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NYCLU: Why was Stalin banner removed from school?
The Associated Press ^ | 11-14-08 | MARCUS FRANKLIN

Posted on 11/14/2008 8:48:43 PM PST by Nick Thimmesch

NEW YORK -- The New York Civil Liberties Union has demanded that city officials explain why they ordered a private art school to remove a banner displaying an image of Josef Stalin.

In a letter Thursday to the Department of Buildings, NYCLU executive director Donna Lieberman expressed concern that the banner was taken down from The Cooper Union after some residents of the local Ukrainian community complained that it "seemed to promote" the Soviet dictator on the 75th anniversary of a famine he imposed. The famine, called the Holodomor, killed millions of Ukrainians.

The banner was part of an art exhibit, "Stalin by Picasso, or Portrait of Woman with Mustache." Lene Berg, the artist who created the banner, said it was intended to provoke discussion about the relationship between art and politics.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Russia; US: New York
KEYWORDS: anniversary; communists; famine; holodomor; nyclu; stalin; ukraine
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"But the Ukrainian community found it offensive, said Tamara Olexy, president of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America."

"It's like hanging a portrait of Hitler in a synagogue or in a Jewish community," she said.

"The banner controversy comes less than six months after a Roman Catholic watchdog group protested a Cooper Union student art exhibition that included what the group considered vulgar depictions of religious symbols such as a crucifix and a rosary."

These Commie loving ankle grabing "artists" have nothing better to do than this crap and the ACLU has nothing better to do than defend them?

I'd love to hang a twelve story high banner of Ronald Reagan right in the heart of Cooper Union!

1 posted on 11/14/2008 8:48:43 PM PST by Nick Thimmesch
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To: Nick Thimmesch

they didn’t bring enough for everyone so some teacher said put it away?


2 posted on 11/14/2008 8:50:46 PM PST by NonValueAdded (once you get to really know people, there are always better reasons than [race] for despising them.)
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To: Nick Thimmesch
Some things should not be forgotten. I hate censorship of evil. It's sometimes the worst kind there is, since it breeds idiots that compare Bush to real evil. Oh, and others that worship osama obama without seeing his closeness to old time demagogues.
3 posted on 11/14/2008 8:52:39 PM PST by MartinStyles
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To: Nick Thimmesch

Did the government make them take the banner down?
Why is the ACLU involved?


4 posted on 11/14/2008 8:57:30 PM PST by Lorianne
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To: Nick Thimmesch

Stalin was a cold blooded murderer that’s why. Oh lord do we even have to ask why?


5 posted on 11/14/2008 8:58:31 PM PST by yldstrk (My heros have always been cowboys--Reagan and Bush)
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To: Nick Thimmesch
After receiving several complaints, the Department of Buildings investigated the banner's legality and determined it violated construction and zoning regulations, the agency said Friday.

"We determined the sign was too high, too large, lacked a permit and blocked the building's windows," buildings spokeswoman Kate Lindquist wrote in an e-mail. "The department does not regulate sign content."

Libs like all these zoning and other nuisance laws and hasten to add more everyday ... let them deal with the consequences.

6 posted on 11/14/2008 9:00:43 PM PST by Lorianne
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To: yldstrk

Unfortunately, there are a # of stupid people that accept this nonsense due to indoctrination. They “worship communism” but live in a free market economy, avoiding the question if they ever considered moving to Cuba or North Korea. Cowardly hypocrites.


7 posted on 11/14/2008 9:02:52 PM PST by max americana
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To: Nick Thimmesch

Remember, Obama went to communist “socialist scholars” conferences at Cooper Union in the late 1980’s.

Wouldn’t want to insult him by removing the portrait of Stalin, would we?


8 posted on 11/14/2008 9:03:20 PM PST by MadMax, the Grinning Reaper
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To: yldstrk

Amen!


9 posted on 11/14/2008 9:11:46 PM PST by doc1019 (We are now an Obamanation. Palin 2012)
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To: Lorianne
NEW YORK -- The New York Civil Liberties Union has demanded that city officials explain why they ordered a private art school to remove a banner displaying an image of Josef Stalin.


10 posted on 11/14/2008 9:13:07 PM PST by caveat emptor
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To: yldstrk

Watched “Red Dawn” for the millionth time the other night: the first thing the Commies did to the town was to hang propaganda banner everywhere.

The Ukrainians should have tagged the Stalin banner ala “Wolverines!”


11 posted on 11/14/2008 9:15:08 PM PST by Nick Thimmesch
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To: max americana
Unfortunately, there are a # of stupid people that accept this nonsense due to indoctrination. They “worship communism” but live in a free market economy, avoiding the question if they ever considered moving to Cuba or North Korea. Cowardly hypocrites.

Exactly. Just like Ayers suddenly developing a fondness for private property and law enforcement. Not to mention the life that comes with being a trust fund baby. Now we have more young upper middle class kids today deciding that they are going to be revolutionaries against that which they take for granted. It's easy to be a revolutionary when all it consists of is posting something on facebook or slapping a sticker on your car.

One foresees many a young idealist whining during the Christmas (well, Winter Solstice, Kwanza, Holidays, whatever the tards in academia are calling it this year) because daddy and mommy are cutting them off thanks to the double whammy of the market tanking and the election of a Marxist government.

'You mean I have to work?'
'I have to drive a used car?'
'You're rich, Obama said so'

12 posted on 11/14/2008 9:16:27 PM PST by Harry Wurzbach (Joe The Plumber & Rep. Thaddeus McCotter are my heroes.)
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To: Harry Wurzbach

Just like the young morons who wear Che shirts!


13 posted on 11/14/2008 9:19:37 PM PST by Nick Thimmesch
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To: Nick Thimmesch

“Art”, bull! The Socialists are always pushing, pushing, pushing. They have an agenda which is to create sympathetic followers. They play their games and they are biding their time. They know that they lose a battle here and there, but winning the war is the goal. The ACLU people are not about civil liberties or they would not be supporting groups who will take away the individual’s civil liberties.


14 posted on 11/14/2008 9:20:30 PM PST by discipler (We have our celebrities too, but they are a slightly better breeed of celebrity.)
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To: yldstrk

He killed about five times as many people as Hitler but gets 1/50th of the bad press. To many in the universities the Ukraine thing was “an unfortunate incident”.


15 posted on 11/14/2008 9:31:14 PM PST by Radl (rtr)
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To: MartinStyles
Some things should not be forgotten. I hate censorship of evil.

I think this brouhaha happened because the evil is not forgotten. It's the romanticization of the subject, turning it into a wine and cheeser that's pissing people off. Che shirts are a chic kind of blasphemy. Stalin, however is no che shirt. Stalin is the granddaddy of the horrors of the twentieth century. That face symbolizes mass slavery and death, which is still, at least in the West, in pretty bad taste.

16 posted on 11/14/2008 9:49:19 PM PST by Seven plus One
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To: Nick Thimmesch
Hey, Stalin was just spreading the wealth around a little.


17 posted on 11/14/2008 9:58:28 PM PST by Uncle Miltie (SARAH *** JOE *** 2012!)
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To: discipler
The ACLU people are not about civil liberties or they would not be supporting groups who will take away the individual’s civil liberties.

The ACLU was originally concieved in order to decriminalise the communist party in the United States. No other reason. It was an integral part of the Comintern, until Stalin's 'Socialism In One Country' speech, when it officially became 'autonomous'.

18 posted on 11/14/2008 9:58:40 PM PST by Seven plus One
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To: Nick Thimmesch
Cooper Union is Obama's old hangout.

Obama's interest in leftist politics continued after he transferred to Columbia University in New York. He lived on Manhattan's Upper East Side, venturing to the East Village for what he called "the socialist conferences I sometimes attended at Cooper Union."

Maybe they are making room for some of his posters.

19 posted on 11/14/2008 9:58:55 PM PST by smokingfrog (If it's to be a bloodbath, let it be now. Appeasement is not the answer. - Ronald Reagan)
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To: Nick Thimmesch

Donna Lieberman. Sheesh, is the ACLU comprised of SHJ’s?


20 posted on 11/14/2008 10:26:10 PM PST by A_Former_Democrat
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