It isn’t just the corruption of the governments whose secrets are being exposed, if you can really call the petty school boy/girl sniping and bitchy cattiness secrets.
We learned that even the US will serve its masters the Saudis by providing the money, bodies and blood to act as the Hessians of the people we gave all that oil money to in order to tool around in gas guzzling SUVs.
And we thought we went into Iraq because Saddam Hussein was a nasty man.
But the fun doesn’t stop when you have a Danial Ellsberg or Julian Assange spilling the nasty thoughts of the powerful like Cassandra in truth telling mode.
The powerful use the governments but the real power is located on Wall Street and in the financial centers around the world.
The rich own the governments and working people are their slaves
And the headline of the Andy Greenberg’s article at Forbes.com: http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/wikileaks-julian-assange-wants-to-spill-your-corporate-secrets/
WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange Wants To Spill Your Corporate Secrets
Nov. 29 2010
Early next year, Julian Assange says, a major American bank will suddenly find itself turned inside out. Tens of thousands of its internal documents will be exposed on Wikileaks.org with no polite requests for executives’ response or other forewarnings. The data dump will lay bare the finance firm’s secrets on the Web for every customer, every competitor, every regulator to examine and pass judgment on.
(For the full transcript of Forbes’ interview with Assange click here.)
Full article at: http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/wikileaks-julian-assange-wants-to-spill-your-corporate-secrets/
11/30/2010 at 3:10 pm
Interesting interview with him on CNN.
http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2010/10/22/intv.shubert.assange.end.cnn?iref=allsearch
He is in court in Sweden. See:
http://www.thelocal.se/30528/20101130/
Most of Wikileaks has been a good thing.
However.
The diplomatic release I am very uncomfortable with. as it could screw up diplomacy in some regions. Diplomacy is the alternative to killing each other, which a lot of people seem to have forgotten. Diplomats need secrets to be effective diplomats and to keep everyone talking instead of killing each other. I consider the diplomatic release to be irresponsible and can not support wikileaks in that action.
11/30/2010 at 3:26 pm
I disagree. What Wikileaks has done is an important blow to the oligarchy of corporate/state fascism that has come to dominate the world body politic.
Julian Assange is a freedom fighter and hero on the order of Daniel Ellsberg.
Wait till he leaks the Bank America Citywide plot to ripoff and destroy the Middle Class
Come the Revolution there will be statues of him.
12/01/2010 at 2:07 am
Come the revolution by anyone religeous, left, right or whatever, you and I will be first up against the wall and shot, if we are lucky.
I am looking through the wikileaks posts of diplomatic files. That was a downright dangerous thing to do.
Posting internal details of banks I would look upon as a public service as the taxpayer has more or less recapitalised all those banks, therefore owns them anyway.
What went on in Iraq I agree with posting, although do wish they had blanked out some of the names of civilians on the ground to protect there safety.
Also I have been looking through the diplomacy posts so far and have noticed that nothing embarrasses the Republican party, yet puts Democrats on the spot. If I was a diplomat in another country such as Russia, China, Germany, Brazil, India, Poland or France, I would be screaming at US diplomats, not to do everything to prevent a demented lunatic like Palin from getting in the Whitehouse, yet not even a whisper.
The only people who will benefit from the diplomacy post in the long run will be Tea Partiers, who want censorship of the internet and would love the rapture to occur. This release does make the possibility of a shooting war slightly more possible in some areas, due to lack of trust in diplomacy.
All the countries have done a good job of making it look as it will be OK, but it is obvious it has affected international diplomacy and will harm US diplomacy for some time to come after Clinton-Obama repaired so much of Bush’s damage to US standing internationally.
Knowing everything is wonderful in concept.
In practice however, the diplomacy post was dangerous.
Also knowledge is power. Assange weilds it like a three edged sword, cutting all ways to do as much damage as possible, except for the diplomacy post which I suspect he or his information supplier, selectively edited.
12/01/2010 at 2:18 am
Unlike you I do not fear the Left Wing or Left Wing revolutionaries. Perhaps that comes from personal experience.
I would rather take my chances with them than with the Little Eichmanns of either the Democrats or Republicans.
Obama and Clinton are as bad as the Bushs and Reagan. They shouldn’t even claim to be democrats as they are DINOs Democrats in Name Only.
They no more represent ordinary people than Goldman Sachs does.
The US is an Empire in Decline.
Game over for the US.
12/01/2010 at 12:37 pm
My personal experience tells me that revolutionaries put us up agains the wall first, no what there opinion, left, right or whatever.
You have always lived in the US, which tends to be cushioned from reality in a lot of ways. I have met real left and right wingers in there own habitat. Trust me on this, they would kill you before any teabagger, as would any teabagger before any left winger. If you want to believe differently, fair enough, but if a revolution happens, you will have to kill left and right or die. That is the reality.
12/01/2010 at 1:08 pm
Andrea I was in Weatherman, I was friends with Black Panthers. While I was in transition. And yes they knew.
I am still friends with former Black Panthers and Weather people from the leadership.
I am friends with people in the Socialist Workers Party and Earth First!
In case you miss the point I am part of the Left.
I may be old but I fought along side of those people I am still friends with while I was transitioning and before.
Now I know you will say, but, they aren’t really revolutionary even though the police shot at us and killed one of us while wounding a 150 or so of us a full year before the Kent State and Jackson State Massacres.
But that is your problem not mine.
12/01/2010 at 1:39 pm
Yes, we have always lived in the US — that HAS cushioned us from your reality. At the same time, you have not lived here in the US — therefore, though you, like many, thinks yourself an “expert” on the US — well, you have been cushioned from our reality.
Here in the US — the land of right wing, evangelical, non-mainstream Christians — I’d MUCH rather take my chances with all the various lefties, than with ANY of the right wingers.
Perhaps our left wing is not as left as yours. Our right wing is absolutely VICIOUS. Our “Conservatives” are currently tied in with right-wing-Christians — all involved with the “Christ Victorious” folks. This doesn’t even claim to be a “religion of peace” — though there would be “peace” if they could annihilate all their “enemies” and presumed “enemies”. In this way, our Taliban is not different from the other Taliban.
Granted some of the lefties just might be clueless about us — they are no more so than most “middle of the road” (I’ve always wondered what that means — have decided it’s, “I don’t care what you do, as long as you leave all MY status and privileges – including financial – alone”) folks — many of whom really wouldn’t care WHAT happens to us – as long as it doesn’t upset THEIR lives.
American right-wing Christians, like Scott Lively (the author of “The Pink Swastika” – a useless lie of a book equating Nazi’s with gays) and others have been behind the proposed Uganda, “Kill The Gays” law. Right wing televangelists are also among those who have called for our death. Right-wing legislators have proposed criminalizing homosexuality. A former magistrate in Tennessee recently said Lesbians should be allowed in the Army — so straight G.I’s could “convert” them. Preachers have called for our death from their pulpits.
I call these right wing secular and religious folks the “Konservative Kulture Kommandos” — even though they might not be a part of the “official” KKK.
In spite of the fact so many folks in various parts of Europe think themselves absolute “experts” on the US — without ever having lived here — they are not. Our right wing is using ALL LGBT folks as the scapegoat of the day — along with immigrants, black and brown people, etc. It’s just that even the anti-Mexican thing is losing steam – especially among “conservative” farmers who now have trouble getting their crops in — they can still whip up some anger against all the various LGBT folks.
Our left wingers are not the folks going around killing all the various different trans folks out there.
By the way, currently our “center” is what you might just call “very right wing”. There are a surprising number of folks who want to do away with damn near EVERYTHING left of our “social safety net”. They don’t want a return to 1930 — they want a return to 1840. It’s insane.
Anyone who does not recognize the danger our hard-right-wing-zealots present, is looking at the US with blinders.
12/01/2010 at 3:51 pm
As a little addition — our right wing appears to be very happy to let people STARVE to death — as long as no one “makes a fuss”.
At that point (starvation), all you would have to do is totally renounce who or what you are — join one of their hate-filled “religions” and MAYBE they would feed you.
We have a multitude of homeless people here in the US — we just try to keep them out of sight — after all, that counters all the myths about the USA. Here’s a little info. about “food security” — statistics from 2008. It’s worse today.
“One of the most disturbing and extraordinary aspects of life in this very wealthy country is the persistence of hunger. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that in 2008:
* Of the 49.1 million people living in food insecure households (up from 36.2 million in 2007), 32.4 million are adults (14.4 percent of all adults) and 16.7 million are children (22.5 percent of all children).
* 17.3 million people lived in households that were considered to have “very low food security,” a USDA term (previously denominated “food insecure with hunger”) that means one or more people in the household were hungry over the course of the year because of the inability to afford enough food. This was up from 11.9 million in 2007 and 8.5 million in 2000.
* Very low food security had been getting worse even before the recession. The number of people in this category in 2008 is more than double the number in 2000.
* Black (25.7 percent) and Hispanic (26.9 percent) households experienced food insecurity at far higher rates than the national average”.”
———————————————————
As is said — “you could look it up”. We have NOTHING like a European “welfare state” — while we still have discrimination and racism against “different”.
Tell me again how OUR left-wing is worse than OUR right-wing.
Many of the various trans-folks who talk about how “wonderful” it is are still doing quite well. They tend to blame all the folks not doing as well for that fact. They are “lazy”, “unmotivated”, etc., etc., etc. Many left-wingers who are doing well actually recognize (to some extent) that they are lucky, privileged, and (maybe) smarter (or, at least better educated) than most.
Does that mean other folks are not entitled to live? In much of the US it does. We are becoming a “winner take all” society.
12/01/2010 at 9:15 pm
I do agree with Suzan on Wikileaks, but Tina makes Andrea’s point about revolutions even more pointed.
Tina, you are saying that the only revolution likely in the USA is of the fascist right, who likely would put you up against a wall. Andrea says revolutionaries put us up against walls. Both of those stand forcefully contrary to Suzan’s foolish claim that things she idealises would happen “come the revolution”.
The plain fact is that those Suzan cites as having been shot were not revolutionaries but victims of a state forces out of control, wildly paranoid in a time of both real and cold war. America has not been fertile ground for anything seriously “left” for nearly a century now; not a revolutionary left. The destruction of the industrial cities sealed that. Riots in which the dispossessed burn their own neighborhoods are not revolutionary. The whole political spectrum is far more to the right than in countries where left-ish revolutions – or even political parties – blossom.
Where they do, its the extremists who gain power, the malcontents, the rabble-rousers, the fire-brands. Extremists whose only difference from the extreme right is the dogma they espouse. And whose animosity to us, for whatever reason (even if only to distract from their own secrets) would be murderous.
Believe me, I’ve known real revolutionaries, of left and of right, and all were totally careless of how all of the vulnerable would suffer, or be treated, whilst they made their ideological point.
To revolutionaries Suzan would be a gabby, centre-left wannabee; someone potentially dangerous and irritating to either end of the political arc. Draft dodging is self-preservation, as are our transitions; radical but not revolution. True revolutionaries are not pot-heads, alchies, whores, or gadflies. Nor bloggers. If anything their drug of choice is cocaine-based. They are deadly serious, and guarded. The mob, or the demonstrators, are their cannon-fodder, not the instigators.
On Wikileaks; Andrea’s criticisms fail to encompass, I think, that the cables leaked were only classified to the extent that over three million US citizens had access, for their information. Most of the truly sensitive diplomatic traffic will have been more highly classified, or communicated privately, and rightly so. Anything potentially damaging in the leaked database should have been classified higher. Three million is the circulation of a major newspaper, or the audience of a successful broadcast. If three million could read it, anyone interested should be able to too.
The fact that many of the world’s top journalism organisations are unprecedentedly cooperating to sift, research, distribute, and publish the material backs that view. The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, The New York Times, etc., are not irresponsible.
Now we can all, rightly, know that the supposedly apolitical Governor of the Bank of England, who sets the nation’s interest rates and supposedly failed to foresee, and certainly facilitated the approaching banking crisis, was conspiring, as a general election loomed, and later, as a coalition came together, with a foreign power to use the financial situation to advance a divisive and harsh, right-wing economics. Today he faces demands for his resignation. We know that US diplomats literally spy even on the shit of their colleagues from other countries, and collect assassination targeting data for Israel. That the King of Saudi Arabia pushes for the US to attack Iran even more than does Israel (the one-true-god cults so hate each other). That hundreds of millions intended for fighting the the Taliban was syphoned into Pakistan’s internal coffers, probably funding the mushrooming nuclear arsenal which American very much fears will fall into the hands of Taliban… And we know that most US diplomatic staff are woefully ignorant of the countries in which they serve. Those, and hundreds of other issues, can now be dealt with in a proper manner, hopefully.
12/01/2010 at 9:41 pm
Anna,
Draft Dodging is what the right wing Republicans did as well as the rich.
What the Left did was Draft resistance and Desertion along with the encouraging of mutiny within the ranks.
And in this country the revolutionaries smoked weed and dropped acid.
When Nixon wanted to quiet things down he cut off the weed with Paraquat in Mexico and started flooding the streets with cocaine and China White from South East Asia.
Your mileage may vary and thing may well have been different in the UK.
Anna I put my ass on the line during that war. Two years after I transitioned and a year prior to SRS, my lover was busted for desertion. I greased palms, bought lawyers and got him moved to a Navy hospital. I then proceeded to bust him out by sweet talking him out of a locked ward and driving him off the base.
But then I was Weather…
12/01/2010 at 9:51 pm
Anna, what’s left of the left in the US is beginning to wake up. The very real possibility of a right wing takeover frightens just about everyone who is a little more than centre-left.
The new book — “The Anti-American Manifesto” by Ted Rall points out a need for change — no matter how achieved. He also points out the real fact that revolutions are never “guided” — what ends up happening, happens.
As for cocaine, etc., perhaps that is a rule in Europe — I wouldn’t know. I doubt you know what’s happening in the US.
In any case, thank you for your support. Carry on.
12/01/2010 at 10:05 pm
oh yeah, I almost forgot — The folks who hate, those who preach, those who call for a return to “strict readings” of our Constitution (whatever the hell that is) are ESTABLISHMENT figures. They are no longer “fringe elements”. Even if they are, they neither act it, nor are they treated as such. They are not seen as “revolutionaries”.
On the other hand — the “leftish” wing, in or out of any established party, gets little or no publicity. We find out by carefully checking the internet.
If there is a populist uprising it will be because some new “leader” manages to harness all the free-floating anger.
These folks WANT a social safety net. They want health care. They are also angry at ALL of “The Government”.
Look at the list of failures — Katrina, 9/11, two needless and useless wars, lie upon lie, a massive financial crisis where Bankers and Wall Street get bailed out at taxpayer expense — just when said taxpayers are losing their jobs, retirement funds, equity in their houses — and every last shred of a social safety net is under attack.
Don’t worry, if the Republicans have their way — we will be facing our own “austerity program” — along with tax CUTS for the rich and very rich.
Tell me again about our readiness for change if things do not improve in two or three years.
I’m too old to do much — but I will be an interested bystander.
12/02/2010 at 1:00 am
> And in this country the revolutionaries smoked weed and dropped acid.
Where was the revolution, except in their heads?
In a post-industrial USA the dreadful warning is in 1930s Spain, or 1970s Iran. With no industrial proletariat, the dreams of a lefty minority rapidly ignite the suburban and rural masses with quite opposite intentions. Then the blood of the vulnerable flows in torrents.
Cocaine makes dreams seem possible, unrealistically.
12/02/2010 at 1:18 am
I didn’t say that our revolution was successful.
But then neither was Emma Goldman’s.
A lot of change did come out of it. Including the development of the LGBT/TQ rights movement, which is commonly dated to the Stonewall Rebellion.
Sometimes it is the struggle against the machine instead of acquiescence.
Indeed the anarchists and left lost in the Spanish Civil war but Franco eventually died and fascism ended.
12/02/2010 at 1:47 am
> I didn’t say that our revolution was successful.
Revolution is as revolution does. It never happened.
> But then neither was Emma Goldman’s.
Another dreamer.
> A lot of change did come out of it. Including the development of
> the LGBT/TQ rights movement, which is commonly dated to the
> Stonewall Rebellion.
Yet wrongly, as you have often said. Reform is not revolution, unless you change the meaning of words to suit.
> Indeed the anarchists and left lost in the Spanish Civil war but
> Franco eventually died and fascism ended.
And there you speak like a true revolutionary, disregarding (no doubt inadvertently) the millions who died and suffered in the many, cursed years, which included WWII, for which Spain was a military rehearsal. Might I also remind you that the civil war the overthrowing of a brief, centre-left government. I can also tell you, having had several friends of the Iranian intelligentsia in the 1970s, that Iran is an even more shockingly apt warning. Few anticipated that the masses would carry the country back to the 14th century. Women out of the workplace, the courts, and off television, music banned, men forced into beards, the borders closed, and mass, teenage, revolutionary guards reenacting the Somme on the Iraq order.
12/02/2010 at 7:00 am
Anna has it right.
Revolution has not occured in the USA since independance. Strangely the puritans who worked for the British the revolutionaries fought against, are back in power in the USA, ie Clintons, Bushs, etc.
If there was a revolution in the USA today, left, right, religeous or whatever then TS people would be just one minority of many minorities that would be put up against a wall. It would not be well ordered, it would be slaughter.
A revolution today in the USA, would lead to genocide due the high amount of weaponary available, extreme polarisation pre-revolution leading to even more extremism in a revolution and the refusal of people on all sides to listen to anything resembling reason.
Revolutions in Spain, France and other countries always led to massive bloodletting. The US would be no different.
In every revolution the first casualty is truth. The next casualities are those to weak, inform, disabled, isolated, different or who do not fit in. Then the fighting starts, after they have run out of scapegoats to blame and kill.
12/02/2010 at 12:44 pm
First of all neither you or Anna have that great an understanding of the US.
The Christo-fascists of today are not the linear descendants of the Puritans, indeed those of the Baptist variety as well as the Mormons are more a 19th Century development. The rapture Bunnies are a 19th and 20th century development.
Who runs this country is an oligarchy of the ultra wealthy, who have reduced the rest of us to wage slavery. This is the same problem one sees in Europe.
At some point people look around and say 90% of us have 20% of the wealth while 10% of us have 80%…
I personally think the French and the Bolsheviks had the right idea in killing the Royals.
12/02/2010 at 3:09 pm
The idea that those in charge in the US today are direct descendants of the Pilgrims and Puritans so beloved in American myth is somewhat off. What is true is that the US has always (at least in the past) been able to incorporate those who might prove a danger to the establishment into that same establishment.
Always remember the Puritan and Separatist ethic led to Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson. (a little more on Williams: “(circa 1603 – between January and March 1683) was an American Protestant theologian, and the first American proponent of religious freedom and the separation of church and state. In 1636, he began the colony of Providence Plantation, which provided a refuge for religious minorities.” – from Wikipedia).
The availability of “new land” to the west gave the young USA a “safety valve”. Our revolution was caused by many different things. It’s good to remember that the first post-revolutionary government, under the “Articles of Confederation”was much less centralized than that under the second government — The Constitution.
As for “revolutions” — many here in the US call the presidential election of 1800, where Thomas Jefferson defeated John Adams, “The Revolution of 1800″ because it signified a major change in US politics. The one party system ended, and Jefferson moved away from the strong anti-French attitude of the Federalists. One of the more important actions involved the repeal of “The Alien And Sedition Acts” — which severely limited freedom.
This is just to point out that “revolution” seems to be used to denote different things to different people. Certainly those historians who have written about, “The Steam Revolution” in England do not mean it the same way you folks do.
Will you please write and tell them — “It was not a revolution!” (especially since it appears little or no cocaine was involved)? Or, will you just let that be?
Now, as far as Spain is concerned — would you have just let Franco come to power? In addition, are you saying WWII would not have happened if there had not been a Spanish Civil War?
Somehow I doubt that.
As far as who the Loyalists (pro “King and Country”) were during the American Revolution — they were not centered in New England — in fact:
“Historian Robert Middlekauff summarized scholarly research on the nature of Loyalist support as follows:
The largest number of loyalists were found in the middle colonies: many tenant farmers of New York supported the king, for example, as did many of the Dutch in the colony and in New Jersey. The Germans in Pennsylvania tried to stay out of the Revolution, just as many Quakers did, and when that failed, clung to the familiar connection rather than embrace the new. Highland Scots in the Carolinas, a fair number of Anglican clergy and their parishioners in Connecticut and New York, a few Presbyterians in the southern colonies, and a large number of the Iroquois Indians stayed loyal to the king.” – Wikipedia
A little more about the Loyalists (also from Wikipedia):
“Military service
The Loyalists rarely attempted any political organization. They were often passive unless regular British army units were in the area. The British, however, assumed a highly activist Loyalist community was ready to mobilize and planned much of their strategy around raising Loyalist regiments. The British provincial line, consisting of Americans enlisted on a regular army status, enrolled 19,000 loyalists (50 units and 312 companies). Another 10,000 served in loyalist militia or “associations.” The maximum strength of the Loyalist provincial line was 9,700 in December 1780.[23][24] In all about 50,000 at one time or another were soldiers or militia in British forces, including 15,000 from the main Loyalist stronghold of New York.[25] The majority of Loyalists fought in the southern and middle colonies and few were from the north.[citation needed] In addition, a large number of Americans served in the regular British army and in the Royal Navy”
Many did emigrate after the war. Some lost their land and status. All in all, it was a very mixed bag. Here, some of the results of that emigration:
“Impact of the departure of Loyalist leaders
The departure of so many royal officials, rich merchants and landed gentry destroyed the hierarchical networks that had dominated most of the colonies. In New York, the departure of key members of the DeLancy, DePester Walton and Cruger families undercut the interlocking families that largely owned and controlled the Hudson Valley. Likewise in Pennsylvania, the departure of powerful families—Penn, Allen, Chew, Shippen—destroyed the cohesion of the old upper class there. Massachusetts passed an act banishing forty-six Boston merchants in 1778, including members of some of Boston’s wealthiest families. The departure of families such as the Ervings, Winslows, Clarks, and Lloyds deprived Massachusetts of men who had thither to been leaders of networks of family and clients. The bases of the men who replaced them were much different. New men became rich merchants but they shared a spirit of republican equality that replaced the elitism and the Americans never recreated such a powerful upper class. One rich patriot in Boston noted in 1779 that “fellows who would have cleaned my shoes five years ago, have amassed fortunes and are riding in chariots.”.
As far as the use of the word “revolution”:
Many others have called the drive for gay rights back in the late sixties and early seventies a “revolution” — those left alive tend to see the current crop of leaders as timid.
There is much historical precedent for calling various movements “revolutions”, even if millions do not die, and little cocaine is involved (anyway, back in the 60′s and early 70′s it was more apt to be “speed”, not coke).
There are times when it almost appears as if some MUST counter anything Suzan says — just because (alleged).
12/02/2010 at 4:30 pm
Oh goodness, Suzan. I think I just figured out who you are!
We ran in some of the same circles, I was over in the Yippie faction. Lots of overlap! (My best friend ran the Weatherman safe house in Columbus, OH.)
I agree w/you about Julian. I fear his days are numbered. I hope he gets plastic surgery and hides himself. I expect him to accidentally walk in front of a train or something (snort) any day now.
12/02/2010 at 4:43 pm
True revolutionaries are not pot-heads, alchies, whores, or gadflies. Nor bloggers.
Well, damn, there goes my whole life! (LOL)
12/03/2010 at 7:06 am
Tina:
> …those historians who have written about, “The Steam
> Revolution” in England do not mean it the same way you folks do.
>
> Will you please write and tell them — “It was not a revolution!”
> (especially since it appears little or no cocaine was involved)?
> Or, will you just let that be?
If you had been one of the hundreds of thousands who lived in working communities located on watercourses that provided water power (for milling, bellows, hammering, weaving, etc.), that disappeared within a few years when steam-power took the work elsewhere, I’m sure you too would have thought it a revolution.
When you see the cutesy, idyllic, cottagey, steep valleys on the Derbyshire/Yorkshire border and find one of those little museums was where steel was first made, then realise that all the bleakly beautiful, and seemingly empty moors above were once a hellish, glowing mass of kilns, smelters, and shallow coal pits, it really hits home. As that revolution took hold men used the scythes they had manufactured against their own bosses, and there are marks on the stone doorways of what were the bosses homes to prove it. The women and children didn’t fare too well in that revolution either.
> Now, as far as Spain is concerned — would you have just let
> Franco come to power?
That’s upside down, Tina. The left formed a government that tried to overthrow the hold of the church and landlords, then the right, utilising the religious peasantry, and german arms, overthrew the government.
> In addition, are you saying WWII would not
> have happened if there had not been a Spanish Civil War?
For god’s sake, who knows? But it certainly encouraged fascists and tested out German martial techniques, including blitzkrieg. The point is that millions of innocent people ended up dead, and us sexual minorities were amongst the first.
12/03/2010 at 4:05 pm
The left formed a government — the right fought against it WITH the help of Germany, Italy, and whoever else supported the right wing (damn near everyone). The left fought with damn little organized help.
So, if that had not happened, if the left were not energized against the fascists, perhaps Hitler and friends (he had many, both in Europe and here in the USA – remember, they tried a military coup against FDR early on) would have just taken over “peacefully”. Do you think we, and all the others targeted, would have fared any better?
Perhaps any possible revolution would have already occurred — with the required massive loss of life.
For @#&%$# (insert favorite expletive) sake here in the USA it is THE RIGHT that is targeting us. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (the group most hated by extremists – along with the American Civil Liberties Union) gays “remain the most targeted minority in America” — in the eyes of those doing the targeting, WE are included with “The Gays”.
As far as a “real” revolution in the USA — it won’t happen — at least not that easily, not that soon —- unless —- our “Masters Of The Universe”, the banksters, and hedge fund creeps don’t stop. If they continue on their merry way, bankrupting what was once the middle class, the far right AND far left might just join in to blow it all up — with the huge mass of people left to suffer.
The thing is the majority of people here have totally lost faith in ALL Government. One mass failure after another. Wars, weather, financial collapse, lack of health care, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc — all under attack by the wealthy — nothing will be left of the middle class UNLESS another FDR, Teddy Roosevelt type comes up and defuses the rage and anger. Obama is not the man. At least with the policies he currently espouses.
We have always been lucky. There has always been a pragmatic, forceful leader who has come to power “in the nick of time” — someone who has saved the obscenely wealthy from themselves. Right now, I fear our luck has run out.
If you think I support armed revolution here in the USA — you’re nuts. I fear it might come. As for us being among the very first to go — if it’s started by the right — absolutely. If by some chance part of our toothless left starts something — heck, they’d need us to show them how to use any weapons they might find 8^)
(most of our “left” are “anti-gun” – thinking the very right-wing, militarized police will protect them)