Monday, December 25, 2023

December 24, 2023 Ridley's Believe It Or Not

 

© December 24, 2023  Ridley’s Believe It Or Not

             On Hamas Israel War front, Israel announced the death of 14 of its soldiers over the weekend as the IDF discovered the reason why the nation is united in its quest to destroy Hamas by finding the bodies of 5 hostages in one of the myriad of tunnels like rats Hamas is hiding. Biden and Netanyahu spoke over the weekend with Biden urging that Gazans not be targeted and the IDF is claiming it is trying very hard to minimize civilian casualties which is very difficult when Hamas locates its strongholds underneath or next to civilians. Netanyahu’s wife has written Pope Francis for his intervention to get the hostages released, citing the case of one female hostage whose mother is dying of stage 4 cancer.
             On the shipping front, the Panama Canal Zone is in the midst of a drought lowering the water levels of Gatun Lake from which water is used to operate the locks that enable the ships to pass through the Canal which reduces the number of ships the  Canal can transit each day which if the drought continues will cause great delays in goods saving thousands of miles by using the Canal.
              On the continuing surge of illegals most of which have illegal asylum claims based not on persecution but poverty, Blue State leaders cannot come to realize that the more freebies of food, shelter, medical cares, education,  transportation, legal representation and work permits the more likely the number of bogus asylum claims will increase threatening to destroy American citizens’ social safety nets as vouchers for hotel rooms are increased while a Chicago alderman wants the idea of Chicago as a sanctuary city to be put before the voters where those suffering from the designation can seek redress. 
             On the growing wave of antisemitism Jewish ownership of firearms is skyrocketing as Magen An which means Nation’s Shield is a Jewish volunteer organization in L.A. and Phoenix which trains volunteers and community members in extensive classes on gun safety, hand-to-hand self-defense, de-escalation, verbal tactics and the use of intermediate weapons such as Tasers or
batons and the need to protect synagogues.
             Very few places on the globe are free from the zealots wanting Palestine from the river to be free (free from Jews that is as they are to be driven into the sea) as a Christmas caroling event in Australia to raise money for blind children with some 10,000 in attendance was disrupted by a swarm of pro Palestinians trying to drown out the performance.
              In Yellowstone National Park a deer carcass was found infected with the deadly prior disease which is called in deer, elk, moose, and reindeer in  areas of North America, Canada, Norway and South Korea and known as the “Zombie deer” disease with so far no spillover cases of transmittal to humans found.
             December 24, 2023  Michael P. Ridley aka The Alaskanpoet
             Noted Holidays: Feast of the Seven Fishes: Celebrated primarily by Italians and Italian Americans on Christmas Eve which is a meal of 7 different fish dishes that trace back its roots to the fact that Christians in Rome did not eat meat on the eve of feast days which Christmas was.
             Word of the Day: The word of the day as we continue with words starting with “b” is “boyg” which means a problem difficult to get grips with which describes to a tee the divisiveness we face today which seems to be growing not receding.
              Song of the Day: Leaving the number 1 songs  on this day in 1940’s to come back to the number song in 2001 in the U.S.A.  was  “How You Remind Me”  by Nickelback on a run of 2 weeks to share number 1 status with 14 other songs, while 12 acts, including Nickelback in their only number 1 single, achieved their first 1st number 1 single. Here is a music video of Nickelback performing “How You Remind Me”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cQh1ccqu8M4
               December 24 Birthdays: “Crossing Trump Can Be a Career Ender”: celebrating the birthday on this day in 1946 in Selma, Alabama of Jeff Sessions who was a U.S. District Attorney in Alabama for 12 years, a District Court Judicial nominee who was only the 2nd nominee in 48 years to not get approval of the Senate Judiciary  Committee to have the nomination go to the full Senate for a vote, Alabama Attorney General for two years and a U.S. Senator for 20 years before resigning to become Trump’s Attorney General for a tumultuous period where he recused himself in the Russian collision investigation resulting in the 4 year nightmare known as the Mueller Special Counsel Russian Hoax Investigation and his resignation at Trump’s request. Tried to make a comeback in 2000 but Trump backed his opponent, former Auburn Football Coach Tuberville in the primary to lose.
               December 24 Historical Events in Rhyme
               1.      On this Christmas Eve in 2021, 100 soldiers of Myanmar Light Rifles Division 66 arrived the village of Hpruso/Hell bent terror and a massacre to bestow/Shot and killed 40 civilians and their bodies burned/No way authorities their identities would ever learn/13 were missing and presumed dead/In a non-Christian country Christmas Eve goals of peace came to an end.
               2.      Starting on Christmas Eve in 2008, the Lord’s Resistance Army, an extremist Christian group in Uganda would on a killing civilian rampage go/When their killing needs were sated in the Republic of the Congo/Over 400 civilian corpses lay scattered all around/In their beliefs in the 10 commandments the 6th they must never have found.
                3.       On Christmas Eve Day 2005 6 days after Chad Rebel forces backed by Sudan the Chad village of Andre attacked/Forewarned Chad’s armed forces stopped the rebel forces in their tracks/The Rebels still alive were to the Sudan limping back/When the dogs of war taste or smell human blood/Chad declared a state of war as the need for revenge and threat elimination came in a flood.
               4.      On this Christmas Eve in 2003 Spanish Police thwarted an ETA bomb attempt/Showing the Basque’s Separatist’s Christmas contempt/2 earlier bomb planting tries on trains heading for Madrid sounded the terrorist alarm/That ETA was planning to on innocent civilians create some major bloody harm.
                5.      On Christmas Eve in 1914 a truce broke out along the trenches of the Western Front/The guns became still, after 5 months of killing each other the idea of killing another man before Christ’s birthday became to the conscience a major affront/Small gifts exchanged on Christmas Day and soccer games/For 2 days the dogs of war muzzled and the world no longer up in flames/In 2014 the soldiers got it right while in the 4 days above the leaders did not give peace a chance/Sadly, let the howling dogs of war, muzzles off, snarling and growling continue  to advance.                
                Quotes on the 1914 Christmas Truce
                Captain Robert Miles, King’s Shropshire Light Infantry, who was attached to the Royal Irish Rifles, in an edited letter that was published in the Daily Mail and the Wellington Journal & Shrewsbury News in January 1915, following his death in action on 30 December 1914: “Friday (Christmas Day). We are having the most extraordinary Christmas Day imaginable. A sort of unarranged and quite unauthorized but perfectly understood and scrupulously observed truce exists between us and our friends in front. The funny thing is it only seems to exist in this part of the battle line – on our right and left we can all hear them firing away as cheerfully as ever. The thing started last night – a bitter cold night, with white frost – soon after dusk when the Germans started shouting 'Merry Christmas, Englishmen' to us. Of course our fellows shouted back and presently large numbers of both sides had left their trenches, unarmed, and met in the debatable, shot-riddled, no man's land between the lines. Here the agreement – all on their own – came to be made that we should not fire at each other until after midnight tonight. The men were all fraternizing in the middle (we naturally did not allow them too close to our line) and swapped cigarettes and lies in the utmost good fellowship. Not a shot was fired all night.”
           Alfred Anderson, 1st/5th Battalion of the Black Watch and last known surviving Scottish veteran of WWI in a 2003 interview: “I remember the silence, the eerie sound of silence. Only the guards were on duty. We all went outside the farm buildings and just stood listening. And, of course, thinking of people back home. All I'd heard for two months in the trenches was the hissing, cracking and whining of bullets in flight, machinegun fire and distant German voices. But there was a dead silence that morning, right across the land as far as you could see. We shouted, 'Merry Christmas', even though nobody felt merry. The silence ended early in the afternoon and the killing started again. It was a short peace in a terrible war.
          German Lieutenant, Johannes Niemann: I grabbed my binoculars and looking cautiously over the parapet saw the incredible sight of our soldiers exchanging cigarettes, schnapps and chocolate with the enemy.”
           Adolf Hitler, Corporal 16th Bavarians: Such things should not happen in wartime. Have you Germans no sense of honour left at all?”

              © December 24, 2023 Ridley’s Believe It Or Not
                 
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