This Blogger has an abiding and perhaps defining admiration for American films of the 1940s, 50s,60s, especially film noir and Classical Westerns produced during those years.   Why?   The first reason, perhaps the main reason, is that they were written, in the majority, by men who had seen combat, or participated in war, or had friends and/or relatives in war.   They seemed determined to grapple with the major issues of    Life; such as, when    one bent over to tie one's shoe lace and the bullet meant for him, killed his best friend. Is that personal luck? Random luck?   O r Pre-ordination? If it is pre-ordination, does that mean you must live a life justifying the escape from certain death?   Since most grievously wounded men whine for their mommies, they never produced art like I AM GLAD MY MOM DIED.   They strove to reveal enduring verities, enduring vanities, enduring flaws, and enduring absurdities in the human condition.   Even in the formulaic films; there was always BIG qu

SWEDEN Brings Back the Draft- Sweden was a homogeneous, SAFE nation until 1975, noted for its equality of women.  Then, in a flush of Globalization zeal, the ideological Swedish Socialists decided it was good to make Sweden a multicultural nation, and by definition, an unsafe nation. Sweden has opened its doors to Sunni Muslims, not just mundane Sunni Muslims, but Sunni Muslims from countries and communities deeply imbued with fundamentalist Salafist and/or  Wahhabi interpretations of the Koran and hadiths, i.e. Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Somalia. Fundamentalist Sunni Muslims are renowned for being anti-feminist, nay, anti-women. "103,901 green cards were issued in 2014 bringing the total number issued to migrants from the Middle East from 2001 through 2014 to an astounding 1,114,453.” Which means as this Blog is being written, one out of ten residents of Sweden is a Muslim migrant, most likely Sunni. “Sweden had 162,000 asylum applications in 2015 and one of

At the July 4, 2014 service, at the Grand Mosque in Mosul, Iraq, (or Mosul, Islamic State), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the trained clergyman who is leader of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria aka Islamic State) made his first public appearance since his fighting forces seize large swathes of Iraq and declared a Sunni Caliphate comprising of conquered portions of Syria and Iraq. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has declared himself Caliph of the new Caliphate, and technically this was his first public appearance as Caliph. Caliph means “successor” to the Prophet Muhammad as the head of state of the Caliphate, a Sunni State led by a supreme religious cum political leader. It is the title for the ruler of the Ummah, the Islamic social society governed by Sharia Law. . Declaring oneself Caliph of a Caliphate is a major political, religious, social and historical event. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s event is as historically significant as Henry VIII declaring himself head of the Catholic Church in Eng