Hello, good morning to everyone
The sun keeps rising a little later each day, setting earlier too, reducing daylight hours until the winter solstice arrives on Dec. 21.Then everything will start going back again in the opposite direction. That much is at least predicable here in the northern hemisphere in our ever-changing world.
Before dawn on these cool fall days, I typically start out in my 3rd-floor home office, where squirrels occasionally bump up against the windows. How do they get up there with the adjacent mulberry tree now gone? After I had that tree cut down, no longer are those bigger, more aggressive raccoons incessantly banging on the windows with their hand-like paws. Raccoons not only would climb up that tree to harass me daily, but also to leap onto my neighbor’s house next door. When mulberries were in season, those raccoons really feasted. As much as I hated sacrificing that tree, it simply had to go.
I’ve written 2 memoirs on my home office computer, one about my experiences as a senior Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras, the other on my human rights efforts in Cuba (titles appear on the upper right of this blog). I wrote each of those biographical narratives in one fell swoop, never lingering in the process. I just wanted to get them out to readers and included many of my photos.
My own brisk writing habits always contrasted with that of my late good friend and neighbor Doris Miller, who helped me found local Amnesty International Group 211 back in 1981. After retiring as a NSA linguist, Doris then spent over 20 years working on a book she called Parable of the Talents, still available on Amazon. She never could finish it quite to her satisfaction. But in late 2004, as she lay in a hospital bed dying of meningitis, her family quickly published the book and brought a copy to her bedside. I’ve been thinking about Doris lately as her death anniversary approaches.
Another author who took his time writing a book was Samuel Clements, AKA Mark Twain, who took over 3 years to write The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He was one of the first authors to use a typewriter. That book and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn were translated into many languages and are still being sold all over the world. Clements lost his only son at age 2, then one of his daughters when she was 24. He survived his wife by several years, dying himself at 74. He is now perhaps the most widely read author ever. Always a fan of his books and their colloquial language, I've enjoyed re-reading them recently.
Local artist Michelle Turner is back again drawing Capitol Hill houses. Most are attached rowhouses like my own, many more than 100 years old.
Here below are photos of flowers still blooming, posted on the neighborhood website.
Milo is home again below, also shown on the neighborhood website.
Was it really necessary to try to eradicate history by melting down the Robert E. Lee statue put up over a century ago in Charlottesville, Va.? Might that statue instead have been kept in a museum or park dedicated to Civil War history? Lee was once revered by many, as evidenced by the original erection of that statue.
My younger grandson, Kingston, while visiting relatives in Oklahoma with his mother, told me on the phone that he is now 11, then laughed to say he was just joking, as he’s actually only 10. But the joke was on me, as his father, my son now living in W Va., tells me that Kingston is really only 9, but likes to pretend he’s older. The last time I visited Hawaii, soon after his birth, must have been 9 years ago.
My son sent some photos taken in Berkeley Springs, W Va. where he lives now.
Halloween, with its various ghosts and goblins, a favorite of my kids when they were young, has already come and gone.
Halloween is even observed now in Australia.
Then on Nov. 1 & 2, Día de los Muertos, Day of the Dead, was celebrated in Mexico with food offerings being left for the dearly departed.
A massive fraud that I’m still dealing with on my debit account would probably have never happened if I’d been able to master an older cell phone lent to me by a neighbor. And it’s been very difficult to monitor current fund recovery efforts without a cell phone, as well as, frankly, quite exhausting. Some of the thousands of dollars already reported to have been refunded by merchants have not yet been totally restored to my account.
The Census Bureau sent me by postal mail a request to fill out an online survey asking detailed questions about me and my house. It even asked if I could climb stairs unaided. The answer is “yes”, but always gripping the handrail.
Given all the dramatic and emotionally impactful events now occurring in our country and around the world, it’s hard to adequately cover them all, so only salient ones will be mentioned here. I sometimes go back on this blog to relive prior experiences, but may prefer to later skip over this period as current news has been so upsetting.
With Halloween now behind us, a really scary thought is that Donald Trump might actually become president once again.
In Rome, Pope Francis recently concluded a “Synod on Synodality.” That synod, a fancy term for a conclave or meeting, concluded with an acknowledgment of climate change, outreach to divorced and gay Catholics, and an expansion of women’s roles, but fell short of what many would have liked to see. Francis, who is turning 87 this month, is marking 10 years as pope, trying to adapt the church to the times and to move past the clergy sex abuse scandal. A church with 1.3 billion members worldwide is proving hard to manage. In snippets I’ve heard of Francis speaking, he speaks mostly in Latin, not in his native Spanish, though the languages have many similarities.
NYTimes, Infant Deaths Have Risen for the First Time in 20 Years The increases were stark for babies born to Native American, Alaska Native and white mothers. Rates for Black infants remained highest of all. The reasons vary and are not entirely clear.
Wash. Post, Children today have less independence. Is that fueling a mental health crisis?
When we were kids many eons ago, weather permitting, when not in school, we were sent outside to play unsupervised and expected to come home after dark. Lots happened out there: games, mischief, even upsetting events, like a man exposing himself, so we just ran away and never told Mom or Dad. We had our own private world and never told our parents very much at all. We climbed trees, waded in streams, skinned our knees, argued, and even engaged in physical fights, with parents none the wiser, as our own world was largely separate.
Working mothers may be able to pump breast milk so that new babies can be nourished by their mothers' milk, but infants would also benefit from their mothers’ actual physical presence to promote emotional bonding. And though rarely mentioned, nursing a baby can afford natural erotic pleasure to the mother, something lost when breast milk is simply being pumped at work. In Sweden and Norway, a full year of maternity leave is allowed so that vital bonding can occur.
Republican House members, after getting exhausted and being ridiculed by the public and the media, finally chose a staunch Trump ally, an election denier, as speaker. AP, New US House speaker tried to help overturn the 2020 election, raising concerns about the next one He is Mike Johnson, a Louisiana congressman.
Wash. Post, ‘The problem is the human heart. It’s not guns.’
So says new House Speaker Mike Johnson, but it’s proved much harder to control hearts even than guns, though guns are proving pretty hard too. (Would Johnson consider the Maine killer’s human heart to have been the real problem, if so, then what?)
Wash. Post, Maine mass killing was the deadliest in the U.S. this year
At least 18 deaths were confirmed and many injuries. Robert Card, age 40, was identified as the shooter. His dead body was finally found, indicating that he had killed himself after being encircled by law enforcement during a massive manhunt.
Pro-lifers now need to step up to the plate by publicly backing gun control, going beyond supporting the pre-born to also protect the lives of humans already born. Everyone needs to recognize that guns kill more American children than even traffic accidents. Guns killed more than 15,000 Americans of all ages in 2021 and rarely has a gun ever proved protective. Many Maine citizens are gun owners but wouldn’t pack heat out at a bowling alley, the place where so many were killed recently. Rather than having everybody pack a gun, always keeping on edge and feeling suspicious, how about getting rid of the guns instead?
Below is an appeal received from Amnesty International after the gun massacre in Maine.
We are reeling from the news last night of a mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine. Reports are stating the shooter used an AR-15 rifle to kill at least 18 people. This is the SAME type of deadly assault weapon used in shootings in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas.
We cannot accept this as normal. We cannot allow our elected leaders to do nothing.
Every single day, an average of 115 Americans are killed by gun violence. Every single day. This is a human rights emergency. We are not safe until our lawmakers take concrete action.
There are four concrete actions we’re demanding that members of Congress take to save lives, and we need your voice right now »
With one letter to your legislators, you’ll push forward four common-sense pieces of legislation:
• Passing the Assault Weapons Ban of 2023 and finally regulating the use of these tools of death which lead to far deadlier mass casualty events.
• Enforcing universal background checks which will help prevent people who pose a risk to others from owning guns.
• Passing the Break the Cycle of Violence, which would provide $5 billion in funding for community violence prevention and intervention programs across the country
• Passing Ethan’s Law, a measure that will require safe storage to protect children and others from unsecured firearms.
TAKE ACTION TO END GUN VIOLENCE
Calling for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives,Attacks by the Israeli military have killed more than 8,000 people in Gaza and injured many thousands more, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
More than 2 million Palestinians — half of them children — are trapped, with nowhere safe to hide from Israeli military bombardments and have little access to food, clean water and medical supplies.
An immediate ceasefire is needed to prevent further loss of civilian lives, ensure access to life-saving humanitarian aid, and prevent further displacement.
President Biden has been trying to hold back Israel, while not publicly contradicting its leaders or threatening to reduce aid. Israel has a right to defend its citizens, but what is happening now seems more like genocide than just defense. Is it anti-Semitic to criticize Israeli policy and actions? Doing so does not necessarily give a green light to Hamas.
Wash. Post, Gaza deaths mount as Israel intensifies strikes. Now the Biden administration is urging a “pause"
Wash. Post, Strikes on refugee camp leave hundreds dead and injured, Gaza Health Ministry says. Gaza is now a ‘graveyard’ for children, UNICEF says.
Hundreds killed and injured in strikes on Jabalya refugee camp, Gaza Health Ministry says
• Blinken, Austin press for aid for Israel, Ukraine in Senate testimony
• Colleges braced for antisemitism and violence. It’s happening.
Wash. Post, Reducing Hamas’ terrorism to a problem of ‘evil’ is a mistake When the fighting stops, the international community must give Palestinians reasons to think there is a nonviolent path to an independent Palestinian state. Opinion by Shadi Hamid
Business Insider, Why Israel's push into Gaza is killing so many children
The monthlong Israel-Hamas fighting is killing children at a rate faster than almost every other armed conflict in decades. The overwhelming majority of these children — a reported to total 3,542 as of October 30, as compared with more than 30 children reported killed on the Israeli side — have been Palestinians in Gaza. Urgent reminder to Israel: children are non-combatants.
Wash. Post, operation in Gaza could endanger loved ones [of Israelis being held there] U.S. urges Israel against Gaza ground invasion, pushes surgical campaign
AFP, Guterres: Situation in Gaza ‘growing more desperate by the hour’ ‘History will judge us all,’ UN chief Antonio Guterres says as Israel steps up offensive in Gaza.
Last week, Guterres said that Hamas’s October 7 massacre “didn’t happen in a vacuum,” a comment decried by Israel as justifying terror.
Wash. Post, Israel’s Gaza offensive stirs a wave of global protest
NY Times, How Years of Israeli Failures on Hamas Led to a Devastating Attack
The Israel/Gaza war continues, but not all Americans or even American Jews are siding with Israel.
Fox, California city passes anti-Israel resolution accusing the Jewish state of ‘ethnic cleansing’ (The city is Richmond, California,).
Wash. Post, Israel’s Gaza offensive stirs a wave of global protest
Wash. Post, Israeli tanks conduct ‘targeted’ raid; U.N. says ‘nowhere is safe in Gaza’
Netanyahu has justified Israel’s attacks on Gaza by comparing them to American military operations in World War II, including the US response to Pearl Harbor in 1941. From today’s vantagepoint, the carpet bombing of Germany and the dropping of A-bombs on civilians in Japan are considered unacceptable and barbaric, and certainly not a template for a war being conducted generations later.
The Gaza war now seems to have gone far beyond deterrence to become a retaliatory genocide against Palestinians, being unleashed by Israeli leaders seeking revenge for being caught by surprise. The lines between offense and defense are becoming blurred, with collective vengeance being visited against all Gazans, going even beyond “an eye for eye” while making no secret of it. Israeli leaders are expressing not only grief and anger, but frank vindictiveness. Are all Palestinian civilians, including children, to be subjected to collective punishment, now considered deserving of injury and death? Palestinian civilians will, of course, support the fighters defending them, often members of their own families.
Admittedly, Hamas recently killed Israeli civilians without immediate provocation, but was not responsible for the far greater earlier European genocide that spurred the creation of Israel and ended up evicting Palestinians from their own ancestral homeland; yet now Palestinians seem be equated with Nazis. Nor was the idea of establishing a safe nation for Jews just the result of the holocaust. Jewish activists had been pushing for a homeland in ancient Judea even long before that. So the lines between good and bad guys and between cause and effect are not so clear cut.
Daily Beast, Moment Al Jazeera Reporter Learns His Family Is Dead On-Air
Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Al-Dahdou, first learned while reporting live that his wife, daughter, and son had been killed by an Israeli airstrike on a building where they’d been seeking refuge.
Wash. Post, Israel’s Gaza offensive stirs a wave of global protest Just when Israel had seemed to be making headway in gaining greater acceptance from surrounding Muslim majority nations, now the Gaza war has sent Israel right back to square one. Can Israel still exist safely surrounded by a Muslim world?
NYTimes, How Years of Israeli Failures on Hamas Led to a Devastating Attack
President Biden needs to call for an immediate cease fire, as what is happening now is arousing understandable resentment and calls for vengeance among Muslim nations. Antisemitism and hostility toward Israel are reviving, not only in the Middle East, but all around the world.
Would Biden dare to hint at reducing aid to Israel? Probably not, though many American Jews are no longer supportive of Israel (I know some of them), while many fundamentalist Christians are still advocates for Israel, based on their readings of ancient biblical texts.
High time now for Israel to seek new leadership and to totally retire Mr. Netanyahu, an unsavory character using the war for self-protection and aggrandizement. His command of English has been a real asset for him; making him almost seem to Americans to be one of us. Ordinary Israelis do not appear to be so different from us either, also often speaking English, making it easy for many Americans to identify with them. In fact, many Israelis were actually born right here in the USA.
So doesn’t the US deserve a modicum of blame for its unquestioned support of and alliance with Israel over these many years? Ever since 1948, the US has showered Israel with massive and continuous financial funding, along with unwavering political support, all the while overlooking any possible excesses by Israel’s political leadership.
President Joe Biden is now walking a fine line, trying to reign-in Israeli violence and retribution against Palestinian civilians to avoid further bloodshed and even more alienation of the Muslim world by once again touting the long abandoned 2-state solution, all while running for reelection himself. He has linked aid to Ukraine to that for Israel, making it hard for anyone in Congress to vote “no.” He may hope that a focus on protecting Israeli hostages will buy time for emotions in Israel to cool down.
Former President Barack Obama has also urged caution, “But even as we support Israel, we should also be clear that how Israel prosecutes this fight against Hamas matters. In particular, it matters — as President Biden has repeatedly emphasized — that Israel’s military strategy abides by international law, including those laws that seek to avoid, to every extent possible, the death or suffering of civilian populations,” Obama said.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was more direct, saying in a written statement that he was shocked by Israel’s unprecedented escalation of bombardments on Gaza. “This situation must be reversed.”
Wash. Post, Biden, shifting tone, stresses need for Palestinian state after war
Jewish Voice for Peace recently declared: “Israeli apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity in that oppression — are the source of all this violence...The Israeli government is threatening to commit genocide against Palestinians and denying their humanity. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu asserted: ‘What we will do to our enemies will reverberate for generations.’ The Israeli minister of defense called Palestinians ‘human animals.’"
Amnesty International is calling on President Biden to do the following:
1. Call for an immediate ceasefire by all parties in the occupied Gaza Strip and Israel to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid for people in Gaza amidst an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe;
2. Demand the lifting of restrictions on delivery of urgent humanitarian aid, including fuel, food and medical supplies, to the Gaza Strip in sufficient quantities to meet the dire needs of the civilian population, and urge the Israeli government to immediately restore Gaza’s supply of electricity, water, fuel, and food and rescind the unlawful evacuation order;
3. Call for an end to unlawful attacks, including indiscriminate attacks, direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and disproportionate attacks.
4. Demand that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in Gaza release all civilian hostages unconditionally and immediately and treat all those being held captive humanely, including by providing medical treatment, pending their release.
5. Demand the immediate suspension of the direct and indirect supply, sale, or transfer to the Israeli government of all weapons, munitions, and other military and security equipment, and make clear that the U.S. will not tolerate the perpetuation of war crimes or crimes against humanity with weapons it has provided to the Israeli government. We ask that the US government commit to implementing the administration’s own policies regarding human rights and civilian harm reduction.
6. Call on the Israeli government to lift the unlawful 16-year blockade on Gaza, and dismantle its system of apartheid imposed over Palestinians. Support the International Criminal Court in urgently expediting its ongoing investigation into evidence of war crimes and other crimes under international law.
From my faraway vantagepoint here in Washington, DC, it does seem that Israel is hell-bent on collective vengeance, not just deterrence, making no effort to avoid civilian casualties, in fact doubling down, trying to kill as many Palestinians as possible regardless, as if to wipe out the threat by totally annihilating Palestine’s population. It won’t work, rather, will simply engender more worldwide animosity toward Israel. Much sympathy for Israel after the initial attack among both world leaders and their citizens has evaporated, being replaced by sympathy for Gazan civilians. President Biden is in a bind. Yet he hardly dares to threaten any reduction in American aid to Israel when next year’s election is almost upon us.
Politico, U.S. discussing peacekeeping force for Gaza after Hamas falls, senators say Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told POLITICO that there’s early, closed-door diplomacy over establishing a peacekeeping force in Gaza, though it was not likely to include American troops.
Other happenings around the world still deserve attention. After the DR blocked the border crossing from Haiti, Haitians who can afford to fly to Managua are reportedly taking charter flights there to continue their journey to the US border.
BBC, Japan: Gunman holds hostage in post office after hospital shooting
Japan does not have a gun culture or many guns in circulation, so shootings there are very rare. An elderly gunman was taken into custody.
NY Times, Denmark Aims a Wrecking Ball at ‘Non-Western’ Neighborhoods A government program is using demolition and relocation to remake neighborhoods that have “non-Western” immigrants, poverty or crime.
Women don’t always seem to realize that most men have a stronger aggressive drive as well as a stronger sex drive than they do, often expecting men to have just as much self-control as they themselves have. In the animal kingdom, where gender differences are also clearly evident, they are far more accepted as being natural. Among deer, we don’t expect to see female does fighting each other just as bucks so often do.
For me, global warming is not such a big threat personally, as I am what we call in Spanish friolenta, that is, someone especially sensitive to cold.
NY Times, Hunter-Gatherers Were Making Baskets 9,500 Years Ago, Researchers Say
Let's post this blog now before anything else happens.
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