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Wolfman
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posted February 01, 2004 06:58 AM |
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That is excellent news! A shame it is not shown on TV. The only people that do show some of that stuff are the people we talked about, PM. The same people who I talked about at the end of my paper. 
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Lews_Therin
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted February 01, 2004 08:45 AM |
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Hello Peacemaker,
what´s your opinion on that "letter"? I may be wrong, but it looks to me very much like it´s been written by the republican campaign team, don´t you think so?
I remember that exactly this thing was in the news some weeks ago: American soldiers protesting that such propaganda letters with their names under them were circulating - they claimed to have never read, let alone written them.
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bort
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Discarded foreskin of morality
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posted February 01, 2004 04:06 PM |
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The thing I don't understand is that people who won't believe anything that the so called "liberal" media reports will automatically believe anything that arrives in their mailbox with the header fwd:True Story! Be skeptical about cnn, the New York Times, whatever, that's fine and probably healthy, but come on, an e-mail forward? You might as well get your news about the world from graffitti on the wall or from the crazy guy who stands on a street corner and screams at people.
And I ask once more -- what the hell did Mr. Bush have to do with Ms. Ebadi receiving the Nobel Peace Prize (which, for the record, was reported in virtually every major news outles).
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Drive by posting.
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Peacemaker
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Peacemaker = double entendre
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posted February 01, 2004 04:56 PM |
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Yes all, as with the last e-mail I received and posted here, I vouch not for its accuracy, reliability or actual source. I just forgot to put the same caveat up this time. Apparently The Gootch and others were able to verify the last one, but this one looks more personal and it may be harder to track down. As bort points out, the e-mail system is prime ground for hoaxes, which regularly occur.
Always makes for interesting conversation though.
P.S. Oh yeah, by the way, on the e-mail from the soldier who participated in Saddam's capture (posted on page 79 in this thread), I actually tracked down the guy who sent it and communicated with him, so I'm pretty sure it was real. He said they pretty much confiscated the photos any of those guys took that night and classified them, so that's why we never got to see the pics he mentioned. Of course that one was predictable. National security and all that rot you know.
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Wolfman
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posted February 13, 2004 07:15 PM |
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Whoops!
My analogy to the story of Chicken Little earlier in this thread was wrong. I ment the Little Red Hen, whoops, sorry for any confusion.
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standup
Tavern Dweller
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posted February 24, 2004 01:23 AM |
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There is nothing we can do to help Iraq. Let me take you back in time. We are standing behind Hitler, when he was a child. We kill him.
Now we're back in the present. The Holocost still happened.
Moral: There will always be some one else with the same views. There is nothing we can do to stop it. Our lives are decided by fate, so buckle up and enjoy the ride of life.
P.S. If you think I have no feelings I do, Bush is 100% wrong to attack a nation that has never directly attacked the USA.
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Stand Up For Whats Right
Be Wild, Stay True, Live to Hope, Be You
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Wolfman
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posted February 24, 2004 01:29 AM |
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An assassination attemp on a president doesn't count? I think it does, but that's just me,
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privatehudson
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The Ultimate Badass
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posted February 24, 2004 02:55 AM |
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It didn't when Kennedy (allegedly) was shot on Castro's orders 
(or so one of my rabidly anti-castro miami based friends tells me) 
Also it's debateable as to whether the holocaust would have happened without Hitler. The war may well have still happened, but without Hitler I doubt the insane hatred he brought to politics would have repeated itself on such a scale.
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We're on an express elevator to Hell, goin' down!
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Wolfman
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posted February 24, 2004 04:05 AM |
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It was one shooter in the book warehouse, that's all.
There would be a WWII, but I don't think the "Halocaust" would have happened as it did.
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Shadowcaster
Honorable
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Shaded Scribe
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posted February 24, 2004 06:45 AM |
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Quote:
Bush is 100% wrong to attack a nation that has never directly attacked the USA.
While I disagree with you on this matter, I'm interested to know why you feel that way. Do you also believe his actions are 100% unjustifiable as well?
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>_>
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privatehudson
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Legendary Hero
The Ultimate Badass
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posted February 24, 2004 12:58 PM |
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Quote:
It was one shooter in the book warehouse, that's all.
Oh dear.
I suppose you also still believe there's WMD's in Iraq and that Bush did his duty during the Vietnam war too huh?
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We're on an express elevator to Hell, goin' down!
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Wolfman
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Insomniac
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posted February 24, 2004 10:40 PM |
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I wouldn't be surprised if we do eventually find WMD's in Iraq. And Bush did more of his duty than Clinton ever even considered doing, just remember that.
And it has been proven that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone shooter in the warehouse. Even though 60% or so of Americans believe therre was a conspiracy around Kennedy's death.
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privatehudson
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posted February 25, 2004 12:04 AM |
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Quote:
And it has been proven that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone shooter in the warehouse. Even though 60% or so of Americans believe therre was a conspiracy around Kennedy's death.
Really? Do feel free to try There's a good reason why those 60% feel that way, and a large chunk of it has to do with the total rubbish that the Warren report was. As for the recent books and TV shows since then that "proved" who did it, the truth is the vast majority set out with an idea who they believe did it, then look for proof that supports their claim, ignoring things that do not.
Quote:
And Bush did more of his duty than Clinton ever even considered doing, just remember that.
Clinton at least didn't pretend to do his duty by dodging the war flying obselete Jets in the national guard. And that's assuming Bush was ever even there most of the time....
I don't see why hiding from the war whilst seeming to do one's duty is any better than being open about opposition. But of course, to admit that would be to admit hypocrisy over clinton...
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We're on an express elevator to Hell, goin' down!
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Peacemaker
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Peacemaker = double entendre
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posted February 25, 2004 01:12 AM |
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WOLFMAN:
Hey dude! Sorry so busy lately..
No, it has not been proven that Oswald was the only shooter. In fact, forensic evidence has proven that it is virtually as impossible for him to have been the lone gunman as it was for anybody else other than OJ Simpson to have committed the murders he was accused of.
PH: I think what is really going on with WMD is that Saddam Hussein had enough time during the war to spirit off all evidence of WMD's so we will never find the evidence of them. Intercepted transmissions during the war would suggest they were in the process of evacuating all evidence (do you guys remember that? I do but I can't pinpoint a time or place; I only recollect hearing the intercepted broadcasts during a press conference by Colin Powell, who is perhaps the only one in the Whitehouse I currently trust...)
So, whether the WMD's were in the country when we started against them may never be known.
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I have menopause and a handgun. Any questions?
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privatehudson
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The Ultimate Badass
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posted February 25, 2004 01:40 AM |
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Quote:
I think what is really going on with WMD is that Saddam Hussein had enough time during the war to spirit off all evidence of WMD's so we will never find the evidence of them.
With the greatest of respect, I'm pretty sure that the kind of evidence that we accused Iraq of hiding could not have been moved so easily given the attention the allies would have been paying to Iraq. I strongly suspect that had they moved the WMD's (of the level we suspected) then our intelligence community would know about it. Then again I'm skeptical of the evidence we did gather in the light of recent events
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We're on an express elevator to Hell, goin' down!
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Peacemaker
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Peacemaker = double entendre
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posted February 25, 2004 05:53 PM |
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Good point PH. However, in the manner of an example, I do recall seeing two aerial photographs taken within about two weeks of one another at some kind of facility that appeared to be up and running in the first photo and completely deserted/dismantled in the second. Now I don't recall what that facility purportedly was, but do you recall what I'm talking about?
So anyways, if that was anything significant, then apparently our intelligence did pick up on it since we had those aerial photos. Then there was that cryptic intercept between Iraqui military officials about "getting rid of the items" or some such thing. What was that all about? (That's the one by Powell I was talking about.)
However, this seems to beg the question both ways. First, if we knew about the facility at the time of the first photo, why didn't we go in and take it over or something instead of just sitting around waiting and taking pictures while they dismantled it and did away with the evidence??? (I dunno; this could be the nature of aerial satellite photography or something -- that you don't always get images back in a timely fashion....????)
Second of all, what was actually in that facility? If this was legitimately a WMD plant of some sort that was dismantled, how many others were out there that we missed and were dismantled before we had total run of the country in order to look thoroughly?
Sure miss you my friend...
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I have menopause and a handgun. Any questions?
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Peacemaker
Honorable
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Peacemaker = double entendre
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posted March 02, 2004 07:09 PM |
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I have read the below piece now four times in a row. Be prepared if you should decide to read it as it is quite long and some of the best points are near the end. If you start it and then reject it out of hand, you might be missing some critical observations. I still have not come down on it either way, but I will say this:
It wasn't quite as outrageous as it first appeared to me after I thought about it for a while.
Any genuine dialogue about a comparison such as the one set forth in this piece is encouraged, particuarly on the comparison of the use of "nationalism" to inspire and disguise fascist sentiments. I know this will outrage some people. But even if it outrages you, please explain to me specifically why it does so. It outraged me as well at first, until I started thinking about it. I cannot now put my finger on why.
Published on Sunday, March 16, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History
by Thom Hartmann
The 70th anniversary wasn't noticed in the United States, and was barely reported in the corporate media. But the Germans remembered well that fateful day seventy years ago - February 27, 1933. They commemorated the anniversary by joining in demonstrations for peace that mobilized citizens all across the world.
It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would eventually succeed. (Historians are still arguing whether or not rogue elements in the intelligence service helped the terrorist; the most recent research implies they did not.)
But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest levels, in part because the government was distracted; the man who claimed to be the nation's leader had not been elected by a majority vote and the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers he coveted. He was a simpleton, some said, a cartoon character of a man who saw things in black-and-white terms and didn't have the intellect to understand the subtleties of running a nation in a complex and internationalist world. His coarse use of language - reflecting his political roots in a southernmost state - and his simplistic and often-inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric offended the aristocrats, foreign leaders, and the well-educated elite in the government and media. And, as a young man, he'd joined a secret society with an occult-sounding name and bizarre initiation rituals that involved skulls and human bones.
Nonetheless, he knew the terrorist was going to strike (although he didn't know where or when), and he had already considered his response. When an aide brought him word that the nation's most prestigious building was ablaze, he verified it was the terrorist who had struck and then rushed to the scene and called a press conference.
"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history," he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building, surrounded by national media. "This fire," he said, his voice trembling with emotion, "is the beginning." He used the occasion - "a sign from God," he called it - to declare an all-out war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and found motivation for their evil deeds in their religion.
Two weeks later, the first detention center for terrorists was built in Oranianberg to hold the first suspected allies of the infamous terrorist. In a national outburst of patriotism, the leader's flag was everywhere, even printed large in newspapers suitable for window display.
Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's now-popular leader had pushed through legislation - in the name of combating terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it - that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; police could sneak into people's homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.
To get his patriotic "Decree on the Protection of People and State" passed over the objections of concerned legislators and civil libertarians, he agreed to put a 4-year sunset provision on it: if the national emergency provoked by the terrorist attack was over by then, the freedoms and rights would be returned to the people, and the police agencies would be re-restrained. Legislators would later say they hadn't had time to read the bill before voting on it.
Immediately after passage of the anti-terrorism act, his federal police agencies stepped up their program of arresting suspicious persons and holding them without access to lawyers or courts. In the first year only a few hundred were interred, and those who objected were largely ignored by the mainstream press, which was afraid to offend and thus lose access to a leader with such high popularity ratings. Citizens who protested the leader in public - and there were many - quickly found themselves confronting the newly empowered police's batons, gas, and jail cells, or fenced off in protest zones safely out of earshot of the leader's public speeches. (In the meantime, he was taking almost daily lessons in public speaking, learning to control his tonality, gestures, and facial expressions. He became a very competent orator.)
Within the first months after that terrorist attack, at the suggestion of a political advisor, he brought a formerly obscure word into common usage. He wanted to stir a "racial pride" among his countrymen, so, instead of referring to the nation by its name, he began to refer to it as "The Homeland," a phrase publicly promoted in the introduction to a 1934 speech recorded in Leni Riefenstahl's famous propaganda movie "Triumph Of The Will." As hoped, people's hearts swelled with pride, and the beginning of an us-versus-them mentality was sewn. Our land was "the" homeland, citizens thought: all others were simply foreign lands. We are the "true people," he suggested, the only ones worthy of our nation's concern; if bombs fall on others, or human rights are violated in other nations and it makes our lives better, it's of little concern to us.
Playing on this new nationalism, and exploiting a disagreement with the French over his increasing militarism, he argued that any international body that didn't act first and foremost in the best interest of his own nation was neither relevant nor useful. He thus withdrew his country from the League Of Nations in October, 1933, and then negotiated a separate naval armaments agreement with Anthony Eden of The United Kingdom to create a worldwide military ruling elite.
His propaganda minister orchestrated a campaign to ensure the people that he was a deeply religious man and that his motivations were rooted in Christianity. He even proclaimed the need for a revival of the Christian faith across his nation, what he called a "New Christianity." Every man in his rapidly growing army wore a belt buckle that declared "Gott Mit Uns" - God Is With Us - and most of them fervently believed it was true.
Within a year of the terrorist attack, the nation's leader determined that the various local police and federal agencies around the nation were lacking the clear communication and overall coordinated administration necessary to deal with the terrorist threat facing the nation, particularly those citizens who were of Middle Eastern ancestry and thus probably terrorist and communist sympathizers, and various troublesome "intellectuals" and "liberals." He proposed a single new national agency to protect the security of the homeland, consolidating the actions of dozens of previously independent police, border, and investigative agencies under a single leader.
He appointed one of his most trusted associates to be leader of this new agency, the Central Security Office for the homeland, and gave it a role in the government equal to the other major departments.
His assistant who dealt with the press noted that, since the terrorist attack, "Radio and press are at out disposal." Those voices questioning the legitimacy of their nation's leader, or raising questions about his checkered past, had by now faded from the public's recollection as his central security office began advertising a program encouraging people to phone in tips about suspicious neighbors. This program was so successful that the names of some of the people "denounced" were soon being broadcast on radio stations. Those denounced often included opposition politicians and celebrities who dared speak out - a favorite target of his regime and the media he now controlled through intimidation and ownership by corporate allies.
To consolidate his power, he concluded that government alone wasn't enough. He reached out to industry and forged an alliance, bringing former executives of the nation's largest corporations into high government positions. A flood of government money poured into corporate coffers to fight the war against the Middle Eastern ancestry terrorists lurking within the homeland, and to prepare for wars overseas. He encouraged large corporations friendly to him to acquire media outlets and other industrial concerns across the nation, particularly those previously owned by suspicious people of Middle Eastern ancestry. He built powerful alliances with industry; one corporate ally got the lucrative contract worth millions to build the first large-scale detention center for enemies of the state. Soon more would follow. Industry flourished.
But after an interval of peace following the terrorist attack, voices of dissent again arose within and without the government. Students had started an active program opposing him (later known as the White Rose Society), and leaders of nearby nations were speaking out against his bellicose rhetoric. He needed a diversion, something to direct people away from the corporate cronyism being exposed in his own government, questions of his possibly illegitimate rise to power, and the oft-voiced concerns of civil libertarians about the people being held in detention without due process or access to attorneys or family.
With his number two man - a master at manipulating the media - he began a campaign to convince the people of the nation that a small, limited war was necessary. Another nation was harboring many of the suspicious Middle Eastern people, and even though its connection with the terrorist who had set afire the nation's most important building was tenuous at best, it held resources their nation badly needed if they were to have room to live and maintain their prosperity. He called a press conference and publicly delivered an ultimatum to the leader of the other nation, provoking an international uproar. He claimed the right to strike preemptively in self-defense, and nations across Europe - at first - denounced him for it, pointing out that it was a doctrine only claimed in the past by nations seeking worldwide empire, like Caesar's Rome or Alexander's Greece.
It took a few months, and intense international debate and lobbying with European nations, but, after he personally met with the leader of the United Kingdom, finally a deal was struck. After the military action began, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told the nervous British people that giving in to this leader's new first-strike doctrine would bring "peace for our time." Thus Hitler annexed Austria in a lightning move, riding a wave of popular support as leaders so often do in times of war. The Austrian government was unseated and replaced by a new leadership friendly to Germany, and German corporations began to take over Austrian resources.
In a speech responding to critics of the invasion, Hitler said, "Certain foreign newspapers have said that we fell on Austria with brutal methods. I can only say; even in death they cannot stop lying. I have in the course of my political struggle won much love from my people, but when I crossed the former frontier [into Austria] there met me such a stream of love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators."
To deal with those who dissented from his policies, at the advice of his politically savvy advisors, he and his handmaidens in the press began a campaign to equate him and his policies with patriotism and the nation itself. National unity was essential, they said, to ensure that the terrorists or their sponsors didn't think they'd succeeded in splitting the nation or weakening its will. In times of war, they said, there could be only "one people, one nation, and one commander-in-chief" ("Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer"), and so his advocates in the media began a nationwide campaign charging that critics of his policies were attacking the nation itself. Those questioning him were labeled "anti-German" or "not good Germans," and it was suggested they were aiding the enemies of the state by failing in the patriotic necessity of supporting the nation's valiant men in uniform. It was one of his most effective ways to stifle dissent and pit wage-earning people (from whom most of the army came) against the "intellectuals and liberals" who were critical of his policies.
Nonetheless, once the "small war" annexation of Austria was successfully and quickly completed, and peace returned, voices of opposition were again raised in the Homeland. The almost-daily release of news bulletins about the dangers of terrorist communist cells wasn't enough to rouse the populace and totally suppress dissent. A full-out war was necessary to divert public attention from the growing rumbles within the country about disappearing dissidents; violence against liberals, Jews, and union leaders; and the epidemic of crony capitalism that was producing empires of wealth in the corporate sector but threatening the middle class's way of life.
A year later, to the week, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia; the nation was now fully at war, and all internal dissent was suppressed in the name of national security. It was the end of Germany's first experiment with democracy.
As we conclude this review of history, there are a few milestones worth remembering.
February 27, 2003, was the 70th anniversary of Dutch terrorist Marinus van der Lubbe's successful firebombing of the German Parliament (Reichstag) building, the terrorist act that catapulted Hitler to legitimacy and reshaped the German constitution. By the time of his successful and brief action to seize Austria, in which almost no German blood was shed, Hitler was the most beloved and popular leader in the history of his nation. Hailed around the world, he was later Time magazine's "Man Of The Year."
Most Americans remember his office for the security of the homeland, known as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and its SchutzStaffel, simply by its most famous agency's initials: the SS.
We also remember that the Germans developed a new form of highly violent warfare they named "lightning war" or blitzkrieg, which, while generating devastating civilian losses, also produced a highly desirable "shock and awe" among the nation's leadership according to the authors of the 1996 book "Shock And Awe" published by the National Defense University Press.
Reflecting on that time, The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983) left us this definition of the form of government the German democracy had become through Hitler's close alliance with the largest German corporations and his policy of using war as a tool to keep power: "fas-cism (fbsh'iz'em) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."
Today, as we face financial and political crises, it's useful to remember that the ravages of the Great Depression hit Germany and the United States alike. Through the 1930s, however, Hitler and Roosevelt chose very different courses to bring their nations back to power and prosperity.
Germany's response was to use government to empower corporations and reward the society's richest individuals, privatize much of the commons, stifle dissent, strip people of constitutional rights, and create an illusion of prosperity through continual and ever-expanding war. America passed minimum wage laws to raise the middle class, enforced anti-trust laws to diminish the power of corporations, increased taxes on corporations and the wealthiest individuals, created Social Security, and became the employer of last resort through programs to build national infrastructure, promote the arts, and replant forests.
To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the choice is again ours.
Thom Hartmann lived and worked in Germany during the 1980s, and is the author of over a dozen books, including "Unequal Protection" and "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight." This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.
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Wolfman
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Insomniac
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posted March 16, 2004 09:51 PM |
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Iraq is kind of scaring me now.
Spain has been attacked by terrorists. Spain has now elected a socialist government, which pledges to pull its troops out of Iraq.
What kind of message does this send to the terrorists?
It’s like waving a white flag and telling them “you win”.
And if Kerry is elected in November, he will more than likely pull American troops out of Iraq and turn it into another Somalia. A hellhole.
It makes me sad to see what could happen on the sidelines. Having no input into the situation, not being able to vote.
In Spain, the terrorists have already been told that they can sway elections by attacking. If I were the government here in the US, I would be watching for terrorist attacks right before the November elections.
I hope people will realize this as we near the elections in this country. And vote to preserve freedom, not destroy it. Give the Iraqi people a chance.
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privatehudson
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The Ultimate Badass
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posted March 16, 2004 10:36 PM |
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I've always been under the impression that even Bush and his administration wishes to withdraw from Iraq relatively soon and hand power onto a provisional government that's not entirely democratic, but heading that way. That's what we get reported in the news any way, scaling down plans and so on.
As for Spain, well Zaparetto has always been against the whole Iraq thing in the first place, and has long intended to withdraw unless the UN takes more involvement, he's always said this. I also doubt people voted for him simply because of the attacks, the involvement of Spain in the Iraq war had been extremely (90% against in some opinion polls) unpopular in the country long before the 11th of March. Aznar also shot himself in the foot a little by trying to blame ETA for the attacks against most intelligence analysis as he had made considerable benefits out of his policy towards ETA whilst in power.
Aznar admitedly did do a good job of coping with ETA, but his involvement in Iraq was highly unpopular and though Zaparetto was an outsider for much of the election, it's not like Aznar was that popular in the first place on certain issues.
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We're on an express elevator to Hell, goin' down!
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Peacemaker
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posted March 17, 2004 05:54 PM |
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I dunno, PH. What I heard over here was that the election was pretty much a dead heat until the attacks, which pushed the ratio clearly in favor of the socialist candidate within a matter of hours... What did you hear?
I know it is speculation that the attack was the cause, but is it not reasonable speculation given the timing?
Anyways, the apparent message is clearly unproductive. We need to achieve the most solidarity we can in the face of the "war on terrorism" and if anybody lets terrorist attacks influence national decisions in ways the terrorists want, then we're just showing them they can win by using terror and are handing them the whole enchilada...
It's very, very upsetting that this thing with the election happened if you ask me. Other than solving the whole Palestinian problem once and for all (which I believe is the primary root cause here), anything anybody does that gives the terrorists what they want in response to attacks, or even creates that appearance, will further empower them and we simply cannot afford to do that....
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