Timeless poster art

I thought I’d put this up just because I like it so much. Stunning poster art from the 1930s, from the Spanish CNT-FAI:

From this wonderful collection of Spanish Civil War posters.

It may be 70 years old, but there’s something extremely contemporary about that poster, both in style and substance. (I get something of the same feeling about the CNT-FAI generally.)

Mother’s Day Addendum

My late mother wasn’t the world’s greatest pianist, but she was an enthusiastic one, and did have a quite good singing voice. She had some old songbooks that she would play and sing from, and one of her favorites was a song that even as a small child I found moving and beautiful, a song from the Spanish Civil War. These are the lyrics as I recall them, and cannot help recalling them in her voice:

Spanish heavens filled with brilliant starlight
High above the trenches in the plain
With the dawning morning comes to greet us
Calling us to battle once again
Far off is our land
Yet proudly we stand
We’re fighting and winning for you
Freiheit!

Well, isn’t that convenient?

It’s fair to call me cynical. In recent times, cynicism about the means and motives of our rulers has proven itself to be the most reliable predictor of their behavior.

Today the newswires and the netteries are alive with talk of “terror plots in Germany! Americans targeted! In the next month!” Americans yearn hopefully for news of raids by the Sicherhe Stas German security forces to thwart these fiends. Even the most cynical of Americans are saying “Bush is in trouble, crank up the Terra wolf.” But it occurs to me that my friends are being good Americans, that is, being “US-centric”, that events in Germany may just have something to do with events in Germany.

Perhaps the cause of being cynical is having more information than the average bear. I long ago realized I couldn’t rely on official information sources, and have learned to look elsewhere for information. keep reading and I’ll share with you what the “unofficial” sources are talking about wrt Germany.

Finally We Understand

“Finally we understand that in France work is freedom“

~ Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France (and Vampire L’etat C’est Moi.) Speaking to the Congress of his UMP party on January 14, 2007

I realize some of my fellow Americans may be concerned. How, they ask, can we allow ourselves to fall behind France (France!) in this critical dimension? How can we allow ourselves to be on the wrong side of a growing Thinly-Veiled Fascism Gap??? Friends, Merkins, countrymen, worry not, as this item dredged up from the archives of the New York Times (March 17, 1994) makes plain, Americans can do more than lend lip service to the great truth that “Freedom is Slavery” we can make it our reality for the foreseeable future:

The Mayor, a former United States Attorney in Manhattan, said New Yorkers were inclined to “see only the oppressive side of authority.”

“What we don’t see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be,” he said at the forum, sponsored by The New York Post. “Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.”

~Rudolph “Il Douche” Giuliani, Likely Next President of the United States of America

We know that Mr. Sarkozy penned the introduction to the autobiography of Gianfranco Fini. The Agitator asks, does Mr. Giuliani deserve less, do his words ring less true to the original?

Finally we understand, that in America, work is freedom. Freedom is slavery. War is Peace. And Ignorance is Strength!