The sad Ruins; always left in the wake of Despots after they've done their Damage

[tomhagen]

[lapfog_1]

1. Three observations

1. Was the background noise of people walking and cars running and birds... dubbed in? Because I never hear any people talking.

2. The girl at around 3:30 into the video looks to be about 5... she would only be 78 right now ( not that old actually )

3. If we have another world war, there won't be nearly this much left of buildings and transportation, etc.

[DemocracyMouse]

4. We're in the middle of a slow-burn world conflict.

The most intense war parts are in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, and the Mexican drug war, etc.

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

2. My word....incredible footage.

We bombed that city to oblivion. The Hitlers Bunker and alleged "cremation site" was chilling. Looks like complete devastation. Lots of bricks.

[jmbar2]

3. The bucket brigade looks staged

The women are too styled to actually be doing manual labor. I like the spunk of the one making faces in that scene.

[DemocracyMouse]

5. People wore the clothes they had, no?

And those bucket passing exercises was pretty normal back then. But on the other hand, it could be staged.

But on the whole, the film is a good warning to the Trumpsters and white nationalists.

[jmbar2]

6. I was looking at the hairdos...

..but the point is well-taken about the aftermath of autocratic rule. It's never just a failure of the tyrant - then entire planet pays the price.

I feel confident that it won't be long before he is gone. However, it will take decades to clean up all of the destructive moles placed throughout government agencies by the Koch crew.

According to Nancy McLean, author of "Democracy in Chains", their agenda is to structure the changes so that they are nearly impossible to undo, like declassifying Bears' Ears national monument, and then quickly selling it off for exploitation. It will take a new administration with deep knowledge of our government, and the scope of the sabotage, to quickly identify all the landmines before they can go off.

[DemocracyMouse]

8. Excellent and sobering points jmbar2

[3Hotdogs]

7. Years ago, I met a woman who was a survivor of the firebombing of Dresden.

I had finished reading Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5. She was 10 at the time. She was telling me of the fires at the edge of where she lived.

There was a forced smile on her face as she told her story. The smile looked as if she was trying to smile because the smile would be replaced with tears if she didn't smile.



Buildings were damaged or destroyed. So were people.

[jmbar2]

10. Vonnegut was also my first introduction to what happened in Dresden

I remember wondering at the time if there hadn't been some other options to such horrific carnage.

[3Hotdogs]

11. Remember, we also firebombed Tokyo. We even attached delayed fire devices to bats.

Last edited Thu Aug 16, 2018, 04:56 PM - Edit history (1)

The plan was, the bats would look for attics to nest. Then the firebombs would ignite.


Correction. The "bat" part of the firebombing was not implement but was subject of experiments using bats from New Mexico. During one fly-by experiment, bats ignited an aircraft hanger in California and a general's car.

The actual firebombing of Tokyo is estimated to have killed 100,000 people.

[jmbar2]

13. I hadn't heard about that.

So much intelligence dedicated to doing harm to others.

[world wide wally]

9. It's mind boggling that all this could be cleaned up, hauled away, and rebuilt in one lifetime

[jmbar2]

12. The whole Marshall Plan was mindboggling when you learn about it

Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek finance minister has written some good stuff on how the Marshall Plan was applied to rebuild Europe. That's another part of European history that I didn't know until recently. Imagine sitting down at a desk with a blank piece of paper to map out how to quickly restore the economies of a destroyed continent. Although there are debates about it's design and impact, it was an audacious project in scope and ambition.

I wish we had such thinkers today to figure out how to save regions from failed governments and environmental collapse. We're having to focus too many resources on defending ourselves from ratfuckery to be able to tackle the most pressing world problems.

Maybe future generations will rise to that challenge. I feel bad for leaving such a mess for them.

[dalton99a]

14. Kick

[Rhiannon12866]

15. My Dad visited Germany as a young student and saw much of the same in 1950

He talked about buildings he stayed in, hotels that were still functioning even though the first few floors were bombed out. And he said that you never wanted to go to Berlin on the days the Russians were in charge. When he began traveling again in the 1980s, that was the first place he wanted to visit - to see the progress they'd made. Of course, those were still the days of Checkpoint Charlie.