Is That Legal?

I won't bother to reply to all the semi-paranoid bits in your commenter's points, except to point out that there have been a large number of outcries against Guantanamo, Bush's policies, immigration reform and the like, and, with the exception of NYC, these have been allowed to go on without furor on the part of the police, and further, that starting in 1938, there was NO public outcry, press denouncement or rally against the Nazi party anywhere in Germany.
Yes, I have a dog in this fight: my family lost more than 2/3 of its German kin.

Wise comment? You're kidding, right?

This rambling gibberish with it's ad hominem attacks, unsupported assertions and vitriol is both stylistically and substantively crap.

Example -

"The Pope was a disaster long before he just 'lucked' into the job, like Cheney did. That should say enough about his moral authority right there."

What the heck is this for? Oh, I see - Pope = evil - must refer to Bush, Cheney or Haliburton even if irrelevant. Must be illegitimate - election, what election, he "lucked" into job. OK - good closing.

I am an attorney, and after viewing your blog for a couple of days, I am beginning to understand why so many of the young lawyers I have been working with recently don't seem to have a clue about how to reason or present a coherent argument if people like you are teaching them.

ELM: Thanks for the kind word, SeanH.

A very, very good point about how people, concretely Germans, could justify actions economically without being concerned about morality (or in a not insignificant percentage, feeling justified to simply take, and happy enough at the taking to not care about any details at all).

Yes, I too wonder about a fruit juice company 'founded' in 1938 in this region. However founded, the Nazi Party was very definitely involved in its economic life. Other hints are always available with open eyes. The history here is very, very ugly.

Even more interesting is recent work suggesting in the last few years of the war, the Nazis were able to ensure at least the necessary members of the Volk didn't starve, while the populations of the subjected countries did.

It would be possible, though not my point, to blame any German who ate between 1943-1945 as being an uncoerced supporter of forced starvation, proven by each bite taken. This is absurd, in the end. But still the truth is, many Germans survived those years simply because other people were starved.

The idea that greed can help further murder seems a moral lesson we do not draw from what Nazi Germany did.

But greed played a major role, and yes, some of the uncoerced were happy at what happened, at whatever remove of justification. Fortunes were being made on connections with the Nazi Party, though afterwards, in the ruins, those connections were forgotten - or often, simply erased whenever it seemed prudent.

And we haven't even begun to think about the neighbors' children, depending on age and school.

There are virtually no limits to the ugliness of what happened here.

To me, it is more important to pay attention to the present - including what a pope says today, about the past.

It is just sometimes, the truth of what happened here seems so fixed in one place and one time that we don't recognize how human such behavior is.

But truly, many, many Germans were motivated by shameful causes, and this includes much of the Catholic and Lutheran churches. The Catholic Church was no more victimized than any institution which remained functional under Nazism, but afterward, the storytelling begins. Truly, listening to Ratzinger is just a way to gauge how things are seen from another perspective. Welcome to Germany - Wir sind Papst! Trust me, you can get occasionally sickened here, both as an American and as a Catholic.

I am sadly certain, that in another decade or two, much like the food supply system, other mechanisms of how the Nazi state spread itself will be recognized. At that time, these discussions will not be dated by that fact. The evil of the Nazi state is hard to grasp, and most people are not at all interested in such uncomfortable truths.

The pope certainly isn't.

Does anyone have any idea what this commenter was talking about when he referenced "American camps" that are being built? I consider myself a reasonably well informed person and I don't have a clue. Thanks.

To SeanH -
I assume you would be familiar with Ratzinger's various Vatican positions before commenting on something as uninformed as saying that Bush or Halliburton have anything to do with "Ratzinger = evil." Both Ratzinger and Cheney just happened to be already occupying positions where saying they just 'lucked' into a job is a cynical circumlocution - this has nothing to do with any American election (well, indirectly in terms of Vice President Cheney), but everything to do with perfect bureaucratic positioning. And both were so pleasantly surprised to see themselves receive what they had so unselfishly striven for.

Please, do some reading.

To Yogi and to acs -
a quick excerpt -
'The Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) component has awarded KBR an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contingency contract to support ICE facilities in the event of an emergency.

With a maximum total value of $385 million over a five-year term, consisting of a one-year based period and four one-year options, the competitively awarded contract will be executed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District. KBR held the previous ICE contract from 2000 through 2005.

The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs. The contingency support contract provides for planning and, if required, initiation of specific engineering, construction and logistics support tasks to establish, operate and maintain one or more expansion facilities.

The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other U.S. Government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster. In the event of a natural disaster, the contractor could be tasked with providing housing for ICE personnel performing law enforcement functions in support of relief efforts.

ICE is one of three agencies that make up the Border and Transportation Security (BTS) Directorate of the DHS. The mission of the BTS Directorate is to secure the nation’s air, land and sea borders. ICE, the largest investigative arm of the DHS, is responsible for identifying and shutting down vulnerabilities in the nation’s border, economic, transportation and infrastructure security.'

Do notice the 'support the rapid development of new programs' line? Somehow, that sounds so comforting. I am sure that it is just routine, nothing to get worked up about - unless you end up being one of the people which these camps are being built for. (Apart from the shareholders and retired executives of the company heading the project, of course.)

A good enough link seems to be http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20060127193326799

And especially to Yogi - I live in a place where it is not paranoid to think about what happens when a government no longer feels constrained by any laws but its own. Actually, protests in Boston at the DNC were equally controlled, just less outrageous in terms of police abuse.

I left a country which used to have only one free speech zone, and a couple of exceptions - the Supreme Court was not a free speech zone, and neither was the Capitol. I guess freedom must be on the march in the homeland, since America has so many more places where its citizens are allowed to publicly gather, without fear of police action, as long as they follow the government's guidelines on freely expressing themselves.

America is not Germany, Bush is not Hitler. Evil remains evil, though. And those camps are being built (well, probably - 385 million doesn't buy as much planning as it used to), and they are intended for a number of purposes, several encompassing emergencies where groups of people will be detained.

I didn't make any comments beyond what is clearly stated in the awarded contract from a press release - no one is ashamed of making money, please note. And the people planning, constructing, and if then placed into operation during an emergency, the guarding of such facilities are uncoerced members of mainstream America, not some secret cabal of evildoers.

The only hypothetical part is the triggering emergency, not the clearly stated objectives.

Living in Germany, the idea of any government building massive detention facilities in the event of a declared emergency tends to send a little alarm bell off. What emergency needs massive detention centers? Strangely, that little bit of information is completely lacking, likely because it has nothing to do with the money being spent at your expense. And you don't need to know it anyways, like the laws now covering air travel security, which are so important to your personal security, you are not allowed to view them. (Reference the Gilmore case, especially the attitude of the Justice Department to admitting that such laws do contain a penalty for acknowledging they exist.)

And hey, I just noticed that the American government now includes 'Directorates' in Homeland Security - boy, does that have a certain Old World flair to it.

ELM: But cya, you forget that racial detention is entirely foreign to American experience.

I have my doubts that Americans are more than a touch more moral than Germans in 1931 - ask a Muslim or Arabic looking American about what life is like in the U.S. these days

This comment in the thread on the pope was so wise that I thought it worthwhile to reproduce it here:

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

cya,

Maybe you need to do some reading. I was speaking of the election of the Pope himself. He did not "luck" into any position. My point was that so many so called "progressives" immediately make irrelevant use of "hot button" names or terms like Bush, Cheney, or Haliburton to evoke some sort of visceral reaction in their readers. What the heck does Dick Cheney have to do with this issue? His position and the Holy Father's are nothing alike. This tendency, I think, evidences a lack of reasoning and the bankruptcy of the writer's ideas.

As far as ambition, if you know anything about the Pope or have read any of his work, you would know he is an extraordinaily modest and unambitious man. He attempted to resign his position twice during the reign of JPII, and only refrained from doing so again because of the Pope's failing health.

Now, as to your comments on the KBR contract, YOU really need to know what you are talking about. An ID/IQ contract is a vehicle to place future work against, and at a $385M ceiling (a significant amount for ICE) I doubt it is funded. The means that before any of these concentration camps could be built, someone would have to come up with the cash to do it. In other words, the situation is far less dire than you make it sound.

What I find ironic is that so-called "progressives" get their knickers in a twist over this, but when it comes to having a huge government bureaucracy dictate health care and education decisions they can't get enough of it. As a libertarian, I don't like any of it.

... on the point we've been discussing -- the degree to which the Nazi Germany of the 1930s was just a "ring of criminals" terrorizing and coercing an innocent Volk, I think the example of "aryanization" shows a broader and more voluntary participation in the oppression of the Jews than any of the pope's comments have implied. Eric Muller

Problem is, Benedict did not indicate it was "just" a ring of criminals, hence that restrictive term needs to be added to Benedict's quote, preceding it, in order to further obscure and further the ahistorical agenda on evidence here. In that vein, millions of Germans were unquestionably quilty, but the coercion applied by the regime shouldn't be minimized, it was very real. Too, since I've already been vilified in a related thread, here, we may as well find out how the slander will be furthered.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a churchman, eventually to become one of the conspirators involved in the various plots to assassinate Hitler and initiate a new govt., began a radio address only two (2) days after Hitler's appointment to the Chancellorship, on 1 Feb., 1933. Bonhoeffer wasn't allowed to finish the address, it was cut off.

Julius Leber, a left-leaning member of the Reichstag and also to become one of the conspirators (and friend of a young Willy Brandt), was sent to a concentration camp for speaking out against the regime, also in 1933, shortly after Hitler ascended to the chancellorship.

The Roehm putsch itself, murder by the state, occurred in '34. When it occurred it wasn't kept secret, to the contrary, Hermann Goering, within hours after the executions, announced to the press, with a flagrant braggadocio, precisely what had occurred.

These are merely examples, reflecting what was occurring. The price to be paid for failing to conform to the expectations of the regime were momentous and were well publicized, there was an abundance of propaganda (also very well known) which served to disseminate both the expectations of the regime and the highly coercive power of the state which would be applied, should failure to conform become a "problem."

Later, when Sophie and Hans Scholl were arrested as leaders of the "White Rose" resistance - a group which was little more than a small clique of students who resisted Hitler and the regime, and in notable part inspired by the sermons of Bishop Galen - they were beheaded, I believe guillotined, for their participation in the "White Rose" movement.

None of this denies the varying degrees of guilt which unquestionably apply to the population, but to minimize the coercions and arrests and thuggery and murder committed by the totalitarian regime - all in order to putatively "prove" an even more willing compliance than was actually present, is simply, and flagrantly, historically inaccurate.

Many, many other factors could be noted, not to whitewash or deny, but to frame within highly germane historical contexts and reference points. Germany's Weimar Republic, imposed by the Treaty of Versailles after WWI, was indeed an imposed and very nascent democratic govt., which came in the wake of a Germany which had just experienced a thousand year period of monarchies and corresponding authoritarian regimes. Similarly, in support of authoritarian regimes, leaders of that era as wide ranging as V. I. Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler and others were convinced that democracy as a form of governance was on the wane, was inadequate to meet the economic and other challenges of that period.

And no Eric, your over-eagerness to apply one of the most vicious labels available not withstanding, none of this makes me an "anti-Semite" - that's a slander which won't be forgotten. Historical truth, and the veracity we can muster and apply in order to assess and convey that truth, matters, not only for its own sake but also for the sake of more contemporary social/political interests. If guilt is going to be applied so indiscriminately and neglectful of even enduringly obvious aspects of history, whether across ethnic, religious, national or other broadly based categories, then that's a Pandora's Box which won't be easily contained since it helps to forward methodological and other problems which are better resisted.

ELM: MichaelB, you're wrong about one thing: my charge that your highlighting that a killer was a Jew suggested antisemitism on your part is not "a slander that won't be forgotten." First off, "slander" is spoken, not written; I believe you meant "libel." Second, it wasn't libelous. Third, it won't even be remembered, because nobody has the faintest idea who you actually are, since you don't have the simple courage to attach your name to your writings. It's hard to get too worked up when an anonymous character gripes that his reputation has been damaged.

I'm not going to be provoked into a merely personal and juvenile tit-for-tat. Quite obviously I'm using the terms in an informal manner, not strictly or legally or narrowly speaking; and obviously as well, I'm the one doing the remembering.

Hmmm, on review that's a suggestive allusion to the dispute as well, for the record again, that thread is here, am more than happy to let people come to their own conclusions. Originally it may have been plausible for you to misunderstand, that is no longer the case. Throwing around particularly vile charges like that reflects a serious case of crying 'wolf'. You get a lot of leeway, you don't get infinity though.

Well, a bit out of date, but I was surprised to see a few comments added.

SeanH -
Amazing how such an unselfish man ended up as Pope, almost a miracle. True, Cheney's unselfishness in proposing himself as VP after being in charge of the search committee has no imputation of divine intervention, but it seems roughly equal in its unselfishness and self-sacrifice. Following Catholic Church politics is another one of my unhealthy hobbies - and the German press, who tended to find Ratzinger a font of interest throughout the last decades, was a fine place to read about such a towering figure. 'Wir sind Papst' indeed - I love a man who uses the royal 'we' when addressing the public after so unselfishly accepting such a thankless, menial position. Makes me think of Jesus, straight off, every time, and what he would probably think about Peter's successor.

I am Catholic, but grew in the 70s, a time whose changes, at least in some parishes in some parts of America (and in South America, too) Ratzinger has done his best to erase. There is certainly no reason to think that the Holy Father will change back to a model that some people, in some places, saw as what Christ would do when confronted with poverty and injustice. To the extent that we are talking religion and faith, we truly have little more to say on that issue.

As for the politics of the press release I posted - doesn't it bother you, even in the slightest, that 385 million dollars are being spent on planning massive detention facilities? I mean, apart from the possible graft/insider aspect, which is thoroughly par for the course for governments throughout history. I left America in 1992, after having grown up in Northern Virginia - it is quite possible I know more about government contracting than you, as a number of my neighbors were military in charge of various projects, and who upon retirement, joined private industry. (As for retired NSA and CIA - well, they were a bit less obvious about working both sides of the fence.)

I left before either Clinton or Bush were elected, and in my eyes, both were disastrous for America. I am neither progressive nor conservative - though you could call my a card carrying member of the cynical party.

Somehow, I cannot imagine Americans, in either the Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, or Bush years, actually saying that 385 million to plan 'concentration camps' (your words, not mine - are you also infected by that progressive nonsense - and remember, data mining is part of what the American government now practices, regardless of piddling questions about legality - security is paramount) is a good use of tax money - can you say 'Soviet' or 'Nazi?' They could. But then, they didn't grow up watching TV, they grew up during a war and after Stalin died, and the Soviets admitted, to a minimal extent, what had happened under a 'cult of personality.'

As for being funded - fair point. KBR seems to think the check is in the mail, though - bet they can call up the VP to find out, too - I think they have his direct line on the Rolodex, if only because they want to make sure he doesn't have any problems with his check from them. You know, a sort of courtesy service, common among ex-CEO VPs. I always like to see a truly effective free market not be restrained in providing those little touches which make government service bearable for those who sacrificed themselves upon accepting it (well, not the military part - Cheney did have better things to do at the time, it seems).