Friday, January 10, 2025
D+66
49 BC Julius Caesar defied the Roman Senate and crossed the Rubicon, uttering "Alea iacta est" (the die is cast), signaling the start of civil war and his appointment as Roman dictator for life
1949 1st Jewish family show "Goldbergs" premieres on CBS
1949 RCA introduced the 45 RPM record
1966 The Georgia House of Representatives voted 184-12 to deny Julian Bond his seat as a result of his opposition to the Vietnam War
1967 PBS (National Educational TV) began as a 70-station network
1990 China lifted martial law, imposed after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989
1994 Trial of Lorena Bobbitt who cut off her husband's penis, began
1994 Ukraine said it would give up the world's 3rd largest nuclear arsenal
1999 "The Sopranos", starring James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano, debuted on HBO
2005 A mudslide occurred in La Conchita, California, killing 10 people, injuring many more, and closing Highway 101, the main coastal corridor between San Francisco and Los Angeles, for 10 days
2018 Jeff Bezos becomes the second man worth over $100 billion as his wealth hits $106 billion due to a rise in Amazon's share price
In bed at 9:50, awake and up at 4:50, from a dream of helping Mike and Deirdre McChrystal move into Don Jones's flat.
Prednisone, day 241, 10 mg. & 5 mg., day 54/3. 5 mg., at 5:10. I felt some slight pain and tightness in my chest again, 2nd time recently. My shoulders continue to be painful and sore in the morning. I followed the morning prednisone with the last of the soda bread and then some of the borscht, before I added lemon juice (I need to get a couple of lemons at Sendik's this morning), sugar or a substitute, dill weed, and some salt It's good, but bland. Weighted heated eye mask, 40 seconds, at 9:10. Other meds at 9:15. Trulicity injection at 10:00. Eye mask again at 11:30 and 2.5 mg of prednisone at 4:40 p.m.
Hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children are being separated from their families and placed in boarding schools by the Chinese government. They are being educated mostly in Mandarin and indoctrinated with official Chinese values of loyalty and patriotism. For China’s leader, Xi Jinping, the boarding schools are crucial to absorbing Tibetans into a nation united around the Communist Party.
Tibetan rights activists, as well as experts working for the United Nations, have said that the party is systematically separating Tibetan children from their families to erase Tibetan identity and to deepen China’s control of a people who historically resisted Beijing’s rule. They have estimated that around three-quarters of Tibetan students age 6 and older — and others even younger — are in residential schools that teach largely in Mandarin, replacing the Tibetan language, culture and Buddhist beliefs that the children once absorbed at home and in village schools.
In the far western region of Xinjiang, children of the Muslim Uyghur ethnic group have also been sent to residential schools in large numbers.
[O]fficial websites also promote instructions from Mr. Xi on minority education, arguing that youth in ethnic minority regions were at risk of having “erroneous” ideas about religion, history and ethnic relations.
The Chinese Communist Party perhaps learned this practice from the United States and Canada, whose governments did much the same thing with the children of conquered North American Indigenous Peoples, often with the assistance of Christian, especially Catholic, religious organizations. This is not entirely unlike Adolph Hitler drawing inspiration for Nazi Germany's treatment of despised and feared minorities, especially Jews, from the United States' treatment of Blacks and Native Americans.
The NYTimes story treats what the Chinese are doing with Tibetan and Uyghur children as terrible, and so it is insofar as it involves the State involuntarily separating children from their parents and other family members. But other than that fascistic element, the Chinese are using schools to socialize children subject to their jurisdiction, much as we do in America with our public schools and religious groups do with their religious schools. We teach our children that White Supremacy and capitalism have been good things. Our teachers and textbooks don't do so expressly but rather by treating Columbus's discovery of America as an event worthy of celebration. The same goes for the English settlements in Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, and the Dutch in New York. We celebrate Jefferson's purchase of the Louisiana Territory without inquiring what right France had to sell it and Jefferson had to buy it. Ditto the Northwest Territory acquired from England in the 1783 Treaty of Paris. Ditto the acquisition of lands by war with Mexico and "Manifest Destiny." In my schooling, the chattel enslavement of African Blacks by White landowners was not morally defended, but nor was it addressed realistically in terms of how the Black slaves were treated by their White masters. Rather, we grew up with images from Gone With the Wind, Huckleberry Finn, and Uncle Remus. I try in vain to think of when and where I learned of my own country acting badly or selfishly, purely for the benefit of wealthy influencers, to the deadly detriment of other nations or peoples. America was always the good guy, those we opposed and hurt were always the bad guys, cowboys and Indians. But see Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket.
I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General [in the US. Marine Corps.] And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscleman for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long... Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents.
A few profit - and the many pay.
What did we learn of Smedley Butler's realities in school? Nothing.
Socialization, which is what the Chinese are doing with and to the Tibetan children is a process of learning and internalizing the norms and ideologies of a society. In Catholic schools we were religiously indoctrinated, our heads filled with tribal teachings about God and Man and Sin and Eternal Punishment. We may reject those teachings in our later lives, but there is much truth in the saying "You can take the boy out of the Church, but you can't take the Church out of the boy." Or, as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., put it"
We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were early implanted in his imagination; no matter how utterly his reason may reject them, he will still feel as the famous woman did about ghosts, Je n'y crois pas, mais je les crains,—"I don't believe in them, but I am afraid of them, nevertheless".
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Jpjn 1:1.
Before we get too worked up about the Chinese and the Tibetans and the Uyghurs, we ought to reflect on our own history. Ditto Russia's invasion of Ukraine. We ought to remember the Monroe Doctrine and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
My Borscht. I went up to Sendik's a bought a couple of lemons and some dill weed to add to the borscht, along with some sugar. What a difference. Delicious. I used the juice of 2 lemons rather than 1 lemon as called for in my recipe. I also used about half of the dill weed called for in the recipe. The best borscht I've made, more like Sy's at his little shop at 15th and Wells.
Some anniversary thoughts. First, has America crossed its own Rubicon by returning Trump to the Oval Office?
Second, l'yoo hoo, Mrs. Goldberg." This series started only 4 years after the end of the Holocaust, but as the Holocaust was beginning, we refused to open immigration to fleeing European Jews.
Third, ah, those .45 PRM records. How I loved them. I was 7 years old when they were introduced but became a regular purchaser in my teens. Elvis, Jimmy Rodgers, the Everly Brothers, Brenda Lee, . . .
Fourth, while I was in Danang, RVN, thinking along with my work friends that this war was not going to end well and wanting to get out and back to Japan, the racist House of Representatives in Atlanta, Georgia, voted to keep the courageous and wise Jullian Bond from taking the legislative seat to which he had been elected by his constituents because of his righteous opposition to the war. Pathetic.
Fifth, 1967 was a terrible year for the country but a bright spot was the advent of PBS, still the only broadcast network that we regularly watch and contribute to. Sesame Street, the Electric Company, Masterpiece Theater. We can be assured that Trump/Musk will do everything they can to cut its funding.
Sixth, the Tiananmen Square protests were enough to get China to impose martial law. What will it take to get Trump to do the same here? Do we doubt he is just waiting for the first good opportunity?
Seventh, Loreena Bobbitt loped off her husband's dick. So symbolic. Undoubtedly admired by many women. Men everywhere shuddered.
Eighth, mustn't we wonder whether Putin would have invaded if Ukraine had held on to its WMDs?
Ninth, "The Sopranos" started a period of great TV series, including "The Wire<" "Boardwalk Empire," "Deadwood" and what else? We watched and enjoyed all of them.
Tenth, a mudslide in Southern California killed 10. With LA burning up as I write this, it makes one wonder why people chose to live there. Or in Florida. Or anywhere on the Gulf or Atlantic coasts. Or in Buffalo.
Eleventh, I have lots of nasty thoughts about Bezos and his ownership of the Washington Post, his imperial yacht, his rocket ships, etc., but it can't be denied that, with Amazon, he created probably the most successful retail business in America, but, like Walmart, at what cost?
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