Trump Could Win the Entomological Foundation Peace Prize

Trump: "My decision on Russia is a very simple one. I am in the process of negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table. Great progress is being made, and that includes current hostage negotiations! Signing that document at this time will do that, and I can sign it later, or any time that I want! Perhaps more importantly, Russia is doing very little, if anything, to help the Islamic Republic of Iran, compared to what they could be doing, and I want to keep it that way, and will, unless stupid people get in the way. Lastly, Zelenskyy is using Diesel Refineries in Russia as a target, knowing that these attacks are seriously hurting the world diesel markets, including those in the United States. Farmers, ranchers, and businesses of all kinds are suffering greatly from this, but Russia is, nevertheless, sending, at a low price, millions of barrels of diesel to the World. Zelenskyy doesn’t care, and frankly, with all of the money that Europe is famously giving him, and that Crooked Joe Biden gave him in the past, he doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did. He could have made a better deal two years ago than he can now. His country is in shambles, a large portion of his land is lost, his oceans and seas are gone, and his male population is low, wounded, and/or dead. I WANT THIS WAR END! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP"

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 18, 2026

Unsurprising coming from Putin's puppet.  But man, if he really wanted to be seen as a Man of Peace, he should end this conflict, which scientists have compared to World War I trench warfare:

A 2006 UC San Diego announcement counted five Argentine ant supercolonies in southern California. The giant coastal one borders three of the four smaller ones, including a colony centered on Lake Hodges, north of San Diego near Escondido. Those colonies are genetically distinct and, crucially, they don't recognize each other as kin.

Ants tell friend from foe mostly by smell, sniffing chemical cues on each other's bodies with their antennae. Within a supercolony those cues are so uniform that a stranger from 500 miles away smells like home. At the boundary between two supercolonies, the cues don't match, and the result is a fight to the death... 

The team found sharp, well-defined borders at 16 contact zones between three pairs of supercolonies. They visited nine of those zones every week for six months in 2004 and saw consistent, intense fighting. Thomas collected the dead along small stretches of the border and scaled up. Her estimate: border clashes around the Lake Hodges colony killed at least 15 million workers in six months.  

The front wasn't hard to find. Holway told the San Diego Union-Tribune that you could spot the piles of dead ants from the car. The paper described the battle line winding through Escondido neighborhoods west of Interstate 15 and along the western edge of Lake Hodges. Despite the carnage, the boundary barely moved.

Crazy shit.  And still not so crazy as the fact we have a dude with an ant-sized brain grinding our Republic into the fucking dirt.

Selah.

PS - Hat tip to The Verified Post.

PPS - Suddenly reminded of A Republic of Insects and Grass by Jonathan Schell.  Read his book The Fate of the Earth, which includes that essay, for my class on nuclear war freshman year (1987, yikes).  Perhaps we won't nuke ourselves, but rather cook ourselves instead; either way I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.

De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae

Trump is threatening to genocide Iran every other day and he’s bragging about publicly executing someone on a live stream and he’s somehow confused why he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize

— Harry Sisson (@harryjsisson) October 10, 2026

Calgacus, as recorded by Tacitus:

Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.  

They plunder, they slaughter, and they steal: this they falsely name Empire, and where they make a wasteland, they call it peace.

Pax.

An Attack on the Inviolability and Dignity of the Person

The Catholic Church teaches that the death penalty is "inadmissible," primarily because every human being has God-given dignity, even a murderer, even a mass murderer. The televising of an execution is barbarism of the worst kind, offering up death as entertainment. Some Catholics still reject Pope Francis's magisterial pronouncement on the death penalty, which is now included in the Catechism. But opposition to the death penalty, grounded in the respect for all human life, is not a brand new doctrine. Rather, it is one that took time to develop, as the church came to understand more deeply the innate dignity of every human life. "The new evangelization calls for followers of Christ who are unconditionally pro-life: who will proclaim, celebrate and serve the Gospel of life in every situation. A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. . . . I renew the appeal I made . . . for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary." —St. John Paul II, St. Louis, Missouri, January 27, 1999

— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) October 9, 2026

Yes, this is military justice, but making a public spectacle out of this execution is truly barbaric.  Certainly something that would never happen under Catholic Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.

Anyway, it brings to mind this:

The year was 1849 and the young Dostoevsky, fresh from the success of his first novel, Poor Folk, had joined a liberal humanitarian group devoted to studying utopian models of socialism. During one of their meetings, the police appeared and arrested the whole company. They were imprisoned in solitary confinement, sentenced for criticisms against the Russian government, and hauled to the city square to be shot. The death sentence was read aloud in their ringing ears. The ceremonial sword was broken over their hooded heads. The cross was pressed to their trembling lips. The shrouds were pulled across their heaving chests. The first three were bound to the execution posts. Fyodor Dostoevsky, twenty-eight years old, waited in the second batch of three to die. The rifles were lowered. The sergeant raised his saber.

When, all of a sudden, a courier from Tsar Nicholas I rode wildly into the square with word that, by the magnanimity of the tsar, the prisoners were spared their lives and instead sentenced to four years hard labor at the prison of Omsk in Siberia. The drums rolled. The rifles were raised. The whole execution had been nothing more than a terrifying farce—a strategy for the improvement of insubordinates. A number of the prisoners collapsed. Two were driven permanently insane. Fyodor Dostoevsky was left with shattered nerves, epileptic seizures, and a nascent conviction that any effort to conquer human suffering was doomed to failure—leaving Christian submission as the only course for mankind.

MAGA sadists want us to be afraid.  Beyond the moral depravity of our drunk rapist SecDef's little fascist show, I (want to) believe it will backfire, both at home and abroad.

Selah.

The Arc of the Moral Universe Is Long

There's a major civil rights protest taking place in Selma, Alabama, right now in response to the SCOTUS decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act and the ongoing attack on Black Americans’ political power

(video: defiancedispatch/IG) pic.twitter.com/tk7fmq3U8i

— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) May 16, 2026

It might bend toward justice, but it can just as easily snap back if we don't actively keep bending. 'twas ever thus...

We Must Now Show the World Our Moral Power

68% of Americans are against sending ground troops into Iran, while Pete Hegseth is sitting at a 65% disapproval rating.pic.twitter.com/EP5lunAloA

— WarMonitor (@TheWarMonitor) April 4, 2026

As I mentioned yesterday, I watched the Apollo 8 episode of FTETTM.  Interspersed between space stuff, it features clips and audio from the period to set context, including something Senator John Stennis said.  It's actually anachronistic (May of '67, not '68), but still a good backdrop for what was going down during a tumultuous epoch:

We simply cannot afford to stop in the midst of a shooting war and take time out to debate whether we have been wise or unwise and whether our past actions were sound or unsound. At this critical time, we need unity and a sense of national purpose not disunity and divisive- ness. Our brave fighting men have the right to expect this and more; we can afford to give them no less. 

It is not my purpose, Mr. President, to criticize or to deny anyone's right to constructive dissent. My purpose instead is to support and uphold our country and its flag, and those men in uniform who defend them so bravely. I fear that even more trying days lie ahead. Recent events clearly indicate an intensification of the war in scale and Violence. More American blood will be shed. All Americans should face these hard realities squarely. 

In view of the fact that our flag and national honor and integrity have now been committed, I believe that we must be firm and resolute and meet increased force with increased force. I shall continue to give support both to our efforts to achieve an honorable settlement and to our resolution to stand firm and per- severe if that proves to be unattainable, I hope my fellow Americans will follow the same course. 

Let there be no mistake in the minds of our adversaries that they think America is divided. America is not divided. Our people are not divided. We are united. We will remain that way. 

According to Gallup¹, in the spring of 1967, 37% of Americans thought the war in Vietnam was a mistake, while 50% disagreed (13% had no opinion).  Around the time of Apollo 7 and Apollo 8 (end of 1968), a majority said it was a mistake.

Around that time when the war was more popular, Dr King said:

Let us save our national honor — STOP THE BOMBING.

Let us save American lives and Vietnamese lives — STOP THE BOMBING.

Let us take a single instantaneous step to the peace table — STOP THE BOMBING.

Let us put an honorable peace on the agenda before another day passes — STOP THE BOMBING.

Let us be able to face the world with a concrete deed of genuine peace — STOP THE BOMBING.

Let our voices ring out across the land to say the American people are not vainglorious conquerors — STOP THE BOMBING.

Yea, verily, amen.

1 - Also check out which age cohort broke the code first.

History Rhyming

Oh:

On March 8, 1965, U.S. Marines — the first combat troops in Vietnam — waded ashore to the coastal city of Da Nang.

Eight months later:

The Battle of Ia Drang (Vietnamese: Trận Ia Đrăng, [iə̯ ɗrăŋ]; in English /ˈiːə dræŋ/) was the first major battle between the United States Army and the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), as part of the Pleiku campaign conducted early in the Vietnam War, at the eastern foot of the Chu Pong Massif in the central highlands of Vietnam, in 1965. It is notable for being the first large scale helicopter air assault and also the first use of Boeing B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers in a tactical support role. Ia Drang set the blueprint for the Vietnam War with the Americans relying on air mobility, artillery fire and close air support, while the PAVN neutralized that firepower by quickly engaging American forces at very close range.

How fitting that we learn of Country Joe's death today...

Hey, Kitten, what's going on?

As Operation Esptein Fury is unleashed, all I can say from my privileged space is that I'm super lucky to be so busy at work - juggling 3 different audiences and courses, multiple times a day, with an added bonus of our team's all-hands onsite this coming week - that I can (and must) compartmentalize.

Well, mostly.  The siren song of social media keeps drawing me into the doomscrolling shoals, even as I try to distract myself with broken lab environments and Unrivaled playoffs.  I'm really getting too old for this shit.

On occasion, the kids have asked me what my favorite decade was.  Hands down, the 90s.  I was young, and full of optimism because the Cold War was over, so it really was a rocking time with as close an approximation to a peaceful world as I've ever known.

In a related vein, Sadie asked just this morning if Sam was pranking her when he said I'd met Bill Clinton.  I did!  Well, I shook his hand, at any rate, when he came to Burlington for a rally in September of '92.  

Pat Leahy introduced him, and proceeded to shout himself hoarse over the course of the event.  The following Monday at the office, I announced that I had shaken the hand of our next preznit.  One of the rare times I've been right about anything political.

And that makes me 1 (one) handshake away from Trump, Putin, and the Dalai Lama, so I got that going for me.

Pax.

PS - In case it isn't clear, blogging will be light, mostly poetry/video signoffs.  Got a lot on my mind, no time to rant.

We've Been Here Before

John Adams' diary, Feb 1770:

When I came into Town, I saw a vast Collection of People, near Liberty Tree -- enquired and found the funeral of the Child, lately kill'd by Richardson was to be attended. Went into Mr. Rowes, and warmed me, and then went out with him to the Funeral, a vast Number of Boys walked before the Coffin, a vast Number of Women and Men after it, and a Number of Carriages. My Eyes never beheld such a funeral. The Procession extended further than can be well imagined.

This Shewes, there are many more Lives to spend if wanted in the Service of their Country.

It Shews, too that...the Ardor of the People is not to be quelled by the Slaughter of one Child and the Wounding of another.

A couple weeks later:

Last Thursday, agreeable to a general request of the Inhabitants, and by the consent of parents and friends, were carried to their grave in succession, the bodies of Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, James Caldwell and Chrispus Attucks, the unhappy victims who fell in the bloody massacre of the Monday evening preceeding!

On this occasion most of the shops in town were shut, all the bells were ordered to toll a solemn peal, as were all those in the neighbouring towns of Charlestown Roxbury, &c. The procession began to move between the hours of 4 and 5 in the afternoon; two of the unfortunate sufferers, viz. Mess. James Goodwell and Crispus Attucks, who were strangers, borne from Faneuil-Hall, attended by a numerous twain of persons of all ranks; and the other two viz. Mr. Samuel Gray, from the House of Mr. Benjamin Gray, (his Brother) on the north side exchange, and Mr. Maverick, from the house of his distressed mother Mrs. Mary Maverick, in Union street, each followed by their respective relations and friends: 

The several hearses forming a junction in King street, the theatre of that inhuman tragedy! proceeded from thence thro' the main-street, lengthened by an immense concourse of people, so numerous as to be obliged a follow in ranks of fix, and brought up by a long train of carriages belonging to the principal entry of the town. The bodies were deposited in one vault in the middle burying-ground. The aggravated circumstances of their death, the distress and sorrow visible in every countenance, together with the peculiar solemnity with which the whole funeral was conducted, surpass description...

It is supposed that there must have been a greater number of people from town and country at the funeral of those who were massacred by the soldiers, than were ever together on this continent on any occasion.

Just two American examples of Method 45 - Demonstrative funerals that come to mind today.

Selah.

You Say You Want A Second EDSA Revolution?

On this date 25 years ago, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo became the 14th President of the Philippines.  It happened thus:

[President Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada], elected in 1998, received considerable support from a base of rural poor. An ex-movie star, he had been a supporter of the Marcos dictatorship in the 1970s and was vice president between 1992 and 1998... 

[Support] began to wane rapidly during the early part of Estrada’s administration. First, during 1999 and 2000 there was little evidence of any concrete measures of poverty reduction...Second, there was a widespread perception of a failure to implement any programme of substantial social reforms...Third, the Estrada government in early 2000 engaged in an opportunistic escalation of the war against the long-standing Moslem insurgency in Mindanao... 

These factors combined to make the Estrada government increasingly unpopular by mid 2000. The perception of this unpopularity was probably a factor that led to major moves within political elites to prepare the way for Estrada’s ouster... 

[Vice President Arroyo's] decision to resign from the Estrada cabinet was in response to concerns over corruption. Estrada would become the decisive issue that caused the collapse of his government. The immediate cause of Arroyo’s resignation were allegations by the Governor of Ilocos Sur Province, Luis ‘Chavit’ Singson, of Estrada’s involvement in the illegal Jueteng gambling syndicate. Questions had already arisen over the president’s involvement in corruption, especially in relation to the BW Resources scandal that emerged in late 1999. 

With Arroyo established as a potential constitutional successor to Estrada, the attempts to remove the president followed three main strategies. First, there was an organised campaign of protests aimed at securing Estrada’s resignation or ouster. The regime responded with its own counter-rallies, under the banner of the ‘guardians of the constitution’. The latter events were generally quite small and relied on mobilisation of poorer communities through bribes by local officials. 

Second, the opposition within the House of Representatives proceeded to pursue Estrada’s impeachment and succeeded in November 2000 in obtaining the necessary two-thirds vote by house members. The conclusions of the resulting impeachment trial, presided over by Chief Justice Hilario Davide, would ultimately be subject to vote by the Senate. 

Third, there was always some threat of military intervention to resolve the conflict either in Estrada’s favour or otherwise. There was continual suspicion of coup plots by various factions of the military and police... 

The immediate catalyst for the eventual revolt was the vote by pro-Estrada senators to withhold crucial evidence from the impeachment trial on 16 January 2001...The result was the collapse of the impeachment trial after the resignation of the Senate president, and then the entire prosecution team, in protest. The pro-Estrada senators probably did not foresee subsequent events.  

Indeed, following the Senate vote there was a series of mostly spontaneous demonstrations that centred on a mass assembly at the EDSA shrine. An important figure in the first EDSA uprising, Philippine Catholic Archbishop Cardinal Sin, had called for mass demonstrations on 12 January in the event of Estrada’s acquittal. He added his authority by calling for a mass prayer session at EDSA on 17 January. 

Over the succeeding days numbers gradually increased at the shrine, while other rallies occurred at other areas within Manila such as Monumento, Makati and Mendiola Bridge. Other protests occurred outside Manila in provincial centres. Pro-Estrada elements organised much smaller protests, occasionally resulting in minor clashes with anti-Estrada forces in places such as Makati. The stage at the EDSA shrine became a centre of opposition activity, with an array of leaders addressing the crowd... 

[T]he final motion for Estrada’s collapse came from contradictory forces. On the one hand, the Chief justice Davide declared his opinion that the resignation of Estrada’s cabinet meant there was ‘no legal basis’ not to allow Arroyo’s swearing-in as president. This occurred at midday on Saturday 20 January. On the other hand, the leftist and more militant section of the protest again played a significant role. 

Against the insistence of Sin and other moderates, these forces left the main part of the rally that morning to march on the Malacanang presidential palace. The marchers increased the pressure on Estrada to vacate Malacanang, forcing him to leave just after 2pm. Otherwise, Estrada may well have stayed there and continued to claim to be president. However, the combination of events ensured that Arroyo was sworn in and Estrada was forced to accept that he had, at least ‘temporarily’, stepped aside.

Anyway, power to the people, and whatnot.

<exits, singing: Don't you know it's gonna be alright>

I am not afraid of the word "tension."

16 April 1963:

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." 

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. 

Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

Selah.

Kisses Sweeter than Wine

Sugar and spice and all things nice:

The British West-Indies were primary producers of sugar, the highest import by Britain, therefore sugar was identified as coexisting with slavery. Slavery became synonymous with sugar; the British “seeing slavery only where they saw sugar”. Anti-slavery advocates determined “commerce was the great emancipator”; to end slavery sugar production in the West Indies must end. The boycott of sugar from the West Indies became the primary form of resistance by upper class individuals in Britain...    

The sugar boycotts were spearheaded by bourgeois women due to their involvement in the consumption of sugar both symbolically and literally. Women were at the forefront of the boycott due to their consumer and cultural power. Women’s roles as domestic servants, entertainers and housewives gave them the ability to control sugar consumption. 

Abolitionists targeted women because of their purchasing power over sugar in items like tea and pastries. Gender roles also assumed women to be barer of empathy and virtue. Women were more easily understood to empathize with the experiences’ of others and therefore they were held responsible for sugar boycotts. Similarly, women were understood to be proponents of virtue and were expected to be involved in humanitarian causes. 

A pamphlet circulated claiming that by “refusing to use any articles which have been cultivated by Slaves, woman, feeble as she is, may do more for the suppression of the inhuman Slave Trade, than all the ships of war that have ever ranged the coast of Africa.” Women’s political power was confined to domestic actions such as purchasing power within the home (Sussman). The idea that a united sugar boycott could stop the slave trade became empowering for women who were not involved in politics.  

Symbolically, sweet was associated with women. Women were makers of sugary delicacies, hostesses of tea parties and producers of breast milk (the origins of sweetness).... 

For most British, imaging the African slave’s agricultural experience in the West Indies was too removed from their lived experience. The abolitionist movement employed the metaphor of the physicality of the slave with the consumption of sugar. The consumption of sugar was understood to be synonymous with the consumption of the slave’s blood, sweat and tears. 

Also, too:

By boycotting they were able to demonstrate their dissatisfaction directly to the slave owners. This was effective because it was a tactic used by ordinary women who had no control in the public sphere. 

They were not in a position to have political influence or make any public displays but in the home they were in charge of buying and cooking food so by boycotting products that had been grown, picked or made by slaves they could have a direct impact on sales and therefore encourage change. For example over 300,000 people stopped buying and using sugar that had been grown by slaves on plantations. Such a large number demonstrates that the issue was extremely popular with women and throughout society. 

Anyway, mobs of wine moms can change the world...

It Can Happen Here

MAGA HATES women -but also FEARS them.

Look at this extraordinary language: white women CAN’T be real protesters! They’re just drunk & silly!

Fascinating to me as a historian of women’s protest,because- EXACTLY what they did to the London Matchgirls in 1888, then suffragettes! https://t.co/nOkzKcye99

— Dr Louise Raw (@LouiseRawAuthor) January 12, 2026

Sounds familiar:

On February 27, 1943, SS soldiers and local Gestapo agents began seizing the Jews of Berlin in an operation called “the Final Roundup.” They were loaded onto trucks and taken to the Jewish community’s administration building at Rosenstrasse 2-4, in the heart of the city. The goal was finally to make the city judenfrei (free of Jews), necessitating the forcible collection of Jews with German spouses and their Mischling (mixed ancestry) children. 

For two years these Jews had escaped the jaws of the Holocaust because they or their German spouses were essential for the war effort, and the regime wanted no unpleasantness on the home front. But the stunning military defeat at Stalingrad earlier that month shattered German morale and led Hitler to call for “Total War,” against Jews inside Germany as well as Allied armies. 

Word spread quickly about the abductions in Berlin, and before long a group of non-Jewish German women had gathered on the Rosenstrasse with food and other personal items for their Jewish husbands, whom they believed were being held inside...The crowds grew considerably despite the winter chill, and soon women waited outside day and night, holding hands, singing songs, and chanting “Let our husbands go!” By the second day of the protest, over 600 women were keeping a vigil on the Rosenstrasse... 

By the third day SS troops were given orders to train their guns on the crowd but to fire only warning shots. They did so numerous times, scattering the women to nearby alleyways. But the wives always returned and held their ground. They knew the soldiers would never fire directly at them because they were of German blood. Also, arresting or jailing any of the women would have been the rankest hypocrisy: According to Nazi theories, women were intellectually incapable of political action. So women dissenters were the last thing the Nazis wanted to have Germans hear about, and turning them into martyrs would have ruined the Nazis’ self-considered image as the protector of motherhood. 

The campaign soon expanded to include women and men who were not in mixed marriages. The ranks of protestors bulged to a thousand, with people chanting to let the prisoners go and taunting the SS soldiers. Joseph Goebbels, seeking to stop more from arriving, closed down the nearest streetcar station, but women walked the extra mile from another station to reach Rosenstrasse 2-4. By the end of the week Goebbels saw no alternative but to release the prisoners. Some thirty-five Jewish male internees, who had already been sent to Auschwitz, were ordered to gather their belongings and board a passenger train back to Berlin. 

Without fully realizing what they had done, the Rosenstrasse women had forced the Nazis to make a choice: They could accede to a limited demand and pay a finite cost—1,700 prisoners set free, if all the intermarried Jewish men were released. Or they could open a Pandora’s box of heightened protest in the center of the capital and brutalize German women in the bargain. For the Nazis, maintaining social control was more important than making sure every last Jew made it to the gas chambers. The regime that terrorized the rest of Europe found itself unable to use violence against a challenge on its very doorstep.

Amplifying that part about the role of women in the Nazi worldview:

One of the regime’s most coveted traditions was the notion that women’s role was limited to the domestic arena. But women’s influence extended far beyond that narrow sphere. Goebbels understood this when he wrote that women were “largely responsible” for “our public sentiments.” Stoltzfus describes the powerful position of women at the crucial time when Hitler’s fortunes began to fade:

The regime’s hopes for regaining control of the war relied more on women than men. Thus in early 1943 German women might have constituted a particularly influential group in any collective effort to oppose the Nazi regime not only because they made up an increasingly large part of the home front and possible labor pool but also because the regime’s decision to conscript women caused internal conflict. Total war measures contradicted the noncivic role Nazism had assigned women and ran contrary to the traditional female household roles it had asserted for ten years.

To sum up:

The few examples of German dissent, such as those against euthansia and the Rosenstrasse, were motivated not by principle but by family ties. However, in retrospect the vulnerability of the regime seems evident. Given the regime’s concern for public opinion, the Germans could have done more to shape policies —by expressing more opposition to the regime.

When the Nazi regime encountered no significant opposition, it increased its brutality, especially toward the Jews. Had the people realized their own strength, Johnson suggests that they might have played a larger role in shaping the Third Reich:

Had the decency and courage that thousands of Gentile partners in mixed marriages displayed during the Holocaust been more widespread among the general population, many more Jewish lives might have been saved. Although many Germans disagreed with Nazi policy against the Jews, and some provided Jews with aid and compassion, it is telling that the only open demonstration against the deportations of German Jews during the Holocaust was carried out by Aryan wives of Jewish husbands.

Also please see Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo.

Selah.

PS - Not quite in the same vein, but also please see Abigail Adams and friends.

History Has Its Eyes on You

Issa Rae has canceled her sold out performance at the Kennedy Center. Pulitzer Prize winner Rhiannon Giddens, Peter Wolf, Low Cut Connie, and the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, D.C., have also canceled. Lin-Manuel Miranda has canceled the entire Kennedy Center run of Hamilton. pic.twitter.com/Yedr5c0mLf

— Hoodlum 🇺🇸 (@NotHoodlum) December 28, 2025

Quick crib from the deep archives:

[S]hort ditty about Method #61 - Boycott of social affairs:

A group refusal to attend certain gatherings, such as receptions, concerts, and the like, as a means of dissociation from the occasion, certain individuals likely to be present, or the group that organized it.

An example near and dear to my heart involves Bill Russell, who died last month.  After a couple of his Celtic teammates were denied service at a coffeeshop while they were in Kentucky for an exposition game back in '61, the Black players decided to go back to Boston rather than play in an atmosphere thick with racism (not that Boston has a great record on that front).

And they were supported in their actions:

The champion Celtics never again will play a basketball game in the South, or any other place where their Negro players might be humiliated as they were in Lexington. Ky., last night, owner Walter A Brown emphatically declared... 

The other side of the same coin: Method #60 - Suspension of social and sports activities.  No sense in playing nice with people who hate you.

Sometimes it's good to throw away your shot...

Selah.

The Wicked Walk on Every Side, When the Vilest Men Are Exalted

Notice how it’s somehow the government’s job to legislate a few Bible verses on human sexuality over our entire country, but it’s suddenly “not the government’s job” when it comes to the +2,500 Bible verses calling for a generous use of wealth that prioritizes the poor.

— Rev. Benjamin Cremer (@Brcremer) October 28, 2025

Yea verily, amen.  All those Christian Nationalists, billionaires, and trillionaires ought to read some of their Augustine¹:

[T]his is what the rich should do: not be haughty in their ideas, nor set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches...But what are they to do with what they have? Let me tell you what: Let them be rich in good works, let them be easy givers. After all, they've got the wherewithal. Poverty is difficult and grim. Let them be easy givers; they've got the wherewithal. Let them share, that is, take some notice of their fellow mortals²...

What more do you get from all the things you have? You've got your food, you've got your necessary clothing; necessary, I say, not vain, not superfluous. What else can you get from your riches? Tell me. For sure, it will all be your superfluities. Well, let your superfluities provide the poor with their necessities.

MAGA can miss me with the "government ain't charity" bullshit (glares at James Madison).  The phrase "general Welfare" was so nice, the Framers mentioned it twice in the Constitution, and the Federal government enjoys economies of scale and more power to act than any individuals or charities.  

You want a "Christian nation"?  Let the wealthiest country on Earth be easy givers, helping people in their immediate circumstances and creating a system that sets them up to succeed in the long term.  You know, as opposed to allowing oligarchs to hoard all the wealth whilst starving the working poor, the eldery and infirm, and children.

Now, a parable:

While Augustine was working on his book On the Trinity, he was walking by the seaside one day, meditating on the difficult problem of how God could be three Persons at once. He came upon a little child. 

The child had dug a little hole in the sand, and with a small spoon or seashell was scooping water from the sea into the small hole. Augustine watched him for a while and finally asked the child what he was doing. The child answered that he would scoop all the water from the sea and pour it into the little hole in the sand. 

‘What?’ Augustine said. ‘That is impossible. Obviously, the sea is too large and the hole too small.’ 

‘Indeed,’ said the child, ‘but I will sooner draw all the water from the sea and empty it into this hole than you will succeed in penetrating the mystery of the Holy Trinity with your limited understanding.’ 

Augustine turned away in amazement and when he looked back the child had disappeared.

Indeed, and sooner than we will succeed in penetrating the depravity that is MAGA.

Selah.

1 - That's, uh...a bit of a joke.  President Biden sure did read him, which is why he declared a moratorium on the death penalty, and commuted death sentences for a few dozen people just before he left office, so naturally the orange rapist/fascist/felon made death great again.

2 - He does go on to say: Non enim...exspoliare illos volo, nudare illos volo, inanes relinquere volo ("[I]t doesn't mean I want them looted, want them stripped naked, want them left empty.").  But to be honest, I'm kinda inclining in that direction these days.

PS - Post title from the last line of Psalm 12, about which Augustine said, "The ungodly walk in a circle round about" (verse 8): that is, in the desire of things temporal..."

Existence Precedes Essence

I've been at the blogging game for over 20 years so often when things come up now, I'll think to myself, "I know I blogged about that before."  The trick these days is to actually find the stuff I wrote, requiring that I dig into the Internet Archive with so much of my musings deleted and defunct.  Such spelunking also brings me a bit of mirth as I rediscover things that I had forgotten about.

While I was looking for that picture of our shenanigans in DC with the Bush and Cheney, I stumbled across this vignette:

Battle of Algiers:

5TH JOURNALIST: Sartre has written another article ...

MATHIEU: Will you kindly explain to me why all the Sartres are always born on the other side?

5TH JOURNALIST: Then you like Sartre, colonel ...

MATHIEU: Not really, but he's even less appealing as an enemy. 

Okay, so whiskeyina gave me a copy of the May 1965 Playboy featuring an interview with Jean-Paul Sartre: 

Other people are hell insofar as you are plunged from birth into a situation to which you are obliged to submit. You are born the son of a rich man, or an Algerian, or a doctor, or an American. Then you have a cut-and-dried future mapped out, a future made for you by others. They haven't created it directly, but they are part of a social order that makes you what you are. If you're a peasant's son, the social order obliges you to move to the city where the machines await you, machines that need fellows like you to keep them going.

So it's your fate to be a certain type of worker, a country kid who has been driven away from the country by a certain type of capitalist pressure. Now the factory is a function of your being.

What exactly is your "being"? It is the job you're doing, a job that masters you completely because it wears you down--along with your pay, which classifies you exactly by your standard of living.

All this has been thrust upon you by other people...Or take a child who was born in Algeria in 1930 or 1935. He was doomed to an explosion into death and the tortures that were his destiny...[but] you can take action against what people have made of you and transform yourself...It takes a lot to change destiny. That destiny has got to be intolerable...

In our social order a man is always dominated by material things, and these things are themselves produced and exploited by others.  These others do not confront him face to face.  No.  They impinge of him through the agency of objects.

You, for example, have separated yourself from me...with this tape recorder.  We put all of modern civilization between  us.  Thus we ourselves become things.  A crowd of other things intervene, from the maker of this gadget of yours to the magazine that you represent.

I'm sure JPS would've loved being interviewed for a Paxcast, and I totally affirm that I didn't look at the centerfold at all.

Since I'd just blogged about Sartre, including that very scene from The Battle of Algiers, I could not let this go unremarked.

And what a time capsule!  I'd stopped by my friend Ina's house on the way back from a War Tax Resistance conference at the Woolman Hill Quaker Retreat Center in Deerfield, MA, and enjoyed cookies and other refreshments, along with receiving the gift of new reading material, before continuing on my way.

That was an interesting and fortifying weekend, hanging out with so many Quakers and other fellow travelers.  Attended my first Meeting since my mother's death in '06, which was a surprisingly emotional experience.  Met some folks who knew the old bookseller in Madison, ME, whom I visited every year when I was at Colby (his name, oddly enough, was Colby).  Also met Juanita Nelson, organizer for CORE and the Freedom Rides, amongst other things.

Alas, Paxcast (one of my several podcasts, along with its live stream version, Paxlive) is one of the many things now memory holed.  But that's okay, since the whole world is on fire and all will be forgotten soon enough.  Fat lot of good my efforts did.

Selah.

The Evil That Men Do Lives After Them

Well, we never did send either of these war criminals to jail, but at least one of them is in Hell now.  

That's me in the Bush costume, BTW, during my first stint at the Code Pink House in Dec '07.  Got warm in that big ole papier-mâché head.

But in the spirit of Nil nisi bonum: Dick did one Good Thing in his life, and that was publicly supporting and voting for MVP Harris.  Have a free cup of ice water on me, you heartless asshole.

But we in it shall be remember’d

On this date in 1415 the battle of Agincourt took place.
A fascinating bit of history that also gave us Shakespeare's masterpiece 'Henry V' and several glorious films.
Here's the St. Crispin's Day speech from the 1944 film with the great Laurence Olivier: pic.twitter.com/JQ1EJ5mAnv

— Fake History Hunter (@fakehistoryhunt) October 25, 2025

Click through to Jo's thread¹ to see three film versions of Henry's speech.  I wrote this about two of them a couple years ago on one of the defunct blogs:

---

Olivier is fine and all, but give me Branagh any day of the week.  Yes, a different time, different audience expectations, and different intent:

The Olivier film was shot near the end of the Second World War and dedicated to memory of English military sacrifice, specifically to the "Commandos and Airborne Troops of Great Britain the spirit of whose ancestors it has humbly attempted to recapture." A film explicitly and unapologetically of the moment of its production, its audience a war-weary Britain in need of an emotional boost, it understandably portrays Henry and his war as benignly patriotic, eliminating any moral or ethical ambiguity in the king and any sense of fractured will among his troops.

Gone are Henry's seemingly sadistic threats to the citizens of Harfleur (3.1). Gone is the traitor scene (2.2) -- replaced by expansive pageantry and a dumb show of Henry's pious devotion before the troops set off to storm the beaches of Normandy. Gone is the sense, in the play's opening scene, of faction among the English governing powers, replaced by clerical slapstick. Gone is the nuance built even into the play's most apparently jingoistic moments. Olivier stripped the danger from the bickering captains and the personality from the French lords, reducing both groups to caricatures.

What remains is a bluntly-realized Merrie Olde English past, exemplified by the film's spectacular opening model effect, a shining and splendid Shakespearean London straddling a pristine, glimmering Thames.

Branagh's 1989 film, on the other hand, was made for a film audience whose view of war had been conditioned by the failed adventure of Vietnam, honed by the many films that captured the disillusionment of the following generation, and given point by the British conflict with Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982, a controversial and much-politicized military victory.

In Branagh's film, Henry's war proceeds from a trumped up pretext concocted in a shadowy antechamber by sinister, whispering bishops. Henry's first appearance, a larger-than-life stalking silhouette framed by fire, evokes nothing so much as Darth Vader, and even when he is revealed to be a boyish figure rather dwarfed by his throne, he maintains a cold intensity: his whispered, steely-eyed "May I with right and conscience make this claim?" comes out as false piety barely-disguising realpolitik tail-covering.

Unlike Olivier, Branagh preserved the traitor scene and allowed it to blot with suspicion the "full-fraught men, and best" in his service, a suspicion reflected in the sidelong glances of Exeter, Erpingham, and Westmorland. Branagh's army seemed never to be fully united; the bickering between Fluellen and Macmorris had real menace, and Williams (played by Michael Williams) managed to present a serious ethical conundrum, and a challenge to a duel, to Branagh's Henry (the challenge had been cut in the 1944 film).

Where Olivier's Agincourt was a brilliant and bloodless piece of Technicolor chivalric pageantry, Branagh's was a bitter, brutal slog in a huge mud puddle that reddened sickeningly by the end of the battle. Where the Olivier film glossed over the human cost of battle, the Branagh film dwelt upon it...

Still, I prefer the 1989 version over 1944.  I mean, who can not love Brian Blessed?  Derek Jacobi?  And a young Christian Bale²?

---

Over the intervening years, I have also watched The Hollow Crown (2012), which is an excellent piece of work, but does not displace Branagh's for me. Regardless, an even more important war started on this date in 1983:

Child: Dad? What’s Grenada?

V/O: A child’s question. But not a question a child might ask. And one, that in the past, has only led to more childish questions.

Child: Did we win the war in Grenada, Daddy?

V/O: Why did we go there? How did we find it³? What did the Marines do the rest of that week?

Child: Is it really the smallest country in the world?

V/O: Time-Life Books presents: The Grenada Experience. The series designed to help you celebrate the greatest military triumph of our generation. 48 comprehensive volumes, one for every hour of this explosive period in American history. We’ll take you there, with the first troops to land. You’ll experience first-hand what it was like to ask directions from people with English accents. You’ll attend secret meetings at the White House, and meet the men who first realized that, somewhere in the world, there had to be a country we could lick. Call toll-free, and start putting the Grenada experience into focus. It’s important to gloat over Grenada. But gloating isn’t enough. Even bragging isn’t enough. It’s even more important to ask the question, “What is the big deal?” For ourselves, and for future generations.

Anyway, Happy Crispin Crispian Grenada Day to all who celebrate, especially all the cobblers.

1 - Also buy her book!

2 - I would have also included Emma Thompson and Dame Judi Dench generally, but they weren't at the battle.

3 - Well, we had a map.

Setting Brushfires of Freedom in the Minds of Men

"He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people."

- Declaration of Independence, Grievance 3 https://t.co/4GZzrdxD6x

— NTodd - Antifa IT Support 🇺🇦🐸 (@ntoddpax) October 20, 2025

Vashon turned out - both on island and in various mainland locales - to oppose with manly firmness Trump's invasions on the rights of the people:

Islanders donned superhero-themed and other wild costumes, hoisted flags and signs and took to the streets both "over town" and on-island to mark “No Kings Day,” a nationwide protest of the Trump administration on Oct. 18. 

At the north end, the line for the 10:35 a.m. Saturday sailing of the King County Water Taxi stretched all the way from the terminal’s sidewalk down the dock.  The boat ride was a tight fit: 273 people boarded the water taxi — only five souls short of its 278-person capacity. Once in Seattle, the islanders marched to the Seattle Center to hear speakers including U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal. 

On Vashon, another crowd numbering between 600-800 islanders turned out to fill the streets of Vashon’s town center around 1 p.m. Saturday, tightly crowding the sidewalks of the intersections at the town’s four-way stop and stretching north past the Village Green and south to Island Queen on both sides of Vashon Highway.

All told, that's about 10% of our population showing up.  On a related note, the First Continental Congress approved a non-importation, non-consumption, non-exportation agreement on this date in 1774:

We, his majesty's most loyal subjects...affected with the deepest anxiety, and most alarming apprehensions, at those grievances and distresses, with which his Majesty's American subjects are oppressed; and having taken under our most serious deliberation, the state of the whole continent, find, that the present unhappy situation of our affairs is occasioned by a ruinous system... 

In prosecution of which system, various acts of parliament have been passed, for raising a revenue in America, for depriving the American subjects, in many instances, of the constitutional trial by jury, exposing their lives to danger, by directing a new and illegal trial beyond the seas, for crimes alleged to have been committed in America: and in prosecution of the same system, several late, cruel, and oppressive acts have been passed...

To obtain redress of these grievances, which threaten destruction to the lives, liberty, and property of his majesty's subjects, in North America, we are of opinion, that a non-importation, non-consumption, and non-exportation agreement, faithfully adhered to, will prove the most speedy, effectual, and peaceable measure: and, therefore, we do, for ourselves, and the inhabitants of the several colonies, whom we represent, firmly agree and associate, under the sacred ties of virtue, honour and love of our country, as follows...

What followed was a 14-point, comprehensive boycott before there was such a word.  To be honest, the effort did not achieve what the Colonials hope for, so they continued to escalate their opposition.  Something for our modern No Kings movement (as well as its target) to keep in mind.

Selah.

My life not availeth me, In comparison to, the liberty of the Truth

An Act made at a General Court Held at Boston, the Fourteenth of October, 1656:

Whereas, there is a cursed sect of heretics, lately risen up in the world, which are commonly called Quakers, who take upon them to be immediately sent from God, and infallibly assisted by the Spirit, to speak and write blasphemous opinions, despising government, and the order of God, in the Church and commonwealth, speaking evil of dignities, reproaching and reviling magistrates and ministers, seeking to turn the people from the faith, and gain proselytes to their pernicious ways:

this court taking into consideration the premises, and to prevent the like mischief, as by their means is wrought in our land, doth hereby order, and by authority of this court, be it ordered and enacted, that what master or commander of any ship, bark, pink, or ketch, shall henceforth bring into any harbor, creek, or cove, within this jurisdiction, any Quaker or Quakers, or other blasphemous heretics, shall pay, or cause to be paid, the fine of one hundred pounds to the treasurer of the country...

And it is hereby further ordered and enacted, that what Quaker soever shall arrive in this country from foreign parts, or shall come into this jurisdiction from any parts adjacent, shall be forthwith committed to the House of Correction; and, at their entrance, to be severely whipped, and by the master thereof be kept constantly to work, and none suffered to converse or speak with them, during the time of their imprisonment, which shall be no longer than necessity requires.
...

Lastly, it is hereby ordered, that what person or persons soever, shall revile the persons of the magistrates or ministers, as is usual with the Quakers, such person or persons shall be severely whipped or pay the sum of five pounds.

And that's why we call them Massholes.

Selah.

I Would Prefer Not To

PORTLAND — Refuse to walk? We’ll give you a ride. pic.twitter.com/RibmhrTLSa

— U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (@ICEgov) October 5, 2025

Gene Sharp, Method 66 (Total personal noncooperation):

Very rarely, there have been cases in which a prisoner has literally refused to do almost everything except breathe because he believed his arrest to be unjust for moral or political reasons. The best known case is that of Corbett Bishop, an American religious conscientious objector during World War II. 

Bishop had initially cooperated with the alternative service program provided for conscientious objectors—Civilian Public Service—but over a period of time he concluded that his beliefs required him to discontinue cooperation in any form. Refusing to continue C.P.S. work, Bishop was arrested on September 9, 1944; he announced that his spirit was free and that if the arresting officers wanted his body, they would have to take it without any help from him. 

In the federal prison at Milan, Michigan, he refused to eat, stand up or dress himself. He was force-fed by tube. After eighty-six days he was brought to trial for walking out of C.P.S. camp, but the judge released him without bond until a decision could be made. Bishop refused to return to court and was rearrested in Philadelphia on February 20, 1945. Bishop then went limp and remained limp during his later hearings. 

He told the U.S. Commissioner: “I am not going to cooperate in any way, shape or form. I was carried in here. If you hold me, you’ll have to carry me out. War is wrong, I don’t want any part of it.” 

His limp body was carried into the court in Philadelphia on February 26. Shortly afterward, he was returned to Grand Rapids, where he was fined and sentenced to four years in prison. Bishop continued his complete personal noncooperation and finally, after 144 days, he was paroled without signing any papers or making any promises, under the Special Parole Plan of Executive Order 8641. 

He was, however, expected to work on a cooperative farm in Georgia, and when he refused to do so he was again arrested, on September 1 in Berea, Ohio, this time as a parole violator. Bishop again went limp, resumed his full noncooperation, and was returned to the Milan prison to finish his uncompleted sentence. 

After continued refusal by Bishop to do anything, and considerable newspaper publicity, the Department of Justice on March 12, 1946, released him on parole, with no conditions and without his signing anything; he returned to his home in Hamilton, Alabama, thus ending 193 days of continuous and total personal noncooperation.

More recently, there's American hikers Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd, and Joshua Fattel, imprisoned in Iran from 2009 to 2011 (Swarthmore NV database; Mother Jones).  Anyway, point being that there are many ways to resist evil.

Selah.