Not On Another Man’s Back
The United States got off to a seriously bad start. 3/5 of a man? Hear the laughter from the African Serengetti. Unfortunately, it has been our policy as Americans since our inception to demean other peoples (and using Christ as an excuse). Former English serfs calling other people slaves. What irony. We can't do that to other peoples and expect to survive as the Founders intended. Another man's life is less important than yours? How can you live with that? Not Christian? Last time I heard, Christ's wardrobe consisted of a robe and sandals. He went around healing people, not dropping nukes. The United States was a great idea. It still is, but you can't have people living in slave conditions in another country providing us with cheap goods and think it's different than a Southern plantation or a Northern mill in the 19th century. You can't do the USA on another man's back.
klokwkdog said,
May 31, 2006 at 11:51 pm
you want a nation or a club? we had a club; they were trying to build a nation.
lots of other bad stuff: women can’t vote, citizens can’t vote unless they own property; voters can’t vote for senators; voters don’t choose the President, etc.
it was all put on the back burner to get this country going and then worked out over the last 200 years. all the glad-handing and quiet ‘diplomacy’ in Washington was never able to solve the the hypocracy of slavery and it finally got worked out in a Civil War. That was either about State’s Rights or slavery, but State’s Rights was in contradiction to Federalism. Federalism was pretty much settled by 1805. So I’d say it was about slavery, and it was solved by the worst kind of “majority vote” you can imagine. We managed the other ones less violently.
The northern mills have to be examined in light of farm life at the time. Which was brutal.
erictravis said,
June 1, 2006 at 12:33 pm
True, Klok… at the least the mill workers could, er, unionize
Lew2006 said,
June 1, 2006 at 2:52 pm
Start investing in prisons and detainee transportation companies.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/36282
Between now and 2012, that will be a growth industry.
One guy told me about a co-worker of 8 years who disappeared last month. She and high school honor society son were apparently sent back to Peru. Scary.
Endgame, a project of the Ofice of Detention and Removal that sounds similar to the final solution, and promises to remove all removable aliens by 2012.
Come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together and try to love one another right now.
Dandy said,
June 1, 2006 at 11:13 pm
last time I heard “gee he’s us” was crucified and came back from the dead…had the wounds of crucifixtion to prove it…and will presently return for the rest of his Flox…mention the Good Sheperd and I go Canadian…know what I mean, eh?…really, think about it, 200+ years ago they were incredibly ignorant of so many things and ideas about the world we take for granted…I don’t condon brutality…but, the Declaration of Independence and its Ideas and Precepts set in motion a Revolution that continues to this day…in looking for authority to begin a serious break with a King, Uncle Tom turned immediately to the “Laws of Nature” and “Nature’s God”….a complete break also with “the church”…the document then makes some statements about universal human rights and the foundation of government (created for the Safety and Happiness of the People, in a form that their wisdom chooses)…etc..so I keep wanting to draw attention back to those Founding Principles because, in my humble opinion, it would solve global conflict and be a foundation for the removal of tyrrany of all kinds…and eh, what are “they” going to do? call you unAmerican? good for you, Kurt…LOL
Bambi said,
June 4, 2006 at 4:13 pm
Kurt, a sad state of affairs to be sure.
I have a piece put together for this topic on the intolerances that led to the Holocaust (and the millions of Jews, and other minority groups that Hitler attempted to extinguish from the face of the planet), but its on the other computer.
If we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it!
I will see if I can post it at some time in the future.
It’s great to see ‘all’ of your posts and comments!
Bambi said,
June 4, 2006 at 5:20 pm
OK, here it is…
Political and Corporate Greed
Propogation of The Intolerance Movement
and the National ID (RealID) and the USA’s DNA Database
Once upon a time there was a corporation within the USA who – with the aid of their newly acquired tabulator technology – helped another country’s dictator exterminate millions of targeted individuals.
This technology of the day was the precursor to the current computer. That company/corporation, despite the regime’s later demise, apparently still received all the money made through that connection.
Whether they were caught in the middle of a very bad situation as expressed by one of the two BusinessWeekOnline articles is really irrelevant to the concerns I will raise here. The outcome was the same.
Now, our USA government has mandated a technologial National ID (Real ID) that will have all kinds of personal information about each and every person within the US. They wanted this so badly ‘to protect us from terrorism’ that it was pushed for and finally signed it into law last year — in 2005. Concurrently, countries around the world, are also pushing for their own digital National IDs and/or Passports. All in the name of protecting their citizens and the citizens of other countries from Terrorism.
And now, as the WashingtonPost Online article below discusses, a growing DNA database of Americans in the US (and not just of violent criminals as it was originally intended), is beginning to cause some concerns.
In light of they many interweaving ‘laws’ already in place and some on the way .. there may well be something to be concerned about.
Vast DNA Bank Pits Policing Vs. Privacy
Data Stored on 3 Million Americans
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/02/AR2006060201648.html?sub=AR
—snip—
Brimming with the genetic patterns of more than 3 million Americans, the nation’s databank of DNA “fingerprints” is growing by more than 80,000 people every month, giving police an unprecedented crime-fighting tool but prompting warnings that the expansion threatens constitutional privacy protections.
With little public debate, state and federal rules for cataloging DNA have broadened in recent years to include not only violent felons, as was originally the case, but also perpetrators of minor crimes and even people who have been arrested but not convicted.
—snip—
And this;
—snip—
At least 38 states now have laws to collect DNA from people found guilty of misdemeanors, in some cases for such crimes as shoplifting and fortunetelling. At least 28 now collect from juvenile offenders, too, according to information presented last month at a Boston symposium on DNA and civil liberties, organized by the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics.
The federal government and five states, including Virginia, go further, allowing DNA scans of people arrested. At least four other states plan to do so this year, and California will start in 2009.
—snip—
and this;
—snip—
“We already take blood from every newborn to perform government-mandated tests . . . so the right to take a sample has already been decided,” Asplen said. “And we have a precedent for the government to maintain an identifying number of a person.”
—snip—
When all of this is said and done, how much easier will it be for singling out
specific pockets of people; by religion, political or ethnic background, gender and/or sexual orientation, affiliations, and all confirmed by Real ID and now they have the possiblity of being found more easily and/or ‘confirmed’ by the national DNA database?
Too 1984? Let’s look at some history…
From the USHMM ebsite:
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/index.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005143
—snip—
The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. “Holocaust” is a word of Greek origin meaning “sacrifice by fire.” The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were “racially superior” and that the Jews, deemed “inferior,” were “life unworthy of life.” During the era of the Holocaust, the Nazis also targeted other groups because of their perceived “racial inferiority”: Roma (Gypsies), the handicapped, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). Other groups were persecuted on political and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals.
—snip—
Once a mystery — How the Nazi machine was so precise and efficient in their evil. Thanks to the book(s) by Edwin Black, if we have eyes and minds to see, the understooding will dawn on how this was accomplished making use of advances in technology’s precursor to the computer … Hollerith’s tabulator.
From Edwin Black’s book’s website:
http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/
—snip—
Only after Jews were identified — a massive and complex task that Hitler wanted done immediately — could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labor, and, ultimately, annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation and organizational challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 1930s no computer existed.
—snip—
Now I think that some may be able to make the connection as Eric Black did years after the Holocaust. The connection that was right in front of one’s face at US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
What companies will be involved with this new cash cow? Or caught again in the between a rock and a hard place? Or will the companies that helped build it even be needed later?
A sniplet from the BusinessWeekOnline article entitled IBM, the Holocaust, and My Grandfather by Sam Jaffe:
http://www.businessweek.com/print/bwdaily/dnflash/apr2001/nf20010412_601.htm
—snip—
NO BLENDING IN. Now, after reading Black’s diligent but strident book, I have to repaint my mental image of Watson. Take out the gold watch chain and substitute a swastika-laden medal. While I don’t swallow Black’s entire argument — that Watson and IBM were somehow directly responsible for the genocide — I do agree with him that, when it came to Nazi Germany, Watson was an amoral businessman who knowingly did business with murderers.
Thanks to IBM’s punch-card technology, Germany was able to organize a massive census that identified Jews even if only one grandparent had Jewish roots. One of the reasons so few Jews escaped was that they assumed that their traditional method of avoiding persecution would work: blend in with the crowd. The census made that virtually impossible. Even Jews who moved to a new city and assumed new identities were quickly sniffed out by the Nazi demographic machine. IBM’s technology gave
Hitler the advantage.
—snip—
And a second sliplet, same article;
—snip—
REQUIRED READING. But even if the charge against Watson isn’t genocide, he knowingly did business with an evil regime, justifying his decision for three years as business, pure and simple. Watson, if he were alive today, would defend himself by saying that his first duty is to his shareholders. How many times do we hear CEOs use that line while laying off workers, investing in sweatshops, or monopolizing a market?
That’s why Black’s book is so enlightening: It paints a richly textured picture of how a man, and an entire company, can ignore all sense of morality while not once transgressing the lines of business ethics. If nothing else, this book should be required reading for every first-year MBA student.
As you might imagine, IBM has strongly disputed many of Black’s allegations. And one very simple argument in IBM’s favor is that “punch cards didn’t commit genocide in Europe; people did.” That is absolutely true. People following orders activated the showers at Auschwitz, pulled the triggers at Babi Yar, and operated IBM punch-card tabulators in Dachau.
But there’s another lesson from my childhood about my grandfather that has stayed with me all these years. It involves the importance of sometimes breaking rules for a greater good. If only all of those people had simply ignored their orders during the Holocaust. If only Thomas Watson had placed humanity’s needs above those of his shareholders.
—snip—
In time all these national databases could be so easily interconnected, like some colossal connected relational database. Easy pickings for a dictator in the making. This would take time, and it would be done in small slices, very much like that prior dictator did…but could be done very quickly once they acquire the needed pieces to the puzzle … personal data on citizens.
How much more surgically efficient could the previous empire have risen given today’s technological advances used for these databases and in other areas as well. And the countries of the world, including ours (US), through fear of terrorism, will open the door to make it all that much easier. The very tools meant to combat terrorism may well become the very tools of future terrorism.
And how much of this personal data is already in the hands of evil men as it is through a myriad of data breaches already?
PrivacyRights.org
http://www.privacyrights.org
Some things truly are so powerful, they can only be used for good or evil.
I would imagine that Hollerith would be spinning in his grave if he knew what one of the biggest commercially marketed uses of his tabulator was during World War II, and that the company he helped get the market lead through his invention made such use of it and may have actually profited from the blood of millions, whether by hook or by crook.
Probing IBM’s Nazi connection
http://news.com.com/Probing+IBMs+Nazi+connection/2009-1082_3-269157.html
Did IBM Really Cozy Up to Hitler?
IBM AND THE HOLOCAUST
The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany
and America’s Most Powerful Corporation
http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/01_12/b3724036.htm
IBM, the Holocaust, and My Grandfather
The intersection of business ethics and profits can be a confusing place — where heroes are hard to find
http://www.businessweek.com/print/bwdaily/dnflash/apr2001/nf20010412_601.htm
http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/
http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/excerpts.php
http://www.edwinblack.com/
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Printonly/Hollerith.html
http://www.history.rochester.edu/steam/hollerith/
US Holocaust Memorial Museum
http://www.ushmm.org/
The Holocaust – Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust
Holocaust Survivors
http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org/
When one thinks of the connections between things, one has to wonder what companies will be making the most from the ‘connection’ with government on the institution of the Real ID and the DNA database technologies.
And one also has to think about history and how one dictator abused the technology of the day to make genocide so much more efficient.
And finally one has to think about whether our government or any government has the right to have that much information on the citizenry.
And what happens if one of the countries that has these technological ‘tools’ in place falls to evil men, from within or without, and what that capability would mean to these evil men …
Just some things to think about.
Dandy said,
June 4, 2006 at 6:30 pm
to add to Bambi’s thoughts, I might point out that it’s utlimately “the People” that allow all this things to happen…where are the protests? where’s the sense of social responsibility?…and more importantly, who is the next Amreikan Idol? best wishes to all…