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4chan Gives 90-Year-Old Vet a Great Birthday
Hugh Pickens writes "Members of 4chan aren't known for doing things that are cute and heart-warming and when they decide to go after someone, it's typically to subject them to ridicule. But not this time. Someone at 4chan decided that the Internet should get together and wish 90-year-old WWII veteran William J. Lashua a happy birthday, and soon Lashua's local branch of the American Legion was deluged by birthday calls from people as far away as Sweden. The account someone set up for Mr. Lashua's birthday on Facebook had 3,956 'likes' and over 500 comments, most of which wished him a happy birthday and thanked him for his military service. It's not clear how 4chan originally came across a photo of Lashua, but a member of the site posted a snapshot of a flyer that was on the bulletin board at a store in Ashburnham, Massachusetts asking for guests to attend the nonagenarian's birthday on at the American Legion hall and the post took off. In contrast to their usual behavior, 4chan members 'were giving him nice phone calls and sending him nice notes' and discouraging those who wanted to do something stupid or mean. 'They were all being.. well, shucks, awful nice.'"
He risked his life for your right to be an asshole.
Instead of wasting mod points on you, I'll just tell you:
It was for his BIRTHDAY. His birthday was yesterday, not on November 11.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Thank you William J. Lashua.
Reddit did it's part as well, example
Perhaps he was like my now deceased grandfather who didn't care for an annual reminder of having been involved in the island hopping of the US at the tender age of 17 nor the glorification and magnification of violence as the answer to world problems.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
4chan being nice?!?
I do believe this was foretold in the bible as one of the signs of the end times.
REPENT!! THEN END IS NIGH!!
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
While WWII might indeed evoke fairly bad memories in those who were actually there, Happy Birthday, and Thank You mr. Lashua.
I live in Italy and if it wasn't for people like you I'd probably speak German or Russian now, and concepts like individuality, freedom of speech, personal rights might be alien or completely twisted in my mind/society.
As an oldfag over at 4chan, let me tell you this:
Anonymous does whatever he fucking feels like, whether it is sending an old man birthday cards or bullying a child. There is no rhyme or reason to it because Anonymous is a disorganized swarm made up of people of all ages and cultures. "Anonymous" is a constantly rotating, relatively small sample of a large, global population.
Trying to predict Anonymous is pointless. There is no command structure, no ultimate goal. Most of the activities partaken that affect the outside world start as pet projects of individuals and gain traction through spamming and samefagging (because everyone posts anonymously, it is easy to pretend to be multiple people to take advantage of the group mentality there).
This particular incident was started by someone close to the man in question and spammed endlessly over the course of several days leading up to the event. It was a shameless abuse of /b/ as his personal army, but it succeeded because it was relatively novel and interesting.
His name is Jack Vaughn.
He was a prize fighter, a diplomat, and the second Director of the Peace Corps.
Read a very interesting story about his life at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Vaughn
Happy Birthday, Jack, from RPCVs around the world.
You fucking douchebag.
Hey, c'mon, be nice. Before saying something that might be hurtful, first ask yourself - WWFD*?
*What Would 4chan Do?
#DeleteChrome
This isn't going to be popular to point out, but citizens of each of the countries you mentioned has more freedom of speech and other rights as a direct result of people like William Lashua and the US military.
Qxe4
I thought this started out as a post on Reddit - not 4chan. But I could be wrong and certainly don't want to piss off 4chan.
And now, every time someone rightly says that 4chan is nothing but a batch of juvenile asshats, they'll trot out this one story as a counterexample.
The event happened yesterday, there are pictures from it. You should have included a link to them: http://imgur.com/a/3Jc87/MP8VI
So like... what? Has 4chan become the Internet Love Machine now?
Truth is rarely popular.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
The truth is uncouth when scrawled on the wall of a bathroom stall or a telephone booth.
He risked his life for your right to be an asshole.
And remember, a right not exercised is a right lost!
You know, those goofy fucks over at 4chan have always been pretty decent to me. Last year, they pitched in and bought me a nice box cake for my birthday.
They made me sign up for some weird sessions, though, where I have to hold these two tin cans connected by wire to a little meter. Supposedly it's going to get rid of some bad feelings or something from my brainpan. I didn't understand the mumbo jumbo because I'd drunk half-a-box of burgundy before going to the first session.
At least they said they were from 4chan.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I know a most of the news stories that mention 4chan are generally in the negative, but people in that community do tend to do a lot of good, and much of it is rarely publicized. People attribute Anonymous to this large collection of like-minded individuals doing whatever they please but it's really couldn't be further from the truth. "Anonymous" is a loose many-minded collection of individuals who don't agree with each other. You'll get those trying to harass others and many stepping in to stop it, and you'll get those trying to do good and many stepping in trying to stop it.
I think you'll find pretty much all of Europe appreciates the US war effort, we consider them liberators. The countries of the Axis generally consider their part in WWII a dark chapter of their history. But some people bug me when they pretend the US valiantly and selflessly threw itself into battle for freedom and justice. The US only entered WWII after Pearl Harbor, it was forced into the war and it's all speculation what would have happened otherwise but it is far from certain the US would have come to our rescue. At the end of the war the allied forced rushed to take land just as much to not give it to the Soviet Union and communism as to liberate Europe. Certainly something we should be grateful for, but hardly selfless. Likewise when they speak of US losses, the US brought lots of military might that was crucial but it was Europeans doing most of the dying. Of course those people were dying for their country while the US forces were mostly dying for someone else's country, but it's also a bit like a person who lost his toes complaining to a guy who had to amputate both legs. But that beef is with all those that commentate in retrospect, full respect to each and every one of those who picked up a gun and went to fight for us. Each man has only one life and he put his on the line for us. A very happy 90th birthday to him.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I take it this is a cover-your-ass "No, officer, I've been documenting" it?
Ask Pete Townsend how well that went.
Maybe this one.. but its old:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,253959,00.html (Linking to Faux news feels so odd)
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Yeah you're wrong. If you are looking any deeper than "because they can" then you are over-analysing.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
What amazes me is that so many of them can manage to not be dicks at the same time! It's almost like they have a choice to act in a douche-ey manner or not - you know, kind of like free will.
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
To paraphrase Spider Jerusalem:
Imagine an underground nightclub full of perverts and freaks and people with sexual organs you didn't know existed. Imagine you're standing in that nightclub and the time comes to vote for what you're all going to do that night. You vote to watch television, and everyone else, as far as the eye can see, votes to rape you with switchblades. That's 4chan. You're welcome.
Let's not get off-track on what's being talked about. The GP was talking about Pre-war vs post-war. We won't discuss any kind of rights adjustments and such that have happened separate from that. Just to clarify though, if you are American, you have more rights now than you did in 1945 (the last year of the war). If you need them pointed out, you reallly need to re-examine that era.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
It only seems nice until you realise that William J Lashua's family specifically asked that random strangers do NOT show up. It was an event reserved for family and friends, and the internets basically gatecrashed what was supposed to be an old man's birthday party.
I don't know how old you are, but I currently have less freedom of speech and other rights than I did 30 years ago. And that's mostly on account of people born to William Lashua's generation and their misuse of the US military.
Ah, but you also forget that most of these people who have misused the military either "had other priorities" than serving their country and used their connections to get repeated deferments, claimed they had a boil on their asses that prevented them from serving, or got a cushy air force position and then went AWOL when even that was too hard.
Mr. Lashua's a hero and deserving of respect. Save your (justified, right, correct, and intelligent) scorn for the clowns screaming "Support Our Troops" while running the military into the ground.
I don't see how anyone could say we wouldn't have at least come to the aid of Britain, considering Americans were already dying coming to the aid of the Brits during the German first happy time which was a full year and a half before Pearl. One could also argue that the Battle of Britain may have gone far differently if America wasn't keeping Britain supplied.
And while I have no doubt that more Europeans died than Americans (after all they were on BOTH sides so it would be kind of hard not to) talking to my relatives who actually fought in WWII when I was a kid I can tell you what the Americans faced, especially on the western front as we pushed towards the Rhine, was a fucking horror show. Our tanks were rolling coffins compared to the Tigers, the Nazis had MG42 nests all over the damned place cutting our guys into hamburger, and according to my grandfather and great uncle, may they rest in peace, many guys didn't even get IDed because they used the FLAK-88 as an antipersonnel weapon, which turned anyone in the blast zone into a "red mist" where even their boots were blown to pieces.
So while I got nothing but respect for anybody that fought in that hell, you have to admit that there were times the Americans got the shitty end of the stick, like the US bombers doing the daylight raids while the Brits went at night. One thing both my grandfather and great uncle could agree on though, they were damned glad to have to face the Krauts over being with Uncle Jerry fighting Japs in the Pacific. Like they said at least they weren't dealing with Malaria and leeches as well as the enemy.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Ferengi rule of acquisition #76 Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies.
Well... it's worth pointing out that Roosevelt supported Britain as much as was politically possible through the lend / lease program with Britain. After WWI public opinion was loath to support "yet another" European war. In fact, I think it's fair to say Roosevelt was provoking an attack supporting Britain as he did.
Of course that's not to say the action was "selfless". Roosevelt understood, more than the public the importance of keeping Britain from being conquered. It is rare that any action in international relations is "selfless" (and when selfless acts are committed they are always minor and occasionally disasters), but the support the USA gave to Europe during WWII and the cold war is probably as close as you'll get.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
If only his mother could have held on for two more months. I guess they don't make them like they used to.
Direct the 4chan Party Van to their driveway
That sounds like a reality TV show waiting to happen.
You make a lot of inane and ignorant ASSumptions here. The US also had a lot of money invested in Germany - ask IBM, because they were at the head of that list. Don't "Oh please" us - the world in 1942 was NOT the world we live in today, and the United States in 1942 was most certainly NOT the world we live in today. If you've read your history at all, you would know that the administration coordinated with the pentagon to MANEUVER us into that war. The losses at Pearl Harbor were preventable, but they were deemed "acceptable" because they would force the citizenry into accepting America's participation in the war. Oh, please, right back at you. Had the US cooperated with Germany, we could have been the third point of a power triangle for decades, even if we may have been less powerful than we were. World history would have been VASTLY different - starting with Iran, Iraq, and Israel. It's possible that you are unaware that the military/industrial machine that controls so much of American policy today ony came into existence during and after the world war - much of it in response to the communist threat. Had the Axis won, that communist threat would have been nonexistent!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Sometimes, I hate your posts. Sometimes, I love 'em. This one is the latter category. My stepdad lied about his age, so that he could join the Seabees at age 15. He saw a little bit of the Pacific, until he was hit by shrapnel, and spent the last year of the war recuperating in the states. The old man turned 18 just after the war ended, and walked out of the hospital shortly after that. During those years, reality sucked, man. I also had an uncle who saw very little combat. He was a year older than my stepdad, but his Mama did everything she could to keep her son from joining the service. When he was old enough to LEGALLY enlist without Mama's approval, he signed up, went to Europe, saw a little bit of action, then participated in liberating one of the death camps. Remembering his stories, every time I hear the holocaust deniers running at the mouth, I just want to shoot them in the face. Yes, reality sucked in the 1930's and 1940's. Sometimes, I think we have things far to good these days. Few Americans have any concept just how ugly life can be.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The summary is wrong. No one is a member of /b/.
I would have expected them to do anything but this. When 4chan gets all warm and fuzzy, then it's definitely a sign of impending armageddon. Cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria!
Anon only attacks those who deserve it or when public ridicule is in order.
You've never been on 4chan, have you? They most certainly HAVE gone after people that didn't deserve it.
This guy did not need the handout, the poster was more or less a joke/notice to let the many people that do know him they should come to his party. The very fact he knows so many people was the reason for the notice, it was the most practical way to notify the large number of people he knows.
If the guy was a "lonely old man with no friends left", do you think he would book out a town hall to hold his party?
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/d9zmp/dear_internet_on_behalf_of_the_lashua_family_i/
"He has 7 children, many grandchildren, and even great grandchildren. In his younger years he was a foster parent to dozens of foster children."
I can't help but think these donations and effort could have been directed to people more in need.
I.O.U One Sig.
Christ, you've never been to /b/, have you? They have. Many, MANY times. They rarely do anything because they feel like it's the right thing to do. They occasionally get a sense of righteous fury (tracking down animal abusers while they post images of animal abuse to drive the newfags out), but they've done plenty to people that didn't deserve it. The emailing of fatality accident photos to family members of the deceased springs to mind. I've seen them attack Facebook memorial pages and raid people just because one post said that they should.
/b/ more often and you'll find that while Anonymous isn't just some big, homogenous group, they do have some pretty collective tendencies.
Hang out on
There is nothing "random" about shooting holocaust deniers. Reading comprehension 101 - available at a community college near you!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I think you'll find pretty much all of Europe appreciates the US war effort, we consider them liberators. The countries of the Axis generally consider their part in WWII a dark chapter of their history. But some people bug me when they pretend the US valiantly and selflessly threw itself into battle for freedom and justice. The US only entered WWII after Pearl Harbor, it was forced into the war and it's all speculation what would have happened otherwise but it is far from certain the US would have come to our rescue.
I think that it's very important to keep apart the U.S. (the country) motivation for its foreign policy and participation in WW2, and the effort of every individual American soldier who fought in that war. Politics may be dirty, but I very much doubt that Americans fighting on the ground and breaking open concentration camps really thought "we'd really leave these guys rot if Germans didn't attack us first, and we didn't have to hold back the Soviets". Maybe a few really did - you never know - but by default I'm going to assume that every person who served in that war, on his own, was truly a liberator.
By the way, the same goes for Soviets - Stalin's politics is one thing, soldiers on the ground is another.
Likewise when they speak of US losses, the US brought lots of military might that was crucial but it was Europeans doing most of the dying.
This one's interesting. If you look at military casualties for WW2, U.S. has 415k deaths, and actually ranks above any Allied European country except for the USSR and Yugoslavia. These are totals, but if you look by theater, then Americans have only lost ~100k dead fighting in the Pacific; so the remainder is mostly in Europe. Let's take that as 300k. Now the next European Allied country on the list, UK, lost 380k dead. Everyone else actually lags behind US losses in European theater alone. So the claim that "Europeans were doing most of the dying", while, perhaps, factually correct, is making a wrong point.
Which kinda makes sense when you remember the history of the war. The most massive losses on Allied side, by an extremely large margin, are the Soviets, because they bore the brunt of the war - the initial wearing out of German industry and manpower - and, ultimately, the victory in Europe. UK is high because it kept putting up the fight; US, because it intervened and kept going. Poland and France are also relatively high because they did put up some fight early on, and because they had significant military resistance to occupation afterwards. Yugoslavia is very high on the list mainly due to active guerrilla warfare against the occupying German forces (IIRC, the most active country in that regard of all occupied ones). Everyone else mostly just sat there waiting for the liberators after putting up some token resistance.
Many people in the U.S. prior to WW2 wanted the U.S. to remain neutral, keep to itself, mind its own business. Look what that led to. Now many people in other countries want the U.S. to keep to itself, mind its own business.
Many people in other countries want the U.S. to keep invading countries. In WW2, it was reversed - many people wanted the US to stop one country from invading the other countries. It's a perfectly sensible position so long as you take it for granted that invading countries (except in response to another invasion) is a bad thing regardless of who does it.
he refers to nazi habits of firing to jews randomly. there are separate accounts of such scenes. If you however prefer shooting all deniers that's perfectly fine for his point.
As for denial, one victim is enough already. That settles it. Let them talk on the details as they want, they are details.
A society which makes you a culprit for giving your warped version of history instrad of the 99.99% likely warped official one is a fascist one. As long as you do not incite others to do crimes your speech oughta be free. In that regard your post is worse than holocaust denial.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Well - that's one more rather liberal viewpoint. How about you take a look at the deniers? What are their aims, their goals? For the most part, they want to tear down the civilization that our fathers and grandfathers built. They side with Hitler and the Aryans. Yes, I want to shoot them. As for actually picking up a weapon and killing a denier - no, I won't. Not unless, and until, they actually organize and start working to overthrow our government in the name of some supposed racial superiority. Then, I'll shoot in self defense. Given the opportunity, they would kill off all my family for having polluted blood.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
"Likewise when they speak of US losses, the US brought lots of military might that was crucial but it was Europeans doing most of the dying."
Actually, it was the Russians who did most of the dying. But other than that, fair point.
I think I remember reading in texts that the US fought on the European front long before pearl harbor.
Yes, you're thinking of World War I.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." - Bob Dylan
looks like he had a great birthday! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzqNkIkj3rE
Offering praise to 4chan for this is like cheering for a 14 year old kid who just figured out how to not shit in his pants.