Tag: holocaust

I have 3 articles for your morning perusal that are kind of on the darker side of things. It’s Monday, so I’m more morose anyway, lol.

First, a decent Oped on Terrorists:

Are All Terrorists Muslims? It’s Not Even Close

Obviously, there are people who sincerely view themselves as Muslims who have committed horrible acts in the name of Islam. We Muslims can make the case that their actions are not based on any part of the faith but on their own political agenda. But they are Muslims, no denying that.

However, and this will probably shock many, so you might want to take a breath: Overwhelmingly, those who have committed terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe aren’t Muslims. Let’s give that a moment to sink in.

Jump!

     On his recent trip to Aushwitz, Newt Gingrich made a spectacular failure of his staged attempt at empathy as he wandered the halls of racial holocaust and worried only about his own wealth and status.

    Using the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr to begin an email that attacks our nations first African American President and our first Latin American supreme court nominee is an insult to every American.

    Claiming that appointing a proud minority to a seat of power will undo everything we fought for in the civil war makes me question if Newt knows why we fought the civil war, as well as which side he would prefer fighting for.

    Without noticing it, the GOP has exposed themselves as the party of hatred, fear and lies. Within their own words you can see that the GOP has a Galtian Superiority complex. If there is a Godwin rule for racism it would have given up by now. The GOP is quickly becoming the new Confederate party.

    It is like going to a funeral and hitting on the widow. Going to Aushwitz and disparaging a racial minority on the grounds of reverse racism is like an ex-Nazi soldier going to a temple to blame all the Jews on the decline of the Third Reich. Seriously, the only thing Newt could do to make this look worse would be to steal Jewish owned artwork before he left Germany.

    When faced with the living embodiment of evil Newt could only think of himself. Normal people who are confronted with the face of human evil and the depth of heartless human depravity are often shocked. I guess a leading Republican spokesperson gets kind of used to that sort of thing these days.

    As Newt Gingrich gazed upon the Nazi torture chambers his thought turned towards his own dilema, which seems to be how he can make women, minorities and other social groups easier targets for racist pale skinned bigots and elitist plutocrats.

    When American politicians visit Aushwitz it should be as an exercise in empathy, to do otherwise is to turn such a visit into a photo op. In my mind, no greater insult could be made to the millions of European Jews who were systematically kidnapped, tortured and murdered by the Nazi regime of Adolph Hitler. While posing to take a picture of the roots of evil, Newt Gingrich and the GOP has made themselves out as a group that ether tolerates hatred and evil, or endorses it.

    Torture. Aushwitz.

    I think most sane and decent human beings could agree to being opposed to both.

    Unfortunately, the modern Confederate party of Conservative America is neither decent or sane.

   In my book, any public figure that can write off empathy for the majority of their non millionaire and non Corporate constituents has totally disqualified themselves from any ability to effectively serve the public.

    This is where the GOP stands today. they refuse to serve the public at all. They are totally enthralled to the service of their lords, the private sector and the wealthy individuals, Corporations and Special Interest groups that own their corrupt political party.

    Those who can justify torture can justify anything.

    With Michael Steele, Sarah Palin and other spokespeople, the GOP gets to have their one exception to the new rule. In effect, this exception says that you can join the GOP, but only if you cater solely to the wealthy and no one else. Just as the GOP advocates socialism for the rich and free market capitalism and personal responsibility for everyone else, in the eyes of the GOP empathy is only reserved for war criminals and rich white males. Anything else is Un-American, apparently.

    Going forward, we should remind any voter who is not white, male, heterosexual, christian or wealthy enough exactly where the Confederate party stands on matters of empathy, equality and social justice. We should put the right wing talking points of last week in a time capsule, and we should bring that time capsule out in 2010, 2012, 2014 and on with a little not attached that says “The New Confederate Party”

    The thing about having no empathy is that without empathy you can not have guilt or shame.

    This is just one more reason why the GOP is unfit to run (and wreck) America again.

The current issue of the German news magazine Der Spiegel takes the extradition of the Ukrainian concentration camp guard John (formerly Ivan) Demyanyuk from the US to face trial in Germany as an occasion to look at the support the Nazi holocaust policy received in their occupied territories (in English).

The article is at pains to not deflect from the fact that the Holocaust was a policy invented by Germany and Germans and implemented by Germany and Germans – but there can also be no doubt that, without active help from institutions and inhabitants of the occupied territories, the Holocaust’s breadth, scope and sheer efficiency would have been much diminished.

The closest I’ve come to trying to understand genocide, is to imagine the worst, most disgusting, evil, dehumanizing, anti-evolutionary, shameless, insatiable, vile, and incomprehensible thing imaginable – and try multiplying that by infinity.

Was losing Major Elliot’s strategic location during the extermination of the Southern Cheyenne Arapaho at Washita by Lieutenant Colonel Custer acceptable by U.S. military standards? Captain Benteen thought not.

Source

“Surely some search will be made for our missing comrades” mocked Benteen’s piece, before concluding, “No, they are forgotten.”

Custer picked the wrong man to threaten horsewhipping.

“It was Soviet troops that liberated Auschwitz, so unless his uncle was serving in the Red Army, there’s no way Obama’s statement yesterday can be true,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Alex Conant. “Obama’s frequent exaggerations and outright distortions raise questions about his judgment and his readiness to lead as commander in chief.”

link: http://www.chicagotribune.com/…

The above is a confident statement from a confident American political operative, working for a jittery party that senses its own demise. Desperate for any political traction, they grasped today upon Obama’s mis-statement that his relative liberated Auschwitz, and not Buchenwald.

For this small historical gaffe, the GOP would have us infer that Barack Obama is not fit to be President of the United States.

But what is the greater gaffe, mislabeling one of several Nazi concentration camps, or misunderstanding the lessons of the Holocaust as our country stumbles, and trips, and reaches for light straws of hope as we seek to restore our moral authority as the world’s leader on human rights after the abuses at Abu Ghirab and the ongoing detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay?