Soviet propaganda: leaving Dr. Goebbels in the dust - Part I

It was a difficult time in USSR, the beginning of nineteen seventies. The Vietnam war was still raging, the Cold War was at its strongest, eating away at Soviet economy and forcing the Central Committee of the Party to look for any excuse to draw attention of the Soviet citizenry from the steadily lowering quality of life and steadily growing queues in the food shops.

It was only too easy to discover a welcome distraction. It was provided by the Soviet Jewry that at this time started to find the way out. The good old "Let my people go!" got a new geographic coordinates and, the fearsome might of the KGB and emigration authorities (see under "KGB") notwithstanding, the slow trickle of the lucky few who escaped using relatives in places like Poland, become a quite strong flow, supported by growing international pressure. Politicians in US, such as Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (whose efforts culminated later in the Jackson–Vanik amendment) have done their considerable best to put the Jewish emigration issue on the agenda and to keep it there. Toward 1973 several tens of thousands of Soviet Jews emigrated, many of them to Israel. The number of people who were refused the permit to emigrate, mostly under pretext of possible damage to Soviet security, was growing quickly too, causing a rise in the dissident movement and related international notoriety - the thing most feared and hated by the Soviet leaders. Dissidents were arrested and incarcerated under various pretexts, such as "hooliganism", "parasitic way of life", "leaking of state secrets" etc. The linked here Chronology of events of the Zionist movement in the Soviet Union (just for year 1973) shows a little bit of the whole story.

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Sara: a clear and present danger to the national security of the state of Israel?

She?

Then there’s the last person Bibi sees every night: Sara. Seconds into any conversation about Netanyahu, the subject of Sara, whom he married in 1991, invariably comes up. It’s amazing how many otherwise sane Israelis see her Lady Macbeth–like hand in every corner of her husband’s life and work—whom he hires, what he does and doesn’t do, whom he can and cannot see. One hears constantly that Sara “has something” on her husband, stemming from her decision to stick by him after the highly publicized affair to which he admitted early in their marriage when his political career hung in the balance. One also hears of a supposed contract between the two of them, said to have been drafted by a former attorney general of Israel, squirreled away in some safe. Or of Bibi cowering in the bathroom, calling the childhood friends of his whom she has excommunicated.

I am not sure that the situation is all that different from that of the other married politicians or, for that matter, of the other married men.

But I am going to the bathroom to call Vanity Fair anyway.

Yep, they know how to treat vampires in Bulgaria

Now it's a scientific fact:

Archaeologists in Bulgaria say they've found two medieval skeletons pierced through the chest with iron rods intended to stop them from turning into vampires.

The discovery highlights a pagan practice common in some villages until a century ago, historians said, where people considered evil had their hearts impaled after death for fear they would return to feast on human blood.

The whys of the matter are simple:

People believed the rod would pin the dead into their graves to prevent them from rising at midnight and terrorizing the living...

And before you look down at the practice and start yakking about superstition, consider the proven scientifically fact that the remedy worked: no one of the suspects rose at midnight.

So there.

A headline to end all headlines

Fox News front page:

I think that usually a bullet in the head works quite well...

Thy neighbor's goat...

Actually the story is educational, in parts. Thanks to it, I have learned a bit about bath salts. Brr... the sophisticated ways of killing self some people choose... But back to the story:

...a West Virginia man killed his neighbor’s pet goat while he was high on bath salts. What makes this even more absurd? When police came to find him they found him in women’s underwear in the same room as the dead animal.

Now, looking at the perpetrator, I believe that the suffering the poor goat experienced before its untimely death was not only physical:

Poor goat, in short. Now I've tried to check which commandments the perp has broken in this story. Or, rather, which ones he didn't. Ehehe... tough business that. Was there anything about the neighbor's goat?

Oh yes, and much more besides.

The most equal between the equals, of course

I would usually (can't say "normally" in the circumstances) bow to Norm's opinion on most things in the universe. But in the situation Norm describes in this post, I have one small advantage*, being a graduate (survivor/escapee/you name it) of too many years of the communist paradise. And believe you me - no surprise at all here. Just a slightly queasy sense of déjà vu.

What it reminds me too - this short exchange between Jesus and Pontius Pilate from Bulgakov's Master and Margarita:

—И настанет царство истины?
—Настанет, игемон, — убежденно ответил Иешуа.
—Оно никогда не настанет! — вдруг закричал Пилат таким страшным голосом, что Иешуа отшатнулся.

Or, in my slavish translation to English:

—And the kingdom of truth shall come to be?
—It shall, Prefect, — confidently answered Jesus.
—It shall never come! - suddenly screamed Pilate in a voice so frightening that Jesus recoiled.

Guess who... oh well, it's just too bad.

(*) Of course, as millions of other people, so it's a small advantage indeed.

P.S. I've just read the second post by Norm on the subject. Not much has changed, but I sure would like to see the original paper on that experiment. Because otherwise, as Norm mentions, it remains an anecdote. Which fact is rather less important than the real subject of my post.

P.P.S. Got to the document here. It is not an anecdote, not anymore, an in some details even more interesting than described. Lewis was quite wrong in his description. Oh boy... it's a mess now. I will get it in the neck for sure, but the truth will out anyway, so:

Oh, in short:

• Powerless and empowered men ate more or less the same quantity of cookies. The powerless ones even consumed a bit more.
• Empowered women ate almost twice as much cookies as powerless ones.

Well, it opens a new can of worms, but what can I do?

But there is more interesting info in that article.

Unit 8200, whiz kids and UPI

The article Unit 8200 and Israel's high-tech whiz kids about some successful high-tech endeavors by the graduates of the Israeli intelligence outfit doesn't carry any information beyond what was already published in many other similar articles. Aside of trying to link that unit with Flame virus, which is a relatively new phenomenon.

What drew my attention was the picture used by UPI to illustrate that article:

The current version of the photo's capture says "An Israeli soldier walks in front of humanitarian aid at the Zrifin Military Base in Rishon le-Zion." The file name of the photograph is "Unit-8200-and-Israels-high-tech-whiz-kids".  The previous version of the capture, later modified - before I could make a snapshot - said that the humanitarian aid was confiscated from one of the Gazan "flotillas".

In any case, seeing as how Zrifin Military Base doesn't have anything to do with the unit described in the article, nor obviously does the soldier in the picture (unless his use of a cell phone somehow makes him an accomplice), I can hardly see the relevance of that picture.

So I would offer a more attractive replacement, also irrelevant to the subject of that article, but at least pleasant to the eye. Here:

The capture to this one says: "Actress Emma Stone arrives at the MTV Movie Awards at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City, California on June 3, 2012.

Ain't it more cool? And no need to change the text in the future because of pissed off readers, methinks.

How To Tell If Someone Is A Paultard (A Ron Paul Supporter)

Repeat with her. Cause it bears repeating.

Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi nude uncensored pictures

Are of a very slight, not to say non-existent interest to this blog. So you get to see, as a compensation, another woodpecker picture. But it's a Syrian woodpecker, so hopefully it's a good enough consolation.

So there. Look at the picture for about 1 minute, breath shallowly and it (your anxiety) will pass.

Amira Hass scores a hat trick

And all she has done was playing according to her employer's rules. First of all, the article as it appears in the front page of Ha'aretz:

Wow, you say, wow, after reading the headline: using Palestinians as dog fodder? Are we some kind of Nazis, indeed? First goal for Amira - and the online editor.

OK, then you read the lede. Hm... so, the soldiers weren't, strictly speaking, using the Palestinians. Well, small consolation, after all they were confiscating private vehicles at will... not very nice, you would agree. Second goal for Amira.

Properly wound up, you open the link to the full article. And you see another lede there (click to read the text):

So the soldiers weren't really confiscating the vehicles. But still, using someone else's vehicle for training purposes is a somewhat non-orthodox approach. Hat trick completed, Amira!

Well, read the whole article.You may find a few more goals there if you make an effort. I couldn't due to some queasiness.

Oh, and here is Amira Hass:

She is, probably, full of more crap than that one article. After all, she churns them almost daily.

And I don't have a dog. My cats died. And I can't train our roaches to attack somebody. But in any case I wouldn't sic a roach at Amira. Roaches are that sensitive.

Hat trick: for football-ignorant - means three goals in a game.

The Council Has Spoken!

Council Winners

• *First place with 5 2/3 votes! The Right Planet – Memorial Day Tribute: My Granddad
• Second place *t* with 2 votes – The Independent Sentinel- The President Is Leaking Top Secret Information to Improve His Re-election Chances
• Second place *t* with 2 votes – Joshuapundit- Obama: ‘Some Of My Best Friends Are Jews’
• Third place with 1 2/3 votes – The Noisy Room-Silencing the Clarions
• Fourth place with 2/3 vote – Simply Jews- Ali Larijani threatens Israel, lost in translation again
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Mellow Jihadi- Peril At Sea
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Razor-Playing the Victim Card: Students And the Student Loan Debt
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Political Commentator – Finally, something intelligent out of the mouth of John Rocker!

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 3 votes! – George C. Gross-A Train Near Magdeburg submitted by The Right Planet
• Second place with 2 1/3 votes – Yid With Lid –The Socialist Rabbi Who Taught Obama About Israel submitted by The Independent Sentinel
  
• Third place with 1 1/3 votes –Campus Watch–UC Berkeley and the ‘Islamophobia’ Lobby submitted by The Watcher
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote -KausFiles Notes On Wisconsin submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Kings of War – The End of Western Military Interventionism? submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes - Sultan Knish –The State at the End of the Universe submitted by The Noisy Room
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote - The Contentious Centrist –The Mos Eisley Spaceport submitted by Simply Jews
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -PJ Tatler/Zombie –I Just Heard the N-Word 30,000 Times (content warning) submitted by Bookworm Room
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -The New Criterion –Future tense, XI: The lessons of culture submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -The Enterprise Blog –The 7 scariest facts from the new CBO long-term budget forecast submitted by Gay Patriot
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -The Gates Of Vienna –Whose Country? submitted by The Razor
• Sixth place with 1/3 vote -Maggie’s Notebook –Don’t vote for the Jew submitted by The Political Commentator

UFO over Israel. Or, at least, in the general area.

This is what Ynet reports:

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Politicians on Syrian massacres: who is being crafty and who is being woozy?

These two news items show the answer to that question:

U.S. backs Chapter VII resolution for Syria

The U.S. treasury secretary said Washington was considering a Chapter VII resolution at the U.N. Security Council, which authorizes the use of force in Syria.

Nice show that, especially when everyone knows that such a resolution doesn't stand a chance to pass through Russia and China in UNSC.

Annan: Iran could help remove Assad

Iran and other nations could create plan to ease Syrian President Bashar Assad from power, special envoy Kofi Annan was to tell U.N. Security Council Thursday.

For a man who travels a lot, Mr Anan has a great and steady provider for whatever shit he smokes (or sniffs or...). But then, traveling a lot he knows a lot of people, so why I am not surprised?

Abu Yahya al-Libi - another #2 RIP, and Peter Oborne's ruminations

Rest In Pieces, it means in this case. That martyrs' paradise has accumulated a sizable unit of #2s by now. Anyway, nothing but good about the dead, so the old formula alone will serve: is Abu Yahya al-Libi dead? Good.

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Ray Bradbury RIP

The man who, I thought, will live forever, because he deserved to (not very sensible, I know).

There are many writers who brought delight to my life, but only a few names that made my heart beat with so much happiness at the sight of a new book on the library shelf. And his name was one of the few.

Rest in peace, descendant of a witch. See you later.