10/9/24

 Wednesday, October 9, 2024

1845 Anglican priest John Henry Newman left the Anglican Curch of England and was received into the Roman Catholic Church

1962 Battles to decide Algeria-Morocco boundary killed130

1991 George H. W. Bush declaresd "total confidence" in nominee Clarence Thomas

2019 Turkey launched airstrikes on Kurdish forces in Northern Syria after US President Donald Trump announced decision to pull back US forces

In bed at 9, awake at 6:30 after a couple of faux-awakes, and up at 6:40.

Prednisone, day 148, 7.5 mg., day 27/28.  Prednisone at 6:45.  Morning meds later in the morning.

Busy day.  It started with a load of laundry early in the morning, followed by making 2 small loaves of banana bread in the early afternoon, then putting together the cabbage borscht.  It looks like a used too large a cabbage for this recipe, which I note calls for a Savoy cabbage, not a green cabbage which is what I always use.  I never compared them, but I'm guessing Savoy cabbages are smaller than green cabbages.  I threw in an second 14.5 oz. can of Red Gold diced tomatores and half a can of water and it still looks too thick.  I also added two capfuls of sseasoned rice vinegar in additon to the joice of a lemon.  If the mix is too sour I'll try adding some more sugr or sugar substitute.   Fingers crossed. 

Dr. Laura Swoboda, Mequon, Gaza.  I watched a YouTube interview of Laura Swoboda of Mequon in which she described her experiences providing wound care at a hospital in Rafah, Gaza during the Israeli assault on the city.  It was sobering, stunning, heartbreaking.  Among the many thoughts I had paying attention to the horrors she described was my wondering what it was like in Vietnam where our aircraft dropped high explosives and incendiary bombs, and where our long-range artillery sent lethal explosives.  In Rafah, there was a hospital and trained medical personnel to provide some level of treatment, however inadequate.  In the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam, there were no medical facilities or personnel to provide help.  The people on the receiving end of those bombs and artillery shells may have included VC and/or NVA combatants but also included non-combatants, children, old men and women.  The thought was that these non-combatants provided support for the VA and NVA and thus were appropriate targets for our bombs and artillery, but the reality was that most of us just didn't care who was being killed, burned, dismembered, or poisoned by our weapons.  It wasn't that we wished or intended great bodily harm on the people on the ground, but rather that we were indifferent, i.e., we just didn't care.  The same thing is true in Gaza though in the case of Gaza, there is every reason to believe that the suffering of the Palestinian civilians is the result of actual malice toward them rather than 'mere' indifference.  With all the killing that has gone on for years - Palestinians killing Israeli Jews and vice versa - there must be some reservoir of mutual hatred in the two communities, especially after October 7th.

I was led to the YouTube interview of Dr. Swoboda by an op-ed in this morning's NYTimes by Dr. Feroze Sidhwa entitled "65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza."  Dr. Swoboda was one of the 65.  Excerpts from the NYTimes piece:

What American physicians and nurses saw firsthand in Gaza should inform the United States’ Gaza policy. The lethal combination of what Human Rights Watch describes as indiscriminate military violence, what Oxfam calls the deliberate restriction of food and humanitarian aid, near-universal displacement of the population, and destruction of the health care system is having the calamitous effect that many Holocaust and genocide scholars warned of nearly a year ago.

American law and policy have long forbidden the transfer of weapons to nations and military units engaged in gross violations of human rights, especially — as a 2023 update to the United States Conventional Arms Transfer Policy makes clear — when those violations are directed at children. It is difficult to conceive of more severe violations of this standard than young children regularly being shot in the head, newborns and their mothers starving because of blocked food aid and demolished water infrastructure, and a health care system that has been destroyed.

For the past 12 months, it has been well within our government’s power to stop the flow of U.S. military aid to Israel. Instead, we fueled the fire at almost every opportunity, shipping over 50,000 tons of military equipment, ammunition and weaponry since the start of the war, according to a late-August update from the Israeli Defense Ministry. This amounts to an average of more than 10 transport planes and two cargo ships of arms per week.

Now, after more than a year of devastation, estimates of Palestinian deaths range from the tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands. The International Rescue Committee describes Gaza as “the most dangerous place in the world to be an aid worker, as well as the most dangerous place to be a civilian.” UNICEF rates Gaza as “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child.” Oxfam reports that in Al-Mawasi, the area Israel has designated as the humanitarian safe zone in Gaza, there is one toilet for every 4,130 people. At least 1,470 Israelis have been killed in the Oct. 7 attack and the following war. Half of the hostages who remain in Gaza are reportedly dead. And, while American officials blame Hamas for prolonging the war and hindering negotiations, Israeli news outlets consistently report that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sabotaged cease-fire talks with both Hamas and Hezbollah while recklessly escalating the conflict instead of reaching an agreement that could achieve many of Israel’s stated war aims, including the release of Israeli hostages.

Was this ghastly outcome for the Palestinians and Israel worth corrupting the rule of law in our own society? Certainly, the Biden-Harris administration can’t say they didn't know what they were doing. Eight sitting U.S. senators, 88 members of the House of Representatives, 185 lawyers (including dozens working in the administration), and 12 civil servants (who resigned in protest of our Gaza policy) have told the administration that continuing to arm Israel is illegal under U.S. law. In September, ProPublica reported the lengths to which the Biden-Harris administration went to avoid complying with the laws that define clear consequences for countries, like Israel, that are blocking humanitarian aid. In these pages, the journalist and commentator Peter Beinart recently suggested that Vice President Kamala Harris can “signal a clear break” with the current administration’s disastrous Gaza policy during her run for president. How? “Ms. Harris should simply say that she’ll enforce the law.”

Together, Israel and the United States are turning Gaza into a howling wilderness. But it’s never too late to change course: We could stop Israel’s use of our weapons, ammunition, jet fuel, intelligence and logistical support by withholding them, and we could staunch the flow of weapons to all sides by announcing an international arms embargo on Israel and all Palestinian and Lebanese armed groups. Enforcing American laws that require halting military aid to Israel would be a move with widespread support: humanitarian organizations, dozens of members of Congress, a majority of Americans and an overwhelming majority of U.N. member states all agree.

The horror must end. The United States must stop arming Israel.

And afterward, we Americans need to take a long, hard look at ourselves.

Amen and amen.

 Cheri brought us a tether for Lilly this afternoon.  The idea is to fasten it to the locust treee in the front yard and tie Lilly to it to keep her from wandering on to the street.   Geri tried it and Lilly was greatly confused - no surprise.

Anniversaries.  Newman's conversion was considered quite a coup for the Catholics.  For 'High Church' Anglicans, it was like a prominent Catholic theologian leaving the Church to become a Pentacostal or Southern Baptist.

That 130 human beings lost their lives in a dispute over boundary lines just reminds me of how stupid most wars are.  The stakes were different in the two World Wars and in various other wars, but they were all stupid, at least in terms of the parties who initiated the military belligerency.  Who remembers today what World War I was about?  Somewhere between 9 million 11 military men were killed and for what?  What were they fighting for?  What were the real stakes in Vietnam?  In Iraq?  In Afghanistan after al Quaeda was chased into Pakistan?

Bush Senior and Bush Junior were said to be "moderate" Republicans.  Senior gave us Clarence Thomas and Junior gave us the disastrous invasion of Iraq, torture of captives, 'black site' prisons in foreign lands, etc.  Never trust a Republican office holder.

The Kurds were our allies, our partners, in fighting the Islamic State in Syria.  Trump betrayed them, threw them under the bus, and many were killed by the Turks.  Shameful.