"The Worst War Ever"
Filmmaker Ken Burns discusses The War, a different kind of World War II documentary.
Thu Aug. 23, 2007 11:00 PM PDT
It's got the obligatory Tom Hanks voice-overs, the black-and-white footage with overdubbed sound effects, and the octogenarians reminiscing in dimly lit rooms, but Ken Burns' The War isn't your typical World War II documentary. The seven-part, 14-hour series, which starts on PBS on September 23, is unusually harrowing, filled with unfamiliar and graphic footage of combat and death. It is so intense that Burns says some viewers have come out of screenings with "their own little post-traumatic stress issues." Yet like all elements of a Burns production, the gore is nothing if not handled meticulously. "Every time we show a human being that is not alive in this film, we thought really hard about whether we should show or not show it," he explains. "When we show it to veterans, you're never quite sure what they're going to think. They usually say, 'This is as close to what I remember as anything I've ever seen; please leave all these horrible things in it.'" Burns, the director of The Civil War, Brooklyn Bridge, and more than a dozen other films, recently spoke with Mother Jones about why he wanted to take a hard look at the "Good War."
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Ken Burns: One of the things that pushed me over the top to do this film is that we are losing 1,000 veterans a day. I'm in the memory business, and this is a hemorrhage of memory that is just too difficult for me to countenance. Someone once said that the death of a man was like the loss of a library. It's a collection of all of these histories that go away as each person dies.
Mother Jones: This film is really about the war from a purely American perspective.
KB: It's even more limited. It isn't America—it is just four towns. We've just taken a few representative stories in these towns and let them stand in for all of the experiences. We get to know the towns; we know the specific addresses where people live. And then we follow the sons off to hell. The Second World War has been so encrusted with the sense of safety—it was the "Good War;" everything is black and white. We forget that it is in fact the worst war ever. We wanted to show what it was like, unmediated by the celebrity of generals and presidents and statistics and Nazis, and instead show it from the bottom up, what the real experiences were for the 40 or so people that we met in these towns.
MJ: The film's tagline is "In extraordinary times there are no ordinary lives." What do you think about the whole idea of "the greatest generation"?
KB: I think "the greatest generation" becomes part of the calcification of the Second World War. I mean [Tom] Brokaw did an amazing thing with his book. He got these reticent people who had never spoken to speak. He should be given a medal for that. But I think to the extent that it perpetuates this notion of the greatest, it is also the worst generation. They slaughtered 60 million people.
Ken Burns' Watch List
"I watch as many documentaries as I can," says Ken Burns, whose seven-part, 14-hour World War II epic The War starts on pbs September 23. "We are really in the golden age of documentaries right now." Some of his recommendations of classic films and filmmakers worth seeking out:
1 Robert Flaherty's groundbreaking Arctic silent Nanook of the North (1922)
2 John Grierson's Night Mail (1936): "A beautiful film that followed the mail from Edinburgh, Scotland, to London, England. Just an amazing black-and-white film."
3 Frederick Wiseman and John Marshall's Titicut Follies (1967): "Still one of the best cinema vérité films of all time."
4 Albert and David Maysles' rockumentary Gimme Shelter (1970)
5 Errol Morris, director of The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War: "I loved Errol Morris from the very beginning. I think he's one of our great filmmakers."
6 Jeff Blitz's Spellbound (2002): "Amazing film about a spelling bee— who thought you could be at the edge of your seat worrying about that?"
7 Michael Moore: "You'd obviously want to study Michael Moore to understand how propaganda works."
MJ: Did you feel like you were going up against the History Channel and other popular portrayals of World War II?
KB: Well, no. I'm disappointed by them. I think that we deserve, and more important, we need a much more complicated history. It's not to say that [the History Channel] doesn't do a great service day in and day out in communicating stuff about what went on. But I think we just need to understand that it doesn't happen at that superficial level. Too many documentaries are just B-roll, the kind of convenient vamping with convenient images as you tell a story.
MJ: A lot of the footage and photos in the film are not the standard World War II stuff that we're used to seeing. Were you trying to avoid the meanings already attached to those images?
KB: There's an argument that those images are touchstones. I don't think we consciously went through and said, "Oh, let's not use that because it's too well known." In fact, we take a lot of very well-known images and use them in different ways. It's less choice in selection of images; it's how they're engaged. Everybody who watches this film just thinks constantly of Iraq.
MJ: How do you expect people to react to the film in the context of the current war?
KB: It doesn't come with an agenda; it's not looking to pick a fight with Bill O'Reilly. It's just looking to say, "We wish to honor the experience of these people." I can show a clip reel to 1,100 dress-gray cadets at West Point and get two standing ovations and be at [San Francisco's] Castro Theater a few weeks later, show the same clip reel, and get the same response. So what it tells us is that the small-p politics that preoccupies us is dwarfed by a larger artistic sensibility that can tolerate and even embrace contradictions. Right now we're in the middle of war, and it barely influences people's lives. And this was a war Americans were all together on. It can remind us of the myriad ways in which it's possible for us to be together, to cohere as a people. There were no red states and blue states. Everybody was together. Everybody knew somebody who was in the war. Everybody suffered in some way. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the historian, said there's too much "pluribus" and not enough "unum." And I think he's right. I've spent all my life trying to talk about unum, the way in which we can be together rather than apart.
MJ: The war is a shared national experience, but as we saw with the recent controversy over the inclusion of Hispanic Americans in your film, people also want to claim parts of that history as their own. Do you see that as an inevitable conflict?
KB: Yeah, I mean, I can understand it. I think there was a misunderstanding of what our film was about. It wasn't going to be all things to all people; it was more like a poem, not a textbook. But we've been able to find and identify some great stories that in no way alters our film but only supplement it and make it that much better. That's the only way I could do it; otherwise it would have been kind of artificial. I'm in the story-making business and it's a great experience to be told you have to make more stories.
MJ: Do you ever think about doing a film with a radically different style than the one you've been using for so long?
KB: That is a really great question. My style has eight elements: four oral and four visual. The visual would be the interviews, the footage, the live cinematography, and the still photographs. The oral dimensions are the third-person narration—"the voice of God"—the first-person chorus of voices, assorted readers, and then a complicated sound effects track to complement authentic music. Each one of my films engages these in varying degrees, so they seem to be radically different, you know? To those who say they're the same, I have to remind them of the diversity and the authenticity of the style. Our whole culture is filled with people who desire change for the sake of change. And then you have unlistenable music, unwatchable art, unreadable books.
MJ: What do you make of the proliferation of digital technology both for making films and distributing them online?
KB: Digital technology has opened us up, but we still have to know how to tell stories. It's not enough just to record them. One worry is YouTube attention deficit disorder, which erodes the single greatest thing we have, which is our attention. All meaning in the world accrues in duration, yet we have an environment which is encouraging this little bite thing. It's not enough to watch Rodney King getting beaten or Britney Spears without underpants. We still have to learn how to synthesize the raw materials. That's why it took me nearly seven years to make this film.
MJ: What do you think about the "Ken Burns Effect" on iPhoto?
KB: Steve Jobs called me up and said, "We've been trying to get this thing on iPhoto where we can zoom and pan, and we want to keep our working title, which is the 'Ken Burns Effect.'" I told him I didn't make product endorsements, so he gives me some equipment which we give to nonprofits. And it's a big joke because I'm essentially a computer Luddite, and people walk out of Apple Stores asking me incredibly dense questions on how they can manipulate the "Ken Burns Effect."
Comments
If Mr.Burns can pay tribute to our veterans and folks at home with the same dignity and respect as he paid to my heroes of "Baseball", knowing full well that one is sport, and one is life, and that they can be mutually inclusive, I look forward to 23 September, 2007.
What blather from the tiresome Ken Burns and the lazy interviewer. I won't be paying for a subscription to this, that is for sure.
What a silly statement by a rather strange person.
My query is: Would she (if that is true) wish to fight in combat, anywhere? MRS. ROBERTA????
Doubtful to an extreme.
My comment is probably a question, as I have yet to see the film. I need to know its greatness as relating to the path to liberation and its relation to the "war to end all wars". The second world war is not an American war per sae, but rather a world war that the whole world participated in. The Nazis-Fascist side fought to engrandize war by waring class against class, gender against gender, race against race, nation against nation, religion against religios, species against species, Empire against empire, to the alienation of all life on the planet. In truth they fought to die.
The liberation side fought for life from dictatorshiip of Militarism that restricts the planet livability and carries forth the worst possible destruction globally that even today forshadows the planets death by its destruction of the ecolgical green balances of life. Liberation supports the living planet and acctuates the harmony and joy that is a healthy well-biengness necessary for the planets survival. Fascism destroys and liberation opens a path to well-beingness. Fascism is not anti-fascism. Does this show mark the difference? The catholic church is busy saying that its all the same, which only confuses the masses as to the role of just and unjust vilence. Does this show also show that the U.S. Imperialists sold half the war materials and high explosives to the Japanese, Spanish, and German axis powers, while conciously crying broke to their own working class majority during the depression? So did Britain, Canada, France and etc. other Imperialist countries. What would make this film truly a great world class work of art is if all the background truths of exposing its causes were also made clear, so the goal of the liberation anti-fascist side could win and overcome the present censorship of the truth carried forward by the Imperialist ruling class conducting the unjust and illegal wars they are waging presently. Viva social liberation.
The liberation
My comment is probably a question, as I have yet to see the film. I need to know its greatness as relating to the path to liberation and its relation to the "war to end all wars". The second world war is not an American war per sae, but rather a world war that the whole world participated in. The Nazis-Fascist side fought to engrandize war for elite profits by waring class against class, gender against gender, race against race, nation against nation, religion against religios, species against species, Empire against empire, to the alienation of all life on the planet. In truth they fought to die.
The liberation side fought for life from dictatorshiip of Militarism that restricts the planet livability and carries forth the worst possible destruction globally that even today forshadows the planets death by its destruction of the ecolgical green balances of life. Liberation supports the living planet and acctuates the harmony and joy that is a healthy well-biengness necessary for the planets survival. Fascism destroys and liberation opens a path to well-beingness. Fascism is not anti-fascism. Does this show mark the difference? The catholic church is busy saying that its all the same, which only confuses the masses as to the role of just and unjust violence. Does this show also depict, that the U.S. Imperialists sold half the war materials and high explosives to the Japanese, Spanish, and German axis powers, while conciously crying broke to their own working class majority during the depression? So did Britain, Canada, France and etc. other Imperialist countries. What would make this film truly a great world class work of art is if all the background truths of exposing its causes were also made clear, so the goal of the liberation, anti-fascist side could win and overcome the present censorship of the truth carried forward by the Imperialist ruling classes conducting the unjust and illegal wars they are waging presently. Viva social liberation. Peace equals disarmament globally.
The liberation
Ken Burns appears to be giving a useful art work to the world and although I have not yet seen the film, I am anxious to view it as he has chosen to show an anti-fascist movie and my whole family took part in that war, not of choice by the way but by necessity. The path to liberation as away from militarism is not easy because the Imperial empires have been marauding around the world and spreading their destructive ideology for thousands of years. Ken has hit a sore point,yet a necessary point on the question of killing members of the species in the prime of their life as being a worst thing and indeed it is. Before the conquest by the Roman Slavholders over the British Tribes around 42AD, no such concept existed, and in fact the polity elected prime people to be the working support for the whole tribe. It was seen that their govt. was filled with those that did indeed cause the most good to the society were elected to the societies most trusted positions. To bad that has gone up in smoke nowadays. The only war that existed was the struggle with nature to procure that which was needed to live, hardly to be named a war by the standards of today. I think the Mrs. Roberta comment there to be rather rude and discredited for trying to make Ken Burns and the interviewer appear cheap and worthless. That is not the case, they do inform and hopefully the movie will also as I am sure it will. Nothing could be worse though if the movie only shows the horrors of war as being the fault of both sides equally, for that is partly true but the concept of unjust and just must be dealt with or the wars continue to no just cause whatsoever, and we get no where. The anti-fascist side did have a just cause and that they did set the goal of liberation to be against agressive war as foreign policy between nations and the beginning of a new path of negotiation, and democracy as collective agree. The anti-fascist covenants are worth studying for that reason and are 1) Nuremburg Trials, 2) United Nations Charter, 3) World Court of the Hague, 4)Geneva Conventions, 5) International Criminal Court, 6) Interantional War Crimes Tribunal (Bertrand Russell Style) In fact the UN Charter specifically says that the new internationalism is meant to make agressive war a long distant memory for the comming generations. Now you can see that the Imperialist security council with its veto has subverted the UN Charter and turned the UN into an Imperialist war mongering tool of the G8 countries with its enormous economic power. That was also done with the League of Nations, and was commented on by Albert Einstien in the early twenties when he said that the League of Nations has become a tool or instument of the war mongering Imperialist powers and no longer serves the vast majority of common peoples or the peace they seek and need most and the reason that those two international organization were originally set up to obtain. The film will live as great art if it can show the great divide as the path to liberation from the path of re-conquest and unecessary war. I don't think insulting the art workers helps the act.
Burns films always brings home a greater reality to important aspects of the past that we in the present are in danger of forgetting ... or never knowing.
On an important but key related subject is the genetic roots to male violence and desire to dominate that is at the roots of war. It's in our genes for survival and promoting our personal offspring. But unless we develop a way to control these factors, war will never end whether in the form of armies, terrorists, young men radicalizing into gangs or wasteful competition and corruption for self gain in every sector of society. The 'love of life', all life, should be the 'pursuit pursued' To quote Ella Wheeler Wilcox (para).. 'So many ways that wind and wind when just the art of being kind is all this sad world needs' Thanks for the airing ... John Coghlan 'in the valley'
However pathetic war is the only way to cause true liberation of the livability of the planet is to aboulish the war machine and its manufactury globally. That is scientific materialism. In reality the ' the war to end all wars is not over yet and won't be until its machinery is dismantled globally. Candas' First Canadian Divison says that. We are now facing the need to elect an anti-war government in both the U.S. and Canada, a troops out now and then pay reparations for such unjust behaviour as nuclear bombing the worlds one and only Holyland. Hitler ordered that with the Holocaust. Full freedom is obtiained with Peace equals disarmament. Viva social liberation. End pollution wars, not endless wars for more pollution. Re-tool the industrial revolution away from coal, gas, oil, and atomic power into wind, tidal, and solar power which transforms to electricity and is more power than can be used by society. No more blackouts. This non-pollution solution is given freely in natures kinder laws and provides work for all and forever more. Release the electric motors the oil monopolies have on moth balls.
Heh it sounds like you guys are all delusional with your
convoluted logic and bizarre lingo.
But I do agree that we should develop
alternate energy sources.
And how are we going to do that?
Not by sitting around bull....
Youguys should have all worked your asses off studying math and science when you were young so that you could have made a difference. If we produced
enough scientists and valued them, that would make a difference.
To dream of returning to a primitive
agrarian society will get you nowhere.
Oh sorry, it will get you a primitive
agrarian society population of a few
hundred million, rather than several
billion
As Americans we grasp at past perspectives to compare with today. I'm sure any new documentary put together on WW II will bring forth another angle for us to look at and appreciate.
Yes, this story should be told again. If it just reaches one American and brings appreciation of American sacrifice during that dark period it will have been well worth it.
I thought it was interesting that Burns said WWII was a war that Americans "were altogether on" (in contrast to the current war). But according to Howard Zinn, there were more war resisters then than there were in Vietnam. And not everyone at that time agreed that the Nazis should be our enemy.
I think that whole idea of uniting people sounds cute, but is actually kind of a cop-out as an artist. No one is objective, as Howard Zinn also says. You have to take a stand, or what's the point? I agree that you don't have to "pick a fight with Bill O'Reilly" (is this a dis at film-makers like Michael Moore?), and I agree that we can be united through our shared experiences, and that it is important to take a step back and tell people's stories in a way that honors them, without having to imprint your ego on everything. But to claim that he doesn't have an agenda, that's just horse-[deleted]. Every artist has an agenda, and the most arrogant thing you can do is to claim that you don't. Then you're implying that you're perspective is THE perspective. And he seems to think that. His films can play equally well to different audiences. Well, that's great. But if someone doesn't like his "agenda-less" film, that implies that they have an agenda, which I guess to him is a bad thing. Very arrogant and self-serving of him, I think.
I am glad he is showing the violence, though. I am glad if this de-glamorizes WWII, which has been so glorified by the media, especially since 9/11. But I hope people don't see this movie as the final word on a very complex subject.
Something I forgot to mention - another little-known fact about WWII, I learned from a documentary called The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (1980): there were actually more casualties among the factory-workers making the products of the war machine here in this country than there were in the War itself. Unbelievable, I know, but watch this film. The factories were incredibly unsafe, and it was almost all women and minorities who worked in them. These are our forgotten fallen war heroes.
In a preview film I saw recently, Burns emphasized strongly that he included no historians or experts in his screen interviews. His implication is that his film is somehow a clear window onto the the "real" experience of WWII, but there can be no such window. There may indeed be nary an expert to be seen, but Burns's amateur-historian hands are all over this film.
On News Hour Mr. Burns claimed that his show would "transcend the political dialectic of the War." Now I have a much better understanding of the term "transcend": no mention of what Americans were doing in the Philippines and how they got there. No mention of the failure of the U.S. Senate to ratify the League of Nations after the first war. Nothing about trade wars with Japan, nothing about encouraging them to invade Manchuria. The War just happened! One must suppose we won't here anything about the tactical and strategic errors- like the Bulge, and the pointless island hopping in the Pacific- of our Admirals and generals either.
I grew up with W.W.II documentaries in the 50's so I've see all the footage. Ken Burn's contribution is a highly sentmental new sound track. What a asted opportunity, caulk him up as another meathead like Bollinger of Colomboa.
WWII should more properly be called the Nazi-Soviet War. 90% of all German divisions fought in the Soviet Union. The Soviets broke the back of the Wehrmacht, not us. Even without our aid, they would have destroyed Hitler (it just would have taken another year). The Nazi-Soviet War was truly "the worst war ever". Ken Burns should honor those people.
John Shaplin, your comments amaze me. People seem to have the notion that since this documentary did not focus on the world politics surrounding the war it has no merit or is somehow lacking. That is a bit myopic.
Ken Burns isn't ignoring why the war happened. You have missed the point of this film.
This film is the story of some common americans and how the war shaped their lives as told by them. These people had no knowledge of the global back room politics and business dealings that contributed to the war. You are correct there is no mention of these things in the war. That IS precisely the point of this documentary. For the people in the small towns of America the DID just happen. Many americans had no knowledge of any of the things you describe. There was no 24 hour news cycle. No CNN, No internet. You have completely missed the whole point of this documentary.
What you describe is a story for another documentary.
David Lemire, you should go back and study your history. Without our aid in the form of food, trucks and other such items the Soviets would have collapsed. Even Stalin for his dislike of the Allies was desperate for us to open the second front.
On another note I don't understand all of the complaints about the documentary. It is not meant to be an overarching comprehensive documentary of all facets of the WW2. It is an American view of the war and its effects on this country.
If Burns' documentary helps show the horror of war and reduce American's glorification of the military, it will have served its purpose. War is an abomination and a direct repudiation of Jesus Christ's admonition to "love one another as I have loved you". War is always wrong in every circumstance and every situation. The Founding Fathers of this country would also be horrified to see the amount of resources we squander on the Pentagon and weapon systems that don't work and only exist to fatten the wallets of corporate war-profiteers, like Prescott Bush. They were firmly against even a standing army, let alone the billions we waste every year on unnecessary military bases and arms.
War is unChristian and unAmerican!
Almost right, but almost right is still wrong. Given another year with no destruction of the war machine and food supplies by allied bombing; the Nazis would have had ICBMs with atomic war heads,squadrons filled with jet fighters and jet bombers that could fly away from any Allied fighter, New York, Washington, London etc. would be radioactive waste lands today, all Jews would have been wiped out, the death camps would have been built throughout Europe, Asia and North America to dispose of any who wouldn't co-operate. Don't forget, the biggest killer of Nazis was the Russian winter not the russian solders, Germans fought to the death against Russians knowing the outcome of capture while their brothers were dropping their arms by the thousands for a can of c-rations. While I don't agree with any part of the Iraq war, give credit where it is due.
sean, revisionism is a tool needed by the right wing wack-os because truth can not support their philosophies. We have truth on our side. We must stay within that truth and not let our emotions lead us to support cases that aren't true. We must broaden our educational prospectives so that we know that which is true and not weaken our stance by accepting someone's position, just because it feels good.
This is a documentary about Americans who lived through the war, not an historical summation of the causes and effects of the conflict. Burns says as much. He uses all his skill as a filmmaker (and all the skills of the Florentine production crew) to show the viewer the context of these stories. The people who actually remember the second world war will all soon be dead, and the historians tend to look at things with an omniscient, giant's eye view. The individual stories I heard from soldiers and marines involved in the conflict were all just like this: harrowing, brutally honest and very difficult to hear (which is why most of the veterans seldom if ever spoke of the war).
I think that the filmmakers have done a fine job in this.
I found myself rising out of my chair and cheering when the G.I.s were shooting down the Japanese Kamakasis, and then learning something about the tremendous bravery of the G.I.s in their determined fight against the German Nazis in the liberation of Europe. Somethings were new and worthwhile. However, there was a certain matter of factness that refused to see the deeper meanings of the betrayal of our species that was and is the causes of the great inter-imperialist destruction of the planet and its plants, animals and peoples by that worst of all wars called the second world war. Sure we were once again shown all the old pictures and good oh that we seen the fighters talking about the war they fought in, but one wonders where are the truths that the purpose, from the majority peoples side was that they were there to end wars for ever on planet earth, and the fact that the Imperialists made money pre-WW11 selling weapons to all sides as the Pentagon does today,while ignoring the majority which is still on the end all wars side, and for utilizing all technology for solidarity with the living world so the liberation of the planet can take place. Why was there no showing of the fact that Eisenhower was roaming around the Italian boot and into Europe extolling the German Prisoners line of ending this war quickly , so they could join with the United States and immediately or a soon as possible after, launch an anti-communist crusade that would then be called the WW111. He was told by Canadas First Canadian Division that should he do so, eg. attack the worlds workers states, that he would be at war with Canada. Sure enough, instead of recongizing the anti-fascist United Front globally and the tremendous fighting role that the workers and peasants liberation army of China, led by Mao-tse-Tung, and the chinese communist party did against the American supplied fascist warmonger, their ally Chiang-Kai-Shek and the Japanese Fascist Imperial Empire which was militarised, by the way, with 50% supplies of war materials, to the fascist military, with American war materials. They go though this film not mentioning the fact that anti-communism is the fascist cause globally. It is not spelled out politically, that there is a liberation side, and that side is the anti-war movement and its supporters such as the greenparty, the trade unions, the peace and justice and ethnic minorities struggle for independence and justice, and the socialist polity, and communist polity, to their cause for equality of election and opportunity. That would have given a lead on to the fact that U.S. Imperialism has become the largest militaristic state on the planet, and is manufacturing and selling more WMD than the rest of the world combined. That is the fascist pact of corporation- military rule. Rule of the military and not the majority peoples of each country. Imperialism profits from war and thereby needs a film industry to glorify aggressive wars of mass destruction. Thank goodness for reminding all the peoples that a new path is needed, and not to continue building cultures that show the lie, Dulce et decorum et pro patria mori, the first vow of enrolement in the Roman Slavholders Military. Aggressive Imperial War is worst and its time we got around to ending wars of aggression before they end all life on the planet. Canadians of which tom is at home, find that Americans need to pay more heed to politics and stop electing criminal war mongers and liers to lead them. Liberation not re-conquest for pollution. Three Star but not five star rating. tom of the old first cdn. div.
I watching "The War" for the 3rd time. I find myself holding back tears when I watch and listen. What is it about WWII that is so impassioning, at least to me? Maybe it was a war (already saddening to think that any war has been or is being fought) that all humans thought had to be fought, but the inevitable consequences, which indeed came to pass (on both sides and including civilians), were so horrid.
Anyway, I think this production is conceptually the best I've ever seen on WWII, and I've seen most of them. If indeed it's possible, Ken Burns has probably come as close as anyone to capturing all of the passion and emotion of those times in the visuals and the unbelievable music. I think the production will become at least as classical as "The World at War" or the Time-Life series. I glad I lived to see it.
why do we need to know about that rabble it is like sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooboring
by peeps lol
It is the worst war ever because it was ended with a nuclear bomb on the Asian side, though Europeans built the bomb. In fact German Imperialists built the bomb and upheld it as Hitler did as the leading and best of all super power weapons. That B.S. propaganda is still poisoning the worlds sanity globally by the U.s. Imperialists of the Pentagon. It is the might makes right philosophy of the nazis third reich and the origin of the super power number one concept of the U.S.A. today. Oppenheimer, and Werner Von Braun were Imperialist-nazis scientists and their works are lockstep in Hitlers footsteps for a war in his cause three generations after he died. That year is 2020 AD. He believed that by then super weapons would be built and then his might makes right, unilateralism, and Pre-emptive strikes methods would work and the working classes, including woman's liberation and religios truths could be defeated and communism forever destroyed and their independent organizations would be defeated. He did not have the popular support of the worlds peoples and thusly he could only fully rely on super weapons to win. Most people believe he was insane. That is partly true but he was far worse than ordinary in that he thought killing was what made a man a man, which is not at all truthful to science. We still here fascist phrases now and then such as all if fair in love and war, and theres nothing truer than death and taxes. etc. If we look through the modern phrases of fascism we find such lies as "smart bombs" and "Depleted Uranium". The nonexistence of smart bombs resides in the material fact that bombs kill all livability equally, such as plants, animals, peoples, air, land, and water. That fact has nothing to do with smartness but everything to do with dumbness, and depleted uranium is actually live uranium and kills for thousands and millions of years. The Pentagon lies to the veterans that it is harmless (depleted) to get out of paying their medical bills. There literally is nothing worse in war than that which would kill all forms of life on the planet or planets, and that is why in a small way the second world war was the worst war to that time. War itself is the problem to be solved and that is why the war to end all wars is not yet fully over, because we need to dismantle the war machine and its manufactury to get to full freedom and liberation on the planet at least in relations between nations and peoples globally. Peace equals disarmament.
And faduma, if mechanical materialism is applied to the analysis of what won, it was told to the people that the second world war won. Now apply that to what happened. The U.S. Imperial system built 70,000 nuclear bombs and the testing took the form of 400,000 times the disasterous explosion power of the bombs let off at Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, which in practice is even now polluting the world and will continue for thousands and millions of years more. The so-called victory led to the U.S.A. becomming the largest producer of means of destruction, in which it produces more WMD and conventional weapons then all other countries in the world, and sells every year from Pentagon bazzars more WMD and weapons of mass murder (conventional) called market green, than all the rest of the world put together. The only criteria is money and the prices are so high that the working classes cannot afford them. That system is the fascist system of dictatorship composed of Monopoly capitalism tied to the military-industrial-orison complex, which dictates what you can or cannot believe in. It is called the greatest society of benefit possible in the world. That is the direct spending set into motion by the so-called victory of the second world war or World War two. Problem is the laws of ecological green balance of all life on earth is beginning to die and warning us that it is not a victory, and that the Imperialist systems in the world have cheered the so-called victory to the point of lying that six-overkill if a full exchange of the means of destruction takes place, the worlds livability would die six times over. Imagine that all life would die six times over and that is what the so-called victory of the second world war has caused directly in military spending.
You and I knnow that war is the problem and why the depressions are are happening around the world. Victory as we know it must be the dismantling of the war machine and its manufactury so that technnology only works in solidarity with the living planet and its ecological balances globally. It is nothing but a supreme international crime, and the biggest of all lies that further imperialist wars will liberate you. Liberation can only result in world disarmament and the freeing of the worlds peoples from the nightmare of nuclear annihilation. From the nuclear blackmail holocaust terror that nuclear weazpons and all other means of destruction (conventionally) implies and does oppress. End pollution wars, not endless wars for more pollution .
To faduma.
This concept of liberation instead of pacification which is the fad of the western imperialists, is not really new. In my closing remarks of this question of anti-fascism as liberation from militarism as foreign policy, I'd like to refer to the Holy Bible in ancient times such as Isaiah approximately 4-6, "and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation,neither shall they learn war anymore". That is not a call for calling war the best war or calling the pacification of peoples, but a peacekeeping imperial military force that oppresses both sides to pacification such as the Israeli's against the nation of Palestine, or the U.S. imperialist forces against the peoples of the middle east, such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, or Iran, not what Germany or Japan did to the Europeans, or Asians, such as massacring them till pacification sets in. It is a call instead for liberation from Imperialist militarism as foreign policy of nations and a call to implement socialization in its place so well beingness is spread rather than war causing pestulence. Ole tom of the first Cdn. Div. says that.
To the world, Merry Christmass and happy new year is a way of saying that ending war is the beginning of the end of the hypocracy of the war machine killing everyone and eveything equally as being Holy. Holinest by force of arms is a bad translation of the concept of Holyland, and the moral imperitive of Holy, because the present translation forbids the real meaning of Holy. The practice of the Imperialist side is to create holes in the ground with children and womens blood dripping around the edges of the holes in the air, land, and water. The hypocracy on the part of the new "super-power" number one rests on dismantling the Holyland and like its massacre of the blacks (enslavement) and native red people on turtle island, it is a lockstep copying of the ancient Imperial ways of the empries of the area called the middle east. There is need for liberation from militarism there and globally and that is why my wish of Happy New Year and Merry Christmass is meant in the orginal way for the living planet to celebrate its best traditions from all times and not pretend that the discredited might makes right, unilateralism, Pre-emptive militarism is the best way to pacify and hypocritically express x-mass as the winning goal of the new super-power. So I say again Merry Christmass and happy new year to all.
Burns has served as chief
Submitted by Steve Martin (not verified) on Tue Nov. 17, 2009 10:08 PM PST.
Burns has served as chief cinematographer on many of his documentaries, thus playing a crucial role in shaping the overall looks of the works. A key visual trait is the photographing of live-action material (such as old houses, or battlefield locations) during the low sunlight of dawn or dusk. As a result, much of the original filmed material in a typical Ken Burns documentary contains a distinctive orange ethereal coloring
