Stephen Malkmus Quotes

In November of each year protesters gather at Fort Benning, the site of the U. S. Army School of the Americas. The School provides training for Latin American Military Officers in Counter-Insurgency Training. The graduates of the school have included some of the worst Latin American killers and torturers (See {41061} for example) who rose to positions of power in their lands. It has also included many leaders who did not ever resort to war crimes and atrocities and also became leaders of their countries. It has been an institution of great controversy since it was discovered that the school at one point taught methods of interrogating insurgents that were tantamount to torture. Defenders of the school claim that but for the school, the military atrocities would have been worse and that it contributed to more human and democratic governments in the Americas. The annual protest has attracted more than 16,000 protesters, some of whom—like Bourgeois—have been guilty of trespass and interfering with a government facility and have served jail terms for those violations.

Explaining the reason for the Paris insurrection against the occupying Germans in World War II in contrast to the general French collaboration and capitulation. The French army, which was larger than the German, put up minor resistance and capitulated quickly when the Germans invaded. A number of French leaders formed a Nazi puppet government in Vichy. Many Frenchmen collaborated with the German Nazis. One of the main reasons for the formation of the French Resistance movement was for the French to have any honor after the war was over. They wanted the world to know that there were Frenchmen who valued freedom and justice and were not cowards--there were French who would risk their lives for freedom and justice. The French Resistance was extremely effective but very small, and to many Frenchman's embarrassment, the Communists were much more active in the Resistance than the conservatives. When the allies were closing in on Paris, and the German's were pulling out, the Parisians could just have waited until the Allied troops forced the Germans out. However, a small group of Parisians organized a major insurrection where Germans were attacked and sniped out while they were pulling out. When the Allies arrived, the Parisians had not been passive victims who had been freed by foreign troops, but had participated in their own fight for freedom and thus retained some honor and dignity. The insurrection was not without cost as many French men and women were killed in the insurrection, and many thought that the gesture of honor was an unnecessary risk and sacrifice. But the war ended in France with the French active in expelling the enemy with great bravery, something that had not generally happened at the beginning or in the midst of the war.

This leading “conductor” of the Underground Railroad carried a loaded pistol which she brandished if escaping slaves would get discouraged and not follow instructions endangering the others or the organization itself. The Underground Railroad referred to the clandestine method that Tubman and other “conductors” would risk their own lives by going down South and guiding escaped slaves through a series of safe houses and locations “stations” until they reached Canada where slaves could not be legally recaptured.