How Many Veterans From How Many Wars?

On Memorial Day we honor those who died in war.  On Veterans Day we honor those who survived war.  More on the difference between the two holidays here.  Let's take a moment to reflect on how many died and how many survived the wars the United States fought in.

The list below is from the Veterans Administration.  (you can adjust the size in the file below)

Americas Wars by Steve on Scribd

When you get to the bottom of page one, there's a link to The Global War On Terrorism. That link gets you to a page that gives you urls that get here.

It turns out The Global War on Terrorism is made up of a series of operations.

From Defense Casualty Analysis System - Click to enlarge and focus

From Wikipedia:

"Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) is the official name used by the U.S. government for the Global War on Terrorism between 2001 and 2014. On October 7, 2001, in response to the September 11 attacks, President George W. Bush announced that airstrikes targeting Al Qaeda and the Taliban had begun in Afghanistan.[8] Operation Enduring Freedom primarily refers to the War in Afghanistan,[9][10] but it is also affiliated with counterterrorism operations in other countries, such as OEF-Philippines and OEF-Trans Sahara.[11][12]
After 13 years, on December 28, 2014, President Barack Obama announced the end of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.[13] Continued operations in Afghanistan by the United States' military forces, both non-combat and combat, now occur under the name Operation Freedom's Sentinel.[14]"

From Military.com:

Hagel said, "In Operation Freedom's Sentinel, the United States will pursue two missions with the support of the Afghan government and the Afghan people."
"We will work with our allies and partners as part of NATO's Resolute Support Mission to continue training, advising, and assisting Afghan security forces," he added. "And we will continue our counterterrorism mission against the remnants of Al Qaeda to ensure that Afghanistan is never again used to stage attacks against our homeland."

On the chart, we also have Operation Iraqi Freedom which happened while Enduring Freedom was still going on.  From the Congressional Research Service:

"Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), the U.S.-led coalition military operation in Iraq, was launched on March 20, 2003, with the immediate stated goal of removing Saddam Hussein’s regime and destroying its ability to use weapons of mass destruction or to make them available to terrorists. Over time, the focus of OIF shifted from regime removal to the more open-ended mission of helping the Government of Iraq (GoI) improve security, establish a system of governance, and foster economic development."

Also in there is Operation New Dawn.  From an Army site:

"During Operation New Dawn, the remaining 50,000 U.S. servicemembers serving in Iraq will conduct stability operations, focusing on advising, assisting and training Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). Operation New Dawn also represents a shift from a predominantly military U.S. presence to one that is predominantly civilian, as the Departments of Defense and State work together with governmental and non-governmental agencies to help build Iraq's civil capacity."

And Finally there is Operation Inherent Resolve.  From a military page:

On 17 October 2014, the Department of Defense formally established Combined Joint Task Force - Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) in order to formalize ongoing military actions against the rising threat posed by ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Fueled by sectarian conflicts and division, ISIS ascended from relative obscurity in 2013 to propagate an extremist socio-political ideology, and claimed to have created an Islamic caliphate. Its successful acquisition of conventional weapons, establishment of armed formations, rapid territorial growth and unconscionable atrocities shocked the world and destabilized the region. By June 2014, the security situation in Iraq had deteriorated with the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Tikrit falling in rapid succession to ISIS aggressors.

The numbers of military who took part, were killed or wounded, is documented differently.  You can poke around that page and get numbers for each of the Operations.  Be careful to note that in most of the tables, deaths are 'per 100,000" serving.  So actual deaths have to be multiplied. If there are 1 million serving, you need to multiply by ten.  And they use somewhat  different categories.

The following document had some particularly shocking statistics.  The percentage of African-American deaths is much higher than African-American's percentage in the US population (13%).
According to the chart, in the Persian Gulf war 17% of the men who were killed were African American and 20% of the women killed were African American.
In all the wars since 1980, 17% of the men killed were African American and 26% of the women killed were African American.  And these numbers only go to July 25, 2009.  We don't know about the next six years.

Active Duty Military Deaths - Korean War to 2009 By Race by Steve on Scribd

It seems to me the Pentagon should have been studying those numbers to determine why.  Are black women significantly more likely to be in the military?  If so, why does that seem to be a better option for them than living with their families in the US?
If not, why are they being killed more than others?  Are white women more likely to be officers (who the other statistics say are killed much less than enlisted military), are they sacrificed, do the commit suicide more?  Whatever the answers, we should have documented explanations.

After I wrote that I googled and found this 2013 NYTimes article on a PEW study of African-American women in the military.  Yes, African American women make up a much higher percentage of women in the military than in the US population as a whole - about one-third.  But they haven't studied why, though the military says they match their recruiting target well:

"[Beth J. Asch, a senior economist and defense manpower specialist at the Rand Corporation] suggested that the military tries to attract high school graduates who are looking for job training, good benefits and help with college tuition — and that a high percentage of black women fit that bill."

Lots to think about on Veterans Day.


And here's another list that seems to be for Enduring Bullshit:

Bergdahl - Justice Or Scapegoating?

I understand that Bergdahl's walking off from his post in Afghanistan, getting taken by the Taliban and imprisoned and tortured for five years, led to others risking their lives to find him.  It appears that no deaths can be attributed to searching for Bergdahl,  but least one solder, Mark Allen, suffered grievous harm.  A further issue, that was totally out of Bergdahl's control, was the debate about whether five Taliban should be released in exchange for Bergdahl.  There are legitimate questions about the impact of releasing the Taliban prisoners, but, for example, Israelis release far more Palestinian prisoners in exchange for just one Israeli soldier, even for the remains of Israeli soldiers. 

Bergdahl was a troubled man.  He'd been washed out of Coast Guard bootcamp.  When he applied to the army, they overlooked that problem and accepted him anyway.  And later, he was diagnosed.

"In July 2015, an Army forensic psychiatrist issued a report diagnosing Bergdahl with schizotypal personality disorder, a condition marked by distorted perceptions, eccentric behavior and “magical” thinking, at the time of his alleged misconduct."

From Stars and Stripes:

“I expect Fidell [Bergdahl's lead attorney] will argue that the Army shares some blame here,” [Eric Carpenter, an assistant law professor at Florida International University and a former Army defense attorney and prosecutor] said. “They brought in somebody that should never have been in the Army in the first place – someone already with mental health problems, and then they put him in the most stressful place that exists – a small [outpost] in the middle of the most hostile part of Afghanistan, and then gee, surprise, surprise, he had a breakdown.”

I understand that when people are harmed - like the people who tried to find Bergdahl - that there is a strong need to find justice.  This need regularly cause the convictions of the wrong people. Eyewitnesses too often swear that the wrong person committed the crime.  Is convicting Bergdahl going to bring justice?  He's already been imprisoned for five years and tortured by the Taliban.

This case is different.  Bergdahl acknowledges he deserted.  There is Bergdahl's decision to walk away from his unit to consider.  But a larger moral issue here is why was he put into this position in the first place when they knew he was not mentally stable?  If people feel that someone has to be punished for the harm to those seeking to find him, is Bergdahl the right person to target?

Focusing on Bergdahl takes the heat of the army officials who set up the waiver system when they were having trouble getting recruits, a program that resulted in Bergdahl being accepted into the army.  Or the specific official(s) who gave him a waiver.

Or people like George Bush whose actions led to the death of thousands of American troops, and hundreds of thousands of civilians throughout the region of the war.

Or the apparent disorganization of the people running Bergdahl's unit, which is raised in the case of Mark Allen, 

“'Whereabouts of the DUSTWUN' means Bergdahl. The second day of the patrol, they came under attack. Allen was shot in the head. One man was hit in the hand by an RPG; another was wounded by shrapnel.
This report includes an extensive discussion about what went wrong on this mission. It says the patrol was horribly planned and badly executed in every possible way. Which is in line with what some soldiers and commanders told us in interviews: that in the days and weeks right after Bergdahl left his outpost, there was such a scramble to find him that soldiers were sometimes left under-equipped and vulnerable. But whether any deaths can be attributed to the search for Bergdahl, according to the Army, the answer seems to be no."

Should Bergdahl be blamed for the poor organization and planning of his unit's missions?  That was precisely what Bergdahl says his desertion was aimed at - bringing attention to how badly his unit was organized.

Emotion usually clouds our decisions and messes with our moral consistency.  We need a scapegoat for things that have gone wrong.  A mentally ill recruit is easier to identify than the folks who let him into the army despite his mental health problems.

Our sense of culpability varies depending on the symbolic meaning of the persons in questions.  We, at least superficially revere vets, yet disabled vets don't radiate the image of strength and power that we want to see in our military.  Their mental problems resulting from war were often dismissed, even punished,  by the military.  Disabled vets confuse our symbolic reactions.  On the one hand our impulse is to honor vets who fought for their country.  On the other hand, disabled people are seen as less than everyone else, though we're overcoming that bias, at least when it comes to vets. Vets who desert are traitors.  But what if they are mentally unhealthy?

My sense is that there is a lot of blame to go around here and piling it all onto Bergdahl, who has already suffered as a Taliban prisoner for five years, won't serve any good.  Bergdahl is not a danger to society. Ending this situation by imprisoning him, means the larger organizational issues that led to his desertion won't be addressed.

“He knew what he signed up for ..."

Our president has gotten a lot of criticism for the insensitivity of this comment to the mother of a soldier killed in an ambush in Niger.  Deservedly so.  

But I'd like address the notion that "'he knew what he signed up for." I'd argue that soldiers tend to see the glory of war and becoming a man, but not the terror and agony of war.  Partly because veterans tend not to talk about the grisly details of war.  Partly because war and soldiers are so glorified.  

Soldiers Don't Talk

This letter is from a German officer, Rudolf Binding, who had studied medicine and law and was 46 years old when WW I broke out.  So he was well educated and older than most soldiers, yet he writes about how unknowable the reality of war is to those who haven't been in it.  From Spartacus, Letters From Soldiers, WW I.

"I have not written to you for a long time, but I have thought of you all the more as a silent creditor. But when one owes letters one suffers from them, so to speak, at the same time. It is, indeed, not so simple a matter to write from the war, really from the war; and what you read as Field Post letters in the papers usually have their origin in the lack of understanding that does not allow a man to get hold of the war, to breathe it in although he is living in the midst of it. 

The further I penetrate its true inwardness the more I see the hopelessness of making it comprehensive for those who only understand life in the terms of peacetime, and apply these same ideas to war in spite of themselves. They only think that they understand it. It is as if fishes living in water would have a clear conception of what living in the air is like. When one is hauled out on to dry land and dies in the air, then he will know something about it.
So it is with the war. Feeling deeply about it, one becomes less able to talk about it every day. Not because one understands it less each day, but because one grasps it better. But it is a silent teacher, and he who learns becomes silent too." [Emphasis added.]

There were 39 responses to a Quora question (there are over 100 now as I write) about why soldiers often don't talk about war.  Military1 reposted two of the answers.  First from Michael Hannon:

"I once read a reply to a question: “For those who understand, no explanation is necessary; for those who don't, no explanation is possible.” We are forever changed. There are many reasons why a vet does not want to talk about their experience. Likely many are still processing that experience."  [Emphasis added]

He also adds this related comment::

"Know that every vet does not like to hear, 'Thank you for your service.'
Thank me for unimagined feelings of terror, fear of the unknown, questions on trust that will never be answered, seeing indescribable fear in others and incapable of helping them, learning my confidence has limits, questioning my ability to protect anyone … the ‘thank you’ often awakens unwanted reminders of confusing memories."

The second was from  Roland Bartetzko:

"War takes its toll on every human psyche. It changes profoundly how you think about yourself and the world around you. I saw soldiers that were fighting a war for more than four years. From kids they turned into serious old men. One says for every year of fighting in a war you get 10 years older. These guys barely talked at all anymore."

A slightly different view of this comes from Afghan-war reporter Ann Jones in Mother Jones.  She describes the contrast between what they got compared to what they expected when they signed up.  She writes about those killed or wounded in the war, about the silence as they are whisked away to be buried or to have their shattered bodies repaired:

"Later, sometimes much later, they might return to inhabit whatever the doctors had managed to salvage. They might take up those bodies or what was left of them and make them walk again, or run, or even ski. They might dress themselves, get a job, or conceive a child. But what I remember is the first days when they were swept up and dropped into the hospital so deathly still. 

They were so unlike themselves. Or rather, unlike the American soldiers I had first seen in that country. Then, fired up by 9/11, they moved with the aggressive confidence of men high on their macho training and their own advance publicity."

The theme of all these comments is that soldiers have no clue of what they are getting into.  They don't know in part, because those who do know, according to these writers, don't talk about the real stuff.

Our culture glorifies war

Not only is there silence about the terrible realities of war, but we glorify soldiers and war. We regularly thank them for their service.   It's not that the negative information isn't available.  These quotes above all come from the internet and are readily available to those looking.  But most aren't looking to be dissuaded.  They're looking to become men, to be heroes, to follow family tradition, to get education funding when they get out, or to escape dysfunctional families or poverty.  I read a number of books about war as a teen - works like Upton Sinclaire's World's End which made the horrors of war clear to me.  Books that showed me that the soldiers on both sides got into their uniforms the same way - through recruitment to a higher nationalist, patriotic cause.  Taught me that the soldiers on both sides were more similar to each other than different.

The silence of those who have experienced war, is intensified by the unrelenting glorification of war and soldiers.  From Hollywood movies, video games, to history books, to family traditions, to military recruitment posters, and to the respect soldiers are given (verbally at least, but not in terms of help once they get back to the US).

Look at this army recruitment video.  It's a call to serve one's country, to be part of something bigger than yourself, to be a hero.  It doesn't show anyone dying or learning to walk on a new prosthetic, or committing suicide.




The heroic music, the emphasis on saving lives, the medical images, the theme of being trained to solve the world's problems.

Our media don't look critically at these kinds of US military recruiting videos.  Maybe they should look at our military ads the way this CNN piece critiques an ISIS recruitment video.

Maybe then the vulnerable teens who are enticed by these kinds of ads will be more savvy and get a better sense of what they are getting into.  (Probably most would not.  But some would.)





I'd guess the soldiers who died in Niger didn't even know where or even what Niger was when they signed up, let alone expect to die there.

Vietnam, Alabama, Puerto Rico, NFL And Rape - We're With Alice In Wonderland

Just some running thoughts.

Ken Burns' Vietnam series is sponsored by David Koch and Bank of America among others.

Watching planes and helicopters fly into makeshift landing zones in the Vietnam series made me scratch my head when NPR reported that planes couldn't land in Puerto Rico because there was no electricity or navigation.  People have forgotten that navigation is nice, but not necessary in emergency situations.

But then Puerto Rico's 3+ million American citizens can't vote for president and their congress member doesn't have a real vote.  And you thought voter suppression was bad in Texas.  Maybe they should establish residency in Alabama, so they can vote  for Doug Jones for US Senate against the new Republican Senatorial Candidate Roy Moore.  You know, the guy who's been kicked off the Alabama Supreme Court because of his insistence on putting up a Ten Commandments sculpture in the Supreme Court.  Go to the link, this guy got support from Bannon and Palin for a reason.  He's way out there.

Blacks make up 25% of the Alabama population.  But restrictions on voting are a serious obstacle.  If you've been convicted of a crime, and blacks are much more likely to be in Alabama than whites, it's hard to recover your vote.  A Mother Jones article says a new law loosens that, but convicted felons are still barred forever.  The article says about 15% of black voters are affected by these laws.  So with an influx of Puerto Rican voters, maybe Doug Jones could win.  The election's in December so there isn't much time for Puerto Ricans to get their residency.

Then there's football.  People kneel when they pray to God, but if they kneel when the national anthem is played that's bad.  Because they are equating the flag and anthem with God?  That doesn't seem to be the logic.  But, in his Jabberwocky way, Trump is trying to change the debate from killing of blacks to honoring the flag.  Distinguishing between symbols of a false reality of America's justice for all and the harsh reality of rampant white supremacy is hard for most Americans.

Just as the Vietnam series is showing us how killing innocent civilians was  seen as ok to get better body counts,  to show we were winning when we weren't, Americans still believe that killing innocent black American citizens is ok, because - well I guess, you can't tell the good ones from the bad, like with the Vietnamese.

Betsy Devos is showing us the real values, by changing Title IX so that innocent men don't get besmirched by wrongful accusations of rape or sexual harassment.  Yes, that's not good, but it's not as bad as being raped. ["Somewhere in America, a woman is raped every 2 minutes."] and it's very difficult to get justice.  But we protecting men from being falsely accused of such crimes is more important.  As I say, Alice in Wonderland, we're there.  Just like it's better to be outraged that black men don't stand up for the anthem, than be outraged over innocent blacks being killed by police.

Terms I Didn't Know

The Glomar Response - from a tweet -

"Leopold's trying to up the bar now that everyone is getting Glomars."

In response to an image of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that was completely redacted.

The story at Unredacted about the history of the Glomar Response is fascinating.  CIA told a FOIA requester that it could

 “neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence” of  “the use of unmanned aerial vehicles”

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Revanche

"It was thought by Obama and some of his allies that this toxicity was the result of a relentless assault waged by Fox News and right-wing talk radio. Trump’s genius was to see that it was something more, that it was a hunger for revanche so strong that a political novice and accused rapist could topple the leadership of one major party and throttle the heavily favored nominee of the other."  From Ta-Nejosi Coats, "The First White President" in The Atlantic.

From Merriam Webster:

"Definition of revanche
:revenge; especially: a usually political policy designed to recover lost territory or status"

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Eldritch

Also from the Ta-Nehisi Coats article:

"To Trump, whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but is the very core of his power. In this, Trump is not singular. But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies." 

From Wikipedia:

"Eldritch is an English word used to describe something as otherworldly, weird, ghostly, or uncanny.
Eldritch may refer to:
Andrew Eldritch (born 1959), singer, songwriter
Eldritch (band), an Italian heavy metal band
Eldritch Wizardry, a Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game supplement
Eldritch (video game), a video game for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux based on the Cthulhu Mythos
Eldritch Moon, an expansion from the Magic the Gathering card game
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, a 1965 science fiction novel by US writer Philip K. Dick" 

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Topoi (plural of typos)

From a review of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's Vietnam  in the Mekong Review:

"The even-handedness, the flag-draped history, bittersweet narrative, redemptive homecomings and the urge toward “healing” rather than truth are cinematic topoi that we have come to expect from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick through their films about the Civil War, Prohibition, baseball, jazz and other themes in United States history."

From Merriam Webster:

Definition of topos
plural topoi play  \-ˌpȯi\
:a traditional or conventional literary or rhetorical theme or topic 

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I heard today that Twitter is going from 140 characters to 280.  That doesn't sound like a good idea.  As one tweeter responded:  140 characters was my best editor ever.   These terms have been building up as a draft post.  I think four are enough for most people, so I'll quit here.

Vietnam War, Fiber Infrastructure, Chinese Language, Community Engagement

I was in meetings most of today and then went to see the Alaska Humanity Forum's preview of Ken Burns documentary on the Vietnam War.  We saw excerpts of each episode.  As someone who lived through that period, I didn't hear anything new.  There was discussion afterward.  But first AKHF director asked audience members who were veterans to stand.  Then those who were Vietnam veterans to stand.  Then those who had family members of friends who were veterans.  Then questions were asked - "Why did you come here tonight?" was the first one - and we were asked to discuss them with people nearby.  

I was struck, after watching the excerpts that covered soldiers from both sides as well as protesters, that people who protested the war weren't asked to stand.  And one of the audience did make that comment to the whole group.

The series will be worth watching when it comes on - not only for people who lived those years, but more so for those who only know the historical myths of that period.

But that's all excuse for why I haven't posted today and to explain why I'm taking the easy way out and letting you know about some talks coming up in the next few days at the UAA bookstore.
They are all free.
(There's free parking for these events in the parking lot near the bookstore.  And for people who can't make them, the videos will eventually be online, probably here.)

Thursday, September 14 from 5:00 pm-7:00 pm
Darrel Hess presents Leave It To Beaver, Cocaine & God: My Journey to Community Engagement

In  Leave It To Beaver, Cocaine & God: My Journey to Community Engagement Darrel Hess talks about growing up in the shadow of domestic violence, his arrest for selling cocaine to an undercover Alaska State Trooper, coming to terms with his sexual orientation, his relationship with God, and his struggles to find himself and his place in the world.
Today, Darrel Hess works as Anchorage’s Municipal Ombudsman and is a member of the Advisory Council for UAA’s Center for Community Engagement and Learning.   A pillar in the Anchorage community, Darrel Hess has served as Anchorage’s first Homeless Coordinator and was a member of the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission.  He has served on the board of Identity, Inc.  and is the recipient of the 2014 Alaska First Lady’s Volunteer of the Year Award.
Everyone is encouraged to welcome and meet the dedicated and amazing Darrel Hess. 
 
There is free parking for this event in the South Lot, Sports Complex NW Lot, West Campus Central Lot, and Sports Campus West Lot.

Friday, September 15 from 3:00 pm-5:00 pm
Dr. Shinian Wu presents Linguistic Challenges in Learning Chinese
Dr. Shinian Wu presents linguistic challenges and cultural congruence in learning Chinese as a second language. His talk will discuss contrasts between Chinese and English, how languages create socio-cognitive processes in language socialization.

 Dr. Shinian Wu. Professor of English and director of the graduate program in Applied Linguistics, English Department, Grand Valley State University, Michigan.
This event is sponsored with the UAA Confucius Institute. Everyone is welcomed to attend. There is free parking at UAA on Fridays.

 Saturday, September 16 from 1:00 pm-3:00 pm
Dr. Sebastian Neumayer presents Fiber Infrastructure and Natural Disasters
Dr. Sebastian Neumayer, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, UAA, shares his research on the effects of natural disasters on fiber infrastructure. While investigating the survivability of networks in the face of geographically correlated failures, he will discuss algorithms that identify the most vulnerable parts of real-world networks to large-scale disasters.
In addition to his academic research, Sebastian Neumayer will discuss The BTC Ring, an open-source Bitcoin project that integrates jewelry and digital assets. The BTC Ring can mitigate the risk that traditional jewelry has to loss and theft as well as can be used as an alternative to diamond engagement rings.
Everyone is invited to attend this fascinating event and learn how we can better prepare for "natural" environmental and emotional disasters.
There is free parking at UAA on Saturdays.  

Should Anchorage People Move To Avoid N. Korean Atomic Bomb?

It's hard for most people to imagine how close Anchorage is to Korea.  When Korean Air flew non-stop, we could get to Seoul in about seven hours.   Flying over the pole works.  We got to Paris last summer in about ten hours (not counting the time on the ground in Iceland).  That's about how long it would take to fly to New York if there were non-stop flights.

It helps to see these distances on a polar map.  Don't mind my messy lines.

Original Polar Map from Winwaed blog

Pyongyang to Anchorage = 3564 air miles
Pyongyang to Honolulu = 4597 air miles
Pyongyang to San Francisco - 5597 miles


Does my title question strike you as alarmist?  I'm sure that a lot of people in Houston are asking themselves if they should have heeded warnings, warnings that said climate change was making more forceful storms and that Houston's development in open areas needed to drain water in a flood plain would result in disastrous floods.

With the news this weekend of a much larger nuclear weapon than previously tested in North Korea, I think it's reasonable to ask this question about staying or moving.  So let's look at the key questions:

1.  Can and will North Korea build a bomb and intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching Anchorage in the next year or two?  It's looking increasingly possible.

2.  If they can, would they use them to target the US?  Americans have a highly distorted view of the world.  In our minds, its ok to have troops and ships and planes stationed all over the world, yet we got crazy when the Russians tried to put missiles into Cuba in 1962.  Other countries also don't like 'enemy' troops so close by.  We've had troops in South Korea since we fought North Korea in the 1950s.  Of course the North feels threatened.  We like to joke about how crazy the North Korean leadership is (and it's certainly unique in the world today), but according to a Heritage  Index of 2017 US Military Strength the US has

"some 54,000 military personnel Department of Defense civilian employees in Japan" and  "maintains some 28,500 troops in Korea." 

Yet any attack on the US by North Korea, let alone a nuclear attack, would be suicide.  But if they thought we were attacking them, I don't doubt that they would attack us - if they could - as well as the much more populated nearby South Korean target.  That 'mutual assured destruction' was supposed to be the deterrent during the Cold War.

3.  If they could and they would, would Anchorage be the target?  Hawaii probably has much more appeal.  There are more people in Honolulu and a large US military presence.  When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the US military presence in Alaska was tiny in comparison.  Seattle and San Francisco and Los Angeles are much better targets.  But Anchorage is closer.
Today Anchorage has a joint army/air force military base with a combined population of about 11,600.   The US tests anti-ballistic missiles from Kodiak, Alaska against potential attacks from North Korea which would make a tempting target as well.
The most compelling reason, in my mind, to attack Anchorage is that it is the closest US target, meaning the US defenses would have less time to respond.

4.  What could stop them?

• Chinese and Russian influence on North Korea
• Economic sanctions - these could make it impossible to complete their weapons, or it could just make them more desperate.
• Conducting ourselves less threateningly - if Pyongyang thinks a US attack is imminent, if we could find a way to convince the that's not the case, it might work.  But if preparing for a US attack is simply a way to keep the North Korean population afraid of war and supportive of the government, it won't.  
• Anti-ballistic missiles maybe.  They seem to have a spotty record with targets they knew were coming.  

So, is it time to look at real estate outside of Anchorage?  I'm sure few Alaskans are going to move at this point because of North Korea.  While Alaska did have a monster earthquake in 1964, relatively few people died and most people here now, weren't here then.  We feel safe.    Just as the people of Houston did a few months ago. Moving means disrupting our lives. But if the odds of an attack seem low, the odds of surviving a successful attack would be nil.  Only a tiny fraction of the people in Houston died.  That wouldn't be the case here.  

Whitewashing History

The Guardian has an article by Sunny Singh that asks why Christopher Nolan's film Dunkirk only shows white soldiers fighting and dying.  In fact, the article explains, there were many Indians as well as Asians and Africans recruited from the British empire who fought there too.  The French army also contained many North Africans.

How would knowing this change change modern day attitudes toward immigrants?  That's the basic question the article  asks.

This jumped out at me because I recently read (and posted about) Amitav Ghosh's novel The Glass Palace which also focuses on how Indian troops were vital to the British army in Asia, yet they never got credit (or blame.)  One Indian soldier to another after a Japanese surprise attack in Malaya, from that post:

"You know, yaar Arjun, over these last few days, in the trenches at Jitra - I had an eerie feeling.  It was strange to be sitting on one side of a battle line, knowing that you had to fight and knowing at the same time that it wasn't really your fight; knowing that whether you won or lost, neither the blame nor the credit would be yours.  Knowing that you're risking everything to defend a way of life that pushes you to the sidelines.  It's almost as if you're fighting against yourself.  It's strange to be sitting in a trench, holding a gun and asking yourself:  Who is this weapon really aimed at?  Am I being tricked into pointing it at myself?""I can't say I felt the same way, Hardy."

And Singh's criticism of the movie seems to echo this - that the Indian (and other forces from the empire) will be erased from the story.  

Here are some excerpts from the Guardian article:

"To do so [leave out the darker troops], it erases the Royal Indian Army Services Corp companies, which were not only on the beach, but tasked with transporting supplies over terrain that was inaccessible for the British Expeditionary Force’s motorised transport companies. It also ignores the fact that by 1938, lascars – mostly from South Asia and East Africa – counted for one of four crewmen on British merchant vessels, and thus participated in large numbers in the evacuation.
But Nolan’s erasures are not limited to the British. The French army deployed at Dunkirk included soldiers from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and other colonies, and in substantial numbers. Some non-white faces are visible in one crowd scene, but that’s it. The film forgets the racialised pecking order that determined life and death for both British and French colonial troops at Dunkirk and after it.
This is important, firstly, because it is a matter of factual accuracy in what purports to be an historical portrayal – and also because it was the colonial troops who were crucial in averting absolute catastrophe for the allies. It is also important because, more than history books and school lessons, popular culture shapes and informs our imagination not only of the past, but of our present and future."

It's interesting when you contrast this historical inaccuracy with film makers who say they can't put blacks or Asians into certain roles, because ti would be factually inaccurate.  But here they can put whites into the roles of the Indian and Asian troops, equally inaccurate.  

And Singh believes this whitewashing of history makes it easier to condemn immigrants today and vote for Brexit.

"Could we still see our neighbours as less than human if we also saw them fight shoulder-to-shoulder with “our boys” in the “good” war? Would we call those fleeing war “cockroaches” and demand gunboats to stop them from reaching our white cliffs if we knew they had died for the freedoms we hold so dear? More importantly, would anti-immigration sentiment be so easy to weaponise, even by the left – in the past and the present – if the decent, hardworking Britons knew and recognised how much of their lives, safety and prosperity are results of non-British sacrifices? In a deeply divided, fearful Britain, Nolan’s directorial choices succeed as a Brexiteer costume fantasy, but they fail to tell the story of Operation Dynamo, the war, and Britain. More importantly, they fail us all, as people and a nation."

Memorial Day Thoughts

My wife's uncle is buried in Arlington after a long distinguished military career.

My father and step-father were both WW II veterans.  And there are many men and women who have served valiantly to protect liberty for us and for others.

But we also have to get past our automatic assumption that people who fight in wars are a) heroes and b) fought to keep us free.  Many US interventions in the world have been to protect US business interests, not the least of which, in this case, is the arms industry.  Writing about Memorial Day and those who served in the military honestly and objectively is difficult in the US and in most countries.

As with most public issues in the US today - whether championed by the right or the left - there is plenty of room for reason and logic and dispassion.  With any group that is honored by a society, the military gives refuge to malcontents as well as true patriots.  It's true as well of religion, science, fire and police departments, teachers, doctors, and every other group with more than average status.

Let's remember, clear headedly, those who truly put their lives on the line for justice and freedom and dignity.  That includes those who died and those who survived.  That includes the three who stood up to bigotry on a Portland light-rail train, two of whom died.  Because the media tends to focus on violence, let's also remember that lots of other people have stood up to bigotry and not been killed or hurt.  Standing up for justice has a risk, but most of the time, you don't get killed.  Those who would stand up like that, should know of the countless times people intervene and no violence ensues.  

I've done a number of Memorial Day posts in the past that may be of interest to some.

Memorial Day 2010

What's the Difference Between Memorial Day and Veteran's Day?

Memorial Day Sees Hmong Vets Shut Out of US Veterans Cemeteries That Include POWs

Arlington National Cemetery to Visit Uncle Kermit  (not a Memorial Day post per se, but lots of photos of Arlington)

"It is my job, however, to ensure that your personal ambitions are not entirely delusional and do not carry with them an unacceptable cost for everybody else."

War Machine is a new Netflix film about General Stanley McChrystal (called Gen. Glen McMahon in the film, but see note at the bottom.)  He's the general Obama fired after an incendiary 2010 Rolling Stone article, by Michael Hastings.

Whatever you think of War Machine , there's one scene that Americans can only dream about - Tilda Swinton plays a German legislator who questions the general in Berlin.  I've written out this brief (under 4 minutes) interrogation.  (I haven't been able to figure out if something like this actually happened.  The character Michael Hastings is sitting in the audience as well when this takes place, so perhaps it was in the book the movie is based on and comes from an actual event.)

German politician:  General, the US invaded Afghanistan because of the al-Qaeda attacks on September 11th.  This is correct sir?
General:  Yeah
German politician:  You have been speaking to us now for 45 minutes and yet in all of that time you have only mentioned al-Qaeda once.  Your own vice president has advocated a much smaller and simpler counterterrorism approach to incapacitate what is estimated to be  a little more than 100 al-Qaeda fighters that still remain in Afghanistan to refocus on what it was that started this war in the first place.
General:  Ah.
German politician:  Your analysis of the insurgency there  suggests to me there is no monolithic Taliban.  You are spread over the entire country.  You are fighting 1,000 separate battles with locals whose principal ideological position would seem to be simply that they don’t want foreign soldiers in their village.    And that, General, you must know, is a war you will never win.
General:  Ah. Uh, with all due respect, ma’am.  Uh I must beg to differ.  I firmly believe, having traveled to all corners of the country, having spoken with many people from many walks of life . . . that what these people want is the very same thing that you and I want.  Hmmm?  Freedom, security, stability, jobs.  Progress is being made.  Real Progress.  But challenges do remain.
German politician:  Yes, I understand all of that, General.  And . . .and , please let me say quite sincerely that I do not question the goodness of your intent.  I have been listening to you here this morning, and, uh. . . I believe you are a good man.  I do.  What I question is. . . your belief in your power to deliver these things that you describe.  I question your belief in the power of your ideals.
General:  Ah, well. . .

German politician:  I think what I am trying to say, and I apologize, General, if this is sounding impolite, but I question your sense of self. 

General:  I appreciate your commentary.  I do.  But I have a job to do.
German politician:  Yes, I understand, And I also have a job to do.  And I’m trying to do mine.  As an elected representative of the people of Germany, it is my job to ensure that the personal ambitions of those who serve those people are kept in check.  You have devoted your entire life, General, to the fighting of war.  And this situation in Afghanistan, for you, it is the culmination of all your years of training, all your years of ambition.  This is the great moment of your life.
General:  Well. . . .
German politician:  It’s understandable to me that you should have, therefore, a fetish for completion to make your moment glorious.  It is my job, however, to ensure that your personal ambitions are not entirely delusional and do not carry with them an unacceptable cost for everybody else.  (emphasis added.)

The closest we have to someone like this is Elizabeth Warren, though she isn't quite as calm and polite.  And how long do we have to wait for the rest of our Congress to get some backbone and remember who they serve?


I'd note that the Guardian didn't think much about the movie, saying the portrayal of General McChrystal was all wrong.  It had this comment about Tilda Swinton's performance:

"Tilda Swinton has an interesting, if slightly supercilious, cameo as a German politician who questions the general about his personal motivation."

A more positive NY Times review says that another of the characters seems to be Gen. Michael T. Flynn.

I'd note that perhaps the movie makers originally considered actually naming the main character   Gen. Stanley McChrystal.    I say this because when I googled the cast, I got google's quick answer (top in screenshot below) which listed Brad Pitt as "General Stanley McChrystal."  But when you go to the cast listed by IMDb (bottom in screenshot below) Brad Pitt is listed as playing Gen. Glen McMahon.

I can't find anything on line that explains this - whether they were going to use the general's real name and then changed their minds or whether google just messed it up or something else.  

I'd also note that Michael Hastings, the author of the Rolling Stone article and the book this movie comes from, died in a strange car crash in Los Angeles.  A long New York Magazine article examines  Hasting's life and career in an attempt to unearth the cause of the accident, from conspiracy to suicide to accident.  It doesn't declare a cause, but seems to lean towards Hastings being out of control in his life rather than someone tried to kill him.  

Post-Civil War Supreme Court Good Example Of How Biased Court Can Do Terrible Things: Part 2

These two posts are based on Carol Anderson's Black [White] Rage. [  It's a scary book that every American should read.  I've only gotten through Chapter 1, which has critical stuff to post that is relevant today. How a biased Supreme Court can make decisions that condemn millions of Americans to a second class life.  Should Trump appoint any more judges to the Supreme Court, we could see the same sort of thing happen again now.  It's ugly.

Part 1 set up the context of the post-civil war South, with Andrew Johnson essentially pardoning many if not most of the old Southern leaders and plantation owners and how they essentially set up a new system of slavery by restricting black options for working, owning property, bargaining with their employers, even quitting.  Vagrancy laws meant any black without a job could be arrested.  Then he'd be auctioned off to people needing workers.  And there was no justice available for blacks.

In this, I'll offer up some of the Supreme Court decisions that Anderson discusses that made it possible to deny blacks citizenship, the vote, or really anything at all.


Dred Scott Case  - this was decided in 1856.  From Wikipedia 

"It held that "a negro, whose ancestors were imported into [the U.S.], and sold as slaves",[2][3] whether enslaved or free, could not be an American citizen and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court,[4][5] and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the United States. Dred Scott, an enslaved man of "the negro African race"[6] who had been taken by his owners to free states and territories, attempted to sue for his freedom. In a 7–2 decision written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, the court denied Scott's request. The decision was only the second time that the Supreme Court had ruled an Act of Congress to be unconstitutional.[7]"

Anderson also quotes Taney:

"the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1856, wherein Chief Justice Roger B. Taney had stated explicitly that black people have 'no rights which the white man is bound to respect.'"(p. 18)

While Dred Scott is pretty universally seen as the worst Supreme Court decision ever, it played a key role, even in the post-civil war era, of signaling to Southerners that they could do what they wanted.

But the Emancipation Proclamation was supposed to have freed the slaves, but after the war,

"Johnson did everything in his power to stop constitutional recognition of black people's citizenship and voting rights, including convincing most of the southern states not to ratify the Fourteenth Amerndend and launching a breathtaking and ultimately disastrous political campaign to unseat Radical Republicans in Congress. Nevertheless, despite Johnson's wild fulminations about the 'Africanization' of the South and the tyranny of 'negro domination,' the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified on July 9, 1868, followed by the Fifteenth on February 3, 1870.  Congress had just created a legal structure to begin to atone for America's 'original sin.'
"The U.S. Supreme Court, however, stepped in and succeeded where Johnson failed."(pp. 31-32)

Anderson quotes Frederick Douglas:

"by the time the justices had finished, 'in most of the Southern States, the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments are virtually nullified.  The rights which they were intended to guarantee are denied and held in contempt.  The citizenship granted in the fourteenth amendment is practically a mockery; and the right to vote  . . . is literally stamped out in face of government.'" (p. 32)

How did the Court do this?  Anderson says that while claiming a strict constitutionalist posture (you know, related, if not exactly, what Scalia claimed and Gorsuch allegedly practices) they picked parts of the constitution to use to say that the federal government was trampling on states' rights.

"The court declared that the Reconstruction amendments had illegally placed the full scope of civil rights, which had once been the domain of the states, under federal authority.  That usurpation of power was unconstitutional because it put state governments under Washington's control, disrupting the distribution of power in the federal system, and radically altered the framework of American government." (p. 32)

Anderson points out, that while states' rights were critical when dealing with black civil rights,

"this same court threw tradition and strict reading out the window in the Santa Clara decision.  California had changed its taxation laws to no longer allow corporations to deduct debt from the amount owed to the state or municipalities.  The change applied only to businesses;  people, under the new law, were not affected.  The Southern Pacific Railroad refused to pay its new tax bill, arguing that its rights under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment had been violated.  In hearing the case, the court became innovative and creative as it transformed corporations into 'people' who could not have their Fourteenth Amendment rights trampled on by local communities.  So, while businesses were shielded, black Americans were most emphatically not."(pp. 32-33)

Then Anderson goes through a slew of cases that kept  white Southerners immune from charges they violated the constitutional rights of blacks, including the right to life.


1873 - The Slaughterhouse Cases - Anderson says this began a retreat from rights-based society.  New Orleans not only restricted butcher shops to a certain part of town (because of the health hazards of 'blood, entrails, and inevitable disease'), but also required them to have city authorized licenses.  The butchers sued on the grounds their due process rights (cannot take life, liberty, or property without a fair hearing) under the Fourteenth Amendment  had been violated.

"The justices ruled that that was impossible because the amendment covered only federal citizenship rights, such as habeas corpus and the right to peaceful assembly.  Everything else came under the domain of the states.  As a result, 'citizens still had to seek protection for most of their civil rights from state governments and state courts.'" (p. 33) (emphasis added)

1874 - Minor v. Happersett  -

"Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite wrote, 'The Constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone,' because the vote 'was not coexistent with citizenship.'" (p. 33)

1875  - United States v. Reese

"In Lexington, Kentucky, a black man, William Garner, had tried to vote.  The registrars, Hiram Reese and Matthew Foushee, refused to hand Garner a ballot because he had not paid a poll tax.  Yet, the black man had an affidavit that the tax collector had refused to accept his payment.  With one wing of local government demanding proof of payment and the other flat out refusing to accept the funds, Garner knew his right to vote had been violated.  The U.S. Supreme Court, in an 8-1 decision, disagreed. . .
In quick succession, the court had undermined citizenship, due process, and the right to vote.  Next was the basic right to life."(pp.33-34)

1876 - United States v. Cruikshank

"Southern Democrats, angered that African Americans had voted in a Republican government in Colfax, Louisiana, threatened to overturn the results of the recent election and install a white supremacist regime.  Blacks were determined to defend their citizenship rights and occupied the symbol of democracy in Colfax, the courthouse, to ensure that the duly elected representatives, most of whom were white, could take office.  That act of democratic courage resulted in an unprecedented bloodbath, even for Reconstruction.  Depending on the casualty estimate, between 105 and 280 African Americans were slaughtered.  Their killers were then charged with violating the Enforcement Act of 1870, which Congress had passed to stop the Klan's terrorism.
Chief Justice Waite . . .  ruled that the Enforcement Act violated states' rights.  Moreover, the only recourse the federal government could take was the Fourteenth Amendment, but, he continued, that did not cover vigilantes or private acts of terror, but rather covered only those acts of violence carried out by the states.  The ruling not only let mass murderers go free;  it effectively removed the ability of the federal government to rein in anti-black domestic terrorism moving forward." (p. 34)

She adds that Supreme Court justice Joseph Bradley was tired of blacks continually trying to use the courts.

"He barked that 'there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of a mere citizen, and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws.'  Like Andrew Johnson, Bradley saw equal treatment for black people as favoritism." (p. 35)

1877 - Hall v. DeCuir 

"The justices ruled that a state could not prohibit racial segregation." (p. 35)

 1880 - Strauder v. West Virginia, Exparte Virginia, and Virginia v. Rives 

". . .in a series of decisions . . . the U.S. Supreme Court provided clear guidelines to the states on how to systematically and constitutionally exclude African Americans from juries in favor of white jurors."(p. 35)

1896 - Plessy v. Ferguson

"Homer Plessy, a black man who looked white, thought his challenge to a Louisiana law that forced him to ride in the Jim Crow railcar instead of the one designated for whites would put an end to this legal descent into black subjugation.  He was wrong.  The justices, in an 8-1 decision, dismissed the claims that Plessy's Fourteenth Amendment rights to equal protection under the law were violated.  Justice Henry Brown unequivocally stated, "If one race be inferior to the other socially, the constitution of the United States cannot put them on the same plane."
"And when Plessy argued that segregation violated the thirteenth Amendment's ban against 'badges of servitude,' the Supreme Court shot down that argument as well, noting:  "We consider the underlying fallacy of [Plessy's] argument . . . to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority.  If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.'" (p.35)  (emphasis added)

1899  Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education 

"that even ignored Plessy's separate but equal doctrine by declaring that financial exigency made it perfectly acceptable to shut down black schools while continuing to operate educational facilities for white children." (p. 36)

1898 Williams v. Mississippi 

"the justices approve the use of the poll tax, which requires citizens to pay a fee - under a set of very arcane, complicated rules - to vote.  Although the discriminatory intent of the requirement was well known prior to the justices' ruling, the highest court in the land sanctioned this formidable barrier to the ballot box.  In fact, Justice Joseph McKenna quoted extensively from the Mississippi Supreme Court's candid admission that the state convention, 'restrained by the federal Constitution from discriminating against the negor race,' opted instead to find a method that 'discriminates against its [African Americans'] characteristics' - namely poverty, illiteracy, and more poverty." (p. 36)

 Anderson notes the impact of this decision.

"As late as 1942, for instance, only 3 percent of the voting-age population cast a ballot in seven poll tax states." (p. 36)

1903 Giles v. Harris

"Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that 'the federal courts had no power, either constitutional or practical, to remedy a statewide wrong, even if perpetrated by the state or its agents." (p. 37)

Did you catch that?  Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the most celebrated Supreme Court justices ever.

 Two things seem most important here to me:

1. Slavery didn't end after the civl war.  In fact for many blacks things were worse.  Slave owners had no incentive to destroy their 'property.'  But after slaves were freed, Southerners could kill at will pretty much.  And these conditions continued until the 1960s.  So African Americans haven't come close to recovering from the personal traumas and the financial theft of their labor.  Rather than blaming blacks for their own poverty, white Americans need to acknowledge the long history of oppression, cruelty, and murders of African Americans, some aspects of which continue to this day.  
2. A court blinded by its own prejudices and ideology can do untold harm to Americans, including overturning the laws of Congress.  A scary thought with Trump and Pence picking candidates for the supreme court.  

Another book club member asked me if I've read White Rage yet.  I told him only Chapter 1, but it was really grim.  He said, it gets much worse.


Part 3 of these posts moves into more modern times.

The White Helmets Takes You On A Short Trip To Syria

Netflix is showing The White Helmets, a short documentary about a group that rescues people immediately after bombings.  It takes you into Allepo and into a training program in Turkey.  It gives you a close up look inside Syria.

When I googled the movie to find out more, I did find an interview with a Dr. Tim Anderson of the University of Sydney who claims the White Helmets is a terrorist group and the movie is total propaganda.  I also found this article which argues that Anderson is merely parroting the Asad and Russian line.   There is also an article in the Australian which looks at Anderson's past.

Judge for yourself.  I still recommend the movie if you have Netflix.  Oh, yeah, they're showing it because it won the Academy Award for best short documentary.  It's very well made.

Jane Wyman's 100th Birthday, Rain, Clouds, And Fences

Jane Wyman was an Oscar winning actress and she married a B movie actor in 1940 named Ronald Reagan until they split in 1949.   Here's the New York Times obituary.  She'd be 100 today.  Here is the first birthday from my list of people born in 1917.

It's been mostly cloudy, with breaks of sun and breaks of rain.  Southern California can use every drop of rain it can get, so I'm not complaining. When we came home after seeing Fences Thursday evening, it was raining, which I tried to catch, not too successfully, in the lights at this soccer field.  But the fence is a good lead into talking about the film.

Fences was powerful.  The language was magnificent, but then it was written by August Wilson, a playwright who has written some of the best American plays of the 20th Century.  I couldn't help thinking about Death of a Salesman - another play about a father who was doing all he could to cope in his role as the family provider.  But while we can see that Willie Loman is a victim of the social expectations of his times, he's essentially a weak man who could have made different choices in his life.

But in Fences the father, Troy, - played by Denzel Washington in the film - was a much stronger and competent man, restricted by much harsher limits.  But flawed as well.  His anger at the injustices he experienced and perhaps some he just perceived prevents him from enjoying the comparatively decent life he has built.   He was a great baseball player, he hit home runs against Satchel Paige he claims, but it was before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball.  Now he's fighting the system to break out of the restrictions of the Pittsburgh sanitation department.  He's tired of throwing the garbage into the truck.  He wants a promotion to the job reserved for white men - driver.

As the play progresses, we learn why he's such a hard ass father, and why he can't tell his son, Corey (Courtney B. Vance  in the 1987 version and Chris Chalk in the 2010 version)  he likes him, let alone loves him.   Here's that scene I found online from the play - first the 1987 version with James Earl Jones as Troy and then in the 2010 version with Denzel Washington in the role he plays in the movie.  (Washington also directs the film.)




Troy's father had abandoned him and we can see throughout the play* how stretched he is trying to provide for his family - which includes his mentally unhinged brother, a son from an earlier wife, and a son from his present wife of 18 years or so, played by Viola Davis. And you can see the pressure he feels to raise his son to be responsible and tough in a world that shortchanges black men.

And Davis is fantastic. Here's a later scene, after Washington had told Davis he's going to be a father again, and how he just needed a place where he could let go of all those pressures, where he didn't have responsibilities to pay the rent and feed the family, where he could escape and laugh and be himself. She doesn't take kindly to that at all.



No one should be saying that while men have it easy in today's world. Few people have it easy.  The system isn't kind to human beings.  But all things considered, there have been fewer barriers to success for white men than for black men. (I'm avoiding women because that's a whole other issue.) 

But I wonder how many white men who hate the slogan 'black lives matter' can watch this film and get its humanity. The issues are universal, but will the racist wing of the Trump team  be able to see past the skin color and the language? One would hope so, but how many will ever see it? And if they do, and if they felt Troy's pain, could they tell their friends?  I don't know, I'm just asking.

* I say play deliberately as I'm vaguely aware of some critics finding the movie not cinematic enough.  As I was looking for cast names I saw a link to a New Yorker article on that topic, but haven't looked because I wanted to finish this first.  I'll look now.

Before I found it, I found an article by Kareem Abdul Jabbar and I can't think of a smarter or more suited man to talk about this film.  The link also includes a video interview he had with the two lead characters of the film.  Jabbar writes as part of the intro:

"The Maxson family's unhappiness results from a toxic mixture of the patriarch's unapologetic hubris and the pressures of being raised black in a white society that marginalizes, degrades and oppresses anyone not in the mainstream. Troy Maxson (Washington) isn't aware that while he battles for equality from the white society, he's imposing the same tyrannical restrictions he's struggling against on his own family. He has become the very enemy he's fighting."

Most of it is the transcript of the video and the video itself.  They are exactly the same.  There are a few things in the written interview that aren't in the video and vice versa.  Also, in the video Davis correctly says 'baseball league,' not the 'football league' that's written.

Thursday was a break from the rain.  When I did a quick bike ride down to the beach just to move my legs a bit, the clouds were out over the ocean, but it wasn't the solid gray we'd had.

We had dinner with a friend of my mom's, a woman who came by weekly and always brought some food for my mom.  They'd been good friends for a long time.  She told us stories about after WWII when she met her husband in London.  They were both young refugees in England during the war.  They'd both gotten out of Germany before the war started.  His sister had lived through the war in Berlin with fake papers.  They had both applied for jobs as translators for the American military in Europe.  Her father took her down to the station and started talking to a young man while she was away a moment.  So, it turned out he introduced her to her future husband.  She was 20 and they first were sent to Paris for a week of training and then to Germany where their fluency in German and English were helpful.  Despite the hardships of those immediate postwar days in Germany, love and adventure are what she remembered most.

For those of you who are wondering about the New Yorker article, I did find it after I finished this.  I think the reviewer got so hung up on the idea that this should have been done more cinematically that he missed the fundamental power of the story.  He's focused on technique, even when he has praise, which he has.

A New Life Borrowed From The Dead

There's so much I haven't written about the movies and tv shows we've seen on Netflix.  And about the phenomenon of Netflix itself.  I think because there is so much to think about after watching many of these films that I give up.  Particularly because by the time the movie is over, it's late.  We've been to so many different worlds, sat in with so many people whose lives we didn't know existed, or if we did, had no idea of what it was like.

The film Dheepan is one of those films.  It won the Palme D'Or at Cannes last year.  It's a French film which colors in the details of one sort of family of immigrants in Europe.  From a country we don't normally see in the news on refugees.

Good film has such a powerful way of plunging us into other people's lives and connecting us to the pains and, in this film, small joys. Not like the superficial descriptions of refugees we see in the news, the nameless faces in a crowd.

It's on Netflix - at least in the US - for now.  It's powerful.  Dheepan.

Screenshot when they get their new identities

Here are parts of three different reviews.


From Joe Morgenstern's  Wall Street Journal review:

"Whether by chance or the filmmaker’s design, the touchingly modest wardrobe of a young schoolgirl in “Dheepan” includes a T-shirt that says “New World Order.” Her life bespeaks a new world disorder. She’s a refugee from Sri Lanka who has managed to reach France as part of a pretend family—a mother, father and daughter who barely know one another, though that’s not what it says on their false documents, and who don’t know how to begin making a new life for themselves in an alien culture. Every day we see new accounts of refugee tides coursing across continents, and every account challenges our comprehension. Jacques Audiard’s superb drama, which won the top prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, rises to the challenge with the power of art and not a scintilla of sentimentality."

From A. O. Scott's New York Times review:

"They have, in effect, borrowed a new life from the dead, and the transaction is mostly successful. They are able to leave the refugee camp where they meet and fly to France (though Yalini would prefer to go to England, where she has relatives). After a spell in a crowded dormitory in Paris, during which Dheepan earns money selling trinkets and batteries on the street, the three are granted asylum, thanks to the intervention of a sympathetic interpreter and the benign haplessness of the French state." 

(I'd note I saw lots of Dheepans selling trinkets on the street last August in Paris.)

And from Peter Bradshaw's review in The Guardian:

"There is such exhilarating movie mastery in this powerful new film about Tamil refugees in France from director Jacques Audiard, who gave us A Prophet, Rust and Bone and The Beat That My Heart Skipped. It’s bulging with giant confidence and packed with outbursts of that mysterious epiphanic grandeur, like moments of sunlight breaking through cloud-cover, with which Audiard endows apparently normal sequences and everyday details. There is also something not always found in movies or books or TV drama – that is to say, intelligent and sympathetic interest in other human beings. Every scene, every line, every frame has something of interest. All of it is impeccably crafted and the work of someone for whom making films is as natural as breathing."

Whether It's US Election Divisions Or Israelis And Palestinians - We're All Humans And We Need To Work It Out

Here's an LA Times headline on that got this post going. 

"This election is much more than Trump vs. Clinton. It's old America vs. new America"

OK, in some ways I don't disagree with the authors.  But we've been hearing variations of this for quite a while now.  Here's some of the script:

"There’s the old one — a distinction not of age alone, but cultural perspective and outlook — that Trump appeals to as he courts white, rural voters and social conservatives.  .  . 

And there’s the new America, the one Hillary Clinton has homed in on with her appeals to women, gay and lesbian Americans, the young, and minorities."

This has been the story of the US since we were colonies.  Each group already here is threatened by the newcomers.  The newcomers are less human, less civilized, don't speak proper English, will take us over and destroy what we have.  

And then the newcomers become the old guys who say the same thing about on new newcomers.

Here are some quotes from the past:

‘’Help wanted but No Irish need Apply’’

From a long letter by Benjamin Franklin on the problem of German immigrants:

Those who come hither are generally of the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own Nation, and as Ignorance is often attended with Credulity when Knavery would mislead it, and with Suspicion when Honesty would set it right; and as few of the English understand the German Language, and so cannot address them either from the Press or Pulpit, ’tis almost impossible to remove any prejudices they once entertain.

How about Italians?  Here's from Wikipedia:

"After the American Civil War, during the labor shortage as the South converted to free labor, planters in southern states recruited Italians to come to the United States to work mainly in agriculture and as laborers. Many soon found themselves the victims of prejudice, economic exploitation, and sometimes violence. Italian stereotypes abounded during this period as a means of justifying this maltreatment of the immigrants. The plight of the Italian immigrant agricultural workers in Mississippi was so serious that the Italian embassy became involved in investigating their mistreatment. Later waves of Italian immigrants inherited these same virulent forms of discrimination and stereotyping which, by then, had become ingrained in the American consciousness.[11]
One of the largest mass lynchings in American history was of eleven Italians in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1891."

 My point?  All the same rhetoric - fear of crime, loss of jobs, loss of culture and language, are nothing new.  This has been the reaction of the people already here to every wave of new immigrants.

 Immigrants with darker skin aren't any different from the immigrants that have been coming to North America since the Pilgrims.  They all eventually assimilate and become Americans.

BUT, it's harder for darker skinned immigrants because white Americans can't seem to get past their skin color and keep treating them badly.  It's not their culture or their language or their religion.  Protestants didn't like Catholics, or even different kinds of Protestants.  

For white immigrants all that evolves into a culturally 'acceptable' American ethnicity with Columbus Day and St. Patrick's Day parades after a generation or two.  Blacks and Mexicans and Filipinos can't as easily anglicize their names and 'fit in' like Germans and Poles and even Italians and Jews.

So let's stop making like this is a cultural shift that is significantly different from what's happened in the past.  Or that Americans from non-European backgrounds have cultures so different from mainstream America that this is different from European immigration.  It's not.

It's the same old rhetoric.  The only difference is the difficulty of some whites to accept people who can't pass as white even after they speak perfect 'American' English.  The new immigrants are not even necessarily less conservative on many social and economic issues, but since they've experienced discrimination themselves, the go to the party that is more tolerant and accepting.

Before the Tea Party and Trump gave them a place to go, the only liberal allowable targets of discrimination were' hillbillies' and 'white trash.'  Now let's see if liberals can start turning our our tolerance to these groups.  Can we start listening to their stories and understanding why they hate others, why they need to dominate women?  It's not as though some liberal men don't also treat women poorly.  It's not that we have to accept their views, but at least we should understand where they come from, listen to their narratives, like we do all the other groups?  

Liberals have tolerated racist and misogynist rap lyrics.  Why not take the same view of Trump's misogynist supporters that Kanye West uses to at least explain, if not excuse, misogyny in rap?

“So let’s take that to the idea of a black male in America, not getting a job, or getting fucked with at his job, or getting fucked with by the cops or being looked down upon by this lady at Starbucks. And he goes home to his girl … and this guy is like … you just scream at the person that’s the closest to you.” West linked the use of misogynistic and violent language in rap to a “lack of opportunities” before switching tack and discussing hatred and racism.

I'm not suggesting any misogyny or racism is acceptable.  But we have to understand how men get to that place and figure out how to shape our society so it doesn't produce so many angry, dispossessed people.  We have to understand their narrative and help them see that there are other narratives.  Perhaps that their economic woes aren't really due to immigrants, but to weakened labor laws, weakened economic regulation of corporations, and tax laws that help the rich get much richer and the poor poorer.  The ruling class has used race to divide and conquer for ever.  For the wealthy right, 'class' is a politically incorrect topic.

Here is an example of that idea in a totally different context.  I just read an interview in the Sun Magazine with a Jewish Israeli and a Muslim Palestinian who both are committed to nonviolence and belong to Combatants for Peace.  The Israeli, Rami Elhanan, tells the interviewer at one point:

Elhanan: There are two possibilities: One, people open their eyes and realize we have to change. (This is the less likely possibility right now.) Or, two, we end up with an all-out war that results in oceans of blood and won’t lead to a resolution, because we won’t be able to push the Palestinians into the desert, and they won’t be able to throw us into the sea. The war will just go on and on. In the long run I fear for the existence of Israel. So many young, educated Israelis go abroad and don’t come back. Almost everyone has family members who live in other countries. And the ones who are leaving are the intellectuals and the artists and the scientists — people we need to ensure the survival of a democratic society. The ones left behind are the ultra-Orthodox and the less educated. Sometimes I see it as a coming apocalypse. It’s terrifying. But I don’t want to succumb to doomsday thinking. I want to believe that once people see that the price of war is greater than the price of peace, there will be a shift in attitude. You can’t live forever by the sword.
Hertog: Though it has often been tried in history.
Elhanan: That’s true. But it’s also true that historically all conflicts end. One year, two years, twenty years — in Ireland it took them eight hundred years to make peace. At some point we will have peace here as well.

Elhanan and his Palestinian counterpart and friend, Bassam Aramin go around talking to school kids.

Elhanan:  ". . . This morning, for example, a student sent me an e-mail saying I had shown him light in the darkness. That was from a boy in a military-preparatory course. These kids are idealistic and committed, but they know nothing. They are the product of indoctrination by the Israeli educational system. You should have seen these students: the tension, the emotions, the anger. They have rarely interacted with Palestinians and have learned to see them all as terrorists and criminals. It’s a shock for them to consider a different narrative. Bassam, who was with me, succeeded in breaking down their defenses and showed them an image of a Palestinian who is not a victim or an enemy, but who also does not surrender his pride. After a meeting like that, those kids did not walk out the same as they came in. They will continue thinking, and they will talk at home about what they have heard. That’s the work we do. There are no shortcuts. We change the narrative, person by person."

It's a powerful interview.  Both men have lost children to the conflict.  Both take huge risks doing the work they do.  It's inspiring for those who think there is no hope.

Elhanan: Nowadays everyone is hopeless. It’s fashionable to have no hope. People wave their despair as if it were some kind of flag. You can’t live like that, especially if, like me, you have already experienced the worst. You can’t just give up because the world is terrible. You have to find hope in small things.

I would say the political divide we have in the US is a minor disagreement compared to the Israeli - Palestinian conflict.  Except for the indigenous people of North America, everyone else has no particular claim to being here that's better than anyone else's.  If "I'm more entitled than you because I've been here three generations and you only two generations" has any validity, then all of us who've been here less than 500 years should be banned and let North America's indigenous people, who have been here for 10,000 years or more,  have their land back.

We need to start, not talking, but listening to everyone.  We need to acknowledge other people's grievances and hopes, and then get them to do the same with ours.  It's not as hard as it seems because, in the end, we're all human beings.  We're born to into a family, have childhoods that turn into adolescence and adulthood, face the task of making our own living in the world, finding a partner, and starting the process over again.  These are the universal themes that unite human beings and make stories from any culture understandable to every other culture.

Here's an excerpt from the interview with the Palestinian, Bassam Aramin, on breaking past each others' narratives.

Aramin:  . . .  That first meeting lasted about three hours. I told a lot of lies, because I didn’t trust them, but it was amazing just to talk. They spoke about how they’d occupied us and harassed us — they admitted it!
They were real soldiers. I wasn’t much of a fighter. I had been arrested because I was part of a group of kids who’d thrown stones. My friends had also thrown two hand grenades at an Israeli patrol, but because they didn’t know how to use the grenades, nobody had been killed or injured. I felt I wasn’t at the same level as these Israelis. To impress them, I boasted that I had shot soldiers and that I had thrown the hand grenades at the Israeli patrol.
Hertog: If you didn’t trust the Israelis, what made you decide to meet with them?
Aramin: I already had one child at that time, and I was thinking of his future. I had decided that I needed to take responsibility, not just fight Israelis. And the Israelis needed to take part in ending the occupation. For them it was security; for me it was my life. We both wanted to find a solution. Palestinians need Israelis, so they can learn to understand us and explain our point of view to others in their society.
Hertog: How did Combatants for Peace come into being from that meeting?
Aramin: At the end of the meeting someone suggested that we meet again. I asked why, because I had assumed it was supposed to be just once. And one of the Israelis suggested that we could work together against the occupation. When he actually called it an “occupation,” I thought, Wow. And I agreed to meet again. In the period before our second meeting, we looked up all the information we could find about these Israelis, so we knew they were for real. Meanwhile they looked up what we had done. And when we met again after two weeks, we talked at a more personal level and discovered we actually had a lot in common.

We either work to make things better, or we let them get worse.  I don't see there being much of a choice here.