The Breakfast Club (Universal Standard)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

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This Day in History

Three civil rights workers disappear in Mississippi; John Hinckley, Jr. found not guilty by reason of insanity for shooting President Ronald Reagan and three others; Britain’s Prince William born.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Human rights is a universal standard. It is a component of every religion and every civilization.

Shirin Ebadi

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Trump Solution: Lock Them Up Together, Indefinitely

In face of the backlash from the media, the public and even Republicans, Donald Trump backed away from forcibly separating children from their families. His solution is to lock them up together, indefinitely. There is one big problem with this plan, as there was with his original policy, it is violation of a court decree from 2015 that required the government to release child migrants from detention after 20 days. Trump can’t just dismiss a federal court order by the stroke of his magic marker.

The solution to the crisis of family separation at the US-Mexico border, the Trump administration has decided, is to get rid of a 1997 federal court decision that strictly limits the government’s ability to keep children in immigration detention.

The administration has fingered Flores v. Reno, or the “Flores settlement,” as the reason it is “forced” to separate parents from their children to prosecute them. It claims that because it cannot keep parents and children in immigration detention together, it has no choice but to detain parents in immigration detention (after they’ve been criminally prosecuted for illegal entry) and send the children to the Department of Health and Human Services as “unaccompanied alien children.”

The Flores settlement requires the federal government to do two things: to place children with a close relative or family friend “without unnecessary delay,” rather than keeping them in custody; and to keep immigrant children who are in custody in the “least restrictive conditions” possible.

Republicans in Congress have proposed legislation that would overrule Flores and allow children to be kept with their parents in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody while they are put through criminal prosecution and deportation proceedings — which many migrant families fight by claiming asylum in the US, a process that can stretch out for months or years. [..]

It’s not at all clear that Trump can, legally, issue an executive order that would override the Flores settlement. That’s why analysts are assuming that any order Trump issues to keep families together in DHS custody will be challenged by a lawsuit and may get thwarted.

If DHS somehow manages to craft an executive order that evades that issue, or if Congress passes any of the suite of Republican bills that purport to end family separation by expanding family detention, it will mean one of two things.

Either the Trump administration will start keeping families in detention for as long as it takes to fully adjudicate their asylum cases — which can take months or years — or it will need to ram them through an “expedited” legal process to minimize their time in detention.

President Obama tried the latter in 2014. It went horrifically. Pro bono lawyers who went to family detention facilities (which were flung together in a matter of weeks) reported that it was all but impossible for families to get due process for their asylum claims.

The former is what families are still going through at the Pennsylvania facility. The long-term detention of immigrant children raises some of the same concerns that keeping them in custody without their parents does, in terms of long-term trauma. Bright lights in the Burks facility reportedly keep children from sleeping well, for example — and they can be disciplined if they try to climb into a parent’s bed for comfort.

Furthermore, getting rid of the Flores settlement entirely wouldn’t just get rid of the mandate to release children; it would also get rid of the requirements for what conditions children must be held in. In other words, the legal standards that undergird the Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities — standards that Trump administration officials brag are among the highest in the world — would be wiped away.

Depending on what replaced Flores, it’s possible that ICE could simply use existing adult detention facilities to herd children into as well.

Nor does Trump’s EO solve the problem of the thousands of children being detained in shelters and tents around the country far apart from their families. Neither the Department of Homeland Security or Health and Human Services has explained how they are going to reunite these children with their families. Some so young they have learned to talk or walk,.Quite a few of their families have already been deported leaving their children stranded in detention.The psychological damage being done to these children is irreparable:

Those harmful effects may run the gamut from future depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to violent tendencies, substance abuse and difficulty forming relationships down the line, according to Dr. Jeff Temple, a professor and psychologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch and a board member of the Texas Psychological Association. And though not every child who experiences trauma will develop these conditions, Temple says the kids in question, who have likely faced other stressors prior to being taken from their parents, may be particularly at risk.

“It’s a three-fold stress: the reason they left their country, the journey [to the U.S.] and now being, at a vulnerable time, separated from their parents,” Temple says. “Really what that amounts to is child abuse. These kids will experience negative and irreparable harm.”

The effects of that harm may evolve over time, says Antonio Puente, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington who specializes in cultural neuropsychology. What may begin as acute emotional distress could reemerge later in life as PTSD, behavioral issues and other signs of lasting neuropsychological damage, he says.

“The longer a child is separated, the worse the situation becomes. This is often hidden initially and becomes more complicated as time evolves, only to emerge in other times of crisis or, for that matter, in adulthood,” Puente says. “These situations are emotional at the onset and neuropsychological in the long-term.”

The separation policy was put into place with the typical knee-jerk reaction to an imaginary crisis on our southern borders. As usual with thus ship of fools, there is no plan to keep track of these children or to reunite them with relatives after their immigration status has been determined.

There is no process for parents to locate their children except a 1-800 number. Most of these people do not speak English, others speak dialects of Spanish that are not commonly spoken in the US, nor do they have access to phones or lawyers. Some have already been deported.

This policy is tantamount to kidnapping since the main purpose was to get Democrats and recalcitrant Republicans on board with funding a useless wall that Trump promised would be paid for by Mexico. Not only that, it is blatantly racist with Trump and his fellow child abusers using terms such as “catch and release” and “infestation” as though these refugees from violence are undersized lobsters or a problem for an exterminator. Let’s not forget to mention Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III using biblical passages that were used to justify slavery and the Holocaust and White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders, a so-called Christian, defending it. Even evangelical Trump sycophant Franklin Graham couldn’t defend that or this inhumane policy of kidnapping children.

This new policy will, hopefully, not end well for Trump or his cohorts. It is just another chapter in the long nightmare for these families and their children.

 

“How much for the little girl?”

The women. How much for the women?

What?

The women. I want to buy your women. The little girl, your daughters. Sell them to me. Sell me your children!

There’s this seafood joint I go to with TMC sometimes because it has the 4th best Mussels I’ve ever had (the best ones are served in a recycled paper bowl from a Wharf Shack) and depending on the time of day and how polite I’m pretending to be (sun you know) I may or may not have a view of the Harbor and a little pocket park the deck overlooks.

The principal feature of this green space is a concrete statue of Beelzebub (or perhaps a lesser known Sumerian God, I could ask the Artist because it’s one of those kind of places) that children love because it’s great to climb on and basically a chair.

Whenever I see one I say “Yessss, yes child. Sit in the lap of Beelzebub.” and rehearse this scene from The Blues Brothers until TMC starts throwing empty Mussel shells at me. I’m not sure if she’s worried the kids or their mother will hear me (they are waaay too far away) or the waiter will (which would be rude).

Possibly she thinks it’s not funny which puts me in a class with George Clooney (Tomorrowland, please keep up because now we’re going to change direction rapidly).

Among other places we’ve been is Comet Ping Pong, 3 doors down from Politics and Prose the well known D.C. bookstore.

Should I locate it so directly? I’m not sure. It’s easy to find and a perfectly harmless place. The pizza doesn’t suck even in comparison to Pepe’s (which is the best in the world, ask anyone) and you can watch your children play ping pong in a kid pen on big screen TV while you interact with adults.

It’s notorious for being the subject of a right wing conspiracy theory that there’s a basement pedophile sex factory run by Hillary Clinton and John Podesta beneath it. This is of course not true.

However Wingers have a bad habit of projection and for every Anthony Weiner (c’mon, not even George Clooney’s wife wants to look at his dick pix) we can cite 10 Roy Moores and Mark Foleys and David Vitters and Larry Craigs. They sin in their heart and because they get a pass from Yahweh (unmerited favor by grace) go and get themselves thrown out of shopping malls for creeping on the teens.

Ick.

So where are the girls? Where are the babies?

It’s probably nothing much other than the desire to portray these young men as dangerous gang members likely to shoot your sorry white ass in the street for your $30 Timex which they will sell to finance their crack/meth/opium habit and the money generated used to finance guns and lawyers to assault the White States of Amurikkka and let Black and Brown and Female people elect our gubmint.

Or they could be shipping them off.

It would be irresponsible not to speculate. Remember, here at DocuDharma and The Stars Hollow Gazette we publish nothing but the most scurrilous rumors.

Happy Anniversary

 

I started writing on the Internet on April 1st, 2005. In August/September 2007 I became one of the founding members of DocuDharma and in June of 2010 Managing Editor of The Stars Hollow Gazette.

It’s not really noteworthy or relevant except for this fact- I have 13 years of searchable published opinion available and I stand behind every word of it, especially the ones you hate me for. I couldn’t care less about your reaction, I write for myself.

I don’t operate under the delusion I’m “special” or “important”, heck- I don’t own a mirror, even one to shave in. If you have a problem with me I have a twitter account I never check with exactly one entry, “I have no thoughts that can be expressed in 140 characters or less.”, so that’s pretty useless isn’t it?

Feel free to add slander and calumny if I oppress and upset you. My 100% guarantee is that I won’t even notice it (what about “I never check” did you misunderstand?). If you want my attention you’ll sign up as a commenter- we censor spam, doxxing, bullying, hate speech, and pornography, not disagreement.

The Breakfast Club (Summer Skies)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

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This Day in History

Lizzie Borden found innocent of a grisly double murder; Britain’s Queen Victoria begins rule; Race-related rioting hits Detroit; Muhammad Ali convicted in Vietnam War-era draft case; ‘Jaws’ premieres.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.

Marshall McLuhan

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Hah, hah, hah

 

What?! Finding it hard to laugh?

Sure. Laugh.

Funny as a corpse I am.

Life in Oświęcim

(from Wikipedia)

Prisoners were transported from all over German-occupied Europe by rail, arriving in daily convoys. By July 1942, the SS were conducting “selections”. Incoming Jews were segregated; those deemed able to work were sent to the selection officer’s right and admitted into the camp, and those deemed unfit for labor were sent to the selection officer’s left and immediately gassed. The group selected to die, about three-quarters of the total, included almost all children, women with small children, all the elderly, and all those who appeared on brief and superficial inspection by an SS doctor not to be completely fit.

After the selection process was complete, those too ill or too young to walk to the crematoria were transported there on trucks or killed on the spot with a bullet to the head. The belongings of the arrivals were seized by the SS and sorted in an area of the camp called “Canada”, so called because Canada was seen as a land of plenty. Many of the SS at the camp enriched themselves by pilfering the confiscated property.

SS officers told the victims they were to take a shower and undergo delousing. The victims undressed in an outer chamber and walked into the gas chamber, which was disguised as a shower facility. Some were even issued soap and a towel. The Zyklon B was delivered by ambulance to the crematoria by a special SS bureau known as the Hygienic Institute. The actual delivery of the gas to the victims was always handled by the SS, on the order of the supervising SS doctor. After the doors were shut, SS men dumped in the Zyklon B pellets through vents in the roof or holes in the side of the chamber. The victims were dead within 20 minutes. Despite the thick concrete walls, screaming and moaning from within could be heard outside. In one failed attempt to muffle the noise, two motorcycle engines were revved up to full throttle nearby, but the sound of yelling could still be heard over the engines.

Sonderkommando wearing gas masks then dragged the bodies from the chamber. The victims’ glasses, artificial limbs, jewelry, and hair were removed, and any dental work was extracted so the gold could be melted down. The corpses were burned in the nearby incinerators, and the ashes were buried, thrown in the river, or used as fertilizer.

For almost as long (actually it’s longer, but almost will do) as I’ve been writing on the Internet I’ve been screaming, shouting, hair on fire warning about the creeping Nazification of the United States. It’s uncomfortable to confront the fact that your government, the one you are taught from birth is wise and benevolent, is led by a cabal of jack booted thugs abetted by a larger group of bigoted morons for the express purpose of stealing everything you have, including your life, to benefit a thin sliver of inbred degenerates.

Yet here we are.

US Border Patrol accused of misleading immigrants while separating families: ‘They’re taking kids for baths and never returning’
by Clark Mindock, The Independent
Monday 11 June 2018

Federal public defenders say that immigration enforcement officials in the United States have repeatedly deceived immigrant parents arriving in the US seeking shelter from violent conditions in their home country, telling those individuals that they are taking their children away for baths or other benign reasons only to never return with them.

Miguel Nogueres, a federal public defender in McAllen, Texas said that he’s seen a dramatic increase in the number of cases his office sees on any given day during the presidency of Donald Trump, and that he has been hearing from clients that they were lied to by Border Patrol agents when their children were taken away, and not being given further information about the whereabouts of their kids.

He says that they have been trying to count the number of children that are being taken from parents, but that doing so has been made difficult by the changes in American immigration policies that allow federal agents to separate families with the expressed goal of deterring future immigrants.

“Every day we hear that parents are being separated from their children and are given different reasons for the separation. Some are told the truth,” Mr Nogueres told The Independent. “Others are told that they’re children are being taken for a break to play, or bathe, or sleep, … little white lies to ameliorate an exploding situation. The parents will realize they were lied to when they meet us before court.”

Mr Nogueres said that he and his colleague — a fellow federal public defender named Azalea Aleman-Bendiks, who also represents clients in mass deportation hearings and who recently made similar statements about Border Patrol deception to The Boston Globe — have seen the number of people being pushed through the courts jump from around 20 to 30 clients a day under the administrations of Presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama, up to as many as 170 a day now.

Mr Nogueres said that the cases he came across before would skew towards people with criminal records, and now the cases skew in the opposite direction.

“So, 90 per cent of those cases would be people with criminal records and less than 10 per cent of those would be with no criminal record,” Mr Nogueres said of the way things used to work, before noting that the representation of criminal vs civil defendants has essentially reversed itself, from what he has observed.

A Border Patrol spokesman said that the claims that these children were in any way inhumanely or unlawfully taken from their parents are not substantiated.

“I would tell you nothing could be further from the truth and these allegations are unsubstantiated,” Daniel Hetlage, the spokesman, said in a statement.

A spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said, when contacted for comment, that the agency is committed to ensuring the parents are able to get in touch with their children, and to find out where their children are located.

“ICE is committed to connecting these family members as quickly as possible after separation so that parents know the location of their children and have regular communication with them in line with ICE policies and detention standards, including the directive Detention and Removal of Alien Parents or Legal Guardians,” Danielle Bennett, the spokesperson, said in a statement.

“ICE will post new information in all of our 72-hour facilities advising detained parents who are trying to locate, and/or communicate with, a child in the custody of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to call the Detention Reporting and Information Line (DRIL) for assistance,” Ms Bennett continued, noting an effort to inform inmates that began last week. “Separated parents who are still in US Marshals Service custody and have not yet been transferred to ICE can also call the DRIL for assistance in locating their minor child. The information provided by these parents to the DRIL operators will be forwarded to ORR for action. ICE and ORR will work together to locate separated children, verify the parent/child relationship, and set up regular communication and removal coordination, if necessary.”

The administration has cited restrictions on children being in federal detention centres that only allow for adult detainees. Children are referred to a different agency.

Once families are separated, it can become difficult for them to be reunited, and it is not at all clear that a child will be deported alongside their parent if the parent loses their court cases.

Mr Nogueres said that he tells it how it is when clients ask if they’ll see their children any time soon: He doesn’t know, but he tries to get them the opportunity to call the relevant agencies to ask if their kids are OK. But, they often face a confusing, uphill battle and they may have to fight it once they’re back home.

“I tell them I hope they’ll be reunited, but I know from what they’ve told me that they will not be reunited immediately,” Mr Nogueres said. “The children are sent god knows where. The parents are cent to a processing centre in McAllen. … I have to tell them to mentally be prepared to be deported without their children, because I know that it has happened and that when they get to their country to immediately go to the authorities, to go to the state department of the country, to go to the US embassy, and to find a reporter from a newspaper. That’s the best I can do for them.”

Baths?! Folks, at least when I lie to you I try to inject some originality and novelty. Using the exact same lies the Nazis did is unimaginative.

(L)ate in 1944, pit burning became the chief method of corpse disposal. The pits had indentations at one end from which human fat drained off. To keep the pits burning, the stokers poured oil, alcohol, and large quantities of boiling human fat over the bodies. The sizzling fat was scooped out with buckets on a long curved rod and poured all over the pit causing flames to leap up amid much crackling and hissing. … The air reeked of oil, fat, benzole and burnt flesh.

You can not live downwind of that, day after day after day, and pretend it is anything except what it is. You can not hear the final screams over the revving motorcycles or look that the trains arriving full and leaving empty and delude yourself that you don’t know, really know, in your heart of hearts what is happening.

What is hard to accept is that these monsters are people like you.

Not the ones doing the dying, they’re sympathetic, I mean the ones doing the killing. Good Germans.

I’m not advocating the medicine they’re dispensing, far from it, but they certainly need to be prevented from further harm to others. They are in every respect “deplorable” and at the least should be publicly shunned and humiliated as a lesson.

If there is a positive thing to take from this stain on our national character it’s that they represent less than a third (27%) of our population. Of course it only took the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei 32% in November of 1932.

They represent 55% of Republicans though.

And every morning represents an opportunity for you, my friend, to decide…

Are you a Good German?

Cartnoon

You want Some News?

Cody Johnston, Newsperson.

The Breakfast Club (Bedrock Of Democracy)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

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This Day in History

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed; Father’s Day first celebrated in the U.S.; The event behind ‘Juneteenth’; Author Salman Rushdie born; NBA draft pick Len Bias dies; Entertainer Paula Adbul born.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Two things form the bedrock of any open society – freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don’t have those things, you don’t have a free country.

Salman Rushdie

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You Shall Know Them By Their Fruits

Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Matthew 7:17 – 20 KJV

 

 

This was always the plan:

President Trump is still trying to avoid responsibility for his administration’s brutal policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the border, but a new report confirms that Trump and his advisers had been considering the extreme measures for as long as they’ve been in power. According to the New York Times, White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller was “instrumental” in convincing the president to enact the policy, which applies a zero tolerance approach to prosecuting undocumented immigrants caught entering the U.S. — even if that means taking children away from their parents in the process. And while some members of the Trump administration have reportedly been uneasy over the policy and subsequent fallout, Miller is not one of them. “It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period,” Miller told the Times, “The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law.” [..]

Aside from the plain cruelty of separating children from their parents, health professionals are warning that the entire experience puts children’s physical and mental health at risk. In particular, the amount of stress the children encounter as a result of being taken from their parents and thrust into a strange new environment — like one where the kids are denied physical contact — could be toxic, disrupting their developing brains and leading the long term health problems. The situation is especially dangerous for children under 10, and even more so for children under 5. With these risks in mind, about 4,600 mental-health professionals and 90 organizations have called on the Trump administration to end the separation policy. [..]

The shelters are managed by the Department of Health and Human Services, but even presuming that workers at the shelters are doing the best they can to care for the children, the system is being pushed to its capacity. More than 11,400 migrant kids are currently in federal custody, including both minors who arrived at the border unaccompanied by an adult and children who have been separated from their parents. More than 2,400 of these children have arrived since the beginning of May. As a result of the rapid influx, HHS has already had to stand up at least one temporary shelter to provide more housing. A new Trump administration policy mandating the fingerprinting of family members in the U.S. who come to take custody of children living in the shelters will undoubtedly lead to more children being left in government custody — if their only relatives in America are also undocumented. [..]

Trump and Miller are not alone in their support for the separations, either. Some administration officials, like Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, have reportedly opposed the border separation policy, but whatever internal opposition there has been within Trumpworld, it has only been expressed in private. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, on the other hand, is a full-fledged supporter of the policy. Kelly infamously showed little regard for what happened to the children after they were taken from their parents during in an NPR interview in May. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who implemented the new rule, has gone so far as to claim that the administration’s lack of compassion for immigrant families is supported by the Bible — a notion which was promptly rejected by prominent Christian leaders like like Cardinal Timothy Dolan.

Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Session quoted Romans 13 where Paul preached obedience to government laws. His choice, once again, demonstrated his bigotry as this was the biblical verse most often quoted to justify slavery and to support white supremacy

If you have ever wondered why slaves adopted the religious philosophy of their slave masters, Romans 13 is your answer. If you wanted to know why slaves, who often outnumbered slave masters, rebelled so rarely, the answer lies in Romans 13. To understand why the Bible was the only book many slaves were allowed to own, read that verse again.

Christianity was adopted by people, rulers and governments all around the globe because it tells its followers to comply. It boasts of a benevolent God who knows best; even when you are the subject of brutality, the Bible tells you that this is what God wants. At the root of Romans 13 is an edict to obey authority.

The 13th chapter of Romans is white supremacy, explained.

Almost 2,000 years after Paul’s letter, the 13th chapter of Paul’s instruction to the Romans is still being used to silence, warn and squash minority populations. When U.S. Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III quoted the verse Thursday to explain the Trump administration’s gestapolike policy of ripping babies from the arms of their mothers and throwing the children into internment camps, he was simply the latest in a long line of white people who used that verse to justify white supremacy. [..]

White supremacists love Romans 13. They used it to justify apartheid, but surprisingly, they also used it to justify why they hated Barack Obama. Hitler used it to justify the Holocaust. [..]

But the irony of Jeff Sessions’ statement and the predilection of white people for justifying white supremacy with a Bible verse is the fact that Paul was beheaded because he wouldn’t conform to the beliefs of the government.

 

“We are a better country than one that tears families apart, turns a blind eye to women fleeing domestic violence, and treats frightened children as a negotiating tool as a means to a political end.”

“These actions are an affront to our values and they undermine America’s reputation as a beacon of hope and freedom in the world.” Hillary Rodham Clinton

Agents telling parents that they are taking their children for showers and clean clothes never to be seen again evokes horrors to those of us who remember the history of Germany. The attorney general using the words that were used to justify slavery and the Holocaust is not Christian nor is it American. This is how the Trump administration will be remembered, liars who held children hostage for their xenophobic, misogynist agenda.

Smashing Pottery

It’s hard to start describing the history of China without noting how very old and organized it is. Indeed “older than the Pyramids” which sit in an incredibly run down piece of Cairo barely large enough for you to frame your disgusting camel (they are terrible brutes who spit on you with much more regularity and vehemence than horses) against the sand and stone for your de regueur tourist photo to prove you’ve actually been there.

Not that I’ve traveled to either China or Egypt.

I’ll assume for the sake of argument (and we could argue it) that you’re not intrinsically interested in the trivia of the Xia and Shang dynasties (2070 to 1046 before the Common Era) and advance straight through them (and the Zhou dynasty, Spring and Autumn, and Warring States Periods) to the Qin (pronounced ‘Chin’, hence ‘China’) dynasty in 221 B.C.E. and the development of the doctrine of “The Mandate of Heaven”.

In summary it holds that The Emperor holds a special dispensation from the cosmos and nature to bring peace and prosperity to his people.

Which is all very well until things start going wrong which they inevitably do. In that case the problem is insufficient devotion and obedience until it isn’t and it’s rot at the top and a New Emperor takes over.

Sound familiar? Humans don’t change.

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice.
He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.

Karl Marx- The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

What Marx forgot to mention is- “It’s Cold Outside.” and play I Got You Babe. because Groundhog Day was not in theaters until 100 years after he died.

“Sun going down.” Not for me, I’m a Winter Soldier anyway. “You want to know my secret? I’m always angry.”

Which brings me back to Permanent Interests. In 4000 years China has never forgotten.

I’ve seen Ming pottery, both intact and… umm… deconstructed. It’s not much of a much. It’s thick, not translucent and diaphanous, and no different from Stoke-on-Trent except for original design and coloring. More under painting because it’s done by hand. Corningware (from Corning, New York and basically glass) beats it in a cocked hat.

Tang painting, music, opera, and poetry…

They’re a thing.

Egypt is not provably older than China or Ur. Historians suppose it so since it’s closer to Africa where our monkey uncles came from. Also it’s mentioned in the Bible.

Cartnoon

Nope. It’s definitely you.

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