Posted on 06/14/2006 5:58:12 PM PDT by Oshkalaboomboom
Confederate flags flown aboard the international space station and seemingly signed by a NASA astronaut showed up last week on the online auction site eBay.
The original eBay listing indicated that the 4-by-6-inch flags were brought aboard the space station by Russian cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov in 2004, and an accompanying photo showed a sample flag that seemed to bear Sharipovs signature as well as that of Leroy Chiao, his NASA colleague on the station. Yet another photo showed several of the rebel flags floating in a space station module.
The item was pulled from the auction on Monday by the seller, Alex Panchenko of USSR-Russian Air-Space Collectibles Inc. in Los Angeles and on Tuesday, Panchenko told MSNBC.com that he removed the items from sale because he had concluded the flag and the authentication documents were forgeries.
However, Robert Pearlman, editor and founder of CollectSpace, said he believes the flags are authentic.
The picture taken of the flags aboard the station says a lot, he said. It would be difficult to fake, given the style and I couldn't see the motivation to do so. The onboard-the-ISS stamp, added Pearlman, is not known to have been counterfeited anywhere."
The disappearance of the flags followed a round of criticism over the weekend from former space scientist Keith Cowing, publisher of NASA Watch, an independent Web log. He cited the Confederate flags as an example of bad judgment on the ISS.
You'd think that someone on the U.S. side of the ISS program would have expressed some concern about flying a symbol on the ISS that many Americans associate with slavery, Cowing wrote.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Change was not necessary.
yet , at the same time , 'change' is always inevitable....
who can avoid it ?
;^)
like this unsavory element ?
http://www.geocities.com/tnudc/edgerton.html
the man is a Hero
No use to try and explain to him Hunble. It never fails, slavery is always pointed to as strictly a southern issue when in fact the institution was prevalent and legal in all of America at various times. Do I think it was disgusting? You bet but I have the advantage of looking at it from today's views. Have no guilt about it either as I wasnt born then. Nor was it limited to blacks only. But then, you know this:) Just trying to save you a headache because you know some people dont care to learn anything that might interfere with their preferred negative view of Southerners. And anyway.... we have much more important things to deal with in the here and now. How can we stand together against our common enemies when we cant even quit sniping at each other about something that is long gone in the past? You see my nic, you know what I am and what area of the country I am from but I long ago decided I would not try to foist knowledge on those that do not want it.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/317749.html
In the month preceding the July 1863 lottery, in a pattern similar to the 1834 anti-abolition riots, antiwar newspaper editors published inflammatory attacks on the draft law aimed at inciting the white working class. They criticized the federal government's intrusion into local affairs on behalf of the "nigger war." Democratic Party leaders raised the specter of a New York deluged with southern blacks in the aftermath of the Emancipation Proclamation. White workers compared their value unfavorably to that of southern slaves, stating that "[we] are sold for $300 [the price of exemption from war service] whilst they pay $1000 for negroes." In the midst of war-time economic distress, they believed that their political leverage and economic status was rapidly declining as blacks appeared to be gaining power. On Saturday, July 11, 1863, the first lottery of the conscription law was held. For twenty-four hours the city remained quiet. On Monday, July 13, 1863, between 6 and 7 A.M., the five days of mayhem and bloodshed that would be known as the Civil War Draft Riots began
I would submit that is not exactly correct. While the parties have changed, certain fundamentals have not.
For example Republicans were against slavery in the 1860's and were for voting rights in the 1960's. Democrats were for slavery in the 1860's and were against the voting rights act in the 1960's.
Either way, the confederate flag issue is an irrelevant fight. It only means what we want it to mean. To some people Micky Mouse is a symbol of corporate oppression for a whole host of reasons.
How do you become a "former space scientist"? Is one defrocked by the Pope of the church of Our Lord of the Nebula for doubting the divinity of Copernicus? Does the Board of Registration in Orbital Mechanicans and Astrodynamics hold a hearing at which your liscense to calculate osculating elements is revoked? Just wondering?
Well put.
Anyone who thinks secession was constitutional needs to re-read the Constitution and perhaps look at the Webster-Hayne debates. Andrew Jackson had it right--- nullification is, was and barring amendment will remain unconstitutional.
Some people need to get a life.
You have no idea what you're speaking of. Your ignorance is blooming like a magnolia.
Can you say token?
Or how about democrat political operative and NAACP plant?
It is not beyond the realm of possibility to say that being drummed out of the NAACP for no appearent reason and taking a Pro Confederacy stance would get him invited into the fold so that he could report on what is going on inside the ranks, so that he could point out plans of the group, so he could bring in people friendly to the democrats as allies.
That's more or less how The democrats took over the NAACP.
Please for once in your life engage your brains people, and ask yourself...
Who benefits from the debate over the confederate flag?
Who benefits from damning everything confederate?
Who benefits from making an issue of race?
And Who has used race as their party's plank on how the south should be ruled since 1860?
Only the democrats profit by making an issue of race, the confederate flag, or the unseemly side of the south, and not one of you flag waving good old boys has ever been able to deny that fact.
You would rather defend those democrats for what? Slavery? Rebellion? The Klan? Jim Crow Laws? Lynchings? Losing the Civil War at such a horrible cost?
Think about what you are defending, think about who you are defending, and then think about who profits when you are defending them.
Wrong:
Just the ignorant ones NORTH of the Mason-Dixon line.
Red States.
And we all know what THEIR opinion is worth.
Dixie no truer words ever spoken.
I long ago decided I would not try to foist knowledge on those that do not want it.
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