Looting is Transition to Freedom
—Donald Rumsfeld, 2003
‘Nuff said.
Category: History
Quote of the Day
Everything they (Communist authorities) told us about Communism was a lie. Unfortunately, everything they told us about Capitalism was the truth.
It’s Russian joke that became popular in the early 1990s.
There is Now a Nazi Definition of Chutzpah………
The descendants of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, are suing Random House demanding royalties for the use of his quotes in the book Goebbels: A Biography:
The estate of Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s minister of propaganda, is taking legal action against the publisher Random House over a new biography, claiming payment for the use of extracts from his diaries.
Cordula Schacht – a lawyer whose own father, Hjalmar Schacht, was Hitler’s minister of economics – is suing Random House Germany and its imprint Siedler, over the book Goebbels, by Peter Longerich, professor of modern German history at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Longerich, an authority on the Holocaust and Nazi era Germany, drew extensively on Goebbels’ diaries in his biography, which was published in Germany in 2010. Now those same passages from the diaries are set to appear in the English edition, which Penguin Random House UK and its imprint Bodley Head will publish on 7 May.
Rainer Dresen, general counsel of Random House Germany, told the Guardian that an important principle was at stake. “We are convinced that no money should go to a war criminal,” he said.
Agreed, Mr. Dresen.
Not only is this chutzpah, it’s insane, even when not considering the overweening nature of the international copyright regime.
The Onion Abides………
Man Pleased To Find Most Of His Mid-’90s Anti-Hillary Rant Still Usable
DECATUR, IL—Expressing relief that he would not have to construct an entirely new diatribe from scratch, local man Harold Willis was reportedly pleased Monday to discover that most of his anti-Hillary Clinton rant from the mid-1990s was still perfectly usable.
Unfortunately, the press corps(e) does not see this as an ironic bit of humor, they see this as a model for the next 16 months.
I pray that Rush Limbaugh and his ilk are rendered mute from choking on their own bile.
Way to Overshadow he 70th Anniversary of Hiroshima, Dude!
Jon Stewart’s last day on The Daily Show is August 6.
With all due respect, Mr. Stewart, I’ll not be hosting a goodbye party for you.
It just does not seem appropriate.
It’s 4/20
What is/was your favorite munchie food?
I no longer indulge in “Demon Weed”, but when I did, I favored ice cream sandwiches and Fig Newtons™.
Of course, I stopped toking before I became even vaguely aware of Ben and Jerry’s™, and the explosion of gourmet snacks was almost a decade away.
To Honor the 70th Anniversary of the end of the Holocaust, the Ukraine has Commemorated Nazi Collaborators………
No, this isn’t The Onion, it’s just the Ukraine being the Ukraine.
They have officially honored Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazis:
The U.S.-backed Ukrainian government came up with a curious way to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Holocaust being brought to an end. The parliament in Kiev voted to extend official recognition to Ukrainian fascists who collaborated with the Nazis in killing Jews.
Though Official Washington and the mainstream U.S. media continue to dutifully ignore the key role played by neo-Nazis in Ukraine’s February 2014 coup and in the post-coup regime’s subsequent military offensives against ethnic Russians in the east, Ukrainian politicians can’t stop their arms from snapping into Heil Hitler salutes like the fictional character Dr. Strangelove. They can’t hold back this reflex even as the world stopped this week to recall the Nazi barbarity that claimed the lives of some six million Jews as well as other minorities.
On April 9, the Ukrainian parliament passed a bill making the ultra-nationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army eligible for official government recognition, a demand that has been pushed by Ukraine’s current neo-Nazi and ultra-nationalist movements, the same forces that spearheaded the overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 and then the slaughter of thousands of ethnic Russians who resisted the new order.
Ukraine’s honor-the-Nazi-collaborators vote came amid increased repression of opposition politicians and journalists who dare to criticize the U.S.-backed regime as it moves to repudiate the political settlement envisioned by February’s Minsk-2 agreement and instead prepares for a resumption of the war to crush the resistance in eastern Ukraine once and for all.
………
During World War II, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, an offshoot of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, collaborated with the Nazis in their orgy of mass murder against Jews, Poles and other minority groups. The UIA also joined with the Nazis in fighting against the Soviet Union’s Red Army, although some UIA elements did ultimately turn against the Germans over their occupation of Ukraine.
Ukraine was the site of several major Holocaust atrocities including the infamous massacre at Babi Yar in Kiev, where local Ukrainian fascists worked alongside the Nazi SS in funneling tens of thousands of Jews to a ravine where they were slaughtered and buried.
According to the Jerusalem Post, the Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned Ukraine’s recognition of the UIA as well as a second bill that equated Communist and Nazi crimes.
“The passage of a ban on Nazism and Communism equates the most genocidal regime in human history with the regime which liberated Auschwitz and helped end the reign of terror of the Third Reich,” said Wiesenthal Center director for Eastern European Affairs Dr. Efraim Zuroff, adding:“In the same spirit the decision to honor local Nazi collaborators and grant them special benefits turns Hitler’s henchmen into heroes despite their active and zealous participation in the mass murder of innocent Jews. These attempts to rewrite history, which are prevalent throughout post-Communist Eastern Europe, can never erase the crimes committed by Nazi collaborators in these countries, and only proves that they clearly lack the Western values which they claim to have embraced upon their transition to democracy.”
You’ve seen a lot of this in the Baltic states, Poland, and the Ukraine.
This is not surprising, as they are ……… the Baltic states, Poland, and the Ukraine.
Note that the US has been aggressively supporting the people who successfully fought for this, the Svoboda party the Pravy Sektor militia, taking it so far as to vote against a measure condemning those who glorify Naziism in the UN.
I do not know if there are any good guys in this conflict, but they ain’t it.
I am Unreasonably Stoked About This
I don’t know why, but the taxonomic resurrection of the species Brontosaurus has me pleased to a completely unreasonably degree:
The brontosaurus, loved by kids the world over but cruelly snubbed by paleontologists for more than a century, is back. British and Portuguese fossil boffins have concluded the dinosaur existed as a separate genus after all.
It was back in 1879 that paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh named a collection of bones a brontosaurus, or Thunder Lizard, and described a massive herbivore with a long neck and tail that wandered across the plains of what is now America.
But within a couple of decades the existence of the Thunder Lizard was called into question, and the scientific community decided that the stumbled-upon brontosaurus was just an adolescent apatosaurus. There then followed a 100-year campaign to expunge the word brontosaurus from textbooks, but the name proved just too popular.
Now a study looking at the largest range of fossils of the genus has shown that the brontosaurus was a distinct genus. While the dino does have strong similarities to the apatosaurus, there are enough differences to separate the two, the study’s authors concluded.
Our research would not have been possible at this level of detail 15 or more years ago”, explains Emanuel Tschopp, a Swiss national who led the research from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Portugal, “in fact, until very recently, the claim that Brontosaurus was the same as Apatosaurus was completely reasonable, based on the knowledge we had.”
The initial argument for the non-existence of the brontosaurus was down to its sacrum bones, which link the tail to the base of the spine. The first Thunder Lizard found had five of these, compared to the apatosaurus’ three, but it was assumed that the brontosaurus bones were young and would have merged together to form these three bones.
But as more and more specimens were found, this theory started to look a little off. That was reinforced by other fossil evidence, so the new study turned to statistics to find out what was going on.
“The differences we found between Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus were at least as numerous as the ones between other closely related genera, and much more than what you normally find between species,” explained Roger Benson, a co-author from the University of Oxford.
I have no clue why I am so giddy over this news, but I am incredibly happy about this.
This is Still the Best April Fools’ Prank Ever
I am referring, of course to the seminal BBC spaghetti harvest hoax:
Happy April Fools’ Day.
When did Evan Bayh Piss in Ezra Klein’s Cheerios?
I’m not sure when Ezra Klein decided that Evan Bayh done him wrong, but his latest in the Washington Post, titled, “The sad, hypocritical retirement of Evan Bayh, which details the former Senator going deep into the K-Street lobbying scene:
………
But Bayh did not return to Indiana to teach. He did not, as he said he was thinking of doing, join a foundation. Rather, he went to the massive law firm McGuire Woods. And who does McGuire Woods work for? “Principal clients served from our Washington office include national energy companies, foreign countries, international manufacturing companies, trade associations and local and national businesses,” reads the company’s Web site. He followed that up by signing on as a senior adviser to Apollo Management Group, a giant public-equity firm. And, finally, this week, he joined Fox News as a contributor. It’s as if he’s systematically ticking off every poison he identified in the body politic and rushing to dump more of it into the water supply.
………
In our last interview, Bayh complained of the poor opinion the public had of him and his colleagues. “They look at us like we’re worse than used-car salesmen.” Yes. They do. And this is why.
It’s taken Mr. Klein at least 4 years to recognize Bayh as a self absorbed snake oil salesman peddling himself.
I had this figured out well before his abortive 2008 Presidential run.
Still, I wonder why Klein finally notices.
It Ain’t Treason. It Does Not Come Close
So, someone has set up a petition at Whitehouse.gov asking for the 47 Senators* be charged with treason:
More than 155,000 people by Wednesday had signed a petition to the White House urging charges be filed against 47 Republican senators who they say committed “treasonous” offenses by writing Iran’s leaders about ongoing nuclear negotiations.
Lawmakers caused a political furor with their controversial letter Monday that warned an international nuclear deal with Iran could be scrapped by the next US president, particularly if Congress does not give its seal of approval.
The White House has said it responds to such petitions when they reach the 100,000-signature threshold, providing President Barack Obama’s administration with another opportunity to slam a letter that it considers inflammatory.
According to the petition, the 47 senators “committed a treasonous offense when they decided to violate the Logan Act, a 1799 law which forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments.”
Critics argue that the lawmakers, including at least three potential Republican 2016 presidential candidates, broke the law, or at least violated the traditions of Congress, by directly engaging a foreign power on US foreign policy.
This is a pet peeve of mine.
Because of hundreds of years of abuse of the treason charge by the British Crown, treason is the ONLY crime defined in the constitution, specifically Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.
The letter to Iran is stupid, and is clearly a case of placing sensibilities the Republican primary voter above the interests of the United States, but this is not treason, under US law.
Treason charges, and the abuse of treason charges by the sovereign, has a long and ignominious history, and calling for treason charges runs directly counter to US values and the founding beliefs of our republic.
*People keep saying, “47 Senators,” and I keep hearing, “47 Ronin”. There is something profoundly wrong in my head
Quote of the Day
As anti-worker as Reagan was, however, he continued to praise unions and their vital contribution to America. Ronald Reagan would be unable to win a Republican primary in any state in 2015 because he supported the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively. That is how extreme his Party has become.
—William K. Black On Scott Walkers batsh%$ insane statements comparing labor unions and ISIS.
I think that Ronald Reagan was determined to muzzle labor unions, and condemn them to irrelevancy, but he felt the need from a political perspective to throw some empty rhetorical flourishes their way even as he knifed them in the back.
These days, you cannot win a primary campaign in the Republican party doing the same. The demand for “red meat”is too strong.
I Think that This Provides a Lot of Insight into Russian Views on the Ukraine
Saker, of the blog The Vineyard of the Saker, is definitely a Russian nationalist and an anti-Semite, but he is fluent in Russian, (He might be Russian) and does have his finger on the pulse of much of Russian society, so his missive on Russian perceptions of the intentions of the US with regard to Russia are a worthwhile read:
I parse the Russian media (corporate and social) on a daily basis and I am always amazed at the completely different way the issue of western sanctions is discussed. I think that it is important and useful for me to share this with those of you who do not speak Russian.
First, nobody in Russia believes that the sanctions will be lifted. Nobody. Of course, all the Russian politicians say that sanctions are wrong and not conducive to progress, but these are statements for external consumption. In interviews for the Russian media or on talk shows, there is a consensus that sanctions will never be lifted no matter what Russia does.
Second, nobody in Russia believes that sanctions are a reaction to Crimea or to the Russian involvement in the Donbass. Nobody. There is a consensus that the Russian policy towards Crimea and the Donbass are not a cause, but a pretext for the sanctions. The real cause of the sanctions is unanimously identified as what the Russians called the “process of sovereignization”, i.e. the fact that Russia is back, powerful and rich, and that she dares openly defy and disobey the “Axis of Kindness”.
Third, there is a consensus in Russia that the correct response to the sanctions is double: a) an external realignment of the Russian economy away from the West and b) internal reforms which will make Russia less dependent on oil exports and on the imports of various goods and technologies.
Fourth, nobody blames Putin for the sanctions or for the resulting hardships. Everybody fully understands that Putin is hated by the West not for doing something wrong, but for doing something right. In fact, Putin’s popularity is still at an all-time high.
Fifth, there is a wide agreement that the current Russian vulnerability is the result of past structural mistakes which now must be corrected, but nobody suggests that the return of Crimea to Russia or the Russian support for Novorussia were wrong or wrongly executed.
I think that his statements that “nobody in Russia” believes various things is overstated, but when you have Mikhail F%$#ing Gorbachev saying that the US and NATO never ended their side of the cold war, it is safe to say that the Russian public and elites generally believe that they are the target of low level hostilities from the west.
I can’t say that this perception is wrong: It appears to me that there has been a long term campaign to reduce Russia to a client petro-state.
What a F%$#ing Coward
The Universe was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, hallowed be his noodly appendage, Ramen
Scott Walker traveled to London, the graveyard of gravitas for Republican Presidential candidates like Mitt Rmoney and Chris “Jabba the Governor” Christie, and when he is asked about evolution, he punts on it.
I mean that literally. He said, “I’m going to punt on that one as well.”
I’m not surprised that Walker is a chickensh%$. It’s been obvious to me since he started to make national news, but I think that the press, and voters on both the myth and reality sides of the evolution will notice as well:
Likely 2016 presidential candidate Scott Walker refused to say Wednesday whether he believes in the theory of evolution, dodging that question and several others about foreign policy after delivering a speech about global trade in London.
“I’m going to punt on that one as well,” said Wisconsin’s Republican governor when asked about evolution at the end of an hour-long appearance at the prestigious Chatham House think tank. “That’s a question a politician shouldn’t be involved in one way or the other. So I’m going to leave that up to you.”
Real profile in courage there, Scotty boy.
Deep Thought
Chuck Norris can bite my shiny metal ass.
Seen on Facebook.
Give Me That Old Time Religion………
In Iceland, the the first temple to Norse gods since Viking will be built in over 1000 years:
Icelanders will soon be able to publicly worship at a shrine to Thor, Odin and Frigg with construction starting this month on the island’s first major temple to the Norse gods since the Viking age.
Worship of the gods in Scandinavia gave way to Christianity around 1,000 years ago but a modern version of Norse paganism has been gaining popularity in Iceland.
“I don’t believe anyone believes in a one-eyed man who is riding about on a horse with eight feet,” said Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, high priest of Ásatrúarfélagið, an association that promotes faith in the Norse gods.
“We see the stories as poetic metaphors and a manifestation of the forces of nature and human psychology.”
Membership in Ásatrúarfélagið has tripled in Iceland in the last decade to 2,400 members last year, out of a total population of 330,000, data from Statistics Iceland showed.
The temple will be circular and will be dug 4 metres (13ft) down into a hill overlooking the Icelandic capital Reykjavik, with a dome on top to let in the sunlight.
Good news though, they will not be returning to animal sacrifice.
A Correction:
When I wrote about the fact that the Iditarod sled dog race was beginning to look like Arizona, I mentioned that I saw the start of the Iditerod in 1968.
This is in error. It was a different race.
According to Mutharch, aka Saroff, aka my dad, it was the the Anchorage Fur Rendezvous which was a fair and a roughly sled dog race of about 25k.
My apologies.
The Phrase “Bad Optics” Doesn’t Even Begin to Describe This………
The German government has selected former SS Barracks at the Buchenwald concentration camp to house asylum seekers:
Plans to house asylum seekers in a former SS barracks at a Nazi concentration camp are causing controversy in Germany.
Local authorities in the city of Schwerte, in western Germany, want to house 21 asylum seekers in a Nazi-era barracks believed to have been used by SS guards at a local outpost of the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp.
Germany is facing an acute shortage of accommodation for asylum-seekers while their claims are assessed. A huge influx of refugees, many of them fleeing the violence in Syria and Iraq, has left official shelters overcrowded and forced local authorities to improvise alternatives.
But the Schwerte authorities have been accused of bad taste over their decision to use a former SS barracks building to make up the shortfall.
“This is not a normal place, not just anywhere, but a place of exploitation, oppression and unbounded violence,” Christine Glauning, director of the Documentation Centre for Nazi Forced Labour, told Spiegel magazine’s website.
Seriously?
Pass the Popcorn
Pass the Popcorn
In response to the scandal over incoming House Whip Steve Scalise’s giving talk at a David Duke funded group in 2002, David Duke has spoken, and he has a list:
David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan at the center of a brewing congressional scandal, told Fusion on Monday that two of his top associates invited Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) to a conference hosted by a controversial Duke-founded group in 2002.
Scalise, the House Majority whip, has come under fire after reports emerged he had spoken before the conference in 2002. Duke’s group, the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, or EURO, has been described as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a characterization Duke rejects.
Scalise’s office didn’t deny he had spoken at the conference — stopping short of confirming it — but pleaded ignorance and said he was “never affiliated with the abhorrent group in question.”
Duke told Fusion he has met with Scalise several times, along with other members of Louisiana’s congressional delegation. He believes two close associates — Howie Farrell and Kenny Knight — invited Scalise to speak at the conference.
………
And he delivered a warning to both Republicans and Democrats: Treat Scalise fairly, and don’t try to make political hay out of the situation. Or he said he would be inclined to release a list of names of all the politicians — both Republicans and Democrats — with whom he has ties.
“If Scalise is going to be crucified — if Republicans want to throw Steve Scalise to the woods, then a lot of them better be looking over their shoulders,” Duke said.
(emphasis mine)
If you are a politician that he has called out, I’d be worried.
Relying on the kindness of David Duke is not what I could calling a winning strategy.
Deep Thought
I was thinking that the current Doctor, Peter Capaldi, was the oldest doctor, was the oldest actor to play The Doctor, (Do we capitalize the “The”?) and then I realized that John Hurt, at age 73, as [T]the Doctor, albeit a Doctor who never had a bit on the series.
So, is Peter Capaldi the oldest actor to play [T]the Doctor, or is it John Hurt, who played [T}the Doctor who did (or didn’t) destroy Gallifrey?
I’m curious here, but I figure that I am stirring up a sh%$ storm, but I am alcohol loading for the new year, so I do not care.