heard some moron leftist professor excusing terrorist ayers

[richpo64]

>>Define "innocent."  If they're the parents, children, relatives and friends of Nazis and soldiers serving the Nazi cause, then they can't be innocent.<<

This is exactly what that piece of shit Ward Churchill said. I'm amazed that this kind of thing is tolerated in here. Simply amazed. Here's hoping somebody blows up your fucking family Mike. This world doesn't need anything related to you in it.

Unfuckingbelievable.

[Michael Tee]

<<Of course KKK members consider their cause just. >>

So did the fucking Nazis.  Don't you guys have any moral backbone at all?  If some fucking moron considers his cause just, don't you have a moral compass that lets you say:  KKK, your cause is NOT just, Ayers, your cause IS just, Nazi, yours is NOT . . . ?

Do you still not get it?  Moral distinctions have to be made.

A just man acting in a just cause is justified in what he does.  If the evil he fights is bad enough, he's justified in more extreme measures.  The Viet Nam war was horrific in its violence, all against an unoffending country posing no threat whatever to the U.S.A.  Many people of conscience, myself and Ayers included, felt that this was a war that had to be stopped by any means necessary.  Which is why Ayers is an American hero today.  By trying to distance himself from Bill Ayers' attack on the death factory, Obama is actually dishonouring no one but himself.

[Xavier_Onassis]

XO, if you realized the full extent of the evil of the Nazis, you would have no problem with what happened to them, their wives and kids and families.  Believe me, the world has lost nothing.   The human race has lost nothing.


Okay, I saw Shoah, the TV series The Holocaust, Schindler's List, Potok and have read Anne Frank, Jerszy Kosinski a whole bunch of other books. I agree that the Nazis deserved what they got. But the bombing of Dresden served no military purpose. It was a war and I am not outraged. But still, I feel that whenever anyone who  is not actually involved in committing atrocities is killed, something is lost. What that might have been we shall never know.

The War Crimes trials were a good idea, and the cure to Nazism was effective.

Have you ever read Vonnegut's Mother Night, or seen the excellent film made of it? 

[richpo64]

You're the scum of the earth Mike.

Scum.

[Michael Tee]

<<Here's hoping somebody blows up your fucking family Mike. This world doesn't need anything related to you in it.>>

Nope.  The world needs me and my family more than you think.  We're the good guys.  You're the bad guy.  A world without people like me would be hell.  A world full of people like you, also hell.  People like me are the reason others can hope.  People like you would condemn everyone else to a life of misery and fascism.

I hope that, in a perfectly democratic and non-violent way, of course, you and everything you represent will be drowned in a tidal wave, and I think that is what is about to happen in November.  The world is sick of your kind, Rich, and now it seems, America is as well.  My only suggestion to you is, get some help.  You really need it.

[richpo64]

Here's hoping somebody gets all of you. It would be perfect irony wouldn't it? Then we can all sit around and justify it because you justified the Weathermen killing.

Perfect. I'll drink to that. And piss on your grave.

[Michael Tee]

<<Have you ever read Vonnegut's Mother Night, or seen the excellent film made of it? >>

Mother Night AND Slaughterhouse Five (the bombing of Dresden) and practically everything else Vonnegut ever wrote.  He was a genius.  After I saw the film of The Sirens of Titan, I resolved never to watch another film made from Vonnegut's works, but I think now I could possibly relent and watch Mother Night.

Vonnegut captured the Zeitgeist of the war and post-war America filtered through a futuristic vision in a way that made me wish his books would never come to an end.  He was such an original talent that it's almost impossible to describe what his books are like to someone who doesn't know them, and I usually end up by saying, "Just read the book and we'll talk after."   This was the way I was introduced by a friend to his work, and it was really amazing.  There were definitely "before" and "after" periods in my POV.

[Michael Tee]

<<Here's hoping somebody gets all of you. It would be perfect irony wouldn't it? Then we can all sit around and justify it because you justified the Weathermen killing.

<<Perfect. I'll drink to that. And piss on your grave.>>

That's great, Rich.  I'll make sure my executors give you the location.

[Michael Tee]

Apropos de rien, as a reader of Mother Night, did it ever occur to you that I am Rich and Rich is me?

P.S. , Just realized, Crab Walk (Gunter Grass) would have been even more fitting for the concept.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Mother Night AND Slaughterhouse Five (the bombing of Dresden) and practically everything else Vonnegut ever wrote.  He was a genius.  After I saw the film of The Sirens of Titan, I resolved never to watch another film made from Vonnegut's works, but I think now I could possibly relent and watch Mother Night.

----------------------------------------
Slaughterhouse Five and Mother Night were excellent films. Hocus Pocus, with Jerry Lewis, was pretty awful. Mother Night was the best screen adaptation. I was unaware that anyone tried to make a film version of The Sirens of Titan. It wasn't my favorite book of his.

I think that the best Vonnegut book to read again and again is  'Thank Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.

[Michael Tee]

The only one I re-read so far was Slaughterhouse Five, but it really stood up to the test of time.  It's as good now as it was then.  God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Cat's Cradle I read about the same time, don't remember them very well.  Mother Night and the Sirens of Titan both have unforgettable plots or at least unforgettable plot elements.  I am getting ready to re-read all of Vonnegut's books, starting with the earliest ones first, something I've been thinking about since he died.  Or went to Trafalmadore.

[Xavier_Onassis]

You should see Mother Night. Probably in your local library. It's great. H=Nick Nolte plays the main character. Vonnegut himself has a cameo in the film, as a NYC pedestrian.

[Plane]

<<Of course KKK members consider their cause just. >>

So did the fucking Nazis.  Don't you guys have any moral backbone at all?  If some fucking moron considers his cause just, don't you have a moral compass that lets you say:  KKK, your cause is NOT just, Ayers, your cause IS just, Nazi, yours is NOT . . . ?

Do you still not get it?  Moral distinctions have to be made.

A just man acting in a just cause is justified in what he does.  If the evil he fights is bad enough, he's justified in more extreme measures.  The Viet Nam war was horrific in its violence, all against an unoffending country posing no threat whatever to the U.S.A.  Many people of conscience, myself and Ayers included, felt that this was a war that had to be stopped by any means necessary.  Which is why Ayers is an American hero today.  By trying to distance himself from Bill Ayers' attack on the death factory, Obama is actually dishonouring no one but himself.

Of course , and because objectively Communism was just as bad a Natzism the resistance against its growth in Vietnam was marked by an unwarrented restraint.

If Several Vietnameese Citys had received the treatment we gave Tokio a coupple of decades earlyer the war would have been shorter so much that the total number of innocents killed might have been much less .


Yes I said "Objectively" only a love of Communism as an idea excuses its remarkable excesses and murders , fully ten times the number that the NATZI's ever had to brag on.

Does anyone still doubt that the worlds worst famine raged for nearly five years in a China so closed that it was unknown outside? Or that the number of Chineese Dead represent a holocost sacrificed to communism? Why doubt whatt he Chineese themselves do not doubt?

[Xavier_Onassis]

If Several Vietnameese Citys had received the treatment we gave Tokio a coupple of decades earlyer the war would have been shorter so much that the total number of innocents killed might have been much less .


Yes, of course. The best way to avoid needless casualties is to carpet-bomb urban areas. How many Vietnamese would have actually died had the US just walked away, allowed the agreed-upon elections and let the Vietnamese run Vietnam unassisted? The US involvement resulted in the less strident South Vietnamese being wiped out in the struggle, allowing the militant factions of North Vietnam to take over. Over 58000 Americans died in Vietnam, millions of Vietnaese, and nearly every person in that sorry place had his life disrupted, all for nothing.

The horrible mess in Cambodia was a direct result of the US deposing Sihanouk, putting Lon Nol in charge, and since no one liked either Lon Nol for the way he consented to the US carpet bombing of his own country, the coming to power of Pol Pot.

Vietnam was a very, very stupid war. There was no reason for the US to get involved whatever, and its participation made everything worse for all concerned.

McCain, demented soul that he is, still thinks it was a noble cause. Bush thought the same, but it was insufficiently noble for him to risk his privileged neck and he played it safe, defending Texas and Alabama from the Great Enchilada Menace South of the Border. Cheney had "other priorities".

[Michael Tee]

<<If Several Vietnameese Citys had received the treatment we gave Tokio a coupple of decades earlyer the war would have been shorter so much that the total number of innocents killed might have been much less .>>

You can't prove that.  It's purely speculative.  The population would have dispersed out of the cities and the war would have gone on.

A point would also have come where, if the U.S. abandoned all restraint, so too would the U.S.S.R.  The one sore point with me regarding Russian support of Revolutionary Vietnam was the holding back of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles.  Directed against U.S. helicopters, these would have greatly increased the body count and so hastened the end of the war.  I think limits were dictated to U.S. policy makers on how far the war could be carried, generated by either fear of the U.S.S.R. or an explicit understanding reached with them in secret as to how far each side could go.

Finally, your argument is just a variation of "Hitler would have done worse."  You don't excuse a crime by arguing that an even worse crime could have been committed but wasn't.  That's just like making a confession of moral bankruptcy.


<<Yes I said "Objectively" only a love of Communism as an idea excuses its remarkable excesses and murders , fully ten times the number that the NATZI's ever had to brag on.>>

Your numbers are total bullshit.  They were fabricated by Nazi collaborators and their apologists to minimize the collaboration as the alleged lesser of two "evils."


<<Does anyone still doubt that the worlds worst famine raged for nearly five years in a China so closed that it was unknown outside? Or that the number of Chineese Dead represent a holocost sacrificed to communism? Why doubt whatt he Chineese themselves do not doubt?>>

That's bullshit too.  The Chinese may or may not have admitted to famine.  I saw the sources posted here but I'm not knowledgeable enough to evaluate them.  China has been plagued by famine for milennia.  There's no evidence I've seen that the last famine was the worst in history.  In any event, the Chinese Communist Party now seems to have finally eliminated famine in China once and for all - - something never accomplished before in all five thousand years of pre-communist Chinese civilization.  A little credit, sir, if you please; the last famine before the one you refer to was in a period of capitalist, pro-American rule, in 1944, and it killed four million people.