J.D. Vance is right: Europe is becoming totalitarian

Okay, I watched Vice-President J.D. Vance's speech at the Munich conference.  And he was absolutely spot-on.  

The same European countries we fought for and lost lives for are now becoming as oppressive as the Soviet Union was.  There is for all intents and purposes no more freedom of speech in places like England and Germany.  Dare to speak against the government and you're declared "far right" and subject to arrest and imprisonment.  Even posting a meme on X/Twitter is grounds for prosecution.  Say something about the massive problem with criminal migrants coming into the countries and that's also considered "hate speech".

And then there are the people who have been arrested for the "crime" of praying in public near abortion providers.

Europe has taken a terrible, terrible turn for the worse and is becoming the very nightmare that George Orwell warned about.  Why should the United States tolerate this kind of behavior from its supposed greatest allies?

This seems to be something that's got a lot of people hot and bothered (I can't believe the CBS reporter who suggested that the Nazis weaponized freedom of speech... what the hell planet did she drop in off of?).  The German leadership is especially honked-off that a hillbilly boy from Ohio just told them to their faces that they have apparently learned nothing from their own history.

(Vance is fast becoming the most proactive and vigorous vice-president that I have seen in my lifetime.  Maybe even the lifetime of any living American citizen.)

I'm working on an op-ed piece about this, suggesting that the United States turn off its support of countries that don't really give a damn about democracy and basic human rights.  It's time to use that "big stick" that Theodore Roosevelt spoke of.

If the countries of Europe want to be totalitarian regimes, they can do it without our help.

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The Berlin Wall fell 30 years ago today

Here's my piece of it:

The slab of it at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum (photo taken December 21, 2016):

Oppression never lasts forever.

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Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz is officially verboten

It's taken an act of legislation to wipe out the longest word in the German language.

"You vill EAT your
rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz
undt you vill LUFF it!!"

"Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz" - a 63-letter long title for a law "for the delegation of monitoring beef labelling" - has been removed from official use in Germany.  The law, passed in 1999, regulated testing cattle for bovine spongiform encephalitis: also known as "mad cow disease".  The European Community is dropping recommendations for testing healthy cattle for the disease.  And with it goes... that word.

I bet spelling bees are something else over there...

Tip o' the hat to Scott Bradford for spotting this!

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Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin has passed away

The Knight Shift today is remembering and honoring the life of an army officer from Nazi Germany.  And for good reason...

Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin was born in July of 1922.  More than two decades later at the age of 22, he was an infantry officer of the German army.  Ironic, since both Ewald-Heinrich and his father hated everything there was about Nazi ideology (the elder von Kleist-Schmenzin had even tried to arouse support from western countries for a coup against Hitler).

In January of 1944, Ewald-Heinrich was approached by Claus von Stauffenberg for a bold plan: to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a suicide bombing.  Von Kleist-Schmenzin volunteered to take the place of a wounded officer.  However the attempt had to be cancelled because Hitler kept postponing the event which would have him placed near the bomb.

Then came the following summer, and von Kleist-Schmenzin became involved with the now-famous July 20th Plot: the plan to kill Hitler - again by suicide bombing - while "Der Fuhrer" was at his Wolf's Lair retreat in the mountains of Poland.  This time it was von Stauffenberg who placed the explosive.  It went off: destroying the conference room but leaving Hitler himself virtually unscathed (the dictator later took it as a sign of divine intervention).  In the days that followed von Stauffenberg and most of his fellow conspirators were arrested and executed (some being hung with piano wire, with von Stauffenberg dying by firing squad).  Von Kleist-Schmenzin's father was one of those killed but almost miraculously, Ewald-Heinrich survived.  He wound up arrested and questioned, sent to a prison camp, then released and put back into army service.  All the while Ewald-Heinrich was helping the German resistance movement and doing a darned good job covering his tracks (obviously).

This past week, on March 8th 2013, Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin - Nazi army officer and the last surviving conspirator of the plot to kill Hitler - passed away.  He was 90 years old.

Ewald-Heinrich, this blogger salutes you and your courage.  May you have a joyful reunion with both your beloved father and your Father in Heaven.

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The statue of Buddha made from a meteorite and acquired by Nazis

That's not the most weird headline I've ever made for a blog post, but I must say: that it's certainly among the most interesting! It's not often that the worlds of archaeology, astronomy, chemistry and history come together so boldly.

The statue on the left, dubbed "the Iron Man", was found in Tibet sometime around 1938, by Nazi scientist Ernst Schäfer. It's thought that it represents the Buddhist god Vaisravana. The statue isn't terribly large but given its all-metal composition it is rather heavy. Schäfer thought it would be of particular interest to his superiors because of the swastika symbol carved upon its chest (Schäfer's expedition was to research the origins of the Aryan race). So the statue was packed up and sent to Germany and eventually found its way into the possession of a private collector.

The statue was likely carved in the tenth century, at most. But it's what it was carved from that makes it really neat: an iron-nickel meteorite that probably crashed to Earth sometime around 10,000 years ago along the border of present-day Siberia and Mongolia!

Furthermore, this is the only known statue carved in human likeness to have been made from a meteorite.

And incidentally, the swastika symbol found on the statue is - or was anyway - a very common symbol in many Asian cultures, as it was thought to represent good fortune. The swastika can be found on statues, in embroidery and many other works of art. It was only when the Nazis arose that Hitler and his followers twisted it into the symbol now sadly synonymous with evil.

LiveScience has a more in-depth article about the Nazi-found meteorite Buddha statue.

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German public TV airing "Patterns of Force" - AKA the Nazi episode of STAR TREK - for first time tonight

Forty-three years after it first aired on American television in 1968 as part of Star Trek's second season, "Patterns of Force", the episode that had Kirk, Spock and the crew of the Enterprise looking for a Starfleet historian and finding an alien civilization modeled after Nazi Germany instead, will be broadcast for the first time tonight on public television in Germany.

Why hasn't "Patterns of Force" been widely aired (it was made available as a pay-per-view episode previously) until now? The official reason is that later in the episode, the Nazi era is described as "the most efficient society” in Earth's history. But widespread consensus is that the extreme hesitancy regarding "Patterns of Force" mostly has to do with what remains the shocking and startling image of James T. Kirk in an S.S. officer's uniform (along with Spock's similar attire, before being captured and tortured in the only scene in Star Trek history that has Leonard Nimoy without a shirt).

Maybe not as fun a watch as is "A Piece of the Action", the other classic Star Trek episode about cultural contamination. And I remember one of the episode's own creators calling it "pretty hokey" in retrospect. But even so, that "Patterns of Force" (read more about the episode at Memory Alpha) is finally getting serious airtime in Germany is a pretty fascinating thing.

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Dude gets shot in head... and doesn't find out 'til 5 years later!

Robert Chojecki, a fella out of Herne, Germany, went to his doctor because he had been suffering severe headaches for a year and didn't know why.

So his physician took some x-rays of Chojecki's head... and found a bullet nestled between his skin and his skull.

It had been there for five years. At the time Chojecki, now 35, thought that he had either bumped his head or been hit by a firecracker during a New Years celebration. But apparently the 22-caliber bullet came from a bullet that had been fired during the same festivities (note to self: stop firing guns at parties).

Read more about the heady case of Robert Chojecki here, including video depicting the x-rays and the bullet!

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Life-sized General Grievous costume

A few days ago this blog forwarded along a story about a full-sized costume of a Covenant Elite from the Halo video games. If that didn't stun and impress, maybe this one will...

A dude in Germany has built a costume of General Grievous from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (as well as being featured in numerous other Star Wars works of fiction). Yeah you read that right: a General Grievous getup. And it not only looks incredible but it moves incredible! Check it out!

This guy has a longer video here that has more detail of the costume.

I bet he's gonna get slammed with requests from people to loan Grievous' help on Star Wars fan films :-P

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Most weirdest Star Wars-related post I've EVER made

There is a girl who can discern different Star Wars characters while blindfolded by putting them in her mouth and sucking on them.

I never want to have to write a summary sentence like that again.

Sophia Heesch, a teenager from Germany, was recently on a TV show in that country called Wetten, dass...? (translated into English it's "Wanna Bet...?") demonstrating her... talent. Sophia, without looking at it, can be given a Star Wars LEGO minifigure and just from sucking on it and feeling with her tongue, can tell whether the minifig is Han Solo or Yoda, and even more unusual characters like the ASP Droid.

Here is the clip of Sophia showing off her amazing powers!

Wetten, dass...? is a German game show, so apparently Sophia won some money. Remember that next time you yell at your kids for putting toys in their mouths :-P

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The Berlin Wall came tumbling down twenty years ago today

It was built by the East German government in 1961.

It completely encircled what was then West Berlin.

It was one of the most tangible symbols of the Cold War.

It was declared by communists throughout the world that the wall would last forever.

I know of no better additional commentary that can possibly be made besides this picture of the chunk of the Berlin Wall that I have owned since 1993...

Read more about the Berlin Wall on Wikipedia.

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Skull thought to be Hitler's is actually of a woman

In April of 1945, during the final days of the European theater and with the approaching rumble of Soviet tanks heralding the collapse of his "Thousand Year Reich", Adolf Hitler is said to have committed suicide within his Berlin bunker. His longtime mistress Eva Braun also joined him in death, rather than be captured alive. They took cyanide and then shot themselves. And according to surviving accounts, Hitler's aides took the bodies outside the bunker, doused them with gasoline and set them ablaze: an attempt to ensure that the Soviets could not make a trophy of the Fuhrer's remains.

But a year later, bones and skull fragments with bullet holes were found at the site by Russian forces. They were assumed to be all that was left of Adolf Hitler. The fragments sat in Moscow throughout the Cold War, and only in recent years have they finally come under the scrutiny of modern science.

And now, according to DNA studies... "Hitler's skull" is found to be that of a woman, most likely between the age of 20 and 40.

There's no telling who this skull might be then. My guess is that it might be Braun's, but absent any confirming DNA from possible relatives, there's no way we'll ever know. Just one more mystery then, among the myriad of enigmas, of World War II. But it also adds fuel to the fire about persistent theories that Hitler survived long after the war.

Or, maybe it really is Hitler's skull... and he was actually a woman? I've heard that one in my time too.

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Monopoly helped British POWs "Get out of jail free" from Nazi captors!

If Ridley Scott wants to make a Monopoly movie so bad, he should scrap his plans for a straight adaptation of the board game and film this instead: the ingeniously crazy and TRUE tale of how British soldiers in German POW camps during World War II used Monopoly to escape from prison. Historians are now saying that thousands of British military personnel could have literally gotten "out of jail free" and safely out of Nazi clutches... with a little help from Parker Brothers.

During World War II, as the number of British airmen held hostage behind enemy lines escalated, the country's secret service enlisted an unlikely partner in the ongoing war effort: The board game Monopoly.

It was the perfect accomplice.

Included in the items the German army allowed humanitarian groups to distribute in care packages to imprisoned soldiers, the game was too innocent to raise suspicion. But it was the ideal size for a top-secret escape kit that could help spring British POWs from German war camps.

The British secret service conspired with the U.K. manufacturer to stuff a compass, small metal tools, such as files, and, most importantly, a map, into cut-out compartments in the Monopoly board itself.

"It was ingenious," said Philip Orbanes, author of several books on Monopoly, including "The World's Most Famous Game and How it Got That Way." "The Monopoly box was big enough to not only hold the game but hide everything else they needed to get to POWs."

Right when I'd thought that I'd heard every bizarre story out of World War II, then this one comes along. Just outright amazing! Mash here for more about "Monopoly: The Stalag Edition".

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World War II began 70 years ago today

Early on the morning of September 1st, 1939, a squadron of Nazi German Luftwaffe attacked the Polish town of Wieluń. More than twelve hundred people were killed. Minutes later a German battleship opened fire on the military depot at Danzig. In the hours that followed dozens of motorized German divisions stormed into Poland along three fronts.

World War II had begun.

Nothing more to say here, other than to remember history... and a prayer that we may be mindful of lessons that are all too often only paid for at the highest of cost.

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Nazi concentration camp guard charged 29,000 times

German prosecutors have thrown not just the book, but several hefty volumes of 'em, at John Demjanjuk. For his time as a prison guard at the Nazi concentration camp at Sobibor in Poland during World War II, Demjanjuk has been charged with 29,000 counts of accessory to murder.

Demjanjuk is currently 88 and lives in Cleveland. The courts in Germany are trying to have the United States extradite him for trial. If that happens, it could very well be the end of an era. I can't see any further war crimes trials of former Nazis taking place.

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German schoolboy corrects NASA's math on killer asteroid odds

A 13-year old schoolboy named Nico Marquardt has found errors in NASA's calculations about the Apophis asteroid. And NASA has conceded that the lad from Berlin, Germany is correct. Marquardt found that that Earth now stands a much higher chance of getting hit by Apophis than originally determined by NASA. How much was the multi-billion dollar space agency off by? It said that the odds of a collision with Apophis were 1 in 45,000. After Marquardt's "peer review", it now turns out that the odds are 1 in 450.

I have to tip my hat to Marquardt. Math was never my big thing, and I tried to calculate the physics of astronomical objects during a class at Elon and didn't do too well either. He's probably got a bright future ahead of him... provided that we don't get hit by any big space rocks anytime soon :-)

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