May 24, 2015

During the Bush War on Terra, the thought struck me that he was put there to break America's

addiction to war and make people disgusted with every foul thing his administration did.

I mean, it was so obvious to me how wrong it all was. After centuries of building an economy and social order based on making weapons, justifying the deeds of militarization and pollution and discrimination and genocide. And lying about why. It was to me, as if he was giving Americans their choice:

'Do you love feeling strong by going to war and feeling like a winner? Does the sight and sound of bombs, jet planes and weapons make you feel a sense of pride and powerful beyond your own physical abilities?

Do you love getting rich quick, taking the money and running? Do you believe being cruel and rapacious is what a warrior is?

How evil will you become, to keep your own status quo going? It's your choice, I'm showing it to you, in all of its glory and horror.

Choose the America you want.'

And a great many chose badly.

Then again, I could change my mind and try to fit it into some complicated world view that absolves me. Claiming I never profited personally or willingly from years of warfare and crimes around the world allowing my life in a first world nation, no more than my white privilege.

But I don't believe in doing that.

May 24, 2015

Of course! Truman most likely saw this film released by the USArmy and more (GRAPHIC):

Eisenhower & Patton Visit The Nazi Death Camps

Published on Jun 25, 2014

While perusing the National Archives I came across this film about the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps by the US at the end of the Second World War. It was at once repulsive and fascinating. It is an in your face look at the ultimate horror. We get A view of the aftermath of large scale mechanized slaughter of countless numbers of innocent people, and the shattered survivors. Below is a breakdown of what the film contains

Anyway it is an important film but not for those who are offended by the showing of graphic images. If you are DON'T WATCH!

Those are comments by the uploader, ChiTownView. It has not even gotten 2,000 views, when AJ, et al, get millions.

R.1: Army Lt. Col. George C. Stevens, Navy Lt. E. Ray Kellogg and U.S. Chief of Counsel Robert H. Jackson read exhibited affidavits which attest to authenticity of scenes in film. Map of Europe shows locations of concentration camps in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechoslovokia, Danzing, Denmark, France, Germany, Isle of Jersey, Latvia, Netherlands, Poland and Yugoslavia. At Leipsig Concentration Camp, there are piles of dead bodies, and many living Russian, Czechoslovakian, Polish and French prisoners. At Penig Concentration Camp, Hungarian women and others display wounds. Doctors treat patients and U.S. Red Cross workers move them to German Air Force hospital where their former captors are forced to care for them.

R.2: At Ohrdruf Concentration Camp, inspection team composed of Allied military leaders, members of U.S. Congress and local townspeople tours camp. Among them are Generals Dwight David Eisenhower, Supreme Headquaters Allied Expeditionary Forces commander; Omar Nelson Bradley; and George S. Patton. General Eisenhower speaks with Congressmen. They see bodies heaped on grill at crematorium and Polish, Czechoslovakian, Russian, Belgian, German Jews and German political prisoners. Col. Heyden Sears, Combat Command A, 4th Armored Division commander, forces local townspeople to tour camp. U.S. officers arrive at Hadamar Concentration Camp, where Polish, Russian and German political and religious dissidents were murdered. Maj. Herman Boelke of U.S. War Crimes Investigation Team (WCIT) examines survivors. Bodies are exhumed from mass graves for examination, identification and burial. Four-man panel interviews facility director Dr. Waldman and chief male nurse Karl Wille.

For more on this part of the story follow this link:

http://www.warhistoryonline.com/articles/during-wwii-general-eisenhower-ordered-every-citizen-of-gotha-germany-to-tour-a-concentration-camp-after-seeing-the-camp-the-mayor-hanged-himself.html

R.3:At Breendonck Concentration Camp, Belgium, methods of torture are demonstrated. At Harlan Concentration Camp near Hannover, U.S. Red Cross aides Polish survivors. Allied troops and able-bodied survivors bury dead. At Arnstadt Concentration Camp, German villagers are forced to exhume Polish and Russian bodies from mass graves.

R.4: At Nordhausen Concentration Camp, there are piles of bodies. Troops treat, feed and remove survivors who are mainly Polish, Russian and French. At Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Navy Lt. Jack H. Taylor stands with fellow survivors and describes his capture, imprisonment and conditions at Mauthausen. Volunteers bathe victims.

R.5: At Buchenwald Concentration Camp, Army trucks arrive with aid for survivors. Piles of dead, mutilated and emaciated bodies. Some survivors among dead. Huge ovens and piles of bone ash on floor of crematorium. Civilians from nearby Weimar are forced to tour camp. They see exhibits of lampshades made of human skin, and two shrunken heads.

R.6: British commander of Royal Artillery describes conditions at Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. German Army Schutzstaffel (SS) troops are forced to bury dead and aid survivors. Woman doctor, former prisoner, describes conditions in female section of camp. Belson commander Kramer is taken into custody. German guards bury dead. Bulldozer pushes piles of bodies into mass graves.

Producer: National Archives
Creative Commons license: CC0 1.0 Universal
National Archives and Records Administration - ARC 43452, LI 238.2 - NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMPS - DVD Copied by Ann Galloway. Series:
Producer: National Archives and Records Administration
Language: English
Keywords: archives.gov; public.resource.org
Creative Commons license: CC0 1.0 Universal



This is what I saw in school. It's why little people do shocks me and manufactured outrage doesn't move me. This is the real thing, not a sanitized version.

Eisenhower thought we should know what happened. In our current era, we have fantasies presented with only slogans, no deep thinking or feelings about how to protect others from being made into the 'Other.' Which is just what happened in Germany.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014998709#post6

Another thing from me. As a kid, iike many others, I had a certain morbid fascination with Hitler as the personification of evil. I had to analyze what I was feeling. For some, looking over such material, knowing they have not been in the position to do such, gives some a sense of moral superiority.

But I lost interest in the pursuit, as I realized that was not proof of anything. That I could not point the finger and feel proud. I was brought with a belief in the Golden Rule, and 'There but for the grace of God go I.'

All are capable of doing evil, or great evil. Some fall into the trap, others see it not as a trap, but an opportunity to enrich themselves. Or as in the case of Hitler himself, I don't believe he thought he was doing a bad thing. He was convinced that he was doing something great and was going to bring about a sort of kingdom of heaven.

I don't give the Mad Dog that kind of credit, though. Read the full BBC and Guardian pieces. I don't think the video is available any longer, though. I wondered at the time he was overthrown, why the British seemed so happy about it. Then some of the DUers from that area explained the history to me.

There is a lot we do not see in our billionaire-owned media. They want us to bite at the latest headline and outrage, or they even make them up. I can't say that I care about this man dying.

May 23, 2015

Okay, got it, see why she acted that way from your links on the other OP. (Warning GRAPHIC):

The BBC Version:

Mad Dog - Gaddafi's Secret World



Colonel Gaddafi was called Mad Dog by Ronald Reagan. His income from oil was a billion dollars a week. He washed his hands in deer's blood. No other dictator had such sex appeal and no other so cannily combined oil and the implied threat of terror to turn Western powers into cowed appeasers.

When he went abroad - bedecked in fake medals from unfought wars - a bulletproof tent was flown ahead, along with camels that would be tethered outside. His sons lived a Dolce & Gabbana lifestyle - one kept white tigers, while another commissioned a $500 million cruise liner with a shark pool.

Like other tyrants, Gaddafi used torture and murder to silence opposition, but what made his rule especially terrifying was that death came so casually. A man who complained that Gaddafi had an affair with his wife was allegedly tied between two cars and torn in half. On visits to schools and orphanages Gaddafi would tap underage girls on the head to show his henchmen which ones he wanted. They would be taken to his palace and abused. Young boys were held in tunnels under the palace...

Then I met a man in a bar in Africa. He was a Scottish oil worker from Tripoli. He told me his Libyan neighbour’s seven year old daughter had been intercepted by Libyan security on her way home from school. They cut off her lips with scissors and hung them in a plastic bag inside a car. They put her body on the back seat. She bled to death. Her father had spoken derisively of Gaddafi and been shopped by a colleague. Suddenly the dictator didn’t seem such fun anymore...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03tj0n0

The Guardian version:

Storyville: Mad Dog – Gaddafi's Secret World (BBC4) was as dense, as informative and as powerful as you might expect of an 80-minute documentary about the Libyan leader containing interviews with those he bereaved, tortured and imprisoned, those who tried to stop him, and those who – when the money was right and the risk worth it – helped him; and it was twice as horrifying.

Christopher Olgiati's film outlined Gaddafi's funding and coordinating of terrorist movements, the orchestrating of civil conflicts, the training of genocidal warlords, the ceaseless executions of enemies real and imagined. Amid the litany of violations against God and man and conscience, some details stood out. Idi Amin's prisoners having to choose between suffocation in their overstuffed cells or death by stepping into the electrified water outside. The hot pokers and dogs trained to bite to a maximally-painful depth in Abu Salim jail. The six-year-old with her lips cut off and left to bleed to death because she did not smile when Gaddafi thought she should.

The only relief came when we moved from profound horror to profound disquiet, such as when the former National Security Council Director for Libya at the White House, Gwenyth Todd, recalled watching an oil company's CEO who had come to ask them to lift the post-Lockerbie sanctions start crying when they refused. "We handed him a Kleenex," she says, in a still-disbelieving tone. She uses the same tone when remembering the meeting at which one of her colleagues wondered whether they could remove the sanctions if they managed to discredit the families of the victims of the Pan Am bombing by pointing out that they had accepted insurance payouts from the airline, making them out to be moneygrabbers...***

It was a masterful portrait of the man and of his rise and downfall – slightly let down by an unnecessarily self-aggrandising voiceover: at one point the speaker intoned, in his effortfully gravelly manner, "The men who went [to accept Gaddafi's offer to train terrorists] are reluctant to talk. One told us to forget we even knew his name..."

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/feb/04/storyville-mad-dog-gaddafis-secret-world-tv-review

***Apparently Obama, called a fossil-fuel, climate destroying lackey at DU, didn't have his staff give the weeping oilman anything but Kleenex. Obama had an oligation under our treaty with the UN to intervene to save civilians. Do people want us to leave the UN like the John Birch Society demands?

The description of the horrors that were being committed in Libya makes me understand why those who overthrew him were so brutal to him and his son. Just when did we develop such a protective feeling for people like this who we were obligated to provide support to take out of power to save lives? And who is funding the media that wants us to feel that way? And why?

Our insatiable thirst for oil helped give this man the power to do what he did. We didn't kill him and his family. His own people did.

May 23, 2015

LOL! Reminds me of my baby shower. All the women were from Mexico. One (a university professor)

threw herself down on the floor just like that, legs flailing as well, screaming shrilly (in Spanish, of course) and my eyes nearly bugged out. I just gaped!

Because MY little one wasn't going to be that way...

Or so I thought, I was so naive.

A couple of years later kid didn't want to leave the Pottery Barn no matter how I reasoned it out.

I had to hoist said darling over my shoulder and kept walking, as reasoning did no good. I had the advantage, but those legs were flailing, and fists were pounding my back, and there was THE SCREAMING. Which I fully accepted and acted as if NOTHING WAS HAPPENING.

Having gently vanquished said public tantrum, nothing more was said and we drove home. And forgot about it until now.

So that childhood event was exactly as predicted...

EDIT to add:

That was near the end of the pregnancy. The baby shower at work was managed by the black ladies at my job. They bought me all kinds of things that I had no idea what they were for.

One lady said, 'She has no idea about having babies.' They decided to take special care of me and even followed me to the bathroom to make sure I didn't go into labor by myself. Yes, I had NO IDEA what I was getting into.

May 23, 2015

Like a portal back in time to another place:

Thanks for the post.

May 23, 2015

I approve. He obviously sees past the 'states rights' and economic charades. It was about slavery.

Racism and slavery was just as wrong then as it is now. I shouldn't be sugar coated the way the Pauls and others of their ilk have done.

The Confederacy's treason wasn't just leaving the Union for the rights of states to determine how to rule within their borders. Nor was it a war for economic supremacy by the Union, but a fundamental rebellion against the Founders' ideal for a future America, better than their own creation, where All Men Are Created Equal. Not just plantation owners and white men. It was pure racism and a denial of human rights.

Totally Not Racist Teabaggers Wave Confederate Flag In Front Of White House



http://mountainsageblog.com/2013/10/14/totally-not-racist-teabaggers-wave-confederate-flag-in-front-of-white-house/

May 23, 2015

Oh, wow. You're right. It's coming to the home stretch now for the

Ready For Someone Else!™ types. It has been nothing but a search for ANY anti-HRC candidate, not caring what the person is really about. They fail to acknowledge that Sanders is neither anti-Obama nor is he anti-HRC, that would be bad for the mantra. It's the echo chamber at work.

I've followed Sanders with interest for a dozen years, but never thought he planned to run for POTUS. Then suddenly his long lost lovers come out of the woodwork, huh?

They clearly didn't know this, as it destroys their anti-Democratic Party fantasies. Their love is not credible. Enjoy this, from the Democratic Socialists of America:



Q. Aren't you a party that's in competition with the Democratic Party for votes and support?

A:No, we are not a separate party. Like our friends and allies in the feminist, labor, civil rights, religious, and community organizing movements, many of us have been active in the Democratic Party. We work with those movements to strengthen the party’s left wing, represented by the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

The process and structure of American elections seriously hurts third party efforts. Winner-take-all elections instead of proportional representation, rigorous party qualification requirements that vary from state to state, a presidential instead of a parliamentary system, and the two-party monopoly on political power have doomed third party efforts. We hope that at some point in the future, in coalition with our allies, an alternative national party will be viable. For now, we will continue to support progressives who have a real chance at winning elections, which usually means left-wing Democrats. 

http://www.dsausa.org/

That's how Bernie identifies himself.

Bernie Sanders Is Proudly Defending His Democratic Socialism From Ignorant Attacks

By Jason Easley - May, 4th, 2015

STEPHANOPOULOS: I can hear the Republican attack ad right now. He wants American to look more like Scandinavia.

SANDERS: That’s right. That’s right. And what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong when you have more income and wealth equality? What’s wrong when they have a stronger middle class in many ways than we do, higher minimum wage than we do, and they are stronger on the environment than we do? Look, the fact of the matter is, we do a lot in our country, which is good, but we can learn from other countries. We have, George, the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on earth, at the same time as we are seeing a proliferation of millionaires and billionaires. Frankly, I don’t think that is sustainable. I don’t think that’s what America is about.

According to the Democratic Socialists Of America,

Democratic Socialism does not mean government control of the economy, “Democratic socialists believe that both the economy and society should be run democratically—to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few. To achieve a more just society, many structures of our government and economy must be radically transformed through greater economic and social democracy so that ordinary Americans can participate in the many decisions that affect our lives.”

The problem is that Republicans have defined everything that isn’t trickle-down economics as socialism. Republicans define liberalism as socialism. Republicans think progressivism is socialism when in reality, they have no idea what socialism is.

http://www.politicususa.com/2015/05/04/bernie-sanders-proudly-defending-democratic-socialism-ignorant-attacks.html

No one is going to find HRC against any of that! Her record does not show it. Nor does her rhetoric. Really, what is a more useful pursuit than Equality? Why dedicate years of one's life to the offal spewing from the GOP and Libertarians?

She doesn't, and neither should we spend our time that way. Make no mistake, wholesale denigradation of the Democratic Party and every single member such as that spewed, is not about getting a Democratic Socialist, a liberal or progressive in office.

It's just about destroying the organizing mechanism of our party to create change, and leaving a vacuum for the Koch brothers to fill up with more Libertarianism. Who's kidding who here?

Supporting Bernie does not mean destroying the Democratic Party as a whole/ refusing to vote for any Democrat/ or attaching oneself to another brand in an act of self-righteous rebellion. Or posting how much the Democratic Party betrayed one or how one will never vote Democratic again, etc. Pull my other finger. No, really. Do it.

Barney Frank was once admired on DU for his accomplishments, but is now maligned, after he ran against the media mold and said this:

Understand that the more deeply you hold your ideals, the more you are morally obligated to be pragmatic...

Idealism without pragmatism is just a way to flatter your ego.

With 'friends' such as those who toss good Democrats under the bus for every media generated poutrage, who needs enemies? And does anyone remember this from Barney?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/17/barney-frank-elizabeth-warren_n_6886862.html

And from Warren herself?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/31/elizabeth-warren-hillary-clinton_n_6977466.html

*sound of bus approaching*

How quickly she was discarded and now is forgotten. You were really onto something when you said they weren't really Sanders supporters. They just put on the robe for the time being. Sad, isn't it?

Some places are not about the people they claim to be in love with, those people are being used as tools for another plan. They're anti-HRC groups doing opposition research for the GOP. They are manufacturing media consent for what a GOP stolen election in 2016. After all, if the Democrats hate them, they can say we didn't show up to vote, thus their guy really did win. And if they get a lot of hits here, that 'proves it' and these posts are being spread like the POS thread on RW sites to 'prove even Democrats are not supporting their Party.' And the polls are attacked saying otherwise. Gotta keep up the meme, oh, yeah.

Bernie and Obama called out CU and the Koch brothers, as did Reid, Hartmann and other figures that have the public ear. The voices have become more insistent since Obama defied them in 2009 and said that a grass roots movement to pass a Constitutional amendment was required as soon as CU crippled fair elections thanks to:



Which has some real corporatists, not what HRC/ Obama/ Democrats are called here, richly enough, by those who follow the ultimate in corporatism, Libertarianism.

How Freedom Became Tyranny

By George Monbiot - 19th December 2011

Freedom: who could object? Yet this word is now used to justify a thousand forms of exploitation. Throughout the rightwing press and blogosphere, among thinktanks and governments, the word excuses every assault on the lives of the poor, every form of inequality and intrusion to which the 1% subject us. How did libertarianism, once a noble impulse, become synonymous with injustice?

In the name of freedom – freedom from regulation – the banks were permitted to wreck the economy. In the name of freedom, taxes for the super-rich are cut. In the name of freedom, companies lobby to drop the minimum wage and raise working hours. In the same cause, US insurers lobby Congress to thwart effective public healthcare; the government rips up our planning laws(1); big business trashes the biosphere. This is the freedom of the powerful to exploit the weak, the rich to exploit the poor.

Right-wing libertarianism recognises few legitimate constraints on the power to act, regardless of the impact on the lives of others. In the UK it is forcefully promoted by groups like the TaxPayers’ Alliance, the Adam Smith Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs and Policy Exchange(2). Their conception of freedom looks to me like nothing but a justification for greed.

So why have we been been so slow to challenge this concept of liberty? I believe that one of the reasons is as follows. The great political conflict of our age – between neocons and the millionaires and corporations they support on one side and social justice campaigners and environmentalists on the other – has been mischaracterised as a clash between negative and positive freedoms...

Article really goes into depth after that and is worth reading:

http://www.monbiot.com/2011/12/19/how-freedom-became-tyranny/

May 22, 2015

You're welcome. Sometimes, I just say:

May 22, 2015

They are very polite for the most part, too. You know I am of mixed mind on this. But applaud the

support of a strong Democrat. Some here aren't gong to vote or prefer other parties, so be it. I don't engage bitter folk since I don't want to be that way. If they get me feeling that way, I will have not been true to myself.

May 22, 2015

I've ben in a lot of tunnels and underground facilities there. It's real, I tell you! Real! Arrghhh!

That's the Alex Jones version, but he's now supporting Rand Paul for president and also said he'd *really* like to see Ted Cruz as POTUS. Another gold mine, right here:



Here Come the Black Helicopters!: Exposing the Liberal Plan for Global Government

by Dick Morris, Eileen McGann

Warning: Our national sovereignty and our freedom are in grave danger.

Stealthily advancing, the globalists and socialists at the United Nations, and in the United States itself, are trying to dilute our national sovereignty, undermine our democratic values, and mandate massive transfers of our wealth and technology to third world countries...

That should make us all buy some adult diapers. That and much more:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15818850-here-come-the-black-helicopters

Honestly, who knew Morris has so much to say? Seriously, though, Iran Contra wasn't CT. Kerry held public hearings on it and it was placed in the Congressional Record. But we can't give him any credit, so let's go with the other guy. Dead people always tell the truth, and in fact he may have really done so. One will need a psychic to see if he changed his mind since his death. RIP.