Only History Could Help Us

[RascalPuff]

http://open.salon.com/blog/kaidu/201...to_-_post_5888

[labelwench]

How quickly a generation that has never known war, forgets that the life of safety and comfort they know today, was paid for with the blood of those who gave their lives, and the broken hearts, minds and dreams of those who lost their loved ones.......and the sadder fate of those who survived and can never forget.

There are worse things than death........

We can best honor the memory of those who fought, on all sides, by living in peace and co-operation to face the challenges that lay ahead for all.

[RascalPuff]

"For as long as war has been talked about, it has been talked about in terms of right and wrong. And for almost as long, some have derided such talk, called it a charade; insisted that war lies beyond (or beneath) moral judgment. War is a world apart, where life itself is at stake, where human nature is reduced to its elemental forms, where self interest and necessity prevail. Here men and women do what they must to save themselves and their communities, and morality and law have no place. Inter arma silent leges: in time of war the law is silent.

"Sometimes this silence is extended to other forms of competitive activity, as in the popular proverb, 'All's fair in love and war.' That means that anything goes - any kind of deceit in love, any kind of violence in war. We can neither praise nor blame; there is nothing to say. And yet we are rarely silent. The language we use to talk about love and war is so rich with moral meaning that it could hardly have been developed except through centuries of argument. Faithfulness, devotion, chastity, shame, adultery, seduction, betrayal; aggression, self-defense, appeasement, cruelty, ruthlessness, atrocity, massacre - all these words are judgments and judging is as common a human activity as loving or fighting.

"It is true, however, that we often lack the courage of our judgments, and especially so in the case of military conflict. The moral posture of mankind is not well represented by that popular proverb about love and war. We would better to mark a contrast rather than a similiarity: before Venus, censorious (critically fault-finding); before Mars, timid. Not that we don't justify or condemn particular attacks, but we do so hesitantly (or loudly and recklessly), as if we were not sure that our judgments reach to the reality of war."
- Just & Unjust Wars, Michael Walzer

I was born 7/11/'41 - five months before Pearl Harbor was attacked. The invasion of China by Japan was already an ongoing history. The purge of Europe by the Nazis was already underway. With international impunity, Mussolini had sacked and pillaged Ethiopia, and Hitler observed the telling non intervention and passivity of the Democratic nations and followed Mussolini's lead with the ensuing invasion of Austria, Czhekoslovakia and Poland. The so called 'Iron Axis' of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan became the status quo. The most colossal war in the history of mankind was initiated. In the relative chronology of world history, this happened a matter of a few minutes ago - in my own lifetime. My Mother lost three brothers in the global debacle, which held in balance, the destiny of the conflict between what can be no better described than a struggle between good and evil. If ever there was a war of necessity, it was the 'conflict' of World War Two. Had the initiators of that war prevailed, the world, as flawed as it is today, would inevitably be incalculably worse...
Two major factors determined the vanquishment of the 'Iron Axis': Hitler's fatal error of attacking Russia (commencing his requirement to fight an extended war on two fronts), and the employment of nuclear weapons against Japan. Had the 'Iron Axis' prevailed, there would be no criticism heard against the prevailing governments, simply because critics would be silenced as a matter of policy. Had the 'Iron Axis' prevailed, it is very unlikely that there would be any 'third world' elements at all; very unlikely that 'freedom of religion' would have any existence beyond whatever was not approved by 'the incumbent state'.
Still, there is - acknowledged peripheral; but tenacious - argument against the prevalence of the democratic allies, certainly including the United States. Two generations have appeared between the Allied victory of World War II, and the present - some portions of which two generations deny the justification for World War Two; including the war crimes of Japan against China, and the war crimes of Fascist Italy against Ethiopia, and the war crimes of Nazi Germany against Europe, the Jews of Europe - and Russia - in particular. Much of this post W W II dissent against the United States has emerged most recently, due to war crimes by the United States against the people of Southeast Asia. Whereas, there is no comparison between the occasion and circumstance of World War Two, and that of the so called 'police action' of the Vietnam War. And, as usual, the troops of both wars had to suffer for 'Executive Policy'.

IMHO, the presence of armed U.S. military in the Middle east constitutes an invasion. IMHO, it is a disgrace that the U.S. has not learned from the lessons of Vietnam, and that presented by Russia in its (eight year) failed occupation of Afghanistan... IMHO, the only American element that stands to profit from 'military occupation' of the MiddleEast is that of the so called 'corporate state'; particularly the oil/petroleum industry - which is the most wealthy and powerful industry in all of America, followed by the weapons industry, and, the cosmetics industry (is closely related to the petroleum industry).

Unscrewing the MiddleEastern Can of ('Don't Open This.') Whoopaz:
1) Imagine a MiddleEast occupied America.
2) Replaying the Crusades: backwards.
3) Retaliating against the Holy Land reclaiming infidels.
4) Oil: Yesterday. Today & Tomorrow.
5) Where is all the $ Trouble Coming From?
6) Saddam is Dead - Along with 3,000 + Americans & Counting.
7) 'Support the Troops': by Ending the War.
What Military Victory?
9) Executive Policy Precedes Proletariat Personnel?
10) Our Occupation Troops Want to Live - Theirs' Want to Die.

Here In One Short Double Spaced Page we have Ten Reasons Why Not To Mess With Texas-Bush Oil In The Middle East.

Moreover, reason #Eleven is, we Have Forgotten what Happened To Russia after Eight Years of Failed Soviet Efforts to Occupy Afghanistan. (Russia is a Mighty Big Place to Get Bounced out of Afghanistan: because it was there...)
12. There is no 'honorable' abatement from torturing people'.
13. You just stop the terrorism and the DoubleTalk, and Go Home (again): your government defeated, in a war it started.
14. The corporate state can stop it now, or later, but it will stop or be stopped.
15. The choppers will be leaving the rooftops of the MiddleEastern Embassies.
They can do it now, or they can do it later - as the body count (on all sides) increases daily.
Can you not see the white flags waving out the windows of America as the suicide bombers close in on Middle America, Wall Street and the Pentagon?
When hell freezes over.
(Are we not way overdue for an oil change?)
**********************
Due to 9/11/01, the Ministry of Justice & Truth
recently issued the 'Patriot' & 'Homeland Security Acts'...
Is it not good to know your phone can be tapped without a Judge's order or due cause?
You may also be placed on satellite reconnaissance TV (24-7/365) without due cause or a court order.
If you don't fear your government yet, surely you harbor a great love and appreciation for your country and Constitution.
Have you heard the one about the MiddleEastern designed DugOut Hotel in the middle of New York City, yet...
Say 'When' ?
Reliable word is there's a newly booming cottage industry of bumpersticker producers with the ominous message:
"I Love My Country But Fear My Government".
(This is not a an encouraging sign?)

East Meets West Logic, revisited...

Europe's pro tem leader bids the East - and
the world - a last greeting and farewell:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRSnqLFPQ2A

Must America destroy itself in order to save its patriots?

http://www.clubconspiracy.com/forum/...tes-11253.html

http://antiwar.com/quotes.php

[RascalPuff]

Truly Yours received a message relayed through Canada so as to make its source untraceable; said message proclaimed that this record was in dire peril of finding itself on the wrong side of a high barbed wire woven hurricane fence topped with razor wire if it should continue its treacherous departures from the (1780 AD vintaged) Crown...
That said record may find himself wearing a khaki prisoner's uniform, eating a lot of freeze dried opossum...

Hooded prosecutor's prepared dissertation to hooded jury (goes like this):

"That, for these reasons, the jury, being a loyal jury (as he knew they were), and being a responsible jury (as THEY knew they were), must positively find the prisoner Guilty, and make an end of him, whether they liked it or not. That, they never could lay their heads upon their pillows; that, they never could tolerate the idea of their wives laying their heads upon their pillows; that, they never could endure the notion of their children laying their heads upon their pillows; in short, that there never more could be, for them or theirs, any laying of heads upon pillows at all, unless the prisoner's head was taken off. That head Mr. Attorney-General concluded by demanding of them, in the name of everything he could think of with a round turn in it, and on the faith of his solemn asseveration that he already considered the prisoner as good as dead and gone...
When the Attorney-General ceased, a buzz arose in the court as if a cloud of great blue-flies were swarming about the prisoner, in anticipation of what he was soon to become." - Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, excerpt. : )

After some delay and demur, the door grudgingly turned on its hinges a very little way, and allowed Mr. Jerry Cruncher to squeeze himself into court.

"What's on?" he asked, in a whisper, of the man he found himself next to.

"Nothing yet."

"What's coming on?"

"The Treason case."

"The quartering one, eh?"

"Ah!" returned the man, with a relish; "he'll be drawn on a hurdle to be half hanged, and then he'll be taken down and sliced before his own face, and then his inside will be taken out and burnt while he looks on, and then his head will be chopped off, and he'll be cut into quarters. That's the sentence."

"If he's found Guilty, you mean to say?" Jerry added, by way of proviso.

"Oh! they'll find him guilty," said the other. "Don't you be afraid of that."
- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, excerpt. : )

" Presently, the dock became the central point of interest.
Two gaolers, who had been standing there, wont out, and the prisoner was brought in, and put to the bar.

"Everybody present, except the one wigged gentleman who looked at the ceiling, stared at him. All the human breath in the place, rolled at him, like a sea, or a wind, or a fire. Eager faces strained round pillars and corners, to get a sight of him; spectators in back rows stood up, not to miss a hair of him; people on the floor of the court, laid their hands on the shoulders of the people before them, to help themselves, at anybody's cost, to a view of him--stood a-tiptoe, got upon ledges, stood upon next to nothing, to see every inch of him. Conspicuous among these latter, like an animated bit of the spiked wall of Newgate, Jerry stood: aiming at the prisoner the beery breath of a whet he had taken as he came along, and discharging it to mingle with the waves of other beer, and gin, and tea, and coffee, and what not, that flowed at him, and already broke upon the great windows behind him in an impure mist and rain." - Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, excerpt. : )

"The sort of interest with which this man was stared and breathed at, was not a sort that elevated humanity. Had he stood in peril of a less horrible sentence - had there been a chance of any one of its savage details being spared - by just so much would he have lost in his fascination. The form that was to be doomed to be so shamefully mangled, was the sight; the immortal creature that was to be so butchered and torn asunder, yielded the sensation. Whatever gloss the various spectators put upon the interest, according to their several arts and powers of self-deceit, the interest was, at the root of it, Ogreish." - Ibid : )
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Incidentally, while opportunity to add a Post Script affords, a little traveling music to the physics section where we consider the Law of Selective Gravity:
"An object will fall, where and when it will do the most damage".

Random laws follow:

P.P.S. Maier's Law: "If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of."

Segal's Law: "A person with one watch knows what time it is. A person with two watches is never sure."

The Golden Rule of Arts & Sciences: "Whoever has the gold makes the rules."

Gordon's First Law: "If a project is not worth doing at all, it's not worth doing well."

For Parlour Use: "The vague generality is a life saver."

"The first 90% of the task takes 90% of the time. The last 10% takes the other 90%."

Howe's Law: "Every man has a scheme that will not work".

Murphy's Law: "If it can possibly go wrong, it will."

O'Toole's Law: "Murphy was an optimist."

Farber's 4th Law: "Necessity is the mother of strange bedfellows".

Jenning's Corollary: "The chances of the bread falling butter-side down, is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet."

Goof night and pleasant drams, dollops and dreams. : )

[RascalPuff]

As a student of local-domestic & global-international destructive human aggression, my studies inevitably include World War Two's 3rd Reich of Nazi Germany; upon entering that subject in Google, it is proving to yield political swings at President Obama, for example - comparisons of the President of the U.S., with Hitler. Such extremism is, of itself, a specific form of Fascism. Whatever your political posturing may be, there is no responsible comparison of the incumbent U.S. President (or the incumbent U.S. Secretary of State), with Hitler. To make such a comparison is to diminish a responsible perspective. The allowance of such comparisons on the internet is a disgrace to those persons or institutions which allow it.

All great movements are popular movements. They are the volcanic eruptions of human passions and emotions, stirred into activity by the ruthless Goddess of Distress or by the torch of the spoken word cast into the midst of the people.
Adolf Hitler

All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.
Adolf Hitler

Any alliance whose purpose is not the intention to wage war is senseless and useless.
Adolf Hitler

Anyone who sees and paints a sky green and fields blue ought to be sterilized.
Adolf Hitler

As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.
Adolf Hitler

As soon as by one's own propaganda even a glimpse of right on the other side is admitted, the cause for doubting one's own right is laid.
Adolf Hitler

By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise.
Adolf Hitler

Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future.
Adolf Hitler

Generals think war should be waged like the tourneys of the Middle Ages. I have no use for knights; I need revolutionaries.
Adolf Hitler

Germany will either be a world power or will not be at all.
Adolf Hitler

Great liars are also great magicians.
Adolf Hitler

Hate is more lasting than dislike.
Adolf Hitler

He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.
Adolf Hitler

How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think.
Adolf Hitler

Humanitarianism is the expression of stupidity and cowardice.
Adolf Hitler

I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.
Adolf Hitler

I do not see why man should not be just as cruel as nature.
Adolf Hitler

I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.
Adolf Hitler

If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.
Adolf Hitler

It is not truth that matters, but victory.
Adolf Hitler

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.
Adolf Hitler

Mankind has grown strong in eternal struggles and it will only perish through eternal peace.
Adolf Hitler

Struggle is the father of all things. It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself above the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle.
Adolf Hitler

Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong.
Adolf Hitler

The art of leadership... consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention.
Adolf Hitler

The day of individual happiness has passed.
Adolf Hitler

The doom of a nation can be averted only by a storm of flowing passion, but only those who are passionate themselves can arouse passion in others.
Adolf Hitler

The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.
Adolf Hitler

The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.
Adolf Hitler

[RascalPuff]

The following is an article from Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader

There’s nothing funny about Hitler, but he is endlessly fascinating. Since Congress passed the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act in 1998, almost 3 million classified files have been opened to the public – including a 1942 secret profile of Adolf Hitler compiled by the OSS. Here are some excerpts.
PERSONAL APPEARANCE
• Hitler never allows anyone to see him while he is naked or bathing. He refuses to use cologne or scents of any sort on his body
• No matter how warm he feels, Hitler will never take off his coat in public
• In 1923, Nazi press secretary Dr. Sedgwick tried to convince Hitler to get rid of his trademark mustache or grow it normally. Hitler answered: "Do not worry about my mustache. If it is not the fashion now, it will be later because I wear it!"
SOCIAL BEHAVIOR
• While dining with the others, Hitler will allow the conversation to linger on general topics, but after a couple of hours he will inevitably begin one of his many monologues. These speeches are flawless from start to finish because he rehearses them any time he gets a moment.
• His favorite topics include: "When I was a soldier," "When I was in Vienna," "When I was in prison," and "When I was the leader in the early days of the party."
• If Hitler begins speaking about Wagner and the opera, no one dares interrupt him. He will often sermonize on this topic until his audience falls asleep.
PERSONAL HABITS
• Hitler has no interest in sports or games of any kind and never exercised, except for an occasional walk.
• He paces frequently inside rooms, always to the same tune that he whistles to himself and always diagonally across the room, from corner to corner
• Hitler’s handwriting is impeccable. When famous psychologist Carl Jung saw Hitler’s handwriting in 1937, he remarked: "Behind this handwriting I recognize the typical characteristics of a man with essentially feminine instinct."
ENTERTAINMENT
• Hitler loves the circus. He takes real pleasure in the idea that underpaid performers are risking their lives to please him.
• He went to the circus on several occasions in 1933 and sent extremely expensive chocolates and flowers to the female performers. Hitler even remembered their names and would worry about them and their families in the event of an accident.
• He isn’t interested in wild animal acts, unless there is a woman in danger
• Nearly every night Hitler will see a movie in his private theatre, mainly foreign films that are banned to the German public. He loves comedies and will often laugh merrily at Jewish comedians. Hitler even liked a few Jewish singers, but after hearing them he would remark that it was too bad he or she wasn’t Aryan.
• Hitler staff secretly made films for him of torture and execution of political prisoners, which he very much enjoyed viewing. His executive assistants also secured pornographic pictures and movies for him.
• He loves newsreels – especially when he is in them.
• He adores gypsy music, Wagner’s operas, and especially American college football marches and alma maters.
• To excite the masses, he also uses American College football-style music during his speeches. His rallying cry – "Sieg Heil!" – was even modeled after the cheering techniques used by American football cheerleaders.

Post Script: Of course the German nationality is not to be confused with the Nazi politic. Incalculable numbers of German citizens who protested Naziism were perished beneath the demonic Fascist juggarnaut. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was indeed of German descent, and refused to salute the surrendering enemy at the conference table. Tens of thousands of German-Americans participated in the defeat of Hitler's Reich. (Lest we forget.) Fascism is not a nationality, it is a state of mind.

[RascalPuff]

WHAT'S SO FUNNY ABOUT VIOLENCE?

<LI class=g>Why does Andrew Malcolm think domestic violence and rape are funny ...

6 posts - 5 authors - Last post: Apr 1
So what, exactly, is funny about Joe Biden's work to prevent domestic violence and sexual assault? Tags: Los Angeles Times, Andrew Malcolm ...
mediamatters.org/blog/201004010036 - Cached
Get more discussion results

<LI class=g>Hey Doritos, Child Violence Isn't Funny | Strollerderby

Feb 18, 2010 ... doritos Hey Doritos, Child Violence Isnt Funny .... What's the story. I like the way this commercial turns that on its head and empowers the ...
blogs.babble.com/.../2010/.../hey-doritos-child-violence-isnt-funny/ - Cached
<LI class=g>Psst! SNL! Guess What? Domestic Violence Isn't Funny - MamaPop™.com

Over the weekend, SNL had a sketch about Tiger Woods and wife Elin Nordegren. And it appears that SNL thinks if a man is abused—like ...
www.mamapop.com/.../psst-snl-guess-what-domestic-violence-isnt-funny.html - Cached
<LI class=g>What's So Funny About Gwyneth Paltrow Getting Punched In The Face ...

Apr 21, 2010 ... What, exactly, is funny about the idea of Gwyneth Paltrow getting punched in the face? I get that it's a meta-comment about how violence ...
www.thefrisky.com/.../246-whats-so-funny-about-gwyneth-paltrow-getting-punched-in-the-face/?... - Cached
<LI class=g>Why is violence funny? - Yahoo! Answers

Jan 27, 2009 ... Why is violence funny? What makes us laugh when someone trips or falls? Why is it funny when a cartoon gets blown up? ...
answers.yahoo.com › Social Science › Psychology - Cached - Similar
<LI class=g>What's Funny to a School-age Child?

What Else Is Soooooooooo Funny? Why Does Humor Matter? ... or an anvil falling on the head of Wile E. Coyote, kids often find violence to be funny. ...
kidshealth.org › Parents › Growth & Development - Cached - Similar
<LI class=g>Violence quotes

“We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal, private, solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict.” ...
thinkexist.com › Topics › V - Cached - Similar
<LI class=g>
<LI class=g>by WD McIntosh - 2003 - Cited by 6 - Related articles
What's So Funny About a Poke in the Eye? The Prevalence of Violence in Comedy Films and Its Relation to Social and Economic Threat in the United States, ...
www.informaworld.com/index/785313822.pdf
<LI class=g>YouTube - Hilarious domestic violence PSA

eightmileshigh69 what makes it funny is that he's sitting there having a nice time ... queueanti-domestic violence PSA commercial163154 viewshollylevin ...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHuk3a4Qqu0 - Cached - Similar
<LI class=g>Violence quotes

Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create. Pope John Paul II
<LI class=g>

[RascalPuff]

D.W. Griffith's Ku Klux Klan praising epic 1915 silent film: The Birth of a Nation.

The Birth of a Nation (premiered with the title The Clansman) is a 1915 silent film directed by D. W. Griffith. Set during and after the American Civil War, the film was based on Thomas Dixon's The Clansman, a novel and play.

The Birth of a Nation was the highest-grossing film of its day, and is noted for its innovative camera techniques and narrative achievements. It has provoked great controversy for promoting white supremacy and positively portraying the "knights" (male members) of the Ku Klux Klan as heroes.[2]

Eric M. Armstrong of The Moving Arts Film Journal writes:[3]
“...The Birth of a Nation is as revered as it is reviled. Its unparalleled innovation and audacity, technically and narratively, coupled with its unprecedented cultural impact, makes it perhaps the single most important film ever made.”
Wikepedia plot follows:

This silent film was originally presented in two parts separated by an intermission. Part 1 depicted pre-Civil War America, introducing two juxtaposed families: the Northern Stonemans, consisting of abolitionist Congressman Austin Stoneman (based on real-life Reconstruction-era Congressman Thaddeus Stevens), his two sons, and his daughter, Elsie, and the Southern Camerons, a family including two daughters (Margaret and Flora) and three sons, most notably Ben.

The Stoneman boys visit the Camerons at their South Carolina estate, representing the Old South. The eldest Stoneman boy falls in love with Margaret Cameron, and Ben Cameron idolizes a picture of Elsie Stoneman. When the Civil War begins, all the young men join their respective armies. A black militia (with a white leader) ransacks the Cameron house. The Cameron women are rescued when Confederate soldiers rout the militia. Meanwhile, the youngest Stoneman and two Cameron boys are killed in the war. Ben Cameron is wounded after a heroic battle in which he gains the nickname, "the Little Colonel," by which he is referred for the rest of the film. The Little Colonel is taken to a Northern hospital where he meets Elsie, who is working there as a nurse. The war ends and Abraham Lincoln is assassinated at Ford's Theater, allowing Austin Stoneman and other radical congressmen to punish the South for secession, using radical measures Griffith depicts as typical of the Reconstruction era.[4]

Part 2 depicts Reconstruction. Stoneman and his "mulatto" protegé, Silas Lynch, go to South Carolina to observe the expanded franchise. Black soldiers parade through the streets. During the election, whites are shown being turned away while blacks stuff the ballot boxes. The newly elected black legislature passes laws requiring white civilians to salute black officers and allowing mixed-race marriages.

Meanwhile, Ben, inspired by observing white children pretending to be ghosts to scare off black children, devises a plan to reverse the perceived powerlessness of Southern whites by forming the Ku Klux Klan. Elsie is angered by his membership in the group.
Then Gus, a former slave who became educated and gained a title of recognition through the army, proposes to marry Flora. Scared by Gus' lascivious advances, she flees into the forest, pursued by Gus. Trapped on a precipice, Flora leaps to her death. In response, the Klan hunts Gus, tries him and finds him guilty, kills him, and leaves his corpse on Lieutenant Governor Silas Lynch's doorstep. In retaliation, Lynch orders a crackdown on the Klan. The Camerons flee from the black militia and hide out in a small hut, home to two former Union soldiers, who agree to assist their former Southern foes in defending their Aryan birthright, according to the caption.

Meanwhile, with Austin Stoneman gone, Lynch tries to force Elsie to marry him. Disguised Klansmen discover her situation and leave to get reinforcements. The Klan, now at full strength, rides to her rescue and takes the opportunity to disperse the rioting negroes. Simultaneously, Lynch's militia surrounds and attacks the hut where the Camerons are hiding, but the Klan saves them just in time. Victorious, the Klansmen celebrate in the streets. The film cuts to the next election where the Klan successfully disenfranchises black voters and disarms the blacks. The film concludes with a double honeymoon of Phil Stoneman with Margaret Cameron and Ben Cameron with Elsie Stoneman. The final frame shows masses oppressed by a mythical god of war suddenly finding peace under the image of Christ. The final title rhetorically asks: "Dare we dream of a golden day when the bestial War shall rule no more? But instead-the gentle Prince in the Hall of Brotherly Love in the City of Peace."

Thomas Dixon, 1864-1946 and Arthur I. Keller (Arthur Ignatius), 1866-1924, illustrated by
The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan.
New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1905.


Next illustration
[Frontispiece Image]
"'Do you not fear my betrayal of your secret?'"

Frontispiece

Thomas Dixon, 1864-1946 and Arthur I. Keller (Arthur Ignatius), 1866-1924, illustrated by
The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan.
New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1905.

Title Page

"Extra! Peace! Victory! Lee has surrendered!"
At last the end had come.

The great North, with its millions of sturdy people and their exhaustless resources, had greeted the first shot on Sumter with contempt and incredulity. A few regiments went forward for a month's outing to settle the trouble. The Thirteenth Brooklyn marched gayly Southward on a thirty days' jaunt, with pieces of rope conspicuously tied to their muskets with which to bring back each man a Southern prisoner to be led in a noose through the streets on their early triumphant return! It would be unkind to tell what became of those ropes when they suddenly started back home ahead of the scheduled time from the first battle of Bull Run.

People from the South, equally wise, marched gayly North, to whip five Yankees each before breakfast, and encountered unforeseen difficulties.
Both sides had things to learn, and learned them in a school whose logic is final—a four years' course in the University of Hell—the scream of eagles, the howl of wolves, the bay of tigers, the roar of lions—all locked in Death's embrace, and each mad scene lit by the glare of volcanoes of savage passions!

But the long agony was over.

The city bells began to ring. The guns of the forts joined the chorus, and their deep steel throats roared until the earth trembled.

The Capital of the Nation was shaking off the long nightmare of horror and suspense. More than once the city had shivered at the mercy of those daring men in gray, and the reveille of their drums had startled even the President at his desk. Again and again had the destiny of the Republic hung on the turning of a hair, and in every crisis, Luck, Fate, God, had tipped the scale for the Union.

[RascalPuff]

Revered and Reviled: D.W. Griffith’s ‘The Birth of a Nation’

"The Birth of a Nation -
“We do not fear censorship, for we have no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but we do demand, as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtue – the same liberty that is conceded to the art of the written word – that art to which we owe the Bible and the works of Shakespeare.” — [Opening title card]

Revered and reviled": By Eric M. Armstrong
David Wark “D.W.” Griffith’s controversial 1915 masterpiece, “The Birth of a Nation,” occupies, on some level, similar stature in film scholarship as its subject matter does in American history. Like slavery’s vile stain on the memoirs of a constitutionally egalitarian nation, Griffith’s ode to Anglo supremacy and the plight of the White South represents the worst of artistic cinema through racist, exploitative, historical revisionism. Both film and subject are reviled, rightly so, for their unforgivable turpitudes. Of course no singular work of art can be equated in its comparatively limited impact to one of the world’s great sins — subjugating and dehumanizing an entire people, stripping them of their unalienable human rights. But even as D.W. Griffith’s explicitly anti-African American work, contrary to its title card, bears the stench of residing on the wrong side of history, “The Birth of a Nation” is as revered as it is reviled. Its unparalleled innovation and audacity, technically and narratively, coupled with its unprecedented cultural impact, makes it perhaps the single most important film ever made.

The epic “Birth,” the longest film ever at the time of its release at over three hours, adapts Thomas Dixon’s novel and play “The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan,” chronicling the rising racial, economic, political and geographic tensions leading up to and including the Civil War, The Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln’s assassination by John Wilkes Booth, and the tumultuous Southern Reconstruction period that was the genesis of the Ku Klux Klan. The dramatic saga of two star-crossed families hewn asunder by the bloodiest of America’s wars, the Camerons from South Carolina, and the Stoneman’s from an unnamed North, anchors the narrative.



"Let my enemies prove to this country that the destruction of slavery is not necessary to the restoration of the Union."
- Abraham Lincoln 1864

"This country was formed for the white not for the black man." - John Wilkes Booth 1864

The first half of the film, while treating both families as ostensible equals (with the exception of the later demonized Austin Stoneman, a proxy for real-life abolitionist, Thaddeus Stevens) quickly tasks itself with painting the pre-Civil War American South as victims of a shamelessly cruel and lawless North. A black militia ransacks the Cameron estate only to be vanquished by heroic Confederate soldiers. The eldest and noble Cameron boy, Ben, is wounded as he does battle with the unreasonable and savage North and receives the affectionate nickname, “the Little Colonel,” for his heroism. Griffith’s picture even has the audacity to claim known abolitionist, Abraham Lincoln, as a champion of the Confederacy’s cause who would have been sympathetic to the South during Reconstruction had he not been assassinated at Ford’s Theater. Instead, “Birth” argues that with his cowardly act, assassin John Wilkes Booth, paved the way for Stoneman and his reviled “mulatto” understudy, Silas Lynch, to inflict all manner of unjust punishments on the South. It is upon these premises of a virtuous and heroic Confederacy molested by a radical, unscrupulous North that Griffith constructs his support for a natural and inevitable rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the film’s latter half.

Dixon’s seething racism, to which he devoted his life to publicly satiating, is afforded particular permissibility in the film’s second half through the a lens of a radically altered Reconstruction era. Where the assumed inferiority and lasciviousness of blacks was only hinted at in part one, part two of the saga provides Dixon and Griffith ample material with which to indict the newly empowered populace in the wake of the Confederacy’s defeat. Black soldiers are shown defiantly parading through the streets, disrupting the peace with deplorable fervor and even committing voter fraud, stuffing ballot boxes while white citizens are turned away. It is in response to these insufferable injustices that Confederate hero, Ben Cameron, devises the Ku Klux Klan, a righteous response to the evils of a freed rabble of base and unwieldy slaves.

The film’s final third becomes so embarrassingly repulsive that it has forever tainted Griffith’s legacy as one of unfettered bigotry. Upon its release, “Birth” sparked a national protest, drawing the ire of the newly formed NAACP and literally triggering riots in nearly every major city in which it screened. It was deemed so offensive that Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Denver and Minneapolis, among others, banned it outright. Yet, despite its vile message and unmitigated rejection by entire regions of the country, Griffith’s 190-minute silent spectacle became the most profitable film in history, a title it held for a staggering 22 years, well into the era of the “talkie.”

[RascalPuff]

"Conformist group aggression: the most common, powerful, dangerous, and difficult to abate."
- Eric Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness

Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search

The bordereau (memorandum) which sparked the Dreyfus affair.


Alfred Dreyfus, who was wrongly convicted of spying for Germany.




The Dreyfus affair (French: Affaire Dreyfus) was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent. Sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly having communicated French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris, Dreyfus was sent to the penal colony at Devil's Island in French Guiana and placed in solitary confinement.

Two years later, in 1896, evidence came to light identifying a French Army major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy as the real culprit. However, high-ranking military officials suppressed this new evidence and Esterhazy was unanimously acquitted after the second day of his trial in military court. Instead of being exonerated, Alfred Dreyfus was further accused by the Army on the basis of false documents fabricated by a French counter-intelligence officer, Hubert-Joseph Henry, seeking to re-confirm Dreyfus's conviction. These fabrications were uncritically accepted by Henry's superiors.[1]

Word of the military court's framing of Alfred Dreyfus and of an attendant cover-up began to spread largely due to J'accuse, a vehement public open letter in a Paris newspaper by writer Émile Zola, in January 1898. The case had to be re-opened and Alfred Dreyfus was brought back from Guiana in 1899 to be tried again. The intense political and judicial scandal that ensued divided French society between those who supported Dreyfus (the Dreyfusards[2]) and those who condemned him (the anti-Dreyfusards), such as Edouard Drumont (the director and publisher of the antisemitic newspaper La Libre Parole) and Hubert-Joseph Henry.

Eventually, all the accusations against Alfred Dreyfus were demonstrated to be baseless.[citation needed] Dreyfus was exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army in 1906. He later served during the whole of World War I, ending his service with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

Main article: Investigation and the arrest of Alfred Dreyfus
Main article: Trial and conviction of Alfred Dreyfus
Main article: Picquart's Investigations of the Dreyfus Affair
While Alfred Dreyfus was serving his sentence on Devil's Island back, supporters and the press in France began to question his guilt. The most notable of these was Major Georges Picquart, who brought evidence of forged evidence to his superiors and, when ordered to keep silent, leaked information to the Dreyfusard press. Picquart was later court martialed for his revelations. After Dreyfus was exonerated, Picquart was also cleared and restored to his military position.
Main article: Others look into the Dreyfus Affair
After Major Georges Picquart's exile to Tunisia others took up the cause of the Alfred Dreyfus.
Main article: The public scandal of the Dreyfus Affair
The debate over falsely accused Alfred Dreyfus grew into a public scandal of unprecedented scale, and caused most of the French nation to become divided between Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards.

Main article: J'accuse (letter)
The influential writer Émile Zola wrote an open letter published on January 13, 1898, in the newspaper L'Aurore. The letter was addressed to President of France Félix Faure, and accused the government of anti-Semitism and the unlawful jailing of Alfred Dreyfus, a French General Staff officer sentenced to penal servitude for life for espionage. Zola pointed out judicial errors and lack of serious evidence. The letter was printed on the front page of the newspaper, and caused a stir in France and abroad. Zola was prosecuted and found guilty of libel on 23 February 1898. To avoid imprisonment, he fled to England, returning home in June 1899.
Other pamphlets proclaiming Dreyfus's innocence include Bernard Lazare's A Miscarriage of Justice: The Truth about the Dreyfus Affair (November 1896).
Main article: Resolution of the Dreyfus Affair

The affair saw the emergence of the "intellectuals" — academics and others with high intellectual achievements who took positions on grounds of higher principle — such as Émile Zola, novelists Octave Mirbeau and Anatole France, mathematicians Henri Poincaré and Jacques Hadamard, and Lucien Herr, librarian of the École Normale Supérieure. Constantin Mille, a Romanian socialist writer and émigré in Paris, described the anti-Dreyfusard camp as a "militarist dictatorship".[3]

Alfred Dreyfus being dishonorably discharged, 5 January 1895.

"History is not history unless it is the truth." - Abraham Lincoln