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[ by Charles Cameron — despair at the human condition, and rejoicing ]
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On the one hand:

In some countries in Central and Eastern Europe, roughly one-in-five adults or more say they would not accept Jews as fellow citizens https://t.co/XctSonSjw8 pic.twitter.com/eNaa226HEa

— Pew Research Global (@pewglobal) March 28, 2018

On the other:

Johan van Hulst, a former Dutch senator and teacher who saved hundreds of Jewish children during the Holocaust, died last week at 107 https://t.co/6OygKxrh48 pic.twitter.com/X93hml9RiX

— CNN (@CNN) March 29, 2018

What impresses me enormously:

Dr. van Hulst was among more than 26,500 gentiles — 5,595 from the Netherlands — recognized by Yad Vashem for risking their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

[ by Charles Cameron — who has moved on to caffe latte ]
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Two things I read in quick succession.

Sugar:

The first deals with a moment in the history of slavery and abolition, and by extension, sugar:

When will Britain face up to its crimes against humanity?:

Shortly after Christmas 1831, an audacious rebellion broke out in Jamaica. Some 60,000 enslaved people went on strike. They burned the sugar cane in the fields and used their tools to smash up sugar mills. The rebels also showed remarkable discipline, imprisoning slave owners on their estates without physically harming them.

Tea:

The second just begs to be read alongside the first, especially if like so many Brits you like two cubes of sugar in your tea..

I saw a bumper sticker that said “Make tea, not war”, and what a wild ride they are in for when they learn literally any fact about tea.

— communicants (@c0mmunicants) March 27, 2018

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The second leaves you hanging, yeah, needing to comb your memory for the back-story of tea.. which is why, in addition to the fact that I read it after I’d read the entry on sugar and the sugar riots, I have put it second here.

It requires mental work!

But then the first one — with the rebellious slaves treating their imprisoned previous slave-owners civilly..

May I find there an early precedent for the nonviolence of MLK and the civil rights movemnt — in Jamaica, 1831?

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This is the sort of intellectual stimulation I live for!

Lattes for two, if you please. Do you take yours with Splenda?

[ by Charles Cameron — honoring the Civil Rights movement ]
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I’m truly sorry, but these two photos tell a mother’s tale — Emmett Till as his mother knew and loved him, and Emmett Till as she found him, when she ordered his coffin opened…

There’s a documentary now released — Hope and Fury: MLK, the Movement and the Media — which features Emmett Till‘s image as revealed in photographs taken when his coffin was opened, and exploring how that image radicalized Americas’s awareness of the lynching mentality, sending a shock wave amplifying the emergent Civil Rights movement.

America is remembering — and I as a Brit have two Emmett Tills to remember: Hugh Masekela, — and Medgar Evers.

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Hugh Masekela:

Hugh Masekela, the great jazz trumpeter whom my own mentor, Fr Trevor Huddleston mentored and gifted:

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Medgar Evers:

Medgar Evers, first, because Bob Dylan recorded Only a Pawn in their Game:

which acquainted me, forcibly, with Medgar Evers’ name — and next because I knew his son, Darrell, for a few years:

That’s a pretty extraordinary interview, and the video itself wound up on the Eyes on the Prize cutting room floor.

Darrell’s description of his father’s pooled blood — Darrell being an artist — was seared into my mind by association with the painter’s term crimson lake.. a private association, surely, but no less forceful for that.

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In those two names, their holders themselves both now deceased, I honor the civil rights movement in the US — our equivalent in the UK was the anti-apartheid movement, of which Fr Trevor was for many years the president.

Heroes, all — may they rest in peace.

[ by Charles Cameron — following up on the comments section at Games, politics, and game metaphors, which shut down unexpectedly ]
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Zell Miller, Wikipedia:

Miller appeared in an interview with Chris Matthews on the MSNBC show Hardball. After Miller expressed irritation at Matthews’ line of questioning, Matthews pressed Miller with the question, “Do you believe now – do you believe, Senator, truthfully, that John Kerry wants to defend the country with spitballs?” Miller angrily told Matthews to “get out of my face,” and declared, “I wish we lived in the day where you could challenge a person to a duel.”

spitballs, duel

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“both sides talk tough .. then there’s fighting”

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Hardball:

GOLDBERG: And so we here in this dystopian situation where John Bolton, the last person in the world who should be anywhere near the national security bureaucracy. This President has – he has dubious legitimacy at best, he doesn`t have popular support in the country. And we are stumbling toward an apocalyptic war that will kill millions of people, turn America into a pariah and our way of life. There is almost no way to talk about what a dangerous spot we are in without sounding insane.

[..]

MATTHEWS: Where does that lead to? What does that lead to if Israel does that against an Islamic country?

CORN: Well, I would say one easy term is apocalypse. I mean, this is where they`re at.

apocalyptic war, apocalypse

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Deadline White House, Nicolle Wallace:

what I’d describe as a legal chess-match

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Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti:

I’m a pretty good poker player. We’re going to see how this plays out. We have a piece of litigation and we’re going to handle it diligently and surgically.

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https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6h05r9

t=33

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Neil Katyal, The Beat:

You don’t go and tell a wwitness who is possibly going to testify against you, Oh, well I’ll give you a pardon, don’t worry about it. You know, criminal lawyers, one of the first things any smart lawyer would do to any one of their ckients is to say, Don’t talk to any witnesses, don’t even say hello to them on the street, let alone something like offering up a pardon, a massive get out of jail free card

get out of jail free card

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Hardball “that is the wild-card here”

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A Night of Laughs Between Trump and His Favorite Punching Bag

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‘Not in a punch-back mode’: Why Trump has been largely silent on Stormy Daniels

The counterpuncher, so far, has held his punches.

“He’s really not in a punch-back mode,” said one friend who has discussed the matter with the president in recent days and requested anonymity to be candid. “Everyone is telling him, look, you can’t win here, so just do nothing.”

counterpuncher, punch-back mode

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Jay Sekulow?

he’s a really good shortstop who has been asked to pitch in the world series

[ by Charles Cameron — that one is a many among many, and how many does that make? ]
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There are many, many distinctions that can be drawn at the group level, political, financial, religious, tribal, on the right side of the line in the diagram below — but every one of them in constituted of individuals, for each of whom the considerations on the left side would, to a greater or lesser extent, apply:

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How is this multiplied?

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Nice words, nice indeed. Bobby Kennedy‘s words.

But did the darker aspects of “the complex compound of pure and impure impulses” — in every individual, every “tiny ripple” — get lost in the niceness of the words?

I ask because for optimists it so often does, and that’s the great weakness of positive movements. And because for the cynical, so often, no glimpse of the positive aspects can make it through their fog.

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Consider this, for each individual:

As every man goes through life he fills in a number of forms for the record, each containing a number of questions . .. There are thus hundreds of little threads radiating from every man, millions of threads in all. If these threads were suddenly to become visible, the whole sky would look like a spider’s web, and if they materialized as rubber bands, buses; trams and even people would all lose the ability to move, and the wind would be unable to carry torn-up newspapers or autumn leaves along the streets of the city. They are not visible, they are not material, but every man is constantly aware of their existence…. Each man, permanently aware of his own invisible threads, naturally develops a respect for the people who manipulate the threads.

That’s not somebody writing about Cambridge Analytica or FaceBook — that’s Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in Cancer Ward, 1968, courtesy Bruce Schneier.

I may add further one and many instances and illuminations in the comments section as I find them — you are invited to do the same..