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 Sharipov’s 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 ...
How about a synopsis as it relates to the questions I've been asking? Now's your chance to really show me up and grind my face in the mud.
I have no idea what the question is. I just saw your self assessment and couldn't help but agreeing.
First of all, that's a loaded question, so it really doesn't deserve much of a response at all, because the intent of it is to put the person being queried at a rhetorical disadvantage.
All I am going to say is, as long as the Bourbons and their well-heeled supporters were in control of the Southern governments, the right of blacks to vote was protected. When the populists and their crowd of ruffians took over, Jim Crow ensued. And the source of the populists anger was the sorry state of the economy and the economy was a direct product of Reconstruction misrule.
When I saw this thread passing through the FR forum just now, the title alone caused me to burst out laughing. Then, I read the article and the more I read, the funnier it got. I almost couldn't finish it. The absurdity and the visual I got -- little rebel flags floating around in the ISS -- struck me as hilarious. Maybe I have a strange sense of humor.
Still chuckling ...
> Different time, different way of life.
So, once again... Do you not see the irony of a slaveowner bitching about someone insulting them or taking their property or subjecting them to "degrading and ignominious punishment?"
> I have to see things through their eyes to understand them...and I am in no way embarrassed.
OK. Then see things through Shermans eyes. Or through the eyes of a slave being whipped to death.
the 'bonds' of brotherhood and ancestry sir :^)
remember them ? Americans used to be so proud of such like.
Indeed not. Of course there was a chain of issues that had led to sectional friction. But none of them had had any real traction with the people. The Nullification Crisis had shown that years before. But the only way to answer the "why then?" question is by looking at the election of Lincoln and what that meant to the south, and the secession declarations make it clear that they saw it meant that slavery was threatened, with other issues getting only cursory mention.
Even the way you state the above is different from what is usually stated...as your response is 'slavery as an economic argument' and not 'slavery as a moral argument'.
I state it the way the south stated it. They weren't defending slavery on moral grounds (with rare and entertainingly bizarre exceptions like Fitzhugh's Cannnibals All!.) They were defending slavery as a property rights issue and as one of economic necessity (see the The Address of the people of South Carolina, assembled in Convention, to the people of the Slaveholding States of the United States:" the most fertile regions of the world where the Caucasian cannot labor are brought into usefulness by the labor of the African, and the whole world is blessed by our own productions.")
I find the 'moral superiority' arguments from those in the North to be particularly offensive not because of thier insulting nature but because they show such overwhelming ignorance.
Ignorance of what, the morality of slavery?
FM if they can't take a joke!
Which countries, aside from the U.S., recognized the Indian tribes as sovereign nations?
It's a good thing that Confederate sympathizers aren't in charge of Guantanamo Bay and our bases in Okinawa at the Pentagon. They might shut down the bases by accident.
... burning Atlanta to the ground was a nifty idea.
Do you think burning Atlanta was a worthwhile military objective?
Obviously you aren't going to answer anything. Ah well...
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