The fall of the Wall, expulsion the Medici, and more.

Monday 11/09/2015 Open Thread (crossposted from www.caucus99percent.com/...

There are now only 52 days left in the year, so whatcha wanna talk about?

Numbah 9, Numbah 9, Numbah 9? -- The Jersey number worn by the inimitable Ted Williams. Fluorine. Organic: Five-digit produce PLU codes that begin with 9 are organic.

"Casting out nines" is a quick way of testing the calculations of sums, differences, products, and quotients of integers. It was known as long ago as the 12th Century. It is also the basis of a lot of "magic" tricks and puzzles. There used to be some based on the rotary phone dial too. Essentially, They are modulo 9 math.

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On 11-09-1494, the Family de' Medici were expelled from Florence. Think about it - 1 percenters run out of town by the hoi polloi! The expulsion only lasted until 1512, however, and there were special circumstances. It would be harder to do today. They produced 4 popes, doubling the meagre two popes produced by their enemies, the Borgias. Verily it was said, "Forsooth, it is far easier for a wealthy banker to become pope than for a poor man to pass theu the eye of a camel."

Having started in the textile trade, they amassed enough moola to start their own bank and became among the wealthiest people in Europe. They gained control of Florence and are credited with allowing humanism and art to flourish. They expanded their fiefdom to all of Tuscany which eventually became a Grand Duchy. They did just peachy until Lorenzo died and his incompetant son Piero came to power and drove the people to expel them. Today, the incompetant scions of one percenters run for higher office (potatoe) and sometimes achieve same (is our children learning?). Hence, there may not be much we can learn from studying these folks further.

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On 11-09-1935, the Congress of Industrial Organizations was founded in Atlantic City, New Jersey, by eight trade unions belonging to the American Federation of Labor.

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On 11-02-1967, the first issue of Rolling Stone magazine was published.

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11-02-1989 was the date of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Communist-controlled East Germany opened checkpoints in the Berlin Wall allowing its citizens to travel to West Germany. This key event led to the eventual reunification of East and West Germany, and fall of communism in eastern Europe including Russia.

Contrary to the revisionist narrative pushed by the GOP and others, Ronald Reagan not only did not push it down with his bare hands, but he had nothing whatsoever to do with it. He did at one point indulge in some histrionics aimed at the US citizenry and putatively directed at another person who likewise had nothing to do with it. Some assert that histrionics was RRs sole competency, while others assert that he had none, being a terrible actor too. Worse yet, he dumped Jane Wyman for Nancy. Many such voted for him anyway because in the US party affiliation trumps everything else. Blockquote from Wikipedia for 11/02: Berlin Wall

What really happened was that East Germans were exiting East Germany in droves via Hungary and Czechslovakia. A bit more from Wikipedia:

The wave of refugees leaving East Germany for the West kept increasing. By early November refugees were finding their way to Hungary via Czechoslovakia, or via the West German Embassy in Prague. This was tolerated by the new Krenz government, because of long-standing agreements with the communist Czechoslovak government, allowing free travel across their common border. However this movement of people grew so large it caused difficulties for both countries. To ease the difficulties, the politburo led by Krenz decided on 9 November to allow refugees to exit directly through crossing points between East Germany and West Germany, including between East and West Berlin. Later the same day, the ministerial administration modified the proposal to include private, round-trip, travel. The new regulations were to take effect the next day.

Günter Schabowski, the party boss in East Berlin and the spokesman for the SED Politburo, had the task of announcing the new regulations. However, he had not been involved in the discussions about the new regulations and had not been fully updated.[78] Shortly before a press conference on 9 November, he was handed a note announcing the changes, but given no further instructions on how to handle the information. These regulations had only been completed a few hours earlier and were to take effect the following day, so as to allow time to inform the border guards. But this starting time delay was not communicated to Schabowski.[44]

At the end of the press conference, Schabowski read out loud the note he had been given. One of the reporters, ANSA's Riccardo Ehrman,[79] asked when the regulations would take effect. After a few seconds' hesitation, Schabowski assumed it would be the same day based on the wording of the note and replied, "As far as I know effective immediately, without delay".[44] After further questions from journalists, he confirmed that the regulations included the border crossings through the wall into West Berlin, which he had not mentioned until then.[80]

Excerpts from Schabowski's press conference were the lead story on West Germany's two main news programs that night -- at 7:17 PM on ZDF's heute and at 8 PM on ARD's Tagesschau. This, of course, meant that the news was broadcast to nearly all of East Germany as well. Later that night, on ARD's Tagesthemen, anchorman Hans Joachim Friedrichs proclaimed, "This is a historic day. East Germany has announced that, starting immediately, its borders are open to everyone. The GDR is opening its borders ... the gates in the Berlin Wall stand open."[44][78]

People were soon crossing, openly, in droves. Others began knocking pieces off of the wall, etc. for souveneirs. This went on for months, until, on June 13, 1990, the East German military began formally destroying the wall, a process that ended in 1991.

"The Jericho Narrative" alleges that the above is false by reason of omission, and that the real cause was sound. Just as Jericho fell to the blare of trumpets, the wall was brought down by electric guitar, a Springsteen concert in East Berlin on 19 July 1988. It was at least aimed at the right people, Unlike Reagan's bullshit rhetoric putatively aimed at the Russians (he was seemingly very bad at geography).

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