I Will Not Go Quietly!

stonebeard:

"You are right, humiliation and desecration of the detainees' religion took place both in concentration camps in the 40s and in these two american camps. but the physical abuse is the big factor here. i don't think many americans care if we humiliatie the detainees and desecrate their religion because these don't seem like big things in america."

You are right: they do not "seem like a big things in America" - when it is someone else's religion.  Yet look how the self-proclaimed "Christian Right" - and many, if not most, of "Christian America" - responds when it thinks that its beliefs are being desecrated!!  What a pack of incredible hypocrites!

Peace.

Maani

"No, they would not have gone on forever. They would have gone on just long enough to show - as we now know from myriad sources, both partisan and independent - that Gore won Florida, and thus the election"

Obviously you didn't checkout the web pages I put in my previous post that clearly say that those media recounts had Bush the winner.

"Korea worked? Really? Is that why North Korea now has nuclear weapons pointed at the U.S.?   Hooray for our side"

As for Korea, N. Korea has nukes because Carter and Clinton were foolish enough to trust them and give them the materials. Henry Kissinger didn't call that the biggest foriegn policy blunder for nothing. And besides, you don't see S. Korea as a communist country do you?


Edited by marktheshark

James Lee wrote: maani: please tell me why we're still bothering to reply. Give 'em facts and they call it media bias. Give 'em reasons and they call them conspiracy theories. Give 'em a straight-up question to answer and they tell you they're sick of your bashing.

marktheshark wrote: Maani "Korea worked? Really? Is that why North Korea now has nuclear weapons pointed at the U.S.?   Hooray for our side" As for Korea, N. Korea has nukes because Carter and Clinton were foolish enough to trust them and give them the materials. Henry Kissinger didn't call that the biggest foriegn policy blunder for nothing. And besides, you don't see S. Korea as a communist country do you?

Right blame it on Clinton MTS

I really think this thing is kind of Bush's fault more.  We rushed of to war with Iraq lookign for WMD (which werent there, who expected that??) and it turned up they were in N Korea, Bush dropped the ball on that

marktheshark wrote: James Lee wrote: The reason why you bother to reply is you love it. And you know it. Face it James, we're all a bunch of last-word freaks.

Speak for yourself!

 

spectral wrote: Syzygy wrote: marktheshark wrote: James Lee wrote: The reason why you bother to reply is you love it. And you know it. Face it James, we're all a bunch of last-word freaks. Speak for yourself! yeah, too right!

Thank you. You two just proved my point!

NJNF:

Couldn't agree more.  Sure, lots of things happened under Carter and Clinton; maybe even some things that they shoudl have taken care of then.  But that, as they say, is history.  And anyway, each president has his screw-ups, and the next one has to "clean up the mess" left by his predecessor.  This, too, is history.

Thus, this is something Bush should have taken care of when he came to office, and did not.  There are two reasons for this.  First, when North Korea began to "sabre-rattle" and threaten to create nukes that could hit California, Bush thought he was "acting tough" by refusing to engage in any form of diplomacy.  He out-and-out shut them off.  This was sheer lunacy.  However, as you may remember, he eventually backed off a little from this outrageously arrogant posture, and began miminal diplomatic measures to be taken.

Why?  Easy.  Keep in mind that Bush is part of the Bush family legacy.  Would it surprise you to know that The Carlyle Group has one of its largest investments - over $750 million - in South Korean banks, real estate, etc.?  Or that Bush's dad is The Carlyle Group's "senior advisor" for those investments?  Or that W only changed his posture after daddy gave him a call - almost certainly to tell him that he was endangering the Bush investments in Korea?  Thus, the thing that got Bush to back down even a little was not any concern for the U.S. - or nuclear missiles aimed at California - but his own inheritance via the Bush family investment in South Korea.

Also, you have all undoubtedly heard that we have now had three bomb scaresin two days, the first two of which were Sunday.  In the first of those, a double-decker tour bus was stopped and surrounded by heavily armed police when the driver reported five suspicious men carrying "large bags."  Do I even need to say that the men all looked like they were of Arab descent?  (They were from South Africa, I believe.)  The police cordoned off two blocks in each direction, and took up offensive positions.  They then had all 60 tourists leave the bus with their hands in the air.  They took the five "suspicious" men, made them kneel on the sidewalk, handcuffed them, and searched them.  They then searched every bag on the bus.  Finding nothing, and determining that none of the men was anything other than a tourist, everyone was let go.

I have a few comments here.

First, most of the tourists on the bus were far more terrified of the police sharpshooters training their guns on the whole lot them than they were of the possibility that one of the bags contained a bomb (this was ascertained through interviews with many of the passengers).  Indeed, the sight of the guns trained on them sent two teenage girls into wildly hysterical fits (not the funny kind); they both required extensive medical attention.

Second, the men were handcuffed without an arrest being made; indeed, no arrest was made at all.  This is counter to police procedure and city law.  The police are not permitted to handcuff a person unless and until an arrest is effected.  That's the law.  And it is not as if there were not enough police to watch over the five men, conduct the search and keep the area quarantined: there had to be at least 50-100 cops there (I work only a block away, and witnessed this myself).

Finally, everyone, including the five men, was let go after the search.  Yet no apology was given, no recompense offered.  If they choose to, these five men have the right to file a serious lawsuit against the NYPD: not only were they illegally handcuffed, but they were humiliated by being forced to kneel on the sidewalk with machine guns pointed at their heads.  This was only one step away from the kind of "accidental murder" that occurred in London the other day.

MtS, Doctor, NJNF et al: Do you still feel all of this is okay?  As noted in my previous post, how much is enough?  Where does it end?

As an aside, I think it was Ivan who suggested earlier that the U.S. "would not stand for" further intrusions into their privacy and freedoms.  (Ivan: forgive me if it wasn't you.)  Below is a link to a short sound and video clip showing where we might be headed as a result of a combination of a National ID Card and some provisions of the Patriot Act.

Peace.

http://www.aclu.org/pizza/images/screen.swf

All:

I thought you would find this intereting vis-a-vis the present discussion.  It is certainly a fabulous history lesson, compacted into a short space.  Note that the italicized sections are my own emphases, and are not part of the original:

How Hitler Became A Dictator

- By Jacob G. Hornberger

Whenever U.S. officials wish to demonize someone, they inevitably compare him to Adolf Hitler. The message immediately resonates with people because everyone knows that Hitler was a brutal dictator.

But how many people know how Hitler actually became a dictator? My bet is, very few. I would also bet that more than a few people would be surprised at how he pulled it off, especially given that after World War I Germany had become a democratic republic.

The story of how Hitler became a dictator is set forth in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer, on which this article is based.

In the presidential election held on March 13, 1932, there were four candidates: the incumbent, Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg, Adolf Hitler, and two minor candidates, Ernst Thaelmann and Theodore Duesterberg. The results were:

Hindenburg won 49.6 percent of the votes, Hitler 30.1 percent Thaelmann 13.2 percent Duesterberg 6.8 percent.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, almost 70 percent of the German people voted against Hitler, causing his supporter Joseph Goebbels, who would later become Hitler’s minister of propaganda, to lament in his journal, - - We are beaten; terrible outlook. Party circles badly depressed and dejected. - -

Since Hindenberg had not received a majority of the vote, however, a runoff election had to be held among the top three vote-getters. On April 19, 1932, the runoff results were:

Hindenburg 53.0 percent Hitler 36.8 percent Thaelmann 10.2 percent

Thus, even though Hitler’s vote total had risen, he still had been decisively rejected by the German people.

On June 1, 1932, Hindenberg appointed Franz von Papen as chancellor of Germany, whom Shirer described as an “unexpected and ludicrous figure.” Papen immediately dissolved the Reichstag (the national congress) and called for new elections, the third legislative election in five months.

Hitler and his fellow members of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, who were determined to bring down the republic and establish dictatorial rule in Germany, did everything they could to create chaos in the streets, including initiating political violence and murder. The situation got so bad that martial law was proclaimed in Berlin.

Even though Hitler had badly lost the presidential election, he was drawing ever-larger crowds during the congressional election. As Shirer points out,

In one day, July 27, he spoke to 60,000 persons in Brandenburg, to nearly as many in Potsdam, and that evening to 120,000 massed in the giant Grunewald Stadium in Berlin while outside an additional 100,000 heard his voice by loudspeaker.

Hitler’s rise to power

The July 31, 1932, election produced a major victory for Hitler’s National Socialist Party. The party won 230 seats in the Reichstag, making it Germany ’s largest political party, but it still fell short of a majority in the 608-member body.

On the basis of that victory, Hitler demanded that President Hindenburg appoint him chancellor and place him in complete control of the state. Otto von Meissner, who worked for Hindenburg, later testified at Nuremberg,

Hindenburg replied that because of the tense situation he could not in good conscience risk transferring the power of government to a new party such as the National Socialists, which did not command a majority and which was intolerant, noisy and undisciplined. Political deadlocks in the Reichstag soon brought a new election, this one in November 6, 1932. In that election, the Nazis lost two million votes and 34 seats. Thus, even though the National Socialist Party was still the largest political party, it had clearly lost ground among the voters.

Attempting to remedy the chaos and the deadlocks, Hindenburg fired Papen and appointed an army general named Kurt von Schleicher as the new German chancellor. Unable to secure a majority coalition in the Reichstag, however, Schleicher finally tendered his resignation to Hindenburg, 57 days after he had been appointed.

On January 30, 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany. Although the National Socialists never captured more than 37 percent of the national vote, and even though they still held a minority of cabinet posts and fewer than 50 percent of the seats in the Reichstag, Hitler and the Nazis set out to consolidate their power. With Hitler as chancellor, that proved to be a fairly easy task.

The Reichstag fire

On February 27, 1933, Hitler was enjoying supper at the Goebbels home when the telephone rang with an emergency message: - - The Reichstag is on fire - -! Hitler and Goebbels rushed to the fire, where they encountered Hermann Goering, who would later become Hitler’s air minister. Goering was shouting at the top of his lungs, - - This is the beginning of the Communist revolution!  We must not wait a minute.  We will show no mercy.  Every Communist official must be shot, where he is found.  Every Communist deputy must this very day be strung up - -.

The day after the fire, the Prussian government announced that it had found communist publications stating, - - Government buildings, museums, mansions and essential plants were to be burned down - -.  Women and children were to be sent in front of terrorist groups....

The burning of the Reichstag engineered by Nazis and Adolf Hitler, was the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war....  It has been ascertained and seen throughout Germany, terrorist acts against individuals, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the day was the beginning of general civil war.  

But how did Goering know and was so certain that Reichstag fire had been set by the Communist Party members?  Arrested on the spot was a Dutch communist named Marinus van der Lubbe.  Most historians now believe that van der Lubbe was actually duped by the Nazis into setting the fire and probably was even assisted by them, without him realizing it.

Why would Hitler and his associates turn a blind eye to an impending terrorist attack on German National Congressional building or actually assist with such a horrific deed?

Because Nazis and Adolf Hitler knew what government officials have known all throughout history, - - that during extreme national crisis and emergencies, people are most scared and thus much more willing to surrender their liberties and treasures in return for - SECURITY - -.  And that is exactly what happened during the Reichstag so-called terrorist crisis.

[Maani's note: For those with an open mind, think 9/11...]

Suspending Civil Liberties

The day after the fire, Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to issue a decree entitled, - - For the Protection of the People and the State - -.  Justified as a - - Defensive Measure Against Communist Acts of Violence Endangering The State - -, the decree suspended the constitutional guarantees pertaining to all civil liberties.

Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed. Two weeks after the Reichstag fire, Hitler requested the Reichstag to temporarily delegate its powers to him so that he could adequately deal with the crisis. Denouncing opponents to his request, Hitler shouted, “Germany will be free, but not through you!” When the vote was taken, the result was 441 for and 84 against, giving Hitler the two-thirds majority he needed to suspend the German constitution. On March 23, 1933, what has gone down in German history as the “Enabling Act” made Hitler dictator of Germany, freed of all legislative and constitutional constraints.

The Judiciary Under Hitler

One of the most dramatic consequences was in the judicial arena. Shirer points out.

Under the Weimar Constitution judges were independent, subject only to the law, protected from arbitrary removal and bound at least in theory by Article 109 to safeguard equality before the law. In fact, in the Reichstag terrorist case, while the court convicted van der Lubbe of the crime (who was executed), three other defendants, all communists, were acquitted, which infuriated Hitler and Goering.  

Within a month, the Nazis had transferred jurisdiction over treason cases from the Supreme Court to a new People’s Court, which, as Shirer points out, soon became the most dreaded tribunal in the land.  It consisted of two professional judges and five others chosen from among party officials, the S.S. and the armed forces, thus giving the latter a majority vote. There was no appeal from its decisions and sentences.  

Occasionally, however, for propaganda purposes when relatively light sentences were to be given, the foreign correspondents were invited to attend. One of the Reichstag terrorist defendants, who had angered Goering during the trial with a severe cross-examination of Goering, did not benefit from this acquittal. Shirer explains.

The German communist leader was immediately taken into - - protective custody - -, where he remained until his death during the Second World War.  In addition to the People’s Court, which handled treason cases, the Nazis also set up the Special Court, which handled cases of political crimes or “insidious attacks against the government.”

These courts consisted of three judges, who customarily had to be trusted Nazis Party members, without a jury.  A Nazi prosecutor had the choice of bringing action in such cases before either an ordinary court or the Special Court, and invariably he chose the latter, for obvious reasons.  Defense lawyers before this court, as before the Volksgerichtshof, had to be approved by Nazi officials.  

Sometimes even if they were approved they were fared badly.  Thus the lawyers who attempted to represent the widow of Dr. Klausener, the Catholic Action leader murdered in the Blood Purge, in her suit for damages against the State were whisked off to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where they were kept until they formally withdrew the action.  Even lenient treatment by the Special Court was no guarantee for the defendant, however, as Pastor Martin Niemoeller discovered when he was acquitted of major political charges and sentenced to time served for minor charges. Leaving the courtroom, Niemoeller was taken into custody by the Gestapo and taken to a concentration camp.

The Nazis also implemented a legal concept called Schutzhaft or, - - Protective Custody - -, which enabled them to arrest and incarcerate people without charging them with a crime.  Shirer explains.

Protective custody did not protect a man from possible harm, as it did in more civilized countries.  It punished him by putting him behind barbed wire.  [Maani's note: Think "enemy combatant" and Guantanamo.]  On August 2, 1934, Hindenburg died, and the title of president was abolished.  

Hitler’s title became Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor.  Not surprisingly, he used the initial four-year - - temporary - - grant of emergency powers that had been given to him by the Enabling Act to consolidate his omnipotent control over the entire country.

Accepting the new order

Oddly enough, even though his dictatorship very quickly became complete, Hitler returned to the Reichstag every four years to renew the - - temporary - - delegation of emergency powers that it had given him to deal with the Reichstag-arson crisis. Needless to say, the Reichstag rubber-stamped each of his requests.

For their part, the German people quickly accepted the new order of things. Keep in mind that the average non-Jewish German was pretty much unaffected by the new laws and decrees. As long as a German citizen kept his head down, worked hard, took care of his family, sent his children to the public schools and the Hitler Youth organization, and, most important, didn’t involve himself in political dissent against the government, a visit by the Gestapo was very unlikely.

Keep in mind also that, while the Nazis established concentration camps in the 1930s, the number of inmates ranged in the thousands. It wouldn’t be until the 1940s that the death camps and the gas chambers that killed millions would be implemented. Describing how the average German adapted to the new order, Shirer writes,

The overwhelming majority of Germans did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away, that so much of culture had been destroyed and replaced with a mindless barbarism, or that their life and work had become regimented to a degree never before experienced even by a people accustomed for generations to a great deal of regimentation.... The Nazi terror in the early years affected the lives of relatively few Germans and a newly arrived observer was somewhat surprised to see that the people of this country did not seem to feel that they were being cowed.... On the contrary, they supported it with genuine enthusiasm. Somehow it imbued them with a new hope and a new confidence and an astonishing faith in the future of their country.

Jacob Hornberger is the founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Garion81 wrote: James Lee wrote: I'm always suprised how willing people are to do the state's rationalizing for them.The civil rights of this country were not created with the footnote "when convenient".Civil rights are a by definition a contract between the people and the state. Yet it is purely a decision of the state to break the deal, and the people have little redress. All that is needed is for the state to create a situation in which they can convince the people that giving up their rights is a necessary tool to end the crisis. Do you honestly believe that these measures will hasten the end of the current conflict?  <P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" ="Msonormal"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"></SPAN>  <SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"> <SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: blue; FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma">The constitution allows for emergency situations on this point Section 9 Clause 2.  </SPAN><?:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><ST1:CITY><ST1:PLACE><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: blue; FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><ST1:CITY><ST1:PLACE>Lincoln</SPAN></st1 :place></st1:City><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: blue; FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"></st1:place></st1:City> suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus and threw a lot of innocent people in jail.  Maybe some were not so innocent but they had yet to commit a legitimate crime such as the Governor of Maryland and the Mayor of Baltimore. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></SPAN><ST1:PLACE><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: blue; FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><ST1:PLACE>Roosevelt</SPAN></st1:place><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: blue; FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"></st1:place>’s government did the same with the Japanese/American interment camps of WW 2. <?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><O:P></O:P></SPAN> <O:P></O:P><O:P></O:P></SPAN> <P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" ="Msonormal"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"></SPAN>  <P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" ="Msonormal"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma">I do not associate what Bush is doing as an emergency outside of searches at airports and other public transportation with what the other presidents did because they were in a rebellion and a declared war.   If that were his only attack on the bill of rights then I think I might be OK with most of this.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">  </SPAN>The government is required to promote the general welfare and provide for the common defense.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">  </SPAN>I think this would come under the latter  BUT this does not require to attack people who criticize his government or their actions as unpatriotic effectively using peer pressure to slice away at the first amendment. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> It is n</SPAN>o different than him using the FCC to monitor and punish programs that don’t fit a certain moral stance either.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">  </SPAN>The Democrats are not to be held blameless in all of this either. The attack on the second amendment should not be taken lightly either.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">  </SPAN>The idea is one end run by any area of the government regarding any of these rights becoming succesful will result in all disappearing in time. <O:P></O:P></SPAN> If we continue on this course, the US will be fighting two wars; one with the amorphous 'terrorists' and one with those of us who love America and want to preserve what it used to stand for. Of course, by that time the rest of you will all be conditioned to think of us as terrorists as well. I agree whole heartedly that this country is more didvided since the Civil war.  I see no solution.

The only people dividing this country are the people that would rather fight their own country than the terrorists. People who will take the word of an enemy prisoner about a Quran being tossed in a toilet than the word of our own soldiers.

 I know that your country has fought many years in order to establish this political sistem based in freedom and citizenship rights, and this is crearly and involution in your society, so much blood was spread out in civil war in order to decide the path that the country would follow for the rest of its existance...

But now the gamerules have changed and ideological values have been put aside in order to protect not the citizens but the economic and financial system that is above us because this modern society has nothing to do with the nineteen century american society, there are no longer to sides in your country since the civil war has ended, actually it doesn´t matter if the president belongs to the democratic or the republican party, the only  alternative to the sistem can only be represented by people that is truly open-minded, cause no matter who is the next president, civil rights will keep on fading in the next years if people just stand out from politics and resign themselves in spite of losing their voice and their freedom.

The worst enemies of the United States and the rest of Western countries including my country(IMHO) are their citizens, nor the terrorist neither the goverment, there have been two strikes against the jewish embassy in Argentina, a lot of people died but the worst is that  the goverment was involved because they just let the terrorist to plant the bombs against the jews in order to avoid conflict with an islamic nation,(Iran), and specially for getting a reward in exchange of the complete freedom of the terrorists.(Note that our president in that moment was from the muslim community, reconverted into catholicism in order to get into power). The problem is that he was elected president by the vote of argentinian people, we all were responsible of the tragedy because we allowed such a kind of politicians to lead our country. Eleven years has passed from the strikes and no one is in jail, the only few that were appresed some time ago have been realeased because they had already been useful to make people think that the goverment was doing something. Now we have a president that is absolutely against the president that was in charge during the strikes, but the case has evolved very little, so you actually begins to think that it doesn´t matter who is leading us, this case would never be solved.