Jane Fonda

[Michael Tee]

<<But, here is where we differ, MT: IT IS NOT YOUR JOB TO DETERMINE WHETHER IT IS JUSTIFIED OR NOT, IT IS THE CA.>>

Not according to my interpretation of the judgments of the International War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremburg, Professor.  I don't check my conscience at the door for anybody.  You don't follow an illegal order, even when it comes from the top.  Your President is only a man, men can be fallible, men can be evil.  A man has one life, one conscience.  You don't surrender it to evil.

A good soldier, given an order to commit a war crime (as at My Lai) does not obey the illegitimate order.  He turns his gun around on the person who gave the order and blows his fucking head off.  But the Nazi robots who serve the U.S. military don't have the balls or the conscience to do the right thing.  They follow their orders, massacre the innocent and cover up as best they can afterward. 

In Viet Nam, finally, some troops were actually starting to turn on their criminal officers and frag them.  This was the same process which began the Russian Revolution, and I'm sure the criminals at the top of the officer hierarchy were well aware of the potential dimensions of the problem, as were their civilian bosses.  This had to be one of the factors influencing the Amerikkkan ruling class to cut losses and bug out before they had a full-scale mutiny on their hands.

[Stray Pooch]

A good soldier, given an order to commit a war crime (as at My Lai) does not obey the illegitimate order.  He turns his gun around on the person who gave the order and blows his fucking head off. 

So you advocate war crimes.

But the Nazi robots who serve the U.S. military don't have the balls or the conscience to do the right thing.  They follow their orders, massacre the innocent and cover up as best they can afterward. 

Yet even at My Lai, there were soldiers willing to put their lives at risk to stop the slaughter.  Those, of course, are just exceptions to the "all US soldiers are evil" philosophy you so rabidly pronounce.

You are no better than any US soldier.  It is clear from your posts that given a situation like My Lai you would check not only your conscience but your sanity at the door.  You hate with as much fervor as any soldier that has watched his buddies killed around him.  The only difference is that you have less of an excuse.  You talk a good game, but your talk just demonstrates how very capable you are of sinking, given the right circumstances, quite as low as any war criminal.  You just haven't been given the opportunity.

Hypocrite.

In Viet Nam, finally, some troops were actually starting to turn on their criminal officers and frag them.  This was the same process which began the Russian Revolution, and I'm sure the criminals at the top of the officer hierarchy were well aware of the potential dimensions of the problem, as were their civilian bosses.  This had to be one of the factors influencing the Amerikkkan ruling class to cut losses and bug out before they had a full-scale mutiny on their hands.

Couldn't be.  Robots never turn on their masters.

[Michael Tee]

<<So you advocate war crimes.>>  ["A good soldier, given an order to commit a war crime (as at My Lai) does not obey the illegitimate order.  He turns his gun around on the person who gave the order and blows his fucking head off." ]

Wrong.  I advocate the immediate termination of war criminals in the field.


<<Yet even at My Lai, there were soldiers willing to put their lives at risk to stop the slaughter. >>

Yes, one soldier.  The helicopter pilot.

<< Those, of course, are just exceptions to the "all US soldiers are evil" philosophy you so rabidly pronounce.>>

I don't go along with "rabidly," but yes, he was quite an exception.  God bless him and God damn all the others.

<<You are no better than any US soldier. >>

That remains to be seen.  I've never been tested.

<< It is clear from your posts that given a situation like My Lai you would check not only your conscience but your sanity at the door.  You hate with as much fervor as any soldier that has watched his buddies killed around him.  The only difference is that you have less of an excuse.  >>

I have much more of an excuse and they have none.  I condemn criminals, and nobody needs an "excuse" for condemning criminals, they are bemoaning the fate of their Nazi buddies, who suffered the fate of aggressors everywhere, and which they themselves should have suffered as well.  They are like bank robbers hating the cops who shot some of the gang.  The cops should have shot all of the gang.  Their hatred is completely unjustified.

<<You talk a good game, but your talk just demonstrates how very capable you are of sinking, given the right circumstances, quite as low as any war criminal.  You just haven't been given the opportunity.>>

Demonstrates nothing of the kind.  Typical fascist gobbledeygook - - if you condemn war criminals, you yourself must be a war criminal.  Ludicrous bullshit.  Try again.

<<Hypocrite.>>

Try again.

<<Quote from: Michael Tee on Today at 07:43:14 AM
<<In Viet Nam, finally, some troops were actually starting to turn on their criminal officers and frag them.  This was the same process which began the Russian Revolution, and I'm sure the criminals at the top of the officer hierarchy were well aware of the potential dimensions of the problem, as were their civilian bosses.  This had to be one of the factors influencing the Amerikkkan ruling class to cut losses and bug out before they had a full-scale mutiny on their hands.

<<Couldn't be.  Robots never turn on their masters.>>

Better watch 2001 - A Space Odyssey again.  They can and they do.  But to escape for a moment from the world of metaphor, the U.S. conscript army was actually a cross-section of working-class Amerikkka at that moment in time; some racist killer robots, some pure sadists, and some dumb, victimized kids being taken advantage of, more like slaves than robots.  Slaves can and do turn on their masters.

[Stray Pooch]

Wrong.  I advocate the immediate termination of war criminals in the field.

Execution without due process is a war crime.  So you advocate ar crimes.

<<You are no better than any US soldier. >>

That remains to be seen.  I've never been tested.

I have much more of an excuse and they have none.  I condemn criminals, and nobody needs an "excuse" for condemning criminals, they are bemoaning the fate of their Nazi buddies, who suffered the fate of aggressors everywhere, and which they themselves should have suffered as well.  They are like bank robbers hating the cops who shot some of the gang.  The cops should have shot all of the gang.  Their hatred is completely unjustified.

It is typical of most communists that violence against anyone they disagree with is acceptable, where violence in any other circumstance is sanctimoniously and disingenuously denounced.  In fact, many of the atrocities that occur in ANY war (at least any in the last century or so  - historically war crimes haven't been crimes)  happen because the enemy hides in civilian areas.  That means THEY are war criminals.  So by destroying the civilian populations that harbor them, we are simply executing war criminals and the civilians are collateral damage.  But you're OK with that, right?  Because those cowardly bastards that blend into civilian populations are war criminals.

I have no doubt that if you were in Iraq and some IED killed the folks in your jeep you would go out and seek to get revenge on the nearest Arab-speaking entity you could find.  Your level of rabid (and yes, it is rabid) anger and your black-and-white view of the world make you a prime candidate for violence.    I'll also bet that after the fact you would come to your senses and be devastated, because I think you have a conscience. 

Demonstrates nothing of the kind.  Typical fascist gobbledeygook - - if you condemn war criminals, you yourself must be a war criminal.  Ludicrous bullshit.  Try again. 

No, uncomfortable truth.  I condemn war criminals.  I just don't advocate murdering people.  You do.  Typical communist rationalization.

[Michael Tee]

<<Execution without due process is a war crime.  So you advocate war crimes.>>

Well, first of all I think that there can be battlefield executions without due process, for example if a soldier refuses to participate in an attack that's underway.  If I'm wrong, I stand corrected, but it doesn't really matter for the purposes of our discussion - - if it's technically a war crime to frag an officer or kill a war criminal on the spot, then, sure, I advocate it anyway.

  The fact that it might technically qualify as a war crime is as irrelevant as the supposed legality of the order to massacre civilians.  You have to analyze the rightness or wrongness of the act itself and then act on your conscience.  How the act is legally characterized ("war crime" "disobeying lawful order") is really irrelevant.  The definitions themselves were created by the same criminals who authorized the fucking war in the first place.  What's needed long-term is a new government to re-write the laws, put the old government on trial for their lives for war crimes, and execute them if convicted.  But what's needed short-term is a bullet to the head of the war criminal closest to you.

<<It is typical of most communists that violence against anyone they disagree with is acceptable, where violence in any other circumstance is sanctimoniously and disingenuously denounced.  >>

Nice try, but we're not talking about violence to punish philosophical disagreement.  Please try to stay on topic - - the issue is war criminals and how to deal with them in the field.

<<In fact, many of the atrocities that occur in ANY war (at least any in the last century or so  - historically war crimes haven't been crimes)  happen because the enemy hides in civilian areas.  That means THEY are war criminals.  So by destroying the civilian populations that harbor them, we are simply executing war criminals and the civilians are collateral damage.  But you're OK with that, right?  Because those cowardly bastards that blend into civilian populations are war criminals.>>

I don't know how we got into bombing civilian populations and collateral damage, when the subject was the My Lai massacre (unarmed, defenceless civilians herded into a ditch and gunned down there) but that's a huge topic and a complete diversion.  For the record, very briefly, and only as a sidebar, I would say all WWII bombing of Axis civilians was fully justified (our basic cause was just, most of the Germans wanted a Nazi victory, etc.) and collateral damage in Iraq or Panama City was totally unjustified because the war itself was unjustified.

<<I have no doubt that if you were in Iraq and some IED killed the folks in your jeep you would go out and seek to get revenge on the nearest Arab-speaking entity you could find.  >>

Fantasize all you like, Pooch, but that is flat-out ridiculous.  Not only would it never happen, I would shoot any surviving member of the party who tried to make it happen.  And the example is particularly absurd because I would never, in any capacity, permit myself to take part in any war of aggression.

<<Your level of rabid (and yes, it is rabid) anger and your black-and-white view of the world make you a prime candidate for violence.  >>

What's particularly interesting about that comment is not the absurd prediction that I am a prime candidate for violence (that's actually laughable, and it's part of the stock fascist response to any criticism of their crimes - - to condemn criminality is to reveal yourself as a criminal) but that you consider anger at horrible crimes to be "rabid"  (whereas the criminals who actually commit the crimes are not "rabid" but (in the Professor's words) merely "over-stressed" and the crimes aren't even crimes, just "bad decisions" made under - - but of course - - too  much stress. 

I find it disturbing but very typical of capitalist society that whereas the crimes of its enemies are magnified out of all proportion and the public outrage generated by their "massacres of millions" and "rapes of little boys and girls" etc. is seemingly without limit, not only are capitalism's own crimes minimized, but the very criticism of them is somehow delegitimized, denigrated as "rabid," "weak-kneed," "liberal guilt-tripping," etc.  A whole industry has arisen around the delegitimization of legitimate outrage,  consuming hundreds of dictionary pages with neologisms belittling any criticism whatever of fascist war crimes.  So it is not the criminals who do the deeds that are "rabid," it is their critics who are rabid.

Nietzsche wrote an excellent book, one of my all-time favourites, called The Geneology of Morals in English ( I only read it in English) in which he discusses what he calls "the Transvaluation of Values," his terminology for how the priestly races (primarily the Jews) allegedly took the values of the warrior races (primarily the Aryans) and stood them on their head, so that weakness became strength, natural goodness became evil, beauty became ugliness, etc.  Seems to me that in your own unknowing way, you must be a devotee of Nietzsche, because you have arrived at a situation in which the war criminals are the good guys and their critics are not only the bad guys but worse than the criminals themselves.

<<  I'll also bet that after the fact you would come to your senses and be devastated, because I think you have a conscience. >>

So the fantasy continues.  Not only do I commit the crime, but then I come to my senses, only to be ravaged by pangs of conscience.  What happens next?  I meet a prostitute with a heart of gold and she redeems my soul, but I still have to go to jail?  Sorry to disappoint you there, Pooch, but Fyodor Dostoevsky got there first.  Called it "Crime and Punishment."  Don't do it, Pooch.  You don't want to fuck with the Dostoevsky estate lawyers - - they're pit bulls.  Wish I'd got 'em for my fight with the Guevara estate.

[Cynthia]

Sticking up for [gasp] Jane Fonda


HER AGAIN. I don't have to prove that I have no use for Jane Fonda. But today she's being tarred unreasonably. Drudge has run one of his RED headlines to highlight her latest crime:



La Malkin pounced on the infraction in her first post of the day, expressing her profound indignation, as well as the banal observation that "the woman has no class." Yet she found it within her journalistic soul to reproduce the offending clip and to caption her teaser for the post as follows:



That's better is it, than what Fonda did? I don't think so. "Ew, I could never bring myself to utter this disgusting word myself, but I can show you other people saying it, and I can play allusive word games with it, but rest assured it will never pass my lips." The truth is, there are only two dirty words left in the English language. The runt-rhyme is one of them. Malkin is equally obsessed with the other one (which she can, somehow, force herself at least to type):




It used to be that words were dirty because they were too anatomical, too pungently evocative of sheer physicalness to be permissible in mixed company. The offending source was always Celtic or Anglo-Saxon (Go figure.) Latin words were almost always acceptable -- feces, urine, anus, penis, glans, testicles, mammaries, vagina, vulva, coitus, orgasm. Because they're not especially successful words; they don't instantly summon a vivid, sensual (i.e., lurid and smelly) experience of the thing so named. The Anglo-Saxon words are all works of verbal genius, astonishingly direct highways to the most fully developed regions of sense memory: shit, piss, asshole, cock, prick, balls, tits, cunt, pussy, fucking, cum.

Well, the Romans faded away for some reason. The Celt/Anglo-Saxon peoples flourished and came to dominate the world. Because their dirty words were dirtier than everyone else's? No one can say. But their dirty words were so powerful that their own poets and playwrights and novelists actually connived in the process of making them dirty in the first place. (Distinctly not the case with the Romans, for example. See Catullus, the Keats of Rome.) The words were too powerful. Using them in print or on stage heightened their power and could cost the author the audience attention he craved. So the Latin words were resurrected for all mundane informational applications ("The mother delivers the infant through her vagina," not "Mommy squeezes the baby out of her cunt"), and the writers made up a brand new art of innuendo, double-entendre, and puns to keep their audiences under control. Today it's popular to blame Christians for such word games, and Christians seem happy to accept the credit, but squeamishness about truly effective words long predates Christianity. Politicians have hated every one-syllable word meaning 'lie' as long as governments have existed. 'Prevarication' is a great, mild-sounding Latin word, isn't it?

But we live in liberated secular times now. The censoring of dirty words has become as vestigial as the human appendix. Most of them can be encountered on American sitcoms in primetime, and all but two are routinely said on basic cable and BBC sitcoms: shit, piss, asshole, cock, prick, balls, tits, [nope], pussy, [nope], cum.

But I previously said there are only two dirty words, including the infamous, unspeakable, unholy N-Word, and I've listed two plain old dirty words you'll never hear unless you have a premium cable channel -- or a pre-teen son or daughter.

Which brings us to the most ridiculous phenomenon of our whole media-saturated age: the phony bleep. With the possible exception of 'shit', 'fuck' (and its variants) is the most widely used word on the whole list. The audio editors have acquired the skill of neurosurgeons in cutting out all sound between the first half of the 'f' and the last half of the 'k.' (Soupy Sales should have been so lucky.) Like there's anyone over the age of three who doesn't possess enough persistence of memory to hear the word that's being (un)spoken. We seem to be content with the pretense that we don't hear what every single damn one of us does hear in our mind's ear, as long as the token phony bleep gives us cover. Exactly the same principle is at work with Michelle Malkin's "rhymes with runt." All phony bleeps come with a built-in leer that arises from the shared perception that a dirty word has been amplified by its fraudulent subtraction. We LOVE it, lechers and prudes alike. Censorship as actual titillation. Will Malkin be hotter tonight, on this St. Valentine's Day, because she rhymed runt with [you know]? Sure she will. Words wouldn't be dirty if they didn't have an effect.

Here's a good example of the whole phony bleep phenomenon. Note two things (skip ahead to four minutes into the clip): Harvard alum Matt Damon's easy use of the word 'fuck' with his whole immediate family and children sitting in the front row, and his schizophrenic feelings about the word 'cunt.' Why does he love it AND hate it? Because it's the last dirty word. (Except for that other one.}



Observe how the largely female audience just loves his uses of these words. They laugh, they giggle, they smile. It's HOT.

The sad truth is, we've destroyed all the good dirty words. When anyone can use them anytime, they gradually lose their force. That's part of the meaning of Matt Damon's description of 'fuck' as a mere conjunction like 'and' and 'because' and 'but.' He said the word a whole bunch of times in his interview, but he never got the reaction he did when he said 'cunt.' The women approved and accepted the former, but they loved the 'latter.' They knew exactly what he meant.

Here's the thing. Women don't "hate" the word 'cunt' any more than black people "hate" the word 'nigger.' Apart from real articulate speech, these are the last two words of power in our language. They're both words used by people who inflict their power on others by posing as victims. They're both words that are used proudly by the supposed victims with each other to heighten the potency of their grievances: Feminists 'celebrate' the supposedly hateful C-Word in events like Penn State's 'Cuntfest,' while blacks use 'nigger' as an ethnic privilege to demonstrate their politically correct advantage over white people in the culture wars. In short, women love the word 'cunt,' depending on who says it and under what circumstances. And black people love the word 'nigger' the same way.

The only thing that makes these words dirty anymore is that there's a caste distinction with respect to who can use them.

But that's not dirt. That's politics.

I know it's taken a long time to get here. But I really liked what Jane Fonda said. She didn't cringe or make a face when she said 'cunt.' She didn't pretend the word is one her lily ears have never heard. I think I heard her say, implicitly, that scrawling a bad word on the wall of a theater or on a page (or even its rhyme) is basically a juvenile waste of time and hardly art. (Rappers take note.) What better way to communicate her objection to performing in a play called the Vagina Monologues, for God's sake? She said a word we all know and made it clear she's not hostage to the word, afraid of it, or particularly smitten by it. She sounded [gasp], for the first time in my experience of her, like a grown-up woman.

Malkin take note too. Yes, a word can be a hurtful brick. But a brick is a weapon only by accident. Mostly, it's a building material. A cunt isn't a disgusting thing. It's probably the single coolest thing God ever created.


http://www.instapunk.com/archives/InstaPunkArchiveV2.php3?a=1260

Words. The world of words. ...the War of words. Words.
 Americans need to take a course in Linguistics! There's nothing scary about language.  There is a "fear and resentment" in our country of what is basically just a lexical unit!
Language is power. Language is danger. Language is hurtful...yes, but  Language is also fun. Language is not the enemy. Americans need to chill out when it comes to such rich units. I learned how silly it is to resist and back away from language when I took a couple of courses in Linguistics last year. Society has arranged a mini court system of sorts against the spoken word.
Of course some words can't be uttered in a certain arena. But to make such a big deal about Jane Fonda, or Diane Keaton..is silly.


"Language of business and sex: businesses penetrate the market, attract customers, and discuss ?relationship management.? Business is also war: launch an ad campaign, gain a foothold in the market, suffer losses. Systems, on the other hand, are water: a flood of information, overflowing with people, flow of traffic. The NOA theory of Lexicon acquisition argues that the metaphoric sorting filter helps to simplify language storage and avoid overload."Wikipedia

Perhaps we need to release a bit of stress overload with the utterance of words...

Words are in your face every day. Paparazzi are in some folks faces too much every day. I would prefer the former. Invasion to make a buck in far worse than an accidental utterance of lexicons that simply express a thought for that moment. Who's gaining?

Could it be the media- making a buck on issues that are meaningless.
Meaningless? Not if the discussion forks through pathways of meaning arriving back to what is important. In this case; political munchies on 3DHS.  Hail the word!!

[Plane]

When the Red Army invaded Germany WWII was in its closing stage Germans resisted desprately but were outgunned far to much for any hope.

It is said that every German woman the Red Army found was raped, well I don't know actually how uch this is or isn't an exaggeration, but I wouldn't doubt that there were occasional war crimes in a circumstance like that.

[Michael Tee]

<<It is said that every German woman the Red Army found was raped, well I don't know actually how uch this is or isn't an exaggeration, but I wouldn't doubt that there were occasional war crimes in a circumstance like that.>>

When you compare the actions of the Germans in Russia, rape is far from the worst thing the Red Army could have done in Germany.

[BT]

When you compare the actions of the Germans in Russia, rape is far from the worst thing the Red Army could have done in Germany.

Pathetic.

Either the action is universally wrong or it isn't.

[Michael Tee]

Pathetic.

Either the action is universally wrong or it isn't.

==============================================

That's ridiculous.  Some things are obviously OK if done in revenge that would not be OK if done gratuitously.  As far as I'm concerned, given the history of Germany in Eastern Europe and Asia, there is very little that the Red Army could do to the German civilian population that I would be prepared to condemn.  What goes around comes around.  Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.  etc.

[BT]

That's ridiculous.  Some things are obviously OK if done in revenge that would not be OK if done gratuitously.

Like Israeli responses to terror?

[The_Professor]

<<It is said that every German woman the Red Army found was raped, well I don't know actually how uch this is or isn't an exaggeration, but I wouldn't doubt that there were occasional war crimes in a circumstance like that.>>

When you compare the actions of the Germans in Russia, rape is far from the worst thing the Red Army could have done in Germany.

relativism? I expected better. 

[Michael Tee]

<<Like Israeli responses to terror?>>

The so-called "terror" that the Israelis respond to is the attempt of the dispossessed to re-take what they were robbed of in the first place.  The original wrong was the Israeli dispossession of the Palestinians, the "terror" a legitimate response to the Israeli dispossession, occupation and oppression, so nothing can justify the Israelis' actions, neither their original theft of the land nor their response to attempts to re-take it.  Pure and simple, they are the aggressors and the oppressors and they cannot be in the right.  Their giving back the West Bank to its inhabitants would solve the violence and their refusal to do so perpetuates it.

Their position is closely analogous to that of the Nazi occupation forces in Europe.  They too claimed to be "responding to terror" when they undertook reprisals for Resistance actions.  Yet how can such a reprisal be justified when it is their own illegal occupation that is at the root of the violence?

[Michael Tee]

<<relativism? I expected better. >>

In the real world, Professor, justice is always relative, never absolute.  In any court in either of our two countries, provocation is always a factor in deciding the punishment of a convicted criminal.

In all of recorded modern history, there are no instances I am aware of where anyone has even come close to the provocation given by Germany to the U.S.S.R.    IMHO, they got off very lightly, rapes and all.  None of their Jewish and Russian victims were able to get up and walk away when it was over.

[Cynthia]

When the Red Army invaded Germany WWII was in its closing stage Germans resisted desprately but were outgunned far to much for any hope.

It is said that every German woman the Red Army found was raped, well I don't know actually how uch this is or isn't an exaggeration, but I wouldn't doubt that there were occasional war crimes in a circumstance like that.

Not an exaggeration. Our family has a friend who lived in Germany during the war, and she belonged to the Nazi Youth. She still talks about "meeting Hitler" as if she'd had the great fortune to meet the Pope. Sad, but true. He must have been quite the charmer.
 Her father died on the Russian front in that war.
 She has shared stories  of the rapes of German women. No young woman was immune.  She was one of the lucky ones to have escaped in time.