Looks like this might be a good movie:
In darkness there can be light. In misery there can be beauty. In death there can be life.
[…]
What happens when make believe, believes it’s real?
Dark theme, and particularly noteworthy that it seems to be based on the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War.
Here is an interesting report on militant American forces operating in Iraq and elsewhere:
The former New York Times Mideast Bureau chief warns that the radical Christian right is coming dangerously close to its goal of co-opting the country’s military and law enforcement.
The drive by the Christian right to take control of military chaplaincies, which now sees radical Christians holding roughly 50 percent of chaplaincy appointments in the armed services and service academies, is part of a much larger effort to politicize the military and law enforcement. This effort signals the final and perhaps most deadly stage in the long campaign by the radical Christian right to dismantle America’s open society and build a theocratic state. A successful politicization of the military would signal the end of our democracy.
The parallels with historic militarist movements are obvious:
“Contracting out security to groups like Blackwater undermines our constitutional democracy,â€? said Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Their actions may not be subject to constitutional limitations that apply to both federal and state officials and employees—including First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights to be free from illegal searches and seizures. Unlike police officers they are not trained in protecting constitutional rights and unlike police officers or the military they have no system of accountability whether within their organization or outside it. These kind of paramilitary groups bring to mind Nazi Party brownshirts, functioning as an extrajudicial enforcement mechanism that can and does operate outside the law. The use of these paramilitary groups is an extremely dangerous threat to our rights.”
I was thinking more about the Taliban or the Spanish Civil War, but point taken. It’s no longer sufficient to understand what’s the matter with Kansas, it’s becoming necessary to observe moderate Christians being swept out of public office by militant, organized, rich and highly political radical fringe groups claiming to fight secular bogeyman, or terrorists, or Muslims, or whatever else they can stand on to justify their supremacy in a time of “need”. The clear irony is that fundamentalists always end up quietly moving towards a police-state on a platform that says they must intervene to prevent any movement towards a police-state.
by George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (1788 – 1824)
Near this spot
Are deposited the Remains
Of one
Who possessed Beauty
Without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferocity,
And all the Virtues of Man
Without his Vices.The Price, which would be unmeaning flattery
If inscribed over Human Ashes,
Is but a just tribute to the Memory of
“Boatswain,� a Dog
Who was born at Newfoundland,
May, 1803,
And died in Newstead Abbey,
Nov. 18, 1808.When some proud son of man returns to earth,
Unknown by glory, but upheld by birth,
The sculptor’s art exhausts the pomp of woe,
And stories urns record that rests below.
When all is done, upon the tomb is seen,
Not what he was, but what he should have been.
But the poor dog, in life the firmest friend,
The first to welcome, foremost to defend,
Whose honest heart is still his master’s own,
Who labors, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,
Unhonored falls, unnoticed all his worth,
Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth –
While man, vain insect! hopes to be forgiven,
And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.Oh man! thou feeble tenant of an hour,
Debased by slavery, or corrupt by power –
Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust,
Degraded mass of animated dust!
Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat,
Thy smiles hypocrisy, thy words deceit!
By nature vile, ennoble but by name,
Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame.
Ye, who perchance behold this simple urn,
Pass on – it honors none you wish to mourn.
To mark a friend’s remains these stones arise;
I never knew but one – and here he lies.
Byron was accused of all kinds of disloyalty and subversive acts (e.g. his adoption of a pet bear when he was told as a student at Trinity that pet dogs were not allowed), but he clearly found solace and perhaps even a more essential and honest companionship with his animals. Perhaps it was because they were less likely to counter his words with their own.
Nice that the Slovenian’s have decided to honor their most well known poet France PreÅ¡eren by putting his likeness on their new Euro coins. The bank has an amusing story (PDF) behind the reason for adding a signature below the likeness of someone so famous:
Unfortunately, PreÅ¡eren’s image remains largely unknown, despite the great number of “well known portraits”. For that reason we have decided to put his handwriting on the coin, as a sure confirmation that it is authentic PreÅ¡eren. We use the poet’s silhouette in releif (after Dremelj’s portrait) because it attests to the “poetic character” of this little-known representation in a contemporary manner.
And even if you look closely at the coin, I suspect his true image will continue to remain largely unknown. Funny and rather strange twist of identity logic. “Officer, please note that I consider myself a poetic character so my identity card has a rather ambiguous photo on it instead of the normal portrait.”
Should we recognize his signature any more than an image?Trubar apparently has a more well-known portrait, despite being alive hundreds of years earlier, and so they only put examples of his typography on the coin.
Speaking of identities, I also noticed that the Carinthian stone was given a place on the Slovenian currency, although Carinthia is actually an area that spans an informal Slovenian province and an Austrian federal state.