Jon drawing that came to me in a vision

Soooo I might be giving in to short hair Jon propaganda. Just a bit

Revisiting Chapters: Sansa VI, ASoS

This is also on my wordpress.

The story so far…

After 2 3/4 books and a hell of a lot of trauma culminating with Joffrey’s murder at the Purple Wedding, Sansa’s escaped King’s Landing! Let’s see if this place is any better…

The Drearfort

The chapter begins as Sansa arrives as Littlefinger’s…let’s call it place of birth. It couldn’t be clearer that he doesn’t regard it as a home, not truly. The scene-setting is described as uninviting - a rocky stretch of coast without much in the way of vegetation (unless you count the rotting seaweed). Littlefinger’s residence is an old flint tower, which complements a bleak grey sky and crashing waves. Even as seasick as she is, Sansa does not want to go ashore here. She’d rather wait on the ship until she sails for home.

Surprise! Littlefinger actually meant his home, a bit of verbal dancing Sansa missed. He describes it so:

“And there is stands, miserable as it is. My ancestral home. It has no name, I fear. A great lord’s seat ought to have a name, don’t you think? Winterfell, the Eyrie, Riverrun, those are castles. Lord of Harrenhal, now, that has a sweet ring to it, but what was I before? Lord of Sheepshit and Master of the Drearfort? It lacks a certain something.”

There’s upward mobility, and then there’s avarice. Littlefinger’s contempt for the place of his birth and his desire for more is apparent throughout the chapter. Hardly a word comes out of his mouth about the place that isn’t an insult, direct or backhanded, and often focused on the little he was born to.

“It is a rare thing for a boy born heir to rocks and sheep pellets to wed the daughter of Hoster Tully and the widow of Jon Arryn.”

“Nothing says home like the smell of burning dung.”

[“]No one has made off with any of my rocks or sheep pellets, I see that plainly.” Petyr gestured toward the fat woman. “Kella minds my vast herds. How many sheep do I have at present, Kella?” [Twenty-three sheep, as it happens.]

“Come, let’s see if my hall is dreary as I recall.”

Inside the hall is a very different experience of nobility than the one Sansa’s used to. Most of her childhood was spent at Winterfell, which as Littlefinger says, is one of the great castles. When Sansa left Winterfell, she went to the Red Keep, also not the typical castle. Now Sansa picks her way through a barely-grassed yard between sheepfold, stable, and small three-storey tower, trying not to get sheep shit on her shoes. The tower interior is three single-storey rooms - the kitchen/servants’ quarters/kennel on the ground floor, the hall on the second, and Littlefinger’s bedchamber on the third. No windows.

Similarly, whereas Sansa was born the sort of nobility with bloodlines going back thousands of years, Littlefinger’s family history is quite different. His great-grandfather was a Braavosi sellsword knighted in Lord Corbray’s service.

In a marked contrast to the local cuisine, which features a lot of cold salt mutton and gulls’ eggs, Littlefinger has fine wine and exotic fruit brought ashore for Sansa.

Later, we go on a brief tour of Littlefinger’s small holdings. It takes less than half a day for Sansa and Littlefinger to walk around them. His smallfolk consist of a dozen families living near a peat bog. Only the oldest people there know him, which shows us how often he visits and how attentively he minds his lands. There used to be a hermit, supposedly with the gift of prophecy, who told Littlefinger’s father that Littlefinger would be a great man. Take that as you will.

Again recalling that GRRM tends to write castles as reflecting their big name residents, consider the fact that Littlefinger’s holdings are a cold, barren, and miserable place where he has no real human connections.

The Hidden Dagger

After everyone’s inside, Littlefinger starts on the important plot business. Not only does this exposit a lot of the machinations behind the Purple Wedding, it’s the first real lesson he gives Sansa in politics. 

First on the agenda is hiding Sansa as Littlefinger’s bastard daughter, so that Varys’ agents don’t find her. Sansa’s upset at having to pretend to be someone from a lower social class, but Littlefinger explains things, giving her a cover story and some homework in the form of  devotional books to quote from. Being the daughter of a wealthy Braavosi woman and entrusted to the Faith gives Sansa plenty of cover for her level of education and social graces. She takes the name of her new identity from Littlefinger’s mother, making this a very rare occasion in the series where we have the name of someone’s mother but not their father.

Then Littlefinger brings out his dagger to cut the fruit he and Sansa are sharing, and starts talking about Ned and how hopeless Ned was at politics. I find this pretty suspicious; I strongly suspect this is the knife Littlefinger put to Ned’s throat. The evidence here is no stronger than our knowledge of Littlefinger’s tendency for gloating (though I think in this case the show’s drawn from how this storyline’s going to end up). Regardless, this opens up a broader conversation about how politics in King’s Landing works. His basic theory is that there are only two sorts of people, players and pieces, and that you move pieces around by knowing what they want.

Littlefinger’s assessment of Cersei is accurate as it is merciless: of the three bases of her political strength, she only truly owns the one (her beauty), and that’s not going to last forever. In the meantime, she has no idea to do with the power she’s wanted for so long.

This in turn leads to Sansa’s guess at who poisoned Joffrey. She thinks Dontos. Littlefinger tells her no, and why not - he’s a drunk, not suitable for such a delicate and important task - and brings out Oswell, to reveal to her that he brought the Kettleblacks to King’s Landing.

“Tell me, Alayne - which is more dangerous, the dagger brandished by an enemy, or the hidden one pressed to your back by someone you never even see?”

This is how Littlefinger operates, as he explains. He brought the Kettleblacks to King’s Landing, so that Tyrion would pay them to spy on Cersei. Sansa’s next guess as to who killed Joffrey is therefore one of them, recalling that Osmund was near the king all night. No, Littlefinger tells her, the Kettleblacks are too treacherous. Then he adds the other important bit of information as to his methodology:

“Clean hands, Sansa. Whatever you do, make certain your hands are clean.”

Out of guesses, Littlefinger lets Sansa in on the secret - the poisoner (or someone responsible for the poisoning, anyway) was the person who told Sansa that her hairnet was crooked and straightened it for her. Sansa gets it in a flash, and she’s shocked. When she works it out, Littlefinger fills her in completely.

“When I came to Highgarden to dicker for Margaery’s hand, [Olenna] let her lord son bluster while she asked pointed questions about Joffrey’s nature. I praised him to the skies, to be sure…whilst my men spread disturbing tales amongst Lord Tyrell’s servants. That is how the game is played.

“I also planted the notion of Ser Loras taking the white. Not that I suggested it, that would have been too crude. But men in my party supplied grisly tales about how the mob had killed Ser Preston Greenfield and raped the Lady Lollys, and slipped a few silvers to Lord Tyrell’s army of singers to sing of Ryam Redwyne, Serwyn of the Mirror Shield, and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight. A harp can be as dangerous as a sword, in the right hands.

[…]

“Be that as it may. Lady Olenna was not about to let Joff harm her precious darling granddaughter, but unlike her son she also realised that underneath his flowers and finery, Ser Loras is as hot-tempered as Jaime Lannister. Toss Joffrey, Margaery, and Loras in a pot, and you’ve got the makings of kingslayer stew. The old woman understood something else as well. Her son was determined to make Margaery a queen, and for that he needed a king…but he did not need Joffrey.”

Over the past book, Sandor Clegane and Cersei have both tried to explain politics to Sansa, but they never really got past be cynical and don’t trust anyone. Cersei in always had the secondary agenda of making Sansa feel like shit; Sandor was lashing out at someone challenging his worldview. Littlefinger is better than either of them at politics and scheming, his explanations are more sophisticated, and they’re meant so that Sansa actually understands the mechanics of what went on. Sansa picked up on the Margaery-Joffrey-Loras thing ages ago, and so she believes Littlefinger when he tells her.

Then there’s the other hidden dagger, the one that was pressed to the back of the Stark cause as a whole. It’s been a while since we saw Lysa Arryn in person - AGoT, in fact. Since then her absence from political affairs has been noted. In spite of repeated requests from her sister, her nephew, and her bannermen to weigh into the War of Five Kings, she’s stayed in the Vale and ordered everyone under her command to stay in the Vale as well. When last we heard of her, Littlefinger was assuring the Lannisters that he could persuade her to marry him.

Now that she’s shown up in person we can see that it’s not quite accurate. No persuading was necessary on Littlefinger’s part. Lysa is, in fact, demanding that Littlefinger marry her. More worryingly, we also discover that their association is long-term. 

“Sweet Petyr, I’ve missed you so, you don’t know, you can’t know. Yohn Royce has been stirring up all sorts of trouble, demanding that I call my banners and go to war. And the others all swarm around me, Hunter and Corbray and that dreadful Nestor Royce, all wanting to wed me and take my son to ward, but none of them love me. Only you, Petyr. I’ve dreamed of you so long.”

Lysa is dependent on Littlefinger, in fact, and it looks to be a political dependence too. She refers to years of silence and whisperings. What she says about the two of them making another brother or sister for Robin is also indicative that the sexual relationship Petyr asserted they had is, in this case, real.

The morning after the wedding, we discover that Littlefinger’s told Lysa everything about Sansa. She’s in on Littlefinger’s plans without a second thought. We also see her resentments over her first marriage and hints of resentment towards her sister:

“Jon Arryn was no dwarf, but he was old. You may not think so to see me now, but on the day we wed I was so lovely I put your mother to shame. But all Jon desired was my father’s swords, to aid his darling boys.”

Lysa describes the sex in that relationship as miserable and the lack of children has clearly hurt her. She’s miserable, and her misery has poisoned any love she once had for her sister. She only loves her son and Littlefinger now. Her dependence on Littlefinger only becomes clearer as she keeps talking.

“He may not look as tall or as strong as some, but he is worth more than all of them. Trust in him and do as he says.”

This should, by now, be raising some serious question as to what Lysa has listened to Littlefinger about. Especially when it’s followed up by this:

“A man will tell you that poison is dishonourable, but a woman’s honour is different. The Mother shaped us to protect our children, and our only dishonour is in failure.”

The truth that makes sense of that line will be revealed in Sansa’s next PoV chapter.

Love and Marriage

Poor Sansa flees a marriage and a wedding only to end up at a another wedding and facing down another marriage. That she was traumatised by the Purple Wedding is clear at the start of the chapter.

…she could keep nothing down, and even sleep came hard. Whenever she closed her eyes she saw Joffrey tearing at his collar, clawing at the soft skin of his throat, dying with flakes of pie crust on his lips and wine stains on his doublet. And the wind keening in the lines reminded her of the terrible thin sucking sound he’d made as he fought to draw in air.

Watching Joffrey’s murder did not do her much good. His death might have, but Sansa, herself, only suffered more for watching Joffrey suffer. Her catharsis is fleeting. Depicting a range of responses to violence and trauma is one of the best things GRRM does in this series - not every character finds revenge satisfying.

Sansa also feels substantial guilt over how she left Tyrion. Her first line of dialogue in the chapter is to say that Tyrion’s innocent. Littlefinger, who of course does not want Sansa to think well of anyone but him, tells her about Tysha - specifically, he tells her that Tyrion was the one who “made a gift of her” to Tywin’s guards, adding that he might have done the same to Sansa. We can see that the incident was not fully hushed up, and it’s not clear whether Littlefinger knows the full story. He concludes his short, false version of this story by saying “shed no tears for the Imp, my lady.” 

This does not work entirely. Sansa has to stop herself from telling Lysa that Tyrion was kind to her (in that he did not rape her).

When Littlefinger tells Sansa that he and Lysa are getting married, we get another look at how some of Sansa’s romanticism has survived her ordeals, and how it’s been tempered.

You said it was my mother you loved. But of course Lady Catelyn was dead, so even if she had loved Petyr secretly and given him her maidenhood, it made no matter now.

When Lysa arrives, eight days after Littlefinger and Sansa, she insists on a wedding then and there - within an hour of her arrival, in fact. At first we get a glimpse of Lysa happy:

Mead and marriage had taken years off Lady Lysa. She laughed at everything so long as she held her husband’s hand, and her eyes seemed to glow whenever she looked at him.

Then there’s the excruciatingly awkward scene where everyone’s stuck in the hall while upstairs Lysa and Littlefinger are having very loud sex. But the lighter material doesn’t last.

It’s sad, too, but Sansa’s also come to see potential marriages as sources of fear and grief, rather than happiness. When contemplating staying at the Fingers, she thinks,

At least I am safe here. Joffrey is dead, he cannot hurt me anymore, and I am only a bastard girl now. Alayne Stone has no husband and no claim. […] The long nightmare of King’s Landing was behind her now, and her mockery of a marriage as well.

Sansa also gets to see a bedding that’s not miserable, thinking on her own wedding.

Tyrion spared me that, Sansa remembered. It would not have been so bad being undressed for a man she loved, by friends who loved them both. By Joffrey, though…

A tradition that Sansa believed was supposed to be a moment of intimacy and a celebration with all her friends (think that illustration of Jaehaerys and Alysanne in Fire and Blood) was turned to an occasion of terror. Undoubtedly, it’s that for a lot of women in this setting, and probably quite a few men as well. Sansa goes outside and thinks hard on her own wedding, still not trusting that Tyrion ever meant her well for real, and reminded of Sandor Clegane.

Then, just as Sansa goes to bed (under the stairs a la Harry Potter), we see that Sansa just cannot escape sexual violence. Marillion accosts her, groping her, and making it very plain he won’t take no for an answer. From what he says, female bastards in Westeros are supposedly promiscuous. He’s only deterred by Lothor Brune, looking out for Sansa under instructions from Littlefinger. When Sansa falls asleep, she dreams traumatic dreams of Joffrey and Robb dying, and Tyrion staring at her as she undresses, until he gets into her bed and turns into Sandor Clegane. The sex and violence are intermingled in a way Sansa is not comfortable with, which makes a very sad sense when you consider just how much sexual violence and anticipation thereof she’s experienced. She’s thirteen.

Within a few hours of that, Lysa’s trying to betroth Sansa to Sweetrobin. Sansa feels only tiredness and resignation.

All she knew of Robert Arryn was that he was a little boy, and sickly. It is not me she wants her son to marry, it is my claim. No one will ever marry me for love.

Sansa the archromantic has given up on ever having that for herself. It’s so heartbreaking. Especially as Lysa goes on to sell the marriage to Sansa.

“Robert has weak eyes, but he loves to be read to,” Lady Lysa confided. “He likes stories about animals the best. Do you know the little song about the chicken who dressed as a fox? I sing him that all the time, he never grows tired of it. And he likes to play hopfrog and spin-the-sword and come-into-my-castle, but you must always let him win. That’s only proper, don’t you think? He is Lord of the Eyrie, after all, you must never forget that. You are well born, and the Starks of Winterfell were always proud, but Winterfell has fallen and you really are just a beggar now, so put that pride aside. Gratitude will better become you, in your present circumstances. Yes, and obedience. My son will have a grateful and obedient wife.”

There’s no pride for Sansa in this, no independence, no dignity, no prospect of love or partnership. What Lysa’s describing is making Sansa a permanent nursemaid in service to a perpetual child. No wonder Sansa just gave up.

Throughout all this there’s Littlefinger, always solicitous, always kind and charming to Sansa’s face. Except he doesn’t actually have Sansa’s best interests in mind. I’ve already mentioned how he attempts to undermine Sansa’s belief in Tyrion’s kindness. There’s also how he treats Sansa’s belief that they were sailing for Winterfell.

His grey-green eyes regarded her innocently. “You look distraught. Did you think we were making for Winterfell, sweetling? Winterfell has been taken, burned, and sacked. All those you knew and loved are dead. […] Winterfell was the home of your childhood, but you are no longer a child. You’re a woman grown, and you need to make your own home.”

So, ick. Aside from tricking Sansa into believing they were going to Winterfell, and then implicitly calling her stupid and childish for falling for this trick, Littlefinger then flips the script - oh, Sansa, you’re far too mature to want something as silly as home, aren’t you? This is part of his long term strategy to start a sexual relationship with her. His aim is to make her believe that she has the maturity and emotional resources to engage in a sexual relationship of her own free will. He wants her to believe that she chose things, rather than having been manipulated and forced into them.

As plenty of people have noted, Littlefinger offers Sansa a pomegranate in his lengthy conversation with her this chapter, in some clear Hades and Persephone symbolism. Sansa rejects the pomegranate seeds, though. There’s hope in that.

Chapter Function

This chapter does a lot in terms of explaining the plot. Everything behind the Purple Wedding except who, exactly, put the poison in Joffrey’s cup is explained. It comes with some projections as to what we’ll see in AFFC - Margaery marrying Tommen, Cersei going off the deep end. 

It also gives us some important pieces as to everything going on with Lysa and Littlefinger, past and present. From earlier in the book, we knew Lysa had suffered a forced abortion from a teenage affair. Here we get enough to guess that it was Littlefinger she slept with, and that their relationship, such as it was, has lasted for many years. We also get enough to infer that Lysa’s listening to Littlefinger in matters of politics. We also get that strange mention of women using poison in a discussion of Jon Arryn and protecting one’s children.

This chapter also does quite a bit to set Sansa up for AFFC. It gives her a new name and a new position, a potential marriage to help her reclaim Winterfell (in a distant future Sansa can’t see yet). It also sets up Sansa’s relationship with Littlefinger - most prominently the student-teacher aspect, where he tells her everything about how he does politics, but it also shows us a bit of his emotional manipulation with an eye to sexual manipulation

Miscellany

Poor Sansa gets very seasick. Like she needed that on top of everything else.

Sansa, like Arya, wants her alias to be an homage to Catelyn.

The explanation for hiding Sansa as Littlefinger’s bastard daughter also helps explain to the readers why Ned’s hiding the biological son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark as his own bastard worked so well - it’s rude to ask about someone’s bastard children.

It’s mentioned here that the Vale’s harvests have been plentiful.

When talking to Sansa, Lysa says of Tyrion, “What woman would bed such a creature, but for gold?” Given what we learn at the end of the book…

Clothing Porn

Lothor Brune wears patched brown breeches, scuffed boots, and a cracked and waterstained jerkin.

Food Porn

Littlefinger offers Sansa a fruit platter - apples, pears, pomegranates, a blood orange, and grapes - served with bread and butter.

The wedding feast consists of quail, venison, roast boar, and a light mead described as fine.

There’s also a breakfast served of bread with butter, honey, fruit, and cream.

Next Three Chapters

Jaime VII, AFFC - Brienne VII, AFFC - Catelyn VII, ACoK

Iron Horse Meeting Minutes January 21, 2020

Mindy Blake (RTA), Monique (FAMA), Al (board member at large), Lee, Ruth, Matt (treasurer), Hannah (president), Jonathan (Secretary), Andrew (board member at large), Dereka (board member at large), Kelly (co-president), Hadley

Regional Transportation Authority Mindy Blake, outreach coordinator for the Regional Transportation Authority, presented about a new transportation plan that is being developed for Pima County to start in 2026.  The current plan started in 2006 with the support of a sales tax initiative and has delivered about 870 projects, including bike lanes, sidewalks, roads, and bus pullouts.  The second 20-year plan is in the process of development, after which it will go through public input, plan refinement, plan review, and a call for an election.  You can find her presentation here: https://youtu.be/8WaoafsgX3s

You can find more information, see plans, and comment at: rtanext.com Neighbors asked if RTA is involved with E-Scooter plans, and Mindy responded that they are not.  Hannah asked if there was a plan for the light rail to go to the airport, and Mindy responded that it is one of the possibilities.  Maintenance for existing transportation options is not included in the current RTA.

Traffic Circle Select board members recently met with Jessie Soto from the City of Tucson Transportation Department to understand the procedural details of installing a traffic circle 3rd avenue & 9th street.  The traffic circle would probably cost us between $12,000 and $15,000, with an additional $2000 because the sewer hole at the center must be elevated 6”.  IHNA has $14,000 in funds from negotiations with The Junction and $3,800 in parking fees that could be applied. There are significant limitations to the size of the traffic circle because it must be 20’ from each of the curbs.  Al is working on getting 60% of neighbors in the blocks affected by to sign his petition; there are 25 impacted homeowners, so 15 would need to approve.  Signatures would then need to be certified and the traffic circle plans would be reviewed by city departments (e.g. fire, police, trash).  Al would like the traffic circle to be a welcoming monument to our neighborhood with an art installation.

Erika reported that the neighborhood voted down this traffic circle 7 years ago, with one concern being that there is not enough space for bikes to ride safely through the intersection.

Kelly suggested that it might be a good idea to think about adding a traffic circle at 8th Street and 3rd Avenue.

Al will work on getting signatures and pushing it forward to see the city’s plans before the neighborhood votes on using funds to complete it.

FAMA Monique reported that FAMA has cancelled the Spring Street Fair.  She reported that FAMA only has 2 workers (herself and Terry) and Eddie, who does streetscape on 4th.  She reported that, with the re-introduction of the Bird Scooters, e-scooter use and parking has been out of control along 4th Avenue.  FAMA has repeatedly reported poor parkers and unsafe riding to the City of Tucson.  If you have pictures of badly parked scooters, you can forward them along to Monique at:  [email protected]

Monique reported that construction at 4th and 6th Street has caused significant parking problems (including trash and lack of the use of masks) among workers along 3rd Avenue.  She reported that the District apartments did not open up parking for the construction workers, as they had promised during the CBA process.

FAMA worked with 65 merchants to get CARES funding and provided COVID packages with masks, sanitizer, and thermometers to merchants.  Monique reported that Ermanos put in permanent outdoor seating in the street in front of their restaurant.  

Iron Horse Park Matt reported that the next meeting for the park design will be on February 11th at 5:30 PM with Tucson Parks and Wheat Design.  Wheat Design will present a summary of survey responses and provide a consolidated, refined plan for the park.  The Tucson Skate Park Alliance was invited to this meeting.  

Ward 6 Letter Matt shared a link to a letter that he wrote thanking Steve K, Diana, and Ward 6 staff for advocating for public health and safety.  Al thought it was a nicely written letter and advocated that Matt work in the State Department.  Matt made a motion to send the letter, signed by IHNA, to Mayor & Council and the President of the University of Arizona.  Jan seconded the letter.  Erika requested that the letter be sent to the list-serv for discussion before sending because there was no specific agenda sent out for this meeting.  Neighbors discussed how IHNA decisions must be made at meeting, with voting members present.  The motion to send the letter was approved unanimously with no abstentions.  The board agreed to send out a planned agenda before each monthly meeting.

You can find the letter here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PzmHO_JD4nN-GWL2myNYwOjoc-DvlQjQnuOUaYcgTZo/edit?usp=sharing

Chicanes Hannah spoke to Jon Choi from Tucson Clean and Beautiful.  She will try to schedule the planting on Sunday, March 7th.  She will find a pre-planning day in the middle of February, which she will promote over email.  

Sunshine Mile Overlay / Central Business District Matt reported that the block of Iron Horse that was previously included in the Sunshine Mile Overlay has been pulled out of the new zoning because of the board’s lobbying.  The block is still included in the Infill Incentive Zoning.  Official approvals for the Sunshine Mile Overlay have been delayed until February 4th at the earliest.  

The Central Business District (CBD) is a zoning area that goes through 4th Avenue and downtown.  The city is having a discussion with interested groups about what kinds of incentives to provide to builders to encourage development in these areas.  One of the incentives is the GPLET, which reduces property taxes for builders for 8 years.  You can provide input to the survey here: https://www.opentownhall.com/portals/310/Issue_10153

CCRC Dereka reported that Campus/Community Relations Committee focused their discussion COVID measures at UofA.  Currently there are only about 5,000 students taking in-person classes at UofA.  Spring break has been spread out over the course of the semester, so that there is no full week without classes.  On-campus students are supposed to be tested for COVID twice per week with gargle tests and use an app that can alert them to potential COVID exposures.  You can use this hotline to report students being bad COVID neighbors: 520-282-3649

HFAC Erika reported from the Historic Fourth Avenue Coalition.  The general meeting is Tuesday, January 26th.  HFAC has been helping merchants apply for PPP loans, providing COVID training, and support the gift certificate launch that happened during early COVID.  IHNA is a dues paying member of the organization.  Dues cost $250 per year and are owed this month.  Erika made a motion to spend $250 dues to stay involved with HFAC.  Al seconded the motion.  The motion passed with 0 nos and 2 abstentions.  

Garden Hannah is working on cleaning out the Bermuda grass that is slowly taking over the garden.  The Indian Center recently reached out to talk about creating a composting station in the garden.  

THERE WILL BE IHNA BOARD ELECTIONS IN FEBRUARY!  

Feels like home.

Daenerys had never experienced this before in her life. She had never had the safety, the joy, the simple pleasure of a meal with others that carried no pressure, no expectations. She had come to their table, her table given use to them, expecting a dinner of consequence of substance. She had treated it like a state affair, a step in their negotiations. She wore her hair with silver pins, a gown of red silks and skin tight leather. She looked the fierce soul of conquest and strength in her divine finery. Accompanied by Missandei, the queen went down to the King of the North’s apartments.

But what she found was the food already served, and a jovial company in their cups. 

Ser Davos was laughing as Tyrion told a story of a green boy named Jon Snow that got so drunk, his first time, that he climbed under his direwolf to sleep, thinking the beast was his sleeping roll. The King of the North looked far from offended upon the mockery that fell over him, laughing through bites of chicken at the revelry of his youthful mistake.

Daenerys felt guilty for having broken up the festivities by her severe appearance. The three men stood at attention upon her entrance, clearly unaware that the queen would take the invitation so seriously. After a long pause it was Ser Davos who retrieved her and Missandei, offering them an arm each, quickly catching Dany up on Tyrion’s story. She felt rather self-conscious from the way everyone stared at her dress, stared at her. But she felt a blush come on when she saw Jon’s gaze last the longest out of all of them. 

She didn’t understand what the point of it all, at first. They didn’t seem to be talking about the war, or politics, or compromise. They were just telling stories, laughing, and reminiscing. It didn’t occur to the young beauty that it was possible to do that. It was a foreign notion that people ate, shared Dinner Company, just to talk and laugh. They were a king, a smuggler, a dwarf, and an interpreter, sitting at a table together with no agenda, no interest in the seriousness of the world order. It seemed a strange place to a girl who spent her life with serious people discussing serious things. She felt out of place at first, but gradually, gratefully, they never once left her behind.

Now, hours later, Dany didn’t want it to end. She wished she could have this all the time. To forget the world for a night and listen to Ser Davos’s stories, Lord Tyrion’s wit, Missandei’s rare laugh, and the way Jon Snow smiled, looking across at her to assure her that it was okay to laugh, to smile, to be herself around him.  

“So there I was ... killer surf that goes straight to the razor sharp rocks below and above me, three guards who hadn’t eaten all day with repeat’in crossbows.” 

“Sounds quite dreadful.”

“Oh, I thought that I would surely be at the end of a bolt or in a bowl of brown, true enough, Your Grace.” 

“What did you do?” 

“Yes, please do continue.”

“Well, you see, there was just a crack in the stone of the tower, so, I built up my momentum and swung across. I planted my feet right there in the crack and held on to dear life. Then, I reached over and climbed the railings.” 

“Such bravery ...” 

“Oh, no, Missandei, it was stupidity, but well payin stupidity. And what lad didn’t dream of climbing the tall tower and rescuing the damsel?” 

“Well did you?” 

“Sadly, no ...” 

“No?!” 

“No, Your Grace, see my rival Salladhor beat me to the punch, ran off with the Lady two days prior.”

“What did you do?”

“I introduced myself to the young woman that was there. She was Lady Croft’s Handmaid that she left behind to be used by the blood thirsty men so that she might escape.” 

“Surely you didn’t leave her behind as well?” 

“Yes, plenty of times, but she was waiting for me when I came back home.”

The table grew quite, but not awkwardly so. There was warmth to the end of the story that spread pleasantly across the small party that sat around the table. It was very late in the night. Lord Tryion was already passed out with an empty cup of wine. He half chuckled in sleep, trying not to appear rude in his subconscious by laughing at Ser Davos’s story.  The rest of the table stared and smiled at the drunken dwarf endearingly. 

“It’s such a lovely story, Ser Davos.” Missandei seemed enchanted by the tale of how he had met his wife. 

“She was a lovely person.” He drew off wistfully. 

Dany felt her heart twinge. “I’m sorry you lost her.” She said sincerely. The Queen had known many rogues in her day. She had varying degrees of sympathize for each of them. But the girl had only known Ser Davos for a week and yet she couldn’t bear to hear ill tidings happen to him. He was just that kind of man. 

The old man only smirked sadly. “Don’t pity me, Your Grace.” He sighed. “I loved a woman, a good woman, and she gave me a fine son. And maybe she’s gone, but I know she’s in some tower, somewhere, wait’in on me to come and get her.” He smiled sadly. 

“But how did you know?” Missandei asked gingerly. “How did you know, you loved her?” There was a timid lilt to her measured question. Dany smirked into her cup. Her handmaid and Grey Worm were a complicated story, but The Queen was never the less invested in the strange love affair. 

The old smuggler looked off for a moment. “It feels ...” He drew off. “It feels like home.” He replied with assurance. 

“Like home?” She asked with a frown.

“Yes ...” He said confidently. “Like, you’ve known that person your entire life. You meet, and it’s like ...” He paused.

“You’ve already met, in another time, in another place  ...” 

Everyone one at the table turned to Jon who had been sitting quietly, listening. His eyes were downcast, cradling his cup. He seemed conflicted, his breath uneven, trying hard not to do the one thing he wanted. But finally he broke, and he looked up ...

Right to Dany.

“It’s like the world was created, you were created, to join that person, to become a part of their life, to share it. Nothing ever makes sense till you find him.” 

The Queen’s voice softened as she spoke with reverence. There was a glimmer of emotion in her bright eyes that reflected in candle light. They were two people whose eye contact could create worlds, entire universes, for only they two. 

A quiet fell over the table, the weight of such strong emotions, of destiny, lay heavy in the charged atmosphere. It seemed that in the late night on Dragonstone that a great truth was unveiling itself to the world over a joyous chicken dinner and wine. The deep intensity of longing and deep primal emotions lashed like the waves below the balcony.

“Ha!” 

Tyrion laughed again from his slumbering place. They all turned as the dwarf cuddled the empty wine bottle. The intensity of emotion faded and somehow it left the dining party breathless. Both Jon and Dany looked to be exhausted from whatever had overcome them. 

“Yes ...” Davos cleared his throat. 

“It’s like home.”  

Flags Quotes

Official Website: Flags Quotes

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• A lot of folks are still demanding more evidence before they actually consider Iraq a threat. For example, France wants more evidence. And you know I’m thinking, the last time France wanted more evidence they rolled right through Paris with the German flag. – David Letterman • A thoughtful mind, when it sees a nation’s flag, sees not the flag, but the nation itself. – Henry Ward Beecher • A thoughtful mind, when it sees a Nation’s flag, sees not the flag only, but the Nation itself; and whatever may be its symbols, its insignia, he reads chiefly in the flag the Government, the principles, the truths, the history which belongs to the Nation that sets it forth. – Henry Ward Beecher • After I left D.C. to join Black Flag, I felt I was in a band. – Henry Rollins • America has an almost obscene infatuation with itself. Has there ever been a big, powerful country that is as patriotic as America? And patriotic in the tinniest way, with so much flag waving? You’d really think we were some poor little republic, and that if one person lost his religion for one hour, the whole thing would crumble. America is the real religion in this country. – Norman Mailer • America is the only country in the world where you can burn the flag but can’t tear the tag off the mattress. – Jackie Mason • And the word is capitalism. We are too mealy-mouthed. We fear the word capitalism is unpopular. So we talk about the free enterprise system and run to cover in the folds of the flag and talk about the American Way of Life. – Eric Johnston • And when we view a flag, which to the eye is beautiful, and to contemplate its rise and origin inspires a sensation of sublime delight, our national honor must unite with our interests to prevent injury to the one, or insult to the other. – Thomas Paine • Any power must be an enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by power and by force, whether it arises under the Fascist or the Communist flag. All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded to the individual. – Albert Einstein • As Conservatives, We Don’t Care About The Color of Your Skin, We Care About The Color of Our Flag – Allen West • As long as I live, I will never forget that day 21 years ago when I raised my hand and took the oath of citizenship. Do you know how proud I was? I was so proud that I walked around with an American flag around my shoulders all day long. – Arnold Schwarzenegger • As National Socialists we see our program in our flag. In the red we see the social idea of the movement. – Adolf Hitler • Ashcroft vowed to] spare no effort to preserve the rights of all our citizens to pledge allegiance to the American flag. – John Ashcroft • At least in my country, we have come to accept the flags burning, but what we cannot accept is violence, burning of embassies and intimidations, and there is no excuse for that. – Daniel Fried

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'flag', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_flag').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_flag img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Bastard Freedom waves Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves. – Thomas Moore • Behold a republic standing erect while empires all around are bowed beneath the weight of their own armaments – a republic whose flag is loved while other flags are only feared. – William Jennings Bryan • But didn’t you say you were satisfied with your life?” “Word games,” I dismissed. “Every army needs a flag. – Haruki Murakami • By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • By the way, I don’t mean to pick nits here, but Obama has just ordered the flag at half-mast for 10 days for Mandela. He did not order the flag at half-mast at all for Lady Thatcher. – Rush Limbaugh • Call it ‘nationalism’ when you affix a flag to your car, and leave the word ‘patriotism’ for your efforts to make this country a kinder, more egalitarian place, and one that is less dangerous to the rest of the world. – Barbara Ehrenreich • Can you imagine what Bush would say if someone like Hugo Chavez asked him for a little piece of land to install a military base, and he only wanted to plant a Venezuelan flag there?- Jose Saramago • Canadians are fond of a good disaster, especially if it has ice, water, or snow in it. You thought the national flag was about a leaf, didn’t you? Look harder. It’s where someone got axed in the snow. – Margaret Atwood • Democratic Rep. Charles Schumer of New York made a plea to Livingston, the incoming speaker. These new hearings, these new subpoenas wave a red flag that common sense and common wisdom are not welcome here, .. Mr. Livingston, this may be the first and most important task you will ever face as speaker. Lead us out of this abyss. – Charles Schumer • Donald Trump appears to be searching for an enemy. Is it flag burners, recounts, the press, the popular vote? Trump has gone after them all at times, using wild experience theories even as president-elect to do it. – Chuck Todd • Emblem: the carapace of the great crowned snail is painted with all the flags of the United Nations. – Mason Cooley • Even if only one guerilla cub survives the prolonged struggle, I am confident that he will raise the flag of Palestine overJerusalem… Jerusalem is destined to be the eternal capital of our sovereign, independent Palestinian state under the P.L.O. leadership. – Yasser Arafat • Even if the flag burning amendment does become law, the larger problem will remain of how to respectfully dispose of older, tattered flags. Well, fortunately the U.S. official Flag Code has a suggestion about this. “The flag, when it is in such a condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem of display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.” Owwwwcchh. In response, the House Republicans are calling for tattered flags to be kept alive via a feeding tube. – Jon Stewart • Every man that tried to destroy the Government, every man that shot at the holy flag in heaven, every man that starved our soldiers… every man that wanted to burn the negro, every one that wanted to scatter yellow fever in the North, every man that opposed human liberty, that regarded the auction-block as an altar and the howling of the bloodhound as the music of the Union, every man who wept over the corpse of slavery, that thought lashes on the naked back were a legal tender for labour performed, every one willing to rob a mother of her child – every solitary one was a Democrat. – Robert Green Ingersoll • Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. – H. L. Mencken • Every time a colony wants independence, the questions on the agenda are: a) how do you get the imperialists out, and b) what kind of society do you build? There are usually the bourgeois nationalists who say, ‘Let’s just change the flag and keep everything as it was.’ Then there are the revolutionaries who say, ‘Let’s change the property laws.’ It’s always a critical moment. – Ken Loach • Every time I hit a shot, I feel like I am shaking hands with the flag stick. – Moe Norman • Everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination’s orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink – for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder.- Honore de Balzac • Fascism will come to America wrapped in a flag. – Sinclair Lewis • Flag desecration is not a constitutional issue for the courts. It is a political one that belongs to the people. – Larry Craig • Flag of the free heart’s hope and home! By angel hands to valour given, Thy stars have lit the welkin dome; And all thy hues were born in heaven. – Joseph Rodman Drake • Flags are bits of colored cloth used first to shrinkwrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead. – Arundhati Roy • For black folks, the Confederate flag represents the same thing that the Nazi flag represents to the Jews. There is absolutely no difference when we look at it. Now, white folks try to explain it away like, ‘Oh, it’s OK.’ But when you’re black, it is not OK. It represents oppression and murder. – Ken Page • For me, I’m just trying to be the best at what I do. I’ll wave an Asian American flag if I get that opportunity. I’m not hiding or trying to discredit my background or anything, I just haven’t had the opportunity. – Chad Hugo • Ford used to come to work in a big car with two Admiral’s flags, on each side of the car. His assistant would be there with his accordion, playing, Hail to the Chief. – Richard Widmark • Getting that audience approval is always a question mark, and it’s always that flag that flutters in front of you. – William Shatner • Growth at an exceptional rate is a red flag in banking. It is hard enough to manage an ordinary bank; to control a sprouting weed is well-nigh impossible. If loans are expanding too quickly, the lending officers have probably been saying ‘yes’ too frequently. – James Grant • Haul up the flag, you mourners, Not half-mast but all the way; The funeral is done and disbanded; The devil’s had the final say. – Karl Shapiro • Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows’ meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they call their flag; which had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen? – Thomas Carlyle • He is a poor patriot whose patriotism does not enable him to understand how all men everywhere feel about their altars and their hearthstones, their flag and their fatherland. – Harry Emerson Fosdick • I always carried a small American flag red white and blue with me so people would know I was from America. – George Foreman • I am not the flag: not at all. I am but its shadow. – Franklin Knight Lane • I believe in America. I’m one of those silly flag wavers. – Paul Prudhomme • I believe our flag is more than just cloth and ink. It is a universally recognized symbol that stands for liberty, and freedom. It is the history of our nation, and it’s marked by the blood of those who died defending it. – John Thune • I believe that movements to suppress wrongs can be carried out under the protection of our flag. – Mother Jones • I came to the resolve that the attempt was not only worth trying, but should be tried in the very near future if we wanted at all to keep our flag flying; for I was sure as of my own existence that if another decade was allowed to pass without an endeavour of some kind or another to shake off an unjust yoke, the Irish people would sink into lethargy from which it would be impossible for any patriot . . . to arouse them . . . – James Stephens • I can train a monkey to wave an American flag. That does not make the monkey patriotic. – Scott Ritter • I can’t fly a flag for monogamy or whatever the opposite is; it depends on the person and on the situation. – Sting • I consider that 9/11 was the day when war was started against my own work and against myself. Even though we are not sure of the links, Iraq was one of the countries that did not lower its flags in mourning on 9/11. – Adam Michnik • I don’t judge others. I say if you feel good with what you’re doing, let your freak flag fly. – Sarah Jessica Parker • I don’t want the news to be patriotic. I don’t want to see flags on the lapels of the anchors. I don’t want any of that. – Aaron McGruder • I expect the Republicans will enjoy a large bounce out of their convention. They’re here wrapping themselves in the 9/11 flag, which I think is inappropriate in many ways, but it’s their choice. – Harold Ford, Jr. • I fear my enthusiasm flags when real work is demanded of me. – H. P. Lovecraft • I feel like I’m waving the flag for musicianship, trying to bring back bands that can play. – Jonathan Davis • I feel there should have been some recognition of the Spice Girls at this year’s 25th anniversary. We flew the flag for Britain around the globe in the 1990s and we achieved a hell of a lot. – Melanie Chisholm • I had an encyclopedia with a list of flags in the back, so I would look at all these flags of China and Liberia and England and Denmark and whatever, and I learned all the different flags and I tried to imagine what it would be like to be voyaging on some of these ships. – George R. R. Martin • I have a great respect for the flag, (but) if the government passed a law saying that I had to pledge allegiance to the flag, I don’t think I would do it. I’ve always felt that I lived in a country…where if I wanted to worship God as a Baptist, I could do so. If I were an atheist, I could be one. If I wanted to be a Catholic but was born a Jew, there’s no condemnation…from a government authority. – Jimmy Carter • I intend to talk about race during this election in the South because the Republicans have been talking about it since 1968 in order to divide us. And I’m going to bring us together. Because you know what? You know what? White folks in the South who drive pickup trucks with Confederate flag decals in the back ought to be voting with us and not them, because their kids don’t have health insurance either and their kids need better schools too. – Howard Dean • I learned this a long time ago. If you call a guy into your office and shut the door, if there’s media around, it sends up a red flag. I never wanted to embarrass a player. – Jim Leyland • I look for the entrepreneur to capture my attention. If you don’t come out with a great presentation, you’re dead. That’s a big red flag. – Robert Herjavec • I mean Black Flag happened. I was lucky. I don’t think I could have put together something with one percent of that oomph on my own. – Henry Rollins • I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag, and to the Savior, for whose Kingdom it stands, one Savior, crucified, risen, and coming again, with life and liberty for all who believe. – Dan Quayle • I prefer a man who will burn the flag and then wrap himself in the constitution to a man who will burn the constitution and then wrap himself in the flag. – Craig Washington • I savored my time on top of the podium by watching the American flag rise up out of the crowd as the anthem played, thinking about how every single second of training I’ve done was for this minute and how many people played a role in my achievement. – Hannah Kearney • I stand fearlessly for small dogs, the American Flag, motherhood and the Bible. That’s why people love me. – Art Linkletter • I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.- Howard Dean • I think love is blind. I hate to use that cliched statement, but people, when they love somebody, they seem to be able to somehow to put aside red flags. – Eric Close • I would warn Orlando that you’re right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don’t think I’d be waving those flags [gay pride flags] in God’s face if I were you, This is not a message of hate , this is a message of redemption. But a condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It’ll bring about terrorist bombs; it’ll bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor. – Pat Robertson • I wrote the script of Patton. I had this very bizarre opening where he stands up in front of an American flag and gives this speech. Ultimately, I was fired. When the script was done, they hired another writer and that script was forgotten. – Francis Ford Coppola • I’d buy myself a cabin on the beach, I’d put some glue in my navel, and I’d stick a flag in there. Then I’d wait to see which way the wind was blowing. – Albert Camus • If a jerk burns the flag, America is not threatened, democracy is not under siege, freedom is not at risk. – Gary Ackerman • If I fall, pick up the flag, kiss it, and keep on going. – Omar Torrijos • If one, then, asks me the meaning of our flag, I say to him, It means just what Concord and Lexington meant, what Bunker Hill meant; it means the whole glorious Revolutionary War, which was, in short, the rising up of a valiant young people against an old tyranny, to establish the most momentous doctrine that the world had ever known – the right of men to their own selves and to their liberties. – Henry Ward Beecher • If the flag of an armed enemy of the U.S. is allowed to fly over government buildings, then it implies that slavery, or at least the threat of slavery, is sanctioned by that government and can still legally exist. – Amiri Baraka • If the test of patriotism comes only by reflexively falling into lockstep behind the leader whenever the flag is waved, then what we have is a formula for dictatorship, not democracy… But the American way is to criticize and debate openly, not to accept unthinkingly the doings of government officials of this or any other country. – Michael Parenti • If you buy the flag it’s yours to burn. – Jesse Ventura • If you start studying history closer, you’ll find that most all wars are based on false flag operations to get people – to convince the people that they’re under attack in some way so that they will support the wars. – Jesse Ventura • If you want a symbolic gesture, don’t burn the flag, wash it. – Norman Thomas • If you wave a flag, make it an American Flag. – Antonio Villaraigosa • I’m about as far from being a flag-waver – you won’t find any American flag pins in my drawer – as someone can be. – Tom Peters • I’m beginning to wonder if the symbol of the United States pretty soon isn’t going to be an ambassador with a flag under his arm climbing into an escape helicopter. – Ronald Reagan • Im in love with red. I think its such a passionate color. Every flag of every country pretty much has red it it. Its power, theres no fence sitting with red. Either you love it or you dont. I think its blood and strength and life. I do love red. I love all colors. Great shades of blue, you find them in nature. Theyre all magic. – Bryan Batt • I’m just always learning lines. I’ve learned to flag the really crucial scenes, and I start figuring them out and committing them to memory as soon as I get them. – Claire Danes • I’m proud of the U.S.A. We’ve done some amazing things. To wear our flag in the Olympics is an honor. – Shaun White • In prosperous times I have sometimes felt my fancy and powers of language flag, but adversity is to me at least a tonic and bracer. – Walter Scott • In the middle of the cavernous cargo hold was a simple, aluminum coffin with a small American flag draped over it. We were bringing another American soldier, just killed, home to his family and final resting place. The starkness of his coffin in the center of the hold, the silence except for the din of the engines, was a real time cold reminder of the consequences of decisions for which we Senators share responsibility. – John F. Kerry • In uniform patriotism can salute one flag only, embrace but the first circle of life – one’s own land and tribe. In war that is necessary, in peace it is not enough. – Bill Moyers • Invention flags, his brain goes muddy, And black despair succeeds brown study. – William Congreve • Israel’s capital will never again be a divided city, a city with a wall at its center, a city in which two flags fly. This city, will, in its entirety, absorb immigrants, welcome pilgrims and be the eternal capital of Israel forever. – Yitzhak Shamir • It is a dangerous day when we can take the cross out of the church more easily than the flag. No wonder it is hard for seekers to find God nowadays. – Shane Claiborne • It is said that peace is the basic tenet of all religion. Yet it is in the name of religion that there has been so much disturbance, bloodshed and persecution. It is indeed a pity that even at the close of the twentieth century we’ve had to witness such atrocities because of religion. Flying the flag of religion has always proved the easiest way to crush to nothingness human beings as well as the spirit of humanity. – Taslima Nasrin • It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving picaninnies; and one can imagine that Blair, twice victor abroad but enmired at home, is similarly seduced by foreign politeness. They say he is shortly off to the Congo. No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in Watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird. – Boris Johnson • It is the will of the American people that we have a right to protect our flag and this can only be accomplished by passing a Constitutional amendment. – Adrian Cronauer • I’ve got one Aussie flag on my car. It would be nice to have two. – Tom Lehman • Japanese-owned cargo ship Tsimtsum, flying Panamanian flag, sank July 2nd, 1977, in Pacific, four days out of Manila. Am in lifeboat. Pi Patel my name. Have some food, some water, but Bengal tiger a serious problem. Please advise family in Winnepeg, Canada. Any help very much appreciated. Thank you. – Yann Martel • Laws protecting the United States flag do not cut away at the freedom of speech guaranteed in the First Amendment… Congress made this position clear upon passage of the Flag Protection Act of 1989, which prohibited desecration of the flag. – Larry Craig • Let it be borne on the flag under which we rally in every exigency, that we have one country, one constitution, one destiny. – Daniel Webster • Liberals hate America, they hate “flag-wavers”, they hate abortion opponents, they hate all religions except Islam (post 9/11). Even Islamic terrorists don’t hate America like liberals do. They don’t have the energy. If they had that much energy, they’d have indoor plumbing by now. – Ann Coulter • Life is not fair. And you have to choose your battles, because there are some that you cannot win. If you’re passionate about something, then you should pick up your flag and run with it.- Bette Midler • Long live Germany. Long live Austria. Long live Argentina. These are the countries with which I have been most closely associated and I shall not forget them. I had to obey the rules of war and my flag. I am ready. – Adolf Eichmann • Men do not fight for flag or country, for the Marine Corps or glory or any other abstraction. They fight for one another. And if you came through this ordeal, you would age with dignity. – William Manchester • Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer. – Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. • My dad has totally taken my Cat Stevens T-shirt, but it’s OK; I have his Black Flag one, and that’s amazing. – Zoe Kravitz • My daughter, who goes to Stuyvesant High School only blocks from the World Trade Center, thinks we should fly an American flag out our window. Definitely not, I say: The flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war. – Katha Pollitt • My goal is people associate November with COPD awareness month as much as they notice October with breast cancer and pink. That’d be a great thing if it happened. The fact that COPD kills more people than breast cancer and diabetes put together should raise some red flags. – Danica Patrick • My major aim in writing is to set out flags and issue wake-up calls. – James Broughton • My version, of course, is not this flag-waving, let’s all get on the Jesus train and ride out of hell. I’m not that kind of guy. It’s an embrace that life is good, worth living and yeah, it’s not easy, but there are more pluses than minuses. – Billy Corgan • Nationalism is just racism with a flag. – Peter Joseph • Not another flag has such an errand, carrying everywhere, the world around, such hope for freedom such glorious tidings. – Henry Ward Beecher • Nowhere else in history has there ever been a flag that stands for the right to burn itself. This is the fractal of our flag. It stands for the right to destroy itself. – Ken Kesey • Obama’s a nice person, he’s very articulate this is what’s been used against him, but he couldn’t sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.- Dan Rather • Of all the names Polygamy went by (so as not to exasperate the Gentile population and even some of the wives of the members’ own bosoms any more than necessary) — such as Pluralism, Plural or Celestial Wedlock, the Principle, the Doctrine, the New Covenant and the Gospel Dispensation of the Meridian of Consummate Time — the latter was thought to be the least like waving a red flag in front of a bull. But as it was hard to remember and did not make instant or any other kind of sense, it was not much used. – Ardyth Kennelly • Of course, Mr. Hannity was outraged that any American would not cross her hand over her heart and repeat the hypocritical words, one nation. Whenever we come up on the Fourth of You Lie, I think of Frederick Douglas and his masterful oration, The meaning of the Fourth of July to the Negro. Pledge the flag? I think not! – Julianne Malveaux • Off with your hat, as the flag goes by! And let the heart have its say; you’re man enough for a tear in your eye that you will not wipe away. – Henry Cuyler Bunner • Oh, it’s home again and home again, America for me! I want a ship that’s westward bound to plough the rolling sea To the blessed land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars, Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars. – Henry Van Dyke • Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light What so proudly we hailed as the twilight’s last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight O’er the ramplarts we watched were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave? – Francis Scott Key • On a royal birthday every house must fly a flag, or the owner would be dragged to a police station and be fined twenty-five rubles. – Mary Antin • On no further occasion present a flag or medal to an Indian. – Zebulon Pike • On the field of battle, the spoken word does not carry far enough; hence the institution of gongs and drums… banners and flags. Gongs and drums, banners and flags, are means whereby the ears and eyes of the host may be focused on one particular point. – Sun Tzu • On this question of principle, while actual suffering was yet afar off, they [the Colonies] raised their flag against a power to which, for purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome in the height of her glory is not to be compared,-a power which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England. – Daniel Webster • Ostentation is the signal flag of hypocrisy. – Edwin Hubbel Chapin • Our flag honors those who have fought to protect it, and is a reminder of the sacrifice of our nation’s founders and heroes. As the ultimate icon of America’s storied history, the Stars and Stripes represents the very best of this nation. – Joe Barton • Our flag is a proud flag, and it stands for liberty and civilization. Where it has once floated, there must be no return to tyranny. – Theodore Roosevelt • Our flag is not just one of many political points of view. Rather, the flag is a symbol of our national unity. – Adrian Cronauer • Our flag is read, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbown-red, yellow, brown, black and white – and we’re all precious in God’s sight. – Jesse Jackson • Our flag means all that our fathers meant in the Revolutionary War. It means all that the Declaration of Independence meant. It means justice. It means liberty. It means happiness…. Every color means liberty. Every thread means liberty. Every star and stripe means liberty. – Henry Ward Beecher • Our flag represents every American and it should not be hidden away as a result of property agreements. – Mike Fitzpatrick • Our great modern Republic. May those who seek the blessings of its institutions and the protection of its flag remember the obligations they impose. – Ulysses S. Grant • Our moneyed men have ruled us for the past thirty years. Under the flag of the slaveholder they hoped to destroy our liberty. – Denis Kearney • Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.- James Bryce • Patriotism has become a mere national self assertion, a sentimentality of flag-cheering with no constructive duties. – H. G. Wells • Patriotism threatens free speech with death. It is infuriated by thoughtful hesitation, constructive criticism of our leaders and pleas for peace. It despises people of foreign birth. It has specifically blamed homosexuals, feminists and the American Civil Liberties Union. In other words, the American flag stands for intimidation, censorship, violence, bigotry, sexism, homophobia and shoving the Constitution through a paper shredder. Whom are we calling terrorists here? – Barbara Kingsolver • People from major labels were afraid to go to Black Flag gigs throughout most of the bands existence. They treated our gigs as something threatening. Im sure that it probably was. They probably had reasons to be scared. – Greg Ginn • Punishing desecration of the flag dilutes the very freedom that makes this emblem so revered. – William J. Brennan • Queen’s University flies the flag for the arts in Northern Ireland and beyond. – Liam Neeson • Red flag of the eating disorder: the muffin. Keep your eye on the ladies with the muffins… and sometimes I’ll just eat the muffin top. – Janeane Garofalo • Remember the hours after September 11th when we came together as one to answer the attack against our homeland. We drew strength when our firefighters ran upstairs and risked their lives so that others might live; when rescuers rushed into smoke and fire at the Pentagon; when the men and women of Flight 93 sacrificed themselves to save our nation’s Capitol; when flags were hanging from front porches all across America, and strangers became friends. It was the worst day we have ever seen, but it brought out the best in all of us. – John F. Kerry • Roger Ebert was the last mammoth alive who was holding the flag for real movies and moviemakers. – Werner Herzog • Saying you are a patriot does not make you one; wearing a flag pin does not in itself mean anything at all. – Viggo Mortensen • Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused. – Woodrow Wilson • So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. -Wendell Berry • SST was formed to put out the first Black Flag record. Basically, there wasn’t anyone else to do it. I felt that what I was doing with Black Flag was very worthwhile, and I wanted to get it out there. – Greg Ginn • Sure I wave the American flag. Do you know a better flag to wave? Sure I love my country with all her faults. I’m not ashamed of that, never have been, never will be. – John Wayne • Sure I wave the American flag. Do you know a better flag to wave?- John Wayne • That one flag encircles us with its folds today, the unrivaled object of our loyal love. – Benjamin Harrison • The American flag is the most recognized symbol of freedom and democracy in the world. – Virginia Foxx • The American flag is the symbol of our freedom, national pride and history. – Mike Fitzpatrick • The American flag represents all of us and all the values we hold sacred. – Adrian Cronauer • The American flag, Old Glory, standing tall and flying free over American soil for 228 years is the symbol of our beloved country. It is recognized from near and afar, and many lives have been lost defending it. – Jeff Miller • The Bible represents a fundamental guidepost for millions of people on the planet, in much the same way the Koran, Torah, and Pali Canon offer guidance to people of other religions. If you and I could dig up documentation that contradicted the holy stories of Islamic belief, Judaic belief, Buddhist belief, pagan belief, should we do that? Should we wave a flag and tell the Buddhists that the Buddha did not come from a lotus blossom? Or that Jesus was not born of a literal virgin birth? Those who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical. – Dan Brown • The few took advantage of the ignorant many. They pretended to have received messages from the Unknown. They stood between the helpless multitude and the gods. They were the carriers of flags of truce. At the court of heaven they presented the cause of man, and upon the labor of the deceived they lived. – Robert Green Ingersoll • The flag is a symbol of the fact that man is still a herd animal. – Albert Einstein • The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history. – Woodrow Wilson • The flag of racialism which has been hoisted in Wolverhampton is beginning to look like the one that fluttered 25 years ago over Dachau and Belsen. – Tony Benn • The flag of the United States has not been created by rhetorical sentences in declarations of independence and in bills of rights. It has been created by the experience of a great people, and nothing is written upon it that has not been written by their life. It is the embodiment, not of a sentiment, but of a history. – Woodrow Wilson • The flag of your nation – wave it! Begin to separate your nation from whatever covenant your forefathers must have had. Break the covenant of corruption/ stealing/ killing/ destruction/ idolatry – break it right now! – T. B. Joshua • The flag represents all the values and the liberties Americans have and enjoy everyday. – Bill Shuster • The flag still stands for freedom and they can’t take that away.- Lee Greenwood • The flag that was the symbol of slavery on the high seas for a long time was not the Confederate battle flag, it was sadly the Stars and Stripes. – Alan Keyes • The headline is the ‘ticket on the meat.’ Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising. – David Ogilvy • The less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag. – Kin Hubbard • The meteor flag of England Shall yet terrific burn, Till danger’s troubled night depart, And the star of peace return. – Thomas Campbell • The Minutemen were seen as more of an art thing than Black Flag, although I didn’t see them that way. It confused people when we put out Saccharine Trust, too. – Greg Ginn • The mother condemned for a witch and burnt with dry wood, and her children gazing on;The hounded slave that flags in the race and leans by the fence, blowing and covered with sweat, The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck, The murderous buckshot and the bullets, All these I feel or am. – Walt Whitman • The Palestinian state is within our grasp. Soon the Palestinian flag will fly on the walls, the minarets and the cathedrals of Jerusalem. – Yasser Arafat • The people are urged to be patriotic … by sacrificing their own children. Patriotism requires allegience to the flag, which means obedience and readiness to kill father, mother, brother, sister. – Emma Goldman • The Royal family to me are not England, and they are not the flag. – Steven Morrissey • The stuff that I got in trouble for, the casting for The Godfather or the flag scene in Patton, was the stuff that was remembered, and was considered the good work. – Francis Ford Coppola • The things that the flag stands for were created by the experiences of a great people. Everything that it stands for was written by their lives. The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history. – Woodrow Wilson • The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. – Smedley Butler • The victory march will continue until the Palestinian flag flies in Jerusalem and in all of Palestine. – Yasser Arafat • The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man’s proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature. – John Steinbeck • Then finally I said, ‘Okay, well, I want to know all the details. I want creative input. I want to be consulted. I want to know what they’re doing and who’s involved. And I want to see the space.’ So they took me to see it, and then I realized it was major! All these red flags on the Rue de Rivoli with my name on them right by the Louvre! – Kate Moss • There are some pop songs I hate but I can’t get them out of my head. Our songs also have the standard pop format: Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, bad solo. All in all, I think we sound like The Knack and the Bay City Rollers being molested by Black Flag and Black Sabbath. – Kurt Cobain • There are those who wrap themselves in flags and blow the tinny trumpet of patriotism as a means of fooling the people. – George Galloway • There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag…We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language…and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people. – Theodore Roosevelt • There is a strong tendency in the United States to rally round the flag and their troops, no matter how mistaken the war. – George McGovern • There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum. – Arthur C. Clarke • There is much more to being a patriot and a citizen than reciting the pledge or raising a flag. – Jesse Ventura • There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people. – Howard Zinn • There is no rule in the pink-triangle guide to coming out that you must wear a rainbow flag cap and organise a full band parade. – Beth Ditto • There’s a certain elitism that has crept into the attitudes of some in journalism, and it played out perfectly over the issue of these little [American flag] lapel pins. – Brit Hume • There’s a principle here and I’m hoping the court will uphold this principle so that we can finally go back and have every American want to stand up, face the flag, place their hand over their heart and pledge to one nation, indivisible, not divided by religion, with liberty and justice for all. – Michael Newdow • There’s an enduring American compulsion to be on the side of the angels. Expediency alone has never been an adequate American reason for doing anything. When actions are judged, they go before the bar of God, where Mom and the Flag closely flank His presence. – Jonathan Raban • There’s one beneficial effect of going to Moscow. You come home waving the American flag with all your might. – Mary Tyler Moore • This flag .. is raised not without costs, .. without the costs of having struggled for many years, without the costs of having lost so many lives in order to have a free and sovereign and good Afghanistan. – Hamid Karzai • To secure respect to a neutral flag requires a naval force organized and ready to vindicate it from insult or aggression. – George Washington • To survive in peace and harmony, united and strong, we must have one people, one nation, one flag. – Pauline Hanson • Tonight the American flag floats from yonder hill or Molly Stark sleeps a widow. – John Stark • Tony Stewart — Broke out a new chassis at Pocono Raceway last June and raced to the checkered flag for his first victory of 2003; has finished among the top 10 in all but two of his 10 career starts here; Turn one is probably the easiest of the three, but you’ve got the challenge of having to downshift in the middle of the corner, .. You go down the backstretch and into the tunnel turn and it’s basically one lane. – Tony Stewart • Tree of Liberty: A tree set up by the people, hung with flags and devices, and crowned with a cap of liberty. The Americans of the United States planted poplars and other trees during the war of independence, “as symbols of growing freedom.” The Jacobins in Paris planted their first tree of liberty in 1790. The symbols used in France to decorate their trees of liberty were tricoloured ribbons, circles to indicate unity, triangles to signify equality, and a cap of liberty. Trees of liberty were planted by the Italians in the revolution of 1848. – E. Cobham Brewer • Under this flag may our youth find new inspiration for loyalty to Canada; for a patriotism based not on any mean or narrow nationalism, but on the deep and equal pride that all Canadians will feel for every part of this good land. – Lester B. Pearson • Unfortunately a Constitutional amendment that would have empowered Congress to make desecration of the United States flag illegal failed to pass by one vote. – Kenny Marchant • United States, your banner wears Two emblems–one of fame; Alas! the other that it bears Reminds us of your shame. Your banner’s constellation types White freedom with its stars, But what’s the meaning of the stripes? They mean your negroes’ scars. – Thomas Campbell • Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a red flag to a bu… was like putting something very annoying in front of someone who was annoyed by it. – Terry Pratchett • War is the spectacular and bloody projection of our everyday living. We precipitate war out of our daily lives; and without a transformation in ourselves, there are bound to be national and racial antagonisms, the childish quarreling over ideologies, the multiplication of soldiers, the saluting of flags, and all the many brutalities that go to create organized murder. – Jiddu Krishnamurti • We Americans are the most lavish and showiest and most luxury loving people on the earth; and at our masthead we fly one true and honest symbol, the gaudiest flag the world has ever seen. – Mark Twain • We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams. – Peter S. Beagle • We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being. – Gilbert K. Chesterton • We cannot allow the American flag to be shot at anywhere on earth if we are to retain our respect and prestige – Barry Goldwater • We considered ourselves Jordanian until the Jews returned to Jerusalem. Then all of the sudden we were Palestinians – they removed the star from the Jordanian flag and all at once we had a Palestinian flag. – Walid Shoebat • We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so, we dilute the freedom this cherished emblem represents. – William J. Brennan • We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together. We may differ in color, but not in sentiment. – Nathan Bedford Forrest • We have room in this country for but one flag, the Stars and Stripes! – Theodore Roosevelt • We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy. – Henry Miller • We identify the flag with almost everything we hold dear on earth, peace, security, liberty, our family, our friends, our home. . .But when we look at our flag and behold it emblazoned with all our rights we must remember that it is equally a symbol of our duties. Every glory that we associate with it is the result of duty done. – Calvin Coolidge • We join ourselves to no party that does not carry the flag and I keep step to the music of the Union. – Rufus Choate • Well, start waving and yelling, because it is the so-called Oxford comma and it is a lot more dangerous than its exclusive, ivory-tower moniker might suggest. There are people who embrace the Oxford comma and people who don’t, and I’ll just say this: never get between these people when drink has been taken. Oh, the Oxford comma. Here, in case you don’t know what it is yet, is the perennial example, as espoused by Harold Ross: “The flag is red, white, and blue.” So what do you think of it? Are you for or against it? Do you hover in between? – Lynne Truss • What does one plant who plants a tree? One plants the friend of sun and sky; One plants the flag of breezes free; The shaft of beauty towering high. – Henry Cuyler Bunner • What if the invasion forces will not leave our lands? What if the U.S. forces and others stay in our beloved lands? What if their companies and embassy headquarters will continue to exist with the American flags hoisted on them? Will you be silent? Will you overlook this? – Muqtada al Sadr • What I’m trying to do is to at least raise a flag to the blinding light of technology. – Godfrey Reggio • When a war ends, what does that look like exactly? do the cells in the body stop detonating themselves? does the orphanage stop screaming for its mother? when the sand in the desert has been melted down to glass and our reflection is not something we can stand to look at does the white flag make for a perfect blindfold? yesterday i was told a story about this little girl in Iraq, six-years-old, who cannot fall asleep because when she does she dreams of nothing but the day she watched her dog eat her neighbor’s corpse. if you told her war is over do you think she can sleep? – Andrea Gibson • When facism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag. – Sinclair Lewis • When fascism comes to the United States it will be wrapped in the American flag and will claim the name of 100-percent Americanism – Sinclair Lewis • When Freedom from her mountain height Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there. – Joseph Rodman Drake • When Freedom from her mountain-height Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there. She mingled with its gorgeous dyes The milky baldric of the skies, And striped its pure, celestial white With streakings of the morning light. Flag of the free heart’s hope and home! By angel hands to valour given! Thy stars have lit the welkin dome, And all thy hues were born in heaven. Forever float that standard sheet! Where breathes the foe but falls before us, With Freedom’s soil beneath our feet, And Freedom’s banner streaming o’er us? – Joseph Rodman Drake • When I see the American flag, I go, ‘Oh my God, you’re insulting me.’ – Janeane Garofalo • When I was in college there was a girls’ flag football league. The girls were extremely aggressive. – Lynn Swann • When somebody say no, it’s a red flag to a bull to me. – Duncan Roy • When the wheel was accepted as part of the national flag, it was surely implied that the spinning wheel would hum in every household. – Mahatma Gandhi • When you go to plant a flag on the visiting team’s field, it’s a form of taunting, .. What message are you sending when you spear it into the turf of your defeated opponent?. – Brad Davis • When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you’re happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot? – George Orwell • While the rest of the country waves the flag of Americana, we understand we are not part of that. We don’t owe America anything – America owes us. – Al Sharpton • Words are some of the most powerful and important things I know….Language is the tool of love and the weapon of hatred. It’s the bright red warning flag of danger–and the stone foundation of diplomacy and peace. – Ani DiFranco • Worrying that banning flag desecration would inhibit free speech reveals a misunderstanding of the flag’s fundamental nature. – Adrian Cronauer • Ye mariners of England! That guard our native seas; Whose flag has braved a thousand years, The battle and the breeze! – Thomas Campbell • Yes, I’m a patriotic person. For these people who disgrace the American way and burn our flag and do all of these things… I say, don’t live here and disgrace my country. Go live in the Middle East and see how you like it. – Payne Stewart • Yonder are the Hessians. They were bought for seven pounds and tenpence a man. Are you worth more? Prove it. Tonight the American flag floats from yonder hill or Molly Stark sleeps a widow! – John Stark • You are the generation that will reach the sea and hoist the flag of Palestine over Tel Aviv. – Yasser Arafat • You are the makers of the flag and it is well that you glory in the making. – Franklin Knight Lane • You cannot have companies where many of the largest ones lose money indefinitely without someone finally waving the white flag, and IBM is the most recent example of that. – Kevin B. Rollins • You don’t defend national sovereignty with flags, cheap election rhetoric, and advertising campaigns. – Stephen Harper • You have to eat before you train. Otherwise, that really intense training, after about 40 minutes you start to flag. – Hugh Jackman • You the devil in drag. You can burn your cross, Well, I’ll burn your flag. – Ice Cube • You’re a grand old flag! You’re a high-flying flag, And forever in peace may you wave. You’re the emblem of the land I love, The home of the free and the brave. Ev’ry heart beats true ‘Neath the Red, White and Blue,’ Where there’s never a boast or brag. But should auld acquaintance be forgot, Keep your eye on the grand old flag. – George M. Cohan

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Flags Quotes

Official Website: Flags Quotes

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• A lot of folks are still demanding more evidence before they actually consider Iraq a threat. For example, France wants more evidence. And you know I’m thinking, the last time France wanted more evidence they rolled right through Paris with the German flag. – David Letterman • A thoughtful mind, when it sees a nation’s flag, sees not the flag, but the nation itself. – Henry Ward Beecher • A thoughtful mind, when it sees a Nation’s flag, sees not the flag only, but the Nation itself; and whatever may be its symbols, its insignia, he reads chiefly in the flag the Government, the principles, the truths, the history which belongs to the Nation that sets it forth. – Henry Ward Beecher • After I left D.C. to join Black Flag, I felt I was in a band. – Henry Rollins • America has an almost obscene infatuation with itself. Has there ever been a big, powerful country that is as patriotic as America? And patriotic in the tinniest way, with so much flag waving? You’d really think we were some poor little republic, and that if one person lost his religion for one hour, the whole thing would crumble. America is the real religion in this country. – Norman Mailer • America is the only country in the world where you can burn the flag but can’t tear the tag off the mattress. – Jackie Mason • And the word is capitalism. We are too mealy-mouthed. We fear the word capitalism is unpopular. So we talk about the free enterprise system and run to cover in the folds of the flag and talk about the American Way of Life. – Eric Johnston • And when we view a flag, which to the eye is beautiful, and to contemplate its rise and origin inspires a sensation of sublime delight, our national honor must unite with our interests to prevent injury to the one, or insult to the other. – Thomas Paine • Any power must be an enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by power and by force, whether it arises under the Fascist or the Communist flag. All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded to the individual. – Albert Einstein • As Conservatives, We Don’t Care About The Color of Your Skin, We Care About The Color of Our Flag – Allen West • As long as I live, I will never forget that day 21 years ago when I raised my hand and took the oath of citizenship. Do you know how proud I was? I was so proud that I walked around with an American flag around my shoulders all day long. – Arnold Schwarzenegger • As National Socialists we see our program in our flag. In the red we see the social idea of the movement. – Adolf Hitler • Ashcroft vowed to] spare no effort to preserve the rights of all our citizens to pledge allegiance to the American flag. – John Ashcroft • At least in my country, we have come to accept the flags burning, but what we cannot accept is violence, burning of embassies and intimidations, and there is no excuse for that. – Daniel Fried

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'flag', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_flag').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_flag img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Bastard Freedom waves Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves. – Thomas Moore • Behold a republic standing erect while empires all around are bowed beneath the weight of their own armaments – a republic whose flag is loved while other flags are only feared. – William Jennings Bryan • But didn’t you say you were satisfied with your life?” “Word games,” I dismissed. “Every army needs a flag. – Haruki Murakami • By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • By the way, I don’t mean to pick nits here, but Obama has just ordered the flag at half-mast for 10 days for Mandela. He did not order the flag at half-mast at all for Lady Thatcher. – Rush Limbaugh • Call it ‘nationalism’ when you affix a flag to your car, and leave the word ‘patriotism’ for your efforts to make this country a kinder, more egalitarian place, and one that is less dangerous to the rest of the world. – Barbara Ehrenreich • Can you imagine what Bush would say if someone like Hugo Chavez asked him for a little piece of land to install a military base, and he only wanted to plant a Venezuelan flag there?- Jose Saramago • Canadians are fond of a good disaster, especially if it has ice, water, or snow in it. You thought the national flag was about a leaf, didn’t you? Look harder. It’s where someone got axed in the snow. – Margaret Atwood • Democratic Rep. Charles Schumer of New York made a plea to Livingston, the incoming speaker. These new hearings, these new subpoenas wave a red flag that common sense and common wisdom are not welcome here, .. Mr. Livingston, this may be the first and most important task you will ever face as speaker. Lead us out of this abyss. – Charles Schumer • Donald Trump appears to be searching for an enemy. Is it flag burners, recounts, the press, the popular vote? Trump has gone after them all at times, using wild experience theories even as president-elect to do it. – Chuck Todd • Emblem: the carapace of the great crowned snail is painted with all the flags of the United Nations. – Mason Cooley • Even if only one guerilla cub survives the prolonged struggle, I am confident that he will raise the flag of Palestine overJerusalem… Jerusalem is destined to be the eternal capital of our sovereign, independent Palestinian state under the P.L.O. leadership. – Yasser Arafat • Even if the flag burning amendment does become law, the larger problem will remain of how to respectfully dispose of older, tattered flags. Well, fortunately the U.S. official Flag Code has a suggestion about this. “The flag, when it is in such a condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem of display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.” Owwwwcchh. In response, the House Republicans are calling for tattered flags to be kept alive via a feeding tube. – Jon Stewart • Every man that tried to destroy the Government, every man that shot at the holy flag in heaven, every man that starved our soldiers… every man that wanted to burn the negro, every one that wanted to scatter yellow fever in the North, every man that opposed human liberty, that regarded the auction-block as an altar and the howling of the bloodhound as the music of the Union, every man who wept over the corpse of slavery, that thought lashes on the naked back were a legal tender for labour performed, every one willing to rob a mother of her child – every solitary one was a Democrat. – Robert Green Ingersoll • Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. – H. L. Mencken • Every time a colony wants independence, the questions on the agenda are: a) how do you get the imperialists out, and b) what kind of society do you build? There are usually the bourgeois nationalists who say, ‘Let’s just change the flag and keep everything as it was.’ Then there are the revolutionaries who say, ‘Let’s change the property laws.’ It’s always a critical moment. – Ken Loach • Every time I hit a shot, I feel like I am shaking hands with the flag stick. – Moe Norman • Everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination’s orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink – for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder.- Honore de Balzac • Fascism will come to America wrapped in a flag. – Sinclair Lewis • Flag desecration is not a constitutional issue for the courts. It is a political one that belongs to the people. – Larry Craig • Flag of the free heart’s hope and home! By angel hands to valour given, Thy stars have lit the welkin dome; And all thy hues were born in heaven. – Joseph Rodman Drake • Flags are bits of colored cloth used first to shrinkwrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead. – Arundhati Roy • For black folks, the Confederate flag represents the same thing that the Nazi flag represents to the Jews. There is absolutely no difference when we look at it. Now, white folks try to explain it away like, ‘Oh, it’s OK.’ But when you’re black, it is not OK. It represents oppression and murder. – Ken Page • For me, I’m just trying to be the best at what I do. I’ll wave an Asian American flag if I get that opportunity. I’m not hiding or trying to discredit my background or anything, I just haven’t had the opportunity. – Chad Hugo • Ford used to come to work in a big car with two Admiral’s flags, on each side of the car. His assistant would be there with his accordion, playing, Hail to the Chief. – Richard Widmark • Getting that audience approval is always a question mark, and it’s always that flag that flutters in front of you. – William Shatner • Growth at an exceptional rate is a red flag in banking. It is hard enough to manage an ordinary bank; to control a sprouting weed is well-nigh impossible. If loans are expanding too quickly, the lending officers have probably been saying ‘yes’ too frequently. – James Grant • Haul up the flag, you mourners, Not half-mast but all the way; The funeral is done and disbanded; The devil’s had the final say. – Karl Shapiro • Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows’ meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they call their flag; which had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen? – Thomas Carlyle • He is a poor patriot whose patriotism does not enable him to understand how all men everywhere feel about their altars and their hearthstones, their flag and their fatherland. – Harry Emerson Fosdick • I always carried a small American flag red white and blue with me so people would know I was from America. – George Foreman • I am not the flag: not at all. I am but its shadow. – Franklin Knight Lane • I believe in America. I’m one of those silly flag wavers. – Paul Prudhomme • I believe our flag is more than just cloth and ink. It is a universally recognized symbol that stands for liberty, and freedom. It is the history of our nation, and it’s marked by the blood of those who died defending it. – John Thune • I believe that movements to suppress wrongs can be carried out under the protection of our flag. – Mother Jones • I came to the resolve that the attempt was not only worth trying, but should be tried in the very near future if we wanted at all to keep our flag flying; for I was sure as of my own existence that if another decade was allowed to pass without an endeavour of some kind or another to shake off an unjust yoke, the Irish people would sink into lethargy from which it would be impossible for any patriot . . . to arouse them . . . – James Stephens • I can train a monkey to wave an American flag. That does not make the monkey patriotic. – Scott Ritter • I can’t fly a flag for monogamy or whatever the opposite is; it depends on the person and on the situation. – Sting • I consider that 9/11 was the day when war was started against my own work and against myself. Even though we are not sure of the links, Iraq was one of the countries that did not lower its flags in mourning on 9/11. – Adam Michnik • I don’t judge others. I say if you feel good with what you’re doing, let your freak flag fly. – Sarah Jessica Parker • I don’t want the news to be patriotic. I don’t want to see flags on the lapels of the anchors. I don’t want any of that. – Aaron McGruder • I expect the Republicans will enjoy a large bounce out of their convention. They’re here wrapping themselves in the 9/11 flag, which I think is inappropriate in many ways, but it’s their choice. – Harold Ford, Jr. • I fear my enthusiasm flags when real work is demanded of me. – H. P. Lovecraft • I feel like I’m waving the flag for musicianship, trying to bring back bands that can play. – Jonathan Davis • I feel there should have been some recognition of the Spice Girls at this year’s 25th anniversary. We flew the flag for Britain around the globe in the 1990s and we achieved a hell of a lot. – Melanie Chisholm • I had an encyclopedia with a list of flags in the back, so I would look at all these flags of China and Liberia and England and Denmark and whatever, and I learned all the different flags and I tried to imagine what it would be like to be voyaging on some of these ships. – George R. R. Martin • I have a great respect for the flag, (but) if the government passed a law saying that I had to pledge allegiance to the flag, I don’t think I would do it. I’ve always felt that I lived in a country…where if I wanted to worship God as a Baptist, I could do so. If I were an atheist, I could be one. If I wanted to be a Catholic but was born a Jew, there’s no condemnation…from a government authority. – Jimmy Carter • I intend to talk about race during this election in the South because the Republicans have been talking about it since 1968 in order to divide us. And I’m going to bring us together. Because you know what? You know what? White folks in the South who drive pickup trucks with Confederate flag decals in the back ought to be voting with us and not them, because their kids don’t have health insurance either and their kids need better schools too. – Howard Dean • I learned this a long time ago. If you call a guy into your office and shut the door, if there’s media around, it sends up a red flag. I never wanted to embarrass a player. – Jim Leyland • I look for the entrepreneur to capture my attention. If you don’t come out with a great presentation, you’re dead. That’s a big red flag. – Robert Herjavec • I mean Black Flag happened. I was lucky. I don’t think I could have put together something with one percent of that oomph on my own. – Henry Rollins • I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag, and to the Savior, for whose Kingdom it stands, one Savior, crucified, risen, and coming again, with life and liberty for all who believe. – Dan Quayle • I prefer a man who will burn the flag and then wrap himself in the constitution to a man who will burn the constitution and then wrap himself in the flag. – Craig Washington • I savored my time on top of the podium by watching the American flag rise up out of the crowd as the anthem played, thinking about how every single second of training I’ve done was for this minute and how many people played a role in my achievement. – Hannah Kearney • I stand fearlessly for small dogs, the American Flag, motherhood and the Bible. That’s why people love me. – Art Linkletter • I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.- Howard Dean • I think love is blind. I hate to use that cliched statement, but people, when they love somebody, they seem to be able to somehow to put aside red flags. – Eric Close • I would warn Orlando that you’re right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don’t think I’d be waving those flags [gay pride flags] in God’s face if I were you, This is not a message of hate , this is a message of redemption. But a condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It’ll bring about terrorist bombs; it’ll bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor. – Pat Robertson • I wrote the script of Patton. I had this very bizarre opening where he stands up in front of an American flag and gives this speech. Ultimately, I was fired. When the script was done, they hired another writer and that script was forgotten. – Francis Ford Coppola • I’d buy myself a cabin on the beach, I’d put some glue in my navel, and I’d stick a flag in there. Then I’d wait to see which way the wind was blowing. – Albert Camus • If a jerk burns the flag, America is not threatened, democracy is not under siege, freedom is not at risk. – Gary Ackerman • If I fall, pick up the flag, kiss it, and keep on going. – Omar Torrijos • If one, then, asks me the meaning of our flag, I say to him, It means just what Concord and Lexington meant, what Bunker Hill meant; it means the whole glorious Revolutionary War, which was, in short, the rising up of a valiant young people against an old tyranny, to establish the most momentous doctrine that the world had ever known – the right of men to their own selves and to their liberties. – Henry Ward Beecher • If the flag of an armed enemy of the U.S. is allowed to fly over government buildings, then it implies that slavery, or at least the threat of slavery, is sanctioned by that government and can still legally exist. – Amiri Baraka • If the test of patriotism comes only by reflexively falling into lockstep behind the leader whenever the flag is waved, then what we have is a formula for dictatorship, not democracy… But the American way is to criticize and debate openly, not to accept unthinkingly the doings of government officials of this or any other country. – Michael Parenti • If you buy the flag it’s yours to burn. – Jesse Ventura • If you start studying history closer, you’ll find that most all wars are based on false flag operations to get people – to convince the people that they’re under attack in some way so that they will support the wars. – Jesse Ventura • If you want a symbolic gesture, don’t burn the flag, wash it. – Norman Thomas • If you wave a flag, make it an American Flag. – Antonio Villaraigosa • I’m about as far from being a flag-waver – you won’t find any American flag pins in my drawer – as someone can be. – Tom Peters • I’m beginning to wonder if the symbol of the United States pretty soon isn’t going to be an ambassador with a flag under his arm climbing into an escape helicopter. – Ronald Reagan • Im in love with red. I think its such a passionate color. Every flag of every country pretty much has red it it. Its power, theres no fence sitting with red. Either you love it or you dont. I think its blood and strength and life. I do love red. I love all colors. Great shades of blue, you find them in nature. Theyre all magic. – Bryan Batt • I’m just always learning lines. I’ve learned to flag the really crucial scenes, and I start figuring them out and committing them to memory as soon as I get them. – Claire Danes • I’m proud of the U.S.A. We’ve done some amazing things. To wear our flag in the Olympics is an honor. – Shaun White • In prosperous times I have sometimes felt my fancy and powers of language flag, but adversity is to me at least a tonic and bracer. – Walter Scott • In the middle of the cavernous cargo hold was a simple, aluminum coffin with a small American flag draped over it. We were bringing another American soldier, just killed, home to his family and final resting place. The starkness of his coffin in the center of the hold, the silence except for the din of the engines, was a real time cold reminder of the consequences of decisions for which we Senators share responsibility. – John F. Kerry • In uniform patriotism can salute one flag only, embrace but the first circle of life – one’s own land and tribe. In war that is necessary, in peace it is not enough. – Bill Moyers • Invention flags, his brain goes muddy, And black despair succeeds brown study. – William Congreve • Israel’s capital will never again be a divided city, a city with a wall at its center, a city in which two flags fly. This city, will, in its entirety, absorb immigrants, welcome pilgrims and be the eternal capital of Israel forever. – Yitzhak Shamir • It is a dangerous day when we can take the cross out of the church more easily than the flag. No wonder it is hard for seekers to find God nowadays. – Shane Claiborne • It is said that peace is the basic tenet of all religion. Yet it is in the name of religion that there has been so much disturbance, bloodshed and persecution. It is indeed a pity that even at the close of the twentieth century we’ve had to witness such atrocities because of religion. Flying the flag of religion has always proved the easiest way to crush to nothingness human beings as well as the spirit of humanity. – Taslima Nasrin • It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving picaninnies; and one can imagine that Blair, twice victor abroad but enmired at home, is similarly seduced by foreign politeness. They say he is shortly off to the Congo. No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in Watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird. – Boris Johnson • It is the will of the American people that we have a right to protect our flag and this can only be accomplished by passing a Constitutional amendment. – Adrian Cronauer • I’ve got one Aussie flag on my car. It would be nice to have two. – Tom Lehman • Japanese-owned cargo ship Tsimtsum, flying Panamanian flag, sank July 2nd, 1977, in Pacific, four days out of Manila. Am in lifeboat. Pi Patel my name. Have some food, some water, but Bengal tiger a serious problem. Please advise family in Winnepeg, Canada. Any help very much appreciated. Thank you. – Yann Martel • Laws protecting the United States flag do not cut away at the freedom of speech guaranteed in the First Amendment… Congress made this position clear upon passage of the Flag Protection Act of 1989, which prohibited desecration of the flag. – Larry Craig • Let it be borne on the flag under which we rally in every exigency, that we have one country, one constitution, one destiny. – Daniel Webster • Liberals hate America, they hate “flag-wavers”, they hate abortion opponents, they hate all religions except Islam (post 9/11). Even Islamic terrorists don’t hate America like liberals do. They don’t have the energy. If they had that much energy, they’d have indoor plumbing by now. – Ann Coulter • Life is not fair. And you have to choose your battles, because there are some that you cannot win. If you’re passionate about something, then you should pick up your flag and run with it.- Bette Midler • Long live Germany. Long live Austria. Long live Argentina. These are the countries with which I have been most closely associated and I shall not forget them. I had to obey the rules of war and my flag. I am ready. – Adolf Eichmann • Men do not fight for flag or country, for the Marine Corps or glory or any other abstraction. They fight for one another. And if you came through this ordeal, you would age with dignity. – William Manchester • Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer. – Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. • My dad has totally taken my Cat Stevens T-shirt, but it’s OK; I have his Black Flag one, and that’s amazing. – Zoe Kravitz • My daughter, who goes to Stuyvesant High School only blocks from the World Trade Center, thinks we should fly an American flag out our window. Definitely not, I say: The flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war. – Katha Pollitt • My goal is people associate November with COPD awareness month as much as they notice October with breast cancer and pink. That’d be a great thing if it happened. The fact that COPD kills more people than breast cancer and diabetes put together should raise some red flags. – Danica Patrick • My major aim in writing is to set out flags and issue wake-up calls. – James Broughton • My version, of course, is not this flag-waving, let’s all get on the Jesus train and ride out of hell. I’m not that kind of guy. It’s an embrace that life is good, worth living and yeah, it’s not easy, but there are more pluses than minuses. – Billy Corgan • Nationalism is just racism with a flag. – Peter Joseph • Not another flag has such an errand, carrying everywhere, the world around, such hope for freedom such glorious tidings. – Henry Ward Beecher • Nowhere else in history has there ever been a flag that stands for the right to burn itself. This is the fractal of our flag. It stands for the right to destroy itself. – Ken Kesey • Obama’s a nice person, he’s very articulate this is what’s been used against him, but he couldn’t sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.- Dan Rather • Of all the names Polygamy went by (so as not to exasperate the Gentile population and even some of the wives of the members’ own bosoms any more than necessary) — such as Pluralism, Plural or Celestial Wedlock, the Principle, the Doctrine, the New Covenant and the Gospel Dispensation of the Meridian of Consummate Time — the latter was thought to be the least like waving a red flag in front of a bull. But as it was hard to remember and did not make instant or any other kind of sense, it was not much used. – Ardyth Kennelly • Of course, Mr. Hannity was outraged that any American would not cross her hand over her heart and repeat the hypocritical words, one nation. Whenever we come up on the Fourth of You Lie, I think of Frederick Douglas and his masterful oration, The meaning of the Fourth of July to the Negro. Pledge the flag? I think not! – Julianne Malveaux • Off with your hat, as the flag goes by! And let the heart have its say; you’re man enough for a tear in your eye that you will not wipe away. – Henry Cuyler Bunner • Oh, it’s home again and home again, America for me! I want a ship that’s westward bound to plough the rolling sea To the blessed land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars, Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars. – Henry Van Dyke • Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light What so proudly we hailed as the twilight’s last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight O’er the ramplarts we watched were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave? – Francis Scott Key • On a royal birthday every house must fly a flag, or the owner would be dragged to a police station and be fined twenty-five rubles. – Mary Antin • On no further occasion present a flag or medal to an Indian. – Zebulon Pike • On the field of battle, the spoken word does not carry far enough; hence the institution of gongs and drums… banners and flags. Gongs and drums, banners and flags, are means whereby the ears and eyes of the host may be focused on one particular point. – Sun Tzu • On this question of principle, while actual suffering was yet afar off, they [the Colonies] raised their flag against a power to which, for purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome in the height of her glory is not to be compared,-a power which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England. – Daniel Webster • Ostentation is the signal flag of hypocrisy. – Edwin Hubbel Chapin • Our flag honors those who have fought to protect it, and is a reminder of the sacrifice of our nation’s founders and heroes. As the ultimate icon of America’s storied history, the Stars and Stripes represents the very best of this nation. – Joe Barton • Our flag is a proud flag, and it stands for liberty and civilization. Where it has once floated, there must be no return to tyranny. – Theodore Roosevelt • Our flag is not just one of many political points of view. Rather, the flag is a symbol of our national unity. – Adrian Cronauer • Our flag is read, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbown-red, yellow, brown, black and white – and we’re all precious in God’s sight. – Jesse Jackson • Our flag means all that our fathers meant in the Revolutionary War. It means all that the Declaration of Independence meant. It means justice. It means liberty. It means happiness…. Every color means liberty. Every thread means liberty. Every star and stripe means liberty. – Henry Ward Beecher • Our flag represents every American and it should not be hidden away as a result of property agreements. – Mike Fitzpatrick • Our great modern Republic. May those who seek the blessings of its institutions and the protection of its flag remember the obligations they impose. – Ulysses S. Grant • Our moneyed men have ruled us for the past thirty years. Under the flag of the slaveholder they hoped to destroy our liberty. – Denis Kearney • Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.- James Bryce • Patriotism has become a mere national self assertion, a sentimentality of flag-cheering with no constructive duties. – H. G. Wells • Patriotism threatens free speech with death. It is infuriated by thoughtful hesitation, constructive criticism of our leaders and pleas for peace. It despises people of foreign birth. It has specifically blamed homosexuals, feminists and the American Civil Liberties Union. In other words, the American flag stands for intimidation, censorship, violence, bigotry, sexism, homophobia and shoving the Constitution through a paper shredder. Whom are we calling terrorists here? – Barbara Kingsolver • People from major labels were afraid to go to Black Flag gigs throughout most of the bands existence. They treated our gigs as something threatening. Im sure that it probably was. They probably had reasons to be scared. – Greg Ginn • Punishing desecration of the flag dilutes the very freedom that makes this emblem so revered. – William J. Brennan • Queen’s University flies the flag for the arts in Northern Ireland and beyond. – Liam Neeson • Red flag of the eating disorder: the muffin. Keep your eye on the ladies with the muffins… and sometimes I’ll just eat the muffin top. – Janeane Garofalo • Remember the hours after September 11th when we came together as one to answer the attack against our homeland. We drew strength when our firefighters ran upstairs and risked their lives so that others might live; when rescuers rushed into smoke and fire at the Pentagon; when the men and women of Flight 93 sacrificed themselves to save our nation’s Capitol; when flags were hanging from front porches all across America, and strangers became friends. It was the worst day we have ever seen, but it brought out the best in all of us. – John F. Kerry • Roger Ebert was the last mammoth alive who was holding the flag for real movies and moviemakers. – Werner Herzog • Saying you are a patriot does not make you one; wearing a flag pin does not in itself mean anything at all. – Viggo Mortensen • Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused. – Woodrow Wilson • So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. -Wendell Berry • SST was formed to put out the first Black Flag record. Basically, there wasn’t anyone else to do it. I felt that what I was doing with Black Flag was very worthwhile, and I wanted to get it out there. – Greg Ginn • Sure I wave the American flag. Do you know a better flag to wave? Sure I love my country with all her faults. I’m not ashamed of that, never have been, never will be. – John Wayne • Sure I wave the American flag. Do you know a better flag to wave?- John Wayne • That one flag encircles us with its folds today, the unrivaled object of our loyal love. – Benjamin Harrison • The American flag is the most recognized symbol of freedom and democracy in the world. – Virginia Foxx • The American flag is the symbol of our freedom, national pride and history. – Mike Fitzpatrick • The American flag represents all of us and all the values we hold sacred. – Adrian Cronauer • The American flag, Old Glory, standing tall and flying free over American soil for 228 years is the symbol of our beloved country. It is recognized from near and afar, and many lives have been lost defending it. – Jeff Miller • The Bible represents a fundamental guidepost for millions of people on the planet, in much the same way the Koran, Torah, and Pali Canon offer guidance to people of other religions. If you and I could dig up documentation that contradicted the holy stories of Islamic belief, Judaic belief, Buddhist belief, pagan belief, should we do that? Should we wave a flag and tell the Buddhists that the Buddha did not come from a lotus blossom? Or that Jesus was not born of a literal virgin birth? Those who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical. – Dan Brown • The few took advantage of the ignorant many. They pretended to have received messages from the Unknown. They stood between the helpless multitude and the gods. They were the carriers of flags of truce. At the court of heaven they presented the cause of man, and upon the labor of the deceived they lived. – Robert Green Ingersoll • The flag is a symbol of the fact that man is still a herd animal. – Albert Einstein • The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history. – Woodrow Wilson • The flag of racialism which has been hoisted in Wolverhampton is beginning to look like the one that fluttered 25 years ago over Dachau and Belsen. – Tony Benn • The flag of the United States has not been created by rhetorical sentences in declarations of independence and in bills of rights. It has been created by the experience of a great people, and nothing is written upon it that has not been written by their life. It is the embodiment, not of a sentiment, but of a history. – Woodrow Wilson • The flag of your nation – wave it! Begin to separate your nation from whatever covenant your forefathers must have had. Break the covenant of corruption/ stealing/ killing/ destruction/ idolatry – break it right now! – T. B. Joshua • The flag represents all the values and the liberties Americans have and enjoy everyday. – Bill Shuster • The flag still stands for freedom and they can’t take that away.- Lee Greenwood • The flag that was the symbol of slavery on the high seas for a long time was not the Confederate battle flag, it was sadly the Stars and Stripes. – Alan Keyes • The headline is the ‘ticket on the meat.’ Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising. – David Ogilvy • The less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag. – Kin Hubbard • The meteor flag of England Shall yet terrific burn, Till danger’s troubled night depart, And the star of peace return. – Thomas Campbell • The Minutemen were seen as more of an art thing than Black Flag, although I didn’t see them that way. It confused people when we put out Saccharine Trust, too. – Greg Ginn • The mother condemned for a witch and burnt with dry wood, and her children gazing on;The hounded slave that flags in the race and leans by the fence, blowing and covered with sweat, The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck, The murderous buckshot and the bullets, All these I feel or am. – Walt Whitman • The Palestinian state is within our grasp. Soon the Palestinian flag will fly on the walls, the minarets and the cathedrals of Jerusalem. – Yasser Arafat • The people are urged to be patriotic … by sacrificing their own children. Patriotism requires allegience to the flag, which means obedience and readiness to kill father, mother, brother, sister. – Emma Goldman • The Royal family to me are not England, and they are not the flag. – Steven Morrissey • The stuff that I got in trouble for, the casting for The Godfather or the flag scene in Patton, was the stuff that was remembered, and was considered the good work. – Francis Ford Coppola • The things that the flag stands for were created by the experiences of a great people. Everything that it stands for was written by their lives. The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history. – Woodrow Wilson • The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. – Smedley Butler • The victory march will continue until the Palestinian flag flies in Jerusalem and in all of Palestine. – Yasser Arafat • The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man’s proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature. – John Steinbeck • Then finally I said, ‘Okay, well, I want to know all the details. I want creative input. I want to be consulted. I want to know what they’re doing and who’s involved. And I want to see the space.’ So they took me to see it, and then I realized it was major! All these red flags on the Rue de Rivoli with my name on them right by the Louvre! – Kate Moss • There are some pop songs I hate but I can’t get them out of my head. Our songs also have the standard pop format: Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, bad solo. All in all, I think we sound like The Knack and the Bay City Rollers being molested by Black Flag and Black Sabbath. – Kurt Cobain • There are those who wrap themselves in flags and blow the tinny trumpet of patriotism as a means of fooling the people. – George Galloway • There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag…We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language…and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people. – Theodore Roosevelt • There is a strong tendency in the United States to rally round the flag and their troops, no matter how mistaken the war. – George McGovern • There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum. – Arthur C. Clarke • There is much more to being a patriot and a citizen than reciting the pledge or raising a flag. – Jesse Ventura • There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people. – Howard Zinn • There is no rule in the pink-triangle guide to coming out that you must wear a rainbow flag cap and organise a full band parade. – Beth Ditto • There’s a certain elitism that has crept into the attitudes of some in journalism, and it played out perfectly over the issue of these little [American flag] lapel pins. – Brit Hume • There’s a principle here and I’m hoping the court will uphold this principle so that we can finally go back and have every American want to stand up, face the flag, place their hand over their heart and pledge to one nation, indivisible, not divided by religion, with liberty and justice for all. – Michael Newdow • There’s an enduring American compulsion to be on the side of the angels. Expediency alone has never been an adequate American reason for doing anything. When actions are judged, they go before the bar of God, where Mom and the Flag closely flank His presence. – Jonathan Raban • There’s one beneficial effect of going to Moscow. You come home waving the American flag with all your might. – Mary Tyler Moore • This flag .. is raised not without costs, .. without the costs of having struggled for many years, without the costs of having lost so many lives in order to have a free and sovereign and good Afghanistan. – Hamid Karzai • To secure respect to a neutral flag requires a naval force organized and ready to vindicate it from insult or aggression. – George Washington • To survive in peace and harmony, united and strong, we must have one people, one nation, one flag. – Pauline Hanson • Tonight the American flag floats from yonder hill or Molly Stark sleeps a widow. – John Stark • Tony Stewart — Broke out a new chassis at Pocono Raceway last June and raced to the checkered flag for his first victory of 2003; has finished among the top 10 in all but two of his 10 career starts here; Turn one is probably the easiest of the three, but you’ve got the challenge of having to downshift in the middle of the corner, .. You go down the backstretch and into the tunnel turn and it’s basically one lane. – Tony Stewart • Tree of Liberty: A tree set up by the people, hung with flags and devices, and crowned with a cap of liberty. The Americans of the United States planted poplars and other trees during the war of independence, “as symbols of growing freedom.” The Jacobins in Paris planted their first tree of liberty in 1790. The symbols used in France to decorate their trees of liberty were tricoloured ribbons, circles to indicate unity, triangles to signify equality, and a cap of liberty. Trees of liberty were planted by the Italians in the revolution of 1848. – E. Cobham Brewer • Under this flag may our youth find new inspiration for loyalty to Canada; for a patriotism based not on any mean or narrow nationalism, but on the deep and equal pride that all Canadians will feel for every part of this good land. – Lester B. Pearson • Unfortunately a Constitutional amendment that would have empowered Congress to make desecration of the United States flag illegal failed to pass by one vote. – Kenny Marchant • United States, your banner wears Two emblems–one of fame; Alas! the other that it bears Reminds us of your shame. Your banner’s constellation types White freedom with its stars, But what’s the meaning of the stripes? They mean your negroes’ scars. – Thomas Campbell • Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a red flag to a bu… was like putting something very annoying in front of someone who was annoyed by it. – Terry Pratchett • War is the spectacular and bloody projection of our everyday living. We precipitate war out of our daily lives; and without a transformation in ourselves, there are bound to be national and racial antagonisms, the childish quarreling over ideologies, the multiplication of soldiers, the saluting of flags, and all the many brutalities that go to create organized murder. – Jiddu Krishnamurti • We Americans are the most lavish and showiest and most luxury loving people on the earth; and at our masthead we fly one true and honest symbol, the gaudiest flag the world has ever seen. – Mark Twain • We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams. – Peter S. Beagle • We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being. – Gilbert K. Chesterton • We cannot allow the American flag to be shot at anywhere on earth if we are to retain our respect and prestige – Barry Goldwater • We considered ourselves Jordanian until the Jews returned to Jerusalem. Then all of the sudden we were Palestinians – they removed the star from the Jordanian flag and all at once we had a Palestinian flag. – Walid Shoebat • We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so, we dilute the freedom this cherished emblem represents. – William J. Brennan • We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together. We may differ in color, but not in sentiment. – Nathan Bedford Forrest • We have room in this country for but one flag, the Stars and Stripes! – Theodore Roosevelt • We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy. – Henry Miller • We identify the flag with almost everything we hold dear on earth, peace, security, liberty, our family, our friends, our home. . .But when we look at our flag and behold it emblazoned with all our rights we must remember that it is equally a symbol of our duties. Every glory that we associate with it is the result of duty done. – Calvin Coolidge • We join ourselves to no party that does not carry the flag and I keep step to the music of the Union. – Rufus Choate • Well, start waving and yelling, because it is the so-called Oxford comma and it is a lot more dangerous than its exclusive, ivory-tower moniker might suggest. There are people who embrace the Oxford comma and people who don’t, and I’ll just say this: never get between these people when drink has been taken. Oh, the Oxford comma. Here, in case you don’t know what it is yet, is the perennial example, as espoused by Harold Ross: “The flag is red, white, and blue.” So what do you think of it? Are you for or against it? Do you hover in between? – Lynne Truss • What does one plant who plants a tree? One plants the friend of sun and sky; One plants the flag of breezes free; The shaft of beauty towering high. – Henry Cuyler Bunner • What if the invasion forces will not leave our lands? What if the U.S. forces and others stay in our beloved lands? What if their companies and embassy headquarters will continue to exist with the American flags hoisted on them? Will you be silent? Will you overlook this? – Muqtada al Sadr • What I’m trying to do is to at least raise a flag to the blinding light of technology. – Godfrey Reggio • When a war ends, what does that look like exactly? do the cells in the body stop detonating themselves? does the orphanage stop screaming for its mother? when the sand in the desert has been melted down to glass and our reflection is not something we can stand to look at does the white flag make for a perfect blindfold? yesterday i was told a story about this little girl in Iraq, six-years-old, who cannot fall asleep because when she does she dreams of nothing but the day she watched her dog eat her neighbor’s corpse. if you told her war is over do you think she can sleep? – Andrea Gibson • When facism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag. – Sinclair Lewis • When fascism comes to the United States it will be wrapped in the American flag and will claim the name of 100-percent Americanism – Sinclair Lewis • When Freedom from her mountain height Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there. – Joseph Rodman Drake • When Freedom from her mountain-height Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there. She mingled with its gorgeous dyes The milky baldric of the skies, And striped its pure, celestial white With streakings of the morning light. Flag of the free heart’s hope and home! By angel hands to valour given! Thy stars have lit the welkin dome, And all thy hues were born in heaven. Forever float that standard sheet! Where breathes the foe but falls before us, With Freedom’s soil beneath our feet, And Freedom’s banner streaming o’er us? – Joseph Rodman Drake • When I see the American flag, I go, ‘Oh my God, you’re insulting me.’ – Janeane Garofalo • When I was in college there was a girls’ flag football league. The girls were extremely aggressive. – Lynn Swann • When somebody say no, it’s a red flag to a bull to me. – Duncan Roy • When the wheel was accepted as part of the national flag, it was surely implied that the spinning wheel would hum in every household. – Mahatma Gandhi • When you go to plant a flag on the visiting team’s field, it’s a form of taunting, .. What message are you sending when you spear it into the turf of your defeated opponent?. – Brad Davis • When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you’re happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot? – George Orwell • While the rest of the country waves the flag of Americana, we understand we are not part of that. We don’t owe America anything – America owes us. – Al Sharpton • Words are some of the most powerful and important things I know….Language is the tool of love and the weapon of hatred. It’s the bright red warning flag of danger–and the stone foundation of diplomacy and peace. – Ani DiFranco • Worrying that banning flag desecration would inhibit free speech reveals a misunderstanding of the flag’s fundamental nature. – Adrian Cronauer • Ye mariners of England! That guard our native seas; Whose flag has braved a thousand years, The battle and the breeze! – Thomas Campbell • Yes, I’m a patriotic person. For these people who disgrace the American way and burn our flag and do all of these things… I say, don’t live here and disgrace my country. Go live in the Middle East and see how you like it. – Payne Stewart • Yonder are the Hessians. They were bought for seven pounds and tenpence a man. Are you worth more? Prove it. Tonight the American flag floats from yonder hill or Molly Stark sleeps a widow! – John Stark • You are the generation that will reach the sea and hoist the flag of Palestine over Tel Aviv. – Yasser Arafat • You are the makers of the flag and it is well that you glory in the making. – Franklin Knight Lane • You cannot have companies where many of the largest ones lose money indefinitely without someone finally waving the white flag, and IBM is the most recent example of that. – Kevin B. Rollins • You don’t defend national sovereignty with flags, cheap election rhetoric, and advertising campaigns. – Stephen Harper • You have to eat before you train. Otherwise, that really intense training, after about 40 minutes you start to flag. – Hugh Jackman • You the devil in drag. You can burn your cross, Well, I’ll burn your flag. – Ice Cube • You’re a grand old flag! You’re a high-flying flag, And forever in peace may you wave. You’re the emblem of the land I love, The home of the free and the brave. Ev’ry heart beats true ‘Neath the Red, White and Blue,’ Where there’s never a boast or brag. But should auld acquaintance be forgot, Keep your eye on the grand old flag. – George M. Cohan

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Don't be Deceived by the Media’s Pro-Immigration Child Exploitation

American conservatives are crowing from the rooftops of Trump Towers. Their biggest foe, the mainstream media – the Prince of Darkness who masquerades as an angel of light, has been stripped of his horns and pitchfork. Lucifer has fallen from heaven into the shithole of Dante’s Inferno, and is being tormented by the angelic host of conservative radio commentators and Republican roosters cock-a-doodling at the cyclopean cock-up committed by TIME magazine.

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The fakestream media have broken Jeffrey Archer’s eleventh commandment: "Thou shall not get caught." TIME was caught with its pants down and its picture of a crying three-year-old Honduran girl exposed as fake news. The girl was real, the crying was real, the picture was real, but the context was faked, framed and photo-shopped.

TIME shamelessly featured its child pawn like child porn on the cover page of its July 2, 2018 issue. It shows the girl facing Donald Trump, who is looking down on the child with bemusement. TIME would like its readers to interpret the look on Trump’s face as callousness. A canny three-word caption completes the toxic cocktail of half-truth and digital demagoguery: Welcome to America.

The image is further inflated by a TIME human-interest story zooming in on Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer, John Moore, who sheds copious crocodile tears as he spins his tale of sanctimonious poppycock. Moore recounts photographing the child on the US-Mexican border as mother and child were trying to enter the US illegally and were apprehended by law enforcement.

"When the officer told the mother to put her child down for the body search, I could see this look in the little girl’s eyes," Moore tells TIME. "As soon as her feet touched the ground she began to scream." The Border Patrol is taking mother and child away in a van and Moore’s bleeding-heart explodes as if he is Mother Theresa. "All I wanted to do was pick her up. But I couldn’t," he recollects.

Am I sounding like a cynical son-of-a-bitch? To this day, I cannot forget what I saw when I was six – a child being separated from his parents. A man with a sack walked through the slums in Mahim, Mumbai. He stopped outside a hovel, picked up a child, threw him into the sack and walked away.

I froze, traumatized with terror, unable to cry or scream or call for help as I watched from the window of our first floor apartment. In India, children snatched from their parents are sold to gangs who cripple them and force them into beggary.

Since when does the Left care so much about keeping the family together?

To this day, I cannot forget what I saw later in life – a British working class grandmother who sat weeping through a service at the Old Royal Naval College Chapel, Greenwich, where I served as Chaplain. She accosted me at the door after the service and blubbered like a child about to break down.

She was holding pictures of three beautiful children. Her partner told me her story. Social Services (SS) had forcibly removed her grandchildren from her care. She was looking after her grandkids in lieu of her alcoholic daughter, but the SS wouldn’t let her even see the kids any longer. The SS were giving one child to a gay couple for adoption, despite grandma’s objections. We did our best to help her reconnect with her grandchildren, but the State had kidnapped them.

So when American’s leftwing media erupted into hyper-hysteria over Trump separating immigrant children from their parents and cruelly caging them in Nazi concentration camps and Japanese internment camps, my hermeneutic of suspicion went into overdrive.

"Since when does the Left care so much about keeping the family together?" I asked myself. After all, one of the primary goals of the Left is the destruction of the family. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels "usually wrote about the destruction, dissolution, and abolition of the family," observes historian Richard Weikart.

Marx fulminated against "the bourgeois claptrap about the family" and "the hallowed correlation of parent and child," both of which he found "disgusting". Charles Fourier, a utopian socialist proposed that children be separated from their parents and raised communally. Robert Owen, one of the most influential advocates of utopian socialism declared war on the family. In his commune, children after the age of three were removed from their parents for proper education.

Under Mao, children pulled from their parents. All parents were to eat in large mess halls while their children went into day nurseries. Bolshevik feminist Alexandra Kollontai was adamant that the "worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine," but "must remember that there are only our children" who would be wards of the state.

If you think this is history, think again. Prof Melissa Harris-Perry, who holds the Maya Angelou Presidential Chair at Wake Forest University, believes that children should be separated from their parents. Harris-Perry laments the lack of "a very collective notion" of our children. She wants us "to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities".

Since when does the Left care so much about keeping the family together? I asked myself again. There can be no more permanent separation of a child from his or her mother than killing the child in its mother’s womb. And what about the Left’s dogma of single-parenthood separating children from father or mother and depriving the child of its most fundamental human right to two parents?

Don’t be deluded into believing that the Left cares about children. They are using children as a battering ram against Trump – a socially acceptable form of child abuse, I thought, as the 'separation of immigrant children’ debate raged. But surely, they wouldn’t stoop to the gutter and use images of little children for their political agenda? Wouldn’t that be a socially acceptable form of child pornography?

My worst suspicions were confirmed when it was revealed that the images of immigrant children in metal cages were actually four years old and taken during the Obama administration. Gotcha! Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau was among the many to condemn the photos – until he realised they dated back to His Master’s Reign.

Then came the bombshell – the crying girl in the border picture on the cover of TIME was actually never separated from her mother! It was fake news. TIME took its own time to issue a correction, but chief editor Edward Felsenthal stood defiantly by the picture, saying that while agents may not have taken the child, the photograph captured the mood of the story.

I remembered how the mainstream media had abused the image of three-year-old Alan Kurdi – the Syrian boy tragically drowned while going from Turkey to Kos. The MSM couldn’t even give the little boy the dignity of getting his name right, and called him Aylan Kurdi. The family were trying to get to Canada and join their relatives in Vancouver. The media, activists and politicians fanned the flames of the picture and cried themselves hoarse demanding open borders.

Brendan O’Neill, writing in The Spectator, responded and termed the use of the child’s image "moral pornography". "It’s more like a snuff photo for progressives, dead-child porn, designed not to start a serious debate about migration in the 21st century but to elicit a self-satisfied feeling of sadness among Western observers," wrote O’Neill. "When it comes to producing moral porn for the right-on, it seems the normal rules of journalism – and civilization – can be suspended," he scathingly added.

They will exploit suffering, dying and dead children in a contemptible game of moral and emotional blackmail.

One of the most morally despicable stories of the media’s use of child porn is the case of Kevin Carter’s picture of a dying girl in the Sudan in March 1993. The girl, no more than five years old, had collapsed while crawling toward a UN feeding center. As Carter crouched to take her picture, a vulture landed nearby, awaiting her death.

Carter waited for 20 minutes, hoping the bird would spread its wings so he could capture a better shot. It did not, and after he took a few images, he shooed the bird away and watched the girl continue to struggle. TIME, the New York Times, the Washington Post and other newspapers emblazoned their pages with the picture.

Only later did people raise questions about the girl’s fate and about the "appropriateness, decency, vulgarity, and the tasteful function of photojournalism", writes Barbie Zelizer in her book About to Die: How News Images Move the Public. Why did Carter not help the girl or make certain the vulture was gone before he moved on? "Which is the true vulture?" asked one reader in a blistering indictment of the media.

Carter’s callousness cost him his life. Hounded by phone calls in the middle of the night criticizing him for not rescuing the girl, he killed himself in 1994.

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The mainstream media doesn’t give a damn about children. The Left doesn’t give a damn about the family. Their agenda is open borders and uncontrolled immigration. They will exploit suffering, dying, and dead children in a contemptible game of moral and emotional blackmail. Their ultimate goal is totalitarian control. For once a country is swamped by immigrants and Balkanized into warring ghettos –all warring with each other– people will turn to the supreme nanny-state for security and salvation.

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