have helped people but that certainly doesn't raise her above criticism for how she went about it, which was terribly misguided. Especially when you consider the sheer amount of money that was involved.


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    #51
    L1011
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 76,213 ✭✭✭✭L1011


    nervous_twitch wrote: »
    Can you link me to the 'reality' of this story please? I've never heard it and I'm interested.

    There's a book about it, as well as a lot of forum posts. US obsession has overwritten a lot of it. Guy is an egotist.

    Basically he had the altitude to glide the plane in to Teterboro Airport, a large but private only airport in NJ. But he refused and insisted on going in to the river, something relatively un-done. Showboating with peoples lives and a multi-million dollar plane.


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    #52
    Sir Osis of Liver.
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,820 ✭✭✭Sir Osis of Liver.


    Dr. Bre wrote: »
    Which Armstrong?Lance Or Neil

    Stretch


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    #53
    Karl Stein
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,687 ✭✭✭Karl Stein


    Dimithy wrote: »
    I'm guessing you'll only vilify one side though?

    Afaia there was only one side that was propping up dictators, funding death squads, and brutally crushing democratic movements; this is the side that the lens of condemnation should focus on first. Any reaction against such murderous brutality is a footnote rather than the main act.


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    #54
    mightdomighty
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 104 ✭✭mightdomighty


    "Tommy Robinson" English Defence league leader


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    #55
    Mardy Bum
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,674 ✭✭✭Mardy Bum


    mightdomighty wrote: »
    "Tommy Robinson" English Defence league leader

    Only idiots would describe him as a hero in the first place.


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    #56
    krudler
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 34,788 ✭✭✭✭krudler


    Duggy747 wrote: »
    Mother Teresa may have helped people but that certainly doesn't raise her above criticism for how she went about it, which was terribly misguided. Especially when you consider the sheer amount of money that was involved.

    Wouldnt be very religious if money wasnt involved.


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    #57
    The_Kew_Tour
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2, Paid Member Posts: 36,064 ✭✭✭✭The_Kew_Tour


    Messi.

    EVENFLOW



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    #58
    Sergeant
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9,362 ✭✭✭Sergeant


    Cathal Cloch wrote: »
    Afaia there was only one side that was propping up dictators, funding death squads, and brutally crushing democratic movements; this is the side that the lens of condemnation should focus on first. Any reaction against such murderous brutality is a footnote rather than the main act.

    Why not focus on both the outcomes of the interactions in 1950's and 1960's South American politics? We have to avoid questioning the utter barbarity of far-left ideologies that were present there as well? That continue to deny citizens of Cuba many of the things we take for granted in a social democracy like Ireland.

    How is modern-day socialism working out in South America at the moment?


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    #59
    nervous_twitch
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 850 ✭✭✭nervous_twitch


    MYOB wrote: »
    There's a book about it, as well as a lot of forum posts. US obsession has overwritten a lot of it. Guy is an egotist.

    Basically he had the altitude to glide the plane in to Teterboro Airport, a large but private only airport in NJ. But he refused and insisted on going in to the river, something relatively un-done. Showboating with peoples lives and a multi-million dollar plane.

    Wow; I never bought into the Miracle Man agenda that the media was pushing, but I've listened to the recordings from the Cockpit and I always thought he was really stuck for somewhere to land. So did he devise it so that he could land in water? I thought that kind of maneuver was pretty much unprecedented for an Airbus and any kind of survival was against the odds. Is this conspiracy theory or does it have any real credentials?


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    #60
    mightdomighty
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 104 ✭✭mightdomighty


    Mardy Bum wrote: »
    Only idiots would describe him as a hero in the first place.

    Agreed, I took the OPs use of the term "hero" to be tongue in cheek


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    #61
    BillyMitchel
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,324 ✭✭✭BillyMitchel


    Sergeant wrote: »
    There are many examples of people throughout history who are seen as heroes by people who admire what they did. From Caesar to Armstrong.

    Yet they turn out to be fundamentally flawed.

    For example, I remember watching Motorcycle Diaries about the life of Che Guevara. It was a wonderfully evocative piece of cinema. I then did some reading about the chap. Turns out he was rather different than the romanticised portrayal shown in the movie. A cold-hearted and vindictive murderer. Over 4000 people died without fair trial in prison camps he administered. He was personally responsible for acts of torture and death.

    Yet he has managed to become a poster-child and an iconic figure planted on many a cheap sweatshop manufactured t-shirt.

    Any other examples of people who you feel don't deserve the badge of 'hero' that has been placed upon them?

    It's not about his life, its about how he saw S.A as he was traveling through all the different countries, way before he picked up a gun.

    Proof? and not some pro American/cuban/miami politician. Of course people died but hey guess what kiddo that's what usually happens in a war. Do you have any idea how bad the U.S backed Batista regime was in Cuba?

    Jon Lee Anderson, author of the definitive biography on Che:

    "To this I must point out that, while Che did indeed execute people [an episode I have gone into at length in my book] I have yet to find a single credible source pointing to a case where Che executed 'an innocent'. Those persons executed by Guevara or on his orders were condemned for the usual crimes punishable by death at times of war or in its aftermath: desertion, treason or crimes such as rape, torture or murder. I should add that my research spanned five years, and included anti-Castro Cubans among the Cuban-American exile community in Miami and elsewhere."

    Hardly his fault now is it and do you really think he would of endorsed it if he was alive?


    If you love Freedom, then you love Che Guevara. N.Mandela


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