Yesterday, the plumber came around 9:00 and was finished before 10:00. I had two separate small problems, one in the bathroom sink and one in the stool. That was a good thing – because with both stopped up, I was afraid there was one problem, farther out, that would require expensive digging. At least I dodged that bullet.
Some information I have come across recently I think is interesting, though it may not mean anything (but it is suggestive.) The area which is now Russia had indigenous peole in the Middle Ages, and was invaded by Vikings – whom the indigenous people called “the Rus.” Those people actually asked the Vikings to stay and rule over them, because the Vikings appeared to be more organized than they were. (Incidentally the Vikings were not an ethniv group – it was more like a career choice – there were Vikings of many ethnicities.) The name “Russia” comes from their name for the Vikings. Ukrainians, however, are descended from Cossacks (if their national anthem is to be believed.) The Cossacks were an ethnic group’ They were semi-nomadic. Groups of them settled in varioua eastern nations, making a deal that they would providwe military service to those nations in return for being allowed self-government – which was mostly democratic. Don’t be discouraged by the length of this video on the Vikings – you only need to listen about a minute and a half to get the content. And this article is on the Cossacks. Those are my sources.
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Letters from an American – September 24, 2022
Quote – In Arizona, Pima County Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson has restored a law put into effect by Arizona’s Territorial legislature in 1864 and then reworked in 1901 that has been widely interpreted as a ban on all abortions except to save a woman’s life. Oddly, I know quite a bit about the 1864 Arizona Territorial legislature, and its story matters as we think about the attempt to impose its will in modern America. In fact, the Civil War era law seems not particularly concerned with women handling their own reproductive care—it actually seems to ignore that practice entirely. The laws for this territory, chaotic and still at war in 1864, appear to reflect the need to rein in a lawless population of men. Click through for story. I believe I see a huge Plan B loophole in the way this law is worded – provided the user orders it from, or buys it in person, out of state (i.e., receives it from a person not under Arizona’s jurisdiction.)
ABC News [Australian Broadcasting Company] – Indigenous activists condemn New York Times obituary of Uncle Jack Charles as offensive Lona
Quote – The lede paragraph of the New York Times story initially read: “MELBOURNE, Australia — Jack Charles, one of Australia’s leading Indigenous actors, who has been called the “grandfather of Aboriginal theatre” but whose heroin addiction and penchant for burglary landed him in and out of jail throughout his life, died on September 13 in Melbourne. He was 79.” It was updated to read: “MELBOURNE, Australia — Jack Charles, one of Australia’s leading Indigenous actors and activists, who has been called the “grandfather of Aboriginal theatre” and who spent years in prison for burglaries that he saw as acts of reparations, died on September 13 in Melbourne. He was 79.” Click through for story (I had no trouble so I assume y’all can see it – if not I’ll be happy to “print” it and sent a pdf) The ironic thing is that the Old Gray Lady is supposedly trying to be more sensitive in obituaries. Apparently, that only aqpplies to Americans.
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
War crimes. We know them when we see them. Or do we? Speaking as an aficionsdo of detective stires – the kind where you try to figure out who did it before the author tells you – when starting out to solve a simple crime (one victim, one criminal) you look for a break in the pattern. I think I can say without fear of contradiction that in a war zone, there are no patterns – certainly no patterns strong enought to look for a break in them. The author of today’s article is a war crime forensic investigator, who can tell you exactly what kind of evidence he looks for, and how convincing it has to be before a case can be made.
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Proving war crimes isn’t simple – a forensics expert explains what’s involved with documenting human rights violations during conflicts, from Afghanistan to Ukraine
The United Nations reports that at least 5,237 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the Ukraine war – but other estimates place this figure at more than 10,000.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has started more than 16,000 investigations into suspected war crimes committed by Russians.
For me and my colleagues – who since 1998 have worked in securing forensic evidence of these types of crimes in Afghanistan, Guatemala and other places – it is apparent that identifying and collecting evidence of international crimes like killing civilians during conflict is beyond the capabilities and resources of local police crime scene teams, criminal investigators and prosecutors.
This means that in the case of the Ukraine war, a new, unbiased judiciary and investigatory organization will likely need to be set up to handle the claims and questions about tens of thousands of victims on all sides. This will take decades of work and cost a large amount of money, requiring the support of rich countries.
A mass grave in Dasht-e-Leili, Afghanistan, was investigated by Physicians for Human Rights experts, including the author, in 2002 and 2008. Stefan Schmitt/Physicians for Human Rights
Proving war crimes
War crimes, under international law, happen when civilians, prisoners of war, hospitals or schools – essentially anyone and anything that isn’t involved in military activities – are targeted during a conflict.
These prosecutions raise questions about how evidence is collected and handled to support these cases – and about credibility. Ukraine has a history of government corruption, and Donetsk is both not recognized internationally and is backed by Russia, which has a judicial system known to tolerate torture.
Previous recent conflicts that resulted in war crime allegations and investigations offer context for understanding the challenges in independently investigating them.
I investigate cases in which law enforcement, military and police are alleged to have committed crimes against civilians and are not held accountable for it. In many cases, these alleged crimes happen during a civil war, like the Guatemalan civil war in the late 1970s and early 1980s, or the Rwandan conflict and genocide in the mid-1990s.
This means that I often work with international organizations like the United Nations to travel to these places and document physical evidence of war crimes – take photographs, take notes, do measurements and draw sketches to illustrate a potential crime scene. The idea is that any other experts can pick up this evidence and reach their own conclusions about what happened there.
Crime scene investigators like me generally do not determine whether a war crime was committed. That is a decision reserved for the prosecutor or a judge who is given the evidence.
Shortly after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, about 2,000 Taliban fighters surrendered to the Northern Alliance, an Afghan military coalition allied with the U.S. They later went missing.
An investigation determined that these prisoners might have suffocated or were killed in containers used to transport them. It was suspected that they were buried in a mass grave in Dasht-e-Leili, a desert area in northern Afghanistan.
In 2002, the United Nations invited a group of forensics experts from the nonprofit group Physicians for Human Rights to investigate this alleged mass grave. As part of this team, I documented heavy equipment tracks, human remains and personal items in this area.
Physicians for Human Rights exposed over a dozen bodies in a test trench, and autopsies by one of their forensic pathologists determined the cause of death was consistent with suffocation. Evidence of medical gloves on the surface of and inside the mass grave struck me as unusual, as it indicated that logistically prepared personnel had handled the remains of the dead. At the time, Afghans barely had any medical supplies to take care of their injured.
To me, it was indicative of the presence of foreign troops with the necessary supplies – such as medical gloves – at this site when the bodies were buried there. Considering that in late November 2001 the U.S. and its allies were searching for al-Qaida members, this might be a reasonable explanation for their presence.
In 2008, in a follow-up visit to the area, I discovered two large pits in the desert, indicative of the removal of any human remains that might have been buried there. Later analysis of satellite imagery provided evidence of a large-scale excavation using a backhoe and trucks, dating it to late 2006.
Everyone from former Afghan Vice President Rashid Dostum, also a warlord, to U.S. military and government experts offered different answers as to what happened there.
Since Ukraine is fighting Russia in an active war, it will not have the independence required to fairly investigate and prosecute potential war crimes cases.
That will require other countries and international groups to help set up an independent, unbiased organization to investigate the fate of victims on all sides of the war.
In March, the human rights branch of the United Nations also launched an international commission to investigate human rights violations in Ukraine. But the U.N. does not identify and return human remains to their families.
While the International Criminal Court is also investigating war crimes in Ukraine, this organization tends to focus on high-level cases that go after political leaders and is not tasked to provide answers to families of all victims.
These investigations will not extend beyond justice – meaning the arrest and prosecution of soldiers or political leaders.
War crimes involving massive numbers of casualties leave behind a multitude of surviving family members, all of whom have the right to know the fate of their loved ones. This goes for Ukraine as well as any other country where international crimes are committed.
Families also have the right to the truth about what happened. This requires an institution with the independence, staff, scientific resources, legal capabilities and money to reach this understanding.
============================================================== Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, the events used as an example here happened during the Bush administration. As suggestive as the findings were, they were not sufficiently evidential to make a case, let alone press charges. So anyone who is still wondering why Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld were never charged with war crimes can look here for at least partial answers.
It would be nice if war criminals – at least the most egregious – could always be brought to justice – but for more than a thousand years it has been a principle of justice that it is better for multiple guilty people to go free than for one innocent to suffer, and the rules of evidence have been written accodingly (the exact ratio, of course, has varied over the years. In Anglo-Saxon England it was four to one. The “Blackstone ratio,” determined at about the time of the Founding Fathers, is ten to one. Some have proposed as high as a thousand to one, and some as low as one to one.) Even if we don’t agree about the number, I think we mostly agree in principle. Even when we don’t like individual results (for example, it appears that the Matt Gaetz human trafficking case has an evidence problem – specifically a witness credibility problem.)
Yesterday, the radio opera was Rúsalka, sung in Czech, by Antonín Dvořák (there’s not actually an accent on the u -I put one there to remind myself that’s where the stress is.) Like every other culture, the Czech cultur is rich in fairy tales. But, if you think the Brothers Grimm are grim, don’t look up the Czech ones, because they are grimmer. A Rúsalka is a female water spirit (it isn’t her name), and her story is that of the Llittle Mermaid, only darker. She is a fresh water being, she doesn’t go to a sea witch, but a lake or river witch called Jezibaba, and forfeits her voice to become human. The prince falls for her but everyone in his castle is terrified of this speechless woman who seems so cold (she didn’t get a soul in the deal, you see.) A foreign princess comes to visit, and the Prince is tempted, and the Rúsalka fears all is lost and goes back to the water. The prince tries to stop her but it is too late. She has become a different kind of water spirit, one who exists to lure human men and kiss them, which condemns tham to hell for eternity (she did get her voice back, so she tells him this – she doesn’t want to doom him.) But he chooses to kiss her anyway. Not exactly a happily ever after ending for sure. The one aria from it which is often concertized is the “Song to the Moon,” about how much she loves the prince and wants to be with him. The role is for a soprano, but this aria isn’t high, and a mezzo-soprano can sing it, and in fact the best, IMO, I ever heard it was done by a mezzo, Frederica von Stade (also, Joshua Bell did a lovely violin version). But I digress. Dvořák also used Czech fairy tales as the bases for some tone poems, of which the three I can remember are “The Noon Witch,” “The Wood Dove,” and “The Golden Spinning Wheel.” All the music is lovely, and all the stories are gruesome.
Cartoon – 25 0925Cartoon.jpg also Rosh Hashanah loaded
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CPR News – Elijah McClain’s autopsy report changed to death by ketamine
Quote – “The forensic evidence revealed that the cause of death was undetermined. Specifically, the pathologist who conducted the autopsy stated that he was unable to conclude that the actions of any law enforcement officer caused Mr. McClain’s death. In order to prove any form of Homicide in the state of Colorado it is mandatory that the prosecution prove that the accused caused the death of the victim.” Even with this new cause of death being ketamine, it is unclear how prosecutors move forward with holding those who touched McClain that evening accountable for his death without a homicide declaration on the death certificate. Click through for updates. We pretty well knew this. But now it’s official – but the manner of death is still wrong. I think our AG tried hard for accountability, but has been stymied, as usual, by law enforcement sticking together regardless.
Crooks & Liars – Ukraine Returns 215 POWs, Including Azovstal Defenders In Prisoner Swap
Quote – An amazing swap, as in total Ukraine returned 215 prisoners of war, 205 Ukrainians and 10 foreigners. The entire leadership of the Azov regiment appears to have survived and were freed, including commander Denys Prokopenko. British national Aidan Aslin, sentenced to death by Russian proxies of Donetsk, also swapped. Ukrainian medic and songstress Kateryna “Ptashka” Polishchuk aka “Birdie” was also among those released, just days after Russia released an interrogation video of her. Click through for more details. This is astonishing, particularly since Putin has started conscripting. But I’ll definitely tke it.
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
I assume it’s no news to anyone here that “Conservative” principles and government, far from being conservative, are reactionary and will make our country a worse – and a poorer – place to live. MAGA should stand for “Make America Garbage Again.” Well, we now have hard statistics and hard math to prove that – to prove, not just that it will happen, but that it is already happening (has already happened.)
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US is becoming a ‘developing country’ on global rankings that measure democracy, inequality
People wait in line for a free morning meal in Los Angeles in April 2020. High and rising inequality is one reason the U.S. ranks badly on some international measures of development. Frederic J. Brown/ AFP via Getty Images
The United States may regard itself as a “leader of the free world,” but an index of development released in July 2022 places the country much farther down the list.
In its global rankings, the United Nations Office of Sustainable Development dropped the U.S. to 41st worldwide, down from its previous ranking of 32nd. Under this methodology – an expansive model of 17 categories, or “goals,” many of them focused on the environment and equity – the U.S. ranks between Cuba and Bulgaria. Both are widely regarded as developing countries.
As a political historian who studies U.S. institutional development, I recognize these dismal ratings as the inevitable result of two problems. Racism has cheated many Americans out of the health care, education, economic security and environment they deserve. At the same time, as threats to democracy become more serious, a devotion to “American exceptionalism” keeps the country from candid appraisals and course corrections.
‘The other America’
The Office of Sustainable Development’s rankings differ from more traditional development measures in that they are more focused on the experiences of ordinary people, including their ability to enjoy clean air and water, than the creation of wealth.
So while the gigantic size of the American economy counts in its scoring, so too does unequal access to the wealth it produces. When judged by accepted measures like the Gini coefficient, income inequality in the U.S. has risen markedly over the past 30 years. By the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s measurement, the U.S. has the biggest wealth gap among G-7 nations.
These results reflect structural disparities in the United States, which are most pronounced for African Americans. Such differences have persisted well beyond the demise of chattel slavery and the repeal of Jim Crow laws.
Scholar W.E.B. Du Bois first exposed this kind of structural inequality in his 1899 analysis of Black life in the urban north, “The Philadelphia Negro.” Though he noted distinctions of affluence and status within Black society, Du Bois found the lives of African Americans to be a world apart from white residents: a “city within a city.” Du Bois traced the high rates of poverty, crime and illiteracy prevalent in Philadelphia’s Black community to discrimination, divestment and residential segregation – not to Black people’s degree of ambition or talent.
More than a half-century later, with characteristic eloquence, Martin Luther King Jr. similarly decried the persistence of the “other America,” one where “the buoyancy of hope” was transformed into “the fatigue of despair.”
To illustrate his point, King referred to many of the same factors studied by Du Bois: the condition of housing and household wealth, education, social mobility and literacy rates, health outcomes and employment. On all of these metrics, Black Americans fared worse than whites. But as King noted, “Many people of various backgrounds live in this other America.”
The benchmarks of development invoked by these men also featured prominently in the 1962 book “The Other America,” by political scientist Michael Harrington, founder of a group that eventually became the Democratic Socialists of America. Harrington’s work so unsettled President John F. Kennedy that it reportedly galvanized him into formulating a “war on poverty.”
Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, waged this metaphorical war. But poverty bound to discrete places. Rural areas and segregated neighborhoods stayed poor well beyond mid-20th-century federal efforts.
Camp Laykay Nou, a homeless encampment in Philadelphia. High and rising inequality is one reason the US rates badly on some international development rankings. Cory Clark/NurPhoto via Getty Images
In large part that is because federal efforts during that critical time accommodated rather than confronted the forces of racism, according to my research.
Across a number of policy domains, the sustained efforts of segregationist Democrats in Congress resulted in an incomplete and patchwork system of social policy. Democrats from the South cooperated with Republicans to doom to failure efforts to achieve universalhealth care or unionized workforces. Rejecting proposals for strong federal intervention, they left a checkered legacy of local funding for education and public health.
Today, many years later, the effects of a welfare state tailored to racism is evident — though perhaps less visibly so — in the inadequate health policies driving a shocking decline in average American life expectancy.
Declining democracy
There are other ways to measure a country’s level of development, and on some of them the U.S. fares better.
The U.S. currently ranks 21st on the United Nations Development Program’s index, which measures fewer factors than the sustainable development index. Good results in average income per person – $64,765 – and an average 13.7 years of schooling situate the United States squarely in the developed world.
Its ranking suffers, however, on appraisals that place greater weight on political systems.
The Economist’s democracy index now groups the U.S. among “flawed democracies,” with an overall score that ranks between Estonia and Chile. It falls short of being a top-rated “full democracy” in large part because of a fractured political culture. This growing divide is most apparent in the divergent paths between “red” and “blue” states.
Although the analysts from The Economist applaud the peaceful transfer of power in the face of an insurrection intended to disrupt it, their report laments that, according to a January 2022 poll, “only 55% of Americans believe that Mr. Biden legitimately won the 2020 election, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud.”
Election denialism carries with it the threat that election officials in Republican-controlled jurisdictions will reject or alter vote tallies that do not favor the Republican Party in upcoming elections, further jeopardizing the score of the U.S. on the democracy index.
Red and blue America also differ on access to modern reproductive care for women. This hurts the U.S. gender equality rating, one aspect of the United Nations’ sustainable development index.
I believe that, when paired with structural inequalities and fractured social policy, the dwindling Republican commitment to democracy lends weight to the classification of the U.S. as a developing country.
American exceptionalism
To address the poor showing of the United States on a variety of global surveys, one must also contend with the idea of American exceptionalism, a belief in American superiority over the rest of the world.
Both political parties have long promoted this belief, at home and abroad, but “exceptionalism” receives a more formal treatment from Republicans. It was the first line of the Republican Party’s national platform of 2016 and 2020 (“we believe in American exceptionalism”). And it served as the organizing principle behind Donald Trump’s vow to restore “patriotic education” to America’s schools.
In Florida, after lobbying by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, the state board of education in July 2022 approved standards rooted in American exceptionalism while barring instruction in critical race theory, an academic framework teaching the kind of structural racism Du Bois exposed long ago.
With a tendency to proclaim excellence rather than pursue it, the peddling of American exceptionalism encourages Americans to maintain a robust sense of national achievement – despite mounting evidence to the contrary.
============================================================== Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, We are going to need all the help we can get to break enough of the American people out of their comfortable denial of reality and into a place where they are willing to work – and fight (hopefully not with weapons, but even that if necessary), not only to preserve our democracy, but to raise it to the status of a true and inclusive democracy. Because, if that doesn’t happen, we will all lose everything.
Yesterday, Queen Elizabeth II quietly passed away. This saddens me because I don’t have a lot of respect for, or confidence in, the new Charles III. But – of course – it is what it is. The New Yorker has published a very thoughtful retrospective on her. Also yesterday, I received approval to visit Vergil Sunday, so it will be one of those days.
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HuffPost – Hundreds of Law Enforcement, Military Part of Jan. 6-Linked Oath Keepers: Report
Quote – The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism pored over more than 38,000 names on leaked Oath Keepers membership lists and identified more than 370 people it believes currently work in law enforcement agencies — including as police chiefs and sheriffs — and more than 100 people who are currently members of the military. It also identified more than 80 people who were running for or served in public office as of early August. The membership information was compiled into a database published by the transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets. Click through for story. On one level this is terrifying – but Beau actually found it encouraging, because 370 out of 38,000 and 100 out of 38,000 are not very large percentages. If he had looked up the actual number of law enforecement and active duty military (665,380 and 1.195 million respectively), he might have felt even better. But it’s important to know, and good that there’s now a database.
The New Yorker – The Election Official Who Tried to Prove “Stop the Steal”
Quote – Douglas Frank,… a high-school math and science teacher with a doctorate in chemistry, had previously been promoting another mathematical formula that, he claimed, allowed him to determine the number of covid cases more accurately than state health authorities and the media. “I was modelling every single county in the United States, and people would come to my social-media pages to find out what the real numbers were,” Frank said. “So that’s how Sherronna first met me. I was on her podcast, and I had her on mine.” Frank told me that, after building an audience of covid skeptics with his revisionist statistics, he was invited by several politicians to examine their 2020 election results. “I noticed a pattern,” Frank said. “And the pattern enables me to go into any state and look at one county. And, once I’ve looked at one county, I can predict all of the other counties to preposterous accuracy.” PolitiFact, the fact-checking arm of the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit journalism school and research organization, has given one of Frank’s claims about vote manipulation a hundred-per-cent “Pants on Fire” rating, Click through for full investigative reporting. This really scares me, more so than the obviously violent.
Before there was Saint Javelin, there were Eastern Orthodox icons of many saints, including, of course, the Virgin Mary. She is more often than not shown with the Baby Jesus. This has often given people the impression that Mary was sweet, submissive, and silent. But that’s not entirely accurate. What do we know about Mary from the Bible? Most of what we know is from the Gospel of Luke.
We don’t know her exact age when Jesus was born. The youngest I have heard her age speculated on is thirteen – the same age that Margaret Beaufort was when she gave birth to Henry Tudor (later Henry VII). Henry was certainly no Jesus, but Margaret Beaufort was definitely a tough cookie. But I digress.
The Biblical story goes (and please suspend disbelief if necessary, in order to appreciate the flavor) that an angel appeared to her and told her Jehovah (westernized spelling in my attempt to avoid cultural appropriation) had chosen her to be the mother of his son. Her first response was, “Yeah, right. How is that going to happen to someone who’s never had sex?” The angel gave her a mystical explanation involving the Holy Spirit and the Power of the Most High, and added that her childless and now post-menopausal cousin Elizabeth had conceived and was now in her 6th month of pregnancy. At that point, Mary said, “All right then, I consent.” You may not consider that fully informed consent, but she’d clearly had at least some sex education, and likely had a pretty good idea of what she was getting into socially. And, like it or not, children were expected to grow up faster up to and including the Indistrial Revolution.
But she didn’t fail to do the fact checking. The first thing she did was go visit Elizabeth to see if this unlikely story was true. It was – and Elizabeth had also been informed somehow about Mary – because the first thing she said was “You? The mother of God? Visiting me? I’m overwhelmed!”
And that was when Mary on the spot composed the poem the church calls the “Magnificat.” A poem which has been around so long that its edge has been blunted. It was actually quite revolutionary.
In drastic paraphrase, but you can check it against any translation and see why you think: “Now I get it. This is a BFD. For the rest of time, everyone in the world will know about me and know my name. What an honor. Our god is amazing, and strong. He’s going to show the privileged elites they are just dirt. He’s going to kick out the powerful and give power to us nobodies. He’s going to feed the poor and starve the rich.” And, of course, that’s what Jesus told us to do. It was revolutionary then, and it’s revolutionary now. And you still have to be a badass if you are actually going to make it happen – or even try to.
Jumping to modern times, in 2012, an artist named Chris Shaw was inspired to do an acrylic-on-canvas painting of Mary holding an AK-47, in a style inspired by Orthodox Iconography. He called it Madonna Kalashnikov. He doesn’r seem to have been thinking specifically about Mary’s character – he says, “The initial idea for the image was conceived during the post 9/11 era. I have always juxtaposed and mixed concepts about culture and religion into my icons, and had long been intrigued at how weapons can be perceived as both evil and good – especially if they are doing God’s work. The concept was brought a bit further in another painting I made around the same time, ‘Madonna of the Suicide Vest’.”
“I first exhibited Madonna Kalashnikov at Varnish Gallery (2012), then at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2013)” he says. “She received plenty of attention but also came back unsold after both exhibits, I think she was a bit too subversive for the times. I eventually sold her directly out of the studio.”
After that, “I can’t say she was ever a meme or went viral after her debut, but the image of Madonna Kalashnikov from my website got shared around. I’d look it up occasionally and typically got a kick out of where she ended up, eventually she was getting all over the place. Unfortunately that also meant unauthorized prints and merchandise started showing up too, ever since it’s been extremely labor intensive trying to keep people from printing her on shirts or other items to sell. Bootleg Madonna Kalashnikov merchandise has been popular in East Europe, which isn’t surprising. Less frustrating are the tattoos, there’s a lot of great Madonna Kalashnikov tattoos, I always enjoy seeing them.” She even became a patch for the Ukrainian military
Still later, “The story continues, in 2018 someone in Ukraine altered an image of the Madonna Kalashnikov painting. She now held a Javelin missile launcher and was posted on twitter, shortly after she was named, ‘Saint Javelin’. Not many people saw it then, I didn’t. However, in 2022 amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the St.Javelin version of Madonna Kalashnikov went hyper-viral, eventually becoming the face of the conflict and a symbol of Ukraine’s resistance against Russia.”
While Chris is not thrilled with the unauthorized uses, he is grateful that the images are being used to raise money for Ukrainians battling totalitarianism. “I feel better knowing that she’s become an icon of hope, freedom, and good.”
I don’t know what he would think of the interpretation of her in stained glass, which is quite recent. It was created by an American artist, Sheila Noseworthy, using vintage glass, made in West Germany, which is no longer obtainable, but which she had been saving. I think Chris would approve – not only is the work exquisite, but the purpose is to raise funds for Ukrainian defense.
Nor do I have a clue what he would think of this, or other videos at the “Saint Javelin Official” YouTube site. I can tell you it made me laugh and cry. The CC ss good, the voices of the judges sound authentic. The voice of HIMARS is that of a wise child.
There are other Saints being called upon also. You can see quite a variety at the Saint Javelin Official Site. One is Saint Neptune, Protector of the Seas. I would call the site, among other things, ecumenical.
Glenn Kirschner – Glenn’s regular video in sequence is a report n a Team Justice get-together. Glenn’s first grandchild was there (cute as a button), but Glenn didn’t make the keynote speech, and it;s long. So I’m substituting this, which includes information not yet covered on “Justice Matters.”
Political Voices Network – No Sweetheart Deals! There Are a Whole Host of Crimes that Apply to Rudy & Trump.
Meidas Touch – Texas Paul REACTS to Adam Kinzinger MOCKING Trump as whiny ‘victim’
Lincoln Project – Receipts
Really American – Republican endorsement of extreme behavior is proof that they are #GOPTerrorists
Parody Project – THE CRIMES THEY ARE ARRANGING
Beau – Let’s talk about WHO changing names and changing as a person….
Lona
seem to have been thinking specifically about Mary’s character – he says, “The initial idea for the image was conceived during the post 9/11 era. I have always juxtaposed and mixed concepts about culture and religion into my icons, and had long been intrigued at how weapons can be perceived as both evil and good – especially if they are doing God’s work. The concept was brought a bit further in another painting I made around the same time, ‘Madonna of the Suicide Vest’.”
her debut, but the image of Madonna Kalashnikov from my website got shared around. I’d look it up occasionally and typically got a kick out of where she ended up, eventually she was getting all over the place. Unfortunately that also meant unauthorized prints and merchandise started showing up too, ever since it’s been extremely labor intensive trying to keep people from printing her on shirts or other items to sell. Bootleg Madonna Kalashnikov merchandise has been popular in East Europe, which isn’t surprising. Less frustrating are the tattoos, there’s a lot of great Madonna Kalashnikov tattoos, I always enjoy seeing them.” She even became a patch for the Ukrainian military
I don’t know what he would think of the interpretation of her in stained glass, which is quite recent. It was created by an 
