The Last World War One Veteran
Tomorrow is veteran’s day. It began as Armistice Day. On this day in 1918, World War I ended. On the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, the cease fire took effect.
World War I was a ghastly bloodbath. Millions of people died. No one is quite sure what it was about. The effects of “The Great War” are with us today.
It is said that the German Kaiser was horrible, and had to be defeated. He was replaced by communism and the third reich. In the middle east, the Ottoman empire collapsed, and the British and French took over the territories. The British drew boundaries between Iran and Iraq, and administered a mandate over Palestine. The French tried to get revenge on the Germans. The Germans then had to get back at the French. World War II was the result. (This is vastly over simplified.)
Apparently, there is one United States veteran of World War I who is still alive. Frank Buckles lives in Charles Town, WV. On February 1, 2010, he celebrated his 109th birthday.
Mr. Buckles lied about his age to join the army. He was an ambulance driver in France, and after the Armistice escorted German POWs home. In 1942, he worked for an American shipping company in Manila, and was captured by the Japanese. He spent the next three years as a prisoner. Mr. Buckles was married in 1953, and bought a farm in West Virginia. “I never got in a hurry.”
Frank Buckles died February 27, 2011. This is a repost. The picture of Mr. Buckles is from Wikipedia. All other pictures are from The Library of Congress. This was written like Kurt Vonnegut. Mr. Vonnegut was born November 11, 1922.
Thirty Trayvons
The names in these pictures are children. They lived in Pakistan. They were killed by the United States. Unmanned aircraft routinely fly over Pakistan and kill people. There is no risk to any United States military personnel.
The background pictures are from a neighborhood fall festival. This is life in the United States. Some say that the children in Pakistan are killed to preserve this way of life. Kill them over there before they come kill us here.
Last year, a young man was killed in a Florida town. An enormous outcry was heard about this death. Pictures of the deceased were on every television set in America. Every one of the names in this feature is a young person, killed by an American citizen. Pictures of these children will not be seen on American television. If the POTUS had a son, he would not look like one of these children.
Road Rage Again
A slack blogger was driving down Button Gwinnett Drive, minding his own business. When he got to the light at Best Friend Road, an SUV pulled up in the neighboring lane. “You need to drive faster. The speed limit is forty, not thirty. Yea, go ahead and smile, I’ll kick your fucking teeth in.”
Button Gwinnett was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Less than a year later, he was in a dispute with Lachlan McIntosh. The gentlemen decided to settle the matter with dueling pistols, with fatal consequences for Mr. Gwinnett. PG was wondering if modern life was going to imitate history. The light turned green, and the SUV went forward, at an undetermined rate of speed.
A listener to this tale made the comment “no G-d no peace, know G-d know peace.” This is the spoken word, so the spelling is a guess. PG had the same reaction to this comment that he did to the angry young SUV speed racer. Say nothing, and avoid complicating discussion. Religion has been a source of misery for PG. Is this because of G-d, or the golden calf religions that man has instituted? Sometimes the best answer is to turn left when the light is green.
Grace
Soldiers from 150 years ago display the grace of silent, still memory. Today, America is thinking about another war. It will not be our men who die. We will direct our high tech weapons to coordinates on a screen. We will not hear the women and children scream. We will not be at risk, except for damage to our national soul. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. They are Union Soldiers from the War Between the States. That war was not fought with unmanned aircraft.
Israel And Syria
There was a feature in the Washington Post, 9 questions about Syria you were too embarrassed to ask. The WP is corporate media through and through. The 9 questions feature had very little to say about Israel. This is curious. Israel is a powerful country that Syria is, technically, at war with. As conspiracy happy as the Middle East is, you would think there is something to say.
PG decided to do a test. The text of the article was copied into a word document. A search was done for Israel. Out of 2900 words in the article, Israel comes up twice.
The Cold War is long over, and most of the region long ago made peace with Israel and the United States; the Assad regime’s once-solid ideological and geopolitical identity is hopelessly outdated. But Bashar al-Assad, who took power in 2000 when his father died, never bothered to update it.
Iran’s thinking in supporting Assad is more straightforward. It perceives Israel and the United States as existential threats and uses Syria to protect itself, shipping arms through Syria to the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah and the Gaza-based militant group Hamas.
As is often the case online, the comments are more revealing than the main article.
You also left out the threat that Iran has made about using nuclear arms against Israel if the US intervenes in Syria. Israel is being used as a pawn in this stupid game of chess.
Regarding the chemical weapon attack, only two options appear to be being considered – that it was the Syrian Regime or the Opposition forces that discharged the weapon. What about the third alternative – that an outside force such as Mossad (Israel) or the Iranians discharged these weapons … to provoke the United Sates into retaliation and involvement.
… the rebels opposing Assad are not all civilians who took up arms; far from it, most of them are former Syrian soldiers who deserted to join the rebels. And seriously, if you think that “most of the region long ago made peace with Israel and the United States”, you lose all credibility in writing about “the region” – you’re blinded by your love for Israel and don’t understand anything about the Arabs ….
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
America Stay Out Of Syria
Ten and a half years ago, America was about to go to war. Congress had passed the fig leaf authorization. The troops were waiting nearby. Babylon was fixin’ to experience shock and awe.
PG did not think it was a very good idea, and wrote his representatives in Washington to tell them about it. While he did not think it would stop the invasion, it is good to be on the record as being opposed.
On this Labor Day weekend, we are looking at another war. While ground troops are not discussed… yet … the world is expecting us to kill some Arabs. This time, instead of useless letters to useless politicians, PG is going to write a blog post. It might not stop anything, but it is an effort.
The two Senators from Georgia are Republican idiots. PG is not sure who his congressman is. It is either Hank Johnson or Tom Price. The best thing that can be said is that neither is Cynthia McKinney. A copy of this post might go to the four gentleman anyway.
The best case scenario is for America to send in a few high tech missiles, kill a few Arabs, and let the Civil War go on as before. There is little way to know whether it is good guys, or bad guys, that we would be killing. Is anyone fighting in Syria a good guy? Kill them all, let Allah sort them out.
The worst case scenario is too horrible to consider. Nuclear armed Israel is next door, and enjoys killing Arabs. Nuclear armed Russia supports Syria, and enjoys killing just about anyone. The OPEC nations are nearby, and looking for an excuse to jack up the prices. There are so many ways for this to get out of control, and so many who want more chaos.
Maybe, just maybe, this is a time for America to sit one out. Let Israel take care of herself. Why is using chemical weapons so much worse than depleted uranium shells? How is what Syria does worse that what Israel did in Gaza? What about the reports that it was the Syrian rebels who were using chemical weapons? How will we know we are killing the correct people? The time to think about these things is before America starts to kill women and children.
Pictures for today’s entertainment were taken at the 2011 Dragon Con parade. PG was horrified by the overcrowding at the 2011 event, and chose to not attend this year. The costumes are probably very similar to what was on display today. Very few of the playtime soldiers at this parade will participate in any military action in Syria.
Chamblee54 
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