If you live in this U.S. Please read this. (965 hits)
Category: NoneRating: -0.61 on 15 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Rob Leishman <leishman_rob.at.hotmail.com> (View user info) at 2003-03-19 13:54:52 EST
I hate posting links but this is truly an article that everyone in the U.S. should read, this is why the world is scared of your country. It's not the American people, it's your administration.
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0316-08.htm
User Reviews
Submitted by Hairsphincter (user info) at 2003-03-19 21:55:44 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Bloody hell, if you work at it hard enough you could liken GW Bush to the Muppets, too.
BTW, just where is Jim Henson's hand? Has anyone seen it lately?
Submitted by TheMan (user info) at 2003-03-19 21:10:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Yet another opinion, and yet another asshole. Hmmmm. Coincidence? I think not.
Submitted by Rethink (user info) at 2003-03-19 18:39:01 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
I usually like commondreams. That is the dumbest thing i've ever heard.
-Rethink
"Remember always, you are unique, just like everyone else on the planet."
-Myself
Submitted by Hardak (user info) at 2003-03-19 17:32:48 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Quote : So, speaking as someone who knows a lot about history, this article is full of shit.
How so? I'm interested in what points are incorrect.
Submitted by Razor (user info) at 2003-03-19 17:01:18 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
Forgot to rate.
Submitted by Razor (user info) at 2003-03-19 17:00:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I have studied history intently.
I was at college working towards being a history professor when a baby derailed my plans so I went back to being a programmer because it pays better than teaching.
So, speaking as someone who knows a lot about history, this article is full of shit.
It reminds me of that email that always gets passed around about how the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations were linked.
Here's the text (copied from Snopes.com):
Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.
Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.
The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contain seven letters.
Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.
Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both were shot in the head.
Lincoln's secretary, Kennedy, warned him not to go to the theatre.
Kennedy's secretary, Lincoln, warned him not to go to Dallas.
Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners.
Both successors were named Johnson.
Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.
John Wilkes Booth was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald was born in 1939.
Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names are comprised of fifteen letters
Booth ran from the theater and was caught in a warehouse.
Oswald ran from a warehouse and was caught in a theater.
Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.
**************************************************************************
After Snopes completely debunks this email, they have this to say:
The coincidences are easily explained as the simple product of mere chance. It's not difficult to find patterns and similarities between any two marginally-related sets of data, and coincidences similar in number and kind can be (and have been) found between many different pairs of Presidents. Our tendency to seek out patterns wherever we can stems from our desire to make sense of our world; to maintain a feeling that our universe is orderly and can be understood.
Submitted by Loren1 (user info) at 2003-03-19 15:38:55 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Rob,
This reminds me a bit of that email that was circulating after the 9-11 attacks which pointed out all the "spooky" connections between the terrible happenings and the number 11.
I'm about 1/3 of the way through "The Rise and Fall of the 3rd Reich" and none of what I read in this article resembles what I've learned from that book. I'm not saying the book is gospel, I'm saying there are a billion different opinions and writings and "facts," and although I appreciate your "concern" for Americans, this author seems like yet another paranoia victim trying to find ways to be some kind of "Nostradamus in the world of research"
Oh, and there are such things as "term limits" in America.
Loren
Submitted by DarthAwesome (user info) at 2003-03-19 15:36:08 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Very intresting.
Submitted by MassD (user info) at 2003-03-19 15:13:24 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
And also... Hilter parlayed a fairly minor event into his own agenda to whip the jewish people off the planet. The terrorist threat to Germany in the 1930's was a phantom... part a propaganda campaign devised by the Nazi party to help gain the blind loyalty of the German people who had spent more than a decade trying to bury itself from under their mess they caused in WWI. That threat was invented.
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't have called the terrorist attacks on 9/11 minor. That attack killed 3000 people and caused uncalcuable damage. That threat was not invented as a tool of the Bush administration. Go visit the family of Brian Kinney, a guy I went to high school with and who died in New York.... ask his family if they agree with this fool.
I could go on and on with many of the points in that piece of swill.
Submitted by jakyl (user info) at 2003-03-19 15:11:12 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I don't think that the purpose of the article was to compare Bush to Hitler, but rather to say that blind and unswerving support of a national leader can be dangerous. It is saying that America is in the same position that Hitler was in, and the same possibilities are there. The point in articles like this is to encourage people to pay attention to the actions of our government, not to stir anti-american sentiment. Questioning our government is truly the American way. It is the basis of Democracy.
Mass media is really dangerous. It is a business. Information is distributed according to what people want, not what is important. This article simply points out that we should not rely on our own media or popular opinion when making major decisions, even if our decisions are simply to support our current president.
By the way, I support Bush wholeheartedly, and am in no way criticizing America.
Submitted by MassD (user info) at 2003-03-19 15:02:46 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I will admit, when I heard the term "Homeland Security" I was too reminded of Nazi Germany.
But there are enough distinct differences between the two situations for me to not put much weight in the comparison, and I am not even talking about the Holocoust either. Its not his point, its how he choose to try to get it across. Its no different than PETA comparing Nazi death camps to chicken farms. There is a right way, and there is a wrong way...
I am quite confident that once Bush gets voted out of office next year, the next administration will take great efforts in righting the wrongs that have been done. I will agree that the Bush administration had used the population's fear to push its own agenda. But its an agenda that can, and will, be changed. I wouldn't go throwing around fascism as quickly as he has....
The author is taking an extreme view when more tact would have done a better job of getting his point across.
Submitted by scott_ny (user info) at 2003-03-19 14:55:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
You're way wrong robby but nevertheless, none of us should rest easy in that knowledge. Why? because the reason Bush is not like Hitler is because he is an absolute idiot. Hitler was a mad man and clearly spawned from hell but, he was a brilliant strategist. He was good, very good, at what he did. Bush, on the other hand....
Submitted by Hardak (user info) at 2003-03-19 14:48:49 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I'm not being a prick here: the article (or my impression of it) is trying to illustrate the dangers of what happened in Germany and that it is kind of similar to post 9-11 America.
Let's not get defensive here, the article is historically correct and the similarities are very close.
Don't Americans find the fact that Homeland Security is basically the same as the SS kind of chilling?
Submitted by Quartermain (user info) at 2003-03-19 14:37:06 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
This isn't the biggest steaming pile I've run across on the Internet, but it's damn close.
Submitted by MassD (user info) at 2003-03-19 14:34:29 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
Right... so ... Hitler is Bush and those millions of Jews (and Christians, the mentally ill, homosexuals, and anyone that had the nerve to help them) Hilter slaughtered in cold blood were terrorists, no better than Al Qaeda?
Quite offensive and unjustified if you ask me. So much so that some of the actual valid points he made are lost in the insane rhetoric in the rest of the article.