Warning Signs of Fascism

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday November 21, 2016 · 8:53 PM PST

2016/11/21 · 20:53

Memorial sculpture at Dachau Concentration Camp, Germany

A few years ago, my husband and I had the opportunity to visit Bavaria (Southern Germany) and Austria. Although the idea of visiting Nazi sites was abhorrent, we felt that we wanted to honor the victims of Nazi Germany and to offer our remembrance of their suffering.

One of the places we visited was this museum near Berchtesgaden in the Alps where Hitler finally died. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dokumentationszentrum_Obersalzberg

We were so heartened to find that the German people have created this magnificent museum here -- a museum which is designed to warn the German people of the first signs of fascism and to take the visitors step by step through the initial attraction of the German people to the Nazi movement, to the coercion and terror of the victims -- Jewish, gays, Gypsies -- and eventually to the destruction of the common people themselves. This stunning and memorable museum provides a great warning and an acknowledgement of the fears and the realities that the German people faced when Hitler was on the rise.

We always like to say that we would never allow such a thing to happen here ... and that somehow the German people failed the test -- failed the world. And yet here we are today in America. A fascist personality is about to take the reins of power and he is busily promoting other fascist types to work with him and to dispense laws, rules and regulations which will lay the foundations for our future.

So I think it's important for us to recognize the signs of fascism -- here and now. Here's a source I've found online which lists these signs. We've only just begun this walk, and we're well on track. www.rense.com/...

I hope we'll be wiser, braver and better prepared to respond than were the German people in the '30s. We can take heart in that they didn't have the benefit of communications technologies that we have today.

We must resist!

Elephants never forget -- and Hillary hasn't forgotten the elephants

Pajaro

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday August 01, 2016 · 5:24 PM PDT

2016/08/01 · 17:24

I would like to share an experience I had this last May with Hillary at a campaign stop in San Francisco -- an experience which was so profound and moving that it literally left me speechless.

First, let me say that I've had a longtime desire to thank Hillary personally for her work to save the elephants. I've been involved in an international effort to save them since the beginning of 2013 and along the way, I learned that she, too, had worked hard to save them through the Clinton Global Initiative beginning in late 2012.

For those of you who don't know, elephants are under siege for their ivory. Approximately 100 a day are mercilessly slaughtered -- that's one every 15 minutes! Hundreds of thousands of them have been slaughtered in just the past decade and sustainable populations in most African countries no longer exist. At this time the elephants are facing extinction in the wild within the next decade or so -- and many thousands of us around the world are working to save them -- including Hillary Clinton.

And so when a last minute rally was to be held in San Francisco, I decided to go with the meager hope that I might be able to say thank you to her.

After standing on concrete for 4 hours, here she came to stand before hundreds of supporters in full rally mode -- waving signs and chanting. Footsore and broken backed, we then listened to her speech. Then among much fanfare, she left the stage and was heading for the exit, when she decided to come back -- greeting the people who were standing in the front of the crowd. I was standing 3 people back and knew that I had no chance of saying anything to her that could be heard over the hubbub of the crowd.

Because I still hoped to let her know of our shared love for elephants and to somehow express my gratitude toward her, I decided that what I could do was to hold my cell phone toward her with a picture of an elephant. And that's what I did. The one I quickly chose off my phone was of Tim – a great bull from Kenya. (It's the picture that I've included here.)

What happened next was literally breathtaking. She saw the picture and her response was stunning. Her face almost went into shock. Her head tipped back and her eyes went wide, filled with tears and then all the energy in her face collapsed into grief and love. And we just stared at each other with a shared compassion for these beautiful creatures. It was as if time stood still and all that remained was our love for them. Then she said, "Thank you." We held hands briefly, and she turned and was gone.

Hillary Clinton is believed by some to be cold, robotic, calculating. What I saw was deep compassion and love. It's such a travesty that someone with such depth should be continuously assaulted as she is, when she has a great heart and truly desires to serve. She's absolutely the real thing.

If elephants could speak a human language, I have no doubt that they would trumpet, "I’m with her!” As am I.

Here’s a link to an episode of the Ellen show, where Hillary talks about her love for elephants. Beginning about 2:40.

YouTube Video

Plight of the Elephants

Pajaro

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday May 12, 2013 · 9:02 PM PDT

2013/05/12 · 21:02

Today, the world’s elephants are the subjects of brutal and deadly poaching by profiteers who kill or maim these creatures, hack away their faces to acquire their ivory, and then sell their bloody loot to China and other Asian countries where it is turned into trinkets and jewelry. The elephants are left to die an agonizing death and the people are silent. Close to 30,000 were killed in 2012; many more thousands have been killed this year. In Tanzania, it is estimated that they will be extinct within 7 years. The World Wildlife Fund says one recent study found that 62 percent of the Congo Basin's forest elephant population has been wiped out over the past decade. Country after country reports the horror and the decline of the species.

An international outcry is desperately needed, or we will awake one day soon and the elephant will be extinct as a wild species. I recognize that this is a painful subject and that most people avert their gaze and their attention, but if we do not help these creatures by raising public awareness, we will see the end of elephants in the wild. Personally, I find this completely horrifying.

What to do? Here are some things that I’ve done. I encourage you to come up with other ideas, do them and share them here.

1. Social and/or Advocacy Media. I know that there’s a great deal of power in social media – to keep our friends and family apprised of the situation may be helpful. I think it would be good to use advocacy media, but I haven’t the first clue how to get that done. Maybe some of you have ideas of how that can be utilized and brought to bear on this situation. Change.org? Avaaz.org? If so, please share it with me and others. I suspect that this avenue will yield the greatest results.

2. Attract Media Attention: The New York Times has written a few important articles about this situation, but little else has appeared. Who can be contacted? How can we attract the attention of the “regular media?”
http://www.nytimes.com/...

3. Wildlife Organizations. Join organizations which are focused on helping these creatures. Here are a few; Googling will find other groups whose focus are saving the elephants.

Wildlife Conservation Society (currently they are trying to save the elephants in the Central African Republic which are being slaughtered at an alarming rate) http://www.wcs.org/

World Wildlife Fund http://worldwildlife.org/...

Bloody Ivory
http://bloodyivory.org/

David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (rescuing injured eles and their orphaned young in Kenya. You can ‘adopt’ an orphan elephant and help return it to the wild)
http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/

4. Tourist Agencies. I believe it’s important to contact the tourist agencies in the African nations, stating your intention to NOT travel to their country as long as elephants are being exploited for their ivory. Here are some links for those kinds of communications. I’m sure there are many, many more.

Kenya:
http://www.magicalkenya.com Email: info@ktb.go.ke

Tanzania:
http://www.tanzaniatouristboard.com/... Email: info@tanzaniatourism.go.tz

Mozambique:
http://www.mozambiquetourism.co.za/... Email:travel@mozambiquetourism.co.za

Zambia:
http://www.zambiatourism.com/... Email: ztb@zambiatourism.org.zm

5. Chinese Ambassador and the Consulates. Write the Ambassador of China to the U.S. in Washington and to the various Chinese Consulates in America. Here’s the letter which I’m sending.

This might be an idea for some kind of Advocacy group. Perhaps in petition form? I’m out of my league here.

Dear Consul General (or Ambassador)

We are writing to request your support in an extremely important environmental matter in which your country is greatly involved -- the importation and use of illegal ivory and the imminent extinction of the elephant. It is widely believed that the sale of ivory products in China contributes to more than 50% of the ivory trade.

African and Asian elephants are being decimated by this trade in ivory. We will lose these magnificent creatures unless action is taken. China has the opportunity to step forward, declare the importation and sale of all ivory products illegal and, overnight, there would be a huge impact on this deplorable situation.

The world has supported China for many years in the protection of its Giant Pandas. We are asking for your help to make the necessary changes to save the world’s elephants.

We realize that you cannot do this alone, but perhaps you are in a position to relay this request to the proper authorities in China.

We thank you for your help.

Addresses are:

Ambassador Cui Tiankai
Embassy of the People's Republic of China in the United States of America
3505 International Place, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20008 U.S.A.

Counsel General ZHAO Weiping
Consulate General of the
People’s Republic of China
One East Erie St., Suite 500
Chicago, IL 60611

Counsel General XU Erwen
Consulate General of the
People’s Republic of China
3417 Montrose Blvd.
Houston, TX 77006

Counsel General Sun Guoxiang
Consulate General of the
People’s Republic of China
520 12th Avenue
New York, NY 10036

Counsel General Qiu Shaofang
Consulate General of the
People’s Republic of China
443 Shatto Place
Los Angeles, CA 90036

Counsel General Yuan Nansheng
Consulate General of the
People’s Republic of China
1450 Laguna Street
San Francisco, CA 94115

6. Protests. I’ve thought long and hard about this. We have a Chinese Consulate in the S.F. Bay Area where I could go “protest.” I don’t know if this is a good idea or a bad one. My first inclination was that it might be helpful, but the Chinese might respond quite negatively. I don’t pretend to have an answer.

7. U.S. Government. Last but not least, contact your American representatives and President Obama, asking for their efforts to help in whatever way possible.

Any other ideas out there?

"If we do not act, we will have to shamefully admit to our children that we stood by as elephants were driven out of existence.”-- WCS conservationists Samantha Strindberg & Fiona Maisels, writing in The New York Times

RSS