What about those Roaring 20s?
James Lileks offers his take on the 1920s. As usual with Lileks, it’s both interesting and fun.
It’s always kind of strange to imagine what is was like to live in a decade we’ve heard about but weren’t around for. I was very much around in the 60s, but my take on it would be very different than that of a lot of other people who lived through it too—the ones who thought it was both a hoot and a transformative time in which we young people were reinventing a far more wonderful world that would be the dawning of the Age of Aquarius yada yada yada. For me, it was not fun and games: boyfriend in Vietnam, multiple assassinations and riots. As for that wonderful world, most of the supposed revolutionary leaders I witnessed (and I did so in person, because I was intermittently around some of the centers of the action) seemed like self-aggrandizing, bombastic, nitwit nihilists. I saw no reason to suppose that any world they were going to have a part in creating would be an improvement on the one we already had.
The 20s meant nothing to me except flapper clothing, the Charleston, and the Crash. But my mother—who had been six years old at the decade’s beginning, and a high school graduate of sixteen at its end—told me something about those years that had stuck in her memory. It subsequently stuck in mine.
“The adults told us we were the luckiest generation in history, that we should thank our lucky stars because we’d never know war,” said this member of the Greatest Generation, who was to see the Great Depression and World War II in short order.
What had motivated her elders to tell my mother and her classmates that? Why, the Kellogg-Briand Pact had been signed in 1928, when she was fourteen:
The Kellogg”“Briand Pact (officially the Pact of Paris) was a 1928 international agreement in which signatory states promised not to use war to resolve “disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them”. Parties failing to abide by this promise “should be denied the benefits furnished by this treaty”. It was signed by Germany, France and the United States on August 27, 1928, and by most other nations soon after. Sponsored by France and the U.S., the Pact renounced the use of war and called for the peaceful settlement of disputes.
It should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone here that the pact didn’t quite work the way it was supposed to:
As a practical matter, the Kellogg”“Briand Pact did not live up to its aim of ending war, and in this sense it made no immediate contribution to international peace and proved to be ineffective in the years to come. Moreover, the pact erased the legal distinction between war and peace since the signatories, having renounced the use of war began to wage wars without declaring them as evidenced by the U.S. intervention in Central America, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1935, the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939, and the German and Soviet Union invasions of Poland.
US Secretary of State Kellogg was awarded the 1929 Nobel Peace Prize for his great accomplishment.
And co-creator Aristide Briand seems to have been an even more influential figure. He had already received his Nobel Peace Prize in 1926, for the Locarno Treaties, which ultimately met a similar fate as the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Briand was a socialist and one-time Prime Minister of France, and might also be called the father of the European Union, because he proposed a prototype.
Besides their obvious well intended failures at the peace process, you forgot that both became well known for their contributions to culinary endeavors; Kellog branching off into breakfast cereals, and Briand; gaining fame for his famous ChateauBriand. The little know fact is their marriage of the steak flavor to shredded wheat was such a flop, it opened the door for Rice Krispies to grab a large market segment.
southpaw: I think they got the Chemistry Prize for that.
I’m against believing in any pact that is half based on corn and wheat products.
And I said that without reading the first two comments, sagacious though they may be.
neo – meaning they didn’t have any serious Nobel candidates in the twenties either?
Then there was F Scott Fitzgerald who having had a pulse that beat in synch with the Twenties said:
“My generation of radicals and breakers-down never found anything to take the place of the old virtues of work and courage and the old graces of courtesy and politeness.”
Of course he said in a letter dated July 1938 to his daughter Frances Scott Fitzgerald though I think it first occurred to him much earlier than that.
Of course (2) you can chisel that in marble and stamp it on people’s foreheads and it still wouldn’t have much traction for very long. People! Go figure.
southpaw: well, we only know that in retrospect. At least Kellogg and Briand, unlike Obama, actually did something (as opposed to just being a magical Wonder Worker who merely had to be) that many people thought would promote world peace. Turned out of course to be foolish.
George Pal: the relevance of what Fitzgerald wrote to my observation about the 60s is quite striking.
And how did Kellogg work to promote world peace? Very, very diligently: “Kellogg made sure that the bowel of each and every patient was plied with water, from above and below. ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harvey_Kellogg#Battle_Creek_Sanitarium
vanderleun: Rubio?
As above, so below.
WRT bowels: We were just coming to the point where a glass of water didn’t have to be regarded as a revolver with an unknown number of cartridges in the cylinder.
The point is that, without sufficient hydration, people were frequently constipated to a degree we’d find unacceptable.
The old Boy Scout manual covered that, recommending a substantial intake of water, the presumption being that people’s habits were otherwise.
What was so special about the 1920’s? Garet Garett considers it the birth of an era. His book, “A Time is Born”, tells the story, and it is the economic history of mankind told in story book form but with spectacular inights into human nature and history.
The Premise, reproduced below, tells why the 1920’s was so special.
“A Time isBorn” is online in pdf form at http://www.mises.org/books/timeisborn.pdf
====
PREMISE
DURING AN INTERLUDE of twenty-one years between two global wars Heaven swung low and then high again.
When it was very low, seeming almost to touch the hill tops, the human race prepared to celebrate the death of poverty. In the whole world material well being advanced to an unexplored plane. If the contrasts that continued to exist were thought to be anywhere greater than before, that was an illusion owing to the fact that so much news of prosperity made people more conscious of disparities. Certainly in all civilized regions poor living was already better than good living had ever been for the fathers; and for those who had gained the heights there was mankind’s first view of the Land of Immeasurable Plenty. So far as they could see there was no longer any limit to the satisfaction of human wants. That was not all. A remorseless law was about to be repealed.
Hitherto it had been that the sum of man’s satisfactions could be increased only by more labor, wherein he lost the pleasure of his possessions. Here at last was plenty without end at a diminishing price. The hours of labor were going to be shortened and the hours of leisure accordingly lengthened. And for this, thanks from economic man to no relenting deity. He had done it for himself, by knowledge, invention, method and machine power.
The American peak was the highest of all.
The Americans said: “Let this be named the New Era.”
It turned out that the New Era was the New Babel.
It was as if again the people of the earth, all with one language, had said: “Let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto Heaven,”– And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, “Behold, the people is one and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another s speech.”
Certain it was that in the Great Depression understanding failed. People were no longer able to make meaning to one another in the one speech they had thought they had in common, namely, the language of economics.
And so they came to the crisis. The adjourned war was resumed on a scale much more grand and terrible; and it was so because meanwhile man had progressed in science.
Regard him, then, scientific man, turning his technics against himself: zooming out of the sky at the speed of sound to lay thunderbolts on his own precious towers, frantically pursuing in his laboratories the search for higher and yet higher explosives, beseeching his gods of research to reveal to him suddenly the ultimate secret of the atom, for if he had that he could make a bomb to blow a city into utter nothingness at one stroke. And although he should risk at the same time blowing himself off the earth or knocking the earth out of its orbit, still he would try it.
If the Lord had been wrecking his towers he could have understood it somewhat. The reasons he gave himself, concerning why he did it, made almost no sense at all.
Two great passions, one to build up and one to tear down, were locked in struggle. The compulsion to destroy was the necessity to create, and between their works was neither time nor space. The issue of this was a fact of inconceivable implications. A frenzy of destructive invention raised physical reality to the plane of phantasy. Thus, reality and phantasy became interchangeable, even as the Lord had feared,– “And now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do.”
Suppose it were true,–what man imagined that he could do. That would seem to be power in its last definition. You would have but one question left to ask: “What will he imagine to do?” Yet the frustration remained as it was. This was power over matter, not power over himself; and if you took him in that light he had come no way at all since he was scattered from his first tower.
But you cannot leave him there. Take him in the role of spectator and he is wonderful again.
By means of written history he had been able to see his past as drama and spectacle, but with his mind’s eye only, standing outside the emotions that had controlled his behavior. If only he could see and hear his own history as it was taking place, then he would be inside of it. Did he expect to learn anything by this? Probably not. Yet in time for his second global war he had achieved that feat entirely.
By an art beyond magic, the scenes and movements of war were made visible, its uproar and voices were made audible, around the world with the speed of light. For an eye-witness account of battle in Europe or Africa before the dead were cold, one sitting at ease on the North American continent had only to flip the switch of a sound-box. To hear, instead, the groans of empire in mortal anguish or the insulting harangue of the enemy, one had but to turn the knob slightly to right or left. To see the action by land and sea and air, and the towers falling down, one had only to go after dinner to the nearest moving picture house.
By a whimsical extension of the same art it was made possible to see, as if it were taking place, what mere man imagined to do,–the future enacting itself before it had actually happened. Thus millions of people sat in movie theatres gazing with fascinated horror at what might have been a phantasy of the end of the world, in technicolor. Yet this was real, and real precisely because it was phantasy,–something man had imagined to do and could do because he had imagined it. How to do it was already known. All that would be now required to bring any phantasy to pass was the re-direction of a few million man-hours of labor.
And what was this?
It was how to make bombing more and more terrible until at last there would be no refuge, not even underground, for a self-accelerating rocket bomb could be made to pierce the earth and then explode at leisure, producing earthquake. There it was happening. By this technique, an enemy nation was not to be overcome, not to be conquered; it was only to be blown apart at the heart.
What was the use of it?
‘The use of it,” said these, “is to destroy those who would destroy us.” And when these had destroyed those, what would be saved? Civilization would be saved.
It was possible of course that this would be the last phantasy of all, and one beyond technicolor. Certainly one not of this earth, looking on as from a window, unable to hear what people said they believed about it, might very well have thought: “But this is not war. It is deluge.”
Deluge was God’s weapon. Now man had got hold of it; man himself possessed the power to produce cataclysm. Moreover, there was no reason to suppose this power would not increase in his hands, since it derived from technical and scientific knowledge, the body of which would probably go on growing by a law of its own. Its discoveries, at any rate, are irreversible events. Nothing is ever again as it was before.
What to do with such power? How to restrain or control it, since it was not confined to any one people? How to live with it at all?
These were questions no one could answer. The vague idea was that only the righteous should possess it, being able to trust themselves and forbid it to all others. Then should their children toil ceaselessly to support it,–the cost being very great,–or should the ‘wicked who had last employed it for purposes of aggression be enslaved and made to pay tribute? How could either one way or the other be for very long?
Well, but for all of this, it was still the same self-contained earth, no bigger around the middle by so much as one inch, going no place, going no faster; and if there were more people upon it than ever before, with more dangerous knowledge among them, their simple motives had not changed in the least since their myth time.
What was the fighting for?
It was for advantage in the earth, one side to conquer it, the other to defend it.
We shall be understood by this to mean economic advantage. What we really mean is advantage in the division of human labor. For kings and princes, for the rich and the high caste, for the overlord people who rule and govern, there is no other.
Consider how it is that from a division of labor two problems immediately arise: First, by what rule shall the product be divided? Second, how shall the tasks be alloted?
Always there are preferred and less preferred tasks, and the least preferred, though they may be essential, are the least rewarded. So it has been from the beginning. The power to allot the tasks is power to adjust the yoke; and this until now has been the ultimate political and economic power of the world. All empire has been founded upon it; empire unable to keep it has always crashed.
Why do we say, until now?
It is true that two global wars were but man’s old, old way with the curse of toil; and yet it is possible to see that the kind of knowledge that made them so terrifying may be at the same time foreknowledge of a world to come in which it would be neither necessary nor profitable for one people to exploit the labor of another.
Neither of these wars was rational, the second far less than the first. For want of twentieth century machine technics and scientific knowledge, wars like these could not have occurred in the nineteenth century. That seems to be merely the statement of an obvious fact, and so it is. But look. For the same reason, that is to say, namely, for want of twentieth century machine technics and scientific means, war proceeding from the same motive in the nineteenth century, or in the eighteenth century, or at any time before, was a rational enterprise.
This is the premise to be explored. It is not a moral premise. It is scientific or nothing.
If it is sound,–if these two global wars were irrational in the present state of knowledge,–does it follow that they were without meaning at all? Was it all so senseless?
The answer is one we shall know later. Generations hence, provided we advance without looking back, we may understand that they were necessary,–that the first was the premature foreboding and the second the true birth agony of a world that could bring itself to pass only by an act of incomparable violence. In that case man would appear to have been the instrument, quite unable to give an account of himself by reason alone. And it would not be the first time he had been saved by works he knew not the meaning of while doing them, even works of great destruction. Supposing this to be so there was much to be destroyed.
====
Daniel Mannix, an American naval officer, tells of some events surrounding the Washington Disarmament Conference of 1921, which he was required to attend as an escort for some foreign dignitaries.
“This was the height of the pacifist craze. The League of Nations was to make wars impossible. All armed forces would be demolished. The resulting savings in taxes would be used to benefit the poor and needy.”
and
“My group of delegates came from a certain European country, a very little one, that had no navy. They were insulted at being met by a naval officer in uniform (we were ordered to wear our uniforms). The chief of the delegation, a little fat man, informed me that he was “a man of peace” and I “no better than a hired assassin.” I called a taxi to take them to their hotel and the chief delegate got into a terrific row with the taxi driver over where he was to put his suitcase. As a dove of peace he was the most bellicose person I’ve ever met.”
and
“Everywhere in the city was the same anti-militaristic attitude. Even walking in the streets, I was met by scowls and often muttered imprecations. This happened to all men in uniform. It seemed to me that they deserved better of their fellow countrymen after risking their lives for them. I am sure a number of these “pacifists” would have attacked me if they dared…One evening, as a representative of the Navy, I was required to attend–in full uniform–a large formal dinner given by the English Speaking Union. The speaker was Mr Arthur Balfour, the famous British statesman. In his speech he assured us that the United States did not need a Navy; we could depend on England to protect us. His remarks about our Navy were so abusive that people turned to glare at me. I felt that I should have vanished like the devil in a pantomine through a trapdoor but unfortunately none had been provided…At the end of his speech, the audience gave him an ovation. A number of them, both men and women, rushed up and actually kissed his hand…A high dignitary of our own Episcopal Church turned to me and said enthusiastically, “A wonderful speech, was it not?” I began to wonder whether I was crazy or whether everyone else was.”
neo is missing the first treaty that started this off and that was earlier and that this was the birth time of the LEAGUE of nations (league meaning socialist/communist, the way peoples and other terms do and are more well known and believed. ie. less scrubbed)
WASHINGTON NAVAL CONFERENCE (1921-1922) which lead to Five-Power Naval Limitation Treaty of 1922
then came KELLOGG-BRIAND PACT (1928)
Aristide Briand was all part of this first attempt at a European Union…
the treaty started as a treaty between the US and france, and was a non intervention treaty. that is, the US and France agreed to never go to war together, and so no matter what france did, the us would not intervene… (remember what started vietnam before the US got there).
Briand’s purpose was to make sure the U.S. would not oppose any French interventions in other countries
Kellog turned the tables on the offer and suggested that everyone would sign.. then everyone could act and no one would interfere. So what ended up happening was not a mistake, it was the prime point. a treaty called a peace treaty that instead insured that war would never break out between the treaty people over what they did to others..
it was like mob families agreeing not to go to war against each other, but everyone else that wasn’t in the agreement became fair game..
in 1928, 62 nations of the world signed the “Pact of Paris” – which was its official name at the time
JUST before this, came the 1917 revolution in russia, and all that… so that by this time, Lenin was already leading, and his people already doing things
the first world war had devastated russia, and so that was what made it weak enough for thugs to take over.
MARCH REVOLUTION came in st petersburg
The Tsar ordered the army to put down the protests, but the army refused. Nicholas II abdicated his throne on March 15.. and the KARENSKY government was born
Lenin was in switzerland… and convinced the germans to let him back into russia for the revolution. (look close to this history, as they have consistently cooperated several times to the doom of europe. this being ghe first. molotove rippendrop, in the middle, EU, and now with germany and russia teaming up to take economic control of europe)
NOVEMBER REVOLUTION on the 6th happened and the Karensky government was over. Kerensky fled the country and eventually became an academic figure in the United States, where he died in 1970.
TREATY OF BREST-LITOVSK in 1918
and then started the war between the reds and whites… and the birth of the checka, vchecka, nkvd, kgb, svr… and all the others. the Bolshevik armies were known as the “Reds” and their opponents were known as “Whites.”
Christopher Andrew & Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield
hostel the horror movie has copied this period and later but wrapped it in a story of evil people kidnapping tourists… but the descriptions of the rooms, the rubber wear, the drains, and all that is in that, is from the actual checka…
and they have never ever been punished, brought to trial, stopped, or even slowed down much. Putin was and is one of them, and is leader, and Tretyakov is warning you that people like the above. are coming for you!!!!!
The Tsar and family were murdered then, including Anastasia…
Leon trotsky lead the red army to victory over the whites… but, remember what i have been saying about succeeding in that realm… and why people dont want to who know the history. latvian rifle men secured the country for lenin… they were all exterminated later… after being lied to as heroes… then Trotsky? secured Russia for the Bolsheviks, but later Mercator showed him he picked the wrong friends.
from a lecture at harding university
The US tally IF you count abortion is already 50 million… with obamas mentor wanting to end the lives of 25 million and us race (as stalin did) to secure a permanent future. the extermination of so many is required as it was determined that if you can remove that many, you have removed enough to destroy the cultural cohesiveness and can then change it. without those killed, the culture will resist, and it will remember…
its not ideological in the sense of a missive
its ideological in the sense its pragmatic to do in order to achieve the ideological ends, and without morals, there are no limits. go back above and read what teenage soviets did to people…
first the communists nationalized everything….
(despite later the nazis their copies, being called nationalizers, spawning their nickname. the current story on that name is like so much stuff, a guess that is repeated and llike much of the facts people here imagine musts be the facts!!! same stuff, different day)
nationalization of course didnt work any more than its working for Obama. but then as a part of that and a part of gettting it all one party
they did the same here, feminism neutralized the votes of the white males who are the aristocrat target of the left and anti-atlanticists (what the think tanks rever to the coalition of communism today)
as the power was being neutralized in the economy with nationalization making it seem like this was juts a new way of doing business, before the power from that was used to do more
but then came the war on religion
Church property was confiscated, and in effect communist doctrine became its own religion in Russia, as it was drilled into the heads of its subjects.
much as it is with american school kids now and like a nasty pit bull, is the puppy that was so cute that is now taking up its mantle of maturity.
one should realize by now that if it wasnt for this birth, most of the wars and murders of the last century would never have happened!!!!
After Lenin died in 1924, control of the U.S.S.R. went to Joseph Stalin, a ruthless and skillful man who put his supporters into positions of power and isolated the power of his rivals.
sound familiar? when you dont have to please the public, you have more power over the other politicos. who have no more leverage on you.
as i have always said, if you study this in detail, you will see what they are copying… just as when you discover somehing when your working that makes it easier then incorporate it as part of what you do from then on. whatever accident that works, they catalogue and use that principal… as if they discovered it… which is why history repeats… the first is an accident, the rest are copies of the accident so that one can benefit from the principal accidently revealed.
thats the same force and power that made the industrial revolution and all of society, except its turned to political invention against an ignorant public who is no where near as brutal as the servants of such power.
your gonna love it.. (or else)
FIVE-YEAR PLAN (1928)… that was when the citizens like us, STARTED to resist this new state… (what lenin did was not in the news, and word didnt travel well in such a primitive place and isolated peoples)
then came the great purges, which were another attempt to force things to work… (interesting concept of paradise, no?)
Stalin was a paranoid man who brooked no rivals, and he set about ruthlessly purging the communist party and the Soviet army of individuals who supposedly were not loyal to the party
this is not true… these leaders are NOT paranoid.
we think they are paranoid because we do not realize that such a set of leaders, do not surround themselves with gold fish. they swim with kindred sharks, and so, they are RIGHT to be paranoid.
how right? lenin died the year USSR was created and recognized… Stalin is thought to have helped him along. Beria poisoned Stalin, and Stalin successor got berea.
if you worked in such an atmosphere, would you walk around thinking eveyrthing was nice, and nothting would ever happen? or would you be paranoid too? and for good reason?
this is the nature of this kind of system that we are most ignorant of. we think we know from appearances, but experiences are not appearances in a society whose game is to fake the surface truth of anything and everything. its a house of mirrors, and mistakes are deadly.
we say obama threw X under the bus, but thats the game. you do not save and revere the tissues you used to blow your nose during great cold… do you? what kind of appreciation do you have for the tissue? you use it, gain from it, then discard it… otherwise it gets value in return back from you, so to avoid the person that did something before, from gaining from you, you eliminate them in some way after you gain from them!!!
and you always lie, you always cheat, always promise tomorrow for what you get today (and so tomorrow never comes), and you always play two ends against the middle, and always use others to do your dirty work, so they get punished for you.
imagine a whole society like that and that the game spans from the smallest deal up to murdering and working thousands to death a day..
and now we are already past the 20s and entering the early years of the deal between two socialists on how to cut up the forgotten men of the world.
later, after one was defeated, two others got together and then divided up the world at yalta.. selling millions to their deaths in camps, and more.
from there, these same entities, would start world war II… korea… vietnam (thanks to that treaty we started with), cambodia, laos, china, hungary, latvia, estonia, lituania, almost finland (they got a chunk out of it), belarus, poland, half of germany, slovakia, czech republic, romania, ajerbaijan, kazakstan, almost afghanistan, armenia, and the list continues in africa, south america, the atlantic, and a few places in the pacific
and now its all peaceful
which to socialists is the time you use to steal tech and prepare for war while others are pretending that peace has finally arrived.
except that this time… its the US
and look what we have… which i have listed. fat, sick, undereducated, violent people who cant understand simple instructions, cant run a mile let alone two… our finances are in the till, our supplies can be cut off at a moments notice (we wrongly think that 20 million Chinese dead would be enough to stop china leaders form doing that… but forget they murdered more of their own for less)
we cant defend the strait of hormuz.. and nuclear iran makes that even worse… (so its not about hitting the US, its about causing a crisis, and selling what is 100 a barrel for 1000 a barrel)
we cant stop them from taking taiwan…
and mostly because our naval fleet operations work and cant operate in close quarters.
an aircraft carrier wants lots of room around it…
a safe space… but you cant get 30 miles in the straight of hormuz… and you cant stop all the civilian ships that hide others who only need small arms or mines to do things. ergo what has happened in the past.
same with taiwan… get into the area near it, and its too small to operate. and with the new russian torpedoes, and new anti carrier missiles, they dont need to find a ship in the big ocean. they only need for the big ship not to be able to come close.
china has been hardening its subways in preparation for nukes…
War Preparation Indicator
Beijing hardens subways for nuclear, gas attacks
http://freebeacon.com/war-preparation-indicator/
Russia has been hardening up and making sure all their stuff is nuclear capable. we laugh that their trucks and stuff are so primitive. but in nuclear conflic, the elctronics die, and the only thing that will run are those old fords and regular cars that dont have electronics and seem so primitive.
ie. what you see that makes you laugh only makes you laugh as you dont realize that our fancy stuff dont work in conflict. (and that china has been inserting parts that are not hardened, and are counterfeit. big big problem actually)
by the way..
Obama is unilaterally disarming the US while russia is doubling its stockpiles and building up EVEN MORE THAN I POINTED OUT A WHILE BACK.
russian nuclear bombers have been spending the past few years desensitizing the world by making bomb runs at varoius country boarders, and forcing them to be escorted out. its a nice way to probe defenses. however, at the distances that they are stopped, an EMP would have not been stopped.
so the game is EMP, not anything else
as EMP would win, without destroying anything.
ny has 3-4 days of food…
an EMP means nearly 8 million will starve…
as such would not be able to handle the whole seaboard and no food transport as no vehicles work
“Before great misfortunes befall a city or a province they are preceded by portents or foretold by men.” – Machiavelli
“If socialism is defined in its most Utopian terms, namely … [as] the abolition of labor … [then it presupposes] … a total trans-valuation of values, a new anthropology. a type of man who rejects the performance principles governing the established societies: a type of man who has rid himself of the aggressiveness and brutality that are inherent in the organization of established society, and in their hypocritical, puritan morality…. Marcuse
Countries are trying to get their gold back from the US… which may have sold their gold and not told the people… we are not allowed to check…
Germany wants their gold back in their country.
this is OFTEN a sign of war, especially if your read the new strats on economic warfare and such. last thing you want is to start a conflict and your opposition or a victim of the conflict has your gold and can lose it to someone else… better to have it on hand in case you need it.
most americans have no idea that Stalin is a hero again… derzinskys statue has been recovered, and that the state is revertting back for the purposes of conflict… which it never abandoned, and even said so… (and if we cant believe feminists at their word, we certainly cant believe the man who we hit a reset button with.. like they were buying clips at staples)
sigh
I really enjoyed that Lileks article. He’s somehow able to make the reader nostalgic for an era you’ve never experienced.
The Kellog-Briand Pact thinking hasn’t died off. How about our unilateral nuclear disarmament moves? Or scrapping of the missile defense system for Poland? Or look at the gun control debate. “IF we just had a law…” Why, anything is possible when government waves its hands and declare it thus. War on drugs. War on poverty. A right to Healthcare. It will work out splendidly, just as long as nothing unforeseeable happens…
neo – All kidding aside, the prize has become a running joke for that reason – the standards are not what they used to be, diminishing the meaning of it for deserving recipients. The fact they didn’t succeed isn’t for lack of effort.
In Obama’s case, if there was a Nobel Prize for lack of effort (self promotion excluded), he’d be a serious contender. I’ve often wondered if the Hellfire missles on the drones have an emblem of his prize painted on the war head, with the slogan “السلام عليكم ”
(google translate says that’s “Peace be upon you”)
You couldn’t make the irony of this stuff up any better than he’s delivered it.
just to see where we are going..
my wife and i are probably barren
but Angel Adams Update…
15 kids and somebody needs to pay for all my children
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rPRtIOmPOD0
in the 20s… men were still men..
now… not so much…
i put this together, and hope i made it interesting..
and since neo likes youtube
Paula Cole-Where have all the cowboys gone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPR108kwNo4
Where is my John Wayne
Where is my prairie song
Where is my happy ending
Where have all the cowboys gone
I will wash the dishes while you go have a beer
Where is my Marlboro man
Where is his shiny gun
Where is my lonely ranger
Where have all the cowboys gone
last i heard.. they went to broke-back mountain as no one wanted them any more… and like puff the magic dragon, they ceased their fearless roar…
Where Have All The Great Men Gone?
The early years of our republic produced dozens of great leaders. A historian explains how men like Adams and Jefferson were selected for public office, and tells why the machinery that raised them became obsolete.
Biographies cannot provide an explanation. The almost routine emergence of such able leaders was a social phenomenon, and to understand it we must examine the society that produced them. What were the conditions that created this political pattern, and when and why did it recede?
http://www.americanheritage.com/content/where-have-all-great-men-gone
Where Have All the Great Men Gone?
Conversations on Morality
http://eyler.freeservers.com/JeffWritings/jbconv13.htm
Where have all our great men gone? In my youth, Gandhi, Schweitzer and Einstein were all alive at the same time! But since their passing, there has been no one — in my opinion, absolutely no one — of that rank amongst us. What has happened? Has our materialistic progress squeezed out human greatness? Is this human advancement? If we keep advancing on this scale, we will soon be back in the Stone Ages.
PROmoting reGRESSIVE policies would do that!!!
Where Have All the Real Men Gone? [LDS]
http://ldsmag.com/article/1/11571
You see, I’m tired and frustrated with the men I meet. It seems that everywhere you look, men aren’t trying anymore.
I’ve struggled internally, and even read magazine articles and books, trying to understand when men stopped caring about BEING MEN.
where did they go
we looked high
we looked lo
we sought them here
we sought them there
we sought them sought them everywhere
and when we wondered if we were to blame…
Are the women partially to blame? Did the women’s liberation movement, and ascent to equality, somehow make the men stop trying to carry the load? If so, that isn’t really the women’s fault. It’s like saying my neighbor mows his yard so well, that I decided to stop mowing mine because it isn’t as good as his. Stupid logic. And yet? It might be true.
nope… never responsible…
Where have all the men gone?
(a voice for men)
http://www.avoiceformen.com/men/where-have-all-the-men-gone/
It’s a question posed today by both social conservatives and liberals alike. And yet all the “great minds” of academia and political punditry combined, heard spewing forth from their ivory Towers of Babel, seem to be utterly vexed by the answer. From William Bennett, George Will and Kathleen Parker, to Michael Kimmel, Kay Hymowitz and Hannah Rosin they all agree the modern male is broken and somehow needs to be fixed, but how exactly they can’t say.
oh. he makes me so mad, where is my man purse, i want to hit him with it… said the protesting metrosexual result of the last tweaking party of the View and others…
-==-=-=-=-=-=-=–==—-=–=-=-
Along our path of living together in my humble little dojo, I asked him one day what he thought about women, having a girlfriend, getting married and having children…and he says to me in a way only the modern high school graduate might, “No way, women are bitches man! I mean some of them are OK but most of them really suck! I’m never gonna get married!”
said posterity and our future, going counter clockwise down the drain… (but remember, its his fault, not hers)
“Where are they?” you ask. They’ve disengaged and disconnected faster than you can say “herbivore” because after all the ridicule, shaming, condemnation, discrimination and legal abuse society has inflicted on them as a group. They’ve simply decided to retreat and stop contributing. Call that “adolescent” if you’d like, (they really don’t care anymore, as they’ve been called worse). I call it a very natural reaction that’s long overdue. Because if the threat of “control” is the problem, he’ll gladly let go of the reigns and the horse that came with them without a shamed or regretful bone in his body.
its gotten that far, and so the population is collapsing, and so all the people who would care, fight or prevent are gone… or afraid to act… or went GALT…
Such is the plight of the modern young man. If he fights/competes against woman (and her enforcers) he loses and if he turns his back to her (and her enforcers) he loses. The difference now is that he’s shamed and ridiculed to the point of being impervious to it. He’s declared the game over (Hannah Rosin would agree), and he’s conceded because while he might meet the definition of being a “man,” HE knows WHO he is, and that’s someone who won’t be taken for a TOOL…
and so… there is nothing to fight for…
why build a company, your mate will take it…
(and whatever reasonable answer neo wants to give as before, wont make them go. oh. sorry, lets go back to what we were doing… )
come the coming fight, and there is nothing to fight for
freedom? men dont have it…
association? certain colors cant do it
family? 15 kids needs our money
respect? never
the nation? they hate him
his alma matter? he didnt go
his company? he never built it
so… when the fit hits the shan..
as it did right after the 20s…
what will this generation do compared to the greatest one?
oh… and will the women ever wake up to realize that in this version of the game, they committed suicide? even those that didnt agree!!!
as the song says..
They heard the hum of our motors
They counted the rotors
And waited for us to arrive
And we would all go down together
We said we’d all go down together
Yes we would all go down together…
Most extensive comments I’ve ever seen!
this is also topical and pertinent as this is soviet union in 1920s thru the 30s… just before another world war…
and it covers gun control… 5 mins…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dV1aYxCzepI
League of Nations in the 1920s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdHA5uT9ocg
1920s Anti-Alcohol Commercial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVuwREbGh3w
General Strike 1926 (England – trade unions)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Oro_m-IlK4
Riots and Strikes in the United States, ca. 1920- ca. 1935
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufrg79192RQ
The Elaine Race Riot: Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM7XTg2tSDo
Race Riot of 1919 in Omaha-The Lynching of Will Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OytIIur3Ck
The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ-vFlEZU6s
Rise of Communism & Fascism 1920s
[the league of nations, Wilson, isolationism, ]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kW_L_Nbm38
i left out the Scopes trial…
I get the impression the 1920s displayed the same social corruptive processes as the 1960s, only that in the 1920s those processes were interrupted by the Depression and the World War, while in the 1960s there was no such interruption, thus drawing a straight line that leads to the current state of the Reds being in power (virtually through their media stranglehold if not actually in government).
Wow, lots of words, not much wisdom IMO. Wilson dragged the USA into WW1 and fumbled the agreements after hostilities stopped. If we had not entered WW1, which was not a matter of our national security, it is likely that the war to end all wars would have ended in a stalemate. Instead Germany was subjected to the terms of Versailles and the consequence was the rise of the National Socialist Party lead by an obscure, pathological Austrian corporal.
Unintended consequences are a bitch. There is no new thing under the sun. If you do not understand that you can not know what is possible on the event horizon, stay home and STFU. Witness BHO and the ‘Arab Spring’. Unintended consequences out the wahzoo. There will be a price in blood and currency.
That’s a great article. James Lileks is a genuine treasure.
I’ve left several comments on that site. Here is one of them:
parker
Ref the Versailles Treaty:
The first world war happened before the Versailles Treaty.
The second happened afterwards.
It appears the Germans can start the most horrendous wars in history with or without the VT.
What may have made the difference was not letting them run their own affairs. Smash them flat, occupy them, tell them how things are going to be, hang or jail their leaders.
Used to know a guy who got to Europe just at the end of WW II and stayed on. He was in the constabulary, a specialized occupation group. Had to be six feet tall to get in. All about overawing a beaten population.
IMO, the VT gets a bad rap, probably because blaming really bad guys–except for the US–is not hip.
“The first world war happened before the Versailles Treaty.”
The Treaty of Versailles was the peace settlement signed after World War One had ended in 1918 and in the shadow of the Russian Revolution and other events in Russia. The treaty was signed at the vast Versailles Palace near Paris – hence its title – between Germany and the Allies.
http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/versailles.htm
The war to end all wars ended at the surrender of the German empire in 1918. You are totally off base on this. The Treaty of Versailles came about after the war ended and placed an unrealistic economc burden on Germany. This burden of unrealistic reparations to France and the UK placed Germany in an untenable situation which lead to the economic collapse of the country, hyperinflation, and the subsequent turn toward the solution offered by Hitler. Hitler’s solution was rearm and ignore reparations. Sieg Heil!
Parker…
The unrealistic burden on Germany was Mercantilism.
Peeling through the documents, the French and British wanted reparations that, they hoped, would be paid in gold — even as they, themselves, practiced a full-tilt mercantilist trading regime.
Restated: they wanted Germany to be excluded from their trading blocs — particularly their home markets — while somehow managing to spin German exports into gold by selling to the rest of the planet.
This, in an era when Britain and France had h u g e overseas dominions that constituted the primary market destination for German prewar manufactures.
The only major market open to Germany was America — of whom Germany normally ran a trade deficit. (Massive food imports turned that tide. German luxury autos were half a century away into the future.)
After WWII, Truman fundamentally reversed every one of these policies. Hence, the Truman Plan. ( nee Marshall Plan )
(Truman made the policy and wrote the speech — and had General Marshall deliver it verbatim. He explained: Congress will NEVER fund it if my (HST) name is on it.)
Consequently, the general received the Nobel Prize for Peace.
BTW, the treaty provisions did not trigger German hyper-inflation. That spendist policy was directed at maintaining WWI war fighting infrastructure — to wit — the German national railroad system. It was as huge for them as American medical spending is for us today: off the rails.
This is a vivid little vignette from the ‘Teens, one our grandfather told us (b. 1896 in Lincoln, Nebraska; moved in 1898 to New Orleans).
He and his young friends used to cycle to the New Orleans streetcar stops to watch the ladies boarding the streetcars — they would delicately hoist their skirts to climb aboard, and catching a glimpse of a lovely ankle was quite a thrill for a young man.
Our grandmother Blanche (b. January 10th, 1900) was a flapper, a principal dancer with the Cinncinnati Ballet in 1920-1922 (we have the fabulous photos to prove it), and taught us the Charleston when she was 82. She could still kick higher than the back of our Queen Anne chair at that age! and she would never be caught dead in trousers, very proud of her great legs. Always a lady, too, and don’t you forget it.
She told us the Ballet was made up of amateurs, young ladies: paid professionals on the stage were considered scarlet women. Their costumes were provided by the company, but you had to bring your own pointe shoes.
Neo, she told us how to get even with a male dancer who was behaving badly: when he partners you, just go slightly slack as he lifts you: she said mischievously that it would make him look like he was straining to lift twice your weight.
She was an ardent fan of Baryshnikov’s, in particular, and gave us granddaughters ballet books for Christmas and birthdays. Her daughter’s daughter thrilled her by joining the Southern Ballet company in Atlanta (though Cousin Julie quit when she was 18, to save her feet).
Blanche was a blend of classic and modern ladyhood; always so elegant, but with a flair and a love for theatrics. I really miss her.
One other Blanche tidbit: in the early days of the Great Depression, she told our grandfather that she wanted a gun: it was her responsibility, she said, to defend the children and the servants when he was out of town on business. So he got her a ladylike but deadly revolver, which is still in the family.
Quite a gal.
Our aunt and our mother were country club Episcopalians, and crack shots with the .22 rifle as well. It’s a Southern thing. 😉
Speaking of the 20s…I keep hearing that Amity Shlaes’ new book,”Coolidge” is a knock-out.
national review
Another Theory for Mass Murder: White-Male Privilege
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/335951/another-theory-mass-murder-white-male-privilege-eliana-johnson
‘We’re Privileged’
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/281059/spoiled-children-capitalism-jonah-goldberg
The University of Minnesota-Duluth has retreated from a campaign to fight racism by criticizing “white privilege,” reports Charles Rollet at the College Fix.
Hey white people: Did you know “society was set up for us”?
Anti White Privilege Campaign
UNIVERSITY SPONSORS CAMPAIGN TO UNDERMINE “WHITE PRIVILEGE”
http://d-umn.campusreform.org/school/blog/?ID=3059
Given this, we are roaring even more than the 20s
Sex Week at the University of Chicago
The worst? “Sex Ed For Kids,” which asks, “How do we talk about sex and its related concepts of choice, gender, and desire to our kindergartners?”
According to the university’s official webpage, the oral-sex symposium will include discussion on “going down on men and women, techniques as well as individual differences and sexual health practices. Yes, expect tea.”
this will definitely make women ready for STEM…
and i guess our men can become male hookers as they are not allowed or funded for science, technology, engineering, or mechanics…
Witness BHO and the ‘Arab Spring’. Unintended consequences out the wahzoo. There will be a price in blood and currency.
who says they are unintended?
do you think that they would admit intention and then give up the old excuse for getting what they want and tricking the people as an accident?
how many times can you have an accident that benifits your agenda before morons realize that its a trick?
oh… i dont know… i am still waiting for them to realize two things… its a trick and the rules changed…
This burden of unrealistic reparations to France and the UK placed Germany in an untenable situation which lead to the economic collapse of the country, hyperinflation…
this is wrong…
thats the excuse to justify things..
why not check how much money germanyactually paid rather than assuem they paid and turned their pockets inside out.
Published: 29 Sep 10 11:39
Ninety-two years after the end of the First World War, Germany will finally put the spectre of the Treaty of Versailles behind it this Sunday with its last payment stemming from reparations.
did you know that?
Germany puts Versailles behind it with final reparation payment
Published: 29 Sep 10 11:39 CET | Print version
Updated: 29 Sep 10 18:30 CET
Ninety-two years after the end of the First World War, Germany will finally put the spectre of the Treaty of Versailles behind it this Sunday with its last payment stemming from reparations.
Neo-Nazis to march as Dresden marks bombing (13 Feb 13)
Germany and UK to recreate WWI footie truce (10 Feb 13)
Mother of neo-Nazi says fair trial unlikely (3 Feb 13)
Germany is to pay €69.9 million this Sunday — which coincides with the 20th anniversary of German reunification — as a final payment on the massive debt it owed to the Allied countries after the war ended in 1918.
The payment, which covers interest on bonds issued by the German government, will bring to an end the country’s financial obligations covering the destruction wrought by WWI, the Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues told news magazine news magazine Der Spiegel on Tuesday.
Under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, the victorious allies ordered Germany to pay 132 billion Reichsmarks — a little under €300 billion in today’s money — a sum that crippled the already battered nation.
how did it cripple them when the last payment was made 20 years later and after a second war?
However, under the control of Adolf Hitler, Germany stopped outstanding deliveries of coal within a few years, thus violating the terms of the Treaty of Versailles
Part I of the treaty was the Covenant of the League of Nations which provided for the creation of the League of Nations, an organization intended to arbitrate international disputes and thereby avoid future wars.[27] Part XIII organized the establishment of the International Labour Organization, to promote “the regulation of the hours of work, including the establishment of a maximum working day and week; the regulation of the labour supply; the prevention of unemployment; the provision of an adequate living wage; the protection of the worker against sickness, disease and injury arising out of his employment; the protection of children, young persons and women; provision for old age and injury; protection of the interests of workers when employed in countries other than their own; recognition of the principle of freedom of association; the organization of vocational and technical education and other measures”[28] Further international commissions were to be set up, according to Part XII, to administer control over the Elbe, the Oder, the Niemen (Russstrom-Memel-Niemen) and the Danube rivers.
They referred to the treaty as “the Diktat” since its terms were presented to Germany on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Germany′s first democratically elected Chancellor–Philipp Scheidemann–refused to sign the treaty and resigned.
After Scheidemann′s resignation, a new coalition government was formed under Gustav Bauer. President Friedrich Ebert then asked Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg if the army was capable of any meaningful resistance in the event the Allies decided to renew hostilities. If there was even the slightest chance that the army could hold out, Ebert intended to recommend against ratifying the treaty. Hindenburg–after prodding from his chief of staff, Wilhelm Groener–concluded the army′s position was untenable. However, rather than inform Ebert himself, he had Groener cable the army′s recommendation to the government. Upon receiving this, the new government recommended signing the treaty
The treaty was signed on June 28, 1919 and ratified by the National Assembly on July 9 by a vote of 209 to 116
The German economy was so weak that only a small percentage of reparations was paid in hard currency
this is from wiki… so if they didnt take hard currency, then how did it cause hyperinflation?
Nonetheless, even the payment of this small percentage of the original reparations (132 billion gold marks) still placed a significant burden on the German economy
Although the causes of the devastating post-war hyperinflation are complex and disputed, Germans blamed the near-collapse of their economy on the Treaty, and some economists estimated that the reparations accounted for as much as one-third of the hyper-inflation
in other words… if you study the history, the idea that this was causing the problem was what hitler was telling the people, so that they would be willing to fight back at what was causing their pain.
the idea has stuck ever since.
and the treaty is blamed, not hitler…
but its hitler, not the treaty that did it…
and here is what ACTUALLY happened
In March 1921, French and Belgian troops occupied Duisburg, which formed part of the demilitarized Rhineland, according to the Treaty of Versailles. In January 1923, French and Belgian forces occupied the rest of the Ruhr area as a reprisal after Germany failed to fulfill reparation payments demanded by the Versailles Treaty. The German government answered with “passive resistance”, which meant that coal miners and railway workers refused to obey any instructions by the occupation forces
In 1919, the dissolution of the General Staff appeared to happen; however, the core of the General Staff was hidden within another organization, the Truppenamt, where it rewrote all Heer (Army) and Luftstreitkré¤fte (Air Force) doctrinal and training materials based on the experience of World War
wait… thats the same time the treaty was signed!!!!
not after the treaty supposedly hurt the economics
it would have, but war was not the only result that could have been. if you study the details, you will notice that preparations towards conflict and war and other thigns were made right from 1919 onwards with games of hiding things…
(so keep thinking the country that taught hitler and others is not hiding things… (russia))
On April 16, 1922, representatives of the governments of Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Rapallo Treaty at a World Economic Conference at Genoa in Italy. The treaty re-established diplomatic relations, renounced financial claims on each other and pledged future cooperation
and THIS is what created the war
the dirty DIKTAT drove germany into bed with soviet russia… and the two dirtiest socilaist leaderships decided, why pay, why even do all that, lets just take it all and in a short while decided to carve it all up.
so it wasnt the reparations that created that.
the reparations created the joint cooperation between what would become nazi germany, and soviet union in a pact…
In 1932, the German government announced it would no longer adhere to the treaty’s military limitations, citing the Allies’ violation of the treaty by failing to initiate military limitations on themselves as called for in the preamble of Part V of the Treaty of Versailles.
In March 1935, under the government of Adolf Hitler, Germany violated the Treaty of Versailles by introducing compulsory military conscription in Germany and rebuilding the armed forces. This included a new Navy (Kriegsmarine), the first full armored divisions (Panzerwaffe), and an Air Force (Luftwaffe).
In June 1935, Great Britain effectively withdrew from the treaty with the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement.
In March 1936, Germany violated the treaty by reoccupying the demilitarized zone in the Rhineland.
In March 1938, Germany violated the treaty by annexing Austria in the Anschluss.
In September 1938, Germany, with the approval of France, Britain, and Italy, violated the Treaty by annexing the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.
In March 1939, Germany violated the treaty by occupying the rest of Czechoslovakia.
On 1 September 1939, Germany violated the treaty by invading Poland, thus initiating World War II in Europe.
so what happened was that germany proceeded on a war plan from day one… the treaty pushed hitler and stalin together… and like two sociopaths with greed in their minds, they made a deal to take it all by force.
stalin emboldened hitler so that once he got back the land the treaty and invasion took, it was easy to egg him on to take more, especially when the other side of poland was to go to russia. poland (if you study the history) had a long period of domination over those countries inthepast, and so they all disliked poland…
HAPPY V day!!!
http://www.vday.org/home
Dr. Mukwege, Godfather of V-Men, Puts Out a Call to Men
http://www.vday.org/node/2965
The Vagina Monologues: A Wake Up Call for Men?
http://www.vday.org/v-men/okun
no, not happy valentines day, that was for when we were deep in the oppressive society of men. its no longer Valentines day, the women decided to change it. if not, they certainly didn’t try to stop it. that and the vagina monologues is a winner for this holiday. (nothing like gay lesbian drugged pederasty to make a holiday liberating)
if anyone is wondering why my attitude is so strong
all this kind of thing hs led to my first TIA (stroke)
the office the put me in is now literally killing me
despite having good blood pressure, no diabetes, none of the risks, and being under 50…
two years in this temporary space…
and no lawyer will help.. i am a class that everyone hates and so the jury will punish me for not wanting to be punished for social justice.