Whoops Apocalypse part 2

I urge everyone to see the new documentary "Countdown to Zero", which focuses on the continued danger of living in a world full of nuclear weapons. While I feel that there is little use in spending day and night worried about the possibilities of impending armageddon, it is useful to keep current geopolitical unrest (ie Iran, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea) in the context of the Nuclear Age. When one considers the list of nations that possess nuclear armaments, of which we are arguably the most prominent, a new perspective on the meaning of "rogue state" comes into focus. I don't foresee France nuking anyone in a hissyfit anytime soon, but the remaining nations on the list of the nuclear club (England, China, India, Pakistan, Russia, North Korea, and the United States) are anything but stabilizing global influences. Far from it. We are still the only nation that has used atomic weapons, and throughout the last half century the nuclear armed nations have held the rest of the world psychologically hostage with the terrible scenarios imaginable should their arsenals be employed.
Something that is touched on in chilling fashion halfway through the narrative of "Countdown to Zero" is a close call that occurred in 1995. A surveillance rocket fired into the atmosphere by American and Norwegian scientists was misconstrued by Russian radar as a first strike nuclear assault. Then Russian President Boris Yeltsin was thankfully not in a bad mood and/or drunk at the time, and even though he was in immediate communication with his military advisers, Yeltsin rightfully suspected the rocket in question was not an initial bellicose maneuver on the part of the United States.
The fact that a technical glitch could potentially trigger the end of the world is, I admit, darkly humorous. And as everything since "Strangelove" has proven, we might as well chuckle at the Apocalypse since we have very little control over who or what might launch it. So as I said, I am not losing any sleep over this stuff. But I am not going to ignore it either.

Liberty Cabbage

During World War One, there was a widespread movement in the United States to rebrand sauerkraut as "liberty cabbage", an attempt to shed German affectations from popular speech. This would of course be repeated some seven decades later in the course of the "Freedom Fry" affair. It's worth remembering, especially on 9/11, that propaganda can often begin as simply smug and arrogant, and very quickly proceed into bigotry.

Your moment of zen....

Peter Lang on Minnesota public television, mid seventies.

Brothers from another planet

My favorite group of Turkish siblings. Please tell me that the guitar player is rocking a double neck with a saz. If so, I would kill to know where to find one.

Dolly and Porter

Pretty hard to top this...

happy labor day

How lucky can one man get? Or to quote Cowboy Jack Clement, "When all else fails, get lucky."

God Willing and the Creek Don't Rise

There is a new documentary on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina by Spike Lee with this title, and I was curious as to the origin of this very very Southern phrase. I assumed, as do a lot of folks, that it was an archaic Southern reference in regards to flooding, perhaps one of those slogans that arose in response to the historic flooding of the Mississippi River in 1927.
The phrase in fact goes back quite a ways further; back to the days when the Creek Indian nation was a primary competitor to the impending hegemony of the oncoming Anglo-American invasion of the Southeast. It is an ironic case of semantic drift, and considering the relevance it has to our newly found forgotten, it is worth recalling its very disparate origins. I am humbly reprinting the following from Knol.....

If someone says, “God willing and the Creek don’t rise” they’re looking to achieve a goal. When they use this phrase, it means that they will achieve their goal as long as there are no outside forces of which they have no control preventing them from doing just that.



Origin:

The first time this phrase was known to be in print it was written by a man named Benjamin Hawkins in the late 18th century. Hawkins was a politician in the late 18th century and early 19th century as well as an Indian diplomat. This was back in the day where American Indians and the white settlers were constantly fighting for the land in the United States. While in the south, Hawkins was requested by the President of the United States to return to Washington. In his response, he was said to write, “God willing and the Creek don’t rise.”
Benjamin Hawkins capitalized the work “Creek”. Therefore, it is deduced that what he was referring to was not a body of water at all, but instead was the Creek Indian tribe. The Creek Indians were also known as the Muscogee tribe which were located in the southeastern region of the United States (Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Oklahoma). Since the Creek Indians were prevalent in the area where he was located, Hawkins knew that there was a great risk of the Creek Indians attacking.
This figure of speech is not only still used today, but the phrase is also in the lyrics of a 2008 song by the country music group Little Big Town. The song is called “Good Lord Willing” and the lyrics in the song say, “Good lord willing and the Creek don’t rise” instead of “God willing and the creek don’t rise”.