Jakub Różalski – Warsaw Uprising

Jakub Różalski – Warsaw Uprising 2016. 

Today marks the 82nd anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising. At exactly 5:00 PM—"W-Hour"—on August 1, 1944, the armed struggle to liberate the capital from German occupation began. The Uprising was part of Operation Tempest (*Akcja Burza*), conducted by the Home Army; its goal was to strike against the Germans before the Red Army arrived and to have the legitimate structures of the Polish Underground State assume authority in the liberated areas 

At this same time every year, Warsaw comes to a standstill for a minute to pay tribute to the insurgents and the city's civilian population. The sound of sirens serves as a reminder of their courage, suffering, and the tragic price paid in the fight for freedom 

Interestingly, the artwork by Kuba Różalski presented today was created a decade ago, yet it remains a powerful symbol of the dramatically unequal clash between the insurgents and the overwhelming war machine of the Nazi regime.

#PolishMastersofArt

The Chronicle of Lerna by Michal Karski

 The Trojan War has been over for many years and the glorious city of Troy is just a memory, but the anti-Trojan propagandists are still at work. There are people who fought with Agamemnon’s army who are intent on justifying Achaean aggression. The truth of what really happened at Troy is already being manipulated for political ends.

At his peaceful home overlooking the bay of Argos, the poet Linos of Lerna, who was with the Argives at Troy and served for a time as Agamemnon’s personal chronicler, decides to set the historical record straight.

Available at Amazon here

The excerpt, below, is interesting! Thank you to Michal for sharing it. 

Here is an excerpt from the ending of Chapter Two. The poet Linos is talking to his helper, Glaukos:

"As for the story of the Trojan campaign, you and I both know, my boy, that the spur for Agamemnon’s enterprise was primarily the lust for conquest and booty and an opportunistic land-grab at the expense of the isolated Trojans. Helen’s abduction may have been the motivation for Menelaus himself, but it only served as a convenient pretext for Agamemnon.

Of course, the entire thing is now being painted by Menelaus and his acolytes as some kind of mythical quest of divine origin, with the abduction of Helen coming to the fore and increasingly being proposed as the one and only legitimate cause for the Achaeans to make war on the wealthy city of Troy with its fertile lands and its world-famous horses.

But the Spartan propagandists and spinners of Menelaus are also engaged in something quite sinister. They are already doing their utmost to try to shift the blame for the war onto the Trojans. The perpetrator is beginning to blame the victim. The glaring example that springs immediately to mind is the expression ‘Trojan Horse’.

 

How so, sir?

 

Think about it, Glaukos. The famous Trojan Horse. The wooden horse was constructed by the Achaeans and was left on the Trojan shore. Should it not be called the Achaean Horse or the Argive Horse or the Danaan Horse? Or perhaps the Horse of Odysseus, after the man who thought of it, or the Horse of Epeius after the actual architect?

No, the revisionists at the court of Menelaus have successfully labelled it a ‘Trojan Horse’, supposedly on the grounds that it was built in Troyland of Trojan wood. What they are actually doing, of course, is subtly and deliberately trying to conflate victim and aggressor. Any surviving Trojans who hear the story of the ruin and burning of Troy will recall not only the horror of the desperate fighting and carnage and atrocities committed upon the civilians of Troy, not to mention the total devastation and destruction of the city, but they will also suffer the added indignity of having the engine of their destruction labelled as ‘Trojan’.

 And, judging by the frequency of the use of this phrase by now – I had to remonstrate with that minstrel fellow for using it – I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this expression becomes the generally accepted shortcut in future ages.

 

I had never considered that, venerable sir.

 

Thersites was one of those who understood the value of propaganda quite early on. “In the long run, propaganda can be more effective than a sword-thrust,” was one of his maxims. We may be fighting a losing battle against the revisionists of Menelaus, but fight we must, Glaukos. We owe it to the inhabitants of Troy, who may not have had a perfect society, but who certainly did not start the war nor do they deserve the kind of denigration which is being heaped upon them by the victors.

There were certainly xenophobes among them, and far be it from me to defend the indefensible, but on the whole, they were no more and no less xenophobic than any other society of the region. Far be it from me to be an apologist for injustice and I did, after all, take part in the campaign against them, because we all believed they had transgressed against the gods by abducting Helen, and I was one of the many among us who believed that much more should have been done by way of diplomacy, but I am not biased either for them or against them.

I can understand that Menelaus might want to present some kind of justification for his own and his brother’s actions, but aggression must be called out for what it is and no amount of revision will disguise that and no amount of myth-making can convince posterity that the Trojans were the architects of their own downfall or somehow deserve to be collectively slandered, much less deserved to be obliterated in the first place."

The Odyssey of Christopher Nolan Movie Review

 

The Odyssey by Christopher Nolan

 

One movie lover's response

Are Jews "Oppressors" ?

In response to my piece "I Stand with the Jews,"  a comment came in talking about "oppressors." The commenter did not specify what group he meant by "oppressors." 

In case he meant Jews, here's my response. 

Jews? Oppressors? See the above map. Israel is barely viewable, it's so tiny. 

Jews are now, and have always been, LESS THAN ONE PERCENT of the world population. Less than one percent. 

Jews live in tiny little Israel, and also in the US, with smaller populations in a few other Western nations. 

Everywhere Jews live, they are subject to arson, shooting, stabbing, rape, and torture, often committed by Muslims, who make up more than one quarter of the world population. 

Islam has always taught murderous contempt for Jews. The founder did more than teach it; he exemplified it, in, for example, committing a genocide of an entire Jewish tribe. 

Massacre of the Banu Qurayza (627 CE): Following the Battle of the Trench in Medina, the entire male population of this Jewish tribe—estimated between 400 and 900 men—was executed, and the women and children were enslaved by early Islamic forces under the prophet Muhammad.

1033 (Fez, Morocco): A violent assault on the Jewish quarter resulted in thousands of deaths

Granada Massacre (1066 CE): A Muslim mob stormed the royal palace in Granada, crucified the Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela, and slaughtered an estimated 4,000 Jewish residents, destroying the local community.

Almohad Persecutions (1147–1212 CE): The fundamentalist Almohad Caliphate instituted forced conversions and carried out sweeping massacres across Morocco and Muslim-controlled Spain. Tens of thousands of Jews were murdered, driving prominent figures like Maimonides to flee the region.

Fez Massacre (1465 CE): A local revolt against the Marinid dynasty targeted the city’s Jewish population after a Jewish vizier was appointed. Mobs killed thousands of Jews in Fez, leaving only a handful of survivors.

More recently, the Farhud was a violent anti-Jewish pogrom, meaning "violent dispossession" in Arabic, that took place in Baghdad, Iraq, on June 1–2, 1941.

An estimated 850,000 to 900,000 Jews fled, migrated, or were expelled from Arab and Muslim-majority countries across the Middle East and North Africa during the 20th century. This mass displacement unfolded primarily in the wake of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the creation of the State of Israel, driven by systemic state-sanctioned persecution, violence, and property confiscations

Followed by decades of hideous terror, murders, bombing school buses and pizza parlors, torturing Olympic athletes to death, murdering my friend's aunt, chopping up lost Jews and displaying bloody hands, dumping a wheelchair-bound Jew into the sea ... Murdering babies in their cribs. 

And of course On October 7, 2023, led by Hamas and other armed groups, thousands of militants launched a massive, coordinated surprise attack on southern Israel by land, air, and sea. The assault resulted in the deadliest day for Israel in its history, killing about 1,200 people and leading to the abduction of 251 hostages into the Gaza Strip

Oh, oh, but it's the Jews who are oppressing people. Bullshit. 

I Stand with the Jews Part Two of Two Parts

 

"I Stand with the Jews"

What does that mean?

Second of two parts

A canopy of oaks and maples rose overhead. Green understory surrounded me: pinxter azaleas and thorny Japanese barberry. Bluets – tiny wildflowers – blossomed underfoot. Up ahead, Marc approached me with his typically hale and hearty, "Hello, Danusha!"

I shoved my rosary in my pocket and removed my headphones. I had been cheating. I should have been focusing, with the binoculars around my neck, on the migrating spring warblers that make Garret Mountain famous among birders. Instead I was listening to Gregorian chant and praying the rosary as I hiked. "Hello, Marc," I said, as I migrated from internal contemplation of the eternal to external society and the ingeniously plumaged sprites zipping around us.

"Look at that color!" Marc exclaimed.

I pointed my binoculars in the direction Marc indicated. He had spotted a purple finch.

"I can see," I said, "Why Roger Tory Peterson called them 'a sparrow dipped in raspberry juice.'"

Marc is, by many estimates, the best birder in the state. Of course we are all, in our own ways, the "best" birdwatcher in compliance with our own needs and desires, but Marc racks up awesome numbers of the species he sees annually.

Marc's surname harkens back to Chelm, a city in Poland once famous among Jews as a site of folkloric fools. My favorite Chelm story: the local wise men declared that if you drop a buttered slice of bread, it will always fall on the buttered side. This conclusion reflects the pessimistic worldview typical of both Jews and non-Jews in Eastern Europe. Of course, eventually, someone dropped a buttered piece of bread and it fell buttered side up. The wise men of Chelm debated this astounding event and determined that the slice had been buttered on the wrong side. Chelm stories arose from a culture that valued scholarship enough that it could spoof scholarly folly.

Mindful of Marc's identity as someone other than our state's best birdwatcher, I wondered if I should say something.

I had told myself, if the opportunity arises, I will say something.

Was this the moment, though, to say something?

I felt timid, but also determined. If we keep waiting for the perfect moment, we never say anything.

"Marc," I ventured. "I want to say something about something other than birds."

"Yes?" Marc said, turning his attention from the purple finch to a streamlet that might be playing host to a Louisiana waterthrush.

"There's been a rise in antisemitism."

"You think?" Marc said, his voice rising, in an atypical, for him, sarcastic comment.

"Yes, and I just want you to know that I'm not Jewish…" said the woman who had been praying the rosary and listening to Gregorian chant. "But I want to be an ally. I'm on your side."

I'm glad I said something. If the moment arises when Marc could use some support from someone like me, he knows I'm here.

I Stand with the Jews Part One of Two Parts

 

"I Stand with the Jews"

 

What does that mean?

 

First of two parts

 

The other day, an antisemitic comment came through my social media feed. I didn't want to debate the poster. People who say abysmally stupid things do not deserve the respect implied by debate, nor do they deserve the attention that debate generates. But I did not want his comment to go unanswered. All I said was, "I stand with the Jews."

 

"What does that mean?" the antisemite challenged.

 

This essay offers my response to his question.

Pressure Movie Review. Yes we do need another D-Day Movie

 

Pressure 2026

Yes, we do need another D-Day movie

I walk a lot. I check NOAA's forecast five times before heading out. If there's a ten percent chance of rain, I have a Gore-Tex slicker in my daypack. I'm always over-prepared for weather. One day I was walking down Ratzer Road, a road I've walked hundreds of times. I passed wide lawns and suburban McMansions, some of them costing a million dollars. I felt carefree. That did not last.

Boom. In the time it took me to type the word "boom," everything changed. The sky turned black. Forty-foot evergreens swayed so drunkenly I feared they'd lash me like the tail of a lunging tiger. Pelting hail obscured my vision. With every step I pushed against a locked door – the wind was that determined to prevent me from moving. I recognized that this is the kind of weather that kills. I frantically sought a nook where I could take shelter in this, not my neighborhood, and, again, that fast, it was all over. The sky was suddenly dove-gray. The hail relaxed to a light drizzle. The Apocalypse was canceled.

My best guess is that I was stuck in a dangerous phenomenon called a "microburst." Microbursts damage structures, cause car accidents and plane crashes, and they do kill. Ultimately, though, what it was, was weather.

In Indiana, after a tornado, I heard of a grandfather trying to hold back his grandson, to no avail. The tornado pulled the tyke out the window. In 2011, in Paterson, NJ, I was evacuated during Hurricane Irene. The Passaic River was coming up through the floorboards. Within hours the entire neighborhood, for a mile around, was under water. In 2012, after Hurricane Sandy, for most of two weeks, we had no electricity and substandard tap water. In 2021, thirty New Jerseyans died during Hurricane Ida. One victim drowned on the very non-aquatic Lackawanna Avenue, near a Best Buy and a Barnes and Noble. Two people tried to rescue her, but these Good Samaritans had to themselves be rescued by fire department crews. Her body was never found.

Weather.

We humans have dominated much of nature. We have extended average lifespans, conquered smallpox, and manipulated the landscape to our whim. But we are still mere playthings in the hands of weather. A new film, Pressure, examines the impact of weather on a history-making event: D-Day.

Perhaps no human accomplishment supersedes D-Day as an expression of humanity's power. D-Day was the largest seaborne invasion in history. On June 6, 1944, almost 160,000 Allied troops landed on Normandy's beaches. These included troops from the United Kingdom, Canada, and twelve other Allied nations. Over 7,000 naval vessels and 12,000 aircraft participated. An estimated 100,000 French resistance fighters coordinated, via coded messages, with overseas planners and carried out crucial and meticulous preparatory operations behind enemy lines. For example, the French derailed Nazi supply trains inside tunnels. Repairing a train derailment inside a tunnel is much harder than doing so in an open field. By the end of June, Allies had delivered 570,000 tons of supplies. By the end of August, two million Allied troops were in France.

In spite of this display of human might, D-Day's planners were still subject to weather. The new film, Pressure, makes this vulnerability to weather abundantly clear. If the Allies had attempted D-Day on the wrong day, with the wrong weather, D-Day might have failed, and the attempt to defeat Nazi Germany would have gone very differently.