George Galloway blasts the Senate

WhoodaThunk wrote:

Lord Ellpus wrote:
Me:-
...."And on the other hand, we have an official report being published by the most powerful nation on earth, possibly one that just squeezes into the top five for justice and freedom of speech"

Whooda wrote:-

"Really??"

Uhhhh ... Lord E .... I honestly don't have the proper time to address all of your concerns, but I'll do my best to get back to you and please know, I am most certainly looking forward to it. (Just so you know ... as certain folks have interpreted lapses in posting times as evidence of cowering, pants-wetting.)

I am going to make time for your initial post, though, and explain how I read your comments. The antecedent for your indefinite pronoun (one) was apparently "nation" meaning you were squeezing the U.S. into your Top 5 list. I read your comment as claiming the "report" was considered by you to be among your top five all-time issues for justice and freedom of speech.

Not that it will take any of the wind out of your Union Jacks, but I just wanted to put my "Really??" in its proper context.

Upon re-reading my paragraph, I can possibly see how you interpreted my meaning in the wrong way. Of course I didnt mean that the Senate report was of such importance.
I should have been a bit more careful with my wording.....but I dont think that any other people read it that way. A bit too much haste on my part.

At this moment in time, I have a female better half of the Spousal variety who has gained a massive promotion in her career, which involves us moving to a new location about 100 miles away.
Consequently, requests are made for me to drive 100 miles and view another batch of houses that have just come onto the market. Refusal to comply with such "requests" could probably result in :-
1. The sudden cancellation of all sattelite sports channels.
2. The removal of anything which may taste good from the fridge, which would then be replaced with Tofu and various types of Donkey fodder.
3. The complete cessation of all horizontal sporting activity.
4. A substantial increase in interference from the Mother in Law.

Hence, when I DO actually have the privilege of actually allowing my posterior to warm the computer chair, it is normally for short periods of time, or I am sneaking an A2K session, under the guise of doing some important work.
So, the truth is that I have one ear on the front door, just in case the better half has set the Mother in Law on me, the other listening out for the cricket scores, one eye on the computer screen whilst the other is browsing the property pages in order to find somewhere to buy that has lots of hidden defects which will probably cost a fortune and take a year of hard labour to sort out.

My dog is now facing the choice of either grabbing my wrist and dragging me out for her walk, or peeing on the carpet in a hidden area of the house, knowing that it will not be discovered for several hours, when one suddenly notices that one's sock is becoming cold and wet.

So, Whooda.....I wont be responding to your responses, as that would probably end up with more responses to respond to, and so on. It is the A2K way, and very enjoyable when one has the time.

I will now also refrain from anything "debatable" until I have settled into the new abode and sorted out the leak in the roof which is causing the badly wired fusebox to make a fizzing sound.
Although debating George Galloway is one of my all time ever favourite activities, I believe I must put Marital bliss, Domestic harmony and house renovation first.

You may now have your moment in the sun and feel very happy today.

PS....If you want me, I'll probably be on the "problem" forums (either house repair, financial or marital).

........but I shall return, armed to the teeth with my usual brand of useless facts, witty ripostes and several more worry lines on my brow.

Have a good day, everyone.

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blatham wrote:

This is the point. Those of us who truly love the ideals and the dream of America (and I am one) are deeply horrified at the possible, and increasingly likely, consequences of the direction America has moved, particularly under this administration.

Even speaking as someone with a long record of protesting against Guantanamo Bay on this forum, I don't get your point about "direction". The ambivalence you are talking about has been existing ever since Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner, wrote America's declaration of independence. For a more recent example of such ambivalence, why don't you ask CI what Roosevelt did to the Japanese Americans, while fighting the war that would bring democracy to Japan? It is only for America's more vigilant press that the fate of a few hundred Guantanamo detainees is so widely considered an outrgaeous crime against America's political ideals, when the fate of X0,000 Japanese Americans in World War II wasn't. This increased press vigilance is a good development, not a bad one, even if it makes the readers feel worse for all those horrors reported.

The high-minded political ideals that have inspired generations of American politicians have always been in conflict with the actions of the very same politicians, which have too often made a hash out of them. The ideals continue to conflict with the actions, and Guantanamo Bay is a good recent example. But I disagree there is a long-term direction to the worse here, and that this direction is especially pronounced under the Bush administration. This contention is incompatible with the outrages that happened in the past, and it fails to distinguish between the American government's propensity to commit outrages and the American press corps's propensity to investigate and publish about those outrages. Your contention may satisfy your political prejudices, but America's political history is not as tidy as your thoughts about it.

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

...about the División Azul - seems to me that you can take different views about the Blue Division.

Different in what respect? Please explain. There was such a division, and Franco did send it off to Russia. Moreover it did get a lot of the Nazi supporters (in the aftermath of the Civil War) out of Spain. It was a minimal gesture of support. - No doubt Franco was covering his bets, but he also refused Hitler access to his territory, access that could easily allowed Hitler to close access to the Mediterranean, with enormous strategic consequences.

Quote:

Spain became only neutral again, when Germany was on the loosing way in 1943.

Neutral compared to what? Sweden dutifully shipped iron ore to Germany throughout the war, and grew prosperous on the trade. Sweden also allowed Hitler's troops access to and across Swedish territory to reinforce their position in northern Norway, Bodo and Narvic. Even Switzerland permitted transshipment of Jews enroute to their fates while turning a blind eye to the obvious purpose and the brutality of their conditions.

Franco successfully kept Spain out of a destructive war in which it had no interest, and, with minimal exposure, covered his bets in the face of danger from both sides. He was more successful in denying Hitler things of strategic value than were Vichy France\ or Sweden.

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I generally agree with Thomas' response to Blatham's highly selective, oversimplified and distorted depiction of his imagined change in the trajectory of American political values and history.

However I take one important exception. Guantanamo is no outrage. In either absolute or relative terms it is hardly detectable compared to the actions of other governments - East and West, North and South - facing even remotely comparable threats. This list includes Britain, France, Greece, the USSR and virtually all of the Eastern European satellites, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, every country in North Africa (except, perhaps Tunisia), just about every other country in the rest of Africa, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Indonesia, .... Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, .......The list includes the great majority of the nations in the world. 600 prisoners held for (now) up to four years in Guantanamo , during a continuing conflict -- This does not even make page three.

The truly remarkable element in the reporting of Gitmo is the amazing lack of historical perspective and comparable understanding that characterizes nearly all of it.

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What is lacking in the conservative response to such reporting is the truly remarkable lack of perspective regarding our image in the world, and our view of ourselves. Things are not done that way in America, and we have always held our system up for admiration and emulation because of core principles such as the right of habeus corpus, the right to speedy trial, the right of counsel, the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment--an entire range of principles which get thrown out the window on basis of the paltry, fear-mongering tactic of invoking the war on terror. That is a war which the Shrub and his Forty Theives long ago abandoned when they had settled in at Baghdad.

Pointing to another nation and saying: "Oh yeah, look at those guys, they're much worse than we are"--is a playground technique, and does nothing to eradicate the stain on the nation's honor. Idiotic policies such as this administration has pursued make us less safe in the world. We demonstrate that we learn nothing in this world--the tactics of the Sassanach at Long Kesh only made Irish resistance more fierce, more murderous, but we bumble along, shitting in our collective pants at the image of the al Qaeda bogey man, while the venal and unscrupulous whom we happily leave in charge of the dirty work have their fun.

It sickens me to contemplate this done in the name of my homeland, and cynical conservative apologists sicken me even more.

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If I may interrupt Setanta's broad-brush canvas with a minor correction on the allegation that Switzerland permitted trans-shipment by train of jewish populations to concentration camps via its territory: a look at the map will show it was unecessary since all neighboring countries (including France, Italy, Austria, the Balkans) were controlled by Axis powers during WWII and their railroads ran on time.

The allegation was specifically examined in a 1999 report (OK, better late than never is the applicable principle here!) commissioned by the Swiss government and found baseless. This is an excerpt from the report:
_____________________________________________________________
"Enfin, notre quatrième annexe aborde la question, souvent agitée ces derniers temps, de l'éventuelle déportation de Juifs de France ou d'Italie à travers la Suisse. Les informations recueillies nous permettent d'exclure le transit par la Suisse de ces trains à destination des camps d'extermination."

http://www.aidh.org/Racisme/2e_guerre/02rapp_presse.htm

["Finally, our fourth addendum examines the question, frequently raised recently, of a possible deportation of jews of from France or Italy via Switzerland. The data we examined allow us to exclude any possible transit via Switzerland of those trains destined for extermination camps.]
_____________________________________________________________

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Nice little cheap shot, there, Helen, how charming of you . . .

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Thomas - on the gay-marriage thread (which I left after it was overrun by fact-free fanatics) your re-wording of the bet isn't identical to the original.

Setanta - habeas corpus has been suspended temporarily before by duly passed legislation and it's my understanding that the current suspension also complies with applicable law, passed btw by both Republican and Democrat legislators. I therefore fail to see why you only mention the former and not the latter.

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Setanta - please clarify what you mean by "cheap shot" in your post; extermination camps are a minor detail compared to what?

Thank you.

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Setanta wrote:

Nice little cheap shot, there, Helen, how charming of you . . .

It wasn't directed at you at all. Helen was correcting an evidently incorrect statement of mine regarding the transshipment of Jews through Switzerland on their way to Nazi extermination camps. I had heard the story from Herman Wouk who had researched the matter well, but it is possible that he and I are wrong.

No need for an emotional reaction from either you or me.

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Setanta wrote:

What is lacking in the conservative response to such reporting is the truly remarkable lack of perspective regarding our image in the world, and our view of ourselves. Things are not done that way in America, and we have always held our system up for admiration and emulation because of core principles such as the right of habeus corpus, the right to speedy trial, the right of counsel, the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment--an entire range of principles which get thrown out the window on basis of the paltry, fear-mongering tactic of invoking the war on terror. That is a war which the Shrub and his Forty Theives long ago abandoned when they had settled in at Baghdad.

Pointing to another nation and saying: "Oh yeah, look at those guys, they're much worse than we are"--is a playground technique, and does nothing to eradicate the stain on the nation's honor. Idiotic policies such as this administration has pursued make us less safe in the world. We demonstrate that we learn nothing in this world--the tactics of the Sassanach at Long Kesh only made Irish resistance more fierce, more murderous, but we bumble along, shitting in our collective pants at the image of the al Qaeda bogey man, while the venal and unscrupulous whom we happily leave in charge of the dirty work have their fun.

It sickens me to contemplate this done in the name of my homeland, and cynical conservative apologists sicken me even more.

Don't blame me if you have swallowed the notion that America is a thing above and apart from all the rest of human history. It is an illusion in the first place, and the fall from it is no fall at all.

The rights you enumerate have long existed in many other countries as well - and were often violated.

There is nothing from the playground in comparative analysis of history - despite your overwrought words to the contrary.

History offers examples of strong resistance to external threats that worked well, and others that didn't. It also offers successful and unsuccessful examples oaf more indirect approaches. Moreover history doesn't reveal its alternatives to us. I'm sure you know better than to make such sweeping generalizations.

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georgeob1 wrote:

Different in what respect? Please explain.

Since I didn't read the complete thesis (which is neither published nor totally completed as far as I know), I only can guess by the authors remarks that he found out, not everything was so 'smooth' as general historical opinion tells.
Sorry that I can't explain it more - as said: I only 'found' and translated some sources from German to English.

georgeob1 wrote:

Neutral compared to what?

Neutral as 'neutral' was seen during WWII, and as those countries you named above.
And compared to the times before, when Spain was closer 'allied' to Germany and the axis countries.

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Walter - a book you may have already read, George F. Kennan's "Round the Cragged Hill" (title based on a poem by Blake), which I think was his last book, spends many chapters to combat this loose definition of "allies". Kennan's definition is the legal one, the existence of a treaty of alliance (or defense pact) duly signed and ratified by the parties.

Spain and Germany as you know had no such "alliance" - term which you correctly place in quotes. Which reminds me - what was Sweden thinking when it let Willy Brandt broadcast from Stockholm the position of German units in the Eastern front?!

Ummmm... in an effort to find some tenuous connection with Galloway: he thinks the collapse of the Soviet Union was the great tragedy of the 20th century Smile

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HofT wrote:

Setanta - please clarify what you mean by "cheap shot" in your post; extermination camps are a minor detail compared to what?

Thank you.

The cheap shot was your broad brush remark, which was not necessary to introduce a correction of the contention about Switzerland. Referring to conservative apologists hardly constitutes a broad brush.

EDIT: A mention of extermination camps as a minor detail constitutes yet another cheap shot. Nowhere have i described extermination camps as a minor detail, nor compared them to the American camp at Guantanamo or to the prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. You are willfully ignoring my point that such comparisons are nugatory because the maintenance of "detention" camps in which basic American principles of judicial rights are ignored flies in the face of our traditions, without reference to what others do.

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HofT wrote:

Setanta - habeas corpus has been suspended temporarily before by duly passed legislation and it's my understanding that the current suspension also complies with applicable law, passed btw by both Republican and Democrat legislators. I therefore fail to see why you only mention the former and not the latter.

Habeus Corpus is one of several judicial rights which i enumerated--i fail to see why you focus on that and not the other examples. Your remark about mentioning the former and not the later implies that all Republicans are conservative, and that no Democrats are conservative. Having been raised in a conservative Democratic family, i know that portion of the implication not to be so. The term moderate Republican has also been applied to many political figures in my lifetime, even including Richard Nixon.

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Lord Ellpus wrote:

Upon re-reading my paragraph, I can possibly see how you interpreted my meaning in the wrong way. Of course I didnt mean that the Senate report was of such importance.
I should have been a bit more careful with my wording.....but I dont think that any other people read it that way. A bit too much haste on my part.

At this moment in time, I have a female better half of the Spousal variety who has gained a massive promotion in her career, which involves us moving to a new location about 100 miles away.
Consequently, requests are made for me to drive 100 miles and view another batch of houses that have just come onto the market. Refusal to comply with such "requests" could probably result in :-
1. The sudden cancellation of all sattelite sports channels.
2. The removal of anything which may taste good from the fridge, which would then be replaced with Tofu and various types of Donkey fodder.
3. The complete cessation of all horizontal sporting activity.
4. A substantial increase in interference from the Mother in Law.

Hence, when I DO actually have the privilege of actually allowing my posterior to warm the computer chair, it is normally for short periods of time, or I am sneaking an A2K session, under the guise of doing some important work.
So, the truth is that I have one ear on the front door, just in case the better half has set the Mother in Law on me, the other listening out for the cricket scores, one eye on the computer screen whilst the other is browsing the property pages in order to find somewhere to buy that has lots of hidden defects which will probably cost a fortune and take a year of hard labour to sort out.

My dog is now facing the choice of either grabbing my wrist and dragging me out for her walk, or peeing on the carpet in a hidden area of the house, knowing that it will not be discovered for several hours, when one suddenly notices that one's sock is becoming cold and wet.

So, Whooda.....I wont be responding to your responses, as that would probably end up with more responses to respond to, and so on. It is the A2K way, and very enjoyable when one has the time.

I will now also refrain from anything "debatable" until I have settled into the new abode and sorted out the leak in the roof which is causing the badly wired fusebox to make a fizzing sound.
Although debating George Galloway is one of my all time ever favourite activities, I believe I must put Marital bliss, Domestic harmony and house renovation first.

You may now have your moment in the sun and feel very happy today.

PS....If you want me, I'll probably be on the "problem" forums (either house repair, financial or marital).

........but I shall return, armed to the teeth with my usual brand of useless facts, witty ripostes and several more worry lines on my brow.

Have a good day, everyone.

Lord: Please know I wasn't suggesting your post in question was poorly worded. It wasn't. I merely read it in a different way and, as a result, a couple of bubbling pots of tar were catapulted and wasted by the both of us.

Although I have a mother-in-law sent from God Himself, I can certainly commiserate with the importance of one's satellite dish, tofu-free & Splenda-free edibles, the sport of the horizontal hunt, and hounds with pea-sized bladders.

Moments in the sun are of little use to me, so by all means take your time. I believe the kingdom and the republic will both be standing when you finally alight.

Happy hunting.

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Setanta - you know I'm a techie and consequently stand in awe of those who can write several pages pages of flowing prose with no apparent effort; I sadly suffer from elliptical expression syndrome. It was a compliment, a genuine apology for interrupting what I thought was a continuing exposition from you.

As George already noted pls don't get emotional without some basis in fact: in this case I mistook your "cheap shot" comment as referring to concentration camps. Your intent is now clear to me thanks to your added commentary and I hope that so is mine.

Lord Ellpus - former owner here of house near Queen's Gate (Hyde Park) who spent 2 years co-habiting with platoons of plumbers, plasterers, electricians, bricklayers, painters and any number of other building trades: you have my sympathy Smile

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georgeob1 wrote:

Don't blame me if you have swallowed the notion that America is a thing above and apart from all the rest of human history. It is an illusion in the first place, and the fall from it is no fall at all.

I've "swallowed" nothing--your tone is unnecessarily contemptuous, and i frankly grow sick of your air of worldly sophistication with regard to governance and governmental principles. I assert on my own account that the United States has long represented a departure from the business as usual of governments in this world. When, after Daniel Shays' rebellion in Massachusetts, all of the state legislatures co-opted the threat of such insurrection by instituting universal, white male suffrage, although restrictive by our contemporary standards, it was then a radical departure from the electoral systems, such as they were, which the world had known in the past. I'm no blind fool regurgitating someone else's propaganda--i know the history of my nation quite well, in detail. The prohibition on the establishment of religion, the guarantee of free speech, of a free press, of the right of the people to assemble and petition a redress of greivances, of universal participation in the militia, of freedom from unwarranted search and seizure, the proscription on quartering troops, the proscription of double jeopardy, of seizure by attainder, the guarantee of trial by jury only upon presentation by a duly constituted grand jury, the guarantee of due process of law, the right to a speedy trial, the right to face one's accusers, the right to have counsel for defense, the prohibitions on excess bail and excessive fines, the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment--all were radical departures from the practice of governance in the past, and the more so by their extension to all citizens. Magna Carta was a document concerned above all with rights in property and securing the same; the portions which dealt with habeus corpus, trial by jury and other judicial rights applied only to members of the baronage and the peerage--the guarantee of such rights and those which i have listed, and many others, and their extension to all of the citizenry, was not simply a radical departure, it was seen as such in Europe, seen as a potential threat, and much of the world who knew anything of the United States wished us ill for precisely that reason.

President Monroe's 1823 message to Congress on the state of the Union, now known as the Monroe Doctrine, was seen as a extension by the United States of a protection--which we were then sadly unable to afford in all instances--to the other people of the western hemisphere to develop their own social institutions and institutions of governance unmolested by colonizing powers. The intervention of the United States Navy, by simply sending frigates to Buenos Aires, although insufficient for the Argentines to make good their claim to the Malvinas/Falkland Islands, was sufficient to assure the survival of the nascent United States of the River Plate, and therefore the birth of Argentina--a process in which Palmerston thought to actively interfere by the overawing power of the Royal Navy. When the "Holy Alliance" crushed the 1848 Socialist uprisings in Europe with a fierce brutality, only France and the United States opened their doors widely to the refugees, and a great many of them thereafter gave their lives in Mr. Lincoln's cause.

Certainly we are not perfect and have often erred in the past and will do so again in the future. Nevertheless, the United States long held an image in the world as the champion of freedom and democratic governance, and the slow erosion of the image from 1898 to 2003 was nothing in comparison to the plummet that image has suffered in just two years. How wonderful your cynicism to ignore what America has meant to world history only in order to defend your partisan thesis and take a swipe at me as naïve. I refer you once again to your statement which McG uses as a tag line: "Excessively patronizing postures are often an indicator of those whose self-images exceed their ability."

Quote:

The rights you enumerate have long existed in many other countries as well - and were often violated.

This is a canard, as i pointed out in my mention of Magna Carta. The 1832 Parliamentary Reform Act in England expanded the franchise from under 3% of the white male population to under 5% of the white male population. Palmerston stated that further parliamentary reform would only occur over his dead body, and that proved to be literally true, no new reform act being introduced until after his death in 1866. Only in revolutionary France was such a broad franchise as existed in the United States introduced before the the twentieth century, and within less than a decade, France had gone down the road to Empire and military agrandizement. Once again, the reference to the failure to maintain a principled standard is a pathetic excuse to abandon the effort.

Quote:

There is nothing from the playground in comparative analysis of history - despite your overwrought words to the contrary.

It most certainly is a puerile tactic to justify the failure to maintain one's own principles by reference to the unscrupulous conduct of others, and there is nothing overwrought in pointing that out. As for a comparative analysis of history, simply saying others have been worse in their conduct than have we is a pretty feeble excuse for historical analysis. I am more than happy to engage in such a debate on such terms--i've already demonstrated in far more detail than you have been pleased to provide that i have good reason for taking the position i have adopted.

Quote:

History offers examples of strong resistance to external threats that worked well, and others that didn't. It also offers successful and unsuccessful examples oaf more indirect approaches. Moreover history doesn't reveal its alternatives to us. I'm sure you know better than to make such sweeping generalizations.

History cannot be said as a matter of course to offer examples which assert the abandonment of principle is necessary to a strong defense against external threats. What i wrote was no sweeping generalization, i provided detail to support my contention initially, and have offered more now. I'm ready any time you are to debate precisely what examples history provides.

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HofT wrote:

Setanta - you know I'm a techie and consequently stand in awe of those who can write several pages pages of flowing prose with no apparent effort; I sadly suffer from elliptical expression syndrome. It was a compliment, a genuine apology for interrupting what I thought was a continuing exposition from you.

As George already noted pls don't get emotional without some basis in fact: in this case I mistook your "cheap shot" comment as referring to concentration camps. Your intent is now clear to me thanks to your added commentary and I hope that so is mine.

You need never view me with awe, although i wouldn't protest if upon a personal acquaintance, you might describe much of my character as awful. I have continued the exposition, but as a necessary response to georgeob1's flawed criticism. I sincerely apologize for having misunderstood the meaning of what you wrote.

As for getting emotional, in the absence of a face-to-face confrontation, such a supposition is unwarranted. It is, however, useful to georgeob1's perennial attempt to condescend as though speaking to an angry child when he disagrees with me. I would hope you would not want to travel down the same road.

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Set, Hear, hear. Spot on!

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George Galloway blasts the Senate

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