Whose News?

Who knew which nose . . .

Would be the news,
That was all the nose,
Fit to print?

She Gave Up Smoking at the Age of 117

. . . only five years before her death.

Only five years . . . before . . .

Wait! Let's just see if I got that right. The longest lived person ever . . .

Jeane Louise Calment

Well? There it is in stunning Wikipedia black and white. And always, I kept promising myself, "Next year I'll quit." But now I figure, hey! Why push it? Why not wait till I'm 118? And while I'm at it, just maybe I can also break the record of Jeanne Louise, for the world's longest living person--still smoking!

Lucky for her, she lived during a time when a smoker was not at hazard of catching her death of pneumonia, snatching a few puffs on lunch break; driven out into the cold, the wind, the rain, sleet and snow by a cruel, sadistic society of hysterics and upight squares who refuse to face the fact of a Mademoiselle Calment!

But at the price of an extortionately taxed pack of cigarettes these days? Shoot! you'd be first driven to poverty, starvation and death, simply for trying to keep puffing so long as that darling old dame.

And what a shame! Think of the Virginia Slims ads in Life Magazine we never got to see: Jeanne Louise in art nouveau vignette, her pretty plumed hat haloed in white curlicues of a slogan blown from her own rosebud lips, "You've Come a Long Way, Baby!"

Like Jesse Ventura keeps saying, "Don't Start the Revolution Without Me."

And God Created Brigitte Bardot

She's 73 years old, and still HOT. And what's so hot about her, might you ask? She's hot under the collar, for one thing, having to show up in court now for a fifth time, charged with the crime of hating Islam.

Bardot was busted for something she said in a letter to French President Sarkozy. As a dedicated animal rights addict--excuse please!--'advocate', she was protesting the ritual slaughter of sheep for the Muslim high holiday of Eid-al-Kabir. The letter was sent in 2004 when Sarkozy was yet French Minister of the Interior, and as it was subsequently somehow leaked to the press--now she is being prosecuted and tried for what she said privately, in a letter.

To think of it. To see everything that Orwell would, in view of this, seem to have prophesied for his horror fantasy of totalitarian European government post-1984; that this may now be threatening to have come true, today for France, and tomorrow, why not for the rest of a former "free world"?

The offending language in Brigitte's missive was, to wit, "this population that leads us around by the nose, [and] which destroys our country." Time Magazine

There is another girl by the name of "Brigitte" who also is totally HOT. Her last name is Gabriel and she, a best selling author, is today here in the USA as an immigrant and new American citizen from Lebanon. I hear from her every day in a newsletter. This morning I read this . . .

Dear John,

While Americans are lulled into complacency as to the threat of Islamofascism because there have been no “9/11’s” since 9/11, the kettle that slowly boils the frog to death is heating up around us.

If you take a frog, put it in a kettle of water, and gradually raise the temperature, the frog will, without thinking and without awareness, adjust to the temperature changes until it boils to death. This is THE metaphor for incrementalism.
--
Any connection between the words "frog" and "French" would be entirely coincidental, and not intended to be understood as being in any way 'significant' or 'prophetic', let alone, least of all, "frog-bashing."

But getting back to the French Brigitte; if all this were not enough to get a free spirit like Bardot hot, after she was already hot and had long been hot, especially in the 1950's and 60's when she was the hottest thing on the international marquee since Theda "Kiss me, my fool" Bara--then consider how trying the whole thing must be for that poor zealot of a prosecutor acting in service of Big Brother, France; Anne de Fonette who has made her feelings plain for the reporters of Time magazine, having said, "I'm a bit tired of trying Madame Bardot," as again according to Time, "she urged the court to impose 'the most striking and remarkable' punishment in the case. A verdict is expected on June 3." Time

Here once again they are saying that Brigitte Bardot "hates Muslims" but how absurd! How can this be, that a lovely little retired sex-kitten like Bardot could 'hate' anything so innocent and defenseless as a religion? What, after no more than five arrests by the French flics, four convictions, four fines and suspended sentences--all this for 'hate'?

Hardly! Such punishment as this can only have been suffered for love, by a French woman--everybody knows!

It is only because Bardot loves France, and loves for France to be France, to stay French and not to be changing into something other, something alien and utterly foreign to French culture and manners.

Where is the 'hate' crime in that?

Why Israel Had to Whack the USS Liberty

All night and day in the hours leading up to the first day of the Six Day War, Moshe Dayan was in continual contact with executive offices in the White House of Lyndon Baines Johnson. Of chief concern to the Israeli defense minister was that the United States should keep him briefed as to the positions of all, and that meant ALL naval traffic in the eastern Mediterranean, international waters or otherwise; this in order to avoid the least possibility of exactly what happened to the incognito spy ship, USS Liberty.

The U.S. complied with this request only to a limited extent, this being due to a massive failure of understanding, or which is the more likely, a bull-headed lack of respect for Israel's critical position, one which demanded in the emergency, a war-time agreement for disclosure between allies, the neglect of which, in terms of the consequences for the USS Liberty, can be viewed by History only at so many fathoms of depth beneath contempt as to be completely out of sonar range.

At first, Dayan had made it plain that since the US, along with all Europe, had opted (in fear of the USSR-UAR alliance) to do nothing about the Egyptian naval blockade in the Gulf of Aqaba; about Egyptian expulsion of UN forces from Sinai; the movement of Syrian, Iraqi, Jordanian and Egyptian tanks, artillery and troops toward Israel's borders; therefore, because the US and Europe would not stand with Israel against this aggression, there was no reason at all, for US naval forces to be in place anywhere near the coasts of Israel--and that meant NONE whatever.

It was not in honor of Israel's critical position, that President Johnson ordered the Sixth Fleet drawn back a hundred miles and more from the theatre of potential conflict. It was done strictly to avoid any appearance in sight of the Soviets that America had even the least intention to honor any form of commitment to her ally, Israel.

Dayan put 'Israel's friend' LBJ on notice that any foreign ship in waters off the coast of Israel and Sinai would be regarded as a threat and an obstacle to Israel's unencumbered mobility in those waters--and because there was nothing to prevent UAR nations, or the USSR from disguising a ship for one of American or European registry, then minus 100% disclosure, there was no way for Israel to gain full assurance as to what the nature of any craft might actually be. Israel had to know the identity and coordinates of any US ship not pulled back with the Fleet, lest that ship should stand as a target, pure, plain and simple.

From Wiki . . .

"The IDF, in its History Report about the attack, says it asked the United States to inform them of any U.S. ships in the area but was not told of the Liberty's presence.[3](p.22) The IDF air and naval forces, respectively, misidentified the Liberty as an unknown destroyer and the Egyptian cargo ship El Quseir.[3](p.15)"

As the US had by this refusal of disclosure failed to stand out of the way of the logistical mobility Israel had to have, the Liberty disaster became inevitable. And it happened only because LBJ, in his tragic pride-bound way, was refusing to face the dynamic of what his timidity before the Soviets had come to; a greater threat, so to hobble an Israeli defense against a sure-fire Second Holocaust, burgeoning belly up to her borders and coasts. For Israel, there would be, in short, NO time for any complications: nothing would be allowed to stand in the way of an unfettered defense--no damned ambiguities of uncertainty and doubt would be tolerated, pure, plain and simple.

From Rabin's Memoirs . . .

"According to Israeli Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin’s memoirs, there were standing orders to attack any unidentified vessel near the shore. The day fighting began, Israel had asked that American ships be removed from its coast or that it be notified of the precise location of U.S. vessels. The Sixth Fleet was moved because President Johnson feared being drawn into a confrontation with the Soviet Union. He also ordered that no aircraft be sent near Sinai."
--
By brunt of critical necessity, Israel was forced to treat that ship for the thorn in the side to her defense that it was, and blew the bull-headed, disrespectful son of a bitch out of the water--sad as that is to say.

And that is the true story of Israel v. LBJ and a pitiful fate for the pride of the USS Liberty.

By Force of Historical Necessity

And to think there are these days so many who would blame the Jews, if they would fight to save their lives. What is missing from the understanding of all but a few concerning the Zionist migration which led to the triumph of Israel as a Jewish state, is that what arises among a people by necessity of survival cannot be argued against.

For "Palestinian" Arabs and their supporters, the "not in my backyard" argument has no force, as the necessity for one people to keep their lives can be in no way equal to what that Arab is trying to keep in an exclusive title to land. The man who migrates and fights to preserve his life has the more valuable possession to keep and defend, life itself--and he will fight the harder for that, than any man can to keep exclusive claim to a piece of land. Titles to land can change hands, an entitlement to life cannot.

That's just life in a world governed by one immutable and inviolable law: Survival of the Fittest. There is no room in Darwinian necessity for ideals of "fairness" considered over puffs of pipe smoke in an easy chair. One man's rightful claim of exclusive ownership to his own backyard is suddenly made petty and indefensible, the moment that his fence is jumped by a man who does so in order to save his life.

You tell that man to go back over the fence from whence he came and what you've done is to perpetrate the lie that ownership of land is a greater good than ownership of life. Such a liar as that, under a biological code of survival of the fittest will prove himself unworthy, flawed, not strong enough to hold that land against the claim of the other man who will enter it because he must, to save his life. The one man needs the land, the other only wants to keep it.

Necessity rules in the blindfolded, objective sight of Justice. Sometimes there is no force in the argument, it is mine because it is mine, or because daddy gave it to me."

Blue Steel Jews

There was a day in these United States when messing with the wrong Jew could get you`messed up so bad that you'd never in this life catch a chance to do it twice. This was the day of such illustrious Jewish gents as Arnold Rothstein, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Mickey Cohen, Seymour "Blue Jaw" Magoon, and Jake "the Jew" Gusik, Isadore "Kid Cann" Blumenfeld and his fellow superbad whoop-ass Jew from Minneapolis, Dave Berman.

There was a parking lot out behind one of the Blumenfeld Brothers nightclubs in downtown Minneapolis, the "Pink Poodle" where parking those baby blue Blumenfeld Cadillacs one summer turned out to be a way for me to save up tuition money for college.

Everybody in town knew who Kid Cann was, how he got sent up in the late fifties to serve a stretch of federal time on a white slavery rap. What all but a few select people didn't know was that the Kid's brother, Harry "Yiddy Bloom" Blumenfeld was still running those downtown Blumenfeld clubs on Hennepin Avenue while Issy was, as they say, 'away'.

Odd thing of it is that no matter how you may search, you can't find it published anywhere, the date of the Kid's release from the . . . can. It was 1959 when he was sent up, and for so little as anyone knew including me, the man was still up the river come the summer of 1966, when I started working in that Blumenfeld lot, which I did not know for any such thing at the time. All I did know is that there was something kind of grand glimmering in the air about those two guys; something they showed you in a glint of blue steel from their eyes, from the way they walked, or dropped the keys to their Cadillacs in your hand.

You could call it 'class'. Or be a punk and call it "rockstar charisma," or then again, don't because there was never anything but jazz and pop standards playing on the radios of those two Cadillacs when they pulled in. Something about the lingering smell of cologne or whatever kind of fancy oil their barbers would rub into their scalps--sure. There was something admirable, so swell about them that you didn't even have to ask who those two were, or if you did it was at risk of being told by whoever was talking, "Well, who the goddam hell do you think they are? Take a better look next time--but not too good, if you know what's good for you.

There was an illegal poker game going at all hours down in the basement of the Poodle, and I used to park the cars of the gamblers. It was funny. There was this one hood who'd come tooling up to my shack one week, all pround and happy and tipping big as he'd come out from behind the wheel of a brand new Mercury convertible. Next week, it would be some old wreck of a '55 Plymouth with one of the bumpers hanging loose, and there he'd be without a shave or even the ghost of a shine on his shoes, or a quarter to flip to my hand.

One morning I grabbed the waste-paper basket off the floor of my little up-right coffin of a parking lot shack to empty it in the cans out behind the Pink Poodle. I opened the gate and was just about to dump when I spied in the garbage something green that didn't look quite like lettuce, but then again in the more vernacular sense, rather did; it was barely visible, just showing a little from under a mess of cigarette and cigar butts, swizzle sticks, napkins and sweeping compound.

I gingerly poked my fingers in to pull that wad of greenbacks out of there, and though I probably should have been honest, should of gone ahead and turned that 200 bucks or so over to those crooks inside the Pink Poodle, somehow the thought of how much closer I'd suddenly come to paying my Fall Quarter tuition, just wouldn't allow me to be jake on that. And so I banked it.

I must admit however that I did come to have second thoughts over it, one late summer's afternoon, after parking the Cadillac belonging to the short, portly, balding guy, who looked to be so much the spitting image of the other more regular Harry "Yiddy Bloom" Blumenfeld guy, which name I'd come to suspect not just quite yet. And when I had eased her into a good spot, I can't say why, something moved me to slide across the seat to get out on the passenger side, and as I did, my elbow somehow happened to catch the button on the glove box, which fell heavily open to reveal in all its snub-nosed blue-steel glory--don't you know what? I slammed the door shut on that and got my buns out of that Caddy quick.

Had I done this on purpose, on the chance that I might get a look at something just like that, to confirm or deny the substance of what was now starting to be my hunch about what was indeed the true news on this guy? You can read all about him and his pal Meyer Lansky with whom he spent the latter years of his life in Miami right here . . .

http://www.toughjews.blogspot.com/

Or you can turn up pretty much the same dope on these guys here . . ..

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/gangsters.html

And there you will read as follows . . .

Lansky recalled breaking up a Brown Shirt rally in the Yorkville section of Manhattan: "The stage was decorated with a swastika and a picture of Hitler. The speakers started ranting. There were only fifteen of us, but we went into action. We … threw some of them out the windows. . . . Most of the Nazis panicked and ran out. We chased them and beat them up. . . . We wanted to show them that Jews would not always sit back and accept insults."

In Minneapolis, William Dudley Pelley organized a Silver Shirt Legion to "rescue" America from an imaginary Jewish-Communist conspiracy. In Pelley’s own words, just as "Mussolini and his Black Shirts saved Italy and as Hitler and his Brown Shirts saved Germany," he would save America from Jewish communists. Minneapolis gambling czar David Berman confronted Pelley’s Silver Shirts on behalf of the Minneapolis Jewish community.

Berman learned that Silver Shirts were mounting a rally at a nearby Elks’ Lodge. When the Nazi leader called for all the "Jew bastards" in the city to be expelled, or worse, Berman and his associates burst in to the room and started cracking heads. After ten minutes, they had emptied the hall. His suit covered in blood, Berman took the microphone and announced, "This is a warning. Anybody who says anything against Jews gets the same treatment. Only next time it will be worse." After Berman broke up two more rallies, there were no more public Silver Shirt meetings in Minneapolis.

Incongruities

There is a certain mood that people get into sometimes where we wind up looking at life from one remove--or maybe two, three, four; how far gone you want to get? And it's not such a forlorn meditation as that may sound even though it kind of comes down to a looking back from the grave sort of perspective. Okay, but it has to be that or it's no good. It's a way of looking at the world and life just as you would see it with the grand nostalgia of knowing it for something forever left behind.

This is a rare and delicious perspective, so powerful as to allow a glimpse, at last and for once, of the funny little incongruities that above everything were making this world and life in it something you know you would have better appreciated, had you only not been quite so close, so immersed in it as not to notice. Put it this way: Go ahead and just try taking Harpo Marx out of this world; take his funny curly be-wigged head out of the picture; take the harp from his hands, take away from your sight the wild look of wonder in his eyes, take from his head that funny crushed opera hat; take it all out of this world as we've known it, and would remember it--as if we could--after we're gone, and what would be left of anything magical enough to miss?

Harpo Marx is incongruous, as also, by ever so vast a contrast is Hitler. Both were clowns under the Big Top of the Greatest Show on Earth. In the center ring of Circus Earth, here indeed was Hitler where he trod the sawdust with mustache and whip to make the opposite of what he wanted, happen; to make the face of his opposite, Harpo Marx all the more lovable than it already was. But here was Harpo, the image of an angel (he could swear like a veritable Mae West in the midst of a three sailor tryst, drunken or sober) golden-haired (though the wig was actually pink) and plucking none but the most ethereal music from a harp he'd taught himself to play, through a most incongruous genius, by ear, and by using a system of tuning he'd invented himself--and there is Hitler trying to rid the world of Harpo.

Incongruity! Oh! How can it be that some skinny, greasy looking kid, stuck with a hick from the sticks name that can conjure nothing but the image of an ignorant country plow-boy, an "Elvis Presley"? How he could arise to such stellar majesty--why, one must only marvel with none but the greatest delight at the very incongruity of it. But this is that kind of world, into which the wild and unruly force of the absurd is continually bursting, always to so marvelously confound our every prejudice and expectation. And here where the impossible is constantly transformed into the possible; here, with such a mystery attendant upon our existence, we find the only kind of life that can possibly be worth missing, in all its glorious and outrageously unaccountable incongruity.