THE FATE OF EGOMANIACS

We have by now been treated to many different manifestations of Barack Obama's egomania. There were the faux Greek columns and similar displays, there are claims such as "we are the ones we've been waiting for," there are grandiose world tours on which meaningless high-flying phrases are spouted and blood-stained hands eagerly shook. There is the apparently unshakeable conviction that certain extremely special individuals (namely He Himself) can talk reason to dictators and dominate them, there is the unquenchable hunger to take over, take over, and take over some more. And foolish people are already naming buildings and geographic landmarks for Obama, with nary a peep from the "House of Noncolor" that, perhaps, this is somewhat inappropriate with the honoree still alive and kicking. Soon, someone will start building a large statue, I am sure.

Speaking of statues of egomaniacs, here is a couple of images of a particularly cool one. I remember walking in the adjoining park in the late 1950s, staring upward at those huger-than-life Soviets, my prepubescent mind filled with wonderment.




















This monstrosity, 30 meters high with its 15-meter pedestal and 22 meters long, was unveiled in Prague, Czechoslovakia at a point overlooking the Vltava River on May Day, 1955. It consumed millions of skilled man-hours and 17 million tons of the best-quality stone. It could be seen from just about anywhere, which was the idea. The gratitude the Czechoslovak citizens were to show to Stalin for his genius and his beneficent leadership must be unbounded.

Until 1961, when the Czechoslovak Party was ordered to take the damn thing down due to de-Stalinization. Given that bureaucrats tend to follow excess with still more excess, the statue was surrounded by the secret police (no pictures, please!) and rapidly demolished. Rumor has it that the Party had ordered for the rubble reduced to such small size that no one could tell it had come from the statue, but that I cannot substantiate.

In any case, this is just a reminder that power and glory are fleeting and, despite relentless intrusion into the lives and minds of citizens and a hunger to control their thoughts, the truth can never be expunged and monuments (and those they represent) get pulled down.

I submit that there is no memory hole large enough to accommodate what Obama has already wrought, and anyone thinking of building monuments to him should bear that in mind.

THE HOLOCAUST IS SOMETHING THAT OBAMA MUST KEEP IN MIND DURING HIS MIDEASTERN TRAVELS

Herewith something that showed up in my mailbox the other day, from the Czech Republic. I added translations below. It's nice to think that some people are still thinking clearly on this issue, even if the Obamites are hell-bent on facilitating another Holocaust by dialoguing with tyrants and looking the other way while their favorite tyrants plan the destruction of Israel.



translation: IT SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE! General Dwight D. Eisenhower was right to order as much film and photographic documentation as possible.


translation: Over sixty years ago, he found a Nazi location that exactly illustrated their plans.

translation: It is a historic fact that, when the Supreme Allied Commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower, found victims of the concentration camps, he ordered that as much be photographed as possible. He brought German inhabitants of local occupied cities to the camps so they could see the atrocities with their own eyes. In some cases, he also compelled them to bury the dead.


translation: He explained it as follows - "It is necessary to collect as much proof, film and testimony, as possible, because the day will come when some idiot will claim that it never happened." (paraphrase of actual quote)



translation: "The only thing the devil needs to succeed is that moral people do nothing." (paraphrase of Edmund Burke)


translation: Recently, Great Britain removed the Holocaust from British school curricula because it "offended the belief of Moslem residents that the Holocaust never happened." Yes, Great Britain.


translation: This is a fair warning that fear rules the world and that each and every country should push for its simple elimination. More than sixty years have passed since the end of World War Two.


translation: You have received this e-mail as a reminder, for all of humanity, to honor the memory of six million Jews, twenty million Russians (translator's note: 'Russians' really means Soviet peoples, by far not all of them Russian - the actual figure is closer to 27 million), ten million Christians, priests and ministers, all murdered, massacred, incinerated, humiliated; all at a time when the Allies and Russia had other priorities...


translation: Now, more than ever, countries like Iran - among others - claim that the Holocaust was a myth. It is therefore imperative to remind the world never, never to forget. The purpose of this e-mail is to reach at least forty million people in the world so they can say that they saw and read it.


translation: Please be a member of this worldwide e-mail chain. Help spread the message throughout the world.


translation: Please do not delete this. It will only take you a minute to pass it on. Let us do it for those who did not survive the Holocaust.

MEMORY OR HEROISM, 67 YEARS LATER

Today, a memorial to honor a group of World War Two heroes was unveiled in Prague to honor SOE-trained Czechoslovak parachutists who assassinated Reinhard Heydrich, the feared Reichsprotektor of occupied Bohemia and Moravia, one of the most powerful men in the Third Reich and one of the principal architects of the Holocaust.

Operation Anthropoid bore fruit exactly 67 years ago, on May 27, 1942, when one of the teams, consisting of Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík, caught Heydrich in the open and wounded him with a bomb. They managed to escape, and Heydrich succumbed to his wounds on June 04, 1942.

The reign of terror that the Nazis unleashed in Bohemia in revenge is the stuff of legend by now. Thousands were arrested, tortured and killed for either having protected the parachutists or simply for revenge. The town of Lidice was razed, its menfolk were shot, the women sent to concentration camps and the children to the Reich to be "Aryanized." Two weeks later, the same fate met the village of Ležáky. The parachutists, betrayed by Karel Čurda, one of their own, were ultimately run to ground in their hideout in the Church of St. Cyril and St. Methodius in Prague, where, after a long battle, they committed suicide to keep from being taken captive.

It is somehow appropriate that the unveiling would take place so close to our Memorial Day, as a reminder that heroism in the face of terror knows no boundaries.

EAST GERMAN SECRET POLICE BIRTHED THE BAADER-MEINHOF GANG

Two German historians accidentally found out that Stasi, the notorious East German version of the KGB and the Gestapo, kick-started massive student protests in West Germany, ultimately midwifing the birth of the Red Army Fraction, a.k.a. the Baader-Meinhof gang.

In a May 21, 2009 interview with the weekly magazine Der Spiegel, Helmut Müller-Enbergs said that he and his colleague Cornelia Jabs “nearly fell off their chairs” when they made the discovery.

Here is what happened.

In June 1967, the Shah of Iran is on a state visit to West Germany. He is to attend a performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Deutsche Oper in West Berlin. On June 2, 1967, student activists are out in force, protesting the Shah’s visit. During the protests, a West German policeman by the name of Karl-Heinz Kurras “happens” to shoot a 26 year-old newlywed and first-time protester, Benno Ohnesorg, in the back of the head. Ohnesorg dies, leaving behind a pregnant widow. There is outrage. Kurras is suspended and the incident investigated. The verdict is accidental killing and Kurras is released. More outrage. On that very night, members of the West German SDS (Socialist German Student Organization) assemble on the West Berlin Kurfürstendamm square and call for armed resistance against the state. “Violence s the only answer to violence,” froths a young woman named Gudrun Ensslin.

Per the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the very next day, signs reading The Police – Your Enemy and Murderer, appear throughout Frankfurt. Thousands of students spill into the streets.

Three years later, Gudrun Ensslin and a few like-minded friends found the Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Fraction), a.k.a. the Baader-Meinhof Gang, and the rest is, well, history.

Except that…

• Karl-Heinz Kurras had been a member of Stasi since 1955. He even joined the East German Communist Party, the SED, in 1964.
• Stasi, like the KGB and the Gestapo, was vitally interested in creating discord in “enemy” countries to weaken them and their systems of alliances.
• Stasi, like the KGB and the Gestapo, had routinely used “wet affairs” (murder) to accomplish their ends.
• Stasi, like the KGB and the Gestapo, was a fertile breeding ground for terrorist organizations and “protest” movements that were willing to advance the interests of their ideologies.

The documentation that Müller-Enbergs and Jabs studied to date do not prove that Karl-Heinz Kurras had killed Ohnesorg on the order of Stasi, or even that he himself was the murderer. All the documents say is that he had carried out the order, but the order is not specified.

The 82 year-old Kurras, still very much alive in Berlin and enjoying the ample fruits of the German welfare state, is predictably silent on the matter. But he may not enjoy the rest of his retirement much, since the German Organization of the Victims of Stalinism (VOS) has filed a complaint against Kurras. The VOS seeks a new trial, this time for murder, for which there is no statute of limitations under German law.

Which brings me to the question of foreign control of “protest” movements elsewhere in the world, like the amply documented (North) Vietnamese ownership of the U.S. Vietnam-era “antiwar” movement. Ditto for whoever it is who really owns and operates today’s “antiwar” and anti-Jewish movements in the U.S.

But that’s another story that’s yet to be written, and hopefully very soon.

WILD WEST IN AUSTRIA

The Austrian news agency APA reported a brawl in a Viennese Sikh house of worship today. Apparently, attendees belonging to a particular sect took exception to a sermon being delivered and attacked two visiting gurus with knives and a pistol. Both gurus were taken to hospital in critical condition. In all, at least sixteen people were injured in the fight.

The fight had repercussions as far away as the Indian state of Punjab, where followers of the wounded gurus resorted to violence, with threats of more violence and strikes on Monday.

As I always say, faith is a wonderful thing as long as you don’t follow it too religiously.

SO THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION IS REGRESSING ON DDT...

Total phaseout by 2020? I am not really surprised, such is the power - and inhumanity - of today's green lobby. Anybody here think that the likes of Kohn-Bendit or Gore care one whit about African children?

So here goes a cruel bumper sticker...


May 6 should henceforth be declared a day of mourning.

MOMENTARY HEART STOPPAGE

While surfing the Net today, saw this headline on BBC news, and my heart fluttered palpably:

Speaker quits 'for sake of unity'

But, alas, the article was referring to Michael Martin, the Speaker of Britain's House of Commons.

Could that be the proverbial hint for, ahem, certain other people?

Certainly, where there is reason, there is hope. Therefore, there is no hope....