27 Comments
Dec 7, 2022Liked by Thom Hartmann

Thank you SO MUCH for writing this, Mr. Hartmann! We MUST do this. Anything less is "conspiring with the Devil." I remember hearing about the Berlin Airlift, but I was born in 1947, too young to recall this 1949 airlift. I'm sharing this on Facebook, on Twitter (as it were), and urging anyone I can to support this. We the People need to start a movement on our own! I want to help the Ukrainians any way I can - without having much money myself. BUT I have a voice. And must use it. Again, thank you for your brilliance!

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Thank you so much for this. We hear about these vicious decisions by Russia and are horrified but cant always know what to do to help.

This makes sense and with historical precedent is even more appropriate.

Sometimes its so hard to hear these things about freezing out and starving fellow human beings.

These people perpetrating these acts , now Putin, have no souls .

I think the United States must make relief happen . For these brave people bruised and battered by their neighbors hatred of humanity and Democracy and specifically , their hatred of Ukraines strength and resistance.

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Dec 7, 2022Liked by Thom Hartmann

Hey Thom, This is personally very timely. I too was very familiar with this from our family lore. I was born on May 7, 1949 on a he farm in Iowa my mother was born on. My father was in England in what was the Army Air Force working on the Berlin airlift. He got back when I was three months old. My father's birthday was December 6. He had lied about his age and joined the army in 1939. His 18th birthday was the day before Pearl Harbor. I wonder if they shipped over mountains of the surplus supplies left after the war. Through the 50s we had a basement with plenty of wool blankets (army blankets) and k-rations. I wonder how many Boomers remember going through the rations to find the canned chocolate or crackers with jelly? So as MR USO sang, Thanks for the Memories!

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Anyone who thinks negotiating with Putin is even remotely possible doesn’t live in reality,

This , in my humble opinion.

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To further drive this point home people should watch "Mr. Jones."

Is the film Mr Jones a true story?

“Mr. Jones” is based on real people and real events. The movie's central character is Gareth Jones, a young Welsh journalist who travels to the Soviet Union in the early 1930s hoping to interview Stalin. Instead, he ends up uncovering the dictator's big secret, the Ukrainian famine. Aug 7, 2020

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I was born early in 1943, so I was in first grade in 1949, and I actually do recall hearing news on the radio that my parents were listening to about the Berlin Airlift. Obviously, the full import wasn't quite clear to me until I was older: college in the early 1960's. The analogy seems unavoidable, and the 'airlift' an obvious "good". Messers Taylor and Kramer have exactly the right ideas. ( is anybody thinking about how up-to-the-minute power supply options that de-centralize electricity services can be installed? "Off the grid" power has been tried with some success and it would be a perfect way to frustrate Putin's tactics to freeze and blind whole cities and regions by "cutting the wires". Just a thought.

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We are all Ukrainians fighting for freedom and democracy. Zelensky is Time's "Person of the year." 👍

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This has a weird "Zeitgeist" feel to me, like like minds spontaneously linking memory of the Reichstag bombing to 9-11. I am privileged to visit Travis Air Force Base in CA regularly, so I am so aware of those giant cargo jets, around and around all day long, so huge they look like they stand still in the sky. At Thanksgiving, I brought up the subject of what huge generators there must be that those huge jets could fly, but cynical family (at least not hostile!) kind of poo-pooed that it would happen, mostly negative on the political will. Also, I was surprised to learn the date of the Berlin Airlift , since I wasn't born until 1953, and it is in my consciousness as if I remember it! Huh! Had it in mind for weeks now. Zeitgeist. May President Biden have the courage......

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The dilemma faced by the world as hunger, poverty, wars, overpopulation and political misery abound is huge and relentlessly increasing https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/us-immigration-by-country. Historically, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have been the places where people could still find opportunity and 'open spaces' up till now.

The global climate changes are now driving massive numbers of people in a tidal wave towards all the borders of the Western countries https://research.cornell.edu/news-features/migration-forced-climate-change. And in more and more cases neighborhoods, schools https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/25/6-facts-about-english-language-learners-in-u-s-public-schools/and urban areas in the developed countries are becoming places of strife and lower economic circumstances for everyone - and it no longer looks like a win-win solution.

America's past, and present, is replete with successfully adding millions of immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/largest-immigrant-groups-over-time, however, with an increasing mass of illegal immigrants and young people who are not present legally the US is sitting on a political time bomb that may cause incalculable harm in years to come https://immigration.procon.org/us-undocumented-immigrant-population-estimates/.

Our well-meaning US federal education system is funding up to 12 years of English and academic support for all the children of our immigration wave https://ednote.ecs.org/how-states-allocate-funding-for-english-language-learners/ - and our schools are in desperate circumstances.

We are short 600,000 teachers and federal and state funding are keeping teacher salaries too low to attract enough qualified teachers https://www.weareteachers.com/teacher-shortage-statistics/. Thus, should legislators choose to support increased inflows of immigrants, asylum seekers or refugees, perhaps it would be timely first to look at whether we have the will to fund our schools adequately to serve both current students as well as the children we invite https://www.americanprogress.org/article/k-12-education-needs-federal-stimulus-funding/.

We are funding our immigrant children at 150% of our support for native-born children, and we have millions of native born children https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/10/census-tool-provides-access-to-child-poverty-rates-every-united-states-school-district.html that need the same level of support just to learn to read at grade level.

Mr. Hartman and others are touching heartfelt strings with bringing up the idea of a proposed airlift of Ukrainian families to the US, along with, of course, more in place support. However, in order for this to work it would be fair to ask for a wave of volunteers to sign up to teach all our children in well funded schools. Many of the passionate supporters of our open borders are liberal males, and it would be really nice to see more male teachers in our schools - we are currently at about 20-25% https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/yc/sept2019/building-gender-balanced-workforce-supporting-male-teachers.

An airlift would be a remarkable humanitarian action by America; Mr. Hartman is correct. But, as always, promises are often easy to make, but difficult to keep. We should, ethically and morally, be prepared to meet the social and educational costs and staffing implied.

Mr. Hartman's citations:

Now Russia is set on repeating the Holdomor. We can’t let them.

I began suggesting we should consider something like the Berlin Airlift for Ukraine several months ago on my radio program. It was kind of a throwaway comment, though, as I had not heard any serious discussion of anything like it from any persons in power or any scholars of the contemporary situation with Russia and Ukraine.

Then yesterday William Taylor (former US Ambassador to Ukraine) and David Kramer (former Assistant Secretary of State) published on op-ed in The Washington Post calling for the United States to lead western nations in rebooting the Berlin Airlift, this time for Ukraine.

“These actions,” they wrote, “intended to freeze a civilian population to death until they surrender, are the definition of a terrorist, genocidal regime: amoral, criminal, barbaric. … In addition to providing Ukraine with missile defense, anti-drone, and antiaircraft systems, the United States should organize and lead a major public and private, international humanitarian effort to help the Ukrainian people make it through the winter.

“We should send massive numbers of portable generators, fuel, repair parts for electricity generation and distribution nodes, blankets, winter clothes, camp stoves, plastic sheeting, building repair supplies, internet connection devices, other communication networks, and food. We should send these supplies by rail, road, sea and air.”

They’re right, and if President Biden has the courage President Truman did, he’ll take their advice. Leaving millions to starve and freeze to death is nothing less than complicity in the genocidal war crime Russia is currently committing.

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The dilemma faced by the world as hunger, poverty, wars, overpopulation and political misery abound is huge and relentlessly increasing https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/us-immigration-by-country. Historically, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have been the places where people could still find opportunity and 'open spaces' up till now.

The global climate changes are now driving massive numbers of people in a tidal wave towards all the borders of the Western countries https://research.cornell.edu/news-features/migration-forced-climate-change. And in more and more cases neighborhoods, schools https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/25/6-facts-about-english-language-learners-in-u-s-public-schools/and urban areas in the developed countries are becoming places of strife and lower economic circumstances for everyone - and it no longer looks like a win-win solution.

America's past, and present, is replete with successfully adding millions of immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/largest-immigrant-groups-over-time, however, with an increasing mass of illegal immigrants and young people who are not present legally the US is sitting on a political time bomb that may cause incalculable harm in years to come https://immigration.procon.org/us-undocumented-immigrant-population-estimates/.

Our well-meaning US federal education system is funding up to 12 years of English and academic support for all the children of our immigration wave https://ednote.ecs.org/how-states-allocate-funding-for-english-language-learners/ - and our schools are in desperate circumstances.

We are short 600,000 teachers and federal and state funding are keeping teacher salaries too low to attract enough qualified teachers https://www.weareteachers.com/teacher-shortage-statistics/. Thus, should legislators choose to support increased inflows of immigrants, asylum seekers or refugees, perhaps it would be timely first to look at whether we have the will to fund our schools adequately to serve both current students as well as the children we invite https://www.americanprogress.org/article/k-12-education-needs-federal-stimulus-funding/.

We are funding our immigrant children at 150% of our support for native-born children, and we have millions of native born children https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/10/census-tool-provides-access-to-child-poverty-rates-every-united-states-school-district.html that need the same level of support just to learn to read at grade level.

Mr. Hartman and others are touching heartfelt strings with bringing up the idea of a proposed airlift of Ukrainian families to the US, along with, of course, more in place support. However, in order for this to work it would be fair to ask for a wave of volunteers to sign up to teach all our children in well funded schools. Many of the passionate supporters of our open borders are liberal males, and it would be really nice to see more male teachers in our schools - we are currently at about 20-25% https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/yc/sept2019/building-gender-balanced-workforce-supporting-male-teachers.

An airlift would be a remarkable humanitarian action by America; Mr. Hartman is correct. But, as always, promises are often easy to make, but difficult to keep. We should, ethically and morally, be prepared to meet the social and educational costs and staffing implied.

Mr. Hartman's citations:

Now Russia is set on repeating the Holdomor. We can’t let them.

I began suggesting we should consider something like the Berlin Airlift for Ukraine several months ago on my radio program. It was kind of a throwaway comment, though, as I had not heard any serious discussion of anything like it from any persons in power or any scholars of the contemporary situation with Russia and Ukraine.

Then yesterday William Taylor (former US Ambassador to Ukraine) and David Kramer (former Assistant Secretary of State) published on op-ed in The Washington Post calling for the United States to lead western nations in rebooting the Berlin Airlift, this time for Ukraine.

“These actions,” they wrote, “intended to freeze a civilian population to death until they surrender, are the definition of a terrorist, genocidal regime: amoral, criminal, barbaric. … In addition to providing Ukraine with missile defense, anti-drone, and antiaircraft systems, the United States should organize and lead a major public and private, international humanitarian effort to help the Ukrainian people make it through the winter.

“We should send massive numbers of portable generators, fuel, repair parts for electricity generation and distribution nodes, blankets, winter clothes, camp stoves, plastic sheeting, building repair supplies, internet connection devices, other communication networks, and food. We should send these supplies by rail, road, sea and air.”

They’re right, and if President Biden has the courage President Truman did, he’ll take their advice. Leaving millions to starve and freeze to death is nothing less than complicity in the genocidal war crime Russia is currently committing.

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Yes negotiations do not appy to miscreants who live only for power and revenge

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#Macron was in the #USA this week to speak with Gen. Mark Milley and `#Chief #Joe` about a perceived need to negotiate with #France’s former nemesis, the Imperial Russian state. This after many PLEA(s) for #RazPutin to please take the offer of “The Plea of Insanity” from the #Hague and retire to #Napoleon’s summer #Dacha in the South Atlantic. Now, these “Gen-Lost” idiots along with #Macron are wishing to negotiate with the sole persona responsible for inflicting a new “Holodomor” upon both the compliant #Russian-soldiers and the brave #Ukrainian-soldiers in the form of a new winter batch of atrocities. Namely, the #Russian soldiers are freezing to death in their fox holes over night! Anything but the complete removal of #RazPutin from #Russian-society and his isolation in the South Atlantic as his most recent peer #Napoleon was allowed to live out HIS remaining years on this planet ... Anything LESS that this one small request cannot be negotiated politically.

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I would encourage you to listen to the likes of Chris Hedges and Jeffrey Sachs who offer truthful and non-partisan information on the situation in Ukraine. Placing Putin's actions in a vacuum and portraying Biden and the US as some knight in shining armor is putting all of us in a precarious situation. And Thom if you had one of these experts who were "in the room" so to speak in the 1980s perhaps you could stop the Red Scare propaganda and cease shouting down callers who try to discuss actual historical context (like me). Biden should have been pursuing peace from the very start of Putin's buildup. It is possible that none of this, including the looming humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, had to happen at all. https://www.democracynow.org/2022/12/6/jeffrey_sachs_ukraine_war

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