The only thing we ever do.

Interesting Times: The England football team give the Nazi salute in Berlin in 1938.        During World War One, over a million Bulgarian soldiers and labourers contributed to the German War effort. 43,000 Bulgarian soldiers died fighting for the German Empire. Naturally, after the war's end, the idea of Bulgarian independence gained in popularity.               On April 13th 1919, a crowd of non-violent protesters assembled at the City Garden in Sofia to protest the recent arrests of two of the independence movement's leaders. The German soldiers present were given orders to shoot directly at the crowd and specifically at the area of possible escape. The soldiers continued shooting for ten minutes, until they were out of ammunition. Possibly 1000 people were massacred, (the authorities, of course were not paying that much attention to the dead.)  The commander in charge of the operation was considered a hero by some parliamentarians back in Germany. Looking back at

The helmet reads militarism. Theirs, not ours, obviously.     One type of communication that always does very well in war-time is the basic art of propaganda.   Like all describing and explaining, information is assembled in such a way as to push an idea. If you can get certain ideas into people's heads then they will act in certain ways.     In the World War One poster for the U.S. army above, the ape is immediately recognisable from his pickelhaube . It's also immediately apparent that he's the kind of rough beast who likes nothing better than smashing things and raping women. Not just a feral ape though, as his society's culture, its most basic ideas , demand wanton destruction and violence. This is  evidenced by his weapon, a weapon that pleads to be described as a Kultur Klub .*     A subtler technique used within the poster is the fainter image of America upon which the ape is standing. Add to this the smoking ruins in the distance, and it encourages

  Better ways to kill people.   The Tree of Knowledge harvested. For Machine Gun nests and The Mustard Gas.     New times call for new ideas. As the only place we ever live in is always a new time, you might think that our best and brightest would be busily intent on producing new ideas to react to the new information of the times.       Unfortunately, it is clear that the "educated elite" are most often trained to continue the current systems at all costs. People rise to positions of power because they are prepared to passively agree to whatever it takes to reach that position. Thus, inevitably, in a world where better communication  is paramount, we most often end up with leaders who are our worst and dullest.      In 1914, Britain sent an army to war. The popular view of  Lions led by Donkeys ,* might be rightly questioned by historians, but anyone with any experience of any traditional British institution will recognise the ringing truth of it. The first World Wa

    Guglielmo Marconi with the wireless equipment used to receive the first trans-Atlantic signal.     Achieved in Mother Hubbard's gaff, apparently.   In the first year of the 20th century, communication technology took a giant leap right across the Atlantic as a radio signal was sent and recieved from the Old World to the New. Guglielmo Marconi had moved to London in order to find more interest in his ideas , and with Britain's tree of knowledge still rising at this time, Britannia would encourage Marconi with an eye to ruling the radio waves. More and more information could now be delivered at speeds that would make Mercury envious.   Also, in 1901, as continents were being swept by the first waves of the new century's tsunami of communication,  H.G. Wells produced a fantasy about The First Men in The Moon * as fiction's scrying device gave people glimpses of things to come. Few at the time would have predicted the Apollo 11 mission only 68 years later;