Wednesday, August 14, 2024
1846 American naturalist Henry David Thoreau was jailed for refusing to pay taxes
1929 Jewish Agency for Palestine was formed
1945 Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh movement launched a coordinated uprising against French rule across Vietnam following the Japanese surrender
1945 V-J Day, the Empire of Japan surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, ending World War II
2018 Pennsylvania grand jury alleged 300 "predator priests" abused over 1000 children over 30 years and Catholic leaders covered it, up after 2-year investigation
2019 "The 1619 Project" produced by Nikole Hannah-Jones to examine the legacy of slavery in America was launched
In bed around 8:30 and up and out at 4 a.m.(!?!?) with aching hip, thigh, and knee. Lilly showed up at 5 to be let out.
Prednisone, day 95, 10 mg., day 2/28. I took the 10 mg. at 5 a.m., and my morning fistful of meds at 5:45 with a banana.
Revenge among the God-fearing. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khameini has publicly declared he "has a duty to seek revenge for [Ismail Haniyeh's] blood" because Haniyeh "was a guest of Iran" when he was killed by Israel. Netanyahu has told the Israeli people that "you must remember what Amalek has done to you. The Book of Samuel commands killing each and every Amalekite, men, women, children, even their animals. Vladimir Putin has vowed revenge against "the West" and Ukraine for Ukraine's incursion into Russia's Kursk Oblast. Khameini is a Shiite Muslim, Netanyahu a Jew, and Putin a cross-wearing, Russian Orthodox Christian. Deuteronomy 32:35: "‘Vengeance is mine and retribution; In due time their foot will slip. For the day of their disaster is near, And the impending things are hurrying to them.’" Romans 12:19: "Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written: “VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY,” says the Lord." Quran 42: 39-43: "“And those who, when tyranny strikes them, they defend themselves. And the retribution for an evil act is an evil one like it, but whoever pardons and makes reconciliation - his reward is [due] from Allah." Matthew 18:22: "Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not just seven times, but seventy-seven times!"
Dear God, save us from your followers!
My daily death watch. Each morning I check the headlines and Morning Joe to see if Iran and Hezbollah have launched an assault on Israel. I try to imagine what life must be like in Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem, and on Israeli military bases. I think of the effect of high explosives on the bodies of the humans killed by them. I remember my father telling me, one morning at his kitchen table, that on Iwo Jima it wasn't getting shot that terrified or worried the Marines, it was getting dismembered by a mortar, a rocket, a mine, or an artillery shell. Body parts lay all over the landing beaches and inland: arms and shoulders, heads, legs. Body parts lay all over the school compound where Palestinians were praying when a Boeing GBU-39 250-pound bomb blew them apart and burned them. I think back to "Hell Night" at the Basic School in Quantico and wonder why wives were invited. But mostly I think of the families in Israel, Gaza, Iran, and Lebanon, never knowing when they may be blown apart by "incoming," never knowing when they put their children to bed each night (if they have beds), what may await them during the night. Will the children be alive in the morning, will the parents be alive, will they all be buried under rubble? Many Ukrainians live with similar fears, though not as intensely as the Israelis, Gazans, Iranians, and Lebanese.
American Respect for the Rule of Law, except at Guantanamo Bay. “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”― Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War.
The military judge in the case involving the 9/11 defendants Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two others accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks has ordered the lawyers in the case to submit briefs on whether DOD secretary Lloyd Autin on August 2nd violated the law in reversing the plea deal worked out between the lawyers. Austin's purpose in scuttling the deal was clearly to keep the death penalty on the table which raises a substantial issue of unlawful command influence in the case, i.e., the chain-of-command superior of the trial judge, military attorneys, and court/commission members letting these subordinates know the result he wanted and presumably would approve. In other words, has he rigged the outcome? Resolving that question could take years and end up at the Supreme Court, leading to the hope of some that the defendants will die of old age in custody and moot the legal issues. But the Guantanamo cases illustrate our government's selective respect for the Rule of Law. The prisoners are tried by military commissions rather than in criminal courts - perhaps illegally. The defendants were interrogated under torture by agents of our government - illegally. They were captured by "rendition" overseas - illegally. They were kept secretly in prisons in foreign countries - illegally. Did Austin have the legal authority under the rules governing the Guantanamo military commissions to step in and reverse the plea deals already approved by his appointee?
This respect for the Rule of Law that we hear so much about is a canard. Our government respects the Rule of Law when it is convenient to do so, i.e., when the Rule of Law will produce a result that the government desires. For most of us, there are two most fundamental Rules of Law. First, the Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules. Second, Thucydides: The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. In America, "the strong" = the rich. Consider Donald Trump and all that he has gotten away with over the years, including the years of his presidency and thereafter. He has spent tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions of dollars on very talented lawyers to ensure that he is not subject to the Rule of Law while he lives in luxury at Mar-a-Lago, Bedminster, and the Trump Tower. Consider all those pardoned by Trump. Consider the plight of the American citizen who, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, made a median income $59,288 in the first quarter of 2024. That American also had a median net worth of about $122,000. Broken down by race, the median net worths are: White, $189,100; Hispanic, $36,050, and Black, non-Hispanic, $24,100. For many, the net worth figure includes the illiquid equity in a home. How many Americans can afford to hire a lawyer, much less teams of lawyers? One of the reasons I was never comfortable in the private practice of law was the realization that my family couldn't afford to hire my services. If they were to receive services from my firm, they would be charity cases, or pro bono publico, as we lawyers put it. Most Americans can't afford to hire a lawyer unless they have suffered a significant personal injury which will support a contingent fee arrangement with a PI firm. Usually, the PI firm finances the case out of its own financial resources. "One call, that's all!" If you need legal help with a consumer problem or an eviction, good luck. The Family Court judge who taught Domestic Relations at MULS used to tell his students that the only people who could afford to get divorced are the very rich and the very poor. For those in-between, the real costs are devastating.
On the national and international level, what does the Rule of Law, or the 'Rules-based international order' mean? What did it mean when we invaded Iraq in 2003? What does it mean to our 'great ally Israel' in the West Bank and Gaza? And what does it mean in Guantanamo? What did it mean to Ronald Reagan in 1983 when he invaded and occupied Grenada? Pass me the basin, please!
The first item on my anniversaries list today is Henry David Thoreau's going to jail for refusing to pay taxes to support the government. In his anarchistic essay On Civil Disobedience, published in 1849, he wrote:
[W]hen a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is that fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.
The essay is not long but it is painful to read because his points are so clearly made, especially the point that we are complicit in the evil acts of our government. It's impossible to deny my own lifelong complicities.
There are thousands who are _in opinion_ opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing; who even postpone the question of freedom to the question of free trade, and quietly read the prices-current along with the latest advices from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep over them both. What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot today? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for other to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give up only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and Godspeed, to the right, as it goes by them. . .
I meet this American government, or its representative, the State government, directly, and face to face, once a year--no more--in the person of its tax-gatherer; this is the only mode in which a man situated as I am necessarily meets it . . . (He refused to pay taxes to the unjust government and was tossed in jail leading him to write:) Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place today, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less despondent spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. It is there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race should find them; on that separate but more free and honorable ground, where the State places those who are not _with_ her, but _against_ her--the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.
I look back on my formal education and wonder why it was that I was never assigned On Civil Disobedience, nor was I assigned any reading nor did I participate in any discussion of the political philosophy underlying democracy, the idea of 'majority rule,' or the problem of 'the tyranny of the majority' and minority rights. I remember no lecture of discussion of anarchism or fascism nor much about democratic socialism versus communism. My education, so good in some ways, was grossly inadequate in others, especially in fostering critical thinking about the society and culture I grew up in, America in its triumphalist, post-WWII, capitalist, militarist, sole superpower role. We learned something of George III's despotism and the unfairness of taxation without representation and suchlike, but we learned little of political philosophy. We learned next to nothing about how the very stingy 'democracy' created by the Founding Fathers meant little to the Founding Mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, and nieces and meant nothing to the 1/6th of the population who were held in chattel slavery. It is no surprise that during the Revolutionary War, many escaped slaves fought for the English against their American enslavers. England abolished slavery in 1933 whereas in America it required the Civil War.
As I so often do, I have drifted far from my opening thoughts about the Guantanamo prisoners and the Rule of Law but the meandering thoughts are at least related and center on my belief in the centrality of the 2 Big Rules: He who has the gold makes the rule and the strong do (get away with) what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
More anniversaries thoughts. First, the Jewish Agency for Palestine is the largest Jewish non-profit in the world, dedicated to bringing Jews from the diaspora to Palestine and since 1948, to Israel. Lest we doubt that Israel is the product of Zionism's settler colonialism.
Second, the U.S. could have established a peaceful, non-military relationship with Ho and his people. Instead, we sided with the French colonizers. We know the sorry though not surprising result. We're fools.
Third, V-J Day is my earliest memory: being pulled in a red wagon on Emerald Avenue in an impromptu parade celebrating the end of the war. I was 10 days shy of my 4th birthday and a little hero because my father was in the Marines and had fought on Iwo Jima. My second earliest memory is worse.
Fourth, Pennsylvania's predator priests and some of their victims. We'll never know how much sex abuse, pedophiliac and otherwise, or how many victims of the Church's sins there have been. Of course, the crimes are not restricted to the Catholic religion.
Lastly, the 1619 Project. Here again, we will never come close to understanding the extent of human suffering was caused, and is still being experienced, as a result of chattel slavery and White Supremacy. Thank you, Nikole Hannah-Jones and the New York Times.
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