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 ...
talk about "HAS NO LIFE!"
free dixie,sw
Many of these people who have posted to me, have the wild notion that if they approach their agenda from a different angle, I'll just fall right into line like a good little soldier...
it is also possible that SOME of the DUMB-bunnies are TROLLS, instead of ignorant.
TROLLS are on FR to just cause "problems". (i should point out that about 8-10 former "members of the DY coven" are now active on DU & they are just as hateful on DU, as they ever were here on FR.)
you could well ask: were they TROLLS, both then & now??? (that question, i don't have the answer to.)
free dixie,sw
Thanks. Always wondered about the referrence of Trolls, but I was not going to visit the DU site to find out. There's enough scary critters here, one doesn't need to go looking for them...
Do you need Dr. Lubar's email address?
"TROLLS," reminds me of Three Billy Goats Gruff, a story I'd read to my children when they were much younger. Always gotta watch out for those who try and knock ya off the bridge, just because they can...
As I recall, that history also includes a rather unpleasant reception (to put it as charitably as possible) for Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy at the Chicago open housing marches in 1966. But that's been 40 years ago, and I'm sure things have changed there, too.
No, not really. It's still a de facto segregated city--blacks on the south and west sides, whites in the southwest, northwest and north. What's changed is that since the 1980s the Democratic machine has been better about giving the black community a piece of the patronage action and the black population boom and resulting neighborhood expansion that led to the violent white reaction has eased.
Where I grew up, down in central Illinois, things were worse. My town of 30,000 had no blacks at all (I think there are a few now) and was once described in a magazine as "the most fish belly pale town in Illinois," although to their credit the article went on to tell how the residents ran white supremacist Matt Hale out of town when he tried to hold a rally there, so maybe things are better now.
I don't make excuses for the deep-seated racism in Illinois, but do point out that it wasn't so bad that Chicago didn't become the major destination in the black "Great Migration" out of the south.
Interesting that you should mention the Great Migration. The Economist had an article in the mid-90s that claimed that black migration patterns have now reversed themselves, and that the South now has a net annual inflow of blacks from other parts of the country. I believe more recent census data confirms that.
I am asking if you really are saying that writers have less of a burden to providing evidence than other people do.
If you beleive those things, some variation of "That's what I meant" would simply be repeating a previous opinion. No backing into a corner there.
If you don't believe those things and I read your intent wrong, correcting the record could not possibly harm you. No backing into a corner there.
There is no bad intent on my part, and even if there was, there would be no reason for you to refuse to answer the question if you're really interested in truth. So please do the mature thing and tell me what the standard of evidence is.
Your post makes no sense. Please elaborate.
Aw gee, don't go making me cry now. Call me when you have some evidence to offer or an apology for your lies.
You might want to see posts 708 and 709 before you allow stand watie to cozy up to you.
The majority of stand watie's pronouncements that people are haters are made in response to people who ask him to provide evidence to back up his accusations. Do you think someone is a hater if they believe historical accounts should be based on evidence?
Does that view include Schwerin and watie's idea that it is a vile thing to expect a historian to provice evidence that an event actually happened?
How dare you say that novel wasn't a good cite, you damnyanke propaganda machine!
Seriously, someone got him to actually cite a source?
I have to say you're both right. Race relations were bad here in Illinois for a long time. Part of it was that many whites whose ancestors had fought to free the slaves were not down with it when the descendents of the slaves started showing up in Chicago.
That said, the entire time I was in school in Maine I met three students who were non-white...and that wasn't until I went to a high school with almost 1,600 kids in it. Most Illinoisans have very integrated lives.
I'm not surprised. What drove them from the South was racism, and what sent them North was opportunity. Now Southern racism is dead as a doornail, and the opportunity is moving South as the North taxes its jobs out of existence.
I have read with great interest your posts on this thread. I have read venomous attacks and plenty of insults and childish name calling. I have also noticed a heavy bias on your part but that's understandable on threads like these. But the insults do not belong. Calling someone an "old coot" is engaging in a discussion or debate? Usually the insults are the last line of defense of the losers of arguments.
I believe someone is a hater based upon the words they speak and in the context they speak them. I believe someone can make a point without insulting names being thrown about. I also believe that a vast majority of "facts" in these arguments come from the fact that the winner writes the history. That has happened from the beginning of time. But just because the winner writes the "facts" does not make them fact.
I'm sure that the North Koreans believe the "facts" that are told to them by their dear leader too. But does that make them facts? I prefer to do my own research beyond history textbooks and what others tell me. I am not one to eat the spoon fed information that I am given. I can only hope you are the same.
Think of me as completely neutral in whatever fights are going on here. I only scanned it quickly (which took a long time with over 900 posts.)
I only remarked on the fact this fight goes on...and was given a welcome. I responded in kind.
Good luck with whichever dog you have in the fight.
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