The Israeli Government's Big Lie Told Over Thirty Years

THE ISRAELI FASCIST regime that has ruled it most of the past half-century has been itching for the United States to attack Iran and install yet another American installed dictator over that country for longer than the criminal Netanyahu has been the head of it.   I don't much watch The Daily Show but their compilation of him trying to get the US to attack Iran with what has been a lie over three decades makes the point better than anything else I've seen   

The lie he has been telling for years - the one he got Trump to make plausible by getting him to scrap the anti-bomb deal that the Obama administration negotiated -   the one he used to push that project along last week by attacking Iran which he knew would provoke a response has been lapped up by the US and Western media for as long as he's been telling it.   It should never be forgotten, if there are any to remember it after what's about to happen,  that the US, British, etc. free press has been buying and pushing lies like that and never, until this clip,  in my recollection, pointing out that the Israeli government has been lying through its teeth about that for decades and getting America, the West and itself in one massive criminal, genocidal, disaster after another for the entire time.    As I pointed out to enormous objection the other day,   the Israeli voters apparently are OK with it because they haven't gotten rid of the various fascists in the fascist coalition who drove the somewhat less fascist factions with any electabability into supporting such criminal insanity.    And, as we can see this week,  what that fascism has done is put the lives of Israelis at greater risk than ever. 

I don't know if it's true or not but there are reports that the apartheid ethno-democracy (majority rule without equality can well result in fascism as many a European ethno-state has put in power by election) of Israel is reportedly demonstrated by Palestinians with putative Israeli citizenship being turned away from bomb shelters by the authorities.   I'd really like to know if that is in fact the case and even more so,  I'd like to be able to believe it isn't.   But with what I've read about the racism that is rampant among Israelis when bombs aren't going off,  I find it all too believable.   The Israel we were all sold by the media and dishonest academics, American socialist romantics and popular writers like Leon Uris and even more so Hollywood was always at best about a quarter truth and mostly lies.   

With the fewest of exceptions

those who hang out at Eschaton are lazy, non-reading idiots who NEVER fact check Simps to find out he lies about what I've said, EVEN AS HE COPIES THINGS I HAVE SAID TO PRESENT THEM AS HIS OWN IDEAS.  

I have dealt with that enough for this year so I won't bother answering what he said at the link.   I remember when they all seemed to believe that Duncan and his commenting community had the attention of such as Paul Krugman and various others of that caliber though I never was sold on that.   Nothing that is important is said there,  it's geezers wasting time and being in with what they take as an in-crowd until someone declares one of them has cooties and drives then out.  Adults left a long time ago.   As for DD,  I gather he's one of those high school teachers who has an emotional need to be kewel with the kids.    I couldn't stand those teachers when I was in school but, then,  I thought the kewel kids were conceited boring jerks  

I will endeavor to have this a Simps free space for the summer,  though if he says something I think is hilariously stupid I might mock it.   As for his fan base at the baby blue blog,  as they say on Letterkenny,  I really don' give a fuck. 

So Much Talent I Can't Keep Up With Them

I DON'T KNOW who Max from UNFTR is and never heard of him until this came up on the ol' Youtube sidebar this morning.   He's also one of the Meidas Touch's ever growing stable of commentators and,  as he seems to use a script instead of improvising,  he's one of the more effective ones I've heard.   His explanation of the political economics of the past about eighteen years is excellent, especially interesting to me because he squarely includes the Obama economic team's enrichment of the elites at the cost of the many as a part of why we are in such trouble now.   Tim Geithner and Larry Summers and others, including Rahm Emanuel helped the prep to Ivy Leaguer Obama do that instead of fulfilling the expectations of his massive vote for his first term.   It cost Democrats AND THE COUNTRY dearly that he chose those preppy asses to do things.  Oh, we plebs got a little from them but it was trickle down.   They were careful to save the bankers from their greed while enriching them even more.   I was never all that sold on Obama to start with and, though I voted for him in 2012,  I wasn't expecting him to be even very good, just far better than any Republican.   

Especially listen to what Max says about the direct stimulus that the middle class and even poor and destitute People got during Covid and how the corporate crooks couldn't stand that they had money that served them and decided en masse to gouge them through inflated prices using the supply chain disruption as a cover.  

I don't agree with every detail in the video though he tells far more of the truth about that than you're likely to find elsewhere.  

I'll be looking to click on more of his content when I see it,  unlike the lawyers, he doesn't bury his lede under rambling stream of consciousness,   the thing that drives me up the wall with Meidas and such other outfits who seem to do it as a conscious decision at Occupy Democrats - you generally have to skip the first three minutes or more to get to what they promise you they're talking about.   Why they do that I don't know.   I sometimes write that way because I'm writing.   People can skim or skip or go back and look at what I've said.   Writing for talk, especially talk with pictures is different.   Those guys should read something like Radio Deutsche Welle's Manual For Radio Journalists (available as a pdf online) or some other radio services' advice about that.  NOT that I expect most lawyers would have the humility to learn something new,  they might be even more successful if they tried something like using a script that GETS TO THE POINT.  

Answer To Whining That I Blasphemed Against The Constitution

WE ARE IN THE INCREDIBLE position for what is alleged to be a republic and far more so a deputed democracy that we are seriously contemplating the possibility that the stupidest to start with and now clearly senile-demented Trump could, on his own, not only get us into the Israeli war on Iran but,  AND THIS IS SERIOUSLY UNDER DISCUSSION,  dropping nuclear weapons on Iran ON HIS OWN WHIM.   And everything with Trump is done on a whim.   I lie when I call that "incredible" because under our petrified presidential system, it isn't unbelievable,  it is a fact in the realm of the all too possible. 

That any government of any kind could be the rational focus of such expectations completely demolishes the legitimacy of such a government and the system of Constitution and laws that bring such governance into existence.  And our Constitution, under the manipulation of the Supreme Court starting in 1803 with the Marbury v Madison usurpation of power by that Court has brought us here.   I maintain that it is clear that that power was never contained in the Constitution but the Constitution AS IT REALLY IS is what is allowed to happen continuously under it.   Ours has allowed that to be the law of the land for more than two and a quarter centuries without any correction so that and the entire corpus of corrupt judicial law making it has led to*  IS WHAT OUR CONSTITUTION REALLY, TRULY IS.  

That original violation of Adams' theory of "balance powers" has since metastasized into the many and varied  abandonment to legislative powers by the Congress to the Executive, as that used to be and now, with the modern Rehnquist-Roberts Courts and, especially,  Republican then Republican-fascist granting of absolute power to Republican-fascist presidents THAT IS WHAT OUR CONSTITUTION REALLY, TRULY IS IN REALITY INSTEAD OF CONSTITUTIONAL "SCHOLARSHIP" AND THE MORE POPULAR FOLKLORE OF OUR PHONY, MYTHICAL OFFICIAL "CIVICS."   

I have meant to try to research the original skepticism of the anti-federalists as the Constitutional Convention's - you don't know how hard it is for me to resist John Quincy Adams' adjective for it at this point - Constitution which I know contained serious skepticism about the "separation of powers" theory that was set forth in it.   I very much suspect that a lot could be learned about how much of the fraud it has turned out to be in real life was pointed out before its rigged adoption was achieved - not, by the way, without intentional vote suppression in some states - just as I learned a lot about the objections to the original Marbury power grab by the Supreme Court in the wake of its first serious use to issue the Dred Scott decision - rejection of that power by Abraham Lincoln alone should have been the occasion for the Congress to decisively reject it. 

Our Constitution has always been held in place by what is well characterized as masking tape and chewing gum.   It has never worked as it's supposedly would for People of Color, certainly not for Native Americans, African Americans as it was never intended to work until the Civil War and later Amendments to fix that were passed.   It has never worked well for working People without means.   Its not working for Women has been reasserted by the Roberts Court in the Dobbs decision that makes every Woman's body subject to control as de jure slavery did.   It has not worked for many others.  It has worked for affluent, straight, white men, especially those with old money.   The task of the Republican-fascists and, especially those on the Roberts Court and many a lower Court AND AS TAUGHT IN VIRTUALLY EVERY LAW SCHOOL COURSE is to make sure it continues as it has.   Much as I might like some of the Democratic "Constitutional Scholars" in and out of public office,  they are willing dupes of that centuries long effort unless they are honest about how truly dangerous our Constitution, both as written and as distorted by Supreme Court lore (what the literature of its decisions is) and as it is distorted whenever the opponents of egalitarian democracy hold the unbalanced power of power under it.   I have yet to hear one of them admit to that. 

Remember this if Trump, single-handed, on his whim AS EVERY DECISION HE MAKES IS ON HIS WHIM AND NOTHING IS STOPPING HIM, LEAST OF ALL THE GODDAMNED SUPREME COURT,  and especially if he does use nuclear weapons as Truman did.  If he gives Putin that excuse,  you can be sure Putin will do so in Ukraine and very likely in other countries, those which were once part of the Soviet empire and others.    I think the Chinese Communists might have more discipline in their dictators but I don't think you can count on that once Trump does it.   As I said,  I am morally and practically opposed to military coups but if that's what it takes to stop Trump from doing that,  I pray for the generals and others who would keep him from doing it.  

*  The Supreme Court invention of what is a clearly false and anti-democratic abomination "corporate person hood" which has stood for 139 years as of just over a month ago,  something relied upon by later Courts in such abominations as Buckely v Valeo and Citizens United.   It was clearly not in the Constitution as it was written by that time but it is part of it AS IT REALLY, TRULY IS NOW.    That our Constitutional system has not gotten rid of it is proof that the goddamned thing is dangerous and will be until it is drastically altered,  I'd hope getting rid of the goddamned presidential system once and for all time. 

Notes From A Rough And Busy Week

I POSTED A ROUGH DRAFT of the major piece I put up yesterday,  something I'd tried to stop doing a couple of years back but felt I had to because of the urgency of the hour.   I've gone back and corrected at least some of it.  I should know better than to do that when I'm breaking some of the biggest taboos,  violating the taboo on telling the truth about Israel and Zionism and the crimes of the Israelis and Zionists and the American fascists who make common cause with them but when the Israeli government is trying to get Trump to drop big ones if not THE BIG ONE on a country perhaps setting off WWIII what that will be taken as an opportunity to lie about what I said by the "Israel right or wrong" crowd is of no importance, at all.   I know you can't keep a career in American journalism if you tell the truth about Israel and Zionism - or American fascism, for that matter -  so you don't mention those or lie about that so you can tell the truth about other things in your journalistic career,   but I don't have one of those to worry about.    So I'll speak the thought crimes others won't. 

I was surprised as well as a bit sad to read that the great pianist Alfred Brendel died yesterday, though he retired so long ago that I hadn't thought of him much in the last years.   He was 94.   Reading his obituaries online,  I hadn't ever known the extent to which he was self-taught, probably more so than any major classical musician of our time has been.  Considering he stopped taking formal lessons in his teen years,  his ability to resist devolving into the kind of willful, neurotic, self-generated habits and mannerisms that defined the career of someone most similar to that career description,  to my knowledge,  Glenn Gould, his intellectual honesty and self-discipline and modesty must have been even more extraordinary than I'd thought during his playing career.    

I remember his interview with Dick Cavett for the subtle warmth and humor he demonstrated but most of all for his response to a question about "modern music" perhaps even specifically the widespread hostility for the music of the greatest European composer of the 20th century,  Arnold Schoenberg,  Brendel said that the reason people didn't like it wasn't because it was cold and "mathematical" as they would have said but because, on the contrary, it was among the most emotionally fraught music ever composed.   As I recall he mentioned the Op. 11, Three Pieces for piano and the short monodrama Op. 17 Erwartung, which I still think was one of the more important insights into the music of Schoenberg I've ever heard.  

I've become pretty well convinced that the research into the early 19th century use of the metronome by Wim Winters and his colleagues is correct - a truly revolutionary concept which I may get into someday - so much of Brendel's recordings of Beethoven and other composers contain a number of movements that probably don't represent their intentions nearly as well as I'd once felt they were.  Though I'd have to go through any given recording of it with the score to judge that.   I can say, with some confidence, that Brendel at least tried to do that with the knowledge he had during his career far better than most do.  I would wonder what Brendel may have thought or said about that research though I suspect he would have waited to read the book Winters and his colleagues have been working on to make a definitive version of their case before he said anything about it.   I have to say that having listened to Winters and looking at the contemporaneous sources he and his colleagues cite and listening to their performances as I have access to,  I'm convinced they are right.   Which means my entire conception of that repertoire has been wrong.  I can say that hearing and playing Moazart at the tempos they advocate has greatly elevated my regard of his music, it gains in gravity what is lost when it is played too fast,  the real genius of his music evaporates faster than that of Beethoven's or Schubert's or Bach's, for that matter.  

In the same interview of Brendel by Cavett, he talked about Liszt and played - as I recall it was the piece about St. Francis preaching to the birds - in a way that enormously altered my regard of Liszt's music for the better.   I'd been kind of allergic to Liszt's music before that but he cured me of it.  Though I think Liszt is mostly ill served by performances of his music,  Brendel got me past that.  

Fact checking myself to give an answer to Simps on the last RFK post

CAME ACROSS an anecdote I told while I was trying to educate him on why his claim that Queens was the most ethnically diverse entity on Earth was clearly false because even if that dubious claim were true, it would only make New York City an even more diverse entity.   I'll retell it here for those who think I commit that greatest of moderny American sins of having no sense of humor. 

I'll tell you a funny story about that book.  It was back at a family party, I think it was the Labor Day one, when I was taking care of my two youngest nieces, after school.  They were constantly asking me to read them the Harry Potter books.  I ended up reading all of them to them, some of them several times.   

Anyway, sitting at the long table at the party among our very old mother, a brother's almost as old mother-in-law, several of my siblings, one of those nieces was badgering me to read one of  the Harry Potter books and I was getting kind of tired of it so among the chattering and babbling around the table, I said,  How about I read you another book, 

Which one? she demanded,

Oh, I don't know, how about "Sets, Relations and Functions."  A joke between us because I'd proposed that one among several other math titles on my shelf other times she was demanding I read Harry Potter to her.  Math not being her favorite subject.  

But the joke was on me that time because I quickly found out if you don't pronounce that particular title, very clearly in mixed company, it can be easily misconstrued.

UPDATE:  Found this before I closed out the search window on that, too.

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Simps and Trump are alike re truth telling, 

As well in their ranting and yelling,

They both come from Queens,

And they both act like tweens 

And oddly alike re repelling.  

Maybe I should go back to answering him in limericks again. 

Update 2:  It's kind of shocking to find out that I seem to understand the most basic of set theory better than a long-time physics teacher at the Chicago Lab School,  though you do have to understand he's been hanging out at Duncan's Daycare for Elderly Boomers and that's bound to lead to stupification.    You can count DD as one who I used to have some respect for but don't have much for, anymore. 

The Issue Is Imperialist Fascism, It Is Everywhere And Opposing That Isn't Racism, It's It's Opposite

THE ISRAELI VOTERS have kept Netanyahu in power and that is with election after elections that they could have gotten rid of him.   It is one of the sometimes effective safeguards of a parliamentary system that that can happen, though Israel as Britain shows, that's no guarantee.   While there is a minority in Israel who oppose the aggressive fascists they have been a minority who have not elected a government in about thirty three years and, arguably, the real opponents of Israeli imperialism have never, once elected a government in the history of that country.   I will note that the American presidential system is far more dangerous and inflexible and our politics has shown that even more so now than used to be.  I mean, American elected Trump II after it experienced the Trump I that the Electoral College imposed on us.  But more of that in a minute. 

It was one of the early covers-ups for the current genocide and expulsion against Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem and around the area, blaming Gazans and Palestinians for having, long ago, voted for bad government.  But those bad governments have kept Palestinians from voting them out of office far more effectively than the non-egalitarian, putative ethno-democracy of Israel have controlled the politics of that country.  In many cases those who oppose fascism in Israel have left the country as they must realize nothing like egalitarian democracy is going to happen there.  I can certainly understand why anyone with a chance to leave that disaster leaving it,  I admire those who tell the truth of the matter, whether they have left or whether they remain Israelis - often working outside of it.   I have said the United States should have given Jews who wanted to leave Europe the chance to come here instead of having the Zionists imperialist project getting set up.   It would certainly have been better than what has happened in the past seventy six years.   I think that it would probably have lessened the amount of antisemitism in the world and would certainly have saved the United States from its catastrophic involvement with the Zionist state, benefiting everyone,  Palestinians, Arabs, Iranians, Jews, Americans and numerous other People who have been disastrously impacted by the situation that has developed in the region, including Africa.   Zionism was the last major European imperialist scheme after Mussolini's and Hitler's,  it has gone from the Labour government's more modest imperialist intentions to the psychotic-fascism's big dreams of who knows how much territory and how many Palestinians, Arabs and Iranians dead and under the regional hegemony of Israel backed up by the United States, primarily but the West which has its own intentions in the area.   I think the theory that when the worst of the Western gangsters with power saw what Israel did in the Six-Day War,  it saw its potential to be a basis of imposing their will on a region rich with oil and other resources as well as major shipping lanes and as a base for expanding their control.   Of course, the Israeli fascists have been calling most of the shots since they took over from Labour with the man that many Jewish skeptics of Israel were warning about since the 1940s taking power,  Menachem Begin.   With that the old-fashioned Western lefty support of socialist Zionism began to decay, though, especially among the more ignorant mid-brow and lower on the left,  the old habits of thought are maintained though there is no real-life reality - such as was always largely imaginary and symbolic - to support that naive faith.   The media, especially the entertainment division has kept those idiots gulled my entire lifetime. 

But I'm an American who opposes the American part in this, watching the United States brought into another Israeli fascist and neo-con inspired catastrophe in the that part of Asia which has the potential to make what was already bad in all those places mentioned above, far, far worse.   That it is largely to keep two utterly corrupt and old men in power, Netanyahu in Israel and Trump in the United States is not a complete surprise.   If Israeli politics has been bad American politics has been worse.   We had had some progress towards the legitimate governance of egalitarian democracy here in the 1930s and 1960s which, ironically, foundered in the late 60s with those kinds of catastrophic foreign entanglements during his term in office made things during the Biden administration.  The same corrupt American and Western interests (the like of the Murdochs are about as American as Musk and Theill) that used Israel as a tool for its ends, has successfully rigged the media and legal establishment to make sure nothing like egalitarian democracy ever happens here.  The Israel project is a major but only small part of that.   But it is one that in the past quarter of a century has involved the United States in the overthrow of the Iraqi government and many smaller projects that have corrupted us even farther and which has cost us as People and as a country and I do blame not only the governments of Israel but the Israeli voters who have kept those fascists and imperialists in power.   I blame them as much as the American voters who have kept us under increasingly fascist regimes as they've been planning since the early 1970s with remarkable success.  

One of the few things to keep me from total despair is the increasing activity of Jewish Antizionists,  whether religious or those many who are my fellow egalitarian democrats.     I saw last weekend's First Jewish Anti-Zionist Convention held in the same city where the first Zionist Convention was held to be a small glimmer of light.   The blackmail of those who have used false accusations of "antisemitism" as part of its American and Western plan to further the worst of Zionist fascism may be showing signs of crumbling.   The point made by not a few of the Antizionists, that the Zionists in Israel,  the West in general and most of all the United States have allied themselves with some of the most overt haters of Jews is certainly something that is true.  It's being noted that one of the biggest fans of the U.S getting involved with Netanyahu's second call for us to fight a major war on HIS behalf is coming from the antisemitic,  Mammonist pseudo-Christian, ordained Southern Baptist Mike Huckabee.  No doubt he'd hightail it out of Israel to save his ass before the shit really hit the fan, watching from the sidelines as he anticipated that his his Kristian Komic Koncept of the Book of Revelation was about to unfold.   I would not be surprised if sometime in the near future that red-heffer con job didn't announce they had their cow and they sacrificed the poor creature on the Temple Mount blowing things to shit - though, of course, that being a Western pseudo-Kristian financed millionaire-billionaire con job, they might want to milk it if Bibi's latest war went badly.   

Among the things I resent about this whole thing is the part it played in corrupting American minds and politics.  Among those things I resent is how it has fanned antisemitism here.  As I've noted it was reading the Argentinian-Israeli journalist Jacobo Timmerman pointing out that since World War II the largest part of antisemitism was inspired by the crimes committed by Israel,  if the Zionist project had been abandoned instead of implemented,  I think it's entirely likely that there would be far, far less antisemitism and antisemitic violence today.   The Israel project is hardly a large part of the American fascists' operations or those fascists in Europe and elsewhere,  the techbro fascists and their like are the major part of that but it has played a part in the corrupting of our politics.   I think the Israeli genocide in Gaza played a major part in the reinstallation of Trump II and I think the Israeli fascist government made it abundantly clear that they wanted Trump because they knew they could manipulate him into giving them everything they want,  we're about to see him give them another Iraqi style regime-change war which may well make the Iraqi one that Bush II gave him look like just the prelude to it.   I think Americans have got to have an honest and anti-racist discussion about Israel and the catastrophe it has been.   I listened to a major Democratic politician yesterday sounding the same "Israel right or wrong" slogans that dragged Joe Biden into the worst thing he ever did,  supporting the Israeli fascist genocide in Gaza.   We can't let that corrupt and rigged definition of "antisemitism" stop us from having that discussion on anti-racist, honest terms BECAUSE THE ALTERNATIVE WILL EVENTUALLY BE AN ANTISEMITIC BACKLASH WHEN THE ISRAEL INSPIRED AMERICAN WARS BRING A REACTION WHICH WILL REACH THAT TIPPING POINT.  The fever dreams of the most insane of the Zionists want more anti-Jewish violence in other places because they think it will force Jews to go to Israel.   I know that because a lot of them,  including Netanyahu have said as much.    On that 'll take my cues from the informed Jewish Antizionists,  they've been making the most sense to me.    And I will equally take my cues from the informed Palestinian opposition to zionism,  listening to Palestinians is not an optional thing,  not if you want to avoid a distorted, racist,  intellectually imperialist concept of things. 

What's most important in this isn't how I feel about it, it's what gets People killed, maimed, displaced, oppressed and the certain enraged reaction it will cause.   That's most true for People in those places and countries most directly involved.  But it plays not a small part in the corruption of governments and powerful institutions and entities around the world.  Barring the American military successfully stopping Trump,  we're about to embark on a complete catastrophe which could involve nuclear weapons being used for the first time since Truman dropped the second one at the end of WWII.  No one can possibly predict or control what's going to happen then.  I certainly wouldn't favor a military coup here - I certainly don't trust any non-democratic governance - but I fear what Trump is about to do even more.  

Hey, hey RFK How many kids did you kill today?

 

Thanks to Brian Tyler Cohen for posting this short.   I can't keep up with the flood of criminal degeneracy that flows from RFK jr. and I'm glad he's one of those on the case. 

The First Jewish Anti-Zionist Congress Happened This Past Weekend

YOU WON'T HEAR about it in the American media.   Just about every part of the Western media has covered up the most public genocide in history.    Here's a sample of the information that was part of it from Katie Halper's podcast:  Jews Speak Out: Israel’s Genocide “Worse Than Nazis”

In case you want to know, here are the notes at Youtube:

Before this weekend's Jewish Anti-Zionist Congress, I spoke with three of its organizers about Israel's decades-long "democratic" genocide in Palestine and the Israelis who keep voting to support it. Thank you to Ronnie, Dalia, Haim and everyone who was able to participate in, attend or watch the Congress! 

00:00 What's happening right now in Palestine

02:27 How does the genocide in Gaza compare to the Holocaust?

05:43 Netanyahu is representative of Israeli society - "the vast majority support genocide"

08:05 Resistance in the West is "still not good enough"

11:14 "The idea that criticizing Israel is anti-Semitic is anti-Semitic in itself" - Katie

Dalia Sarig is co-founder of the initiative ‘Not in our Name’ founded by Jews in Vienna and candidate on the GAZA list. 

Haim Bresheeth Zabnner was Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at University of East London and then a Professorial Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).He is Filmmaker, photographer, film studies scholar, and historian. His films include “A State of Danger,” a documentary on the first Palestinian Intifada. His books include "An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defense Force Made a Nation." Haim is the son of two Holocaust survivors and was raised in Israel. He is a member of Holocaust survivors and Descendents Against the Genocide and a founding  member of Jewish Network for Palestine. On November 4, Haim was arrested over a speech he gave at a pro Palestine demonstration outside the residence of Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely in north London.

Ronnie Barkan is an Israeli activist, a conscientious objector and co-founder of Boycott from Within – a group of conscientious Israelis who support the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. He represented the Popular Struggle Coordination Committees at the European Parliament in Brussels, where he challenged EU institutional complicity in Israeli violations.

Brahms - 7 Fantasien - Mieczysław Horszowski

 

I recently had an occasion to listen to the Brahms Cello Sonatas played by Pablo Casals and Mieczysław Horszowski and was reminded how great a pianist he was.   Also how very different their playing was from younger performers.  Casals was 21 when Brahms died and already a very active musician, the extent to which he was familiar with those who played as Brahms intended,  I don't know but it sounded quite convincing.  Horsozwski was about five then.    

I'm just,  just getting back to playing a little after my accident last winter.   I am taking come comfort in remembering how old he was while he was still playing extremely well.  He lived to be a hundred and taught his last lesson a few days before he died.  Which, unless I win the lottery I might be doing, too.    Here he was in 1958 in a live performance.   This live performance of the Opus 116 pieces is extremely deep and good. 

Fifty Gay Retablos: Gay Mexicans thank the saints for blessings

 

THIS MIND EXPANDING  video by Hugh Hagius in which LGBTQ+ Mexicans going back decades painting retablos for the saints intervening to help them in their lives which the official Catholic Church certainly wouldn't ever believe the saints would help them with.   I have to say that as being Irish Catholic praying to my patron saint to help me find a good, faithful partner never once occurred to me.   Maybe I should pray for a rich one whose dental insurance would cover me. 

I always love retablos but now I love them even more.  Don't miss the website where he found them. But I'll warn you that my computer gave me a "not secure" warning when I tried it.  

I Wish That My Beloved

JACK LEVINE was alive to paint the Kim Jong  Trump parade flop.   If not him then the great Herblock to draw it.   I can't think of another artist who could do it as well and truthfully. 

I think Trump doing his Kim Jong Un salute TO SOLDIERS DRESSED UP TO LOOK LIKE VIETNAM ERA SOLDIERS,  you know, the ones who went to Vietnam while his daddy paid a quack to get him out o the draft for a war Donnie and Fred supported, would be one of the emblematic moments of the thing.  

UPDATE:  History Repeating Itself 

Here's Herblock on the news media's treatment of Trump.