Opinion Implants in News Slots. The Way to Foster Cheap Conflict

Objective News-Gathering and Analysis:
Necessary Footwork for Resolving Conflict.

But Conflict is Entertainment
And Entertainment is Money.

Which presentation do we get, with what predictable results?
Do We Need Some Version of a Fairness Doctrine Again?
A "certified" news presenter category?

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News via Talk Show; unknown information impersonator

The pipedream of world peace.

Scratch that. Inter-ethnic peace. No, won't work. Regional peace. No, that's out. Inter-religious system peace. That's worse.

What would help? Dissemination and discussion of fact, the content in an issue? Opportunity to explore options, as we do with sibling rivalries? Perhaps. But even that takes a calming down first.

Is there any way to instill a discipline, to get facts and explore options, before forming firm opinions? Won't work. There is money in forcing opinions without spending time and cash on gathering and presenting information. Besides, with informataion, your personal interest may not prevail. Can't have that.

So:

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1. Distract the people with entertainment: Opinion-Churning. Present a battle of opinions. The new media blood sport..

2. Poll the people before they are offered the facts.

3. Control the Information Flow;

4. Promote Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt - FUD - Before They Have the Facts..

5-6. Who has the money and dedication

to counter the marketing, perception management that run our democracy.

Could discussion of facts before commitment avoid wars?

1. Distract with Entertainment

A. Opinion- churning:
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It works like porn in marketing --
Add some opinions, make them spicey, and you get people's attention.

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Watch with us. How exactly are we distracted from the main business at hand. Start here:

This is the news! Background music revs up, visuals pan around, headlines pop. Big event here, and another there! Just look at that!
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Fact-finding mission, China. Who focuses on the nice fact to the right there, with all those Opinions behind.

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And there is a vital fact, over there, at the bottom right.

If that fact goes unnoticed, the whole story, the whole significance of the issue fails. And yet - is anyone paying attention? No!

Nobody is paying attention because there are Opinions back there, big Opinions! and nobody is paying attention to the linchpin fact over there.

How is it done through the hearing? And watch the weasel words, the unattributable statistics, the vague, "some people say", that papers the walls of CNN, MSNBC, Fox. Weasel words in places where facts, attributable, verifiable facts, are vitally needed for this democracy.

Skip the words. We got visuals. Oh, my - get an eyeful of those Opinions.

Instant gratification of the senses even in politics wins in the attention department. Thinking function? Step aside while these nice people distract you from other things that matter.

• For the purveyor, satisfy the imagination, and reality diminishes in importance. Is that so?
• For the immediate, subject consumer, all those Opinion Implants in the news slots can look good, but over time, watch the sagaway. FN 2. Does anyone tell the high school seniors who get them as graduation gifts about that?.

While they hold up, the opinions can be great fun, titillating indeed, entertaining, marketing opportunities, Compare them to somebody else's opinions, and before you know it, your life is gone -- just like the hour-long ersatz news show that had no news to add to the debate in it.

We agree this is a bit much. The implant image is not a friendly one when looked at more closely, in another context. The whole analogy may be a bit much, but the principles remain the same: window-dressing serves lots of egos at the time, sells for the short term, but does not get the real job done. What is correlation between the window-dressing and vital decisions to be made. And we just love it anyway. Lead me astray, please.

The parallel to TV? They say this is a news segment, but all you get is commentary. Is that it? Back to the polls. Ask the people polled what basis in fact they use. We bet the stares will be blank ones. Ask them whose opinion they heard and relied on, and you will get clear answers. Opinions of regular people are based on opinions they hear on TV or read in the news slants. Is that so?

Got to grab their attention and sell what we got because this is a market - and regardless of the real issue. Like the girls draped over the hoods of the old cars. Glitz up the news with the hate about it on one side, and the gush on the other. Forget the car - we got the ladies and the band. This celebrity. That talking head. That hoary legislator in the bubble.

Who can remember the issue with all that excitement going on. Barnum would love it.

Car show, Kosice, Slovakia

But look at the consequences. We are whisked away because we got ourselves swayed by Opinions, into a war or other persuasion mentality.

B. Present Opinion-Churning as a Blood Sport for the news industry.

Drawing blood draws an audience, so surely we can pollute news with opinions so we can see the match-ups. In our nice home colisseums.

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Opinion Fight. Old print.

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Shows pit one Opinion, turn of a phrase, against another. "Ooooh!" goes the audience, impressed, and waiting for more. Show a fight, violence, verbal catfights, a mudwrestle, political or religious Survivor fighting political or religious Survivor, cannonading Opinions to the right of them, cannon to the left of them, volley and you know. Thunder. Get out the nearly nude roller derbies of competing Editorializing, and you got sport, man, you got sport.

What was the fight about? Who cares. We got ourselves a fight. Pop the can, edge in closer to Watch.

2. Polling Shmolling
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Poll numbers come in.

Ten minutes of an evening news show stems from reporting on the poll; but the question asked leaves so many loose ends, so many qualifiers are hovering out there, that the answer depends on how the pollee filled in the gaps himself or herself.

Ten minutes lost from reporting the content of the latest policy initiative, the content of opposition policy initiatives (if any), content that we could use for analysis.

Then another ten minutes panning from opinionator to opinionator churning other peoples opinions on the stuff we aren't getting the facts about. Look at the weasel words - ://www.answers.com/topic/weasel-word/; ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word/, a site that itself warns the reader about weasel words in it. Even the contributors use them.

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Polls. Opinion tracking.

What are they good for when we get opinions instead of news in the media and papers. So long as people get more "opinion" than "news" on TV and in the papers, the poll results reflect people's opinions -- that the people themseles arrived at, from being exposed to a hundred media celebrity opinions.
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Opinions On The Move. Old print.
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Who knows what facts the celebrity - political, religious, talk show - used or rejected. Somebody will assume it is grounded.
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None of that gets vetted. We train people to follow celebrity and to demand "entertainment" - so the news uses entertainment marketing techniques, inserts opinions and opinion wars into the news, and soon there is no time left for the news. And celebrity views - political, religious, showtime celebrities - become more important than the facts. Is that so?

Why not ask what is important:

• What facts do you understand about this issue or that issue.
• Where did you get your facts.
• Do you have a computer? Do you ever use a fact check?
  
• How much time do you spend watching opinion shows.
• How much time do you spend watching or seeking out hard facts about news.
• Whose opinions do you value most.
• How much time do you spend listening to the opinionator's opposition

Political celebrities, religious celebrities, media celebrities, all with a shtick, all tools for propaganda. Persuasion, not information. Is that what we watch when we see all those opinions instead of "news." Shall we teach children how to spot it?
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3. Control the Information Flow
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Governments and markets know that free communications, more information, can be dangerous, because they may lead to less support for a cause or a drug, not more. The more people know, the more they may exercise independent judgment. Therefore, enforce opacity - not transparency - and the troops muster faster. Is that so? Catch their emotions before they have the facts? See Fear of Fog: Emoticon Dominance.

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Conflict requires dedicated opponents, each with a single-minded viewpoint. How to get that. How to get the citizens to come down on your side.
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a. Woodrow Wilson. Committee on Public Information.

As to government efforts on the force side, see Woodrow Wilson and the Espionage Act of 1917, that allowed us to imprison those people criticizing the WWI effort, interfering with the draft. See ://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1344.html/ It was amended by the Sedition Act of 1918.

False statements. False reports.

Those were crimes then when we were at war. Hello, Dick. What about today? See ://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1345.html/ Schenck v. United States - Supreme Court upheld restrictions on speech.

That was the great Oliver Wendell Holmes.

b. Fairness Doctrine. The medicine worked but the patient died.

Look back at the 1941 Mayflower Ruling - not a law, just FCC policy, but it established The Fairness Doctrine, later judicially upheld in 1969's Red Lion Broadcasting v. FCC, so that the FCC could deny a broadcast license if the person or group did not serve "the public interest, convenience, and necessity."
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Read about those in the google book Propaganda and Mass Persuasion, by Cull, Culbert and Welch, at page 410 ff (long URL) at ://books.google.com/books?id=Byzv7rf6gL8C&pg=PA410&lpg=PA410&dq=Woodrow+Wilson+war+persuasion&source=bl&ots=Wk2aooy31Z&sig=Tqg-2XwfONISnzIWBlzzWDB09vc&hl=en&ei=YkM4SqbQIM-_twe4k_njDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6/. Read there as well:

"The United States is the largest consumer and disseminator of propaganda and persuasion in history."

The fear of oppositional propaganda leads to a strong government response - a) muzzle the media, while using its opportunities to reach more people, more effectively, where they cannot defend, and the history of how to do that is frightening. Or b) fake the news: plant the plants. See The Fodder Site: Any Propaganda Today;. World War I was not the beginning. Read our efforts back to colonial times.

The Fairness Doctrine. is there something left there, to slide us away from the polarization, the vitriol, the killing by abortion vigilantes and other extremists, that comes from long-steeping in one sided, manipulated information. Is it time to reconsider, to offer an immediate, visible other source.
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When there was scarcity in the bandwidths or whatever, the Fairness Doctrine was useful. The FCC could require steps in the public interest: balanced productions of news: seek out community affairs, offer counter-statements to opinion. See Fairness Doctrine, about U.S. Broadcasting Policy, by Val E. Limburg at ://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/F/htmlF/fairnessdoct/fairnessdoct.htm/.
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Can it return where there is not that scarcity, on grounds that there is no effective place to turn any more for the public interest information. All the "bandwidths" are taken up by the spewers. We have different kinds of fact checks, or public media; but too many people don't even have computers. The idea was that there is no longer that scarcity, so the function of the Fairness Doctrine is not useful, and it may even have led reporters to shy away from difficult stories because of the obligation to show other sides. But it didn't work. The marketers simply took over.
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So the Fairness Doctrine fell away, both as FCC policy and legislation, by the time of the Reagan era, and revival legislation was vetoed by President Bush in his time.

• So what happened? "News" is virtually gone. With editorializing now fully open season, that is all we get. Facts, actual information to add to the debate, zip. We've cut the Hartford Courant and moved to the New York Times, and perhaps a few good national papers could do the job after all. Let the locals slip in a section for state news. But that only addresses the few of us who are left who like a morning paper.

News time slots are overwhelmed by Opinion and Churning Opinions, offered without the needed underlying facts so we an evaluate the Opinion. Chatterers pit one Opinion against another like a blood sport. A fact here? Quick - cut to Opinion. More facts? Skip it. All the real excitement, to get the adrenalin running, entertain and gratify the viewer, use the soundbite, the flasher technique, on Opinions. Sell them first. Market everything.

c. J. Edgar Hoover. Easy to get a foothold, my dear.

Then fast forward to the post WWI era and the social issues of immigration, then the Red Scare, who followed whom and the rise of J. Edgar Hoover - see ://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1343.html/ We just have more ways to do it now. Is this part of our children's education, our own history? The human hard-wired idea, get what you want any way you can, pound the facts like bread dough and see what rises, is not new.
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d. Edward Bernays over it all. All the world's a market.
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Flower market, Croatia

Selling ideas like little blossoms.

How does this lack of news, and just sales talk for whatever idea someone will buy, impact upon the drive to war and polarization.

Lack of news, or carefully chosen, spun news. For the master of the skill of manipulating opinion, see Edward Bernays, 20th Century market, propagandist, American, at ://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Edward_Bernays/

He would be proud of the current technique of opinion implants in news programs. Opinions Gone Wild. Mesmerizing! Getting nothing but opinions also pushes people to positions of extremes in viewpoint, since the facts behind the opinion are seldom vetted. Unbridled opinionating is a prerequisite to war or any conflict.
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What if the facts, if known or discussed, would not support the person's or the group's or the government position.

Suppress it; or distract from it.

If you were president, you could establish a Committee on Public Information. Woodrow Wilson did, see ://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Committee_on_Public_Information/.

Promote polarization for the cause. Against the defined enemy. What time do we dedicate in media to getting facts out. Test it. Turn on your gadget. Time the time given to Opinion and churning opinions, and the time given to objective facts about the event or issue itself, to edify the debate. FN 1
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Bewailing, identifying issues and warning are not enough, however. We expect that power in commerce, politics and religion will manage the information, control the flow.
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4. Promote Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt;

Not an Alternative Substantive Plan

What does all this marketing of opinion do? It dumbs us down. Maybe we are too far gone. Maybe Sam Zell is right - the readers want puppies and entertainment.

It skews the polls. We don't have the facts we need to form our own opinions. We parrot people we like to identify with, like celebrities in politics or religion..

It opens us to fear, uncertainty and doubt about what is on the table, without the mongers putting out their own alternative substantive plan. Opinions are not a measure of the merit or substance of the issue. Opinions, when people have no immediate access to a full fact source, are stagecraft.

Polls reflect the measure of FUD - the fear, uncertainty and doubt the opinionators raise who have no substantive alternative in policy or agenda. Ask Gene Amdahl and IBM. Nothing new here. Identify with the opinionator, not with an analysis. The train wreck of business-interested media influencing policy continues.
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5. Who has the money to change anything.

Is there a way to jumpstart anything without money?

News gathering and presentation is expensive, and takes wits.

Churning opinions about news that somebody else reports, and on part of a topic, is cheap, and takes no wits.

So what do we see on TV and in the papers? Politicians, ex and current; with party lines out their ears like clotheslines. Adding no facts to the debate. Just whether people should like this or like that. Lots of O-Pin-Ion. Opinion wars are not news.

Nonetheless opinion wars are what we get, with people who used to be journalists and newscasters at the helm. Pit this against that.

Smackdown between Cheney's latest fantasy and whoever. Insert something for the imagination, even verging on the prurient by use of words and imagery, dominance and power, and watch the dozer's attention focus. Facts? Everybody sleep. Might even disagree.What have we lost in civility, in intelligent inquiry about issues, what could we gain by reinstating a form of fairness doctrine.

Is polarizing good for democracy, communicating with intent to polarize, not inform..

We expect fancy advertising and psycho-skews to titillate the faithful. Gain the converts. Get attention. Sell. Sell. Buy. Buy. Any special interest will engage in news manipulation. And even where the control is not feasible - as in Iran currently, because of cell phone capabilities and internet and other immediate outlets - the government has another additional advantage. Consider the opportunities for eavesdropping, monitoring who is saying what.
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Daniel Widing and The Presidents, Madame Tussaud's. Real and fake information sources, intermingled.

P.S. Trust Dan.

Do we need certified news presenters.

People who swear to uphold truth, full and balanced, un-agenda'ed information presented to the people.

The conflict: government hiding some or all of its activities, people demanding transparency.

So we have these warring camps. In many areas - religion, politics, culture. And all from the extremes going nonstop, with no reliable, convenient, fast source to check on what is being said, what other viewpoints may be. Step back a moment.

Editorials and opinions alone are not the problem.

It is the squeezing off the stage of the factual underpinnings. That was not anticipated when the Fairness Doctrine was trashed. Look at the result of our preoccupation with opinion and slant, rather than analysis. Do we have extremists of our own to rival any elsewhere in mayhem? Yes. Why? Guess. A partial, contributory factor at least.

Did you keep reading in hopes of getting some more opinions? Here you go.

Oops. Camera slipped. Darn. Now we've lost you.

Do we really need all this entertainment? Guess so. So much for the public interest. Skip a role for reasoned analysis in war and conflict decisions. Let the poison waft over the airwaves whether it increases or decreases information, or instead steers toward the likelihood of war and conflict on any issue.

Who gets to decide. Does an election mean that the voters vote out their own rights to information and assessment, in favor of those matters concentrating in secret halls of the winner's government. Does an election mean that the airwaves and other means can spew at will, with people not getting it as to opposing views, but revving higher and higher in the decibels until someone or some group explodes. There are no lone wolves.

6. Conclusion so far,
and a small rant.
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The most visible sign of voter exclusion from decisionmaking, from necessary facts, is the premature polarization of views. The camera cuts from the event it briefly covered, to hordes of Opinion about the few facts revealed. Whether pulp paper on the driveway, or broadcast, cable or internet..

We get Opinion before we even get or can find the facts. What are these Opinions based on? The facts fade in air-time as Opinion takes over. Wars of opinions. Churning Opinions instead of news.

Churned Opinion is not news. What this puppet thinks is not news. What that puppet thinks is not news. What you or I think is not news. News is information, objective facts about events, persons involved, who, what, why, where, when. History, Background. Actual provisions.

Hear instead five words from the President about a new policy framework, and immediately cut to the opposition's Opinion. Then someone else disagreeing with the opposition's opinion and more opinions. Where is the factual underpinning, the real framework?

Rant. We have learned nothing from the Iraq debacle. Persuading people to go to war there was not a matter of the merits of the issue - it is who wons by opinion. To believe in this and not that. To support a cause. To hate this person, but believe this one is divine. Believe WMD's are there.

Real news about any topic, real time for the Inspectors, background on informants, where someone has a stake in the outcome, has always been suspect. When the goal is persuasion, war is marketing, not necessity.
Does our news morphing into tirade contribute to our ignorant polarization, the ease with which people are led to follow. The demise of the fairness doctrine, while failing to provide any comprehensive, objective news source, parallels the rise in rabble-rousing. Is that so?

Suspending opinion, until facts are in, is a discipline that we neither practice nor preach. Can we couch a fairness doctrine in those terms - first get the facts out, and if that is not feasible because it impinges on someone's right not to give the facts, provide a place where everyone can go immediately for the facts, and then let the implants loose. Fine.

But opinion only after the facts, not before. Or where the facts are immediately available. Then again, if you want warring people, then just sling the opinions around. 24/7/ There. Done.
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FN 1 Test the theory. What time on "news" shows is expended on finding and sharing fact, and what time is expended on Opinion. Mislabeling of the entire show? Consumer, beware. There is no obligation to list the ingredients on the label. Not even the place of origin of the views spewed.

Test it out. Take your newspaper and circle in red every slanted word, every choice that tilts your response to favor or disfavor.

Non-news. Searching for facts and there are none; but it sure is entertaining

• Take out your stopwatch when you turn on a half-hour news program. Or get one. Make columns on a piece of notebook paper. First column: factual statements of news. Second column: opinion voiced by a media host or guest. Third column, video of somebody else's opinion. At the beginning of every thirty seconds, put a stroke in one of the columns. Slash, slash, slash, slash, cross-slash.

Consider and reconsider the ramifications. Keep the objective facts off to the side, because with facts, people think. Instead, bring on Opinion, Editorializing, and overwhelm with that before people have facts for thinking. With Opinions, people react. Immediately. From the gut. Reacting is Good. Thinking, and the tools to do that, is Bad. For the polarizer. Is that so?


Successful propaganda requires reaction, not thought, so we get Opinion before we have time to think about the facts. It used to be that there were public interest safeguards so we as voters and the ones most affected got information from a variety of perspectives. We could think before deciding Those safeguards fell away for a variety of reasons - like the Fairness Doctrine. And Opinion took over.

Is this use of Opinion in the news time like using porn in ads, and blood sports. Opinion and editorializing with flashbangs is the way to get people watching, so you then can sell something to them. It may be time to look at the revived need to serve the public interest by ensuring equal access to facts in our "news programs", if not in that same form.
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FN 2 Think further. The analogy gets worse. Much needed information is not given out before the the commitment is made and the operating room readied. No facts to hold the opinions up for long. Consider the weight. That is not an area where muscle is, is it? Droop as facts change and the premature opinion moots itself out. In time. And the purveyors do not have a great history of reliability: infection and leaks, folks, from botched jobs. Check out the scars in the locker room. Better yet, don't. You've been warned.
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And when it comes to function, how about the effect of the implant on an important non-ego purpose, the wee babe - where are the studies on the impact of implants on young women who later want to provide the Top Drawer Diet. Who counsels the girls on that. Medicine, where are you? Off to the bank. Mothers? Oh, you got some, too. Lemon-lime or perhaps apples and oranges or maybe a nice set of cantaloupes? All in the catalogue. Opinions taking place of news on news programs, other implants, six of one.

The implant technique on TV is a not-so-cheap temporary fix, uses up time for the lazy or not too bright talker (the host can have coffee while the camera cuts to the legislature, the man on the street, or another talk show), while the opportunity to pass on hard, complete, objective information needed for a real debate falls away.

No time for facts hello goodbye, we're late, we're late, we're late. Alice. Wake up.

What is the danger of all the conclusory statements, views, opinions, and re-churns of opinions we get in the media? The time gets used up, without delivering on content, on information, on facts for the debate. The debate instead becomes a joust of opinions, based on entertainment, or what "stuck" from what the opinionators said. The debate loses its grounding in fact. And Chris Matthews and the rest just laugh and laugh as they churn some more opinions instead of discussing facts, factual bases for all those opining heads. All the way to the bank.

First, You Plan. Genghis Khan, Basil Liddell Hart. War Strategies.

War Strategy.

Plan, but Prepare to Regroup.

Defer Confrontation. No Loss of Honor.

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A. Genghis Khan.

Eastern warfare tactics include leaving the field. Take time to regroup.
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No Loss of Honor in melting away. The strategic withdrawal is not quitting the field. It is deferring the confrontation until more favorable conditions may develop. Highly efficient.
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Western warfare says stand up and fight. Now.

Even the cowardly Lion knew the posture to take, fists up, feet dancing, put-em-up. See ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxTy3JK_qgA/ Even if down we go, put up your dukes. Confrontation, immediate contest. That is the fast time-line to determine who won, who lost. Zero sum. Whatever thing you win, means I lose that thing, and that is it. Win and lose are quantifiable. See ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum

Eastern warfare: This is a different approach. Defer the confrontation. There is no loss of honor in that. Eastern warfare often provides a different result from Western thinking. If you see that you are outnumbered, and probably will fail, or may, just disperse, preserve your numbers, and regroup later. That is a long timeline. No "arena." Wait out your enemy, take your time. Use indirection.

The East is creative. No rigid mindsets. An example, from the Mongols, shows some of the most effective fighters in history. But they were flexible thinkers, not following some lockstep chivalry notions of the time. No code said that this group wore red, that group wore blue.

They used big or small groups as needed, faked withdrawals, set ruses, ambushed, and raided. See Medieval Warfare, Mongol tactics, at ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_warfare#Mongols_in_the_West/.

So, Who is Civilized.

Go back to "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" review at://anthropology.net/user/kambiz_kamrani/reviews/genghis_khan_and_the_making_of_the_modern_world/

Learn how Genghis Khan won by following the basics: He

a) prepared and then
c) engaged, and then
c) followed-up.

See also://www.mongolianculture.com/Excerpts%20Jack%20Weatherford.htm.

Genghis Khan looks more civilized than we do, in terms of the planning, the use of good people in the subject peoples, having his own people ready to move in where the slots so required.

How does that apply to us?

Our world is different, and the same, at once.

• Mongols: They were wise beyond our willingness to acknowledge, because they were invaders who won, and we want to downplay that. They are not religious extremists plotting against us, however, and we are not Medievals, or European Kings' armies limited by ideologies and behavior mindsets trapping our heads. We do have our own extremists in many areas, but the lessons for today escape the bounds of our usual mindset and strategy.

• Genghis Kahn and others did not succeed for so long for nothing. Eastern warfare tactics. Eastern military strategy. Pragmatic, sensible, and it works. Don't waste your time on macho. Redefine strategy. Get what you want - no question. But you are permitted to bide your time. It is valid strategy, not weakness.

Torture.

And, the Mongols killed-slaughtered many, in gross ways; but they did not torture. Kill but no torture.

"The Mongols did not torture, mutilate or maim, but their enemies did." See://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h11mon.htm/ quoting from "Genghis Khan and the Mongols."

Do a "find" search for torture and the portion is there. We and our current adversaries are less honorable than the Mongols? FN1. People were killed brutally, in great masses. But the individual, tortured by another individual? No. Amazing. Read the book.

The culture: This site notes that the Mongols felt that God gave them the world, and that their intention was to be a colonizer of Europe, the barbarians.

Mongols introduced the concept of freedom of religion to Europe, and taxed the conquered people - the 10% looks like a tithe. The people retained rights, however. The Mongols were their overlords, but the people continued in place.

Later, the Roman church would initiate the tithe; but they held that unbelievers, heretics have no rights, and that set the stage for the Inquisition. See European History 1220-1289 at //www.telusplanet.net/public/dgarneau/euro53.htm. That approach to the conquered, to declare them anathema, was foreign to the Mongols who would rather use their economic contributions than beat them down. Is that so?



B. Basil Liddell Hart


A British soldier in World War I. Developed theories of indirection in warfare, for infantry tactics. See ://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWliddel.htm/


Lessons:

• Direct attacks do not work.
• Use indirection.
• Upset the enemy's equilibrium.

See biography at://www.spiritus-temporis.com/basil-liddell-hart/


These ideas from Genghis Khan and Basil Liddell Hart have been with us for centuries, and then decades. Shall we try them?

Women in War: Capability, Combat , Culture. See Hind, the Warrior; Become Hinda. the Monster

Women in Combat.
Good at it, thank you.

But see what happens when ideology takes over.


From Hind to Hinda
From Warrior to Demon as Time Passes

Others: From Battlefield to Folktale

"Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war." Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. At that command, will and can women respond?  See the history of the phrase at ://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/105600.html/.
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Overview
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A.  Women in War
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In American History, Amazons, Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic cultures, women were warriors. 

That happened in a variety of ways:  from disguise as men, and continuing until discovery;  to remaining overtly female as some cultures did permit' or fighting with men because circumstances allowed a zoning variance, but often the warrior life ended with the end of the emergency requiring their killing services.

• Some could join some military groups in history, by cultural acceptance.  Some could learn the skills, wear men's clothing but be known as a women, and go to battle with approval. Prove yourself. 
• Some dress in woman's peacetime dress, but conceal the warrior weapon beneath - the burqa and the female suicide bomber.
  
• Others had to disguise their gender; dress as a man, pretend to be one, and in days where outdoor plumbing was the rule and not group showers, be prudent.  
• Others we might call today cross-dressers - raised as a girl, but sensing the self to be a man, in the body of a woman that felt alien; and dressing as a man as soon as could, because you knew you really were a man.  Others lived their entire lives as men,  not really denying anything - just doing what came naturally.  A choice of behavior.  Lesbian? Transgender?  Cross-dressing? These general areas come to mind, but who knows or cares which applies - the idea is the female body but not the cultural female in action.
• Others knew they were "women" and stayed in women's clothing, but their bravery denied the culture's insistence on dependency and weakness for women, either as a lifestyle, or for the occasion. 
• Others were nurtured by their culture to be warriors, or strong and assertive, and able to do what was required. See not only the Amazons; but also individual girls and women in our original folktales and myth, showing qualities later suppressed: aggression, superiority to the male even, resourcefulness, doing the bloody when needed, and shirking at none of it.

Does the frequency of the success of women, who sought out warfare, make hollow the later claims that keep them down and out.
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B.  When the Rules Change - Turn Hind the heroine, into Hinda the unspeakable.
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C.  The Chemistry of War - Controlling havoc.
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 A.  Women in War

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1. American History.  

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Some Americans defied culture and went to war, as "men". Look at the Revolutionary War, and the Civil War, for starters.

Resources American History. 

For an overview from the 1700's through WWI, try "Amazons and Military Maids: Women Who Dressed As Men In Pursuit of Life, Liberty, Happiness", by Julie Wheelwright, at ://www.alibris.com/search/books/qwork/261429/used/Amazons%20and%20military%20maids%20:%20women%20who%20dressed%20as%20men%20in%20the%20pursuit%20of%20life,%20liberty%20and%20happiness/>Amazons and Military Maids.
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Here are names - and circumstances:

• Frances Clayton, Civil War: at Women Soldiers of the Civil War, by DeAnne Blanton 1993; ://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1993/spring/women-in-the-civil-war-1.html/
  
• Here is a soldier's discharge papers - discharged for "sextual incompatibility" at ://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1993/spring/women-in-the-civil-war-2.html/
  
• Others are cited as having enlisted as a man, later found to be a woman.
  
• Charles Freeman / Mary Scaberry;
  
• John Williams / Mrs. S. M. Blaylock; then
  
• Sarah Emma Edmonds Seelye (the name as a man not given) who served the entire Civil War, as did Albert Cashier (the name as a woman not given).
  

See the discussion of why their roles, and of so many others, have been trivialized, although they were known at the time; and find that four women fought at Antietam at the same time. See ://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1993/spring/women-in-the-civil-war-3.html/li>Read about women in the Revolutionary War, Deborah Sampson Gannett / Robert Shurtleff, at ://www.ancestry.com/learn/library/article.aspx?article=2513

2.  Amazons
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There were two cultures of women warriors.
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Where. There were two such groups:

• one, some time before the time of the Trojan War, in what is now Libya; and
  
• another in Asia Minor, perhaps part of Turkey, in the vicinity of the Caucasus, at the Thermidon River, active at the time of the Trojan War.
  

See Amazons, Ancient world: See ://ancienthistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa032703a.htm/. Both were military cultures, all women, except for the times needed for men to father children, see://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/AMAZONS.html/. Cities tradition says were founded by the Amazons: Smyrna, Ephesus, Cime and Myrene. Same site. Read the roll call there of Amazon cities. Need to find out more.
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3. Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Women Warriors
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Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic cultures, at the time of the Islamic expansion beginning with Mohammad some especially in Bedouin or desert areas (is that so? that is the impression so far)  permitted women to choose warfare, and as women. See many here who excelled in bravery and skill, and earned the respect of the Prophet. Read and put your head around the images here, and the men who are not threatened by it at all - even appreciative, and supporting. What have we lost in taming the strong, autonomous Bedouin woman of those early days, or the early Islamic woman.  There is also evidence that Islamic women participated in the era of Europe's Crusades, although we just saw "Kingdom of Heaven," and Hollywood showed none.
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Individuals and Sources:

Where we refer to the Prophet here, please add the PBUH for peace be unto him, as a sign of respect for the religion, even if it is not yours. In some sources you will see (PBUH) added each time the "Prophet" is in the text. For an overview on women warriors in our 18th Century west, see ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_warfare_(1750_-_1799)/.

• This resource is of particular interest:  The Nawal El Sadaawi Reader.
  

Outsiders researching Early Eastern, Middle Eastern cultures:  Dicey. There are few reference points. Always open to revision if a source turns out to be unreliable.

Here, note that spellings of names vary, but meet the women here, at the Nawal El Sadaawi Reader, by Nawal El Sadaawi, at pages 77-79 at ://books.google.com/books?id=r9SPVEG3cv0C&pg=PA78&lpg=PA78&dq=pregnant+belly+Muhammad&source=bl&ots=6-MOAkKJXL&sig=3RxXZY93-4oJZa0SzOfoJdz793Q&hl=en&ei=geHiSfqVLujqlQef4cDgDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1/

Individuals:

Take time to read at the Nawal El Sadaawi Reader about each one. Some summaries here.

• Khadija - the first wife of Muhammad, and his only wife until her death at age 65, see ://www.islamfortoday.com/khadijah.htm; and the first Muslim; see this in the Qur'an at ://mohammad.islamway.com/?lang=eng/

Note that the Qur'an cannot be translated.  It remains one text, in Arabic. The best (we have heard) of the English versions, the Meaning of the Qur'an,  is the one by Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, who died in the 1930's, see "The Meaning of the Glorious Koran" at ://sacred-texts.com/isl/pick/index.htm

• Aisha, youngest wife of the prophet after the death of Khadijah, when he took multiple wives; and their skills, intellectual independence, and medical and other knowledge. Go to this next site: find that she "joined the forces of the earliest followers of Muhammad in the disastrous Came Battle. Seehttp://www.amazon.com/Women-Islam-Medieval-Modern-Times/dp/1558760539

Then focus on the warfare of the women:

• Nessiba Bint Ka'ab
  

She "fought with her sword by the side of Muhammad at the battle of Uhud, and did not abandon the fight until she had been wounded thirteen times," see google book The Nawal El Sadaawi Reader at page 78, The section continues: "Muhammad held her in great respect, and said, 'The position due her is higher than that of men.' (Ibn Sa'ad 1970: p.302/" Ibn Sa'ad was a companion of Muhammad himself, see http://wapedia.mobi/en/Bashir_ibn_Sa%27ad Bin/Who knows Arabic to see what he said firsthand?

• Um Sulayn Bint Malhan. Unforgettable image here - she "tied a dagger above her pregnant belly and fought in the ranks of Muhammad and his followers." Sadaawi at page 78.

• Hind Bint Rabi'a - on the other side, opposing the Muslims, in the battle of Uhud - "She wore armor and a warrior's mask in the battle of Uhud, and brandished her sword before plunging it with a mortal thrust into enemy after enemy (Sharkawi, 1967: p. 217). Here come followup sources for figuring out information, URL's for Google Books are long. 

From Hind to Hinda:  Look what happened to her story, as centuries went by and roles of women had to be reined in to meet demands of ideology. A later (modern ideological?) source recasts and demonizes Hind instead as an unscrupulous cannibal, to deter any from following in her steps.

She is called Hinda in that later source, and depicted as chewing on the liver of the Prophet's brother. See ://www.witness-pioneer.org/vil/Articles/companion/13_ali_bin_talib.htm/ at Sassafras Tree, Natural Pragmatism, Hind Bint Rabi'a. That cannibalism is not found in the earlier sources we find so far. In any culture: recent fabrications to fit later ideological demands. 

Sources again:

The Qur'an of course will have passages from these early times, see especially the site with particularly easy navigating, at ://mohammad.islamway.com/?lang=eng/  We were looking up how the Quraysh were set forth.

Is that Sharkawi named as a source for the Sadaawi Reader the writer and political figure Abdel Raham Sharkawi, see obituary at http://www.nytimes.com/1987/11/11/obituaries/abdel-sharkawi-67-egyptian-leftist-writer.html/
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Or is it Shayk Al-Sha'rawi, see his egalitarianism at "Women and Islam: Critical Concepts in Sociology", edited by Haideh Moghissi, at ://books.google.com/books?id=6ln19FcDV7wC&pg=PA143&lpg=PA143&dq=Al+Sharawi+research+Islam&source=bl&ots=p88fp9miNq&sig=e2DJ0bDRk9aykhx4B6M0GZD1Hjo&hl=en&ei=BqfkSYXVFqTtlQful8HgDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3/ See Sadaawi at page 78.

Find Shayk Al-Shar'awi at ://www.sunnah.org/history/Scholars/Shaarawi.html/
 .
Read more at "Islam, Gender and Social Change," at http://books.google.com/books?id=RkbZWrU4UfUC&pg=PA92&lpg=PA92&dq=Shayk+Al-Sha%27rawi+women+in+islam&source=bl&ots=4k-Sr2g5WS&sig=GLpa9SIokbST6viyLbgu4Yf1cP4&hl=en&ei=BqrkSdvtDIbglQeX4dDgDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2#PPA93,M1/
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Hind's father's support for his daughter's desire for independence, "So it shall be", has a source listed also as Ibn Sa'ad, the companion to Muhammad. Ibn Sa'ad's name is also given as Sa'ad ibn Abi Waqqas, see ://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Sa%60ad_ibn_Abi_Waqqas

• Umm Omara - Here is another woman fighter - "lost a hand in battle", see ://www.amazon.com/Women-Islam-Medieval-Modern-Times/dp/1558760539/
  

See Umm Omara also at Islamic Forum at ://www.gawaher.com/lofiversion/index.php/t16654.html, the name spelled Om Omara. Motheiba Bint Kaab. She was the only woman, among 20 men, who remained with Muhammad at the Battle of Uhud, there spelled Ohud. That battle was the Muslims' first defeat.

As with our own religious and historic traditions and sources, details and even substantive accounts vary. That Gawaher.com source does not state that Umm Omara lost her hand, but the sword wound to her shoulder was so deep her son could put his hand in it, and she gushed blood.

Still, when she saw that the Prophet was alone and exposed, she said noone would get to him except over her dead body, and she sought to return to "save the Prophet." Read the details. The Prophet said she would be with him in paradise. More details, of course; including that the Arab tradition was not to kill women.

"Bint" in the name; or "Umm" "Bint" means "daughter, one who has yet to bear a child." See Worldwide Words at ://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bin1.htm/

Yet the British turned it into disparaging slang for woman or girl, adding a low-class and offensive element. See same site. But this site notes that "Umm" means mother of - so how is that in the same name as the "Bint?" Need to find out more. See ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_name/ That site, however, defines "Bint" merely as "daughter." So, no inconsistency.

•  The suicide bomber - female, in burqa.  Or otherwise concealing the warrior status and intent.  See Female Suicide Bombers, at ://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB408.pdf/. and On the Cusp -The Next Wave - Suicide Bombers at ://www.stratfor.com/cusp_next_wave_female_suicide_bombers/  Women as suicide bombers apparently first surfaced in Lebanon in the 1980's, then India in 1991, Kurdistan later in the 1990's, in Chechnya in the early 2000's, Palestine 2002 or so, Iraq 2005 or so. That On the Cusp site notes that "the idea of women martyrs is supported by the Koran" and names the first martyr for Islam as the woman Somaiya. It also finds a possible connection - a woman under the shame of a pregnancy when unmarried, or an affair, attains forgiveness of sins and entry to paradise through martyrdom.  Is that so?  There is a full discussion of the effectiveness of the strategy, and why.
  

 
Sources and Researching.

For those of us unfamiliar with Arabic, the varieties of western spellings, given for the same individual, mean research is difficult. We are doing our best here - and we are not authority. Both Sharkawi and Sadaawi appear to be left of center, in Islamic governments-cultures. Does that in itself make the scholarship suspect. If you know ancient Arabic, please check for us.

Meanwhile, find the Sadaawi Reader book reference at Google Books, bookmark it, return often. Read the words of the women, the anecdotal accounts of conversations with Muhammad, and even about Hind's father - Hind stated she would be her own person, and he said, so be it - roughly. Go read.

Discuss: these women lived at the time of the Prophet, it appears, in pre-Islamic cultures both sides, as we think of "Islam" today. They were there with the Idea, before the System took over the Idea and altered it for its own needs, see "Isaac's Torah," at Bogomilia, Rabbi Shmuel Ben David of 'Isaac's Torah
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4.  European History
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Women leading men into war
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Bodiam Castle, England

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In the Middle Ages, this was knwn, despite Church insistence that women's status was to be inferior.   See Castle Learning Center, Medieval Women, Britain at ://www.castles-of-britain.com/castlezb.htm/.  Unmarried women landholders had the same rights as men.  Upon marriage in the Church, however, she forfeit those, and her lands, to her husband.  When the husband died, she got back 1/3 so she could support herself.  In work, they were paid less than men.


Women as Knights.
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Islamic sources appear clear that western women participated armed as knights - see Science Direct at ://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VC1-3SWSJV5-3&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=eecbb76310438add5b9acb7aef381beb/ Whose agenda creates which version, and which is so? This pertains particularly to the Third Crusade.

 
Fighting Openly as Women Among Men, or as Leader of the Men.  See the Women Warriors site at ://www.lothene.demon.co.uk/others/women.html/.  It is difficult to tell in some cases who fought openly, and who merely entered the battle undiscovered..
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Specifically well known: Joan of Arc. Openly a woman, dressed as she had to to get the job done.

Joan of Arc, Rheims, France 

See this broad site, "Women Warriors Throughout History," at http://www.lothene.demon.co.uk/others/women.html/ Find sections by century; as well as by culture (Celtics, Romans, Vikings, Saxons, Prehistory, Ancient World, as well as lists of laws forbidding women from fighting - would not have been necessary had they shown no skill or interest? There is a special section on women warriors in Scotland.

Glen, Scotland. Where are your women warriors now?
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Become little lassies, have they? Like everywhere?
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5.  Folktales
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Look at Red Riding Hood, the little dear. Red Riding Hood is the one who, when the wolf was caught, and participated in the vivisection and soon Granny was out and safe once again.

Grimm - Red Riding Hood, our old volume

,

Then it was Little Red who gathered lots of rocks and stuffed the wolf full of them (must have taken some time), then sewed up the wolf. No wonder her hood was always red. Saved on the laundry if she did this often, and she did seem to know what she was doing. See Migratory Patterns of Cultural Tales, Red Riding Hood

That vengeance and punishment part of the story morphed into the usual treacle, shrinking violet approach deemed more suitable for modern young women. Our girls are not taught the real Red Riding Hood. Culture hidden is culture lost. Is that the idea? 
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Rapunzel. The Witch climbs up. Our old Grimm.

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See Rapunzel. The one in the tower, where the prince climbed up her braids until the witch found out. He was cast out, falling in the briars, blinded, then wandering in the wilderness. She was banished to the wilderness, but there she had twins. Gift of the prince. She bore them alone, cared for them and herself out there, and finally found the prince in his section of the wilderness, still blinded, and healed his eyes with her tears. Strong lady. Gutsy. Rises to the occasion. Migratory Patterns of Cultural Tales, Rapunzel Our girls are not taught that. More culture hidden, more culture lost.
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Go back to our earliest folktales, shaping what girls can think of themselves and their abilities, in our western culture. Role models offered then.  And altered to pablum now.  Part of our cultural and physical heritage; filtered out to meet other culturally approved agendas.
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Upbringing and vulnerability. 

Denial of overt role models in controlled assertion leaves girls to the more indirect kill, the deniable, the predatory behavior, see "Claims 'torture squad' harassed Tatum Bass at Miss Porter's School for Girls," reported even overseas at ://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24873000-401,00.html?from=public_rss/
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Lack of physical outlets.  We hope Title IX helps here. Without it, training in the passive prepares them for exploitation and rape in the culture, by removing assertive and even violent role models. Turn the female's aggressive behavior into the indirect: the gossip, the clique, the bullying. The Miss Porter's, the Oprichniki at Farmington, see ://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/Student-at-Elite-Boarding-School-Files-Lawsuit---.html?corder=&pg=1/.
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Why the military keeps women back. It affects male-female relationships both on and off the battlefield. Self-defense must become reflex. For women, learn to use the knee. Do they teach the knee? Genoux 101? Maybe so. Easily? Nice girls don't do that to their friends. So who pays attention to sexual assault even in the army there?
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Not many. Rule of tough, as with any assault.

Assaults condoned. One woman in ten reports sexual assault in the military, see ://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/31/military.sexabuse/index.html/ How many civil situations. So do we teach the knee? Genou 101. All together now: Genoux 102. New uses. Take nothing for granted. What do we teach our daughters? Should we? Why would some stop that. Unlawful interference? All a game. To some. Ladies in the military - For boosters: Tradition says plant substances give testosterone a boost, see Sassafras and History, Sassafras Remedies, at Sassafras and History, Remedies. Have some tea.
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B.  When the Rules Change; Why the Need for the New Rules

Rules arise when something must be put down because it is working. Women must have been good at fighting, in order to require laws against it by those who felt threatened. The role of rules in shaping people. Warrior women proved so "natural" that the powers had to pass laws to prohibit it - see  ://www.lothene.demon.co.uk/others/women.html#laws/

See the emperors and popes at work in 200 AD, 590 AD, no crusading women allowed in 1189, and kings - no wearing men's clothing in 1644, no attending political meetings in 1795 if more than 5 people were present, and no women in the front lines of the Israeli army as of 1950, the last leaving in the 1960's
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C. The Chemistry of war.
Cry Havoc. How to Control Havoc.

1.  Premise.  Violence increases with increases in testosterone

• China and testosterone.

China - give it credit for acknowledging the role of testosterone in violence. We knew that, but who could dethrone god testosterone?

the god testosterone

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China has expressed alarm at its large and growing numbers in gender gap, and the role that all that testosterone will likely play in increasing violence in that country, unstemmed. See China has 32 million more boys than girls, at ://article.wn.com/view/2009/04/10/China_has_32_million_more_boys_than_girls/?section=TopStoriesWorldwide&template=worldnews%2Findex.txt/ Some testosterone gets deflected into martial arts skills that become an art form in themselves. That does not make it less deadly.
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Martial Arts, China

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2.  Premise.  Violence increases with crowding

The more of it is put together, the worse in the sense of violence it makes people, and the less the incarceration deters. Prisons.

We are the land of the what? We put more people in the pokey than mostanybody else. And their behavior there is fierce. See your local TV reality show about "the yard." If they weren't violent going in, they will be violent coming out. And see The Fodder Site, Jail "Em.

Our culture feeds on violence, puts it in huge petri dishes then profits by the pictures of it on TV. Does it? Our prisons house more men than women. Are women less violent? Could they be made more so by being in prison, as men are? That disparity in incarceration either reflects a lesser tendency to break the law, or a lesser tendency to prosecute (less risk with less testosterone?), and has an effect in furthering social norms, not necessarily the nature of the offense. We don't know which is which. See Nancy Kurshan's Women and Imprisonment at ://www.prisonactivist.org/archive/women/women-and-imprisonment.html/
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Newgate Prison, Granby CT

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Even our colonial prisons did not incarcerate for long. Just long enough to get the other person paid, feeling satisfied, then the bad guy could go back to being productive. Did they? Who has statistics on whether colonial "felon-equivalents" adjusted their lives more productively?

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And blacks overall more than whites, but the blacks cope with it better, fewer psychiatric problems, see ://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pressparliament/pressreleasearchive/pr386.aspx/ Too much to analyze here, but early cultural adversity (as in a hostile enviroment for blacks) might mean some practice in getting through. Is there anything to that? That we are products of conditioning, to a greater degree than the cultures acknowledge.
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Isolation by gender in anything is a bad idea, where violence is bound to escalate.
 
3.  Premise.  Testosterone once roused will not be doused.

The "righteous war" - the role of testosterone.  Try to define a righteous war - is there ever such. If there is, do we need as many people as possible regardless of gender, to use all the testosterone they can muster,in order to prevail. Who can and will rise to the occasion. In wars that sit - people at consoles - is the same chemistry needed as is needed for the knight?
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The righteous war also needs people who can set the reflexes and learning aside when the need abates. That often cannot be done - post traumatic stress recurrences.

A "righteous war" without the tempering effect of those with perhaps less testosterone, will soon become as abusive as all the rest of the wars.
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4.  Premise:  Testosterone and its effects on behavior is not a new issue
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See Sassafras Tree, Natural Pragmatism, Testosterone Marching. Currently: Women in 2007 made up about 10% of the forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, see National Public Radio at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14964676; and at NPR at ://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&q=women+in+combat&btnG=Google+Search/ There used to be restrictions, those started in 1994, and women were not allowed in ground combat units, but the line between front-line and rear areas blurs. More and more they find themselves in combat. The prohibition remains, as "reasonable and relevant." The issue is not new. But the need to control it, for our survival, is.

De-hormoning. A problem is that one side cannot stop fostering testerone behavior without everyone else, like disarmament, de-hormoning is not likely to meet with much support. Perhaps simply evening out the numbers of women and men might. Or might not, if the other side is all men. So what to do? We didn't promise you a solution, just horizons. Now, to check on that diet.... could be a military weapon, that.....hmmm... seed clouds with testosteronediluters

More sites: Medieval Women and War, at ://libraryautomation.com/valerieeads/medievalwomeninwar.html/ The Crusades: European sources are ambiguous about women participating directly - but the Islamic sources are not. See Women on the Third Crusade at ://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VC1-3SWSJV5-3&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=eecbb76310438add5b9acb7aef381beb/

We know women have the qualities, can develop the skills. What we have not tried, is woman as the balancer of the excess testosterone in the men.
..................................................

FN 1 Physiology supporting idea that no woman should serve in aggression positions.

• overall a lesser muscle mass, possibly a product of breeding "out" that trait over millennia. And
  
• a tendon weakness connected to hormones, see http://ajpregu.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/296/1/R119/.
  

Those still are an individual matters however, that can be screened out or treated or compensated for otherwise, not necessarily applicable as limitation to all. Is that so? Enough to rethink how we use our human resources? How many men have failed in other ways, not related to physical strength, but in impulse control or psychological. Are we looking at human issues, not just gender.

Afghanistan - How To Learn The Adversary's Terrain - And Reconsider Tactics. Political, Cultural , Religious Aspects.

Afghanistan.
The terrain, the roots, why invaders lose.

The Self-Help Way to An Informed Citizenry

Russian tank, Afghanistan campaign, at Montreal's Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps Museum

.

America. Do we know as little as we seem. We are trying a self-education road to exploring this, an 8-years' war without focus. Additional forces? May help.

Approach for the public in the meanwhile: Informational.

Start with a region on your own, then move to another. Look for linguistic roots, cultural patterns. But where to start? By browsing, and see what turns up. We are only the latest in a series of powers that have tried taming and changing culture there. We found:

A. Regions (ongoing)

1. Nuristan.

Richard F. Strand. American Institute of Afghanistan Studies, July 2008. See - :www.bu.edu/aias/index.html/. The region. ethnic considerations and strategic role. See Richard F. Strand's site at ://users.sedona.net/~strand/ Find there an outline (scroll down) and click on any of a number of topics, and they all were new to us. The expertise covers so much.

We found this illustrated video lecture on one section, Nuristan, by Richard Strand, at YouTube's ://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1143391428692281347/ If you go there, find more references to further video lectures.

We had been researching a fine article of clothing, the Afghan pakul, see our Hats of the World exploration in connection with the Da Vinci hat inspiration, and found that lecture. See our beginning interest at France Road Ways, Da Vinci Hat, Hats of the World (scroll down).

We found this in part from the lecture, quoting from ourselves about the hat (do an Images search) - The pakol, or pakul, originated in Nuristan, an area of the Hindu Kush populated as early as 4200 BC by the Aryan peoples, term long predating Hitler, and then leading in a split to the Indo-Iranian, moving even into Hungary; and to Iran; then see the pre-Sanskrit languages group. Then eras of sequential displacements.

We knew the ancient character of the region, the diversity, the effects of mountainous areas on cohesion (hard), but wanted to pass on this source even before we can digest it ourselves. You will find one powerpoint display on who dropped the ball since 2003 - see there, and in subsequent boards and comment,

• US governmental dysfunction,
• need historical depth of knowledge,
• who are the real players,
• missing cues - we need to learn the language because interpretation is so difficult and exploited - the hacks (us) don't understand who is straight and who is a crook, the role of the "TERP" or the interpreter, is huge. Minimal translations, no nuance, everybody walks away not knowing even half of what went on.
• cultural misunderstanding (in Nuristan, a civilized person would not have a bathroom in the house and will only go outside, for example, is one of the anecdotes given about custom)

Countries with an aspect of control of groups within it - when does that become a "war" for cultural values, no answers here, but a continuation of the Strand video discussion, and on to other sites: Women.

• role of women - they do all the agricultural work, firewood, the word used for getting her out of the house and to her new husband's is the same word as herding cattle. This is not to elicit uncomfortable laughter, from westerners, but to show the depth of the differences in how the world is perceived.
• how to bridge gaps, see more sides of an issue, apart from a current political or oppressive interpretation.
• Start here with the burqa - at "The Evolution of the Burqa" by Iram, 2006, at ://iramz.wordpress.com/2006/10/05/the-evolution-of-the-burqa/, by Mohammad Qadeer. This is a history, not a reaction site, or anecdotal.
  
• Burqa or total body and head-face covering and its variations, The Burqa is a sign of respectability, but not used among the "rich and modern" or among working wives alongside husbands; and was introduced about 100 years ago.See definitions of the
• Chadour, or Chador (loosely wrapped head covering, face open), the
• Niqab (stand-alone head covering),
• Hijab (head covering without face veil),
• Looking now for an information plus anecdotal reaction site. We do see that there is a western fashion component emerging, see Journal of Middle East Women's Studies at ://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/ /journal_of_middle_east_womens_studies/v005/5.1.mclarney.html/. In some western countries, wearing a burqa is a symbol of oppression, see law proposed against it, Netherlands, at http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/017359.php/.

That started us going further: the lecture is the best starting point for any outsider's understanding, we think. I am listening to it again even now, in another window.

Ordnance Curator. Andrew Gregory, Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps Museum, Montreal. Recognition for the Behind the Scenes.

A Tribute to the Curators

Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps Military Museum,
Montreal, Quebec Province, Canada.

Curator: Andrew Gregory
.

A tribute to those who care for warfare's history, memories, so we may learn.

Master of Ceremonies at Awards Ceremony: It has come to our attention that there is a curator of a military museum in Montreal, who gives personal and thoroughly informative attention to visitors. We honor him this evening. Please rise and honor... ANDREW GREGORY, of the Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps Museum.

(Mr. Gregory leaves his seat, to great applause, and makes his way forward)

In making this year's selection, our judges looked at criteria other than mere size of facility - we seek the most moving, the most personalized and educational site for the visitor, displays with reverence and dignity. And we seek those qualities in this, the human-sized museum category.

We look at exhibit inside and out, accessibilty, guided tour options, and ambiance.

Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps Museum. 25-pounder, artillery (rotating ring for targeting)

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Ah. Here he is. Welcome and congratulations, Andrew Gregory. For those to whom this museum is news, it is found easily c/o

Curator Andrew Gregory

Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps Museum

6560 Hochalaga St, PO Box 4000, Stn K, Montreal, Que, H3C 3R9

Phone (514) 252-2241 Fax (514) 252-2273
.

Andrew Gregory, Curator, Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps Museum, Montreal; and tourist Daniel Widing, USA(Applause! Standing ovation!)
(And up runs the Curator, looking remarkably like USA's Stephen Cobert, makes his thank-you speech, and retires to more applause).

MC (continues) Now, we have a question for the judges. How did you find this fine institution, as it is modest in size, and not on a main road for tourists coming from Quebec City.

Russian tank, Afghanistan; Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps Museum, MontrealJudge: I believe it was you, Ms. Mistress of Ceremonies. We asked for nominations, and you had found this gem by asking your Global Positioning System in your car military museums as you approach Montreal. As you said, when people are tired, they may just take the first one nearest. Then plan to regroup.

We did not disqualify you for that.

As I recall, you found the Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps Museum that way, and we took it from there.

MC. Right you are. But I want the viewers to know that my identity as the nominator was not revealed until FIVE MINUTES AGO, after the judging was complete.

Judge. That is correct.

Dan Widing, in cockpit, Cf5 fighter, Ordnance Corps Museum, Montreal

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MC. So, as the judge said, we so enjoyed and learned so much from the exhibits that we never bothered with the bigger museums. For any tourist = follow that model - take the closest institution of the kind you are looking for, and you may find you are bowled over with what you find.
.

Dan Widing and Fighter trainer, Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps Museum, Montreal

.

Tank, Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps Museum, Montreal
.
Tonight, let us start by saying that we have been to many battlefields, many museums, many memorial sites. My son is interested in history, cultures, conflicts between them and why. With a Canadian grandfather and half the family there, we do recommend the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, see ://www.ottawakiosk.com/war_museum.htmlMilitary Museum/. This Ottawa museum is a huge enterprise, much like those we also saw in Europe, at Ypres, Belgium (Ieper). Our Uncle Len was there with the Canadian Army - Leonard Wilson who married Violette Scharfe of Ottawa. He never spoke much about it, but we knew he had been nearly killed many times, and was gassed, but survived and fully recovered.

.

The so-called glory in the older wars, of going over the top, climbing in the tank, manning the gun. Short-lived. Imaginary. It was hell. Ask any who were there.

Still, the soldier the point man, the hero if someone called him that.depended on the Ordnance Corps.

Exhibit: Ypres, Belgium, Destroyed. World War I, Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps Museum, Montreal

.

That soldier or gunner stood on the shoulders of those who made the advance possible; or who did his best to minimize the damage.

For another fine military museum, see the Museum of the Great War, Peronne Castle, the Somme area, France. And many more. See Europe Road Ways.

Ordnance Corps.

The Ordnance Corps consists of those who procure, maintain and issue the weapons combat vehicles, the cannon, the artillery, ammunition. Aircraft. Any weapon that is the sine qua non of any battle. This is not to glorify battle. It is to recognize those behind the scenes, without which, there could be no battle. Go to the movies and you will see little of it. Go here, and see some fine film: Our interest is in the Canadian Ordnance Corps because of family in Canada, and visits to Canadian military museums and attending Canadian-oriented memorial services in Europe related to both World Wars. For the film, see ://www3.nfb.ca/collection/films/fiche/?id=17374

Nijmegen, The Netherlands, WWII Memorial. Operation Market Garden

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Hitler entering Brandenburg Gate, Berlin. Exhibit, Ordnance Corps Museum, Montreal
.

This museum has a global reach. See campaign weaponry and memorabilia, from the World Wars to the Russian Afghan campaign - deja vu? To the interior exhibits of uniforms, gas masks, even for children, and insignias.
.

Mortar Carrier, Ordnance Corps Museum, Montreal

Another round of applause, please, for Curator Andres Gregory who made this visit so memorable. Thank you, Mr. Gregory.

Close-up, 25-pounder, Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps Museum, Montreal

Agincourt: Somme Area, France 1415

Battles Over Time
Topic: Agincourt 

Location: Similar to WWI, Somme Theater

 The Somme and Lys River areas

At Agincourt, the Somme and Lys River area that has seen so much war, the English were vastly outnumbered by the French.

The English had invaded at an earlier point, at Harfleur, in order to advancing Henry V's Norman-rooted claim to the French throne.  The victory at Harfleur was terribly costly, however, and barely worth it. It also brought Henry few riches for his coffers, but that was not the primary motivation for continuing. Henry did not have the "equipment or time" for plunder. So Henry had the army continue on to egg on the French to another battle 120 miles away, where his victory could be more glorious, not bring home the few fruits of a mere mess. And he wanted to clinch the throne.

You probably already know that the vastly-outnumbered, hungry, and horse-march exhausted English (down to about half their, had just barely finished with that disease-ridden, messy long-slogging victory at Harfleur. Such a setting. And the King still needed to engage in mere destruction, in order to establish his Norman-based street creds and engage the French in order to get the throne. How did the English win at Agincourt? And did that win matter in the long run?
.

Answer yourself: Does France sing God Save the King? Or does it sing the Marseillaise.

Mouquet Farm, battle site, Somme area, France; WWI ("Mucky Farm")

Agincourt. Go there, and find mostly woods again now. Start at Amiens and Abbeville, France, and head around the neighborhood. That is the battlefield area now, 700 years or so after. But where to start with Agincourt itself, a familiar name of a big battle, but foggy memory on details.

Try an afternoon's novel, no epic but with details of the warfare of the 15th Century. That opens the way to understanding Agincourt.  Try  Bernard Cornwell's "Agincourt",  HarperCollins 2009.

What decides the outcome of battle.  Consider these four.

1. Technology superiority - arms races
2. Weather, topography, happenstance
3. Chance and choice of leaders
4. Dedication, spirit, intangibles of mindset in the ranks

What does not decide the outcome: Consider these two.

5. The merit of the cause
6. The numbers on the field

I. Technology.

The English had the longbow.  And archers trained since childhood, see page 49, for the strength to use it. An adult coming to its use later in life was at a disadvantage - the chest area has to be grown early to full barrel, the bone structure has to develop to support the enormous strength needed for the pull-back, and all that has to be set early.  No time or steroids available for later catch-ups.

Leeds Castle, Kent, England. The King's Men Plus One

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Here is where your choice of book to learn about Agincourt makes a difference. Cornwell describes the makings and aimings of the proper arrows for the longbow; the makings and care of the longbow itself.

Go immediately to page 37 of "Agincourt".  The old man doing the arrows and at the forge at the stable was named John Wilkinson (Wilkinson sword?).

Bowyer, fletcher, arrow-maker.

His work:  "Feathers and horn, ash and silk, steel and varnish," he says.

He is working on damaged arrows, bent ones. These particular ones are made of ash, see page 37, but the best ones were a scarf of ash at the fledging end, and oak at the steel tip or bodkin end, see page 40.  The ash ones there were useless as is. The joint was scarfed.

The scarf join:  See scarf as a Norse surname, Skarf, morphing into Scharfe, Scarfe, Scharf, Scariff, etc. perhaps from the joins in ironworking and arrow-making at Ireland Road Ways, Scarf, Scharfe, Scharf, Ironworking; Arrows; and for a long saga of community conflicts for revenge and to settle accounts, including persons named Skarf, at Burnt Njal's Saga, Brennu Njal, at the Icelandic Saga Database at ://www.sagadb.org/brennu-njals_saga.en#1/; and the conflict setting itself at Bogomilia: Site for the Unsung. Otkell Son of Skarf.

There is a brick oven for the work, and on top of that, a steaming cauldron. Wilkinson lays the bent arrows across the cauldron, lays a thick folded cloth on top, then weights down the cloth on top of the arrows with a rock.  "I steam them, boy," he says, "then I weights them."  This sounds too modern (bad end of 19th Century London, or perhaps the Gaargh of a pirate) in dialect, but it only bugs you for a little while.

Doing that steaming for straightening, however, makes the fledging fall off - the goose feathers.  So Wilkinson has a second cauldron going that is full of smelly hoof glue (note the stable there) and he uses that to re-fix feathers into the slits on the arrow. The best have feathers from the same goose-wing. See page 50.

Then it takes silk thread to reinforce the glue. If silk is unavailable, use sinew - but that shrinks up and goes brittle if it dries out. Not so good.

Then there is the nock - the part of the arrow at the feathered end, see page 4, that lies on the string when the bowman shoots the arrow.  It takes a sliver of horn to reinforce the nock so that the cord of the bow will not sliver the arrow shaft. The shaft is made of ash, or oak. The renewed arrows are carried in special leather discs that hold them apart, to the fledging is not damaged before use.

The head:  This is called a bodkin, and it is made of steel, as long as a middle finger, appropriately; and three-sided.  A sharp point. This on page 39.  No barb at the end. A bodkin's purpose is to pierce armor, so is heavy. A "knight-killer." For arrows made of a combination of oak and ash (oak is heavy, adds to the piercing quality, but too heavy for distance - there you need ash), there are a wedgie notches cut in the end of the oak end and the ash end to match, and that is called the scarf - the join.  See page 40. To scarf is to join. Wilkinson holds up a "scarfed" joint - admires its perfect fit. Glue it all together and whaddaya got?

How to harden the bodkin steel enough to pierce armor?  Put bones on the fire when the iron is being processed. Bones and charcoal - there's the formula. "Now why would dead bones in burning charcoal turn iron into steel?" Wilkinson asks rhetorically, and does not know. One fellow even used babies' skulls and those bodkins "whispered" through the armor. The best armor was from Milan.

More on the longbow. Start at "The Longbow" at  ://www.thebeckoning.com/medieval/longbow/longbow.html/ It made its debut at the Battle of Crecy, in about the same general area geographically, in 1346. A longbow can weigh 40 pounds. Here is the English longbow, at http://www.thebeckoning.com/medieval/longbow/the-longbow.html/. Good site.

II. Happenstance of weather and topography

Over the rivers and through the woods, to the battle fields they go.  And they are fields. Farm fields. The fields had been plowed for winter wheat, and that meant a deep, deep furrow. Add rain, and everybody gets bogged down.  Mud in your eyes, your visors, horses hate it, easy targets because no speed. Everything a mess. Look at Mouquet Farm, World War I in the Somme area, Australian troops, a line barely moving all through the war.  Mucky Farm they called it. And, as in Harfleur, much tunneling about. Farmland recently plowed makes a poor battlefield. There are other reasons besides frost for sowing winter wheat deep: starlings and beaky access. See //www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119859296/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0/

III Chance Combined With Choice
.

The French had blocked the way to Calais, forcing the English to go inland and slow up going across the Somme. This gave the French more time to gather. And the English to run out of food.

The French armies - plural, many big names and their men - stood back and let the English advance their line and re-establish angled staking to stop the French horses and protect the archers.
.

IV Dedication, Spirit, Mindset
.

The English managed to maintain this despite the numbers against them. The French left too soon.
.

V  Merit of the Cause
.

Everybody can find a reason to think God is on their side, and they did and do. So just skip that element in any discussion of "merit" and go back to measurable facts. Henry V did have a claim to the French throne, but so did others; and the French were none too keen on him.
.

VI  Numbers on the Field
.

It is not the numbers on the field, it is the discipline of those there, and the decisions of the decision-makers. The wise old owl sings to Jeremiah Kincaid in Walt Disney in "So Dear To My Heart," "It's whatcha do with whatcha got."

But as to numbers, some say 6,000 English to 30,000 French; others say 9,000 English and 12,000 French; others say 60-120,000 French (English chroniclers) but the French and Burgundian chroniclers say 8-50,000.  Read the debates at page 445.

................................................

Medieval Military Miscellany:

The oriflamme - French long red banner with notches at the end. See that come riding around, flying behind the rider in front of the French troops, meant to be a display. Means they will take no prisoners. War-banner. Kill everybody. See p. 48.

The zen of the longbow:  "The skill is all between your ears, boy." the archer is taught. "You don't aim a bow. You think where the arrow will go, and it goes." Page 50. The arrow and bow are in the way of your eye anyway.  Think your course. "You saw (with the mind), and then you willed the arrow, and the hands instinctively twitched to point the bow....") Page 50.

Cannon gun of the times: used round stones. Exploded a lot. See 53-54.
Leper's clapper: piece of wood with two leathers attached, with wood on the ends.
Crossbows: Use bolts, not arrows
Cord: made of hemp, see p. 5.  Unstring the bow when not in use so you don't stretch it and the bow out. Never snatch at it, because that spoils your aim. See page 307
Big war. Against rust. Sand and vinegar rubbing helps, see page 130
Men-at-arms. Foot folk.

Austerlitz. The Three Emperors. The Battle of Slavkov.

Austerlitz

The Czech Republic

The Three Emperors

December 2, 1805. Who cares? What does that say about us, and the 20,000 who died there, but not on cracking ice and falling through, as myth may say. Perhaps 170,000 as total forces fought on the battlefield, some 15,000 then dead, see http://www.bond.cz/www/austerlitz/after.htm/. A textbook showpiece of Napoleon's tactics, a military chess, forcing the enemy to move this way or that.

Old wars. Can there be learning from them. There was Napoleon, and the other two Emperors, Alexander I of Russia and Francis II of Austria. Great Britain (doing much funding) and Sweden were also part of the coalition, but not primary at Austerlitz as were Austria and Russia. The Battle of the Three Emperors. The town area is Slavkov, not familiar as is Austerlitz. We found Slavkov on the road maps, not Austerlitz.

The land. There is a broad agricultural area, flat, and with few signs of the battlefield beneath the crops. Barely visible along the highway is a sign for Napoleon's Tree, the one beneath which Tsar Alexander wept, depressed and sick, but try to find the large overall monument, and you wander. It is a large area, not really a designated battlefield with boundaries any more, in the Czech Republic. There was drama there: sudden sunshine through the early morning fog - the rising sun of Austerlitz, the symbol - we heard of that, can't find an image - a torchlight procession of Napoleon's army the night before; feints in order to take a bridge, armies captured by maneuvering (General Mack of Germany earlier). Brilliant, Napoleon; brilliant. See Robert Goetz' book, Austerlitz: Napoleon and the Destruction of the Third Coalition, the Napoleon Series Reviews, bicentennial year 2005, at ://www.napoleon-series.org/reviews/military/c_goetz.html/ Austrians and Russians on paper were superior in numbers; but turned out to be demoralized, disorganized.

Signs hard to follow. Tree references. There is one for the tree Napoleon was supposed to have stood beneath; is that the same as the one where the Tsar wept?.Then there is the linden tree on the way, where Napoleon and the Austrian Emperor Francis met, see ://www.bond.cz/www/austerlitz/after.htm/

The battle was not an even match, in terms of leadership, discipline, organization, focus of power sites within the army itself. Yet, the numbers of combatants were about even between Napoleon's forces, and those of Austria and Russia combined. See ://history.howstuffworks.com/european-history/battle-of-austerlitz.htm; ://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/19thcentury/articles/austerlitz.asp/. However, the BBC says Napoleon was outnumbered. See ://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4496358.stm/ Napoleon's tactic of surprise attack worked well. Need to find out more, separate out prior campaigns from this one.

Weapons of choice: muskets. Much close combat, bayonets, sabres. The inaccuracy of the musket led to huge numbers of wounded. Napoleon, however, picked the battleground, and inspired his troops well.

Read the motivational speech at Military History, ://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/19thcentury/articles/austerlitz.aspx/.

Tactics buffs, read the full account there. The purpose was to break up a coalition of European powers, when Napoleon realized he could not invade England. Success at Austerlitz enabled Napoleon to become master of Central Europe, dissolve the Holy Roman Empire, and "organize the Germanies into a federation." See the How Stuff Works site - informal name, but readable. See also ://www.historynet.com/napoleonic-wars-battle-of-austerlitz.htm/ And Napoleon became known for his roads, straight, lined with shade trees to ease the troops, and his planting; see Napoleon's Roads by David Brooks, at ://www.kenyonreview.org/issues/sf03/brooks.php/. The softer side of power.

Napoleon's Tomb, Paris, France

Austerlitz added to Napoleon's transitory glory, and he now rests in a glamorous place in Paris; but how else to measure Austerlitz. There is no agreement on the battle's lasting significance, just that some 15-20,000 soldiers dead. And examples of the French soldiers' and Napoleon's kindly treatment of their wounded, soldiers using dead Russians' coats to cover the fallen living, and Napoleon wandering the battlefield, giving comfort. Does humane concern after the fact make war noble? See ://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4496358.stm/ Tourist re-enactments apparently continue.

Moral? Hear Carl Sandburg:

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work --
I am the grass;. I cover all.

*****

See ://www.americanpoems.com/poets/carlsandburg/12885

Warriorism. Training the Warrior. Wars of Choice or Necessity. Taming the Beast.

Selling People on Military Solutions

Wars of choice or necessity,  How to discern.  Anticipating some war of necessity, to what degree is warriorism a necessity as well.  Or can the training, the skills, the leadership arise when needed.

Issues: Perhaps a war is necessary for defense: in case of overwhelming force on the way, and belief in a "righteous cause" that must, must survive. Or one's own life. Survival. Warriors then, there must needs be. Those trained and willing to die for the Cause; to protect self and others.  Warrior skills can be verbal, strategic, as well as physical.

Warrior; old japanning woodcut 

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Warrior skills training, when taken seriously, for a real world and not mere presence, have to start early. The old times.

Sparta. See this good overview, by Andrew Murphy at ://www.helium.com/items/795298-training-warriors-in-ancient-sparta/.

King Leonidas, Battle of Thermopylae, Greece

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These days, warrioring can be gender-neutral.  

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Role model; ideal postercop
.

How about the rest of us.

Do warrior skills have a place. Or does the clout of the warrior highjack our independent judgment as to what is needed, necessary; and what is a conflict of someone's choice.

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1. Warrior skills are severable from belief in a Cause.   Having one does not necessarily lead to the other.


Sometimes warrior skills are promoted for self-development. Nothing to do with a "cause" beyond self. Fitness spun into imagination, or sensible psychology, or fantasy. Pick one, or all.  Wars of necessity or choice, ;way back in 2003, issues still relevant,  at ://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2003/12/b13867.html/.  And an issue in the Civil War - see ://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1861/august/necessity-war.htm/.

2.  Warrior skills are severable from physical force; and can be just as difficult to learn.

a) war internal, against a negative mindset, self-doubt, and

b) war internal, to enable a person to stand by his or her principles; but no conclusions are made as to the merit of those principles. Skills: any old racist, misogynist, agist, genderist, whatever, can learn and swagger. Warrior skills apart from merit.

3.   Warrior skills communicate, in a sense of confidence that helps affect outcomes, even deflect war.  Is that so?

In that sense, it is good for everybody who wants not to be trod, upon, regardless of the beliefs behind them. Are you the poor sap on the beach with the bruiser kicking sand in his face. No mas! Learn the moves, get the confidence, probably very true to a degree. Would our Treasury Secretary make a better impression if he had some theater behind him, voice training, a sense of presence. See ://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/14/business/14nocera.html/ for overview of his presentation on the bailout. Part deux.

If you know how to defend, how to put others down, you exude perhaps some sense to others that you are not to be messed with.

War against commercial fraud? Perhaps the gullible need help Or is it rule of tough. Or are we expected to have some common sense, to know that this is permissible puffing on the part of seller to sellee. Simple physical fitness, is touted as stuff for the warrior. If that sells, fine; but perhaps fitness should be separated from testosterone addiction issues. Or not? Free country? Sure. So, buyer beware.

See "Warrior Training" at ://www.real-strength-training.com/warrior.html / Serious combat athletes - do your own search. The concept for increasing masculinity presence, even as defense for women, as is needed in many cases, is all over - learn the martial arts, it is good for you, and it surely is as exercise and discipline. You can even do it in 5 days - ://www.enlightenedwarrior.com/.

Note the use of "enlightened" in connection with lethal skills - as though our use of kicking against the mugger or the bully piggybacks on the great eastern religions of enlightenment.

4. Is flaunting the aura of warriorism mere manipulation? Does it matter if it works.

As any of this results in knee-jerk or foot-kick automatic reaction to support the first warrior on the airwaves, we need caution in who and how we teach - or let on those airwaves unfettered.
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Justice trashed; newly captioned from a Godey's Lady's Book 1865 woodcut

Crusades: License to Kill. Label: Evildoer: the Non-Human

Code Words for Warfare: Target Words.


From Crusades, targeting "Evildoers";

To "Heretic" - Forcing Conversions by Inquisition; and 
Other Contemporary Ethnic, Religious Targets


Say a magic word for the era, and License to Kill, Exterminate;

License to Torture,
Follows.

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Evildoer. Name it, and license to kill follows. Here: a simple ursa in silva.

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Labeling facilitates exclusion, extermination, exploitation, war, domination. Is that true, or are labels merely neutral shortcuts to objective information.

The everyday.

In political warfare. Some code words or phrases are geared to suggest a preset meaning to some listeners to trigger a negative response to the target, while concealing the speaker's true meaning to outsiders who might not notice. See recent label-promoters, in the "war" known as politics, at ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGgKBY61X0Y; and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ_v3T0HVXY/

• Sometimes the code is so heavy-handed it detracts from the plot - as in the film, "Taken."  At the end, the purchaser of the goods for a half-mil is not only fat, old, and a slob, lolling in his near-birthday suit, but also specifically referred to multiple times as "the sheikh" - and this on a yacht in Paris, so that, in that setting, any ethnicity would have sufficed for the sake of the story alone. Shame, Hollywood.  
• And must we identify a nationality as a source of the problem? Is Albania as a nation so expendable that we refer to it in film in the most pejorative of terms. Absurd dragnet, and dysfunctional.  Are there connections? Perhaps. But the sales of these goods also occurs here, rather freely. Do a search. Target words, acts of war? Then recall history:  the "Alba" are among the earliest and most enslaved white people on earth, see the discussion of white slavery at ://www.electricscotland.com/history/other/white_slavery.htm (there discussing the enslavement also of Pics, Scots, Irish, and the citations).  Is there a cycle of abuse - is it what the Alba know from experience. Are we complicit.
  

Leaders use code words as shortcuts. Saves them from explaining all the time. After the right amount of repetition, like Pavlov's dog salivating at the sound of the bell, instead of waiting for the food pellets, people respond as taught. Is that right? Consider.

Code words allow the speaker to use a term sounding more agreeable to the average person; codes are subtle, may pass undetected to many uninitiated, except for the effect the speaker knowingly is trying to mislead large groups of the initiated. See Code Word definition at ://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGGL,GGGL:2006-28,GGGL:en&q=define%3Acode+word/

How did Code words get so poisonous? By repetition; and fostering action after the speech. Promote the connection in the inattentive brain. Persuasion management. Propaganda. See techniques at ://www.propagandacritic.com/.

The traditional war.  

Here we look at traditional settings for code words in "war."

Objective: death to the identified enemy. Crusades, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Inquisitions, Iraq, era, exacerbaated by President Bush's use of "evildoer." Or evil-doer.

Evil-doer as Code

Defining evil-doers. This took a deadly turn in the 1100's when the term evildoer was used to promote the crusades, and exonerate those who killed in the name of the crusades.

A. St. Bernard of Clairvaux. The evildoer code made explicit:
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In 1140 AD: St. Bernard of Clairvaux defined evil-doers in effect as non-Christians and pagans. They were the embodiment of evil, and not even humans. Is that the root of our ability to see concentration camps that were filled with persons defined as non-human, and just move on, deny. Brains are complex.

Knights of Malta, Prague, Maltese Cross

Even Christians who had not been converted by the Roman branch, but instead were converted by the Eastern/ Orthodox Branch, as in Eastern Europe including Poland; and the Balkans, were not "Christian" enough. See chronologies, including at The Knights Templar Chronology at ://www.georgesmart.com/ktc2c2.htm; and Nationmaster on the Teutonic Knights at ://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Teutonic-knights/.

St. Bernard:  He was promoting the new Knights Templar, see St. Bernard on Evildoers, at ://www.smom-za.org/bgt/bgt_1_1.htm/. This particular treatise, "The New Knighthood," was geared to promote the Crusades, and is printed at this site. Scroll down past the pictures and other text to St. Bernard.

Read about the Fourth Lateran Council, called by Pope Innocent III, for a more complete treatment at the Medieval Sourcebook at ://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/lat4-select.html/. What is the connection between the idea of a nonbeliever as evil, and torture, inquisition.

Gist: An Evildoer is not a human, and killing him is justified for the "Christian," as the killing not of a person but a killing of "evil."

Where from here? We substitute one label for another among all the possibly Christian types. From one crusade, or holocaust, to another.

B. Today, evildoer used against other ethnic and religious groups. Pattern under the Bush.

Use of labels, especially evil-doer as a label, has been virtually equated with Muslims. Dehumanize and label. Call people evildoers, the Code, then use that to justify whatever you wanted to do in the first place.

The Christian code of evildoer: once it was descriptive, to warn you to stay away. Now it is a tool for the enforcers of something that may not be related at all - just related to the enforcer's drive for power. Each group calling the others It. Code words, now used against Muslims who are Americans. Us. US.

• President Bush on evil-doers: A political potpourri, see ://www.answers.com/topic/potpourri. His era of leadership is over, but the pattern needs analysis, lest it re-erupt.

The word "evildoer" was once used infrequently. Now, in the recent administration, it was enough to get the phrase nationalized. Chronology of the use of the term shows its tie to policy: watch the words any president uses. They are code for a base.  Just as code in a battlefield triggers responses in the commanders, the soldiers.  The war du jour.

• Example 1.
  

Here are four references in one Bush II speech. There are four references to "evildoers" in this 10/4/2001 Economic Recovery presidential speech at ://beta.blogger.com/:http://www.dol.gov/_sec/media/speeches/20011004_President_visit_to_DOL.htm">10/4/2001 Economic Recovery presidential speech.

"The evildoers struck, but they may have hurt our buildings, and they are obviously affecting some family lives in such a profound and sad way. But they will not touch the soul of America. They cannot dim our spirit."

"There are many Americans on bended knee from all different religions, praying to an almighty God. We’re a nation united in our conviction that we must find those evildoers and bring them to justice. We seek not revenge in America, we seek justice."

"The evildoers cost America a lot of lives. And for the two here in the Labor Department, I say, we will get justice, and we grieve with you-two good folks who suffer as a result of September the 11^th. I can’t tell you how many people are praying for you and praying for the victims all across America; people you can’t even imagine, can’t even-will never know are on bended knee."

"I strongly believe we need to make sure that consumer confidence stays high, by giving people more of their own money back. We need to counter the shock wave of the evildoer by having individual rate cuts accelerated and by thinking about tax rebates."

• Example 2.
  

See this Bush II speech: "That as a result of the evil-doer, not only are we responding militarily and not only have we put this broad coalition together that says we'll rid the world of 5. terror, but here at home people are saying, gosh, let me reassess my life. It's so important for moms and dads to know that the most important job they will ever have is to love their children with all their heart and all their soul." See the evildoer as reason for military response to terror at ://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020105-6.html"> Evil-doer as reason for military response to terror.

• Example 3.
  

The Dracula Club, Bucharest, Romania

.

Bush II speech: "But nevertheless, Americans must know that their government is doing everything we can to track down every rumor, every hint, every possible evil-doer." ://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacked/transcripts/bushtext_100301.  

Mr. Bush and evil-doer. The pattern entrenched. Even though use of the word diminished, the damage was already done.

• Example 4.
  

Axis of Evil: See the Bush II State of the Union speech. Axis of Evil ://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html/

Some ears perk up when hearing certain terms. A website on code's use: evildoing. "The perpetrators must be demonized in the harshest, medieval terms. ("Evildoer")" More code on evildoer at ://www.blogger.com/%20http://webserve.govst.edu/pa/Political/Not-So-Great%20Expectations/war_words.htm/

• C. Torture - the logical extension of warfare-type labeling.

1.  Labeling facilitates torture. The next step.

The "inhuman" evildoer, or terrorist, is not worthy of human considerations. The code means that people can ignore their other views. The authority says it is ok, so people do whatever.

If the authority says to do it, people do. See the Milgram Studies, see discussion of that and more recent studies, at ://www.mercurynews.com/ci_11283475?source=most_emailed/; where persons told by an authority to inflict pain, do so and feel no remorse because the authority has taken responsibility, they assume. See the Milgram study and its progeny discussion at ://www.cba.uri.edu/Faculty/dellabitta/mr415s98/EthicEtcLinks/Milgram.htm/
.
Buchenwald, Labor Camp, Germany

This is Buchenwald. See ://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005198/ Somebody - here Hitler - labeled other people as the equivalent of evildoers - non-Aryans, non-human, and set out to exterminate/torture/work-to-death them, and others fell in line. 

From small beginnings, small acceptances, small looking away. Those in Weimar, Germany, see ://www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/Camps/BuchenwaldEng.html/ apparently said they had no idea. See://www.scrapbookpages.com/Buchenwald/Liberation0.html/.

2. Torture - its history, its fascination.

What is it and what has it been? 

Your children probably already dote upon it, in their computer games.

See Torture, history, exhibits, at ://www.torturamuseum.com/this.html. 

We treat torture as entertainment. There is an appalling list/account of exactly what people have done to other people for over two thousand years at Teaching Hearts, see one religious view of how history unfolded, at ://www.teachinghearts.org/dre04historynotes.html#martyrs/. This is cited to show the numbing effect just reading all this has - not to endorse the organization or its goals. Torture becomes just ho-hum here. 

There are counter-views. See Beyond the Myth of the Inquisition at ://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0027.html/.

Amnesty International is against it. See ://www.amnestyusa.org/stoptorture/index.do So is the World Organization against torture, ://www.omct.org/index_en.cfm?CFID=4312519&CFTOKEN=19028267/. Others like the Museum can be found with a simple search for "torture."

 3.  What does it take to inculcate values, labels so pejorative and adopted without vetting, so that someone becomes an aficianado of torture as to those people.

Aficionado at ://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary/ Who is a torture aficionado.

Include those who vote for it. 

Punishment becomes addictive.

Vietnam: Battlefields. US Failure to Encode, Encrypt, or Encipher. War Crime Against Our Own?

 Appalling Disregard.  Tet. Vietnam.

1. Mutuality of duty.

What is the duty, if any, of commanders to safeguard the lives and well-being of the troops; who, trusting, signed on for service.

When does incompetence arise to the level of war crime, against one's own. Can there be a crime for mistreatment of one's own combatants, see War Crimes at the BBC, ://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1420133.stm/, why is there not.

Vietnam.  Tet, before and after.

Vietnam Memorial, Washington DC

Here, in Vietnam, we have gross incompetence, at the least. We have failure to encode. Failure to encrypt. Failure to encipher. Gross and criminal negligence, even, in permitting interceptions, even regardless of use of communications by the enemy for enemy alterations of fire. Read "After Tet, The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam," by Ronald H. Spector, MacMillan, Free Press 1993 at pages 80-81 especially.

Can there be there such patterns of appalling disregard of reasonably foreseeable consequence, that become perverse crimes against one's own:  our own ungdommelig; our jeugdig; les jeunes, the jugendlich, the equivalents of the youth for whose lives we are responsible in a fiduciary sense, whether expressed in the language of war in Greek, Chinese, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese, Korean. See ://www.answers.com/topic/youthful. Many words for this universal stage of life, many sounds, same responsibility. The young entrust their lives to decent equipment, decent planning. Are we, at the least, indecent.

2, What is our history in this regard, this idea that basic common sense is the least that is owed to preserve life.  

Or are military personnel fungible.

We establish here an award for support of troops: The Anti-Troopicide Award, originating in the Vietnam War Era. That goes to Ronald H. Spector.  He is the winner.  The loser is the US itself. Go throw up.

You will read that, in effect, we were so arrogant in Vietnam as to believe our Vietnamese opponents had no wits.

• That they would not think to listen in on what we said in messaging between action and command. 
• That they would not know English. 
• Or could not learn it.

After all, they were only _________ (fill in your own pet ethnic pejorative).

3. We know that the North Vietnamese relied on traditional jamming for a while.

For the North Vietnamese, jamming was not a good option for long, because that required batteries and high-powered radios.

So they moved to the next obvious option: simple interception.

Soldiers. Ours. Out there.

We made that easy - American forces used voice messages seldom encoded or encrypted. Here is one horror as one example: The 1st Air Cavalry Division never changed its frequencies or call signs from 1966-1970. The arrogance was that the battalion commander believed it did not matter because the army could maneuver faster than the enemy could get there. See p.80 in "After Tet." If you have vetted information that Mr. Spector is wrong, or that the failure to encode was de minimis in effect, trivial, let us know.

So, if Mr. Spector is right, the Vietcong had advance knowledge of US and South Vietnamese troop activity, plans, attacks, ambushes and air strikes. They learned American slang, call signs, names. They could and did enter the radio net frequencies and redirect American artillery and air strikes, using accurate grid coordinates. The great pages 80-81,

Zygotes have more rights to life than troops. So it appears.

4. Have we made progress in protecting our young?

Tell us that we encrypt, encode, encipher in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Please.

Then go to the index of past (and present) field manuals at Army Field Manuals, at ://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/index.html/ These only go back to 2001, but we start with what we can get.

Look up "Operational Environment" at ://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-0/ch1.htm#par3/ and find this list of dimensions to be considered:

threat
political
unified action
land combat operations
information
technology.

Read this in the "threat" section: 

"In the foreseeable future, most nations will modernize and maintain military capabilities for countering regional threats or seeking opportunities. Military change will incorporate advances in information technology...."

Progress?

No. Nations decades ago had already established military capabilities - like listening in - that we never believed they were capable of (!). Why? Because of our self-centeredness and sense of superiority? Is that it? What else. We communicated in open English, for @#!*X^! sakes.

Nuts -in the words of another military commander, General McAuliffe, Ardennes Offensive, Battle of the Bulge, World War II, see http://www.defenselink.mil/home/Specials/bulge/

Knowing the language of the target culture: See University of Military Intelligence at ://www.universityofmilitaryintelligence.us/mipb/article.asp?articleID=507&issueID=38 /  The army has only valued learning the language of the people it was fighting and capturing after 2003 - nothing before?  No direct communications with indigenous people in Vietnam? Or in the nonplanning for Iraq? And only after 2003, when nothing was in place apparently, did we set up a cuture center? Too busy faking the pull-down of statues for our own PR at home? See Portland Indymedia at ://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/04/58107.shtml/

Please tell us we encode in Iraq. Or is interception still a freebie?
 
5. Look around. In Iraq, we find appalling disregard for human life in the inadequate equipment, vehicular roadside bomb protection, and pierce-proof vests for soldiers, etc.

See Common Dreams site at ://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1005-01.htm/

6. And now we cut out our aging young, the VA, including the ones in the line of fire when our communications people were chatting openly, from funding. 

 And this although adequate funding for our aging youth, gravely wounded, would indeed create jobs to care for them properly. See CNN at ://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/13/stimulus.winners.losers/

7. Don't look. 

Have to? read, softly, to yourself:

...the giovanile; the jovem; the juvenil; the ungdomlig; the....

Flanders Fields - Where Poppies Blow. Popular Memory vs. Fact. Popular Memory Wins.

We Remember The Idea

Not the Precision; Not the Source
.

In Flanders field the poppies blow. Or, is it this:  In Flanders field the poppies grow.  Or is it fields, plural. Years pass and memory changes substance. Editors get careless. A personal preference supersedes an original rendition. Does it matter, that we change what we remember, to fit ourselves. This is a short topic: how we remember is different from what really happened.

The poet.

In World War I,  a Canadian medical doctor-soldier, John McCrae, from the trenches,  wrote a poem by hand, later published around the world, the handwritten copy from 1915 reproduced at  "Great War" at ://greatwar.nl/poppies/handwritten.html/.  He was a member of the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps, 1872-1918, see ://www.americanheros.com/articles/flanders_fields.html/.

So why is he listed in a site for American heroes?

Here, the title shows field in singular, but the main body of the poem shows fields, plural. The Arlington Cemetery site has it plural in title. See ://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/flanders.htm/ He fought at Ypres, today's Ieper.

Memory, memory.

The issue of memory arises in this context. What did he write? What do many of us think he wrote? Even Canada gets caught in the memory trap.

Canadian currency, following the letter of the poem, issued one form. Its chosen wording, with poppies blow, met with outrage, some claiming that the venerable Bank of Canada made a mistake.

The Bank of Canada, issuing the currency, went back to the archives where Canada holds the original handwritten poem - and there is is.

"In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row...."

Where poppies blow.  See ://greatwar.nl/poppies/handwritten.htmlNot where poppies grow, until a later part of the poem, where poppies indeed grow,.  See http://www.snopes.com/business/money/flanders.asp.

What is told gathers more credibility, like moss, than what happened.  The popular will, or a segment of it, wants to see "grow" and not "blow." This puts a rightful burden on tellers and retellers to vet what they are telling, lest they repeat inadvertently a hand-me-down error. Whether in religious texts, war poetry, ancestry, anything. Is that so?

A rolling tale gathers much moss.

Warfare Against Children. What are the Roots. Cry Havoc. Testosterism.

A Review of Havoc.
Warfare Damages Children.

Can we not stop its perpetuation.

Testoster-addiction. Hard-Wired? 
.

War's Costume, Discipline, Identity: Transmit The "Glory" of War, Here, Knights Templar castle, Malbork, Poland

War - Its Triggers.

Testoster-addiction

1.  War For the "Righteous Cause"

But who is to say what is righteous? Perhaps only zealots.

2.  War for the Addiction of Force 

3.  War for the Money in It

Articulate a Cause, but really Feed the Addiction to Profit?

Does reason and observation really get us nowhere.

Children in Havoc

.

We know children are victims in war. Our issue is not in pleading that point. See FN  1 for examples. We also know that nature itself is not necessarily kind in its allocation of parental or adult-babe sensitivity.  See FN 2.

Kids, Cetinje, Montenegro. Children still build bunkers, not tree houses.

..

After the wars, some children can recover with a return to normalcy, sometimes, depending on the experience. How narrow is that window, how deep the pit, before permanent damage is done.

The recovery of some from it, and the selective memory of others,  is no excuse for the practice of it.

Dogs of War.; Crier Havok

We know the old phrase, the dogs of war. A familiar full phrase is, "Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war." Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 1601. Older versions appear in English Navy laws from 1385 and the English army in 1525 or so. Cry havoc! Crier havok! See Cry Havoc at ://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/105600.html/  An old poster, WWI era, used that theme - see the Perrone War Museum, the "Historial," at France Road Ways, Historial, Dogs of War.

How is havoc perpetuated?

We are interested here in the persistence of havoc.

What is at the root. Why do we with our alleged higher powers of thought and choice, yet run amok. The suspension of humanity itself. The "permission" to assault and pillage, and acted out with such joy. What triggers that horror. It is not racial, geographic, limited in history.

Meet havoc - a child in the way does not care about the motivation of the actor, but here are some motivations, causes, we think.
____________________________________________

1. A child gets in the way of the Righteous Cause. 

RIGHTEOUS CAUSE -  Whose? Who determines? Who vets the deciders?

• Sarah Palin proclaims that her son is off to Iraq to fight "the righteous cause." See September 8, 2008 news article, at MyWire at ://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_kmafp/is_200809/ai_n28100756?tag=rel.res2/  That also made the news in South Africa - ://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-09-12-palin-will-not-blink-in-americas-righteous-cause
  

• A book by that name presents the life of William Jennings Bryan, by historian Richard Cherny, see review by William McKenzie, 1985,  at://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_v17/ai_3838432/  Bryan is complex - more than an opponent of the concept of evolution at the Scopes trial, he also championed liberal values such as women's suffrage, a graduated income tax, and other "basic" Christian values part of the mainstream today. Righteous causes are complex. One label does not fit all.
  

• Each side in our Civil War saw itself as serving the Righteous Cause, seehttp://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6532/is_4_69/ai_n29048487?tag=rel.res3, article, "Rightous Armies, Holy Cause: Apocalyptic Imagery and the Civil War," about a portion of "Journal of Southern History,"
  

•  Any ideologue effort to beat down others in the name of a higher so-called goal:  keep children from getting health care because of the label on their parents, in the name of what? Go further back to Crusades, persecutions, any religion's riding to obliterate others
  

• The concept.  It has found its way into music - see and hear D-flame on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN3kp1K8hLg/  Energy, anger. Pick up bits - flaws, laws, atrocities, America, Africa, imperiales. The lyrics are clearer at ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_eU6CFQOSg

•  JSTOR won't let you in unless you join and pay to play, but here is the topic:  http://www.jstor.org/pss/133362/  "Righteous Cause or Tragic Folly: Changing Views of War in Modern Japanese Poetry."  There must be another way to pay creators of works without barring the "free" flow of ideas,  quick access by people. A pay per click pd by the govt as the anomalous price we all pay for free speech. 

• Images Search Alternative: The Center for Japanese Studies, monograph. Cut and paste this URL, or do an Images search for righteous cause.  Look it up in Images, at http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/cjs/images/pubs/catalog/covers/monog17.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/cjs/publications/monograph%2520links/17.%2520Righteous%2520Cause%2520or%2520Tragic%2520Folly.htm%3Fpubid%3D32%26series%3DMonographs&usg=__SL2lzqEJ4Y6iRoOh1ynaVQSi8gM=&h=429&w=288&sz=30&hl=en&start=4&um=1&tbnid=_U2VHYvnfxadoM:&tbnh=126&tbnw=85&prev=/images%3Fq%3Drighteous%2Bcause%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26channel%3Ds%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN

• One war size fits all:  Hannah Arendt, this and other quotations at ://womenshistory.about.com/cs/quotes/a/hannah_arendt.htm/   Whose tyranny, how defined.
  

No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.

And is it for that that we need a cadre of trained, monitored soldiers: to fight our righteous cause, as we see it, or is it as our leaders see it, for their reasons, but then how to vet that? As who sees it? Otherwise to lose out to those who press their own rightous cause

On the other hand, without a trained cadre of soldiers willing to die for the cause, we would be defenseless against those of other cultures who did train to be willing to die for the cause.

Vet and  vet  again.  No solution except vetting, more vetting, all the time.

Unfettered vetting.
_________________________________

2.  A child gets in the way of  a)  an addiction to power, or  b)  an abdication of responsibility.
 
ADDICTION TO FORCE AND POWER

a.  The Addiction.  

Name the Beast. For domestic abuse, wars, bullying, political, religious and economic exploitation.
Force and power-wielding as pleasurable, urges reinforced by learning. The number of ex-militaries who cannot leave the methods alone once home. See the National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence In The Military, Sexual Violence Issues in the Military, at http://www.ncdsv.org/ncd_military_svissues.html/.  Or the Post Service Officer's Guide at ://www.legion.org/documents/legion/pdf/psog_08.pdf/

Blackwater.  These ex-militaries would rather do nothing else. Some have a cause, some believe in a cause, but that is not a prerequisite. See the home page at Blackwater USA at ://www.blackwaterusa.com/   Not even a mention of violence, killing, warfare. Just customer-focused solutions. Accountability is listed. To whom? The purchaser, and Blackwater who trains them?

Hard-wired from Eden. Is that so?  See FN 3 for a ramble.  Here is another, since noone can prove what happened or not, we can speculate about rhe reason poor Adam could not be left alone. Is that so?  Will we find yet a tablet in the desert describing the poor kitty with the tin cans tied to her tail?  The Addiction That Cannot Be Named because it is so very pleasurable.

"Violent Veterans: The Big Picture," article by Helen Benedict, at Huffington Post, see ://www.huffingtonpost.com/helen-benedict/violent-veterans-the-big_b_157937.html/  Then there is the Military Rape Crisis Center - see ://www.stopmilitaryrape.org/

Testosterone. Other chemicals are addictive, why not that one? The issue is a natural one - see Germany Road Ways, Remagen and Dogs of War Accusations. Both call each other.

Is that so? Is it so entrenched, so gene-pooled and selected that we may be left with seeding the clouds with a benign counter-potion just to get along. Heck, psychiatrists are abandoning long talk sessions for chemical corrections: why not us. ha.

Stonehenge

Shall we challenge King Testosterone.

Instead of worshipping testosterone, and all the entertainment and bloodiness and posturing it provides as an outlet for macho and football or wrestling, what if we looked at the need to keep it from concentrating in places of power.  For our own survival. We are looking at what happens when testosterone is allowed to concentrate and governs. FN 1
 .
Government decisionmakers, in the family, in churches, other implementers. Is at least a balance at the top, where any decisions are made, an approach. Perhaps Obama with his high number of females in official positions is on to something.

How to define it.

Secret UN Global Leader Testosterone Monitoring Facility

.

Of course, it is absurd to think of monitoring hormone levels or other tests. But the allocation of testosterone does not always follow visible gender lines. Some women have higher testosterone probably than some men, and vice versa, That could never be implemented before taking office or exercising decisionmaking, but you get the idea. Is it the concentration of testosterone that is the issue.

Does testosterone defeat rationality as the basis for decisions where too many of the same ilk are wielding power.

Testosterone feeds on testosterone.  Creates testosteraddicts.

Is that so? That it needs to be channelled productively from the start? That is an informal observation, not scientific. You do the testing and report. The less testosterone is made accountable, as now, the more it goes awry in its undergound bunkers.

Would global aggression and posturing decrease for lack of opportunity to bloom, if dilution of testosteraddicts at the top were adopted as policy.

Deprive the oxygen of other testosterone, and would we make progress. Brainstorm.  Could we seed the clouds or negotiating table water bottles with safrole - the original hospitality, feel-good food that is a natural part of sassafras, see Sassafras and History. FN 1

We need tempering. War.  Rape. Child slaughter. Will tempering, handling testosterone with care and limiting its self-feeding, help? How so amok?  The horrors go on. Guantanamo.  Made people worse, and now they need to be let go. Had noone any foresight? Who knows. But we all are responsible. Have you a better idea.

b.  A child gets in the way of someone's abdication of responsibilty.  

ABDICATION OF RESPONSIBILITY

This is not the pleasurable addiction to force and power; as in section a.  This is the result of someone's abdication of responsibility in the name of authority

Read about the Milgram Study at ://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=95437/  Go back tg Hannah Arendt and her quotations at the "righteous cause" section - hov very "normal" pain-inflictors are.

How many stood by and let it happen.  See Petr Ginz, Places, Lens and Legacy: a Prague Child's WWII Diary.

____________________________________________________-

3.  A child gets in the way of a blur

Somebody in power cries, Righteous Cause! Be afraid!  While really feeding the addiction, and others rally without vetting. The ultimate abdication. Do your own Images search for Iraq children war.


What  is going wrong with our moral compass as men and women both, that we still  cry havoc, and respond in kind.

_______________________________________


4.  We have information.  Resources: There are lots.  But little progress. Havoc goes on,  in the home, on the battlefield, in political party plot rooms.

• UNICEF's Children in  War (United Nations Children's Fund) at ://www.unicef.org/sowc96/ciwcont.htm;   
• Children of War, promoting a radio documentary, at ://www.warchildren.org/;  
• Children In War, Rwanda, Bosnia, Israel (now needed - Children in Gaza),  
• Northern Ireland, at ://www.videoverite.tv/childreninwar/index.html;  
• Children At War, by P.W. Singer, a Google book at ://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=B_43v3j3vlMC&dq=children+in+war&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=1FQIZzQvXM&sig=eJdSiEC-92TniTv6r1ghLlWQx28&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result/ 
• Get a lesson plan and do it at home sometime, even if you do not home-school, at ://school.discoveryeducation.com/lessonplans/activities/childrenofwar/; 
• or go to the BBC with your  7-year old to find out what it was like to be child during the war in Britain, see ://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2children/

____________________________________

Solutions and Non-Solutions Intended as Seed.  Watch the outcry here. A measure of the addiction.


1.   Keep too  many men from banding together for long, without dilution.


Look around you. Prison? Ridiculous.  Putting all that testosterone together is asking for trouble, for example.  We know what the Western nuclear family has led to, with cycles of abuse.  War. All over. Keep the testosterone separated from too much contact with other testosterone, without mitigation.  Put nobody in jail as a mere punishment - only put people there who are a danger to self or others. Punish in other ways as a deterrent, like financial remuneration, indentured servitude of a kind, until debt paid or amends made.

Why do we let military men train themselves (some women join, of course - no lines are clear cut between any kind of sexuality, or dominant tendencies).  We have civilian control in theory, but that gets abdicated by other testeronicts who like to see other testosteraddicts get going. Vicarious testosterism.

But overall, is it a testosterone overdose.  No dilution at an earlier stage so that the aggression and the pleasure centers, the detachment that can result with accustomed violence. For further along a crooked road, see FN 4. 

Sassafras: The Leaves in Fall 

Ask the FDA to retest safrole, from the bark of the sassafras tree found all over, and, finding that its 1960's testing was indeed flawed, release safrole for soft drinks and water supplies and cloud seeding.

Useless. The FDA onlly looks at stuff that somebody can profit from, and safrole can't be patented. Therefore, don't test. don't sell.  Even with restrictions. Out, out!

Will never happen.  Nonetheless. Consider. Can some version of this be at least discussed. Who can tame the FDA?

.............................................


FN 1  Children as victims: 

Look at
 
Uganda. See the series of sites, books, films on "Invisible Children." See ://www.invisiblechildren.com/about/history/.  Africa's longest-running war. A email from Herbert alerted us to all the books and programs on that topic. See YouTube.

Other genocides:  You know about these by now - Nazi Germany against any non-Aryans, Gypsies, Jews, the handicapped, others.  See the children's diaries from WWII, including Anne Frank in Amsterdam - famous now, a city child in hiding; and Petr Ginz in Prague - less famous so far, but a different setting, a city child continuing his life out there, not in hiding, seeing, see Petr Ginz, Places, Lens and Legacy.

Israel-Gaza -- both sides. Each sees the attrition as necessary for the larger goal.
.................................................................

FN 2 We know that nature itself has parents eating/destroying babies. 

There seems in many species to be no recognition, once eggs have hatched, of parenthood.

There at the guppy tank, see the little eyespot babies hide in the greenery near the top. Good food for the grownups who find most anyway. Down the hatch. The distaff side spider, consuming the gent she just had the pleasure of enjoying.

Even mammal moms say no. The ewe rejecting the cuddly runt - hurry that one to the house for the bottle instead. Dads have limited attention spans. Sea lion bulls, rolling over on the small ones. It's tough being young out there. And some animals are after your nice little human baby.  See ://www.campussqueeze.com/post/Horrifying-Stories-Where-Animals-Eat-Babies.aspx

Cycles of abuse in humans, beat up the kid.  

We have the virus. In most of those abuse cases, there is even a relationship somewhere - with the mother, who may even join in; or, if there is a parenting relationship, either of both do it, emotional stress say some, PTSD, or whatever, but killing and injuring children is not rare.

 Kid in the way? Target the kid.


................................................................


FN 3. A secular view of a religious idea.  Look back at Eden.   We messed up.

• If you have a Bible in the house, whether you are or are not a religious-oriented person, look up Creation.

• The man was supposed to leave his parents and cleave to the woman elsewhere.

• That served a purpose.  Dilute the testosterone.  Break up the male concentration in families. If the guy tried to mess up the woman with her family around, the guy is toast.  She has support, a place to go if abused. Why make her work for his mother, as in some cultures.

Instead of that sensible arrangement of the woman staying put and the guy moving in, follow along here, patriarchy took over after the first folks were Out; and the guys stuck together and the women had to leave their protectors and it's all downhill from there. Even while pregnant she is away from her supports. No escape in some places.


..........................................................................

FN 4   The place for silly concepts.   A silly concept may lead somewhere. We are seriously concerned with unmitigated testosterone in war.

If you are not silly sometimes, or have no humor, do not read this. Apply the new psychiatric discorder solution (chemicals, and here a naturally occurring one, non patentable so nobody can get greedy) to this new disorder: Testosterone HyperActivity.

Try this one: putting, for example, real safrole back in root beer and sassafras tea and sarsaparilla - the original hospitality beverages, see Sassafras and History. It has worked for centuries, but was tested on rats with huge doses, and rats are naturally averse to sassafras anyway, no no wonder they reacted badly.  Perhaps retest, FDA, after all these years. Correct the flaw, if it is onw. Sassafras redemption  may just lead a sensible person to convert the concept into something workable. Bottle it - nonalcoholic so it passes muster in countries and religions otherwise frowning upon alcohol. Too much leads to ecstasy, we are told, but too much tobacco and alco also are not good, so control what you need to, bur free safrole.

 Fear not the surfacely silly, so on we go.

War Promotion: Fraud and Deception in the Selling of It

Deception in the Selling of War

Unconscionable Delay in the Revelation

Which wars would not have bloomed if a reasonable degree of transparency governed the governments seeking it. Or does ideology, once absorbed, direct reasoning to the irrational. For the people, is it true that fear trumps rational thought, so that there are no brakes on government once government instills fear in the electorate. Fear of Jews, fear of terrorists, fear of whatever.

APPLAUSE to Lawrence Wilkerson.  He had served as an aide to General Colin Powell, and went going public with his information and views on the Administration's uses and abuses of pre-invasion Iraq intelligence; and on the intelligence services' own complicity in the "hoax."

This series of deceptions was was reported in regular news, and was the subject of a PBS program, David Brancaccio, host - you can look it up on Public Broadcasting website.

His delay in revealing the deception, however, is inexcusable. Which wars would not have bloomed if people stepped up sooner to reveal the fraud.  Is career-promotion an excuse for silence? Being a team-player? To humans, yes, but for history, no.

More deconstruction of the pre-invasion Iraq myths continues. Look up deconstruction.

The Administration now trying to muzzle PBS by appointing a partisan critic of PBS, Warren Bell, to the remaining seat on the PBS board. There is little question for whom this Bell tolls. Do look him up as well.

One bad decision after another. Rampant Groupthink. Disease. Antidote needed. Transparency will do it.

Groupthink is a term used by Irving Janis in 1972, and here is a summary - faulty decisions stemming from group pressures - the pressures lead to deteriorating mental efficiency, reality connections, and making moral judgments. They ignore other choices and take irrational steps. This tends to happen when members are alike or insulated and when there are not clear steps and rules in making decisions. Look up Groupthink.

Deception promoting war? There is a link to Al Jolson singing "Tell That To The Marines" at ia311526.us.archive.org.

Domination by Diminution - Shunt Populations Aside. Marginalize the Women, War Out of Sight

The Woman, at Home

Ignorance Imposed;
Participation even by Debate Diminished.

Civil War
Perspectives, Influence Lost.

Do wars perpetuate and exacerbate, by excluding from participation those populations that may moderate the conduct and other aspects of war.

Would any side, seeking violence, ever permit a voice to those who disagree - we are thinking Darfur here, an extreme, genocidal form of violence, but the principle is the same. Internal warfare, civil wars, politics, or genocidal maniacy, what recourse is there when those in power wield it with no looking back.
.

Godey's Lady's Book and Peterson's were the Victorian era's American Ladies Home Journals, with more panache, and very little commercialism.

As is true today today, those women's magazines do not focus on world affairs: that is not the reason for being. But they instead build up the domestic, to the substantial exclusion of other balances even in the home.

Domestic life in kodachrome brights. At least we have TV, communications get in anyway. Not so then.
.

It is not surprising, then, that Godey's Ladies' Book downplayed the death of Abraham Lincoln, but it is surprising that the Civil War itself finds no voice in its pages. We offer no solution to bringing balance into war's decisions, simply by including its issues in women's magazines, but surely a responsibility on the part of the pulpies to raise topics, is part of our ignorance, and lack of voice.

.

Godey's Lady's Book for 1865 -

We offer here a re-typing of the original notice of the death of Abraham Lincoln, June 1865 edition; and at another site, a re-typing of the subsequent longer Tribute on the death of Abraham Lincoln, it appeared in the July 1865 edition, at Bogomilia, Those Restricted in Cultural Role.

Our comments at both sites focus on how groups are kept subservient by ignorance, barring them from participation in the larger culture - though some, of course, rise above. Here, the women are allowed to mourn, told how to do so, but no role other than mourner is modeled, suggested, ask no questions, just mourn.

1. Our resource. We have been examining our big leather bound volume of Godey's Lady's Book from 1865, the year's publications together, like an "Annual."

June 1865. There is the little notice of the death of Lincoln. That little box in a black frame, below. It was hastily inserted in time for publication, in June 1865, at page 557, and is followed up in July 1865 with an editorial one column in length. Then, as far as we can see, the topic disappears again.

That Notice: Little, teeny thing, in the midst of all the fashion and moralizing, oh, pass the smelling salts for even having to mention....

See here the two references to the Civil War that we can find, in the entire 1865 Annual of all the monthly subscriptions for Godey's Lady's Book 1865. There is this notice, hastily inserted to meet publication deadlines, and a single column the next month.

These are the only references we see at all in the 1865 Godey's as to the war. In our day, Vogue and Martha Stewart also do not address wars, but we have multimedia to turn to. Easy at-home access. Newspapers and posters and leaflets of the Civil War era were geared to the men, with lessened access by women who were supposed to defer.

There was protest, however, see Bogomilia, Protest Within Convention - Ten Years Married.


Our Lincoln. We are still in awe.

Here is the notice:

"We Mourn! Our Chief has Fallen!

"This is the motto that meets your eye, go where you will through the streets of Philadelphia; and we are sure that the same feeling extends to every city, town, and village in the United States.

"ABRAHAM LINCOLN IS DEAD!

"This announcement would have startled us if his death had occurred in the
course of nature; but to be shot down by the ruthless hand of an assassin, can it be wondered at that the whol country has been paralyzed!

'Murder most foul and unnatural, as in the best it is,
But this most strange, foul, and unnatural.'

"Go where you will -- through our principal streets, our courts, our alleys - you will discover a general mourning. Families who live, as we may term it, "from hand to mouth," have erected their signals of grief. It seems not only to be a mourning for the President of the United States, but a mourning for that just and good man, ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Our churches on the Sunday succeeding this sad event were all draped in black, and those who went to rejoice in Our Saviour risen (it being Easter Sunday) had to mourn for a just man fallen."

UNQUOTE. That's it for June of the Godey's Lady's Book account of the death of Lincoln. A just man, and we are so sad. Sad, so sad. Just so, so sad. Look at the non-tribute in light of the actual trauma.


1. Domination can be by gunship, or by simply imposing ignorance, depriving a population of a forum. Diminish the very idea of a population being useful in a certain regard, or having insights that may help solve a problem.


Diminishing the importance of information, impose ignorance. Reducing a population to a mere accessory while others decide their fates. Depriving people of a forum.


The times. For a poignant view of the exclusion of women from contemporary issues, see the March 1865 short story from another women's publication of the day, Peterson's, at Peterson's Story: Ten Years Married.

So, from Godey's, life was usual, no need to burden the women, and they were led to see Abraham Lincoln as a mere "just man" who was untimely taken. The Women of the North and South. We understand that both sides would have subscribed to Godey's Lady's Book, because its publication (and Peterson's) commenced in the 1840's or so. Peterson's also ignored the war, but there is a notice or two at the back for collecting clothing for a blind soldier's family, things like that.

Domination of a population, or segment of a population, takes many forms.

Domination happens

• when the tops keep the bottoms ignorant,
• when the tops pretend there is nothing to worry about,
• when the tops pretend there is nothing that the bottoms can or should do,
• when the tops bar the bottoms from discussion, considering issues, weighing their own world.

2. Exclude a population from the national discussion. Domination.

There was no right to vote, no forum with clout for an exchange of views.

Here is the tiny notice. Even with publication deadlines, this could have been given more space.Lincoln Death Notice, Godey's Lady's Book
Are you squinting yet?
You know the circumstances: The Civil War.

Was this even wartime? Who could tell. Omicron* would have no idea.
Depriving people of voting rights is one way to see that voices are not heard. Another is to diminish what they see and hear, and can respond to.

How did that add to the cumulative effect of keeping women ignorant, so there voice could not moderate the era's extremes. Was there any other forum available to women of the leisure or nearly leisure classes that Godey's addressed, where they could learn and exchange ideas, explore options. Limit access to information, in ways that would foster their discussion, in their media, and they are effectively shut out. Foster the cultural idea that it is not culturally acceptable for that population to pursue those issues.

3. Now, look at what really was happening, nothing to worry the little women about:

Discussion focus: The American Civil War 1861-1865.

Rough chronology of events, Civil War, late 1864-1865

• November 1864 - Union General Sherman in Atlanta GA, begins march to the sea. President Lincoln re-elected
• December 1864 - General Sherman takes Savannah
• January 1865 - Confederacy Falls
• February 1865 - General Sherman's continued March through Confederate Georgia. Reconciliation opportunity: Talks offered. But Confederate President Davis insists on precondition to reconciliation talks with President Lincoln, requiring recognition of Confederacy independence. Lincoln would not. No talks ensued.
• March 1865 - President Lincoln's second Inaugural, address.
• April 1865 - 4/1 Richmond VA falls. 4/09 Confederate General Lee surrenders at Appomatox Courthouse, in Virginia. 4/14 President Lincoln assassinated, Washington DC; further final surrenders.
• May 1865 - Confederate President Davis captured
• November 1865 -Following 8-10/1865 trial, in Nov. the hanging of Confederate superintendent of Andersonville Prison
• December 18 - Thirteenth Amendment passed. This abolished slavery
  

See its topics, chronology (our interest is as of 1865), and issues involving total populations at ://americancivilwar.com/. Among other battles, events. FN 1.

4. Back to domination issues. We are interested in subpopulations and war here. Who has the right to make decisions about who gets what information and how? Obviously, the dominator does. And does.

How do history and culture shape roles, become self-fulfilling prophecies. How do influential propaganda journals for particular social classes - here, those upscale women who subscribed to Godey's Lady's Book and other journals directed at well-to-do households, address the issue for its subscribers, again, wealthy women.

Research other topics at that site, but here we note that there were women whose roles were pivotal to aspects of the Civil War: see ://americancivilwar.com/women/women.html.

And Godey's mentions none of them. Again, the volume is big and the print is tiny, but we have seen no references yet.

Listed there are:

• Clara Barton,
• Harriet Tubman,
• Harriet Beecher Stowe,
• Lucretia Mott,
• Rose O'Neal Greenhow, there were women soldiers, other women formed the "Sick Soldiers' Relief Society," and
• Louisa May Alcott volunteered there; women were in manufacturing, supply lines, and still slaves.

5. Rant. Yet, look what was given street creds -what about this Great War in America, the Civil War. What was deemed important for well-to-do women to think about. What effect did that decision have on roles of women and women's intellect.

Those who read the 1985 Annual - the volume of the separate monthly magazines from January through December 1865 - why, don't bother yourself with the world, honey. We've got some nice short stories for you, and patterns and hairstyles and a picture of a happy negro.

War (not the real topic of this little interchange, but it comes to mind):

"How do you know that it will be pleasant? "It will! I will make it so."

That an excerpt just happened upon and totally out of context, at our page 323, from a story called, "The Recognition," by one Amy Graham, Philadelphia, April 1865. It appears after a nice piece of music to play on the piano, and after a story entitled, "Poor Relations."


.............................................................................................
* Omicron. This you can't miss. Even if you missed it then, tune in now. Cordic and Company. Pittsburgh early-morning radio show, the '50's; characters making cameo appearances in the AM included Omicron. See ://www.regecordic.com/; http://cordic-and-co.com/; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regis_Cordic; http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08179/892971-294.stm

Public Interest Battlegrounds: Combining Common Good with Property Rights

The War of Public Interest Against Private Property Rights

A little song without words.

At least, not many

Keep going.















































































































Oops.















The dump out back, by the Metacomet Trail.


































Development. Personal Aggrandizement.

Davids become Goliaths.

Palatial-Status disease (PPD).

The Hartford area is particularly afflicted.














Kiss a frog, get a frog.

See Hello, Fodder: Right to Commons, Ridgeline Development.

The Battle of Loos 1915 WWI - The War, The Missing, The Dead, The Misidentified; The Grief. Rudyard Kipling's son Jack - Poem, "Sea Warfare"

The family. Each death a shape-changer for each family. A personal and remembered banner, in many cases, to raise against the maw. Later generations still seek them out, leave a pebble on top anyway. The regimental record, in a clothbound book that reads like a novel, accounts of attacks and bravery, and, finally, "McConaghey fell." Find your own records at the Documentation Center at Ypres, a/k/a Ieper, over the border into Belgium, not far.

Lt. Maurice McConaghey, Royal Scots Fusiliers, cousin distantly, buried in cemetery #648 or so, near Arras, France, WWI

For Rudyard Kipling's family, death came closer - an adored son. Also near Arras.

The Battle of Loos, France. Near Arras, see map of the northern France WWI battle areas at ://www.webmatters.net/maps/ww1_map_fr_belg.htm. Here, even the Germans were astounded that the British troops were advancing without adequate cover, and against machine guns. There were 50,000 dead after the few weeks of that battle. See://www.firstworldwar.com/battles/loos.htm.

The soldier. At home, meet the family of one Jack Kipling, who was missing in battle for two years, and his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Rudyard Kipling, and his sister, see ://www.firstworldwar.com/poetsandprose/kipling.htm. PBS just showed this specific family reeling from a son missing in that battle - Masterpiece's "My Boy Jack," on PBS 4/20/08 ://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/myboyjack/kipling.html. See the father using his influence to enable his son to enlist underage and nearsighted, his going to war as the boy wanted, the family's search for news, interviewing many returning wounded, even (TV version) being told the lie that the battle was a victory.

The body, finally "found" in the 1990's, may have been incorrectly identified. See ://www.aftermathww1.com/kipling.asp

The grief and the poem. The ending of the TV version: Worth seeing in itself, and hearing over and over. Rudyard Kipling speaking his grief through his 1916 poem, "Sea Warfare." It is in the language of a naval death, but echoes in any war death.

1. Read it at the Masterpiece site.

2. Or here at ://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/the-great-war-and-its-aftermath-the-son-who-haunted-kipling-413795.html, Jonathan Brown's 2006 overview.

3. Or here - In pdf - the original Kipling report from 1916. Rudyard Kipling was not home with his family when Jack went missing. Instead, he was a war reporter in France, and his topic was the Battle of Jutland - off Denmark's coast. The poem first appeared in that report. See ://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/jutland.htm. Read the Kipling report as published in the New York Times on October 10, 1916, at ://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F02E2DC1F3FE233A2575AC1A9669D946796D6CF

The news story will come up as pdf, so go directly to it with its old typeface, a newspaper experience, at ://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9F02E2DC1F3FE233A2575AC1A9669D946796D6CF&oref=slogin
and read the poem and report there.

4. Better yet, here is the Project Gutenberg entire ebook of "Sea Warfare," see://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page, at ://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/7/6/8/17689/17689.htm

5. Or read it here. Mr. Kipling's poem from that source, available for this use:

DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND

(1916)

"Have you news of my boy Jack?"
_Not this tide._
"When d'you think that he'll come back?"
_Not with this wind blowing, and this tide._

"Has any one else had word of him?"
_Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing and this tide._

"Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?"
_None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he didn't shame his kind
Not even with that wind blowing and that tide._

_Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide,
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!_

Roles: The Punisher; The Enforcer; The Harpy; The Monster; The Force Gene; The Torturer. Needed for War or any Dominance.

Wars. Is this true? Wars could not get started or proceed without a) successful propaganda, the emotional selling of a product ideology; and b) people willing to take on the role of forcer.

What is included in the concept of War: Here, include all conflicts - overt and covert. The sneaky personal taking advantage, with the victim unaware, and the up-front "I dare you." In politics, how candidates oppose each other. In families, bitter adversarial divorces. In any human arena, a battlefield, self-interest, ideologies going at it. Propaganda creates justifications for genocide, holocaust.

Gender Wars. The Witches' Cage. Levoca, Slovakia

War Roles. Are they inbred? From classical and ancient times, to now, it appears that the force gene is in all of us. See http://martinlutherstove.blogspot.com/2008/04/genesis-and-potter-examined-for-roots.html. There are some whose constitutions will lead them to assert force to get what they want, or think they deserve. The rule, for those like that, is to do what is needed to knock someone else out of the game of a dominance.

The force gene. In traditionally understood war settings, the force gene is overt. In politics, the force gene shows in how a campaign is conducted. That is a good indication of how that person will deal internationally, and when in charge otherwise. If they swiftboat , see Joy of Equivocating, Swiftboating during a campaign, they will resort to that distortion approach with other countries to get their way.

The force gene may well not be the best way to get a job done, but that is another issue.

What does taking on the role of forcer itself require. What kind of person.

Taking on the role of forcer requires that the person absorb the propaganda about how the work is "right" and disregard any equities that might offset strict application of some law or ideology.

The forcer works best when able to avoid stress from cognitive dissonance.

For cognitive dissonance, see www.learningandteaching.info/learning/dissonance.htm. It means roughly: the discomfort of finding that our present view may well not fit this new situation, or new information. We have to pit the old mindset against the new information - then, having to choose - to open to the new information and modify ideas, or to shut the mind's doors against reconsideration, for the sake of personal comfort, or to others, seeming "consistent" or "strong."

Could you be a torturer? What does it take to stay consistent, or press an idea, regardless. The person must block out these possibilities:

• a) why the criticized event occurred. That there may a reasonable excuse for the behavior if considered. Think of the extreme example - a medieval child thief and the apple, chop off the hand that stole, or hear that he was supporting a crippled parent and several starving siblings; or
• b) whether the target person is personally innocent but the force serves some other governmental or other group goal in targeting a group;
• c) what role the punishers and judgers themselves had, by act or omission, in fostering the behavior of the "bad-actor" now in need of Correction (suburban whites going into the ghetto for drugs or sex; obsessed with oil and now in a corner because no recourse, they think); or
• d) the nature of the offense. A broken law, but perhaps the law itself doesn't work and hasn't been enforced reasonably, so there is a long period of governmental condoning breaches. Someone can always define "harm," but the idea here is who to blame first: laws unlooked up and unenforced, reliance, etc.

The image of torture. This is dispositive.

If you excite at the idea of inflicting pain upon those who cannot then defend themselves. regardless of what you think they did, or they actually did, and there has been no adjudication by a disinterested judicial entity (not your boss) to keep you from simply venting your force gene, you could be a torturer.

If you recoil, you have compassion and humanity. You are not a torturer. The latter is patriotic.

The gray area: If you inflict the pain after adjudication by an independent judicial body, then you also are patriotic, we suppose, but we already know torture produces bad information, so why do it. The prism of war. The rotating prom ball.

You cannot get into this site without authorization, so get your own and enter here ://www.jstor.org/pss/2264988. Even non-democracy groups decry the practice of torture, see ://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jun2004/bush-j26.shtml;

4. Sneaky force. Force in political terms means propaganda again, and to distort and spin until no-one knows what was originally said. Death to reason or truth. Theft of consent by depriving people of the information they need to make a detached, intelligent, fully informed opinion.

Texas. How does idea of theft of consent, see Hello, Fodder, Hello, Buyer, Theft of Consent work in wars of religion - as in the current Texas Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints ("FLDS") polygamy and child exploitation (alleged) war against the authorities. What is our right to propagandize our children to our sexual and other advantage?

Try this as a theory:

Inculcation of children as to behavioral and moral values without providing an adult opportunity to experience otherwise and go elsewhere before sexual imprinting is imposed, is theft of consent. See the Amish, and their Rumspringa - casual look at ://bloghd.blogspot.com/2004/07/amish-vs-heimish.html.

For a serious lo0k, see NPR at ://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2002/may/amish/.

So: If there is meaningful opportunity to say no when one can, and before harm to the child who cannot say no (sexual contact or intercourse) is done, and so the person can indeed leave freely, then the person's consent upon return may be valid.

Otherwise, no. Theft of consent. We imprint like ducks, we do.

Old terms for the Forcer regardless of merit: The Harpy.

Earliest references in Greek mythology show the Harpies as beautiful, seductive, originally. They look good. Later, they become monsters. See ://library.thinkquest.org/26264/inhabitants/underworld/site405.htm. Yes, winged, crone Monsters with huge crooked talons, carrying off people to the Underworld or otherwise tormenting them, or snatching their only food from their grasp. Sometimes they take the names of the Storm Winds - Aelio, Celaeno, and Ocypete. See ://www.pantheon.org/articles/h/harpies.html.

Unbridled storm energy has always been frightening, see the Babylonian Creation Myth and the Goddess Tiamat, with a similar theme of storm energies unloosed - see Martin Luther's Stove, Babylonian Enuma Elish, Goddess Tiamat.

See also Furies, the Fates. Females with power. Visit ://monsters.monstrous.com/harpies.htm

Testosterone and torture? We have info on testosterone and risk-taking, as in stock market, early wins, then they lose because they cannot stop. See //www.livescience.com/health/080414-financial-traders.html.

So: Take out of policy and torture-infliction positions all those whose testosterone levels may lead them to exercise that testosterone instead of rationality. Test for it, just like steroids. A civilized society controls its testosterone addicts, and fosters a compassion that may defuse instead of multiply the opponent's dedication against the policy maker.

Are some nominations of persons for the monster category classically correct? Probably so, but that is not synonymous with discretion because the bulldozers and clear-cutters are waiting. H may be a H but who's to say.

Argonne Forest, WWI France: The Forgotten Cemetery; Black Regiments; Military Racism; "Cher Ami" Carrier Pigeon, and The Lost Battalion

American Cemetery, Argonne Forest, France

Racism in WWI and the Black Regiments. The American military in World War I had regiments of black soldiers, but hardly used them despite their fine record in the Civil War.

So, three black regiments from the American 93rd Division retained that identity but fought here at the Argonne-Meuse offensive WWI with the French 161st Division, wearing French uniforms and using French equipment, see ://www.historyofwar.org/articles/battles_meuse_argonne.html. The French saw them as no different from other American troops. See more on the black regiments at ://www.armyhistory.org/armyhistorical.aspx?pgID=868&id=103&exCompID=32.

We do not know if the dead from the black regiments are buried here, or elsewhere with the French. We would need the names, and from there could find out. Trying.

We step all over our own vast human resources for the sake of ego or dominance even when we die as a result. Could those soldiers, fighting with the American army, have saved American lives.

Forgotten battles. Who learned about the Argonne in school. Raise your hands. No-one recalls? These conflicts can be brought back to mind in unexpected ways. This time, as to the Argonne, through Hollywood, and its incidental choice of WWI battle for a comedy football film. It deserves more attention.

See the recent film, "Leatherheads," with George Clooney and Renee Zellweger, ://www.leatherheadsmovie.com/ and at least hear about "Argonne" and see some bits of entertainment fake footage as part of the plot. Then get real.

Cemetery - forgotten. Casualties of this Argonne offensive for Americans: 117,000, or 40% of the expeditionary forces during the course of American involvement in the war as a whole. Of those, 49,709 were killed. See ://www.historyofwar.org/articles/battles_meuse_argonne.html.

After its important role in WWI, see its beautifully kept, huge cemetery, empty. See it at ://www.abmc.gov/cemeteries/cemeteries/ma.php. There were no other visitors when we were there. Usually in any large memorial area there are people even toward the end of the day. Not here. The World's roads and interest have passed it by. Meticulous landscaping and care, but where are the people. Worth the drive. Monumental, agony there, but who remembers. We need to.

There were also Americans at the battle at Belleau Wood: They cleared a strategic region, took machine guns, part of the overall Argonne offensive. A search for that will give details.

So thank you, George Clooney and Renee Zellweger, for bringing this Argonne battle back home to mind again.

Overview: The Battle of Argonne Forest. This was part of the larger Meuse-Argonne offensive, France, near Verdun, World War I. We recall no-one in the film telling people where it was. Many confuse Argonne with the Ardennes, Alsace, part of the Battle of the Bulge in WWII. See ://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/7-8/7-8_cont.htm Different forests.

The battle includes Belleau Wood.

The Argonne offensive is known to historians for the

• Great acts of endurance and courage of the leaders and soldiers; and
  
• Its The Lost Battalion, 700 started, then 500+ trapped for five days, and 194 alive at the end; and
  
• The carrier pigeon who saved 200 American lives, "Cher Ami." See ://www.homeofheroes.com/wings/part1/3b_cherami.html

American Expeditionary Forces were sent there in World War I 1918, after finally entering the war and getting prepared. This country had not anticipated war, and was not ready. France and the British and its colonial-derived allies had fought for 3-4 years before the Americans came in.

The Americans undertook a four-month push from near Verdun against the Germans; the British, Australians and the French needing time to regroup and repush after their four years of fighting, and from the other side of the German salient (a bulge in their line into French territory).

Read about it and see maps at ://www.homeofheroes.com/wings/part1/3_lostbattalion.html. Imagine the chaos, hunger, confusion as German lines and Allied mixed in the night. Carrier pigeons (the most famous is "Cher Ami") used for communications because runners could not get through. And the bravery, optimism and sense of humor of Captain George McMurtry of Pittsburgh.

An ultimate victory for the American troops and the other Allies, but at huge cost. The Allies needed to break through to the Hindenburg line, the last defense line for the German war effort, but the Germans at Argonne were well entrenched in the forest. Read about it at ://www.firstworldwar.com/features/pathoffire.htm. American General Pershing, largely the 77th Division. American troops as the anvil, the British and the French as the hammers, says the article.

How to get there. This area has been a crossroads for invasions for centuries.

Castle, at nearby Sedan, France

Warfare has moved from the winner having the highest walls, as here at Sedan by the Argonne, to the winner (for a time, at least), being the best dug in - WWI and WWII trench warfare.

We had driven the 26 miles or so from the battletrenches of WWI Verdun, a side trip to this castle at Sedan (medieval roots, then on to the Napoleons) to see the American Cemetery from the Argonne, following little signs to American Cemetery, on and on, no kilometer distance markers.

World War I songs come to mind, especially this one -

Over there. Over there....
The Yanks have forgotten,
The Yanks have forgotten,
The Yanks have forgotten
That their boys died over there. *
.......................................................................................
* See ://www.firstworldwar.com/audio/overthere.htm. Hear it, vintage, at ://www.worldwar1.com/media/overa.wav. Take time from your Blackberry to go back. George M. Cohan. See his grave at Woodlawn, Bronx, NY. Always fresh flowers there. See about him at ://www.musicals101.com/cohanbio1.htm. The schools can't teach history, but we can. And now, let us present, Iraq. How long before soldiers who died there are also forgotten, as seems to be the rule in battle history.

Hero Roles: The Messenger. Incoming! Types, and Reaction

What Saved The Day
The Carrier Pigeon
The Runner

Getting the Message Through.
But What is the Reception for the Messenger

The special status of the messenger. But the reception may depend on the message. What war film or battle study is complete without some messenger getting through enemy lines alive enough to get the code through. Extrapolate from a battle message to a political one, a social message that just has to get through - amid the rockets, the arrows, the kitchen sinks being thrown.

If you studied the classics - ancient Greek and Roman culture, and before; some concepts arising about messengers today are familiar.

1. Modern messenger. True tale.

Cher Ami was the carrier pigeon in the employ of the American Signal Corps who saved the lives of 200 American soldiers at the Battle of the Argonne, WWI, see ://www.homeofheroes.com/wings/part1/3b_cherami.htmll and ://www.si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/nmah/cherami.htm. See the Argonne at Argonne Forest, WWI, Cher Ami.

2. Ancient Messenger. False.

Here is a story about one you thought was true, but is improbable. The runner after the ancient Greek battle against the Persians at Marathon - we (I) were told that one Pheidippides ran 26 miles to report the victory, then dropped dead. Wrong. Start with Wikipedia, :://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheidippides. Then go to ://www.helleniccomserve.com/pheidippides.html and learn that, yes, there was a runner but it was from Athens to Sparta to try to get the Spartans to help against the Persians in a coming battle. Sparta was in the midst of a festival, however, and declined until the full moon, so the runner's run reason ran out.

Did you know that "marathon" means "fennel" as in fennel field? And fragrant feet?

3. Advocating for messengers. Don't kill the messenger for bringing bad news.

Don't Shoot The Messenger, or Don't Kill The Messenger. The bearer of bad tidings reports at his peril. Anger, disbelief, despair wait. Where did the phrase originate.

3.1 Sophocles, Ancient Greece.

Go back to Sophocles, the Greek philosopher in 442 BC, who wrote a play called "Antigone." These words appear: ..."[N]o one likes a messenger who comes bearing unwelcome news with him...." The lines are either 320, for one translation; or 277, for another. See it at ://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/sophocles/antigone.htm.

3.2 Shakespeare, England.

Fast forward to 1598, and Shakespeare's play, Henry IV Part II at; and another play, Antony and Cleopatra 1606-07, where Cleopatra has learned from a messenger that Antony has married in Rome. She says,

"Though it be honest, it is never good
To bring bad news: give to a gracious message
An host of tongues; but let ill tidings tell
Themselves when they be felt."

See ://www.shakespeare-literature.com/Antony_and_Cleopatra/10/html.

3.3 Oscar Wilde.

1854-1900 - "Don't shoot the piano player, he's doing the best he can." Find the Oscar Wilde at ://www.german-films.de/en/germanfilmsquaterly/previousissues/topicalsubjects/focuson/pianoplayer/index.html; See also ://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/texas/entry/please_do_not_shoot_the_piano_player_he_is_doing_his_best/popik.com/index.php/texas/entry/please_do_not_shoot_the_piano_player_he_is_doing_his_best/and Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900 -

See these at ://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/3/messages/520.html

3.4 Barack Obama.

Is it to be true that his message is not financed by special interests primarily; that this messenger has comparative independence, telling people what they need to know, not what they want to hear. From GM to Canadensis, PA.

Watch the flak. A messenger. What will the reception be.

Incoming! Incoming! Leader on the loose! To be updated.

Ideological Battleground - Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo, Humanism, The Reformation, and The Popes

The Sistine Chapel, at Vatican City, Rome, see ://www.christusrex.org/www1/sistine/0-Tour.html FN 1.

This is a battleground site. For battles, we think of geographic battle fields. Yet, the topic here is Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel, an intellectual, religious matter. His intent in incorporating anomalies in the frescoes that stop many people in their tracks. How does that qualify as a battle field. Yet, it is.

Here in the Sistine Chapel is a battle for minds.

The Sistine Chapel, the Vatican, the Renaissance, see what the communications were, mind to mind in the wind, when the Reformation was already barking at the established church's institutional heels.

That climate blowing in the wind, and other ideas are said to be at work in Michelangelo's conception and execution of ideas at the Sistine. See for example, ://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/books/la-bk-owchar11-2008may11,0,6132963.story.
See also Hello, Fodder: Metacomet's Lament, Ridgeline Development.

The post is not misplaced. Battles for hearts and minds can be more significant than some wars for limited arbitrary acreage: where arrows, or cannon, rained and reigned.

Look at history's wars: in the times of Shakespeare, Reformation, Counter-Reformation, Rabelais, Durer, Holbein, Macchiavelli, Thomas More, Titian, Chaucer, Henry VII. Read about them all at the overview of history's mark-makers at ://www.cumulo-nimbus.ca/ch2.htm

This whirlpool of conflicting and expanding thought had to affect the Sistine Chapel. And it did. This historic enclave of the Roman Catholic Papacy. The Sistine Chapel. Is this an unlikely battleground for anything? Yes. But on its walls and ceilings are reflected some of the most wrenching battles of our culture. Some kinds of warfare are subtle, resisting rather than confronting,. Sometimes, actors' acts and omissions carry meaning only to those who look for it, knowing what to look for.

This thumbnail of a portion of the Sistine Chapel, near the Altar end, is fair use from the larger at ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Creation_of_stars_and_planets.jpg. What do you see in this authoritarian environment. Are there elements of resistance to something going on, just above the heads of those below. Does any resistance effort have to work this indirect way, or risk obliteration. What was Michelangelo thinking, doing. Good heavens!

Michelangelo had been influenced since youth by the philosophies and criticisms of the Humanists against the Church. He seems to express views inconsistent with dogma and the church's rigid compartmentalizing of theological interpretation, and especially sexuality, for example. Look closely, here at the Sistine Chapel.

As an overview, we see Michelangelo ignoring established texts and dogma, in favor of his own artistic interpretation. See issues at Martin Luther's Stove, Michelangelo and the Sistine, Foggy Texts.

• Favoring the Jewish tradition. He at the outset refused to paint the contracted for 12 Apostles, and engaged in paintings about the Old Testament instead - he favored the Jewish tradition over the Christ-ian. The Ceiling is all Old Testament, with no dogma, no trinity, no all the doctrinal bits that the Church used to impose its views.

• Taking more personal potshots at the Papal authorities. He painted God at Creation literally mooning the altar where the Popes and clergy would be most often - see the painting of the Creation of the Moon and Stars. Read about the stories circulating at the time (see below) about Pope Julius' warfare and crudities, text corruption in scripture, self-interest and enrichment. Remember that the Reformation was about then - Martin Luther was born in 1483, the year the Sistine was completed (ceiling repainted later by Michelangelo) and died in 1546. These conflicts in religion were in the wind.

History of mooning. The "mooning" is interesting because the practice has a long history, including in the military. Wars and moons. That history apparently includes mooning a) by Greeks at the Crusaders at Constantinople 1204; and b) at the Battle of Crecy in 1346, Norman soldiers baring their backsides to Edward III's English archers when Edward had taken Caen and was on the way to Crecy (not a happy ending for some Normans), see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooning. The practice has new supporters on the athletic field. See ://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/sport/football.html?in_page_id=1779&in_article_id=492107

Surely these stories made their way around in local lore - and here we are at the Creation painting, views of the painter aimed at those in power, by using a timeless gesture.

Specifically, look at the paintings yourself. Take this idea slowly.

See if you agree that there are changes to scripture that are focused on personal interpretation and preference -- thus Humanistic (personal views are ok, no other authority-intermediaries required) and undermining of authority that would provide one interpretation. Go to //www.christusrex.org/www1/sistine/0-Tour.html, and click on each painting to see. Or do an Images search, and enlarge.

• The serpent in the Creation painting is shown as a woman, when the literal Bible account refers to the snake as "he"; so Eve here was tempted by another woman - an unusual twist, and, if the snake is the "fallen angel," then that fallen angel also was a woman. Try to make sense of the complications there. Was Michelangelo oriented to his own sex, //socrates58.blogspot.com/2007/01/was-michelangelo-homosexual.html; and, if so, does that make a difference here?
  

• Eve is shown as being banished, when the literal Biblical account says "the man" was banished (this is fun to look up). See Martin Luther's Stove, Genesis and the Potter Examined (a short read-aloud play); also note as you read Genesis that clothing was provided by God before the banishing, but the two are shown nude here. Still.
  

• God is shown reaching out a finger to give life to the man. But the man is clearly alive already. And reaching back. Where did that finger touch idea come from? And there is a gap there - who knows if the fingers ever met, if the gap was bridged. Judging from history, whatever God intended to pass on, could well have never made it - such as compassion, for example. The finger is ambivalent - does it ever reach and touch, or not - there is a gap that remains. The Biblical account refers to God's breath breathed into the man, not a finger outstretched anywhere. We like the the idea that God tried to pass some compassion into the guy, and never made it. Obviously. Overall, it ain't there. Greed aplenty, me-firstness, but not reciprocity. God's error.
  

• Jesus is shown judging at the Final Judgment painting (replacing, we understand, a painting of the assumption) ultimately done by Michelangelo, at the behest of another Pope, and at the altar wall but some 23 years after Michelangelo had completed the ceiling; But this is a distortion of scripture. Jesus disfavored Judging and said, "Judge not," etc. It may be coming - says he, warning everybody to shape up - and probably is, says the church - but where is Jesus going to do the judging? See the timing of this Wall painting, and begin to see it as Michelangelo's support for the reformation (ceiling portions) and then protest against the violence of the counter-reformation, then in full swing. See both ideas at Martin Luther's Stove: Michelangelo and the Sistine.

• God is shown exposing his back parts as part of the Creation painting; where that actual act was prescribed by God in Exodus 33:23 - where God tells Moses that Moses could not look on the face of God, lest he die, but Moses shall see God's back parts but God's face shall not be seen. See your own King James Version (by the time of the Revised Standard Version in 1952, this had been edited out to read that God said that Moses "shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen." See full discussion at Joy of Equivocating, Propaganda by Translation, Sistine. *
  

Context. So, with that in mind, go back in time to 1508. Are those incidents just pranks, careless, uncaring, or intentional as resistance to the authority of the Church by this particular painter-sculptor.

A conflict had been brewing between Roman Catholic dogma and doctrine; vs. a Religious Humanism that surged during the 15th Century Renaissance. Michelangelo, the Italian sculptor and painter, had studied Humanism extensively, see the Content section at p://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sistine_Chapel_ceiling#cite_note-Gold-3.

Conflict. The Roman Catholic Church taught that humanity was sinful, flawed, and had access to the deity only through fixed institutional intermediaries. Humanism, however, taught that humanity was potentially noble, mutually responsive and responsible, and had available direct access to the deity, no intermediaries needed.

About the Sistine Chapel: It was finished in 1483, with many artists contributing to the wall paintings and other areas. See FN 2 for a broad overview.

Michelangelo's commission: The Ceiling and the context of the commission.

In 1508, another pope, Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo Buonarotti to repaint the ceiling. Pope Julius is known as "The Warrior Pope" - military-minded, more interested in politics than theology, and nephew of Pope Sixtus IV. He solidified the Papal States, and fended off French encroachments, and used Swiss Troops for another battle (origin of the Swiss Guards, the Beefeaters at the Vatican??). See ://historymedren.about.com/library/who/blwwjulius2.htm.

There is a particular quote identified as from Julius at this essay, and with footnotes so you can check it out, at://touritaly.org/magazine/people01/jul01.htm. The quote, if so, underscores his competitiveness, as he compares anatomy parts to that end. Noting his charging into battle on horseback and in armor.

Humanism intervening. What the Pope wanted was not what he got. The theme for the ceiling was to be the Twelve Apostles.

However, Michelangelo did not do that. See ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sistine_Chapel_ceiling.Here is where Humanism and Michelangelo's mindset may have intersected.

• Erasmus influence. A prominent humanist and critic of the Church living at the time, the scholar and writer Desiderius Erasmus, had little regard for Pope Julius, see ://www.studyworld.com/desiderius_erasmus.htm. Look up his essay, re "The Praise of Folly" - monks are beggars, Pope no way like Apostles, etc. Yet he is described as tolerant and a pacifist, so his criticisms were quiet. See Erasmus and thoughts on using spiritual interpretations of the ancients to make moral ideas pertinent, at www.britannica.com/eb/article-59230/Desiderius-Erasmus#239702.hook.

• Savonarola influence. A monk, Savonarola was known for his fiery preaching against the corruption of the Church. Savonarola and his writings and sermons were also familiar to Michelangelo. See Savonarola at ://www.webpak.net/~westgoth/Paul5.html

• Other Religious Humanist Influences. See documents and discussion of the variances in texts and interpretations at ://www.loc.gov/exhibits/vatican/humanism.html; and the irreconcilable differences at ://www.ibiblio.org/expo/vatican.exhibit/exhibit/c-humanism/Hum_theology.html
  

1512 - Michelangelo completed the ceiling. No changes were made to his work by the Popes, we understand. And the Reformation ripened.

The Altar Wall area - The Last Judgment, painted some 23 years later - in the midst of the counter-Reformation.

Here, it looks like the Pope got more than he bargained for. The extremes of pain and suffering and threats of loss of eternal life show how the Church was warring the Reform-minded - so extreme as to be a criticism of the tactics.

1535- Pope Paul III Farnese commissioned Michelangelo to paint the "Last Judgment" over the altar. Note this was not entirely voluntary - Michelangelo was not allowed to refuse to do it. This is some 23 years after he finished the ceiling. The Counter-Reformation was in play, and the Church interested in ensuring no believer went astray. See ://landru.i-link-2.net/shnyves/The_Damned_Michelangelo.html.

This Last Judgment, however, at the altar wall, is the very scene being mooned, by the painting of the Creation of Moon and Stars. Paint what you have to, but think what you like, Michelangelo? Will we ever know.
.......................................................................
FN 1 Plan. At this Sistine Chapel site, ://www.christusrex.org/www1/sistine/0-Tour.html, click on each different section to see the paintings, and in detail or overview. There also is a basic map. We are focusing on the ceiling here, but you may want to see it all.

FN 2 Chapel Chronology: 1475-1483 - The Sistine Chapel had been built by Pope Sixtus IV, and it was special because it conformed to measurements of King Solomon's Temple.

Other Wall paintings: J's life (some events) and New Testament and Old Testament themes. By a variety of artists; Subjects include as to J: baptism, temptation, leper miracle, calling apostles, sermon on mount, giving keys to St. Peter, last supper, resurrection; popes included in the wall of the life of J, and the wall of the life of Moses.

Lunettes and spandrels - ancestors of J.

Ceiling edges - prophets and sybils (pagan prophetesses, see ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibyl.See there the Libyan and Delphic Sybils at the Sistine)

..................................................................................................

* Biblical sexuality. Does inserting the mooning at Creation even suggest that this is a bona fide act of intimacy, as was later offered to Moses as a substitute for seeing God's face. The only change is that Michelangelo shows it as instituted long before Moses, as part of Creation itself. Is homosexuality perhaps in Michelangelo's view - and even in the view of the Church that has condoned it for a millenium apparently, not scripturally forbidden universally, in all contexts. Go back to the traditionally cited portions that say God doesn't like homosexuality, and see if there isn't a context to it each time. We need to look at each context, because we see here that even God sealed relationship in that kind of way. Researchers, your turn.

Ireland - Battle of the Boyne - Protestant vs. Catholic, and English occupation

Here, a religious battle 1690 Ireland- see Catholics vs. Protestants at ://www.irelandseye.com/aarticles/history/events/dates/ch5.shtm. William of Orange claiming the English throne, the Protestant, see://www.bcpl.net/~cbladey/orange.htmland; and James II also claiming the throne, the Catholic, see ://www.essortment.com/battleofthebo_rrzj.htm.
Read both sides at ://www.bcpl.net/~cbladey/battle.html

Echoing today. This is a place-holder post, because the main interest here is how the Battle of the Boyne, and its cultural memory, is triggering ongoing violence in Ireland just as the 1389 Battle of Kosovo in Serbia (Orthodox Christian vs. Ottoman, and Ottomans won), with the Albanian ethnic majority (Muslim) now claiming independence and Serbians rioting in Belgrade, 2/21/08, to protest.

Are we allowed to say that the timing of the US recognition of an independent Kosovo at this particular time, when a few month's consideration and discussion could have been prudent, smacks of political opportunism, a distraction in an election year, or is that forbidden? See Hello, Fodder: Serbia and Woodrow Wilson.

War memories and uniforms. See the panoply of uniforms at ://www.warplay.com/Warplay14-Historical%20Links.htm. Were the British at the Battle of the Boyne wearing Red Coats at that time? This is from a parade in our town, commemorating the Revolutionary War here, and shows only that people like war memories and dress-up, and their memories may be affected by patriotic overlays.

Kosovo Independence: And the 1389 Battle of Kosovo Plain, Kosovo Polje, Battle of Kosovo

Meet The Battle of Kosovo Plain in 1389.
.
Our understanding so far is that the Orthodox Christians were led by their King Lazar (was it Prince?) of Serbia in trying to hold back the Ottoman invasions. However, the King had a vision that if he did not fully oppose the oncoming Turks, he would be assured of entering Heaven. So he, in his tent at the battlefield, held back. By this view, he martyred his troops. For background, see a rough chronology of Kosovo's history, with some rough-hewn concept overviews at other sites, including Europe Road Ways, Kosovo I, History of an Evolving Identity, and Europe Road Ways, Kosovo II, Legend Overtaking Fact.

Significance. To the Turks, Kosovo was not pivotal . They would have won the larger war anyway. They were on the move and were unstoppable. Probably true. Kosovo was unimportant.

But for the Serbians, this piece of land was their heart. They have never forgotten losing it. It is the focal point of nationalism and their identity, it seems. There must be a reason, a way to get it back. Enter the epic poems, the legends of the Maid of Kosovo tending to the dying and wounded, the vision itself guiding the Prince, this all should never have happened! Make it right!'

In some ways, memories - true or flawed - of the Battle of Kosovo are like those of the Irish in the Battle of the Boyne 1690 - see ://www.irelandseye.com/aarticles/history/events/dates/ch5.shtm. The cultural message leads to marches and armaments and violence down ages. Read about the flags around which the Green and the Orange rally - see ://www.crwflags.com/FOTW/flags/ie.html/

Current situation.

Serbia's province of Kosovo, is now some 90% Ethnic Albanian. Many are Muslim, but we understand the religious practice has been broadly tolerant of others, as was the tradition of the Ottoman Empire that took over much of the Balkans 1300-1850 or so. The religious groups lived near and with each other for centuries. That may be changing - see the 2006 article, "The Young and the Old: Radical Islam Takes Hold in the Balkans," at www.worldpress.org/Europe/2335.cfm, another topic.

The ethnic Albanians, in Kosovo where they largely settled because of History's march has declared independence. But Serbs, now 10% of the population of the province, Still Just Say No. How legend and epic, the cultural narrative, rules over facts in any nationalist drive.

Nationalism driving war. The topic of how nationalism gets its killer foothold is relevant to any nation that finds fervor taking the place of a common good.

What we learn of war from Kosovo:

1. That conflict is exacerbated whenever emotions and loyalties are fed by the storytellers, the legends, the epic poems. If those legends supersede information, but the legends and epic narratives are internalized by the people first, then there is little chance that later "facts" will set anything straight at all.

2. That overall facts were not documented well from 1389 - so it was easy for subsequent epic narratives to cast in their own terms that particular battle. The Battle of Kosovo, on the Plain in 1389, where the Sultan's army defeated the Orthodox Christian, became what the epic said it was. The legends superseded any facts at the time. See Joy of Equivocating, How Legend Supersedes Facts.

The narrative, once planted, whether with a solid fact base or not, takes over. Like us.

This epic event, to the Serbians side, has kept it fighting for Kosovo. Meanwhile, while the later-arrival Albanians, who followed in the footsteps of the Turks, converting in a peaceful way to Islam, and settling the lands abandoned by the Serbians (the Albanian-connected population now some ninety percent says the news, and Serbs at ten percent) are about to lose their houses to returning Serbians.

Add to the battle, in which the Serbians feel unjustly defeated, later developments:

• Russia aiding Serbia in the 1850's in becoming fully independent when the Ottoman Empire was being pushed back;
• an Orthodox Christian view in Serbia that they were targeted by the WWII era Fascists, including Roman Christians who stood by as the Serbians were killed in mass murders (see the sites above),
• communism after WWII, at least creating a philosophical tie to those nations even now - how the past looks rosy;
• Serbian efforts to regroup and reclaim their nationalism under Slobodan Milosovic after Tito who held the old Yugoslavia together after WWII had died. The 1990's, with its disastrous consequences in ethnic cleansings, accusations of genocide,
• Montenegro's independence in recent years, and now Kosovo leaving -
• and Serbia may well be another Ireland/ Northern Ireland/ Battle of Burgoyne perpetual violence.

The Battle of Kosovo. 1389. A people trying to recoup. The Battles go on. No answers here, just a perspective that this is not simple, and fast decisions internationally can be equally disastrous.

This background, and the role of cultural narrative taking over from facts, especially when facts are being actively concealed and spun, and the cultural narrative then becoming a domestic weapon, driving what people think despite facts, should be part of the reporting.

Kosovo is important for its lessons for us, so this is a request for media to go into its history to explain. So far, the evening news is not telling us much, and yet that Balkans area has been in upheaval for so long.

Myth and Indigenous Wars Against Incursions - King Philip's War, 1600's - Native American-Puritan-Pilgrim New England

King Philip's War. Myth surrounding the reality of indigenous people against new arrivals. Predictable wars.

What may delay the explosion between the established, or the simply "there," against invasion. Sometimes a mutuality emerges as a stabilizer at the outset. Both need each other in some way, mutual benefit, soon giving way to each side finding that its interests are being unacceptably compromised by the other. Is that true? What is the role of the later myth-makers in altering perception of past events, so that the later learning has little to do with facts at the time.

King Philip. His War was short - 1675-1676, New England, Northeast Corner, the present United States. He and other Native Americans, Indians of many tribes, united against Pilgrims and other colonists, who then had the resources of England to come to assist - and the Indians were defeated, vast massacres on both sides.

King Philip is also known as Metacomet, his Indian name as the son of Massasoit. He is now recalled mostly and locally (this is Connecticut speaking) for these mild references:

• Metacomet Trail through Connecticut, see ://www.amcberkshire.org/mm-trail; and://www.a1trails.com/hiking/ct/metacomet.html.
  
• King Philip Middle School in West Hartford.
• King Philip's Cave up the ridge at Talcott Mountain toward the Heublein Tower, on Avon Ridge, see ://www.dougsimpson.com/river/archives/000054.html.

The cave carries with it the only suggestion of war. Many such caves carry the lore that King Philip watched settlers from those locations, and planned attacks. Few were ever occupied by King Philip. See the view of the cave area at this site - ://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=406766. Hang gliders go off there now.

Hartford CT from Metacomet Trail area

Here is a view of Hartford, CT just on the other side of Talcott Mountain there, on the Metacomet Trail - the Indian name of King Philip - it shows who won.

Names. King Philip is the anglicized name, as became a common custom among the Indians (now "Native Americans" but "Indians" at the time). He was a son of Massasoit 1580-1661. Massasoit had been the chief of the Wampanoag tribe who signed a pact with the Pilgrims in 1621 at Plymouth, and is commemorated at the ritual (if fake) Thanksgiving holiday.

A son of Massasoit, Metacomet or King Philip, became chief of the Wampanoag tribe upon the death of his father, and in his lifetime, saw his people subjected to increasingly forced land sales resulting from their increasing dependence on English goods and a complex of circumstances, see ://www.bartleby.com/65/ki/KingPhil.html. There followed a series of retaliations and retributions, each side escalating.

Resources:

• For children, get a view of this real situation, not the myth of Plymouth Rock and the kindly Puritans, all pablum, with a book like this: "Thunder from the Clear Sky," by Marcia Sewall, Atheneum Books 1995 (see Simon and Shuster); or, "Making Thirteen Colonies," by Joy Hakim, Oxford University Press NY 1993.
  
• For adults, get
  
• "King Philip's War: The History and Legacy of America's Forgotten Conflict," by Eric B. Schultz and Michael J. Tougias, The Countryman Press 1999; and
  
• "Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War," by Nathaniel Philbrick, Penguin Group 2006; and
  
• "The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity," by Jill Lepore, Alfred A. Knopf 1998.

From "Mayflower," learn that this war was supposed to remove the threat of Indian attack, from the New Englanders' perspective. It did not. It did the opposite by throwing the region out of balance, removing friendly buffer Indians from the frontiers, exposing them to attack by the hostiles; forced the Puritans to tie more closely than they had wanted, to an alliance with England. And the costs of the war, with its taxes needed to recoup, left the per capita settler income far lower, and for the next century, than the income had been before. P.347.

Learn that losses in terms of percentage of population exceeded World War II -- Casualties were 1% of the adult male population. Compare to the Civil War - casualties there were some 4-5%. Then note that in the 14 months of King Philip's War, casualties were close to 8% of the adult males. As to Indians, out of some 20,000, at least 2000 were killed in the fighting or of wounds from the fighting, 3000 died of illness, hunger, another 1000 were enslaved and sent to the Caribbean often, and 2000 fled to other tribes. Whoever could outlast the other, won. Page 332.

The Pilgrims had very short memories - they relied on the Indians when times were harsh, but forgot when their fortunes improved - and promptly denigrated the Indians. They chose their own economic prosperity at Indians' expense, putting everything at risk - and the gamble lost. The Indians finally had to push back, and did. Page 215.

Read the accounts of the Puritans in a killing mood - they had some vets from the 30 Years' War in Europe among their ranks, and shooting and hacking and burning alive. William Bradford rejoiced: "It was a fearful sight to see them (the Indians) thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gae the praise thereof to God." Quoted at page 178. Divine slaughter.

Read about Standish's "terrifying whirlwind of violence" at page 153.

Marriage was a civil ceremony - Bradford notes that the Gospels nowhere require a minister. Page 102. Marriages continued to be secular in the decades following, as the Pilgrims followed a tradition from their time in Holland before setting sail. Page 104.

And with the Indian populations decimated by disease by the time the Puritans landed, they were in no position to protest.

Online, see ://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h578.html; ://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/horsemusket/kingphilip/default.aspx; and ://www.historyplace.com/specials/kingphilip.htm.

American Revolution - Fort Ticonderoga, NY. Memory of Group Effort.

What accomplishments are connected with war motivations - muscle, persistence, endurance, sacrifice, luck, sneak. What role does the memory of group effort have, and its circumstances, in the perpetuation of fond memories of war.

Ticonderoga was at a strategic location at Lake Champlain, French, then British; then the Patriots took it in a surprise attack on a sleeping and undermanned fort; hauled the cannon to Boston; and ultimately the British retook it, but the Fort was not critical at that point. See http://www.fort-ticonderoga.org/.

For Ticonderoga NY, cannon

Gamesmanship in fond memory. In terms of sheer pluck, the taking of the fort was the stuff of legend. The Patriots, under Colonels Ethan Allen (with his Green Mountain Boys) and Benedict Arnold retook Fort Ticonderoga from the British (who had taken it earlier from the French), while the British were napping and few were there. The patriots had been joined by Silas Deane from Hartford.

Sheer force and group push. The Patriots were then able to remove the cannon from Fort Ticonderoga, and stagger with them with horse wagons all the way to Boston, to be used in protecting the harbor there. They sought to prevent the British from reinforcing the fort for later use - but the Fort, even when retaken by the British, was not that important by that time, apparently.
See ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_Fort_Ticonderoga.

Sixty tons of artillery, dismantled, 300 miles over ice, rivers, snow, to Boston, under Henry Knox, and it took two months, see ://www.massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=29. There is a trail marking the way, see ://www.nysm.nysed.gov/services/KnoxTrail/.

Fort Ticonderoga, NY, Courtyard

American Revolution: Saratoga Battle. Turncoat. Benedict Arnold.

The Turncoat,

Benedict Arnold, and

Revolutionary War Swiftboating

The concept of "turncoat" is now a term of great, throat-clutching, aghast. General Benedict Arnold, who shifted from the American side to the British in the American Revolution, is called a turncoat in that sense of the aghast. Patriotic horror. General Benedict Arnold fought as an American General at Saratoga, see FN 1, and Ticonderoga Battlefields, then shifted sides and joined the British, and now is known mostly for that act, as a "turncoat."

Redcoat, Back So we ask what did he do and why did he do it. There has to be more of a story. And there is. Was he swiftboated into it?

New idea.

Explore. Is the context any excuse for someone's behavior, do Revolutionary Americans bear some responsibility in inflicting injustices, as claimed, or was Arnold just too thin-skinned.
Colonial swiftboating.

If colonial or any other swiftboating is in the mix, does that make a difference. Look at the talent we lost by swiftboating. It is almost impossible to counter because once words are said, they often are believed.

Losing this brilliant tactician to the British.Was the ego-satisfaction of bringing someone down worth it?
.
History of turncoating: "Turncoat" has an ordinary, day-to-day conducting business beginning.


1747. The Duke of Saxony, whose lands adjoined French lands, had to do business with both sides. He had the brilliant idea that his life would be easier if he wore a white coat to please the French, and a blue coat to please the Saxons. He had made for his ducal self a reversible coat - white reversing to blue. D'accord! Turncoat. See ://www.infoplease.com/dictionary/brewers/turncoat.html This site gives more detail, and sets the stage in the 1500's. See ://www.word-detective.com/070401.html. Scroll down to the Duke of Saxony derivation in the 1500's at "Word Detective." He had a coat, blue on one side, white on the other, and his property was between warring factions who championed one color of the other. He, for convenience, and with reason to see both sides, could turn his coat as he went about.

Nowadays. Then it turns nasty: Turncoat. One who switches parties or sides. See www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/turncoat/. Disloyal, traitor-like, adds this site. See ://www.thefreedictionary.com/turncoats.

A Home Grown Turncoat - Or Was He? Benedict Arnold.

The term came to mind when we went to the Saratoga Battlefield, in NY State, looking up American Revolutionary War sites. Arnold had been brilliant at both Saratoga and Ticonderoga. See ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saratoga.

Colonel Benedict Arnold lost his boot on the battlefield at Saratoga (this is long before he "flipflopped" to the British side).

The memorial's dedication is to the "most brilliant soldier", but does not mention his name, Benedict Arnold.

Arnold: Not a simple case. He had long been "stung by injustices" - Swiftboatings.

He made enemies along the way, had been passed over here and there even though later promoted, and the colonies were in the midst of a wide malaise, depression about any possible positive outcome against the British - and he had given brilliant, brilliant service. Still, he took the fatal step. See ://www.benedictarnold.org/.

He hoped to put himself in a position of negotiator for some benefit to the colonies, that would remain under British control, but with improvements.

He ultimately gave up, accepted the position of Brigadier General in the British Army, and got a piddly amount of cash, eventually moving to London and, also eventually, dying, bitter with remorse. For leaving? For what? Don't know yet.

The point is that Swiftboating anywhere anytime can work against the swiftboater, in knocking out brilliance when it is needed, when that brilliance simply cannot counter the emotional pull of bad talk.


Nowadays. Then it turns nasty: Turncoat. One who switches parties or sides. See www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/turncoat/. Disloyal, traitor-like, adds this site. See ://www.thefreedictionary.com/turncoats.

Does that bring us to an analysis of Senator Joe Lieberman? We see nothing driving Lieberman to the other side, as with Arnold (he would site the injustices against him, etc); he just lost the primary to another democrat, and re-entered the race as an "independent democrat" and getting republican votes (Rush said mess things up) and we see no other gain for Lieberman as the motivation, but rather a voiced intent to be responsible in the larger sense. Will we vote him back in? Those who want representation, and not to have us represented by someone who will ignore us, no. C'est la vie. But no hard feelings, Joe.
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FN 1 More on Saratoga:

Saratoga National Park Battlefield

Saratoga, NY - Revolutionary War 1777. Up the Hudson River, from NY, west from Hartford. See map at ://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/maps/saratogamap/enlargement.html .

Here, the English were defeated, an early victory that rallied the patriots and encouraged foreign support (French joined in, then Spanish and Dutch) all crucial over time to the war for independence.

What is behind each such action to reconsider. If it was a real analysis of new facts, circumstances, where the new position actually benefits the prior allegiance? If it is an assessment that a prior position taken was flawed? Why not allow rethinking, re-judgments. Why is that anathema - flip-flopping.

A change for sheer personal gain, that may be a true turncoat. A change for the common good, or a realistic effort to be responsible, that is an obligation.

A change for sheer personal gain, that may be a true turncoat. A change for the common good, or a realistic effort to be responsible, that is an obligation.

Mutiny. History of the Concept: French Infantry WWI; Mutiny in history

Honor Wall, Groton, CT Naval Base Museum

Military/ Naval honor-

How does the concept coexist with a soldier's right as a citizen, to assert moral parameters to sacrifice. Photo here, an honor wall at Groton, CT submarine base exhibit.

Start with "The Anatomy of Mutiny," at "A Further Flight," writings by Robert A. Seeley, at //www.givewings.com/writings/essays_on_war/mutiny.html.

This refers at length to the Mutiny of 1917, at Verdun, France. Gen. Robert Neville, the commander who said his plan could not fail, but it did. Hugely.

Some aspects of mutiny are vs. incompetence in leaders. Others are vs. war itself. It is not always "indiscipline." It may well be collective resistance to war.

This source points out the existence of two narratives for the mutiny cases.

• There is the official, that gets in the record books, that says holding to discipline wins wars and letting discipline slide loses them.
  
• And there is the secondary, the one from experience, that says soldiers and sailors and officers in effect engage in a continuing covert and overt dialogue about what is happening, and that mutuality affects both orders and responses.

Then go to this book - "Between Mutiny and Obedience: The Case of the French Infantry Division," by Leonard V. Smith, reviewed by Jennifer Diane Keene, Journal of Social History Winter 1995, at //findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2005/is_n2_v29/ai_17841825. Fair use references here, not taking away from a reader going to the whole.Review of a review here, pending getting the book.

Idea is that mutiny is more than despicable dolts turning tail.

It can be passive, active, individual, or collective, or a combination. Is widespread drug use a collective passive rejection of the orders, as in Vietnam? Frame the issue starting with this review of a book on mutiny, as part of the often-ignored social history of the military.

The topic.

This focuses on Verdun and the 1917 Mutiny of the Soldiers, French Infantry, and that mutiny is discussed at the post here at World Wars I and II, Verdun Mutiny. There are three French crises - an offensive, 1915, at Neuville-St. Vaast, defense of Verdun 1916, and the trench warfare crises leading to the mutinies of 1917.

Phrases -- for ongoing research:
.

• Mutiny raises "the question of power relationships within a relatively closed hierarchical institution" - in factories, the work process.
  
• In the military, discipline."How French soldiers and officers negotiated the meaning of obedience"

• When have they stoically obeyed power-crazed leaders

• With what results.

Background Ideas and their Promulgators-- to be looked up. Laundry list.

• "[W]ar is politics by other means." Karl von Clausewitz
  

• Soldiers have had a constant expectation of war in western history

• Keep violence "proportional to the war's objective"

Augustine of Hippo,
Thomas Aquinas.
John Locke
Common soldiers do not have "an independent role in the debate over proportionality"
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Just War theorists
Western soldiers
Obey without question
Whether the king goes to war for God;
Or fights for a republic that supposedly in turn represents the soldiers themselves

• New slants in "Between Mutiny and Obedience"--

Recognition of French soldiers' explicit role in outlining parameters of what is moral, by taking political action against authority and obedience. Says soldiers retain rights of the citizen.

There are parallel narratives about mutiny: one, put in the records, that armies win when traditional discipline holds, and lose when it does not; and one from experience, that soldiers and leaders do in fact negotiate terms and both want to win, just differ in what sacrifice and by whom is tolerable. Taking a political position reclaims rights, is not disloyalty.

A Guy Pedroncini appears to be the leading historian of this French series of events--
Why this kind of mutiny did not occur within the British or German units -author suggests these histories not written yet.

There appear to be a collection of the soldiers' letters that the French Intelligence gathered, narrating when the mutinies were occurring. Would like to read. Smith calls them "a testament to the human spirit"

Other mutiny situations to check:

The Scots Athol Highlanders early 18th Century, serving in Ireland, refusing to go to the Indies
Magellan
Captain Bligh and the Bounty
Columbus' dual logs to avoid mutiny

Propaganda as Firing the First Shots, Then War

Would there be war if there were no propaganda: if everyone had the full information from the start, on both sides, and no effort was made by either side to muster emotion, reaction. Can self-interest and desire to dominate ever be restrained in favor of a common good. History says probably not.

Propaganda - What it is. See its history at //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/. That is a long entry, but well done.

• Presenting facts selectively
• Persuading regarding a particular narrative to explain something
• Effective and connected especially with political, nationalistic areas, and in sales, especially since WWII. Giving a negative thing a positive name; or connecting ideas so there is a transfer of approval or disapproval, etc.
  
• Techniques - many. See ://www.aacps.org/aacps/boe/INSTR/CURR/comed/es/webquest/Persuade/PER2.html

Euphemism, glittering generality, name-calling, word games, plain folks, see them plus swiftboating, rhetorical techniques and other ways to persuade at Hello, Fodder, Hello, Buyer, Propaganda Study.

Propaganda is playing with words, spinning in order to persuade without constraints of full information, or merit. See://www.propagandacritic.com.

Origins - Not necessarily a pejorative. It began in the religious arena - see Pope Gregory V in 1422. Propagation of the faith. Extended quickly to the Protestant response. Playing with words nonetheless. Example: Germany in WWII. Calling people names. Great and enticing generalities.

America warning us about it in WWII. America using it against its own people since.

In democracies: Ours. Propaganda subverts the purpose of the First Amendment in blocking robust discussion. People get persuaded without the discussion, because of the sophistication of the sales techniques. See the Three P's - distinguishing between Patriotism, Propaganda, and Protest, at http://www.eiu.edu/~history/ha/exhibits/2005/egallery/definitions.htm.

Plus ca change - PTSD. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Wilfred Gibson

A poem called "Back" from WWI,

"Back"
Wilfred Gibson, 1878-1962

"They ask me where I've been,
And what I've done and seen.
But what can I reply
Who know it wasn't I,
But someone just like me,
Who went across the sea
And with my head and hands
Killed men in foreign lands...
Though I must bear the blame,
Because he bore my name.

With permission provided we give the source; here it is - with thanks - , //www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1914warpoets.html.

The Enemy Becomes the Economic Desirable. The Hated Soldier Boche Becomes Bosche, The Latest Style in Kitchens

Wars don't last even 60 years before economics supersede and handshakes all around.

British soldier-poet in WWI, Herbert Read, not killed at the time, 1983-1968, gave us this view of the Boche, a derogatory term for a German, see //www.billcasselman.com/wording_room/boche.htm

"The Happy Warrior"
by Herbert Read, reproduced with permission so long as source is given, as we do below: watch for Boche

"His wild heart beats with painful sobs,
His strin'd hands clench an ice-cold rifle,
His aching jaws grip a hot parch'd tongue,
His wide eyes search unconsciously.

He cannot shriek.

Bloody saliva
Dribbles down his shapeless jacket.

I saw him stab
And stab again
A well-killed Boche.

This is the happy warrior,
This is he..."

See source at ://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1914warpoets.html

Now look up Bosche now - we can't wait to get those upscale appliances. See http://www.boschappliances.com/. Upgrade your whole kitchen with it. Bosche. For happy eaters.

War Poets. Poetry from the Trenches - WWI

Poetry, here the phenomenon of multiple British poets in WWI.
............................................................................
1. Wilfred Owen. Read his "Disabled" at ://www.yourenglishguide.com/english/pages/warpoetry.asp

There is also a commentary. It helps to get back into education. Today, yesterday and tomorrow. Read it aloud, preferably when noone is around. Several times. Standing up. Quietly. Mail it to a friend. He died in 1918. Is his work still in copyright? I haven't the foggiest.

This site lets you reproduce (!) so long as you give the source:

Here is what it is like to be gassed in WWI, Wilfred Owen: A poem with a Latin title "Dulce et Decorum Est," that is something like happy and decorated he is:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under I green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Thank you, //www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1914warpoets.html.
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2. Siegfried Sassoon. "How to Die" at ://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1914warpoets.html

War as a Big Game. Condition the Children. Or is it Necessary?

View A. Mindsets, conditioning, framing, entertainment all set the context to permit war.

Adjust those, and war can be diminished substantially.

The lure of the game of war. How to overcome. Just buy some. Or put another nickel in.

First, play these fun games for years ahead of time so you know what to expect. Second, sign up for the troops.

Sure, it's like that.

That's how they get you there. ://battlefield2.filefront.com/news/BattleGroup_42_Mod_Update;27037/ The war lure.

View B. Can we all live together nicely, with the proper upbringing and mindset, or are we hard-wired to need and prepare for warfare.

Do we need this preparation so some can defend while the rest of us live in our rosy worlds. See body and personality types - ectomorph, the tall and thin; the mesomorph, the boxier outgoer; the endomorph, the pear shape. See ://www.2knowmyself.com/miscellaneous/Ectomorph_Mesomorph_endomorph_body_types/ See Ectomorphs Ascending. For an overview of many theories, see also ://wilderdom.com/personality/L6-1PersonalityTypes.html

Scroll down at this one for the origins of hate: what is needed to counter those types, if you believe the theory set forth there that self-haters, weak sense of self, turn self-loathing outwards and have to have that outside target. The theory continues, that ose intransigent haters will not be changed by the extended hand, but are the persons who need to be countered by force, set aside and removed by force, says the site. Ergo, war? Sometimes needed? See ://www.upkedupke.com/art/personality_types.html

The Big Black Tatras - Official cars, WWII Nazi, Fascist, Other

High Tatra Mountain Range, Slovakia and Poland, Border
.
Men in cars.
.
See Gypsies, Roma, Gypsies Under Communism, post quoting from the book, "Zoli" a novel inspired by the life of a Slovakian Gypsy poet: that the Gypsy population did reasonably well under communism, in the initial bloom after WWII, until they too started driving around in the "big, black Tatras." The symbolic vehicle of those in power.

Without a photo of a Tatra of my own, here is a view of the High Tatras mountain range, between Poland and Slovakia (this from the Polish side, near Zakopane). Massive, forbidding, beautiful. Do an Images search for Tatra car and feast eyes. Rhmmmmm. RHMMMMMM. The company was founded in 1850, in what is now the Czech Republic, and production continued until 1999. Germans were fond of them. They were called the Czech secret weapon, says this site, because so many Germans were killed just trying to go too fast in them. See ://www.cars-directory.net/history/tatra/. Look up the exhibits at the museum in Koprivnici CZ where they were manufactured, at ://www.tatramuseum.cz/index.php?page=museum&museum=2&lan=EN.

Now, go rent a WWII movie, or later, and watch the wheels.

Vimy Ridge -1914- Soldier Stories - Pegs in the Moonlight

Search for stories and then the name of the battlefield. For Vimy, a Canadian-German battlefield in France, here is one of the sites: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=e54d3263-a6a3-4af7-a8bf-96bb41b6fb45%20%20

1. The Canadian National Post published an article 1/18/07 entitled, "Soldiers, Snipers and Comedians," a narrative by soldier Jack McLaren about his serious and lighter work in 1914.

Snipers: Stake pounding. McLaren was one to go out of his side of the trenches at night, and pound in as many painted stakes toward the German side as he could, even in front of their trenches. The idea was that, if a German soldier passed in front of the stake, the Canadian sniper would notice the blackout of the stake's reflection, and shoot.

McLaren had a theatrical background, and participated in what sounds like R&R follies - monologues, and vaudeville complete with crossdressing actors n wigs made of ox hair from cottage furniture, and stunts including fake high dives. "Where there's a will, there's a wig," he wrote.

Read more about battle tactics, the course of a fighting day. Men were organized into cadres of 50 - gunners, snipers, stretcher-bearers, machine-gunners, bombers and scouts.

2. There is also a story about the women ambulance drivers at that same site, and the initial obstacles in the way of women participating at all. Then the reliance on them. See "Grace Came To Drive An Ambulance," about Grace MacPherson of Canada, age 19.

3. Slang in WWI - how they talked, see ://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-slang/ww1.htm/ Slang from the trenches.

4. The Third Man Dead. The first to light a cigarette alerted the sniper, when he passed the light to the next man, the sniper could aim, the third man to get the light for his cigarette was hit. See http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-slang/ww1.htm, #264 in the list.

Unlikely Hartford CT and Colt's Firearms, Weaponry: Prague Operation Anthropoid, Assassination of Nazi Reinhard Heydrich 1942

Meet Hartford, Connecticut; and Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Co.

Here is the old Colt factory's distinctive Blue Onion Dome, with the stars, just off the mixmaster of I-84 and I-91, and with exits nearby to center city and elsewhere. See the trademark bronze colt rampant at the top. The pistol on the frieze.

The broken windows.

One day, this may be refurbished as an arts colony, with apartments and studios. One day. Even other residential offerings. But its second floor is on eye level with the freeway. Great planning, Hartford. But it is trying to rectify.

Weapons and war.

This was home to firearms that were integral to the course of history: from the Old West and the Civil War through World Wars I and II, and later, to Iraq.

Samuel Colt started with a revolver, and became famous for firearms that could fire without reloading - look up the Peacemaker, the Colt Single-Action Revolver, the Six-Shooter, the the Whitneyville-Walker Pistol, the Gatling gun.

Samuel Colt's pistol and other specialty weapons have a multi-country connection. See research and bibliography site at the Connecticut State Library - //www.cslib.org/colt.htm.


Wars set the stage for many ongoing instabilities in international relations - the countries' resource and cultural exhaustion, and continuing mutual suspicions, national boundaries still in flux (ask the countries' for their wish lists for return to old domains, like Germany wanting Gdansk), and the reconfiguration-deaths of entire populations.

..............................................................................
Special World War II connection: the Colt pistol is documented as part of the successful assassination of Nazi Reinhard Heydrich in Prague, World War II. See Czech Republic Road Ways, post dated August 5, 2007; and Places of Petr Ginz, assassination post for further accounts. Petr was a child diarist in Prague who died at Auschwitz. Go to Prague and see the church where the Prague resistance fighters held out for so long against capture. Two carried .32 Colt automatics. See fine photos of the memorial, the old church, and a narrative, at //www.curme.co.uk/prague.htm. The Colt connection is also cited in the Czech army account listed at Czech Republic Road Ways: www.timelapse.dk/models.php. See also www.army.cz/images/id_7001_8000/7419/assassination-en.pdf.

There is an exhibit at the church, with photos of the resistance fighters, Czech paratroopers trained in England, with a specific mission.

See the safe houses and their locations in Prague, sheltering them for a time.


And the church itself, and its crypt beneath, finally flooded with fire hoses to get the remaining fighters out. They died by their own hands rather than surrender. Then came the terrible reprisals. The village of Lidice wiped out. See//www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-lidice.htm

Look up up Operation Anthropoid, the code name for the assassination plot. Encyclopedia start: //everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1509938; then sites listed at Czech Republic Road Ways, post dated August 5, 2007; and Places of Petr Ginz, assassination post.

Emotions run high about his legacy, and what is fact (demonstrable) and what so far is claimed or firmly believed but without a cited authority. For details of his life and death, get feet on ground at Wikipedia and watch the process of sifting and rewriting, with alerts to areas still clearly in flux, at //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Heydrich.


Preserving history. A history of a war and its recurrent events, in one place, and Hartford's Colt is documented as being there. One of the highest ranking Nazis.

Both in Prague and Hartford - history's sites threatened. The church in Prague depends mostly on donations; the dome at Colt's is shiny but the building is neglected, plans in process perhaps to become part of a national park, revving up then stalling, see efforts since 2002 - Hartford Courant article on preservation efforts October 12, 2007, or not. Or arts center, condos, or not.

There is a way to teach history from our own buildings. Get the students over here. From weaponry here move to the history of the onion dome in architecture, see Poland Road Ways, onion dome architecture post.

Austerlitz CZ. Pre-World Wars. Lessons from literature, and the garden. War and grass.

Austerlitz, Slavkov, Czech Republic. The Battle of the Three Emperors.

Austerlitz. A hundred years before the World Wars, and who cares. Quiz. Who can name what three major empires converged here, and why, and who won what and for how long. Are wars ever long remembered. Here, Napoleon against Russia and Austria.

At Austerlitz, just try to find the battlefield.

Getting there, pass a sign by a tree near the motorway that says Napoleon stood beneath it once at dawn, surveying, so the sun sign represents Austerlitz; but no definable battlefield is in sight. Find a town: Slavkov u Brna. Ask a walker, and finally open the door to let him in so he can point, and you can drop him off on the way, and that is how to find this memorial. The battlefields are many, and all gone. Gone. Just farms again. Huge area. Bodies where they fell. Get a visual: See Napoleon himself, in a series of paintings during his career at //www.napoleon.org/en/essential_napoleon/key_painting/premier_empire.asp.

Now read Carl Sandburg, American poet:*

"Grass"

"Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work --
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg.

And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass. Let me work."

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* American poet Carl Sandburg, poem "Grass," this time found in Modern American Poetry 1919, Louis Untermeyer, ed. Fair use of a single poem, as a small part of a total work.
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Austerlitz: See //www.fortunecity.com/victorian/riley/787/Napoleon/1805/Auster.html; //www.napoleon-series.org/reviews/military/c_goetz.html; //www.bond.cz/www/austerlitz/after.htm; and post 8/13/2007 at Czech Republic Road Ways;

Waterloo: See //www.britishbattles.com/waterloo/waterloo-june-1815.htm; and post 12/19/2006 at Belgium Road Ways

Gettysburg: see www.civilwarhome.com/gettysbu.htm.

Ypres: See www.firstworldwar.com/battles/ypres1.htm (first battle); www.greatwar.co.uk/westfront/ypsalient/secondypres/index.htm (second battle); //www.pbs.org/greatwar/maps/maps_ypres.html (third battle); and posts here

Verdun: see //www.historylearningsite.co.uk/battle_of_verdun.htm; and posts here.

Government as Marketer. German, WWII. Nuremberg, Hitler's stadium. Film: "Triumph of the Will"

Nuremberg, Germany. Hitler's Stadium
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Here is the huge stadium that Hitler built in historic Nuremberg, to house his extravaganzas. See post at Germany Road Ways. Near by it now is the weighty Nazi Documentation Center, laying out what happened when, and how. See //architectook.net/documentation-center/.

For both sides of a question, impressive huge visuals do work. Sound works. Words work. Put people together to see something, and a new dynamic arises. The event itself becomes convincing. Especially, if within the bounds of the display, dissent is kept out. The Documentation Center is hugely convincing.

So was the Nuremberg Stadium. Consumers are apt to buy whatever is presented like that. Citizens have to check it all out. Choose.

See the process of turning citizens into consumers by government films and presentations at //www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a713621073~db=all.

When you can take the full several hours, or even a part, go to Leni Riefenstahl's film, "Triumph of the Will," and the write-up of the era at //www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-will.

Speech. What is the difference between you and me talking; and our proposing a commercial transaction (advertising) and political - editorializing speech.

Elections are on the way. Get a start on the free speech issue at //funsite.unc.edu/pub/electronic-publications/stay-free/archives/17/freespeech.

1. The First Amendment protects free speech as an idea, but there are exceptions when regulations can be made. See overview, at law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/commercial. See there that there is a right to receive other people's speech - advertising, or proposing a commercial transaction, see caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment01/17. As well as to talk your own. And no restriction should be more than necessary, as a start. There is a case, shortened here to "Central Hudson," that aims at deceptive speech (don't) or speech advertising illegal activities (don't); or the government has to have a substantial interest in restricting the speech, and any regulation has to advance that interest directly.
Political speech, calm
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Has political speech become so like commercial speech, like advertising - so that it cannot be misleading, and, if there is a regulation, it has to be aimed at a strong govt interest and focused on that). Is it time to require that, in selling candidates to ourselves, we cannot be deceptive, either about our candidate or the other person's.
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How would that ever be proven or implemented in short time frames with big legal budgets available. See //www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporations/FirstAmend_Follies.

When does editorializing speech really become high-stakes sales of products. Lobbying and other money changing hands - a commercial titfortat in everything but name. The buying of elected position.
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These fellows are from our old out-of-print reproduction of an 18th C. Japanning patterns book, for use in decorations.

2. Now go to the radio/tv area - scroll down the findlaw site above to the footnote blue numbers shown as 44,45 and following, there are rights of reply, the right to the speech does not necessarily mean a right to broadcast, because airwaves are limited - licensing comes in - and "expression of editorial opinion, see the findlaw site at its blue footnote number 57. Then go to newspapers, and requiring them to run material they would not otherwise run, forcing them to present opposing views, that doesn't happen. They have a broad duty of good faith to be balanced but that falls short of forced publication, see blue footnote number 65.

3. And cable. Some different considerations See the findlaw blue footnote 50 to start, and that looks like a supplemental reference.

Remaining open, because cases could be decided on other grounds, are: a) the weight of a public forum argument about cable, a special responsibility or interest of govt and people: and b) the weight of rights to editorialize - are they more or less important than rights of programmers or viewers. Those were not decided. Will somebody please get those up and in front fast.

Normandy - Pointe du Hoc, Rangers; Arromanches, Mulberry Harbor

Pointe du Hoc, Memorial, Normandy, France, WWII

Pointe du Hoc, Normandy. How could US Rangers scale these nearly perpendicular cliffs, under fire, but they did. See the huge crater holes remaining, and the memorial. No TV special can cover everything, but a recent one at PBS did bypass Pointe du Hoc, we recall.

Did we just tune in too late?
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Pointe du Hoc, Craters, Normandy






See this site for its chronology, detail in the narrative, and inclusion of the foul-ups and errors that plagued the effort, including the weather and boats swamping, or going in wrong directions. Get caught up in the battle - read also about the equipment and ropes, and how they were used. Go to www.worldwar2history.info/D-Day/Pointe-Du-Hoc.
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Pointe du Hoc, Clifftop, Normandy

Here is the clifftop, and German bunkers.
Pointe du Hoc, Bunkers, Normandy
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Pointe du Hoc, Map of Beaches, Normandy
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There is a map at Omaha Beach, showing the landing areas, Sword, Juno, Gold for the British; Omaha, and Utah for the Americans. Is this kind of thing copyrighted or can we use it? Help.

Heroism, but also human errors, complexity of personalities of leaders and events, and adversities on a huge scale. See also www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/dday/pointeduhoc.aspx. Click on the menu for any of the Normandy sites, and then other battles back to Medieval times. Civil War here, you name it.

Pointe du Hoc, Memorial, Normandy
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See overviews of the war effort at Normandy at the war museum at Bayeux, with flags united and displays. These are Dan's photos, from his trip with his Dad. Earlier Normandy ones are at France Road Ways, Normandy posts.

Pointe du Hoc, Atlantic Wall, Normandy
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And, the Atlantic Wall - the fortifications built by the Germans around Europe's coast to make their Reich impregnable for a thousand years. See this German site, most entries in English but not all, for the original placements, how bunkers are structured, their status now://atlantikwall.net/. That site has no photos - this one does: //atlantikwall.fr/en/atlantikwall/atlantikwall.

Engineering. Amazing. Here is Arromanches, the British landing area known as Gold Beach, where "Mulberry Harbor," the artificial docks built into the sea for the unloading of tanks and material, Winston Churchill's port, was constructed. See this site for an idea of the amusement park setting just off this quiet beach with the ruins of old structures, that attracts visitors to this British beachhead. We liked the quiet of the American sites. See www.normandie44lamemoire.com/versionanglaise/fichesvillesus/arromstcomus2.
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Pointe du Hoc, Beach, Normandy

Dresden, Germany, and Area Bombing Feb.1945 - The Spearheading of Arthur Harris, and Am/Brit okay

Dresden, Germany; Baroque, still stands

Baroque Dresden, in eastern Germany, not too far from Berlin, was a city of culture, historical treasures and beauty. A Florence on the Elbe, (its river), some sites say. See www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,339833,00.

Drive now into the city, and see small posters affixed to lampposts - "Dresden Lives."

Why should that be of note? Look around and see vast reconstruction, repair. Old buildings looking solid, even if blackened.


Dresden, Germany, Square

The posters count because Dresden had been very nearly dead.

During the earlier years of WWII, allied Brit/Am commanders and heads of state decided that the strategy of fire-bombing, a/k/a carpet-bombing, a/k/a area bombing, entire German cities was still a good one.

Instead of using precision bombing on specific military targets, however, they justified carpet bombing on grounds that it would demoralize the German population. For example, I understand that Hamburg was fire-bombed in 1940-1943 for that reason. That was the justification of the Germans for bombing London. Did it work there? No. It motivated them. How about for Germany. Carpet bombing. Firebombing. Did it shorten the war?

Davison site - Dresden's destruction not strategically necessary or reasonable. Read "In Defense of Dresden" by Robert Davison (Wolf) at //rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Davison/In_Defense_of_Dresden.shtml. It notes that, by 1945, the German population had been already demoralized, and Dresden itself was full of refugees from the eastern fronts as well as its own civilian population. This site suggests there were no significant military targets there; and even if there had been, there was no excuse for firebombing the entire place and its civilians. Dresden was almost completely destroyed. You may remember that author Kurt Vonnegut was there at the time - read his "Slaughterhouse Five," see Dresden post at Germany Road Ways.

Davison site: British commander inappropriate for his decision-making post because of prior history of overkill, and reasonable to believe he would continue. How did it come about: One Arthur Harris, the highest ranking officer of the RAF bomber command, strongly recommended and prevailed in implementing the firebombing of Dresden.
The site notes that the British flew by night, American bombers by day.

Who was this instigator Harris. Read that site for the c.v. of Harris: his "heavy handedness" in prior commands in the middle east 1930-32, included "gas attacks and delayed action bombs" on Iraqis fighting British rule. He was not a new entity. When he proposed the firebombing, he must have been so forceful and stubborn that, despite knowing his overkill predilections, Americans and British opponents of the policy folded. Here is a fair use quotation about Harris from the site:

"Harris was at best an autocrat, certainly not a diplomat. He clearly preferred getting his own way to the more disciplined process of developing the qualities of leadership required to persuade. Under his leadership of the RAF, his "heavy hand" now perfected, he fought all attempts to be dissuaded from carpet bombing in favor of precision bombing.****"

Issue presented: How to put people in power with qualities of leadership leading to a reasonable tempering of force. It is that use of force that gets them in the power position in the first place.

Dresden, Germany, old town center

See how Harris prevailed as to Dresden, its results - 135,000-250,000 killed overnight, February 13, 1945, says the Davison site. The Germans killed some 51,000 during its London blitz, and Americans killed some 70,000 instantly at Hiroshima. And even Winston Churchill denounced the bombing as "mere acts of terror and wanton destruction." Even Arthur Harris himself tried to distance himself from himself. All this and more at Davison's site.

Stars and Stripes, the US military newspaper source, uses fewer numbers. It says the number killed at Dresden was not over 100,000, and may be 50,000.

May be so. Incineration makes it hard to count, refugees don't have identification papers, and even if they did, paper does burn. No way to know for sure.

Were there military targets there? The Stars and Stripes site says there were indeed military targets there, but makes no effort to discuss what they might have been and how it was appropriate to carpet bomb the whole city instead of precision-bombing the military targets, whatever they were. See Stars and Stripes at www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=26318&archive=true

Next steps: If you are uncomfortable reading this, and perhaps the Am/Brits were highly fallible and flawed in their acquiescence to Harris, do go find other sites that prove Mr. Davison's site wrong. So far, I think his conclusion, that the Bomber Command itself was dangerous for friend and foe alike (tens of thousands of British and Americans in the bombers also killed), is worth considering. Being in command does not always mean being right. Any lesson from Dresden? Maybe that citizens have to scrutinize, weed, hold accountable any decisionmakers, or military, or heads of state, whatever. Note their tendencies at all stages of their careers. Then the policies adopted may reflect the best a culture has to offer, not just the heavy hand. Maybe save people from becoming fodder.

Or, find out more about Mr. Davison. Who is he? Need to find out. Maybe we should pay no attention and skip all this.
Dresden, Germany; church and tower
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Precision bombing. Hard to ignore Dresden when we see the steps back we have taken, and steps toward Harris-ism. In WWII that concept of precision bombing was valued, see quote above.

Yet, fifty years later, in the Iraq war 1991, the Stars and Stripes article above says that only 10-12% of the bombs dropped were precision-guided. That means the rest, 88-90%, dropped willy-nilly. Then with that in mind, see how that counted not at all - see the pass-off:

Here is a fair use quote from Stars and Stripes, somebody named Pollard's summary of Dresden:

"Pollard said, 'Dresden is a raid at the end of the war where everything goes right. They find the target, they hit the target, the target burns.'"

Verdun, France: 1916 - The Trench of Bayonets. And Rodin.

Verdun, France. A military disaster in many forms. Failures of command, vast casualties both sides: could be as high as over 700,000. See www.wereldoorlog1418.nl/battleverdun/slachtoffers. Many international tributes, huge memorials, ossuary, see posts here.
There is a map at this site locating Verdun and giving background at www.indigoguide.com/france/verdun. For Verdun, we are using old postcards of ours to preserve them - they are part of a small collection of about 9 or 10, unused, very yellowed, and here instead of our own photos.

If you read nothing else about Verdun, at least go to this one site and read it all, study the photos. "The Battle of Verdun: The Greatest Battle Ever." www.wereldoorlog1418.nl/battleverdun/index.htm#battle05. Poor choice of words for the title; but unforgettable descriptions of this strategically unjustifiable waste.

Rodin Memorial. Holland (now The Netherlands) commissioned this work, an angel bearing a dead soldier, by the French sculptor, Auguste Rodin. Rodin: See www.musee-rodin.fr/biotx-e">www.musee-rodin.fr/biotx-e.

Trench of Bayonets. An American, a "Mr. Rand," gave this significant memorial in 1920. It provides a setting to preserve the place where soldiers remain buried but upright with their bayonets still showing, in a collapsed trench. Open air, insofar as that can be done while keeping out weather.

This is the gated entryway to the trench area.

An entire company had disappeared. Then, this filled-in, collapsed trench was found with bayonets still sticking up, atop the rubble. A body standing or nearly so, beneath enough to lead to the conclusion that the others also held soldiers beneath. See www.worldwar1.com/heritage/bayonet.
There are single flowers still strewn, a hushed place.

Verdun, France: The Soldiers' Mutiny 1917; Girardot memorial to unknown soldiers

Why study Verdun. Because of the bleating.

It is at Verdun that military nightmares occurred, that are among the most heart-rending, and blameworthy as to the commands of both sides, among the horrors of war. Read a full account and the damning account of the commands, at "The Battle of Verdun: The Greatest Battle Ever." www.wereldoorlog1418.nl/battleverdun/index.htm#battle05.

Mutiny of 1917. Soldiers knew they had no chance against the German guns. The main campaign had stretched from February through December 1916, and still the survivors were ordered to return, with additional troops day after day and the deaths were horrendous.

And their commanders knew that. And the soldiers knew the commanders knew. No chance.
The men were not adequately equipped, there was unprecedented firepower, phosgene gas, heavy artillery, emerging flame thrower technologies, cave-ins, no plan other than the perpetual suicidal counterattack regardless of losses, see The Forts of Verdun by Robert E. Duchesno www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Base/3495/FVerdun1a. And communications sometimes only by carrier pigeon, those that rose above the explosions.

The rebellion. Finally, multiple divisions of soldiers revolted against orders to go to the front, against those guns, to be mowed down. Rebellion. See "The Anatomy of a Mutiny" at //givewings.com/writings/essays_on_war/mutiny. The 21st division refused to go into battle. Others also, some 20,000. Against the foddering. And just before the actual mutiny, there was a vast and unique form of unrest.

Hear the form of this revolt - There was "sheep-like bleating heard among regiments ... mingled with cries of 'Down With The War' and 'Down With The Incapable Leaders....' " See the givewings site. That cynical bleating of the troops under their incompetent leaders echoes still. There the commanders were, issuing orders under the circumstances of old-time training but new world guns, commanders unable to adjust, unable to see the war world in this new way, and the soldiers finally refused.

Then came the resounding "Baa-aa-aah," as they passed their officers, in the line moving forward, forced. The account goes on: "Men on leave waved red flags and sang revolutionary songs. They beat up military police and railwaymen, and uncoupled or derailed engines to prevent trains from leaving for the front." See the givewings site.

"The war had lost its legitimacy." See the givewings site. See also this next site for a good description, and don't be afraid of the "socialist" in the address if that goes against your grain. The word means different things in different countries and contexts - this is Great Britain (the UK). Venture for the information to //www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=3695. The information and facts look on point. And see how a victory in one area for some, turns out to be a victory in other areas for unintended groups as well. War lays many seeds, some unwanted and unforeseen, and deadly later.

Fodder.

See "Between Mutiny and Obedience: The Case of the French Infantry Division During World War I," Journal of Social History, by Jennifer Diane Keene 1996 at //findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2005/is_n2_v29/ai_17841825/pg_2.

Wilfred Owen, the British poet in WWI who died in 1918, on dying as cattle. This can be reproduced so long as the source is given, as we do at the end:

"Anthem for a Doomed Youth"
by Wilfred Owen 1893-1918

"What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
--Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of silent minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds."

Find it at ://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1914warpoets.html
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Dilemma for soldiers needed as fodder, to just stay in line. How to foster the continuing mindset that accepts that.

Question: Does it require ongoing isolation and inculcation, especially when it is no longer the very young and malleable who serve in the military. Can you come home and be a citizen, even testify or engage in discussions about things like underlying policy, when setting policy is not your job, and retain the ability to return to being a consumer soldier - follow the orders. Maybe that is why soldiers are given limited leaves: don't give them time to think. They might get out of role. And not go back. Or criticize. Keep them fodder. Does that isolation protect the commanders against analysis; or protect the mission by promoting cohesion. Like don't ask don't tell. What non-military interest is really being served.

Sources that do not call a spade a spade. Worldwide phenomenon. Spin.

If some French or some other sources are checked about the Mutiny of 1917, for example, you may find little reference, if any, to mutiny. You may find only a lapse in discipline idea; or, as in this side (also above), the detail about the panic and flight of the soldiers, but it does not use the revolting word. See "The Battle of Verdun: The Greatest Battle Ever." www.wereldoorlog1418.nl/battleverdun/index.htm#battle05. The section at Phase 5 in the wereldoorlog site is merely titled, The Crises in the French Defence. Mirrors are ugly for all of us in some way. Who is right?

Meet Mme. Berthe Girardot, and her elegantly understated, but profoundly moving, Memorial to the Unknown Soldiers - her son among them. Grief. Resignation. Pensiveness. The quiet "why." Those are lasting. Not glory.

This is the memorial to unknown soldiers that was actually made by a mother whose son was never found. She also was an artist-sculptor: Mme. Berthe Girardot. See her tall, shrouded stone-woman, standing straight like the column she is, gazing out with a finger to her lips. Elsewhere on the grounds is the huge Ossuary holding unidentifiable remains of some 150,000 unknown soldiers. And her son. See post.

The caption on the postcard translates to something like this: the gesture of silence symbolizes the resignation of French Womanhood, attentive in affection. "Cette stele, par le geste du slience, symbolise la resignation de la Femme francaise atteinte dans ses affections." Unspeakable grief. Close enough in translation?

Verdun, France 1916-1917. The Soldiers' Mutiny Works - "They Shall Not Pass;" "An Act of Military Madness"

Original postcard, Fort De Vaux, Verdun France, WWI

Verdun, France. A campaign, not just a battle. 1916, 1917.

The illustrations here are actual postcards, undated (unused) but yellowed, with captions in French, and some with English as well.

The area consists of several "forts" and cemeteries, a trench still showing the bayonets of soldiers caught beneath (see other post), and a huge Ossuary.

This one is Fort de Vaux. There is the main trench, and a tunnel entry, structures and a wooden walkway to the top.

And Fort du Douaumont.

That trench has walls to hold back the hillside.
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Original postcard, Fort du Douaumont, Verdun, France WWI










And the Ossuary. Ossuaire du Douaumont.
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Original postcard, Ossuary, Verdun, France WWI
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The Ossuary tower is above the place where rest the various remains of some 150,000 specifically unidentifiable French and German soldiers. The walls inside the Ossuary list the missing. It still looks like that. For an overview of the Campaign, see www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Base/3495/FVerdun25a.

The phrase, "They Shall Not Pass," originating with this campaign, became the motto of the later ill-fated French Maginot Line WWII. See photos and narrative, The Forts of Verdun, by Robert Duchesno at www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Base/3495/FVerdun2a. at Part IV.

"An act of military madness," wrote Correspondent Eric Margolis about the Verdun campaign. See www.ericmargolis.com/archives/1999/11/they_shall_not.php. Read it all.

This campaign involved the Foreign Legion, heroic Moroccan troops (buried in a group in the main cemetery, but with headstones all at the angle facing east to Mecca, and very moving) who received many awards for valor. See the Duchesno site. There were carrier pigeons, there was phosgene gas, trenches and structures burying people alive, thirst unto death, madness.

Mouquet Farm, France, Somme WWI: Unity, 11000 casualties, no "victory".

Mouquet Farm, Thiepval, Somme area, France, WWI

Sometimes it is better to go around than do a direct assault, or tunnel under.

Mouquet Farm, France 1916, near Thiepval. Battle of the Somme. The Australian and British units against the German. The front moving back and forth within a few miles over the course of years, sometimes only within hundreds of feet. The cellars of the farmhouse itself as part of a network of tunnels used by the Germans as a brigade headquarters. See //www.diggerhistory.info/pages-battles/ww1/france/mouquet-farm.

Australian casualties: 11,000. Victory? Not by assault. Or the honeycomb digging beneath. The Australians finally went around it, leaving the area isolated until it finally fell of its own stranding. See //www.awm.gov.au/units/place_885.asp. All is now smoothed for grapeseed harvests, bright yellow.

To the British this was "Mucky Farm." To the Australians, "Moo-Cow Farm." The resilience of people. Hats off.

Read the course of the ongoing battle at Mouquet at //www.webmatters.net/france/ww1_mouquet.

Soldiers. Role requires a willingness to die if need be. Made easier if there is absolute personal commitment to, and agreement among them and those they know, about a) the worth of the mission and b) the competence of their leadership. They are taught to accept authority and its orders. Immediately. Unquestioning obedience. Promotes internal discipline.

Humor helps.

Berlin aftermath, Wall. Germany. WWII. Propaganda issues.

Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall. War brought liberty to some, death and oppression to others.



Lustig Co., ad, Germany
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How to tell what Heads of State are cooking up? How do they succeed. Look into the techniques of marketing. Propaganda, all sides. Means of persuasion. Then you can see it coming and decide if you want it after all.

There are several sites on the US Institute for Propaganda Analysis from 1937, when our government was teaching us how to spot and resist German propaganda efforts. See, for example, //mason.gmu.edu/~amcdonal/Propaganda%20Techniques. Find many sites with a search for Institute for Propaganda Analysis.

Read the list, and consider which have become routine in persuasions since then, against anyone, for any cause. Because they do work.

Shall we add to the program of No Child Left Behind a course in propaganda spotting, so we and our children can identify persuasion techniques. A propaganda spotting poster in every classroom, on every refrig. About food choices, war "facts," enticement lines by molesters even. Also the techniques of radio and tv talk show host people. They practice.

Lilli Marleen - Germany: Motivational singing. WWI antiwar song turned WWII military march.

Old Berlin, facade

Old Berlin. Unter Den Linden. But Hitler took down all the lindens so he could put up his swastikas along the main parade route there.

See the post at Germany Road Ways at this longer address, if you cannot find the Lilli Marleen title easily there: use this in your browser, as much as needed: http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=10243298&postID=6092791116384098225.- Can't just repeat other posts elsewhere. But in summary, to highlight the issue:

The history of music; Lilli Marleen was a song dating frm World War I, a protest against that War.

Then fast forward to WWII, think Marlene Dietrich and the lamp post in Berlin, leg draped, smoke and fog, and eyes hooded beneath the big brimmed tilted hat.

The song continued as a love song that moved many people that in World War II. Both sides sang it. Then Germany refashioned it as its own, and turned it into a militaristic march shouted out by the soldiers as they passed - UN-der the LAMP-post, DAH de dah de DAH....

And then it became a German marching song for the army. Do go to that earlier site. There is even a place on the internet there that you can hear it. Propaganda by adoption of one form, and morphing it into another.

Ypres - Ieper, Belgium, Flanders. Poets; Christmas Truce

Ypres, Belgium, WWI. Now spelled Ieper. On the French border, not far from Arras. Here is the map of the "Salient" or front there. See photos from the war at //www.worldwar1.com/pharc002. Click on every thumbnail. Enlarge the photos.

My uncle fought with the Canadian army there. He said that they used to call the town, "Wipers."

A soldier may be fodder, just as other groups can become like fodder when they are put in a category where the individual in the individual is denied. "Immigrants" today, perhaps. Even "blondes." But fodder is an ascribed status, and that does not mean victim, it does not mean fault, it does not mean unthinking. It means doing what you have to and can do under limited choices, those limitations or boxed stereotypes imposed by others. You can be in the fodder lines and still be heroic, retain dignity, assert your own choices.

Ieper, Belgium. Canadian War Memorial, WWI. Ypres.

Canadian war memorial at Ypres

The War was also a place of poems.

Soldiers in the soldier fodder lines, still retaining their identity, their protest, their observations as citizens, even as they do their jobs. Read the poems of World War I here - at //gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2005/06/poetry-of-war-part-ii.
"In Flanders Fields the Poppies Grow." Go to the documentation center at Ypres with your name of a relative you may never have known who died somewhere there, and they probably can find the grave. See Belgium Road Ways.

Ypres was the site of the Christmas Truce, a "spontaneous fraternization" where British and German troops stopped the fighting, met across the trenches, exchanged cigarettes, and sang. Even played football in nomansland. This did not extend to the elite types of troops, however, or particularly hardened units. See //www.worldwar1.com/heritage/xmast.

War and Literature - Holocaust - family, Isaac Bashevis Singer

A thinker and writer spanning two world wars. Poland. Slaughters of animals and people. The why. "The Compassionate Vision of Isaac Bashevis Singer," at //www.powerfulbook.com/singer. Much of his family died in the Holocaust, he survived by leaving in 1935. He addresses the Holocaust indirectly, but the theme pervades much of his writing.

Netherlands, Arnhem, British Soldier John Frost: Nijmegen, "A Bridge Too Far," Operation Market Garden. The Netherlands.

A Bridge Too Far, Arnhem, the Netherlands

The John Frost Bridge in Arnhem, the Netherlands. See ww2panorama.org/panoramas/arnhem. Also known as "A Bridge Too Far," from the movie of that name. World War II. Operation Market Garden.

That was a controversial mission, with officials disagreeing on many planning and implementation points, high losses, and heroic efforts to make it work. See Pictures of Arnhem at picture.bbnl.nl/pictures-of-arnhem. John Frost and his men held the bridge as long as they could. Reinforcements did not come. See www.thehistorychannel.co.za/site/features/operation_market_garden.

See The Netherlands Road Ways, posts for Arnhem, and the bridge at Nijmegen, where the Americans fought.

Links, See World Wars I and II, People, Places, Events on the web.

See also the hub site for issues and topics: Studying World War: World War I and II, Europe, hub on the web.

See also index of topics, like a web-magazine, at Topics by Dint: Index, Tag Cloud Expanded; and photographs and comments about places from his diary or where he went: Petr Ginz: Places, Lens and Legacy.

Vimy Ridge, France. Soldiers as fodder. WWI. Vimy Ridge, France.

Vimy Ridge, France, WWI
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Here is a memorial at Vimy Ridge, France. Trenches. Huge pits still there, from bomb craters and trenches and upended huge trees, their root holes making it impossible to mow the grass, so sheep are set loose, to finally safely graze.

The conditions for soldiers in World War I were horrendous. Soldiers ultimately saw themselves accurately as "cannon fodder" or "gun meat." See "War Not Peace" at //smoter.com/warnotpe. See Verdun post here, where the soldiers mutinied in 1917 - tens of thousands of them.

For all the precautions need to approach user-editing sites like Wikipedia, it works as a start on basic concepts.

Here is the section on cannon fodder, with "fodder" as an idea. Shakespeare used it. See ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon_fodder.

Explore fodder. Fodder is expendable, as in the face of enemy fire. Fodder is forced to fight by custom or order against odds so impossible as to render the action probably useless. The suggestion of fodder relates to infantry, not air force or others who are not on the ground.