Daily News Digest December 25, 2023
WWI’s Christmas Truce: When Fighting Paused for the Holiday
Christmas In The Trenches My name is Francis Tolliver, I come from Liverpool. Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school. To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here I fought for King and country I love dear. ‘Twas Christmas in the trenches, where the frost so bitter hung, The frozen fields of France were still, no Christmas song was sung Our families back in England were toasting us that day Their brave and glorious lads so far away. I was lying with my messmate on the cold and rocky ground When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound Says I, “Now listen up, me boys!” each soldier strained to hear As one young German voice sang out so clear. “He’s singing bloody well, you know!” my partner says to me Soon, one by one, each German voice joined in harmony The cannons rested silent, the gas clouds rolled no more As Christmas brought us respite from the war. As soon as they were finished and a reverent pause was spent “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” struck up some lads from Kent The next they sang was “Stille Nacht.” “Tis ‘Silent Night’,” says I And in two tongues one song filled up that sky. “There’s someone coming toward us!” the front line sentry cried All sights were fixed on one lone figure trudging from their side His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shown on that plain so bright As he, bravely, strode unarmed into the night. Soon one by one on either side walked into No Man’s Land With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand We shared some secret brandy and we wished each other well And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave ’em hell. We traded chocolates, cigarettes, and photographs from home These sons and fathers far away from families of their own Young Sanders played his squeezebox and they had a violin This curious and unlikely band of men. Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more With sad farewells we each prepared to settle back to war But the question haunted every heart that lived that wondrous night “Whose family have I fixed within my sights?”. ‘Twas Christmas in the trenches where the frost, so bitter hung The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung For the walls they’d kept between us to exact the work of war Had been crumbled and were gone forevermore. My name is Francis Tolliver, In Liverpool I dwell Each Christmas come since World War I, I’ve learned its lessons well That the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead and lame And on each end of the rifle we’re the same. —John McCutcheon
From: WWI’s Christmas Truce: When Fighting Paused for the Holiday Over Christmas 1914, singing and soccer broke out between British and German forces. Singing Breaks Out in the Trenches on Christmas Eve At about 10 p.m., Bairnsfather noticed a noise. “I listened,” he recalled. “Away across the field, among the dark shadows beyond, I could hear the murmur of voices.” He turned to a fellow soldier in his trench and said, “Do you hear the Boches [Germans] kicking up that racket over there?” “Yes,” came the reply. “They’ve been at it some time!” The Germans were singing carols, as it was Christmas Eve. In the darkness, some of the British soldiers began to sing back. “Suddenly,” Bairnsfather recalled, “we heard a confused shouting from the other side. We all stopped to listen. The shout came again.” The voice was from an enemy soldier, speaking in English with a strong German accent. He was saying, “Come over here.” One of the British sergeants answered: “You come half-way. I come half-way.” British and German Soldiers Meet in the ‘No Man’s Land’ What happened next would, in the years to come, stun the world and make history. Enemy soldiers began to climb nervously out of their trenches, and to meet in the barbed-wire-filled “No Man’s Land” that separated the armies. Normally, the British and Germans communicated across No Man’s Land with streaking bullets, with only occasional gentlemanly allowances to collect the dead unmolested. But now, there were handshakes and words of kindness. The soldiers traded songs, tobacco and wine, joining in a spontaneous holiday party in the cold night.
Dec. 25, 1837: Christmas Day Freedom Fighters: Hidden History of the Seminole Anticolonial Struggle By William Katz
On Christmas day in 1837, the Africans and Native Americans who formed Florida’s Seminole Nation defeated a vastly superior U.S. invading army bent on cracking this early rainbow coalition and returning the Africans to slavery. The Seminole victory stands as a milestone in the march of American liberty. Though it reads like a Hollywood thriller, this amazing story has yet to capture public attention. It is absent from most school textbooks, social studies courses, Hollywood movies, and TV. This daring Seminole story begins around the time of the American Revolution when 55 “Founding Fathers” broke free of British colonialism and wrote the immortal Declaration of Independence. About the same time, Seminoles —suffering ethnic persecution under Creek rule in Alabama and Georgia —fled south to seek independence. Africans who had earlier escaped bondage and became among its first explorers welcomed them to Florida. Read More
Imagine
How the Rich Stole Christmas!
The Tipping Point For the Amazon: “Our data show that the protection of 80% of the Amazon is necessary and possible, but above all, urgent. If the current trend of deforestation continues, the Amazon as we know it today would not reach 2025,” says the RAISG’s report, based on the analysis of data from 1985 to 2020. — The Amazon Will Reach Tipping Point If Current Trend of Deforestation Continues
American Exceptionalism: Inequality in the US and Why It Matters How will we pay for a more equitable, sustainable, and secure economy? The answer starts with tax the rich. 
‘Not Worth the Paper It Is Written On’: US Guts Gaza Resolution “By striking the call for suspension of hostilities, the resolution will now ensure that Israel’s slaughter in Gaza continues,” said one analyst.
‘Turns Out the Israelis Lied’: Probe Dismantles IDF’s Al-Shifa Hospital Claim A Washington Post investigation found Israel’s evidence “falls short” of showing that Hamas used the facility as a command center. The Israeli military launched a deadly assault on Gaza’s largest hospital last month on the grounds that the facility concealed a sprawling Hamas command center. But a detailed Washington Postinvestigation published Thursday found that the evidence Israel has presented in support of its claim “falls short” of demonstrating that Hamas used the al-Shifa Hospital Complex for any significant military operations. U.S. President Joe Biden, who repeated the Israeli government’s claim about al-Shifa, has not released any evidence to support the assertions.
Evidence Missing in ‘Mass Rape’ Charge Against Hamas Jonathan Cook examines two articles in Haaretz that form the backbone of Western political and media claims about mass rape by the Palestinian resistance group. Jonathan Cook examines two articles in Haaretz that form the backbone of Western political and media claims about mass rape by the Palestinian resistance group.
Unchecked Human Activity Is Pushing Ecosystems Toward the Brink The planet is facing multiple severe challenges that require our immediate attention. Putting an end to the dirty and suffocating fossil fuel emissions may be the most significant global priority, but limiting the misuse of water and restoring degraded land are also essential projects.
Indigenous Forests Are Some of the Amazon’s Last Carbon Sinks Carbon Flux: How Forests Serve As Carbon Sinks — or Carbon Sources The world’s forests, which cover about 30% of Earth’s land, absorbed approximately 7.2 billion more tonnes of CO2 per year than they emitted between 2001 and 2021, about twice as much carbon as they released. Deforestation, degradation and other disturbances, however, have already turned some of the world’s most iconic forests into carbon sources and threaten to convert others. The Amazon, the world’s largest tropical forest, remains a net carbon sink, but it teeters on the edge of becoming a net source. Southeastern Amazonia already emits more carbon than it sequesters. Over the past 40-50 years, an estimated 17% of Amazonian forest has been lost, of which over four-fifths was converted to agricultural land, mainly pastures. Scientists estimate that deforesting 20% of the Amazon could push it past a tipping point, triggering a large-scale dieback that would release more than 90 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere (approximately 2.5 times greater than annual global fossil fuel emissions), transform the forest into a savannah and disrupt rainfall across South
America.Rainforest Watchdog Accuses Peru of ‘Predatory’ Attack on Amazon New rules approved by the nation’s lawmakers “will effectively make it ‘open season’ for organized crime, says Amazon Watch. In what opponents called a rushed vote without adequate notification or debate, Peru’s right-wing congressional majority on Wednesday effectively decriminalized illegal logging, a move Amazon defenders warned will empower criminal groups to destroy ecosystems critical to the survival of Indigenous peoples and biodiversity.
- CPI no longer measures the cost of maintaining a constant standard of living.
- CPI no longer measures full inflation for out-of-pocket expenditure.
- With the misused cover of academic theory, politicians forced significant underreporting of official inflation, so as to cut annual cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security, etc.
- Use of the CPI to adjust retirement benefits, private income or to set investment goals impairs the ability of retirees, income earners and investors to stay ahead of inflation.
- Understated inflation used in estimating inflation-adjusted growth Has Created The Illusion Of Recovery In Reported Gdp.
Problems With Inflation Estimation This public comment reviews and updates the nature of inflation understatement by the U.S. government’s statistical agencies and the rationale and methodology used by ShadowStats.com in compiling the SGS Alternate Consumer Inflation measures. While much of the following text is new, the concepts all have been explored in earlier writings. Some of the material here has been repeated from our September 2008 Response to BLS Article on CPI Misperceptions. Real-World Experience and Public Perceptions versus Academic Theories and Political Gimmicks. In 30 years as a private, consulting economist, I have noted a growing gap between government reporting of inflation, as measured by the consumer price index (CPI), and the perceptions of inflation held by the general public. It has been my experience that the general public believes inflation is running well above official reporting, and that the public’s perceptions tend to mirror the inflation experience that once was reflected in the government’s CPI reporting. The growing difference in perception versus reality primarily is due to changes made over decades as to how the CPI is calculated and defined by the government. Specifically, changes made to the definition of CPI methodologies in recent decades have reflected theoretical constructs offered by academia that have little relevance to the real-world use of the CPI by the general public. Importantly, these changes generally are not understood by the public.
The Education Department is a Loan Sharking Operation President Joe “What’s a Campaign Promise?” Biden seems less interested in student debt forgiveness with each passing day. Indeed, his latest proposal has become, in the words of the Debt Collective December 7, the incredible shrinking debt cancellation plan, with his Department of Education providing the magic and malign elixir that constricts debt relief more each passing month. In November the idea was scrapping interest to reset people’s balances to the original amount. But then came December and, according to the Debt Collective, a new proposal “that would leave most deeper in debt than the day they left school.” Fittingly, on December 15 came the news that 40 percent of student loan borrowers skipped their October payment. That’s a lot of people sinking even deeper into the debt quagmire. If you doubt that usurious education lending is the respectable version of loan sharking, you have your head in the sand. The Debt Collective cites a librarian “who originally borrowed $60,000, has paid back $40,000, but still owes $110,000.” Under the November proposal, she would have received $70,000 of cancellation. “But under the new December plan, Kat would get only $10,000 of cancellation and President Biden would expect her to repay another $100,000.”