The Sedlec Ossuary

"From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The Sedlec Ossuary is a small Roman Catholic chapel located in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic. The ossuary is estimated to contain the skeletons of between 40,000 and 70,000 people.

"Henry, the abbot of the Cistercian monastery in Sedlec, was sent to Palestine by King Otakar II of Bohemia in 1278. When he returned, he brought with him a small amount of earth that he had removed from Golgotha and sprinkled it over the abbey cemetery. The word of this pious act soon spread and the cemetery in Sedlec became a desirable burial site throughout Central Europe. During the Black Death in the mid 14th century, and after the Hussite Wars in the early 15th century, many thousands of people were buried there and the cemetery had to be greatly enlarged.

"In 1870, František Rint, a woodcarver, was employed by the Schwarzenberg family to put the bone heaps into order. The macabre result of his effort speaks for itself. Four enormous bell-shaped mounds occupy the corners of the chapel. An enormous chandelier of bones, which contains at least one of every bone in the human body, hangs from the center of the nave with garlands of skulls draping the vault. Other works include piers and monstrances flanking the altar, a large Schwarzenberg coat-of-arms, and the signature of Rint, also executed in bone, on the wall near the entrance."

Mongolian Film Festival

"The Arts Council of Mongolia (ACM) is pleased to announce the inaugural East Meets West Film Forum and Festival to be held in UIaanbaatar, Mongolia from October 5 – 8, 2010.

"With support from the Asia-Europe Foundation and the Open Society Institute, ACM will bring together filmmakers and film industry professionals from Asia, Europe, Central Asia, the USA and Mongolia for this very special event, the first of its kind ever to be held in the country.

"The film industry in Mongolia is currently in a state of flux, and local filmmakers struggle to make an impact at an international level. As such, ACM identified a great need to bring support and recognition from the global filmmaking community to Mongolia.

"A panel of international guests has been invited to meet in Ulaanbaatar to share ideas, screen films and work with Mongolian filmmakers to further the local industry. East Meets West will consist of film screenings with post-viewing discussion and Q+A sessions, a day forum focused on the global film industry and workshops for up-and-coming Mongolian filmmakers."

http://eastmeetswest.culture360.org/

Ilf and Petrov in America

"When we had been in New York for a week and, as it seemed to us, we began to understand America, we were quite unexpectedly told that New York is not at all America. They told us that New York is a bridge between Europe and America, and that we were still situated on the bridge. Then we went to Washington, being steadfastly convinced that the capital of the United States is indisputably America. We spent a day there, and by evening we managed to fall in love with this purely American city. However, on that very same evening we were told that Washington was under no circumstances America. They told us that this was a town of governmental bureaucrats and that America was something quite different. Perplexed, we traveled to Hartford, a city in the state of Connecticut, where the great American writer Mark Twain spent his mature years. Much to our horror, the local residents told us in unison that Hartford was also not genuine America. They said that the genuine America was the southern states, while others affirmed that it was the western ones. Several didn't say anything but vaguely pointed a finger into space. We then decided to work according to a plan: to drive around the entire country in an automobile, to traverse it from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific and to return along a different route, along the Gulf of Mexico, calculating that indeed somewhere we would be sure to find America....

"This picture should be captioned as follows: 'Here, this is America!'

"And, indeed, when you close your eyes and try to rekindle memories of this country where you spent four months, you don't imagine yourself in Washington with its gardens, columns, and full collection of monuments, nor in New York with its skyscrapers and its poor and rich, nor in San Francisco with its steep streets and suspension bridges, nor in the mountains, factories, or canyons, but at such an intersection of two roads and a gasoline station against a ground of wires and advertising signs."


--Ilya Ilf and Yevgeni Petrov, Odnoetazhnaya Amerika, 1937, translated by Erica Wolf

Grande y Felicisima Armada

Defeat of the Spanish Armada

Philip James de Loutherbourg

1740-1812 French/English

"From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"An attempt to press home the English advantage failed the following year, when a comparable English fleet sailed for Portugal and the Azores in 1589. The Norris-Drake Expedition or English Armada limped home after failing to co-ordinate its strategy effectively with the Portuguese.

"High seas buccaneering and the supply of troops to Philip II's enemies in the Netherlands and France continued, but brought few tangible rewards for England. The Anglo-Spanish War dragged on to a stalemate that left Spanish power in Europe and the Americas dominant."

Stupid, Greedy, Fat, Stupid Americans

> Subject: FW: OH USA YEAH RIGHT
>
> Right here in our own country:
>
> food banks are empty
>
> unemployment is over 15 million
>
> repossessed homes are at a record pace
>
> probably 1,000,000 in 2010
>
> repossessed cars at a record pace
>
> bank failures almost 2 per week
>
> 401 plans slipping
>
> medical insurance out of sight
>
> No Social Security C.O.L.A. 2010,11,12
>
> Doctors are stopping Medicare patients
>
> Gulf Coast states in deep trouble
>
> Our young men coming home in body
>
> bags from unnecessary wars in record numbers
>
> record numbers of illegals in OUR country.
>
> Our political leadership throughout our
>
> Federal & State level are worthless!!!
>
>
> These are just SOME of the reasons that I
>
> support the information in the copy below.
>
> Please be sure to read the last 4 lines
>
> and see if you WILL pass this along.
>
>
>
> SO 'Pathetically'  TRUE..................
>
> OH USA   YA RIGHT!!
>
>
> We're "broke" & can't help our own Seniors, Veterans, Orphans, Homeless etc.,?????????
>
> In the last month we have provided aid to  Haiti , Chile , and  Turkey .
>
> Our retired seniors living on a 'fixed income'
> receive no aid or get any breaks while our
> government and religious organizations pour
> Hundreds of Millions of $$$$$'s and Tons of Food to Foreign Countries!
>
> We have hundreds of adoptable children who are shoved aside to make room for the adoption of foreign orphans.
>
> USA a country where we have homeless without shelter,  children going to bed hungry,
> elderly going without 'needed' meds, and
> mentally ill without treatment -etc,etc.
> YET...................
> They have a 'Benefit' for the people of  Haiti
> on 12
> TV stations, ships and planes lining up with food, water, tents clothes, bedding,
> doctors and medical supplies.
>
> Imagine if the *GOVERNMENT*  gave 'US'
> the same support they give to other
> countries.
>
>
> Sad isn't it?
>
> 99% of people won't have the guts to forward
> this.
> I Just Did!

Re: FW: OH USA YEAH RIGHT


“In March 1997, a joint poll by the Washington Post, Harvard University and the Kaiser Family Foundation asked Americans which area of federal expenditure they thought was the largest. Was it Social Security (which actually constituted about a quarter of the budget)? Medicare? Military spending? Sixty-four percent of respondents said it was foreign aid—when in reality foreign aid made up only about 1 percent of total outlays (Washington Post, 3/29/97).

“Today, Americans think about 20 percent of the federal budget goes toward foreign aid. When told the actual figure for U.S. foreign aid giving (about 1.6 percent of the discretionary budget), most respondents said they did not believe the number was the full amount (Program on International Policy Attitudes, 3/7/05).

“It’s no wonder that most Americans think they live in an extremely generous nation: Media reports often quote government officials pointing out that their country is the largest overall aid donor, and the biggest donor of humanitarian aid. But what reporters too often fail to explain is how big the U.S. economy is—more than twice the size of Japan’s, the second largest, and about as big as economies number 3–10 combined. Considered as a portion of the nation’s economy, or of its federal expenditures, the U.S. is actually among the smallest donors of international aid among the world’s developed countries.”

--Ben Somberg, "The World’s Most Generous Misers," Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 2005 Sept/Oct

===

In 2009, of the 22 wealthiest countries in the world, the Swedes, Norwegians, Luxembourgers, Danes, Dutch, Belgians, Finns, Irish, British, Swiss, French, Spanish, Germans, Canadians, Austrians, Australians, New Zealanders, and Portuguese all were more generous to their fellow humans than were the Americans.

--Poverty.com; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

===

US federal government funding for all of its international programs, of which international aid forms but a portion, is generally 1% of the total US federal budget (in 2008, it was 3% of the 38% discretionary budget spending, which equals 1.14% of total spending).

Most of the US federal government budget is spent on US citizens, mainly through the Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid programs:

“Social Security claimed just over one-third of mandatory spending in fiscal 2008 (see figure 4). Medicare and Medicaid took up 25 percent and 13 percent, respectively. The remaining 28 percent covered income security programs (such as food stamps), retirement and disability programs (including pensions for federal retireees), and other programs.

“About half of fiscal 2008 discretionary spending paid for defense, and most of the rest went for domestic programs such as agricultural subsidies, highway construction, and the federal courts (see figure 3). Only 3 percent of discretionary spending funded international activities, such as foreign aid.”

--Tax Policy Center of Urban Institute and Brookings Institution

===

“As percentage of GDP, Arab states of the Persian Gulf are the most generous, with Kuwait contributing 8.2% of its gross national product and Saudi Arabia contributing 4% in 2002.”

--Wikipedia; SAMIRAD

Hagar the Realistic

b3ta > Cartoon Identity Crisis > Doctor When

gloomy contemplation

“Many Americans have never seen a corpse, and those who have probably encountered only the travesty of a beautiful death concocted in the mortician's beauty parlor. Nor is the prevailing present-day lifestyle in the United States and large parts of the Western world, set by egotistical, hyperactive people obsessed with amassing money and luxury goods, conducive to gloomy contemplation of death...”

--Jan Bondeson, Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear, 2001

Churchill advocating the initiation of gas warfare in World War II

“It is absurd to consider morality on this topic when everybody used it in the last war without a word of complaint from the moralists or the Church. On the other hand, in the last war the bombing of open cities was regarded as forbidden. Now everybody does it as a matter of course. It is simply a question of fashion changing as she does between long and short skirts for women.”

--Winston Churchill, as quoted by Barton J. Bernstein in “Why We Didn’t Use Poison Gas in World War II,” American Heritage, 1985 August/September

The Toblerone Line

“Despite the effort put into building the line over several years, the Swiss, lacking sufficient modern weaponry, and having seen the methods used on European battlefields, were under no illusion that they had built an impregnable barrier. The best they could hope for was to make the enemy pay dearly for any victory. It was considerably less obvious in 1940 than it is today that Hitler would not invade, especially after German troops had swept into neutral Belgium and neutral Norway.”

--http://www.toblerones.ch/en/cadre.htm

the felt tents of his encampment

“In the 1190s a young and somewhat embittered Mongol who had become khan of his people began to seek revenge for slights and injuries to them by the Tatars (another nomadic nation). Within a few years he was accepted by all the Mongol tribes as their 'universal khan,' or, in their own tongue, 'Chinghis Khan.' Mispronounced in Arabic, this name became 'Genghis Khan' to Europeans. He proved to be the greatest conqueror the world has ever seen, terrorizing Europe and Asia alike. But Chinghis also built up something much more like a true empire than any other nomad chief, even though its only capital was the felt tents of his encampment....

“The unity of Chinghis Khan's empire had given way to a loose connexion of khanates ruled independently by Mongol princes, but with much in common. A sort of Mongol federation stretched at its greatest extent over something like a sixth of the old world's land surface. Its communications were good and well policed and the Mongols made intelligent use of their conquered subjects. They enlisted them in their armies, while Chinghis used Chinese civil servants to run his taxation system and borrowed the Turkish script in order to write down the Mongol language.... The Great Khans came to see themselves as somewhat like Chinese emperors. They expected other peoples to pay them tribute, not to negotiate with them as equals, and believed they exercised a universal monarchy on behalf of their own sky god. Yet they were tolerant in religion and the diversity of belief at the Mongol court impressed Christians.”


--J.M. Roberts, A Short History of the World, 1993

Mine-golia

The Machine Gun in World War I

“The machine gun had been a symbol of European dominance over distant, alien and despised peoples in Africa and Asia.... By the second decade of the twentieth century, the machine gun had become a means whereby those societies that felt they shared the highest values of civilization, religion, philosophy, science, culture, literature, art, music and a love of nature, were able to continue to bleed each other barbarically year after year.”

--Martin Gilbert, The Somme: Heroism and Horror in the First World War, 2006

World War I

On the firestep in the trenches during the night, you could hear the groaning of the dying — but you couldn't go out to help them. There were rats feeding on their flesh. They were dying there, dying in misery and pain, and the rats were nibbling away at their flesh.
--Cecil Withers, British private

The air in the dugout is so foul that I sit by the entrance. Walter Mayer and Hendrich from my squad sit next to me. Hendrich has completely lost his composure. He is down on his knees and prays. Mayer loses all patience. He tells him off. In this situation a prayer is senseless... Our roof is blown apart by a 28 cm shell. Because I am sitting by the entrance, I am left unscathed, just shoved inside. Most of the men are dead.
--Walter Pechtold, German soldier

The appearance of the trench is atrocious... In places pools of blood. On the protective wall, in the communication trench, stiff corpses covered with tent canvas... An unbearable stench poisons the air... I have not slept for 72 hours. It is raining.
--Charles Delvert, French infantry captain

When we started firing we just had to load and reload. They went down in their hundreds. You didn't have to aim, we just fired into them.
--German machine gunner

The first thing I saw were two legs sticking out of the ground... There was a skull high up in a tree and helmets with bits of head in them...
--John Masefield, British visitor to the front

Some injured men are able to drag themselves to the rear, the one supporting the other, some using their rifles as crutches. Stretcher-bearers follow them in single file, carrying their burdens of suffering... Oh! The terrible explosion! With infernal violence, a shell bursts right amongst this mob and hideously tears it to pieces.
--Thellier de Poncheville, French soldier

Soon a fresh gun gets through the fire to the front. They are selected soldiers. But by midday they, too, are finished. One of them, bleeding, comes to us. The men are so apathetic that they cannot bring themselves to bandage the man.
--Walter Pechtold, German soldier

All day long they lie there, being decimated, getting themselves killed next to the bodies of those killed earlier.
--French officer

The men often cannot eat in the forward lines because of the smell of corpses, and they cannot sleep either.
--Rupprecht Maria Luitpold Ferdinand, German commander

Shrieks of agony and groans all around me... All about me are bits of men and ghastly mixtures of cloth and blood.
--Anthony R. Hossack, British soldier

These are horrendous days... The infantry have lost about half their men, if not more. Some of those who have survived are no longer human beings, but creatures who are at the end of their tether...
--Albrecht von Thaer, German lieutenant-colonel

I can still see the bewilderment and fear on the men's faces when we went over the top. All over the battlefield, the wounded were lying there — English and German, all asking for help... You couldn't help them. I came across a Cornishman, ripped from shoulder to waist with shrapnel, his stomach on the ground beside him in a pool of blood.
--Harry Patch, British private

Among the living lay the dead. As we dug ourselves in, we found them in layers stacked on top of one another. One company after another had been shoved into the drum-fire and steadily annihilated.
--Ernst Junger, German officer

What a slaughter. Hell cannot be this dreadful.
--Alfred Joubaire, French lieutenant

I saw men dead from exhaustion from their efforts to get out of the mud... We were pitchforked into a quagmire in the dark and there was no possibility of a man helping the one next to him... It was the worst instance I came across of what appeared to be a cruel useless sacrifice of life.
--L.W. Kentish, British officer

Under no circumstances must we relax our effort, and we must retain the offensive.
--Douglas Haig, British commander

hand

decomposed German soldier

legless dead French soldier

dead American soldiers

wounded British soldier

sources:
Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War by Alan Kramer, 2007
The Faces of World War I: The Great War in Words and Pictures by Max Arthur, 2007
The Pity of War: Explaining World War I by Niall Ferguson, 1998
The Somme: Heroism and Horror in the First World War by Martin Gilbert, 2006

photographs from Corbis, Getty Images, and the Imperial War Museum London

World War I flyers

skull with aviator's helmet and goggles and German 50-mark note between the teeth as a symbol of the cheapness of an aviator's life

Take the manifold out of my back
Take the crankshaft out of my brain
Take the pistons out of my stomach
And assemble the fucking engine again

--World War I aviators' song

Happy Independence Day

propaganda poster
Harald Damsleth
1906-1971 Norwegian

the entire Eastern seaboard might join the European Union

"The front page of the December 29 issue of the Wall Street Journal carried a story about a Russian professor, who predicts the disintegration of the United States by 2010....

"Igor Panarin, a former KGB analyst, forecasts economic, financial and demographic turmoil in the U.S. leading to a political and social crisis that will result in social unrest and a civil war before the country breaks up along ethnic lines....

"Panarin, the dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s academy for future diplomats, first predicted a U.S. collapse in 1998 at a conference in Linz, Austria... [Attendees] lined up afterward and asked him to autograph copies of the map showing how America would break into different regions that would align with foreign lands.


"He essentially predicted nearly a decade ago that California and many western states will become part of China (or fall under Chinese influence), Alaska will go back to Russia, Hawaii will go to either China or Japan, Texas and several southern states will become part of Mexico, northern states will become part of Canada and the entire Eastern seaboard might join the European Union.

"Panarin spends plenty of time at receptions in the Kremlin, lecturing to students, publishing books and appearing in various media outlets as an expert on U.S.-Russian relations, which are pretty dismal right now....

"His projections of a U.S. breakup have made him a darling of the Russian media and power circles.

"White House reaction at a December news conference drew laughter from the press corps. But Panarin warns a similar 1976 prediction by a French political scientist, Emmanuel Todd, correctly predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union 15 years before it happened."

--Rick Killion, Prairie Business Magazine, 2009 March

65th

F-5 Lightning with D-Day Invasion stripes

European Bee-eater

Merops apiaster

Happy Victory Day

/still/ with the vampires

"From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Medieval stories of revenants have common features....

"Several stories imply that sucking of blood has occurred. Because of this, revenants have sometimes been described as 'vampires' by a number of authors of popular books about vampire legends, starting with Montague Summers. Medievalists are, however, largely skeptical towards this interpretation, possibly because vampire legends are believed to have originated in Eastern European folklore and became known to the Western public only later through reports coming from the East in the 18th century. Vampires do not appear in Western fiction (with modifications) until the late 18th century and early 19th century, starting with authors such as Robert Southey, Lord Byron and John William Polidori. However, anthropologists and folklorists tend to blur distinctions between the various forms of 'walking dead', for which counterparts exist in the myths and legends of nearly every civilization dating back to earliest history."