Very Useful App....

This application will very thoroughly clean the inside of your screen for you.

Give it a try.

Haiti, Before and After

WIRED Magazine brings us satellite pix of the devastation, with pics of the same areas before the quake.

Mother of God.

In Re: Dirty Laundry

In connection with the above - Don Henley playing at the 1992 Clinton Inaugural Ball - I wish to bring your attention to THIS little essay by one claiming to be a Real TV Anchor.

If it is true, no wonder the Dinosaur Media DeathWatch claims another victim every day.

Holly[Extremely]Weird

In the course of the human events I've beheld this last half century, I can say that I've seen a great deal. I've seen cities like Chicago rise to glory, and my home city die of leprosy. I've seen the glory of Europe and the lights go out on Broadway. I've met Presidents and peasants, shaken hands with amiable murderers and irascible saints, held my newborn son and ancient mother in my arms. I've been to the Embassy Ball and I've beheld mass graves and the victims of genocide.

But never, but never, have I met anybody like Tia Tequila or Katy Perry.

And for that last I must say I am eternally grateful.

Haiti: My. God.

I'm shamelessly stealing this link from LGF.

This needs to be seen.

They're talking a HALF MILLION casualties.

"Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed," Preval told the Miami Herald. "There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them."

Even the main prison in the capital fell down, "and there are reports of escaped inmates," U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said in Geneva.

The head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission was missing and the Roman Catholic archbishop of Port-au-Prince was dead.

Mother of God. Have mercy on these people, Lord.

Avatar: Hogwash in 3D

Hat Tip: the geniuses at failblog.org

Yesterday AM I was digging through a stack of old and much loved paperbacks and found myself rereading Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, which celebrated human victory in interstellar war against a hive-race of space spiders -- an achievement worthy of celebration because "both races are strong and tough and want the same real estate."

Last night I went to see (front row, 3D, Imax) Avatar.... the anti-Starship Troopers. To say the least.

I emerged with a splitting headache.

Oh, sure, the visuals were awesome. But the story was nothing more than a rehash of the what-happens-when-White-Europeans-encounter-noble-savages nonsense we've all come to know and loathe.

Noble Savages my butt. Sure, 15th Century unbathed Euroes were no prize, but the peoples of the Americas weren't exactly peace-love-dove types either (EVERY human has eaten the apple!).

Just once I'd love for them to make a movie about the fall of the Aztecs that showed the monstrous bastards for what they were before Our Lady crushed them beneath her heel. Hint: they weren't exactly Christian Bernard wannabees wielding stone knives on their sacrificial altars.

Besides, the premise of the movie is absurd. With PC nazis everywhere now, the chances of our actually REACHING an alien planet are zilch (leaving aside the physical barriers); were we to find one with sentients on the surface, we CERTAINLY wouldn't be down there mining dilithium crystals from under their sacred shrines and apartment complexes. What frakking hogwash.

I want those three hours of my life back so I can spend them on something useful.

ADDENDUM

Somehow the moral superiority of spear-and-arrow-casting woad warriors over humans is not clearly established. Truly, their only claim to the forest is, "We were here first!". A claim that, alas, history shows that when confronting vastly superior alien tech will, along with a buck and a half, get you a Venti at Starbuck's. (A grande is three and a quarter.)

I DO know that the advantages of living in a forest and shooting deer with blowdarts over ambling over to a grocery store and buying fresh ground beef to make hamburgers out of escapes me; give me light beer and blue jeans any day of the week, thanks.

ADDENDUM II

THIS would have made a much more interesting movie, methinx: the story of Scientist Kenneth Good and his Yanomama mama, Yerema, nine years old when they first married, and her eventual decision to go with him to New Jersey.... and return to the rain forest after deciding that a steady diet of MTV and Mickey Dees wudn't for her.

Headline du Jour

The WashPost reports:

Obama administration says there was no smoking gun before attempted airline bombing

Maybe not before, but there appears to have been one afterwards....

(ba DUM bump)

Holocaust Museum Killer Is Dead

The killer of Stephen Tyrone Johns at the Holocaust Museum in July has died.

May God have mercy on his sorry excuse for a soul.

Tattered Remnants #024: Titanic Heroes

WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST: HEROES OF THE TITANIC

(Read all about the Tattered Remnants by clicking {here}.)

Dance band on the Titanic
Sing "Nearer, my God, to Thee"
The iceberg's on the starboard bow
Won't you dance with me
- Harry Chapin

It is in time of horrible disasters that the hidden virtues of the Tattered Remnant are often revealed. Some in steadfastness and strength keep order so that those who can save themselves do so. Some simply withhold themselves from rescue so that the young, the weak, and the ladies may survive. And some deliberately sacrifice themselves so that others may live.

The sinking of HMS Titanic forms the left-hand bookend of the catalogue of horrors we call the Twentieth Century, with the 9/11 atrocities forming the right. On this bitter and terrible night remembered, that of April 14-15, 1912, when a shipload of over two thousand people went from sleep to wakefulness to alertness to panic to horror to death in the course of three hours, some 1500 people lost their lives in the cruel, cold North Atlantic.

Now, three paragraphs into this retelling of an oft-told tale, I'm going to mention James Cameron's 1995 film "Titanic" just to get it out of the way. I have a love-hate relationship with this movie. The plot for the first half of the flick is lifted directly from the 1980 classic weepy Somewhere in Time: all of the plot elements are there, including the setting of a luxurious castle in the middle of great waters (the Grand Hotel is on Mackinac Island in northern Lake Huron), the old lady actress recalling her young love, the Iconic Object From The Past, the traveling-back-in-time to Spring 1912, the young man dying for his lady, the again-youthful lovers reunited in the next world, etc etc. The main difference, of course, is that the Grand Hotel doesn't sink into the Great Lakes at the end. (And a good thing, too.)

Anyway. The movie has become so embedded into the popular consciousness that "Titanic" is the gold standard of Titanic memory. But this is not about fictional turnip ghosts -- but true heroes.


THE WALLACE HARTLEY BAND

Well, they soon used up all of the lifeboats
But there were a lot of us left on board
I heard the drummer sayin' "Boys, just keep playin'"
"Now we're doin' this gig for the Lord"
-Harry Chapin

Their names, clockwise from the top left:

John Clarke
Percy Taylor
Theodore Brailey
Roger Bricoux
Jock Hume
Georges Krins
John Woodward (not pictured).

And in the center, band leader Wallace Hartley.

There is much to tell of the Titanic band members; Bill Whittle has done a marvelous job here; I cannot better his version.

But I join with him in saying: Remember these men.

They were, essentially, "deadheaders." The ship didn't employ them as crew; they were entertainers hired at dirt wages by some subcontractor for the privilege of entertaining the rich of First Class as they dined. They weren't paid by the contracting company, either; the assumption was that their tips would serve as their pay.

The Captain asked them to play happy and hopeful music as the ship began to go down.

So, they stayed and they played.

They played waltzes. They played ragtime. They played hymns of hope and hymns beseeching.

They played their lives away.

They were under no obligation to do so. They weren't under the Captain's command. As first class inhabitants (if not passengers) they had the best chance of any aboard the ship to survive.

But they remained.

They didn't play because they were ordered to. They played because music was their life. And in playing, they earned eternal memory by the human race, who look to them even now, a century later, as among the very the best to whom their people ever gave birth.

There are those who argue, perhaps rightly, that the stand of Englishmen against the Nazis were their finest hour. Perhaps. But the hour of music these men provided must surely rank as equal to the valor of their nephews of 1940.

Wallace Hartley.

John Clarke.

Percy Taylor.

Theodore Brailey.

Roger Bricoux.

Jock Hume.

Georges Krins.

John Woodward.

None of them survived.

A contemporary news account stated that "the part played by the orchestra on board the Titanic in her last dreadful moments will rank among the noblest in the annals of heroism at sea."

Indeed.

Shut off, shut off the ragtime ! The lights are falling low !
The deck is buckling under us ! She's sinking by the bow !
One hymn of hope from dying hands on dying ears to fall-
Gently the music fades away — and so, God rest us all !
- Arthur Conan-Doyle


FATHER THOMAS BYLES


"There's no way that this could happen"
I could hear the old captain curse
He ordered lifeboats away, that's when I heard the chaplain say
"Women and children and chaplains first"

I love Harry Chapin, but Father Thomas Byles, a priest of Christ, surely gave lie to that last line.

Thomas Byles

....was born Roussel Davids Byles in Leeds, Yorkshire, the eldest of seven children of the Reverend Dr. Alfred Holden Byles, a congregationalist minister, and his wife Louisa Davids. He attended Leamington College and Rossall School, Fleetwood, Lancashire, between 1885 and 1889, then went to Balliol College, Oxford in 1889 to study theology, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1894. While at Oxford, Byles converted to the Roman Catholic faith, taking the name Thomas. In 1899, he went to the Beda College in Rome to study for the priesthood, and was ordained in 1902. He was assigned to St. Helen's Parish in Ongar, Essex in 1905.

Father Byles was walking the deck, reciting his breviary, when the iceberg struck. As the ship descended into chaos, he held his place, guiding women and children to the boats, and is credited to getting Margaret Brown to hers. He was said to have refused a lifeboat at least twice.

He gave his last moments in offering confession, absolution and perhaps even eternal life to those who turned to him their final minutes. He too chose to go down with the ship rather than turn his back on his calling. While he was neither a saint nor a martyr in the strict sense, it is clear that his actions in his last minute showed that he had the makings of both.

Father Boyle did not say "...and chaplains first." He died at his ultimate duty station, and if there is any truth to Catholic theology at all, it is entirely possible that his death bought the salvation of the souls of many. There is no finer way for any Christian to end his life; for no greater love hath a man.....

"He died a martyr of charity, performing the most perfect act of love of his God and of his neighbor." - The Vicar General, Society of Jesus, 1912




THOMAS ANDREWS

Mama stood cryin' at the dockside
Sayin' "Please son, don't take this trip"
I said "Mama, sweet Mama, don't you worry none"
"Even God couldn't sink this ship"
- Harry Chapin

The man who built Titanic, he took full and total responsibility for its failures and its design flaws, the exact nature of which was unknown to him at the time of the sinking, but ultimately revealed to be a short rudder and, possibly, bad steel and rivets that went into the hull.

He was seen below decks during the evacuation, making a last check to be sure that as many people from the lower levels of the ship as possible had a life jacket and an opportunity to survive.

He was last seen in life staring into a painting in the clubroom, waiting for the last call, contemplating in melancholy the painting of Southampton port.

Like the Captain, he chose to go down with his ship. The accident that occurred could not be attributed fully to him -- excessive speed was problem number one, followed by the choice of White Star Line not to put enough boats on board -- but he still took responsibility for whatever contribution to the loss he had made by choosing to stay until the end with those who died as a result of the catastrophe.

One might question whether this makes him one of the Tattered Remnant, for suicide is forbidden. But he recognized that he shared responsibility for the disaster, and withheld himself from rescue, allowing others to take his place: which is more than you can say for the owner of the White Star Line, who was rescued, but whose name I cannot recall at this instant.


WILLIAM MURDOCH

Well, the whistle blew and they turned the screws
It turned the water into foam
Destination sweet salvation
Goodbye home sweet home-Harry Chapin

Of all the distortions of the movie "Titanic" the denigration of William Murdoch was possibly the most outrageous.

He was First Officer, on duty on the bridge when the ship struck the berg. He it was who desperately attempted to port around it; he it was whose hand was at the conn when the accident occurred. But in no way did he shoot any passengers and certainly he did not take his own life like a coward, as portrayed in the film.

After the collision Murdoch was put in charge of the starboard evacuation, during which he launched 10 lifeboats, containing almost 75 percent of the total number who survived. He was last seen attempting to launch Collapsible Lifeboat A. He was never seen again after Titanic disappeared into the Atlantic Ocean on the morning of 15 April 1912. His body, if recovered, was never identified. .... Several members of the crew, including the ship's lamp trimmer, Samuel Hemming, and Second Officer Charles Lightoller said they saw Murdoch attempting to free Collapsible A from the falls on the Boat Deck just before the bridge submerged in the final stages of the sinking, when a huge wave washed him overboard into the sea. Surviving wireless operator Harold Bride later stated that he saw Murdoch near Collapsible Lifeboat "B," but that he died in the water.

A great memorial fund was established in his memory in his home town: a fund that was much enhanced when an executive from the movie studios responsible for the film flew to Scotland and made a public apology, as well as a great donation to the fund.



MARGARET BROWN

They were burnin' all the flares for candles
In the banquet they were throwin' in first class
And we were blowin' waltzes in the barroom
When the universe went CRASH!
- Harry Chapin

"The Unsinkable Molly Brown" of course is most famous for having received that most American of tributes, a musical comedy written in her honor.

In spite of that, her actual achievements, and not just those on the night of the sinking, deserve to be remembered. First, Wikipedia:

Margaret helped others board the lifeboats but was finally convinced to leave the ship in Lifeboat No. 6. She would come to be regarded as a heroine for her efforts to get lifeboat 6 to go back to look for survivors. After the Titanic sank, she and several other women passengers took control of Boat 6, rowing "to keep warm" but headed back, against the demands of the head crewman, to find survivors in the water ... However, some sources report that no survivors were found, except by Lifeboat No. 12. Onboard the rescue ship R.M.S. Carpathia, Margaret Brown took a leadership role among the women passengers.

When the Carpathia reached dockside, Margaret went to considerable expense to have made a silver loving cup to be given to the crew of the Carpathia; furthermore, she had commemorative medals made for the individuals who crewed the rescue ship.

Her heroism and strength showed itself again after the event. Almost exactly two years later, in the town of Ludlow, Colorado, some 20 people were killed when the Colorado National Guard assaulted a tent colony of striking coal miners. Wikipedia reports that two women, eleven children, six miners and union officials and one National Guardsman were killed.

On the morning of April 20, [1914,] the day after Easter was celebrated by the
many Greek immigrants at Ludlow, three Guardsmen appeared at the camp ordering the release of a man they claimed was being held against his will. This request prompted the camp leader, Louis Tikas, to meet with a local militia commander at the train station in Ludlow village, a half mile (0.8 km) from the colony. While this meeting was progressing, two companies of militia installed a machine gun on a ridge near the camp and took a position along a rail route about half a mile south of Ludlow. Anticipating trouble, Tikas ran back to the camp. The miners, fearing for the safety of their families, set out to flank the militia positions. A firefight soon broke out.

The fighting raged for the entire day. The militia was reinforced by non-uniformed mine guards later in the afternoon. At dusk, a passing freight train stopped on the tracks in front of the Guards' machine gun placements, allowing many of the miners and their families to escape to an outcrop of hills to the east called the "Black Hills." By 7:00 p.m., the camp was in flames, and the militia descended on it and began to search and loot the camp. ...

[Three] captured miners were later found shot dead. ... During the battle, four women and eleven children had been hiding in a pit beneath one tent, where they were trapped when the tent above them was set on fire. Two of the women and all of the children suffocated.

Molly Brown's connections to the Colorado mining industry -- which had given her and her husband their riches -- combined with her fame from the Titanic disaster, gave her "good offices" to serve as an intermediary and a badly needed moderating influence between management and labor.

Margaret, who had connections in both the West and the East, went to Ludlow, in answer to urgent appeals for help from both sides, each seeing her as an ally. Margaret struggled to maintain a middle ground, refusing to join radicals calling for the resignation of the governor, while also challenging Rockefeller on his harsh business practices. As the two sides became further entrenched, Margaret spoke out about miners’ rights and pressured Rockefeller with the resulting negative media. Rockefeller eventually softened his stance and agreed to make concessions. The conflict at Ludlow was ultimately resolved and, in many ways, marked the end of the radical wing of the workers’ movement in America as the new PR savvy of industrialists like Rockefeller grew more and more effective.

She also went on to work in France providing war relief before American entry.

She died in 1932 at the age of 65, her money almost all spent.




KINGS OF THE WORLD: THE MEN OF THE TITANIC

Dance band on the Titanic
Sing "Nearer, my God, to Thee"
The iceberg's on the starboard bow
Won't you dance with me
- Harry Chapin

"Thank you, no; we are dressed in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen. But we would like a brandy!"
- attr. Benjamin Guggenheim, April 15, 1912, 12:30 AM

In the Waterfront section of Southwest Washington, DC, not far from the now-bitterly poor neighborhood called "Anacostia," there is a battered memorial. In one of those strange rituals that only a capital city can long support, there has been a tradition that, at midnight or so of April 14 of every year, a society of men gather at this monument and, as the clock strikes twelve, they raise a toast in commemoration of the men who chose to follow the ancient custom of "Women and Children First."

Those numbers were very great. Wikipedia reports that, for instance, of those men in Second Class on the Titanic, some 92% died, giving their places to the women and children on board. All but one child in first and second class survived; only 20% of the men survived, compared to nearly 75% of the women.

It is unknown if this rule would still be respected in this bitter era of sexual equality-as-battlefield. I think it would be, for I think it is one of those eternal rules of human decency that is written in every human heart (even if it is disregarded by many).

I should also note one of the many women among those who stayed behind: Ida Strauss, husband of former Congressman Isadore Strauss. Although a first class passenger, she refused a place in the boat, choosing to honor her vows to her husband and stay with him to the bitter end. "Not I—I will not leave my husband. All these years we've traveled together, and shall we part now? No, our fate is one."

(And of course we also remember the mothers who had small children that they protected as best they could as the waters came to enclose them.)

But that said, let us not forget those men who chose not to step on a lifeboat so that others might live, for it is this selfless act that made them all "Kings of the World."

For they are the truest embodiments of the Tattered Remnant that could be.

All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly, which can — and must — be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. ... Attempts to formulate a "perfect society" on any foundation other than "Women and children first!" is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal....
- Lazarus Long (Robert A. Heinlein), Time Enough for Love



ADDENDUM I - ROSE DEWITT BUKATER

I've always loathed "Titanic's" lead character. Rose Dewitt Bukater -– portrayed at the age of 17 by Kate Winslett and her two best friends, Port and Starboard -– is most decidedly not one of the Tattered Remnant, but is a self centered rhymes-with-witch who stops at nothing to get her way. She humiliates her family in public at every opportunity. She later makes her unmarried granddaughter wait in her hand and foot.

She deliberately tosses a zillion-dollar blue diamond that belongs to the insurance company (or should be left to the granddaughter) into the drink. The alternate ending on the CD -- where Rose throws the rock into the sea in full view of her hosts on the Russian research vessel -- needs to be seen (once).

(But, either way... didn't she realize how many billable hours in litigation she prevented? Doesn't she know there are starving lawyers in Ethiopia?!)

It could be argued that the sinking of HMS Titanic was her fault--since she was on the deck smooching with Jack, distracting the first officer and the seamen in the crow's nest from paying proper attention to their jobs.

More seriously, she was remarkably cruel, in that she let her own mother believe, for the rest of her (the mother's) life, she was dead in the sinking, which if you think about it is about a 9.5 on a logarithmic Nastymeter.

Really, I always figure that the alternate universe in which Cameron's "Titanic" takes place would probably have been better off if somebody else had gotten to the floating bedstead.... but that would not have made a very good movie, would it?

ADDENDUM II - ELBERT HUBBARD

Mr. and Mrs. Straus, I envy you that legacy of love and loyalty left to your children and grandchildren. The calm courage that was yours all your long and useful career was your possession in death. You knew how to do three great things—you knew how to live, how to love and how to die. One thing sure, there are just two respectable ways to die. One is of old age, and the other is by accident. All disease is indecent. Suicide is atrocious. But to pass out, as did Mr and Mrs Isador Strauss, is glorious. Few have such privilege. Happy lovers, both. In life they were never separated, and in death they are not divided.

- Artist Elbert Hubbard, 1912

On May 7. 1915, Elbert Hubbard and his wife Alice perished in the sinking of the Lusitania.

On Patriotic Dissent

I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate, and you disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic, and we should stand up and say we are Americans, and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration!

Hillary Rodham Clinton, 4-28-03

"...A Harsh Mistress"

Lunar Colonies in holes in the ground?

(CNN) -- Building a home near a moon crater or a lunar sea may sound nice, but moon colonists might have a much better chance of survival if they just lived in a hole.

That's the message sent by an international team of scientists who say they've discovered a protected lunar "lava tube" -- a deep, giant hole -- that might be well suited for a moon colony or a lunar base.

As usual, Robert Heinlein got there first.

Happy International Binary Day!

Thousands of people will gather in Times Square this afternoon to watch the ball drop at 1:01:01 PM today 01/01/10....

This is not to be confused with the National Pi Fight, which will happen on 3/14/15 at 9:26:53, or International e Day, which will take place on 2/7/18 at 2 PM.

These latter holidays are not expected to be widely celebrated as the reasons for them are completely irrational.

The Naughty 'Aughties are Over.

So there is but one thing to do.



A blessed New Year and New Decade to everyone.

It's gotta get better; it can't get worse. (Please, Lord!)

NYT: Nothing To See Here, Folks, Just Move Along

The all-knowing New York Times on the Interpol thingie:

Contrary to its portrayal in some movies, Interpol has no police force that conducts investigations and makes arrests. Rather, it serves its 188 member countries by working as a clearinghouse for police departments in different nations to share law enforcement information — like files on wanted criminals and terrorists, stolen cars and passports, and notices that a law enforcement agency has issued an arrest warrant for a fugitive.

In the United States, a bureau at the Justice Department staffed by American officials transmits information between law enforcement agencies and Interpol. If a foreign country issues an arrest warrant for a person inside the United States, it is up to the United States government, based on its own laws, to decide whether to apprehend the suspect.

So 'splain, please, Mr. NYT, why was it necessary therefor to give them diplomatic immunity and to make their archives off-limits to FOIA and subpoena?

Answer: Because it gives the US DOJ the ability to simply shove a box full of uncomfortable documents across the hall to the Interpol liaison office and voila! Instant inability to access by the public! No FOIA jurisdiction! And, yes, no nosy NYT reporters can look at it!

You'd think that the folks who brought you the Pentagon Papers would find this just ... a wee bit disturbing, no? No?

Guess not. Guess only mouthbreathing dimwit conservatives who love Sarah Palin and want to fill the world with little Trigs worry about such things.

Bah.

War's Over: A Photoessay.

(Someone forwarded this to me; I do not know the source.)

HIROSHIMA, 2009







DETROIT, 2009.











The war is over. So who won?

P.S. The picture of Tiger Stadium no longer reflects reality.

They tore it down this last fall. (The abandoned building to the left however is still standing.)

Is Interpol Now Immune from Restraint in the US?

The Web is screaming.

Everywhere you look, they're screaming about a new Executive Order, that supposedly gives INTERPOL – the international police organization once headed by Heinrich Himmler – TOTAL IMMUNITY to operate within the United States, free from let or hindrance by the FBI or from any Federal or State Court. The acts of their agents, they say, are absolutely diplomatically immune; their records, inviolate and unsearchable (and un-subpoena-able!), their property free from search, and everyone employed by the organization is now exempt from all Federal income tax, Social Security, or property taxation.

Sounds like tinfoil-hat territory, right?

There's one little problem with this story.

It appears to be entirely true.

ONE UPON A TIME, in 1983, President Ronald Reagan gave the following order authorizing INTERPOL to operate in the United States as an International Organization, however requiring that it be subjected to certain restrictions: their records, like any law enforcement agency, would be subjected to search and review under certain circumstances; income of INTERPOL employees were taxable for both income tax and Social Security taxes; they were subject to our laws and not granted diplomatic immunity for their acts. In short, they were under the same restrictions as the FBI, ATF, Secret Service, or other Federal law enforcement agency His order reads like this (boldface for emphasis).

Executive Order 12425 of June 16, 1983
International Criminal Police
Organizations

By virtue of the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and statutes of the United States, including Section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (59 Stat. 669, 22 U.S.C. 288), it is hereby ordered that the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), in which the United States participates pursuant to 22 U.S.C. 263a, is hereby designated as a public international organization entitled to enjoy the privileges, exemptions and immunities conferred by the International Organizations Immunities Act; except those provided by Section 2(c), the portions of Section 2(d) and Section 3 relating to customs duties and federal internal-revenue importation taxes, Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6 of that Act. This designation is not intended to abridge in any respect the privileges, exemptions or immunities which such organization may have acquired or may acquire by international agreement or by Congressional action.

Ronald Reagan

In 1995, certain amendments were made to the order, stating that all physical property of INTERPOL in the United States was exempted from all taxation to the same extent that our diplomatic property is exempt. Furthermore, their agents and official communications obtained diplomatic immunity (and thus are exempt from our laws).

Executive Order 12971 of September 15, 1995
Amendment to Executive Order
No. 12425

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions, and immunities upon the International Criminal Police Organization (‘‘INTERPOL’’) it is hereby ordered that Executive Order No. 12425 be amended by deleting, in the first sentence, the words ‘‘the portions of Section 2(d) and’’ and the words ‘‘relating to customs duties and federal internal-revenue importation taxes’’.

William J. Clinton

Finally, most disturbingly, the President of the United States last week stripped away all protections of the American people from the actions of INTERPOL by granting them full diplomatic immunity, full inviolability of their records and complete immunity from search or seizure, even in the case of law enforcement investigation by another law enforcement agency (like, oh, the FBI).

Executive Order 13524 of December 16, 2009

Amending Executive Order
12425 Designating Interpol as a Public International Organization Entitled To Enjoy Certain Privileges, Exemptions, and Immunities

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (22 U.S.C. 288), and in order to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions, and immunities to the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), it is hereby ordered that Executive Order 12425 of June 16, 1983, as amended, is further amended by deleting from the first sentence the words ‘‘except those provided by Section 2(c), Section 3, Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6 of that Act’’ and the semicolon that immediately precedes them.

Barack Obama

Therefore Presidential Order 12425 now reads as follows:

By virtue of the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and statutes of the United States, including Section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (59 Stat. 669, 22 U.S.C. 288), it is hereby ordered that the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), in which the United States participates pursuant to 22 U.S.C. 263a, is hereby designated as a public international organization entitled to enjoy the privileges, exemptions and immunities conferred by the International Organizations Immunities Act. This designation is not intended to abridge in any respect the privileges, exemptions or immunities which such organization may have acquired or may acquire by international agreement or by Congressional action.

Which means that INTERPOL now has privileges and immunities as an International Organization with the following new (or in the case of the un-italicized text, Clinton-era) immunities:

except those provided by Section 2(c), the portions of Section 2(d) and Section 3 relating to customs duties and federal internal-revenue importation taxes, Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6 of that Act.

INTERPOL was previously excluded from all of these immunities under the International Organizations Immunities Act. They paid taxes; they were not personally inviolate; their records were not inviolate; their records could be seized, searched and, when necessary, subpoenaed; and their employees were taxed for income, Social Security, and property taxes.

No longer.

Let's examine, section by section, Section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (59 Stat. 669, 22 U.S.C. 288), which can be found at this link.

59 Stat. 669, §2c

Property and assets of international organizations wheresoever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search unless such immunity be expressly waived and [be free] from confiscation. The archives of international organizations shall be inviolable.

[Translation: If INTERPOL violates our laws we can't search or seize their "inviolable" records AND NO COURT CAN SUBPOENA THEM.]

59 Stat. 669, §2d

Insofar as concerns customs duties and international revenue taxes imposed upon or by reason of importation, and the procedures in connection therewith; the registration of foreign agents, and the treatment of official communications, the privileges, exemptions and immunities to which international organizations shall be entitled shall be those accorded under similar circumstances to foreign governments.

[TRANSLATION: All physical property of INTERPOL in the United States is exempt from all taxation to the same extent that our diplomatic property is exempt. Furthermore, their agents and official communications have diplomatic immunity and thus are exempt from our laws. This is a Clinton era change.]

59 Stat. 669, §3

Pursuant to regulations prescribed by the Commissioner of Customs with the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, the baggage and effects of alien officers and employees of international organizations, or of aliens designated by foreign governments to serve as their representatives in or to such organizations, or of their families, suites and servants of such officers, employees, or representatives shall be admitted ... free of customs duties and free of internal revenue taxes imposed upon or by reason of importation (this italicized text was a Clinton era change).

[TRANSLATION: Customs can't search any property or baggage belonging to INTERPOL, any employee or servant of INTERPOL, or any members of their families.]

59 Stat. 669, §4
(Omitted; long passage on the terms of the Internal Revenue Act.)

[TRANSLATION: up: INTERPOL employees, servants or agents don't have to pay federal income taxes on their wages while working in the United States.]

59 Stat. 669, §5
(Omitted; long passage on Social Security Act.)

[TRANSLATION: Long passage; I'll sum up: INTERPOL employees, servants or agents don't have to pay SOCIAL SECURITY taxes while working in the United States.]

59 Stat. 669, §6
International organizations shall be exempt from all property taxes imposed by or under the authority of any Act of Congress, including such Acts as are applicable solely to the District of Columbia or the Territories.

[TRANSLATION: None needed; they're not subject to property tax.]

I hesitate to sound like an end-of-the-worlder or a tinfoil hat-wearer, but ladies and gentlemen, .... to use Law French, this Presidential Order is... ahem...

A. Very. Bad. Move.

Or worse.

They want to make a former SS controlled secret police force diplomatically immune, exempt from search or seizure or subpoena, and all its employees free from any and all taxation?

Please, Mr. President, what are you thinking?

ADDENDUM

Turns out that this is NOT-NOT-NOT tinfoil-hat territory.

Even National Review sees this as a problem.

Money graf:

Why would we elevate an international police force above American law? Why would we immunize an international police force from the limitations that constrain the FBI and other American law-enforcement agencies? Why is it suddenly necessary to have, within the Justice Department, a repository for stashing government files which, therefore, will be beyond the ability of Congress, American law-enforcement, the media, and the American people to scrutinize?

WHY, INDEED.

LABEL THESE PIX

Are these:

(1) Iranian protestors being gassed by the Ahmonajihad islamocrazy regime? Or

(2) Former LGF posters being run off of LittleGreenSTFUtballs by Charles and co.?

Your call.

Tattered Remnants #023: László Tőkés

(Read all about the Tattered Remnants by clicking {here}.)

THE SPARK OF TIMIŞOARA: LÁSZLÓ TŐKÉS

I write this on December 26, 2009. Yesterday, along with being the Feast of the Nativity of Christ the Lord, was also a special anniversary of a different sort: twenty years to the day from the time that a long Winter at last yielded to Christmas, that an evil dwarf and his ice queen finally met the justice that they long deserved, and their people delivered to freedom.

* * * * *

His name was László Tőkés and he was a minister of Christ. He lived in the obscure town of Timişoara, in the far western tip of Romania. The region in which he lived is called The Banat; although within the borders of Romania, it has a very large Hungarian-speaking minority. The region has, over the years, toggled back and forth between Hungarian and Romanian control.

In December 1989 László Tőkés was a pastor of a Hungarian speaking Protestant church in this town far away from the nation's capital and leadership. He had acquired a name for himself as a supporter–-some say agitator–-in favor of greater linguistic and cultural rights for those, like himself, of Hungarian extraction.

Let Wikipedia tell the story:

Like his father, Tőkés was a persistent critic of the Ceausescu regime. While a pastor in the Transylvanian town of Dej, he contributed to the clandestine Hungarian-language journal Ellenpontok ("Counterpoints"; 1981-82). An article there on abuses of human rights in Romania appears to have been the occasion of his first harassment by the Securitate [secret police]. He was reassigned to the village of Sânpetru de Câmpie, but refused to go and instead spent two years living in his parents' house in Cluj-Napoca.

His situation was discussed in the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, which led indirectly to his appointment to be assistant pastor in Timişoara, where he gave sermons that opposed the Romanian national government's program of systematization, which proposed radical restructuring of the infrastructure of Romanian towns and villages. This was seen by Hungarians as a particular threat to their villages, although Tokés' sermons did not single this out, calling for solidarity between Hungarians and Romanians.

But times were changing in the late 1980s. The death of the monstrous Yuri Andropov was followed by the brief papacy of Constantin Chernenko–and then by the so-called reformer, Gorbachev.

And the first signs of springtime began to appear in Eastern Europe.

In May 1989, Hungary dropped all travel restrictions to the outside world; in August, a so-called "Friendship Picnic" ended when 900 guests–almost all East Germans–crossed the Hungarian border into Austria. The Hungarian Communists gave up absolute power in October, and the Berlin Wall first opened, and then completely fell in November. Solidarity had quietly but firmly taken power from the communists of Poland; the Velvet Revolution threw out Czechoslovakia's communist party.

There was but one bastion of hardline Communism left in Eastern Europe: Nicolae Ceauşescu's Romania.

This last near-Stalinist dictatorship had not changed a whit from the mid-1960s. But the winds of change were blowing, and to those who tried to listen, the creaking of the Romanian communist regime was clearly audible.

The horrors of the Ceauşescu regime, while perhaps not comparable to Auschwitz or the Cambodian killing fields, were still remarkable in their cruelty. Again, Wikipedia:

Ceauşescu visited the People's Republic of China, North Korea and North Vietnam in 1971 and was inspired by the hardline model he found there. He took great interest in the idea of total national transformation as embodied in the programs of the Korean Workers' Party and China's Cultural Revolution. Shortly after returning home, he began to emulate North Korea's system ....

[Ceauşescu] heralded the beginning of a "mini cultural revolution" in Romania, launching a Neo-Stalinist offensive against cultural autonomy, reaffirming an ideological basis for literature that, in theory, the Party had hardly abandoned. ... Strict ideological conformity in the humanities and social sciences was demanded. Competence and aesthetics were to be replaced by ideology; professionals were to be replaced by agitators; and culture was once again to become an instrument for political-ideological propaganda.

In this period, great but pointless national projects were undertaken. A new National Palace of the People and a subway system for the capital of Bucharest were built at enormous expense to the common people. Food and gasoline were strictly rationed: not because there were shortages but because as much agricultural output as possible was sold abroad with the intention of paying off Romania's national debt, a goal that was actually achieved in early 1989.

In contrast to the West and China, which turned wholeheartedly to violent population control through legalized abortion, Ceauşescu, through his wife Elena, fell off of the other side of the horse: they instituted a policy of population expansion at great cost to the common people, instituting policies that forced people to have children and actively taxed them if they did not have any (even if they were single).

They opened enormous orphanages to care for the children who were born to unwilling parents, then instituted policies, such as medically pointless involuntary blood-transfusions, that ended up spreading HIV to huge numbers of children. Even today, in 2009, Romania has 95% of Europe's pediatric AIDS population even though it has 3% of Europe's population.

It should also be noted that the Ceauşescus attempted to obliterate the culture of one of their own minorities. Romania had (and has) one of the largest populations of Roma (those people known most commonly to us as "gypsies") in Europe. They were (and are) viewed with hostility as they were and are commonly viewed as a criminal element. To solve this "problem" it became Ceauşescu's and his wife's desire that the Roma lose their identity as a people. They were forbidden to wander in their time-honored fashion, forced to settle in reservations, and were forbidden to use their ancient Romany language; furthermore, their children were often taken away from them and placed in the above-mentioned orphanages.

This combination of needless privation, political and literary oppression, the Ceausescu cult of personality, and the steadfast refusal of Ceauşescu and his wife to read the signs of the times and to sense the winds of change, led to an explosive situation.

It was in this atmosphere of an accumulation of toxic political waste that László Tőkés caused a spark. Again, Wikipedia:

In the summer of 1988, [Tőkés] organized opposition to systematization among Hungarian Reformed Church pastors, again drawing the strong attention of the Securitate. After the Securitate objected to a cultural festival organized on October 31, 1988 (the Day of Reformation), jointly with the amateur Hungarian-language theatre group "Thalia", Bishop László Papp banned all youth activities in the Banat (the region of which Timişoara is part). Tőkés nonetheless collaborated with the bishop of the Romanian Orthodox Church on another festival in spring 1989.

On March 31, 1989, Papp ordered Tőkés to stop preaching in Timişoara and move to the isolated parish of Mineu. Tőkés refused the order, and his congregation supported him. The bishop began civil proceedings to evict him from his church flat. His power was cut off and his ration book taken away, but his parishioners continued to support and provision him, some of them being arrested and beaten for their trouble. At least one, Erno Ujvárossy, was found murdered in the woods outside Timişoara on September 14, and Tokés's father was briefly arrested.

A court ordered Tokés' eviction on October 20. He appealed. On November 2, four attackers armed with knives broke into his flat; Securitate [secret-police] agents looked on while he and his friends fought off the assailants. The Romanian ambassador was summoned to the Hungarian Foreign Ministry and told of the Hungarian government's concern for his safety. His appeal was turned down, and his eviction set for Saturday December 15.

His Hungarian-speaking parishioners began to gather at his apartment to discourage the eviction. Like a snowball rolling downhill, the group grew to include Romanian youth, and then people from all social groups. Signs denouncing the regime and calling for free elections began to appear. Within days the entire city of Timişoara was in revolt.

Ceauşescu, clueless to the last, organized a massive "spontaneous" rally as he gave a great speech on December 21. And spontaneous it was, but not in a way he expected. This massive televised rally, intended to transmit his supremacy to the nation and the world, ended in unexpected booing. Ceauşescu's look of astonishment at the people's hatred was the crowning moment of the Revolutions of 1989. His TV cameras were cut off, and he fled his own Presidential palace by helicopter; captured before he could flee the country, he was returned to Bucharest and, after a two hour drumhead court martial, he and his wife were executed by firing squad on Christmas Day 1989.

The death penalty should not be so lightly given, but bitter things happen in revolutions. And Ceauşescu's quarter-century of brutal terrorism and manhandling of the people of Romania, as well as the abominable social policies pressed by his wife, earned them both their date with the firing squad.

To Tőkés' credit he played no part in the violent denouement of the Romanian revolution. He was eventually elected the Lutheran bishop of his region, and devoted the next years to an (alas, largely unsuccessful) attempt to re-obtain his church's properties that had been confiscated by the Communists. He was elected to the European Parliament in 2007. In 2009, he achieved recognition for his efforts to overthrow his nation's bitter dictatorship when he was awarded the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom from the Victims of Communism Foundation.

In some way, Tőkés' contribution cannot be viewed as crucial in that it is very likely that some event would have triggered the collapse of Romanian Communism. The Ceausescu regime was on its last legs by any measure and its overthrow was almost certain, given the events in the nations surrounding it.

But László Tőkés was not some random historical personage. He, like his father before him, suffered significant retribution from the Communist authorities for decades before his stand. He was a subject of concern and of hearings before the United States Senate long before his stand that December night. While perhaps not a Solzhenitsyn, he was heroic in his own way. And it should be remembered that he chose not to take up arms in defense of himself but rather stood on his moral authority as a pastor and as a Christian.

The pen of history writes, and having written, moves on. History moved forward and Tőkés was, in fact, the individual who fired a moral shot heard around the world. His contribution to the destruction of communism is measurable, and he should be saluted for what he did. László Tőkés is surely one of the Tattered Remnant.

ADDENDUM

It is melancholy for those of us who are individuals who struggle against prenatal surgical violence to contemplate Nikolae Ceauşescu and his vile wife Elena. While the end of preserving unborn life may have been laudable in itself, his motives were not, and the direct and oppressive manner in which they persued their ends should make anyone who stands for human liberty recoil.

Yes, if legalized abortion is once more suppressed, there need to be legal mechanisms in place to encourage childbirth and to discourage and punish those who insist on killing the unborn. But the methods used by the Romanian Communists are in thier own way just as repugnant as those used by the Chinese Communists to restrict birth. Careful thought must be given to how we achieve our ends. This much we know: if there is a question as to which way we must modify our society to end the horror called legal abortion, the bitter ghost of Nikolae Ceauşescu, a philosophical descendant of Vlad Ţepeş the Impaler, surely does not provide an answer.

Not by a long shot.

Holy Innocents: Still Dying At Herod's Hand

Sunday commemorates the Feast of the Holy Innocents, which remembers those young children destroyed by a tyrant at Bethlehem. Whether they were counted in the thousands (as thought in Tradition) or dozens (as believed today) they represent all the children, from those murdered at the hand of Pharaoh to kill Moses up to today, who died at the hands of murderous princes seeking eternal power.

The following essay appeared in The Taipei Times. However, since it is a public statement by a sitting U.S. Congressman made in the line of duty, I am assuming that it is not covered by the Copyright Laws of the United States and am taking the liberty of reposting it in its entirety.

Remember: Someone at the White House actually saw fit to hang a picture of Mao on his Christmas Tree.

Behold the handiwork of The Mao Emperor. Anita Dunn and Diane Francis of FinancialPost.Com, in particular, please note.

=======================

One-child policy a rights disaster

By Chris Smith

Thursday, Nov 19, 2009, Page 8

She was dragged into a room to be forcibly aborted with “hundreds of pregnant moms … just like pigs in the slaughterhouse,” Wujian, a Chinese student in the US, told a congressional human rights commission in Washington on Nov. 10.

“He must speak up for us, for our lives, for our human rights. He must speak now,” she pleaded.

He — US President Barack Obama — was in Beijing this week for talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and other senior Chinese officials. Coming on the heels of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s infamous remark made en route to Beijing earlier this year, that human rights can’t “interfere” with US engagement on climate change or selling Treasury bills, the witnesses at the hearing expressed deeply held concerns that human rights in China — especially forced abortion — have been demoted, trivialized and dismissed by the Obama administration.

Through her tears, Wujian appealed to the president to speak with clarity and boldness for the women and children of China who, like herself, have been traumatized by China’s one-child-per-couple policy, which relies on forced abortion and forced sterilization to achieve its goals. Her appeal was echoed by several human rights activists and a world-renowned demographer.

Having become pregnant without a government “permit,” Wujian lived in hiding for months. Family planning cadres, unable to find her remote shack, beat her father almost to death. Still she refused to turn herself in. Eventually the cadres found her.

“The room was full of moms who had just gone through a forced abortion,” she remembered. “Some moms were crying, some moms were mourning, some moms were screaming and one mom was rolling on the floor with unbearable pain.”

The Chinese people are not docile in the face of government abuse. There are about 80,000 anti-government protests in China every year. Nor do the Chinese people accept the one-child policy. Women’s Rights in China (WRIC), a group of Chinese-American women established by Annie Jing Zhang (張菁) and Chai Ling (柴玲) — the famous students’ “general commander” at Tiananmen Square in 1989 — commissioned some courageous Chinese to collect new evidence on such hitherto murky events as a mass uprising in Guangxi Province.

When Guangxi cadres started a one-child policy crackdown in 2007, as many as 50,000 people rose up and destroyed half-a-dozen government buildings and beat several policemen to death. Male villagers smashed the homes of one-child policy personnel, while pregnant women hid in the mountains and along lake shores. It ended worse than you might expect.

Police and family planning cadres organized themselves into military formations and captured hundreds of farmers, surrounded villages, extracted fines by armed force, smashed homes, broke up families, confiscated farm animals and valuables, and took hostages. The captured women were bound, taken to the hospital and sterilized. Other women agreed to be sterilized in order to get their husbands, sons and fathers released from jail.

The one-child policy is enforced with the most ruthless measures, which have not abated in recent years, as the Chinese government would have us believe. Again, Wujian’s tale is emblematic. Struggling with a nurse, begging and weeping, she was told that cadres had performed more than 10,000 forced abortions in her small county that year. Her forced abortion over, Wujian, so traumatized she could not eat, speak or drink for days, returned home to nurse a father recovering from his beatings.

The message is unmistakable. Former longtime Chinese political prisoner and now activist Harry Wu (吳弘達) showed the commission photographs of banners hung across village streets: “Resistance to IUD [intrauterine device] insertion, sterilization and paying fines will cause the total destruction of your home and property! Destroy! Destroy! Destroy!” and “Resistance to sterilization will bring you nothing but detention; refusal to abort will lead to the destruction of your house and confiscation of your cattle.”

This policy affects every Chinese woman’s life. It invades her privacy, colors her experience of intimacy and motherhood with a sense of fear, humiliation, and powerlessness, and traumatizes her. As WRIC reported, family planning cadres require all women to maintain menstrual records and report every four months for crude breast-­uterine-labial checks — called “the three examinations.” The cadres are looking for indications of pregnancy or miscarriage, or removal of contraceptive rings — a serious crime. There are women who have removed their IUD rings living on boats in the Guangxi River, like hoboes or escaped criminals.

Thus the WHO reports more than 500 female suicides per day in China. It is the only country in the world where the female suicide rate is higher than the male — and it is three times higher.

“When I was writing this short testimony, several times I cried out,” Wujian said.

And so I — we — appeal to Obama: Seriously raise the plight of Chinese women who are every day cruelly and systematically assaulted by population control police. China’s population control policy is violence against women and violence against children — by the hundreds of millions. It is the worst violation of women’s rights in human history.

Chris Smith is serving his 29th year in the US House of Representatives and specializes in human rights issues. [In November] he chaired a hearing of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission.

"A Sign Is Given Unto You"

Says it all.