We humans, we Americans are chock-full of opinions. Most we’ve had for ages, decades, and we can’t actually identify when we came to adopt them, can’t support them with anything deeper than gut feel. Mostly it doesn’t matter because nobody cares anyway.
But the opinions we choose reflect the health of our souls. In a real sense our opinions are who we are. Occasionally it’s worth distancing ourselves from them and the ego attachments we form to them. Just to find out whether our opinions have any connection to anything inside the real world.
Old Jules
Why Can’t Americans See the Obvious Truth?
Jimmy Carter unveils truth about Israel
An honest Israeli Jew tells the Real Truth about Israel
An Israeli intelligence service cop cultivates a relationship with a kid living near one of the Israeli settlements and nurtures it. Reason being to create an informant to betray the people who live around him.
The cop might actually kid himself it’s about friendship, that he cares what happens to the kid. He seems to at times. But when discussing it with his bosses in cophood he has to deny it, has to claim it’s about using the kid.
And use him he does. The kid’s brother is a serious player in trying to discourage Israel’s expansion outside its boundaries. He’s killing people in East Jerusalem. The Israeli cops want him badly and eventually the cop uses information provided by the kid to trap the brother inside a building and execute him.
Bethlehem 2013 NR99 minutes An informant for Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service, Palestinian Sanfur is torn when his brother becomes an agency target. More Info Starring: Tsahi Halevi, Shadi Mar’i Director: Yuval Adler
Unsurprisingly the kid gets pissed, but his involvement with the cop gets him on a hit list among the Arabs for collaborating. He’s offered a possible pardon if he kills the cop.
Your average, “Eek, there’s a nigger in the White House!” patriot never has to ask himself any moral questions, any ethical questions. All he’s got to do is run around in increasingly smaller circles squealing and waving the flag anytime someone points at a war somewhere. “Support the troops!” is about as complicated as it gets. “Stand with Israel,” doesn’t even need saying. Bought and paid for politicians have already taken care of Israel.
But you’ve got to admit those Israeli human beings and those Palestine human beings should be finding themselves with serious questions about what they are doing. Which they probably aren’t.
If you’re a non-Jew living next door to Israel in Palestine you can watch Israel stealing it, piece-by-piece, house-by-house. They’ll come right out and tell you God gave it to them. Some people will inevitably fight back. And those will be labelled terrorists.
If you’re an Israeli and you believe God gave you the keys to the land outside the boundaries set by International Law and the United Nations, anything goes. Duplicity, manipulation, torture, force, bullying, lies. Because you are motivated by the higher good. By the fact that trumps all the others: God gave you anything you want in Israel and Palestine. All you’re doing is taking what’s rightfully yours.
Back when she was still Princess Elizabeth the US magazines had a love affair with her. We kids in Portales, NM, saw pictures of her looking her best and didn’t think she looked all that great, for a princess. A bit horse-faced, we thought. And the kid, prince Charles with his snooty little spoiled brat look. We hated his guts.
Didn’t much care who knew it, either.
Law law law. The British still had themselves thinking maybe it was an empire in those days. Didn’t take a lot of the reign of Liz to put that thought out of the minds of anyone with an eye to see. No Victoria, our Liz.
So here she is today, maybe still alive and in the catbird seat. Been there longer than Victoria. Hasn’t been poisoned or strangled by either of her offspring. And actually managed to win one war during her watch.
That was the Falklands War. Whupped Argentina all by themselves, those British did. Still had a whisper of a navy in those days. Lots of fireworks and generally a fairly safe war without any danger of contagion carrying it out of the ocean and onto places with Argentina firebombing London or vicee versee.
Put Britain down on record as the only civilized country in the world to win a war after 1918. A clear win, no illusions with the losers popping up as economic giants taking over the world marketplaces.
Hell, Liz was there when most of the shooting stopped in Northern Ireland. Might still be there when Mr. Scotland thumbs his nose at who? Henry was it? And tells the rest of the island to go piss up a rope. [After thinking on it while I showered I’m thinking it was Longshanks, Lackland, wossname, maybe Henry II. They all run together these days.]
Anyway, I’m just glad little Prince Charles with his snooty little short pants never got to be king. That was worth the price of admission, having to know something about what the damned British monarchy did or didn’t do anytime in my life.
Old Jules
Afterthought: I recall sometime during the 1980s the other kid, Andrew, I think, had a girlfriend who was a porn star, which I applauded. If he’d gotten to be king I mightn’t have minded knowing about it. Randy Andy they dubbed him at the time. If the bard had been reincarnated to see that he might have written a good tragedy about it.
Hi readers. She snuck out of the nursing home they put her in after they snagged her car and sold her house. When a movie begins with that there’s nothing much can be done to spoil the ending. I’d put it up beside Harry and Tonto, generally.
Redwood Highway, 2013PG-131hr 30m, You rated this movie: 5 , Itching to get out of her retirement community but estranged from her family, Marie uses her granddaughter’s wedding as an excuse to go on a walk.
Woman my age dons a backpack and hikes roughly 100 miles up the California coast dodging search and rescue, refusing rides and shooting molesters in the face with bear spray.
Seems more obvious every day that wossname, George Bush Sr. needed to stay the hell out of wars in the Middle East instead of waging them and giving himself a premature ejaculation. That Desert Storm I must have been the absolutely most senselessly waged war in US history even before he pulled out and splattered the proceeds across the belly of the whole region.
That would have been a good time to sigh and notice the cold war was over and bring the troops home from Korea, Europe, and all those pestholes across the world where they don’t speak English. George Bush was never any great shakes, but Desert Storm 1 followed by him not noticing the end of the cold war when the USSR ceased to exist defined him. He set the course as surely as it could be set to continue disastrous military spending and constant military adventures for the foreseeable future.
For this reason George Bush Senior qualifies as the worst president in US history until those who followed him.
There’s no need to go through the litany of tweedle-dums and tweedle-dees who came after GB Sr, identical to him in every respect aside from being lousier presidents. They all marched to his drum and carried the country into more endless wars and a bottomless pit of national debt directly resulting from military expenditures, wars, and foreign aid to bought-and-paid-for friends we only need for more wars and military adventures.
What else he didn’t do? He didn’t sit Israel down and insist they withdraw inside their International Boundaries as recognized by the UN and every other country in the world. On pain of losing what eventually became $130 billion in foreign aid from US taxpayers.
Because GB Sr., had he done what any responsible president should have done, could have ended the next generation of troubles we’re experiencing as a contributory factor, today.
The US, and the US Presidents are frequently accused of responsibility for not stopping what some Roosky strongman’s doing, or some Mexican from Syria, or Iraq, or Afghanistan does or doesn’t do. Or what some Chinaman from Japan, or Burma, or North Korea does or doesn’t do.
What a laugh! What a stupendous irony.
The only thing in the entire world a US President might control, might influence helpfully, is the slaughter between Palestinians and Israelis. The problem we helped create.
By insisting Israel return to inside its established boundaries and withdraw the settlements. Cease claiming lands assigned to others, cease claiming mineral rights offshore belonging to Palestinians.
The US Presidents love to toss around sanctions against, say, Russia, or Syria, or Iraq, anywhere. Except the one place they’d surely resolve the fundamental problem.
When people in Israel shout, “They don’t acknowledge we have the right to exist!” what they mean is, “They don’t acknowledged we have the right to take their lands designated for Palestine for our own!”
This series of duckwalking ducktalking clowns who’ve occupied the White House could probably have made two gestures to appear to be something other than the mediocre hopscotching puppets they were .
They could have brought the troops home and sliced the military budget to something approaching what other countries have.
They could have forced Israel back inside its borders and bribed Palestine to accept things as they are with foreign aid akin to what Israel receives.
But I suppose imagination is too much to hope for in a duckwalking ducktalking politician.
Old Jules
Who’s Profiting From Israel’s Offensive in Gaza
Israeli Military Torturing Palestinian Children ~viewer discretion~
How the Jews Treat Christians in Israel – It’s Serious!
Israel’s New Racism: The Persecution of African Migrants in the Holy Land
THE TRUTH HURTS JEWS ADMIT THEY ARE NOT THE JEWS OF THE BIBLE
Shlomo Sand: Challenging notions of a Jewish People
Israelis: What do you think of settlers forcing Palestinians out of their homes in East Jerusalem?
Most of you probably are aware that as soon as human beings discovered, sometime during the 1700s, I think, that they were Homo sapiens, they figured out they needed a dictionary to find out what they were. When they discovered they are wise and judgemental by definition, they immediately began wondering what they thought about.
The question was a tough one. Mostly humans seemed to think they’d like a little something to eat. Or they thought they’d like another brewsky, or they thought they were horny. Sometimes, particularly during the winter months Homo sapiens thought it was cold and some even thought they’d like something to wrap around themselves to get warmer.
But otherwise Homo sapiens sapiens were less obvious about what they were thinking and discovering the nature of it eluded scientists. Until psychology, then Facebook came along to allow them to publicly display what they were thinking.
“I think [name a celebrity] is awesome!”
“I think those [name a sports team] are awesome!”
“I think [name a consumer item] is awesome.”
“I think mean people suck!”
“I think I need a raise in pay!”
“I think the boss sucks!”
Researchers confirm that 98.7 percent of homo sapiens thought are either among these, or are within the same family of concepts.
Hi readers. Hydrox and Ms. Shiva did Snoopy dances last night when Jeanne arrived back here. She’d been the past couple of weeks climbing wet mountains and doing other things people do out there under the Japanese nuclear threat. Although she didn’t say so to the cats, her arrival was timed in such a way as to suggest she came back fleeing the Japanese invasion of Hawaii.
It’s long been known, both by Japanese military planners and by US historians that WWII would have gone a lot differently if Japan had followed up the Pearl Harbor attack with an invasion of the island. The recent reinterpretation of the post-WWII Japanese constitution allowing renewed military adventures by Japan requires absorbing lessons learned from WWII so they don’t make the same mistakes again. Practice landings on Hawaii, and possibly later on areas of the US west coast not yet too heavily contaminated by radiation from Japanese nuclear plants will help assure that next time things will be different.
Anyway, Jeanne didn’t say anything about all this. Her climbing of Mount Whatchallit, Ranier? etc etc etc went as well as could be expected. She took plus/minus 2500 photographs, stayed various places, and despite the radiation, wasn’t all that anxious to return.
Today’s a new beginning returning to working two, count’em, two, jobs again. Which evidently still weighs in better than radiation poisoning as a way to count off the days she has left in life.
The cats and I were glad to see her back, everything else being equal.
WASHINGTON—Following years of research and testing, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration officially approved a groundbreaking artificial tumor Tuesday, marking the first time a synthetic malignant growth has been cleared for use in patients across the country. “There were obviously significant complications in devising a tumor substitute the human body would accept, but we now have an artificial neoplasm that serves the same physiological functions as an organic abnormal growth of tissue,” said Jeffrey Shuren of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, adding that the polymer-based lump can be safely implanted in patients regardless of age, health, or medical history during a minimally invasive and relatively quick two-hour surgical procedure. “This synthetic tumor is remarkably lightweight, malignant, and capable of naturally metastasizing throughout the body. It also has the benefit of being incredibly small—roughly the size of a dime—but once in the body, it will grow two to three times in size and will get to work immediately replicating itself.” Shuren added that while initial prototypes of the device had only enough battery power to last a few days, the approved version is capable of going for several years or more, or until its objective has been completed.
Hi readers. When Keith and I were kids in Portales in 1954, a boy named Harold Hodges ran around with us a little. For some reason we called him Winkie. Keith and I discussed him sometime a while back and he knew Winkie a long while after I lost track. Winkie was one of the really honest-to-goodness poor kids we knew. Hardscrabble farm kid out in the sand hills off the Clovis highway.
I knew his dad died in the mountains deer hunting in 1955, I remembered that. And I remembered his mom became a bootlegger to make a living in alcohol-dry Roosevelt County.
Anyway, I was remembering an incident on the school grounds involving Winkie, Keith and I getting into one hell of a lot of trouble with a teacher named Mrs. Tate. The meanest teacher I ever had, maybe the meanest woman I ever encountered this lifetime, though she had stiff competition on both avenues.
But Winkie, Keith and I made her cry. On the other hand, thanks to her I didn’t learn long division until a quarter-century later. It wasn’t an even trade, but it was the best three 4th graders could do given the resources available.
Anyway, I did a websearch for Harold Hodges, then Winkie Hodges. Just curious. All I came up with was an obit for a name I’d encountered several years later when I lived in Borger, Texas. Small world. Winkie was still alive in 1998, still in Portales, and they were still calling him Winkie.
Abbie G. Friend BORGER – Abbie G. Friend, 85, died Monday, Nov. 2, 1998.
She married Deane Friend in 1975 at Borger. She was preceded in death by a son.
Survivors include her husband; three sons, Wayne Vaughan of Mission, Jack Vaughan of Pryor, Okla., and Gerald Vaughan of Long Beach, Calif.; three brothers, Volly Hodges of Friona, Teet Hodges of Roswell, N.M., and Winkie Hodges of Portales, N.M.; seven sisters, Lorene Cunningham of Lubbock, Lois Hill of Odessa, Bernice Alexander and Natoma Reigle, both of San Antonio, Geraldine Farmer of Ozark, Ark., Maggie Rae Gibbs of Silver City, N.M., and Lena May Gibbs of Portales, N.M.; seven grandchildren; and 12 great-grandchildren.
The family suggests memorials be to the Women’s Abuse Center.
Sooooo. Bound to be a story worth knowing why the family wanted memorials sent to the Women’s Abuse Center, but it didn’t have anything I could discern to do with Winkie Hodges. Just Coincideneces trekking around roping and branding everything in sight.
Anyway, Winkie’s dad died of a heart attack early in life, but I think he might still be alive. I didn’t find an obit on him, anyway. If I ever figure out I’ve got enough heart left to travel I think I might try to look him up or find his gravestone.
74 years old, a resident of Leavenworth, KS, in an apartment located on the VA campus. Partnered with a black shorthaired cat named Mister Midnight. (1943-2020)
Since April, 2020, this blog is maintained by Jeanne Kasten (See "About" page for further information).
https://sofarfromheaven.com/2020/04/21/au-revoir-old-jules-jack-purcell/
I’m sharing it with you because there’s almost no likelihood you’ll believe it. This lunatic asylum I call my life has so many unexpected twists and turns I won’t even try to guess where it’s going. I’d suggest you try to find some laughs here. You won’t find wisdom. Good luck.
So Far From Heaven 