RE: Off-Topic, New Orleans Images

DEAR GREG,
        For some really paranoid bedtime reading, try Pynchon's GRAVITY'S RAINBOW.
It describes the fact that, all through WWII, British Shell was still doing
business with (Nazi occupied) Dutch Shell while the Dutch Shell tower in
Holland was being used for the immediate post launch guidance for the V-2
rockets on their way to England. Lovely...yes?
        As a young man, just before joining the armed forces in 1942, my father
worked for Merck Chemicals. He found it odd that he received special
overtime to work at night unloading newly arrived chemical drums marked "I.
G. FARBEN" into unmarked drums. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. GRAVITY'S RAINBOW alleges
that WWII was the first international corporate war. The nasty boys
(Adolph, Benito, etc) that made the press were just cover.
        And the beat goes on...
                CHEERS!
                        BOB

 Please check my website: http://www.bobkiss.com/

-----Original Message-----
From: Greg Schmitz [mailto:gws1@columbia.edu]
Sent: Sunday, April 30, 2006 10:58 PM
To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
Subject: Re: Off-Topic, New Orleans Images

Sadly Tom I think Phillip may have a point, though he may not have
expressed it clearly enough. How we perceive the world around us has
much to do with our politics and the information that is made available
to us. Over the course of the last 50 or so years the tax dollars that
you and I have payed to our government have been used to KILL millions
of civilians world wide. In SE Asia the numbers of dead non-combatants
that I've seen range between 1.5 and 4 million (much higher if you count
the deaths that occurred as a result of our destabilization of the
region). Then there were the people (non-combatants) that died as a
result of directed fire from U.S. gunships in El Salvador and perhaps
Nicaragua and Guatemala (n.b. it took retired US Special Forces
troops,who were being denied benefits for reasons of "plausible
deny-ability," appearing on television to bring those atrocities to the
attention of the general public). We killed a pile of folks in Grenada
and Panama too. If you include deaths attributable to the regimes that
we have trained and equipped, the numbers sore and become staggering.
One of the things that always amazes me about the rise of the Third
Reich, noted after the fact, was the ignorance - or claimed ignorance -
of the general population in Germany. I would also remind you that IBM,
Shell Oil and U.S. Steel continued doing business with the Axis Powers
during WWII primarily through foreign subsidiaries (those numbers on
concentration camp inmates arms were indexed using a system designed by
IBM and the German planes that bombed Guernica were fueled and lubed
with products supplied by Shell Oil). In OUR quest to make the world
safe for our corporations we have committed atrocities galore - perhaps
now that our government is beginning to use some of the tactics &
techniques that have in the past been reserved for use elsewhere in the
world the U.S. public will begin to question why nearly 50% of the money
they pay to the Federal government every years is being used for
military hardware and debt service on our military debt.

Truly -greg

Tom Ferguson wrote:
> Phillip, this is a very disturbing statement. I strongly object to
> being called a Nazi (reich-wing supporters) by association! I believe
> you owe me and this entire list an apology.
>
> Think about, from a world perspective, how similar the two major USA
> parties are. To insist that only your brand of politician is good and
> the rest of us Nazis is far too bigoted and narrow minded to even make
> sense.
>
> As hurt as I am having to read this insult on a photo board, I'm even
> more saddened by the apparent lack of concern from the other board
> members and minders. No-one here cares that Phillip just declared a
> large part of the American population Nazis? I'm use to the arts
> community being left wing, always has been and probably always will
> be. But seriously, this sort of slander and hate is OK with everyone
> here?
>
> And finally, the worst of this is that Phillip has denigrated the
> memory of the true Nazi victims. Phillip's post is nothing but a mean
> spirited trivialization of a true world tragedy. Give a handful of the
> folks in 1942 at Dauchau a choice between the Nazis and the
> Republicans and lets put Phillip's hate speech to a test.
>
> Tom
Received on Mon May 1 00:23:45 2006