CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 116th Edition. Dissing J.D., What's the point of the National Prayer Breakfast?, Drip.

Boo

J. D. Vance was booed at the Olympics

No surprise, had I been at the Olympics, I'd have booed Vance, and I'm an American.  Trump has brought the U.S. into universal contempt, so that a symbol of it gets jeered is no surprise.

Vance must go home and cry seeing his chances of being President decline below 0 every day.  His only hope in the first place was the application of the 25th Amendment and so far, in spite of my expectations, no luck there.

Trump was asked about the event.

REPORTER: “The vice president got booed during the opening ceremony. What do you make of that frosty reception?”

PRESIDENT TRUMP: “That's surprising because people like him. Well, I mean, he is in a foreign country, you know, in all fairness. He doesn't get booed in this country.”

Truly, Trump is clueless.

Ignoramus at National Prayer Breakfast

I don't see the point of this anymore.

Truth be known, I probably never did.  I appreciate prayer, obviously, but this, at least in my memory, has been sort of a lukewarm American Civil Religion event in which the sitting President makes a nod towards religion  The same guy could have been chasing skirts all week and then sound like he was really sincere at the breakfast.

Here's JFK's 1963 speech there.

February 07, 1963

Senator Carlson, Mr. Vice President, Reverend Billy Graham, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, gentlemen:

I am honored to be with you here again this morning. These breakfasts are dedicated to prayer and all of us believe in and need prayer. Of all the thousands of letters that are received in the office of the President of the United States, letters of good will and wishes, none, I am sure, have moved any of the incumbents half so much as those that write that those of us who work here in behalf of the country are remembered in their prayers.

You and I are charged with obligations to serve the Great Republic in years of great crisis. The problems we face are complex; the pressures are immense, and both the perils and the opportunities are greater than any nation ever faced. In such a time, the limits of mere human endeavor become more apparent than ever. We cannot depend solely on our material wealth, on our military might, or on our intellectual skill or physical courage to see us safely through the seas that we must sail in the months and years to come.

Along with all of these we need faith. We need the faith with which our first settlers crossed the sea to carve out a state in the wilderness, a mission they said in the Pilgrims' Compact, the Mayflower Compact, undertaken for the glory of God. We need the faith with which our Founding Fathers proudly proclaimed the independence of this country to what seemed at that time an almost hopeless struggle, pledging their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence. We need the faith which has sustained and guided this Nation for 175 long and short years. We are all builders of the future, and whether we build as public servants or private citizens, whether we build at the national or the local level, whether we build in foreign or domestic affairs, we know the truth of the ancient Psalm, "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it."

This morning we pray together; this evening apart. But each morning and each evening, let us remember the advice of my fellow Bostonian, the Reverend Phillips Brooks: "Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks."

[The President spoke first to the gentlemen in the hotel's main ballroom and then to the ladies in the east room.]

Ladies:

I'm glad to be with you again this morning with the Vice President, Reverend Billy Graham, Dr. Vereide, Senator Carlson, the same quartet that was here last year and the year before.

I think these breakfasts serve a most useful cause in uniting us all on an occasion when we look not to ourselves but to above for assistance. On our way from the last meeting to this, we met two members of Parliament who carried with them a message from Lord Home to this breakfast, in which Lord Home quoted the Bible and said that perhaps the wisest thing that was said in the Bible was the words, "Peace, be still."

I think it's appropriate that we should on occasion be still and consider where we are, where we've been, what we believe in, what we are trying to work for, what we want for our country, what we want our country to be, what our individual responsibilities are, and what our national responsibilities are. This country has carried great responsibilities, particularly in the years since the end of the Second War, and I think that willingness to assume those responsibilities has come in part from the strong religious conviction which must carry with it a sense of responsibility to others if it is genuine, which has marked our country from its earliest beginnings, when the recognition of our obligation to God was stated in nearly every public document, down to the present day.

This is not an occasion for feeling pleased with ourselves, but, rather, it is an occasion for asking for help to continue our work and to do more. This is a country which has this feeling strongly. I mentioned in the other room the letters which I receive, which the Members of Congress receive, which the Governors receive, which carry with them by the hundreds the strong commitment to the good life and also the strong feeling of communication which so many of our citizens have with God, and the feeling that we are under His protection. This is, I think, a source of strength to us all.

I want to commend all that you do, not merely for gathering together this morning, but for all the work and works that make up part of your Christian commitment. I am very proud to be with you.

Kennedy, who was a (bad) Catholic, was only able to get elected by promising not to be really Catholic, an act of betrayal to his faith that has hurt Catholics ever since.  At least with Trump we don't have that, as he's some sort of undeclared Protestant, he says.  Crediting that claim, which I don't think deserves much credit, he's a really bad Christian.

None of which stops people like Franklin Graham and Paula White-Cain from praising him.

White Cain was pretty restrained in her opening remarks there.  She isn't always so restrained. Trump wasn't restrained in his babbling remarks, which departed greatly from Christianity.

I'm pretty skeptical about any real attachment, or perhaps understanding, of Trump to religion. Indeed, I'm firmly convinced the damage he's doing to Evangelical Christianity is deep.

Trump announced a May 17, 2026 national prayer gathering on the National Mall as part of the White House's 'America Prays' initiative, which encourages one million people to dedicate weekly prayer time. Such prayer would be beneficial no doubt, but a big gathering on the National Mall is a mistake.  It's going to gather a counter prayer demonstration for sure by Christians who see through Trump, and it'll likely generate a mass protest.  It'll be difficult to keep it from getting out of hand.

That's a Sunday.  Maybe J.D. can note that he has to go to Mass and skip out.

Drip

For the 2026 US Olympic drip, the teams has white duffle coats and a sort of winter themed sweater with the flag on it.  It looks nice, but Norway has accused the US of stealing the star motif on the sweater.

I have a duffle coat I wear as a winter overcoat.  I really like it.  I've had it for years and year, but oddly suddenly I'm getting compliments while wearing it.  It always catches me off guard as it is getting long in the tooth, but still I get a fair number of them.

The same is true with a Hanna Hats panel cap I've been wearing for about 25 years or so.  I've always received some compliments on it, but I"m getting a lot all of a sudden.  A guy actually interrupted a conversation he was having with a woman at a store just to ask me "what's that sort of cap called"?

In other somewhat surreal conversations, I picked up pizza on my way home from an unsuccessful goose hunt the other day and went into the joint in a heavy surplus European camouflaged coat.  I'm too cheap to buy the designer camo that other people do.  Anyhow, I parked my Jeep right in front of the place and when I went in the girl waiting the counter said "What kind of a car is that?"

It was a Jeep. 

That was a surprising question as Jeeps look like Jeeps and they have since the very first Jeep.

Probably because of my coat she then asked, after getting my pizza, "where you in the military"?  I affirmed and she thanked me for my service.

I note this as this sort of somewhat awkward but ready engagement seems common for people in Generation Alpha.  Indeed, back to the hat, I've had some young women, probably 20 years old or less, just look at me and say "I like your hat" in passing.  It's a little awkward and surprising.

When I was 20 myself, young women never told me that, darn it.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 115th Edition. The Killing of Alex Pretti, Hageman flees the stage, ICE blocked in hotel.

Labels: 2020s, 2026, Alex Pretti Incident, Border Patrol, Civil Unrest, Harriet Hageman, Renee Good Incident, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Wyoming (Casper), Wyoming (Riverton), Wyoming (Thermopolis), Zeitgeist

Saturday, September 26, 1925. No divorce.

It was a Saturday.

A real glimpse into how things have changed was provided by the denial of divorce story on the cover of the Tribune.

Both sides asked for a divorce, but the judge said no.

No fault divorce, as we've noted here before, did not exist at the time.

It shouldn't exist now.

The Saturday journals were out. Women seemed to be the theme.

Marty Robbins (Martin Robinson) was born in Arizona.  He learned how to play the guitar while serving in the Navy during World War Two.

Alejandro Velasco Astete, the first aviator to fly over the Andes, died in a plane crash while landing.  He was attempting to avoid a crowd of spectators that had gathered to watch him land at Puno, Peru.  He was 28.

Spanish Olympic fencer Miguel Zabalza was killed in action in the Rif War.  He was 29 years old.

Last edition:

Friday, September 25, 1925. Moving the Kurds.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, baseball, boats and ships, Disaster, Kurds, Racism, Turkey, U.S. Navy, Washington DC, Weapons

Monday, August 4, 1924. Around the world disruptions.

Women commenced competing in an Olympic type event, the Women's International and British Games, for the first time. 

A British attempt to fly around the world ended with the plane crashing in the Bering Sea, while a US plan suffered a similar fate in the Atlantic.

Last edition

Sunday, August 3, 1924. German memorial day.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, Afghanistan, Belarus, Berlin Germany, Communists, First Around The World Flight, Germany, Iceland, Iraq, It was because of World War One, Judaism, Poland, religion, USSR, Weimar Germany

Women's Rugby

While I'm not really following the Olympics, I am glad to see that Women's Rugby is getting press.

It's awesome.

Included as awesome, is Ilona Maher, US women's rugby player.

5 ft 10 in, 200 lbs, and all muscle, she's quite the contrast to the female characters the press is usually focused on, like Taylor Swift or Billie Eilish.  

Mocking Christianity.

But understand this: there will be terrifying times in the last days.  People will be self-centered and lovers of money, proud, haughty, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, irreligious,callous, implacable, slanderous, licentious, brutal, hating what is good,traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,as they make a pretense of religion but deny its power. Reject them.

For some of these slip into homes and make captives of women weighed down by sins, led by various desires, always trying to learn but never able to reach a knowledge of the truth.

Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so they also oppose the truth—people of depraved mind, unqualified in the faith.

But they will not make further progress, for their foolishness will be plain to all, as it was with those two.

2 Timothy, Chapter 3.

A very interesting Canadian agriculturalist whom I follow on Twitter (I don't care with Elon Musk calls it), who is also an Eastern Rite Catholic, noted that he, like me, didn't watch the Olympic opener (as will be noted, I watched the very start of it, grew bored, and wondered off).  So he, like me, was left with the media accounts, of which there are plenty, including video, of a group of drag queens mocking Da Vinci's The Last Supper.  He goes on to make the  point that the sex laden transvestite portrayal was likely calculated to offend, but that The Last Supper is not an icon, which is quite correct.

But, with some exception, the Latin Rite lacks icons.  While not the same, the great Medieval and Renaissance works of art in the West tended to be commissioned by the Church, so they have an association with it.  Put another way, in order to offend to the  degree as denigrating an icon, there'd be little other choice. ¹  Again, it's not an icon, but part of a set of religious works of art commissioned by and associated with Christianity in the West.

It's hard to grasp why this would occur, but the outrage in the Catholic Church, and there is a lot of it, is justified.  So is the embarrassment in some French circles, particularly French conservative ones.  The French far right came with in a gnat's breath of taking over the French government two weeks ago and the ultimate makeup of the upcoming French government is still unknown.  Had this happened before the election, I have a strong feeling that the French far right would be forming a government now.

That provides a topic for another thread, which we will address, but we'll note here.  Part of the rise of National Conservatism and Christian Nationalism, and even just far right populism, is due to debauchery such as this.

The Olympics itself was quick to claim that the portrayal wasn't not of The Last Supper, which of course is an Italian, not a French, Renaissance work, noting on Twitter:

The interpretation of the Greek God Dionysus makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings.

Hmm. . . Dionysus is a Greek mythological figure, not a French one. . . 

Dionysus was the Greek god of  is the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre.  His Roman equivalent was Bacchus.  While celebrated in Roman times, the Romans also restricted unofficial celebrations dedicated to Bacchus due to the excess he was associated with it.  

Whatever else Dionysus may stand for or have stood for, it certainly had nothing to do with being against violence between human beings.  He really had a lot more to do with booze, drunkenness, sex and insanity, and its interesting that the ancient Greeks linked all of them together.  Eirene or Irene was the divinity associated with peace, but she didn't engage in drunken excess.

Another Olympic official also reacted with a series of excuses that were fairly lame.  Thomas Jolly, the artistic director of the Olympics Opening Ceremony, said the display was about "inclusion".

When we want to include everyone and not exclude anyone, questions are raised. Our subject was not to be subversive. We never wanted to be subversive. We wanted to talk about diversity. Diversity means being together. We wanted to include everyone, as simple as that.

Whatever diversity means, it doesn't mean "being together".  At least to some significant degree, it means being apart, and in the modern era, when this is being self defined in a way contrary to nature, it literally means being a Dionysus until one's self.

Jolly noted:

In France, we have freedom of creation, artistic freedom. We are lucky in France to live in a free country. I didn’t have any specific messages that I wanted to deliver. In France, we are republic, we have the right to love whom we want, we have the right not to be worshippers, we have a lot of rights in France, and this is what I wanted to convey.

Um, okay.

Le Filip, the winner of  Drag Race France season three, probably got it more accurate.

I thought it would be a five-minute drag event with queer representation. I was amazed.  It started with Lady Gaga, then we had drag queens, a huge rave, and a fire in the sky. It felt like a crowning all over again. I am proud to see my friends and queer people on the world stage.² 

Whatever a person thinks of it, Le Filip grasped it better than Jolly did, quite frankly.

For many, as I have often told you and now tell you even in tears, conduct themselves as enemies of the cross of Christ.

Their end is destruction. Their God is their stomach; their glory is in their “shame.” Their minds are occupied with earthly things.o

St. Paul to the Philippians, Chapter 3.

A portion of France, particularly urban France, has waged war with the Church and Christianity since the failed French Revolution.  Like all the revolutions that were conducted by populist mobs, their god was their belly and they turned on the Church. The same is true of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Mexican Revolution. The Church stands for the proposition that there is something greater, much greater, than us, where as populism of the left and right, at the end of the day, doesn't.  Modern "progressivism", heir to the extreme left that arose in 1798 and 1917 has the same ethos, rejecting anything outside of ourselves and rising each person to an individual Bacchus no matter how much a person's own nature may be corrupted in one fashion or another, as individual natures are the only thing that matters.  The portrayal at the Olympic opener celebrated that ethos shamefully mocking Christianity in favor of a world outlook that goes no deeper than a person's gentiles.  Their glory, is their shame.

The storms that are raging around you will turn out to be for God’s glory, your own merit, and the good of many souls. 

St. Padre Pio.

I'll be frank that I quit watching the opening ceremonies of Olympic games some time ago.  I think the last one I actually watched was the Moscow Olympics, which is now quite some time back. They've ceased to make sense to me. The Olympics are ostensibly about sports, not about the glorification of the country where they're held, or drag queens.  Indeed, I've frankly lost interest in the Olympics themselves for some reason.

This really reinforces that view, particularly as to this particular Olympics.

I feel they should just be permanently placed in Greece, for the summer games.

Make no mistake: God is not mocked, for a person will reap only what he sows, because the one who sows for his flesh will reap corruption from the flesh, but the one who sows for the spirit will reap eternal life from the spirit.

Galatians, Chapter 6.

I suspect most of the viewing audience will simply regard this attack on Catholicism as part of the show, shrug it off, and move on.  In doing so, they benefit from the liberal culture the Church created in the West and the fact that central to the Christian worldview is turning the other cheek.  In contrast, France has a very large Muslim population that nobody would dare attack in such a fashion, a cartoon depicting Mohammed for instance famously resulting in murder.  There will be no drag queens taking on an Islamic topic.  None.  Islam doesn't turn the other cheek.  Likewise, Hinduism, which of course would be completely foreign to France, can't be attacked in this fashion either without almost immediate retribution.³

Catholics aren't going to do that, nor will the rest of the Christian world.

Which doesn't mean that the offense should be ignored.

Footnotes:

1.  One religious image that has endured this is the tilmahtli associated with Our Lady of Guadalupe.  Back when there was a print Playboy magazine, the company issued a Mexican edition with a Mexican woman featured on the cover replicating the image in a pornographic fashion, which brought a firestorm of criticism.

That, and this, give credence to those who claim a diabolical origin to these events.

2.  Are there no French singers to do an Olympic opening?  Why Stefani Germanotta as the opening act?  That alone is embarrassing for France.

Having said that, the Marseilles was beautifully sung by Axelle Saint-Cirel. They should have just stopped right there.

In case anyone wonders, my watching of the show was basically bookended by those two acts.  I grew tired of the masked boofador running over roofs and wondered off to take a shower and watch something else.

3.  One religion that has endured something like this is the LDS, Mormon, faith.  Target of the satiric comedic The Book Of Mormon, it's basically shrugged it off, probably figuring, correctly, that as a minority religion, it might actually benefit from being mocked, as it at least puts a spotlight on it.  I'd guess, however, that Mormons aren't keen on the portrayal, and while I've never seen it, and I'm not a Mormon, I'm not either.  As noted, nobody would put on a Broadway satiric "The Koran", nor should they.

Sunday, May 18, 1924. Kīlauea

 

Kīlauea erupted in Hawaii.

The last Olympic rugby union game was played, with the United States defeating France 17 to 3.

Last prior edition:

Saturday, May 17, 1924. U.S. Flyers reach Paramashiru.

1920s, 1924, Aircraft, Attu Island, First Around The World Flight, Kentucky Derby, Kuril Islands, Paramashiru

Sunday, May 4, 1924. Summer Olympics. Not ousting councilman over booze.

The 1924 Summer Olympics opened in France with preliminary competitions and a really cool logo.

Men, opened.

It's lost.

The Society of American Wars, which was a thing, met with Coolidge.

Efforts to boot Councilman Royce failed, due to the state of the law.

And the transglobal flight was back at it.

Locally, plans were being advanced for the construction of the Presbyterian church, which were published in one of the papers.

The church ultimately constructed would look a big different.

City Park Church, formerly First Presbyterian Church, Casper Wyoming

This is City Park Church, and was formerly, as noted below in the original entry, the First Presbyterian Church.

This Presbyterian Church is located one block away from St. Mark's Episcopal Church and St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church, all of which are separated from each other by City Park. 

The corner stone of the church gives the dates 1913 1926. I'm not sure why there are two dates, but the church must have been completed in 1926.

This century old church became the home of the former First Baptist Church congregation on February 28, 2020, and as noted in a thread we'll link in below, had been experiencing a lot of changes prior to that.

The original entry here was one of the very first on this blog and dated at least back as far as January 25, 2011.  While the architecture hasn't changed at all, with the recent change our original entry became misleading to an extent.

Related Threads:

Grace Reformed at City Park, formerly First Presbyterian Church, Casper Wyoming

Changes in Downtown Casper. First Presbyterian becomes City Park Church, the former First Baptist Church.

And, as can be seen, events have resulted in some denominational shifting.

The morning edition was full of all sorts of dramatic news.

British sponsored Assyrian Levies killed 50 in Kirkuk.

German elections were held, resulting in the Social Democratic Party of Germany narrowly maintaining a small plurality of 100 seats. The German National People's Party finished with 95.

The Soviet Union demanded an apology for yesterday's police raid.

Last prior edition:

Saturday, May 3, 1924. Foundings.

1920s, 1924, Art, boats and ships, California, German Weimar Republic, Judaism, Nebraska, Nebraska (Omaha), Omaha Nebraska, Personalities, religious organizations, Teenagers, USSR, Youth Organizations

Thursday, March 6, 1924. The US Olympic Equestrian Team.

Olympic Cavalry Team, March 6, 1924. Capt. E. W. Taubee, Capt. V. L. Padgett, Lieut. P. M. Robinett. (Back Row) Lieut. F. L. Carr., Major, C. P. Georges, Major J. A. Barry, Major S. Doak, Captain I. R. Underwood, and Captain U. T. Bauskett.

At the time, the equestrian teams were drawn from various nation's officer corps.

Last prior:

Wednesday, March 5, 1924. An attempted caliphate.

Friday, January 25, 1924. The First Winter Olympics.

The 1924 Winter Olympics opened in Chamonix.  It was the first winter games.

The USSR renamed Petrograd, which had been founded by Peter the Great in 1703 and named after St. Peter, Leningrad, thereby substituting the name of a name of a lawyer turned mass murder in place of that of the Christian saint and first Pope.

While Lenin's foul body remains in a specialized mausoleum for worship by the secular, the city regained its rightful name in June 1991, when it appeared that Russia might escape the treachery of its recent past.

Mexican rebels took Morelia.

Czechoslovakia and France signed a mutual defense treaty.

Wednesday, January 2, 1924. Kings in Exile.

Bulgaria gave former King Ferdinand, who had been in exile since 1918, permission to return to Sofia.

He had been living in Coburg, Germany, oddly enough, given that the German monarch was also in exile.  He noted, while there:

Kings in exile are more philosophic under reverses than ordinary individuals; but our philosophy is primarily the result of tradition and breeding, and do not forget that pride is an important item in the making of a monarch. We are disciplined from the day of our birth and taught the avoidance of all outward signs of emotion. The skeleton sits forever with us at the feast. It may mean murder, it may mean abdication, but it serves always to remind us of the unexpected. Therefore we are prepared and nothing comes in the nature of a catastrophe. The main thing in life is to support any condition of bodily or spiritual exile with dignity. If one sups with sorrow, one need not invite the world to see you eat.

Yugoslavia issued an ultimatum objecting to his return.

He in fact did not return, and having taken steps to secure his fortune, lived a quasi bucolic life, marked by family tragedy, and carried on in Germany, dying in 1948.  The prior year, he married a third time, to his secretary, age 26.  

Simon & Schuster, the legendary publishing house, was formed.

The U.S. Winter Olympic team left for the first Winter Olympics.

1924 Winter Olympics including Beatrix Loughran, Joe Moore, Valentine Bialis, Richard Donovan, Harry Kaskey, Charles Jewtraw, and William Steinmetz aboard the ship SS President Monroe on January 2, 1924. 

The Constitutionalist government of Mexico reported that is forces had achieved a victory over the rebels of Adolfo de la Huerta at Zacualpan.

The war in Mexico, and other age-old lethal vices, were making headlines far away:

Flooding in Paris closed the railroads.

Sabine Baring-Gould, composer of "Onward, Christian Soldiers", died at age 89.  Clara Abbott, American businesswoman who had been the first woman to serve on the board of a major American corporation, Abbott Laboratories, died at age 66.

United States Senators Frazier and Johnson were photographed working.

A new flag for Iowa was unveiled.

It is, frankly, ugly.

It had been adopted in 1921. Iowa had lacked one before that.

Thursday, October 25, 1973. Ramping up to and backing down from war.

The US military was alerted that the Soviet Union was "planning to send a very substantial force" to intervene in the Yom Kippur War.  On the same day, perhaps ironically, Egypt and Israel accepted United Nations Security Council Resolution 340 creating a peacekeeping force between them that would omit US and Soviet troops.

The Local Government (Scotland) Act of 1973 was given royal assent.

Lebanon, which was not in a good place in relation to petroleum bans, provided that cars with even-numbered plates could only drive on even-numbered days, those with odd-numbered plates only on odd-numbered day.

Abebe Bikila (Amharic: ሻምበል አበበ ቢቂላ), Olympic marathon runner who won the1960 Summer Olympics in Rome marathon while running barefoot and the 1964 Tokyo Olympics marathon died as a result of an automobile accident sustained in 1969

Both his 60 and 64 runs were world records.

Wednesday, January 20, 1943. Senseless deaths.

Attila Peschauer, Hungarian Olympic fencer and gold medalist in 1928 and 1932, is commonly thought to have died in the Davidovka concentration camp in Ukraine where Hungarian Jews had been deported by Nazi Germany, an act which required cooperation of Hungary.

It's commonly misunderstood by those in the West that all the victims of the Holocaust were gassed in camps, which is far from true, and in the few camps whose names are in common circulation in the West.  In reality, bullets and starvation were the most common means of death and most of the killing took place in the Poland, Ukraine and Belorussia in those areas where they were occupied by the Germans.

While, as noted, it's been commonly thought that Peschauer died in a concentration camp, and may even have been ordered into execution by a fellow Hungarian serving the Germans, some recent information is that he actually died in a Soviet POW camp.  The irony here would be that Hungary was a German ally during World War Two.  This might actually be more likely as while Hungary was repressive towards its Jewish citizens, it didn't deport those who actually held Hungarian citizenship, that being done to Jews who lived in areas that Hungary took in after it invaded the Soviet Union.

By this point in the war, it should be noted, countries like the Kingdom of Hungary should have been seriously reconsidering their role in the war as, at least to an astute advisor, there was no way for them to come out on the winning side.  Of course, they were also captive to their earlier decision to side with the Germans.

The Luftwaffe bombed the Sandhurst Road School in a daytime raid of the London suburb of Catford, killing 41 school children. By this point in the war, Luftwaffe raids over the UK were increasingly rare.  Six teachers were also killed.  Eleven of the German aircraft were downed by Typhoons.

The Red Army continued to advance, with the New York Daily Post noting that the Germans were now back on their 1941 line as a result.  The British took Homs and Tarhuna in Libya.  The Germans advanced in Tunisia.  Chile broke diplomatic relations off with Germany, Italy and Japan.

Thursday, September 6, 1972. Tragedy in Munich

A German rescue plan, based on an ambush at the airport, went badly awry and was discovered by the Black September terrorists before it was put into action.  As a result, all eleven of the Israeli athletes taken hostage were killed.  One West German policeman and five Black September members also died in the gun battle.  Three of the terrorist survived.

The surviving terrorists, almost unimaginably, were held for only a little over a month before being exchanged for hostages held on board Lufthansa Flight 61 in an act designed purposely to secure their release. They were then flown to Libya.

Israel launched a retaliatory mission which is known by two names, Operation Wrath of God and Operation Bayonet, to hunt down and kill those associated with the massacre.  While there were various covert accounts carried out by Mossad as part of this effort, the fate of the surviving terrorists is not entirely clear.  Adnam Al-Gashey and Mohammed Safety are both thought to have been hunted down and killed by Mossad, in both cases due to their remaining in contact with relatives.  Jamal Al-Gashey is thought to be still living in Tunisia, and was actually interviewed for a documentary about the event in 1999.

As a side note, Black September had logistical support for their attack from German Neo-Nazis.

Wednesday, September 5, 1972. An Olympic Tragedy

On this day in 1972 the Palestinian terrorist organization Black September attacked the Israeli quarters at the Olympic village in Munich, killing two athletes and taking nine hostages.

Black September was named for the failed Palestinian attempt to overthrow the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in September 1970, an event which was a Palestinian disaster. This event itself led to the Palestinians being expelled from Jordan and going to Lebanon.  The organization's connection with the Palestinian Liberation Organization has never been clear, but it is clear that there was one.  In 1973 the PLO caused the shutting down of the organization, whose violent acts had not been successful in engendering any support for the Palestinian cause.

This is an event I can recall happening, and oddly enough I believe I learned about it after the family went swimming on a Wednesday afternoon, something that was pretty common for us to do.  Indeed, we swam a lot during the summer, and almost always did on Saturday afternoons and often on Sunday afternoons.  It wasn't a tradition I kept up with my own family, but I probably should have.  The day prior Mark Spitz had won his seventh gold medal at the Olympics, the first athlete to do so.

Mark Spitz at the 1972 Olympics.

Spitz, then only 22 years of age, retired from swimming after the 72 Olympics, but competed again in 199w after filmmaker Bud Greenberg offered  him $1,000,0000 if he made the team that year. He failed to do so by only two seconds.

Spitz had intended to become a dentist, but the Olympics interrupted that pursuit, and he did not resume it after 1992, other opportunities having developed.  He married the next year and the couple have two children.