2, 4, 6, 8

Stop The War / Smash The State

(Mongo / Machine)

An exceptionally large number of people participated in the Women's March yesterday. A worldwide event, it was initially organized to focus on women's rights but expanded as a generalized protest against any aspect of the incoming pack of bourgeois lickspittle revanchist trash administration.

(Mongo / Machine)

In San Francisco, a very large number of people attended. I'm not good at estimating crowd sizes; as part of an anti-Vietnam War march in The City in the spring of 1972, when Tricky up-tempoed his bombing campaign of North Vietnam, over 300,000 were supposed to have attended -- but all I could have told you, then or now, was that there were a hell of a lot of people on Market Street.

(Mongo / Machine)

Several luxury buses -- the sort used to ferry Genentech or Google's tech workers to their jobs, a ubiquitous sight in San Francisco -- dropped people off near Civic Center Plaza; no idea who these people were, or why they deserved such treatment. Back in the day, even the organizers and speakers didn't appear at the Demonstration in a chartered vehicle.

There was a hefty police presence all day as well, but (despite the Tac helmets and riot batons you can see in the photo) I guarantee you these officers were thinking primarily about containing the crowd to the area agreed between the city and the march organizers, traffic reroutes, making sure nothing starts that gets out of hand, and keeping people from doing eight bazillion things to hurt themselves.

Of course, if Anarchists (back in the day, it would have been Trots or PL Maoists) executed an action, it would be a different story;  helmets and batons would be more than contingency. San Francisco, alleged bastion of Wingnut Liberals, has had several highly-publicized officer shootings in just the past year.

It was a good crowd, demographically -- Kiddies, Olds; families with younger children, mothers in their fifties with daughters in their teens and twenties; Gay, straight -- and while there were people of color in the crowd, it seemed predominately white.

(Mongo / Machine)

And there were a number of Hipster men and women for whom going to the demonstration appeared to be an art project, a chance to sport fashionable clothing and professionally-printed signs displaying a "Sixties Psychedelic" typeface (The woman above appeared to be posing for two professional photographers: a photo shoot with an actual demonstration as 'background').

The rain began to come down steadily -- more than a shower; less than a deluge -- from about 4:30 on. With the rain, I watched as Hipsters quickly walked away from the Plaza, smart phones up, headed for side streets; the Uber or Lyft drivers pulled up and took them -- away.  No great loss.

Meanwhile, the vast bulk of the crowd, with umbrellas or none, finally moved out of the Plaza and headed east up Market street towards Justin Herman Plaza, across from the Ferry Building at the bay.  I took no pictures of the actual march; a Dog can only do so much.

Weirdly, streetlight poles all along Market had banners advertising an anti-abortion 'walk for life - west coast', scheduled for January 21st ... plainly, the Women's March had, uh, trumped the Phyllis Schafly brigade.

And, please note the slogan: abortion hurts women. Those who support a woman's right to choose, are, according to the individuals behind that particular march, murderers. And worse. All part of the Culture War, brought to you by the same people who now have a seat at Trump's table.

'Death Dance' - Illustration By Mr. Fish - In Santa Fe, New Mexico, January 21st

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"Watched protests yesterday but was under the impression that we just had an election ! Why didn't these people vote? Celebs hurt cause badly."
--  Il Duce ! / Twitter; January 21, 2017.

In talk show interviews Sunday, advisers defended Trump's anger at journalists for correctly reporting that his inauguration drew a smaller crowd [than] President Barack Obama did eight years ago... [that] the Trump administration was supplying "alternative facts."

Kellyann, With Cleavage, About To Appear On Sunday's Meet The Press

"There's no way to really quantify crowds. We all know that. You can laugh at me all you want," Kellyanne Conway told NBC's Meet The Press.  "I think it's actually symbolic of the way we're treated by the press."

Aides also made clear that Trump will not release his tax returns now that he's taken office, breaking with a decades-long tradition of transparency. "He's not going to release his tax returns. We litigated this all through the election. People didn't care," Conway said on ABC's This Week.
-- Newsday, January 22, 2017

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The Steady Drummer

(If You Liked This, Let JRart know)

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MEHR, MIT ALLE DIE REFERENZ DU MOCHTEST: All the reference material you need for today, for tomorrow, and the next how many ever years it's going to be, is right here.

Oh -- and Fuck 'em.

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The Morning Of The Day Before

January 29, 1933

Statue Advertising Restaurant, Northern China

(John Woo, Reuters / 2016)

Sunday
(Sh'vat, 5693, for those who do.  Note: The 1933 [Gregorian] calendar is the same as that for 2017.)

Poet Sarah Teasdale dies in New York City after an overdose of sleeping pills. She is most commonly remembered for "There Will Come Soft Rains" (aka War-Time), published in 1920.

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound...

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

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On January 29, Edouard Daladier, French centrist politician, was asked to assume position of Prime Minister and form a new coalition government, which would last from January to October, 1933.

In 1938, Daladier was again a minister in (yet) another coalition government in France, and with extreme reluctance supported the 1938 Munich agreement to cede the Sudeten portions of Czechoslovakia to Germany, and (presumably) avoid a general European war.

Returning to Paris after the agreement was signed, Daladier expected hostile crowds, but was instead warmly cheered. A combat veteran of the Western Front in WW1, Daladier understood: The Great War had been such a monumental bloodletting for the world, a fall of European empires and whole ways of life, that few people wanted to see new monsters on the horizon.

However, Daladier understood that Munich was nothing but appeasement. He had no illusions about the ultimate intentions of Hitler and the nazis -- to him, Munich only delayed what he saw as an inevitable war. 

Seeing the crowds cheering his arrival -- to the man on the street, war over Czechoslovakia had been averted! Yay! -- Daladier turned to an aide and said sadly, "Ah, these morons".

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German Chancellor General Kurt von Schleicher had resigned on January 28th. The recently re-elected German President, Paul von Hindenburg, had to appoint a replacement who could form a new government. On January 29th he offered the position to Franz von Papen, who refused.

von Papen had already been Chancellor from June through November, 1932. The possibility of another civil war in Germany between the extreme right and extreme left was growing, and von Papen had tried and failed to resolve tensions. On January 29th he suggested to Hindenburg that Hitler be named Chancellor -- because, he explained to the old Field Marshall, Hitler could be controlled.

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The Weimar Republic had survived the 1919 civil war between the Center-Right and the 'Spartikus' Left (which became the Communist Party), only because the Center begged the German army to crush the Leftists. That bargain linked the survival of a moderate democratic republic to the officer class, heavily linked to Prussia's landed nobility -- part of the same mixed bag of conservatives which had always been on top under the Kaisers. 

The 1929 stock market crash (Thanks, America! Didn't see that coming!) resounded around the world. By 1932, the Depression had kicked Germany's population to the curb. The most significant aspect of the country's politics was how the majority appeared to gravitate to one extreme or the other in their political spectrum. Times were desperate; there wasn't much of a Center left to hold.

On the left were the Communists (KPD) and Red Front. On the right were a number of nationalist / conservative parties; the nazis (NSDAP) were the most radical.

Something usually glossed over in summary histories about the period is the backstage maneuvering by the same traditional conservative layers of German society, attempting to maintain a grip on power. In April of 1932, a national election was held: Hitler ran against Hindenburg for the Presidency of the German Republic -- and while the NSDAP overall made gains in the Reichtag, Hiter wasn't popular enough to beat the Old Man.  

National elections for Reichstag deputies saw support for the nazis rise to 37% : they were the majority party. Anyone who wanted to govern in Germany's parliamentary system would need their support (Remember, however -- Hitler's stated position was to eliminate all political parties in Germany, except his own).

In May of 1932, the moderate conservative government was frightened there would be an eventual revolution from the Left  -- enough that General Kurt von Schleicher, and a previous Chancellor, Franz von Papen, held secret meetings with Hitler to offer a proposal. 

In order to keep the KPD and the nazis from fighting in the streets, the brownshirts and SS had been banned from holding public rallies and marches. von Schleicher told Hitler the ban would be lifted -- also, the Reichstag would be dissolved, and new elections called. The then-Chancellor, Heinrich Bruening, would be dismissed by Hindenburg.  von Papen would replace him... and Hitler would support von Papen's conservative nationalist government. 

Conservatives were just as frightened of Hitler and his NSDAP as they were the Kommunisten Partei Deutschland. This was an attempt to appease Hitler by including the nazi party in a legitimate government -- the nazis would have a minister or two in the cabinet, he was told; they would have a real 'seat at the table'. Hitler agreed to von Schleicher and von Papen's offer -- only in order to have the ban on nazi public appearances lifted. 

So, Bruening was dismissed; von Papen was named by Hindenburg as Chancellor. However, Hitler had no intention of being co-opted into von Papen's government, and said so -- that he considered von Papen's government a 'temporary measure'.

When the political situation continued to deteriorate through 1932, Hitler claimed to be the only political figure who could hold the Republic together. He requested a meeting with President von Hindenburg so that he could demand to be appointed Chancellor. 

In a humiliating session, the old Field Marshall treated Hitler like the ex-Gefreiter (Lance Corporal) he was, and refused Hitler's demands. The entire episode fed into Hitler's general delusions, and made it impossible for the conservatives to later offer him anything less than what he wanted -- to control the government of Germany.

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On January 29th, 1933, the New York Times ran three separate articles about events in Germany.  The first looked at European stock markets, saying “apprehensions [are] generally felt over the fresh evidence of Hitler’s influence in the German situation.”

The second summarized events in Germany, stating that Hindenburg was seeking a coalition government -- and that Hitler could only be made part of it through a guarantee that his power and that of the nazis would be limited. Many leading intellectuals in Germany had serious misgivings about any government that might include Hitler -- “a straight Parliamentary government headed by [him]... is not envisaged in sober-minded political quarters.”

The third article was a long piece on Mussolini, Stalin, and Hindenburg. Hitler was only briefly mentioned, in comparison with Hindenburg; the article spoke of Hitler's "extreme policies", and inferred that he and the nazis were not the future of Germany in the same way that Mussolini and his fascists, and the Soviets under Stalin, appeared to be.

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Monday, January 30, 1933

Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of the Weimar Republic.

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Do All The Rubes Have Tickets?

Ein Mensch Ist Kein Tier

Denn wie man sich bettet, so liegt man
Es deckt einen da keiner zu
Und wenn einer tritt, dann bin ich es
Und wird einer getreten, dann bist’s du.

As you make your bed, you must lie in it
No one else makes it so, only you
And when someone kicks, it will be me
And when someone gets kicked, it will be you

--  Kurt Weill / Bertold Brecht; "Meine Herren, Meine Mutter Prägte",
(aka, 'Denn Wie Man Sich Bettet') from Rise And Fall Of The City Of Mahoganny (1931)

This week, a person with no mainstream political experience will be elevated to Chief Executive of the Federal government -- a businessperson who easily displays his prejudices through a spiteful, narcissistic, adolescent public character which no American now living has ever seen in an elected official at that level.  No one knows what to expect, but the level of apprehension is palpable.

That display continues, and the apotheosis of such a person to that powerful a position leaves many people around the world profoundly uneasy. His inauguration  this coming Friday is expected to be a gaudy show, a celebration of triumph for, as someone once said, "decayed roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin ... vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, [and] pimps...".

His continuing display of ignorant bile has caused a number of leading Democrats to state publicly they will refuse to attend some or all inaugural events -- in particular, the swearing-in ceremony. There is certainly going to be some level of public protest. If things get ugly, it will be very public.

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A friend noted over the weekend that an earlier post appeared to suggest turning inward as a response to recent political events -- that we might ignore raised voices or emotions and instead focus on a balance with a wider universe. That we keep family and friends close, and reduce our connections to only those things which nurture us and are necessary.

We live with one foot in the Cosmos and one foot on our dirty linoleum floor. Any insight I possess about what to do while we're there is subjective. I may have my own answer to a basic question -- What Do We Do Now? -- but it only applies to me. It's ignorant and rude to assume a personal understanding is a universal constant. If there's consensus in a larger group that everyone believes essentially the same thing, that's a different matter.

Some time ago a friend mentioned that the Dalai Lama was allegedly asked by a person who just bumped into him (at a hotel, or some public venue) what he felt the central tenet of Tibetan Buddhism to be. The Lama is supposed to have replied, " ' Just do your best.' "  I'm not a Buddhist, but I take the Lama's observation to suggest that Existence is too complicated for any person to say why they Are, and what the end results of their thoughts and actions will be. Be kind; act with compassion. Do the best you can. I'd like to aspire towards that, so; works for me.

As a comparative comment on purpose and values (and in his case, resistance), Albert Camus believed the fact of humankind was the only justification for right action, of a demand for a better world. 

I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning. But ... it has no justification but man; hence he must be saved if we want to save the idea we have of life. With your scornful smile you will ask me: what do you mean by saving man? And with all my being I shout to you that I mean not mutilating him and yet giving a chance to the justice that man alone can conceive. (Resistance, Rebellion and Death)

That works for me, too.

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America is about to collectively leap off a cliff into unknown political, and social, territory.  I don't believe it's a time to turn inward; we need to listen to the voice in the pit of our stomachs which is saying Fuck this; I vote No; you don't do this crap in my name, and we need to act. Collective is good -- in fact, it's essential -- and while I don't believe in passive resistance, I don't favor violence because I know where that goes.

It's a real conundrum, deciding how you live your values. Everything I read on the Intertubes seems to be some variation on "This analysis will explain why we lost" -- more circular argument between Hillaryites and Bernieites and Masters of the DNC over who was right and controls that party, or academic analysis about what the election means in a Marxist or Other context. I'm sure that will make a number of people feel better, or at least useful.

The sense I get is of a vast, collective indrawing and holding of breath, as we wait for something to happen. The problem is, that Thing already has happened.  Now, we have to do. The discussion needs to be around what.

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Friday We Went Into The Night And The Gnashing Of Mandibles

Hope You're Not Expecting Profundity, Or Good Government.

At the end of another week I remind myself:  We don't have it that bad, relative to... a whole lot.

Huh? You want the list, Yo? Well, to start with --- we didn't have to endure physical torture (though watching Il Duce's minions in confirmation hearings on CSPAN2 is pretty close); we didn't have to survive a Russian airstrike; we didn't have to wander in -20 F temperatures outside Belgrade; we aren't dropping to the living room floor whenever we hear popping we know is gunfire. We have enough money to buy things we do not need (as we are compelled to do by training which begins in infancy), and enough food to be overweight (Mildly. Let's not get carried away here).

We're fairly safe; live in neighborhoods where there are over ten different varieties of honey for sale, for fuck's sake; and we don't have to pay the police to leave us alone.  It's a good bet our children, if they commute home from school, will actually get there alive and unmolested. And when The Dear Leader To Come appears on teevee -- tubby, bloated, "Huge" -- we can shut the fucking thing off and not be compelled to perform some act of obeisance.

Yes; there's much I personally do not have.  But because of all the above, I am grateful. Really.

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Dow Surges As Kremlin Says Has No Dossier Dropped From Chinese Bomber Over The Spratlys

While Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Scrambles Taiwanese Jets
To Investigate Mariah Carey's VW Executive Oil Pricing 
In Wake Of Sessions Confirmation Hearings

Mongo Is On The Ball.
"Hey; is that food? Give me some -- I've been picking up this thing you keep throwing."

 Just thought we'd cover everything. It's raining out here on the Left Coast.

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Photo Of Stunning Flight Attendant

For Absolutely No Goddamn Reason

No idea what airline this person is connected with. Doesn't matter. (Associated Press)
[ The Googlegerät advises it's UAE's Eithad Airways.] 

Back at the Place O' Witless Labor. Thinking about the transience of all things; listening to Avro Pärt's Spiegel Im Spiegel. Pausing to note that Mariah Carey is very close to being officially fat, and that Il Duce ! is not just tubby but putrescently podgy and blubbery in a way only Oligarchs can be.

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And with this post, we here at BeforeNine inaugurate yet another unnecessary Blog category: For Absolutely No Goddamn Reason, as indicated above.  

This relates to an image which appeared in the very top strip of the banner on a print version of The Onion, distributed circa 2010 in Kiddietown before it became Kiddietown, which showed a small photo of a Lemur with the caption, "Picture of Lemur shown for absolutely no goddamned reason". 

Just to be clear, the image above is not a photo of a Lemur. Thank you.

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Outlasting The Emperor Day By Day

The New Year

A club in The City displayed a window poster for its annual holiday party which depicted a cowboy boot, kicking the numerals 2016, above the legend Give The Year The Boot.  Wherever I've been so far in this holiday season, everyone agrees that the year about to close sucks, even more so than any other year they can remember.  I asked why, and the answers were more or less in this priority:

• Trump's election as President; his Twit behavior since the election, and the persons he's chosen as cabinet appointees;

• The ForeverWar in Syria and Iraq; brutality of IS terrorism; migrant crisis in the Mediterranean and Europe;

• The rise of nationalist, rightist politics in France, Greece, Germany, Austria, Turkey, Romania, Hungary, and the former Yugoslavia;

• The death of so many culturally seminal figures -- such as Prince, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen; Muhammad Ali, Harper Lee, Edward Albee, Gene Wilder; Elie Wiesel; and so many others. (Man; I  almost forgot Mose Allison.)

• It wasn't mentioned often, but some feel the bill for having sold our collective souls  to the ideas embodied in financial, corporate and political structures which run the world has begun to come due.

2016 isn't necessarily worse than any other year -- and for comparison, I pulled 1968 right out of the air: There was a Youth Revolution at home. Yuri Gagarin died in a plane crash.  Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. The police rioted in Mayor Daley's Czechago; the NVA and Viet Cong's Tet Offensive caught the U.S. by surprise, and combat deaths in Southeast Asia were approaching 50,000 in the decade since we had intervened there.

Richard Nixon said he spoke for the "great, silent majority of Americans," and was elected. John Steinbeck died.  And, in the background of every year since 1950 was always the possibility of a thermonuclear war between the U.S. and our NATO allies, and the Soviet Union. The Cuban Missile Crisis had happened only six years before.

2106 feels worse than other years because the future seems to carry so much potential for negative disruption, and that's beyond question -- but how it will all actually go, what the larger situation, which does affect our individual lives, will turn out to be no one knows.

How we deal with whatever comes will be the sum of who we are -- our values, experiences; our realizations and prejudices -- and how we deal with things will be supported by others; family and friends, allies. At every hairpin turn in the road, we're called to be who we are -- not to temporize, or bullshit, but to stand. In that sense, 2017 will not differ, except in the details, from any other.

But, consider - how we approach things is a matter of perspective. A good friend, one of my best, once told a story about a Buddhist monk imprisoned in China, placed in solitary confinement for ten years. He was allowed no visitors, and only a few hours of exercise outside alone each week. When released, the monk thanked each of his jailers. Jesus, I said to my friend; that's a remarkable act of compassion. And, ten years -- I don't know if I could maintain my sanity locked in a small cell.

"Well," my friend said, "it's a matter of perspective. You see a hell of imprisonment. The monk might have seen that he was safe from most harm; he was fed twice a day, given a quiet space, free of most distractions, to practice meditation techniques central to his system of belief about reality -- for him, a heaven," he said.

Consider, too, a fable attributed to a number of cultures:  Once upon a time, an Emperor owned the finest white stallion in his kingdom. And one night, a thief tried to steal the horse, but was captured by palace guards. The next morning, he was dragged before the Emperor, who ordered the thief to be put to death.

The thief accepted the emperor's sentence calmly, but humbly made one request -- not that he be spared; but that if the Emperor would only postpone the execution for a year and a day, the thief would teach the horse to sing hymns. The court burst into laughter, but the Emperor held up his hand and, to everyone's surprise, accepted the offer.

As he was being taken away, the Emperor's Jailer whispered to the thief, "You are a fool!"

"Am I a fool?" replied the thief. "Much can happen in a year and a day. The King may die. The horse may die. I may die. And, perhaps, the horse will learn how to sing."

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And, my favorite:  If you sit beside the river long enough, the body of your enemy will float by.

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Always Free Cheddar In The Mousetrap, Baby

Digging Up The Dead With A Pick And A Shovel

Tom Waits: "God's Away On Business" (Album, 'Blood Money'; 2002)

(Used in the 2005 film, Smartest Guys In The Room)

... Political conditions were becoming even more confused. One crisis followed on the heels of another, and we paid no attention... On January 30, 1933, I read of Hitler's appointment as Chancellor, but for the time being that did not affect me. Shortly afterward I attended a membership meeting of the Mannheim local party group... "A country cannot be governed by such people," I briefly thought. My concern was needless. The old bureaucratic apparatus continued to run the affairs of state smoothly under Hitler, too.
--  Albert Speer, Inside The Third Reich; The MacMillian Co. (1970), p.25.

Police reported that eleven people were shot and killed in Chicago, primarily in South Side neighborhoods, during the Christmas holiday. The city may pass 700 homicides, and over 4,000 gun-related injuries, before 2016 ends.
--  Information In PBS 'Nightly News Hour' Segment, December 26th

BOB:  ... And a heartwarming moment this weekend when Fred Arnold of Pinole lost his partial upper dental plate while riding the Richmond BART line on Christmas Eve. The dentifrice was found by a five-year-old boy, whose parents wish him to remain anonymous; and on Christmas Day Mr. Arnold was reunited with his dental plate, telling KTUV news, "I can eat now."
KATHY:  That's so kind of that boy. You know, when I hear items like this, it balances out so much of the other news we report, you know?
BOB:  Sure does.
--  Close Of 6:00PM Newscast, KTUV-Oakland, California, December 26 (OK; maybe not).

Tom Waits: "Hell Broke Luce" (Album, 'Bad As Me'; 2011)
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Berlin Bleibt Berlin

Berlin is a good town; in the arts, there's a great deal happening that's amazing -- and now yet another terrorist attack in Europe appears to have been carried out there, in the Charlottenburg district, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Church. At least twelve are dead and over fifty injured; the brainless coward perpetrator ran off is still at large.

Germans I've spoken to in the past few years have been very matter-of-fact in saying that they expected terrorist events to occur in their own country; and they have. This one happened against a backdrop of a million migrants seeking asylum in Germany, and a resurgence of rightist, nationalist politics which smacks of the nazis organizing before 1933 -- and no one thinks this attack will be the last.

Still, Berlin is a good town. Let's keep the people there in our thoughts.

Obligatory Cute Street Art Pooch: Jeder Deutscher Ein Tierfreund.
Berlin has more street art than any other capital city in Europe.

(Clicky = Bigger)

Friederichstrasse; The Checkpoint Charlie Museum

(Click -- Nett u. Spass !)

Night In a Restored Section Of Neukölln

(You Know The Drill)

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