10/17/24

 Thursday, October 17, 2024

1933 Albert Einstein arrived in the US as a refugee from Nazi Germany

1973 OPEC oil ministers used oil as an economic weapon in the Arab-Israeli War, mandating a cut in exports and recommending an embargo against unfriendly states

1979 Mother Teresa of Calcutta was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

1979 US President Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating the Department of Education

Lilly was in bed at 9, awake at 3:30, and up at 4:00. She was sleeping next to her mattress on the floor in the TV room, and I woke her up by sneezing at 4:15, after which she moved to the living room without asking me to let her out.  

Prednisone, day 156, 5 mg., day 7.   Prednisone at 5 a.m.  My shoulders seem to be OK this morning.

This morning's headlines on Israel and the U.S. in the WaPo are "American B-2 bombers target Houthi sites in Yemen; U.S. sees aid enter northern Gaza," "Israeli attacks on aid convoys in Gaza persist, U.N. says." and "Israel complicates election’s final stretch, an issue Democrats hoped would fade."   I wonder again, as I have so long, what are the real reasons the United States is so tied to the state of Israel.  Only a fool would buy the propaganda that it is because Israel is a fellow democracy.  First, America favors other democracies only when it is in America's own economic interests to do so.  America is very comfortable supporting autocracies and even military dictatorships when doing so favors America's corporate, capitalist, and economic interests, witness our history with, e.g., Egypt, Chile, and all the countries in the Caribbean, Central, and South America.  It is a question of whether Vietnam fit this pattern or whether that set of policies was simply the stupid and tragic results of LBJ's Texas machismo and Robert McNamara's MBA hubris.  Second, Israel is a democracy only for Israeli Jews, not for the Arab Palestinians living in the occupied territories.

B-2 bombers cost approximately $1,000,000,000 each and can carry 20 tons of bombs including 'bunker-busting' bombs such as were used in the attack on the Houthis.  I do not argue that the Houthis do not deserve the bombing because they attack commercial and naval shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden but note that it is what has been happening in Gaza for the past year that occasioned the attacks on the commercial and naval shipping.   

The warning letter from DOD Secretary Austin and Secretary of State Blinken comes about a year too late.  Does Joe Biden think this letter gets him and the U.S. off the hook for complicity in the starvation and other group punishments the Israeli government has inflicted on the Gazans?  From the WaPo article:

This account of the Biden administration’s handling of ballooning violence in the Middle East during the election’s final weeks is based on interviews with more than two dozen officials from the United States, Europe and the Middle East as well as Harris’s campaign. The dynamic they conveyed is of an improvisational White House that has followed Israel’s lead into a widening regional war while only marginally influencing Netanyahu’s actions. Some spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss their observations.

The war’s spread has alarmed the Harris campaign, which sees the images of dead civilians as complicating her path to victory in key swing states with sizable Arab American and Muslim populations. ' ' '  Look at our track record of intervening to get humanitarian assistance in,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters Tuesday. “When we have seen the results not measure up to the standards that we expect, we have intervened with them.”

But according to the administration’s own assessment, the amount of aid delivered to Gaza has dropped by more than 50 percent since the spring. 

If Harris loses Michigan, and perhaps other states, because of the U.S. complicity in tens of thousands of dead Palestinians and almost 2 million displaced and starving Palestinians, the blame will lie primarily at the feet of Joe Biden.  Joe Biden's legacy of saving the nation and the world from a second Trump term will be permanently overshadowed by his legacy of delivering a second Trump term.  "Don't underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up." B. Obama.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has agreed to pay $880 million to settle more than 1,300 claims of childhood sexual abuse.  The settlement resolves 1353 claims against the archdiocese over many years.  The settlement demonstrates that the archdiocese itself enabled the abusers and perpetuated the harm to the victims.  [Archbishop José H.] Gomez said that funding for the settlement will come from “reserves, investments, and loans, along with other Archdiocesan assets,” and not from donations."  Los Angeles is the largest archdiocese in the U.S. and this settlement reveals, yet again, the sinfulness and corruption of the Church and its immense wealth.  I'm reminded that in dioceses across the entire nation, including Milwaukee and Chicago, bishops and archbishops, and cardinals "circled the wagons" by protecting the Church and its wealth when cases of sexual and other abuse of children and adults by diocesan priests and members of religious orders came to their attention.  In 2016, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee agreed to pay $21 million to hundreds of claimants.  Just this month, a federal judge denied a motion by Wisconsin Attorney General Kaul for access to the bankruptcy court's sealed file containing information about the victims.  As I've written before in this journal and in my memoir, the "One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church" is a transnational feudal organization, a superstate, with the Pope as its divine right king and bishops his vassals. It is just as subject to sinfulness, crime, and corruption as any other human power structure. 

In 2007, the same archdiocese in Los Angeles settled sexual abuse lawsuits involving more than 500 alleged victims for $660 million — the largest sexual abuse settlement by a diocese until this week. The new settlement brings the cumulative payout from the archdiocese to more than $1.5 billion.  The situation in California received renewed attention after the state passed a 2019 law that opened a three-year window in which cases were exempted from age limits and allowed alleged victims of sexual abuse to sue up to the age of 40. That window closed at the end of 2022. More than 3,000 lawsuits were filed against the Catholic Church in the state during the window. Facing an influx of suits, the dioceses of Oakland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Rosa, and San Diego filed for bankruptcy.  I think of the trip that Geri and I took to Santa Rosa in 2003 to interview for a job as communications director for that diocese where the bishop himself had been involved in a sex scandal with one of his deacons.  How fortunate that I withdrew my application.