Katyn

[dan2100]

What particular individuals are you proud of helping to kill?

My enemies. And god damn the collateral damage.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Which individuals were your enemies?

[BaalChatzaf]

What particular individuals are you proud of helping to kill?

My enemies. And god damn the collateral damage.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Which individuals were your enemies?

In the 40's the fascists, after the war, armed Commie bastards. Later on Islamofascist bastards.

Who are your enemies?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited May 4, 2010 by BaalChatzaf

[dan2100]

What particular individuals are you proud of helping to kill?

My enemies. And god damn the collateral damage.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Which individuals were your enemies?

In the 40's the fascists, after the war, armed Commie bastards. Later on Islamofascist bastards.

Who are your enemies?

Ba'al Chatzaf

That's classified, of course.

[Martin Radwin]

.

70 years

Compared to what the Nazis did, the Katyn Forest Massacre was a minor event.

The murder of inconvenient people is one of the most common human doings.

Disproportion is an enemy of clear thinking.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Okay, then would you accept that terrorism today is really a minor issue -- with the far bigger problem being statism? Why? Because statism kills far more people. As, for instance, James Bovard pointed out:

"A core fallacy at the heart of the war on terrorism is that terrorism is worse than almost anything else imaginable. Unfortunately, governments around the world have committed far worse abuses than Al Qaeda or any other terrorist cabal. By treating terrorism as the supreme evil, and insisting that governments can never be guilty of terrorism, the Bush administration makes the crimes of government morally negligible. From 1980 to 2000, international terrorists killed 7,745 people, according to the U.S. State Department. Yet, in the same decades, governments killed more than 10 million people in ethnic cleansing campaigns, mass executions, politically caused famines, wars, and other slaughters. During the 1990s, Americans were at far greater risk of being gunned down by local, state, and federal law enforcement agents than of being killed by international terrorists." -- http://www.strike-the-root.com/4/bovard/bovard2.html

So, when will you start calling for an end to the War on Terror and a beginning to a War on Statism?

Dan,

Thanks for bringing up this quote from James Bovard, which I'm almost certain was from his book "Terrorism and Tyranny". Bovard is the greatest journalist of our generation. I consider him to be for our generation what H. L. Mencken was for his. It's a sign of the state of our culture that most people have never heard of Bovard, while millions of people have read the moronic ravings of Thomas Friedman on the pages of the New York Times. Great minds labor in relative obscurity, while blithering idiots become rich and famous and read by millions.

Martin

[dan2100]

Okay, then would you accept that terrorism today is really a minor issue -- with the far bigger problem being statism? Why? Because statism kills far more people. As, for instance, James Bovard pointed out:

"A core fallacy at the heart of the war on terrorism is that terrorism is worse than almost anything else imaginable. Unfortunately, governments around the world have committed far worse abuses than Al Qaeda or any other terrorist cabal. By treating terrorism as the supreme evil, and insisting that governments can never be guilty of terrorism, the Bush administration makes the crimes of government morally negligible. From 1980 to 2000, international terrorists killed 7,745 people, according to the U.S. State Department. Yet, in the same decades, governments killed more than 10 million people in ethnic cleansing campaigns, mass executions, politically caused famines, wars, and other slaughters. During the 1990s, Americans were at far greater risk of being gunned down by local, state, and federal law enforcement agents than of being killed by international terrorists." -- http://www.strike-th...rd/bovard2.html

So, when will you start calling for an end to the War on Terror and a beginning to a War on Statism?

Dan,

Thanks for bringing up this quote from James Bovard, which I'm almost certain was from his book "Terrorism and Tyranny". Bovard is the greatest journalist of our generation. I consider him to be for our generation what H. L. Mencken was for his. It's a sign of the state of our culture that most people have never heard of Bovard, while millions of people have read the moronic ravings of Thomas Friedman on the pages of the New York Times. Great minds labor in relative obscurity, while blithering idiots become rich and famous and read by millions.

Martin

For some reason, that doesn't bother as much as the reaction one other person gave here.

by the way, that's probably my favorite quote from Bovard. I've deployed it before -- for instance, in online discussions with Tim Starr. I usually get the same reaction from warmongers -- that is, no sense of proportion in what's the bigger threat: terrorism or statism. (This is little different, to me, than people who worry about private crime versus statism. As Rand recognized, the state does far more damage to society than all the private criminals put together, but, sadly, even many seemingly intelligent people are far more worried about the latter while even going so far as to believe on the former can help with the latter problem. This goes even for many Objectivists who would never believe the state is the solution for any other social or personal problem. This only shows how much work remains to be done.)

[algernonsidney]

Wow! That was the excuse Tim Starr gave for not joining the military: health issues.

Daniel, what happened to him? Back in the mid 1990's, he was a principle defender of freedom. I once had a lot of respect for him.

[dan2100]

Wow! That was the excuse Tim Starr gave for not joining the military: health issues.

Daniel, what happened to him? Back in the mid 1990's, he was a principle defender of freedom. I once had a lot of respect for him.

I don't have a clue. I've never met him and only knew about him when he'd entered his warmongering phase.

[Guyau]

Russian Katyn Massacre Archives

US Cover Up for Soviet Ally?

[Brant Gaede]

Damn commies!

--Brant

[Reidy]

The fact that the US helped to cover Katyn up in the interests of wartime unity has been common knowledge for decades.

Footnote: the incident also figured in the 2001 movie Enigma, which was based loosely on the British code-breaking project at Bletchley Park.

[BaalChatzaf]

Robert, notice that each side was also delighted to discover an atrocity, and quickly used it for propaganda purposes: Makes the phrase "Kettle calling the pot black" the understatement of the century (20th).

David; The one problem is that the Soviet atrocities are little discussed in comparison with the Holocaust. The Poles were totally aware of atrocities since they were carried out on them.

The Soviet Atrocity to be discussed is the slaughter of the Ukrainian Kulaks. By body count it was on a par with the slaughter of the Jews in Germany and the areas that they conquered.

The killing of the Poles in Katyn was actually a calculated slaughter not a terror act. The Commies gathered together intellectuals and other worthies that would oppose their efforts to take over Poland and they killed them dead. It was unjust and evil, but not insane. It was pre-emption against political opposition. That, of course, does not excuse it.

Hitler's killing of the Jews was based on a totally insane and unfounded premise or premises.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[anthony]

You still reject philosophy, Bob?

[BaalChatzaf]

You still reject philosophy, Bob?

Metaphysics yes. Metalolgic and metamathematics, no.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[anthony]

You still reject philosophy, Bob?

Metaphysics yes. Metalolgic and metamathematics, no.

Ba'al Chatzaf

What you call the "totally insane" and "unfounded premise" of Hitler, was a metaphysical premise.

(His 'nature of man', versus his 'nature of Jews'.)

[BaalChatzaf]

What you call the "totally insane" and "unfounded premise" of Hitler, was a metaphysical premise.

(His 'nature of man', versus his 'nature of Jews'.)

It was racial hatred. If you want to paint that as philosophy (metaphysics) go ahead.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[anthony]

What you call the "totally insane" and "unfounded premise" of Hitler, was a metaphysical premise.

(His 'nature of man', versus his 'nature of Jews'.)

It was racial hatred. If you want to paint that as philosophy (metaphysics) go ahead.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Do you doubt that AH explicitly and consistently viewed or 'identified' the Aryan race one way, and the Jewish race another? first step always: remove 'Their' humanity, which is their "nature".

This was an evil metaphysical premise through and through, that made the hatred possible.

From this false premise can and will emerge the epistemological falsity of racism - a subset of collectivism.

(A parallel with the blanket condemnation of ALL Muslims - misidentify, collectivize, fear and hate, and

one can rationalize the most extreme actions against them, like the Final Solution.

You don't or won't see the similarity?