John of Damascus

John Damascene was also among the first to distinguish, in the cult, both public and private, of the Christians, between worship (latreia), and veneration (proskynesis): the first can only be offered to God, spiritual above all else, the second, on the other hand, can make use of an image to address the one whom the image represents.

Obviously the Saint can in no way be identified with the material of which the icon is composed. This distinction was immediately seen to be very important in finding an answer in Christian terms to those who considered universal and eternal the strict Old Testament prohibition against the use of cult images. 

This was also a matter of great debate in the Islamic world, which accepts the Jewish tradition of the total exclusion of cult images. 

Christians, on the other hand, in this context, have discussed the problem and found a justification for the veneration of images. 

John Damascene writes, 

“In other ages God had not been represented in images, being incorporate and faceless. 

But since God has now been seen in the flesh, and lived among men, I represent that part of God which is visible. 

I do not venerate matter, but the Creator of matter, who became matter for my sake and deigned to live in matter and bring about my salvation through matter. 

I will not cease therefore to venerate that matter through which my salvation was achieved. 

But I do not venerate it in absolute terms as God! How could that which, from non-existence, has been given existence, be God?

… But I also venerate and respect all the rest of matter which has brought me salvation, since it is full of energy and Holy graces. Is not the wood of the Cross, three times blessed, matter?

… And the ink, and the most Holy Book of the Gospels, are they not matter? The redeeming altar which dispenses the Bread of life, is it not matter?

… And, before all else, are not the flesh and blood of Our Lord matter? 

Either we must suppress the sacred nature of all these things, or we must concede to the tradition of the Church the veneration of the images of God and that of the friends of God who are sanctified by the name they bear, and for this reason are possessed by the grace of the Holy Spirit. 

Do not, therefore, offend matter: it is not contemptible, because nothing that God has made is contemptible” 

(cf. Contra imaginum calumniatores, I, 16, ed. Kotter, pp. 89-90). 

Our True Friend

"Bleak are our shores with the blasts of December, Fettered and chill is the rivulet's flow; 

Thrilling and warm are the hearts that remember Who was our friend when the world was our foe. 

Fires of the North in eternal communion, Blend your broad flashes with evening's bright star; 

God bless the Empire that loves the Great Union Strength to her people! Long life to the Czar! "

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1871

AMERICAN TOPICS IN PARIS.; 

Mr. Slidell's Conference with Napoleon III-- The outcry against Gen. Butler--Colonel Cluseret--Charivari.

PARIS, Friday, Nov. 7, 1862.

Mr. SLIDELL, the agent of the rebellion at Paris, has at length and for the first time, obtained an interview with the Emperor. What transpired at the interview no one seems to know, further than that Mr. SLIDELL declares that the interview was entirely satifactory. The general impression appears to be, however, that this interview was not granted for any special purpose, but simply because Mr. SLIDELL had been for a long time demanding it, and because the Emperor happened to have leisure during his late stay at St. Cloud to grant it. The interview was therefore an act of politeness offered to a distinguished man, representing eight millions of people in a state of rebellion against their government -- an act which formed no exception to the general line of conduct pursued by the Emperor toward most agents of the same kind from other parts of the world. 

His Majesty, who likes to hear what people have to say, who is always anxious to inform himself on both sides of a question, could not very well refuse to receive a man representing such immense interests as those represented by Mr. SLIDELL, and especially when backed in his demand by a man of such influence as M. DE PERSIGNY. But although the occurrences at the interview remain a secret, it is easy to understand that the subject of intervention was not discussed, since it is known that the Government is now as firmly settled in the doctrine of non-intervention as it was during the whole reign of M. THOUVENEL at the Bureau of Foreign Affairs; but we can predict that Gen. BUTLER received a scientific dissection, and that the condition of the "thirty thousand suffering Frenchmen at New-Orleans," to use a standing phrase of the secession Press here, was not overlooked. They no doubt discussed the prospects of the cotton trade, a subject on which Mr. SLIDELL is known to possess all the requisite figures, and they probably attacked the Mexican question, for a majority of Frenchmen believe that if the Southern Confederacy had acquired its independence it would still cling to the doctrine that an extension of Southern territory in the direction of Mexico was essential to the existence of Slavery, and it may be that His Majesty was one of those who cherished this belief. It may be also that they devoted some time to the chances of the war, for His Majesty sent two or three days before the interview to JOHN MONROE & Co. the American Bankers, to obtain copies of all the war maps which they might happen to have. 

But notwithstanding the undoubted ability of the Southern agent for diplomacy, we have no fear of his getting the advantage of the present American Minister at Paris, who by his good taste and superior judgment has gained such a position with the French Government as to be able to obtain its ear at all times, and who is sure to be consulted on all questions relating to the present complications in America. Up to the present time not a word of official communication looking to an intervention in American affairs has passed between the Government of Europe, and there is no indication that there is to be any change of policy in the repect. Nevertheless it will be observed that since the tide of success begins to roll back against the Confederates, the secession papers of Paris and London are recommencing [???] for mediation, and their canards on the [???] subject. [???] that these [???] have [???] their effect, both here and at home.

The abuse of Gen. BUTLER continues with a crescendo that bids [???] to have no limit of ascent. The Constitutional, which appears to enjoy a monopoly of the written complaints of the people of New-Orleans, and which always speaks of these people as if they were foreigners, or rather as if the Federals at New Orleans were in a foreign country, precedes one of its late letters from New-Orleans with the following reflection: "Each day brings us some new and heart-rending revelation on the condition of things at New-Orleans. Oppression has there assumed an unheard of degree of cruelty. The life, the property, and the liberty of the citizens are completely at the mercy of an uncontrolled military dictature, and what is to be hoped for from such a system? Certainly neither peace nor a pacification of the public mind. Such excesses, such a revolting use of victory, will only leave in the hearts of the people an undying hatred and an implacable desire for revenge; they will only engender calamities and ruin. Is it not, therefore, time that these useless atrocities, at which humanity shudders, should have an end? The honor of civilization, the honor of the century, is interested in it.

The Constitutionnel then publishes a letter which naturally gives but one side of the story, and which gives a picture of oppression only surpassed by that of the Empire in which the Constitutionnel is printed, and of which it is one of the most devoted supports and eulogists. To those readers, however, who look no further than the printed letters of the Constitutionnel, the picture of affairs at New-Orleans is a dark one, indeed, and well calculated to arouse the sympathies of the French people.

The Constitutionnel has also had the misfortune to declare that the mission of Gen. FOREY was to convert the Mexicans into a "great people." The word has been taken up by the Opposition Press, which naturally desires to know how much it is going to cost and how long it is going to take to accomplish so herculean a task. There are even people who deem such an undertaking an impossibility.

A French paper notices with satisfaction the promotion of Col. CLUSERET to the rank of Brigadier-General, for meritorious services at the battle of Cross Keys, and adds: "Col. CLUSERET has served in the army of his native country in Africa and in the Crimea, and he has served the cause of liberty under GARIBALDI, at Naples. He is a grandson of a companion of LAFAYETTE, in the war of Independence in America, and now naturally finds himself in the right place, under the flag of the Union."

Charivari has its own way of criticising the American war. It gives this week two pictures on the subject, from the pencil of "Cham," the first one of which represents Saturn congratulating himself that other people as well as he de-vour their children. The unnatural god stands looking at a rapacious squaw (American) swallowing a Confederate, and holding in the other hand a National, ready to undergo the same operation. The other engraving represents the game of America -- deer, rabbits, pheasants, &c. --reposing quietly in various attitudes of indiffer-ence, regarding the two American armies de-stroying each other. It is labeled: "The game of America, felicitating themselves on the peace and tranquillity which the civil war affords them." MALAKOFF.

NSAM 55

National Security Action Memorandum Number 55: Relations of Joint Chiefs of Staff to the President in Cold War Operations, June 28, 1961

Date: 06/28/1961

NSAM No. 55 THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON June 28, 1961 NATIONAL SECURITY ACTION MEMORANDUM NO. 55 TO: The Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff SUBJECT: Relations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the President in Cold War Operations I wish to inform the Joint Chiefs of Staff as follows with regard to my views of their relations to me in Cold War Operations: a. I regard the Joint Chiefs of Staff as my principal military advisor responsible both for initiating advice to me and for res- ponding to requests for advice. I expect their advice to come to me direct and unfiltered. b. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have a responsibility for the defense of the nation in the Cold War similar to that which they have in con- ventional hostilities. They should know the military and paramilitary forces and resources available to the Department of Defense, verify their readiness, report on their accuracy, and make appropriate recommen- dations for their expansion and improvement. I look to the Chiefs to contribute dynamic and imaginative leadership in contributing to the success of the military and paramilitary aspects of Cold War programs. c. I expect the Joint Chiefs of Staff to present the military view- point in governmental councils in such a way as to assure that the military factors are clearly understood before decisions are reached. When only the Chairman or a single Chief is present, that officer must represent the Chiefs as a body, taking such preliminary and subsequent actions as may be necessary to assure that he does in fact represent the corporate judgement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. - 2 - d. While I look to the Chiefs to represent the military factor with- out reserve or hesitation, I regard them to be more than military men and expect their help in fitting military requirements into the over-all context of any situation, recognizing that the most difficult problem in Government is to combine all assets in a unified, effective pattern. [signature of John Kennedy] cc: Secretary of Defense General Taylor

March 30 2001 At Iraq's Backdoor, Turkey Flouts Sanctions

The Iraqi-Turkish Border at Harbur, 2009

Daesh-Turkish Oil Tankers, Racqa Province, Northern Syria

The Jarablus Corridor North of Aleppo,

October 2015

At Iraq's Backdoor, Turkey Flouts Sanctions

By DOUGLAS FRANTZ

Published: March 30, 2001

Correction Appended 

HABUR, Turkey— Deep in the dusty southeastern corner of Turkey, closer to Baghdad than to Istanbul, a line of 200 aging tanker trucks stretches for half a mile along the highway as drivers wait to unload Iraqi diesel fuel at a depot run by the Turkish government. 

The trucks are returning from Iraq with full tanks on the last leg of a journey that openly flouts the United Nations economic embargo against Baghdad. It is sanctions-busting smuggling regulated and taxed by the Turkish government and tolerated by the United Nations and the United States. 

Estimates on the volume of Iraqi oil and diesel fuel passing through Habur Gate, the only legal crossing between Iraq and Turkey, range from $300 million to $600 million a year. Western diplomats calculate that the illicit business puts $120 million a year in the pocket of President Saddam Hussein.

''This trade is outside the sanctions system,'' said a senior Turkish government official, who spoke on the condition his name not be used. ''But I would say it is indispensable for Turkey, and we are sensitive not to allow it to help Iraq acquire weapons of mass destruction.''

There is, however, no way to monitor what Iraq does with the revenue.

Western diplomats say the trade has increased as oil prices have climbed. They justify turning a blind eye because the money helps the battered economy in this volatile region of Turkey, an important American ally. The trade also is the chief source of income for northern Iraq's Kurdistan Democratic Party, which opposes Mr. Hussein.

Because of the political considerations, the smuggling continues and underscores a quandary confronting the Bush administration as it shapes its sanctions policy.

The United States and Britain have been under pressure from other members of the United Nations Security Council to ease the sanctions. One contention is that the borders are porous anyway; experts say illegal goods and oil flow overland from Jordan and Syria and by boats in the Persian Gulf. Another argument is that the sanctions have inflicted the most damage on the Iraqi people and neighboring countries.

Turkey has been hard hit by the embargo. Iraq was not only a major trading partner, but also a conduit for getting Turkish agricultural products into the Middle East. Turkish officials say the embargo has cost the economy $35 billion to $40 billion, and the country's current economic crisis has increased pressure to expand trade with Iraq.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is trying to develop sanctions that will allow more consumer goods into Iraq and tighten the rein on Mr. Hussein's ability to buy weapons. But any attempt to loosen controls is likely to face opposition from hard-liners at the Pentagon and conservative Republicans in Congress.

Edward S. Walker Jr., assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, traveled to Ankara this month to assure Turkish officials that the administration is studying ways to reduce the impact of sanctions on Iraq's neighbors. ''It's going to mean that we're going to have to change the way we deal with the border,'' Mr. Walker said.

Iraq is allowed to sell oil under United Nations supervision only through a pipeline to Ceyhan on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, and by ship through Mina al Bakr, a Persian Gulf port. Proceeds go into an account administered by the United Nations to buy food, medicine and other goods and pay war reparations.

To gain more control over its oil revenues, Iraq has been sending oil through an unauthorized pipeline to Syria. It also increased sales of low-grade fuel oil and diesel fuel to the truckers who ply their trade through Habur Gate.

Turkish and Western government officials as well as truckers said the oil and diesel fuel were sold by Iraq to the Kurdistan Peoples Party, despite its opposition to Baghdad. The party is an independent force that controls the border on the Iraqi side.

Masoud Barzani, the head of the Kurdish party, marks up the price, adds a tax and resells it to truckers. The revenue helps Mr. Barzani cement his control over the border area and makes it relatively prosperous, diplomats said.

A 31-year-old Turkish truck driver said he paid 14 cents a liter for diesel fuel in Iraq, including a 2-cent tax. He said he often waited at least three days to load because the lines were so long.

Once loaded, truckers said, 2,000 or more trucks are often lined up at the border because Turkey allows only 450 tankers a day back into the country. Turkish officials said the limit was necessary so trucks can be inspected for other smuggling.

The volume of tankers remains far below pre-embargo levels, and the landscape is dotted with thousands of rusting tankers, described by an official as ''martyrs to the embargo.'' Officials estimate that 40,000 to 50,000 trucks now haul oil and diesel fuel from Iraq into Turkey.

By 1999, the illegal trade accounted for a quarter of Turkey's diesel fuel consumption, and that was when the government stepped in to institutionalize the smuggling with new regulations. Truckers who had made at least a trip a month were limited to one every three months. Instead of selling diesel fuel on the open market, they were required to unload at the government depot in nearby Silopi and pay taxes.

The government profited two ways -- by taxing the fuel and reselling it to distributors at a higher price. The depot collected $74 million in taxes in its first four months in late 1999, but officials said more recent figures were not available.

Customs inspections were also toughened. The diesel fuel or oil is weighed and tested and matched against a computerized list to make sure that the driver has not exceeded the allotted number of trips. Empty tankers and trucks hauling goods to Iraq also are inspected to make sure any Iraq-bound material complies with the sanctions.

''With our controls, it is almost impossible to get anything through,'' Abdullah Erin, the deputy governor who runs the customs gate, said as he strolled through a lot filled with trucks awaiting examination.

Mr. Erin and Huseyin Baskaya, the provincial governor, insisted that the trade operated within United Nations sanctions. Mr. Baskaya even said he was establishing a company to take part in the business, with profits earmarked for civic projects.

It is fiction. A senior Turkish official in Ankara acknowledged that the trade was outside the sanctions, though he defended its economic necessity.

The truckers chafe at the restrictions and taxes. They can earn $2,000 to $3,000 a year, a good income in the southeast, but it often must support several large families.

Any relaxation of sanctions would be welcomed in the region, where unemployment exceeds 60 percent. After years of civil war between the Turkish government and Kurdish separatists and the effects of the embargo, the biggest hope many see is opening the border, something unlikely to happen in the near future.

''Turkey is a loyal friend of the United States, and absolutely the embargo should be lifted so we can begin to make a living,'' said Kutbettin Arzu, an official with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Diyarbakir, the regional capital.

In the meantime, the line of trucks continues to run from Iraq to the Turkish depot in Silopi.

Photos: Drivers at the Habur crossing into Turkey stood on their trucks to measure the volume of oil or diesel fuel that they purchased in Iraq. (Staton R. Winter for The New York Times)(pg. A1); Turkish customs officials inspecting a cargo of electrical insulators being trucked from Turkey to Iraq through Habur Gate this week. Turkey says it is making sure that goods bound for Iraq comply with U.N. sanctions. (Staton R. Winter for The New York Times)(pg. A8) Map of Turkey highlighting Habur

Netanyahu : Holocaust Denier

An Evaluation of Key claims by way of Juxtaposition, Direct Contrast and Side by Side Comparison.

I'm referring here to the Social Construct and Public Myth of The Holocaust (or, "The Nazi Holocaust"), not the historical event known as the holocaust.

CLAIM : The Nazi Holocaust was an Arab plot.

CLAIM : The Final Solution to the Jewish Question in Europe was to consist of mass deportations East into Asia of all Asiatics.

CLAIM : There was no pre-meditated plan, desire, policy or intention on the part of either Adolf Hitler personally, the Nazi Party or the German Government to bring about the physical destruction of European Jewry prior to a key meeting in December 1941.

" My grandfather came to this land in 1920 and he landed in Jaffa, and very shortly after he landed he went to the immigration office in Jaffa. And a few months later it was burned down by marauders. These attackers, Arab attackers, murdered several Jews, including our celebrated writer Brenner.

 

And this attack and other attacks on the Jewish community in 1920, 1921, 1929, were instigated by a call of the Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was later sought for war crimes in the Nuremberg trials because he had a central role in fomenting the final solution. He flew to Berlin. 

Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews. 

And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, "If you expel them, they'll all come here." 

"So what should I do with them?" he asked. 

He said, "Burn them." 

And he was sought in, during the Nuremberg trials for prosecution. He escaped it and later died of cancer, after the war, died of cancer in Cairo. 

But this is what Haj Amin al-Husseini said. 

He said, ":The Jews seek to destroy the Temple Mount." 

My grandfather in 1920 seeks to destroy…? Sorry, the al-Aqsa Mosque.

So this lie is about a hundred years old. It fomented many, many attacks. 

The Temple Mount stands. 

The al-Aqsa Mosque stands. 

But the lie stands too, persists. "

"The Republic will not abdicate. The people will come to their senses."

"France is threatened with dictatorship. 

There are those who would constrain her to abandon herself to a power that would establish itself in national despair, a power that would then obviously and essentially be the power of totalitarian ****ism. 

Naturally, its true colours would be concealed at first, making use of the ambition and hatred of sidelined politicians. 

After which, such figures would lose all but their own inherent influence, insignificant as that is."

30 May 1968 - Televised speech

Men and women of France.

As the holder of the legitimacy of the nation and of the Republic, I have over the past 24 hours considered every eventuality, without exception, which would permit me to maintain that legitimacy. I have made my resolutions.

In the present circumstances, I will not step down. I have a mandate from the people, and I will fulfil it.

I will not change the Prime Minister, whose value, soundness and capacity merit the tribute of all. He will put before me any changes he may see fit to make in the composition of the government.

I am today dissolving the National Assembly.

I have offered the country a referendum which would give citizens the opportunity to vote for a far-reaching reform of our economy and of our university system and, at the same time, to pronounce on whether or not they retained their confidence in me, by the sole acceptable channel, that of democracy. I perceive that the present situation is a material obstacle to that process going ahead. For this reason, I am postponing the date of the referendum. As for the general elections, these will be held within the period provided for under the Constitution, unless there is an intention to gag the entire French people to prevent them from expressing their views as they are being prevented from carrying on their lives, by the same methods being used to prevent students from studying, teachers from teaching, workers from working. These means consist of intimidation, the intoxication and the tyranny exerted by groups long organised for this purpose and by a party that is a totalitarian undertaking, even if it already has rivals in this respect.

Should this situation of force be maintained, therefore, I will be obliged in order to maintain the Republic to adopt different methods, in accordance with the Constitution, other than an immediate vote by the country. In any event, civic action must now be organised, everywhere and at once. This must be done to aid the government first and foremost, and then locally to support the prefects, constituted or reconstituted as commissioners of the Republic, in their task of ensuring as far as possible the continued existence of the population and preventing subversion at any time and in any place.

France is threatened with dictatorship. There are those who would constrain her to abandon herself to a power that would establish itself in national despair, a power that would then obviously and essentially be the power of totalitarian communism. Naturally, its true colours would be concealed at first, making use of the ambition and hatred of sidelined politicians. After which, such figures would lose all but their own inherent influence, insignificant as that is.

No, I say ! The Republic will not abdicate. The people will come to its senses. Progress, independence and peace will carry the day, along with freedom.

Vive la République !
Vive la France !

Sgt. Nick Fury's Howling Commandos and Holocaust Revisionism

1972

The Howlers  -- Caught in the Hell-Torn Holocaust that was DRESDEN!

SLAUGHTER from the SKIES!

"The Germans again and again missed their chance, ...of setting our cities ablaze by a concentrated attack. Coventry was adequately concentrated in point of space, but all the same there was little concentration in point of time, and nothing like the fire tornadoes of Hamburg or Dresden ever occurred in this country. 

But they did do us enough damage to teach us the principle of concentration, the principle of starting so many fires at the same time that no fire fighting services, however efficiently and quickly they were reinforced by the fire brigades of other towns could get them under control."

— Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris

"...based on World War II experience with mass fires resulting from air raids on Germany and Japan, the minimum requirements for a firestorm to develop are considered by some authorities to be the following: 

(1) at least 8 pounds of combustibles per square foot of fire area (40 kg per square meter), 

(2) at least half of the structures in the area on fire simultaneously, 

(3) a wind of less than 8 miles per hour at the time, and 

(4) a minimum burning area of about half a square mile."

— Glasstone and Dolan (1977)

A State of Emergency or An Emergency of State?

"You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security."

Vincenzo Vinciguerra

Neo-Fascist,

Convicted Terrorist,

Murderer,

Agent of NATO Intelligence

On the only prior occasion in history which resulted in the Declaration of a State of Emergency, formally invoking Article 16 of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic in France, a junta of mutinous  army officers in Algeria staged a Coup d'etats, called for the troops loyal to them in France to overthrow President DeGaulle and the lawfully elected constitutional government in Paris, and had all-but secured possession of a captured nuclear weapon.

The French underground testing range and nuclear enrichment facility actually detonated the entire French nuclear stockpile then in existence to prevent its capture by the Junta in Algiers and nuclear blackmail of the world. DeGaulle ordered that his nation's proudly treasured and hard won status as declared nuclear power and providing the leverage from which to propose it's standing as a third force in Cold War politics be temporarily recinded and rolled back as a sacrifice to ensure the guaranteed  protection of the State's survival as an expression of Constitutional Government.

THAT'S a National Emergency.

Article 16 was invoked last night in response to a few loud bangs in the street and people running about in the streets of Paris, waving a few guns around....

You Sir, Mr. Hollande - you're no Charles DeGaulle.

This is Your History - Learn it Well

Commencing Data Capture Protocols - It's going to be a long night...

The German Revolution of 1918

A "Captured British Tank" on the Streets of Germany, 1918

"Someone must become the bloodhound"

- Gustav Noske, Social Democratic Party,

Minister of Defence, Provisional pre-Weimar German Government, 1918

"There are rumors rife that we will go to Germany to do police and rioting duty. I'd rather go home but if your Uncle Samuel needs us in Germany, to Germany we'll go and be as happy as we can. We got in on the last drive and fired up to the last hour and I suppose that is the reason they'll send us if they do.

Shall I bring you some German spoons and tableware or just some plain loot in the form of graft money? I hope they give me Coblenz or Cologne to hold down; there should be a good opportunity for a rising young captain with an itching palm, shouldn't there?" 

- Harry S. Truman, November 15, 1918

German Freikorps Counter-revolutionary Troops on the street in 1920 around the time of the Kapp Pustch.

Note the Swaztikas.

Better Dead Than Zed : Haganah, The Mauritius Plan and The Real Voyageof the Damned

"I have a great surprise for you: His Majesty, Sovereign of the British Empire, is sending you a gift -- a gift called Uganda!"  - Theodore Herzel, Sixth World Zionist Congress

"We don't want it!" they shouted. "We don't want it!"

The Russian Zionists began to explain: 'We don't want just any country! We are Zionists! We want to return to our ancient, ancestral homeland.'" 

- Salome Levite, 

Swiss Delegate,

Sixth World Zionist Congress

Humanitarian Bombing : 

In 1940, The Zionist Resistance murdered over 200 Jewish refugees and more than 50 British civilian crew, rather than allow the British authorities to relocate and settle those Jews in Mauritius, rather than Palestine.

In November of 1940, there was no Holocaust occurring in Europe at that time.

Better Dead than Zed.

"There was never any intent to cause the ship to sink. The British would have used this against the Jewish population and show it as an act of sabotage against the war effort."

Written confession and justification the bomber, Munya Mardor of the Mapai,

Memoirs of his Haganah Terrorism, 1957

He presumes that rescuing Jews was an aspect of the British or Allied Strategic War Effort - it was not. 

These are weasel words.

Humanitarian efforts and operations intended towards the rescuing of Jews, or any other refugee population during time of war, in the theatre of combat operations are burden on warfighting powers, not an aid.

"On one bitter and impetuous day, a malicious hand sank the ship". 

Israel Cohen,

Ha-Po'el ha-Tza'ir ("Young Worker"),

Mapai party newspaper

December 1945

On Easter, 1903, the first and most notorious pogrom of the 20th century took place in Kishinev, in Czarist Russia. For two whole days, while the police did nothing, rampaging gentiles attacked the city's Jews. They threw children out of upper-story windows, gouged out their victims' eyes, and drove nails into their heads. By the time the order came from St. Petersburg to stop the pogrom, sixty Jews had been murdered and many more were maimed for life.


"I have a great surprise for you: His Majesty, Sovereign of the British Empire, is sending you a gift -- a gift called Uganda!"  

Four months later, Theodore Herzl convened the Sixth Zionist Congress with the words, "I have a great surprise for you: His Majesty, Sovereign of the British Empire, is sending you a gift -- a gift called Uganda!"

Indeed, the British government had offered Dr. Herzl an entire country in Africa, what the British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain described as a land with a comfortable climate and the possibility of raising cotton and sugar. "When I first saw Uganda," Chamberlain declared, "I said to myself: 'This is a land for Dr. Herzl.'"

In the wake of the Kishinev pogrom, Herzl felt gratified that he had procured for the Jews of Europe an immediate, safe haven. Raised with virtually no Jewish background, Herzl was totally unprepared for the reaction of the delegates at the Zionist Congress. "We don't want it!" they shouted. "We don't want it!"

As Salome Levite, a Swiss delegate to the Congress, described Herzl's reaction: "He didn't understand what had happened. He didn't understand at all. He just couldn't digest what had happened here, how it was that such an unfortunate nation, suffering pogroms and denied all rights and privileges, could be offered an entire country and say, 'No.' The Russian Zionists began to explain: 'We don't want just any country! We are Zionists. We want to return to our ancient, ancestral homeland.'"

Herzl was particularly amazed that even the delegates from Kishinev rejected Uganda, claiming that they would go nowhere else but the Land of Israel.

What had happened? If the purpose of Zionism was to provide a refuge from anti-Semitism or political independence, why wouldn't Uganda do? Max Nurock, a secular British Jew who served as Lieutenant-Governor of Uganda during the 1940s, years later explained: "Uganda wouldn't do. You know, it hadn't got the spark of divinity in it."

"Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred.Veterans' Day is not."

"I think I am trying to make my head as empty as it was when I was born onto this damaged planet fifty years ago.

I suspect that this is something most white Americans, and nonwhite Americans who imitate white Americans, should do. The things other people have put into my head, at any rate, do not fit together nicely, are often useless and ugly, are out of proportion with one another, are out of proportion with life as it really is outside my head.

I have no culture, no humane harmony in my brains. I can’t live without a culture anymore.

So this book is a sidewalk strewn with junk, trash which I throw over my shoulders as I travel in time back to November eleventh, nineteen hundred and twenty-two.

I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. 

Veterans' Day is not.

So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things.

What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

And all music is."

- Kurt Vonnegut 

Somewhere in France - November 11, 1918, 10:30am (approx.)

"No, don't cheer, boys - they're dying over there..."

Gunnery Lt. Harry S. Truman,

Battery D

November 11, 1918

Letter from Harry S. Truman to Bess Wallace, November 11, 1918. Family, Business, and Personal Affairs Papers. Truman Papers

Somewhere in France

November 11, 1918

Dear Bess:

I knew Uncle Samuel was holding out on me when your letter came not with Boxley's and Brelsford's. Two came this morning and I am of course very happy. We are all wondering what the Hun is going to do about Marshall Foch's proposition to him. We don't care what he does. He's licked either way he goes. For my part I'd as soon be provost marshal of Cologne or Metz or Munich or Berlin as have any other job I know of now. It's a shame we can't go in and devastate Germany and cut off a few of the Dutch kids' hands and feet and scalp a few of their old men but I guess it will be better to make them work for France and Belgium for fifty years.

Their time for acceptance will be up in thirty minutes. There is a great big 155 Battery right behind me across the road that seems to want to get rid of all of its ammunition before the time is up. It has been banging away almost as fast as a 75 Battery for the last two hours. Every time one of the guns goes off it shakes my house like an earthquake.

I just got official notice that hostilities would cease at eleven o'clock. Everyone is about to have a fit. I fired 164 rounds at him before he quit this morning anyway. It seems that everyone was just about to blow up wondering if Heinie would come in. I knew that Germany could not stand the gaff. For all their preparedness and swashbuckling talk they cannot stand adversity. France was whipped for four years and never gave up and one good licking suffices for Germany. What pleases me most is the fact that I was lucky enough to take a Battery through the last drive. The Battery has shot something over ten thousand rounds at the Hun and I am sure they had a slight effect.

I am returning the enclosure from the Kansas City Post. It is a good thing I didn't censor Bill's letter or I probably would have thrown it out. It was evidently not quoted correctly even as it is. He was promoted for bravery by me but he was not mentioned in orders. Of course the remark about his captain is pleasing but there are no vacant sergeancies now so he won't get promoted for that.

It is pleasant also to hear that Mrs. Wells has adopted me as a real nephew and I shall certainly be more than pleased to call her Auntie Maud and I hope it won't be long before I can do it.

You evidently did some very excellent work as a Liberty bond saleswoman because I saw in The Stars and Stripes where some twenty-two million people bought them and that they were oversubscribed by $1 billion, which is some stunt for you to have helped pull off. I know that it had as much to do with breaking the German morale as our cannon shots had and we owe you as much for an early homecoming as we do the fighters.

Here's hoping to see you soon.

Yours always, Harry

The British Military Mission to Berlin and The Stab in the Back Myth

Or, "A Classic Example of the Abuse of Footnotes by Citing Sources which Actually Support the Exact Opposite Position to the Claim you are Currently Attempting to Make"

Punch Magazine, October 2nd 1918

The British Army, undefeated in the field and in a time of war, about to be stabbed in the back by Labour at home.

Both the German Republic proclaimed on November 10th 1918, and the Kaisers' elected Reichstag that immediately preceded it were dominated and controlled by a Centre-Left block of Socialists and Social Democrats - the House of Commons was not.

NB - "Myth" is not in any sense a synonym for "fictional" or "factually false, fraudulent or untrue"; perhaps a better definition, taking Plato's concept of the Noble Lie as the principle of basis for any successful exercise in nation-building or statecraft as its starting point, a better description of what constitutes myth might be "Those stories we tell each other that become more powerful and important than what may actually be more accurately true".

The Tojan War, with its dramatic equestrian finale bringing the ten year siege to a final close is a Classical Greek myth describe via the epic poetry of Homer, but the city and Siege of Troy were both real historical events, as was the burning and sack of the great city by the army of the Greeks. 

It's a myth, yes - but it's also true.

It's the meaning of what you take from that which is infinitely more crucial to influencing your life and belief systems than the question of whether or not it actually happened - especially since, if nobody believes in something, then we tend to simply write it off and say that it just didn't happen, evidence to the contrary be damned.

From Shirer : 

 ”As an English general has very truly said, the German Army was ’stabbed in the back.’ ”∗

Field-Marshall Paul von Hindenberg

Committee of Inquiry of the National Assembly

November 18, 1919

∗ The attribution of the myth to an English general was hardly factual. 

Wheeler-Bennett, in Wooden Titan: Hindenburg, has explained that, ironically, two British generals did have something to do – inadvertently – with the perpetration of the false legend. 

”The first was Maj. Gen. Sir Frederick Maurice, whose book The Last Four Months, published in 1919, was grossly misrepresented by reviewers in the German press as proving that the German Army had been betrayed by the Socialists on the Home Front and not been defeated in the field.” 

The General denied this interpretation in the German press, but to no avail. Ludendorff made use of the reviews to convince Hindenburg. 

”The other officer,” says Wheeler-Bennett, ”was Maj. Gen. Malcolm, head of the British Military Mission in Berlin, Ludendorff was dining with the General one evening, and with his usual turgid eloquence was expatiating on how the High Command had always suffered lack of support from the Civilian Government and how the Revolution had betrayed the Army. 

In an effort to crystallize the meaning of Ludendorff’s verbosity into a single sentence, General Malcolm asked him: 

’Do you mean, General, that you were stabbed in the back?’ 

Ludendorff’s eyes lit up and he leapt upon the phrase like a dog on a bone. 

’Stabbed in the back?’ he repeated. ’Yes, that’s it exactly. We were stabbed in the back.’”