52 replies to this topic

[bobdrake12]

This epic quality of Jihad, Crusade and evangelical politics is not to be ignored in this discussion at all. It isn't mere tribalism and reflects issues more profound and arcane. These motives are generally not given credence by those that are by definition "unbelievers". Clearly the conflicts of the Middle East possess this most dangerous quality and are not to be treated like a simple social engineering experiment in neighborhood urban renewal.

Lazarus Long,

Unfortunately, President Bush was unaware of the negative impact that would result from his using the term "crusade" against terrorism.

bob

http://www.bbc.co.uk...d_crusade.shtml

The Middle Ages - Edward I returns from crusade 1274



In 1250, Henry III had sworn to recapture Jerusalem from the infidel. His son, Edward, intended to fulfil this oath when he set out for Palestine with a group of knights in 1270. After Henry III's death in 1272, Edward was obliged to return to England without having achieved his objective. The last crusader fortress at Acre was lost in 1290.




http://www.themodern...rusade-csm.html


Europe Cringes at President Bush's 'Crusade' Against Terrorists

by Peter Ford, Christian Science Monitor, 19 September 2001

As Europeans wait to see how the United States is planning to retaliate for last week's terrorist attacks in Washington and New York, there is growing anxiety here about the tone of American war rhetoric. President Bush's reference to a "crusade" against terrorism, which passed almost unnoticed by Americans, rang alarm bells in Europe.

It raised fears that the terrorist attacks could spark a 'clash of civilizations' between Christians and Muslims, sowing fresh winds of hatred and mistrust. "We have to avoid a clash of civilizations at all costs," French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine said on Sunday. "One has to avoid falling into this huge trap, this monstrous trap" which he said had been "conceived by the instigators of the assault."

On Sunday, Bush warned Americans that "this crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take awhile." He and other U.S. officials have said that renegade Islamic fundamentalist Osama bin Laden is the most likely suspect in the attacks. His use of the word "crusade," said Soheib Bensheikh, Grand Mufti of the mosque in Marseille, France, "was most unfortunate."

"It recalled the barbarous and unjust military operations against the Muslim world," by Christian knights, who launched repeated attempts to capture Jerusalem over the course of several hundred years.Bush sought to calm American Muslims' fears of a backlash against them on Monday by appearing at an Islamic center in Washington. There he assured Americans that "the face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about."But his earlier comments, declaring a war between good and evil, shocked Europeans.

"If this 'war' takes a form that affronts moderate Arab opinion, if it has the air of a clash of civilizations, there is a strong risk that it will contribute to Osama bin Laden's goal: a conflict between the Arab-Muslim world and the West," warned the Paris daily Le Monde on Tuesday in an editorial."Bush is walking a fine line," suggested Dominique Moisi, a political analyst with the French Institute for International Relations, the country's top foreign policy think tank.

"The same black and white language he uses to rally Americans behind him is just the sort of language that risks splitting the international coalition he is trying to build."This confusion between politics and religion ... risks encouraging a clash of civilizations in a religious sense, which is very dangerous," he added.On Monday, Taliban deputy leader Mohammed Hasan Akhund warned his fellow Afghans to prepare for 'Jihad' - holy war - against America, if U.S. forces attack Afghanistan.

While almost every world leader agrees with Washington that the terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center were evil, not all of those leaders - especially in the Middle East - identify the United States with good. British prime minister Tony Blair has gone out of his way this week to make it clear that the battle against terrorists is a battle not between Christians and Muslims, but between civilized values and fanaticism. In that battle, he said Monday, "the vast majority of decent law-abiding Muslims" opposed fanaticism.

It is their support for Washington's war that could be undermined by the sort of language on the president's lips, warns Hussein Amin, a former Egyptian ambassador who now lectures on international affairs. "The whole tone is that of one civilization against another," he finds. "It is a superior way of speaking, and I fear the consequences - the world being divided into two between those who think themselves superior" and the rest.Moderate Muslim opinion could also easily be swayed against America, predicted Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, head of the Muslim Parliament in Britain, an umbrella group for Muslim organizations.

"If they end up killing innocent civilians it will be very unfair," Dr. Siddiqui said. "The problems will arise if people see that justice has not been done."

French President Jacques Chirac, who arrived in Washington on Tuesday, and Blair, who will see Bush on Thursday, are expected to offer Europe's solidarity but to stop short of offering Washington a blank check. If European help is needed, Europeans want to be in on the planning, officials here say.

[bobdrake12]

The problem with religion as a factor in war is that it is "Self Prophetic" the crisis must come in part because human society is programmed to clash. What is still in question (thank God) is the outcome. Religion is where we find much of the sub and supra conscience programming for our species as it transcends any one generation and develops memetic paradigms for large scale behavioral adaptation.

Lazarus Long,

Religion can be used to point out wrongdoing or turn a blind eye to it.

bob

Part IV: The Concordat with Hitler

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hitler's Pope: Vicar of Christ or Instrument of the Devil?
Professor Arthur Noble

John Cornwell: Hitler's Pope, The Secret History of Pope Pius XII, Viking, 1999.

In a devastating indictment based on indisputable documentary evidence, Cornwell's brilliant study reveals the antipathy of Pius XII to Jews and how he refused to denounce Hitler by name. He had, moreover, a scheme to impose his own personal ultra-authoritarian stamp on the Roman Catholic Church, and found Hitler a useful ally. In short: "He was the ideal Pope for Hitler’s unspeakable plan. He was Hitler’s pawn. He was Hitler’s Pope."

Immediately following his ordination as Bishop in 1917, Pacelli left Rome for Germany, where he was to remain for the next 13 years. Despite its Protestant majority, Germany had one of the largest Roman Catholic populations of any country. The historic autonomy of the Church of Rome in Germany was enshrined in ancient concordats between the Vatican and the German regional states. Pacelli's purpose, Cornwell points out, was to bring all the local treaties in line with the new Code of Canon Law and papal absolutism mentioned in Part 3. His "principal task in Germany was now nothing less than the imposition, through the 1917 Code of Canon Law, of supreme papal authority over the Catholic bishops, clergy and faithful".

To that end he set out to renegotiate existing concordats with the German regional states, hoping ultimately for a concordat with the German nation itself, one that would solidify Vatican authority. Over the heads of the German bishops, Pacelli secretly reached a deal with Hitler that authorised the papacy to impose the new church law on German Roman Catholics and granted generous privileges to Roman Catholic schools and the clergy. In exchange, Pacelli collaborated in the withdrawal of Roman Catholics from social and political action in Germany.

Such was the fateful background to what followed the rise of Adolf Hitler. Cornwell writes:

"The acquiescence of the German people in the face of Nazism cannot be understood in its entirety without taking into account the long path, beginning as early as 1920, to the Reich Concordat of 1933; and Pacelli's crucial role in it; and Hitler's reasons for signing it. The negotiations were conducted exclusively by Pacelli on behalf of the Pope over the heads of the faithful, the clergy, and the German bishops. […] The Reichskonkordat effectively removed the German Catholic Church – which had successfully rolled back Bismarck's Kulturkampf, and which had opposed the rise of Nazism, generally barring party members from receiving holy communion into 1933 – from any continued role of opposition to Hitler. More than that, as Hitler told his cabinet on July 14, it established a context that would be "especially significant in the urgent struggle against international Jewry. […] This was the reality of the moral abyss into which Pacelli, the future Pontiff, had led the once great and proud German Catholic Church."

That Church, on the insistence of Rome, now fell silent. It was a terrible defeat for the Jews. As Hitler himself boasted in a cabinet meeting on July 14, 1933, Pacelli's guarantee of non-intervention left the régime free to resolve the Jewish question. "Hitler expressed the opinion that one should only consider it as a great achievement. The concordat gave Germany an opportunity and created an area of trust that was particularly significant in the developing struggle against international Jewry."

This Papal endorsement of Nazism, in Germany and abroad, helped to seal the fate of Europe. Cornwell shows how Pacelli, from his early forties, had already nourished a suspicion and contempt of Jews for political reasons; but the repeated references to the Jewishness of these individuals, amid the catalogue of stereotypical scorn and revulsion, betrays a confirmed Anti-Semitism.

In January 1937, Pius XI issued an encyclical written under Pacelli's direction: Mit Brennender Sorge (With Deep Anxiety). It denounced the alleged persecution of Roman Catholics in Germany, but included no condemnation of Anti-Semitism. National Socialism and Hitler were not even mentioned by name. Worse still, between Pacelli's election to Pope on March 2, 1939, and his 'coronation' he held a meeting with the German cardinals, he sent a letter of good wishes publicly affirming Hitler and beginning "To the illustrious Herr Adolf Hitler".

After Hitler's invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, the new Pope baffled the Allies by declining to condemn Germany. His first public statement, the encyclical known in the English world as Darkness over the Earth, was full of Papal rhetoric and equivocations.

Another more immediate indication of Pacelli's moral dislocation occurred before the liberation of Rome, when he was the sole Italian authority in the city. On October 16, 1943, while Pacelli was the sole Italian authority in the city, SS troops entered the Roman ghetto area at dawn and rounded up more than 1,000 Jews, imprisoning them in the very shadow of the Vatican. While such scenes had been enacted throughout Europe in the previous two years, the difference was that Pacelli refused to denounce the event and even refused to sign a letter of protest drafted by German occupation officials.

The Jews of Rome were deported on October 18. When Harold Tittmann, the American ambassador, visited Pacelli that day, he found him "not inclined to lift a finger for the Jewish deportees, who were now travelling in cattle trucks to the Austrian border". Within five days, some 1,060 of the deportees had been gassed at Auschwitz and Birkenau.

These charges against Pius XII have been familiar ever since Rolf Hochhuth’s play The Deputy of 1963, which linked the words "Pope Pius XII" and "silence" to the tragedy of the Jewish Holocaust.

As Cornwell summarises it: "He had not done enough to save the Jews from the death camps."

http://www.ianpaisley.org

Email: eips@btopenworld.com

[bobdrake12]

Germany had even secretly offerred Jews to many Nations instead of putting them all to death and the US like most Nations had clamped down their borders and refused.

I am unaware of this, but the "Voyage of the St. Louis" is a fact.

bob

http://www.fiu.edu/~...ellstlouis.html

Journey From Hell and Back - Holocaust Museum Tells of the Passengers America Turned Away

By Ann Gerhart - Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, April 30, 1999; Page C01

Herbert Karliner is pointing at the old photographs on the wall of the Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Up there is my uncle," he says, "and this is my father. This is me," he adds, his voice perfectly flat, and he points to a small boy in short pants and dress jacket, his arm draped protectively around a little girl. "And this is my sister."

And what became of his little sister, Ruth, beaming in her party clothes?

One word is enough. "Auschwitz," says Karliner.

But that was later. The people in these pictures, all Jews, are on a luxury liner in spring of 1939, steaming away from Germany and Hitler, sailing toward America and freedom. They have seen Kristallnacht, the chaos of Nazi destruction waged against the Jews some months before, and they are getting out. They have paid their passage; they have their quota numbers for entry into the United States. They look thrilled and buoyant.

The photos are part of a small but wrenching new exhibit at the Museum, "Voyage of the St. Louis." Together with newspaper clippings, personal belongings and, most compellingly, the stories of five families aboard the boat, the photos tell of a refuge denied. Sixty years ago, on May 27, the 936 passengers so full of hope arrived in Cuban waters, where they expected to disembark and stay while waiting for their numbers to come up for entry into the United States. Instead, they learned that antisemitism--and corruption among Havana officials--had conspired to keep them out. The ship then steamed toward Florida, and lingered offshore while the passengers pleaded to enter America. But in an episode of bureaucratic indifference that history would judge as complicity, the United States also refused to admit them, and finally, the ship sailed back to Europe.

Unable to go home to Germany, the Jews fanned out into four other countries. There, terror overtook them again only a few months later as war swept through Europe. Over a third of the passengers, who had been close enough to swim toward the shimmering hotels fringing Miami Beach, died in the Holocaust.

The modest exhibit is one whose power comes from knowing the end of this story even while it is retold in the museum. Hollywood told it in 1976 in "Voyage of the Damned." Now, with Europe again engulfed in ethnic annihilation and overwhelmed with a refugee crisis, it is impossible to walk through the show without reflecting on lessons unlearned. And yet more than half of the St. Louis passengers learned that the capacity of humans to inflict cruelty on each other is exceeded only by the resilience of some humans to survive it.

"Voyage of the St. Louis," on view through Sept. 6, is an outgrowth of a three-year museum project to determine the fates of all of the ship's passengers. To date, researchers have established what happened to all but 26.

Along the way, they collected objects the St. Louis passengers clung to for decades--family photos, letters, a foot locker--and put them on display. Here is Oskar Blecher's Leica camera. There is 10-year-old Hildegard Wolff's little sailor doll, with its smart St. Louis cap. With these few exceptions, these possessions are less interesting than the pictures; even in this context they are just things. But the cruise photos snapped by passengers and ship staff are an effective central visual element to the exhibit, because they show a group of people looking almost carefree, off on a great life adventure that turned tragic.

At the ship's rail: children pausing impatiently for the official photographer, their hair tousled by the sea breeze, looking mischievous and ready to dart off on another exploration.

Inside the ballroom: cool sophisticated adults, the men in white dinner jackets, the women in gowns, their lovely throats thrown back for a full laugh, holding their cigarettes just so. Balloons in the air; couples gliding about the dance floor.

On the deck: a man in a sport coat leaning forward on his chair, as a uniformed waiter pours him a cup of coffee from a silver pot.

"Oh, we were treated so well," recalled Alice Oster, 73, who now lives in Kew Gardens, N.Y., in an interview at the museum. "We walked about. We heard Strauss music, and we hadn't heard Strauss for a long time before that." Her sister, Jane Keibel, now 75, met a boy. "I had a terrible crush on him. [Afterward] he was supposed to go to Colombia," said Keibel, but she has never been able to find him, and yet, 60 years later, she has never been able to give up on him either.

"I loved it," said Sol Messinger, who celebrated his seventh birthday during the voyage. "I got out from under my mother's thumb," which kept a frantic grip on a Jewish boy in Hitler's Germany.

No one felt like having any photos taken while the passengers sweltered in the heat outside Havana before the Cuban president ordered the ship to shove off. The exhibit dwindles to yellowed pieces of paper.

"Most urgently repeat plea for help for the passengers of the St. Louis. Mr. President help the 900 passengers among them over 400 women and children," reads the cable sent to President Roosevelt. It went unanswered.

A page of the Miami Herald features several news photographs of the ship anchored off the Florida coast, with "suicide watch" patrol boats floating alongside, but the newspaper saved its considerable editorial muscle for a topic of true interest to its readers: Adjacent to the photos, in a cruel juxtaposition, the community service column "The Town Cryer" begins, "Those ash trays that Friday's contributor to this column said were so badly needed in Jackson Memorial Hospital have been provided and cigarette butts will not have to be tossed on the floor by the patients and visitors."

The United States already had filled its 1939 immigration quota from Germany and Austria when the St. Louis went looking for a haven, and while Americans were sympathetic to the plight of the passengers, public sentiment also was against relaxing the quotas.

"Remember the garbage barge?" asked Oster, referring to the trash-piled vessel that wandered the Eastern Seaboard for months in 1987. "We were the human garbage barge."

Even families who escaped from Nazi-occupied countries intact often endured arrests, deportations, terror and malnourishment before they landed in America, their lives changed forever.

The refugees' own words are chilling. Middle-class Viennese merchant Franz Blumenstein was arrested and sent to Dachau. His wife, Else, got him released by paying a large bribe and promising that he would emigrate. He went to Venezuela, then Cuba and secured landing permits for his mother, Else and their 3-year-old son, Heinz George. Eager to join Franz, the three set sail on the St. Louis, then upon returning to Europe disembarked in Amsterdam and lived there for three years, while Blumenstein the businessman struggled to build a farming commune in the Dominican Republic.

"Only our dear child helps me to survive," Else wrote in 1941 to Franz. "Our Golden Boy is in every respect, mentally and physically, a splendid fellow. From 7 in the morning when he wakes up, he starts chatting; from 9-12 he is in school; and then he comes home and the house is alive again." Mother and son later went into hiding, separately. Else did not survive Auschwitz, and Heinz eventually was reunited with his father in the United States.

After their journey to nowhere on the St. Louis, Jane Keibel and her sister, Alice Oster, went to a children's home in France. Later, they rejoined their parents and immigrated to New York, where their father, a successful store owner in Germany, took a job manufacturing cheap ladies' compacts with "Lake Placid" inscribed on them.

Herbert Karliner, 72, the protective brother of the photo, began a seven-year cycle in Nazi Europe--hide and flee, hide and flee, hide and flee. Carrying his family's documents and photos all the while, he survived on wits and reflexes and finally landed in America in 1946. He headed straight for Miami Beach, where he lives today, a tanned, tough, white-haired man with a German accent. He is married to a woman he met in a children's home in France, and they have two daughters and a grandchild. His brother is a dentist in Connecticut. Their parents and sisters perished in the camps.

"I saw Miami Beach," he said. "I have to come back." As a St. Louis passenger who became an American, against all odds, he lives with a paradox. "In 1939, the U.S. didn't want us," said Karliner. "In 1950, I was drafted into the Army," where he served, he proudly notes, as a translator in the Pacific.

And Sol Messinger, the boy who turned 7 on board the St. Louis, came back to America with his parents when he was 10, after a series of harrowing escapes. He vividly remembers a conversation between his parents in one of the camps, where husband and wife could meet only once a week, through a fence. As Messinger clutched his mother's hand, his father leaned in, close enough to feel the razor wire on his cheek, and whispered that mother and son must escape that night. "I don't know if I want to leave without you," his mother told his father. And his father replied, in a low hiss, "If you don't go, you'll have your son's blood on your hands." They left that night.

Messinger, who lives in Buffalo, N.Y., and became a pathologist who served in the Army, thinks often of that day as he watches news coverage of sobbing Kosovar children in refugee camps. For him, NATO's struggle to do the right thing is personal.

"The United States has been very good to me and my family," said Messinger, "but there's a 'but,' and the but is that what happened with the St. Louis was so opposite to what happened in the history of this country. And that is a very painful part of me as an American."

"You know what I can't understand," Karliner said hotly as he and Messinger stood together in the museum. "We were not allowed in Cuba, and then in 1980, 125,000 Cubans were let into Florida without a question, and some of them were criminals, too, and here we were, 900 people running away from Nazis, and we could not come!"

"Herb," said Messinger, and he paused, perhaps considering that what he wanted to say might come more easily to him, because his mother and father had lived to a ripe old age. "I like to think because of us is why they let them in."


© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company

[bobdrake12]

http://www.blechner.com/ssstlouis.htm

Voyage of the SS St. Louis

Oskar Blechner, the second eldest of the four brothers tries to emigrate to the USA via Cuba on board the Hapag-Lloyd steamer St. Louis. The ship leaves Hamburg on 13th May 1939. The fate of the 937 almost entirely Jewish passengers is uncertain from the outset. The majority of passengers possess only tourist visas and no valid entry documents for Cuba. The visas were issued by the Immigration Director on his own initiative. The Cuban Government refuses to acknowledge them and declares them invalid.

The United States, the next nearest immigration destination, also refuses entry to the St. Louis passengers. The ship has to return to Hamburg. Thanks to the untiring efforts of the Jewish aid organisations and growing public pressure, Belgium, Holland, France and Great Britain decide to accept the threatened refugees. Oskar was lucky. He was allowed to come to England. Only few of the those who were taken in by the other countries would survive their later occupation by the Nazis.

Copyright © 2002 Anthony Blechner

email: anthony@blechner.com

Edited by bobdrake12, 14 March 2003 - 10:09 PM.

[bobdrake12]

Distracting the population from worsening economic conditions is another reason for war.

bob

http://www.multied.com/dates/1936.html

1936 Italy Invades Ethiopia -The Italians had claimed Ethiopia as their territory. With economic conditions worsening at home, Mussolini needed to take actions that would distract the Italian people. In 1936, the Italians fought against poorly-armed Ethiopian troops in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital. The League of Nations censured Italy, but that comprised the extent of world reaction.

© 2000 MultiEducator, Inc.

[bobdrake12]

http://www2.sunysuff...n/causeww2.html

HOW WERE THE EFFECTS OF WORLD WAR I RELATED TO THE CAUSES OF
WORLD WAR II?

The economic collapse, and the political instability caused by World War I led the rise of fascism in Europe to World War II. The Nazi version of fascism was dedicated to the reversal of the Versailles Treaty and the establishment of a German Empire by means of war and conquest.

HOW DID THE GREAT DEPRESSION CONTRIBUTE TO THE COMING OF WORLD WAR II?

The Great Depression decimated the economies of Europe and the United States. This was fertile ground for the emergence of the Nazis to power in Germany, and a military clique to take power in Japan. In the United States and in western Europe, the pre-occupation with the domestic economic crisis contributed to the political failure to meet the rising threat of fascism.

HOW DID FASCISM CONTRIBUTE TO THE COMING OF WORLD WAR II?

Fascism was an ideology which glorified the military, denounced international organizations and cooperation, and considered war an acceptable means for achieving national goals. Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy adopted aggressive foreign policies involving war as an intended, even desirable method.

WHAT WERE THE ROLES OF ENGLAND, FRANCE AND THE SOVIET UNION IN CONTRIBUTING TO THE COMING OF WORLD WAR II?

England pursued a determined effort to avoid war, which played into Hitler's plans because he used every concession to prepare the stage for his next demand. France consistently followed England's lead. The English and the French did not trust Stalinist Russia, and Stalin distrusted the capitalist West. When the Russians tried to form a common front against fascism in the 1930's, many English and French leaders considered Nazi Germany to be useful as a check against Russian expansion.

WHAT WAS THE ROLE OF THE UNITED STATES IN CONTRIBUTING TO THE
COMING OF WORLD WAR II?

The United States, as the leading power in the world after World War I, might have exercised great influence in restoring a stable peace through economic assistance to wartorn Europe, and through an active role in the League of Nations, discouraged aggression. Failure to do that led to the rise of fascism and the path to renewed war.

[bobdrake12]

http://www.infopleas...y/A0862008.html

World War II

Causes and Outbreak

This second global conflict resulted from the rise of totalitarian, militaristic regimes in Germany, Italy, and Japan, a phenomenon stemming in part from the Great Depression that swept over the world in the early 1930s and from the conditions created by the peace settlements (1919–20) following World War I.

After World War I, defeated Germany, disappointed Italy, and ambitious Japan were anxious to regain or increase their power; all three eventually adopted forms of dictatorship (see National Socialism and fascism) that made the state supreme and called for expansion at the expense of neighboring countries. These three countries also set themselves up as champions against Communism, thus gaining at least partial tolerance of their early actions from the more conservative groups in the Western democracies. Also important was a desire for peace on the part of the democracies, which resulted in their military unpreparedness. Finally, the League of Nations, weakened from the start by the defection of the United States, was unable to promote disarmament (see Disarmament Conference); moreover, the long economic depression sharpened national rivalries, increased fear and distrust, and made the masses susceptible to the promises of demagogues.

The failure of the League to stop the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1931 was followed by a rising crescendo of treaty violations and acts of aggression. Adolf Hitler, when he to power (1933) in Germany, recreated the German army and prepared it for a war of conquest; in 1936 he remilitarized the Rhineland. Benito Mussolini conquered (1935–36) Ethiopia for Italy; and from 1936 to 1939 the Spanish civil war raged, with Germany and Italy helping the fascist forces of Francisco Franco to victory. In Mar., 1938, Germany annexed Austria, and in Sept., 1938, the British and French policy of appeasement toward the Axis reached its height with the sacrifice of much of Czechoslovakia to Germany in the Munich Pact.

When Germany occupied (Mar., 1939) all of Czechoslovakia, and when Italy seized (Apr., 1939) Albania, Great Britain and France abandoned their policy of appeasement and set about creating an “antiaggression” front, which included alliances with Turkey, Greece, Romania, and Poland and speeding rearmament. Germany and Italy signed (May, 1939) a full military alliance, and after the Soviet-German nonaggression pact (Aug., 1939) removed German fear of a possible two-front war, Germany was ready to launch an attack on Poland.

World War II began on Sept. 1, 1939, when Germany, without a declaration of war, invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war on Germany on Sept. 3, and all the members of the Commonwealth of Nations, except Ireland, rapidly followed suit. The fighting in Poland was brief. The German blitzkrieg, or lightning war, with its use of new techniques of mechanized and air warfare, crushed the Polish defenses, and the conquest was almost complete when Soviet forces entered (Sept. 17) E Poland. While this campaign ended with the partition of Poland and while the USSR defeated Finland in the Finnish-Russian War (1939–40), the British and the French spent an inactive winter behind the Maginot Line, content with blockading Germany by sea.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Copyright © 1994, 2000, Columbia University Press.

Edited by bobdrake12, 15 March 2003 - 02:05 AM.

[bobdrake12]

After World War I, defeated Germany, disappointed Italy, and ambitious Japan were anxious to regain or increase their power; all three eventually adopted forms of dictatorship (see National Socialism and fascism) that made the state supreme and called for expansion at the expense of neighboring countries.

http://www.encyclope.../f1/fascism.asp

fascism

(fash´izem) , totalitarian philosophy of government that glorifies the state and nation and assigns to the state control over every aspect of national life. The name was first used by the party started by Benito Mussolini , who ruled Italy from 1922 until the Italian defeat in World War II. However, it has also been applied to similar ideologies in other countries, e.g., to National Socialism in Germany and to the regime of Francisco Franco in Spain. The term is derived from the Latin fasces .

Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, Copyright © 2003.


http://www.encyclope...tPhilosophy.asp

Section: Characteristics of Fascist Philosophy

Fascism, especially in its early stages, is obliged to be antitheoretical and frankly opportunistic in order to appeal to many diverse groups. Nevertheless, a few key concepts are basic to it. First and most important is the glorification of the state and the total subordination of the individual to it. The state is defined as an organic whole into which individuals must be absorbed for their own and the state's benefit. This “total state” is absolute in its methods and unlimited by law in its control and direction of its citizens.

A second ruling concept of fascism is embodied in the theory of social Darwinism. The doctrine of survival of the fittest and the necessity of struggle for life is applied by fascists to the life of a nation-state. Peaceful, complacent nations are seen as doomed to fall before more dynamic ones, making struggle and aggressive militarism a leading characteristic of the fascist state. Imperialism is the logical outcome of this dogma.

Another element of fascism is its elitism. Salvation from rule by the mob and the destruction of the existing social order can be effected only by an authoritarian leader who embodies the highest ideals of the nation. This concept of the leader as hero or superman, borrowed in part from the romanticism of Friedrich Nietzsche , Thomas Carlyle , and Richard Wagner , is closely linked with fascism's rejection of reason and intelligence and its emphasis on vision, creativeness, and “the will.”

Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, Copyright © 2003.

Edited by bobdrake12, 15 March 2003 - 02:17 AM.

[Lazarus Long]

This concept of the leader as hero or superman, borrowed in part from the romanticism of Friedrich Nietzsche , Thomas Carlyle , and Richard Wagner , is closely linked with fascism's rejection of reason and intelligence and its emphasis on vision, creativeness, and “the will.”

Here is an example of a false dychotomy that all too many believe. I personally embrace the principles of Reason and Intelligence but I recognize these as the mainstay and wellspring for true vision, creativeness, and the "will".

[bobdrake12]

This concept of the leader as hero or superman, borrowed in part from the romanticism of Friedrich Nietzsche , Thomas Carlyle , and Richard Wagner , is closely linked with fascism's rejection of reason and intelligence and its emphasis on vision, creativeness, and “the will.”

Here is an example of a false dychotomy that all too many believe. I personally embrace the principles of Reason and Intelligence but I recognize these as the mainstay and wellspring for true vision, creativeness, and the "will".

Lazarus Long,

The "educated" German people fell for Nazi lies hook, line and sinker because Hitler told them what they wanted to hear. The German people were looking for their hero and thought they found one.

The fatal mistake of the German people during the Nazi era is that they had blind trust in their hero; thus, did not question where their hero was leading them.

Actions have there consequences.



Bombed out Berlin during WWII


bob


http://www.freedomsf...g/XXthCent.html

"What luck for rulers that men do not think." ~ Adolph Hitler

Devastated by their defeat in World War I, the German people were looking for a hero.

Hitler was a genius at mind control and knew the way to control the masses through the country's youth. There was never a single rally without the Hitler Youth, who idolized their charismatic leader.

Presenter: Gerry Sachs

http://www.rosenoire...cles/hist27.php

Hitler the Demogogue (excerpts)

How Crucial to the Success of Nazi Germany was Charismatic Leadership?

Historical Pamphlets Series: No. 27

By Troy Southgate

In this study I will examine the incredible impact that Adolf Hitler [1889-1945] made both upon the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (NSDAP) and the German nation as a whole. I will begin by examining Hitler’s approach to the question of leadership and then look at how his inherent charisma was largely responsible for the Party’s eventual rise to power. It will then be necessary to study the effects of the post-1933 fuhrerprincip, before attending to the Nazi government’s propagation of the so-called ‘Hitler Myth’.

In the wake of the First World War and the short-lived Weimar Republic, few people would doubt that Hitler was the central figure in German politics. In order to study his own perception of competent leadership, therefore, one must look at the relevant sections of Mein Kampf. In line with the Nietzschean concept of Natural Selection, Hitler was of the opinion that German society “should take care that the positions of leadership and highest influence are given to the best men. Hence it is not based on the idea of the majority, but on that of personality.”[1] In other words, he believed that human equality was a myth which should be sacrificed on the altar of Social-Darwinism, and liberal-democracy nothing more than an obstacle to the creation of the New Man. As far as leadership within the NSDAP was concerned, Hitler postulated the view that “a movement which is based on the principle of the leader who has to bear personal responsibility for the direction of the official acts of the movement itself will one day overthrow the present situation and triumph over the existing regime.”[2] Indeed, for any man who declares that “the State must be established on the principle of personality, starting from the smallest cell and ascending up to the supreme government of the country”[3], it necessarily follows, therefore, that “Genius of an extraordinary stamp is not to be judged by normal standards whereby we judge other men.”[4] The fact that such opinions were so openly expressed in what eventually became the political catechism of the whole National-Socialist phenomenon, left the citizens of the Second Reich in absolutely no doubt that should the NSDAP come to power, Hitler would be the unassailable oarsman at the helm of the German State. So even when the ideological trappings of Hitlerism were still on the proverbial drawing-board amid the relatively safe confines of the Landsberg Fortress, the nation’s future dictator was busily evolving into the self-appointed embodiment of the German soul.

Immediately prior to his imprisonment, Hitler had already discovered that his unique charisma could be used for the benefit of the Movement as a whole. When Hitler had joined Anton Drexler’s [1884-1942] fledgling Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (DAP) in September 1919, those who witnessed his early attempts to develop an oratorical prowess were highly impressed by what was obviously an inborn talent. In fact after one particular speech, in which “Hitler was a joy to watch”[5], Drexler could hardly contain his excitement: “When the speaker had finished I rushed towards him, thanked him for what he had said and asked him to take the pamphlet I had away with him to read . . . because we could do with people like him.”[6] Indeed, Drexler was among the very first to become obsessed with the mystical power of Hitler’s personality and he obviously sensed a useful political asset when he saw one. According to one source, the “the DAP provided him with an outlet for his political energies, and it was small enough to enable him to make his presence felt immediately.”[7]

By July 1921, Hitler had realised that his inherent charisma was the key to the whole success of National-Socialism. After threatening to form a rival organisation when Drexler had proposed a merger between the NSDAP and the Arbendlandischer Bund [Western League], Hitler issued an uncompromising ultimatum and demanded that he be made Party Chairman and immediately assume full dictatorial powers. In his own words, “recent events have convinced me now more than ever that without iron leadership the Party will in a very short time cease to be what it ought to be”[8]. Hitler knew only too well that he was the life and soul of what had previously been little more than a drinking club for disillusioned ex-soldiers and, by August 1921, Hitler’s gamble had paid off and he finally got his own way. By remaining totally unprepared to sacrifice its most valuable acquisition, the NSDAP had intelligently secured its future success. But whilst the ability to influence a tiny organisation was one thing, Hitler would soon be forced to display his qualities of leadership in a more pragmatic manner.

That Hitler was undoubtedly aware of the vast powers of theatre and rhetoric was obvious.

The first NSDAP rally, held between January 27-29th, 1923, was a huge personal success for Adolf Hitler and contributed to his growing self-confidence. According to one observer, “the one they were waiting for came with his followers, walking quickly to the platform, his right arm raised stiffly. He passed by me quite close and I saw. This was a different person from the one I had met now and then in private houses; his gaunt, pale features contorted as if by inward rage, cold flames darting from his protruding eyes, which seemed to be searching out foes to be conquered.”[17] Hitler’s ability to manipulate a crowd has been well documented, but few historians have been able to offer a valid explanation for precisely how he came to possess such an ability. His natural charisma may well have been accentuated by the colourful romanticism of Nazi pageantry, but Hitler’s power was often felt to be an emotional rather than a visual experience. But nevertheless, despite frequent attempts by neo-Freudian psycho-analysts to dismiss Hitler’s innate talent as an attempt “to change himself from a hesitant and unsure little man to a person of towering historic force who paralysed opposition and commanded millions to do his will”[18], it remains an incontrovertible fact that far from representing the product of a warped mind, human charisma is something you either have or have not got.

The most prominent feature of the NSDAP was its emphasis upon the fuhrerprincip. Although the Party was staffed by officials serving at the heads of the various national ministries and local branches, the “deceptively simple”[19] Enabling Act of 1933 made it possible for Hitler to exert his control over the whole political, social and economic system. David Welch has pointed out that “While in theory the Weimar Constitution was never abandoned, Hitler’s position as Fuhrer and exclusive representative of the nation’s will was quickly consolidated.”[20] As a result, Joseph Goebbels [1875-1945], the Party’s Chief Minister for Propaganda, was given the task of creating what has since been described as the ‘Hitler Myth’. His role was also to ensure that “Hitler had been given the halo of infallibility, with the result that many people who looked askance at the Party after 1933 had now complete confidence in Hitler”[21]. But in order for the government to proceed unhindered, it was necessary to erode all other influences and replace them with the figure of Adolf Hitler himself. One such influence was Christianity.

Hitler’s election as Chancellor had relied partly upon the Catholic support which he had poached from the Centre Party (Zentrum). Following the example of Benito Mussolini [1883-1945], the Fuhrer set out to limit the power of the German churches and one of his first tasks was to arrange for a Concordat between the Nazi State and the Vatican. This rather unlikely alliance took place on July 20th, 1933, and allowed Hitler to safeguard against any potential opposition from those Catholics who were hostile to his new regime. In addition, the Enabling Act of March 24th - which was designed to help the Nazi government “introduce legislative measures independently of the legislature, included alterations to the Constitution”[22] - had basically forced the Church into such an alliance in the first place. In the period directly preceding the Enabling Act, the Catholic authorities had used their influence in the Centre Party to express their hostility to the Nazi regime. Thus, in recognition of the fact that he was now forced to exert a considerable degree of diplomacy towards his potential Catholic supporters, Hitler promised to defend Christianity in general and both “permit and guarantee to the Christian denominations the enjoyment of their due influence in schools and education.”[23] However, although he had cynically deceived his own Catholic sympathisers and won many of them over from the waning Centre Party, this sentence was deliberately omitted from the text of his Reichstag speech when it subsequently appeared in the pages of the Volkischer Beobachter. Once Hitler had been granted full powers over the State, there was nothing the German churches could do about it. When charisma failed him, Hitler could always rely on deceit.

But only one ‘god’ was permitted in Nazi Germany, and that was Adolf Hitler. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that Martin Bormann [1900-1945] declared Christianity to be fundamentally irreconcilable with National-Socialism and dismissed it along with “the harmful influence of astrologists, soothsayers, and other swindlers”[29]. The success of the Nazis, of course, depended upon the exaggeration of Hitler’s existing charm. No wonder, therefore, that Dr. Engelke was to remark that “God has manifested himself not in Jesus Christ but in Adolf Hitler.”[30]

To conclude, despite the fact that the success of German Fascism was - amongst other things - due to the procurement of finance and the use of repression, it can also be attributed to the charismatic nature of its leader. Indeed, despite one or two early setbacks Hitler himself was highly confident of his own abilities and Mein Kampf served as a warning for the imminent domination of one man.

In short, Hitler was Germany and Germany was Hitler; something once described as the “reign of the collective beast”[32]. Similarly, the gradual obliteration of Christianity and its replacement with a substitute religion was also crucial to the success of German Fascism. Such a system was dependant upon the cultivation and maintenance of mass hysteria, and the Nazi State had “to rely on proving itself every day by deed and success; hence the ever-repeated public appearances of the Leader with a ceremonial which is cunningly adapted to different situations.”[33] In addition, whilst Hitler was unable to feel part of German society in any meaningful sense, it eventually became necessary for him to impose his indelible will on Germany itself. But, according to Hans Frank, “One must not say that Hitler violated the German people - he seduced them! They followed him with a mad jubilation”[34].

Edited by bobdrake12, 16 March 2003 - 04:43 AM.

[bobdrake12]

The "educated" German people fell for Nazi lies hook, line and sinker because Hitler told them what they wanted to hear. The German people were looking for their hero and thought they found one...

Hitler successfully used propaganda such as the film, "Triumph of Will", to manipulate the German people to become "true believers" in Nazism.



"True believers" do no question their hero leader.


bob


http://history.sandi...es/triumph.html



Triumph of the Will scene shows huge banners designed by Albert Speer




Leni Riefenstahl made films for Hitler, but claimed not to have been a Nazi


http://www.dasblauel...new_page_20.htm

TRIUMPH DES WILLENS (1935) (Triumph of Will)

(excerpts)



Memorial service with Hitler flanked by Himmler and Lutze of the SA. Triumph des Willens, 1935

September 4-10, 1934, Nuremberg. The NSDAP Nazi Party Rally was executed and Riefenstahl and crew attempted to capture the events in unique ways. Some of this is done through aerial shots, crane shots and dramatic point of view angles. Her mastery of camera movement and perspective is demonstrated in framing of shots which angle upward, downward, both static and in motion, with faces and structures in shadow or relief. Riefenstahl's camera is moving in motorcades, is looking upward from a street level or provides the tremendous overhead shots from a special tower elevator approved by Speer. Her direction insured that Hitler would be a central focus. Individuals are gleamed from the images of the masses and yet the repetitive, linear strength of the parades of masses remain in contrast of Hitler's singular presence.




Riefenstahl lines up a shot, Triumph des Willens, 1935


Crowded by more than one million participants, the pageants of the Nazi rally included workers on the march, SA and SS troops in review, military equipment displays, and speeches by key figures of the Third Reich. Additional sequences profile comradeship, athletic games, life in the campsites, and a unified national spirit. Likewise images of static and moving symbolism (eagles, swastikas, banners , and the waves of humanity) of the Nazi party are inter cut with music ranging from Wagner to original work by Riefenstahl's frequent collaborator Herbert Windt to Party songs to Horst Wessel Lied.

© DASBLAUELICHT.NET



http://www.filmeduca...cs/triumph.html




Triumph of the Will (1935) B&W. 110mins.
Production: NSDAP
Director: Leni Riefenstahl
Chief Cameraman: Sepp Allgeier
Music: Herbert Windt
Architectural direction of the Nuremberg Rally: Albert Speer

The celebrated film by Leni Riefenstahl is of the 1934 sixth Nazi Party Congress at Nuremberg. The romantic opening showing Hitler's arrival by air is one of the most famous sequences in film history. Many of the events of the congress are covered, though not in strict chronological order, because the rhythm of the film is intended to build up Hitler's personal image.

Susan Sontag has referred to the film as 'the most successfully, most purely propagandistic film ever made.'

What is Propaganda?

The word 'propaganda' derives from the name of an organisation set up in 1622 by the Roman Catholic church to carry on missionary work, the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Congregatio de Propaganda Fide). Today propaganda is seen as the systematic effort to manipulate other people’s beliefs, attitudes or actions. The propagandist has a specified goal or set of goals and to achieve these he deliberately selects facts, arguments, images etc. to present them in the ways he believes will have the most persuasive effect.

The Power of Propaganda

Both Hitler and Goebbels, Hitler’s brilliant propaganda minister, believed that cinema was potentially the most powerful mass medium of the new age. Goebbels perceptively realised that the public had little appetite for Brownshirt cinema epics and therefore exploited the use of entertainment as film propaganda. The films commissioned by Goebbels were about the need to mentally and emotionally conquer the German people for the Nazi Revolution.

Propaganda had a key role in this task, but to achieve its objective it had to find ways to keep mass enthusiasm alive. Film art, Goebbels thought, could greatly contribute to this endeavour. Hence his admiration for Eisenstein’s Potemkin as the cinematic myth legitimising the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.’
Robert Wistrich ‘Weekend in Munich: Art, Propaganda and Terror in the Third Reich’

In 1934 Hitler commissioned Leni Riefenstahl, the only director whom he believed came close to rivalling the work of Eisenstein, to produce an artistic film about the Party convention at Nuremberg, Triumph of the Will. In her book on the film, Riefenstahl notes that ‘The preparations for the Party convention were made in concert with the preparations for the camera work.’ In reality however, the rally was intended from the outset to be the stage for a spectacular piece of film propaganda glorifying Nazism.

Although 'Triumph of the Wil'l was indeed about the Nuremberg Party Congress, preparations for the rally were carefully constructed around the preparations for the film. The Third Reich’s architect, Albert Speer, carefully constructed the groundwork for the event, with grandiose building arrangements and precise plans for marches. The city of Nuremberg became a stage-set for Reifenstahl’s film, with a sea of swastika banners, bonfires and torches. Reifenstahl’s cinematic technique creates a sense of feverish movement and a seemingly endless array of banners and people.

'Triumph of the Will' is un-equalled as propaganda and is, according to the historian Professor Robert Wistrich ‘...the supreme visualisation in cinematic form of the Nazi political religion. Its artistry, reinforced by the grandeur and power of the Nuremberg decor, is designed to sweep us into empathetic identification with Hitler as a kind of human deity. The massive spectacle of regimentation, unity and loyalty to the Fuhrer powerfully conveys the message that the Nazi movement was the living symbol of the reborn German nation.’


'Sometimes you have to lie. One often has to distort a thing to catch its true spirit.' ~ Robert Flaherty

Edited by bobdrake12, 16 March 2003 - 02:58 PM.

[bobdrake12]

It is hard to believe that civilized people would establish death camps for the innocent, but it is a historical fact that it has happened.

How powerful is propaganda?

Propaganda's purpose is to create the "true believer". Even so, it is difficult for me to understand the "true believer", and how the "true believer" can be manipulated to blindly follow "orders" to willfully murder the innocent.

bob

http://english.gfh.o...as_chambers.htm




GFH Archive, Catalogue # 9276

Women and children on their way to the gas chambers in Birkenau camp. Photographed in 1944.


http://www.kimel.net/method3.html

DECEPTION AND HOAXES (excerpts)

Written by Alexander Kimel - Holocaust Survivor


The Germans used many diverse methods of deception. After the first transport left the Ghetto of Warsaw, postcards started to arrive to families left behind. The postcards talked about work and resettlement in the East. The sad part of the hoax was the fact that at time the post cards arrived the senders were already dead.

Ringelblum notes in his diary:

"The most important reason for the Jews' passivity in July 1942 was the excellent German strategy, which deceived the Jewish population as to the real aim of "resettlement". The fairy tale about the "resettlement in the East", supported by the band of Gestapo agents brought in from Lublin, was so widely accepted by the Jews that thousands of people who were starving as a result of the constant cordons and the complete stoppage of smuggling presented themselves at the Umschlagplatz voluntarily, in order to be sent to work in the East."

"In order to encourage people to volunteer for resettlement, the Nazi promised the volunteers bread and marmalade: " Besides the blockading of houses and hunting in the streets, there is still a third method of expulsion-premiums. Large posters have been put up in many courtyards to say that all those who voluntarily come to the transfer point for expulsion will receive three kilos of bread and a kilo of marmalade to take with them in their wanderings."

"I don't have the figures for the volunteers who reported to the Umschlagplatz. But the minimum seems to be to have been 20,000 persons who, driven by hunger, anguish, a sense of hopelessness of their situation, had not the strength to struggle any longer, simply had no place to live, because they weren't assigned to any shop, and had no recourse but to go to their death voluntarily."

The deception did not stop at the boarding of the death trains, it continued to the last moment of life.

"You may wonder why prisoners who has just gotten off the trains did not revolt, waiting as they did of hours (sometimes of days!) to enter the gas chambers... The Germans had perfected a diabolically clever and versatile system of collective death. In most cases the new arrivals did not know what awaited them. They were received with cold efficiency but without bestiality, invited to undress "for the showers". Sometimes they were handed soap and towels and were promised hot coffee after their showers. The gas chambers were, in fact, camouflaged as shower rooms, with pipes, faucets, dressing rooms, clothes hooks, benches and sort of. When, instead prisoners showed the smallest sign of knowing or suspecting their imminent fate, the S.S. and their collaborators used surprise tactics, intervening with extreme brutality, with shouts, threats, kicks, shots, losing their dogs, which were trained to tear prisoners to pieces, against people who were confused, desperate, weakened by five or ten days of traveling in sealed railroad cars."

Edited by bobdrake12, 16 March 2003 - 03:42 PM.

[bobdrake12]

With propaganda, there is a gapping between reality and the image being presented. The "true believer" eventually becomes blind to this gap.

Eventually, Nazi Germany was bombed into ruins during WWII. That is reality.

http://www.tilmanrem...eForBerlin.html



The Battle for Berlin - 2nd of May 1945, Hitler is dead, the German capital lies in ruins. In the last three weeks of the war, more than a million shells have been fired into the city, and a quarter of a million people have died.

Some 10 years before this reality, an image was created (as shown below). The image was a false one.

bob


http://www.subcin.com/foreign.htm

TRIUMPH OF THE WILL (1935)



Directed by Leni Riefenstahl. THE classic Nazi propaganda film, a fascinating and frightening chronicle of Hitler's 1934 Nuremberg rallies
(1:55) (A/A) - OP German with English subtitles

http://www.subcin.com/nazi.html



Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens) is a filmed record of the 1934 Nazi Party Convention, in Nuremberg. No, it is more than just a record: it is an exultation of Adolf Hitler, who from the moment his plane descends from Valhalla-like clouds is visually characterized as a God on Earth. The "Jewish question" is disposed of with a few fleeting closeups; filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl prefers to concentrate on cheering crowds, precision marching, military bands, and Hitler's climactic speech, all orchestrated, choreographed and illuminated on a scale that makes Griffith and DeMille look like poverty-row directors. It has been alleged that the climactic rally, "spontaneous" Sieg-Heils and all, was pre-planned according to Riefenstahl's specifications, the better to take full advantage of its cinematic potential. Allegedly, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels resented the presence and intrusion of a woman director, but finally had to admit that her images, achieved through the use of 30 cameras and 120 assistants, were worth a thousand speeches. Possibly the most powerful propaganda film ever made, Triumph of the Will is also, in retrospect, one of the most horrifying. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Edited by bobdrake12, 16 March 2003 - 05:07 PM.

[Lazarus Long]

Here is a short list of links to just today's news as it is unfolding around the world. Secret alliances, conflicts of interest, Unspoken and unapproved agendas, corruption, and the desire to force reform or prevent it are all contributors to the March to War. Just look at a few examples of the news behind the focus most here at home see.

Cuba Executes Three Charged in Ferry Hijacking
http://story.news.ya...=World&cat=Cuba

World News from OneWorld.net Apr 11 10:13am ET
http://story.news.ya...l=index&cid=655

'Double Standard' for Food Aid to Iraq, Africa?
http://story.news.ya...1815_1050072571

Nepal NGO Employs Escapees to Police Flesh Trade
http://story.news.ya...0502_1050062380

Sri Lankan Tea Exports Hit by Iraq War
http://story.news.ya...0502_1050059573

Arab-Israeli Partnership Aids Farmers in Dry Areas
http://story.news.ya...3343_1050057026

RIGHTS: Costa Rica Promotes Global Ban on Human Cloning
http://story.news.ya...3343_1050018153

TRADE: Central American Deal a Dud, Activists Say
http://story.news.ya...3343_1050015053

Congo War World's Deadliest Since World War Two
http://story.news.ya...1815_1049983065

IRAQ-OIL: OPEC Interests a Possible War Casualty
http://story.news.ya...3343_1049978032

Immigrants Brace for Backlash but Fear Alerting NYPD
http://story.news.ya...401/lo_vv/43037

Blast Destroys Venezuela Office Building
http://story.news.ya...zuela_explosion

Voting Begins in Nigeria Despite Threats
http://story.news.ya...geria_elections

Doctor killed, 43 wounded in Kashmir blasts
http://in.news.yahoo...2/43/23b3f.html

Israel to Press U.S. for Peace 'Road Map' Changes
http://story.news.ya...s_nm/mideast_dc

Spotlight on IRA as Clock Ticks on N.Irish Deal
http://story.news.ya.../wl_nm/irish_dc

Thousands in India, Bangladesh Protest Iraq War
http://story.news.ya...asia_protest_dc

Karzai Threatens Officials Who Do Not Fight Taliban
http://story.news.ya...fghan_karzai_dc

These just a few examples and Colombia, Bolivia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and too many areas of concern to list them all right now. Start being concerned about the world because that which we do not know CAN kill us and NOT caring only makes us MORE vulnerable.

[Lazarus Long]

Socioeconomics has to be at the top of any rational list of the causes of war AND the area that must be addressed to prevent it. Authoritarianism, especially as manifested by despotic tyrannical regimes, ethnic oppression, and ignorant fear (xenophobia) of other cultures also goes directly to the heart of the matter.

The causes of War always includes questions of hate, fear, greed, lust, duplicity, and complacency. There is the desire for order and security that is used to justify a world of ills and the oppression of minorities and those who don't fit "into" the common fold, or conveniet to the "Will to Power" of the fanatically ambitious.

But again no matter how many times we investigate the tenuous paths of cause and effect it will almost always possess an economic quality reflecting territoriality, natural resources, access to fertile land, and potential mates, or its opposite, the fear of intermingling of race.

Again history is rife with this and Hitler's Germany is no exception.

Edited by Lazarus Long, 12 April 2003 - 11:02 PM.

[Saille Willow]

Who cast the first stone?If we take the present war as an example, it seems as if there is often a single leader at the center of the causes of war. One single man could have prevented the death and suffering of many. What made Saddam Hussein such a brutal dictator?

His childhood could scarcely have been more traumatic. His mother, Subha, eked out an existence as the the village fortune-teller. His father disappeared soon after his birth and a singularly brutal stepfather, known in al-Ouja as 'Hassan the liat', beat Saddam incessantly and denied him any education. As a fatherless child, Saddam was singled ou for torment by local children and he took to carrying an iron bar for his protection.

The hardships of village life, where rival clans waged brutal vendettas, marked Saddam for life - quite literally so. He still carries the tattoo on his right hand - three dark-blue dots in a line - traditionally given to village children at that time...

His uncle, khairallah Tulfah, rescued Saddam from al-Ouja and took him to Bagghdad when he was 10, ensuring the illiterate boy went to school. Saddam would later marry Khairallah's daughter.

Exactly how his kindly uncle influenced him can be judged by Khairallah's political views. He nursed a passionate hatred of Britain, then Iraq's colonial overlord, and a fervent admiration of Hitler....

From Khairallah, Saddam imbibed this toxic mixture of nationalism and xenophobia. From his violent rural upbringing, he learned to distrust anyone beyond his immediate family. Saddam the paranoid tyrant can be traced back to Saddam the persecuted village boy."
David Blair, Sunday Times, March 23 2003

If we are looking to the future we should look to the way we raise our children, to find the causes of war. I remember seeing a headline: "Fight Crime look to Childcare."

[brokenportal]

We organize hundreds of thousands of people to fight wars, we sell war bonds, eat cheaper quality foods, have nailed shoe soles to the rims of our cars to save rubber and made steel pennies to save on copper in order to concentrate on winning our freedom. We have armies
and draft people to throw themselves with the great risk of death, at the oponent to try to win freedom, why arent we recruiting
and drafting people to throw themselves with the great risk of having more life at the oponent to try to win life?

In short, life is a prerequisite for freedom, lets fight for that first.

You know how youve seen rivaling faction unite to fight common enemies? I think we can unite the world under this concept. What do you think?

[SharpTak]

While I would tend to agree with you that the idea of uniting the world towards the common goal of a 'war on aging' I doubt such action will ever happen, or that it would ever succeed.
The emotional appeal of armed conflict simply holds too much sway over politicians and the popular imagination and, as such, the analytical and scientific persuit of anti-aging remedies would be hard pressed to compete.
While I agree with you that life is to be cherished and that everything possible should be done to ensure everyone a long and healthy existance I, unfortunately, do not believe the common person on the street could be persuaded to give up war in favor of immortality, especially in regions rocked by religious, ethnic, and cultural conflicts dating back decades or centuries.

In short: I believe this would be a noble goal but I'm afraid the darker sides of human nature would prevent it.

[kevin]

As a species we still have not evolved to the point where symbiosis takes precedence over self interest. It is sad but true that most people, especially as they get older, become jaded and do not see the world as a wonderful place to live. In fact most view their time spent on earth as a kind of purgatory and once they've paid their dues they can get on with whatever comes next. In this light, most people do not view extending their bleak and uninteresting lives as something to work towards. Selling life extension to people of the world must be accompanied by the reassurance that the problems they are currently facing will not be extended along with it, then you would have massive buy in.

[Infernity]

I know it is a very old topic, I anyway think that wars are a stupid things that happens because of boorishness.
Religions, territories, findings, all these if you will look deeply and figure the wars on it, you shall see there is no point in it and that whole base of it is so stupid and that's annoying to see a wrong fight, like shouldn't happen. Wars is something that will be banned and avoided automatically when the boorishness shall be vanished. I am not saying "let's kill them then", that would be stupid the same way exactly, that shall make us stupid the same way! I believe they are dying anyway, they think it is fun to smoke all day long, they are ok NOW, so everything is fine and they can eat whatever, whenever and everything will be ok then because now it is- bull-sh*t! But, let it happen, they shall never understand and they shall always be, let them at least harm themselves without affecting on you.

All should be lived together in peace, there is no reason to break it.

Yours truthfully
~Infernity

Edited by infernity, 11 March 2005 - 02:52 PM.

[mikelorrey]

Causes of war are many, and changing human nature is a long road and a difficult task. Better to look at what enables a country to go to war, to construct a large war machine, and to kill many. One word: banking. Without the huge loans and acceptance of government bonds of immense size that central fractional banking systems provide governments, they would not be able to finance wars of agression. Here in the US, we have the Federal Reserve. The other developed nations each have their own central banks. Between the US and Europe, we share control of the IMF/WorldBank, which is the central agency responsible for providing the loans and grants to thuggish tyrants. The IMF/WorldBanks attitude is that they should not be responsible for judging those they lend to (Words directly from John D. Rockefeller, Jr.).

The World Bank is the War Bank. Loans by it are backed by the tax payments of the people of europe and the US. When Polish dictator Jaruzelski was crushing Solidarity, he was defaulting on his loan payments to the WorldBank to the tune of $60 million per month, which the American people were paying for. The American people paid for the loans to the Soviets and China that were used to build the munitions that were shipped to Vietnam to kill American teenagers. Same for the Korean War. Same for both Gulf Wars. You name it: Rwanda, Somalia, Cuban support of communist guerrillas around the world and the regimes that killed them off with death squads, the South Africa/ANC situation, among many others.

[mikelorrey]

This being said, Hitler did not finance his war machine this way, though much of German industry was financed through JP Morgan & Co. Hitler preferred outright confiscation, because he knew how the Central Bankers manipulate both sides of a conflict into war. He had seen how the bankers had created WWI, how they had manipulated the US into entering the war in order to end neutrality limits on bank lending to the British, by staging the Lusitania sinking. He had seen how the Bolsheviks were financed by New York bankers to destroy the Menshevik revolution. The Bankers hated that he self-financed Germany's recovery in the 1930's and refused to do business with the bankers in governemnt loans. It isn't an accident that the major contractor for the death camps was IG Farben, which was wholly owned by New York bankers, and that IG Farben factories escaped allied bombing runs through the war.

Hitler used the hate of the people, when they learned of banker manipulations, to rise to power and to expand his power. He himself was an evil manipulator who found other means to the same ends, but he would never have gained power in the first place if it were not for central bank manipulations and their war finance strategies.

Suggested reading for those who look at these posts as a little weird:
G Edward Griffin, "The Creature from Jekyll Island" which you can buy on Amazon.com

While I've been going through flagging a lot of things I have issues with, a lot of other little known facts are presented accurately. I'm about halfway through the book and am rather shocked at the extent of the corruption.

Right now, the World Bank is financing both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is financing Iranian and North Korean investments in Chinese nuclear technology, it is financing storage facilities in Syria for Iraq's WMD which were shipped out of Iraq shortly before the invasion (the european nations signed an agreement with Syria in January that allowed them to keep their chemical and biological weapons under and IMF agreement that included grants for constructing safe storage facilities.) It is IMF money that is financing Baathist/Wahhabist insurgents in Iraq and paying for their propaganda in the west and through the arab world.

World Bank is financing the Chinese military machine that keeps several million slave laborers in bondage, is constructing an Air Force and submarine Navy intended on going up against the US, an ICBM missile fleet capable of hitting any point in the US, both gound based and sub-based missiles.

Who are these world bankers? Simple: They are the Fabians.

[hightrain]

I think it is rather silly to assume that war and violence can be eliminated from mankind. Humans have known since their origin that violence, espeically organized violence, gains results. Anyone who thinks otherwise has a skewed take on reality and could fall prey to those willing to exploit that weakness.

Am I saying humans should embrace war? No, I have seen it first hand and I have developed a strong distaste for it. However, I have also seen and felt it on a more primal and burtal level, so I understand its nature at a combatants level. On a wider view it all adds up to just rumors and hearsay. When the soldiers who are on the ground doing their jobs and are force to take action to enforce the policies people can and will get hurt. It is a horrible situation where either side is willing to resort to unyielding violence, which is understandable.

War should be avoided, however it must never be forgotten. By forgotten I mean its results, its means, and how to conduct it. The ability to use violence could very well save you, be it individually or collectively. Those who refuse to take up arms could every well be crushed under the heavy boot of those who wish to take advantage of the unwilling.

Those politician and generals that have conducted war throughout history have done so for simple reasons. Selfish, vane, foolhardy, and pipe-dream reasons, yet reasons none the less. Reasons that they had the ability to seek out and even achieve. Here is how it works and I will use the US as the example: A-They have something the US wants. B-The US has the power to get there and take it. C-Who has the might, can deem it correct. D- Those who have the might can enforce their policies. E-This is nothing new. Does this make war good? No, and neither does it make it evil. It is natural for the strong to destroy the weak, or at least the cunning to exploit the unprepared. I do not assume that those who are in the line of destruction accept it. They have every right and means to resist and fight back. That is the driving balance of life.

War is bloody and miserable. I know damn well it is. However, it is also a fact of nature and to be able to avoid war we must understand war and be willing to utilize it when necessary. It is something that must be examined by each individual and must not be taken at face value or you could be swept away by mass hysteria.

I always find it amusing when people use the words "we" and "us" when they speak of politics and national conflicts. It suggests that they are a collective whole that bases their own personal existence on this mass entity. That they are not an individual, and that their motives, and interests lie within a group. I like to avoid such terms. It helps me disassociate myself from such herd-mentality. I am able to separate myself and take a better look at a given situation. From this perspective I can judge if becoming involved is truly worth the effort, time, and pain. Basically, war, politics, economy and all those other global ideals are just gossip, unless of course you actually can make a large change without just being a pest. I rather deal with what is in front of me and what I can actually physically change to make my life better than to worry about such things I have no control over. Unless of course it is done in the name of self-entertainment, yet it should never be self-deceitful.

Anyways, that is just the humble opinion of a combat veteran.



"You seemed to be unaware of it," he said grimly. "Since you do know it, wouldn't you say that violence had settled their destinies rather thoroughly? However, I was not making fun of you personally; I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea -- a practice I shall always follow. Anyone who clings to the historically untrue -- and thoroughly immoral -- doctrine that `violence never settles anything' I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.

He sighed. "Another year, another class -- and, for me, another failure. One can lead a child to knowledge but one cannot make him think."
- Heinlein, Starship Troopers

Edited by hightrain, 17 April 2005 - 05:37 PM.