Reprint Heaven: In The Buh-Buh-Bubble

Will Ann Ever Ride Horses Again?

(This post is worth repeating as we move into another Presidential election season -- filled with conservative intraparty warfare: Hereditary Wealth and Patrician Privilege, versus vicious, god™-fueled liars and black-helicopter Randian libertarians.  And on the Left -- well, Hillary.

(It'll be fun.  Jebby is an Empty Suit for the Carlyle Group; Greg Stillson Cruz, Le Gouvernor Placard Perry and Lil' Mikey Huckabee are the Guns 'n Jesus candidates of the Church Of I Kill You ! ; Good-Ole-Boy Sen Graham is there to uphold 'Southern Values'; Randy Paul has a mop of hair [Is there really anything under there?]; and let's not forget Lil' Ricky Santorum extolling Amerikanischer values.

And, there will be plenty of money! Kochbruder money. Addled Sheldon money. Money from corporations and hedge funds and donors abroad. There's so much money -- and there is soft music, and treats, for those who deserve so much; because they are the Owners, and we are their chattel, one way or another. Go vote, Little People; do as we bid you. Then clean our toilets.

(On the Left , despite the fact that Bernie Sanders is an adult, as is Elizabeth Warren, it makes no difference. We're going to get a Hillary candidacy filled with Hillary issues -- it's fated; she's watched Ken Burns' The Roosevelts sixty bazillion times now and wants her own documentary.

(And lest we forget -- Herr Obama has been a lasting, fucking disappointment. But, hey; he was America's first non-Caucasian President. And Bin Laden!  S'all good. Corporations are people !!

(But, before you laugh too much at the capering antics of the Right -- remember what people like Mitzy are. Remember how they see the world, and what they believe your place is in it.)

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I Just Really Like This Graphic.

It was surrealistic; Marcel Duchamp could have written the script:  Mitzy, arriving at The White House for lunch with the Once and Future President Of The United States, Barack Hussein Obama. The pair photographed shaking hands in the Oval Office -- Romney a textbook image of awkward discomfort, Obama at ease, hand-in-pocket casual. It was bizarre; What did these two people have to talk about, really?

This was followed by a Washington Post article which underscores how badly out of touch, how In The Bubble the Republicans were -- and specifically Romney, his wife Ann, and Little Paulie Ryan. All of them were served Kool-Aid by GOP pollsters, and had been drinking it for months.  Reality arrived on election night.

In a conference call with big-money donors after the loss, Romney claimed he had failed to win because of "big promises" made by Obama and the Democrats of entitlements or social program spending to specific constituencies -- Hispanics, African-Americans; 'the youth'. It wasn't because the message the GOP delivered during the campaign -- that they were the party of wealth, godliness, racism, homophobia and Good-Ol'-Boy southern power -- was so out of touch with... well, Reality.

At nearly the same time, one of Romney's campaign advisors quipped that Romney had carried the (Republican-defined) true middle-class voters, so by inference had actually 'won' the election. He hadn't failed. He hadn't really 'lost', and the Republican Party was really strong and a reflection of real America -- because the People Who Mattered had all voted for Mitzy. Simple! Wasn't it?

Now, Romney is in seclusion in San Diego -- not far from San Clemente, where another bitter Republican loser nursed his wounds, after being forced to resign ahead of an Impeachment for conducting a criminal conspiracy from the Oval Office. His wife, Ann, is heartbroken, and just can't make herself ride the horses again (These are rich people, remember. They can afford to buy, house and keep horses).

“Is [Romney] disappointed? Of course he’s disappointed. He’s like 41,” adviser Ron Kaufman said, referring to former president George H.W. Bush. “Forty-one would hate to lose a game of horseshoes to the gardener in the White House, and Mitt hates to lose. He’s a born competitor.”

Comparing the contest between Romney and Obama this past year, with an image of GHW Bush vs. the 'White House Gardener' is telling, given who Romney believes he is -- and who the GOP perceives Obama to be... because Romney is an elite multimillionaire with extensive property, investment holdings and Cayman Island accounts, and you're not.

That was really the crux of the election just past, and the Right is utterly gobsmacked to have lost -- not just the Presidency; they lost in most of the hotly-contested, controversial Senate and House races. The American voting population rejected their message.

The Right has been living in a Cloud-Koo-Koo Land of evangelical wishful thinking and Troglodyte hubris since the mid-1990's, and on the night of November 6th, that collapsed on itself again -- as it did in November of 2006, and again in 2008. All the bizarre, self-serving sore-loser comments made by Rightist pundits, the screeching of the Lard Boys and Little Mikey Wieners, ever since only serves to make that clearer.

If Romney had won, the next four years would have etched the divide between  people like Mitzy and Ann and The Rest Of You even deeper into American society -- and Romney would have presided over that with gusto, because he truly believes in that kind of social stratification as the natural order, something ordained by god.

Which is why, after the majority of the American people voted No to this notion, Mitzy is having such a hard time adjusting.

Meanwhile, back in Oz On The Potomac, President Boner and President Yertle The Turtle and President Graham and President Cantor are saying they will not play nicely with the evil illegitimate Socialist up the White House what thinks he's Prestident.

They intend to force Obama to give them what they could not win at the ballot box by dint of typical Rethug behavior -- bait-and-switch, outright lying, threats, and posturing for the cameras. Little Rupert's Fox is ready to support all this by repeating those same lies over and over, 24-7.  And all this is standard operating procedure for the Right, though these same tactics didn't work in the months leading up to the election. 

In November, the Republicans lost because they only saw what they wanted to see. So far, they haven't really admitted to themselves that they did, in fact, lose the election in a very fundamental and substantial way -- that the very 'Republican Brand' may be heading for extinction.  The reasons for that loss don't seem to have made any difference to the Republican Congressional leadership -- but, clearly, like Mitzy, they have Bubble problems of their own.

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Welcome To Target

Because Freedom

(Photo By Mongo + Android / Photoshop)

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More Than Met The Eye

Christopher Lee (1922 - 2015)

Leaving Dracula Behind: Lee As Scaramanga, Bond's Nemisis In Man With The Golden Gun

It's easy to make assumptions about anyone, even if you've seen them often -- around the office; on the street; even on a film screen or the Teevee -- based on what you think you know of them.

My favorite personal encounters with that were two people, living in my home town -- one, an Austrian immigrant who had come to America in the 1920's; after his death, it turned out he had been a young man, standing curbside, in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, watching as the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were shot by Gavrilo Princip.   The other was a friend's father -- a slight and unassuming man, gentle in his take on the world, who had been captured on the Philippine island of Corregidor in 1942 and was a survivor of the Bataan Death March. You never completely know what's behind the person you see.

Christopher Frank Carandini Lee passed away on Monday night, aged 93.  He was an Englishman out of a mold long broken, now: Born not long after the Great War to a Continental marriage -- his father a Colonel in the King's Royal Rifle Corps; his Italian mother the Comtesse di Sarzano, from a family ennobled under Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa but decaying over the centuries into more genteel circumstances.

There were many British families like theirs, before and after WW1 (read about Robert Graves' own in Goodbye To All That), solidly English but with Old Bloodline connections to the Continent -- however, with not so much by way of money. Never quite broke, yet never quite rich, but always conscious of who they are and where they came from.

His parents divorced when Lee was four; he and a sister were educated in Switzerland and private schools in England. His mother then married a banker, Harcourt George St-Croix Rose, the uncle of Ian Fleming.

In the arcane labyrinth of English "public" (read: exclusive) schools, Lee missed an opportunity to attend Eton and instead prepped at Wellington College, where with a small exception he did no acting-- which wouldn't become his career until after World War Two.

Lee turned age 17 just before the summer of 1939. His mother had just separated from her second husband, and Christopher suddenly needed a job. Unable to find one, he and his sister were sent to France -- and here, his mother's family connections opened doors to a particular layer of the world's culture: While in Europe, he watched the last public execution by guillotine in France; and among the exiled members of former royal families met Prince Felix Yussupov, who murdered Rasputin in 1917.

Portrait Photo Of Lee, Circa 1939

When war looked inevitable, Lee came back to England --  Germany invaded Poland on September 1; Great Britain declared war on Germany four days later.  Instead of heading back to school, Lee volunteered to fight with the Finnish army during its invasion by the Soviet Union, but was kept far from any fighting and after a few weeks was sent back to London. France had been invaded and surrendered to Germany; England had managed to save its men but not its guns at Dunkirk, and the Blitz was about to begin.

Lee found a job as a clerk because, under Britain's selective service scheme at the time, he had to wait to be 'called up' --  in which case he would have no choice over which branch of service he'd be placed in.  Unless he volunteered, which he did, and chose to go into the RAF. He did not qualify for pilot training, but was assigned to intelligence duties and posted to a squadron in the spring of 1941.

Long Range Desert Patrol Group In The Field, 1941

On the public record, Lee was posted to several different RAF squadrons as an intelligence officer, a role he held more or less for four years through the North African and Italian campaigns -- except for Burma and New Guinea, the only theaters of the war where Britain was active before D-Day. Lee also had four bouts of Malaria during the war (which I can guarantee you is serious).  And though he never discussed it, later in life Lee admitted that he had been a part of two organizations in the British army -- SOE, Special Operations Executive, and the Long Range Desert Patrol group.

While the LRDP did perform some commando-style raids deep inside German- or Italian-held North Africa to force their enemies to spend time and resources hunting them down, during 1941 - 42 they were principally long-range reconnaissance units,  small groups operating far behind the lines. Their job was to be stealthy, to observe enemy troop movements and positions, and report.

The SOE were the real commandos -- they blew things up, carried out assassinations and assisted local resistance organizations, and their job was to give the nazis hell. After 1942, SOE also sent agents into countries like Yugoslavia, people who (as Lee did) spoke multiple languages and could dress and act like a local.

The SOE agents ran exfiltration lines, moving downed Allied air crews, political refugees and other intelligence agents out of Europe from night pickups on the Dalmatian coast. It was dangerous work; the German security services in Yugoslavia -- or anywhere else -- were efficient and brutal.

 British 'Irregular' Detachment; Italy, 1944

It was rumored that this had been Lee's role for a time; he never denied it, or any other rumor about his wartime service -- including that he had been recruited to be a spy by his step-cousin and MI-6 officer, Ian Fleming, who would become the creator of James Bond. Once asked by a fan if he had been an undercover agent during the war, Lee smiled and asked quietly, "Can you keep a secret?" Of course, the fan said. "So can I," Lee replied.

When the role of 007 was being cast for the first Bond film, Dr. No, in 1962, Fleming wanted the role of 007 played by his step-cousin, Christopher -- because, Fleming said, Lee had "done this kind of work", and would play the role more believably [Note: The BBC, in it's obituary notice, has reported Fleming wanted Lee to play the role of Dr. No, which went to actor Joseph Wiseman]. 

Flight Leftenant Lee In Vatican City, 1944, After The Liberation Of Rome

 
When the first Lord Of The Rings trilogy was being filmed in New Zealand, director Peter Jackson was filming the scene on the Tower, where Saruman stabs Wormtongue in the back; Jackson was directing Brad Dourif to shout or scream when Lee stabbed him; Lee demurred -- when someone is stabbed from behind, he said, reflex makes the victim draw in their breath.  Jackson pushed back, asking, How do you know that? "Because I know what it sounds like," he said -- and that was all.

It's possible Lee was 'playing the mystery' a little; he was an actor, after all; but I tend to think there was some truth to all the rumors -- and while he may have allowed that to play out in the imaginations of others, Lee came of age in an England where such things as discretion, and duty, and knowing how to hold one's tongue meant something, Official Secrets Act or no.

(Lee was, incidentally, the only member of the LOTR cast or crew who had actually met J.R.R. Tolkien, as a still-young man after WWII in an Oxford pub.  It was a brief, chance meeting; Lee enjoyed and admired Tolkien's work and was awe-struck at meeting the man, and so when introduced only managed to say, "Ah, hello, how are you?")

Sir Christopher Lee, 2012

For his career in film, there is plenty on the Intertubes for you to see. I enjoyed his performances; I'll miss his general gravitas and sense of sagacity or menace he could bring to a role. And beyond the general reserve of the English, I always got the sense there was much more about Lee beneath the surface (for example -- the man had two heavy metal albums out there. Ruminate on that for a moment).  He was rumored to have one of the largest private collections of manuscripts and printed material on the occult on the planet -- something he played down, but again, never denied.

In any event, now he knows what we do not. Go well.

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Fear And Ballast

No One Could Have Forseen

Soup Line; Margaret Bourke-White, 1937

On June 9, 2005, then-Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan (appointed to the Fed Chair by Ronald Rayguns in 1987, holding that position for nearly 20 years) appeared before the Congressional Joint Economic committee to deliver what, in retrospect, was testimony dipped in irony and about to be deep-fried by events.

... a "bubble" in home prices for the nation as a whole does not appear likely, there do appear to be, at a minimum, signs of froth in some local markets where home prices seem to have risen to unsustainable levels... Although we certainly cannot rule out home price declines, especially in some local markets, these declines, were they to occur, likely would not have substantial macroeconomic implications.

But too, also, of course, no one could have forseen what was about to happen. Just one of those things.

Toot, Toot.  Hey; It's Only Money.

In December, 2009, financial writer for BusinessWeek David Rosenburg noted in an article, "Why 2010 Looks So Dicey" that

The defining characteristic of this asset and credit collapse has been the implosion of the largest balance sheet in the world: the U.S. household sector. Even with the equities rally and the tenuous recovery in housing in 2009, the reality remains that household net worth has contracted nearly 20% over the past year and a half.

That's an epic $12 trillion of lost net worth [italics added], a degree of trauma never seen before. As households assess the damage, the impact of this shocking loss of wealth on spending patterns is likely to be enormous.

[Q]uestions of basic economic justice, and war and peace... [have] moved so far right that we have a political discourse which would have been largely unrecognizable a generation ago. The first step toward changing that situation is recognizing it for what it is.
-- Paul Campos, 'Single-Wing Politics', (Via Whiskeyfire)
Lawyers, Guns and Money; February 12, 2011

"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story ... Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that."
-- Matt Tabibi, 'Why Isn't Wall Street In Jail?'
Rolling Stone, March 3, 2011 Issue

 Greenspan Knighted By "Lil' Boots" For Enriching The Carlyle Group Service To America

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Reprint Heaven: Look; I Don't Make This Stuff Up

Trolling For Submerged Vehicles

Obligatory Small Animal Photo At Beginning Of Blog Thing

Sniffing around the Intertubes, I found this.

“When is Ben coming home?” Edmund said.

“They told their dog they’d be back in a week,” the muddy boy said. “So… four more days, then. Their dog hates boats, which means anytime they leave on a sailing vacation their dog has to live outside and kill his own food and put up with me doing whatever I want to it.”

“Do you know which song unlocks the trapdoor in Ben’s cottage?” Edmund said.

As the muddy boy handed Edmund the carton of milk, Edmund saw that on the boy’s wrist someone had lettered, in mud, the letters M O N G O.

“I don’t know anything about songs,” the muddy boy said as he peeked into his bag.

Edmund gestured at the muddy boy’s wrist. “Did Mongo write that on you?”

“Yes.”

“You know Mongo?”

“I am Mongo. Who told you I wasn’t Mongo?”

“Nobody,” Edmund said. “But if you’re Mongo, I’m supposed to tell you something.”

“Then tell it.”

My original suspicion was that James Joyce had been reborn and has been using my name. However, it's part of a serial post-modern Intertubes novel entitled The Numberless, created by Ts’ui Pên, a Chinese writer now living in Italy (and thereupon, I am convinced, hangs a really good tale), translated by a person at Vanderbilt University and published by Potboiler Press.

But, I'm only a Dog, and no one listens to me -- though I do happen to like boats, so long as I'm not actually on them. And, I don't live "outside", and don't kill my own food. I go to a restaurant, like anyone else; even if I have to use a child seat and have difficulty with the silverware.

There. Now you know everything. Except about Heino.

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MEHR, MIT AROOO:  All fans of Umberto Ecco and the Illuminati series, and anyone who enjoys those nifty 9-11 conspiracy videos posted on UTub, take note: in going back to check the links in this post (as the Intertubes has a way of marching on), we discovered a tiny mystery: The novel I'd quoted from had disappeared. And it didn't appear to be as it seemed.

The section quoted above was indeed from a postmodern, online novel, The Numberless -- however, the domain where it was posted, thenumberless.com, has expired.  It did exist, however (and proof can be seen courtesy of The Wayback Machine), but there are no search engine references to the work. 

Thankfully, the Wayback cache did keep a link to the email address at vanderbilt.edu of the novel's 'translator', Matthew S. Baker, and a search for him shows that he is quite real and very much extant.  Formerly of the MFA program at Vanderbilt University, he has had a children's novel, If You Find This, just released this year by Little, Brown publishers.

Baker's claim in posting The Numberless online was that it had been penned by Ts’ui Pên, a Chinese writer living in Rome, and that Baker had translated it from the original Italian.  Putting Pên's name into the vast whirl of the Googlemachine shows one reference  -- to a 1941 short story, "The Garden Of Forking Paths", a collection of short works by Jorge Luis Borges and published under that title.

It's a story set during WW1, involving espionage and a search for Hermetic knowledge.  Pên is mentioned as "a learned and famous man" who resigned as governor of a Chinese province "to undertake two tasks: to write a vast and intricate novel, and to construct an equally vast and intricate labyrinth ... in which all men would lose their way." Ts'ui Pên was murdered before completing the novel. The draft he left behind was confusing, contradictory and made no sense to later readers. The labyrinth he mentioned was never found.

However, the novel Ts'ui Pên wrote was the labyrinth -- his attempt to describe a world where all possible outcomes of an event occur simultaneously, each one itself leading to different possible futures.  Today, given String Theory, The Multiverse, and even stories like "One: A Novel", this vision is hardly new -- but in 1941, notable.

And Heino is still around.. 

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Memorial Day

Vergessen Sie Nicht

Mother In Aleppo, Syria, Tries To Comfort Her Children During Bombing, 2015

GENEVA, June 20, 2014 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency reported today on World Refugee Day that the number of refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced people worldwide has, for the first time in the post-World War II era, exceeded 50 million people.
(via UNCHR.org)

Children, Orphaned Or Separated From Their Families; Uganda (UNHCR)

Officer :  You were never in combat.
Maurer :  To be there is to fight.
-- Decision Before Dawn, 1951

(Child Holocaust Survivor,
 Photographed As Part Of Effort To Reunite Children 
With Surviving Family Members; USHMM)

Deaths In Military Conflicts Since 9/17/1945
(Includes military and civilian deaths. Full List Here)

1946-49: Chinese civil war (1,200,000)
1946-49: Greek civil war (50,000)
1946-54: France-Vietnam war (600,000)
1947: Partition of India and Pakistan (1,000,000)
1947: Taiwan's uprising against the Kuomintang (30,000)
1948-1958: Colombian civil war (250,000)
1948-1973: Arab-Israeli wars (70,000)
1949-: Indian Muslims vs Hindus (20,000)
1949-50: Mainland China vs Tibet (1,200,000)
1950-53: Korean war (3,000,000)
1952-59: Kenya's Mau Mau insurrection (20,000)
1954-62: French-Algerian war (368,000)
1958-61: Mao's "Great Leap Forward" (38,000,000)
1960-90: South Africa vs Africa National Congress (??)
1960-96: Guatemala's civil war (200,000)
1961-98: Indonesia vs West Papua/Irian (100,000)
1961-2003: Kurds vs Iraq (180,000)
1962-75: Mozambique Frelimo vs Portugal (10,000)
1962-75: Angolan FNLA & MPLA vs Portugal (50,000)
1964-73: USA-Vietnam war (3,000,000)
1965: second India-Pakistan war over Kashmir
1965-66: Indonesian civil war (250,000)
1966-69: Mao's "Cultural Revolution" (11,000,000)
1966-: Colombia's civil war (31,000)
1967-70: Nigeria-Biafra civil war (800,000)
1968-80: Rhodesia's civil war (??)
1969- [Ongoing] : Philippines vs New People's Army (40,000)
1969-79: Idi Amin, Uganda (300,000)
1969-2002: IRA - Norther Ireland's civil war (3,000)
1969-79: Francisco Macias Nguema, Equatorial Guinea (50,000)
1971: Pakistan-Bangladesh civil war (500,000)
1972-2014: Philippines vs Muslim separatists (150,000)
1972: Burundi's civil war (300,000)
1972-79: Rhodesian/Zimbabwe's civil war (30,000)
1974-91: Ethiopian civil war (1,000,000)
1975-78: Menghitsu, Ethiopia (1,500,000)
1975-79: Khmer Rouge, Cambodia (1,700,000)
1975-89: Boat people, Vietnam (250,000)
1975-87: Civil war in Lebanon (130,000)
1975-87: Laotian civil war (184,000)
1975-2002: Angolan civil war (500,000)
1976-83: Argentina's military regime (20,000)
1976-93: Mozambique's civil war (900,000)
1976-98: Indonesia-East Timor civil war (600,000)
1976-2005: Indonesia-Aceh civil war (12,000)
1977-92: El Salvadorian civil war (75,000)
1979: Vietnam-China war (30,000) 

(Click On Image To Expand. Easy But Not Fun.)

1979-88: Soviet Union Invasion Of Afghanistan (1,300,000)
1980-88: Iraq-Iran war (435,000)
1980-92: Peruvian civil war (69,000)
1984- [Ongoing]: Kurds vs Turkey (35,000)
1981-90: Nicaragua vs Contras (60,000)
1982-90: Hissene Habre, Chad (40,000)
1983-2011: Sri Lanka's civil war (70,000)
1983-2002: Sudanese civil war (2,000,000)
1986-: Indian Kashmir's civil war (60,000)
1987-: Palestinian Intifada (4,500)
1988-2001: Afghanistan civil war (400,000)
1988-2004: Somalia's civil war (550,000)
1989-: Liberian civil war (220,000)
1989- [Ongoing]: Uganda vs Lord's Resistance Army (30,000)
1991: Gulf War - large coalition against Iraq to liberate Kuwait (85,000)
1991-97: Congo's civil war (800,000)
1991-2000: Sierra Leone's civil war (200,000)
1991-2009: Russia-Chechnya civil war (200,000)
1991-94: Armenia-Azerbaijan war (35,000)
1992-96: Tajikstan's civil war war (50,000)
1992-96: Yugoslavian wars (260,000)
1992-99: Algerian civil war (150,000)
1993-97: Congo Brazzaville's civil war (100,000)
1993-2005: Burundi civil war (200,000)
1994: Rwandan civil war (900,000)
1995- [Ongoing]: Pakistani Sunnis vs Shiites (1,300)
1995- [Ongoing]: Maoist rebellion in Nepal (12,000)
1998- [Ongoing]: Congo/Zaire; Rwanda, Uganda vs Zimbabwe, 
Angola, Namibia (3,800,000)
1998-2000: Ethiopia-Eritrea war (75,000)
1999: Kosovo - NATO vs Serbia (2,000)
2001- [Ongoing]: Afghanistan War - USA & UK vs Taliban (40,000)
2001- [Ongoing]: Nigeria vs Boko Haram (16,000)
2002- [Ongoing]: Cote d'Ivoire's civil war (1,000)
2003-11: Second Iraq-USA war - USA vs Shiite squads, Sunni extremists (160,000)
2003-09: Sudan vs JEM/Darfur (300,000)
2004- [Ongoing]: Sudan vs SPLM & Eritrea (??)
2004- [Ongoing]: Yemen vs Houthis (??)
2004- [Ongoing]: Thailand vs Muslim separatists (3,700)
2007- [Ongoing]: Pakistan vs Pakistani Taliban (38,000)
2011- [Ongoing]: Iraq's civil war after the withdrawal of the USA (150,000)
2012- [Ongoing]: Syria's civil war (200,000)
2013- [Ongoing]: Islamic State, Sectarian War In Iraq, Syria (??)
2014- [Ongoing]: Ukraine's civil war (6,000)

(via UNHCR)

Reprint Heaven: Victory

( Fifty years ago, now.  This post is now another annual repeat. )

Victory In Europe (V-E) Day; May 8th


May 8th, 1945; Kaiser-Wilhelms Church, Kurfurstendamm, Berlin


San Francisco, May 8, 1945


May 8th, 1945; Times Square, New York City


Canadian Troops, German Refugees Outside Hamburg, May 8, 1945


May 8th, 1945; Ebensee Concentration Camp, Bavaria


May 8th, 1945; Russian Soliders At The Reichstag, Berlin


May, 1945; Russian Soldiers Near Führerbunker Show Location
In Chancellery Garden Where Hitler's Corpse Was Burned


May 8th, 1945; Berlin


May 7, 1945; Survivors Of Mauthausen Concentration Camp


May 8th, 1945; Winston Churchill At Whitehall, London


May, 1945; Bomb Damage Still Being Cleared, Central London


May, 1945; Berlin


May 8th, 1945; Paris


May 8th, 1945; German Refugees, Juchen (N.Rhein-Westphalia)


Memorial, Mamayev Kurgan, Volgograd


Memorial, The Cenotaph, London


Memorial, Near The Mall, Washington, D.C.


Memorial, The Neue Wache With Kollwitz Pieta, Berlin


Memorial, Deportees And Prisoners; Lyon, France


Memorial, Yad Veshem, Jerusalem


Kaiser-Wilhelms Church; Kurfurstendamm, Berlin


European Union Headquarters Building; Brussels, Belgium

---

Что вы ищете в этом?

Gettin' Weird Out There

Sad Vlad The Putin had a one-sided conversation with a large, stuffed Totoro for over two hours on Russian Television. While viewers were somewhat mystified, this seemed to make Vlad feel better, though the Totoro had no comment (as Totoros are wont not to). 

All this because Before Nine has been getting a lot of traffic from Russia (not that we get a lot of traffic at all), and even the continuing lure of Johanna Sällström doesn't seem to explain it.  Well -- enjoy!

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Reprint Heaven: The Random Barking Pesach Miracle

Nu?
(From 2012)

Whether this observation bounded by the strictures of religious belief, or as open as any question in quantum mechanics -- it can't be denied that we live on a single planet, its atmosphere captured by gravity, orbiting a single star in a universe so vast that we can't conceive just how large that vastness is.

So.. what? What is all this for? Religion will insist on one answer, science another -- though unlike religious leaders, scientists (not ones paid by the Koch Brothers™, or some other bored billionaire, anyway) will tell you their answers aren't absolute. But though you can debate about the purpose, the facts of where and how big can't be argued. So, what's it for? What are we for?

And from that perspective, President Boner's toupee, Obama's support for Banksters™ or 'National Security', or "Bucky The Beaver" Brooks' rat-toothed giggle doesn't mean much.

President Obama Graciously Ignores The Incident Of President Boner's Hairpiece (Photo: People/Newsroom; TPM; Inset Detail By Mongo)

In the face of the unanswered Big Questions, many of the things we consider so important, aren't. There are obvious things which are important, but much of what captures our attention in this place we inhabit -- as Ellen Ripley reminds us, "all this, all this bullshit you think is so important" -- isn't.

We should be asking The Big Questions. But, I'm only a Dog, and no one listens to me.

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MEHR, MIT SCHADENFREUDE, UND FROHE OSTERN, PEEPS!  Three guys appear before Saint Peter, sitting at his raised dais while guarding the entrance to Heaven Itself.  Pete fixes a gimlet eye on them and intones, "You wish to enter the Kingdom Of Heaven. To see God, and to know your place in All Things, and to live forever and ever in Paradise. Is that about right?"

"Yeah man."   "Yes, your honor."   "I do!"  The men replied.

"Okay." Peter leans on his raised podium and squints down at them. "Listen up; here's how it works. I'm going to ask each of you a question. You get it right; you're in. You blow it, and I pull the string and you go to Hell. Ready?"  The men, obviously frightened, nodded. Peter pointed to the first man. "You. What's the meaning of Easter?"

 The man opened his mouth, but no sounds came out. "Well?" peter said, frowning. "That your 'final answer'?"

"Uh... isn't it about Moses, and wandering somewhere for forty days and BWWWAHH HHHHAAA!!!!!!" The ground beneath the man opened up; flames shout out of the ground and he fell into the flaming maw. The earth closed and the air was redolent of sulfur and brimstone. Peter shifted his gaze to the second man. "You -- what's the meaning of Easter?"

"Well, it's about -- well, there's a whole bunch of fish and bread at the end of it but BWWWAHHH HHHAAA!!!!!!"And the earth opened beneath him, flames spewed towards the sky, and he was pulled down into the fiery pit; the earth closed over him.  Peter looked at the last man. "You. What's the meaning of Easter."

"Ah... isn't that where, uh, Jesus had the last supper, and was betrayed, and tried for heresy, and sentenced to be crucified?" The man said.

"Okay," Peter replied. "Say more."

"And He was crucified, and taken down and placed in a tomb?" The man said with a hesitant smile.

"All right," Peter said, leaning forward. "Keep going."

"And they rolled a big rock in front of the tomb, and He was there for three days?"

Peter was nodding. "You're on a roll, man; tell it."

The man, beaming, smiled back at him. "Yeah! And on the third day, Jesus rolled back the rock -- and he came out of the tomb -- and saw His shadow; and that meant we had three more weeks of Winter BWWWAHHH HHHAAA!!!!!!"

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Oh, and Gut Pesach.

Taliban

Someone Else Today. You Tomorrow.

This bill is not about discrimination... [the purpose of the legislation] is very simply to empower individuals when they believe that actions of government impinge on their constitutional First Amendment freedom of religion... 
-- Indiana Governor Mark Pence, to ABC's George Stephanopolis

SB 101: Religious freedom restoration. Prohibits a governmental entity from substantially burdening a person's exercise of religion, even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability, unless the governmental entity can demonstrate that the burden: (1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering the compelling governmental interest... Specifies that the religious freedom law applies to the implementation or application of a law regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity or official is a party to a proceeding ... Prohibits a governmental entity from substantially burdening a person's exercise of religion, even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability... Specifies that the religious freedom law applies to the implementation or application of a law regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity or official is a party to a proceeding implementing or applying the law. Prohibits an applicant, employee, or former employee from pursuing certain causes of action against a private employer... (The RFRA, per the Indiana General Assembly)

I had intended to post a long rant on the perfidy and outright evil which characterize right-wing evangelism in America, but we'll just take those items as a given.

SB 101 isn't the first law passed in even recent memory allowing a minority in political control to enshrine their intolerance with the force of legislation -- in this case, evangelical christians (with a small "c") and their god-given (well, somebody's god, anyway) right to condemn -- in this case, LGBT Americans. And evangelicals love to condemn; being a True Believer seems to gives them the authority to do that, filled with Grace™ and love (and something else) as they are.



And our right-wing evangelicals want to be the dominant authority -- over women, over children, over education and art and sexuality. Our evangelicals, like the Taliban, would like to enact their own version of religious law in America -- and religious law is not about uplifting and empowering the human spirit; it's based on Thou Shalt Not.

Religious law of whatever flavor is based on the fundamental precept that Humans are bad, stained from birth with evil, who must be carefully watched by the Elders and restricted from committing more acts which The Elders believe are affronts against (somebody's) god.

And (as is always true in less democratic forms of governing), the force of religious law always rests on ultimate punishment. Those who break these laws are whipped and disfigured, have parts of their bodies crudely amputated; are tortured until they confess their crimes; are stoned to death, beheaded, or burned at the stake. And the entire community will be made to watch, or may be required to participate in a ritualized killing... as a religious requirement. As an object lesson.

And nations ruled by True Believers and their edicts -- religious, or political -- always become bankrupt cultures; shabby, frightening, and ultimately murderous places.  Ask the Muslims of Serbia and Croatia. Ask the Tutsis of Rawanda. Ask the people of Cambodia. Ask the people of Afghanistan. Ask the Jews of Europe.

(A Dog has a long memory:  The last member of my family had been a born-again evangelical; for a time, they were associated with a tiny sect, organized around a self-proclaimed 'pastor'. After a long illness, my family member died; at the funeral, I watched the 'pastor' turn what was a moment of grief and remembrance into his opportunity to tell a captive audience, at length, that their time on earth was short and everyone in earshot and beyond was hellbound and they'd better get right with the lord.

(He shouted and strutted; he preened -- a True Believer in full, in love with the power that act of condemnation gave him. Of passing judgement, and settling scores. I've found some of him in every individual I've seen or experienced since who claims to be 'moved' by an allegedly higher power. And the so-called "laws" associated with whatever freakshow delusion they're pushing which allow them to do pretty much whatever they want. Yes, they'll make fine leaders of America, or whatever they'll call their New Kingdom.

(Ask the members of the People's Temple at Jonestown. Ask the Branch Davidians at Waco. You might even ask the members of 'christian' congregations across America, listening to speeches made by their 'pastors' condemning other people as less than human and feeling such putrescent drivel is not only just fine but righteous.) 

SB101 is not the last legislation of its kind that we'll see passed in America. And if an evangelical christian ever becomes President of the United States, we will see many more. The United States is, in the eyes of many, the country where political apathy is king; perhaps that's so.

If it is, then God help us all. In our torpor, ultimately we may find ourselves ruled by the same kind of strutting, egotistical monsters that a real pastor, Martin Niemöller, had in mind when he made the oft-quoted observation:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out. --  Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)

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MEHR, MIT "ES GENUG IST !":

(Reuters) - Indiana's Republican Governor Mike Pence, responding to national outrage over the state's new Religious Freedom Restoration Act, said on Tuesday he will "fix" it to make clear businesses cannot use it to deny services to same-sex couples.

Pence, in a news conference, said the law he signed last week had been widely mischaracterized and "smeared" but he called on the state's Republican-controlled General Assembly to send a new law to his desk this week to fix it...

But Pence found support from conservatives including Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz and possible presidential contenders Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio...

Critics say Indiana's law went too far in potentially allowing businesses to deny services to gay couples, because they could argue that doing so went against their deeply held beliefs.

Same-sex marriage became legal in Indiana under an appeals court ruling last year.

Religious Freedom Acts in Georgia and North Carolina appeared to stall this week after Indiana came under fire. But the Arkansas House of Representatives is expected to approve this week an RFRA that has already passed the state's Senate.