Opium Wars

When I was a kid I was reading a history of the British Empire. I came across the history of the Opium Wars, between England and China,

I thought England was being libeled when I read the English made war on China for China's refusal to allow Indian grown opium (this was about 1860 when India as a well established part of the Empire, the Jewel in the Crown, to be imported into China, enslaving her people and driving them further into poverty).

The prejudice I acquired in California Public School told me this was the sort of behavior to be expected of the Yellow Peril, not white Europeans who always acted for the Good.

So I did what I always did, I consulted my Dad, a great lover of history who could knowledgeably answer any history question I might ask him.

The book was right, my Dad assured me, and that was not the worse thing the English had done. He referred me to the English invention of the concentration camp during the Boar War, and the secret police-like actions of the Black and Tans the great Winston Churchill had sent to Ireland to smash the Irish quest for independence in the form of the Republican Army.

I was reminded of this while reading Piers Brendon's excellent THE DECLINE AND FALL THE THE BRITISH EMPIRE.

To paraphrase Oliver Cromwell: I want my history warts and all.

Keep Hollywood Working

The motion picture and television writers finished their ugly business some time ago causing havoc in the Industry and the community that depends on it. Why? for a larger slice of a bigger pie they'll never taste. For an endeavor that has little use for the vapid product of writers who's best effort is no more than the rehashed television of their youth. Yuk.

Now the actors stand at the abyss ready to destroy the last vestiges of a productive industry. An Industry, Hollywood, once then envy of the world.

That they are artists is the grossest of self-delusions. Most can't remember lines or hit their marks. Ninety percent never work, but not for those reasons The successful actors contracts give them far more than any Union contract could guarantee. Those who do not work hold the fate of the Industry in their hands. A spite vote for a strike will be yet another blow to the fate of the Industry.

Hollywood is a moveable feast.

Keep everyone working.

TODAY

All men stand equal before the law. But, what kind of odds are those?

Outside the Zone

In THE TWILIGHT ZONE episode TIME ENOUGH AT LAST Burgess Meredith plays Henry Bemis, a henpecked little guy who's persecuted for what his boss identifies as the crime of being ... a reader. He must steal time to pursue the simple pleasure of reading.

Fate intervenes in the form of the H Bomb. Henry survives because he was in a bank vault when the bomb obliterated almost everything he knew. He finds a revolver and is about to end his solitude when he spies the ruins of the Public Library, overflowing with readable books. His life is renewed.

Fate intervenes once again when Henry accidentally breaks his glasses. Henry declares its not fair. Life's not fair.

I was ten years old when I saw that episode, but I learned its lesson: if I wanted to keep out of The Twilight Zone, I'd best keep a spare pair of glasses. Forty years later I came to need reading glasses, so I keep several spare pair of glasses, and remain, to this date, clear of the Twilight Zone.

Giving Thanks

In today's New York Times historian Kenneth Davis reminds us of a Thanksgiving held in 1564 by French Huguenots who had established a colony in Florida, near present day Jacksonville. They had fled persecution in France.

Another party of Huguenots had escaped to South Africia.

King Philip II of Spain didn't care for these Protestants on a foreign land Spain did not occupy but claimed none the less, and sent Adm. Pedro Menendez and a fleet to slaughter the heretics. He did so with Inquisitionary zeal.

Francis Parkman chronicled the whole ugly business in his PIONEERS OF FRANCE IN THE NEW WORLD.

Souperism

The award winning film, THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY, about the Irish struggle for independence in the 1920s, might put you in mind of the Potato Famine of the century before.

English aid to the starving Irish was lackluster at best. Other countries were more generous: the Ottoman Sultan Abdulmecid sent a 1000 pounds sterling (he would have sent more, but the Queen, who sent only 2000 pounds, did not want to be out-shined by a heathen foreigner) and three ships loads of food. The impoverished Choctaw Indian Nation sent $710.00.

The Irish Anglican Church, in an effort to siphon off members of the Irish Catholic Church, offered bowels of soup to Catholics willing to convert to the Anglicans. Those who took the religion to keep from starving were known as soupers.

The Lone Gunman

On this day in 1963 Jack Ruby engendered an entire school of conspiracy theory. We watched it on TV. At the time I wondered how a cheap thug could carry a gun into the basement of the Dallas Police Station. A little reading provided the answer. The myth of the Lone Star permeates the Texan culture, but has its limits.

The Dallas Police were good enough to capture Oswald within hours of shooting the President, but were incompetent to provide security for his transfer from one building to another. They would provide better security for a football team. The Christian faith competes with football for title of Texas State Religion.

Putin' on the Ritz

My walking stick has provided me with the greater portion of my personal complements, not counting those made about my height, something over which I had no control (6'6"). Unlike vanity sticks, or the Irish shalale (made famous by the dreadful John Ford/John Wayne film, THE QUIET MAN) mine's sole use is to support me as I stumble my way through the day.

I recall a character in a Sherlock Holmes' story who had drilled out the center of his heavy walking stick and filled it with lead. Like so many Holmes' characters, this fellow felt his life was in danger. I knew a guy who carried a sword cane. He couldn't fence but fancied himself a modern Scaramouche.

My stick was constructed for me by a friend. I always cite him when complemented.

The Royal Family

After waiting through some really tiresome negotiating (which continues to slow roast the patience of the American people) the Hilary Clinton people, along with the Bill Clinton people, negotiate with the Obama people as to the conditions under which The Hilary will accept nomination as Secretary of State (the whole tiresome affair seems as Byzantine as the Congress of Vienna, which the Media portrays as just as important).

If The Hilary should grace the Cabinet for Change with her insight, ego and competitiveness, it will leave an empty seat in the Senate, a vacancy the Democrat Governor of New York will be obliged to fill. Bill Clinton, a choice for bound to irritate Republicans and give his fellow Democrats the dry heaves, would not be a lowly junior Senator, he would enjoy the status of Princeps Senatus.

There is little doubt The Hilary plans a presidential run in 2016. By then Bill could be Majority or Minority leader (depending on the breaks). The Clintons could have two branches of government 'bout sewed-up.

Wild Blue Yonder

A few years back the Air Wing of the CIA's Murder Incorporated (Peruvian Branch) managed to shoot down a civilian aircraft on the suspicion it was carrying (and I hope you're sitting down) drugs.

It turned out this plane was carrying nothing more lethal than Bibles, and Missionaries to introduce the Good Book to the native population (which is a step up from what our civilization used to impose on the unbaptized)

Mother missionary and daughter were killed while father missionary and son escaped death.

Boy, were there red faces at the CIA! Actually no. Those responsible for this murder (and it would be charged as murder if this ugly passion play happened in the USA) hid in the baseboards when investigators shined their flashlights in the darker corners of the agency. Huddled in that darkness, they crossed their antennae and hoped for the best.

The investigation of this murder is about to be reopened and we can only expect the worse and hope for the best.

The Election

The fascisti of the Republican Party has endured a body blow; a setback for their return to the 15th Century that will last at least four years.

The bigots of California have triumphed, protecting what they fancy as traditional marriage, complete with wife beating, child abuse and adultery. The deviant hoards will never breach the ramparts of a true, clean living civil contract.

We can be secure in the knowledge the Right Wing Slander Machine is warming up the leftovers plus new outrages to pollute our TV screens. The hoods, and their interns, the goons, are chugalugging suds, chanting tryout slogans for Neo-Thug rallies. Governorette Palin is now part of the Republican Brain-Trust. The smart part.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and Republican TV ads.

Yeah, I'm a glass half empty kind of guy,

McCain the Brain with the Superplane

We’ve come a long way from, “I retire from the great theatre of action”; and, “A republic, if you can keep it.” To, “I have been tested”, so said the John McCain.

Sadly, when the President handed back his test paper, the score of 2.0 was circled in red. In a class where any score less than 80% is failing.

McCain claims cooling his heels in the cockpit, parked on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Enterprise (“Beam me up Scotty”) waiting to do his part for World War Three is the same as what politicians vainly call “being tested”.

Perhaps McCain means he might have taxied off the flight deck of the Enterprise and into the sea. There would have been no repercussions. The three planes he lost as an aviator would have become four, four planes he lost before he ever went to Vietnam. It was three. Phew, lucky.

The eight stars belonging to his daddy and granddaddy trump three lost planes every time.

First Dick and then Governerete

What we suspected all along is true: Capt. McCain aspires not just to the office of President ( a chair history has proven to wield far greater power than intended by the Framers), but to the grander of a Franco, a Stalin, a Borgia, in other words, Generalissimo. A title more modest than Supreme Dictator, Defender of the Faith and Family Values and Promoter of Retrograde Change. He gets his own Junta, much like the Supreme Dick, Cheney. Dickie Bird got a Junta without the taste of battle, as did Little Bush ( he just went buzz, buzz in an obsolete airplane).

Too bad for the Generalissimo, the Supreme Dick departs his office taking Little Bush with him, and the Generalissimo need a pliant second in command. A Gun Moll to carry his message along with his 20 mm chain gun and spare ammo. The Alaskan Governerete fits the bill. She can shoot congressman from airplanes and dress out the kill on the White House lawn. Kabang! Splat! Who left this mess on the White house lawn? Who's the Boss?

The Alaskan First Red Neck wants a son he can code-name Zamboni. Sadly, Sarah has retired form the baby making business for the Presidency of the Senate (as if they don't have enough trouble) Perhaps the Commerce Committee can buy her off with new clothes. Graft for a vice Presidential Gun Moll house is out of the question as the vice President already has a house. The First Dick resides there at the moment.

After the Republicans steal the election, she can get right down and make some Senatorial changes. Kick some booty. Do some good. Promote comity and a tax free life for the rich. How 'bout an exemption from sales tax for 'em. Its the right thing.

Bourbon/Pretzel Logic

Those who suffered from alcoholic dementia now seen to suffer from religious dementia. This is nothing new in history.

Edward Gibbon reports newly minted christians would pound on a Roman magistrate's door in the dead of night, loudly admitting their religious crime, and demand to be burned alive on the spot. The magistrate would respond with a comeback in the morning, say after 10 AM, I'll be condemning some actors and musicians tomorrow and you can join in. It'll be flames up at three PM. Invite the family and friends. Kids pay half price.

The religiously demented are notoriously self centered, unwilling to share the flames and the audience with riffraff like actors, and worse, musicians, and demanded from the magistrate a pre demise cremation at that very moment. The flames do stand out better in the darkness.

OK, a Centurion and 80 soldiers (those Romans always could spell better than they could count) had to be called out along with the wood haulers in the middle of the night, on double OT (damn unions).

So they got their pre-dawn immolation just to shut them up. The magistrate smelled liquor on the breath. Gibbon further reports the demented seemed to bathe in the flames, all the time calling out, OK Edith, here I come.

Pre Council of Nicaea AA meetings were tough.

The funny this is, the J Man never asked of his followers any such behavior, especially waking grumpy Romans in the middle of the night . The Man was no fool.

He did instruct his followers to render unto Caesar, a suggestion his modern followers seem to forget, or brand socialistic and Un-American, and quite possibility terrorist related. It is felt by some to be a mistranslation of the Lord's Word. The J Man has a hard-on for the rich. Coin should pass in the other direction. Concentrated wealth is very large plank in the religiously demented platform.

The poor are hungry? Are there no horse apples on the roads?

Caesar making payment to those who can't pass through the eye of a needle is called tribute. Any coin remaining should go to defense.

It takes alcoholic dementia to prepare the mind for the religious dementia that leads to that kind of thinking.

Mista Jone, He Daid.

In this version of the Indy Jones Chronicles the monkey people retreat
to the back of the Monkey House and pelt the audience with feces, after
which they sat back and watch the producer, director, writer, in fact
all the above the line leaches, masturbate to distract the audience
from the realization that watching this movie is like swimming across a
river of snot.

In this installment Indy has a son named Mutt. A truly talented writer
would have given the poor lonely child a brother named Jeff. Maybe the
two of them together could have come close to a convincing performance.
"You're not my Dad! He was a RAF pilot who's kite was shot down by a
ME 109 flown by the Red Baron!" You see, Matt never finished school,
he's a motorcycle mechanic, like those guys on SONS OF ANARCHY.

Cate Blanchett is a sword welding transvestite Soviet Army Officer in a
quest to learn mind control from, you guessed it, the Red, I mean, the
crystal skull, which turns out not to be crystal, but ETs lost head
("Elliott, do you believe in Tinker Bell?)

John Hurt seemed to think he was doing the last act of KING LEAR ("my
poor fool," in this case Spielberg," is dead. Or in one of the radio
versions of HEART OF DARKNESS, "Mister Kurtz, he daid".)

There's the obligatory fat guy who turns out to be the turncoat. Yeah,
fat guys have no loyalty except to pizza and ice cream. The only
dramatic purpose he served to is play the fool to Hurt's Lear (sans
storm).

This abomination was part X FILES and a lot of the NATIONAL TREASURE
pictures. NATURAL TREASURE was much better.

Oh, in this turkey, ET didn't phone it in, Harrison Ford did. He's
going to end up doing dinner theater in Florida.