A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

This was so true when it came to convicting the Nazi war criminals. At the Nuremberg trials, the Allies had 250 tons of written material documenting the crimes committed by the Nazis. It was tedious reading material.

It wasn't until the prosecutor presented a film that showed the horrors of the concentration camps that the 21 Nazi's on trial knew it was over for them. Read more about this here...

Excerpt:

When everything was ready, the lights in the courtroom were dimmed; perhaps for security reasons, perhaps to gauge their reactions, the defendants were illuminated by small lights installed in their box. The clacking noise of the projector starting up was to prove the crack of doom for Hitler's amoral co-conspirators.

The film, "Nazi Concentration Camps," was a distillation of footage shot by Allied cameramen as their armies had liberated the death camps one by one in the final months of the war. The documentary was directed by Lt. Col. George C. Stevens, a noted Hollywood director in his own right (before enlisting, Stevens directed Woman of the Year; after the war, some of his most notable films included Shane, The Diary of Anne Frank, Giant and A Place in the Sun, the last two of which earned him Best Director Oscars).

The scenes, many of them familiar to us now, were absolutely shocking in their day: Bulldozers shoving tumbling corpses into open pits. Bodies stacked like cordwood. Walking skeletons looking dazedly into the camera, uncomprehending. And then, just when the viewer's mind started to go numb, the camera would focus in on a single dead face among a literal pile of dead faces, eyes staring vacantly, glazed over, transforming the millions of deaths which (to paraphrase Stalin) up to that point were just a statistic, into the unspeakable tragedy of single death upon single death upon single death, repeated to horror.

The film lasted just under an hour. The effect on the mood in the courtroom can hardly be overstated. Some people could not bear to watch; one woman fainted. And as the images from the projector continued to flicker across the screen that fateful afternoon, the veneer of arrogance and invincibility that had been a hallmark of the Nazi true believers for 12 long years finally cracked. A psychologist assigned to monitor the defendants at the trial described what he observed among those sitting in the box while "Nazi Concentration Camps" was shown:

Funk covers his eyes . . . Sauckel mops brow . . . Frank swallows hard, blinks eyes, trying to stifle tears . . . Frank mutters, "Horrible!" . . . . Rosenberg fidgets, peeks at screen, bows head, looks to see how others are reacting . . . Seyss-Inquart stoic throughout . . . Speer looks very sad, swallows hard . . . Defense attorneys are now muttering, "for God’s sake – terrible." . . . Fritzsche, pale, biting lips, really seems in agony . . . Doenitz has head buried in his hands . . . Keitel now hanging head."

http://books.google.com/...

By the time the projectors high up on the courtroom balcony cranked out the sixth and last terrible reel, Field Marshal [Wilhelm] Keitel was defeated as few generals have been defeated on a field of battle. He sat there, bent over and broken, mopping his lined face with a soggy ball of handkerchief.

President Obama is doing the right thing by withholding pictures of torture from the public eye. If these pictures are released too soon, the public will become desensitized by the scenes of torture. It is best to present these pictures in a court of law, in front of a jury so that the shock value sways the jury to convict Dick Cheney and his cartel.

Featured Blog

Please take the time to visit Meals on Wheels of Western Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.

http://fsmealsonwheels.blogspot.com/

Senator Specter's And the EFCA

Yesterday, I sent an email to PA Senator Arlen Specter asking him to support the Employee Free Choice Act. This is his response.

Dear Pennsylvania Constituent,

After giving exhaustive consideration to the Employee Free Choice legislation, I have decided to oppose the bill for reasons specified in my Senate floor statement which is contained below or you may read here and watch here.

I remain open to working to correct the imbalance which exists with so many jobs being exported and substantial labor losses in areas like pensions and health care.

In my floor statement, I have also laid out some suggested revisions to the National Labor Relations Act which could provide the basis for correcting the current imbalance.

Sincerely,

Arlen Specter

Here is Senator Specter's full floor statement:

Senator Specter's full floor statement, including the appendix, follows:

I have sought recognition to state my position on a bill known as the Employee Free Choice Act, also known as card check. My vote on this bill is very difficult for many reasons. First, on the merits, it is a close call and has been the most heavily lobbied issue I can recall. Second, it is a very emotional issue with Labor looking to this legislation to reverse the steep decline in union membership and business expressing great concern about added costs which would drive more companies out of business or overseas. Perhaps, most of all, it is very hard to disappoint many friends who have supported me over the years, on either side, who are urging me to vote their way.

In voting for cloture - that, is to cut off debate - in June 2007, I emphasized in my floor statement and in a law review article that I was not supporting the bill on the merits, but only to take up the issue of labor law reform. Hearings had shown that the NLRB was dysfunctional and badly politicized. When Republicans controlled the Board, the decisions were for business. With Democrats in control, the decisions were for labor. Some cases took as long as eleven years to decide. The remedies were ineffective.

Regrettably, there has been widespread intimidation on both sides. Testimony shows union officials visit workers' homes with strong-arm tactics and refuse to leave until cards are signed. Similarly, employees have complained about being captives in employers' meetings with threats of being fired and other strong-arm tactics.

On the merits, the issue which has emerged at the top of the list for me is the elimination of the secret ballot which is the cornerstone of how contests are decided in a democratic society. The bill's requirement for compulsory arbitration if an agreement is not reached within 120 days may subject the employer to a deal he or she cannot live with. Such arbitration runs contrary to the basic tenet of the Wagner Act for collective bargaining which makes the employer liable only for a deal he or she agrees to. The arbitration provision could be substantially improved by the last best offer procedure which would limit the arbitrator's discretion and prompt the parties to move to more reasonable positions.

In seeking more union membership and negotiating leverage, Labor has a valid point that they have suffered greatly from outsourcing of jobs to foreign countries and losses in pension and health benefits. President Obama has pressed Labor's argument that the middle class needs to be strengthened through more power to unions in their negotiations with business. The better way to expand labor's clout in collective bargaining is through amendments to the NLRA rather than on eliminating the secret ballot and mandatory arbitration. Some of the possible provisions for such remedial legislation are set forth in an appendix to this statement.

In June 2007, the vote on the Employee Free Choice Act was virtually monolithic: 50 Senators, Democrats, voted for cloture and 48 Republicans against. I was the only Republican to vote for cloture. The prospects for the next cloture vote are virtually the same. No Democratic Senator has spoken out against cloture. Republican Senators are outspoken in favor of a filibuster. With the prospects of a Democratic win in Minnesota, yet uncertain, it appears that 59 Democrats will vote to proceed with 40 Republicans in opposition. If so, the decisive vote would be mine. In a highly polarized Senate, many decisive votes are left to a small group who are willing to listen, reject ideological dogmatism, disagree with the party line and make an independent judgment. It is an anguishing position, but we play the cards we are dealt.

The emphasis on bipartisanship is, I think, misplaced. There is no special virtue in having some Republicans and some Democrats take similar positions. The desired value, really, is independent thought and an objective judgment. It obviously can't be that all Democrats come to one conclusion and all Republicans come to the opposite conclusion by expressing their individual objective judgments. Senators' sentiments expressed in the cloakroom frequently differ dramatically from their votes in the well of the Senate. The nation would be better served, in my opinion, with public policy determined by independent, objective legislators' judgments.

The problems of the recession make this a particularly bad time to enact Employees Free Choice legislation. Employers understandably complain that adding a burden would result in further job losses. If efforts are unsuccessful to give Labor sufficient bargaining power through amendments to the NLRA, then I would be willing to reconsider Employees' Free Choice legislation when the economy returns to normalcy.

I am announcing my decision now because I have consulted with a very large number of interested parties on both sides and I have made up my mind. Knowing that I will not support cloture on this bill, Senators may choose to move on and amend the NRLA as I have suggested or otherwise. This announcement should end the rumor mill that I have made some deal for my political advantage. I have not traded my vote in the past and I would not do so now.

***

First of all... this is NOT the "card check" bill. There is no "card check" in this bill so the Senator needs to stop being dishonest with his constituents. Senator Specter does have a habit of bending the truth. Remember the bouncing single bullet that killed President Kennedy? That story is unbelievable. Then there was Specter's attack on Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings. He dismissed her accusations as lies. Senator Specter should have spoken with other women about sexual harassment on the job. Maybe he would have learned that it is not easy for a woman to speak up and accuse her manager of sexual harassment.

So Senator Specter has decided to NOT support labor and unions in Pennsylvania even though Pennsylvanians are losing their jobs to places like China and India. If he doesn't care about us, then we won't care about re-electing him in 2010. This seat has now become very viable for any Democrat to fill. Republicans really don't care about "Main Street".