A Wider Lens

Posted on January 11, 2015 by Professor Taboo

For the sake of higher, broader awareness and education…
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Though I am a history fanatic and quite familiar with the two world wars (politically and militarily), I watched an excellent 3-part series recently about events surrounding the World War I conflict, but it was NOT from the typical Western European perspective. It was from the “conscripted” perspective, or rather from the nations who were promised much from the principle Allied nations but in the end were grossly betrayed by them despite the enormous cost in life and blood of their own fathers and sons-in-arms.

As a 20th century born American, this was a perspective I knew very little about from my secondary schooling, collegiate years, or mainstream U.S. media. Today, out of necessity, I have completely relearned the events on my own accord. It wasn’t too long into the study that I learned my naïvety was larger than I had expected. Humbled, I pursued a more broadly educated view for the sake of my right to vote, taxpayer-responsibility, and my now refined middle-aged American

citizenship and wisdom. Furthermore, it mattered because my own children could one day be faced with international conflicts and wars, or more disturbing, serve in my nation’s armed forces in conflicts abroad that were created in 1917-18 and later 1947-48, or be casualties of future 9/11 attacks, and clueless about why! How is that possible you may ask!?

Naive is the democratic citizen who does not think their nation’s foreign affairs influence or dictate their present economy, employment, and taxes, even their own family — whom could very well serve giving the “ultimate sacrifice” for that same nation’s armed forces abroad. Very foolish is the same citizen who hasn’t a firm grasp of the full history behind their nation’s foreign affairs which led to and/or fuels conflicts abroad, and therefore perpetually binds and chains their national foreign policy, economy, employment, and taxes for near seventy years, seven decades, i.e. almost a century, with no end in sight. What has been the cost, both realized and still unrealized? The answer is likely much more than you and most could ever imagine.

I am currently reading (actually it is further reading) Alison Weir’s acclaimed book, “Against Our Better Judgement: The hidden history of how the U.S. was used to create Israel.” Some reviews on Weir’s hard work:

“This provocative book documents a history that is essential in understanding today’s world. Scholarly, yet readable, it is a must for all Americans. We all need to know what we have spent by coddling Israel and its aggressions, and why the cost has become more than we have bargained for.”
— James Abourezk, former U.S. Senator

“The main messages from Weir’s history are that the Jewish community has not legitimately needed a homeland-refuge from anti-Semitism and that Americans must take back their country by insisting that their elected officials place the interests of the United States before those of Israel.”
— Karin Brothers, freelance writer for RINF.com

“The United States has a moral prestige in the Near and Middle East unequalled by that of any other great power. We would lose that prestige and would be likely for many years to be considered as a betrayer of the high principles which we ourselves have enunciated…”
— Loy Henderson, U.S. Senate Department

“Prodigiously documented… Alison Weir must be highly commended for throwing such a brilliantly hard light on the relationship between the United States and Israel. I hope this marvelous book gets all the attention it deserves.”
— Ambassador Andrew Killgore, Publisher, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

If you are like me — a voting, taxpayer-responsible, loving parent, middle-aged (or not) American citizen who deeply cares about my local, state, and federal economy, jobs, tax-rates, and family members who serve, or could serve, in our armed forces — and you’re EXHAUSTED about the U.S. constantly getting dragged into Near and Middle Eastern conflicts, then you will want, NO… you are vehemently required to learn the real roots of the blood-ridden region and history! Broaden your lens, broaden your perspective.

If you truly care about humanity and this life-giving and sustaining planet, by re-examining this history and its bridle on current affairs in the region, then you will discover just how much our nation’s past is controlling our present and possibly your future generations! And hopefully, you can find the determination do something about it!

So it seems quite proper to close with this,

الله يكون معك

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For starters, more information:

IfAmericansKnew.org
Behind the Balfour Declaration of 1917 – Institute for Historical Review

And my own references/blog-posts and their links:

Canaanites Killed & Removed From Native Lands
Religious Imperialism Alive Still

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Heraclitus and The Oak

Posted on June 17, 2014 by Professor Taboo

The Master and his warrior-student rested under a massive oak tree near the stream. “Look Teacher,” said the proud young warrior, “I will become as big and famous as this oak!” banging his sword against its trunk. The Master sighed and told this ancient story…

Sitting under a tree much the same as this one, understanding his place in Nature, a very wise humble man once said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” On hearing this sage’s words the Oak and the nearby slender reeds argued. A wind blew and the great Oak stood proudly upright with its hundred arms up into the sky. The reeds however, swayed and bowed low under the wind.

“You have reason to complain,” said the Oak to the reeds. “The slightest breeze ruffles the water and makes you bow your heads, while I, the mighty Oak, stand tall and firm against the tempest.”

“Do not worry about us,” replied the reeds. “The winds do not harm us. We bend before them and so do not break. You, in all your pride and strength, have so far resisted, yes. But as the old Sage says, this is not the same river, this is not the same wind, and now you are not the same tree.”

“Pfffft” boasted the giant oak, “Non-sense! We are oak. It has always been this way! We will stand forever!”

As the proud Oak spoke, a great storm rushed in from the north. The Oak stood more proudly fighting against the storm, while the reeds yielded and swayed. The wind’s fury doubled then doubled again, and all at once the great tree fell, torn up by the roots and lying among the pitying reeds.

And looking upon the fallen Oak that wise Sage said, “Better to yield when it is folly to resist, than to resist arrogantly and be destroyed.”

The Master turned to his over-zealous student, and added “If you learn no temperance, your arrogance will be your folly. Even the unmovable is one day moved. Learn your place; embrace your place humbly.”

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Religious Imperialism Alive Still

Posted on March 28, 2014 by Professor Taboo

A few months ago I got lured into what I thought was a discussion and dialogue over American-Syrian foreign policy. My college friend had an obvious hatred for President Obama and Democratic policies. The discussion, turned heated debate, was regarding the treatment of Syria by President Obama and Syria’s perceived lack of respect for American threats against Assad’s regime and his use of chemical weapons on Syrian citizens. My conservative college friend’s stance on Syria, Islāmic regimes, and basic American foreign policy in the Middle East was one of ‘enforced power‘ applied through America’s alliance with Israel.

zahal_israel_defense_forces_inspection_1949

New Israeli army on parade – 1949

In my attempt to give more historical background to America’s long Israeli support in matters of Middle Eastern conflicts, including our MASSIVE costly mistake in invading Iraq for WMD’s, I stressed how prudent and utterly cautious the U.S. should be when involving itself in Middle Eastern matters so soon after invading Iraq. I eventually let him know that the 1949 U.N. creation of the nation of Israel was a horrible blotch on the U.S. and Western nation’s historical political record in the eyes of Palestinians, Syrians, and Islāmic nations in the region. It is the major reason the area has seen so much violence and blood-shed for the last 65-years toward Israel and Western powers.

My friend blew his top and began using Biblical passages – as if they were God-ordained entitlements – that Israel “belonged there” for several millennia. That’s when I knew I was facing an all too common Christian-Zionist misconception of the region’s history which is TOO OFTEN naïvely understood and ignorantly proclaimed by conservative (Puritan?) American politics. Here are at least 10 reasons why their belief is based in gross fabrication as inspired from the work of Dr. Juan Cole from the University of Michigan.

The ancient geographical history of Judaism begins in Mesopotamia, loosely modern-day Iraq and Syria, not Jerusalem or the Levant.
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The actual settlement of Jerusalem and its surrounding region was founded between 3000 to 2600 BCE by a Semitic people (possibly Canaanites), the common ancestors of modern Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, and Jordanians. However, outside of Old Testament passages, Judaism as a state or kingdom did not exist in or around Jerusalem. To date, there has been no archeological evidence found of a “Kingdom of David” or of Solomon’s Temple claimed in the Bible during this period.
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The settlement of Jerusalem was named in honor of Shalim, (salem) from the Canaanite religious pantheon, found on inscriptions in Syria. According to the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (1999), the word Jerusalem means “built-up place of Shalim.” Modern Judaism wrongly translates the word as City of Peace, and has romanticized its historical context as their own at the exclusion of Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese, and Jordanians.
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Strictly from Biblical sources, i.e. not from additional independent sources, Judaism asserts that the prophet Moses led slaves inside ancient Egypt. Judaism asserts slave labor and a major slave revolt by Jews in ancient Egypt followed by a mass exodus into the Sinai Peninsula. Judaism also asserts a Jewish invasion of Palestine by fleeing slaves from Egypt. Yet no Egyptian records or evidence during the reign of Ramses II, as recorded at Luxor, exists to support any of these claims. Furthermore, the only archeological evidence of a monotheistic worship happening inside Jerusalem doesn’t take place until around 1000 BCE. All evidence prior to 1000 BCE clearly demonstrates common Canaanite deities were worshiped. And even in this case, as noted in #4 below, substantial evidence of a monotheistic religion beginning in Jerusalem doesn’t begin happening until after 900 BCE as a small sect or population!
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There is no definitive proof that Jerusalem was even inhabited between 1000 and 900 BCE. No archeological evidence of glorious palaces, great states or kingdoms, or recognized kings of the region by Assyrian tablets, which record even the minutest events throughout the Middle East, has been discovered. But once again, strictly from Biblical sources only, Judaism asserts these buildings, kings, and states existed. The independent archeological records simply are not there.
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Finally, with much exhaustion, a Jewish group known as the Hasmoneans did rule Jerusalem briefly between 168 and 37 BCE. This is a grossly different time span (almost a 2,200 year difference) from what Zionist Judaism claims: 3000 BCE to present? Yet even during this period (168 – 37 BCE) the reign over Jerusalem was with the significant help of Parthia. The archeological and historical sources clearly show the Assyrians ruled Jerusalem and the region in 722 to 597 BCE when the Babylonians conquered it. They lost it in 539 BCE to the Achaemenids of ancient Iran and ruled until Alexander the Great took the entire Levant in the 330’s BCE. Alexander’s descendants, the Ptolemies, ruled until 198 BCE when his other descendants, the Seleucids, took it. Enter the well-known King Herod of Parthian heritage from 37 to 6 BCE, at which time the Romans conquered all of Palestine. The Romans and then later the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium, or later Constantinople, or modern Istanbul) reigned from 6 BCE until 614 CE when the Iranian Sassanian Empire conquered Jerusalem. They ruled until 629 CE when the Byzantines took it back. But wait! The fighting and conquering isn’t over!
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Beginning in 637 CE, the Muslim Arabs put siege to Jerusalem and conquered it a year later. They ruled until 1099 CE when all the European Crusaders took it. It is at this point when the Jewish and Muslim inhabitants of Jerusalem fought side-by-side but were horrifically murdered in mass by Christian Crusaders. The Gesta Francorum, the chronicle of the First Crusade, states “…[our soldiers] were killing and slaying [women and babies alike] even to the Temple of Solomon, where the slaughter was so great that our men waded in blood up to their ankles…” The estimated genocide is calculated today to be between 10,000 to 25,000 lives.
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Saladin

Upon the incursions and invasions of the European Crusaders, the great Sultan Saladin led his Egyptian and Syrian Muslims against the Christian armies, conquering much of the Levant and freeing Muslim slaves, then put siege to Jerusalem in 1187 CE and conquered it less than a month later. Saladin, in unprecedented military fashion of the time recognizing the historical significance of Jerusalem to so many, allowed non-combatant Christians to leave and allowed Jews the choice to return. Muslims ruled Jerusalem until the end of World War I, or in sum for about 1,192 years!
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To conclude #5, advocates of Zionist Judaism did not found Jerusalem. Judaism as a firm stable known religion or as a kingdom did not begin until around 200 BCE. And the Hasmonean dynasty only ruled Jerusalem (in part) for about maybe 170 years.
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Perhaps the most notable part of Jerusalem’s history is in 136 CE after the Bar Kochba revolt against Roman authority failed. Some of the Jews in Jerusalem remained, but firmly under the rule of Rome and then Byzantium. Many converted to Christianity to escape the harsh oppression. After 638 CE and the Arab Muslim invasion, 90% of Jerusalem converted to Islam! Thereafter, the entire region was almost exclusively Muslim for the next 1,300 plus years. Palestinians are the legitimate descendants of Jerusalem, Eastern Israel, and the region!
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In 1947 the virtual city and region of peace was completely turned upside down. Despite the above historical and archeological chronicle of Judaism, the United Nations enacted the Partition Plan for Palestine following World War II and Jewish Holocaust. This plan for the State of Israel developed from the post-war British political and military withdrawal from Palestine as well as wide Western sympathy for Jews and the Holocaust. Suddenly, it seemed, the U.N. and West completely forgot what European Crusaders did to Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem in 1099 CE in the aftermath of the First Crusade. Naturally, Palestine breaks out into civil war shortly after Resolution 181 (II) of the United Nations General Assembly implementing the partitioning of Palestine. All out war followed between Arab militias and Jewish militias eventually leading to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Because of Western powers and alliances with Zionist Israel, and dare I say ignorance, the region has seen very little peace ever since. Today tensions, violence, and terrorism trickle over into other contemporary conflicts from Western nations over-meddling in the Middle East, i.e. Iraq and Afghanistan, based indirectly on religious imperialist differences.
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1967 Six Days War

The 4^th Geneva Convention of 1949 along with the Hague Regulations of 1907 explicitly forbids occupying powers (i.e. Britain or Jewish Europeans) to alter the lifestyles of non-combatant civilians who are occupied. It furthermore explicitly forbids the immigration of people from the occupiers’ country into the occupied territory (i.e. Palestine). Western nations of the U.N., including the United States, sat idle as the newly formed State of Israel removed Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem, usurped Palestinian property and settled on their property, annexed districts of Jerusalem, all in gross violation of International Law. Ironically, to state mildly, the Nazis began the same violations in 1938 and 1939 Europe.
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Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin

Past and present Israeli governments have not been united, much less consistent, about how East Jerusalem and the West Bank should be settled and managed once they were taken over. Comically, this is reminiscent of Judaism’s long history of sectarian division and fragmentation going all the way back to 37 CE. The Judaization of Galilee, a region in northern Israel, was implemented throughout the 1960’s and ‘70’s but with limited success. Prime Minister and Nobel Prize winner Yitzhak Rabin was primarily responsible for bringing Israelis to peaceful coexistence with Palestine through the Oslo Peace Accord in 1993 and granting Palestinians their right to become a recognized state and withdrawing Jews from Gaza and Jericho. For these proceedings Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by Jewish-Zionist elements in 1995, specifically Yigal Amir, and elements that are now associated with current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government. As late as 2000, rhetoric and hints of Palestinian assurances by post-Rabin Israeli officials have been given but fourteen years and counting none have materialized.
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The archeological record and linguistic history of Jerusalem and Levant show who has the most legitimate claim to sovereignty from best to least, in chronological order, by the number of years settled:
In the end, the only real claim Judaism has for Jerusalem and a state of Israel is based subservient to Persians, Greeks, and Romans when they ruled Palestine. To make assertions to inhabit Jerusalem and the Palestinian region based on Biblical history, is like Americans claiming the European continent as legitimately theirs because of their ancestors, or Mexico claiming the southwest United States as their own because prior to the 18^th century CE it belonged to them. Spain could then lay claim of southwest America prior to them! Yet, in a post-WWII world, by pandering to the West’s sympathies and political imperialism, Zionist-Jews robbed western Palestine and expelled Palestinians from their legitimate homeland while the “civilized” Western nations turned their heads.

Christian Biblical Fundamentalism

My conservative college friend no longer acknowledges me. Because I questioned and disagreed with his political, religious, and social positions, he no longer speaks to me. In fact, many of my former college and seminary friends – yes, I attended three years of seminary in Jackson, MS – no longer speak to me much less listen to me. My more moderate college friends and my current liberal friends enjoy having these types of discussions and examinations. Why they do, compared to the far-right fundamentalists, I cannot specifically answer. I can speculate, but without any level of communication it is impossible to figure his or the far-right’s obstinacy.

For the last twenty-three years, my once biblical fundamentalism has been increasingly deprogrammed and deconstructed until finally there was no intellectual basis for it whatsoever. It eventually became all together Pagan or non-religious until I finally determined my current “title” or label: Freethinking Humanist.

I recently read a post from one of my favorite bloggers, 500 Questions, where he examines whether the canonical Bible is divinely inspired (click here for that post). He delves into the power and persuasion of memetics or the transfer of information or stories socially over the span of many generations. If popular and useful enough, the meme can take on a life of its own becoming seemingly factual. It is an excellent post if you have a chance to read it!

My now former conservative friend is a microcosm of a larger global problem: religious extremism or literalism. When I study all the world’s various faiths and social systems, I am appalled by how much of humanity’s history is filled with religious conflict and imperialism. More striking is how much of it has been born from the Abrahamic religions. If historians compiled the top ten worst moments in human history so far, half of them would be religiously based with the Crusades of Jerusalem topping all of them. Two to three more would be politically-religiously based.

In light of what I’ve written here, in an age where geneticists and modern genetics have determined time and again that all of humanity has less than a 1% difference with each other, it is appalling that religious extremism and imperialism still exists. Ninety-nine percent of us have the same tools genetically to live in peace and prosper together! Everything outside of that 1% is taught to us (truthfully or falsely) by our parents, family, and community. What does that say about potential change and world peace?

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**Nov. 22nd, 2014 — More Information:

“Few Americans today are aware that US support enabled the creation of modern Israel. Even fewer know that US politicians pushed this policy over the forceful objections of top diplomatic and military experts. As this work demonstrates, these politicians were bombarded by a massive pro-Israel lobbying effort that ranged from well-funded and very public Zionist organizations to an “elitist secret society” whose members included Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.”

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Alison Weir’s organization: IfAmericansKnew.org

John Crewdson’s October 2007 Chicago Tribune article

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Live Well * Love Much * Laugh Often * Learn Always

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Since I Was A Boy

Posted on February 26, 2014 by Professor Taboo

Several years ago I lived in an apartment no more than a mile from a suburbia airport north of Dallas. It is the home of a vintage flight museum I have visited countless times and volunteered two or three times just to touch and be near the famous warbirds. Like a boy loves his dog or a little girl loves her favorite doll, I marveled at the history, pilots, and flying machines of World War II. Some days I would utterly frighten my son and daughter by suddenly dropping whatever I was doing and run out the door as fast as I could. Seconds later they would hear what I already heard. Sometimes the windows and knickknacks on the mantel or shelves would vibrate. Turn your volume up as loud as is appropriate to get the full effect and play this 20-second clip:

My kids would chase after me, sometimes out of breath because I would keep moving around in order to see as much sky as I could watching the spectacle arrive and depart. “How can you always tell the difference between modern planes and the old ones!?” my daughter would ask. “That is amazing!” as she shook her head bewildered. As I have gotten older, been to many airshows, and gotten more informed and educated on EVERYTHING World War II Aviation, a few of those traumatic surprises would start with pumped adrenaline, then goose-bumps, and then tears. My son, always emotionally connected to me since his first breath, upon seeing my tears would ask “Why are you crying Dad?” And this is how I would describe to him the honored, revered tears.

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I love almost all of the WWII planes whether they were combat or cargo, they all had a vital importance to the war effort. Their pilots were some of the bravest heroes under the most extraordinary circumstances. All of our veterans from any war or combat service are and will be heroes. However, if I had to choose just one WWII plane to love most, I know exactly which one she would be.

p-51-mustang-credit-caf — The P-51 D Mustang

If you are not aware or cannot remember, at the onset of the Second World War the Allies were grossly unprepared to fight Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. Both Axis nations had a big head start in fine machinery and experienced well-trained pilots. In the first 24 to 30 months of combat, most air battles were won by Germany and Japan with much better maneuverable faster planes and better pilots. Losses due to combat or dogfights were often staggering for the Americans and British. Plain and simple, the German Messerschmitts and Folke-Wulfs, and the Japanese Mitsubishi Zeroes were flat-out better machines. Any high-ranking general will tell you every time, if you don’t control the skies, you either will not win or you might win but at astronomical losses in men and materials. In 1942 and ’43 the war in both theaters was very uncertain for America and Britain. The Germans controlled the skies over Europe and the Japanese controlled them in the Pacific.

The Allies desperately needed an edge in the skies!

The primary reason Great Britain thwarted Hitler’s Luftwaffe (air force) in the Battle of Britain was because of their Spitfire and Hurricane pilots. Spitfires could handle the Messerschmitts while the Hurricanes could take out the bombers. The problem was that Britain could not quickly replace losses; both in planes or pilots. The Spitfire housed one of the most superb engines ever built: the Rolls-Royce Merlin V-12. The Americans had a few good fighter-designs but most of them at the time were under-powered and couldn’t match the high-altitude performance of the German engines. Finally, with British ingenuity and American manufacturing, emerged a single fighter-plane that would change the course of the air war in Europe and the Pacific…

The North American P-51 Mustang.

You might ask how can just one fighter plane change the course of a war? Simple, the P-51 D Mustang saved thousands of American bomber crews from their deaths. From 1942 to early 1944, American bomber losses were intolerable because the bombing raids required deeper penetration into Nazi Germany. In the Pacific air war, vast oceans with few islands also required long-range aircraft. The Allies had no such fighter plane capable of escorting bombers all the way to their target and back until the P-51 Mustang.

Not only did the Mustang, with its high-performance high-altitude Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, match and exceed those of its enemy fighters, but it was also highly maneuverable and lethal in the hands of a good pilot. To put it in perspective just how much the P-51 Mustang changed the air war, the survival rate of American bomber crews in Europe prior to its introduction was 1-out-of-3 crewmen killed from 1942 to late 1943. After the winter of 1943-44 when Mustangs flew escort, the survival rate rose to 67% after 25 missions flown, then 81% by 1945 and the end of the war. The P-51 Mustangs were quite literally their knights-in-shining-armor for bomber crews, or “Angels on our wings” as many bomber pilots and crewmen would describe. The Mustang helped turn the tide of war and bring it to a quicker end.

That is the historical impact of the Mustang. Now I want to describe from a boy’s perspective the emotional impact of this gorgeous mighty bird.

Leave it to Steven Spielberg to capture the moment perfectly how it feels for a boy. His 1987 film Empire of the Sun starring a young Christian Bale, tells the story of a small British boy fascinated with flight and “the brave daring pilots” of the Japanese Zero fighter. He gets separated from his parents in Shanghai, China at the outbreak of war with Japan. Though his captors are brutal to him and his “new” British prison-family, Jim (Christian Bale) worships the Zero pilots and their magnificent planes throughout the first half of the war.

After they are moved late in the war to an airbase to build a runway for the Zero fighters, Jim hears rumors about a new fighter plane called the Mustang, the Cadillac of the Skies. He eats breaths and reads everything he can get his hands and ears on. I relate completely to Jim’s obsessions of flying and the machines these brave pilots fought in.

And then one morning while paying his respect and admiration to the Kamikaze pilots and planes, Jim’s whole world and those of the planes and pilots he worshiped so long are turned upside down. Apologies that this heart-wrenching scene is broken up into two clips – blame YouTube!

It is hard to put into words how the flight, the speed, the beautiful lines of a P-51 looks and feels to a young heart. There is no other sight or sound in this world like the air being sucked into the intake whistling at a high pitch as it dives toward you, and a second later the reverberation of that V-12 roaring by as it climbs away at over 4,160 feet per minute! “Go P-51…Cadillac of the Skies!” As Jim screams, “HORSEPOWER!“

Since I was a boy I have always dreamt of flying in this mighty magnificent warbird. To feel the immense rumble of that Rolls-Royce Merlin engine supercharged and forcing me back into my seat. That would absolutely be one of the best days of my life!

For a few very lucky months the software company I use to work for had their offices at the end of the runway. Every two or three weeks the owner of the flight museum and the P-51 D Mustang would take it out for some fly byes. On one particular occasion he throttled it out on take off. Just over halfway down the runway he had enough airspeed to lift-off and put this beautiful bird into a 35-40 degree climb with ease, banked it, and then leveled off about 600-700 feet at cruising speed. It seemed effortless. I thought to myself, so that’s how it must have looked and sounded back in 1940’s Europe and China. Imagine if you were Japanese or German what it meant watching the Mustangs fly by and listening to that whistling horsepower. Imagine how it felt if you were British or American back then: finally, the beginning of the end. Wow! I still get chills up and down my spine every time I hear that distinct engine and watch it zip from one horizon to the other.

Some of man’s creations are works of beauty and timeless. Today my son no longer has to ask why I have goose-bumps and tears watching famous warbirds; he gets it…just like I did when I was his age.

L’absurdité de la Guerre

Posted on December 5, 2013 by Professor Taboo

It was known as the war to end all wars. In all the history of mankind the scale of destruction and death of World War I had never been seen or remotely imagined. From all the major world powers fighting in 1914, an estimated 65 million men put their nation’s uniforms on and set off to the front-lines to obliterate their enemies. In the end, more than 10 million men would be killed; 20 million would be maimed for life. Thirty-million families lost husbands, sons, fathers, brothers, or the return of their permanently disfigured bodies and minds.

L’absurdité de la Guerre – The Absurdity of War

From the very first shots fired the war spun quickly out of control. By the summer of 1914 European empires were realizing an era of unprecedented scientific and mechanized advancements as a result of the Victorian industrial revolution. The killing efficiency of these new 19th century national armies wiping out swaths of soldiers in a matter of minutes had never been seen on any battlefield at any time earlier. Central Europe was literally a 600-square mile butcher’s block of human and animal limbs and carcasses scattered everywhere in pools of mud, blood, and disease. The poet-novelist Robert Graves wrote:

“[the bodies] we could not get from the German [barbed]wire continued to swell…the color of the dead faces changed from white to yellow-gray, to red, to purple, to green, to black.”

The stench of death is unlike any odor known. I know; I’ve smelt it. Overlooking these unbelievable scenes one looses any remaining hope for humanity’s survival. None of the warring leaders and monarchs had any conception of what killing-machines were being set in motion. The fact that most of them thought the war would be ending by Christmas 1914, shows how arrogantly disillusioned they had become with their national status and power. Too few thought the apocalypse had arrived but watched as masses of ordinary people and soldiers were lead to their deaths.

In some of the darkest hours however, there are some that rise above their circumstances.

In a letter to his brother Nickolai in 1886, Anton Chekhov – thought by most historians to be one of Russia’s greatest writers – described eight simple principles of human decency.

Respect others as individuals, no more.
Have more compassion for others beyond beggars or pets.
Respect other’s property, even pay their debts.
Do not be devious. Fear lies as you fear fire.
Do not solicit sympathy from others.
Do not be vain, thinking you are above certain others.
Value beauty and talent; nurture it, doing your part to grow it.
Develop your aesthetic sensibilities, doing your part for the greater refinement of the whole.

Chekhov would conclude that any level of pomp and arrogance was only as noble as the least of your fellow man. That was his standard of a true civilized human being and people.

On Christmas Eve December 24^th, 1914 bitter enemies in opposite trenches of Europe’s Western Front despite the hatred their national leaders, families and military commanders felt toward their enemy, decided not to fight, but to sing. The Germans lit candles and in beautiful harmony sang “Silent night…Holy night.” So moved by their cheer, the British soldiers responded with carols of their own. This goodwill inspired many soldiers on both sides to toss gifts of food over into their enemy trenches. The German side applauded the British singing then the Brits cheered and applauded the Germans. One miracle act of goodness led to another, then another. By dawn Christmas Day, chivalry and kindness were as out of control as the war. They even played a football match together around the large cannon-shell craters and wired obstacles.

I often understand the causes of war and killing: it is the utter failure of peoples or their leaders to do everything humanly possible to resolve dispute, or it is merely the greed of egos and the ignorance of those who follow them. In the end, in every single conflict throughout all of mankind’s history, the price of war and killing is too high and never completely measured for generations to come. In certain obvious cases today it never ends.

Yet on a small level, on an individual basis, when humans can step back and understand the person facing them on a personal level, not as a total stranger who is being led by a delusional greedy ego-maniac monarch or king, that spirit which Anton Chekhov speaks about can and will courageously step forward. The real miracle of this 1914 Christmas between “enemies” was that a few good men did not bow to the fear of a firing-squad or court-marshal by their superiors. Instead they recognized the moment was greater than themselves or their nations — as is almost always the case in any situation of dispute. When people view strangers as anything other than another human being, a human being who also has parents, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters all with the same basic needs as you…the higher perspective, the higher road comes to focus. What remains is the decision to take it.

The Christmas Truce of 1914 was a supreme act of humanity and goodwill by a group of courageous men in uniforms surrounded by the most despicable acts of nations. Such a truce had never before taken place. And for no apparent intelligent reasons, has never happened again. Though I am not a Christian or a religious man during this time of year, I am the biggest fan-fanatic for humanity and the potential brilliance of the human spirit.

Peace on Earth, goodwill to all men and women. Happy holidays everyone.

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