Rare color footage of the bomb damage inflicted on London during World War II has surfaced on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Blitz.

The dramatic footage shows the destruction of several London landmarks, including the flagship John Lewis store on Oxford Street.

The film was released Monday by Westminster Council to mark the start of the devastating German bombing campaign that began September 7, 1940, and continued until May 1941.

The film was found in the attic by the family of an air raid warden who shot it on the home movie equipment in use in the 1940s.

See the video here.

As an Illuminatus, an important part of Christian Neefe’s duty was to covertly inculcate promising young people in the ideals of the order, then to recruit them when they came of age. Beethoven was as promising as young people get. So did Neefe inculcate this student? Surely he did. Was Beethoven recruited to the order? No—the Illuminati dissolved in 1785, when he was 14. There is also a question as to how inculcatable Beethoven was by anybody. Even in his teens, he was so fixed on his own tack that he only intermittently took notice of the rest of the world.

Not only Neefe, but then and later most of Beethoven’s other friends and mentors and patrons were ex-Illuminati or Freemasons. Did those influences have an impact on his life and art? Among many other things, certainly. By the time Beethoven left Bonn, he was already planning to set Schiller’s Ode to music, and he had a good idea what that poem was about, from its humanistic surface to its Masonic and Illuminati depths. By then Bonn had helped give him ideas and ideals about being a composer that no one ever had before. He wanted to be something more than an entertainer. He wanted to be part of history.

If Beethoven had come from anywhere but Bonn he still might have been a genius, but he would not have been the same man and composer. True, he was more self-made than anything else, could see the world only through his own lens. He was a legendarily recalcitrant student and claimed to have learned nothing from any of his teachers. His most celebrated teacher, Joseph Haydn, sardonically dubbed Beethoven die grosse Mogul—in today’s terms, the big shot. Yet at the same time, Beethoven was by no means aloof. He soaked up every idea around him, read voluminously in classical and modern literature, studied the music of older masters and modeled what he did on them. His art drew from myriad sources, among them the extravagant humanistic ideals floating around Bonn in his youth. One of the things it all added up to was something like this: music as an esoteric language wielded by a few enlightened men for the benefit of the world. Beethoven was all about duty to the abstraction called humanity. That was what he was taught and what he lived and wrote for, through all the miseries of going deaf and a great deal of physical pain. It was people he didn’t much care about. But in taking up Schiller’s Ode for the Ninth Symphony, he proposed not just to preach a sermon about the brotherhood of humanity and the dream of Elysium. He wanted the Ninth to help bring those things to pass.

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Using clues from star and sun positions mentioned by the ancient Greek poet Homer, scholars think they have determined the date when King Odysseus returned from the Trojan War and slaughtered a group of suitors who had been pressing his wife to marry one of them.

It was on April 16, 1178 B.C. that the great warrior struck with arrows, swords and spears, killing those who sought to replace him, a pair of researchers say in Monday’s online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

But interpreting clues in Homer’s “Odyssey” as references to the positions of stars and a total eclipse of the sun allowed them to determine when a particular set of conditions would have occurred.

“What we’d like to achieve is to get the reader to pick up the “Odyssey,” and read it again, and ponder,” said Magnasco. “And to realize that our understanding of these texts is quite imperfect, and even when entire libraries have been written about Homeric studies, there is still room for further investigation.”

Their study potentially adds support to the accuracy of Homer’s writing.

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{Intriguing: Antikythera: ancient Greece’s analog computer}

“Kaniya-kaniyang Rizal…”

–Cris Villanueva in Bayaning Third World–

Today, the Philippines, as always, celebrates its national hero’s 147th birthday. As always, renowned politicians, attention-hungry statesmen, and a wild caboodle of TV-familiar faces who are in control of government and business are all over public plazas frothing out “nationalistic” fervor in relation to Rizal’s life, works, and influence. This will continue on and on and on, a vicious and aching cycle for a nation attuned to the vices of modern technology.

Nowadays, who cares about Rizal? Who reads him? I mean, who really reads him? Would an avid Rizalian be able to share his heroism towards the masses who would rather pay more attention to bring food to their homes at least twice a day? Ambeth Ocampo does, but mostly towards students who are affluent enough to be able to enroll in posh schools like La Salle or the Ateneo.

But here lies the question: why is there a need to study Rizal? For the simple reason that he is the key towards identifying the Filipino national identity. Not that he was the first Filipino (in a way, he was, in the romantic context of León Ma. Guerrero), but whenever there is a mention of Philippine history, this Calambeño will easily come into mind. Besides, Rizal did have something to do with national identity; he lived in that identity which was later lost when we were invaded in 1898 and which, up to now, our generation is still looking for (or is it?)

Rizal, as well as his contemporaries, but especially him, knew where he stood. National identity was never a dilemma nor a mystery for him. Nor was it a mystery for the rest of the Ilustrados and majority of Filipinos. Knowledge of national identity is power. And with this, Rizal and the rest of the Ilustrados had knowledge of this power; the only problem was some of them didn’t know how to use it.

The scenario today is twice as frightening: we don’t know our true national identity, thus we are powerless.

Since Rizal, among other venerated people of the past, is the most conspicuous and most widely known throughout the islands, it is but wise to use him as the key to opening that treasure chest of knowledge of our national identity that has been long searched for and debated.

But there is yet another problem: Which Rizal should we use?

This realization behind the mystery of Rizal was raised upon watching the last scenes of Mike de León’s film biopic Bayaning Third World (winner of the Gawad Urian Awards 2000).

At the end of the movie, Cris Villanueva’s character, which was dumbfounded behind the controversies surrounding Rizal’s retraction, couldn’t help but mention “Kaniya-kaniyang Rizal” (each has his own version of Rizal). This was a result of his and Ricky Daváo’s character’s frustration over their unresolved search for the truth behind Rizal’s retraction from Masonry.

Did he or did he not retract?

Standing on top of the heap of all this controversy was a Vincentian from the San Carlos Seminary, Jesús Mª Cavanna, C.M.

Several decades ago, he published a massive tome: Rizal’s Unfading Glory (a Documentary History of the Conversion of Dr. José Rizal, 1956). Cavanna’s brilliant defense that Rizal did return to the Catholic Church seemed up to now unbeatable. In the book, through the strengthening of the “Rizal did retract” postulation, Cavanna virtually stripped Rizal’s novels and vitriolic essays off every trace of heroism. Indeed, what is so heroic behind irresponsible calumnies against an institution which technically created a nation? But the gist of the book is that Rizal’s heroism may be found in the retraction itself — he fought for what he thought was evil, unjust. He aligned himself against forbidden secret societies, read books that were included in the Index of Forbidden Books. All this he did for love of country. The retraction he did for love of God.

In view of the foregoing, the truth behind Rizal’s retraction is terribly crucial: if he didn’t retract, that only goes to show that everything he wrote against the Catholic Church, no matter how baseless and Satiric, were true. That would have given Christianity in the country a gaping hole. That could only mean that Dan Brown is right about the Church after all. On the other hand, if Rizal did retract, what’s all this talk of Rizalian heroism during his birth and death anniversaries?

No matter how strong Fr. Cavanna’s evidence is, skeptics remain. Thus, it is up to the historian in general and to the Rizalian scholar in particular to finish this discussion once and for all. We may never know where Bonifacio was exactly buried. We may never know where the first cry of revolt was made. We may not even know the real reason behind Gomburza’s execution. But with Rizal, perhaps the most self-documented Filipino hero of all time, everything to know about him is all set on the table; all we need to do is to have a discerning eye, a conscious mind, a relaxed judgment of facts.

Not to mention a huge amount of patience and time.

In order to know Rizal, we should follow and faithfully observe his life. One step at a time. In order to know Rizal, we have to get into his mind.

To the historian and Rizalian scholar lies the brunt of responsibility. He must think and feel like Rizal. He must follow his every movement — from his childhood days in Calambâ to his misadventures in Biñán. From his poetic youth in Manila to his sojourn in Singapore and elsewhere. From his cold lonely nights in Europe to his peaceful days in Dapitan. From his final moments in Fort Santiago to Eternity.

He must think like Rizal. He should literally read all the books Rizal read, page by page, word for word. After reading, the Rizalian should learn how to daydream like Rizal, and how the latter felt after reading the triumphs of his literary heroes. Was it a feeling of triumph, of wild ambition, of a realization?

He should feel like Rizal: meditate on the heartaches and the pains of a broken heart, from Batangas all the way to Europe. He should discover how Rizal felt when he secretly left his parents on his way to the Old World.

He should be able to answer why Rizal hated the very institution which nurtured his hunger for knowledge, and quenched his thirst for the sciences. Why did he rebel against those who supported his desire to make love with the arts and letters?

The Rizalian should know the hidden fears, excitement, and awe that Rizal must have felt upon entering the Lodge door. If the need arises, the Rizalian, if religious, should make a pact with God before entering the Lodge just as to know more about the evolution of this Renaissance Man from Calambâ. Within the Lodge lies so many answers behind the evolution of Rizal’s rebellious character later on in his life.

The Rizalian must learn how to talk to God, for that was how Rizal was: deeply spiritual man despite his Masonic degrees. And in this spiritual puzzle, the Rizalian must be able to delve in order to solve it.

He must undergo a lot of challenges. He must undergo a transformation. He must become José Rizal. Because Rizal was never human. First and foremost, he was a man, sent by God to challenge our iniquities in these direst of times.

All this the Rizalian must face — if he wishes to finally decipher Rizal and his religious conversions. Only an end to this retraction hullaballoo will finally get rid of the rust that has encrusted our “key” which can open the age-old chest hiding our national identity…

For each Filipino cannot have his own version of Rizal, nor he be allowed to have his own fancy of the national hero…

We should only have one Pepe Rizal.

José Mario “Pepe” Alas,
Skirmisher since 2006

Photos of Old Japan before Hiroshima and Nagasaki became proud venues of world-changing new technologies. This one is of a bijin (beautiful woman) postcard, circa 1918.