CREDO Action, MoveOn, Chemical Warfare in Syria, and the trains to Auschwitz
September 10, 2013 at 1:23 pm | Posted in Fairness | 2 CommentsTags: Anna Galland, Auschwitz, Carrie Olson, chemical warfare, CREDO Action, CREDO Mobile, Eli Pariser, Joan Blades, Jordan Krueger, Justin Ruben, Matt Lockshin, MoveOn, MoveOn.org, Syria, the Holocaust, Wes Boyd, Working Assets
The main entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp (Wikipedia’s caption in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz). Photo by Angelo Celedon (AKA Lito Sheppard) on August 2006.
CREDO Action (an arm of the company CREDO Mobile) , Move On, and like-minded organizations oppose punishing al-Assad’s regime for using chemical weapons.
A previous post has argued that physically punishing the al-Assad regime for this act is essential for preventing a huge amount of cruel, indiscriminate future slaughter.
In the 1940s there occurred a choice that is exactly analogous to the present one.
The question was whether or not to bomb the railroad lines that transported victims to the concentration camps.
Although that question was not posed to the public, if it had been, the exact analog of the position presently taken by CREDO Action and Move On would have been to oppose bombing the railroad lines.
CREDO Action, MoveOn, your position is morally indefensible.
A Deutsche Reichsbahn “Güterwagen” (goods wagon), one type of rail car used for deportations (Wikipedia’s caption, in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz). Photo by Claus-Joachim Dickow, 1 October 2006.
Hungarian Jewish children and an elderly woman on the way to the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau (1944). Many of the very young and very old were murdered immediately upon arrival and were never registered. (Wikipedia’s caption in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz). Photographed by Bernhard Walter, May 1944. Attribution: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-74237-004 / CC-BY-SA .
If you wish to comment on this post but do not see a box where you can submit a comment, that is because WordPress includes the mechanism for commenting only on the page for the individual posting, never on the page that shows all of the recent postings. So click here, scroll to the bottom of the post, and submit your comment.
The ‘No Sochi’ Pledge
September 5, 2013 at 8:04 pm | Posted in Abuse of Office, Enemies of Freedom, Fairness | Leave a commentTags: fair and open competition, gay bashing, gay rights, homophobia, Kathy Lally, Olympics, Philip Kennicott, Russia, Sochi, sports, Washington Post, Will Englund, Winter Olympics
Ice hockey game between the Canadian and Swedish teams during the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz. Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-05472 / CC-BY-SA
There is a justified uproar about the choice of Sochi as the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Sochi is under Russian law, which is hysterically fearful of homosexuality, as if it were contagious. Homosexuals are widely persecuted in Russia, and of course the police do not protect them. See here, here, and here.
It is unlikely that any athlete who is known to be gay or lesbian will be allowed to compete, so the competition will not be free and open. The winners will not necessarily be the best athletes. They will merely be the best among those who were allowed to compete.
Even if an athlete’s homosexuality were not publicaly known, if they went to Sochi they would be vulnerable to being ejected if their mental configuration were discovered while they were there, and would be likely to suffer physical abuse as well as mistreatment by any officials they encountered, for example, in the airport.
The same applies to spectators, and to the judges at the events.
Since the Sochi Olympics cannot be fair to the pool of athletes, nor to the pool of potential spectators, many urge a boycott.
Any boycotting should include the advertisers, who pay enormous sums to advertise during broadcasts of the Games, and should also include the broadcasters themselves. Hence the following pledge:
I pledge
– to not go to Sochi to watch the Winter Olympics of 2014;
– to not watch any part of the Winter Olympics of 2014 on television or on the internet, nor to acquire videos of it;
– to avoid the products and services of any entity that advertises at the 2014 Winter Olympics, or that broadcasts the contests there. To do so, I will consult a list of the advertisers and broadcasters that will have been compiled by human rights organizations.
If you wish to make this pledge, please leave a comment to that effect.
Since comments to this blog can be submitted only by Word Press bloggers, please encourage human rights organizations world wide to co-sponsor this pledge, and to host it on their own web sites.
Olympic Rings without “rims” (gaps between the rings), as used, eg. in the logos of the 2008 and 2016 Olympics. The colour scheme applied here pertains to the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The original design was by Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937). This image is due to O Alexander, 4 January 2011.
If you wish to comment on this post but do not see a box where you can submit a comment, that is because WordPress includes the mechanism for commenting only on the page for the individual posting, never on the page that shows all of the recent postings. So click here, scroll to the bottom of the post, and submit your comment.
If we do not punish al-Assad
September 3, 2013 at 8:45 pm | Posted in Abuse of Office, Crime and punishment, Enemies of Freedom, Terrorism | 1 CommentTags: al-Assad, Assad, biological warfare, British Parliament, chemical warfare, civilians, Geneva Convention, non-combattants, nuclear terrorism, Syria, terrorism, torture, treatment of captured soldiers
A 1939 Second World War-era baby’s gas mask in Monmouth Regimental Museum. This design covered the whole of the baby except for its legs. (The caption was obtained from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_mask). Photo taken by Rock Drum on 19 May 2012, at the Monmouth Regimental Museum.
If we do not physically punish the al-Assad regime for its use of chemical weapons:
=> All treaties on the use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, on the use of torture, on terrorism, on the treatment of civilians, and on the treatment of captured enemy soldiers, become meaningless.
=> The U.S. and others should immediately begin stockpiling chemical and biological weapons, and radioactive contaminants, and methods for delivering them, because others will do so.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. We must physically punish the al-Assad regime.
As for the vote in the British Parliament, those who voted against action have learned nothing from Chamberlain’s mistake in Munich.
For background, see here, here, and here.
If you wish to comment on this post but do not see a box where you can submit a comment, that is because WordPress includes the mechanism for commenting only on the page for the individual posting, never on the page that shows all of the recent postings. So click here, scroll to the bottom of the post, and submit your comment.
‘I Voted’ emblem
Blog at WordPress.com.
Entries and comments feeds.
thepoliblog 