lostcauser

lostcauser
Location
Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Birthday
January 07
Title
Happiest Girl In the Whole USA
Company
No, I'd rather be alone.
Bio
After prematurely retiring at the age of 44, I've hunkered down on the mean streets of Memphis, TN, where I'm carving out my memoirs with an empty Bic pen on the walls of an abandoned abattoir. What ? MY FAVORITE MOVIES: Taxi Driver, A Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket, Duck Soup, Horsefeathers, A Day At the Races, The Last Temptation of Christ, Carnival of Souls, Freaks, Goodfellas, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Last House On The Left, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Life of Brian, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, all Herschel Gordon Lewis, educational shorts MY FAVORITE MUSIC: Sex Pistols, Frank Zappa, (early)Alice Cooper, Schubert, Leadbelly, (early)Rolling Stones, Nirvana, Irving Berlin, Violent Femmes, all Sun Records, The Cramps, The Dead Kennedys, Box Tops, Billy Lee Riley, Beethoven MY FAVORITE BOOKS: Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, Physician's Desk Reference, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV, Crime and Punishment, Notes From Underground Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Psychopathis Sexual STUFF I FIND INTERESTING: According to a new Pentagon study, 35% of Iraq veterans received mental health care during their first year home; twelve percent of the more than 222,000 returning Army soldiers and Marines in the study were diagnosed with a mental problem. As of early 2008, Human Rights Watch reports that roughly half of all prison and state inmates are mentally ill. 76% of all sexual offenses are committed by someone related to or acquainted with the victim.

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APRIL 24, 2009 7:21PM

War Crimes

Rate: 12 Flag

Some say those who abused their power should be held accountable for their crimes.  And others hold that wisdom lies in moving forward, towards the light. Each argument can be reasonably justified. But there’s a point that neither one addresses.

In 1945, when the various Allied forces moved in to liberate the camps, they documented the atrocities they found; as the images of things once unspeakable and once contained found their way into the world, the German people, the ordinary citizens living in and around the countryside, argued one of these positions or the other, from  anger and from shame.

And at that time, one German man whose name I do not know—but a wise man and a brave one, I believe—with all around him, angry and ashamed, this man spoke to his countrymen and neighbors.  And he said the only thing that really mattered, and the one thing they did not want to hear:

“It didn’t have to come to this; we knew about Belsen...Dachau...we all knew, whenever we saw the smoke...we knew what the stench that hung in the air was...and if we had tried as hard to stop it as the one who started it...this did not have to happen.  It did not have to come to this."

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Thank you of reminding us all of our complicity.
Redstocking Grandma
April 24, 2009 07:35 PM
I spoke up and was mostly shouted down. I don't know what else I could have done but that seems like pathetically little. Point taken.

Welcome back, LC.
Major Mojo
April 24, 2009 07:51 PM
Well done. We all must learn from history. (again nice to see you blogging again) --rated--
Chuck A. Stetson
April 24, 2009 07:51 PM
Thank you, Redstocking. It took a two-week bout of illness to hammer this point home, but there really is only one thing I can change.
lostcauser
April 24, 2009 07:59 PM
Nice in theory, but I'm not sure what else I could have done. I knew all this was happening at the time. I did speak up about it. I voted against the people who did it. I wrote to my congresscritters (and incidentally one of them, Harold Ford junior, was one of the few who opposed it from the beginning and even sent out a letter to his constituents about how alarming the panicked 'let's throw away everything we are for the sake of security' attitude was).

Short of organizing an armed rebellion or becoming a terrorist, I don't see what else I could have done. I am a 40 year old fat woman with a chronic illness who took chemistry a long time ago. I am ill-suited to overthrow my government. So what exactly did I fail to do that was within my power?
Allie Griffith
April 24, 2009 08:05 PM
Thank you Cap'n, and MMM (and Redstocking Grandma). The past two weeks have been difficult and strange; what I thought was the re-emergence of the flu was apparently a seizure and/or a mild stroke. The blessing of it is that when this happens, everything becomes very simple, and very clear.
lostcauser
April 24, 2009 08:10 PM
Hi Allie--

I bet you've made changes in those around you that you can't see yet.
lostcauser
April 24, 2009 08:37 PM
I have written often and furiously about this. I spoke with leading Democrats who agreed with me but now have betrayed us all. I said in several articles if they do punish the War Criminals starting at the TOP, they are hypocrites if they do not open the doors of all prisons and let go free the puny crimes of murderers, thieves, and all the rest, may I add, "Whores, Murderers and thieves will enter Paradise, before hypocrites.' Jesus 25- AD-Israel.
Professor Emeritus Peter Bagnolo
April 24, 2009 08:46 PM
That should : I said in several articles if they DO NOT punish the War Criminals starting at the TOP, they are hypocrites if they do not open the doors of all prisons and let go free the puny crimes of murderers, thieves, and all the rest, may I add, "Whores, Murderers and thieves will enter Paradise, before hypocrites.' Jesus 25- AD-Israel.
Professor Emeritus Peter Bagnolo
April 24, 2009 08:48 PM
Thanks for the read - very thought provoking.

I don't think you can compare or weigh or even measure one act to another. For better or worse each one stands alone. Our universal conscious - or unconscious - that part of us that is shared by all 'knows'. The knowing for some maybe before the act / others during the act / and some after the act.

We collectively have a sense that this was not one of our finer moments. We should look at this act in the daylight get all of the facts and take steps not to do repeat performance.

Yes, we are dealing with a 'cause' where the participants are motivated to the point of using themselves as brutally destructive weapons. Sooner or later we should be wanting to know why?
Gramps
April 24, 2009 09:07 PM
Great post. This is exactly why I won't rest on this on here. I feel it's our duty now that it's out there, in the open, and we know it, we cannot stop the pressure to pursue it.
(rated)
Kind of Blue
April 24, 2009 11:22 PM
in re: your health issues, to think it's the flu and it to have possibly been a stroke? I am glad you are better and hope you are getting the care you need. Take care.
Ariana Paz
April 25, 2009 06:11 AM
Technically speaking, Hitler didn't kill the Jews, it was all the people who followed him who did the actual dirty work. There will always be Hitlers in the world, it's our job not to follow them. As a whole, we have failed in that capacity. The monsters are nothing without followers.
cheshyre grin
April 25, 2009 06:28 AM