Truth

[Andy Lang]

To understand the world these days, you have to not only love truth a great deal--maybe more than life itself--AND, you also have to know how to find it--AND if you do care about it, be in people's faces about it, especially when it is an important issue affecting many people.

On that second point--how to find it--you have to start be reading the ordinary news stories very carefully and see if you can detect the level of Bullshit, on the AndyBert Bullshit Meter (ABM, for short), a special device my good friend who resides on that Very-High Moutaintop where the air is thin and cold, but very clear, so that he can see clearly what is happening to all his creations, for which he takes no responsibility, given the fact that he simply started the ball rolling with some very simple chemistry and a handful of equally simple algorithms, and then gave them all free will and gobs of time--5 billion years or so and lots of trial and error and external(exogenous)influences (like asteroids for example, or even a grain of sand in an oyster) and evolution will do it every time--so The Master says.

The Great One always reminds me of the fact that dinosaurs ruled the earth for 160 million years, but humans have been around for a measly 6/10,000ths as long, and are showing every sign of doing what so many species have done before on earth, making themselves extinct, by failing to learn from past experience and in man's case, also fouling their own nest and all of those wonderful life-forms that are essential for the earth to continue to have life, to say nothing of making it worth living in the first place.

The Magnificent One also reminds me often of the fact that so many other planets and solar systems and even galaxies have dissapeared as a result of other life forms who 'advanced far more than man has at this point but were so arrogant that they thought they were essential and the center of the universe. Hey--where do you think all that missing space material came from anyway?

The cosmos is littered with space junk from these failed experiments, but also there are quite a few successes too--but they are very afraid to contact us as they regard us as too primitive and much too dangerous for the time being--and thus have taken a rain-check in contacting us for at least as long as the dinosauers---God they were gorgeous creations, and still are, BTW--check out the birds, especially those in Borneo--the top of the heap being those gorgeous Birds of Paradise.

Anyway, on my last trip to the Mountaintop, he told me to use the ABM on the small stuff in the newspaper and so I did and found this little gem from a recent Philadelphia Inquirer...

"Ford; No war-era gain from German firm

0 Ford Motor Co. did not earn any profit from its German subsidiary during the WWII era, according to a study the automaker released yesterday. The 144-page report commissioned by Ford said the company lost operational control of Ford Werke AG after the Nazi government seized the subsidiary's assets in 1941. The report concluded that the U.S.company did not 'materially benefit' from the subsidiary's actions."

Now when I used the ABM on this gem, the thing went absoluletly NUTS--vibrating, buzzing and bells and whistles and lights and carrying on like you wouldn't believe.

The Gorgeous One says he had make the ABM that way to make sure any human who uses it knows that a Bullshit Gold Mine (BGM, for short), or if you prefer a Texas-Saudi Oil Gusher (TSOG)was struck--what with all the other Bullshit around these days.

On that TSOG thing, hey, we are going to use up in a mere 100 years or so what it took Mother Nature 160 million years to produce when the earth was a lot warmer and produced all that vegetation for those Really Big dinos to munch on, so that the meat eaters also good munch on them, and so one and one --and all that CO2 being released in that short time, that it took our sun so long to make ain't gonna have a good effect on Mother Earth--and if you wait and watch and listen you can hear her telling you, almost every week now--shhhhhhh.....listen to the icebergs melting and crashing into the sea...or hear the tornadoes and watch the huricanes and see the snow...

But back to Ford and the ABM: Now who can tell me why the ABM reacted so strongly to that little teensy weeny little story...?

[Mr. Grim]

Who cares? The Jewish lobby has been grinding as much money and power as possible from the German Holocaust and they are starting to run out of targets, thank god maybe we can begin to focus on something that benefits less than 4% of the population.

[Double High C]

On 2001-12-11 13:40, Grim wrote:
Who cares? The Jewish lobby has been grinding as much money and power as possible from the German Holocaust and they are starting to run out of targets, thank god maybe we can begin to focus on something that benefits less than 4% of the population.


In a way, that's like saying that we shouldn't focus on holding criminals (of a certain "degree") accountable because only x% of the population are victims.

BTW, who is "the Jewish lobby"?

(Note that I am not saying that every case against every company cursorily associated with Nazi Germany has merit.)

[Pseudolus]

I started reading Andy's post at 1:37. The next thing I remember is waking up in a bathtub full of ice and realizing that both my kidneys had been stolen. Get Lyndon Larouche on this immediately!

[Mr. Grim]

Don't get me wrong, the Holocaust was a horrible thing but almost every ethnic group in America has been wronged by somebody somewhere, be it the Chinese immigrants who were basically slave labor for the railroads, similar for the irish and others, be it the Africans, be it the Natives - many of the original colonists also were killed and otherwise punished by Europeans - it really is time to move on. However, all I hear about is the Jewish Holocaust this and Jewish Holocaust that and it becomes infuriating at times - My Lutheran forefathers were also killed and imprisoned by the Nazis,yet I have never heard much about this.

[Double High C]

On 2001-12-11 14:09, Grim wrote:
Don't get me wrong, the Holocaust was a horrible thing but almost every ethnic group in America has been wronged by somebody somewhere, be it the Chinese immigrants who were basically slave labor for the railroads, similar for the irish and others, be it the Africans, be it the Natives - many of the original colonists also were killed and otherwise punished by Europeans - it really is time to move on.


So we should forget what happened? (Neither I nor most of the others who say that we should "never forget" the Holocaust say that we should forget what happened to any of these other groups.)


However, all I hear about is the Jewish Holocaust this and Jewish Holocaust that and it becomes infuriating at times


All you hear about??? That's funny. I have not heard about it at all for some time. I hear more about the Taliban, and its victims in Afghanistan and in America (as is appropriate).

It sounds like you've been duped by extremists of different stripes into the "us vs. them" mentality. You're too smart for that, aren't you? (Perhaps you didn't mean it the way you worded it, but it appears that you did not give much thought to your post.)

(If you want to take issue with some who might want to punish Germany forever, e.g. by throwing them out of the UN forever, then that would be another issue. However, most Jews/Holocaust survivors I know don't obsess about the Holocaust; they have gotten on with their lives. However, asking them to forget what happened - and history's lessons in general - is another matter.)


- My Lutheran forefathers were also killed and imprisoned by the Nazis,yet I have never heard much about this.


Certainly you have heard plenty about this (as have I and anyone who knows anything about history). Granted that it does not get as much attention, but nor should it, as the crime against the Jewish people (Hitler tried to kill all of us, and in fact did kill about 1/3) was of a unique character.

If you want to point out other acts of genocide that do not get as much attention (e.g. the Turks' killing of Armenians), then fine, maybe we have not focused on this as much as we should have.

However, one thing that you must keep in mind is that large (though dwindling) numbers of Holocaust survivors are still alive. The wounds are plenty raw (and always will be) for them.

Telling us (Jews and Americans and people of good will) to forget the Holocaust is analogous to telling people (in future years) to forget the Taliban.

Don't obsess, but never forget!!!

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Battery Park City on 2001-12-11 17:56 ]</font>

[Anonymous]

Where is the Jewish lobby?

I think its right off the porte de cochere at the house of my friend, Assif Rosofsky...

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ODB@WuTang.com on 2001-12-12 00:00 ]</font>

[Anonymous]

Battery Park--don't be a schmuck. Grim said, its time to move on--he didn't say anything about forgetting.

Now, could you PLEASE pass the Maneschevitz? Oy!

[Paddyboy1]

THis kills me to do it, but for the second time, I have been scared away from the WC, where there is a little bit higher level of discourse, and its censorship. Further pain is inflicted by the necessity of having to read the daily self-lather courtesy of the insufferably dishonest and self-deceiving dullard Andy Lang

Let me ask the endless arguers over the whether we should invest our mental capital in the holocaust, one of a handful of slaughters in the 20th century, for a moment if maybe it would be more fruitful to consider the here and now, the current republicrat hunterkiller hegemony power structure.

Brother CHomsky teaches us that not only are the Taliban terrorists, but "If they fund a terrorist, they're a terrorist.... If they develop weapons of mass destruction that will be used to terrorise nations, they will be held accountable"

Let us ask ourselves not if Hitler was a bad guy or if we should 'never forget' Taliban repression of women, but first: Are we a terrorist nation? Does anyone (excluding those on TV of course) deny that we develop weapons of mass destruction in order that they may terrorise nations? That we encourage these weapons to be used in violation of international law? Didn't South Africa and Iraq and Indonesia and Nicaragua kill millions, yes millions, with our weapons of destruction, mass and otherwise?

[Anonymous]

If we are going to have to take Paddyboy, isn't there some way we could require the WC to take Andy?

[Oracle]

Actually, I hope A**y L**g does more posting over in the Desert. Let's not distract him from his quest for the top ten over there.

[Mr. Grim]

BPC,

I do not think we should forget the Holocaust, just as I do not think we should forget slavery, Vietnam, etc.

I just feel the culturally elite are fairly obsessed with the Holocaust when there are a host of other atrocities going on around the world. how many movies, plays, books have you seen in the last few years that deal with the Holocaust - i guess it is because they sell well.

The Japanese were equally cruel to the Chinese in WWII but I have not seen any lawsuits or many book/movies about this topic.

Personally, I feel the Holocaust is used to justify certain atrocities in other parts of the world - granted I also feel that the Arab leadership is mainly a bunch of worthless trash. But if anything, the Israeli's should have learned not to discriminate against certain people based on their experience in the Holocaust but it seems they have learned other lessons.

[Andy Lang]

[Actually, I hope A**y L**g does more posting over in the Desert. Let's not distract him from his quest for the top ten over there.]

Nobody posts over there any more, so it is easy to get into the top ten. Even a desert has a fair number of life forms in it, even though most are insects and spiders and snakes and scorpions and cacti.

Did you ever notice in a desert most of the life forms need awful defense mechanisms or attack weapons, but in a jungle there are all kinds of disguises and other less aggressive means of protecting oneself among the enormous numbers of living things?

As mankind reduces the numbers of living things as it has so drastically in recent decades, we are all going to have to become like the desert ones.

[Paddyboy1]

1. While scorpions and cactii do live in the desert, I don't see how those have any more terrible defense mechanisms than in the jungle. Thats anecdotal. Where are the facts?

2. I would say the developed jungles have lost the world a lot more species than the developed deserts have.

So what you're trying to do is make some kind of metaphor. saying nothing and proving it with poetry. More lies and bald-faced buffoonery from Andy Lang.

[Griffin 1]

On 2001-12-12 18:09, Andy Lang wrote:
Did you ever notice in a desert most of the life forms need awful defense mechanisms or attack weapons, but in a jungle there are all kinds of disguises and other less aggressive means of protecting oneself among the enormous numbers of living things?

Not true. In the old Tarzan TV show, Jane was always stepping on a big flower that would swallow her up, and people would often be caught in giant spider webs. You don't see these things in a desert.

[Double High C]

On 2001-12-12 10:10, Grim wrote:

I just feel the culturally elite are fairly obsessed with the Holocaust when there are a host of other atrocities going on around the world. how many movies, plays, books have you seen in the last few years that deal with the Holocaust - i guess it is because they sell well.


Good books, movies, and plays have been written, and people are interested in the topic of the Holocaust. The tragedy is unique (or at the very least, in a fairly exclusive class) in a historical perspective.

People can, do, and should write good material about the other topics. When they do, people watch. If it is true that the Holocaust material exceeds its "proportionate share" relative to the other tragedies (when taking the magnitude / gravity of the event into consideration), the solution lies in writing books about the others.

The idea is not to dwell on any of these tragedies, but to learn more about the downside of human potential. OTOH, comments like "I'm tired of hearing about tragedy X" do little more than divide people.


The Japanese were equally cruel to the Chinese in WWII but I have not seen any lawsuits or many book/movies about this topic.


Equally cruel??? Did the Japanese try to kill all of the Chinese?

Regarding lawsuits, I don't think that the end goal is / can / should be to make every survivor / relative 100% whole; in fact, this is not possible. However, groups that knowingly continue to hide monies, deny involvement, and fail to agree to take any responsibility (where such is due) should be forced to suffer at least some (monetary) consequences. I don't even care so much whether the money goes to the families of all of those who "deserve" it; more important is that some reparations are made. (In many cases, they have been.)


Personally, I feel the Holocaust is used to justify certain atrocities in other parts of the world - granted I also feel that the Arab leadership is mainly a bunch of worthless trash. But if anything, the Israeli's should have learned not to discriminate against certain people based on their experience in the Holocaust but it seems they have learned other lessons.


A few comments:

I do not agree with your primary assertion, but regardless, your lumping of "the Israelis" into one category, and your higher expectations of them based on their (the Jews', as well as the Israelis') experiences, and your harsh criticism resulting from their failure to live up to them, is unfair at the very least.

PS The (Jewish) Israelis are far from a monolithic group when it comes to opinion / politics.

[Mr. Grim]

BPC,

Thanks for your comments. I guess I just feel there is alot of noise about this issue which is over 50 years old when there are alot of more recent problems in the world that are often drowned out.

But I value your comments none the less.

[openminded]

What value Truth?
As seen from the unrepentant.
Why listen to these lines
for?
Entertainment?

[yoyo]

A*** L*** and PB1. Ah, good times, good times...

[Mel-o-rama]

One more to go, yoyo!!! 1000 posts? Now that's Truth!

[yoyo]

One more to go, yoyo!!! 1000 posts? Now that's Truth!
Huh, I didn't even notice. Thanks for the heads up!

[Force Majeure]

DFTUYR!

[L. Mo]

What value Truth?
As seen from the unrepentant.
Why listen to these lines
for?
Entertainment?

nope. gotta cut 6 syllables. :D