Tuesday, April 7, 2026
1541 Spanish missionary Francis Xavier left Lisbon for the Portuguese East Indies as the first Jesuit missionary
1943 Adolf Hitler & Benito Mussolini met for an Axis conference in Salzburg
1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in a news conference, was the first to voice fear of a "domino effect" of communism in the Indochina region
1968 Riots continued in over 100 US cities following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
1971 US President Richard Nixon ordered Lt. Calley (Mi Lai) free
2025. Trump announced plans to impose a 50% tariff on China, escalating to a total of 104% if China did not revoke its 34% reciprocal tariff on all American goods within a day. China rejectsed the ultimatum, and stated its intention to match any further escalation.
In bed at 9:45, awake at 4:15, up at 4:45. 137/63/64 120 204.8. 26/14/35/26. Cold, sunny day.
Morning meds at 9:30 a.m. Ranolazine at 7:30 a.m. and 6L20 p.m.
The Testament of Ann Lee. I don't know what to make of this very strange historical movie which we watched last night, or what to make of the Shakers, or the Quakers, or the holy rollers, or the evangelicals, or the Roman Catholics, religious beliefs, religious practices, religious leaders and religious followers, Jesus of Nazareth, Peter and Paul, Augustine, the Desert Fathers and Desert Mothers, Mohammed, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Aimee Semple McPherson, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, the cardinals and bishops, or me. What is a poor, wayfaring stranger to make of all this?
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” he wrote. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?” We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!
This wicked and almost unbelievably stupid utterance by Trump takes me back to 1979 when the Islamic Revolution in that country occured and 66 American hostages were seized in our embassy in Teheran. Some people in the U.S. were talking about "nuking" Iran. I had a close friend, Ara Cherchian, who was an immigrant from Iran. We served together on the board of the Milwaukee Ballet Company. His mother, father, brother, and other relatives still lived in Iran, but they were not native or ethnic Iranians; they were Armenians. They were not Shia Muslims; they were Christians. They did not support the Islamic Revolution, but they were among the people who would be presumably killed (in addition to the American hostages) if Jimmy Carter had "nuked 'em," or even ordered a conventional bombing campaign. One of the professional librarians who worked in the MULS law library also had family in Iran. They were followers of the Bahai religion, not Muslims. The Bahais were a persecuted minority in Iran, because they were not considered merely infidels, like Christians and Jews, but "apostates," because their religion was a 'spin off' of Islam. They too could be among the casualites of a nuclear attack or a saturation bombing campaign. Not surprisingly, there are no reliable polling data from Iran revealing how many in the population oppose the reign of the clerics and the Revolutionary Guard, but most experts believe they are in the majority, at least 60%. In modern warfare, it is usually the innocent who suffer the most. Trump doesn't care, so long as he can thump his chest and pretend to be manly.
Lest we forget. From The Fire in the West Bank Is Burning Hotter, Out of Sight, by Talia Sasson, former senior official in Israel’s State Attorney’s Office and former president of the New Israel Fund, writing from Tel Aviv, in this morning's New York Times:
The Israeli parliament, the Knesset, last week passed a law allowing the hanging of Palestinians convicted of killings during militant attacks, using language that effectively exempts Jewish perpetrators of nationalistic violence. This legislation is both unconstitutional and discriminatory. Beyond its fundamental immorality, the law is part of a larger, accelerating effort to systematically end once and for all the possibility of a Palestinian state. That effort includes the uncontrolled surge in violence by settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, and a strategic restructuring of the West Bank’s administration intended to make it easier for settlers and the state to seize Palestinian land.
An alliance of settlers and far-right politicians is the primary engine behind this radical transformation. While polls show that most Israelis support it, the legislation was pushed through by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to ensure the survival of his governing coalition by indulging the vengeance narrative that serves as the cornerstone of the political goals of the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, a key partner in the coalition.
Its passage comes on the heels of a sharp escalation in near-daily acts of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank over the past year. Settlers have raided Palestinian villages, setting fire to homes and vehicles, harming livestock and uprooting trees. In February and March alone, settlers reportedly killed eight Palestinians.
Settlers continue to establish illegal outposts within Area A — territory that under the Oslo peace accords of the 1990s is designated for full Palestinian civil and security control. According to data from the United Nations, 36,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes in the West Bank last year, 3,500 of them forced out directly by settler violence. This trend intensified in the first three months of 2026, with 1,697 Palestinians already displaced.
Late afternoon; TACO
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