Yom HaShoah

The gate said "Arbiet Macht Frei" in an arc over  it. 

     It was a lie. It should have said "Alles Macht Todt." Because the real purpose of the place beyond that gate was not to make people work. It was to make people die. Not in small, accidental numbers. Not in slow starvation (but that was done.) But it was to make people die in vast, industrial scale numbers. Not a hundred or so a day, but thousands. Tens of thousands. Originally located at Dachau, the signs would also come to be known at the Auschwitz complex of camps. The camps were a big fat German lie. The Germans told everyone, including themselves, that the people in the camps were just being held there to work. They were being held there to die. In the end, some six million Jews were consigned to places where they would either be immediately executed or slowly worked to death. Why ? simply because they were Jews. Juden. Untermenschen -- Sub-Human. Yes, that's right. They were considered to be less than human because of their religion and lifestyle. Let that sink in. 
 Roughly 8 decades ago, people were herded into cattle cars at gunpoint -- packed in until there was only standing room. They were then transported to the camps. There, they would be sent in two directions. The minority were sent one way, the majority were sent to their deaths. They were told to strip off all their clothes, put all their personal belongings in a bag, and then step into the "shower room." There was no shower. Pellets of Zyklon B were dumped into the room by men on top of the gas chamber. People  -- ordinary decent people -- were gassed to death in horrific numbers. Then the "Sonderkommando" -- work parties of prisoners -- would drag the bodies out of the gas chambers, load them on carts and then wheel the carts to the crematoria. When the crematoria were overloaded, they would take the bodies and burn them the hard way. Dante never conceived of a hell like this.

(note: Extermination camps killed more than Jews, but the Jews were the only ones targeted for death because of their religion. )
So I'm going to say it again, for all those who can't.

Never Again. Never forget what happened. Never allow it to happen again.
Don't let any modern-day Nazi, whether they call themselves "Nationalists" or "White Nationalists" or "White Separatists" fool you. Don't let them deny what happened.

Some Thoughts about MLK Day.

I was six years old when Dr. Martin Luther King was killed on April 4 1968. 

I don't really remember his speeches from the days he gave them, but I viewed and listened to them again in Jr High School, and again in High School, and again in College. It's important that we keep repeating his words -- that we keep his message going. But try not to paraphrase. Try to use the original words.
So I include here a transcript of one of Dr. King's most popular speeches.
It's called the "I Have A Dream" speech.
Go ahead, read it. The speech espouses ideas I consider vital to American Society.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr: "I have A Dream"

Go ahead. Read it. Copy the link and share it with your friends.
Dr. King's dream is still alive.

Nixon, Trump and Weasels

I was reaching the end of my boyhood when the whole Nixon thing brewed up.

      I remember well sitting in the kitchen with Mom and eating my breakfast while she got our lunches ready and made sure we had our homework, while half watching the morning news. The War, Watergate, NASA and The cold war were the big topics. But soon it would all be eclipsed by Nixon and Watergate. Erlichman, Dean, Cox, Haldeman and others. Soon, we were even talking about it in class. The effects were pervasive, and divisive. "never trust anyone over 30", "remember may 4" and other slogans were popular. The pressure to get rid of Nixon was intense, and eventually even the Republicans realized Nixon had to go. With the Impeachment hearings moving through Congress, a delegation of GOP Senators went up to the White House. One witness later described Nixon as a "Cornered Weasel." Nowadays, we have Donald Trump, who wants so badly to be seen as a Tough Guy, but who even a casual observer would see is not a Tough Guy, but a Weasel.
Where is the modern day version of the three who took that walk up to the White House to beard Nixon in his den ? We need a modern day version of Scott, Goldwater and Rhodes. Unfortunately, it looks today as if McConnell , Cornyn and McCarthy simply haven't got the belly for it. Although I tend to doubt that The Weasel in Chief would resign if they bid him to. He would simply continue on, hacking holes in the bottom of the Ship of State.

Bill Maher is wrong again.

Bill Maher is wrong again.

The other day on his show, Bill Maher asked that people stop talking about politics. He made the unfounded claim that nobody ever changes their minds and therefore it's useless. I hate to disagree with a man who has his own TV show, but I'm going to. Bill, you're wrong. People do in fact change their minds. When I first voted, I voted as a Reagan Democrat. By the time I moved to Arizona, I was a conservative Republican. (yup... crazy, ain't it.) By the time "W" was elected (or stole the election in 2000) I refused to vote for him. The Party had moved away from me, or perhaps I had moved away from the party, or perhaps some of both. By now, 18 years later, I've shifted toward being a progressive or liberal Democrat. You might even call me a Democratic Socialist. (I wouldn't but that's another story.) People do change, Bill. and Political discussions are a part of that. Not the canned talking points, trolling, and carefully studied insults that we have today, but actual discussion, where the facts themselves are not in question, but the interpretation of those facts is the matter of discussion. Bill, we don't need to stop talking politics, we need to stop having arguments about what the fundamental facts are. Even as early as the mid-90s, people on the internet were trying to bring their own facts. That's what we need to stop doing -- stop using our own facts. Stop bringing "Alternative facts" to the discussion. That done, we can move on to discuss the actual issues at hand. It's not going to be easy. People have to mutually agree to trust sources of facts, and that's going to be difficult. Not impossible, just difficult. It will likely take as long to move back to that that than it took to get to where we are, and to stop shouting slogans at each other.

Another poem for the day.

Whenever veteran's day (Remembrance day elsewhere) comes around, I cannot help but think of this poem. I'm just going to leave it here for you. 

Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries

By A. E. Housman

These, in the days when heaven was falling,

The hour when earth's foundations fled,

Followed their mercenary calling

And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;

They stood, and the earth's foundations stay;

What God abandoned, these defended,

And saved the sum of things for pay.

Wikipedia entry for AE Housman

As sung by Gillian McPherson (for the film The Dogs of War)

(contrary to the use in the movie, Housman was using "Mercenaries" ironically, describing the professional soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force in WW1)

We like to talk today about anything but 11/11/18 @ 11:00 AM.

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

We like to talk today about everything but the end of the First World War. 

But I'm going to, for just a few minutes. 

     We love our holidays here in the United States. We also at least mouth the words that we appreciate those who sacrificed their time, money and even their lives for this nation.
We throw parties, parades, football games (gridiron) and solicit donations in exchange for American flags of dubious manufacture or paper poppies. Most of you don't even know why the poppies.
Not to worry, I'm going to tell you. But first, a bit about War.
     Warfare is one of mankind's oldest activities. For most of known history, it was men only (not really, but we'll pay lip service to the official history for now.) War began with rocks, sticks and fists, feet, elbows knees and head-butts. In the earliest times, War was bad, but relatively manageable. Sometimes people got killed, but mostly they yelled at each other and beat on each other until one side or the other ran away. Along with this developed the concepts of Honor, Bravery and Heroism. Most probably the first one to run away in a battle would be dishonored, the last to run honored and those who bothered to show up bravery, and those who made the other side run away first heroes. But the problem is, while medical technology developed, so did killing technology. We went from fists, rocks and sticks to arrows, spears and rock-clubs or hatchets. But the first world war was uniquely ugly because it was the first major Industrial Age war, and we brought industrial age weapons to it. But the world wasn't ready for Industrial age warfare yet. We were still fighting as if it were the Boer war -- with rifles, trenches, non-recuperating artillery and swords and bayonets. Except it was not the Boer war. We had recuperating artillery (cannon that don't need to be re-laid between salvos), machine-guns and worst of all, gas. We didn't know how to cope with those. We didn't know how to cope with sappers who used TNT by the ton, either. In short, the war was a horror raised to an exponential fever pitch.  Indeed, so grim was it that the United States feared a global societal collapse and a global pandemic. We got the second of those two, a pandemic of influenza, which killed more than double those killed in the war. 
     In WW1, men died by the millions. Historians would later reckon that an entire generation of the English upper class was wiped out by the war. The casualties were horrific. It was also the first time the psychological effects of warfare were recognized. Men came home devastated. Physically and emotionally wrecked. It would take years for them to recover, and some never did. We did not learn from that grim lesson. Men who came home were often treated poorly. Few benefits were granted them. Once the war was over, it was over. Bonuses that were promised to be paid "in the future" often didn't happen. The poppy became the symbol of the peace, because of a poem by Col. John McCrae, titled "In Flanders Fields."
I include a copy from Wikipedia:

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
    Between the crosses, row on row,
  That mark our place; and in the sky
  The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
  Loved and were loved, and now we lie
      In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
  The torch; be yours to hold it high.
  If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
      In Flanders fields. 

So, remember these people who fought and died in the first world war. The first war of the Industrial age. The horror war. Remember it and don't be fooled when some thieving politician tells you we need to go fight another war. The United States should not ever fight a war of choice. So remember those men, but also remember the horrors they perpetrated on each other, In Flanders Fields.

Whistling past the graveyard? perhaps.

It is 11/6/18. In hours, the polls will open across the United States, and voters will slowly if surely decide the fate of the United States, and to a lesser extent the Western World, for the next two years or possibly more. Traitor Donnie, a ruthless, greedy, self-aggrandizing, egotistical, injury-collecting braggart, liar and bully, has been President of the United States for just under two years. He has damaged our relationships with our allies, alienated our friends, sucked up to dictators and crashed our trade agreements. The total list of things he's done are too numerous to list here, and they are not the point of this post.
All night, I've been posting stuff on Facebook. Stuff to cheer me up. Stuff like : Charlie Chaplin speech in The Great Dictator
Or: Churchill Speech from The Darkest Hour.
Or even : King Henry V Agincourt speech .
Or this one : V for Vendetta Revolution speech
And of course this one : King Elizabeth Speech "Hoist the Colours!"

Then the comment : "Weather for Phoenix AZ : Temp. 60 Degrees F, Feels like "June 5 1944".
Because it really does feel like the night before a big battle.

Then there were some funny videos :
Martian Queen (From Duck Dodgers in the 24th 1/2 Century) sings "Blues in the Night"

Or her enemy's reply -- "It's Not Unusual" with the borrowed voice of Tom Jones.

I'm an optimist about the elections. I expect the Democratic Party to gain seats in the House and Senate. Optimally they will take both legislative bodies. But, I'm human. I have moments of doubt. Moments of needing some morale boosting. So, I turned to Youtube.

See you after the Elections. GO VOTE!