Friday, July 3, 2009

Military Strategy; Figureheads; Battlefields; Codes, Memorabilia

By Dint:

Hatpins Collection, Military Buttons, Insignias
Battle Memorabilia - Battalions on Hats.  Souvenirs, mementos, carry the memory with you, on your head. Find history in the long Edwardian hatpins.


JPMorganChase and Code of the Hand.
Military: uses codes to get messages out and past the enemy.  So does the corporate world.  See JP Morgan Chase and its code.  The intended audience gets it. Corporation codes. Believe. Its own form of military.

Torture
Sassafras and Guantanamo: Getting At the Truth:
Military strategy to get information from enemies also included matters that Geneva Conventions and others consider torture. A former president went along. Should he be prosecuted for war crimes? Amnesty International says so. Try another route: to get information from enemies.  Explore the relaxer approach, truth serum idea with sassafras, encourage changes of heart and mind. Not torture.  We have lots of sassafras in this country. Get busy, labs. Sassafras for truth.

Strategy
Genghis Khan, a model for Planning, Timing, and Follow-Up  The virtue of strategic withdrawal when outnumbered. Conquer when ready. See also Liddell Hart: The most effective approach may be the indirect.

Sulking as strategy
Politics of Sulk.  When the loser can't think of what to do next, sulk.

Warrior Qualities
Women in War See the warriors of the past. Talent in many forms.
Moscow's BlackWidows, Chechen suicide bombers.   Origins of women in warrior roles, the Caucasus and its Amazon traditions.
Warriorism; Warrior Skills; Training  Does practicing the skills of war deter, or set the stage for, use. Warrior skills as confidence-builders, psychological crutch.

Auxiliary Troops
Hero Roles:  Messenger. Including Carrier Pigeons American Signal Corps and "Cher Ami" who brought news.


Need to Preserve Memory - Keepers of the Artifacts
Curator, Andrew Gregory, Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps Museum, Montreal.  Those who house our memories. Meet this overseer of a Montreal learner-friendly military museum. Learn tactics, history, weapons, equipment, strategies of wars. Andrew Gregory: curator,offers personalized interest at the Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps Museum, Montreal.

Persuasion Techniques:  Teach to Kill
Crusades:  License to Kill Evildoers.  Battles mobilized on faith; demonize the enemy.  Use of code words to justify killing, suggest religious approval, even mandate.

Tools of Persuasion
Propaganda:  The Firing of the First Shots. Verbal. Then the War.  The role of propaganda in warming up the populace to support what is to come.

PRE-WORLD WAR I

Specific Battles

Agincourt, in the Somme Area

1389 Battle of Kosovo  Ottoman Empire advances;  Serbia loses its "heart" - Kosovo.

Myth, and Indigenous Wars Against Incursion.  King Philip, Native American; and His War Against Colonists  Our history's self-serving myths of glory; and the shabby reality. How we got our foothold. New England's battleground, indigenous tribes against settlers. King Philip, local chief.

American Revolution, Fort Ticonderoga, NY


American Revolution, Saratoga.  This is where Benedict Arnold lost his boot.  His case is not a simple one.  Turncoat, yes, but with reason.

Ireland.  Battle of the Boyne Protestant v. Catholic

Austerlitz, The Three Emperors.  Find Napoleon here; the Battle of Slavkov.  You will not see "Austerlitz" on the map, perhaps.  See also Austerlitz and Carl Sandburg's poem, Grass.  It covers all.

WORLD WAR I

Vimy Ridge, France, World War I

Citizen Poets While Fodder in the Trenches, Ypres, Ieper, Belgium  See Canadian War Memorial here.  The Christmas Truce. Poetry.

Vimy Ridge, France; Pegs in the Night.  Soldiers told of pound in painted pegs along the German side, if you could.  Then, later, if a solder passed in front of it, you could see, and the sniper could shoot.  

Flanders Fields, Where Poppies Blow  Belgium, France.

Argonne Forest, World War I, France. The Forgotten Cemetery.  Overshadowed by Verdun, off the beaten track, near Belleau Wood, also forlorn.  Go anyway.  They need you.

Soldiers' Mutiny, Verdun, France WWI,  Issues, Negotiating During Slaughter Poem.  Anthem for Doomed Youth.  Soldiers, passing officers, and saying, "Baaah" like sheep, knowing what was coming.

Verdun, France, WWI, Soldiers' Mutiny Worked  See original postcards of area at end of the war, fort areas, memorials.


WORLD WAR II

The Netherlands, Arnhem, A Bridge Too Far, British Soldier, John Frost

Normandy, Pointe du Hoc, Arromanches, Rangers.  The Rangers scaled these cliffs, but nothing was there of importance.

Unlikely Hartford and Colt Armaments.  World War II,  Assassination of Nazi Reinhard Heydrich, Prague, by Czech Resistance, a Colt used among their weapons.  See film, "Operation Daybreak".

Vietnam Battlefields; US Failure to Encrypt. Inexcusable blunders in war, the conceit, the flawed sense of superiority of the American command, costing thousands of lives. Not even coding messages.The gooks can't read English.  Imagine. The gall of it.

Berlin Wall, Germany  When problems cannot be resolved, wall them away. Then kill whoever tries to pass over.



IDEOLOGICAL BATTLEFIELDS

Ideological Battleground:  Sistine Chapel

Argonne Forest, France, World War I

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Aging Issues: Value of a life, Advance End of Life Directives,

By Dint:

A view on aging.

Bremen Town Musicians, Euthanasia for Nonprofitability  The Reality Tale. Think Bremen. Poor, old Ass. Getting too old to be useful. Can't work for his keep any more.  Get rid of him, thinks the farmer. What do to but pack a hasty exit for the poor, old Ass. So he clip-clops down the road. Then, with others deemed equally useless, he indeed manages to be very useful, in his way. Useful after all. Thoughts:  How to define value of a life.  Is profit the only measure of a life? Wrong, farmer; wrong. Apply anew:  Need for transparency, not hyperbole in discussion. There never were "death panels" anyway.  Just people telling tales, hoping others would believe. It's end-of-life directives, not ending life directives, Sarah.

Self-disposition. Lay out directives

Resolution Enacting Federal Healthcare Decisions Day.  To promote laying out one's own directives in advance of The Need.  If we don't make our own plans, someone else will do it for us.

Complexities of Stereotype in Cultural Tales: Black not always a pejorative

By Dint:

Three Little Pigs. Blackie, Brownie, Whitie. England 1890's est   In this English version from about the 1890's, the Black Pig is the hero, the handsome one.  The Brown pig is the messy one and the White Pig is the greedy one.

White Bride and Black One; Racism Amok
This is a Grimm Tale:  The Brothers Grimm. It is not the color that ends up important, however, although the story started out that way.  The "black" is highly symbolic; it is the doing of good or evil. We think we know the ending: that the black one was bad, ended up miserable.  Is that so? Read the story. Who ends up happy in the tale? Black was not always a pejorative. We added that, to a large degree.

Eve's Various Children: Each to His Place
Handsomes get to idle at the top; the uglies get to work at the bottom. Plus ca change?  That stereotype holds true.  Pretty children earn more, get hired faster, is that so?

The Jew Among the Thorns
Anti-semitism has long been in the tales.  Consider how concepts get transmitted.

Social and Economic Theory: In Cultures and the Kitchen

By Dint:

Who Will Bell the Cat? "Piers Plowman" and 14th Century Social and Economic Theory.
William Langland, 1332-1400. Poem: Langland adds to Aesop's Fable about belling the cat. The plan failed because noone would do it. What would have happened if the cat indeed had been belled. Far worse for the community. Find out why.

Rumpelstiltskin 
Thinks one: When you don't know the answer, sneak around and cheat. Finds out the other: ha! Bartering with the Mannikin? Never a good idea, but here it leads to a Bad End for the Mannikin.

Sassafras:  Industry Opportunity; Social and Economic Uses
Explore sassafras to improve the economic position of some.

Sassafras - Industry Pressure to Call Safrole, a Food Component, an Additive?. Put sassafras back in the kitchen. Re-establishing safrole as useful when used with ordinary care in foods could open up economic benefits, as well as health. Is that so? The FDA exerts jurisdiction over safrole merely because of a label it gives to it, as an "additive." How can something that is itself a food, be an additive?  The carcinogenicity of safrole in sassafras is no greater than the the safrole in your spice or herb shelf.  Test that. Is that so?