Home » Open thread 5/29/23

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Open thread 5/29/23 — 26 Comments

  1. Sprung has sprung and summer is fresh! Nice.

    Yet it is still Memorial Day. And I have a fine celebratory find to share:
    An article and documentary video of World War Two and the secret heroism in which a bold and brave team of Jews go behind enemy German lines to strike back at Hitler. And survive. These interviews will warm your hearts.

    From the National World War Two Museum in New Orleans in 2021 comes this notice: “ Operation Greenup: The REAL Inglourious Basterds;
    A real world spy story fit for the silver screen.”
    https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/operation-greenup-real-inglourious-basterds

    Now, I had thought that the violent revenge film “Inglourious Basterds” by Quentin Tarentino was sensationalised fiction. A send up, to be sure. But how much of it was also grounded in lived fact?

    That’s what gets answered here.

    From late 2021, this 51 minute documentary video from YT: “The Real Inglorious Basterds! | True Story of the Jewish Commandos Who Inspired Tarantino”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ou4PtFa3HM

    This will amaze and entertain you, and feel good at yet another greatest generation war-time tale, finally well told.

  2. The photo of the lilac blossoms with their “heart-shaped leaves of rich green” reminds me of Walt Whitman’s 1865 poem on the death of Abraham Lincoln:

    When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
    And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
    I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. . . .

    In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings,
    Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
    With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
    With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard,
    With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
    A sprig with its flower I break.

  3. ‘…Of thee I sing…’
    “Commencement Speaker Slams CUNY Law For Supporting ‘Fascist’ NYPD, Oppressive Systems”—
    https://blazingcatfur.ca/2023/05/29/commencement-speaker-slams-cuny-law-for-supporting-fascist-nypd-oppressive-systems/
    + Bonus:
    “Jane Fonda Says White Men Are To Blame For ‘Climate Crisis’ And Is Calling For Them To All Be ARRESTED And Jailed”—
    https://blazingcatfur.ca/2023/05/29/jane-fonda-says-white-men-are-to-blame-for-climate-crisis-and-is-calling-for-them-to-all-be-arrested-and-jailed/

    And through the looking-glass we go…

  4. Another good book on Jews who fought back in WW II is “Sons and Soldiers
    The Untold Story of the Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned With the U.S. Army to Fight Hitler” by Henderson, Bruce B., 2017. It tells the story of Jewish refugees (mostly from Germany) who joined the US Army when the war came. The Army used many of them in the Intelligence branch to interrogate captured Germans. Being native German speakers who knew the culture perfectly they were very good at their job. I loved reading Henderson’s description of the reaction of some of the Nazi officers and their reactions when they realized that they were confronted with a figure out of their nightmares: a Jew. In an American uniform. With a gun.

  5. Kate:

    There are a lot of lilacs in New England, and they come in several colors. These particular ones are a variety that’s a deeper purple color than the classic shade. They’re exceptionally beautiful, I think.

  6. ENTERTAINMENT — brilliant songbird Angelina Jordan has now graduated High school (and at 17.5 years young, is licensed to drive).

    Her new (third) original song — “Love Don’t Let Me Go” — is topping the charts in Northern Europe, ahead of her debut EP next month. https://youtu.be/1U6WY_z8Vu8

    AND September 22, in Portsmouth, NH marks her first US concert in her new, adult career. This event was just newly announced today.

    I’m fortunate to have dear old friends in Southern Maine I need to visit. Time to make it happen then.

    A star is being born.

  7. Lilacs love eastern Washington. My wife used to bring in bouquets of lilacs, but the fragrance is too overpowering for me. They’re done blooming, but Spokane has had a Lilac Festival for 85 years around the third weekend of May.

    That’s proceeded by a fun run, Bloomsday, on the first weekend of May, where over 50,000 runners (OK, most aren’t even runners) hustle, meander and dodder around a 12K course.

  8. Re: Lilacs photo

    I’m grabbed by the rightmost 40%, where the tree scene, being in the background and out of focus, looks like a painting.

  9. My lilacs are in full bloom in my back yard. The fragrance is so strong I have to keep my back door closed so that it doesn’t flood the kitchen with its perfume.

  10. Hubert said, “Lilacs may be associated with New England, but that’s not the only place you’ll find them.”

    True; the house I grew up in in Pennsylvania had a small lilac tree in the back yard– and my father liked the fragrance as much as my mother did. So lilacs for me are a reminder of my home state even though I presently live in New England.

  11. I have no lilacs, but our garden is filled at this moment with the sweet fragrance of gardenias.

  12. A great WW2 story, and a true hero.

    https://notthebee.com/article/fire-ittheres-more-of-them-than-there-are-of-us

    I remember it was my senior year of high school when then-President Bill Clinton honored Fox posthumously with the Medal of Honor for what he did in the small village of Sommocolonia in Tuscany during the winter of 1944.

    Fighting World War II in a segregated black division, the artillery officer Fox was ordered to remain in the village as it was being overrun by Nazis. As American forces were in retreat, Fox used a high perch to radio movements, locations, and vital information to his commanding officers, allowing the bulk of our troops to escape catastrophic destruction.

    Sensing that the Nazis were amassing to launch what could be a fatal pursuit of American forces, Fox did the unthinkable. He called for an artillery strike to be launched on his own position. When the officers manning the American artillery responded that they could not launch an attack that they knew would kill Fox, the 29-year-old uttered his famous last words:

    “Fire it. There’s more of them than there are of us.”

    The rest of the story? The artillery barrage wiped out hundreds of Nazis and actually allowed the fleeing American forces to regroup and launch a successful counterattack. The taking of Sommocolonia became part of the massively significant liberation of the Italian peninsula several months later.

    Scripture teaches that no man has greater love than the one who willfully lays down his life for a friend. Few in history have had the love for his fellow countrymen exhibited by John Robert Fox. Let’s honor him this day. Let’s honor them all.

  13. Lilacs!

    Wow! Does that photo bring back memories!

    We just buried our mother (she was under hospice care for the last year and a half in my house for which, while it was both physically and emotional exhausting for me, I am glad that I did it for she died peacefully and feeling wanted at home instead of alone in a nursing home).

    These lilacs so remind me of her backyard which had a few gardens. One of the gardens was a rather long “hedgerow” along the side of her yard shared with a neighbor. There were so many different flowers such as irises, tulips, poppies, daffodils, etc. but there were also lilac bushes (they grew to be trees really) every 20 feet or so in that garden. The garden looked great in the spring; and, although, they were not this deeper purple color, they were the typical blue shade, boy, did those lilacs bloom!

    The lilacs have been long gone; but, her house is still surrounded by rhododendrons as tall as the house and are in full bloom now. Several red or white rhododendron bushes and one orange bush by the back door. She so loved colors.

    Thanks for the reminder Neo!

  14. Charles on lilacs post. I recall growing up in a neighbourhood with a variety of lilac ladies. The older ones were perhaps more devoted to them. But the more active younger ones were drawn to them, too. When they weren’t busy!

    Thus, the photo, the image, the memory of the scent, and up pops this deep, childhood recollection noe. THANK you N.

  15. John+F.+MacMichael concludes “I loved reading Henderson’s description of the reaction of some of the Nazi officers and their reactions when they realized that they were confronted with a figure out of their nightmares: a Jew. In an American uniform. With a gun.”

    BINGO. This was Tarantino’s inspiration, undoubtedly.

    The library of hidden secrets along these lines is growing. Two authors are interviewed in the video I link to, ABOVE, for instance. And below the history essay from The National World War Two History Museum, is a link to a story on Winston Churchill’s Secret Jewish Commando unit, “Troop X.” There’s a fourth author’s book title involved there.

    Therefore, we can anticipate still more movies on this story to come. Perhaps slowly. But more will come.

  16. From the “When the Going Gets Absurd the Absurd Get Going” File:
    “Ugandan president signs law with harsher penalties for same-sex relations, Biden threatens sanctions”—
    https://justthenews.com/world/africa/ugandan-president-signs-law-harsher-penalties-gay-sex-biden-threatens-sanctions
    (One wonders if the Uganda president will be able to get back in “Biden”‘s good graces if he decides to show some support for Boko Haram…)

    “Arrest Of Chicago ‘Peacekeeper’ Police Substitute Demonstrates The Folly Of ‘Defund The Police’ “—
    https://blazingcatfur.ca/2023/05/30/arrest-of-chicago-peacekeeper-police-substitute-demonstrates-the-folly-of-defund-the-police-read-more-https-www-americanthinker-com-blog-2023-05-arrest_of_chica/

    …And “Biden”‘s perfectly apropos, if mythic, answer to “White Supremacism”:
    “Left-Wing Extremism Linked To Psychopathy And Narcissism…”—
    https://blazingcatfur.ca/2023/05/29/left-wing-extremism-linked-to-psychopathy-and-narcissism-study/

  17. And if anyone was wondering about the reason why so many crises have been created, invented and encouraged—IOW REQUIRED—by our political leaders (AKA, the MORAL argument for culling humanity, controlling populations and cutting homosapiens down to size)…as enthusiastically mandated by Klaus Schwab and his merrye kitschy, klatsch of WTF-ers….
    “Eco-Anxiety: Salvation Through Terror”—
    https://blazingcatfur.ca/2023/05/29/eco-anxiety-salvation-through-terror/

  18. I recently posted about Japan’s demographic death spiral, and by happenstance here is a recent article discussing this situation, and it’s ramifications.

    You might especially note the link in this article to another article, about how some adult children are just abandoning their elderly parents–especially if they are “difficult.”

    See https://vpostrel.substack.com/p/japans-old-age-crisis-and-ours-to

  19. charles, my sympathies on the loss of your mother, and my respect for what you did for her. Well done.

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