Yesterday, in the night, late, I’d a note from our young Mr. King who reads Holy Books and repeats quotations and does not think for himself–I admonish him to learn to think and not to repeat slogans.

I know a young girl from Persia–a very pretty little thing–whose nation is the pit of Hell Itself because it is run by men who read Holy Books, different of degree but not of kind, from those Holy Books cherished of young Mr. King, to the Persian people and get them to repeat quotations while they rot in the streets and do not think for themselves.

The Americans, the youngest and most naive of all God’s Children, listen to men who read Children’s poetry books to them and have them repeat quotations and they do not realize that their sweet life is slipping away from them–too bad–their fault–because they do not bother to think for themselves.

The Americans do not like to think—they do not like to consider that they are asked to sell their magnificent birthright for trinkets and that they appear to us happy as baby clams with the rate of exchange–very happy to say—“OK, I’ll sell my magnificent birthright to you in exchange for trinkets, yes please.” We ask: Do you think for yourself?  No? Oh, why not?

***Follows on now a comic book, annotated as to copyright, end of each page, what we called “the funny papers” in our late lamented youth, this dating to 1950. Do you find it a funny paper today?  Well, do you?  DO YOU?***

***We have now had our comic book, annotated as to copyright, end of each page, what we called “the funny papers” in our late lamented youth, this dating to 1950. Do you find it a funny paper today?  Well, do you?  DO YOU?***

Young Gary Cooper went out and looked up at the sun, found his passion, became brilliant and rich. Go out in the sun yourself.  Look up. Drink in the rays.  Find your passion.  Become brilliant.  Become rich.  Notoriously laconic, when his image men called a meeting to discuss how best to type-cast him, Mr. Cooper listened a bit and finally said, simply this:  “Always make me the hero.”  He never played anything else and his image in America was that of a hero always.

In addition to laconic, Mr.  Cooper was a number of other notable things.  He was, unquestionably, the most insatiable and successful seducer in Hollywood history, which is a remarkable accomplishment.  The girls fell over like duck pins.  The public knew virtually nothing about this aspect of the man.  His image was assiduously protected from any harm to his notion of being always the hero.

Mr. Cooper was also, beyond doubt, the best dressed man to ever work in the movie business.  Ever.  He was active in what is called the age of Hollywood glamour, and to say he was best dressed man at that time is high praise indeed.  He insisted on only wearing and being photographed in Brioni suits at a time when very few men had ever heard of Brioni suits.

These days, at the grocery, have a look while in check out at the movie magazines and note what passes for Hollywood glamour today.  What are called Hollywood leading men today, uniformly dress and look like junkies.  So much for glamour.

Mr. Cooper understood glamour in the same way he understood, from time he first rode into Hollywood from Wyoming, that his image must be carefully managed.  And so it was.  He was always the hero.  Message to us:  decide what your image will be and insist upon it being so.  Never waver.  Decide who you want to be and become that–be tenacious.  Be passionate.

The principle trouble with the American middle orders is that the men in those orders bequeath to their younger generations all the attributes necessary to be, well, middle class. Be studious, follow the rules, try to get into best schools, punch all your tickets. The trouble with this mindset is that while it to large extent ensures a middle class life, it rules out with virtual certainty ever being rich.

Some people have a certain je ne sais quoi about them–almost a halo.  This halo is called passion.  Do you have a passion? Oh, what is it?  If you have a passion, you may work all the time but you are not really working–in truth you are having a ball.  You are doing what you love.  Are you doing what you love? Oh, why is that?  Do you know what you love?  Have you ever thought about it?  If no, why so? Think about it.

While passion and what I call brilliance lead to money, money is a sidebar to the pulse of passion.  Money comes when you are passionate but you are not passionate after money.  Money simply follows passion.

Man is born with a certain IQ–this is intelligence.

Man becomes educated, on the streets, in life, in schools of various sorts-this makes a man smart.

What is the missing ingredient that puts a halo around the highest achievers?  That mysterious attribute derives from passion and is called brilliance.

Ordinary people cannot plan to be brilliant because they don’t know what passion is.  They can see the results of passion in the very few brilliant men they meet in life.  But they cannot understand that the brilliance stems from passion.  Men of passion think.

The oldest of adage to a young man is not–Go to Choate, go to Harvard, work hard at the firm, make partner, marry a girl from a good family, teach your kids the same rules.  Make the kids just like you.

What is the oldest adage?  Think and grow rich.  Think.  Brilliant men are always thinking.  Thinking about their passion.  Not about money–about their passion.

These men become brilliant and brilliance leads to treasure not merely because passion becomes brilliance and then becomes money, but rather because brilliant men become rich by the exercise of their passion.  They become rich inadvertently.

These men are tireless, absolutely and unwaveringly self-assured and above all happy.  They look up at the sun in the sky and smile.  Ordinary men look down at their feet and are glum.  Don’t look down at the street, look up at the sun.  Don’t be glum, be happy and bask in the rays of brilliant sunshine.

Jesus Christ gave all His Children the capacity to be great.  He gave them all a passion. Find yours.  First, Think–what is my passion?  When you find it, you are free, you are finally happy and you will be rich without even thinking of money.

Find your passion–become brilliant–become rich.

Let’s have a look at a work sent to me today from a Mr. H. Q Roosevelt, who in his turn introduces us to Mr. Steve Siebold who has put together a list of those discernible things that make the rich different from ordinary men.

Mr. Siebold’s opinions are of course his own and  I am happy to have this note from him as inspiration to send you this night.  I neither completely endorse nor completely reject them.  I simply submit them to you for your consideration.  For you to think about.

** I commence to quote from Mr Roosevelt and Mr. Siebold here in full, unless and until otherwise noted by me.**

21 Ways Rich People Think Differently Than Average People

By H.Q. Roosevelt

Many bells must be rung, in this, our century of rampant savagery, for the dead innocents

Today, I was with a lady who is by blood, Armenian.  The history of the genocide against her people waged by the Ottoman Turks, in the very midst of the Great War, is, simply put, mind-numbing.

The rendition I heard today of my Armenian Lady’s  family history and national history had me take on the grimmest of search for statistics as to how many killed, when and where.  I didn’t have to look too far.  Shocked, even in this, our, hopelessly jaded age, I probed further on and found the follow quotes from Senor Piero Scaruffi.

As I  look over the list of the dead, mind you, simply of the 20^th Century, I must, at a minimum, ask myself  “just what sort of creature is man—God’s highest Creation?”  Lamentably, the answer is most unpleasant.  Of singular importance in the roll of death provided me by Senor Piero Scaruffi is that these are dead innocents, not merely warriors.  This is not a roll call of lost combatants, but instead a call of the innocents.  What do they call back to us about ourselves, these dead innocents, about who we all are, of what we are, all apparently, capable?  About mankind itself? There are so many dead and from every corner on this earth.

I very much hesitate to say that I am thankful to Senor Piero Scaruffi for his fine work, which, as an abstract academic exercise goes, truly is sterlingly brilliant.  I hesitate to thank simply because I ask all here this:  who can thank any man for a roll of the dead innocents such as Senor Piero Scaruffi now provides us?

***That said, I here commence to quote M. Piero Scaruffi in full below, until, and unless,  noted as otherwise.  This caution: Senor Scaruffi adopts an oft-strident politic in his synopsis, about which, I’ve nothing to say but I leave his thoughts on that for you to read as he wrote them after providing us the roll of the innocents***

First, a note about the author of this work we are about to read.  Senor Piero Scaruffi  was born in Trivero, Italy, in 1955.  He took down his degree in Mathematics, summa,  in 1982 from University of Turin, where he put himself to the General Theory of Relativity.  Nicely done, Piero, nicely done, that.  So, Senor brings here the requisite bona fides in the counting of  things, which I’ve always thought to be what mathematics is, or am I wrong about that,  to his important but dismal task of writing the roll of the innocents that we will now read ourselves.

See also Wars and Casualties of the 20th and 21st Century.

The worst genocides of the 20th and 21st Centuries

For a list of casualties in wars, see this page.

Main sources:

• Charny (1988) Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review
• Stephane Courtois: Black Book on Communism (1995)
• Matthews: Guiness Book of Records (2000)
• Clodfelter: Warfare and Armed Conflicts (1992)
• Elliot: Twentieth Century Book of the Dead (1972)
• Bouthoul : A List of the 366 Major Armed Conflicts of the period 1740-1974, Peace Research (1978)
• R.J. Rummel: Death by Government – Genocide and Mass Murder (1994)

• Matt White’s website
• Several general textbooks of 20th century history

1. Note: this website has been banned in China and Turkey since 2006. Please help boycott these countries.
2. The crimes committed by right-wing dictators have always been easier to track down than the crimes against humanity committed by communist leaders, so the figures for communist leaders like Stalin and Mao increase almost yearly as new secret documents become available. To this day, the Chinese government has not yet disclosed how many people were executed by Mao’s red guards during the Cultural Revolution and how many people were killed in Tibet during the Chinese invasion of 1950. We also don’t know how many dissidents have been killed by order of Kim Il Sung in North Korea, although presumably many thousands.
3. I often get asked if Hiroshima/Nagasaki qualify as a genocide. I disagree. First of all, why only nuclear weapons? The carpet bombing of German cities and of Tokyo killed the same number of people. Second, Winston Churchill and Harry Truman did not start that war: they ended it. It is even debatable if these bombings killed or saved lives: Hiroshima probably saved a lot of Japanese lives, because a long protracted invasion like the one that took place in Germany would have killed a lot more people (Germany lost 2 million people, Japan only 300,000, because Japan was never invaded, while Germany was invaded from all sides). Actually more Japanese died in two weeks of battles with the Soviet Union in Manchuria than in the two nuclear bombings. I suspect a nuclear bomb on Berlin would have killed 100,000 people but caused Germany to surrender right away, thus saving many German lives. (I know, it is gruesome to count dead bodies like this; but, again, i didn’t start that war, the Germans and the Japanese started it). The USA had a casualty rate of 35% in the battle of Okinawa: they expected to lose one million soldiers in a land invasion of Japan, and the estimates were that Japan would lose the same number of soldiers and many more civilians. Most historians believe that it was the atomic bomb to convince Japan to surrender, and it was the second one: after the first one, there were still members of the Japanese cabinet that were opposed to surrender (the cabinet had to be unanimous in order for the emperor to surrender). The dissenters who wanted to continue the war even tried a coup to overthrow the emperor rather than obey the order to surrender. After the first bomb, Nishina (head of the Japanese nuclear program) was asked if it was possible that the USA could build another atomic bomb within six months: obviously the people who asked him the question were not going to surrender unless a second bomb was possible. Koichi Kido, advisor to emperor Hirohito, said: “We of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our endeavor to end the war.” Hisatsune Sakomizu, chief secretary of Cabinet, said that the atomic bombs were a “golden opportunity given by heaven for Japan to end the war.” Thus the Japanese themselves (those who wanted to surrender) seem to indicate that the two atomic bombs were indispensable to end a war that was killing hundreds of thousands of people per battle (the battle of Okinawa killed more Japanese than the atomic bomb on Nagasaki). It is also estimated that throughout Japan-occupied Asia about 200,000 civilians were dying every month (of disease, hunger, etc): if the atomic bombs helped Japan surrender even just six months earlier, that saved the lives of one million Indonesians, Indochinese, Philipinos, Chinese, etc. (Notable dissenting voices were the two most powerful USA generals, Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur, who both felt that the atomic bombs were unnecessary to finish Japan).
   People die in wars. During the previous world-war, millions died of everything from guns to chemical weapons. The fact that a more or less efficient weapon is used to fight a war does not constitute genocide, per se.
   It is not the weapon, but the intent. Churchill’s and Truman’s intent was to end the war, not to exterminate the peoples (which they could have done easily, had they wanted to). In fact, i think that Churchill and Truman are exemplary of how to treat a defeated enemy: instead of annihilating the enemies, they helped Germany and Japan to rebuild themselves and become stronger wealthier than they had been before the war. It may have been the first time in history.
   Furthermore, we know that Werner Heisenberg in Germany and Yoshio Nishina in Japan were working on an atomic bomb: what if they had had the time to complete one? Heisenberg in Germany had failed to correctly calculate the critical mass of uranium required to sustain a chain reaction, but Nishina in Japan had just done that in 1944. It was a matter of time before German and Japanese scientists would find out the right recipe. Thus the first bomb saved a lot of lives, probably millions of lives (not just Japanese lives, but lives of all the nations that were being massacred by the Japanese). Last but not least, the USA dropped 720,000 leaflets on Hiroshima and other cities two days earlier, warning of the impending destruction of the city.
   It is certainly debatable, instead, if the second atomic bomb was necessary. The USA only waited three days to see the effect of the first atomic bomb and of its leaflets. Today sitting in our living rooms we can calmly debate this issue forever. Of course, it was a different kind of decision for the man sitting in the White House in the middle of a world war that had been raging for four years.
4. I’ve been asked why i blame the USA only for part of the civilian deaths in Vietnam while i blame the Soviet Union for all of the civilian casualties in Afghanistan. The USA “invasion” of Vietnam is not as clearcut as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan:
   1. Even today many in Vietnam think that the aggressor was North Vietnam, not the USA, at least at the beginning, whereas everybody in Afghanistan blames the Soviet Union for that invasion. Nobody welcomed the Soviet Union, whereas about half of Vietnam welcomed the USA.
   2. When the Soviet Union withdrew, almost no Afghani followed them, whereas, when the USA withdrew, about eight million Vietnamese left with them and about three million ran away from Vietnam in the following decades risking their lives (the “boat people”).
   3. There are documented large-scale atrocities by the North Vietnamese against their own population (read the Black Book of Communism) while i haven’t seen evidence of any large-scale atrocity by the Afghani fighters against their own population
   4. The Soviet Union tried to invade the WHOLE of Afghanistan. The USA never tried to invade the northern part of Vietnam: it simply fought the Vietcong that wanted to annex south Vietnam to north Vietnam (if you read the history of the country, north and south Vietnam have fought wars for more than 1,000 years: go to the Timeline of Indochina and look for Annam and Champa. the ancient names of the two kingdoms). When the USA bombed civilians in North Vietnam, then i consider it a war crime.
5. The most frequently asked questions are always about current unpopular USA presidents: Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II… The moment the USA elects a new president, i start receiving emails asking to add him to the list of “genociders”. The moment the president leaves office the same people forget about him and jump on the next one. Can we consider President Bush a genocider due to all of the civilians killed in Iraq under his watch? I don’t think so, because the vast majority of civilians killed in Iraq were NOT killed by US troops. It is genocide, but the “genociders” are others, and the situation is still too murky to decide who exactly killed those 100,000 civilians. (If Bush is indirectly guilty of it, then certainly Islam is too). The USA bears some clear responsibilities for the chaos, but ineptitude, miscalculation, ignorance, etc do not qualify as genocide. Otheriwse the United Nations and France would be responsible for the genocide in Rwanda (900,000 people). Putin would be a better candidate for “genocider”, since the vast majority of Chechen civilians killed under his watch were killed by Russian troops. However, i have never received a single email nominating Putin…
6. Specifically about Bush II (the hot topic between 2003 and 2008). I have seen no evidence whatsoever that he or anybody working for him or the British prime minister or the Australian prime minister wanted to kill Iraqi civilians. And even less evidence that Iraqi civilians were killed in any large number by US soldiers. The Iraqi civilians killed by US soldiers are estimated at about 4% of all deaths, which is a little over 5,000. With all due respect for those families, a seven-year war that kills only 5,000 people (less than 1,000 a year) does not register anywhere in the history of the world. All the other civilians were killed by militias, suicide bombers, etc. and almost always in the name of Islam (so it would be more appropriate to vent your anger at that religion than at the USA). In fact, all the documents show that some caution was taken by the US and Britain to avoid mass civilian casualties. Compare with Vietnam, when the US bombed densely populated areas knowing that thousands of civilians would die. In fact, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan might be the first large-scale wars in which the winners went out of their way to avoid mass civilian casualties. Compare with any other war. Future generations (who will face other crises and will be more concerned with their presidents than with Bush II) may see more clearly who is responsible for those killings. Most of them were killed by fellow Iraqis or at least fellow Muslims, not by US soldiers. Once we remove all the personal emotions against this or that politician, it is self-evident who/what killed those Iraqi civilians. If you simply scream hysterically against the president of the USA, you are not helping solve the real problem of those places.

***That said, I here cease to quote Senor Piero Scaruffi .  I leave his thoughts for you to read as he wrote them after his providing us the roll of the innocents, a labor for which, we must, with requisite hesitation, thank him roundly here***

Above, at top, Suleiman I (1494-1566)  was the tenth and longest-reigning Emperor, Sultan, of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, from 1520 to his death in 1566.  Suleiman was by far the greatest leader of the Ottomans and also known, in the East, as Kunani, The Lawgiver. To the Western historians Suleiman is “The Magnificent One.”  As Sultan, Suleiman of course did not lack for the feminine comforts, but like many boys before him and after in history, he could not resist the blandishments of a girl who was strangely bred.  His itching addiction, a Russian slave girl, called by him Hurrem Sultan, Roxelane (seen below him pictured), so named, as she was head of the Imperial Harem of concubines, she, nee Aleksandra Lisowska, born in Rohatyn City of the Kingdom of Poland in a day when Russia belonged to Poland, a sharp reversal of the more recent relations between those nations.  Startlingly conniving, even for a Russian, and with red hair no less, Roxelane not only out-performed the other harem girls in her harem duties–she got a large ring and a Mrs. degree in the bargain!!  He fell, hard and long for the slave girl and, while he never knew it, and died as he lived The Magnificent One, who ruled the Osmanli Empire with personal magnetism, power, strength and brilliance, that one misstep with the Russian slave girl put the Ottomans who followed Suleiman into a long death spiral which finally ended, as did all other civilization of any consequence, after  The Great War, 1914-1918.

Below, Louis Quinze et Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, also known as Madame de Pompadour (29 December 1721 – 15 April 1764), was a member of the French Imperial Court and first-call party doll to Louis XV from 1745 until her death.  As can be seen, Jeanne Antoinette et Le Roi, Louis Quinze, lived a pretty  cushy life dans La Chateau de Versailles, but, somehow, Jeanne Antoinette had that sinking feeling that one day the axe was going to fall, or, at minimum, somebody was going to break all the Louis Quinze furniture.  Grown tired of baby talk reassurances, finally she whispered truth to Louis, on their silk upholstered chair, Qu’est-ce que ca peut faire? Je pense que, après nous, le Déluge.  A terrible!!

Madame de Pompadour either did, or did not, say to her King and consort Louis XV, “Au reste, reste, après nous, le Déluge, toujours après nous.”  If or no Madame ever said this, she was certainly prescient both in an immediate and far longer historical sense than she could have ever imagined. After Louis Quinze, came, swiftly, Madame La Guillotine.  Heads rolled and a new regime emerged, and, as with most new regimes, the Reign of Terror was far, far worse than what it replaced.  That Reign of Terror was merely a herald of the true horror to come after it.

The Great War, a century or so farther on from the Terror, ended modern civilization. This is beyond responsible dispute of any kind.  All the horrors let loose by the collapse of monarchy and empire in that war that have been visited upon us ever since; Mr. Stalin, Mr. Mao, Mr. Hitler, Mr. Castro, Mr. Pol Pot and myriad less murderous players, were presented and bequeathed their capacities to raise hell by the collapse of civilized order and society occasioned by the end of the Great War.

Of all the Kingdoms and Empires to succumb to the ravishes of the Great War, one given comparatively short shrift by today’s historians, is that of the Ottoman Turks.  Today, I delight in bringing to you the follow quotes respecting the glory, decline and collapse of the Ottomans, penned by a fellow called G.J. Meyer, he in turn introduced to us from the fellows at delancyplace.com, who daily bring us, gratis no less, some occasional gems of inspiration.

The Great War destroyed what had long been called the civilization of mankind.  All that has followed, all the horror, dislocation, disruption is but a post script, a mere annotation, to the grim result of that war.  Mankind was cut adrift, never to find firm and steady shore again.  The Great War put mankind over a ravine and all subsequent history has simply recorded the ever-increasing velocity of that disaster and fall.

In that context, we are very thankful today for the book penned by our Mr. Meyer called by him A World Undone: The Story of the Great War 1914 to 1918.  I have yet to read Mr. Meyer’s work in the full version but I will say here that if the follow quotes embodied here are any indication, it is full worth the price of purchase at suggested retail, likewise annotated at our closing here today, from amazon.com.

I am accused, if that is the word, of paying inordinate attention to the Great War to the detriment of studying of “other important stuff of consequence that has happened since.”  In a simplistic, puerile, way, I am of course guilty.  But if my critics think me stuck immobile in the muck and mire of that war, in my defense,  I ask them this:  “When you speak to me of ‘other stuff of note that has happened since,’ do you not mean merely a recording of the increased velocity at which mankind’s fall over that ravine and into the abyss occasioned by the Great War–a velocity that zooms by us unabated and unstoppable, and, if so, why ought I concern myself with a mere record of the increased velocity of the same thing?  What am I, an auto racing mechanic over here?’”

I have written, first, likely now full 25 years on, and then again after September 11, 2001, an article unchanged, as no change has actually occurred, about both that Great War and of the Ottomans and the hellfire and ceaseless terrorism let loose by the collapse of the Ottoman Turks and “other stuff” as well, comme ca:

https://johndanielbegg.com/2002/12/26/holy-terror-the-third-worlds-war-against-modernity/

An outtake of that, lamentably, all too current piece republished in the wake of 911 follows now:

A bit of  history will prove useful at this point. The First Great War left many things in its wake when it groaned to an exhausted end in 1918. I deliberately say “end” and not “conclusion” because more was left unresolved than resolved, particularly regarding the formulation of new national boundaries and the dissolution of three great, yet by then antiquated, empires—those of Russia, Austro-Hungary and the Ottomans.

It is the dissolution of the Ottoman, or Turkish, Empire which is of interest to us because with its dissolution, came helter-skelter, the unleashing of some of the most fanatical and barbaric brands of Mohammedanism the world has ever known. To be sure, the Ottomans were themselves fascistic and of a strongly fundamentalist religious bent. However, they kept a certain order in the lands then known simply as Persia to the Western mind. From its founding in AD 1299, until the end of the First War, the Ottoman Empire was a ruthless, yet comparatively stable state. After the war, the pent-up fury of those forces kept in check by force from the Ottomans, sprung free. Their freedom is our scourge today. It is those forces, loosely drawn together, which comprise the front-line threat to the modern world.

The unfettered forces of the fundamentalist Muslims represent many and disparate interests. They are joined together in a commonality of spirit only in their mutual hatred of the West—America in particularly; Israel, as America’s puppet, vassal state in Persia; moderate Arab states; and above all modernity which all four of the other objects of hate collectively represent.

***I begin here to quote in full the follow quotes of the presentation of delancyplace.com, they in turn quoting from a book, duly annotated at closing from our Mr. Meyer.  We thank both our sources named.***

“In today’s encore selection — starting with its founding by Osman in 1299, the Ottoman Empire was ruled for ten successive generations by capable and often brilliant leaders, culminating in the dazzling reign of Suleiman the Magnificent (1494-1566), who led the Empire to its cultural and geographic zenith. That changed when his son Mustafa was executed — by five professional executioners whose tongues had been slit and eardrums broken so that they would hear no secrets and could never speak of what they saw — and replaced by his wife’s favorite, Selim II. Selim was followed by a succession of mostly degenerate and weak leaders — many who murdered relatives to prevent rivalries — that left the Empire, by 1914, as the “sick man of Europe”:

“Suleiman, a contemporary of Henry VIII of England, took his strange heritage to a peak of vitality. Like his forebears, he was a warrior, personally leading his army in thirteen campaigns. He pushed deeper into Europe, capturing Belgrade and Budapest and completing the conquest of the Balkans. He besieged Vienna, the keystone of central Europe, and would have captured it too if torrents of rain had not made it impossible for him to bring his heavy guns north. He was a poet, a student of the works of Aristotle, and a builder who made Constantinople grander and more beautiful than it had ever been. The opulence of life in his Topkapi Palace beggars the imagination.

“Suleiman had some three hundred concubines, as well as a promising young son and heir named Mustafa, when he was given a red-haired Russian girl named Ghowrem, who came to be known as Roxelana. She came into his harem as part of his share of the booty from a slave-gathering raid into what is now Poland, and she must have been a remarkable creature. (Not surprisingly, in light of the power she acquired in Constantinople, she eventually won a second new name: ‘the witch.’) Almost from the day of her arrival, Suleiman never slept with another woman.  Eventually and amazingly, he did something that no sultan had done in centuries; he married. Their love story would have been one of the great ones if it hadn’t ended up taking the dynasty and the empire in such a sordid direction.

“Mustafa gave every indication of developing into yet another mighty branch on the family tree. At an early age he showed himself a bold military leader adored by his troops, a capable provincial governor, and a popular hero. But he stood in the way of the son whom Roxelana had borne to (presumably) Suleiman, and so he was doomed. Working her wiles, Roxelana persuaded Suleiman that Mustafa was plotting against him. (He was doing nothing of the kind.) With his father looking on, Mustafa was overpowered and strangled by five professional executioners whose tongues had been slit and eardrums broken so that they would hear no secrets and could never speak of what they saw. And so when Suleiman died some years later, master of an empire of almost incredible size and power, he was succeeded by Roxelana’s son, Selim II. Nothing was ever the same again.

“Selim the Sot was short and fat and a drunk. He never saw a battlefield and died after eight years on the throne by falling down and fracturing his skull in his marble bath. His son, Murad III, was also a drunk and an opium addict as well; during a reign of twenty years he sired 103 children and apparently did little else. His heir, Mahomet III, began his reign by ordering all of his many brothers, the youngest of them mere children, put to death, thereby introducing that custom into Ottoman royal culture. Having done so he followed his father in devoting the rest of his life to copulation. And so it went. Every sultan from Roxelana’s son forward was a monster of degeneracy or a repulsive weakling or both. The abruptness and permanence of the change, the sharpness of the contrast between the murdered Mustafa and his half-brother Selim II, has given rise to speculation that perhaps Roxelana’s son was not Suleiman’s son at all.

“In the post-Suleiman empire, a new breed of craven sultans came to live in terror of being overthrown by rivals from within the dynasty. Appalling new traditions emerged, to be observed whenever one of them died. All the women of the deceased sultan would be moved to a distant place and kept in even deeper solitude for the rest of their miserable lives. Any who happened to be pregnant would be murdered (generally by being bundled in sacks and drowned), and the younger brothers and half-brothers of the new monarch (often a large number of men, boys, and infants) were murdered as well (generally by strangulation).

“The rulers erected a windowless building called the Cage in which their heirs were confined from early childhood until they died or were put to death or, having been taught nothing about anything, were released to take their turns on the throne. The result was as inevitable as it was monstrous: an empire ruled year after year and finally century after century by utterly ignorant, utterly incompetent, sometimes half-imbecilic, half-mad men, some of whom spent decades in the Cage before their release and all of whom, after their release, were free to do absolutely anything they wanted, no matter how vicious, for as long as they remained alive. They commonly indulged their freedom to kill or maim anyone they wished to kill or maim for any reason — for playing the wrong music or for smoking, for example — or for no reason at all.”

***I cease here to quote the presentation today of delancyplace.com, they in turn quoting from a book, duly annotated at closing from our Mr. Meyer.  We thank both our sources named.***

Author: G.J. Meyer
Title: A World Undone: The Story of the Great Was 1914 to 1918
Publisher: A Division of Random House, Inc.
Date: Copyright 2006 by G.J. Meyer
Pages: 87-89

A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918

By G.J. Meyer by Delacorte Press

Paperback ~ Release Date: 2007-05-29

If you wish to read further: Buy Now

Ginger, Ginger–who could not be happy?

Who could possibly have been depressed in the Great Depression when they saw and heard Miss Ginger Rogers (nee Virginia Katherine McMath of Independence, Missouri; July 16, 1911 – April 25, 1995) warm their heart and tickle their imagination?  Ginger sings:

“We never see a headline about breadlines today!!  And when we see that landlord, we look that guy right in the eye.”

One of the things the American government did right in the Great Depression was to commission songs and movies to cheer the hearts of the people.  Maybe the current government ought to consider doing the same.  Ginger sings:

“We’re in the money, the skies are all hunney.. let’s lend it, spend it, let it roll all around.”

All these Depression era songs are real classics and, to kick things off, Our Ginger, accompanied by myriad comely friends, informs us that, well–Zut alors!!! –we’re in the money, the skies are all hunney!!…comme ca…

To finish up–as all here are honorary Scotsmen today, by executive fiat I say, have a  look and listen to this from Miss Deanna Durbin (nee Edna Mae Durbin at Grace Hospital in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, December 4, 1921 and alive yet today in south of France–small wonder she was Mr. Churchill’s favorite star, he the inveterate Francophile) who proves to us that there are such things as “happy tears,” something we bred Scots already know, but for the rest of you:

Loch Lomond

Loch Lomond

By yon bonnie banks and by yon bonnie braes,
Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomon’.
where me and my true love were ever wont to gae
On the bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomon’.

Chorus:
O ye’ll tak’ the high road and I’ll tak the low road,
An’ I’ll be in Scotland afore ye;
But me and me true love will never meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomon’.

‘Twas there that we parted in yon shady glen,
On the steep, steep side o’ Ben Lomon’,
Where in purple hue the Hieland hills we view,
An’ the moon comin’ out in the gloamin’.

(chorus)

The wee birdies sing and the wild flow’rs spring,
And in sunshine the waters are sleepin’;
But the broken heart it kens nae second spring again,
Tho’ the waefu’ may cease frae their greetin’
[ From: http://www.elyrics.net%5D

(chorus)
……………………………………………….
………
The song was apparently written by a young soldier to
his sweetheart. Two
of Bonnie Prince Charlies soldiers were captured in
Carlisle after the
abortive rising of 1745. One wrote the song, the other
was released and
took it back to Scotland to give to his colleagues
sweetheart. The low road
refers to the soldiers impending death and the path of
his spirit, whilst
the high road is either the sign of hope for which he
sacrificed his life,
or the actual road back to Scotland over the high
rugged hills.
Hence, his spirit would return via the low road and be
back in Scotland
first.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rjgs3pj_38k

Every picture tells a story, don’t it?

Mr. Roderick David, “Rod,” Stewart, of North London, England, was a brilliant showman from, now long years ago, who sang for us this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmyGa29zIqk

I am unfamiliar with Mr. Stewart’s sensibilities as to guns regulation for the Americans.  I can say that Rod very likely would be today considered, what is the peculiar term employed by the foggy-minded ones??—oh, yes, that’s it–politically incorrect, as, in his song here for us today he makes reference to a romance on ship with an Asian girl thusly: “I fell in love with a slit-eyed lady, by the light of an eastern moon.”  Roderick’s just so RACIST!!  Far more damming, Rod goes on to sing that “Shanghai Lil didn’t use no pill—she claimed that it just ain’t natural.”  Horrors!!  Rod!!!  Bad, Roderick—naughty boy!!!  I am very sure that the school marms who today patrol all speech in America and the West would have some much-arched editing to do to Rod’s poem.

Like all subjects in the public market, the subject of guns regulation for the Americans is remarkably simple, but for the Children’s Party and its desperate fixation with getting guns away from the Americans—by any means possible.

Children, infants, cannot appreciate grown-up concepts.  So, let’s just say that if you don’t understand the idiocy of the notion that disarming the Americans will prevent guns mishap and mismanagement, you occupy that peculiar territory of Disneyworld dreamland in which mature ideas are strictly forbidden.

Which means this: There is nothing to discuss with the Children.  Off to bed, now!!

What I can re-count here is the history—going back to the killing of Jack Kennedy in my personal knowledge—of the annoying tantrums of the Children that if guns were only banned, Jack’s and many subsequent fatalities would have been avoided.

I was, perhaps inordinately, fond of Jack.  I have written you about him extensively, most recently during what were called, most sarcastically,  the very, very important elections of 2012, by the gentlemen of estate fourth, here for instance:

https://johndanielbegg.com/2012/09/12/jack-kennedy-and-the-democratic-party-that-he-would-not-today-know/

The Americans, in a singular sense, are addicted to vast troves of conspiracy theories–hopelessly so–and of every conceivable type imaginable.  The most enduring of this genre—in truth, more of an industry in my life the past 50 years, is, sorry school marms, “who wacked Jack?”  The theories amount to a massive commercial enterprise and virtually no one, except young Oswald, is spared the searing light of inquest.

I was of tender years when Jack fell in Dallas, but I am of course a current person of interest because, quite frankly, everybody drawing breath in November, 1963, is as well.  I say here to you on God’s Book “I simply didn’t do it.”  But pay me no mind.  The theorists of conspiracy will show no quarter in their search for the real murderer.  So, I stand accused, notwithstanding that I hadn’t means or motive and, much more so, that I was roundly and publicly very fond of Jack, which did not sit well with members of my family at all—most of which were, and now yet remain, far more deservedly so, also persons of interest in the long running Dallas melodrama.

So convoluted did the conspiracy theories respecting Jack’s death become that likely the only question about which all Americans of a certain age can agree is that there is a far shorter list of those who did not kill Jack than is the list of who did kill him. Likewise, that young Oswald is not guilty to be sure and the Justice Warren Commission, charged with finding out the real and complete story was, of course, deeply in on Jack’s November mishap–up to their eyeballs so–as well.  Jack’s murder was, and is, quite evidently a nationwide, nay, worldwide, plot without foreseeable end.

I do not recall the Children’s Party getting into high froth and lather and baying at the moon about the gun, or guns—you choose from the vast menu of offerings on that subject–used in Dallas, but maybe I was too small then to notice if the Children had yet sounded that particular alarm or no in 1963.

I can say here, with full alacrity, that by the time, 5 years after, when Jack’s kid brother, Bobby, of whom I was far, far, less fond, got popped in Los Angeles, the guns control now!!  to save as all from full wreak and ruin crusade!!  was in gear fifth campaign mode.  Here, again, I remain a person of interest and here again; I am innocent as new driven snow drift. Had guns not been permitted the populace, the Palestinian boy who bumped Bobby would not have had any chance to succeed, so the kiddies’ litany goes.

Fast forward to the present and I am likewise sanguine that the Children are so feverish about outlawing guns for the Americans that they simply have to covertly, it is whispered perhaps–in quarters of dark, nether reaches, in Disneyworld dreamland–overtly, enjoy mass murders of young kids so that they can get their rag-tag band back into the streets to play that old, tired, song loud, long and repeatedly.  The Children did not even bother to wait until the tiny bodies were buried before trying to make political hay as the sun set on the murders.  This, craven, political use of such tragedy is fully beyond reprehensible.  Shame on ya, Children!!   Back to bed with ya!!

For the slow learners, the Children today inform us, ceaselessly, that gunmen themselves are mere passive bystanders—it is a thing, not a man, who shoots the babies—it is the evil guns themselves.  The murderer and the babies just happened to be there, that’s all.  What do military men call such passive participants??  Oh, yes—collateral damage.

And the band plays on.

And the pictures tell the stories, don’t they?

Maybe, just maybe, all the Americans really want to do is dance!! Shall we dance?? You decide!!.