Alleged Nazi Guard Faces 29,700 Murder Charges...And Has One Unique American Defender
German prosecutors have formally charged a suspected Nazi death camp guard with 27,900 counts of being an accessory to murder.
Eighty-nine-year-old John Demjanjuk was extradited from the US in May.[..]
Demjanjuk says he was a Red Army soldier who spent the war as a Nazi prisoner and never hurt anyone.
Demjanjuk had originally been deported to Israel in 1986, accused by Holocaust survivors of being "Ivan the Terrible", a particularly brutal guard at the Treblinka camp. His conviction was overturned based on evidence that suggested reasonable doubt that he was not that guard. In April of this year, he was deported to Germany to face charges of being an accessory to the murder for being a guard at another death camp.
But there's one American that thinks that Demjanjuk got a raw deal: none other than MSNBC's resident racist (and now alleged Nazi apologist) Patrick J. Buchanan. (link goes to VDare)
John Demanjuk And The True Haters
On Good Friday, John Demjanjuk, 89 and gravely ill, was ordered deported to Germany to stand trial as an accessory to the murder of 29,000 Jews—at Sobibor camp in Poland.
Sound familiar? It should. It is a re-enactment of the 1986 extradition of John Demjanjuk to Israel to be tried for the murder of 870,000 Jews—at Treblinka camp in Poland.
How many men in the history of this country have been so relentlessly pursued and remorselessly persecuted?
But wait...it gets better. Buchanan actually likens Demjanjuk to Christ in his persecution:
But if Germans wish to prosecute participants in the Holocaust, why not round up some old big-time Nazis, instead of a Ukrainian POW.
Answer: They cannot. Because the Germans voted an amnesty for themselves in 1969. So now they must find a Slav soldier they captured—and Heinrich Himmler's SS conscripted and made a camp guard, if he ever was a camp guard—to punish in expiation for Germany's sins.
The spirit behind this un-American persecution has never been that of justice tempered by mercy. It is the same satanic brew of hate and revenge that drove another innocent Man up Calvary that first Good Friday 2,000 years ago.
All I can say is "Wow".
We torture people. What else is there to say, except of course they would rally against one of their own being prosecuted for war crimes.
...but I have to agree with Buchanan on this one. Search the "Operation Paperclip" archives and hundreds of real participants-- real guilty ones who were there-- will be found. The urge to prosecute someone (anyone) to support a hate-fest isn't only found in this case. There are plenty of people locked up simply to satisfy the urge to prosecute.
"Courtesy is owed. Respect is earned. Love is given." --Unknown author, found in Guide to Texas Etiquette by Kinky Friedman
you mean, like Gitmo?
Paperclip brought over hundreds, maybe more, high-level Nazi scientists and officers. The OSS used numerous specialists in their field (with new identities, of course) and of course we all know about Werner von Braun, the top German rocket scientist, working for NASA all those years. I believe I've seen some information that Dr. Mengeles continued his "research" here, is another good example. Others concerned with mind control and experimentation were also included.
"Courtesy is owed. Respect is earned. Love is given." --Unknown author, found in Guide to Texas Etiquette by Kinky Friedman
.......the rethuglican party.
"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative.”
- John Stuart Mill
Mengeles fled to Argentina and died there in 1979. He spent the intervening years as the most hunted criminal on the planet.
Operation Paperclip is a favored target of distortion among conspiracy theorists, but the reality is more prosaic and now, for the most part, declassified. The US carted home a large part of Germany engineering and scientific establishment as spoils of war.
I think Buchanan is an absolute moron on most subjects, but in this instance he is correct about Demjanjuk. I have never believed Demjanjuk is Ivan the Terrible. This has been in the local news here in northeast Ohio for decades, and the majority of people think just what you stated - the urge to prosecute anyone for the crimes of the prison guards is what drove this and continues to drive this case.
Pat's talent used to be that he could connect with the 'mushy middle' by being somewhat witty and vague about his bottom line (I know, I know - sometimes not so much). But after watching his current meltdown, especially on Rachel's show, he seems to have jumped the shark. He seems to be enjoying digging deeper into a comforting hole of resentment.
I will mute him from now on. He's had his chance and he's blown it.
Believe he is entering into some sort of newer stage of Alzheimers- not so careful now- just increasingly relying upon yet unaffected and fixed-brain-stem relex of his baser tendancies
I've been wondering lately if Pat is affiliated with "The Family" written about by Jeff Sharlet (the Cult on C Street Gang) since it has both a racist past and a history of aiding actual Nazis during the 1940's. I haven't read that he's a member, but there are concentric levels of intimacy radiating outward from the center, and he could be connected to their racist philosophy this way.
I like your idea of muting Pat from now on; the same goes for Chuck Todd, Defender of the Torture Administration.
But if he's provably a concentration camp guard guilty of murder, why shouldn't he be prosecuted? I hope we're still pursuing the CIA torturers when they're 89.
lock him up. He's a war criminal. Just because we don't prosecute ours--heck, we promote 'em!'--is no reason a killer should stay free.
Should we be prosecuting 80 some year olds from a war that took place almost 70 years ago? That's the question I asked myself for quite some time. If you haven't seen it, you should watch the six part documentary from PBS called Auschwitz. This was stuff I never learned in High School some 28 years ago. The answer to my question was yes. Definatley yes. These people even after the war were unrepentant. The thing that hit me most was at the end of each episode they'd have a panel on to discuss the current episode. After the last episode they had high school kids discussing it and it took a 17 year old kid to sum it up for me. There is still so much xenophobia in this country that it could and chances are will happen again. IT did and it is. Rwanda and Sudan.
This is what the Beck's, Hannity's, Coulter's and limbaugh's are promoting. The Rwanda genocide was started by propaganda on the airwaves. We can see it today with their vile and violent attacks on the left. They have had some success without them doing any of the killing. We learn nothing as a culture from history. Not a thing.
is intended to be a factual statement
I did watch that documentary. What I saw were people that were so far into the denial of what they had been part of that they could not bring themselves to see what monstrous things that they had done.
I do agree with your last point. We are a nation of ahistorical boobs and that saddens me.
The monstrous things they did and the denial was because of the message that was taught. If they are not intelligent enough not to realize what they were doing was so wrong and they had so much power, then they deserve the fate of a serial killer or a child rapist. And the people spreading the convincing message deserved/deserves a far worse fate. This is where the Becks's and Limbaugh's come in. They're spreading the message to weak minded having them do their their dirty work. We need to learn from the Nazi history. It was the message more than the acts that caused genocide.
is intended to be a factual statement
In a word, yes. There's no statute of limitation on murder or torture.
This seems to come across as typical of the way justice seems to work nowadays. The little guppies are the ones that get prosecuted. Nearly 30,000 counts of accessory to murder? For a guard at a prison camp? Really?
Is the guy an asshole? Possibly! But he was already tried once and there was reasonable doubt found. This strikes me as jurisdiction shopping and I do not like that no matter what the crime.
He is damn near 90 and I will be shocked if he lives through a trial. The crimes were done 65+ years ago. How are they possibly going to get a conviction? Any eyewitness testimony will be so highly suspect as to be useless.
This strikes me as a waste of time and money for such a little fish but if Germany wants to try him I guess that is their right.
So, what is the next shiny object (after Pat ... who we all know is a loon) that we are supposed to pay attention to instead of making sure that health care reform actually happens and that someone is watching the banks before they pick our pockets again. This just seems to be the kind of thing that is floated out there to distract us and we rose to the bait as usual
he sat there and watched what was happening and either did nothing or assisted in the murders
i dont shed even one tear for him
at least he made it to is late 80s
millions didnt
he is a filthy excuse for a human being and deserves everything that is coming to him
Did you assume that the first time, when he was Ivan the Terrible?
"Courtesy is owed. Respect is earned. Love is given." --Unknown author, found in Guide to Texas Etiquette by Kinky Friedman
If they believe he stood by and watched, possibly actually killed someone, then yes...he is subject to full prosecution.
If he's found not guilty, then that ends it. If he's found guilty he should be punished accordingly.
Whether it's six days, six months or sixty years...a crime is a crime is a crime. There should be no statute of limitations...most especially when it comes to the Holocaust.
He's been found innocent before. So they are trying him again. That's the brutality of it. I don't know if he DID or DID NOT kill people. That's not what I am saying.
And the Holocaust, from my research, is highly speculative on numbers. Auschwitz death tolls have been revised from 4 million to 1.5 million and now are under 275,000. That's a BIG BIG difference. I love all people of the world and don't wish to come across as some sort of hater, but these facts are still facts.
'The devil crept into Heaven, God overslept on the 7th, the New World Order was born on Sept 11th.' - Immortal Technique
Only in the mind of David Irving and his fellow travelers is the reality of the Holocaust in doubt.
Holocaust deniers give humans a bad name.
It's called...
They want their pound of flesh.
'The devil crept into Heaven, God overslept on the 7th, the New World Order was born on Sept 11th.' - Immortal Technique
Nicole he posted that article months ago, get real.
Why is it that whiles males are just suppose to keep there mouth shut and get railroaded over everything?
The sad part is in the not to distant future your kids are going to lose out on a oppurtunity because they are white and then your going to wake up and realize you did it to yourself...
The straw man you are flogging is self evident BS. White males getting railroaded? Name 10 cases. For every single one of them I will name you 100 or 1000 cases of a woman or a person of color getting passed over because they were not a white male.
That was a feeble attempt, please try again
Blacks and Latinos have had their boots on the necks of white males for waaaaaaay too long.
"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative.”
- John Stuart Mill
even trolls can play victim.
And Demjanjuk was formally charged this week.
[Raising hand]White male here, and I've never felt any pressure to shut up because of it. Maybe because Buchanan- with whom I sorta happen to agree over this one, double jeopardy and jurisdiction shopping and all that- has to play the race card regarding , in this case, Jews(yeah, they're always looking to crucify someone, right?), he should shut the fuck up.
And you know that Nicole and her children are white how?
Additionally, my kid is mostly Irish, fair-skinned and rosy-cheeked. I've got absolutely no fear that he'll face any discrimination in his life. OTOH, my biracial niece and nephew have a tougher row to hoe. I've worked in shops where white racists nakedly discriminated against blacks and latinos, refusing to hire perfectly qualified applicants, but hiring less qualified white people who would routinely fuck up assignment after assignment.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
(Gasp!)
The reason YOU feel "railroaded" and taken advantage of, "Backtrack," is because you don't have an education. You can't spell, so you probably can't keep a job. Go back to school before screaming
"VICTIM!"
...it is never prosecuted. Only the losers get tarred with that brush.
"Courtesy is owed. Respect is earned. Love is given." --Unknown author, found in Guide to Texas Etiquette by Kinky Friedman
there, no winner or loser is declared and Bush/Cheney and company cannot be prosecuted. Shouldn't there be a statute of limitations on war crimes? Isn't there one running against the prosecution of Bush and Cheney? But not against Demjanjuk? And if he is a citizen of the US, shouldn't the same laws that apply to Bush and Cheney apply to all other citizens, too? Huh?
At which camp was Christ a guard?
"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative.”
- John Stuart Mill
except to point out that the wheels of justice had to turn for a few decades.
From the time he threw away his uniform until the day he was deported, he taught many people about how to avoid justice. These were secondary crimes he'll never be tried for but then again maybe in another way.
Middle aged and elderly Jewish citizens were rounded up to see Ivan.
When Ivan is finally convicted, that will send a message to those looking for an excuse to huddle next to Iran-like denial in the present day.
And we're not a nation of history forgetting buffoons. Assuming that all is lost is not a mindset that works well with these problems.
Where are all the high horses coming from? In our names, Bush and Cheney committed war crimes--torture among them. I don't hear anyone here calling for them to be punished. And what does this mean? "When Ivan is finally convicted, that will send a message to those looking for an excuse to huddle next to Iran-like denial in the present day." His prosecutors were wrong about him once already, what if they're wrong again? Won't you at least feel a little contrite? Hypocritical. That is the word that comes to my mind.
For years now. And I'm hoping something happens... but historical precedent is against that.
"Courtesy is owed. Respect is earned. Love is given." --Unknown author, found in Guide to Texas Etiquette by Kinky Friedman
Then you haven't been listening these past few years, have you?
Pukeanan would agree with any racist murderer.
He knows what length of a shaky branch he's crawled out on with this.
If he starts a defense fund, he'll find himself in a 4 frame Brady Bunch screen with Coulter, Hannity and Beck. On Fox.
It is utter, total horseshit. Just look at the viewpoint advanced by Buchanan. The man is a total friggin' loon, he is truly out there in right field. When I read the preview for this book when it was published I was astounded at just how wrong he got it, it is straight out of the Dick Cheney book of conventional wisdom
Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War
Radix Omnium Malorum Avaritia
conventional wisdom is on par with conventional ovens.
I grew up not far where where he lived. Seven Hills, Ohio. (cleveland)
And I remember the events in the mid 80's quite vividly. Mountains of coverage.
And if I remember correctly, Demjanjuk would have been executed in Israel had not the Soviet Union fallen, and new evidence surfaced that he wasn't whom the prosecution claimed. (no shit)
It's an interesting case. The guy almost hung on a false claim and here he is in deep shit again.
the atrocities. They apparently have to double up now. He's very old. Maybe this should be left to God.
I'm afraid may be too merciful
Thankfully, the only pain and suffering that will occur now is when this beast is forced to recognize his past. I'm glad he lived long enough
Radix Omnium Malorum Avaritia
.first he was sent to one country to be tried as a guard at a prison.....that was not successful because they could not prove it was true.......now he is sent to another country to be tried as a guard at yet another prison......is there something wrong with this picture????
years of investigation, they believe they've found out just which guard he was at which concentration camp. They know Demjanjuk lied about his wartime service to get into the US. Apparently they now know what he lied about. Germany has a very mixed record for prosecuting its Nazi war criminals, so one hopes they're trying to get this right.
Pat Buchanan is the last person John Demjanjuk needs to have on his side.
Buchanan will frame this as a white victim/backlash persecution.
That being said, the fact that this guy was tried and acquitted of a different crime as a different person in a different place, does raise some eyebrows. Hopefully there will be some judicial watchdogs making sure that the evidence presented is legitimate, and this man does not have to prove his innocence to keep from being found guilty.
front of MSNBC's cameras. Putting aside the facts of this man's case, it shows that Pat is a Nazi sympathizer through and through.
And other Nazi sympathizers are attracted to Pat like flies on shit.
"The greatest tyranny is censoring information in order to be better able to control people." - Cristina Saralegui
Seems like Pat is calling for empathy again, doesn't he?
appears to be last bastion of 'justification' for the GOP in its present incarnation. Yet methinks Pat's quite overdue for his turn out into the (serene, however curiously guilty) pasture. He's been a-tiltin' mightily!!
On his interview with Rachael Maddow shows his distortion of history painting white people as the superior race.
He claims the "American Civil War" was 100% white. HELLO MCFLY! The entire cause was over slavery over African Americans! In which the slaves/freed ones fought to end it. With the exception of Confederate's forcing them to by gunpoint on the front line as human shields.
Also, when it comes to WW2 if it were not for the Philippines we would not have had such an advantage against the Japanese due to southern bases as opposed to eastern coming from Hawaii.
Our alliances with foreign nations has made us who we are today. Now every other nation hates us due to dragging them into an unjustifiable war wasting excess expenses.
I find it ironic that America was founded to free us from Tyrannical religious Europe to end up becoming the same thing we fled from with our founding fathers rolling in their graves. To top it off.. Europe is more Atheist today then ever in it's history.
Side note: Pirate's of back in the day had such power due to freeing of slaves to become pirates leading to successful and interesting lives.
My great-great-great grandfather, who became a citizen of the USA when Texas was annexed from Mexico, was also a captain in the Confederate Army.
I believe the last Confederate general to surrender period was Stand Watie, a Cherokee tribal leader (and a distant relative of mine).
Buchanan has the historical insight of Mr. Magoo!
"The greatest tyranny is censoring information in order to be better able to control people." - Cristina Saralegui
Your grasp of history, Bob Dobbs, suggests you may have been out in the hall those particular days.
Jean Lafitte, one of the last of the pirates, took on escaping slaves and then sold them to people like Jim Bowie and his brother. Everyone became richer that way. I don't see your "pirates freed the slaves" proof.
The Cherokee fought on the side of the Confederacy, for example (Cool! Someone else was writing this as I was! But Watie was captured just before the end of the war; however, he was the longest surviving Confederate general.) A very large number of Irish immigrants fought on both sides, while they were still considered second class citizens in the North ("No Irish need apply-- except as cannon fodder.") And in Missouri, Order #10 meant one's land and home was forfeit if caught assisting the Confederates. That alone created a large number of outlaws, including a couple of brothers named James. They certainly didn't have slaves; few Southerners were wealthy enough for that. Slavery was secondary to property rights/states' rights as a primary factor.
And FDR set up the scenario that created Pearl Harbor, as a way to bring Nazi sympathizers such as Charles Lindberg into the rabid patriot mind-set. The Marianas were far closer to Japan than the Philippines, and liberated sooner.
The slave labor of the camps enriched many non-German elites, such as Prescott Busch. Why wasn't he prosecuted?
"Courtesy is owed. Respect is earned. Love is given." --Unknown author, found in Guide to Texas Etiquette by Kinky Friedman
Lovely and truthful counter-analysis!
...but for:
Sorry, I don't buy it. It excuses the fascist Japanese government for actions such as the Rape of Nanking. Was Roosevelt just supposed to keep feeding that government the materiel it required to enslave and massacre the rest of Asia?
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
Pearl Harbor was going to happen because he recognized that if the Japanese attacked, it would make an American declaration of war inevitable.
The Purple intercepts? Intercepted but not decoded.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
From Wikipedia: "Four of the seceding states, the Deep South states of South Carolina,[29] Mississippi,[30] Georgia,[31] and Texas,[32] issued formal declarations of causes, each of which identified the threat to slaveholders’ rights as the cause of, or a major cause of, secession. ... In what later became known as the Cornerstone Speech, C.S. Vice President Alexander Stephens declared that the "cornerstone" of the new government "rest[ed] upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth".
The "state's right" the rich men who fomented the secession wanted was slavery. The war was fought so the South could hold slaves, and there were many poor people in the South--in fact, whole areas-- who recognized it and fought for the Union.
What nonsense. The first state to seceed, S. Carolina, was the only Confederate state where a majority of whites owned slaves. The Confederates themselves couched their treason in explicitly pro-slavery language. All that nonsense about 'property rights' and 'states rights' and 'economic system' are all code words for slavery. To pretend otherwise is to declare oneself a friend of slavery.
The Union's real failure was allowing the Southern aristocracy to survive the war more or less unchanged. Every person who owned a slave or served as an office in the Confederate army should have been permanently forbidden from voting or owning property.
And that nonsense about FDR setting up Pearl Harbor has been thoroughly and completely discredited.
You do realize that the Japanese struck the Phillipines as they were hitting Pearl Harbor, right? And that they controlled the former by the end of January of '42?
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
had taken it from Spain in the Spanish-American war, betrayed its independence movement, and killed hundreds of thousands of Filipinos who were fighting for their independence against our imperialism? The Philippines was our first Vietnam.
It's not as if the Filipino's aided the Japanese in conquering the US forces. The archipelago had gone from colony to commonwealth status in '35, and plans for full independence in the '40's were interrupted by the Japanese invasion.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
and there isnt a nazi war criminal that pat wouldnt defend...on the grounds that everyone accused was a dupe of the soviets
pat is a jew hating racist bastard...nothing new here
Buchanan HAS TO GO! How about posting the msnbc e-mail so all C&Lers can flood the network with demands that this anti-semitic racist be removed from their programming. He has no business commenting on anything. Send him back to his cave where he belongs. There he can light candles to Richard Nixon and David Duke until he dies. But there is no justification for having this man on the airwaves. NONE.
That is an issue- isn't it?!
Is that the sound of Pat hoisting himself on his own petard?
How far over the line will he be permitted to step?
"How deep is the ocean?
How high is the sky?"
Has anyone found (or noted) over the years the increasing stridency of PB's voice?! (Which, to begin with, was never a truly full throttled baritone, by any means) Is it due to lack of testosterone, atrophying vocal musculature (due to shriveling old age, for ex.) or rather increasingly desperate attempts to make himself more relevant, etc etc? Please respond with your thoughts/hypotheses....Thx
Is he simply wearing it out by overuse of the shrill diatribe?
"Courtesy is owed. Respect is earned. Love is given." --Unknown author, found in Guide to Texas Etiquette by Kinky Friedman
It sounds like aging to me.
If this guy is who they say he is he's a major league creep and deserves to spend the last days of his life rotting in prison.
But, you know, he could be innocent. As a liberal I believe in the concept of innocent until proven guilty. If the Israelis couldn't convict the guy after charging him with the murder of 870,000 people, maybe Pat, odious as he is, is in the right. And wouldn't that be a kick in the head?
That's why you have freedom of speech. Because even the assholes are right occasionally.
Nighty nite.
He was right about Bushco not having a casus belli for the invasion of Iraq. And, imo, he's right that Demjanjuk is getting a raw deal by being tried again.
And while he has every right to do his best Father Coughlin impersonation with:
he's a complete fucking racist for putting it that way. While he's at it he could might as well call the DoJ and State Department the Gypsies who made the nails that were used to crucify Christ.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
Wasn't Buchanan the one whose bright idea it was for Reagan to visit the Nazi cemetery at Bitburg when Buchanan was Reagan's Communications Director? And hasn't Buchanan expressed admiration for Hitler and said that the US should not have been fighting the Nazis during World War II but instead should have fought the Soviet Union? Yes to both questions.
...guards at two different prisons (if that is, in fact, what has happened) would seem to be grounds for reasonable doubt, especially after more than 60 years. When a person is 89 years old and it's been decades since the crimes were committed (even genocide), I'd say that the "reasonable doubt" standard, which, after all, still allows many wrongful convictions for crimes committed within the past year or two, is inadequate. Guilty beyond any doubt seems more appropriate. Since that is an almost impossible standard to meet, absent a credible admission of guilt, I'd say let this guy die in peace.
Whatever good might come from convicting him, if he is guilty, couldn't possibly make up for the evil inflicted on him if he is innocent.
I hate to be on Buchanan's side on anything, but prosecuting this guy seems like a horrible idea. Let's let the International Criminal Court try Bush and Cheney instead. No chance of mistaken identity there. And Yoo. And Alberto. And Paul W. And Rumsfeld. And [name your villain].
While I agree with everyone here that Pat Buchanan is a friggin moronic bigot. I have no idea if this guy did anything wrong and find it amazing he's still being hounded after 20 some years. He was on trial before and countless witnesses old and completely out-of-it swore he was a killer. They were all wrong. I think too many years have gone by for this guy to be convicted with reliable testimony, so why bother.
and the Soviets had concocted a false ID card to frame Demjanjuk as a way to attack Ukrainian nationalists.
If the documentary evidence is there that Demjanjuk is guilty, why not try him? You wouldn't call it hounding if he had helped murder your family.
It took us getting a black president and a latino woman for me to realize that Pat Buchanan was a truly racist and vile person.
I think anyone guilty of serious war crimes should be punished including the victors, some of whom have been named above. The banality of the death camps as presented in the recent book of photographs of death camp staff during their recreation and in the PBS Independent Lense piece regarding the daughter of war criminals meeting with some of their victims.. is a horrifying testament to humanity and we need to face it. As far as that goes, the employer who pays 'wages' which don't support basic needs is a horrifying example of humanity as well.. I really know next to nothing about Demanjuk or how ears age but I can't help but observing that the ears of the young man who was suppose to be the guard, don't look like the old man's
First off, I've seen "Operation Paperclip" come up at least a couple of times and as disgusting as it was what those guys did, the justification for that Operation was this - they were either coming here or the USSR was going to get them and as evil, and they were/are evil, as the Nazis were, they weren't stupid. Sadly, these scientists that were brought over here helped with a lot of research and advancements for the United States which means, had we not brought them here, the balance in the world may have shifted in a somewhat different manner.
NOW, all that being said, these guys should still be prosecuted for war crimes. They just should if there is evidence that they committed them. Just because you rescued thousands of lives through an act (this is just a hypothetical), doesn't mean you instantly get a pass on all those you've killed.
Now I'd like to talk about MSNBC and make 3 points:
1) Pat Buchanan should just be fired. The fact that they've kept him on this long (the guy still defends Nixon to an extent) as some sort of expert is amazing to me.
2) If Olbermann doesn't at least include Pat with this guy in the Worst Persons segment, I'm going to find myself questioning the segment every day from here on.
AND 3) Pat's going to be on Morning Joe Monday morning, I'm almost certain of that as he seems to be... you know what, he just is the crazy old man wandering the halls of the NBC studios and they grab him to fill a slot on various shows throughout the day. Anyway, my main point for #3 is that the Morning Joe crew will just treat him with an "oh grandpa" type of attitude like he's just adorable I'm sure... and he's not obviously. The one that just makes me scream every time is Mika. I used to think she was smarter than she appears to be on that show.
1) I agreed at first that Buchanan should be fired for his increasingly racist and sexist rants which get more shrill and over the top every time he opens his mouth, but then maybe he is useful for the left and independents, to observe just how ridiculous the conservative right really is and let him help damage his own party by digging a deeper hole for them. I haven't decided which way I think on this just yet.
2) Olbermann should have Pat as a Worst Person - but will he be ALLOWED by the powers that be at NBC to hang that on one of the other employees? Keith only got to do that to Tucker Carlson after Carlson was no longer employed by NBC.
3) Yeah, that "oh grandpa" or "crazy uncle Pat" shtick is getting old. I hardly ever watch Scarborough - it is no different than some crap on Faux News. And Mika must have been told to not step on the host's toes, she has been put in her place and knows that she is second banana. Now she is just a bobble head. I love when her father comes on and puts Joe in his place, but I don't watch the show to know when he is even going to be on as a guest unless it's mentioned on some other show on MSNBC.
I used to get Morning Joe's short video podcast, but finally wrote to them AND Starbucks to tell them why I was swearing off BOTH for good: Morning Joe for their cluster f**k RepugFest every day, which Mika responds to by giving the camera a shrug and a "look" which means, 'boys will be boys!' and Joe Scarborough puts Mika down worse than my ex-husband used to do to me at the worst point in our marriage. Again, she tolerates all of it, turning to the viewers, pathetically, with "help me" eyes. It's humiliating to watch her. I was watching this to keep an 'eye on the right' but THAT wasn't what was making me so angry; it was Mika's subservience that forced me to quit.
Russian Volunteers in the German Wehrmacht in WorldWar II
by Lt. Gen. Władysław Anders and Antonio Muňoz [ed.]
It is not known when and where exactly the first units of volunteers from the USSR, and from the countries annexed by Russia after 1939, were organized to fight against the Soviets on the German side. Their beginnings were shrouded in great secrecy, for fear of Hitler who was categorically opposed to any form of participation of Soviet citizens in the war against Russia. But needs of the army on the Eastern Front, and the enthusiastic desire shown by hundreds of captured and escaped officers, by thousands of Soviet soldiers, and by almost the entire local population induced German commanders to accept the services of volunteers to fight the Soviet regime even against the clear orders of the Supreme Command. When the existence of numerous formations of Eastern volunteers came to light with the passing of time, Hitler was unpleasantly surprised. The hopeless military situation of the Reich forced him to approve this state of affairs.
The creation of eastern volunteer formations was patronized - secretly, of course - by the Section of Foreign Armies East of the Intelligence Department of the Army General Staff, the so-called "Fremde Heere Ost" Section; Officers of this section saw the importance of an anti-Soviet Russian Army fighting on the German side and its possible effect on the outcome of the war. The idea was fully appreciated also by the propaganda section of the Supreme Command, the "Wehrmacht Propaganda IV," or WPrIV for short, which dealt with propaganda on both sides of the eastern front and had under its control special camps for selected prisoners who were being trained for active propaganda in psychological warfare against Soviet Russia.
A number of German generals also supported the organization of eastern volunteer formations, but for a long time without success. In the autumn of 1941, Field Marshal von Bock had sent to Hitler's Headquarters a detailed project for the organization of a Liberation Army of some 200,000 Russian volunteers, and for the formation of a local government in the province of Smolensk;
The forerunner of the volunteer formations was a voluntary auxiliary service, of a para-military character, which was started in the autumn of 1941 by the German Commands on the front. On their own initiative, they organized auxiliary units of various services, made up of Soviet deserters, prisoners, and volunteers from among the local population. These so-called "Hilfswillige," or "Hiwi," were employed as sentries, drivers, store- keepers, workers in depots, etc. The experiment surpassed all expectations.
The next step taken by the German Commands in the east behind Hitler's back was the organization of voluntary military troops, called "Osttruppen," clad in German uniforms and designed to guard communication lines, fight Soviet partisans in the rear of the German armies, and sometimes even hold less important sectors of the front.
so many know that Obama and his bunch are war criminals and nothing is being done about it. http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/01/o...
americanthinker.com is a crazy Cancervative site filled with rants, ravings, conspiracy theories, and desperation. Save it.
Buchanan, MSNBC's resident white supremacist would only stick up for one of his brothers.
As far as I'm concerned, Buchanan, and the rest of his racist, backwards, comrades can go straight to hell.
The bulk of his kind are finally dying out, and I say 'good riddance'.
Just hurry up and die, already. Please. Just die.
Make the world a better place with your passing.
I hope, that when you go, it's from testicular cancer, or maybe cancer in the eyes. This way, in your last days, you'll be blind to all the people you hate because of the color of their skin, or whom you just hate for being different.
It would be wonderful irony, don't you think?
So let's see here, he was acquitted in Israel for lack of evidence by their Supreme Court but we have to give Germany a whack at it. Seems to be a familiar occurrence happening here. Back when this country was being founded the King of England would charge you with a crime, and if you weren't found guilty he would try you as many times as it took until a jury would find you guilty. How Un-American.
Double jeopardy is being tried twice for the same crime -- his indictment in Germany is for a different crime than that which he was indicted for in Israel, because it allegedly occurred at a different time and place.
He's being tried as a Nazi war criminal no matter what the particulars. And you believe the charges in Germany?!?! They throw people in prison for exercising free speech.
The principle of double jeopardy applies only to individual criminal acts, not to broad classes of crimes that an individual may have committed. The double jeopardy argument is laughable on its face.
While I disapprove of Germany's laws against Nazi apologia (which is what you're talking about when you mention 'freedom of speech), Demjanjuk isn't accuse of violating them. He's accused of being a murderer and an accomplice to murder. I do believe that their justice system meets reasonable standards of fairness and due process, so there's not objection to him being tried for those crimes in the country in which they occurred (Germany).
Here's a link to what John is being accused in Germany with. It's exactingly the same as was in Israel. And no Double Jeopardy is not funny. At least our Founding Fathers thought not. http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/nlnet/con...
from http://www.realchange.org/buchanan.htm:
Buchanan is the most prominent defender of accused Nazis in America. The most famous case is that of John Demanjuk, who was accused of being an infamous death camp guard named Ivan the Terrible. Buchanan proclaimed his innocence for years, against ample criticism, and felt vindicated when an Israeli court declared there was not enough evidence to convict Demanjuk of being Ivan.
Buchanan continues to declare that Demanjuk has been proved "innocent". Actually, a key piece of evidence (from German documents) that exonerated him as Ivan showed Demanjuk to be a willing guard at Sobibor, another extermination camp where 250,000 died. Even the National Review, while generally defending Demanjuk and Buchanan's support for him, concedes that "Demanjuk was probably guilty of being a lesser accomplice in the Nazi machinery of genocide. That is a fair summary of the Israeli court's findings."
More to the point, Demanjuk is only one of several accused Nazis Buchanan has defended in one way or another. These include Karl Linnas (Buchanan personally appealed to Ed Meese, then Attorney General, to block his deportation to the Soviet Union); Klaus Barbie (Buchanan did not oppose his trial, but argued the US should not have apologized to France for sheltering Barbie after WWII); Arthur Rudolph, a rocket scientist involved in slave labor and severe punishments at a German rocket factory (Buchanan argued his confession was a "lie" while acknowledging he was a "nominal member of the Nazi party and of the SA until 1934"); and Frank Walus (of all the accused, the one most likely innocent.)
One of the most striking examples is Kurt Waldheim, the disgraced former UN leader. Buchanan repeatedly attacked him during his tenure, but once his Nazi past came out, Pat complained that "the ostracism of President Waldheim [has] an aspect of moral bullying and the singular stench of selective indignation." He also rationalized that "like others in Hitler's army, Lt. Waldheim looked the other way."
In each of these cases, Buchanan found a factual reason to defend the accused, an appeal to justice. But put together, it is striking how often he rushes to the defense of accused Nazis. He has also attacked the US Justice Department's Office of Special Investigation (which pursues war criminals) more generally:
"You've got a great atrocity that occurred 35, 45 years ago.... Why... put millions of dollars [into] investigating that?"
I'm sorry if you find it offensive. It's the truth. The Man has been tried and found INNOCENT and is now in a case of double jeopardy and being tried for a second time.
He was a soldier in a time of war and was just a camp guard. Camps where (according to the red cross) 275,000 people were killed. (6 million if you ask less reliable sources)
So with so much death and so much discrepancy, why are he going on trial for a second time?
I have no doubt many died in WW2, and many died in camps through slave labour, but that doesn't make it right to charge a single man for their deaths when he was a guard.
According to the Germans *I* should go to jail for even DEBATING the death toll. As if academic truth must be backed up by law.
The truth needs no such defence.
'The devil crept into Heaven, God overslept on the 7th, the New World Order was born on Sept 11th.' - Immortal Technique
I'm sorry if you find it offensive. It's the truth. The Man has been tried and found INNOCENT and is now in a case of double jeopardy and being tried for a second time.
He was found innocent of being Ivan the Terrible. He was not found innocent of being a concentration camp guard at Sobibor. Therefore, this is not double jeopardy in any conceivable sense of the word.
And your claims about the death toll are lies invented by Nazi apologists.
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