5 May 2010 Who gets to be the next Emperor?
Franklin Graham wants very badly to win a war that he’s all too willing to start; and that he’s already lost.
“In an interview with Newsmax TV, Franklin Graham said the Pentagon's decision to rescind his invitation to Thursday's National Prayer Day event was "a slap at all evangelical Christians" and he blamed the Obama administration.
The "slap" is "absolutely part of a pattern of hostility toward Christianity in the federal government," Graham said. "And I don't know if it's exactly from President Obama, but I'm certain that some of the men around him are very much opposed to what we stand for and what we believe."
Graham was removed from his slot at the Pentagon’s “National Day of Prayer because he made statements about Islam that might well have increased the risk to U.S. military personnel serving in Islamic nations. The Pentagon, which is not supposed to support or champion any religion, explained the official position quite clearly. Graham, who wants badly to become the de facto evangelical leader for the theocracy he is all too willing to create, chose to claim the Pentagon had delivered a personal insult to him. He fails to understand that the entire National Day of Prayer is illegal and un-Constitutional. He claims personal insult when he should be asking for enlightenment.
His statements about Islam have some modicum of truth. Its fundamentalist adherents are often violent, are often intolerant, and are in need of joining the 21st century.
So, too, are the fundamentalist adherents of Judaism, who cling to the traditions of the Pale, and who claim the divine gift of “Greater Israel,” those lands under Jewish rule in the very brief periods of the Davidic monarchies and the 1st & 2nd Temples. The most fanatical among them will neither recognize nor defend the modern state of Israel. They are a danger to Israel today and to Israel’s future as a continuing nation.
Graham stands in a long line of evangelists and fundamentalist Christians who think that Christianity is excluded from the 1st Amendment’s establishment clause. They are all eager to rewrite the Constitution so that it gives them secular power to equal their numerical representation in our population. They fail to understand that they are owed no power, no presence, and no rights but those afforded every citizen. Their faith and that of their fellow travelers is of no concern to the non-evangelical citizens.
Graham and company cite large numbers of adherents. They claim that their religion commands them to convert everyone around them. They may well believe that but such dogma has no hold on the rest of us and should be purged from the political body of the United States, particularly our military.
Lest Graham be allowed to hide behind charitable deeds to mask his hatred of Islam and his father’s hatred of Judaism, consider how his charity actually deals with people in need.
“Samaritan's Purse has shown a lot of love for its neighbors, including its Muslim neighbors. The ministry has established humanitarian relief efforts in such predominantly Muslim countries as Somalia, Sudan, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq -- drawing much praise but also some criticism for requiring people to sit through Christian prayer meetings or talks before receiving aid.”
How much Christian love and charity is to be found in a church which requires hungry people to sit through indoctrination before being fed? Judaism prohibits such lack of charity. So, too, do many of the moderate Christians I know. And I believe Islam teaches the same practice. The depth of Graham’s hypocrisy is damning. No honest conversion to any philosophy or faith comes from torture. And preaching to people who only show up for food is a form of torture. True, it leaves no marks, causes no physical injury, but it brings mental anguish. Just as the Moors converted the Mediterranean to Islam under penalty of death; before them, Constantine converted the Roman world under similar threat. And after the Moors were ejected from Europe, the Inquisition created false Christians who prayed to avoid torture and death such as that dealt out to Jews and Moslems at the hands of the Church.
I see no spiritual merit in Graham, in Robertson, or any of the evangelicals who lust for power in numbers of followers. They are no better than the Inquisitors, no better than the Taliban. There real danger to this nation lies in the refusal of moderate Christians to stand up and shout the evangelicals down, to point out their hypocrisies and to remove them from political power until they lose their hold on the political processes in this nation. Their numbers, these evangelicals, do not justify their chokehold on the GOP. That level of control speaks all too loudly of the GOP’s willingness to use religion when it can. But religion is destroying the remaining merits of the GOP.
We need to be aware of the risks coming from the religious right. They are too willing to ally with no-nothing populism and racism in order to gain political presence. They’ve been courted by the GOP since the Nixon years and it is time for such practice to stop. We must avoid yoking our nation to a fundamentalist/evangelical harness. We left state churches in Europe for the best of reasons. We don’t want to elect a Holy Christian Emperor to rule over the U.S. as the Vatican did over Europe for centuries. We’re much closer to having such an empire than we know.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
4 May 2010 What a field day for the Heat!
4 May 2010 What a field day for the Heat!
The suspected bomber, the one who admitted involvement, has been charged. His accomplices or coaches in Pakistan, perhaps both, have been arrested there. I’m willing to bet that the Pakistanis will extract more information than our interrogators. However, I don’t, for the minute, want a government such as Pakistan’s for our citizens.
There are almost certainly other Jihad-oriented Pakistanis carrying U.S. passports and plotting harm against their fellow citizens; living in our cities. There are certainly sleeper agents waiting to be activated before they take their turns at killing the people they live among. They have been so conditioned that they are all too willing to try to destroy the nation that welcomed them and gave them personal and economic opportunity.
Radical Islam is a dangerous force in this world. Even more dangerous is the unwillingness of moderates in the Moslem world to speak out against or to censure the murderous nature of fundamentalist jihadism. As with German citizens in WWII, the silent compliance of moderate Moslems only aids the murderers.
This time it was a Pakistani-American. Next time it may be a native American who lights the fuses and leaves the bomb to shatter lives and buildings. Our native hate groups are equally dangerous, equally as indoctrinated in the politics and religion of hatred.
Like Pakistan’s Mullahs, our right wing hate mongers have a large, fertile, and poorly educated audience to radicalize with their particular brand of stupidity and hatred. We’ve already seen one of our most hateful pundits try to blame the oil well blowout in the Gulf on environmental activists. How any environmental group could mount an attack on a well head over a mile beneath the ocean is a question that will never be asked by his true believers. They lack the intellectual curiosity to form the question.
Today is the 40th anniversary of the shootings at Kent State. I heard the incident described today as “the day the war came home to America.” In a sense that is true. Students in other nations during the 1960’s had learned that challenging a government’s policies in the streets could, and often did, result in great risk of physical harm. Our students had, by and large, been handled much more gently by police and military units called in to maintain order. With the exception of Chicago, those nice white, middle class girls and boys could take to the streets in protest with little fear of physical harm. Black Americans met with violence much earlier than the VietNam protesters. They already knew what Kent State was to teach their white analogs.
When one wishes to change the course of governmental policy, one needs either a greater force to counter that policy or a willingness to place one’s life on the line. The by-standers killed at Kent State were collateral damage. They were most likely the victims of a misunderstood order to “Hold Fire!” The National Guard troops who fired that day were equally victims, trapped between obligation to follow orders and the willingness of demonstration leaders to involve bystanders and to attempt to force a governmental back down.
In another sense, a most unpleasant and painful one, the war came home every day. It came in aluminum coffins – “Remains nor viewable.” It came in returning soldiers with drug habits. It came in doctors, nurses, & corpsmen who had tried, repeatedly, to save those who could not have been saved. It came in photographs of friends who would never be seen again, in nightmares, in stories that needed to be told, but which could not be told because no one wanted to listen to them. Kent State was a big thing here. Young Americans died.
In VietNam young Americans died, too. And it was no big thing. It was just “Nam.”
The suspected bomber, the one who admitted involvement, has been charged. His accomplices or coaches in Pakistan, perhaps both, have been arrested there. I’m willing to bet that the Pakistanis will extract more information than our interrogators. However, I don’t, for the minute, want a government such as Pakistan’s for our citizens.
There are almost certainly other Jihad-oriented Pakistanis carrying U.S. passports and plotting harm against their fellow citizens; living in our cities. There are certainly sleeper agents waiting to be activated before they take their turns at killing the people they live among. They have been so conditioned that they are all too willing to try to destroy the nation that welcomed them and gave them personal and economic opportunity.
Radical Islam is a dangerous force in this world. Even more dangerous is the unwillingness of moderates in the Moslem world to speak out against or to censure the murderous nature of fundamentalist jihadism. As with German citizens in WWII, the silent compliance of moderate Moslems only aids the murderers.
This time it was a Pakistani-American. Next time it may be a native American who lights the fuses and leaves the bomb to shatter lives and buildings. Our native hate groups are equally dangerous, equally as indoctrinated in the politics and religion of hatred.
Like Pakistan’s Mullahs, our right wing hate mongers have a large, fertile, and poorly educated audience to radicalize with their particular brand of stupidity and hatred. We’ve already seen one of our most hateful pundits try to blame the oil well blowout in the Gulf on environmental activists. How any environmental group could mount an attack on a well head over a mile beneath the ocean is a question that will never be asked by his true believers. They lack the intellectual curiosity to form the question.
Today is the 40th anniversary of the shootings at Kent State. I heard the incident described today as “the day the war came home to America.” In a sense that is true. Students in other nations during the 1960’s had learned that challenging a government’s policies in the streets could, and often did, result in great risk of physical harm. Our students had, by and large, been handled much more gently by police and military units called in to maintain order. With the exception of Chicago, those nice white, middle class girls and boys could take to the streets in protest with little fear of physical harm. Black Americans met with violence much earlier than the VietNam protesters. They already knew what Kent State was to teach their white analogs.
When one wishes to change the course of governmental policy, one needs either a greater force to counter that policy or a willingness to place one’s life on the line. The by-standers killed at Kent State were collateral damage. They were most likely the victims of a misunderstood order to “Hold Fire!” The National Guard troops who fired that day were equally victims, trapped between obligation to follow orders and the willingness of demonstration leaders to involve bystanders and to attempt to force a governmental back down.
In another sense, a most unpleasant and painful one, the war came home every day. It came in aluminum coffins – “Remains nor viewable.” It came in returning soldiers with drug habits. It came in doctors, nurses, & corpsmen who had tried, repeatedly, to save those who could not have been saved. It came in photographs of friends who would never be seen again, in nightmares, in stories that needed to be told, but which could not be told because no one wanted to listen to them. Kent State was a big thing here. Young Americans died.
In VietNam young Americans died, too. And it was no big thing. It was just “Nam.”
Monday, May 3, 2010
3 May 2010 Mishaps but no mayhem yet
3 May 2010 Mishaps but no mayhem
The Pathfinder threw another service warning Friday. We are told that it needs a new catalytic converter. The muffler shop we were directed to tells us that the Pathfinder has two such devices and asks if one or both are malfunctioning. We don’t know. Tomorrow will require a trip to the muffler shop to see if those and other questions can be answered.
Closer to the kitchen, a new, unopened bottle of A-1 steak sauce flung itself to the floor from a pantry shelf. As with all jumpers, the carnage was obvious and widely dispersed. Clean up required many paper towels.
We will try to finish the calendar day without further mishaps.
The Pathfinder threw another service warning Friday. We are told that it needs a new catalytic converter. The muffler shop we were directed to tells us that the Pathfinder has two such devices and asks if one or both are malfunctioning. We don’t know. Tomorrow will require a trip to the muffler shop to see if those and other questions can be answered.
Closer to the kitchen, a new, unopened bottle of A-1 steak sauce flung itself to the floor from a pantry shelf. As with all jumpers, the carnage was obvious and widely dispersed. Clean up required many paper towels.
We will try to finish the calendar day without further mishaps.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
2 May 2010 And the war moves closer to home again
2 May 2010 And the war moves closer to home again
While we were listening to good music and taking admission money at a dance yesterday evening, someone tried to detonate a car bomb in Times Square, NYC. Whether timely detection, faulty construction, or some other reason prevented it detonating, many lives and many injuries were, fortunately, avoided.
We’ve had relatively few successful terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Two attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, The Murraw building, the attack on United States Capitol shooting incident of 1954, a small bomb in the U.S. Capital, the Ft. Hood shooting, & the Wisconsin math building lead the list. Other attempts including assassination attempts failed and successful against politicians can be considered terrorism. Numerous school shootings have taken place but those are less about terrorism than about loopholes in our gun laws allowing mentally ill people access to firearms. A few successful embassy bombings, troop barracks bombings and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, while deadly, happened offshore.
As a nation, we’ve been fortunate. We’ve, for the most part, been able to avoid mass casualties caused by political or religious terrorists. We’ve managed to improve communications between agencies tasked with public safety and national defense. We’ve been lucky in learning about planned attacks more than better at catching plotters. We treasure our civil liberties, even those of us who don’t truly understand what they are and how they are secured. So we err on the side of missing many plots rather than on the side of arresting more innocent, or as yet innocent, people.
In defense, we’re fighting the “last” war instead of the current war. We’ve added all manner of tactics to catch people using old bomb smuggling tactics: shoes, laptops, radios, etc. But we don’t screen people as we should because we don’t want to offend minority religions, populations, or appear to be racially profiling. We’ll eventually find that the Israeli methods we’ve yet to employ work better than anything we have put into place today.
The primary questions about the Times Square car bomb attempt are: who and why. Is it religious, Islamic fundamentalism? Is it Christian fundamentalism/anti-abortion? Is it political, someone worked up over taxes, health care, our first black POTUS, a gun nut afraid of having his firearms confiscated, or over any of a dozen other blatant lies created and circulated by the GOP lobbyists?
We need to know if this attempt was part of a group attack or a single person over the edge. We need to know if there were more cars, equally loaded, that also failed but that weren’t noticed. Was this intended as a distraction or as an attraction?
Having just completed a CSI survey class, a lot of things about evidence in and about the vehicle and components come to mind. It would be interesting to be working on this case. I think we’re going to see a lot more attempts at this sort of attack. We’re being dragged into unity with the rest of the western world. Our oceans no longer protect us.
Nor do we protect our oceans. The oil well spewing 5000 + barrels of oil every day in the Gulf of Mexico is more of a disaster than the bomb in Times Square would have been. We have allowed drilling companies and service companies to join with oil lease holders to avoid responsibility for the disaster and to avoid being required to act in a timely and correct manner to prevent ecological damage. BP, Halliburton, and the drilling rig owner/operator will dump the cleanup onto our federal government while they collectively share in the increased revenues from increased oil prices. Make no mistake, oil prices will go up as a result of this blowout. CEO salaries will go up, Halliburton’s profits will go up, and taxes on gasoline will go up.
The Gulf fishing industry, already in trouble and depending in too many cases on over-fished species is going to be damaged for a long time. Shrimp, scallops, oysters, crabs, grouper, snapper, and other prized sea food will become scarce and exorbitantly expensive. Fishing communities and those that depend upon them run the risk of becoming ghost towns. Families all over the Gulf coast are going to lose their homes, their jobs, their boats, and their way of life.
Somehow, it does not surprise me that Halliburton is involved in yet another disaster.
While we were listening to good music and taking admission money at a dance yesterday evening, someone tried to detonate a car bomb in Times Square, NYC. Whether timely detection, faulty construction, or some other reason prevented it detonating, many lives and many injuries were, fortunately, avoided.
We’ve had relatively few successful terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Two attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, The Murraw building, the attack on United States Capitol shooting incident of 1954, a small bomb in the U.S. Capital, the Ft. Hood shooting, & the Wisconsin math building lead the list. Other attempts including assassination attempts failed and successful against politicians can be considered terrorism. Numerous school shootings have taken place but those are less about terrorism than about loopholes in our gun laws allowing mentally ill people access to firearms. A few successful embassy bombings, troop barracks bombings and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, while deadly, happened offshore.
As a nation, we’ve been fortunate. We’ve, for the most part, been able to avoid mass casualties caused by political or religious terrorists. We’ve managed to improve communications between agencies tasked with public safety and national defense. We’ve been lucky in learning about planned attacks more than better at catching plotters. We treasure our civil liberties, even those of us who don’t truly understand what they are and how they are secured. So we err on the side of missing many plots rather than on the side of arresting more innocent, or as yet innocent, people.
In defense, we’re fighting the “last” war instead of the current war. We’ve added all manner of tactics to catch people using old bomb smuggling tactics: shoes, laptops, radios, etc. But we don’t screen people as we should because we don’t want to offend minority religions, populations, or appear to be racially profiling. We’ll eventually find that the Israeli methods we’ve yet to employ work better than anything we have put into place today.
The primary questions about the Times Square car bomb attempt are: who and why. Is it religious, Islamic fundamentalism? Is it Christian fundamentalism/anti-abortion? Is it political, someone worked up over taxes, health care, our first black POTUS, a gun nut afraid of having his firearms confiscated, or over any of a dozen other blatant lies created and circulated by the GOP lobbyists?
We need to know if this attempt was part of a group attack or a single person over the edge. We need to know if there were more cars, equally loaded, that also failed but that weren’t noticed. Was this intended as a distraction or as an attraction?
Having just completed a CSI survey class, a lot of things about evidence in and about the vehicle and components come to mind. It would be interesting to be working on this case. I think we’re going to see a lot more attempts at this sort of attack. We’re being dragged into unity with the rest of the western world. Our oceans no longer protect us.
Nor do we protect our oceans. The oil well spewing 5000 + barrels of oil every day in the Gulf of Mexico is more of a disaster than the bomb in Times Square would have been. We have allowed drilling companies and service companies to join with oil lease holders to avoid responsibility for the disaster and to avoid being required to act in a timely and correct manner to prevent ecological damage. BP, Halliburton, and the drilling rig owner/operator will dump the cleanup onto our federal government while they collectively share in the increased revenues from increased oil prices. Make no mistake, oil prices will go up as a result of this blowout. CEO salaries will go up, Halliburton’s profits will go up, and taxes on gasoline will go up.
The Gulf fishing industry, already in trouble and depending in too many cases on over-fished species is going to be damaged for a long time. Shrimp, scallops, oysters, crabs, grouper, snapper, and other prized sea food will become scarce and exorbitantly expensive. Fishing communities and those that depend upon them run the risk of becoming ghost towns. Families all over the Gulf coast are going to lose their homes, their jobs, their boats, and their way of life.
Somehow, it does not surprise me that Halliburton is involved in yet another disaster.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
1 May 2010 One tank from column A, two missiles from column B
1 May 2010 One tank from column A, two missiles from column B
As long as I can recall, May Day was the day to watch the USSR and Warsaw Pact nations demonstrate their military might. The celebration of trade-unionism and democratic socialism that marked Europe in the early 20th century was co-opted by the Soviets as a day to use parades to attempt to intimidate the rest of Europe and the NATO nations.
The USSR disintegrated in 1991, and with its demise, the annual intimidation by parade became a tradition of the past.
I’ve never had any reason to celebrate May Day for anything other than its socialist, workers, trade union origins. The pick nicks and outdoor dances on the village greens, as well as other raucous celebrations that have been associated with end of winter celebrations stem from other cultural hand-me-downs such as the Celtic festival of Beltane and the Germanic festival of Walpurgis Night. May Day falls exactly half of a year from November 1, another cross-quarter day which is also associated with various northern European pagan and neopagan festivals such as Samhain. May Day marks the end of the uncomfortable winter half of the year in the Northern hemisphere.
Not growing up in or working in agricultural –based traditions, I gravitate to the socialist traditions that evolved in urban cultures.
I still miss seeing the Red Square parades. While we lived with a reality-based dread of nuclear war between the West and the Soviets, we knew that at some level the Soviets were afraid of the same things we were. This made them reliable enemies with replicable habits and patterns. Trotting out the new weaponry on May Day was one such habit.
I can still see them, those old men – they were all old then in my youth – lined up atop the Lenin Mausoleum in Red Square. I can see their grim faces, their poorly cut suits, and bullet-proof overcoats as they stood there in a row that defined who was rising in power and who was descending from power. They seemed as afraid of each other as of us. They were all apparatchiks, party men to their cores – as long as the party wanted them; ready to stab one another in the back for power, willing to sell their children into party servitude or exile their grand children into the gulags forever if the party called for it. They could stand at a podium and speak for 24 hours, delivering the party’s message, Russia’s message, and saying very little of significance by design. They appeared from various bureaucracies s , clawing their way upward in the hierarchy as did Trotsky, Stalin, and the rest; then falling into disfavor just as rapidly if their power plays fell short and their nemesis’ worked.
They stood there while the ceremonial troops strutted by, goose-stepping across the square beside and in escort for the new tanks, the new missiles on their mobile launchers, the new armored personnel carriers for the motorized rifle armies, and the tube artillery. There might be a fly-over if Mikoyan-and-Gurevich Design Bureau (Russian: Микоян и Гуревич, МиГ) or Sukhoi (Сухой had a new aircraft to announce.
This was the annual intimidation performance. It was also the time for the satellite and client states client states could get a look at what might be heading down the arms pipeline to them. Just as we sold other than first tier weaponry to our allies and clients, the Soviets provided at least three tiers of technology; with the 1st and 2nd tiers going to their own forces and the Warsaw Pact forces and the 3rd tier of “monkey copies” going to the client states such as the Arab nations. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m glad the Cold War is over. But we could trust the Soviets to be somewhat rational. These current enemies are absolutely irrational.
Today, May Day is just not the same.
In truth, the remaining enemies with missiles are more frightening. Iran and North Korea are dangerous in their isolation from other nations and in their willingness to take the rest of the work with them into a nuclear war over an imagined insult or in order to create new Islamic martyrs.
The North Koreans do have goose-stepping down pat. Watching them passing in review in front of Kim Jung Il is impressive. They must be amazing to see and hear on parade, thousands of boots clicking on pavement, metal hardware on their weapons announcing their passage. Even their female soldiers goose step on parade. Despite the tight cut of their uniforms they march by with a magnificent factor the Soviets never offered. Looking down the ranks as they pass by offers an idea of how much force is involved in that parade march. If you look, you can see their medals and badges of award bouncing in harmony with their breasts. Somewhere there must be military fetishist videos and a rather unique market. You don’t see that in the armies of any other nation that I’m aware of.
If we want to talk about dour old men and bad suits, Iran has positioned itself to take that role on. They excel at treachery in the name of religion, far worse than being a party apparatchik. Their penchant for martyrdom and insistence that they are the spiritual descendants of the Persian empire that lost to the West at Salamis demonstrates that they lack the reality base we shared with the Soviets. We worked out a way to co-exist with the Soviets. I don’t think that will ever be the case with the Islamic fundamentalists who control Iran. The Soviets planned to live and armed their nations to insure it. The Iranian fundamentalists plan to convert the world to Islam or kill us all in the attempt.
Give me the Cold War any day. There’s no reasoning with religious nuts, be they in Iran, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, Rome, or the United States.
So today is May Day. It is a beautiful day here in N.E. Tennessee with temps in the middle 80s. I spent the middle of the day coaxing remaining life from a rapidly failing lawn mower, then using it to mow about an acre of lawn. Tonight, we will red; we will eat in Jonesborough then work the gate for a contra dance. We’re still recovering from the Thursday trip to Asheville.
So, imagine our friends Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale, just before some misadventure is stymied by our fur-bearing heroes, wishing you “Happy May Day, Tovarishch!
As long as I can recall, May Day was the day to watch the USSR and Warsaw Pact nations demonstrate their military might. The celebration of trade-unionism and democratic socialism that marked Europe in the early 20th century was co-opted by the Soviets as a day to use parades to attempt to intimidate the rest of Europe and the NATO nations.
The USSR disintegrated in 1991, and with its demise, the annual intimidation by parade became a tradition of the past.
I’ve never had any reason to celebrate May Day for anything other than its socialist, workers, trade union origins. The pick nicks and outdoor dances on the village greens, as well as other raucous celebrations that have been associated with end of winter celebrations stem from other cultural hand-me-downs such as the Celtic festival of Beltane and the Germanic festival of Walpurgis Night. May Day falls exactly half of a year from November 1, another cross-quarter day which is also associated with various northern European pagan and neopagan festivals such as Samhain. May Day marks the end of the uncomfortable winter half of the year in the Northern hemisphere.
Not growing up in or working in agricultural –based traditions, I gravitate to the socialist traditions that evolved in urban cultures.
I still miss seeing the Red Square parades. While we lived with a reality-based dread of nuclear war between the West and the Soviets, we knew that at some level the Soviets were afraid of the same things we were. This made them reliable enemies with replicable habits and patterns. Trotting out the new weaponry on May Day was one such habit.
I can still see them, those old men – they were all old then in my youth – lined up atop the Lenin Mausoleum in Red Square. I can see their grim faces, their poorly cut suits, and bullet-proof overcoats as they stood there in a row that defined who was rising in power and who was descending from power. They seemed as afraid of each other as of us. They were all apparatchiks, party men to their cores – as long as the party wanted them; ready to stab one another in the back for power, willing to sell their children into party servitude or exile their grand children into the gulags forever if the party called for it. They could stand at a podium and speak for 24 hours, delivering the party’s message, Russia’s message, and saying very little of significance by design. They appeared from various bureaucracies s , clawing their way upward in the hierarchy as did Trotsky, Stalin, and the rest; then falling into disfavor just as rapidly if their power plays fell short and their nemesis’ worked.
They stood there while the ceremonial troops strutted by, goose-stepping across the square beside and in escort for the new tanks, the new missiles on their mobile launchers, the new armored personnel carriers for the motorized rifle armies, and the tube artillery. There might be a fly-over if Mikoyan-and-Gurevich Design Bureau (Russian: Микоян и Гуревич, МиГ) or Sukhoi (Сухой had a new aircraft to announce.
This was the annual intimidation performance. It was also the time for the satellite and client states client states could get a look at what might be heading down the arms pipeline to them. Just as we sold other than first tier weaponry to our allies and clients, the Soviets provided at least three tiers of technology; with the 1st and 2nd tiers going to their own forces and the Warsaw Pact forces and the 3rd tier of “monkey copies” going to the client states such as the Arab nations. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m glad the Cold War is over. But we could trust the Soviets to be somewhat rational. These current enemies are absolutely irrational.
Today, May Day is just not the same.
In truth, the remaining enemies with missiles are more frightening. Iran and North Korea are dangerous in their isolation from other nations and in their willingness to take the rest of the work with them into a nuclear war over an imagined insult or in order to create new Islamic martyrs.
The North Koreans do have goose-stepping down pat. Watching them passing in review in front of Kim Jung Il is impressive. They must be amazing to see and hear on parade, thousands of boots clicking on pavement, metal hardware on their weapons announcing their passage. Even their female soldiers goose step on parade. Despite the tight cut of their uniforms they march by with a magnificent factor the Soviets never offered. Looking down the ranks as they pass by offers an idea of how much force is involved in that parade march. If you look, you can see their medals and badges of award bouncing in harmony with their breasts. Somewhere there must be military fetishist videos and a rather unique market. You don’t see that in the armies of any other nation that I’m aware of.
If we want to talk about dour old men and bad suits, Iran has positioned itself to take that role on. They excel at treachery in the name of religion, far worse than being a party apparatchik. Their penchant for martyrdom and insistence that they are the spiritual descendants of the Persian empire that lost to the West at Salamis demonstrates that they lack the reality base we shared with the Soviets. We worked out a way to co-exist with the Soviets. I don’t think that will ever be the case with the Islamic fundamentalists who control Iran. The Soviets planned to live and armed their nations to insure it. The Iranian fundamentalists plan to convert the world to Islam or kill us all in the attempt.
Give me the Cold War any day. There’s no reasoning with religious nuts, be they in Iran, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, Rome, or the United States.
So today is May Day. It is a beautiful day here in N.E. Tennessee with temps in the middle 80s. I spent the middle of the day coaxing remaining life from a rapidly failing lawn mower, then using it to mow about an acre of lawn. Tonight, we will red; we will eat in Jonesborough then work the gate for a contra dance. We’re still recovering from the Thursday trip to Asheville.
So, imagine our friends Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale, just before some misadventure is stymied by our fur-bearing heroes, wishing you “Happy May Day, Tovarishch!
Friday, April 30, 2010
30 April 2010 Alls well that sounds well
30 April 2010 Alls well that sounds well
We had a very good evening dining out in Asheville.
We had a wonderful night seeing out good friend, David Gans, and listening to the music he plays so well.
We got home at 0200, got to bed at 0300, and ran errands all afternoon.
April gives way to May.
Shabbat Shalom!
We had a very good evening dining out in Asheville.
We had a wonderful night seeing out good friend, David Gans, and listening to the music he plays so well.
We got home at 0200, got to bed at 0300, and ran errands all afternoon.
April gives way to May.
Shabbat Shalom!
Thursday, April 29, 2010
29 April 2010 Japanese food, bar food, and live music
29 April 2010 Japanese food, bar food, and live music
Tonight, we will be privileged to see our friend, David Gans, perform live in Asheville.
Any trip to Asheville, about an hour to an hour and a half offers the opportunity to dine at a good restaurant. Asheville has a much more cosmopolitan makeup than does Johnson City. The selection of restaurants is highly superior to that of N.E. TN. So far, we’ve been to a Tapas restaurant, a Mediterranean restaurant, a Japanese restaurant and a noodle shop/Asian restaurant that were worth revisiting. We have also been to an Italian/Greek restaurant that was lacking in quality and a noodle/Asian fusion restaurant that was more about impressing the guests with how smugly superior the waiters are than about food quality, variety, and service. We won’t be returning to the last two.
Tonight we will dine at our regular time on Asian/Asian fusion. Our memory of our last trip to Doc Chey’s, was that we wanted to try more from the menu. Tonight we will.
People with diabetes seem to do best when they eat at regular times rather than not developing a schedule that helps them maintain glucose levels. Gloria and I eat a bit earlier than many people but that allows her to build in light snacks later in the evening, to avoid unwanted spikes and dives. Since we won’t have access to our kitchen tonight, we’ll have to depend upon finding her food at the venue. Supposedly this bar has a good menu and kitchen, how fast the turnaround is may be problematic. But we travel with emergency food for her.
Doc Chey’s doesn’t take reservations. There is some sort of festival going on today that is filling restaurants. We may not be able to get seats at the time we want so we have backup reservations at a good Japanese restaurant as well. Doc Chey’s will be less expensive if we can get seated.
Then the matter of evening snacks should be met at the venue’s kitchen. I’m not at all opposed to some bar burgers if they are available. I’ve been wanting a cheese burger for several days, despite having had one last weekend.
The drive should be a good one. The weather is clear and the nearly full moon will rise at 2200. The drive back should be beautiful. We have no idea how late we’ll stay after the David’s set. If we see him before he plays, we may just leave when the set’s over. If not, we’ll hang around for a bit to say hello and catch up. He’s a very engaging person, highly skilled musician/singer/songwriter. He’s penned some excellent works of social commentary, including American Family; which should have been John Kerry’s campaign song. For that matter, it would be relevant for any candidate opposing a Republican for election this year.
Here’s to a great evening, good food, great music, safe travel, and sleeping in tomorrow!
Tonight, we will be privileged to see our friend, David Gans, perform live in Asheville.
Any trip to Asheville, about an hour to an hour and a half offers the opportunity to dine at a good restaurant. Asheville has a much more cosmopolitan makeup than does Johnson City. The selection of restaurants is highly superior to that of N.E. TN. So far, we’ve been to a Tapas restaurant, a Mediterranean restaurant, a Japanese restaurant and a noodle shop/Asian restaurant that were worth revisiting. We have also been to an Italian/Greek restaurant that was lacking in quality and a noodle/Asian fusion restaurant that was more about impressing the guests with how smugly superior the waiters are than about food quality, variety, and service. We won’t be returning to the last two.
Tonight we will dine at our regular time on Asian/Asian fusion. Our memory of our last trip to Doc Chey’s, was that we wanted to try more from the menu. Tonight we will.
People with diabetes seem to do best when they eat at regular times rather than not developing a schedule that helps them maintain glucose levels. Gloria and I eat a bit earlier than many people but that allows her to build in light snacks later in the evening, to avoid unwanted spikes and dives. Since we won’t have access to our kitchen tonight, we’ll have to depend upon finding her food at the venue. Supposedly this bar has a good menu and kitchen, how fast the turnaround is may be problematic. But we travel with emergency food for her.
Doc Chey’s doesn’t take reservations. There is some sort of festival going on today that is filling restaurants. We may not be able to get seats at the time we want so we have backup reservations at a good Japanese restaurant as well. Doc Chey’s will be less expensive if we can get seated.
Then the matter of evening snacks should be met at the venue’s kitchen. I’m not at all opposed to some bar burgers if they are available. I’ve been wanting a cheese burger for several days, despite having had one last weekend.
The drive should be a good one. The weather is clear and the nearly full moon will rise at 2200. The drive back should be beautiful. We have no idea how late we’ll stay after the David’s set. If we see him before he plays, we may just leave when the set’s over. If not, we’ll hang around for a bit to say hello and catch up. He’s a very engaging person, highly skilled musician/singer/songwriter. He’s penned some excellent works of social commentary, including American Family; which should have been John Kerry’s campaign song. For that matter, it would be relevant for any candidate opposing a Republican for election this year.
Here’s to a great evening, good food, great music, safe travel, and sleeping in tomorrow!
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