Tea and Vitriol

World War I was billed as "the war to end all wars." Only it wasn't. There have been dozens of wars since then, producing mass destruction, death, genocide and ethnic cleansing to name just a few items on the bill of fare "civilization" offers to people who disagree with others. Justification for such acts are always publicized to absolve perpetrators of guilt or as a publicity stunt to make war mongers feel better about themselves. True, there is evil in the world, which most people choose to ignore if it doesn't affect them...at first. True, it can be nipped in the bud if the so-called "peace-loving" nations stand firm against it. But most of the time they don't. The industrialized Western nations are all willing to make deals with the devil in order to provide themselves with resources that they themselves do not possess, arguing that their various peoples NEED them, when actually it is the ruling elites who need them in order to preserve TH

It is the eighty-fifth anniversary of Kristallnacht (Night of broken glass) in Nazi Germany. "Spontaneous" demonstrations against Jewish businesses, homes, synagogues and other examples of Jewish culture were encouraged by the Nazi government. Books purported to be examples of "Jewish Intellectualism," looted from Jewish-owned bookstores and the public libraries, were also burned in huge bonfires. The resultant vandalism produced so much broken glass in Germany and Austria (which had been annexed to the Reich that spring) that the glass manufacturers in the Netherlands and Belgium were unable to meet the demand for orders to replace the glass before the outbreak of the war. Apart from the vandalism, there was also the violence that was inflicted on the Jewish people in Germany that night, who either objected to the destruction of their property or simply managed to fall into the hands of antisemitic mobs. More than thirty-thousand Jewish men and women were arrested