OT: does obama bring change?

[David Jamieson]

Which one? The genocide of the Indian people on the North American continent was much larger and more savage.

Or maybe the slaughter of the aborigne people in Australia?

It wasn't larger. There were far less people. Native and Indigenous peoples in the Americas are not gone, they were not wiped out and they have more rights than you or I in many respects.

Are you actually prepared to pay for the sins of your father? your grandfather? Your great grandfather?

Look at it this way, do you take personal responsibility for the people who have died in Iraq or Afghanistan? If not why not? You pay taxes to the government who carried out the deeds with your financial support.

[BoulderDawg]

It wasn't larger. There were far less people. Native and Indigenous peoples in the Americas are not gone, they were not wiped out and they have more rights than you or I in many respects.

It's not even close. Give me some time and I will quote some stats but the holocaust in America was multiple times worse.

By the way genocide is a termed first describe by Raphael Lemkin in 1944. The attempted total elimination of a culture or race is only the most drastic definition. You can committ genocide or the genocide of a culture in many ways.

[1bad65]

You think he was given a pass? that's all fox blabbed about and you too. When you type it out for the masses to read, or broadcast it, that's "the media".

He was given a pass, to an extent. Obviously, they couldn't ignore him. But when you compare the coverage he got, vs the coverage a Republican candidate gets for say going to Bob Jones University, you can say he was given a pass.

[BoulderDawg]

http://www.monabaker.com/pMachine/mo...=A2068_0_1_0_M

During the four centuries spanning the time between 1492, when Christopher Columbus first set foot on the ‘New World’ of a Caribbean beach and 1892, when the US Census Bureau concluded that there were fewer than a quarter-million indigenous people surviving within the country’s boundaries, a hemispheric population estimated to have been as great as 125 million was reduced by something over 90 percent. The people had died in their millions of being hacked apart with axes and swords, buried alive and trampled under horses, hunted as game and fed to dogs, shot, beaten, stabbed, scalped for bounty, hanged on meathooks and thrown over the sides of ships at sea, worked to death as slave laborers, intentionally starved and frozen to death during a multitude of forced marches and internments, and, in an unknown number of instances, deliberately infected with epidemic diseases. (p. 1)

Later in the book he gives a staggering estimate of the total who were ‘ethnically cleansed’: ‘All told, it is probable that more than one hundred million native people were ‘eliminated’ in the course of Europe’s ongoing ‘civilization’ of the western hemisphere.’(p. 86) (Emphasis added)

Yet this ghastly history is denied, suppressed, minimized or even celebrated by deniers of what Ward Churchill calls the American holocaust. The director of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Lynne Cheney, in collaboration with the US Senate, during preparations for the 1992 celebration of Columbus Day, refused to fund any film production which proposed to use the word ‘genocide’ to explain the liquidation of Native Americans. Charles Krauthamer used one of his Time Magazine columns (May 27, 1991) to claim that the extermination of Native Americans was entirely justified because it wiped out ‘barbarisms’ like the Inca community (notwithstanding that pre-Columbian Inca art has been compared favorably with the achievements of classical Greece, e.g. by Malcolm Billings in a recent BBC Heritage episode on central America). Arthur Schlesinger, Churchill continues, is prarphrased by David Stannard as asserting that without the European conquests and slaughter, at least some New World societies would today be sufficiently unpleasant places to live so as to make acceptable the centuries of genocide that were carried out against the native peoples of the entire Western Hemisphere. (p. 4)

The is from a review of "A Little Matter of Genocide" Ward Churchill

nuff said

[1bad65]

It wasn't larger. There were far less people. Native and Indigenous peoples in the Americas are not gone, they were not wiped out and they have more rights than you or I in many respects.

Are you actually prepared to pay for the sins of your father? your grandfather? Your great grandfather?

Look at it this way, do you take personal responsibility for the people who have died in Iraq or Afghanistan? If not why not? You pay taxes to the government who carried out the deeds with your financial support.

Me and you disagree alot, but I'll give you a word of advice.

Ignore him. But if you are a glutton for punishment, ask him to source his allegations.

Remember, just about everything he writes about American Indians is info he got from a white guy with a spray-on tan pretending to be an Indian. And yes, even that poseur himself has been forced to backtrack and admit he can't source most of his allegations either (as writing a book under a fake name and using it as a source does not count). See a pattern here?

[BoulderDawg]

Me and you disagree alot, but I'll give you a word of advice.

Ignore him. But if you are a glutton for punishment, ask for him to source his allegations.

Remember, just about everything he writes about American Indidans is info he got from a white guy with a spray-on tan pretending to be an Indian. And yes, even that poseur himself has been forced to backtrack and admit he can't source most of his allegations either (as writing a book under a fake name and using it as a source does not count). See a pattern here?

To me this is a main tenant of the different between conservatives and liberals.

Personally I would never tell anyone to ignore the opinion of someone else. It's called being open minded. Also, I like to hear the views of everyone in forming my opinion of something.

[David Jamieson]

He was given a pass, to an extent. Obviously, they couldn't ignore him. But when you compare the coverage he got, vs the coverage a Republican candidate gets for say going to Bob Jones University, you can say he was given a pass.

ok, there's a bob jones university? lol

seriously, come on. obama was roasted and lambasted for days over the wright flap.

I don't remember too much negative stuff about McCain except that people pointed out that he fully supported Bush and would in essence be McSame. Another thing I remember is the high number or republicans who indicated they believed in creationism over evolution. Which was stunning! lol

seriously though, I didn't mind McCain at all, I just think he should've been Pres oevr the terms where W was. W didn't deserve the presidency and McCain was teh superior statesman and politician in general.

but that was a failing of the GOP and now they are paying for it big time.

Not only did w drop the ball from a fiscal responsibility standpoint, he left such a hugely bad legacy that the GOP won't see a presidency for a while no matter who thy put up and if they don't stop with the ridiculous pandering to the religious right wing, they are gonna continue to be unpopular and fragmented from within, which is a shame because there are some really solid republican thinkers out there.

It's the format of american politics that has become too much like the crap mayonnaise they serve as entertainment on TV.

It behooves the entire system to stop that sort of nonsense and move on with real world actions and policies instead of freakshow politics and grandstanding.

I find democrats to generally be scattered in their thinking and knee jerk in their responses to problems, not that they don't have great minds and orators as well, it's just that they attract their own share of pinko fruitloops.

The whole country is now politically bi-polar and has been for almost a decade. If Obama can't change that, he won't see a second term. He has to do more than just plopping prominent republicans into power as well. He has to put critical republicans that are strong thinkers into power as opposed to cardboard cutouts that appeal to a given demograph.

then and only then would I give him the Lincolnesque analogy. lol

People are still drunk on the idea that a dem is potus and bush is gone.
As they lose their property and get policed more, the song will change. Hope it won't be too late!

just sayin.

[David Jamieson]

http://www.monabaker.com/pMachine/mo...=A2068_0_1_0_M



The is from a review of "A Little Matter of Genocide" Ward Churchill

nuff said

I disagree with those estimates. The fact of the matter is, they don't know how many people were killed. Also, do you think that the mayans, the aztecs the mixtecs, the toltects, the arapaho, the navaho, the apache, the cheyenne and so on didn't kill each other off as well in their own wars, in their own land grabs and territorial stuggles? Can you even grasp that aspect of humanity?

also, I would like to complain about all the danes, swedes and norwegians who took over scotland and killed off the original inhabitants.

while we're at it, let's ask for reparations from rome for wiping out our ancestors from asia to judea to germania to england!

so, again, are you prepared to take on the sins of your father?

if so, please sign over all your properties and lands to the nearest native american you can find and gtfo of the country. it's that simple if you believe it to be so.

[1bad65]

Good points, David. I actually agree with a good bit of it.

I'll touch on this though:

Not only did w drop the ball from a fiscal responsibility standpoint, he left such a hugely bad legacy that the GOP won't see a presidency for a while no matter who thy put up and if they don't stop with the ridiculous pandering to the religious right wing, they are gonna continue to be unpopular and fragmented from within, which is a shame because there are some really solid republican thinkers out there.

Read my post about the Democrat primary for Governor in Virginia. And remember, Virginia is widely considered a 'battleground state'. Notice the Democrat who won easily was the one who ran furthest RIGHT.

While I agree W Bush left a alot of people disenchanted with the Republicans, more and more Americans are quite upset with Obama's radical socialist policies. I huge majority of Americans feel he was wrong on the automotive issue, and publicly calling for socialized medicine was why the Democrats got mauled in 1994.

[1bad65]

I disagree with those estimates. The fact of the matter is, they don't know how many people were killed. Also, do you think that the mayans, the aztecs the mixtecs, the toltects, the arapaho, the navaho, the apache, the cheyenne and so on didn't kill each other off as well in their own wars, in their own land grabs and territorial stuggles? Can you even grasp that aspect of humanity?

You disagree with those estimates? Well, you're in good company. So does just about every academic who actually studied that part of history. That poseur is considered a joke by REAL academics. Under oath he has had to admit he cannot back up his assertions.

When somone has to write a book under a fake name to use as a source, you know he is full of ****.

[Baqualin]

Neo-Con a word BD worships.
WASHINGTON, Aug 12 (IPS) - With all the attention paid to neo-conservatives in the global media today, one would think that a standard definition of the term would exist. Yet, despite their now being credited with a virtual takeover of U.S. foreign policy under President George W. Bush, a common understanding of 'neo-cons' remains elusive.

A brief description of their basic tenets and origin can help distinguish them from other parts of the ideological coalition behind the administration's neo-imperialist trajectory; namely, the traditional Republican Machtpolitikers (Might Makes Right), such as Vice President **** Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, and the Christian Rightists, such as Attorney General John Ashcroft, Gary Bauer, and Pat Robertson.

As neo-con godfather Irving Kristol once remarked, a neo-conservative is a ''liberal who was mugged by reality''. True to that description, neo-cons generally originated on the left side of the political spectrum and some times from the far left. Many, such as Kristol himself, have Trotskyite roots that are still reflected in their polemical and organisational skills and ideological zeal.

Although a number of prominent Catholics are neo-conservatives, the movement remains predominantly Jewish, and the monthly journal that really defined neo-conservatism over the past 35 years, 'Commentary', is published by the American Jewish Committee. But at the same time, neo-conservative attitudes have reflected a minority position within the U.S. Jewish community, as most Jews remain distinctly liberal in their political and foreign-policy views.

Neo-conservative foreign-policy positions, which have their origin in opposition to the New Left of the 1960s, fears over a return to U.S. isolationism during the Vietnam War and the progressive international isolation of Israel in the wake of wars with its Arab neighbours in 1967 and 1973, have been tactically very flexible over the past 35 years, but its key principles have remained the same.

They begin with the basic foreign-policy realism found in the pessimistic views of human nature and international diplomacy of the English political philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, which neo-cons share with most U.S. practitioners: ''the condition of man (in a state of nature) ... is a condition of war of everyone against everyone". Or as Machiavelli, another favourite thinker of the neo-cons, wrote: ''Men are more ready for evil than for good.''

But neo-cons take ''man's'' capacity for evil particularly seriously, and for understandable reasons.

For them, the Nazi Holocaust that killed some six million Jews during World War II is the seminal experience of the 20th century. Not only was it a genocide unparalleled in its thoroughness, the Holocaust also wiped out family members of hundreds of thousands of Jewish citizens in the United States, including, for example, close relatives of the parents of Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

For neo-conservatives, as for most Jews, the Holocaust represents absolute evil, and the factors that contributed to the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany and the subsequent extermination of European must be fought at all costs..

The "defining moment in our history was certainly the Holocaust'', Richard Perle, a key neo-con and leading advocate of war with Iraq, recently told BBC's 'Panorama'. ''It was the destruction, the genocide of a whole people, and it was the failure to respond in a timely fashion to a threat that was clearly gathering."

''We don't want that to happen again ... when we have the ability to stop totalitarian regimes we should do so, because when we fail to do so, the results are catastrophic,'' he said.

For neo-conservatives, the 1938 Munich agreement, under which Hitler was permitted by Britain and France to take over Czechoslovakia, is the epitome of appeasement that led directly to the Holocaust. As a result, Munich and appeasement are constantly invoked in their rhetoric as a way to summon up the will to resist and defeat the enemy of the day.

[BoulderDawg]

You disagree with those estimates? Well, you're in good company. So does just about every academic who actually studied that part of history. That poseur is considered a joke by REAL academics.

Totally ignorant statement colored by your hatred of the man.

Are you an academic or very familiar with the academics in this field? Churchill's work is well respected by the vast majority of academics in the field of indigeous studies.

[Baqualin]

Good points, David. I actually agree with a good bit of it.

I'll touch on this though:



Read my post about the Democrat primary for Governor in Virginia. And remember, Virginia is widely considered a 'battleground state'. Notice the Democrat who won easily was the one who ran furthest RIGHT.

While I agree W Bush left a alot of people disenchanted with the Republicans, more and more Americans are quite upset with Obama's radical socialist policies. I huge majority of Americans feel he was wrong on the automotive issue, and publicly calling for socialized medicine was why the Democrats got mauled in 1994.

According to polls....36% of American voters are now claiming to be independents.....34% Democrats .....14% Republicans

Light at the end of the tunnel
BQ

[BoulderDawg]

You disagree with those estimates? Well, you're in good company. So does just about every academic who actually studied that part of history. That poseur is considered a joke by REAL academics. Under oath he has had to admit he cannot back up his assertions.

When somone has to write a book under a fake name to use as a source, you know he is full of ****.

One other thing: Bad is simply saying this never happened. According to him, Churchill is wrong.....this never happened.

When someone tells me the violent deaths of over a 100 million Americans never really happened I'm as apalled as much as I would be if someone was trying to deny the holocaust in Europe.

[Baqualin]

Totally ignorant statement colored by your hatred of the man.

Are you an academic or very familiar with the academics in this field? Churchill's work is well respected by the vast majority of academics in the field of indigeous studies.

Show proof
I think you upset him Bad
BQ