Chocolate still tastes like Chocolate

The sun still rises in the morning.

Chocolate still tastes like chocolate.

I'm still here but others aren't.

Where did they go?

They are on the mantle

Or under the snow.

How do you close a gaping wound?

Which of those things

is the greater sin?...

Guns or butter

give way to inconsolable tears.

A different war comes home,

With different fears.

When a building is bombed

We expect shock and awe.

But how does one fight a plague?

You can't shoot it or drop a bomb.

The dead died choking,

Their voices suffocating.

But their voices cry to us.

So many pillars,

dropped to the ground.

From Angel voices to Screech.

Gone before their time.

A silent war of disappearances

And silence.

Yet we hear them in our heads.

We have to speak for them.

I, Chris

Has the Trumpist Republican Party become a Front?

The Troubles and Trump

From 1968 to 1998 Northern Ireland was involved in a bloody conflict between Mostly Catholic, Irish Nationalists who wanted to join Northern Ireland with the rest of the Island and mostly Protestant Ulster Irish who wished to remain separate from Ireland & in Union with Britain.  Both sides used insurgency methods, though the Ulsterites had sometimes overt and sometimes covert support from Crown forces.

Sinn Féin and INLA

Most of the terror operations of the Northern Ireland Republicans were carried out by The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA, Irish: Arm Saoirse Náisiúnta na hÉireann).  This "army" was the terrorist "resistance" arm of the mostly Catholic Irish Republican Socialist Party or IRSP.

(Irish: Páirtí Poblachtach Sóisialach na hÉireann).

They separated from the larger Sinn Féin mostly to add a layer of legal separation from the earlier version of the Irish National Liberation Army, which had liberated Ireland from British Tyranny in prior years.

Violent Group Fronts

The Ulsterites fielded several "militia" which also employed a front, terrorist group operation. During that period politics in Northern Ireland became very ugly. It took intervention led by Irish Americans to settle "the troubles." 

The Broader Point

I'm referring to the troubles for a "broader point." You can look up insurgencies, they usually take that form. The front is an ostensibly peaceful group that poo-poos violence, but shares the otherwise violent aims of the terrorists. Front groups recruit, support, fund & excuse the terrorists & their deeds. Without them terrorists starve.

The Question

Have the Trumpist Republicans become a front group of Trumpist terrorism? Have groups like The Proud Boys or The Oathkeepers become shock troops for white supremacy terrorism?

Radical Change?

Radical change? 

Pennies spilt on the ground.

 That wheel of revolution, it had to go round.

 and it kicked everybody to the ground.

 

Radical change? Doesn't that sound strange?

 Cut the roots and you kill the plant.

 Look at those revolutions, look at where they went.

 Lots of death and dying, leaving the world spent.

 Did the workers want change? No they just wanted to eat.

 When they couldn't eat, then they took to the street.

 Out went the Tsars, in came new Tsars.

 The names changed, but the oppression remained the same.

 When that wheel comes round it crushes all to the ground.

 

You want radical change, you might as well head for the stars.

 Even if you get your way, you'd be better off on mars.

 Because as long as human beings want to fight,

 the ends never make the violence right.

 Cut off their heads, new pigs take their place.

 Want to get rid of the old leaders? new ones take up the race.

 Level the pack, and a new monster emerges.

 And in the end, all the mothers can do is to sing their dirges.

 The names might change, but oppression is always strange.

 Fear begets fear, violence begets violence, 

fear has that smell of sulphur and hell.

 and radicals cut the plants down, till new ones won't grow.

 When that wheel comes round it crushes all to the ground.

 

So don't talk to me of radical change,

 It might sound romantic to you, 

but to me it just sounds violent and strange.

 I've heard it before, and those who talk it are whores.

 They'll set others in motion, and then run the other way.

 When the pack disappears, and your standing alone.

 You'll run from the fray, and oppression will win out the day.

 And you'll set in motion events, that will grow and grow,

 Until the grass is all trampled, and young lives are all mowed.

 When that wheel comes round, it crushes all to the ground.

 And when it passes, all that is heard is a plaintive sound.

Christopher H. Holte

Posted to facebook January 21 2012

Great Grandpa Truman C. Carpenter

Truman C. Carpenter

From my mom's compilation  & Sarah Persons.

Truman C. Carpenter, My Great Grandpa, was a big guy and an adventurous fellow.  My cousin tells me a tale that he once met Jessie James while getting a hair cut. Evidently Jessie James came into the same Barber Shop. The story is that Truman commented that he was a mean fellow. Which makes sense.  He was.  That would have been in Kansas or Missouri near the eastern end of the Southern Pacific.  It ran from Southern California to the Mississipi River, started right after the Civil War and didn't disappear until the 60's. 

My Great Grandfather lived in El Paso, Texas, which is about the halfway mark between the two ends of the Southern Pacific, so it makes sense.  He lived there from about 1905 til about 1910 when he moved back east. Long enough for his wife to have my Grandfather born in El Paso. And I thought he was born in St Johnsbury for so many years!

My Great Grandpa, took people on expeditions into the Southwest and Mexico. He took hunting expeditions down into Mexico exploring. The photo above is represented as being Hop Valley in the Sierra Madre (Oriental?) mountains. The picture apparently is of Santa Maria Canyon near Strawberry Canyon. Where-ever it was, his life intersected with the Mexican revolution.

The Mexican Revolution broke out in 1910. Much of it was fought near the Border with the United States. The old President had made himself a President for Life and was ruling as a dictator, and in 1910 the democratic faction insisted on elections. That failed and so a civil war broke out. Pancho Villa was recruited to lead.

...in Potosí, Madero [had] called for revolutionary action against the Díaz regime on 20 November 1910, and declared himself provisional president of Mexico. In Chihuahua, Abraham González, reached out to Villa to join the movement. Villa joined and subsequently captured a large hacienda, a train of Federal Army soldiers, and the town of San Andrés. He went on to beat the Federal Army in Naica, Camargo, and Pilar de Conchos, but lost at Tecolote. Villa met in person with Madero in March 1911.

Shortly after they laid seige to Ciudad Juárez in April and May, and the city fell to the combined forces of Pancho Villa, Pascual Orosco and Madero. Subsequently Porofiro Diaz fell from Power and Madero became President. Villa and Orosco needed to pay their officers, and their plan was to give them seized properties. Madero rejected their demands, and so the revolution didn't stop. Juárez is just across the river from El Paso. It was no longer safe to travel into Mexico, so moving back to Vermont where Truman had family, made sense. And he did.

Truman C. Carpenter And the Mexican Revolution

Truman C. Carpenter left the railroad around 1910. He seems to have seen the risk associated with the Mexican revolution that was breaking out at the same time he left. I knew he was a railroadman. But he was more of a cowboy than I previously thought! I'll ad more as I find it.

For my post on Grandpa Truman E Carpenter: https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2021/01/great-grandpa-truman-c-carpenter.html

Out in the Cold January 2021

Open the door,

And step into the light!

So dazzling bright,

It looks hot from inside.

But then the bitter cold blows.

Clear blue sky, crunchy snow.

Face going numb

Fingers too.

It feels so bracing.

Afterwards the stove's heat

Feels so good.

Picture from Ida Skibanes

The psychopaths Advantage

Too many laws, require proof that the person telling a lie or breaking a law, did so knowing it was a law, lie or illegal. The result is that this makes it hard to prosecute officials, news presenters, tv personalities, etc... or get compensated when they harm others. At one time they simply locked up the criminal insane, but nowadays it appears they just get valium.  This is beyond absurd, bad law, it is deadly to our republic, its democratic features, comity, and to many of us survival.  Some of this may be bad lawyering. But the results are dangerous. An example is that Tucker Carlson just won a legal case, in September,

From September 2020, Business Insider:

Fox News won a court case by 'persuasively' arguing that no 'reasonable viewer' takes Tucker Carlson seriously

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7216968/9-24-20-McDougal-v-Fox-Opinion.pdf

Except the issue is that many viewers are not reasonable viewers, because they watch and believe Tucker Carlson! This is not a legitimate legal defense! On the contrary, the fact that he is a deliberate liar and propagandist should be an aggravating factor in McDougal's lawsuit!

The judge ruled that:

“ Mr. Carlson’s invocation of “extortion” against Ms. McDougal is nonactionable hyperbole,... This “general tenor” of the show should then inform a viewer that he is not “stating actual facts” about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in “exaggeration” and “non-literal commentary.” Milkovich, 497 U.S. at 20-21; Levinsky’s, Inc. v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 127 F.3d 122, 128 (1st Cir. 1997)). Fox persuasively argues, see Def Br. at 13-15, that given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer “arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism” about the statements he makes.”

Except Tucker's audience sops up his lies as if they were truth, and people are engaging in violence and threats based on them. The law needs to be stricter here.

First drafted back in October

Memory and Outrage

I mark each outrage with memory

This stain on our republic

This assault on democracy.

We need to learn,

And strengthen our walls.

The subversives have been sneaking in

A long time.

There are enough of them now

They call democracy radical.

We will cull such hate.

Before it's too late.