1/30/2025

 Thursday, January 30, 2025

D+84

2019 A continuous 24-hour church service lasting 97 days to prevent deportation of Armenian asylum seekers ended after Dutch authorities relented at the Protestant Bethel Church in The Hague

2019 An approaching polar vortex prompted a state of emergency to be declared in Wisconsin and other states.  US Postal Service suspended deliveries to ten states

In bed at 110:15, up at 4:30, perseverating on Don McNeil's Breakfast Club theme from the 1940s: 'Good morning, BreakfastClubbers, good morning to ya. We got up nice and early just to howdy-do-ya.'     

Prednisone, day 286, 5 +2.5 mg., day 23, Verzana, day 9/14  5 mg. prednisone at 4:55.  Other meds at 8 a.m.  2.5 mg. prednisone at 4:10.    

Judgment at Nuremberg.  I posted a comment to SCC's post suggesting to her FB friends that they watch "Judgment at Nuremberg."

I finished watching "Judgment at Nuremberg" this morning. You mentioned in response to Matt Czosnek's comment that the film is about how the courts were used in the Third Reich to advance fascism and of course that's true, but it is also about how the Allies' used ad hoc courts (or 'tribunals') to punish government leaders of the vanquished Germany and about the legal and moral culpability of government workers for complicity in carrying out the policies of their government. The Americans were able to put the four judges on trial and imprison them because the Americans won the war and the Germans lost. General Curtis LeMay, who led the massive firebombing attacks on Japanese cities toward the end of World War II said "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals" and "There are no innocent civilians, so it doesn't bother me so much to be killing innocent bystanders." He was rewarded by being made commander of our Strategic Air Command after the war. I wonder what would have happened if America and South Vietnam's military government had won their war against other Vietnamese, which North Vietnamese and VC leaders would have been placed on trial and killed or imprisoned after the war. Or if Vietnam had won AND been powerful enough to exert its will against the vanquished Americans whom they would have tried and punished. LBJ, Robert McNamara, General Westmoreland, how low would they go. The point made by the German defense counsel in the film is that everyone was complicit in the Nazi crimes. It's been almost 60 years since I was sent to Vietnam by my government to participate in the killing, wounding, burning, and poisoning of people who posed no threat to me or my fellow Americans. I still am haunted by my small but complicit role in all that human suffering. I was reminded of it by Russia's gratuitous invasion of Ukraine and again by "Judgment at Nuremberg."    

Anniversary Facebook post:  Today is the anniversary of the ending of perhaps the world's longest continuous religious services.  On October 26, 2018, in the Hague in the Netherlands, a religious service started in the Bethel Church to protect an Armenian immigrant family from deportation, under a Dutch law that forbade police from disrupting a church service to make an arrest.  Every day, for more than three months, the church service at the small Dutch chapel went on around the clock. Pastors worked in shifts. Volunteers worshiped.  For 96 days, the Tamrazyan family lived in the red-brick church building in a residential neighborhood. The family of five had resided in the Netherlands for nearly nine years since fleeing Armenia, and the country's highest court ruled the previous year that they had to return, pending the processing of their asylum claims.  Hundreds of pastors from the Netherlands, Germany, France and Belgium rotated through the church between October and January to carry on the service.  The service lasted about 2,300 hours.  Pastors said they were taking part on behalf of all the children of asylum-seekers, not just the Tamrazyan family.  The government relented and allowed the family to stay in the Netherlands as their asylum claim was processed.  The United States government does not have a law restricting arrests during church services, but enforcement agents have usually been sensitive to the bad optics of interrupting a church service to effect an arrest.  We'll see whether that practice will continue under ICE's arrest quota system.   

A passing thought.  Following Geri's surgery, a Jewish friend brought us a banana cake.  A Lutheran neighbor offered to bring us a dinner.  Another Jewish friend called to see whether he could go to the grocery store for us.  Another Jewish friend and a Chinese immigrant friend brought us a lasagna, a homemade cake, and a salad.

No surprise.  Trump holds a presser and blames Obama and Biden DEI policies for the midair collision at Reagan National Airport approach path.  Former Wisconsin congressman and current Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy appeared and licked Trump's boots, as did DOD Secretary Pete Hegseth and VP J. D. Vance.  All spoke of DEI policies as if the accident occurred because of air traffic controllers at Reagan National.  A disgusting, demoralizing, depressing demonstration of Trump's base character, raising yet again the question of whether he is the worst person in the world, or merely one of the worst.  His appearance started out with him reading, almost verbatim, a statement writtten by one of his aides with the normal, meaningless pap words, "thoughts and prayers," "loving God," etc., none of the words reflecting Trump's own thoughts, beliefs, or values.  Then he launched into the broadside against hiring policies of the Obama and Biden administrations designed to help with the extreme shortage of air traffic controllers at the nation's airports and air traffic control centers.