The Books of Bokonon

  Today's   May Day . If you're curious about the origins of May Day,   read here . It may well be the most ancient religious festival worldwide - primarily a homage to fertility goddesses as well as the renewal of life that we see in the spring time. In more modern times, May Day is significant as   the original labor day , and is tied with the   struggle   by organized labor movements to get the 8-hour work day that many of us take for granted recognized today. A number of years ago, I read John Ross' book   Murdered By Capitalism , in which the author discussed the labor movement in US history. In that book, I was reminded that by the middle of the 20th century May 1 was officially designated "Law Day" - making us unique in that we're supposed to celebrate those who smashed organized efforts to improve labor conditions. Then again, there are always those on the US and elsewhere who will use this occasion to use the specter of communism as a bogeyma...

Today is May Day, which is recognized an international workers' day practically everywhere but the US. May Day protests are also something of an international tradition. Why not here as well? There are events all around the US . And if you don't have a protest nearby today, there will be more to come. Bookmark 50501 to stay in the loop. H/t Tom Sullivan at Digby's blog for image and the reminder.  

      Today marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, one of the most notorious of the Nazi concentration camps during WWII. On this international Holocaust Remembrance Day , let's memorialize this atrocity as a harbinger, an omen, a warning, as many of the posts on the Guardian's live blog of this occasion remind us. One million people of Jewish descent were murdered just at Auschwitz alone. Wrap your mind around that statistic, and then remember that behind the number were living breathing human beings whose lives were snuffed out. The survivors have undoubtedly experienced a lifetime of PTSD, but also have been among our most powerful witnesses to the very worst of what humanity is capable. I've had the opportunity to speak with survivors of Auschwitz and other similar camps. Their stories are not pleasant but need to be heard. If you never had a chance to visit with someone who lived through that atrocity, there are other resources that are digitally...

I remember learning those immortal words from a speech by Franklin Delano Roosevelt when I was a kid and have not forgotten. There are very few veterans left who survived the Pearl Harbor attack. This was the moment in history that put an end to American isolationism that was the hallmark of US foreign policy after the conclusion of WWI. An attack on our soil (Hawaii was not a state then, but it was US territory) was not going to go unanswered, no matter what the America First crowd might have wanted. And since the Japanese empire was an ally of Nazi Germany, answering that attack meant accepting being drawn into another world war. The bombing of Pearl Harbor shattered the illusion that the US was invulnerable to threats from distant neighbors. After all, the US has two major oceans that act as buffers as well as two friendly neighbors to the north and to the south. Once a Japanese attack on the west coast started to look at least conceivable it probably didn't take a lot of imagin...

Kyiv Independent has a feature article about the Orange Revolution of late 2004 and early 2005. It's worth reading. This would not be the last time that Viktor Yanukovych would stare down the ire of the public and lose. There were credible accounts of ballot stuffing to where after two months of continuous protests a new vote was held and a more pro-European government was formed as a result. The Ukrainian people truly flexed their collective muscle then, and that sense of independence has carried the Ukrainian population since then. The regime in Moscow has made it clear that it does not view Ukraine as an independent nation or Ukrainians as distinct people and is in the process of perpetrating a genocidal war against Ukraine. Those heady days of 2004 are a reminder that Russian dominance - in the form of an empire, the USSR, or whatever sort of mafia government Putin runs - is not inevitable.

One of the bloggers at Emptywheel posted about what November 9th means to Germans , and the decidedly mixed emotions that the date brings up. In 1923, the day marked the Beer Hall Putsch. In 1938, the date marked Kristallnacht. Those each were dark days. In 1989, the date marked the fall of the Berlin Wall, marking the end of Soviet dominance of eastern Germany, and eventually the fall of the communist USSR which paved the way for the eastern and western sides of Germany to be once again reunited for the first time since WWII. This year's date is marked probably more by German and European worries about what a Trump regime in the US will mean, including emboldening a Russian dictator hell-bent on reviving the old Soviet Union, just minus the Marxist rhetoric. We are back to dark days.

Today marked the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. For a brief period, there was some hope that a more democratic and peaceful future was upon us. Alas, it was not to be. But for that one brief moment...

"History! Read it and weep!" Linkage

Here is one of several articles you can find on former President Jimmy Carter's 100th birthday . I was a kid when Jimmy Carter was President. Although I don't remember a ton from the Nixon/Ford era, I do remember what my parents thought of Nixon (not favorable) and Ford (pardoning Nixon was one of Ford's cardinal sins). Jimmy Carter's campaign and his Presidency was really a breath of fresh air. In my elementary school class, we had our mock Presidential election where we "voted" for either Carter or Ford. I was one of the only kids in my class to vote for Carter. That makes sense to me now after I made the mistake of reconnecting with some classmates on Facebook last decade.  The 1970s was, to be perfectly frank, a lousy era to live in. President Carter was dealt some lousy cards when it came to the economy and international relations, but he played them as well as anyone would expect. Stagflation was a persistent problem. The Iran hostage situation was going...

September 11, 2001 is a date etched in my memory. I was in Goodwell, OK at the time and worked at the university, which was walking distance from my house. Since my first class was not until 930 am, I had plenty of time to enjoy breakfast, a couple cups of coffee, and catch up on any morning news. When coverage of the first airplane to crash into the World Trade Center happened, I thought it was a horrible accident. And then, the second plane hit the Twin Towers. My wife and I were no longer considering this an accident. I had to get ready for my first class of the day, so I did that and when I was getting ready to leave the house, my wife told me that one of the towers had collapsed, as if the fire wasn't horrific enough. I want to say that by around this time, we already knew that the Pentagon had been struck, and that a crash landing of yet another plane in rural Pennsylvania kept it from hitting its intended target. To say it was an awful morning is an understatement, as the ne...

Why do all the MAGA weirdos hate America? There is an answer , and one in which we are reminded that the seeds of the current Trump cult of personality can be found in 19th and 20th century central Europe. I will give you an extended excerpt from the article: As everyone knows, Donald Trump admires Vladimir Putin, and so a large portion of the Republican Party admires Putin in an imitative and slavish manner. But even before Trump became a candidate, the most regressive elements of conservatism — the paleoconservatives who developed around former Nixon and Reagan staffer (and Hitler apologist ) Pat Buchanan , Christian nationalists and reconstructionists inspired by Francis Schaeffer , and the tech-obsessed neoreactionary movement fueled by Silicon Valley money, which has produced JD Vance — discovered how much there was to love about Putin’s Russia. This New Right also seems to have an easy familiarity with the theorists of totalitarianism. In an interview this June with New York ...

I'll admit I had never heard of Dr. Allan Lichtman prior to 2016, when he correctly predicted that Donald Trump would become the next US President. My reaction was along the lines of "who is this guy" and "you've got to be kidding me". But I learned who he was and realized that he knows his stuff. Lichtman uses a set of thirteen keys (answered as true or false) developed by him and a colleague in 1981. This model ignores polling data, which is the stuff that most take for gospel. Instead, the model is guided by historical precedent. As someone who relied on polling aggregators at the time (e.g., 538), I can see how his approach to prediction seems unsophisticated to the data wonks.  Here's the thing: he's used those keys to make the right prediction for nearly all US Presidential elections since 1984. That kind of track record establishes his credibility. We ignore his predictions at our peril. A lot of hay has been made out of the Democratic Party l...

  I am going to borrow a bit from a Telegram channel I've been following (Conflict History and News*) since around the time Russia started its full-scale war against Ukraine in 2022. This photo was posted here . What are you looking at, you might ask? These are fleets of military transport vehicles provided by the United States to the Soviet Union (or USSR) during WWII. This photo was apparently taken in 1944.  To give you the scope of the lend-lease program and what the US provided the USSR in the way of military supplies, here is a probably incomplete list: — Through this program, the U.S. provided over $11 billion in essential supplies and equipment to the USSR, including: - 400,000 vehicles - 14,000 aircraft - 13,000 tanks - 8,000 tractors - 4.5 million tons of food - 2.7 million tons of petroleum products. That is quite a lot of equipment and food. Would the USSR have been successful in their efforts against Nazi Germany's eastern front without all that assistance? Doubtf...