One might think that however tragic the deaths on 9/11 — the destruction of the Towers sans deaths would merely be a blessing, as would be virtually every building since 1920 ( but including the deaths of all foul present modernist architects and scum bastard building workers everywhere who destroyed the old and erected the pointless vile concrete new ) — the swap of 30,000 Afghani civilians since would placate the manes of the 3000 murdered then

Anyway, for the demonic bin Laden, the present choices are: that he was either dead long ago in the Caves of Tora Bora; dead from his numerous ailments ( which included Marfan’s, kidney disease, liver disease etc. etc.); killed in Abottabad; or snatched for a life of imprisonment and torture under the auspices of the vengeful state — which has not treated those on Guantánamo, ever unclosed yet, whose guilt in much less culpable crimes than those of bin Laden was unproven, at all well. Or he may have escaped and a double killed, yet his charisma and mystique vanished.

The ‘DNA evidence’ is as valueless as anything else the propaganda machine issues, since we have to rely on, the retrieved bits actually coming from the corpse in Abottabad, the matching being done by the state who killed him, and the control sample actually having been taken from his sister’s corpse — bearing in mind that it was recently discovered that the piece of skull held by the Russians which they alleged was that of Hitler really belonged to some poor woman — and that in all reports the administration controls what information is released, and however generous they are in releasing in succession utterly different stories, this means believing in the good faith of Obama, a man rarely capable of understanding, let alone telling, truth; the Pentagon; and the various state security forces. One thing that is certain is that the corpse, real or not, was actually about his height: since the killers had omitted, understandably enough, to bring along a tape measure, one of them of a similar length lay down besides the body to provide a datum.

And even if the event is broadly true, whilst the raid was a credit to the hit squad, killing a bewildered old man was evidently preferred to capture, as execution of the unrighteous; especially since they said that anything less than utter submission — difficult to manage for the least alarmed when being shot at — didn’t qualify as surrender, and that attempting to retreat, as was the demonic bin Laden before he was rubbed out proved resistance. Since when they killed this sick old fellow crawling on the floor, in front of his 12 yr-old daughter, he seemed incapable of a fight to the death with tooth and nail, being unguarded and unarmed, which seems extraordinary carelessness on the part of a supervillain.

While this affair reminds one of the horrifying 2004 murder of Shiekh Yassin, which temporarily changed my internet signatures to:

‘If you could have heard the old man scream as he fell, and the noise of his bones upon the pavement !’

[ from The Story Of The Young Man With The Cream Tarts by RLS ]

&

I have to kill a 67-yr-old man
Considering he’s paraplegic, should I choose a knife fight ? Or as he’s blind, it might be pistols at dawn: in order to demonstrate my sheer fighting courage perhaps I should use a helicopter gunship when his wheelchair is exiting morning prayers.

the mention of dreary old Adolf may as well include here my very favourite joke, as told in Germany in late ’45, and perhaps almost relevant in this matter:

When they found the Führer’s body, there was a little note attached: ‘I was never a Nazi.’

 
Down in the Valley

And with all this cavilling, the fact remains the aging prisoner in Abottabad was wistfully planning yet more wacky mayhem: his computer files, as released by the administration showed his meticulous planning for a new atrocity. “…was looking into trying to tip a train by tampering with the rails so that the train would fall off the track at either a valley or a bridge.”; yet worse, this was to be specifically aimed at Amtrak’s 805 km per hour trains — which I’ll assume can cross the continent in three and a half hours — no doubt as the doleful plumes of smoke rose from the valley below the opera-glass gazing conspirators would toss their tophats into the air and fondle their waxed moustaches whilst cackling fiendishly.

For someone who hated America so, I’m guessing he had very little idea of daily life in America; let alone Amtrak.

And at the last the final question remains: What sort of person is terrified by a weird old loony such as bin Laden ?

Yanks of a liberal disposition now try to disassociate themselves and Bush-Lite from any suspicion of Obamamania, claiming that it was their opponents who fastened the unreal expectations of a new dispensation upon the reputation of a remarkably shifty candidate and soon to be dilettante president, yet none who actually lived through November of ’08 will forget the revolting genuflections and hosannas which accompanied that victory; like Boulanger, who twisted in turn to solicit support from correct legitimists and the slippery factions who composed the body politic of the corrupt Third Republic, orleanists, bonapartists, socialists, clericals etc. etc., all realising in turn that he lacked spirit to do good for any, and not even for himself, the president courted foolishly his alleged enemies for bi-partisan support without having much of a plan for even the semblance of victory. As to whether being a hollow man is better than being a criminal worshipped war-lord, I can’t say; but trying to be both is a respectable recipe for disaster.

As Gorman includes: In Politics one insisted to the last that one’s party was winning, and when one’s party did not win one spent the the next week inventing extraneous excuses for the defeat. The simple fact that one’s party had lost because it had not received as many votes as the other fellow’s party was never a conclusive explanation in itself. Politics, it appeared, was a constant self-justification. If I had done that, if I had done this, if the question had been properly presented, if my agent in that particular place… if the funds had been distributed as… if… if… if… Ah, that was politics. It was an absurd game of chess with crazy moves and cheating antagonists who stole your pawns when you were not looking. There was more politics, she thought, in republics than there were in kingdoms or empires for the simple reason that in republics there was no definitive iron hoof to stamp it out. That was good. So everybody said. The People spoke. Sometimes they spoke in a dozen clashing voices and nothing was resolved, or, if was resolved, it took a long time and the resolution lost a part of its strength. Like the American Congress. A wilful minority in that Paradise of democracy could indefinitely obstruct the will of the majority. That was called rule by the people. It sounded more like rule by the sediment that was too clotted to go down the drain. It held back everything.

Twilight was falling

Twilight was falling when the Prince, looking very much like a blown-up caricature of his august uncle, waddled into the large library with the General at his heels.
      “If you enter politics,” he was saying, “you will soon discover it to be a nasty and merciless business. Have you a fortune ?”
      “Not a sou, “replied the General.
      “Well,” said the Prince, as he thrust his hand into the front of his waistcoat, “if you run aground you will never be a stranger here.”
Thiébaud, who was standing by one of the glass cases of relics with Berthet-Leleux, turned smilingly towards the two men.
      “I have been thrilled by some of the objects in this case, Your Imperial Highness,” he declared. “Look here, my General. Here are some things that will stir your soldier’s heart.”
Boulanger advanced towards the relics eagerly, and the Prince followed, his broad face wreathed with smiles.
      “Yes,” he said, “I intended to show you some of these sacred souvenirs. Berthet-Leleux, hand me the keys.”
The four men gathered before the case, while the Prince awkwardly unlocked the glass-panelled door.
      “There are the spurs that He wore on the return from Italy,” he explained. “And there is the cockade that was in His hat the day He made them eat grapeshot at the Church of Saint-Roch. There are two of His pistols and the sash He wrapped around His middle when He drove the recalcitrant Council of the Five Hundred out of the Orangerie. And here… here…”
He reached into the case and withdrew an Egyptian sabre in a gold-plated and bejewelled sheath. He extended it towards the General.
      “This is the sword the First Consul carried at Marengo,” he said solemnly.
For an instant the magic of the Cult impregnated the still air in the library. Afterwards Thiébaud swore that he heard the distant grumble of grenadier drums as the General stretched forward a respectful hand and lightly touched the hilt of the glittering weapon.
      “Are you sure that this is the sabre of the First Consul ?” he demanded in a hushed voice.
The Prince smiled.
      “Do you think that this is bric-à-brac I have collected in flea-markets ?” he asked proudly.
      “It is a beautiful souvenir,” declared the General in a reverent tone.
His hand again caressed the hilt of the sword as lightly, as tenderly as though it were the upturned face of a beloved woman. Thiébaud saw the grave melancholy visage of a professional soldier to whom warfare was a religion and in whose eyes the saints wore burnished epaulets. Like the Moor in the English play his profession was his life and without it he would have no life at all… nothing, indeed, but existence. What, then ? What, then ? The journalist closed his mind to the answer. The Prince, too, observed the General’s emotion and instinctively understood it. After all, he was a Bonaparte. Turning, he carefully placed the sabre back on the velvet in the open case.
      “General,” he said, “when you have returned Alsace and Lorraine back to France I will offer you this sword.”
Justin entered the shadowy library with a lighted candelabra.

As elsewhere, earlier in the book, eternal truth remains for some of us outside all such montebanks of apparent power…

It was after four o’clock in the morning when the Polish waiter, leaning like an old collapsed scarecrow against the corridor wall, saw the door open and the octet emerge in a compact group. They were no longer laughing.
      “Remember,” said Laguerre. “My dinner is tonight. You are all invited. In the meantime…”
      “In the meantime we have accomplished nothing,” snapped Clemenceau.
      “We are moving to an understanding,” said the General mildly.
Ignace observed how Clemenceau turned a brief sour glance at the handsome gentleman with the blond beard.
      “Whose understanding ?” demanded the Breton abruptly.
Nobody answered.
As they were going down the stairs Ignace turned to Monsieur Frédéric.
      “They all detest one another,” he remarked in a surprised tone.
Monsieur Frédéric, who had been a maître d’hôtel for thirty years, shrugged his shoulders.
      “After all,” he replied, “we live under a Republic. They have the liberty to detest one another. As for me… I am a Royalist.”

This was not a punishment: it was a warning.
 
 

Punishments there were, in plenty, for the survivors.

Now, governments will do these things, whether in Indonesia, China or the USA — and in the absence of government private parties will do such things, as in the Bastard Feudalistic phase of Late Mediaeval period during the Wars of the Roses or in the Gilded Age of America ( when Robber Barons such as the unspeakable little republicans such as Carnegie or Frick randomly slaughtered their workers, Europeans were outraged not wholly at the murderous defence of Capital — European polities were scarcely housing or in other ways treating their lower classes well, and were not averse though profoundly reluctant to sending the troops in if the police could not contain a strike — but at the sheer insufferability of private citizens, including corporations as private citizens in the curious Anglo-American tradition, possessing and using armed private police forces to ensure their will ). This is not so much a question of the awfulness of government power, but the inane and disgusting purpose of an individual government.

The sect remembered was a breakaway group of a breakaway ad infinitum group in the true tradition of faiths. Seventh-Day Adventists are fearfully respectable and cook delicious food in their restaurants: those who seceded, as is the common way with splinter-groups, grew loopier the further they strayed. By the time David Koresh was through his sect was the Davidian Branch Davidian Seventh-Day Adventists, the apple having rolled fairly far from the tree. Which is not to say the tenets of the Adventists are sane compared to Catholic doctrine — and for Royalists, the Roman Catholics have always been the weak sisters to Monarchy and Western Civilisation: petty, corrupt and wilfully treacherous. For those loyal to higher powers than despicably elected mere Popes, Canossa is the Great Unforgotten as much as Kronstadt is to any decent communist. However, although their theology may not be persuasive it is at least coherent — From the Wiki entry, all the Adventist groups share such flawed beliefs such as:

# Jesus Christ is to soon personally return to earth to gather together his elect and take them to heaven for 1000 years, after which he will return with them to this earth to dwell with them for eternity in his kingdom.

# The non-immortality of the soul. That is, the dead have no consciousness, nor being.

# There shall be a resurrection of both the just and of the unjust. The resurrection of the just will take place at the second coming of Christ; the resurrection of the unjust will take place 1000 years later, at the close of the millennium.

# There is a sanctuary in heaven in which Christ is ministering on behalf of mankind.

# There is an investigative judgment going on in the heavenly sanctuary that began on October 22, 1844 to determine who will come forth in each of the resurrections, and who will be translated without seeing death at the second coming of Christ. That said judgment began with the records of those who had died, and would eventually pass to the living.

 
Etc., etc.. This stuff shares the usual delusion of religion that God is subject to human desires and whims. One may be sure that the number ’1000′ is relied upon as being a definite span, not too large as to be incomprehensible, not too small as to be verifiable: but to imagine God is subject to human time-tabling is not merely impious, but as vain as a mayfly suggesting the God envisaged by mayflies will judge the risen mayflies within a month.

And in the Wiki entry for the Siege itself there is piece we recognise as classic Curious Religious Americana — we are often belaboured with the fact that America has a deeply religious base as compared with decadent Europe, just as has Dar al-Islam. And what use is that if the religion itself is utterly insane ? This has more to do with Spengler’s forecast of the Second Religosity amongst the peasantry during the Imperialistic period than a deep love of the Almighty — which involves exhumation and guns.

Following the failure of this prophecy, control of Mt. Carmel fell to Benjamin Roden, and on his death to his wife, Lois. Lois Roden considered their son, George, unfit to assume the position of prophet. Instead, she groomed Vernon Howell, later known as David Koresh, as her chosen successor. In 1984, a meeting led to a division of the group with Howell leading one faction, calling themselves the Davidian Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventists, and George Roden leading the competing faction. After this split, George Roden ran Howell and his followers off Mt. Carmel. Howell and his group relocated to Palestine, Texas.

After the death of Lois and the probate case, Howell attempted to gain control of the Mt Carmel center by force. George Roden had dug up the casket of Anna Hughes from the Davidian cemetery and had challenged Howell to a resurrection contest to prove who was the rightful heir. Howell instead went to the police and claimed Roden was guilty of corpse abuse. By October 31, 1987 the county prosecutors had refused to file charges without proof and so on November 3, 1987 Howell and seven armed companions attempted to access the Mt. Carmel chapel with the goal of photographing the body in the casket. George Roden was advised of the interlopers and grabbed an Uzi in response. The sheriff’s department responded about 20 minutes into the gunfight. Sheriff Harwell got Howell on the phone and told him to stop shooting and surrender. Howell and his companions, dubbed the “Rodenville Eight” by the media, were tried on April 12, 1988; seven were acquitted and the jury was hung on Howell’s verdict. The county prosecutors did not press the case further.

While waiting for the trial, George Roden was put in jail under contempt of court charges on March 21, 1988 because of his use of foul language in some court pleadings threatening the Texas court with AIDS and herpes if it ruled in favor of Howell. The very next day, Perry Jones and a number of Howell’s other followers moved from their headquarters in Palestine, Texas to Mt. Carmel Center.

The bellowed threats of God’s biological warfare smiting the court seem counterproductive to getting that court to look favorably upon one’s cause…

The Most Intelligent Way Possible

 
However the prior antics of squabbling religious fanatics was unassociated with the later event, which was orchestrated under the leadership of Miss Janet Reno. Here, I shall defer to a recent report [ Dec 2009 ] from IFS Writers: God Bless You Janet Reno — Child Killer.

For 51 days, the ATF and the FBI held these people hostage, and then lied to Congress. I just want to let everyone know that I too, remember these Americans, these little children and old people that Janet Reno had gunned down, mutilated and burnt in the name of justice. I remember that one male report, who would come to the microphone and TV camera, and report that – there was no food for the children, or the next time, the kids were being molested, or the very next time, the kids were being held as hostages, etc. I wonder how his career is during these days. America will never forget Janet Reno and her friends that kill children, mothers and old people. I know she will live a long fruitful life. After all one day she will meet each and everyone of those victims again. And at that time, there are no laws, police and anything thing else that will save her from the raft of hell.

Janet Reno, the former attorney general in the Clinton administration, received a lifetime achievement award Friday, April 18, 2009, from the American Judicature Society, a non-partisan justice advocacy network.

Speaking slowly because of the effects of Parkinson Disease, Reno praised violence prevention programs and the current direction of the Justice Department. “Now I can look at America and think this is a nation that is responding in the most intelligent way possible to deal with violence, especially domestic violence,” Reno said.

Poor old incompetent fool, it might be more charitable to assume she, as we assume of Reagan during his presidency, so crippled pre factum that the mental damage was already there rather than it being a punishment..
 

Oh, Say, Can You See….
 

On February 28, 1993, the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) launched the largest assault in its history against a small religious community in America. Approximately eighty armed agents invaded the compound, purportedly to execute a single search and arrest warrant. The raid went badly; six Branch Davidians and four agents were killed.

Attorney General Janet Reno asked for and received military support. The U.S. Army showed up with tanks.

After a fifty-one-day standoff, the United States Justice Department approved Reno’s plan to use CS gas and break down the walls with tanks to “save the children” of those barricaded inside.

On the 51st day tanks carrying the CS gas broke through the concrete walls and entered the compound. A fire broke out, and all seventy-four men, women and children inside perished. One third of them from gunshot wounds, the rest crushed by debris or burned to death.

After the compound had burned down the ATF flag was hoisted aloft to signify ‘victory’. At Janet Reno’s award ceremony today it was only mentioned that 74 “cult members” were killed.

Still Meant Over 10 Years In Quod For Resisting Arrest
 

In The Davidian trial judge sentenced five Davidians to the maximum sentence of 30 years each; one to 20 years; one to 15; one to 5 years and one to 3 years. On June 4, 2000 the Supreme Court cut 25 years from 4 Davidians’ sentences and 5 years from one. On September 9, 2000 Judge Walter Smith followed the Court’s instructions and cut those sentences, as well as the 25 year sentence of Livingstone Fagan who had not appealed.

All were released as of July 2007.

However… Quite ordinary American prisons appear training grounds for Guantánamo: from the Wiki article…

One, Derek Lovelock, was held in McLennan County Jail for seven months, often in solitary confinement. Livingston Fagan, another British citizen, who was among those convicted and imprisoned, recounts multiple beatings at the hands of prison guards, particularly at Leavenworth. He claims to have been doused with cold water from a high-pressure hose, which soaked both him and the contents and bedding of his cell, after which an industrial fan was placed outside the cell, blasting him with cold air. He was repeatedly moved between at least nine different facilities. He was strip-searched every time he took exercise, so refused exercise.

It’s very difficult to imagine what pleasure a prison guard gets from beating up inmates…

And with all sieges where the external forces have world enough and time, All You Ever Have To Do Is Wait.
 

Famously, after the last battle, at Stow-on-the-Wold, Jacob Astley, Major-General of the King’s Infantry, contemptuously predicted to his conquerors: “Now Boys, ye may now sit down and play, for you have done all your Worke, if you fall not out among yourselves.”

 
Quite apart from egregious terrorism and racketeering, which form a link with the established political movements which support and sponsor them and their ideals, the multi-splintered groups forming the twin ideals of Irish Republicanism and Unionist Loyalism are further joined by their infamous beliefs in democracy and religion: each partaking of the ancient liberal evil which rejected the Stuarts and Divine Right Royalism. As are also heirs — of course — the government forces of the pseudo-monarchical Great Britain — serving the ultimate beneficiaries of the murder of Charles the First and the expulsion of his progeny: foul old parliament and it’s hireling Windsor puppets squatting on a usurped throne — and dreary little Eire, which puts all these gangs of parricidal and fratricidal sentimental bastards beyond the pale.

 
Ulster’s ‘Troubles’ is merely one part of the aftermath of the defeat of Royalism whereby the republican scum fell out amongst themselves.
 

 
However, like most movements each can play a jolly tune — outside the province and some parts of Scotland religio-political parades are sufficiently rare — and here is one group of protties, the Ravenshill Flute Band, on Black Saturday 2006, playing Hello ! Hello ! Who’s Your Lady Friend ? — one of the Edwardian era’s most spectacular songs.

It was written by the half-French Fragson, murdered by his own father.

[See post to watch Flash video]

[See post to watch Flash video]

[See post to watch Flash video]

Quite other than it’s being comedy, there is a satire implicit upon the very worst and most despicable Liberal. The utterly sincere, and really morally pure, harmonising, well-meaning, honest idiot who horridly sees good in all and tries so hard to reconcile, that his weakness destroys himself and all that he is obligated to protect. Who genuinely thinks that competing cultures must be greeted with complacent self-destruction. Combining self-satisfied fellow-travelling, dumb moral relativism and a disgustingly feeble-minded belief in the value of all, and their good intentions, together with total disdain for those who prefer reality, makes them so worthless as to be more dangerous than a frank villain such as Bush or Clinton.

Still, as I was saying, though the contemporary in-jokes have reached the inevitable fate of all such trifles, many of the finely delivered lines resonate so as to be almost unforgettable [ Bearing in mind that everything is ultimately forgot here below... ]. Thanks to a friendly torrent this aged comedy is available here.; but also proffered as a downloadable zip which is recommended for home use.

 
FOOOOOOLLLL ! Now I can seeee yoou !

Name not that name within these walls, Master..

Loathsome Brothers !

Just a, a minute. There’s something strange here.
Majesteh ?
Why are there so many more wenches than hags in the village ?
The men had marched a long way, Majesteh.
Oh. Ah… yes… I see…

Beware, Agar, son of Yulfric; for no power on earth is granted without a price.

You take the counsel of that cannibal and sentence your own son to grisly death ?

Right, what is this ?
Just a mirror.
It looks like the All-Seeing Mirror of Ganst, whose power lies by reflecting deep into the souls of the fallen…
Reproduction.
And all these axes here, magic helms and articles of torture ?
Collector’s Items.
I don’t doubt it Yulfric, but what sort of collector ?

 
Download audio file (1TheFirstChronicle.mp3)
The First Chronicle

Download audio file (2TheSecondChronicle.mp3)
The Second Chronicle

Download audio file (3TheThirdChronicle.mp3)
The Third Chronicle

Download audio file (4TheFourthChronicle.mp3)
The Fourth Chronicle

It is of course easy to criticize the philosophical naivety of the fellow-travellers. Too blandly did they incorporate subjective, ethical premises into the general concept of reason, and in this respect they were little in advance of Thomas Paine, who described history as a periodically interrupted progress from the government of priests and conquerors to the government of pure reason – this reason being defined simply as the antithesis of ignorance. When Owen declared: “Train any population rationally, and they will be rational”, he virtually spoke for a later generation separated from him by a hundred years. Yet what sounded enlightened in 1830 could only be judged as naive in 1930. When Condorcet and Owen argued that idleness, poverty, crime and punishment were merely, in Owen’s words, “the necessary consequences of ignorance”, they could not reasonably be criticized for lacking a concept of alienation or anomie, whereas the fellow-travellers turned their backs not only on such concepts but blandly ignored a century of psychological inquiry. It was time to recognize that formulas such as Bentham’s “the greatest happiness of the greatest number” had an ethical rather than a rational basis, yet the fellow-travellers continued to elect Unitary Reason to the throne once occupied by God, complete with all the court ritual of the fall, redemption and salvation. One can at least partially sympathize with Marx’s scorn for the endeavours of Saint-Simon and Owen to convert humanity, including the rich and powerful, to socialism by means of rational persuasion; it was this aspect of their thought rather than the building of model settlements like New Harmony which provoked him to brand them as “Utopians”. Admittedly the later fellow-travellers occasionally acknowledged that the knout had become a frequent messenger of reason in Soviet Russia, but they refused to draw conclusions about the motivation of the knout-wielders, preferring to judge them as benevolent schoolmasters occasionally resorting to sterner discipline out of love for their pupils. Though they were anti-capitalist, and though some of them, like Shaw, recognized the necessity of force, the fellow-travellers still inhabited the mental universe of Auguste Comte, with his vision of history as being synonymous with the progress of the human mind towards the final, rational stage of universal positivism. No doubt the immense upheaval which took place in Russia during forced collectivization was in a sense positivistically inspired; but what appears ruthlessly rational is not neces­sarily reasonable, and the fellow-travellers lacked not only Kant’s in­sight into the necessity of an inner, moral revolution within men but also the vital gleam of cautionary wisdom offered by Voltaire when he remarked: “Le monde avec lenteur marche vers la sagesse.”

David Caute : The Fellow-Travellers

 
One of the finest books ever written; and by a leftist, too…

As a very interesting and influential European group, the Puritans exemplified this tendency toward altruistic punishment. A defining feature of Puritanism was the tendency to pursue utopian causes framed as moral issues — their susceptibility to utopian appeals to a ‘higher law’ and the belief that government’s principal purpose is moral. New England was the most fertile ground for “the perfectibility of man creed,” and the “father of a dozen ‘isms’.” There was a tendency to paint political alternatives as starkly contrasting moral imperatives, with one side portrayed as evil incarnate — inspired by the devil. Puritan moral intensity can also be seen in their “profound personal piety” — their intensity of commitment to live not only a holy life, but also a sober and industrious life.

Puritans waged holy war on behalf of moral righteousness even against their own genetic cousins. The suggestion is that this is a form of altruistic punishment found more often among cooperative hunter-gatherer groups than among groups based on extended kinship. For example, whatever the political and economic complexities that led to the Civil War, it was the Yankee moral condemnation of slavery that inspired the rhetoric and rendered the massive carnage of closely related Anglo-Americans on behalf of slaves from Africa justifiable in the minds of Puritans. Militarily, the war with the Confederacy rendered the heaviest sacrifice in lives and property ever made by Americans. Puritan moral fervor and its tendency to justify draconian punishment of evil doers can also be seen in the comments of “the Congregationalist minister at Henry Ward Beecher’s Old Plymouth Church in New York [who] went so far as to call for ‘exterminating the German people . . . the sterilization of 10,000,000 German soldiers and the segregation of the woman,.”

Thus the current altruistic punishment so characteristic of contemporary Western civilization: Once Europeans were convinced that their own people were morally bankrupt, any and all means of punishment should be used against their own people. Rather than see other Europeans as part of an encompassing ethnic and tribal community, fellow Europeans were seen as morally blameworthy and the appropriate target of altruistic punishment. For Westerners, morality is individualistic — violations of communal norms by free riders are punished by altruistic aggression.

Kevin Macdonald : What Makes Western Culture Unique ?

 
Guilt is rather necessary, for we ought to know what we are; but it is also necessary to discard it as mere vainglorious self-obsession once past fault is recognised and subsumed. Natürlich, some of us find it easier than others; but that’s just through rigorous self-training ( or something ) — which is far less complacent than the opposite urge to purge another’s guilt. And certainly beats killing or self-killing to satisfy a ridiculous moral ego…

Hannah Arendt

 
Also… from the same publication, an amusing glance at feel-good morality when it contemplates atrocity by persons it disapproves of, Effing the Ineffable.

 
Of course, the proponents of the antithetical beerier type of incontinent love of folk are the most apt to promote sacrifice for the religious object of love; group, gods, or even person — carefully ignoring the fact that no sacrifice except one’s individual own can have the faintest value howsoever that value is defined… Only an Imbecile God — perhaps Azathoth — can prize the stench of some burnt offering.

‘We need a futile gesture at this stage. It will raise the whole tone of the war’.

 
* Actually, another source gives this as Susanna Bathing *shrugs*

This is one of the most beautiful and inspiring Bible stories that ever instructed happy infants in a Sunday School. ** Still, since the story of the idiot Jephtha is apposite here, I’ll stick to that attribution…

**

The Jewish people had been exiled to Babylon, but their captors allowed them to retain their customs and laws. Two elders who had been appointed judges met to adjudicate disputes in a spacious and pleasant home, where Susanna lived with her husband and children. One day, the two licentious elders spied on Susanna bathing in her garden. Inflamed with lust, they tried to coerce her to lie with them, but the virtuous beauty said she would rather die than offend the Lord by committing adultery.

Infuriated, the elders claimed that they had seen Susanna lying with a young man in her garden. She was being led to the execution ground when the Holy Spirit inspired the young prophet Daniel to suggest that the elders be questioned separately. What sort of tree were Susanna and her lover lying under? When one named a mastic tree and the other an oak, Susanna was vindicated and the elders were dragged to execution.

Cursorily, one can say, virtually any act among the Hebrews was liable to get one killed.

“Dzerzhinsky furnished the instrument for tearing a new society out of the womb of the old — the instrument of organised, systematic, mass terror. For Dzerzhinsky the class struggle meant exterminating ‘the enemies of the working class.’ The ‘enemies of the working class‘ were all who opposed the Bolshevik dictatorship.”

“At meetings of the Sovnarcom, Lenin often exchanged notes with his colleagues. On one occasion, he sent a note to Dzerzhinsky. ‘How many vicious counter-revolutionaries are there in our prisons ?‘ Dzerzhinsky’s reply was: ‘About fifteen hundred.’ Lenin read it, snorted something to himself, made a cross beside the figure, and returned the note to Dzerzhinsky.”

“Dzerzhinsky rose and left the room without a word. No-one paid any attention either to Lenin’s note or to Dzerzhinsky’s departure. The meeting continued. But the next day there was excited whispering. Dzerzhinsky had ordered the execution of all the fifteen hundred ‘vicious counter-revolutionaries‘ the previous night. He had taken Lenin’s cross as a collective death sentence.”

“There would have been little comment had Lenin’s gesture been meant as an order for wholesale liquidation. But, as Fotieva, Lenin’s secretary, explained: ‘There was a misunderstanding. Vladimir Ilyich never wanted the executions. Dzerzhinsky did not understand him. Vladimir Ilyich usually puts a cross on memoranda to indicate that he has read them and noted their contents.’”

From computer jottings. Original link 404ed.

The Russians had reverted to becoming savages by 1945: the Americans maintained their customary anthropological status as barbarians. Their especially barbaric political system of representative democracy had grave consequence as victors… The very first moralistic theatre was the judicial murder of General Anton Dostler, of which may be read here, written by the son of his American defense counsel. Essentially, 15 American soldiers were captured disguised as Italian civilians, and the — non-nazi — General referred the case to Kesselring, who ordered them to be executed. Admittedly Smiling Albert had enough to occupy his mind right then without giving this a great deal of thought, but under the laws of war this was a done deal anyway. It is pointless to object or blame soldiers for disguising; it is equally pointless to object to the consequence — which procedure is actually there to protect civilians. Thus although guiltless — neither prosecutor nor defence expected anything except acquittal — General Dostler was then sentenced to death after new instructions were handed down from Washington in response to the revelation that the prosecution would fail, that is that henceforth in these trials hearsay evidence would be admissible. This was to satisfy the voting constituents. Democracy is awesomely repellent not merely in practice, but still more so in idealist theory…

‘Hope to God we never lose a war.’ said the prosecutor.

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Another version, shorter, but with a few more frames

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Incidentally, this trial caused the innocent prosecutor to lose his faith in the Rule of Law forever…

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