Favourite Peoples Revolutionary Leader Military or Otherwise

[Daz_Hockey]

RE: Favourite Peoples Rev

can I put Winston Churchill as a revolutionary?


because without him, we'd all be in the shyte now.

"remember him, we all owe him so much"

 

[jimmoyer]

RE: Favourite Peoples Revolutionary Leader Military or Other

Ghandi read Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, an essay
written around the Mexican-American War under
President Polk.

That wasn't his only influence, but Ghandi read it,
just as Ho Chi Minh was reading a biography of John
Brown when he died. The book was still open on his
desk.

Ho Chi Minh was quite informed on American history,
even having had approached Woodrow Wilson during
the Versaille peace treaty for his country.

But he was such a young man at that moment with
no cache for a President to waste his time entertaining
an unknown.

Too bad.

We could have had a Hong Kong of the Orient in
Vietnam.

We're going to be stupid dealing with Hugo Chavez
too.

 

[Jay]

Re: RE: Favourite Peoples Rev

can I put Winston Churchill as a revolutionary?

Nope, sorry Daz...you have to pick an American.

 

[Daz_Hockey]

RE: Favourite Peoples Rev

ahha!!!!.......he was half american!!!, he could have got a green card no probs...could have had dual nationality too....

 

[Jay]

RE: Favourite Peoples Revolutionary Leader Military or Other

I guess it will do then...

 

[Daz_Hockey]

RE: Favourite Peoples Rev

thankx....I wont go into how his mother Jennie Jerome was a blue-blood american and daughter of the owner of the new york times...or how her ancestors fought against the british in the war of independence then?lol

 

[Jay]

RE: Favourite Peoples Revolutionary Leader Military or Other

Let's just say it isn't going to help your cause... :lol:

 

[Colpy]

Re: RE: FAVORITE PEOPLES REVOLUTIONARY LEADER- MILITARY OR O

Giap. One thing I liked was that he didn't move on to fulfill personal political aspirations.

You must have missed the Tet Offensive, where NVA and Viet Cong troops arrived in captured southern towns and cities with lists of people to be immediately executed. In Hue, a city north of DaNang that the Viet Cong held for some time before it was recaptured, 5000 were executed.

RESPONSE: or Mai Lai where American troops slaughtered civilian women and children under orders. There were many other similar instances. Or how about following the liberation of Vichy France when collaborators were dragged into the streets and stompted to death.

Although Thomas Jefferson would be my top pick.

RESPONSE: Jeffererson managed his raping among his female slaves, and then didn' t acknowledge his paternity when the offspring were issued. Now there is a noble man. Wrote were too. about the equality of man and all that stuff.

There is a very fundamental difference between Mai Lai and the Tet Offensive murders.

Mai Lai was the result of a frustrated platoon under an idiot officer running amok. In fact, some civilians at Mai Lai were saved, and the massacre contained, by the heroic efforts of an American helicopter crew.

Calley should have bbeen executed, but there it is.

Tet was an organized, top down, efficient elimination of picked non-combatants. Nobody was tried, it was official policy.

Giap = Calley, except 50 times worse.

 

[Finder]

Re: Favourite Peoples Revolutionary Leader Military or Other

Ernesto "Che" Guevara has always been a hero of mine. A little too radical but the man had princibles and a large heart. He was uncorruptable.

http://www.che-lives.com/home/modules/coppermine/albums/userpics/pics/normal_congress.jpg

I also Like Ho Chi Minh

I think Mr Washington deserves credit too.

Spartacus for his leadship during the second slave rebellion brings to mind of the romantic freedom fighter.

Zapata perhaps for you mexicans here, was a creat leader

Bolivar was aswell.

 

[zoofer]

Re: Favourite Peoples Revolutionary Leader Military or Other

English admiral Horatio Nelson who kicked Napoleon's butt.

 

[Finder]

Re: Favourite Peoples Revolutionary Leader Military or Other

English admiral Horatio Nelson who kicked Napoleon's butt.

He's a conservative guard leader not a revolutionary leader my friend.

Though Nelson is a great military leader I will agree but there is not stretching him into a revolutionary. lol

 

[zoofer]

Re: Favourite Peoples Revolutionary Leader Military or Other

Oh Oh.
Missed the revolutionary ...

Jan Christiaan Smuts.

 

[Blackleaf]

RE: Favourite Peoples Revolutionary Leader Military or Other

I suppose Wat Tyler, the leader of the 1381 Peasants' Revolt, could be considered a revolutionary -

Medieval England experienced few revolts but the most serious was the Peasants’ Revolt which took place in June 1381. A violent system of punishments for offenders was usually enough to put off peasants from causing trouble. Most areas in England also had castles in which soldiers were garrisoned, and these were usually enough to guarantee reasonable behaviour among medieval peasants.

An army of peasants from Kent and Essex marched on London. They did something no-one had done before or since - they captured the Tower of London. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the King’s Treasurer were killed. The king, Richard II, was only 14 at the time but despite his youth, he agreed to meet the peasants at a place called Mile End.

What were the peasants angry about and why had they come to London ?

1. After the Black Death, many manors were left short of workers. To encourage those who had survived to stay on their manor, many lords had given the peasants on their estates their freedom and paid them to work on their land. Now, nearly 35 years after the Black Death, many peasants feared that the lords would take back these privileges and they were prepared to fight for them.

2. Many peasants had to work for free on church land, sometimes up to two days in the week. This meant that they could not work on their own land which made it difficult to grow enough food for their families. Peasants wanted to be free of this burden that made the church rich but them poor. They were supported in what they wanted by a priest called John Ball from Kent.

3. There had been a long war with France. Wars cost money and that money usually came from the peasants through the taxes that they paid. In 1380, Richard II introduced a new tax called the Poll Tax. This made everyone who was on the tax register pay 5p. It was the third time in four years that such a tax had been used. By 1381, the peasants had had enough. 5p to them was a great deal of money. If they could not pay in cash, they could pay in kind, such as seeds, tools etc., anything that could be vital to survival in the coming year.

In May 1381, a tax collector arrived at the Essex village of Fobbing to find out why the people there had not paid their poll tax. He was thrown out by the villagers. In June, soldiers arrived to establish law and order. They too were thrown out as the villagers of Fobbing had now organised themselves and many other local villages in Essex had joined them. After doing this, the villagers marched on London to plead with the young king to hear their complaints.

One man had emerged as the leader of the peasants - Wat Tyler from Kent. As the peasants from Kent had marched to London, they had destroyed tax records and tax registers. The buildings which housed government records were burned down. They got into the city of London because the people there had opened the gates to them.

By mid-June the discipline of the peasants was starting to go. Many got drunk in London and looting took place. It is known that foreigners were murdered by the peasants. Wat Tyler had asked for discipline amongst those who looked up to him as their leader. He did not get it.

On June 14th, the king met the rebels at Mile End. At this meeting, Richard II gave the peasants all that they asked for and asked that they go home in peace. Some did. Others returned to the city and murdered the archbishop and Treasurer - their heads were cut off on Tower Hill by the Tower of London. Richard II spent the night in hiding in fear of his life.

On June 15th, he met the rebels again at Smithfield outside of the city’s walls. It is said that this was the idea of the Lord Mayor (Sir William Walworthe) who wanted to get the rebels out of the city. Medieval London was wooden and the streets were cramped. Any attempt to put down the rebels in the city could have ended in a fire or the rebels would have found it easy to vanish into the city once they knew that soldiers were after them.

At this meeting, the Lord Mayor killed Wat Tyler. We are not sure what happened at this meeting as the only people who could write about it were on the side of the king and their evidence might not be accurate. The death of Tyler and another promise by Richard to give the peasants what they asked for, was enough to send them home.

By the summer of 1381, the revolt was over. John Ball was hanged. Richard did not keep any of his promises claiming that they were made under threat and were therefore not valid in law. Other leaders from both Kent and Essex were hanged. The poll tax was withdrawn but the peasants were forced back into their old way of life - under the control of the lord of the manor.

However, the lords did not have it their own way. The Black Death had caused a shortage of labour and over the next 100 years many peasants found that they could earn more (by their standards) as the lords needed a harvest in and the only people who could do it were the peasants. They asked for more money and the lords had to give it.

historylearningexperience.co.uk

 

[Finder]

Re: Favourite Peoples Revolutionary Leader Military or Other

Oh Oh.
Missed the revolutionary ...

Jan Christiaan Smuts.

Ihmmmmmm, I think your still a little off. lol

 

[PoisonPete2]

Re: RE: FAVORITE PEOPLES REVOLUTIONARY LEADER- MILITARY OR O

There is a very fundamental difference between Mai Lai and the Tet Offensive murders.

Mai Lai was the result of a frustrated platoon under an idiot officer running amok. In fact, some civilians at Mai Lai were saved, and the massacre contained, by the heroic efforts of an American helicopter crew.

Calley should have bbeen executed, but there it is.

Tet was an organized, top down, efficient elimination of picked non-combatants. Nobody was tried, it was official policy.

Giap = Calley, except 50 times worse.

RESPONSE: So you think the Mai Lai 'massacre' was a local platoon running amoc :?: kind of like Abu Grahab(?) was not done on chain of command authority. Right! There were more 'Mai Lai type of massacres as a 'military strategy' just as torture continues in Iraq and around the world under US direction. Calley and that bunch were stressed-out grunts under orders to raise the body count and to sweep the area for VC. They were not protecting America from harm, they were protecting "assets" discovered off the coast of Viet Nam by seismic readings. Those findings have still not been shared with the current government of Viet Nam. And Giap was a soldier trying to free his nation from continued occupation.

 

[JoeyB]

RE: Favourite Peoples Rev

Trotsky / Lenin / Stalin / Hitler / Castro / Arafat / Ghadaffi.... et al.


all of them seemed very 'popular' at the time...


I think Lenin was the least offensive of the abovementioned. Bolsheviks and bourgeois were always going to clash... Lenin did want peace at almost any cost, Which says something for his character. Things just dont always go your way in a revolution, do they?

I forgot Mussolini.... a facist revolutionist, very successful, and extremely popular with the italians (they deny it now though...) but he was a complete clusterfuhhhh. However.. at the time, they were all popular leaders and revolutionary, extermely popular and well encouraged by their countrymen and women. Not that it makes any of them better people, just more successful than others who have tried similar means to achieve an end.

 

[Colpy]

Re: RE: FAVORITE PEOPLES REVOLUTIONARY LEADER- MILITARY OR O

There is a very fundamental difference between Mai Lai and the Tet Offensive murders.

Mai Lai was the result of a frustrated platoon under an idiot officer running amok. In fact, some civilians at Mai Lai were saved, and the massacre contained, by the heroic efforts of an American helicopter crew.

Calley should have bbeen executed, but there it is.

Tet was an organized, top down, efficient elimination of picked non-combatants. Nobody was tried, it was official policy.

Giap = Calley, except 50 times worse.

RESPONSE: So you think the Mai Lai 'massacre' was a local platoon running amoc :?: kind of like Abu Grahab(?) was not done on chain of command authority. Right! There were more 'Mai Lai type of massacres as a 'military strategy' just as torture continues in Iraq and around the world under US direction. Calley and that bunch were stressed-out grunts under orders to raise the body count and to sweep the area for VC. They were not protecting America from harm, they were protecting "assets" discovered off the coast of Viet Nam by seismic readings. Those findings have still not been shared with the current government of Viet Nam. And Giap was a soldier trying to free his nation from continued occupation.

I am certainly NOT trying to defend America's behaviour in Vietnam. It is indefensible.

I did pretty extensive work on the beginnings of America's involvement in Vietnam in university. Ho Chi Minh was their FRIEND, and could have easily remained so, if he were not stabbed in the back by American pre-occupation with maintaining good relations with France. The Yanks feared communist strength in France (most of the rersistence to the Nazis were communists), and the Yanks were willing to do ANYTHING to keep the French happy, including stabbing Ho in the back and facilitating the return of the French colonial masters.

Ho was much more a nationalist than a communist. It is amazing, but the Vietnamese constitution he wrote very closely resembles the American constitution, by design. He took it to Archimedes Patty, his OSS controler, to make sure he got it right.

It seems the Americans missed a terrific opportunity to have a stable ally in south-east Asia starting right after WWII.

But who knows?

"What if?" is only a diversion.

 

[PoisonPete2]

Re: RE: FAVORITE PEOPLES REVOLUTIONARY LEADER- MILITARY OR O

..
It seems the Americans missed a terrific opportunity to have a stable ally in south-east Asia starting right after WWII.
But who knows?
"What if?" is only a diversion.

RESPONSE: I think you are right on. Ho Che Mein got 1/2 million military packs the Americans didn't need after the surrender of Japan. They were to agitate against the Chinese. The return of France to Viet Nam was unexpected and left American diplomacy in a bind. The return of the Gaulists to French power was more than an irritant. General DeGaule was not much loved by the west. It was anticipated he would try to hold Algeria as his shadow government had operated out of Algiers, but the realitity of Colonialism was thought to be fading. So America was stuck supporting a French Viet Nam to a Billion dollars a year. And the rest is history with the industrial / military complex seeking a President they could push into war. Giap wanted a homeland free of foreign control. Don't we all?