1 Ford was not a government enterprise but privately owned and the higher wages were market driven "Keep skilled labor".Silicon valley is following suit by giving 1 year maternity leave to its female workers to keep them .Wha ... read full comment
1 Ford was not a government enterprise but privately owned and the higher wages were market driven "Keep skilled labor".Silicon valley is following suit by giving 1 year maternity leave to its female workers to keep them .What government does is to help them with H1 visas for foreign workers .2 Nkrumah was trying to provide skilled and educated workers to drive the economy.That is part of the interdependence of private and government 3 Health is another area government plays a big role else the enterprises will need to foot the bill for the health of their workers. I guess in your capitalist language you will"call it out sourcing .Bra PKB it is not Kwarteng who is memorizing but you .Please bra listen to good advice and stop displaying your ignorance .KK has already told you.Take time and re read these books and Nkrumahs books while taking a walk in Tema to see how Nkrumah shaped it .The proof is there at your doorstep
Kojo T 8 years ago
Capitalism would have done better for Blacks?How with no money and inferior education? There are more Blacks in jail than any where in the world PKB get your fact right
Capitalism would have done better for Blacks?How with no money and inferior education? There are more Blacks in jail than any where in the world PKB get your fact right
francis kwarteng 8 years ago
Re: Nkrumahism, The Can of Worms I Opened–Hitler's Mein Kampf 1
PHILIP KOBINA BAIDOO, JR. AND HIS AGITPROP REVISIONIST HISTORY
Mr. Baidoo, the half-story teller is at it again!
First off, we should want to bring to ... read full comment
Re: Nkrumahism, The Can of Worms I Opened–Hitler's Mein Kampf 1
PHILIP KOBINA BAIDOO, JR. AND HIS AGITPROP REVISIONIST HISTORY
Mr. Baidoo, the half-story teller is at it again!
First off, we should want to bring to Mr. Baidoo’s attention little-known facts about Jewish contribution to the European Holocaust, just as some African chiefs and kings did both in the European Slave Trade (the so-called Transatlantic Slave Trade) and the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade. We are here referring to the Judenrats (Jewish Council of Elders) in the case of the Holocaust. Even more conspicuously, Mr. Baidoo's articles did not mention what historian Bryan Mark Rigg calls "Hitler's Jewish Soldiers" (see his book "Hitler's Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military"). This is to be expected because Mr. Baidoo is not a well-rounded writer. We have more than sufficiently overstated this observation in our previous rejoinder articles exposing the weaknesses of his arguments.
That said, the implications of Rigg’s profound historical work is mind-boggling in terms of the fact that not many people are aware Jews formed part of the Nazi Army, some holding senior positions in it. The other point is that some Jewish organizations, scholars, and leaders did not particularly like the book's revelations, fearing that, among other reasons, others might use them to justify the actions of Hitler and the Nazis (Dr. Rigg is a Cambridge-trained historian and Jewish himself; see his other book "Lives of Hitler's Jewish Soldiers: Untold Tales of Men of Jewish Descent Who Fought for the Third Reich").
More important, though, Mr. Baidoo failed to show the links among the Holocaust, colonialism, Nazism (“Mein Kampf”), and the Herero and Namaqua Genocide (the first of such in modern history; the German Holocaust and its associated diabolical acts had its colonial roots in the German extermination of the Herero and Namaqua of South-West Africa, present-day Namibia, and American racist laws and her development of eugenics). Again Mr. Baidoo may not have known these facts. Here are some important texts (all written by leading Jewish scholars, authors, historians, and political scientists) demonstrating Jewish supposed collaborations with the Nazis leading up to, during, and after the Holocaust (the Final Solution) for Mr. Baidoo:
1) "The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine" (Edwin Black)
2) "51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis" (Lenni Brenner)
3) "Zionism in the Age of Dictators" (Lenni Brenner)
4) "Perfidy" (Ben Hecht)
5) "Jews for Sale?: Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933-1945" (Yehuda Bauer)
6) "The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering" (Norman Finkelstein)
7) "The Unheeded Cry" (Abraham Fuchs)
8) "The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust" (Tom Segev)
9) "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" (Hannah Arendt)
So much for Jewish involvement in the Holocaust. We mentioned earlier that the German Holocaust had its colonial roots in South West Africa (Namibia) and American racist laws and her development of eugenics. These statements are well-documented facts (Edwin Black). The latter writes: “In ‘Mein Kampf,’ published in 1924, Hitler quoted American eugenic ideology and openly displayed a thorough knowledge of American eugenics. ‘There is today one state,’ wrote Hitler, ‘in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States.’” Mr. Baidoo glossed this fact in discussing “Mein Kampf.”
AMERICAN EUGENICS, ADOLPH HITLER AND NAZISM
The story of eugenics is deeper and captivating. It is generally believed among historians that its modern formulation originated with Sir Francis Gaston, Charles Darwin’s cousin, in the Victorian Age. It then traveled from the United Kingdom (Britain), where Mr. Baidoo presently lives, to America where it was perfected. From America eugenics landed in Germany. American scientists and research institutions, for instance the Carnegie Institution, began sharing their expertise and findings with German scientists. Also an American foundation such as the Rockefeller Foundation “helped found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz,” writes Black. “The most commonly suggested method of eugenicide in America was a ‘lethal chamber’ or public locally operated gas chambers.”
Gas chambers became one of the potent weapons the Nazis used to annihilate their victims. We should also stress that Eugen Fischer, Chancellor of the University of Berlin and one of the important German scientists involved in eugenic experiments on ethnic Namibians in the beginning of the 20th century, taught medicine to Nazi doctors including Otmar von Verschuer, who in turn had Josef Mengele as one of his research assistants. Both Fischer and another German Frantz von Epp, who also played a leading role in the Herero Genocide, would later lend their expertise to Hitler and the Nazis. We should bear in mind that the Herero and Namaqua Genocide and eugenic experiments in South West Africa predated the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. Black recalls the relationship between Verschuer and Mengele:
“Verschuer had a long-time assistant. His name was Josef Mengele. On May 30, 1943, Mengele arrived at Auschwitz. Verschuer notified the German Research Society, ‘My assistant, Dr. Josef Mengele (M.D., Ph.D.) joined me in this branch of research. He is presently employed Hauptsturmfuhrer [captain] and camp physician in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Anthropological testing of the most diverse racial groups in this concentration camp is being carried out with permission of the SS Reichsfuhrer [Himmler].’”
The Germans had used concentration camps and slave labor in connection with the Herero and Namaqua of South West Africa (Namibia) long before their appearance in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust, just as the British had used concentration camps in the connection with the Boers during the Anglo-Boer Wars in South Africa (Finkelstein). These are just by the way. Black continues:
“Only after eugenics became entrenched in the United States was the campaign transplanted into Germany, in no small measure through the efforts of California eugenicists, who published booklets idealizing sterilization and circulated them to German Officials and scientists. Hitler studied American eugenics laws…Hitler proudly told his comrades just how closely he followed the progress of the American eugenics movement. I have studied with great interest,’ he told a fellow Nazi, ‘the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock.’ Hitler wrote a fan letter to American eugenic leader Madison Grant calling his race-based eugenics book, ‘The Passing of the Great Race’ his Bible.”
The successes of Nazi eugenics caught the attention of eugenicists across America, with California eugenicists republishing “Nazi propaganda for American consumption” (Black). California eugenicists also organized scientific exhibits for Nazi scientists (1934). Black further notes: “More than just providing the scientific roadmap, America funded Germany’s eugenic institutions. By 1926, Rockefeller had donated some $410, 000…to hundreds of German researchers. In May 1926, Rockefeller awarded $250,000 to the German Psychiatric Institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute…Among the leading psychiatrists at the German Psychiatric Institute was Ernst Rudin, who became director and eventually an architect of Hitler’s systematic medical repression.”
“Another in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute’s eugenic complex of institutions was the institute for Brain Research,” Black continues. “Since 1915, it had operated out of a single room. Everything changed when Rockefeller money arrived in 1929. A grant of $317,000 allowed the Institute to construct a major building and take center stage in German race biology. The Institute received additional grants from the Rockefeller Foundation during the next several years. Leading the Institute, once again, was Hitler’s medical henchman Ernst Rudin. Rudin’s organization became a prime director and recipient of the murderous experimentation and research conducted on Jews, Gypsies and others."
Black concludes: “A special recipient of Rockefeller funding was the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin. For decades, American eugenicists had craved twins to advance their research into heredity. The Institute was now prepared to undertake such research on an unprecedented level… At the time of Rockefeller's endowment, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, a hero in American eugenics circles, functioned as a head of the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. Rockefeller funding of that Institute continued both directly and through other research conduits during Verschuer's early tenure.
“In 1935, Verschuer left the Institute to form a rival eugenics facility in Frankfurt that was much heralded in the American eugenic press. Research on twins in the Third Reich exploded, backed up by government decrees. Verschuer wrote in ‘Der Erbarzt,’ a eugenic doctor's journal he edited, that Germany's war would yield a ‘total solution to the Jewish problem’…
“Mengele began searching the boxcar arrivals for twins. When he found them, he performed beastly experiments, scrupulously wrote up the reports and sent the paperwork back to Verschuer's institute for evaluation. Often, cadavers, eyes and other body parts were also dispatched to Berlin's eugenic institutes.
“Rockefeller executives never knew of Mengele. With few exceptions, the foundation had ceased all eugenic studies in Nazi-occupied Europe before the war erupted in 1939. But by that time the die had been cast. The talented men Rockefeller and Carnegie financed, the institutions they helped found, and the science it helped create took on a scientific momentum of their own.
“After the war, eugenics was declared a crime against humanity–an act of genocide. Germans were tried and they cited the California statutes in their defense. To no avail. They were found guilty…
“Human genetics' genocidal roots in eugenics were ignored by a victorious generation that refused to link itself to the crimes of Nazism and by succeeding generations that never knew the truth of the years leading up to war. Now governors of five states, including California have issued public apologies to their citizens, past and present, for sterilization and other abuses spawned by the eugenics movement…”
Black’s account is merely one of many well-documented scholarly works on the subject. Fortunately or unfortunately, such accounts expose America’s indirect complicity in fostering the German racist national character and how that racist national character came to define German eugenics and the Holocaust itself. Mr. Baidoo did not find it necessary to bring these facts to the attention of his readership. Alas, many questions about the Second World War and the Holocaust remain unresolved or shrouded in history. Even the actual number of Jews who supposedly died in the Holocaust remains an unresolved conundrum, a heated question being debated in the international community today!
And finally, Mr. Baidoo may not have been aware that a significant percentage of the wealth Hitler and the Nazis stole from Jews in Germany and across Europe, part of which they hid in Switzerland, were hidden in America and are still here (Finkelstein). In a related context the capitalist Swiss, their banks, and their links to Nazi stolen treasure and the Vatican, Western investments in Nazi Germany, propaganda campaigns staged by the governments of Canada, Britain and Australia aimed at concealing Nazi war criminals living among their citizens, knowledge that the British and Americans had known about the Holocaust as far back as 1941, and successful attempts by American and British code-breakers of Swiss banks to conceal Nazi gold transfers as a protective cover for America’s intelligence boss Allen Dulles, etc., completely left out of Mr. Baidoo’s naïve account (Aarons & Loftus).
On the other hand other scholars argue that the British intelligence/government had known about the Holocaust as early as September 1939 but chose to do nothing about it. The British sent a cache of comprehensive intelligence information to their American counterparts in 1942, the same year President Franklin D. Roosevelt publicly pleaded for solid information on what the Nazis were doing to Jews. The Americans, like the British before them, did not act on the intelligence reports and suppressed it (Grose). Yet Eleanor Roosevelt, President Roosevelt’s wife, and some prominent American politicians did not take it at all lightly when W.E.B. Du Bois took the American government to the United Nations (UN) and petitioned it to look into the manner African Americans were being unfairly treated and terrorized across America. Eleanor was the first chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights. The Commission supervised the draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She was also a national board member of the NAACP.
And in spite of the fact she supported some African American causes, her husband President Roosevelt, on the other hand, refused to support a bill meant to criminalize lynching. His primary objection to the bill was antagonizing Southerners if he had supported the bill and losing the Southern vote at the polls on that account. This was in 1935, about seven years prior to British intelligence officials handing over Nazi secrets on the Holocaust to his administration, which he failed to act on anyway.
Could it be that President Roosevelt viewed Jews and Africans the way Hitler did? This is a controversial question because by not defending a bill that would have criminalized lynching and possibly saved some African-American lives, President Roosevelt indirectly lent his support to the act, though he did not literally send African Americans to gas chambers and extermination camps as in the case of Hitler. But lynching sent some African Americans to the gas chambers and extermination camps in the American South: Their painful and horrendous deaths in the pits of American racism!
Unfortunately Jewish organizations and leaders have not mustered moral and political courage to go after the American government as they did with European government and corporations (Finkelstein). Evidently, it appears Jewish leaders do not want to lose America's support for the State of Israel and to betray the bond America has always shared with World Jewry, given what the former [America] did for the latter [World Jewry] during and after the Second World War. The other important questions are: Who financed Hitler and the Nazis? Which countries re-armed Nazi Germany and which countries helped build and expand Hitler’s technological base? Which American, British, and French corporations supported and benefited from the Nazis? How were Nazi profits repatriated back to their American owners? What role did Wall Street play in the rise of Hitler and the Nazis? How did the capitalists of the West finance and benefit from Hitler’s National Socialism? How many of the people killed during the Second World War were actually killed by the US, USSR, Japan, France, Britain, and others besides Nazi Germany?
These are important simple questions Mr. Baidoo’s articles did not delve into, though the answers are already in the public domain in the form of archival and declassified records from Russia, America, Britain, Germany, Japan, and France, as well as in scholarly publications. Mr. Baidoo may have been unaware that governments and multinational corporations from the capitalist West, including Britain where he lives, traded with socialist Nazi Germany during the war (WW2), what one writer aptly refers to as “the Nazi-American plot 1933-1949” (Higham). Perhaps more suspiciously, we were not educated on the specifics of the capitalist connection to the Holocaust and the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. For instance, “The Dearborn Independent” or “The Ford International Weekly,” a paper Henry Ford, the famous American industrialist and automotive manufacturer, owned published the anti-Semitic “The Intentional Jew” series that was later compiled into a book.
The book and its newspaper series influenced an entire generation of German youths would become part of the Nazi machinery. Hitler read them also and “The International Jew” influenced and informed his authorship of “Mein Kampf” as well as of Nazi politics (Of course Nazism had been around before Hitler’s birth as well as in a number of nations. Namely, he did not invent Nazism. Nazism had existed under various guises in places such as the United States (slavery and Jim Crowism), post-Columbian America (extermination of Native Americans), Australia (extermination of Australian Aborigines), Africa (extermination of the Herero and Namaqua; Apartheid), and Western Europe prior to Hitler’s birth). Regarding the parenthetic statement however, one author notes: “The anti-Semitism obsession of the Nazis, if not necessarily the German populace, is demonstrable even before Hitler. As Breitman puts it: ‘Even Hitler and Himmler could not know then how far or how soon they would be able to pursue their emotional impulses and ideological goals. But they knew that they needed manpower…for what they considered a political-racial war’” (Grose).
This fact and others like it invalidate the misguided notion that Hitler invented Nazism. In fact, Ford is the only American mentioned in “Mein Kampf.” Hitler kept a copy of the book in his private library, having been cited as one among a collection of books to shape his life (Ryback). Hitler also kept “a life-size portrait of Ford next to his desk” (Dobbs). Finally, he [Hitler] awarded Ford the Grand Cross of the German Eagle (July 1938), Germany’s national highest decoration for non-Germans (Dobbs). Beyond these basic facts, the Ford Motor Company established joint ventures with the company I.G. Farben, a German concern. I.G. Farben produced and marketed a poison gas Zyklon B, an invention by Fritz Haber, a Jew, and his team of scientists/researchers, (see also the “I.G. Farben Trial”) used in extermination camps and gas chambers (Borkin; Jeffreys), leading to the deaths of millions.
Also John D. Rockefeller, another famous American capitalist, was reportedly involved with I.G. Farben through his companies Standard Oil Co. Inc. (and Esso Corp). I.G. Farben was one of the largest and most influential companies in the world and therefore its tentacles spread out into every corner of the world, whose directorship, scientists, and researchers teamed up with other capitalist industrialists from Western Europe in several ventures. Perhaps the surprising aspect of this shameful legacy beyond the deep ties American (and Western European) capitalist industrialists and corporations had with Hitler’s war machine and the general leadership of Nazi Germany (Riemann) is a little-known fact involving a capitalist- or privately-owned company’s contractual engagement with the Nazis that culminated in the company constructing and running some of Hitler’s concentration camps (Borkin). Again capitalism, profit motivation, human medical experimentation (eugenics), the Holocaust, slave labor, and Nazi politics (Lindner) are totally ignored in Mr. Baidoo’s articles.
Neither did Mr. Baidoo address the frustration and opposition, one American lawyer sent by the American government to Germany to decartelize Germany, had to endure at the hands of men with ties to Wall Street’s and German corporations (Martin). These “hidden” facts are gradually coming out as research into factors leading to the Holocaust and the Second World War intensifies. The facts are actually there in the public domain but academic or establishment historians, particularly in America, are trained to look elsewhere rather than directly into the face of Holocaust and Second World War historiographies, archival and declassified records. This is fast changing as some of these academic and establishment historians are turning away from the methodological parochialism of their academic professions towards a more inclusive methodology of historicism and comparative valuation of nonconventional historical material.
We can therefore understand why some lay writers and readership miss out on such important facts of history. Yet capitalism was right there in the midst of carnage, human suffering and mass murder, misery, wars, slave labor, exterminations, and so on, reaping untold profits. Even so, we still may want to ask: Why then did Mr. Baidoo delink the capitalists from the National Socialists of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, exterminations camps, and concentration camps?
We should not overlook the essential fact that the National Socialists of Nazi Germany endorsed some of the core features of capitalism such as private ownership, while dismissing German communists. It has been suggested in some of the academic literature on the subject that capitalist America preferentially financed the rise of Hitler and the Nazis in order to prevent German communists from taking over the country. We clearly see a confirmation of this suggestion with the advent and subsequent unraveling of the so-called “Operation Paperclip” at the onset of the Cold War (Jacobsen; Lichtblau; Loftus).
Then also it has been suggested through another alternative theory that the Soviet strategically played German communists against their social democrat colleagues in the hope the strategy would give a competitive advantage to the former in electoral outcomes, although, eventually, that strategy worked in Hitler’s favor by turning it into a numerical edge, bringing him and the Nazis to power. It therefore goes without saying that the factors that projected Hitler and the Nazis are many and varied, though not as naïve and simplistic as some writers would want to claim. Soviet and American politics of manipulation (this will intensify during the Cold War), dire economic conditions following the Treaty of Versailles, anti-Semitism and Henry Ford’s propaganda machine (“The International Jew”), intra-continental mutual jealousies, struggles for continental dominance, ideological clashes among Marxism and capitalism and fascism, and other historical reasons.
Above all, what is also certain as argued by some historians is that President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order requiring the federal government to do everything within its power to rescue European Jews, but the pressure mounted by big American corporations in the aftermath of the signing of the executive decree rendered the executive order inactive. In other words capitalism triumphed over human suffering. Another theory goes that the Nazi propaganda machine and other media organs made it known to the world that the Allies were fighting on behalf of Jews. And since the British and the Americans did not want to be identified with that charge, strategically refrained from acting on intelligence pointing to what the Nazis were doing to the Jews (Grose). This well-documented fact is hardly mentioned in mainstream coverage of the Holocaust as well as of the links shared amongst capitalism, the Holocaust, the rise of Hitler and Nazism, and the advent of the Second World War.
The foregoing shows how much Mr. Baidoo left out of the background history of "Mein Kampf, namely the historical connections among the African Holocaust (German extermination of the Herero and the Namaqua. This took place before the Jewish Holocaust took off). We should be equally mindful of the colonial roots of Nazism and eugenic experiments in Africa, Namibia), Nazi mistreatment of Jews (we should not exclude the Roma/Gypsies, the handicapped, homosexuals, capitalists, and “communists” in the Holocaust), Jewish complicity in the Holocaust, America's corporate links to the Holocaust and Hitler and Nazi Germany, “Mein Kampf,” and black/African suffering under Nazi Germany (Lusane), and so on.
The story and the historical record are not all that rosy, however. Thousands of Nazis came to America after the Second World War as “refugees” though many were war criminals having been involved in the Final Solution, but American officials protected some of them and then deploying them in various capacities as scientists, intelligence assets, engineers, spies, doctors, and so on. The American military, the Central Investigation Agency (CIA), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) benefited from their services (Lichtblau). Readers interested in this question can read more about “Operation Paperclip," a program under which the American government headed by Harry S. Truman brought in nearly 1,600 German technicians, scientists, engineers, doctors, etc., to live and work in America, after the (American government) had given them new identities, granted them securities clearances (their criminal pasts erased), and their membership in the Nazi Party been expunged immigration documents (Lasby; Jacobson).
There also exists a detailed discussion of America’s recruitment of Nazis and fascists and collaborators of Nazis and fascists to work for America in various capacities in post-Second World War (Simpson). The Australian government, for instance, has known about the existence of Nazi war criminals in the country for decades and yet largely kept quiet about them (Mark Aarons). Some have however speculated that some of the research work done by these Nazi German scientists, now in America, in the area of biological and chemical weapons was tested on African Americans. All these do not in any way justify the Holocaust. Still, Mr. Baidoo should have approached Hitler from the standpoint of comparative methodology in which he also discussed the Catholic Church, the Asiento, the enslavement and extermination of Native Americans and Australian Aborigines, and the enslavement of Africans (Casas; Kiernan) and the role these activities played in developing Western capitalism. Mr. Baidoo’s articles completely ignored Jim Crowism, Nazism, and Apartheid.
That is, we are completely left in the dark about Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of Apartheid, and his possible connections to Nazism and Jim Crowism and free market fundamentalists, such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, propping that diabolical regime. There have been some speculations that Verwoerd designed Apartheid in line with German eugenics, when he studied in Germany, and with Nazi ideology. He may have also have picked up some new ideas about Jim Crowism in America where he studied. Jim Crowism may have informed his creation of Apartheid. In the main Mr. Baidoo did not mention those diabolical scientists, like the Japanese Shiro Ishii, whom the Americans spared in the aftermath of the Second World War (WW2) in exchange for freely sharing their research findings with Americans. This happened in the case of some of the Nazi scientists Americans brought to work in the United States after the war.
LESSONS FROM “MEIN KAMPF” AND THE HOLOCAUST FOR TODAY
Hitler’s controversial book “Mein Kampf” has been at the center of political studies in many institutions. It has shaped the direction of post-Second World War politics, including politics of the Cold War, international relations, German politics and foreign policy strategies, genocide research and scholarship, to mention but a few. For us in Ghana and Africa it has immediate political and sociological relevance in how we live together and respect each other as a people. We are referring to tolerance.
Today in Ghana we have politicians who call on one ethnic group (Asantes) to slaughter other ethnic groups (Gas and Ewes). In Rwanda, it [Rwandan Genocide] began as soon as Hutu Militants (hardliners) and their sympathizers started calling the Tutsis, their fellow brothers and sisters, “cockroaches,” “insects,” “inferior,” and “pests.” Hutu hardliners subsequently called for the extermination of the Tutsis. Yet some of us do not see striking parallels between the behavior of the Nazis/Hutu hardliners and the Holocaust/Rwandan Genocide. This is regrettable for a number of reasons. The Rwandan Genocide in turn spilled into Eastern Congo where the seemingly unending political instability has created ample opportunities for multinational corporations from the capitalist West, particularly America, to cash in on vital minerals it needs for its production of cars, phones, space technology, computers, and the like, without paying taxes to the central government of the Congo.
Not many people are aware that some of the men among the Hutu hardliners directed some of their well-placed sympathizers to register Tutsis in certain Rwandan localities to guarantee their easy identification and swift extermination. This is similar to the task the Nazis gave the Judenrat (“Jewish Council of Elders”) across Europe, at least in those places the Germans occupied during the Second World War. The later discovery of Nazi documents (the Holocaust, eugenics, etc.) in the hands of Hutu hardliners (Kiernan) reinforces Hitler’s legacy and what uncritical imitation of foreign ideas can do to a people. Hutu hardliners and their sympathizers slaughtered the Tutsis and moderate Hutus with a ferocity probably matched by that of the Nazis in their extermination of Gypsies (properly called the Roma), Jews, and others.
The industrial scale of the Nazi extermination camps and gas chambers guaranteed the efficiency of their killing machines (recall that Edwin Black traces the concept of “gas chamber” to American eugenics).
What is more, it is also hardly known by many an individual that Hitler regretted publishing that book as it began giving him problems once he became his country’s Chancellor. It has been reported of Hitler telling his former lawyer Hans Frank in 1938 that “if he had known in 1924 that he was going to become chancellor, he would never have written his book” (Breitman). This is good but his later actions and the publication of “Zweites Buch,” the sequel to “Mein Kampf” which he thought wise never to publish as he did with “Mein Kampf” for fear of additional problems accruing to his chancellorship, cast some doubts on the sincerity of his admission to his lawyer. Anyone who has seen excerpts or even cursorily read portions of “Zweites Buch,” discovered and published by historian Gerhard Weinberg in 1961, would have known that Hitler and the Nazis held the Soviet Union and America in as much contempt perhaps as they did World Jewry.
“Zweites Buch” and “Mein Kampf” define Hitler’s foreign policy strategies for Nazi Germany and the new Germany he intended creating under Nazism. This new Germany is not substantively different from the kind of world White Supremacist William L. Pierce, the founder of the National Alliance, created in his novels “The Turner Diaries (1978)” and “Hunter (1989).”
There is a demoralizing paradox which Hitler’s genocidal instinct gave birth to, which is destroying the high-level industrialization, development, growth, and technical advancement his leadership, even if we are against his racial politics, brought to Germany, Europe, and the rest of the world. German Jews were part and parcel of this golden age of technical advancement of German society. Hitler reversed this golden age. On the other hand, what the Rwandan Genocide has done to the future of Rwanda is incalculable in monetary and psychological terms. The recent xenophobic slaughter of non-native South Africans in South Africa and killings associated with partisan politics in Ghana bespeak the danger intolerance, coupled with historical animosities and poor economic management of national resources and bad leadership and social inequality, breeds in a fragile political economy. A fragile political economy such as the one the Treaty of Versailles created for Germany on account of the reparations burden partially contributed to the rise of Nazism and with it Hitler.
Again some of us are not quick enough to discern a link between the political sentiments undergirding Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and the politics of Boko Haram, Al-Shabab, and the Lord’s Resistance Army. What these terrorist organizations have done is to replace Jews, communists, Gypsies (the Roma), capitalists, the handicapped, Slavs, and other alleged inferior human beings in “Mein Kampf” with non-Muslims and political opponents, the latter in the particular case of the Lord’s Resistance Army. Across Africa politicians are doing similarly via political ethnocentrism and ethnic nationalism. The winner-takes-all democratic capitalism Africa blindly copied from the West reinforces the moral and political paradox inherent in “Mein Kampf.” Yet Germany has recovered from her past blunders and has risen to lead Europe. Why is it that Africa and some of her politicians are assuming that shameful past blunders of Germany by creating the Boko Harams, the Al-Shababs, the Hutu hardliners, and the Lord’s Resistance Armys?
The irony of it all points to other interesting facts. The behavior of Western and non-Western conservative capitalists and the latter’s opposition to concerns raised about the environmental, social justice, equality, women’s issues, responsible capitalism, corporate social responsibility, gun control among many others, reeks of neo-Nazism. The rancid rhetoric of free market fundamentalists such as Lush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly instantiates this social and political paradox. In this light Ghana and Africa can do better than the racist, xenophobic, and social Darwinist prescriptions Hitler advanced in “Mein Kampf” and “Zweites Buch.” After all Hitler and the Nazis did not initiate the Holocaust by constructing gas chambers, concentration and extermination camps.
They began with coordinated staged rhetoric of acidic hatred much as the Hutu Militants and their sympathizers did. Osei Marfo’s outrageous outbursts on ethnocentric regionalism or balkanization, Akufo-Addo’s “All Die Be Die” war cry, and the Zulu King whose xenophobic utterances led to the unfortunate murder of Africans in South Africa all have their negative views imbued with the political character of neo-Nazism. Unfortunately, in some parts of our little world in particular and the world in general it is the political sentiments of “Mein Kampf” and “Zweites Buch” that are gradually coming back in full swing both in subtle and explicit ways. Neo-Nazism need not always have a white face. We have seen that in the persons of Idi Amin, Omar Bashir, Emperor Bokassa, Mobuto Sese Seko, Francisco Nguema, Gnassingbe Eyadema, Joseph Kony, and Charles Taylor…Yoweri Museveni had this to say about Hitler, his hero:
“As Hitler did to bring Germany together, we should also do it here. Hitler was a smart guy, but he went a bit too far for wanting to conquer the world” (The Shariat, Vol. 2, No. 15, April 15-21).
An American-based Ugandan writer and journalist, a friend of ours, implicates Museveni and his capitalist friends from the West in plundering the mineral wealth of Eastern Congo (Allimadi):
“Yet Congolese remain impoverished. Foreign powers allow bandits financed by Rwanda and Uganda to wreak havoc in Congo's eastern region, which contains most of its resources. Under this planned chaos, private corporations enjoy absolute rent; they siphon off Congo's resources through Rwanda and Uganda without paying fees or taxes to the central government.”
Just look at what an African admirer of Hitler and his bloodsucking capitalist vampires doing to Africa and her people!
CONCLUSION
In the end, Mr. Baidoo may have to revise his tattered notes on the history of the Holocaust, including but not limited to, America's contributions to the rise of Nazi Germany and the fact that the Holocaust in Europe began its journey with deep colonial taproots in South West Africa (Namibia). Mr. Baidoo needs to read more on this subject matter. We should like to ask in conclusion: Should Mr. Baidoo not have seen any wisdom in pursuing the speculation that Evan Braun, Hitler’s mistress and then wife, could have descended from Ashkenazi Jews as DNA analysis seems to indicate? Or that Hitler may have had Jewish and possibly African ancestors? We need a better, more nutritious history than the fast-food histories we are currently being fed with.
Usually intellectual obesity, or should we rather say mental atrophy, and debilitating psychological disease states are the end results of agitprop revisionist history of the kind daily propagated on Ghanaweb and other Ghanaian-based fora. Fortunately some of us and several others know better than to fall for these antiquated Hitlerite gimmicks. We are no longer in gas chambers, concentration and exterminations where we are being forced to read Henry Ford’s “The International Jews.”
We shall return…
Additional References
1) "Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur" (Ben Kiernan)
2) "The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and The Colonial Roots of Nazism" (this text deals with the Herero and Namaqua Genocide; readers may also want to read the Whitaker Report (United Nations, 1985)
3) "Hitler’s Black Victim’s: The Historical Experiences of European Blacks, African and African-Americans During the Nazi Era" (Clarence Lusane)
4) "Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler" (Anthony C.Sutton)
5) "Nazi Nexus: America's Corporate Connections to Hitler's Holocaust" (Edwin Black)
6) “IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Corporation" (Expanded Version; Edwin Black)
7) “War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race” (Expanded Version; Edwin Black)
8) “The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics” (An article published in the History News Network (HNN) by Edwin Black (2003)
9) "The Nazi Hydra in America: Suppressed History of the Century-Wall Street and the Rise of the Fourth Reich (Glen Yeadon)
10) "Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present" (Harriet Washington)
11) "Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War 2" (Douglas Blackmon)
12) "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" (Michelle Alexander)
13) "Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe Under Nazi Occupation" (Isaiah Trunk)
14) "Project Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America" (Annie Jacobsen).
15) “Sanctuary: Nazi Fugitives in Australia” (Mark Aarons)
16) “Hitler’s Private Library: The Books that Shaped his Life” (Timothy W. Ryback)
17) “Ford and GM Scrutinized for Alleged Nazi Collaboration” (Michael Dobbs; The Washington Post, July 30, 1998)
18) “Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew” (Richard Breitman)
20) “America’s Nazi Secret: An Insider’s History” (John Loftus)
21) “Hell’s Cartel: I.G. Farben and the Making of Hitler’s War Machine” (Diarmuid Jeffreys)
22) “The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben” (Joseph Borkin)
23) “Patents for Hitler” (Guenter Riemann)
24) “Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis, and the Swiss Banks” (Mark Aarons & John Loftus)
25) “Inside I.G. Farben: Hoechst During the Third Reich” (Stephen H. Lindner)
26) “All Honorable Men: The Story of the Men on Both Sides of the Atlantic Who Successfully Thwarted Plans to Dismantle the Nazi Cartel System” (James S. Martin)
27) “Hitler’s Willing Spin Doctors” (Peter Grose; The New York Times, Feb. 28, 1999)
28) “The Choice is Clear: Africa Must Embrace Nkrumah’s Vision and United” (Milton Allimadi; Black Star News, May 26, 2013)
francis kwarteng 8 years ago
Dear Baidoo,
Good day. This is another useless article (I have some provocative answers for you on FRD and the New Deal). You are here lying and misleading your unsuspecting readership again!
I will provide an article ... read full comment
Dear Baidoo,
Good day. This is another useless article (I have some provocative answers for you on FRD and the New Deal). You are here lying and misleading your unsuspecting readership again!
I will provide an article showing how WEB Du Bois discussed the way American capitalism treated white and black laboerers (while you mentioned Du Bois views on black laboreres, you ignored what he had to say about white labor. I am not saying you did on purpose. You may have read Du Bois enough to have said what you said about him in this article. You have been doing this in all your uninformed articles).
I have been advising you to read and read and read and read critically but you don't listen.
Unfortunately, some of us have problems with you because you don't seem to have a clue what capitalism, socialism, mixed economy, and communism.
You throw these concepts about without telling your readers what they mean or what you think they are. Your descriptive ramblings on these concepts make your arguments worse.
Well, if you want to murder and bury your "general ignorance" about basic facts for good then you may as well have to read the works of Robert A. Hill, Tony Martin (deceased), and Rupert Lewis, three of the world's leading authorities on Marcus Garvey.
Please read these writers. I don't have the time to delve into their extensive scholarship on Garvey with you (I can recommed others if that is what you want. However I rank these three above all Garvey scholars).
To start off, I will ask you to read Vol. Vll of "The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Associations Papers," edited by Robert Hill (you may want to read the volumes edited by him).
Let me just tell you a few things Garvey says about "capitalism" (I put the word capitalism in quotes just to separate it from your paper capitalism, which has never been practiced in human history).
Marcus criticized socialism, capialism, faciscm (Benito Mussilini's attack against Ethiopia) and "communism." But he rooted for "capitalism."
Prof. Robert Hill writes of Garvey: "While his [Garvey] is tinged with liberalism, he has come out in unmistakable terms for capitalism."
Then Prof. Hill goes on to quote Garvey on capitalism:
"Caiptalism is necessary to the progress of the world, and those who are unreasonably and wantonly fighting against it are enemies to human advancement, and there should be a limit to individual and corporate use of [or] control of it."
Prof. Hill continues, quoting Garvey: "If we dare destroy the capitalists, we are going to destroy the means of getting some of the good things of the world."
So Garvey viewed "capitalism" the same Dr. Douglas Amy viewed "capitalism," or what I called Keynesian economics or mixed economy. However, unlike you, I have provided you the source where you can get the context for his views on "captalism." If you really want to understand Garvey's understanding of "capitalism," then read PARTS 3/4 of "RE: NKRUMAHISM, THE CAN OF WORMS I OPENED-KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS."
Besides, he established businesses across America. Please learn to stop misrepresenting facts or others' views. You are grossly lying about Garvey.
That said, Garvey was not necessarily against unionization as you put. Let me just give you one context to explain why you may wrongly have thought Garvey was against unionization, courtesy of Prof. Hill (Vol. V11). The latter recalls of Garvey:
"I would strongly advise you to go work. Your strike would be effective if there were nobody to replace you. What is the use of strking now, when probably in one hour they would have people to do the work you are doing, and probably at a cheaper rate."
Prof. Hill then adds:
"Garvey thus acted as a strikebreaker and TOOL of the employers, the United Fruits Co.,..." In other words the owners of United Fruits Co. were merely using Garvey for their selfish ends. "That he is trying to ally himself with the bourgeoisie of the Island and to gain their support can be seen from the aid he is giving to one of the most labor-hating canditades for mayor."
These were way back when Garvey was still in Jamaica. Garvey since changed many of his views as his political and social consciousness advanced (see his "The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey" and "Message to the People: The Course of African History"). As for Du Bois the less said about him, the better. I can also say both Du Bois and Garvey contributed to American capitalism in more ways than you think.
I have read nearly all the important works by Thomas Sowell and those of his newspaper column articles of the Wall Street Journal, Huffingon Post,the Washington Times, the New York Times, and the New York Post among others (in fact, I had a Jewish friend in New York whose father was Sowell's close friend and we used to discuss Sowell's scholarhsip all the time, particularly when we were on break).
And you know Milton Friedman was one of Sowell's mentors. And as you might as well know, most of Friedman's ideas and economic policies have been shown to be unworkable, impractical, and unsuccessful in the world world.
That is why all the world's major central banks and financial institutions are running to Keynes (I hope you have read Richard Adam's "Milton Friedman: A Study in Failure," a piece in the Guardian. Actually I have a whole library on the failures of Friedman). Yet Sowell comes nowhere near Friedman in terms of academic acomplishments, originality, and theoratical productions.
Thus, there is nothing really important I can say of Sowell in terms of the influence of theoretical productions on economic and political theory.
Namely, he is not as original as Keynes or Friedman. A friend of mine, one of America's most influential, prolific, and respected scholars, thrashed Sowell in a public debate on various topics, eventually making him look like a new-born baby an the end of the debate (I will make information on this debate to readers available at a later date if an opportunity calls for it).
Well, let me tell you that one online writer called Sowell "IDIOT EMIRETUS." Let us respect Sowell for what he is and stands for. And let us respect Sowell for his conservative scholarship and his person. You know he is idolized on the right, Baidoo?
Please go back and read the corpus of scholasrhip on Garvey (and his ideas) and provide your readership with the proper contexts for his ideas. Your simplistic argumentation sometimes ignores the depth of what people have to say.
And while you read Rupert, Hill, Martin, make sure to access primary sources (by Garvey himself). And while you read, try to follow how his political consciousness grew from his days in Jaimaica, his travels thoughout the Caribbean, America, and then to England where he died. That is how I have read him. I don't take one or two commments made by him 9without the contexts) and draw gegeralized conclusions. I will say the same of Du Bois.
Thanks.
Nii Teiko 8 years ago
How do you expect people to read these stupid lengthy articles and foolish commends after one retire home, very exhausted from the hard days work? Ghanaweb "residents" are been warn of joblessness that could lead to homelessn ... read full comment
How do you expect people to read these stupid lengthy articles and foolish commends after one retire home, very exhausted from the hard days work? Ghanaweb "residents" are been warn of joblessness that could lead to homelessness if they don't cut the time they spend, commenting and debating stupid issues that do not put food on the table. I still insist Mr. Kwarteng and Prof Lungu don't know what time is it now. What matters is the massive looting of the nation coffers by the incompetent and messy administration of Mahama. Think about that.
francis kwarteng 8 years ago
Dear Readers,
In this article WEB Du Bois fought for the rights of African-Americans in Labor Unions and for their White-American Union members to respect them [African-Americans]. Read on (I am so happy to find this artic ... read full comment
Dear Readers,
In this article WEB Du Bois fought for the rights of African-Americans in Labor Unions and for their White-American Union members to respect them [African-Americans]. Read on (I am so happy to find this article):
........................................................................................................................................................
Title: "The Black Man and the Unions"
Author: W.E.B. DuBois
Date: March 1918
I am among the few colored men who have tried conscientiously to bring about understanding and co-operation between American Negroes and the Labor Unions. I have sought to look upon the Sons of Freedom as simply a part of the great mass of the earth’s Disinherited, and to realize that the world movements which have lifted the lowly in the past are opening the gates of opportunity to them today are now of equal value for all men, white and black, then and now.
I carry on the title page, for instance, of this magazine the Union label, and yet I know, and everyone of my Negro readers knows, that the very fact that this label is there is an advertisement that no Negro’s hand is engaged in the printing of this magazine, since the International Typographical Union systematically and deliberately excludes every Negro that it dares from membership, not matter what his qualifications.
Even here, however, and beyond the hurt of mine own, I have always striven to recognize the real cogency of the Union argument. Collective bargaining has, undoubtedly, raised modern labor from something like chattel slavery to the threshold of industrial freedom, and in this advance of labor white and black have shared.
I have tried, therefore, to see a vision of vast union between the laboring forces, particularly in the South, and hoped for no distant day when the black laborer and the white laborer, instead of being used against each other as helpless pawns, should unite to bring real democracy in the South.
On the other hand, the whole scheme of settling the Negro problem, inaugurated by the philanthropists and carried out during the last twenty years, has been based upon the idea of playing off black workers against white. That it is essentially a mischievous and dangerous program no sane thinker can deny, but is peculiarly disheartening to realize that it is the Labor Unions themselves that have given this movement its greatest impulse and that today, at last, in East St. Louis have brought the most unwilling of us to acknowledge that in the present Union movement, as represented by the American Federation of Labor, there is absolutely no hope of justice for an American of Negro descent.
Personally, I have come to this decision reluctantly and in the past have written and spoken little of the closed door of opportunity, shut impudently in the faces of black men by organized white workingmen. I realize that by heredity and century-long lack of opportunity one cannot expect in the laborer that larger sense of justice and duty which we ought to demand of the privileged classes. I have, therefore, inveighed against color discrimination by employers and by the rich and well-to-do, knowing at the same time in silence that it is practically impossible for any colored man or woman to become a boiler maker or book binder, an electrical worker or glass maker, a worker in jewelry or leather, a machinist or metal polisher, a paper maker or piano builder, a plumber or a potter, a printer or a pressman, a telegrapher or a railway trackman, an electrotyper or stove mounter, a textile worker or tile layer, a trunk maker, upholster, carpenter, locomotive engineer, switchman, stone cutter, baker, blacksmith, booth and shoemaker, tailor, or any of a dozen other important well-paid employments, without encountering the open determination and unscrupulous opposition of the whole united labor movement of America. That further than this, if he should want to become a painter, mason, carpenter, plasterer, brickmaster or fireman he would be subject to humiliating discriminations by his fellow Union workers and be deprived of their own Union laws. If, braving this outrageous attitude of the Unions, he succeeds in some small establishment or at some exceptional time at gaining employment, he must be labeled as a “scab” throughout the length and breadth of the land and written down as one who, for his selfish advantage, seeks to overthrow the labor uplift of a century.
francis kwarteng 8 years ago
Dear Readers,
Like I said to Baidoo, I know Sowell's scholarship inside out (that is a topic for another day).
Title: "Thomas Sowell: Idiot Emeritus."
Author: Tomfoolery
Date: July 31, 2010
...................... ... read full comment
Dear Readers,
Like I said to Baidoo, I know Sowell's scholarship inside out (that is a topic for another day).
Title: "Thomas Sowell: Idiot Emeritus."
Author: Tomfoolery
Date: July 31, 2010
........................................................................................................................................................
Godwin’s Law states that the longer an online discussion goes, the greater the chance of a Nazi reference. No matter what the forum, unless the subject is the Nazis or genocide, anyone making such a comparison automatically loses the argument. Period.
By this standard alone, syndicated Conservative columnist Thomas Sowell is the Biggest Loser.
For those who don’t know him, Thomas Sowell (born 1930) is an American economist, retired professor, social critic, political commentator, author, and lunatic. After seeing his vile, depraved weekly columns for the past four years I truly believe he belongs in an institution – which is just where he is. Since 1980, Sowell has been a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. The Hoover Institution, like the Heritage Foundation and countless others, is basically a welfare program for Right Wing Op-Ed writers. Wealthy donors give people like Sowell the financial freedom to rail against entitlement programs and rewrite history, particularly the Great Depression. Consequently, they are not bound by prickly things like facts or editors or journalistic ethics.
But before we delve into all things Nazi, let me acquaint you with some of Thomas Sowell’s other bat guano droppings on a host of topics, both historical and contemporary. How this crackpot is taken seriously is more of a mystery to me than Stonehenge or ‘Cop Rock’.
Dig. In a column called “Random Thoughts”, Sowell wrote of FDR and asked incredulously: “How can a President of the United States be re-elected in a landslide after four years when unemployment never fell below 15% for even one month during his first term?”
Good one, Tommy.
Let’s see if we can unravel this enigma, shall we? OK.
First, notice how Sowell doesn’t even bother to mention that U.S. was in the throes of that little jam known as the Great Depression, and had been since 1929. Note, too, how Sowell doesn’t say what the unemployment rate was when the great Herbert Hoover left office and the awful Franklin Roosevelt took office. In 1933, when FDR became President the national unemployment rate was Twenty-Five Percent! One quarter of the nation was out of work. Maybe Tommy forgot this little fact because in 1933 he was only 3 years old. Yeah, that must be it. (The Meghan McCain Defense.)
Now, during the next four years–the same four years cited by Sowell–the national unemployment rate went from 25% to 16.9%. Funny how he doesn’t tell you this, isn’t it?
Here’s the year by year break down for those of you playing at home:
1933: 25%
1934: 21.7%
1935: 20.1%
1936: 16.9%
So, unemployment fell every year during the first four years of FDR’s first term. It dropped seven points during that period. This would be like President Obama taking office with unemployment at 12% and it falling to 5% by the end of his first term. You think he would be re-elected? And let’s not forget FDR’s rival in the 1936 election; Alf Landon, a man who ran on repealing Social Security, which had just been passed the year before, no thanks to the GOP. Sound familiar?
Shame on you, Thomas Sowell. Is your argument about FDR’s re-election so flimsy that you’re afraid to tell your readers what the unemployment rate was when he took office? I know, as John Adams said, “Facts are stubborn things”. If you’re truly puzzled as to why FDR was re-elected in a landslide, why not come down from your ivory tower and talk to people who actually lived through the Great Depression. Ask them why they voted for FDR. Ask them if the New Deal worked or not. FDR won because he put people back to work and gave them hope. Even my 80 year old Republican step-mom will tell you this. Roosevelt created a few programs too, Sowell: FDIC, Social Security, SEC, WPA, and put financial regulations in place that kept us safe from another financial catastrophe until they were dismantled piece by piece. (See S&L Scandal and Financial Meltdown of 2008)
By the way Mr. Sowell, the most recent presidential poll conducted by real historians rates FDR as our 3rd greatest president. I’m no expert, but I think that puts him ahead of Herbert Hoover and George W. Bush, whom you described in another one of your idiotic columns as “an honorable man.”
In yet another column, Thomas Sowell protested against the idea of high school students engaging in community service to pad their college resume’. The activity that angered Sowell the most was volunteering at a homeless shelter. It seems that in Sowell World, anyone who ends up in such a shelter is just no good. Students shouldn’t help out at a homeless shelter, he argued, because they shouldn’t have to be involved in, and I quote, “feeding people who refuse to work”.
This ignorant statement is so vile on so many levels I don’t know where to begin. First off, most people who are homeless are homeless because of mental illness – specifically schizophrenia. It’s not due to lack of character or laziness. Beyond that little fact, to label people in a homeless shelter as there simply because they refuse to work is particularly despicable, especially in today’s economy.
God forbid young people help those in need and maybe see just how lucky they themselves are. God forbid young people get a glimpse of just how cruel life can be. God forbid they develop a sense of compassion or community – they might not want to become millionaires! Where’s the profit in that?
Using Sowell’s logic, battered women seeking shelter do so because they refuse to get along with their husbands or boyfriends. I guess people who were homeless in the Great Depression got that way because they refused to work also. This thinly veiled contempt for people that drips from every paragraph of Sowell’s columns reveals to me a man whose heart serves no other function but to pump blood into a jaundiced brain. Guess no one will ever accuse Thomas Sowell of being a “compassionate conservative.”
Last year Sowell devoted an entire column to the notion that Rush Limbaugh had never made any racist statements in his professional life. Guess Sowell doesn’t watch football.
Here’s what Sowell wrote last summer about what he thinks might happen if Iran gets the Bomb.
“Just two nuclear bombs were enough to get Japan to surrender in World War 2. It is hard to believe that it would take more than that for the United States of America to surrender – Especially with people in control of the White House and the Congress who were for turning tail and running just a couple years ago.”
Huh?
So let me get this straight, Tommy; If Iran were to drop two nuclear bombs, we would surrender? WTF? Is this why they call you “brilliant”? Yeah, Dems are weak – especially those two pansies who guided us through World War 2; FDR and Harry Truman.
“Turning tail and running in Iraq”? You mean that illegal, immoral war George W. Bush started instead of pursuing the actual people who attacked us on 9/11? Kind of like invading China after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Like the GOP today, Thomas Sowell’s solution to every foreign policy problem is WAR.
After Sowell has us surrendering to Iran, here’s how he finishes that scenario:
“Perhaps people who are gushing over the Obama Cult today might do well to stop and think about what it would mean for their granddaughters to live under Sharia law.”
Thorazine, anyone?
I can’t imagine that even Thomas Sowell believes this nonsense. He’s simply pandering to the serial bedwetters of the far Right. After all, it pays the bills. If, however, Sowell really believes this garbage he is clearly insane or, at the very least freebasing Metamucil.
One of the most remarkable political events in recent times took place the summer of 2008 when then Senator Barack Obama spoke to a large, cheering crowd in Berlin. And what did the great Thomas Sowell have to say about this?
“To find anything comparable to the crowds’ euphoric reactions to Mr. Obama, you would have to go back to the old news reels of German crowds in the 1930’s with their adulation of their Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler.”
Actually, Mr. Sowell, no, we don’t. Not even close. We need only go back to June, 1963 when President John F. Kennedy addressed the brave people of West Berlin and stood proudly with them, declaring “Ich Bin Ein Berliner.” Remember that? It was kind of big deal. After his stirring speech, JFK was informed by the Mayor of West Berlin, Willy Brandt, that on his best day, Adolf Hitler, Fuehrer, never had as large an audience as he did on this day.
Oh but wait a minute….If JFK drew a larger crowd than Hitler, he must have been even more like Hitler than Hitler! Do I have to connect the dots? It all makes sense now. Like Hitler, JFK mesmerized a nation with his soaring rhetoric and got us all to carry out his evil agenda. We were so brainwashed that we even followed him to the moon! Chilling, isn’t it?
In Sowell’s warped mind, anyone who can draw a massive crowd must be like Hitler. If this is the case, then Garth Brooks is Hitler, too!
The massive audience in a unified Berlin wasn’t worshipping Obama. After eight years of the disastrous go-it-alone, cowboy diplomacy of Bush/Cheney, these people were just happy to hear from a potential President whose foreign policy didn’t consist of simply thumbing his nose at the rest of the world.
But by far the most amazing and inspiring spectacle of all was the sight of thousands of Europeans proudly waving American flags again. When was the last time we saw that? And this piece of shit Sowell compares him to Hitler?
If all of this isn’t vile enough, Thomas Sowell’s latest ad Hitlerum about the BP Oil Disaster made national news. Last month, BP agreed to voluntarily set aside $20 billion to compensate those whose lives and livelihood and already been destroyed by this tragedy. Even Bill O’Reilly was happy about this. But Thomas Sowell could only see Nazis again, saying, “That law gave Hitler dictatorial powers that were used for things going far beyond the relief of the German people — indeed, powers that ultimately brought a rain of destruction down on the German people and on others.”
So getting BP to take responsibility for the disaster they caused is going to lead to another Holocaust? This is the kind of screwball opinion I’d expect from someone in a straitjacket.
Speaking of screwballs, Sowell’s column was actually read on the House Floor by GOP Congressman and Slow Talker Louie Gohmert (R TX).
“When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics…”
You mean like teabaggers?
Never one to pass up an opportunity to be hateful, Sarah Palin jumped on Thomas Sowell’s Crazy Train, and linked to this idiotic column on her Twitter page. When it blew up in her face only hours later, she tried to jump off the Sowell train by tweeting, “ I never compared Obama to Hitler”.
No Sarah, you just endorsed and linked to an op-ed piece written by a man who compares President Obama to Hitler almost every week. This is another classic example of that great conservative trait of personal accountability that Palin and others brag about possessing.
And there were others, Michele Bachmann and Sharon Angle (who even Joe Scarborough called a “jack-ass”) who referred to the BP victim fund as a slush fund, and even one member of the GOP, Congressman Joe Barton went so far as to personally apologize to the CEO of BP, calling the victims fund a “shake-down”. How much does a new ocean cost anyway?
What the hell is wrong with these people? Whose side are they on?
Dear Mr. Sowell: There are at least six Million reasons why you need to stop calling President Obama Hitler. I wonder what Anne Frank would think of your despicable Nazi comparisons? You trivialize the actual evil of the Nazis, and insult the memory of their victims. Have you no shame?
Shame on you.
........................................................................................................................................................
Amanfo 8 years ago
Dear Sir Baidoo, I appreciate your effort to credit some socialists in your write up at least that's good irrespective of the ideological stances. My little worry here is, your advice for books or materials to be read whi ... read full comment
Dear Sir Baidoo, I appreciate your effort to credit some socialists in your write up at least that's good irrespective of the ideological stances. My little worry here is, your advice for books or materials to be read whilst at the same time you chastsies same recommendation from Mr Kwarteng. I think when the material/s suits your philosopy you quickly advocates for their/its reading but, when it runs contrary to your beliefs as mostly advocated by Mr Kwarteng you belittle them. Is there any reason/s for that? Or simply because you abhors socialism and her advocates? Once again well done for your appreciation. Thank you
Kwame 8 years ago
Dr. Francis Kwateng you distorted some facts. You wrote that the Soviet Union, therefore Joseph Stalin favoured the communist in Germany over the socialist. However the fact is that at the end of the second world war till the ... read full comment
Dr. Francis Kwateng you distorted some facts. You wrote that the Soviet Union, therefore Joseph Stalin favoured the communist in Germany over the socialist. However the fact is that at the end of the second world war till the breakdown of the Berlin wall Germany was ruled by groups of leftist parties that came together to form the Social Democratic Unity party. It is a fact that the Soviet Union favoured the African National Congress over Pan African National Congress, which was more active on the continent of Africa during the liberation struggle in South Africa in the case of other countries, which do not have communist countries it recognized on the student union. I studied in the Soviet Union from 1977 to 1983 and though the organization I belong to was directly offered scholarship by the Soviet Union we were not allowed to organize under a separate umbrella outside the student union-National Union of Ghana Students.
Angela Michel played part in the destruction of the Berlin Wall and unification of Germany, but she was not against the use of citizens of Eastern Germany as second rate citizens of Germany, though she herself came from Eastern Germany. The ideas of racial superiority and imperial views of Angela Michel are not different from that of the fascists and that is reflected in the relation she has with Western European leaders who see Slavs in Europe as inferior, though Germany itself has a large population of Slovens.
francis kwarteng 8 years ago
Dear Kwame,
Good day.
You may have misdirected your answer to the wrong person, Francis Kwarteng. I will deal with your first and second sentences only (because I have never said any of the other things you attribute to ... read full comment
Dear Kwame,
Good day.
You may have misdirected your answer to the wrong person, Francis Kwarteng. I will deal with your first and second sentences only (because I have never said any of the other things you attribute to me anywhere).
First, you are talking about happenings in Germany after the Second World War. That is where you got my facts mixed.
When I wrote about the Soviet Union, German "communists," and "social democrats," I was writing about the elections that brought Adolf Hitler to power. This was after the First World War, not after the Second World War.
You wrote: "However the fact is that at the end of the SECOND WORLD WAR till the breakdown of..." Please go back and read "Re: Nkrumahism, The Can Of Worms I Opened-Hitler's Mein Kampf" again, particularly the paragraph where your arguments are derived.
Second, leftist parties etc rose in Germany after the First World War. Unfortunately you did not mention "conservatives." There were German "conservatives" who joined the German left in post-First World War. In fact there were "conservatives" in Hitler's Nazy Party and the leftist movement of Germany in post-First World War Germany.
Finally, in the paragraph where you you base your arguments on I specifically mentioned the Soviet Union, German "communists" and German "social democrats." Let me remind you of what I wrote:
"Then also it has been suggested through another alternative theory that the Soviet strategically played German communists against their social democrat colleagues in the hope the strategy..."
In sum, I never mentioned "socialist" as you mistakingly suggest and attribute to me. I say this because "social democrats" are not "socialists" or "communists."
Namely, social democracy is not the technically the same as "socialism" or "communism." Please take note.
That said, I never said anything about Angela Merkel, the African National Party, the Pan African Congress, and the rest of the things you say. And always remeber I was discussing events in the period after the FIRST WORLD WAR, not after the SECOND WORLD WAR, in the particular paragraph of "Re: Nkrumahism, The Can Of Worms I Opened-Hitler's Mein Kampf 1." I even went ahead to quote that specific sentence for your edification.
I hope I have clarified my position. Thanks for sharing. I always appreciate and respect your opinions.
Have a great weekend.
Thanks.
francis kwarteng 8 years ago
Hello Kwame,
Let me mention in passing that, one of the many reasons for which Hitler came to hate the Soviet "communists" was their using German "communists" and others on the left to undermine or thwart his political age ... read full comment
Hello Kwame,
Let me mention in passing that, one of the many reasons for which Hitler came to hate the Soviet "communists" was their using German "communists" and others on the left to undermine or thwart his political agenda in the '30s, a fact I forgot to mention in my comments to you! Please and read Hitler's two books.
This is just by the way.
Thanks.
YAW 8 years ago
Any reason why state controlled railways in Germany,Netherlands and France are faster,cleaner and cheaper than the privatized ones in Britain?. Your idol Lew Kuan Yew, used the same socialist principles to build houses/flat ... read full comment
Any reason why state controlled railways in Germany,Netherlands and France are faster,cleaner and cheaper than the privatized ones in Britain?. Your idol Lew Kuan Yew, used the same socialist principles to build houses/flats for the people of Singapore through the central provident fund.
Kwame 8 years ago
Yaw you made a nice point....That even the Malaysian nuclear medical institute was established by a Ghanaian who was trained in the Soviet Union.
Yaw you made a nice point....That even the Malaysian nuclear medical institute was established by a Ghanaian who was trained in the Soviet Union.
francis kwarteng 8 years ago
Dear Kwame,
Let me mention in passing that, one of the many reasons for which Hitler came to hate the Soviet "communists" was their using German "communists" and others on the left to undermine or thwart his political agen ... read full comment
Dear Kwame,
Let me mention in passing that, one of the many reasons for which Hitler came to hate the Soviet "communists" was their using German "communists" and others on the left to undermine or thwart his political agenda in the '30s, a fact I forgot to mention in my comments to you!
Philip stop this your rubbish.
1 Ford was not a government enterprise but privately owned and the higher wages were market driven "Keep skilled labor".Silicon valley is following suit by giving 1 year maternity leave to its female workers to keep them .Wha ...
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Capitalism would have done better for Blacks?How with no money and inferior education? There are more Blacks in jail than any where in the world PKB get your fact right
Re: Nkrumahism, The Can of Worms I Opened–Hitler's Mein Kampf 1
PHILIP KOBINA BAIDOO, JR. AND HIS AGITPROP REVISIONIST HISTORY
Mr. Baidoo, the half-story teller is at it again!
First off, we should want to bring to ...
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Dear Baidoo,
Good day. This is another useless article (I have some provocative answers for you on FRD and the New Deal). You are here lying and misleading your unsuspecting readership again!
I will provide an article ...
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How do you expect people to read these stupid lengthy articles and foolish commends after one retire home, very exhausted from the hard days work? Ghanaweb "residents" are been warn of joblessness that could lead to homelessn ...
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Dear Readers,
In this article WEB Du Bois fought for the rights of African-Americans in Labor Unions and for their White-American Union members to respect them [African-Americans]. Read on (I am so happy to find this artic ...
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Dear Readers,
Like I said to Baidoo, I know Sowell's scholarship inside out (that is a topic for another day).
Title: "Thomas Sowell: Idiot Emeritus."
Author: Tomfoolery
Date: July 31, 2010
...................... ...
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Dear Sir Baidoo, I appreciate your effort to credit some socialists in your write up at least that's good irrespective of the ideological stances. My little worry here is, your advice for books or materials to be read whi ...
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Dr. Francis Kwateng you distorted some facts. You wrote that the Soviet Union, therefore Joseph Stalin favoured the communist in Germany over the socialist. However the fact is that at the end of the second world war till the ...
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Dear Kwame,
Good day.
You may have misdirected your answer to the wrong person, Francis Kwarteng. I will deal with your first and second sentences only (because I have never said any of the other things you attribute to ...
read full comment
Hello Kwame,
Let me mention in passing that, one of the many reasons for which Hitler came to hate the Soviet "communists" was their using German "communists" and others on the left to undermine or thwart his political age ...
read full comment
Any reason why state controlled railways in Germany,Netherlands and France are faster,cleaner and cheaper than the privatized ones in Britain?. Your idol Lew Kuan Yew, used the same socialist principles to build houses/flat ...
read full comment
Yaw you made a nice point....That even the Malaysian nuclear medical institute was established by a Ghanaian who was trained in the Soviet Union.
Dear Kwame,
Let me mention in passing that, one of the many reasons for which Hitler came to hate the Soviet "communists" was their using German "communists" and others on the left to undermine or thwart his political agen ...
read full comment