Thursday, June 6, 2024
1944, D-Day
1958, Charles de Gaulle says Algeria will always be France's
1966, James Meredith was wounded by a White sniper
1977, WaPo reported the US had developed a neutron bomb
Prednisone, day 25., day 3 at 20 mg. I took my 20 mg. pill with an apple sometime after 5.
Living in Hell. There has been increasing attention on Trump's threats and promises of retaliation against his adversaries once he regains power in November. Trump's threats are supplemented by those of many other Republicans, including Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, urging Republican district attorneys and attorneys general to start indicting, arresting, and prosecuting Democrats.
Prisoner abuse in Wisconsin and Israel, Waupun, and Sde Teiman. In JSOnline, there is a story about the former warden of the maximum security prison in Waupun and 8 others charged in the deaths of 2 prisoners. In both the WaPo and the NYTimes, we read reports of "unimaginable abuses" of Gazan prisoners at an Israeli detention center in the Negev Desert where Palestinians are kept, without charges, in "administrative detention." Israel's Unlawful Combatants Act, with its post-October 7 wartime amendments authorizes detainees to be held incommunicado for months before a judge reviews their case or they are given access to a lawyer. Literally, thousands of Palestinians have been incarcerated under this law. At Sde Teiman and other detention sites:
Former Gazan detainees told The Washington Post in January that theywere beaten, denied medical care and made to kneel handcuffed and blindfolded for days on end at secret Israeli detention sites. Last month, a CNN investigation into Sde Teiman found the camp was divided into two parts: enclosed areas housing groups of shackled detainees — some of whom were handcuffed so tightly they had to have body parts surgically removed — and a field hospital, where patients in blindfolds and diapers were strapped to beds and force-fed through straws.
“Mounting testimonies have exposed the unimaginable abuses at Sde Teiman — surgeries without anesthesia, prolonged restraint in agonizing positions leading to amputation, blindfolding for days even during medical treatment and toilet use, detainees forced into diapers, severe beatings and torture,” ACRI said in its statement to the court.
It is a scandal that there is so little reported by either the American government or by American news media about Israeli official persecution of Palestinians and the gross absence of due process rights for Palestinians in Israel's civilian and military courts. A small part of this is due to the conditions of secrecy imposed by the Israeli authorities, who are very good at keeping reporters away from sights the Israelis don't wish to be publicly seen. But most of the blame lies with the American government and corporate news establishment who either don't want to call attention to Israel's long history of human rights abuses or are afraid to because of the Israel Lobby. ever vigilant and ever threatening, viewing every criticism of Israel as an existential threat to the Jewish State. After October 7, we Americans, or at least our government and our media, are inextricably linked with the depredations and human rights abuses of Israel's right-wing government and military. Most of the rest of the world sees clearly what we don't see, refuse to see, or don't care about - our hypocrisy. I remember Abu Ghraib.
The Waupun story here in Wisconsin reminds us that prisoner abuse and neglect is a worldwide challenge. I'm reminded of the infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment in which student "guards" imposed increasingly brutal punishment on student "prisoners." The increasing brutality was attributed to the de-individualization of all the participants, guards and prisoners alike, and the dehumanization brought on by the prison environment. The study was funded by the US Office of Naval Research because the Navy and the Marines wanted to investigate conflict between military prisoners and guards. Marine Corps brigs have a particularly nasty history and reputation, probably not surprising considering the nasty history of its boot camps.
Today's anniversaries remind me first of Europe's evil history as a collection of colonizing, imperial countries that, while purporting to be "civilized," "advanced," and "Christian," imposed unquantifiable suffering on weaker peoples. France's war in Algeria is as good an example as any. After France suffered an injury to its national ego at Dien Bien Phu and Geneva in 1954, the haughty Charles de Gaulle led the French effort to subdue and oppress the Algerians lest France cease to be an empire, a colonial power. He was the French version of Winston Churchill, a racist imperialist. I think of course of how the United States stepped right into France's place in Vietnam. Africa has been called "the Dark Continent." That title ought to belong to Western Europe, with its history of depredation and plunder. I had just finished my junior year at Leo High School when DeGaulle told the world Algeria belonged to imperial France. Little did I anticipate that Ho Chi Minh's defeat of the French 4 years earlier would end up with me in "French" Indochina in 1965.
The attempted assassination of civil rights leader James Meredith occurred 4 days before I flew from Okinawa back to the States. It was a vivid reminder of the world I was returning to after 'fighting for freedom and democracy' in Vietnam - not! White racism remained America's original and besetting sin. It still is. When Meredith, an Air Force veteran, was the first African-American to attend Ole Miss' in 1962, it led to a deadly White riot and the deployment of more than 30,000 federalized troops by President Kennedy.
The news about the neutron bomb in 1977 reminds me of our species and our nation's never-ending quest for more powerful, more lethal weapons with which to kill people and destroy stuff. The big selling point of the neutron bomb was its enhanced ability to kill human beings with radiation while minimizing damage to surrounding structures and objects. Wikipedia points out that "Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory director Harold Brown and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev both described neutron bombs as a "capitalist bomb" because it was designed to destroy people while preserving property." H. L. Menchen: "Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under."
I was 2 years, 9 months, and 13 days old on D-Day. My mother was 6 and a half months pregnant with my sister Kitty. My father had been drafted in February of 1944. My Uncle Jim was in the Navy on the Pacific coast. Uncle Bud was stationed at the Manhattan Project in New Mexico. Uncle "Bim" was in the Army Air Corps in Europe. D-Day brought hope to all that the war in Europe would come to an end with a victory for the Allies and so it did, though it required another 10 months of deatn and destruction. The war in the Pacific, where my father was, would require another 4 months. The D-Day invasion became the iconic symbol of the European war, the flag-raising on Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi the symbol of the war in the Pacific. I wrote rather extensively of my father's PTSD after the war in my memoir, and also in some of my daily jourmals. I think of the millions, indeed hundreds of millions of human beings who were affected by World War II, not only military but also civilian. I think how my father's PTSD affected my sister and me throughout our lives and think of the millions of other people all over the world very much like us. And I think of how, as a species, we are incapable of not warring on one another. I think of Ukraine and Gaza. I think of Randall Jarrell's Eighth Air Force
If, in an odd angle of the hutment,
A puppy laps the water from a can
Of flowers, and the drunk sergeant shaving
Whistles O Paradiso!--shall I say that man
Is not as men have said: a wolf to man?
The other murderers troop in yawning;
Three of them play Pitch, one sleeps, and one
Lies counting missions, lies there sweating
Till even his heart beats: One; One; One.
O murderers! . . . Still, this is how it's done:
This is a war . . . But since these play, before they die,
Like puppies with their puppy; since, a man,
I did as these have done, but did not die--
I will content the people as I can
And give up these to them: Behold the man!
I have suffered, in a dream, because of him,
Many things; for this last saviour, man,
I have lied as I lie now. But what is lying?
Men wash their hands, in blood, as best they can:
I find no fault in this just man.
The most powerful words in the poem, words describing himself and his comrades: O murderers! Words that describe all the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines engaged in the great killing competition. Words describing me and my fellow Marines in the TACC in DaNang, casually keeping tranck of each missiion launched from the air field, and of the lethal ordnance carried by the aircraft. O murderers!
Matthew 27:19. While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him."Have nothing to do with that innocent man, for today I have suffered a great deal because of a dream about him."
Gospel of John, ch. 19: . . . So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, Behold the man! . . . I find no guilt in him. . . WE HAVE NO KING BUT CAESAR! So he deliverd him over to them to be crucified.
Matthew 27: 24-25. Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere and a riot was developing. So he se t for a bowl of water and washed his hamds in front of the crowd. "I am innocent of this man's bloo. The responsibility is yours. All the people answered: His blood is on un and on our children."
What Did You Learn in School Today? Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
. . . .
I learned that war is not so bad
I learned of the great ones we have had
We fought in Germany and in France
And someday I may get my chance
That's what I learned in school today,
That's what I learned in school.
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