TOM CLARK: Homeland with Ghost Wall (Assimilating the Insanity)

Friday, 24 February 2017

Homeland with Ghost Wall (Assimilating the Insanity)

With all the Oscar "escapism vs hard reality" debate, #London offers up a split ticket Photo @LealOlivas @AFPphoto #TheresaMay #Trump: image via Reading the Pictures @ReadingThePix, 23 February 2017

True Detective, Season 3: image via Mark Murray @mmurraypolitics, 23 February 2016

Trump on deportations: "It's a military operation": image via Dan Merica @danmericaCNN, 23 February 2017

In rare public appearance, top Trump adviser Stephen Bannon talks Pres. Trump's "economic nationalist agenda.": image via NBC Nightly News @NBCNightlyNews, 23 February 2017

Hoodwink'd Hoodwinker with Neon Pangolin Scales

Donna Brazile celebrating Mardi Gras at the DNC meeting in Atlanta: image via Jennifer Epstein @jeneps, 23 February 2017

This is the scene at the party, by the way: image via Jennifer Epstein @jeneps, 23 February 2017

Non sequitur. #CPAC Photo @somogettynews: image via Reading the Pictures @ReadingThePix, 23 February 2017

Assimilating the Insanity: Nicholas Stargardt: The German War

The key asymmetry between Jewish and German responses is to be found here: for the Jews, their impending destruction shaped their understanding of all other aspects of the war: for Germans, the war framed their understanding and response to the murder of the Jews. It was not knowledge of the events which separated them, but their viewpoints, which were marked by huge asymmetries of power -- and also of empathy.

With the German media hinting at what people already knew, the rumours became more bizarre. In November 1942, Himmler was appalled to read a serious claim advanced by Rabbi Stephen Wise in America that the corpses of Jews were being turned into fertiliser and soap. The SS leader immediately instructed the head of the Gestapo to investigate, asking him to guarantee that no further use was being made of corpses, beyond burning or burial. By that time, the rumour, which had reached Wise via his Swiss rabbinical informants, was already well established. In Berlin, it circulated as a joke: 'Who are the three greatest chemists of world history? Answer: Jesus, because he turned water into wine; Göring because he turned butter into cannons; and Himmler because he turned Jews into soap.' Fifteen-year-olds laughed at each other under the shower after their football games, joking about how many Jews they had scrubbed in the suds of green soap. Others deciphered the initials RIF embossed in wartime bars of soap as RJF, transforming the innocuous-sounding Reichsstelle für Industrielle Fette (Reich Office for Industrial Fats) into 'Rein jüdisches Fett' (Pure Jewish Fat).

The soap rumour may have harked back to the First World War, when British propaganda had claimed that in German 'corpse factories' the military dead were processed into glycerine and other products. Like the rumours of mass execution in the special camps from which the trains returned empty, false and real details combined to convey a widespread sense that an unparalleled, industrial-scale operation was taking place. Ghoulish humour in particular provided ways of starting to assimilate the enormity of what was happening without fully accepting it as fact. With flippant remarks, people could try to displace fact into the realm of the absurd, without quite dispelling their own profound unease.

from Nicholas Stargardt: The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939--1945 (2015)

Happening now, and in a human dignity way, yet

Full text of Gen Kelly scolding press for "misreporting" use of military force just after @potus calls deportation plan "military operation": image via Jacqueline Alemany @JaxAlemany, 23 February 2017

Zeke Miller Retweeted Jacqueline Alemany
Zeke Miller added,

It's not fake news if the president says it

tweet via Zeke Miller @ZekeJMiller, 23 February 2017

Dan MericaVerified account@danmericaCNN
A WH spox says Trump didn't misspeak. "It was an adjective," they said, adding Trump describing focus on "removing serious criminals"
Zeke Miller Retweeted Dan Merica
Zeke Miller added,
hmmm

tweet via Zeke Miller @ZekeJMiller, 23 February 2017

@PressSec on “military operation": “The president was using that as an adjective. It’s happening with precision.”: tweet via Zeke Miller @ZekeJMiller, 23 February 2017

Bannon to press: “Is that the opposition party back there?": tweet via Zeke Miller @ZekeJMiller, 23 February 2017

Bannon: "The mainstream media better understand something -- all of those promises are going to be implemented”: tweet via Zeke Miller @ZekeJMiller, 23 February 2017

Treasury Sec Mnuchin just showed @BeckyQuick the signature you'll soon see on your money. @CNBC: image via Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla, 23 February 2017

Happening now, to amuse the base (keeping our promises)

Happening now: Heavily militarized police force raiding #OcetiSakowin protest camp at #StandingRock: image via Jamil Dakwar @jdakwar, 23 February 2017

Highly militarized police force raiding #OcetiSakowin using armored vehicles, pointing automatic rifles and arresting water protectors: image via Jamil Dakwar @jdakwar, 23 February 2017

These pictures are not from occupied West Bank but from #StandingRock protest camp being raided by heavily militarized police force: image via Jamil Dakwar @jdakwar, 23 February 2017

#OcetiSakowin protest camp @StandingRock looks like a war zone as heavily militarized police force are raiding it: image via Jamil Dakwar @jdakwar, 23 February 2017