Holocaust Remembrance Day... and Mussolini

It's that day again, Holocaust Remembrance Day, as designated by the UN and adopted by the US.  Quite a day, too, with remembrances taking place with honor and sorrow in many countries. 

Of course you know that there are also a lot of Holocaust deniers (hello, phony moon landing folks), neo-fascists and just plain Hitlerites, young and old.  What may surprise you is that a recent world leader chose this day to tell us how Benito Mussolini was just a misunderstood guy who did some really good things.  Yep, for "having done good" to be exact.  

And not in a secret meeting where he might claim some plausible deniability.  Oh no:  "(former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi) spoke to reporters on the sidelines of a ceremony in Milan to commemorate the Holocaust."  (My emphasis.)  That's really making a statement.  THEN he said ""It is difficult now to put oneself in the shoes of who was making decisions back then." 

No, Silvio, you putz, it's not.  I thought a Mussolini review might be in order.

Okay, I know that a lot of you only remember Mussolini as a junior (in comparison) leader of the WW II Axis - Germany, Japan and Italy.  There were some other countries involved but you get the picture.  But do you recall that while Hitler was languishing in jail and writing Mein Kampf, Benito was embarked on vicious campaigns to reclaim Ethiopia (then Abyssinia)  and Albania for his modern Roman empire.  Called it Italian East Africa.  The Ethiopians didn't have much of an air force, army or navy - nor much of a chance - and Beni won in a walk.  Pretty much the same for Albania.  Incidently (unless you were there), he also used mustard gas and phosgene on civilians and he summarily executed captured guerrillas. Hey, that's just the kind of guy he was.

Beni backed Franco in the so-called Spanish civil war.  Then there was that whole "Let's kill all the Slovenes" thing.  After sucking up to England, Beni made common cause with Hitler - The Pact of Steel - and sent troops to fight in Russia without being invited.  Free killing with booty for all?  Not so much, as it turned out. 

He invaded North Africa (again) and when the locals turned the tide against him, Hitler had to send in his Afrika Corps to bail Beni's butt out -- but only until the allies launched Operation Torch and eventually sent both armies packing with massive losses.

Did I mention that Beni rounded up and executed 6,000 Italian Jews, "the most assimilated Jews in Europe", and murdered most of them? How assimilated was Italian Jewry?  "(I)n 1910, Luigi Luzzatti, a Venetian Jew, became prime minister."  Thank you, AJC, for both quotes.

Beni and his mistress were escaping to neutral Spain shortly before the war ended but they were captured and executed en route.  Finis with disgrace, or so you might have thought.  But noooo (thank you, John Belushi).  There's been a lot of revisionism since WW II but my summary is pretty well established fact.

But this piece is really about Berlusconi.  This isn't the first time that Silvio Berlusconi has extolled Beni "for having done good."  It's been a theme of his for years.  In 2003 he told world leaders at a Paris conference that he had been reading Mussolini's journals, and Berlusconi claimed that Mussolini "never killed anyone.  (Thank you, Reuters.) 

In 2010, Berlusconi said:

"I will dare to quote you a phrase from someone considered a dictator, a great, powerful dictator, Benito Mussolini.  In his diary, I recently read this phrase. 'They say I have power. It isn't true. Maybe my party officials do. But I don't know. All I can do is say to my horse go right or left. And I have to be happy with that.'"

"Considered" a dictator?  Considered?  Mussolini was a dictator even before Hitler's rise to power.

Speaking his thoughts about judges:

"If they do that job, it is because they are anthropologically different from the rest of the human race."

Like Mussolini, Berlusconi has opined on conquest:

"The West will continue to conquer peoples, even if it means a confrontation with another civilisation, Islam, firmly entrenched where it was 1,400 years ago."

And more on conquest, of a more personal nature:

"I never understood where the satisfaction is when you're missing the pleasure of conquest."   (regarding his notorious sex life, especially with underage women and prostitutes)

Conquest is a recurring theme with Silvio.

And finally, on himself:

"In my opinion, and not only mine, I am the best prime minister we can find today." 

"I am the Jesus Christ of politics. I am a patient victim, I put up with everyone, I sacrifice myself for everyone."

"In Italy I am almost seen as German for my workaholism. Also I am from Milan, the city where people work the hardest. Work, work, work - I am almost German."

"When asked if they would like to have sex with me, 30% of women said, 'Yes', while the other 70% replied, 'What, again?'"... (OK, I admit that one is a little bit funny.)

There are two important things to remember about Berlusconi.  The first is that he's a rich politician and the second is that he's running for parliament next month. 

Running for Parliament?  Could Italy really be that far out of touch?  Well, there was that fling with Mussolini.

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Please:  Remember the cost and terror of fascism and racial politics today, and mourn their numberless victims... and teach your children the truth.

Holocaust Memorial - Berlin

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Yad Vashem, the holocaust memorial in Israel.  Click HERE for Wiki's explanations.

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So long as the Duce lives, one can rest assured that Italy will seize every opportunity to achieve its imperialistic aims.

--Adolf Hitler, November 1939

It is the height of revisionism to try to reinstate an Italian dictator who helped legitimize and prop up Hitler as a `reincarnated good guy.' 
--Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. (Thank you, HuffPost.)

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Note:  I got my quotes from various credible sources on the Internet.  (Thank you, Al Gore.)

Say WHAT, Mr. Speaker?

"Go f*** yourself."  Yep, that's what Speaker Boehner said to Sen. Harry Reid last Thursday.  Harry had accused John of running the House like a dictator.  Snivelin' John didn't much like that.  I guess Harry didn't notice when NancyP ran the House like the prez of an out-of-control sorority house.  It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry. 

The tax bill passed, of course.  It really wasn't a fiscal cliff and it was created by Congress in the first place.  They didn't roll back the 2% SocSec cutback, either.  You lose.  Your taxes also likely went up if your household income is more than $40K, but not nearly as much as if it happens to be >$450K.  We all feel the pinch but that's not what they promised.  The more you make, the more you pay, which sounds fair enough if you don't stop to think about it.  

The natural extension of our current tax debate is the two-line tax form:  
  1)  How much did you make?  
  2)  Send it in.

Our national debt was $10.6 Tril when the prez took office.  Today it's more than $16 Tril and the new spending plan will add another tril or more annually for the next four years.  $20Tril.  What a sorry legacy to hand down to our kids.  How do you repay $20Tril?  DO you repay $20Tril?  Think about it. 

The NYSE is up 308 points.  Gold is up, too.  In fact, gold is up more than 100% in the past five years.  Is that in the hope that stuff will be worth more than money some time soon?  Are Z-Bux coming to the USA?


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The credit of the United States has, both at home and abroad, been so heavily and perhaps imprudently laden that care should be taken lest the strength should become inadequate to its burdens.

John Jay letter to General Schuyler

November 25, 1780 

Then I say the earth belongs to each of these generations during it’s course, fully, and in their own right. The 2d. generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the 1st., the 3d. of the 2d. and so on. For if the 1st. could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not the living generation. Then no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of it’s own existence.

Thomas Jefferson

September 6, 1789 

I can make a firm pledge.  Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.  Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains tax, not any of your taxes.
Barack Obama
September 2008

It's not a tax.  You just have to pay more taxes

Your humble blogger, HERE

Look, I'm very much in favor of tax cuts, but not with borrowed money.  And the problem we've gotten into in recent years is spending programs with borrowed money, tax cuts with borrowed money, and at the end of the day that proves disastrous.  And my view is, I don't think we can play subtle policy here.
Alan Greenspan

Go f*** yourself.
John Boehner

Did You Feel It?

We tumbled off the fiscal cliff last night.  Finally.  I didn't feel a thing, did you? But not really fell, we're told today.  That was only to get Congress to do... something.  Please.

Your withholding will feel like it's going up.  That's because you've been paying 2% less recently.  Yep.  Social Security is bankrupt and the government's answer had been to reduce our contributions to it by 2%.  Now it's payback time unless and until our gummint heroes can reduce it again and call themselves, yes, tax cutters.  Then we can resume stealing from our children's future and call it revenue.  It's a liars game.

A bunch of taxes, some new and some not, went up this morning.  I suppose with us being in collective $16 Tril of debt, something had to happen.  Raise taxes or cut spending, those were the choices Congress told us we (they) had.  

The latest deal from the Senate raises taxes $620B and cuts spending $15B.  That will really annoy the House so don't look for complete agreement.  Heck, they couldn't even get unanimous consent to declare war in 1941.  

The Senate wants most of the new tax revenue to come from families making more than $450K.  Was $250K (those fiscal demons), now it's $450K.  Just kidding, you $250K people.  Relax.  

It's kinda hard to pin down who's a dirty capitalist kulak who has to cough up "just a little more" and who's just one of the folks.  More on kulaks soon.

Remember the Repub presidential debate when the moderator asked each job applicant if he/she (Michelle was still in it) would trade ten bucks of deficit cuts for one buck in increased spending?  10:1.  'Nope, wouldn't do that' was the unanimous answer.  Bet it wouldn't be today.  Today's Senate proposal was 41:1 ... the other way.

India has a novel idea.  Remember Eunuch Tax Collectors?  This time, why not just hand cash to poor people?  Direct deposit, actually.  You know, to the Indian poor who actually have bank accounts and aren't lucky enough to be eunuchs.  Both of them. No, really.  Billions of IndiBux.  What could go wrong?  

I was shocked -- shocked, I tell you -- to learn that India has an election coming up in 2014.  Remember when Mitt accused the Prez of trying to buy votes by increasing welfare, health care and food stamps?  Same thing.  As ever was.


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A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape it. Alexis de Toqueville

To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder. 
Benjamin Disraeli

New Year's Eve 2012

More than a year, this time, since I've posted on my blog.  I need to say something about the year just passing.  It's been a tough one.

My good friend Ransom passed this year.  What a shame.  It was a brain aneurysm, sudden and unexpected.  He was what we all strive to be: courageous, self-sacrificing, loving, caring of others.  An ex-Vietnam Chinook pilot with heavy combat experience.  Did I mention brave?  I loved him and I miss him daily.

My step-dad passed away, too.  We were never close, but it would be wrong to disparage him.  He did the best he could.  My step-brother had the tough job of disposing of his dad's life's possessions.  Did it well, too.

My darlin' wife had a rough time of it this year, and still does.  Two major back surgeries in November, one day apart, with a year of pain before finally making the big decision.  Unenviable at best, and she is still recovering, slowly and painfully but steadily.  She'll make it, though, and her smile is lovely. 

Our youngest and her family moved away so that she could find meaningful work in her field.  From Hillsborough, Oregon, to Toledo, Ohio.  Culture shock and the moving blues at the same time. 

Our eldest and his wife moved, too.  Here, to our home, as part of a career move.  They'll be here as long as they want.  It's good to have them around, them and their old beagle.

Our elder girl may have had it the toughest, though, with an ugly break-up.  She's doing her best with it and we're trying to be supportive parents.   It's never easy.

Even our pets get a mention here.  The two little ones we got as puppies on Thanksgiving week-end last year have grown into charming little guys.  They've got big shoes to fill, though, after Bailey's passing of three years ago.  Well, if dogs could wear shoes. 

Next week I'm losing my Vet Center counselor of more than 13 years.  At 65, Cliff is finally taking a well-earned retirement after 33 years in a demanding field.  He's the last of a breed, a Vietnam combat veteran who became a combat-related PTSD counselor.  Godspeed, my friend.  I owe you more than I can pay.  From here on out may it be peaches and pound cake forever.

As for me, I'm fine. To quote Willie Nelson in "Me 'n' Paul": "After taking several readings I'm surprised to find my mind's still fairly sound."  Couple of hobbies keep me busy and I'm active in a local AA group.  If I make it to next May, it'll be a quarter-century of continuous sobriety.  Who would have thought?  I try to have as much fun as possible and to remember the people who, at one time or another, saved my life or changed it for the better.  Sometimes both. 

I've got some fine friends, an excellent home life and a terrific wife and family.  I need to remember AA's lessons on gratitude.  There's no reason on Earth that these good things should have happened to me.  But they did.

Good-bye, 2012.  You did the best you could, too.

Thank you, my friends.

Thank you, Edythe.

Thank you, God.

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I get half a million just to show up at parties.  My life is, like, really, really fun. ... Paris Hilton


New Year's Resolution:  To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time. ... James Agate


Resolution One:  I will live for God.  Resolution Two:  If no one else does, I still will. ... Jonathan Edwards

Veterans Day 2011

 

It's been exactly one year since I wrote my last blog post.  Don't know exactly why.  It just didn't seem like fun any more and I was running out of things to say, or so I thought.  I've been re-thinking all that and today looks like a good day to try again.

I've been moved to write on several occasions by the magnitude of the events of the day, or a day in perspective.  Thus my various posts on Memorial Days, Veterans Days and, last year, on June 6.  D-Day.  It seems to me that days like those should hold special meaning for all of us.  They don't, though.  

As before, few discern a difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day.  Our local rag has the obligatory flag-at-a-cemetery photo.  Its story explains that some people will "... pause to remember men and women who served, and died, as members of the U.S. military."  Some will, of course, but that's not what today is about.  On the inside is a continuation headlined "Names of 6,200 killed in wars will be read at UO."  The UO is also sponsoring a 5k "Run for the Fallen" today.  These are fine things, no doubt, but they don't capture or even acknowledge the meaning of Veterans Day.  I'm a veteran and I'm not yet fallen.  Is today not about me as well?  The poster is pretty clear about it:  "Honoring All Who Served".  Why can't we get that right?

My favorite local coffee joint, The Hungry Bunny in Cottage Grove, did a much better job this morning:  "Hey, are you a veteran?"  "Yes, I am."  "Coffee's free for you today.  Thank you."  No, thank you young lady, for getting it right and for the good hot coffee.  Click on the cartoon:

Bill Mauldin and Charles Schultz got it right, too.  That's Mauldin's Willie and Joe above.  Willie is looking at Snoopy and says to Joe "I think the new recruits are getting smaller all the time."  Snoopy is looking back and saying ""Willie and Joe.. my heroes.  Happy Veterans Day, men."  Schultz was a WW II machine gunner sergeant who earned the Combat Infantryman's Badge.  Mauldin was a Stars and Stripes reporter/artist who earned the Purple Heart at Anzio Beach.  Both are gone now, but will always be national treasures.  Schultz drew a special Veterans Day strip every year and sent the original to Mauldin, who never quite understood why.  There are things veterans never forget.  I hope Schultz and Snoopy are hoisting root beers and telling war stories at Mauldin's home in heaven today.  They made the world a better place and, after all, isn't that what we're thanking our veterans for today?

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For American veterans everywhere:

The master said, "Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let's celebrate together!"

Happy Veterans Day
Let's celebrate together

Thank You

Veterans Day 2010

[Full disclosure:  I am an American military veteran.]

Here it is again, Veterans Day, likely our most misunderstood day of remembrance.  If you are a veteran I thank you for your service and I join my fellow Americans in honoring you.

It began in honor of those who served in WWI, a war that ended at 1100 on 11-11-1918.  It is celebrated elsewhere, named Remembrance Day or Armistice Day.  It was Armistice Day here, too, until 1954 when it became Veterans Day.  It was the fourth Monday in October from 1971 to 1978, in the frantic quest for more 3-day weekends.  That was settled in 1978 and it helps us remember what it commemorates.  It was a near-universally observed American holiday once, now not so much.

This is Joseph Ambrose, now gone as are all his fellow WWI vets.  They served in the War to End All Wars.  It didn't though.  He's carrying his son's coffin flag, KIA - Korea, 1951.

How many American armed conflicts can you count?  Not all of them, I bet.  Too bad.  Those veteran's sacrifices are already forgotten.  That's one of the reasons we honor them today.  Did you know that there is a memorial at SGU honoring US dead?  I didn't either.  SGU?  Southern Grenada University.  May I ask, how many war memorials on campuses near you?  Fewer than there should be?

Memorial to fallen Americans in the 1983 invasion of Grenada.

They're veterans too, of course, those fallen 19, as is everyone who ever put on an American uniform that they didn't want to wear, got that first brutal haircut, learned things they never knew existed ("pugil sticks", anyone?), were sent places they didn't want to go in order to do things that they usually didn't want to do.

We especially remember those veterans who were taught to use lethal weapons and told that they had to kill people that they didn't know much about, and about whom they were told almost almost nothing that was true.  Then they were sent home to pretend that nothing much really happened at all.

This isn't Memorial Day.  That day is dedicated to that special cross-section of veterans who gave all in the defense of their country, killed in the line of duty.  Maybe you've read my Memorial Day blogs.  If not, I hope you'll take a look at this one and this one and remember our fallen warriors every day.

No, this is Veterans Day.  We live among you, we work next to you, we share your fears and passions and dreams.  We may have gotten to our place in the world differently than you but here we are.  Some don't like us, some revere us too highly but mostly we are the background music of America.  Music like this, as sung by Ray Charles.  He usually started with the third verse, the verse that speaks directly to veterans, then sang the first, so that's the way I'll write it here:

America the Beautiful

O beautiful for heroes prov'd

In liberating strife,

Who more than self their country loved

And mercy more than life

America!  America!

May God thy gold refine

Till all success be nobleness,

And ev'ry gain divine.

O beautiful for spacious skies

For amber waves of grain

For purple mountains majesties

Above the fruited plain!

America!  America!

God shed his grace on thee

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea!

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Go thank a veteran today.  No, not me, someone else.  And tell your kids why you did it.  Pass it on.

Forty Years Ago Today

I've been meaning to start writing this for days.  Didn't.  Maybe I thought the day wouldn't come.  That happened before, forty years ago, that day I thought might never come.

Forty years ago  today I went to war.  Drove from Reno to Travis AFB, got a send-off kiss, boarded a civilian Boeing 707 with a couple of flight school buddies and left my world behind.  This anniversary never bothered me before.  Most years I didn't notice.  This year is different.  Don't know why.

We had mechanical problems that delayed our departure in Honolulu.  There was enough time to call my old Sgt. Major, CSM Bernard J."Mick" Meehan.  He picked the three of us up, took us out and got us drunk before we had to re-board.  Fine man, Mick.  Brave and noble and tough, very old school.  He'd been my ROTC Sgt. Major at Cal Poly, severely wounded (again) on Hamburger Hill (he got a mention in the book) and was on a recovery assignment at Hickam AFB, something to do with mapping, or at least that was the story.

I was blissfully unaware, in more ways than one, of what was in store for me.  I had logged a couple hundred hours of pilot time in flight school, was type-rated in Hueys and IFR and I thought I could fly.  Thought I was invincible, too; maybe that was a prerequisite.  We stopped somewhere en route, maybe Guam.  I don't remember de-planing there but I may have been suffering a hangover. 

We landed at Bien Hoa, Republic of South Vietnam.  If you paid attention (I don't hold it against you if you didn't), Bien Hoa was the site of major battles during Tet '68.  I clearly remember getting off the plane in Bien Hoa.  Most everyone remembers the tidal wave of over-heated rotting-vegetation JP-4 laden air that overwhelmed you when they first opened the door.  Amazing how soon we ceased to notice it at all.  

Down the airplane gangway to the tarmac, past another line of GIs who were walking past us on the way to "our" plane.  There were whistles and taunts and cat-calls;  "You'll be sorry!"  "You gonna die, GI!", uplifting things like that. 

We were bused to the 90th Repo Depot at Long Binh, then the largest US military base in the world.  I noticed the heavy wire mesh on the bus windows.  Keeps the occasional grenade-thrower at bay, we were told.  Sure enough, no grenades but now I was thinking about them.  Got to the 90th, got a bunk assignment in officers quonset hut quarters (made grenading officers that much more convenient, it occurred to me) and walked around to stretch my legs.  There was a list of names and where they were going and when and where they were to ship out.  I wasn't on it yet.  

By that time I had met a senior warrant officer on his third tour.  I hung on his every word.  He was going back to the 1st Cavalry Division, for whom he had flown in the past.  He'd been a med-evac pilot, a breed of particularly lunatic and brave aviators, and he convinced me that was what I wanted to be and where I wanted to be.  Plus, of course, The Cav has that cool yellow patch.  Plus again, I was young and foolish.

When the time came I told them it was The Cav for me (ho-HO!), got my orders and we flew out together on a C-123 to 1st Cav HQ.  Couldn't help but notice when we got in the landing pattern that all the artillery was firing.  That's a clue that you may not be in the safest place you've ever been in.  It's also a clue that there are people who want to kill you within artillery range and we had probably just flown over them.  I didn't even wave.

We reported to the S-1, the CWO and I.  The chief got exactly what he wanted and was welcomed back into the fold with pleasantries and comradeship by all present.  Good deal, I thought, and when he left I told him I'd see him in a few.  Nope. Never saw him again.

Then it was my turn to report and report I did.  "Got any idea what you want to do?"  I smiled my best friendly smile:  "Yes sir, I want to fly med-evacs like the chief who was just here."  

"No.  Here's your orders.  You'll be going back to Bien Hoa as soon as you can find a lift.  Dismissed."

Whoa.  Just like that?  Where was MY friendly welcome?  They needed med-evac pilots, didn't they?  And didn't I just volunteer to be one?  And "NO"?  And what WAS an Assault Helicopter Battalion anyway?  I knew all those words but I'd never heard them strung together like that.  "Assault?"  Like, I'm going to be assaulting something?  In a helicopter?  Waiiiit just a minute.  In a helicopter?  Me?

Begged a ride back to the flight line.  Got on another C-123 and back to Bien Hoa, where I had landed oh, three days before.  I was already going in circles.  Didn't have the faintest idea in the world where B/229AHB/1CAV was or even if I was on the right base.  I asked around like the hopeless newbie I was.  Aside:  You've never really been a newbie until you've been a newbie in a combat zone.  Talk about a green bean!

I discovered that I was supposed to be looking for the 229th AHB HQ.  AHB.  Assault Helicopter Battalion.  There were those words again.  Further discovered that I was on the Air Force side of Bien Hoa and I was supposed to be on the Army side.  I didn't even know that bases had sides and I was on the side where I wasn't supposed to be.  Figures.

Hitched a ride with some sympathetic driver and reported to 229AHB HQ.  No more ceremony than when I reported to CAV HQ.  Was told to go to B Co. HQ and report to the CO.  At least I knew that company level was the end of my reporting in and that some kind of beginning was in sight.

That was it, the end of a transition that began 40 years ago today, ended 39 years ago tomorrow and changed my life forever.  I'm writing this to fix certain events in my mind and to share them with whomever might care to read about them.

This isn't about what was to come.  The fear, fatigue, boredom and occasional horror that is part and parcel of war, even for aviators.  

No, this is just what happened to me forty years ago today with a few more days added on.  The transition from garrison soldier to combatant in 120 hours or so and from young man to old in a year.  It made me who I am today... and I damn it for that.

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All war is deception.  --  Sun Tzu