July 26 2011 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Nostalgia In Retrospect - When Shoes Were Quality And So Were The Politicians

"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now." July 26 2011 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Nostalgia In Retrospect - Return To The Days Of Yesteryear When Shoes Were Quality And So Were The Politicians [Pop Out Player? Click Here] Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [128Kbps MP3 16:36 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Razer Raygun Says: ♥ Sharing IS Caring! ♥ Twitter This Commentary

In The News:

Thanks this morning to ChrisM, my MP3Angel, for supplying the news and commentary audio files.

[After the commentary Jesse Winchester slips on his Sweet Little (dancing) Shoes... Get well soon Jesse. Courtesy of the respective artists]

» Only seven negotiating days left until a Republican instigated trickledown global economic crisis. Last night pres Obama attempted to explain his side of the debt limit talks. Negotiations continue with 2 new plans Reid's would have no new tax increase until 2013 and the Republicans offered about the same but further discussions and a vote on the debt limit in the middle of next year's elections. Senator Boehner demanded equal time and spent fifteen minutes criticizing the president but had nothing of any significance to say.

» Maybe they should increase the rates on junk mail - Due to poor revenues The US Post Office is going to close about 3,000 branches... mostly in rural American communities.

» If you're going to be here you may as well be an intellectual and economic benefit to the state - California governor Jerry Brown has signed two new laws. One will allow children of illegal immigrants to use the University of California educational system and do so at resident rates. The second law signed would qualify those students for state student loans.

» Even as street fighting continues Syria's president Bashar Assad has signed a law which would allow opposition parties in the country after forty eight years of Baath Party rule. It's notable the Baath Party has long been a CIA infiltration point into regional politics... Indeed the rise to power of Iraq's leader Saddam Hussein was a CIA operation, along with many of Syria's politicians.

More on that:

THE BABY AND THE BAATH WATER

Adam Curtis

Thursday, 16 June 2011

What is happening in Syria feels like one of the last gasps of the age of the military dictators. An old way of running the world is still desperately trying to cling to power, but the underlying feeling in the west is that somehow Assad's archaic and cruel military rule will inevitably collapse and Syrians will move forward into a democratic age.

That may, or may not, happen, but what is extraordinary is that we have been here before.

Between 1947 and 1949 an odd group of idealists and hard realists in the American government set out to intervene in Syria. Their aim was to liberate the Syrian people from a corrupt autocratic elite - and allow true democracy to flourish.

They did this because they were convinced that "the Syrian people are naturally democratic" and that all that was necessary was to get rid of the elites - and a new world of "peace and progress" would inevitably emerge.

What resulted was a disaster, and the consequences of that disaster then led, through a weird series of bloody twists and turns, to the rise to power of the Assad family and the widescale repression in Syria today.

I thought I would tell that story... [In Full]

In OTHER News:

Let it be noted: "On a per capita basis, Norway lost twice as many people today as the U.S. did on 9/11.". More at Atlantic Monthly.

From Harpers:

A bomb exploded at the Norwegian capitol building in Oslo, killing eight people. Hours later, a gunman opened fire at an island camp for young members of Norway's ruling Labor Party, killing another 76, many of them teenagers. Police took into custody 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik, who claimed responsibility for both attacks. “We are not sure whether he was alone or had help,” said a Norwegian police official. “What we know is that he is right-wing and a Christian fundamentalist.”

On the day of the attack, Breivik posted online a 1,500-page manifesto entitled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” in which he claimed membership in a militant group that planned to “seize political and military control of Western European countries and implement a cultural conservative political agenda.” The document, which describes a 2002 meeting in London to re-establish the Knights Templar and begin a new Crusade against Muslims, borrows from the writings of the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, and quotes extensively from anti-Muslim American bloggers.

Breivik's manifesto also criticizes the feminization of European males as paving the way for the Islamization of the continent. “The female manipulation of males has been institutionalised during the last decades,” he wrote, adding that in the “destructive and suicidal Sex and the City lifestyle (modern feminism, sexual revolution) … men are not men anymore, but metro sexual and emotional beings that are there to serve the purpose as a never-criticising soul mate to the new age feminist woman goddess.” [More @ Harpers Weekly Review]

Finally, since the politicians and leaders of the United States are so fond of discussing other nation's war crimes, I thought I'd propose a historical countervail:

The atom bomb may represent a fabulous advance, but it is interesting to note that primitive TNT and thermite managed to exterminate in one bloody night more people than died in the whole London blitz. Fortress Dresden fired a dozen shots at our airmen. Once back at their bases and sipping hot coffee, they probably remarked: “Flak unusually light tonight. Well, guess it’s time to turn in.”

"Following is an extract from Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut in which he describes the scenes of ‘obscene brutality’ he witnessed as a prisoner of war in Dresden which inspired his classic novel Slaughterhouse-Five."

The blood of Dresden

Kurt Vonnegut

I was among a group of 150 infantry privates, captured in the Bulge breakthrough and put to work in Dresden. Dresden, we were told, was the only major German city to have escaped bombing so far. That was in January 1945. She owed her good fortune to her unwarlike countenance: hospitals, breweries, food-processing plants, surgical supply houses, ceramics, musical instrument factories and the like.

Since the war [had started], hospitals had become her prime concern. Every day hundreds of wounded came into the tranquil sanctuary from the east and west. At night, we would hear the dull rumble of distant air raids. “Chemnitz is getting it tonight,” we used to say, and speculated what it might be like to be the bright young men with their dials and cross-hairs.

“Thank heaven we’re in an ‘open city’,” we thought, and so thought the thousands of refugees – women, children and old men who came in a forlorn stream from the smouldering wreckage of Berlin, Leipzig, Breslau, Munich. They flooded the city to twice its normal population.

There was no war in Dresden. True, planes came over nearly every day and the sirens wailed, but the planes were always en route elsewhere. The alarms furnished a relief period in a tedious work day, a social event, a chance to gossip in the shelters. The shelters, in fact, were not much more than a gesture, casual recognition of the national emergency: wine cellars and basements with benches in them and sandbags blocking the windows, for the most part. There were a few more adequate bunkers in the centre of the city, close to the government offices, but nothing like the staunch subterranean fortress that rendered Berlin impervious to her daily pounding. Dresden had no reason to prepare for attack – and thereby hangs a beastly tale.

Dresden was surely among the world’s most lovely cities. Her streets were broad, lined with shade-trees. She was sprinkled with countless little parks and statuary. She had marvellous old churches, libraries, museums, theatres, art galleries, beer gardens, a zoo and a renowned university... [More @ PulseMedia]

This is Razer Raygun saying 'Happy Motoring America...' Enjoy it while you can.

Remember...



(And PLEASE try to keep your government from killing all the dusky natives...)

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