Fourteen Years Of War On Terror And Counting

In January, 2007, the Bataclan Theater in Paris received threats, reportedly since the owners were Jewish. Le Figaro reported in 2011 that there were still threats.

So why can't we provide 8 years of security for every place - not just government offices - that Islamists do not like?

Eight years?!

What do you think Sun Tzu (The Art of War)would say about our War on Terror?

“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”

“There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.”  (like 14 years since the World Trade Center)

“One may know how to conquer without being able to do it. ”

“There are roads which must not be followed, armies which must not be attacked, towns which must not be besieged, positions which must not be contested, commands of the sovereign which must not be obeyed.”

What did we do this week? We had a media slobber-fest over killing Jihadi John.
Then we lost over a hundred people in Paris.
We can't even begin to talk about ending our support of the destabilization of Syria, and Mr. Obama is going to find that this growing disaster everywhere - not just the Middle East - will tarnish his legacy as sure as the Iraq War did George W. Bush's.


And think about the USA...

How would you like to be flying for Thanksgiving or Christmas? 
If you remember, my wife ran into a serious slow down in Baltimore three weeks ago, and that was before all this happened. People will stay home, and the parts of the economy devoted to travel will slide into recession.

We shall sit around the fire and cling fervidly to religion and guns.

You can kiss any form of gun control good-bye.
I'm going to learn to shoot a handgun... just in case eight years from now someone wants to shoot up the movie house I'm sitting in.

--

Phantom Of The Bataclan

2011, Le Figaro:
Al-Qaida à Gaza voulait frapper la France
Par Philippe Cohen-Grillet Mis à jour le 20/02/2011 à 21:07 Publié le 20/02/2011 à 21:06
http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2011/02/20/01016-20110220ARTFIG00175-al-qaida-a-gaza-voulait-frapper-en-france.php

...Car, en janvier 2007, Le Bataclan a été la cible de menaces de mouvements islamistes pour avoir accueilli un concert en soutien «aux gardes frontières israéliens». Lors de leur arrestation en Égypte, plusieurs comparses de Dodi Hoxha ont reconnu que l'Armée de l'Islam projetait des attentats contre «une synagogue en France, l'ambassade de France et le Centre culturel français au Caire». Des aveux à prendre, certes, avec beaucoup de précaution tant en ce qui concerne les auteurs des déclarations que les conditions des interrogatoires. Cependant, la France et ses compatriotes semblent effectivement dans le viseur des terroristes de la «Jaish al-Islam». Une autre «filiale» d'al-Qaida, jusque-là méconnue, mais qui a déjà fait couler le sang...

Portion emphasized:
For in January 2007, The Bataclan Theater was the target of threats from Islamist movements...

So apparently the Bataclan Theater has been targeted for at least 8 years...

There are many more comments in the French press about this.

--

Sketches By Grandville: Fishing / La Pêche

Caption:
J'y a fait de bien mauvais vers, mais je n'y ai jamais pris de poisson.


I would think this means something like "I have dealt with some very poor worms, but I have never caught a fish with them."
I do not know where it comes from. I was way off on my first translation. Pathetic.
I wonder if I am getting senile?
--

The Man Who Wasn't There

Hassan Nasir

A good story...

Dawn:
Hassan Nasir: The man who wasn’t there
Nadeem F. Paracha — Updated Nov 08, 2015 12:41pm
http://www.dawn.com/news/1217943/hassan-nasir-the-man-who-wasnt-there

...But who was Hassan Nasir?

Hassan Nasir was born into an aristocratic Muslim family in Hyderabad Deccan, India. After finishing school in his hometown, Nasir got admission in UK’s prestigious Cambridge University where he came into contact with various young British and Indian Marxists.

On his return to India, and against his family’s wishes, he plunged into a peasants’ uprising against feudal lords and British Colonial overlords in the Telangana region.

When the movement collapsed after the departure of the British in 1947, Nasir decided to migrate to Pakistan. In 1950, he arrived in Karachi and joined the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP). His family stayed back in India.

Though just 22 years old at the time, he greatly impressed the CPP leadership with his profound knowledge of Marxism.

Soon, Nasir’s revolutionary outlook and charisma made him popular among college students, peasants and factory workers. In 1954 he was arrested by the government, jailed, tortured and then forcibly flown back to India.

However, in 1955, he quietly slipped back in. Since the CPP had been banned, Punjabi and Urdu-speaking leftists began joining progressive Sindhi, Baloch, Bengali and Pashtun nationalists to form the National Awami Party (NAP). In 1957 Nasir was made the party’s secretary general in Karachi.

He turned his office into a busy working and planning area for leftist students and trade unionists. Though his aristocratic background could have easily guaranteed him a rich and comfortable life in Karachi, he chose to live among labourers cramped in and around the make-shift shanty towns that had sprung up in the glittering metropolis.

In 1958, when Field Marshal Ayub Khan launched a military coup, he ordered a crackdown against leftists as well as against the religious parties. Nasir went underground.

Veteran communist leader, Jamal Naqvi, in his 2014 memoir writes that in 1960, Ayub, while being briefed by Karachi’s police chief, lost his cool when Nasir’s name came up. He is reported to have lashed out and shouted, ‘How is that bloody communist still free … ?’

The Ayub regime was equally harsh towards the religious parties. But Nasir’s activities and his popularity among the students and labourers had begun to greatly perturb the regime.

Nasir was finally located, hiding in a shanty town in Karachi. He was picked up by the police and then flown in chains to a special cell that had been set-up by the police in Lahore’s historical Lahore Fort.

Naqvi informs that here Nasir was continuously tortured, beaten up and refused food and water for days. Then finally, he was slayed in his muggy, tiny cell. He was just 32.

The Muslim aristocrat’s son who had become a communist rebel was never seen or heard from again...

--

Santa And Starbuck's Cup

Gift-giving is a basic human act.
It is a basic act of primates.
It is a basic behavior of many life forms.
When we talk about Gifting in this way, think of it as something like the acts of Filling and Emptying. We celebrate - and have celebrated for thousands of years - harvests by great feasts where we FILL ourselves with food and drink and thank God for the increase.
Similarly, we have performed rituals of fasting and denial where we Empty ourselves of food and drink and often other types of things, like giving up candy for Lent, or observing Ramadan.

Gifting is a complex behavior, and the times of gift exchanging vary: in what was the Western Roman Empire the time became Christmas in December, while in the Eastern Byzantine and Greek portion it became St. Basil's Day in January. The gifting remains constant even though the trappings and surrounding of the exchange vary.

The season itself and its history will color the festival of gifting. The Norse god Odin, who was usually depicted with a full white beard, had a festival at Midwinter, a season called Jol or Yule, and he was referred to as Jolnir, a Yule person. Midwinter was on or about the winter solstice at December 20-21, not in the "middle" of winter, the word mid here being used to mean "at", so the calendar was "at [the start of] winter" on the solstice. ("Mid" has more than the meaning of "middle"; for example, the "mid" in "midwife" means "with").

We have ancient feasts and ancient ideas and concepts; myths, poetries, and stories; images and imaginations and songs; and they all conspire - the ancient fellows of our fraternity of Mankind - to recall, experience, renew, and create anew the experience of the Yuletide.
There is Sinterklaas, Father Christmas, and St. Nicholas who all have changed through time and report. Dicken's A Christmas Carol has had a profound effect, as well as the illustrations of Thomas Nast. The American Retail Goods industry started on the bandwagon in the 19th century and transformed the image as well as the nature of the holiday.


Recently I was at a site where the morality of the story of Santa was debated: should parents tell the lie that Santa exists to their very young children since those children will eventually discover the falsehood?

I do not think the tedious discussions need repetition.

When children reach the age of the end of the willing suspension of disbelief, why not discover to them that Santa Claus is a dynamic and complex symbolic structure that sums up and extends the History of All Men and Women of Goodwill?

It is merely a myth... but a myth of immense proportions! For is it not a fact that we live and die according to stories of magnificent proportions? We strive that these theme stories of our lives be great rather then paltry and mean.
The story of the Christmas Season is a living and breathing symbolic creation. We have degraded it into commercialism, true, but we have also sung carols and spoken of the unstinting love of this descendant of St. Nicholas for good children. It is not a lie, rather it is an expression and summation of  our secular desires for peace and harmony.
Touch on the nature of Gifting as simply as saying it is a sign of love: our love for each other and God's love for us, freely given without expectation of return; freely and selflessly as Saint Nick gives his presents to all the world's children.

For heaven's sake, do not destroy Santa!
Extend him to encompass the virtues of the season! Let him take under his tabard that godly charity we already express by "Peace on Earth, Goodwill towards Men!" Say that in this Christmas myth, we speak of peace, love, and selfless gifting... do likewise, young people!

People say that by emphasizing Santa Claus and the gifting we ignore the real meaning of Christmas. It is my opinion that we ignore the real meaning of Christmas for 364 days of the year, so why not ignore it for another day?
There are needs which for some reason we cannot allow our religious figures to fill. I mean, Jesus cannot go around giving gifts to kids, as if games, toys, and iPhones were loaves and fishes!

So give Santa a chance.

Then there is the real problem of the true nature of Starbuck's coffee cups for Xmas 2015!

--
partially recycled

The Pithy-and-Oracle Speaks !

Ann Coulter

The Hill:
November 14, 2015, 10:00 am
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/260155-coulter-after-paris-attacks-trump-was-elected-president-tonight

Ann Coulter took to Twitter on Friday night to respond to the Paris terror attacks, saying that “Donald Trump was elected president tonight.”

The conservative commentator tweeted a series of reactions to the attacks that left more than 120 dead, calling for “no more Muslim immigration.” She also targeted recent U.S. college student protests, as well as American gun and immigration laws and proposals.

Coulter ended her string of Tweets with: “They can wait if they like until next November for the actual balloting, but Donald Trump was elected president tonight.”

President of France?
Maybe President of the World !!?

--

A Palmer Moment

Named after the character Palmer (David Clennon)
in John Carpenter's The Thing:

A Palmer Moment references his line in this shot.






From the so-called Grown-Up world:

Yahoo News
https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/church-under-fire-for-misunderstood-sign-about-191546635.html

The St. Columba-Brigid Roman Catholic Church in Buffalo, N.Y., changes its movable-letter sign every two weeks. But the Rev. Roy Herberger’s latest message — “Jesus had 2 dads and he turned out just fine” — didn’t last nearly that long.

“As soon as I learned of this sign, I took immediate action to have it removed,” Bishop Richard J. Malone of the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo said in a statement shared with Yahoo Parenting about the message put up last week.

Malone instructed Herberger to remove the lettering on Tuesday following “phone calls from around the world, from callers protesting the contents of the sign,” a diocese spokesperson told the Buffalo News. “The pastor of SS Columba-Brigid Church told me that the “2 Dads” were meant to refer to a child who has both a father and stepfather,” Malone wrote in his statement. “There are several children in his parish who have both a father and stepfather. However, given the potential for the meaning of this message to be misunderstood and even perceived in a heretical way, it was immediately removed.”

Herberger tells Yahoo Parenting that now he “can see why people are upset,” but when he put up the phrase he had no intention of making a statement about supporting same-sex marriage in contradiction of the Catholic Church’s teachings. (In fact, the 73-year-old told the Buffalo News that he’d gotten the phrase from the Internet a few months ago when he searched for “funny church signs.”)

“I only had one purpose,” the pastor explains to Yahoo Parenting. “After 48 years in the church, I see so many kids with stepparents, or even in single-family homes or being raised by grandparents, who feel that they’re not as good as other kids who have a nuclear mother-and-father family. I’ve seen what that does sometimes when they’re comparing themselves to that nuclear family and I wanted to say, ‘Hang in there. You’re good. Things will work out for you.’ I wanted to provide support and understanding for kids in that situation.”

The church leader adds, “I’m not trying to cause problems. I had no trouble taking the sign down.” But many commenters on St. Columba-Brigid’s website still don’t approve of, or accept, Herberger’s explanation. The majority of its 80 messages are critical of the pastor for his actions. “Shame on you,” blast a few writers, while others label Herberger a “disgrace,” call for his resignation, and insist that he did “damage to the Catholic Church,” making an “outrageous mockery of the Catholic faith.”

Catholic Family News even weighed in after posting a story Monday sharing an image of the sign: “With respect, it seems hard to imagine anyone in our time not being aware of what the '2 dads’ term can imply,” reads an update to the original post added on Wednesday, “especially since the pro-homosexual book Heather Has 2 Mommies has been around since 1989.”...

I mean....  Heather Has 2 Mommies !!??

Another Palmer moment for me.

--

Films I'm Not Sure I'd Really Like To See

When Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins re-unite for a Jane-Austen-Vampire-Slayer-like sequel to Remains of the Day:

Remains Of  Z  Day !

--

Brennt Paris?

As World War II was ending, Hitler ordered General von Choltitz to destroy Paris before he pulled his troops back, and every day thereafter Hitler would call and ask "Brennt Paris?",  "Is Paris burning?"
There is an ironic attraction Paris has for monsters, as indicated in the photo above, where emergency workers are busy at a bar named Voltaire, named after Voltaire of the smile of reason and in the midst again of unreason.

The Light attracts the Dark and causes it to burn with hatred of self and others.

I am reading in the Recklinghauser Zeitung:

Der Horror von Paris
https://www.recklinghaeuser-zeitung.de/nachrichten/thema/Report-nbsp-Der-Horror-von-Paris

Paris (dpa) Zehn Monate nach «Charlie Hebdo» ist Paris erneut Ziel einer Terrorattacke. An mehreren Orten gleichzeitig fallen Schüsse, sind Explosionen zu hören. In einem Konzertsaal richten Unbekannte ein Massaker an. Die Zahl der Toten und Verletzten ist riesig...

"Ten months after "Charlie Hebdo" Paris has experienced yet another terror attack..."

10 months...
Not a long time...

Every month we should pick up the telephone and ask, "Is Paris burning?"
And every month, when the person at the other end answers "No. Paris is not burning.", we shall know that hope and freedom endure and have triumphed yet again over death and destruction.

--

Operation Deep Sweep

An interesting mixture of art and technology, not Ars Gratia Artis - art for the sake of art - but Ars Gratia Libertatis - art for the sake of freedom.
And it is the coin of freedom we shall pay governments to shield us from terrorism, which ironically was instigated by governments themselves.
(It is too conspiratorial by far to even think that the CIA placed an order with Osama bin Laden to fight the Soviet Union, and also ordered a side-order of world-wide terrorism to be used to undermine individual freedoms in the near future.)

Critical Engineering

https://criticalengineering.org/projects/deep-sweep/

INTRODUCTION

The Deep Sweep is an aerospace probe scanning the otherwise out-of-reach signal space between land and stratosphere, with special interest placed in UAV/drone to satellite communication.
Taking the form of a high-altitude weather balloon, tiny embedded computer and RF equipment, The Deep Sweep project is being developed to function as a low-cost, aerial signal-intelligence (SIGINT) platform. Intended for assembly and deployment by public, it enables surveying and studying the vast and often secretive world of signal in our skies.

Two launches have been performed so far, from sites in Germany, landing in Poland and Belarus respectively.

We intend to make many more, in Europe and beyond.

The purpose seems to be to become aware of all the types of surveillance available under the Umbrella Corporation of security from terror, from hackers, from foreign states, whatever!

Copyright Umbrella Corporation
Veni, Vidi, Vinci



If you read further about Critical Engineering, you will come across things like this:
https://criticalengineering.org/

0. The Critical Engineer considers Engineering to be the most transformative language of our time, shaping the way we move, communicate and think. It is the work of the Critical Engineer to study and exploit this language, exposing its influence.

1. The Critical Engineer considers any technology depended upon to be both a challenge and a threat. The greater the dependence on a technology the greater the need to study and expose its inner workings, regardless of ownership or legal provision.

2. The Critical Engineer raises awareness that with each technological advance our techno-political literacy is challenged.

3. The Critical Engineer deconstructs and incites suspicion of rich user experiences...

If you do not like philosophical chatter, just skip over it. We all do it. We all chatter on about philosophies and our sacred "belief systems".  I mean, jiminy!, everyone needs some sort of reason to pop out of bed in the early morn and get to the workshop.
The proof is in the pudding.

--

A Workers' Co-Operative

Argentina: Occupy, resist, produce!
In one Argentinian factory, workers refused to succumb to forces of failing economy, took matters in own hands.

Yiannis Biliris | 04 Aug 2015 07:00 GMT
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2015/07/argentina-occupy-resist-produce-150728073511336.html

Neuquen, Argentina - As a consequence of the 2001 crisis in Argentina, many people, especially those of the worker class, lost their jobs.

But in Patagonia, in the south of Argentina, one factory gained fame, first locally and then nationally and internationally because the workers refused to accept the loss of their jobs.

The workers of the ceramic tile factory, Zanon, located in the city of Neuquen, occupied the site and effectively resisted all attempts by factory managers and government authorities to expel them. They kept the factory running, maintained production quotas, and saved their jobs.

In August 2009, the provincial legislature voted to expropriate the factory to the workers' cooperative legally and indefinitely. The national government took three years to legally recognise the ownership transfer.

The factory has been renamed Fasinpat, an acronym for Factoria Sin Patrones - Factory Without Bosses, and has since become profitable.

With part of the profits, the cooperative invested in local projects such as the construction of a local hospital. It also developed relations with the indigenous Mapuche community to buy clay from their lands to use as raw material.

--

Mr. Smith Goes To Jefferson City

That is, Jefferson City, Missouri, capital of Missouri.

I do not post about as many things as I used to, mainly because I realize that most readers are just as sagacious - if not more so - than I, so the vast reading populace does not really need me - as if I were the Donald Trump of blogs - to point out the madness of the entire world, including myself as a subset thereof.

But some things need comment.

Thus, in the capital city of Missouri, Jefferson City, we read of this in Al Jazeera:
Missouri state senator aims to block student's dissertation on abortion
November 11, 2015 2:26PM ET Updated 5:45PM ET
by Massoud Hayoun
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/11/11/missouri-senator-aims-to-block-students-dissertation-on-abortion.html#commentsDiv

University of Missouri doctoral student plans to continue research for her dissertation on the effects of the state’s recently imposed 72-hour waiting period for abortions, despite a state legislator’s push to block the research, the student told Al Jazeera in an exclusive interview.

“I stand by my research project,” Lindsay Ruhr said Wednesday. “I feel that my research is objective, and that the whole point of my research is to understand how this policy affects women. Whether this policy is having a harmful or beneficial effect, we don’t know.”

State Sen. Kurt Schaefer, a Republican from Columbia, Missouri, who chairs the Missouri state senate’s interim Committee on the Sanctity of Life, sent a letter in late October to the University of Missouri...

 That's all I need to read: that there is a committee made up of politicians making decisions on the "Sanctity of Life"

Politicians make decisions of the morality of Grand Theft; Auto. That's what they are capable of.
Imagine a place where the mediocre entities that call themselves "politicians" have arrogated to themselves the place to make decisions about sanctity and the Holy!

Imagine living in a such a Right-Wing Third Worldie place! Right-Wing Iran, Right-Wing Saudi Arabia, Right-Wing Israel, Right-Wing Indonesia, Right-Wing India, and Right-Wing USA !

It makes us think about fundamentalism and the whole process of becoming "Right-Wing":  part of the process is to transfer the innate right-wing dislike of change and seeming anarchy from the world of things and politics to a religious condemnation of change, ebb and flow of holy tides of God....

It is the desire to fetter God, such as entrapment within the confines of a golden statue of a calf or to imprison God within an icon or statue...

The type of fundamentalist thought we call Right-Wing is the state of Death in Life applied to the Holy, a gross mischaracterization.

Which - by the way - is why fundamentalists such as we have described so often bomb and destroy statues and icons and rip up other people's sacred books:
Fundamentalist believe that the Holy can be trapped within their Belief Systems, and by gruesome analogy they believe that the Holy can be fettered as easily in crude material artifacts.

Unfortunately, very often the opposition to the Right-Wing is a Left-Wing who can only imagine the Holy as a chaotic regime, beyond thought and speech, and, thus, beyond our experience.
The Holy may be beyond our Comprehension, but is is not beyond Experience.

--


--

Music Has Charms

No One Expects The American Inquisition !

pic: zimzer


Ever since 9/11 - which, by the way, is the Main Theme of the Age - we have had a flirtation with torture. It has been depicted on films and even brought into our homes on TV. Yay!
We have had low-brow hijinks - Abu Ghraib comes to mind - and we have had high-brow discussions and debates about it, sort of like Mr. Dershowitz arguing the pro side: Torture: will it bring bombers to their senses before the clock... (such as Ahmed Mohammud made and took to school one day, school one day... made the teachers laff 'n' say it wuz against the rule!)

... before the clock runs down the last 15 minutes (or less, depending on which Die Hard movie you're watching) and explode.

What is the history of torture in the Anglo-Saxon nations? We know all about Spain and the Hapsburgs and what-not, but what about the English speaking democracies?

We have recourse to old tomes and old bones for antiquities:

wherein we see

p.211

--

Taco Bell Ezecutive Series: The Pilot Episode

Taco Bell Ezecutive Attacks Uber Driver

My pal, George, and I are going to pitch this idea to NBC.

First, ya gotta know that Taco Bell calls salaried employees "ezecutives" and the dress code makes them wear their baseball caps gang style. That's first. You got to get the whole ethos thing.

Here's the idea:

This crazy Taco Bell guy goes off on his Uber driver, and the Uber driver presses charges against him.

So it goes to trial.  The judge in the case decides that instead of jail time, the Taco Bell guy should become the Uber driver's butler for 18 months, with no time off for good behavior. His butler! Is that funny, or what?

And it should be a little like Jeeves and Bertie, eh? Like the Uber driver from the photo above obviously has no sense of fashion or what looks good. I mean, he looks like he got the call in the middle of the night, and went to pick this guy up while he was still wearing his 'jammies.

So Pizzaro - that's a name were kicking around for the ezecutive, Pizzaro - goes in for his first day on the job and sort of tries to bring some order into Lloyd's - Uber driver's name - closet, and Lloyd is like, wow, man! when he gets home from the airport or wherever, and Lloyd sort of chillaxes and tells Pizzaro about his rider, man, like this guy wanted to marry his girlfriend, but the girl's old man doesn't want her to marry someone outside her racial group - like, he don't want no mixie grandkids, dig?

So Pizarro, who actually has quite a good brain on his shoulders when he's not binge drinking, turns on the grey matter and devises a plan to let the young couple wed... and Lloyd gets to drive them to the wedding, and then off to the airport for their honeymoon trip.

Cool Idea!

--

The Unenlightenment Revisited

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Musician

Mozart was a child of the Enlightenment, living within the era of the American Revolution and the French Revolution, both of which movements represented a partial culmination of certain threads of thought that flowed from the works of Enlightenment writers.

I was writing to my friend, Signs, today, and I recalled how we had once a disagreement about Sir Flinders Petrie.  (http://readingthesigns.blogspot.com/)

If I remember correctly, Signs was all sails set for some sort of Flinders Petrie museum, possibly including a visit to the local taxidermist, making dear, old sainted F.P. to be for all the world a latter-day Jeremy Bentham display therein.

I, being the voice of reason, said "No."

Actually, if I remember correctly, I said  "Piano, piano... pace... serenità..."  as if  I were Lorenzo da Ponte writing the libretto for Mozart's Don Giovanni.

I became aware how very few people I communicate with who have even a faint glimmer as to who Sir Flinders Petrie may be. Very few, actually... possibly none altogether.  So it is a precious thing to be able to talk with people who share a curiosity of the world so great that they feel inclined to discover and find out as much as they can about our world, people who find pleasure in the great details of the universe...
Not like those who turn back into their own private bastilles, far from the madding crowds, but more like those who wear their tricolored cockades of curious upon the battlements of life!

Which led us back to Woody Allen's latest movie, Irrational Man, for in the après ciné talk, I had made the mistake of mentioning the Leopold and Loeb trial of the 1920s, which gaffe on my part caused eyes to roll and dart about... rather like ten pins in a bowling alley, and I thought that I was no longer bowling against Pal in Uncle Buck, but had taken a turn to the dark side and now bowled against John Turturro in The Big Lebowski.

I mumbled Clarence Darrow to mute incomprehension, and almost said "You know, Darrow, like in the Scopes Monkey Trial?"

That would have been a disaster.

I was not at Chuck E. Cheese. We were at an adult establishment, and most people had college degrees.

What was irrational about Irrational Man is the fact that the main character tried to rationalize the irrational.
So did Leopold and Loeb when they tried their experiment in the Übermensch philosophy of Nietzsche.

I am trying to write an essay, I said to Signs, on the Enlightenment, Mozart, Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, and Woody Allen's Irrational Man, possibly throwing in William Barrett's book Irrational Man, which I happened to have read 50 years ago... and still possess.

There is a complement for everything: for every enlightenment, there is an obscurity. In Mozart's The Magic Flute, the Queen of Night is the enemy of clarity and light. Although she may be defeated in an encounter, she is not defeated forever.

Each state of our awareness may exist in light or in dark or in a multitude of states in between.

We tell stories and educate to narrow the choices down, hopefully to the good ones.

But we exist in a quantum logic of Enlightenment and Unenlightenment, and we do not know which will prevail, until we make a choice... and the wave function collapses... and we are in heaven... or not.

Ted Nugent, Musician

--

Tantalos Shrugged

I was spending a hour yesterday reading about the allies of Troy in the Trojan War. In particular, I read about the Thracians and the Phrygians. I think I became interested as I had yesterday put up a post with a picture of Helen and Paris in which Paris was wearing a Phrygian cap:

Helen on the left, Paris on the right

Phrygia was a land approximately in the middle of Asia Minor. In the Trojan War, we have the Greeks (Argives, Achaeans, Danaans, etc.) in the West, the Trojans and the Phrygians and the other Trojan allies in the East and Northeast, and the Aegean Sea in the middle.
This same area was to be the setting for the war between the Greeks and the Persians centuries later.

I referred to Wikipedia for some quick references to Phrygia, Lydia, Caria, and other allies of Troy in Asia Minor:
Phrygians. (2015, October 18). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 22:35, November 9, 2015, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Phrygians&oldid=686383740

[...]

Mythological Accounts
The name of the earliest known mythical king was Nannacus (aka Annacus).[4] This king resided at Iconium, the most eastern city of the kingdom of Phrygia at that time, and after his death, at the age of 300 years, a great flood overwhelmed the country, as had been foretold by an ancient oracle. The next king mentioned in extant classical sources was called Manis or Masdes. According to Plutarch, because of his splendid exploits, great things were called "manic" in Phrygia.[5] Thereafter the kingdom of Phrygia seems to have become fragmented among various kings. One of the kings was Tantalus who ruled over the north western region of Phrygia around Mount Sipylus. Tantalus was endlessly punished in Tartarus, because he allegedly killed his son Pelops and sacrificially offered him to the Olympians, a reference to the suppression of human sacrifice. Tantalus was also falsely accused of stealing from the lotteries he had invented...

(emphasis mine)

I came to an abrupt halt. What lotteries were these? I do not think I have ever heard of the lotteries of Tantalus. So I began to look around for some starting points where I could commence my search.

Interestingly enough, the Wikipedia entry for "Tantalus" does not mention it.
Tantalus. (2015, November 8). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 22:42, November 9, 2015, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tantalus&oldid=689697146

but there is more information by which you may recall Tantalus:

...Tantalus's punishment for his act, now a proverbial term for temptation without satisfaction (the source of the English word tantalise[19]), was to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches. Whenever he reached for the fruit, the branches raised his intended meal from his grasp. Whenever he bent down to get a drink, the water receded before he could get any. Over his head towers a threatening stone like the one that Sisyphus is punished to roll up a hill.[20] This fate has cursed him with eternal deprivation of nourishment...

Tantalus was reputed to be rich. Another king of Phrygia was Midas of the golden touch, and Croesus - "rich as Croesus" - was a Lydian king whose realm included Phrygia. Tantalus' father was Zeus and his mother was the nymph Plouto, and "plouto" meaning "rich, wealthy" can refer to absolute riches or it can be a euphemism for the gods of the underworld.

From the Suidas, Porus and Kuster, 1705 edition:

which in Greek and Latin describes the saying applied to someone very rich, that is, "he gathers the talents of Tantalus", where "talent" is a Greek word for a large sum of money.

The word outlined in red is a declensional form of "plouto", meaning wealth and also being the name of the nymph who was Tantalus' mother.

But there is no mention of "lotteries"

However, it seems that subsequently people using Wikipedia may have mentioned "lotteries" to a very great degree. Searching on Google using "Tantalus was also falsely accused of stealing from the lotteries he had invented" :

1)LiquiSearch
 Phrygia- The Mythic Past
http://www.liquisearch.com/phrygia/mythic_past

...he allegedly killed his son Pelops and sacrificially offered him to the Olympians, a reference to the suppression of human sacrifice. Tantalus was also falsely accused of stealing from the lotteries he had invented...

no citation to any source

2) Atlantipedia
Turkey, Phrygia
http://atlantipedia.com/doku.php?id=turkey_phrygia
...because he allegedly killed his son Pelops and sacrificially offered him to the Olympians, a reference to the suppression of human sacrifice. Tantalus was also falsely accused of stealing from the lotteries he had invented...
no citation to any source

3) Hurdan Answers
Tantalus
http://www.hurdan.com/q/tantalus

Tantalus » was also falsely accused of stealing from the lotteries Tantalus had invented »

no citation to any source

4)Omics International
Phrygians
http://research.omicsgroup.org/index.php/Phrygians

...One of the kings was Tantalus who ruled over the north western region of Phrygia around Mount Sipylus. Tantalus was endlessly punished in Tartarus, because he allegedly killed his son Pelops and sacrificially offered him to the Olympians, a reference to the suppression of human sacrifice. Tantalus was also falsely accused of stealing from the lotteries he had invented...

no citation

This goes on for a while.
There is no reference to the lotteries of Tantalus anywhere I can find in the ancient literature, nor in the philological work up to the present, until the mentions made at present, and all of these quotes are exactly the same, indicating that they were copied whole from some basic source.

The only thing I can possibly think of is that possibly someone has seen klērourgia which is a word based upon klēros, meaning "lot", as in "casting or drawing lots". The word klēros may also meant a "lot (of land)", "an estate", and klērourgia means "inheritance (of estates)".

There could be an accusation of theft of inheritances, but I cannot find it anywhere else.

Case in point:

Today on Facebook a friend posted an excerpt from a book of something wherein there was a list of some things that Mr. Obama once asserted to be true and turned out to be false.

This seems to be some sort of support for Ben Carson's fast-and-loose... with-the-truth.
(Sort of a Brian Williams and Bill O'Reilly Syndrome, possibly stemming from the trauma Mr. Carson experienced when he stabbed his best friend.)

The trouble is, where do the assertions come from? With Carson, we have the documents in the case in front of us. With Mr. Obama's past, we have nothing but our faith in the goofiness of politics and what someone says on Facebook. And as far as whether Mr. Obama's assertions listed were true of not, that is too much dependent upon our predetermined world view.

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Exit The Gods, Stage Left

I have read The Iliad in English and in Greek. However, I have never had it recited to me. I am currently listening to an audio-books recording of The Iliad, Fitzgerald's translation. It is great. I mean, I used to trudge through this stuff, but this is freedom and enchantment.

Of course, The Iliad was an ode that was intended to be recited; we were supposed to sit around and listen to the poet or rhapsodist recite the verses. It works, and it works quite well.

Listening to the Iliad is far superior to reading it, and it is also vastly superior to watching any of the films made of it so far.

Furthermore, it was a truly eye-opening experience, for I had always read of the major role that the gods played in The Iliad.
However, what I have found is that the poetry is so realistic that the gods are nothing more than asides and window dressing of a supernal kind.

Take for example the plague sent by Apollo because Agamemnon did not wish to ransom his war prize, the daughter of the Chryses, priest of Apollo, into the care of her father who came suppliant and bearing ransom to the Achaeans camp.
Even though we have been versed over and over about Apollo's role in all this, it is not only extremely natural to expect an epidemic to break out in an army encampment nine years old that had rudimentary hygienic practices, it is to be expected as a highly probable event.

Each and every act of the gods is a completely normal event to be expected in the tides of war and the lives of men and women. There is no obvious gods from the machine - theoi apo mechanes, dei ex machina, gods from the machine - rather everything proceeds according to the normal expectations of the ups and downs of history. The gods seem almost to be an intrusive embellishment.

It is said Zeus allowed his son by Laodamia, Sarpedon, king of Lycia and ally of Troy, to be killed by the Greeks since it was so fated, and to exempt Sarpedon would be to gamble with fate, and Hera says the other gods would contemn him for it or would exempt their own offspring from mortality, with unknown consequences for both men and gods.
But, all that really happens, as is set quite straight forwardly, is Sarpedon fights and Sarpedon dies, for that is one of the lots given to soldiers.

Again,
https://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/homer/iliadessay3.htm

...with references to lightning, earthquakes, storm clouds, and so on, all of which keep reverberating through the images of human efforts and hopes the ominous sense of an irrational, overpowering, and destructive cosmic destiny.

Some of those who find such a vision of the divine uncomfortable try to neutralize the obvious implications of this scene. So G. S. Kirk, for example, finds nothing very shocking here. “[Zeus’ declaration of affection for Troy and Priam] may cause the listener to wonder why, nevertheless, he allows the city to fall even after he has discharged his promise to Thetis.

The answer is that this has been made inevitable by Paris’ offense against hospitality which is protected by Zeus . . . and by the Trojans’ condoning of it by receiving him and Helen” (Commentary 333). But there is no reference here to that reason. Indeed, it is conspicuous by its absence, as if Homer wishes to go out of his way to bring out the lack of such moral reasoning on Zeus’ part. Comments like this one by Kirk, it strikes me, are imposed on the poem in order to enable the reader to evade the central ironies in this harsh vision of experience (more about the origin and effects of such interpretative efforts in a later essay).

Faith in such deities obviously demands an acceptance of irrational and cosmic conflict and the frequently brutal consequences of that for human beings as the way the world and everything in it operates...

But as I hear this tale, the gods seem to deceive themselves about their power, and the gods are play-acting, and with all their huffing, puffing, thundering, and bravado they are actors off to the side watching the events of the world and mankind, pretending to be top dogs.

 Helen and Paris

I was amazed by this sudden insight into the poetry.

Most interpreters of myth think that heroes and heroines in time were raised by their society to a status of godhood.
However, there is something else here, and it is a hint of what so many have referred to as a species of genius of the Hellenes and Greek Culture: there are gods, but they are so fettered by Fate and the World that they - the gods themselves - lapse and degenerate over time into heroes and heroines, and eventually into men and women... not the other way around.

--

Of Dubious Value

Neo-Conservative Foreign Policy

Bloomberg:
Putin Thinks He's 'Vladimir the Great,' Condoleezza Rice Says
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-05/putin-thinks-he-s-vladimir-the-great-condoleezza-rice-says?cmpid=yhoo.headline&ref=yfp

As former U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice knew Vladimir Putin up close. One thing he liked to remind her during her time in the Bush administration was how Russia had "only been great when it has been led by great men, like Alexander II and Peter the Great.”

Hearing him eulogize former tzars, there was a little voice in her head that wanted to suggest “and Vladimir the Great?,” Rice told a group of investors and bankers at an annual forum hosted by Fitch Ratings Ltd. in New York on Wednesday. As a diplomat she never did out of politeness, “but that is how he thinks.”

Her musings on Putin’s motivations seek to put Russia’s growing assertiveness on the world stage, from the annexation of Crimea to the bombing campaign in Syria, as part of a grander scheme to restore Russian influence to its heyday. International sanctions and its first recession since 2009 have done little to blunt Putin’s standing among Russians.

“He has decided that he will find a way to avenge what he considers the greatest tragedy of the 20th century, which is the collapse of the Soviet Union,” said Rice, who served under President George W. Bush and was a diplomatic adviser to his father during the dissolution of the Soviet Union...

No mention of the 21st century's great tragedys.... like Yellow-Cake-Gate and the ensuing disasters in Iraq which befell us all, like a deadly, infernal line of dominoes, falling one after another.

Ms. Rice is reasoning by Analogy:
Oswald Spengler, The Decline Of The West

The means whereby to understand living forms is Analogy...

...Thus, in the case of Ranke, a master of artistic analogy, we find that his parallels of Cyarxes and Henry the Fowler... possess morphologically no significance, and his oft-quoted analogy between the Hellenic city-states and the Renaissance republics very little, while the deeper truth of his comparison of Alcibiades and Napoleon is accidental.

I can't find any Rice-ean analogies for the recently deceased Ahmad Chalabi, but throughout the period from 1991 - the first Iraq War - to the present, it is doubtful she ever said nor thought by any significant or deep analogies. (She may have envisged him as an Iraqi Patrick Henry, which would be consistent with the Cloud-Cuckoo-Land nature of Neoconservative foreign policy.)

Ahmad Chalabi (Image by © Patrick Robert/Corbis)

In Commentary two days ago, we read on the death of Chalabi:
Mourning Ahmad Chalabi
Michael Rubin / Nov. 3, 2015
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/iraq/mourning-ahmad-chalabi/

...The press also lazily accepted other false narratives and never actually conducting basic fact checking. Consider today’s obituary from the Washington Post, written by Loveday Morris. She writes, “After years in exile in the United States and Britain, Chalabi returned to Iraq after Saddam’s fall, becoming interim oil minister.”

This is false. Chalabi had a house in Beirut and London, but lived primarily inside Iraqi Kurdistan after the 1991 uprising freed the region from Saddam Hussein. When war broke out, he had been in Iraq for 12 years, and he was one of the few politicians to live exclusively outside the Green Zone in the wake of the war...

"This is false"?!
The nature, the essence of political Neoconservatism : to argue about whether their Man in Baghdad lived in Kurdistan or in London.

NO mention of the Falsehoods of yellow cake uranium; no mention of the falsehoods on Weapons of Mass Destruction, no mention of the myriad lies and subterfuges that committed us to this Trojan War which has no end.

If you want a reminder on how ignorant, clueless, and corrupt the Bush Administration was, go and re-read"
The New York Times
THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: THE EXILE;
Conservative Allies Take Chalabi Case To the White House
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: May 29, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/29/us/struggle-for-iraq-exile-conservative-allies-take-chalabi-case-white-house.html

...Mr. Wolfowitz's spokesman, Charley Cooper, said in an e-mail message that Mr. Wolfowitz believed that Mr. Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress ''have provided valuable operational intelligence to our military forces in Iraq, which has helped save American lives.'' Mr. Cooper added in the message that ''Secretary Wolfowitz hopes that the events of the last few weeks haven't undermined that.''...

This was the Mr. Wolfowitz who - in his best George C. Scott imitation as General Buck Tirgidson in Dr. Strangelove -  said famously:

"This war will cost, ohhh, a billion dollars... TOPS!"

Nice to hear from you, Condoleezza.

--

Climate Change Revolutionary Songs!

Tierra y Libertad !

illustration: vita castro

La Ardilla!

La ardilla, la ardilla,
ya no puede caminar
porque no tiene, porque no falta,
marihuana pa' fumar!


The childrens' book climate fighter squirrel,  Hidardilla  (an abbrevation of "hijo de ardilla") and his serio-comic adventures:

La Ardilla (Photo: Max Ellis)

--

Kafka Never Dies

Cover of   An Iranian Metamorphosis   by Mana Neyestani.

--

Continuous Transporation: Stalin

Un État de Transport Continu
inspiré par le film Transperceneige

il était une fois...
Le camarade Staline prenait le métro.

Once upon a time...
Comrade Stalin rode the subway.

--

Rosy Fingered Dawn Must Wait

My favorite Lebanese news web site is undergoing a major renovation in its English language section. I admit I read An Nahaar  - meaning "the day from dawn until dusk, whereas "yaum" is the whole megillah of 25 hours  - in English, because I just can't keep up.

I began reading An Nahaar probably in 1982-83 as I was going to one class at U of Michigan, Dearborn Campus, and would stop by Arab-owned stores for food, and the only timely edition available was An Nahaar.

So this was the print edition. I read my first Arab OpEd piece about Mu'ammar Ghadaffee of Libya in it, and I was vastly surprised - vastly... say a distance mentally like that from the Alpheus to the Scamander! - how different the writer's opinion was from that I normally received from our newspapers and periodicals.

I guess Orwell was right about the Ministry of Truth.

This could be called Neyestani's definition of  An Nahaar: the period of the 24 hour day during which the sun is up and bright.
It seems to apply to the Middle East and Central Asia in the present day.

--

The [Oval] Office ?

Mike Huckabee, a compendium of the South and the Midwest, is obviously a character that was drawn upon the style of Andy Bernard:

--

Les Revenants Revienent!

Victor

Entertainment Weekly:

The Returned
Posted August 19 2015 — 6:54 PM EDT
http://www.ew.com/article/2015/08/19/the-returned-les-revenants-french-season-2

The Returned — or Les Revenants, as its known in its homeland — first premiered back in 2012 on France’s Canal+ and went on to air on the Sundance Channel in 2013 before taking a years-long hiatus. But now The Returned is making, a, well, return: The eerie drama’s set to debut its second season this fall, the show tweeted (along with a link to a quick, mysterious teaser) Wednesday.

The Returned follows a group of people who were once declared dead but have since reappeared back on earth as living, breathing humans. The show is based on a 2004 French film titled They Came Back (or, again, Les Revenants in French), and has itself been the inspiration for other media: A&E adapted the show for American audiences in 2015, but it was canceled after one season...

It was on last night. I recorded it and watched it today while the sun is up.
If you have not seen it, just watch the opening five minutes and let the credits roll by and listen to the music... because you really need to have seen the first season.

In the new series, the action takes place six months after the first series story ended. That was 3 years ago real time. Adele is dark and morose, Lena and Camille are more beautiful, Victor is growing up, M. Seguret has a six month (or three year) beard...

The French Army has moved in, and I sense that my enchantment is also aging. I do not think I will have the innocent amazement I had for the first season. The story now seems to be flowing into accepted paths; maybe not; it is early yet.

Nevertheless, the series started with resurrection: there was a display of mounted butterflies in an entomologist's glass cabinet mounted on a wall in a well-worn corner of a comfortable dwelling; it had obviously been there for a while.
Suddenly, the center butterfly begins to twitch, then move its wings;

then, crash!, the plate of glass shatters, the pin which cruelly mounted it is thrown aside, and the butterfly breaks forth into the air!

This was new.
The power of rebirth was not concentrated, but was broadcast and covered a large area. Not only mankind, but the animals, the insects, and the flora must have been involved! If the writer/director Fabrice Gobert had time, he would have had shots of dead fossil trees re-invigorated... maybe the drowned bells of the carillon of the old church submerged in the lake created by the new dam would have swung in watery chorus...!?

So I naturally thought of the gospel of Matthew 27: 51-54

⁵¹ At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split ⁵² and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. ⁵³ They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and^[a] went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

NIV 

It was as if raising up from the dead were due to a power spread widely in place and time.

However, this is a stumbling block to the literal and rational dogmatists.


The Cripplegate:
Matthew 27:51-54 – Understanding a Difficult Text
by Lyndon Unger September 18, 2015
http://thecripplegate.com/matthew-2751-54-understanding-a-difficult-text/

If you loosely follow evangelical apologetics circles like I do, you’ve possibly run across the name Mike Licona. A few years ago he was involved in a kerfuffle when he questioned the historicity of Matthew 27:51-54 in his book The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach. He commented on “that strange little text in Matthew 27:52-53, where upon Jesus’ death the dead saints are raised and walk into the city of Jerusalem” (548) and wrote:

“it seems to me that an understanding of the language in Matthew 27:52-53 as ‘special effects’ with eschatological Jewish texts and thought in mind is most plausible. There is further support for this interpretation. If the tombs opened and the saints being raised upon Jesus’ death was not strange enough, Matthew adds that they did not come out of their tombs until after Jesus’ resurrection. What were they doing between Friday afternoon and early Sunday morning? Were they standing in the now open doorways of their tombs and waiting?” (552)

Licona closed of his discussion of Matthew 27:51-54 writing, “It seems best to regard this difficult text in Matthew as a poetic device added to communicate that the Son of God had died and that impending judgment awaited Israel” (553). How did that idea fare for him?

Not so well.

Upon being challenged on his view of inerrancy by none other than Stormin’ Norman Geisler: he has a whole section on his website dedicated to Licona, including support from Ergun Caner and Al Mohler. Licona responded with his own letter including a list of scholars who didn’t think he was challenging inerrancy, and the battle raged on as my disinterest grew exponentially. After the dust settled, Licona lost his job with the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board and resigned from Southern Evangelical Seminary, but quickly was hired by Houston Baptist University. I’m glad that he’s still working and contributing too. Mike Licona isn’t some sort of heretic (that I know of). He’s a rather capable apologist with a flaw common to most apologists; he has precious little training in the proper interpretation of the Scripture...

...I’d like to take a stab at addressing the same conundrum without resorting to such inventive explanations, not because I’ve got anything against Licona but because I love tackling difficult texts...

[...]

Then, in 27:52-53 there’s an indication of the meaning of the death of Christ. This is seen in the physical resurrection of many “saints who had fallen asleep.” Now many tombs were split open (possibly the rocks which were split were tomb-sealing stones), but only the “saints who had fallen asleep” were raised, emerging from their tombs after Christ rose from his.
This was the passage on which Licona got hung up. He seemed to think that those raised saints were raised when the tombs were split and “sat around” all weekend, waiting for Christ to be raised. I’d argue that such an idea is forcing the text. The tombs were split at the same time as the veil, but the saints came forth after Christ. There’s no reason to think that the saints were resurrected at the time of the splitting. It’s far more likely that the saints were resurrected at the time of Christ’s resurrection, emerging a short time after he did.

That's a tough call.
The root word used for the "raising" of Jesus is the same word as is used for the holy people. The NIV version captures that in that it says - in the Passive voice - that the holy people who had died "were raised". Then the NIV immediately muddies matters by using "resurrection" to describe the same process applied to Jesus: in both cases, it was a "raising" back into life.

The NIV also inserts a period where there is none.
The Greek version says that the earth shook and the rocks split and the tombs were broke open AND the bodies of many holy people were raised to life. There is no hiatus, implied or otherwise, between these events. These events happened 1,2, 3, and 4, at least according to Matthew.
There is a hiatus between these events and Jesus resurrection and the peoples' coming out of their tombs, the hiatus being the three day lapse.

It is as if a number of these people have a story that any "real" raising of the dead must not precede that of Jesus. This neglects the Lazarus case.
It is as if these people have so much invested in a given rational belief system about the Holy - something they know little about and usually never experienced - they cannot deal with a simple description right in front of them.
There are no hard to understand parables here.
There is a sequence of events.

Why do these rational dogmatists seek to establish the limits of God?
Why does the act of the Holy, the raising of the dead have to emulate the snapping of the fingers of a stage magician? Why cannot resurrection spread throughout time and space?
The Holy cannot be limited in time, space, nor your in your dogmatic statements.

I rather understand that the holy force of rebirth spread back and forth in time: at least as far back as Lazarus and forward to infinity; rebirth spread throughout the universe.  Taxes may be certain, but Death has Quantum probability: it is not necessary and final.

God is a living event, not an object of their scrutiny and science, nor some well-defined divine species to be pinned to a board amid the other specimens of their Credo!

--

(among other things, the holy people raised up seem to have been recognized - in some sense - by the city's inhabitants. There are a number of ways of approaching that phenomenon.)