I'm part way there. In government buildings, city parks, etc., sure -- take 'em down. State flags incorporating the confederate flag? Yeah. Probably time to change.

Civil war battlefields / memorials? Leave 'em up. Stone Mountain? Leave it. Placards noting that these people fought for the wrong side, for wrong reasons (90% of which boils down to slavery) can / should be included. Make it clear that the efforts of these people to try to keep slavery around were evil and wrong.

I've seen it noted that there are no monuments to Hitler in Germany. True, but reminders of the terrible Nazi legacy remain, in Germany and elsewhere. Concentration camps remain, still standing as a reminder of the human capacity for evil. Nazi flags, logos, and equipment remain in museums.

In China, images and monuments to Mao are everywhere. In spite of the fact that even the Communist Party there admits that his policies and actions were terrible -- the devastating Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, etc. Some Chinese can remember and celebrate the good that Mao did (perhaps a small list) while simultaneously acknowledging his extremely tarnished legacy.


I think that being very quick to say that ALL people on the Confederate side of the Civil War were evil and wrong while their counterparts in the Union were clearly the "real Americans" is entirely too easy. The CSA was founded almost entirely in support of a very evil primary goal -- to keep slavery around. But the people in it, even the people running it, were different from the people on the other side mainly due to accidents of birth location. They fought for what they thought was necessary / right. They were wrong. But, they were real Americans -- and acknowledging that they could have been wrong in that way reminds us that the potential to end up on the wrong side of history also exists for us.

6/10 polled said they believe they should remain, a tiny bit different from wanting them standing, but surprising none the less.
So was this quote from Robert E Lee denouncing civil war monuments....

“I think it wiser,” the retired military leader wrote about a proposed Gettysburg memorial in 1869, “…not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered.”
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/robert-e-lee-opposed-confederate-monuments/

620,000 people died in the civil war over the fate of black lives in america. Then and now the 1% rallied their armies, blood was shed and in the end the victorious pocketed the profits. The DOW is still above 22K and it's dividend time again.

Facts and Truth is all I Have.

The window panes are political quadrants. The lower right corner is punched out, indicating the man is anarcho-capitalist. The lamp is tilted toward the newspaper to bring light upon the Sri Lankan Civil War, which was set off by an ambush the day after this comic was published. (That's why the newspaper is blank. Nothing newsworthy compared to the following days/week.) The meat on the table symbolizes the impending carnage, as thousands would die, and 150,000 made homeless.

@newtboy
gonna have to disagree with ya there mate.

not so much on the speculation in regards to trump involvement,or some kind of capitulation with russia.there quite possibly be some co-ordination between the kremlin and the trump administration.trumps alleged ties with putin may all be true,but until i see some actual evidence,that is all it will ever be;speculation.

and i think chomsky's criticism is a valid one.
the "russia russia russia" drum beating is reminiscent of the republicans and their meth-induced media barrage of "benghazi benghazi benghazi",and even after their precious political whipping tool had been debunked,they STILL beat that drum.

and of course it is hypocritical of the US government to cry about political election interference! america has been interfering with other,sovereign countries democratic elections for decades!

because here in murica' we like our allies to be either be run by despotic leaders,or rigid theocracies,because democracies are hard to manipulate and control.can't be bribing an entire citizenry now can we? we like our foreign allies like we like our meat,juicy and tender and easy pickings.

now i am not here to defend putin.the man is a brutal authoritarian,who may appear to some as a russian patriot,but i just see a ruthless and saavy political player who appeases the only constituency that matters to him.the russian oligarchs,and they OWN that fucking joint.

but it was NATO who began to encroach on russian borders,not the other way around.in fact,as early as the 80's we began that encroachment.we lied to gorbachev,who was removed as president in shame,to be replaced by yeltsin.who was america's pick for their own little tool of the kremlin.

russia's military build-up has been a direct response to our ever-increasing wars of aggression in the middle east.putin has stated so publicly.

russia's biggest export is oil and natural gas,and russia pretty much is the sole provider for all of europe.with our wars in the middle east,and now qatar aggressively seeking to push through their own oil and gas pipeline to sell to europe.(what?you thought yemen and syria were about civil wars and terrorists?).

what did you THINK russia was going to do?
sit back and let their only major export be challenged?

and now that trump,like the buffoon he is,publicly stated that if the baltic states are not willing to pay their fair share towards NATO,then they will be removed.opening the door for putin.

poor latvia...

but lets waste all this time on "russia russia russia",while ignoring the larger implications of a fucking world war.

did russia manipulate US elections?
possibly..probably..
was the trump administration complicit?
possibly..probably..

is their any evidence beside speculation,and coincidence?
nope.

chomsky makes a valid point.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-shifrinson-russia-us-nato-deal--20160530-snap-story.html

reddit thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/USCivilWar/comments/4qdjbd/did_union_concentration_camps_kill_free_slaves/

Civil War Talk:
http://civilwartalk.com/threads/the-devils-punchbowl.125679/

It seems to me that the fringes have become the loudest voices in both parties, but it's the right who is legislating based on their fringe (no more global warming according to the soon to be defunded epa is just one good example of that). Fortunately, the far left can't implement their banning of words (legally) in the U.S.....our constitution makes that impossible.

Big government is bad, but then you need to actually look into which party grew government and spending, you'll find that they both are near equal these days, no matter what rhetoric they spout.

The civil war pushed us to think that the state's deciding everything with no federal protections for human rights leads to trouble....but I do agree there should be less interference from on high. Consider, if the state's were allowed to be self deterministic, Calexit or Wexit (what I call the plan for all West coast states to form a new country) would be a serious consideration for us and a likelihood.

I would say you seem to have it backwards, the left of today is actually implementing the plans of the right from 20+ years ago, not the other way around.

You used the accusation that they advocate killing children to excuse us killing their children during our assassinations by drone.
EDIT: You strongly implied it's OK and smart to kill children as collateral damage because it "lowers the overall body count" and because we don't target the children specifically, but they do (but we don't not target them).
You don't have to say the exact words you put in quotes to mean it. I did not quote you saying those specific words, did I?

We aren't at war, war is between nations. This is an international police action at best.
And again, you aren't being honest to play a semantics game and conflate active attacks on a battlefield with supportive speeches. We aren't at war, and there's no American citizen filled battle group, and never has been one fighting Americans. (not since the civil war, that is)
EDIT: To be labeled and killed as an "enemy combatant", we should have to be able to prove they are actually engaged in combat, IMO.

You are being deliberately obtuse. It's NOT war, war as a legal concept only occurs between nations, not groups of individuals. That is not opinion, it's international law. It is war like, but that's a completely different legal situation, one that until recently would not allow us to kill Americans.

Was not Aleppo held by "moderate" rebels, not Daesh or other religious fanatics? I suppose that would mean they ARE mostly wiped out now, but only recently.

Foreign fighters on your side doesn't make your fight illegitimate for either side. Having ONLY foreign fighters on either side would mean it's no longer a civil war but is now an invasion. Thanks to targeting the local citizens first (fighters or not), that may be where we are now.

lol; the second half is a repeat in slow motion, right?

But more interestingly; what is the back story here?

Using the sweeper as cover during a particularly nasty part of someone's civil war? Before firing the RPG?

To some extent, that is still the norm. You would expect unaffiliated opportunists to take advantage of the conflict to steal an area for themselves, but these groups are rarely if ever successful from what I can find.
It sounds like that is a larger part of this particular conflict than normal, though, perhaps larger than the original civil war itself, even supplanting it.

Absolutely. We've had our share of - primarily Austrian and French - mercenaries as part of our internal wars. These were groups who enlisted for one of the fighting parties.

In Syria, however, you've had thousands of mercenaries who were not fighting for the government or the "rebels", but for their own. And we're not just talking about ISIS carving out pieces of Syria for their own caliphate, but also other jihadists who merely want to turn Syria into another failed state, like Libya.

To describe this as a civil war distorts the nature of this conflict, it makes it sound as if it were a struggle for control between two groups of Syrians. It may have been at some point years ago, but it hasn't been for a long time.

Mali is looking awfully similar by now, too. Lots of foreign fighters in nation states that were only ever stable on paper anyway -- a recipe for disaster.

Um....there were also plenty of foreign mercenaries fighting on both sides in our (US) civil war. That is the norm, not something odd.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_enlistment_in_the_American_Civil_War

Also, note how she refers to it as a war. Not a "civil war", mind you, but a war. The difference lies in the thousands of foreign mercenaries fighting against the Syrian military.