Bob Dylan Drabble Birthday
Content below was previously posted May 24, 2024. … Hibbing MN is a cold place. At least it’s the birthplace of Robert Allen Zimmerman. That’s Allen, with an e, and double L, just like hell. He legally changed that to Bob Dylan, with no known middle name. The initials are BD. On May 24, 1941, the curly haired wonder boi arrived. Europe was in flames, and eyeing America as fresh cannon fodder. This was twelve years, eleven months, and eighteen days before I graced the planet. A twelve year old in Hibbing MN would have no reason to think of me.
Content below was previously posted May 24, 2024. … a decision was made to go to Nashville. Al Kooper played organ, and served as a music director. A bass player named Joseph Souter, Jr. would become famous a few years later as Joe South. Kris Kristofferson was the janitor. The second session started at 6pm and lasted until 530 the next morning. Mr. Dylan was working on the lyrics to “Sad eyed lady of the lowlands,” and the recording could not start until he was ready. The musicians played ping pong and waited. At 4am, the song was ready. …
Content below was previously posted May 24, 2024. … I met a lady once, who worked in an insurance office. One of the customers was Joe South. His driving record file was an inch thick. … Al Kooper had a life. The former Alan Peter Kuperschmidt produced the first three Lynyrd Skynyrd albums, sold that contract for a nice piece of change, and lived happily ever after. Mr. Kooper was playing a show. I sat in front of the stage. During a break between songs, I asked his friend “what time is it?”. Mr. Kooper heard me, and said it was 11:30.
Content below was originally posted May 28, 2010. … The first BD record that I got was “Blind Boy Grunt”. BBG was a bootleg, recorded in a New York hotel around 1961. … I saw BD with The Band at the omni in 1974, and was not impressed. I won tickets to see BD at the house of blues during the 1996 olympics, and could barely hear what he said, the sound was so bad. … Zimmerman is the birth surname of Ethel Merman. May 24 gave us Queen Victoria and Patti Labelle. On May 24, 1844, Samuel Morse sent the message ”What hath God wrought”
Content below was previously posted July 30, 2024. … “I think everybody’s mind should be bent once in a while. Not by LSD, though. LSD is medicine – a different kind of medicine. It makes you aware of the universe, so to speak; you realize how foolish objects are. But LSD is not for groovy people; it’s for mad, hateful orange haired people who want banana revenge. It’s for people who usually have heart attacks. They ought to use it at the Geneva Convention.” PLAYBOY: “Did you ever have the standard boyhood dream of growing up to be President?” DYLAN: “No. When I was a boy, Harry Truman was President; who’d want to be Harry Truman?”
Content below was previously posted July 30, 2024. … “The only thing I can tell you about Joan Baez is that she’s not Belle Starr.” … PLAYBOY: “Writing about “beard-wearing draft-card burners and pacifist income-tax evaders,” one columnist called such protesters “no less outside society than the junkie, the homosexual or the mass murderer.” What’s your reaction?” DYLAN: “I don’t believe in those terms. They’re too hysterical. They don’t describe anything. Most people think that homosexual, gay, queer, queen, faggot are all the same words. Everybody thinks that a junkie is a dope freak. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t consider myself outside of anything. I just consider myself not around.” …
Content below was previously posted July 30, 2024. … “I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a “before” in a Charles Atlas “before and after” ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy – he ain’t so mild. The next thing I know I’m in Omaha. It’s so cold there, by this time I’m robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night.” … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The social media picture: “Unidentified soldier in Confederate uniform with bouquet of flowers”
Why The War Between The States Was Fought
This was a repost from 2017. … Recently, Mr. Trump said something stupid about the War Between the States. After his comments began to filter into the marketplace of ideas, people began to react. There was a good bit of self righteous talk about how bad the Confederacy was. Maybe it is time for another point of view. This feature will have minimal research. Mistakes will be made. The reader is encouraged to do their own research.
When the colonies declared independence in 1776, nobody knew how things would turn out. First, Great Britain needed to be defeated. After that, the Articles of Confederation went into effect. “Under these articles, the states remained sovereign and independent, with Congress serving as the last resort on appeal of disputes. Congress was also given the authority to make treaties and alliances, maintain armed forces and coin money. However, the central government lacked the ability to levy taxes and regulate commerce …”
This arrangement was not working, and the Constitutional Convention was called. Originally, the CC was going to revise the Articles of Confederation, but wound up throwing the whole thing out, and creating the Constitution. This document called for greater federal authority. The issue of what powers to give to the states, and what powers to give to the central government, was contentious. It remains controversial to this day.
Had any group of autonomous states formed a federal union before? Usually, such a union is the result of a conquest, with one of the states ruling the others. It is unclear whether such a union had been attempted before, or how successful it was. When the “founding fathers” created the constitution, they probably did not foresee how it would play out. The current system, with a massive central government cat-herding the 50 states, would have been laughed off as a dangerous fantasy.
So the states start to have disagreements. One of the things they disagreed over was slavery. Yes, this was an important factor in the unpleasantness to come. Slavery influenced a lot of the economic conflicts. The North wanted high tariffs to protect industry. The South wanted low tariffs, so they could sell cotton to Europe. There were many other ways for the states to not get along.
Finally, in 1861, the disagreements became too big to ignore. The south seceded, and the War Between The States began. The Confederate States of America was a looser union than the United States. The thought was that the states were more important than the federal union. Mr. Lincoln disagreed. (One popular name for the conflict was Mr. Lincoln’s war.) Many people say that Mr. Lincoln was not especially concerned about the slaves, but wanted to keep the union together.
How does slavery enter into this? Imagine the conflict over states rights vs federalism to be an open tank of gasoline. The lit match that was thrown into that tank was slavery. When the winners wrote the war history, it sounded better to say that the war was fought to free the slaves.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The social media picture: “Unidentified young soldier in Confederate infantry uniform” … In 1865, the national debt was $2.6 billion.
Winston Churchill Said What
Another ghastly meme has surfaced on facebook. “When Winston Churchill was asked to cut arts funding in favour of the war effort, he simply replied, “then what are we fighting for?” The quote is not in the Churchill archive, which is either fifteen million documents, or fifteen million words. The authorities use the figures interchangeably.
The Telegraph has an article debunking the meme. It has a splendid sentence: “But that anecdote does not so easily play into the screeching rhetoric of today’s 140-character political ding-dongs.” There are also some lovely quotes from Mr. Churchill. 
In 1937, Mr. Churchill spoke before the Peel Commission. It was discussing “partitioning British mandated Palestine into Arab and Jewish states.” At the time, Mr. Churchill was a minor figure in British politics, disgraced by his blundering in the Great War. The quote: “I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.”
Winston Churchill is quite the quote magnet. This is somehow fitting for a man whose most famous speech was read, on the radio, by an actor. There is a page on the internet devoted to times when he was falsely accused of saying something inspiring.
One of these stories is notable. “The only traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash… Churchill’s assistant, Anthony Montague-Browne said that although Churchill had not uttered these words, he wished he had.”
UPDATE: Sir Anthony Montague-Browne KCMG CBE DFC appears to have been a piece of work. He is acknowledged to be the illegitimate father of The Most Reverend Justin Welby Archbishop of Canterbury. Sir Montague Brown was the private secretary of Winston Churchill from 1953 until Churchill’s death in 1965. “As well as his duties as a chief of staff, Montague-Browne lunched and dined with Churchill and provided an opponent for his favourite card game, rubicon. He also accompanied Churchill on his trips abroad.” While it is possible that Monatague-Brown did ask Churchill about the quote, there is no solid documentation. It is also possible that Churchill was in decline, or drunk, and could not remember something he said in 1911.
“Montague-Browne confirmed this to Richard Langworth, one of the most respected Churchill biographers. In his great book about Churchill quotations and misquotes, Churchill by Himself: The Definitive Collection of Quotations, Richard Langworth says that Montague-Browne personally told him that he had asked Churchill about the quote. According to Montague-Browne, Churchill responded: “I never said it. I wish I had.” Langworth notes that “rum, sodomy and the lash” is similar to “rum, bum and bacca” — a catchphrase from an old saying about the, er, pastimes of British sailors, dating back to the 1800s.”
This is a repost, with pictures from The Library of Congress. The facebook picture: Captain William W. Cosby of H Company, 2nd Virginia Light Artillery Regiment.
Always Take Sides
“Always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.” This meme, illustrated by the gnomic face of Elie Wiesel, turns up on facebook a lot. (Elie Wiesel is pronounced like Elly Mae Clampett) Some find it inspiring. Others think it is simplistic and manipulative.
There are two questions. Did Mr. Wiesel say that? What was the context? The quote appears in the acceptance speech for the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize. The next sentence is “Sometimes we must interfere.” We immediately go from the absolute always, to the conditional sometimes. That is progress, even if it does not fit on a bumper sticker.
“Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, Romania, in 1928. … In May 1944, Wiesel was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp along with his parents and his sisters. Wiesel and his father were slave laborers at Auschwitz. His father died in January 1945 during a forced march to another camp, Buchenwald, and his mother and younger sister were murdered as well. After the war, Wiesel moved to France, where he worked as a journalist.”
The Israel-Palestine problem was just as vexing in 1986 as today. Here is what Mr. Wiesel said in his speech. “More people are oppressed than free. And then, too, there are the Palestinians to whose plight I am sensitive but whose methods I deplore. Violence and terrorism are not the answer. Something must be done about their suffering, and soon. I trust Israel, for I have faith in the Jewish people. Let Israel be given a chance, let hatred and danger be removed from her horizons, and there will be peace in and around the Holy Land.”
Who is the oppressor in the Middle East, and who is the victim? Many sides can make a case for their cause. Who is the better at persuasion? Who is better at playing the shady game of influence, and money. Often, more noise encourages the tormentor. The answer to age old conflicts is seldom found in bumper stickers, or facebook memes.
“…to whose plight I am sensitive but whose methods I deplore.” “Always take sides” means that you pick one side in a conflict, and use the tools of rhetoric to promote that cause. It can be tough to tell the good guys from the bad guys. Human suffering is human suffering. Simplistic rhetoric is *never* the answer.
In 1986, the Iran-Iraq war was raging. Hundreds of thousands of men died. Many said the war was allowed to go on intentionally. Allegedly, if Iran and Iraq were not fighting each other, they would be fighting Israel. The United States was allied with Iraq, while making arms deals with Iran. Israeli dealers participated in the United States-Iran arms trading. The profits from those deals went to supply terrorists in Central America. “Sometimes we must interfere.”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
Ira Hayes
This is a repost from 2010. … The post before this is about Arizona SB1070, a controversial measure dealing with illegal immigration. One of the men quoted is the Sheriff of Pima County, which lies on the border. The sheriff works 115 miles north of the border.
Pima County is named for the Pima Tribe, whose land was in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. Their name for the “river people” is Akimel O’odham. According to Wikipedia, “The short name, “Pima” is believed to have come from the phrase pi ‘añi mac or pi mac, meaning “I don’t know,” used repeatedly in their initial meeting with Europeans.”
Many of the Mexicans crossing the border are Native Americans. They did not agree to the Gadsden Purchase, or the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. In other words, they were here first, and the white man (and black associates) are the uninvited guests.
The second part of this feature is a repost from 2009. One of the best known Pimas was Ira Hayes. He was one of the Marines who raised the flag on Iwo Jima.
One of the enduring images of World War II was raising the flag on Iwo Jima. Three of the six men raising the flag died on the island. A fourth, Ira Hayes, became a casualty after the war.
The story of Ira Hayes is well known, but needs to be told again. A member of the Akimel O’odham (Pima) nation, his people had not been treated well by the conquerors. Nonetheless, when the War against Japan started, men were needed for the struggle, and Ira Hayes joined the Marines.
Iwo Jima was a steppingstone to the main island of Japan. After Iwo Jima and Okinawa were in Yankee hands, preparations could be made for the invasion of the main island. However, the stepping stone islands proved to be incredibly tough to secure. There were more American casualties on Iwo Jima than on D Day.
On the fourth day of the battle, a picture was made of six marines raising the flag on top of Mount Suribachi. A month of sticky, treacherous fighting was ahead for the fighting men. Of 21,000 Japanese soldiers, 20,000 died.
The flag was raised on February 23, 1945. Germany was all but defeated. The “explosive lens” for the atom bomb had been successfully tested. It seemed inevitable that the costly island hopping needed to continue, to be followed by an invasion of the Japanese mainland.
Two of the twelve hands holding the flagpole belonged to Ira Hayes. Ira Hayes did not adjust to peacetime well. He became a drunkard. On January 24, 1955, he passed away.
Thousands of Americans have returned from foreign wars, to be treated poorly. On Memorial Day, we should struggle to ensure that all future veterans are treated with respect, all year long. Pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library. The picture on facebook was taken June 24, 1949. “Gone with the Wind” tenth anniversary”
Truth About Opinions
Chamblee54 is normally a profanity free blog. However, for this piece, certain cuss words are essential to the free flow of information. In other words, IF YOU DON’T LIKE CUSS WORDS, YOU DO NOT NEED TO READ THE TEXT.
Once, when his blog was active, a radio whiner referred to a study, that said that one third of all people were not qualified to have opinions. This was said before a commercial break, without saying why this percentage should be without opinions. Possible reasons would be lack of education, inability to think critically, or a disturbing tendency to disagree with the person doing the study.
Opinion is derived from “opīniōn- (stem of opīniō), derivative of opīnārī to opine.” Opinion rhymes with rack and pinion, dominion, and virginian. The anagram of opinion is onion pi. The Power Thesaurus has 1,326 synonyms for opinion. Many are notoriously anal, like assumption. Or the sister of suppository, supposition.
“Opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got theirs.” The truth is, opinions have more in common with the waste that comes out of the anal sphincter, than the port of exit. Feces (thesis) is the product of food fed into the digestive system. Opinions are the result of information (and misinformation) fed into the thought system. Doodoo is influenced by the digestive system, like opinions are influenced by the attitudes, and thought patterns, of the individual. They all stink.
“Four Jews, Five opinions” is another crowd pleaser, like “You are entitled to your opinion.” The latter is usually said when you disagree with what you have just heard. When a Court of Law issues a ruling, it is called an opinion. Sometimes, a justice will write a dissenting opinion. When getting a provider to pay for a procedure, you often need to get a second opinion.
Opinions are frequently more valued by the giver than by the receiver. Some opinions are best kept to the owner. You should be wary of someone who feels that his shit does not stink, because he will usually feel the same about his opinions. You don’t have to have an opinion about everything. Many things are beyond or control, or do not interest you. Also, you should be wary of those who try to “fire up” your opinions. Often these people do not have the best of motives.
Opinions are seldom humble, no matter what the owner of the opinion might say. In fact, the act of holding an opinion is often self aggrandizing, and contrary to humility. Opinions are seen as a way of asserting ones individuality. Many people have lives of quiet desperation, full of struggle and turmoil. There are many situations where what the individual thinks is simply useless to the powers that be. In times like this, having opinions can restore a sense of self worth to the individual. I am somebody. I have my opinion. This does not mean that anyone is listening.
This is a repost with pictures from The Library of Congress. Edward H. Hart was the photographer, working for Detroit Publishing Co. “U.S.S. Brooklyn, after supper” The pictures, taken between 1896 and 1899, are more reliable than the text.
Letter To Darryl Cooper
Darryl I recently finished listening to Fear & Loathing in the New Jerusalem parts 1-6. I listened to part 7 shortly after October 7. I only listened to 1-6 after the Douglas Murray went on JRE to promote his new book. I have a few thoughts about this intense experience. If you could find the time to read this, I would be honored. I also plan to post this letter on my blog, chamblee54.WordPress.com, and at r/martyrmade. I have made 4 blog posts about listening to FLNJ. 041525 041825 042325 042625
We have never met in person. However, after listening to 22:54:47 of FLNJ, I do feel a connection. Listening to FLNJ is intense. I appreciate Douglas Murray’s reluctance to take this journey. This is the same person who said “So what. 30 plus hours of podcasting, you do that in a week”
The most obvious comment is about the insanity of forming opinions about Darryl Cooper based on a few comments on the Tucker Carlson show. FWIW, I disagree with the idea that Winston Churchill was the true villian of WWII. This was not the first time I had heard these ideas. For some bizarre reason, I read Pat Buchanan’s book a few years ago. I generally prefer fiction, and honestly don’t know what drew me to that book.
Winston Churchill is an actor in FLNJ. He was an enthusiastic supporter of Zionism, for whatever reason. I did do some digging into Mr. Churchill, and found a copy of his editorial Zionism Vs Bolshevism. I also found a quote: “As prime minister, in 1941, he proclaimed that “I was one of the authors” of Zionist policy. Indeed, among the lengthy catalogue of criticisms of Churchill was that “He was too fond of Jews.” My irony meter went crazy while listening to FLNJ.
There are many whatifs in the FLNJ story. One is the Ottoman Empire. What if OE had allied with the Allies, rather than the Central Powers? Or better yet, remained neutral. From my Wikipedia level view of history, it seems as though Germany simply made a better offer than France. That would have changed a lot of things.
Another missing link is the history of communism and Judaism. At one time, communism was seen as being a Jewish movement. Over the years, this evolved to the point where Israel is seen as being the enemy of communism. In the eighties, we heard a lot about the need to rescue Jews from anti-semitic persecution in the Soviet Union. How/when did this change take place?
On a related note, here is a quote from part two part two of the chamblee54 commentary. “While driving back, I heard the last few minutes of FLNJ-4. Darryl mentions something I had never heard before. At some point in this era, the United States and Great Britain restricted Jewish immigration. Darryl says the fear was about communist revolutionaries coming into the country. At this time, most of the Bolsheviks were Jewish, and the Russian revolution was seen by many as a Jewish revolution. When I try to find out more about this, the only google results are to sources concerned with anti-semitism or the holocaust. Any information about communism being a motivation for restricted emmigration is are very difficult to find.”
FLNJ-5 and FLNJ-6 are difficult to listen to. There are a lot of things I had never heard about that era. The Arab rebellion, the Zionist terrorism against the British mandate, the dirty business of getting the UN to approve the partition were all new to me. While I had knew that the Nakba existed (contrary to what some propagandists tell you today) I had no idea about the details. There is a saying about making laws and making sausages … you don’t want to be there when either one takes place. The same thing could be said about “nation building.” God is in the details, or maybe it is the Devil.
It is obvious that a 2016 show about Israel/Palestine is going to sound very different in 2025. It is a fitting irony that one of the last things you mentioned in FLNJ-6 was the quote from Refaat Alareer. “Sometimes a homeland becomes a tale, We love the story because it is about our homeland, and we love our homeland even more because of the story.”
On December 7, 2023, Dr. Alareer “was killed by a strike in Shajaiya, in northern Gaza … He was staying with his brother, his sister, and her four children, who were also killed.” Shortly before his death, Dr. Alareer had been in a twitter squabble with Bari Weiss. The IDF saw this as sufficient reason for a targeted assassination.
Anyway, thank you for the hard work you put into FLNJ. It took me 13 days to listen to it. If listening causes this much brain damage, I can only imagine how tough it would be to create those 23 hours. Thank you. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Jack Delano took the facebook picture in December 1942. “Chicago IL An unusually heavy fog in the early afternoon”
Fear & Loathing Part Four
This is part four of my guided tour with Fear & Loathing in the New Jerusalem, a podcast series about Israel and Palestine. This will be the final episode, and will cover FLNJ-6. FLNJ covers the time between 1890 and 1948, and is 22:54:47 in 6 episodes. FLNJ was created by Darryl Cooper aka @MartyrMade. Other episodes of the chamblee54 series are available: 041525 041825 042325 Disclaimer This post is a greatly simplified view of what happened. For more information, you can listen to FLNJ, or google one of the many histories of this era.
April 23, 2025 Throughout this process, I have been hitting the wrong button on my phone, and sending FLNJ back to 0:00. I’ve started taking notes of when I finish listening, so that if when I screw up, I can go back and find where I was. A minute ago, I arrived at dinner. I turned off the phone, and looked at the time (1:54:26). I then hit the wrong button on the phone, and wound up at 0:00. It is one of the problems of listening to long form podcasting.
At 1:57:24 I have to pull over into a parking lot. Darryl has gotten to where he needs to discuss the Jewish Holocaust of World War II. It’s an important part of the Israel story, as well as an overwhelming human tragedy. Darryl is having a tough time deciding how to approach it, and settles on reading three individual stories. Multiply these 3 stories by 2 million, and you have a holocaust. God/Satan is in the details. Focus on the tragedy, and leave the statistics for someone else.
FLNJ was recorded in 2015 and 2016. This is 9 years ago, or 7 years before October 7th. Today is also 8 months after Darryl’s notorious appearance on Tucker Carlson, after which he was called a holocaust denier. It’s tough to see how you could listen to FLNJ, and then call Darryl a holocaust denier. That is how the modern discourse goes. You can create an intense multi-part series about the creation of Israel, and people are more interested in a few sentences on youtube.
Another thing that’s happened since 2016 is the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This surprised most people, who knew little about the Maidan coup, or the Russia-Ukraine war already raging. In FLNJ, Darryl calls the capitol of Ukraine KEY-evv, whereas most people now say KEEV. Darryl also has a tasteful quote in FLNJ-6. “In the early 1930s, Poland got to look across the border to Ukraine and watch the Communist secret police, which was 75% Jewish … murder, by intentional starvation, somewhere between 6 and 10 million Ukrainian peasants.”
At 2:18:02 Daryl mentions the social ramifications of not accepting the Holocaust story with worship, but by questioning some of the details. It’s almost as if he saw the reaction to his comments on Tucker Carlson, 8 years later.
April 24, 2025 At 0833, I take my brother to the marta station in Chamblee, and find a non-handicapped place to park. I’m going to do my morning walk on the paths in downtown Chamblee.
At 3:32:00 of FLNJ-6, Darryl is talking about a jailbreak. This is the point where I came in on FLNJ-6, thinking it was FLNJ-5. I’m going to continue to listen. It’s going to be difficult, because I know what is coming. Israel is going to declare independence after the British mandate ends. The Zionists are going to be rewarded for their terrorism against the British, and they’re going to turn their homicidal fury on the Arabs. Israel is gaining their Homeland by violence. This is not the message that I have been taught about Israel.
I finished my walk at 3:58:20 of FLNJ-6. It is 0958 in Chamblee, and I’ve turned off FLNJ-6. I’ve had enough. There was a United Nations vote to establish the partition of Palestine. It was going to fail. The vote was delayed. Many countries were put under intense pressure, and given threats by the United States, to pass this resolution. Liberia was told that they were going to lose their major employer. France was told if they did not vote yes, they will not receive financial aid after World War II. There are reports that the Soviet Union pressured Ukraine to vote yes. It was dirty dirty dirty.
The Lebanese representative made an impassioned speech against establishing the partition. It’s almost as if he could foresee the future, and the destruction that Israel would visit upon Lebanon.
4:22:58 Always write down the time. I somehow hit something on the player that said show album art. Meanwhile, I was talking to some idiot phone scammer, and the show-album-art screen would not go away. I had to close the player out to get rid of the screen. By the time I got the player back on, FLNJ-6 had gone back to 0:00.
April 24, 2025 I am in a parking lot, turning off the player at 5:21:58 of FLNJ-6. The series is essentially over. The last chapter was about the Nakba. … Darryl continues, “The Zionists are never going to give up Israel, and the Palestinians are never going to give up their fight to return. Refaat Alareer wrote “Sometimes a homeland becomes a tale, We love the story because it is about our homeland, and we love our homeland even more because of the story.”
On December 7, 2023, Dr. Alareer “was killed by a strike in Shajaiya, in northern Gaza … He was staying with his brother, his sister, and her four children, who were also killed.” Shortly before his death, Dr. Alareer had been in a twitter squabble with Bari Weiss. The IDF saw this as sufficient reason for a targeted assassination.
This is where the journey ends. Listening to FLNJ has been difficult, although not nearly as difficult as living it. … to paraphrase an obnoxious argument, which one hears all too often these days. The chamblee54 series is not comprehensive, and leaves out a great deal of information. I write this knowing that almost nobody will read it, and that even fewer will care. If you tell this story to a supporter of Israel, you can expect to hear some angry talking points about October 7. Angry hasbara is a huge part of the problem in the United States.
The pictures are from The Library of Congress. John Collier took the photographs in November 1942. “Pittsburgh PA (vicinity) Montour no. 4 mine of the Pittsburgh Coal Company. Miner’s wife, who is an Office of Civilian Defense first aid nurse.” · selah
Fear & Loathing Part Three
This is part three of my visitation with Fear & Loathing in the New Jerusalem, a podcast series about Israel and Palestine. FLNJ covers the time between 1890 and 1948, and was created by Darryl Cooper aka @MartyrMade. Other episodes are available: 041525 041825 042625 … Disclaimer This post is a greatly simplified view of what happened. For more information, you can listen to FLNJ, or google one of the many histories of this era.
April 19, 2025 I listened to FLNJ-5 on the morning walk without incident. This listening thing needs to go at a slower pace. Burnout is creeping in. The FLNJ story makes me think too much. So much of it corresponds to current events, controversies over historic events, and conflicts from my own life. I have eight hours to go on FLNJ.
There are several whatifs here. One involves the Ottoman Empire. Why did the OE ally with Germany in World War 1? If the OE had stayed neutral, or sided with the British and French, it would have changed a lot of things. When you deal with wikipedia level history, it simply seems like the Germans made the Turks a better deal than the British. See disclaimer above.
I spent much of saturday afternoon editing photographs, and listening to FLNJ-5. I don’t have a lot of product to show for it. Every few minutes, I would hear something the piqued my interest, and go looking for a transcript of it. A good example is this: 2:27:36 “Hitler never left those trenches you can see a few old pictures of Adolf Hitler sporting a normal mustache in the early days of the war the shortened mustache tucked under his nose that was a modification made in order to allow a soldier’s gas mask to seal against his skin during an attack”
Later, at 2:34:17, there was a long quote from Winston Churchill. “Just a month before Hitler was discharged from the German Army, in March 1920, Winston Churchill had published that editorial … called Zionism Vs Bolshevism … ‘the international Jews were engaged in quote a worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization. There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these International and for the most part atheistical Jews.’
FWIW, Winston Churchill … who Darryl Cooper famously called the real villain of World War II … was a staunch supporter of Zionism. “… as colonial secretary in the 1920s, Churchill took steps that enabled 300,000 Jews to emigrate to Palestine … As prime minister, in 1941, he proclaimed that “I was one of the authors” of Zionist policy. Indeed, among the lengthy catalogue of criticisms of Churchill was that “He was too fond of Jews.”
April 20, 2025 I come in from my morning walk shaking with rage. FLNJ-5 is at 4:43:00. Israel has declared Independence, the British are leaving, and the Nakba is going strong. Darryl tells some confirmed stories of Israeli atrocities, during the ethnic cleansing of the Arab population.
I HAVE F$$$ED UP. I am not listening to FLNJ-5, but FLNJ-6. I should have looked closer at the screen. Apparently, when I switched from youtube to mp3, I started back with the wrong file. I suspected that something was up last night. At one point, there was a gap. First, we were at Hitler’s rise to power, which had obvious implications for the Zionist project. Next, it was 1946, and the Irgun terrorist movement was in full flower. After realizing my mistake, I think I understand why. I will find where I was in FLNJ-5, and start over. Unfortunately, when I get to the Nakba in FLNJ-6, I will have to listen a second time.
April 21, 2025 I am now 8 days into this project, one day longer than it would have taken Douglas Murray to record it. I am at 3:52:23 of FLNJ-5, and burnout is setting in. Files from other podcasts that I enjoy are piling up.
Monday morning means a new episode of “Blocked and Reported.” This week features Episode 257, Faux POC Poetry. I am part of a poetry community that is run by POC. This should be entertaining.
April 22, 2025 When I got back from my morning walk, I was at 5:21:11 of FLNJ-5. The various situations are not improving. Germany is lurching towards war, and the “final solution.” British Mandate Palestine is descending into chaos, with the elimination of Arabs on the horizon.
There are many, many things to learn from FLNJ-5. The Mandatory British Administration of Palestine is a disaster for the Arabs. An Arab revolt was suppressed by the British and Zionists, with the trademark cruelty of all anti-insurgencies. Torture, collective punishment, and limitless “collateral damage” are all present. An estimated 10% of the Arab population in Palestine died. The British Army is forcing Arab prisoners to ride on the hood of trucks, as human shields against land mines. The rhetoric of this era could have been spoken today.
In the early nineties, I read A Child of the Century by Ben Hecht, a journalist, screenwriter, and piece of work. During the last days of the Mandatory Government, Mr. Hecht became involved with the Irgun … a notorious para-military outfit in Palestine. Mr. Hecht proudly used the term “terrorists” to describe the Irgun. I read this during a time when Israeli propaganda made “terrorist” synonymous with Palestinians. The evening news was full of leaders saying the name Yassir Arafat, pause, terrorist. Using the t-word to describe a Zionist force struck me as highly ironic. FWIW, the term “terroriste” was coined in 1794, during the French Revolution.
April 23, 2025 This is #nationalpoetrymonth. Every day in April, I post a picture poem from my archives. Today it is In Jerusalem. The text is based on Ecclesiastes 1, and the pictures are “added value” shots of the American flag.
Whirleth about continually dim, Preacher was King over Israel’s fate, Have been before me in Jerusalem, That which is crooked cannot be made straight, I gave my heart to know how wisdom sings, Generation passeth away below, There is no remembrance to former things, Increaseth knowledge Increaseth sorrow.
A month after October 7, I was working on another poem, Cha Cha Part Two. One of the lines was “Ecclesiastical Abomination,” which rhymes with “Cultural Appropriation.” … FWIW, the poem was a celebration of white people who like to dance. … I was working on the pictures, and glanced at twitter. I saw a video of PM Netanyahu saying, there is a time for war. I began crying, and could not stop. By then, the exponential over-retaliation of Israel was all full display, for those who could see. This was truly an Ecclesiastical Abomination.
The FLNJ series runs 22:54:47. (FLNJ-1 – 2:21:05, FLNJ-2 – 3:18:52, FLNJ-3 – 1:44:03, FLNJ-4 – 4:25:58, FLNJ-5 – 5:35:43, FLNJ-6 – 5:30:07) Mileage may vary. Today’s pictures are from The Library of Congress. Russell Lee took the facebook picture in April 1941. “Saturday night in barroom. Southside of Chicago, Illinois” · selah
Fear & Loathing Part Two
This is Part Two of my journey with Fear & Loathing in the New Jerusalem, a podcast series by Darryl Cooper aka @MartyrMade. Other episodes of this effort are available. 041525 042325 042625 Disclaimer This is a greatly simplified view of what happened. For more information, you can listen to FLNJ, or google one of the many histories of this era. … At the end of this post, we will see that googling for more information can have its limits.
April 15, 2025 My morning walk today was a trip to the county office to buy next year’s auto tag. It is 1.54 miles from my house to the office. When I got there, I had to go through a metal detector wielding security guard. He looked in my bag, and would not let me take my bottle of tea into the office. As soon as I got in the office, I was waited on, and got my tag business done quickly.
I am finished with FLNJ-2. The last part was about the time between roughly 1922 and 1925. More Zionist settlers are coming into Palestine. There is a debate about whether settlers should take over, or whether they should get along with their neighbors. Unfortunately the Jaffa riots took place.
According to this narrative, the trouble began when a groups of settlers were having a march somewhere, and one Zionist group attacked the other. The British police got involved, and the Arabs started to hear that the settlers were causing trouble. The Arabs got involved, and it was a great big mess. After that after that there was little talk of getting along with your neighbors. This development had unfortunate consequences for the whole Zionist project.
After posting FLNJ Part One, u/chamblee54 made a comment at r/martyrmade announcing the publication of Fear & Loathing Part One. There was a festive comment thread. HughNormousPeanus “I made this list during my last listen hope it helps” (This list was the actors in the F&L drama. It may prove helpful in the production of the series.) Chamblee54 “Thank you. I may want to borrow from this in my series. I hope your co-worker wasn’t listening at work. He might not get anything else done. Always remember, Douglas Murray could have done this in one week.” HughNormousPeanus ‘Douglas Murray is a three letter word I can’t say on Reddit starting with F ending in G with an A in the middle” Chamblee54 “Oh my. I am a gay man. I do not appreciate that. His sexual honeydew list is about the only good thing I can say about that idiot.” HughNormousPeanus “I’d tell you to appreciate these nuts but you probably would I can’t think of anything more derogatory to call Douglas Murray you’ll have to get over it.”
Later in the day. … I took a different route back from the county office, making the round trip 2.87 miles. I downloaded FLNJ-3, and listened to the whole thing on a trip to a pizza buffet on Pleasant Hill Road. FLNJ-3 is only 1:44:03, and is not a narrative history. Instead, MartyrMade discusses the honor culture among the Arab people in West Asia. Societies are not governed by institutions as much as families and tribes. This is how mankind has operated until recently. There was one quote that made me pull into a parking lot and make a note. 33:18 “what civilization does is relieve us of the burden of needing to be honest all the time.”
April 16, 2025 I started to listen to FLNJ-4 on my morning walk. Immediately after the opening montage, FLNJ-4 got very interesting. “Late one Friday afternoon in 1924, the Orthodox Jewish rabbi Yaakov Yisroel Dehan was walking back from his synagogue to his home in Jerusalem …”
Jacob de Haan a Dutchman, was a Gay Poet, an Orthodox Jew, and an all around piece of work. In 1919, he left The Netherlands for Palestine. “On the day of his departure, thousands of fans crowded Amsterdam’s train station, waving frantically and singing “Hatikvah.” At least one chronicler of the occasion joked that many present just wanted to make sure that he’d really gone.”
Rabbi de Haan soon became disillusioned by the reality of Palestine, after hearing about the high minded vision of a Jewish homeland. He began to display his talent for pissing people often. One quote seems to sum up his attitude. “Ever the polyglot, he quickly studied Arabic, and took great pleasure in upsetting the Zionists he’d meet by demanding that they speak to him in Arabic, an official language according to the British bylaws.” Eventually, he got enough people mad at him.
When the Zionists killed Yaakov Yisroel Dehan on July 1, 1924 I found an article written about YYD shortly after his death. It was republished in 2002, by a contemporary group with similar ideas about Israel. “NKI is the voice of Religious Jews world wide in their Torah-based opposition to the State of Israel” … “At a time when the first followers of the Zionist movement began streaming into the Holy Land in large numbers, defiling the holiness of the land, and by virtue of their idiotic ideas began to work to expel the Arabs who had been living there for centuries in order to establish a Zionist state.”
April 17, 2025 The process of listenting to FLNJ is turning into a war of attrition. The gee whiz phase is over. I am 69 minutes into FLNJ-4. The saga is sometime in the 1920’s, and is being overwhelmed by problems. The Arabs are not going anywhere, and have plenty of issues with the British and the settlers. The settlers are quarelling with each other about the direction of the Zionist project. There is a lot more action to come.
My life continues. Every morning in April, I repost an old picture poem for national poetry month. Today, it was something from Psalm 46. I got unwound talking about that on facebook, and decided on a possible definition for God … something that we cannot fully know or understand, but just might be real. … It is too nice a day to worry about this.
At 1:24:00, Darryl gets onto a source of support for the Zionists. They have the backing of several Western European nations, most notably Great Britain. Some cynical people said these nations just wanted to get rid of the Jews. Whatever. Another source of support is the Rothschild family.
Illuminati talk often involves the Rothschilds, and can get antisemitic quickly. Darryl mentioned the wars that were financed by the Rothschilds. There have always been rumors of the Rothschilds financing both sides of a war, and of egging on the warring parties, so as to make money from the ensuing carnage. There are rumors about the War Between the States … the London branch financing the Union, with the Paris branch financing the Confederacy. This is difficult to confirm or deny, and inevitably leads to Illuminati talk.
The Zionists had unity, and access to resources, not enjoyed by the Arabs in Palestine. It is interesting to speculate how the Zionist project would have gone, had it waited until after the influx of oil revenues into the Arab world. At this point, we might note the presence of Iran, which is Persian rather than Arab. The saga of Iran over the last 80 years is consequential … the 1953 coup, the 1979 revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, the ongoing conflict with Israel and the United States. The story of Iran is just as consequential as the story of Israel.
April 18, 2025 I finished my morning walk without incident. The stock market is closed for good friday. The last report: −527.16 (1.33%) Apr 17, 4:55PM EDT. In a few minutes, I will drive over to Drew Valley, for their community yard sale.
I am now at 4:04:09 of FLNJ-4. It is 1929 in the New Jerusalem. Radical Zionists are forcing matters, into faster action. The Arab population does not like it. The British don’t know what to do. The situation gets very, very ugly. See Disclaimer at top of post.
The yard sale will be celebrated on Saturday. While driving back, I heard the last few minutes of FLNJ-4. Darryl mentions something I had never heard before. At some point in this era, the United States and Great Britain restricted Jewish immigration. Darryl says the fear was about communist revolutionaries coming into the country. At this time, most of the Bolsheviks were Jewish, and the Russian revolution was seen by many as a Jewish revolution. When I try to find out more about this, the only google results are to sources concerned with anti-semitism. Any information about communism being a motivation are very difficult to find.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Russell Lee took the facebook photograph in July, 1941. “Lunch at carnival stand, Fourth of July, Vale, Oregon”
Fear & Loathing Part One
April 13, 2025 – I am beginning Fear & Loathing in the New Jerusalem (FLNJ), a six part series by Darryl Cooper (middle name unavailable), aka @MartyrMade. This might prove to be a bit of a challenge. The podcast itself is easy to find as a free download. However, a transcript (the lazy blogger’s ally) might prove challenging. After googling several paywalled sources, I found a youtube edition. This will provide a transcript.
I begin this journey a few days after the infamous JRE featuring Douglas Kear Murray and Dave-no middle name-Smith. I am on team Dave, and found DKM to be an obnoxious purveyor of bad faith rhetoric. At one point, Rogan was trying to say that DC has done 30 plus hours of podcasting about Israel/Palestine. DKM interrupted him, to say “So what. 30 plus hours of podcasting, you do that in a week” I am just starting to listen to that 30 hours. I doubt that I will finish in a week.
There are so many ironies in FLNJ-1. DKM stridently said, in effect, that DS should not talk about Israel if he had not been there. At 59:54, DC mentions that “Herzl (Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism) had never even been to Palestine when he published his pamphlet calling for the Jews to move there.” In another head scratcher, at 24:44 we learn: “Zionism was competing for recruits with Bolshevism, and these other radical movements. It’s a competition which Winston Churchill … would later call quote little less than a struggle for the soul of the jewish people.” DC opened a can of worms when he said the Mr. Churchill was the real villain of World War II.
Eventually, though a series of World War I related events, Britain issued The Balfour Declaration. This document promised a “national home” for the Jewish people. Unfortunately, Britain had already promised the Arabs their own independent state. Britain also promised France that Palestine would be under international rule. These conflicting promises would lead to problems.
April 14, 2025 Today’s visit with FLNJ is with Episode 2, on my morning walk. FLNJ-2 begins by talking about the effect of World War I on the Arab populations of West Asia. The colonial powers … The English, The French, The Ottoman Empire … were conscripting Arabs to go fight in their war. These men did not understand why they had to go kill each other. This is not surprising, since the European conscripts did not understand the war either.
The first two hours of FLNJ-2 concern the events in Palestine after World War I ended. As could have been predicted, Britain broke its promise to the Arabs. The Balfour Declaration stood, and a portion of Palestine was “given” to the Zionists, under British administration. Meanwhile, Syria became a French governed territory. The Zionists began to build things, including militias. The Arabs were not happy, and the British managed to upset everybody. Before long, people began killing each other, and the whole thing devolved into a quagmire. … This is a greatly simplified view of what happened. For more information, you can listen to FLNJ, or google one of the many histories of this era. … I am going to copy that disclaimer for later use.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Russell Lee took the facebook picture in May 1938, Southeast Missouri Farms. Farmers talking together in cooperative store. La Forge project, Missouri. There are more episodes of the Fear & Loathing series available. 041825 042325 042625
Bathtubs In The US Capitol
99invisible posted a show, The Bathtubs or the Boiler Room. It seems as though an NPR reporter likes to go places she is not supposed to be in. In the basement of the US Capitol, she found a bathtub, carved out of a chunk of Italian marble.
“The bathtubs were installed around 1860 during the expansion of the Capitol. DC is known for its swampy summers, and legend has it that senators could be banished from the chamber if they were too smelly. But lawmakers—like most Americans at the time—didn’t have indoor plumbing at home. They needed a place where they could wash up. So, the Architect of the Capitol ordered six marble bath tubs, each three by seven feet and carved by hand in Italy, to be installed in the Capitol basement—three on the House side, three on the senate.”
The tubs were imported from Italy, and sent to the port of Baltimore. They arrived just in time for the War Between The States. They were quite a luxurious item. Today, they are forgotten, surrounded by HVAC machines, with one covered with plywood and file cabinets.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the featured photograph in November 1937. “Pool Hall, Newport News, Virginia.” This is a repost.
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