F16’s Don’t Kill People, 500 Lb. Bombs Kill People

Driving home today, a radio ad caught Danny’s attention. I’d only been half-listening and thought it couldn’t possibly be what I heard-but it was, sort of.

The Nebraska Air And Space Museum (don’t let the name fool you, the place is a shrine to the SAC) is having an event tomorrow where Darth Vader and his Storm Troopers will assist the Air Force in escorting Santa. From the back seat I hear an excited voice say:

"He said Star Wars! Can we go? Can we?"

While I tried explaining why it is completely out of the question, I was trying to figure out why the hell anyone would want to associate STRATCOM with Father Christmas, much less the villains from a thirty year old movie. I mean, if you’re the people charged with dropping nuclear bombs, do you really want to have people associate this with a character that blows up planets to make a point? And then the whole Christmas thing- really, that’s just so distasteful.

"Can we go? I love Star Wars? Can Papa take me?"

Eventually, I think he should go there, but not until he’s old enough to understand what those planes on display do. Danny’s much too young to grasp that, so I get to be the mean parent that won’t let him have any fun.

"But mama, I like prop-a-gander. Papa likes prop-a-gander."

Sigh. I named the kid for the Berrigan brothers; I am most certainly not taking him to meet people in Star Wars costumes flanking a B-52. I just can’t. Anyway, I was sure it couldn’t be what it sounded like on the radio because as blatant as their prop-a-gander can be, it didn’t really fit in with the larger "with us or against us" thing. Father Christmas is clearly "against us."

Well, it turns out there are a group of Star Wars enthusiasts that do these events around the Midwest and thankfully, it isn’t an Air Force project. I have to admit, looking at the website, I’m sort of impressed.

So we’ll look for them at other events that don’t involve B-52’s, and hopefully my son won’t hate me for spoiling all his fun.

I’m somewhat surprised THIS was even mentioned in the newspaper, however briefly. Granted, the article doesn’t really tell readers much about the Catholic Worker, and isn’t really a fair portrayal of the group, but at least it avoided presenting them as a bunch of peacenik nut jobs. I guess that’s progress.

What the article missed, is that Omaha is home to STRATCOM which is what the Catholic Workers were trying to draw attention to.  

A while back, I let Danny select a few cookie cutters at the discount kitchen supply store. At .50 cents each, I let him buy a number of them and then pretty much forgot about them until he asked for aeroplane cookies Friday. It really wasn’t until I’d cut them out and started thinking about decorating that I realised I’d purchased a cookie cutter in the shape of a U2. A spy plane, how cool!

I’m not maniacal about keeping squirt guns away from my child and I’m still not sure how I feel about plastic Army men, but must we indoctrinate children with cookies shaped like reconnaissance aircraft? Really, aren’t there any non-military aeroplanes we can let children eat or for that matter, play with? Think I’m kidding? Go to a toy store and have a look at the toys. I’ll be the first to admit that I would have loved playing with a model aircraft carrier that launched little planes off the deck-I mean, that is a really cool toy until you start to think about the purpose of aircraft carriers and what those planes are headed off to do. I suppose if Danny were a bit older and could grasp that, I might feel differently (or not) but at three and a half years of age these cookie cutters and toys are straight-out branding of the military product. I’d recoil at other branded merchandise, why make exceptions?

I realise Danny has no idea what a U2 looks like but I still felt compelled to shorten the nose and pipe the engines on differently enough so that I wouldn’t have to dwell on it every time I let him have a cookie.

It doesn’t stop with snacks and toys-have you seen the camouflage clothing for infants? They even have pink and grey camouflage with sequins for the girls-isn’t that adorable? How about bed linens, matching curtains, notebooks, pencils, and so on. This isn’t your stoner teen wearing Army surplus as an inside joke-this is babies for goodness sake. Camouflage swaddling blankets-do you need me to explain why that is just so wrong? Because it is, and you know it is.

The best I can try to do is counter-indoctrinate my child but I know I’m up against the prevailing culture. I was tempted to make a template and cut out some hammer shaped cookies so he could beat his planes into ploughshares but he’s too young to get it and I’d only be trivialising it.

There’s so much competition for the attention of children-and they get it because we as parents are so consumed with worry about the pervert living within 500 feet of a school. I didn’t think disconnecting the television when Danny was born would guarantee anything, but I thought it was the wise thing to do. I didn’t expect the marketing to come in on a cookie cutter instead. I didn’t think the branded characters on the disposable diapers would invite it in. I didn’t think our Paediatrician’s office would sell our information to fucking Disney so we would be receiving "special offers" in the post addressed to my son. No, I really didn’t plan on that. In my mind I thought I was doing everything correctly until I was confronted with decorating those cookies. 

Maybe I ought to just plug in the telly and give up

Tom Lewis has died at the age of 69.

I was a bit young to remember Catonsville when it happened, but with delays in trials, sentencing and actual served sentences, I remember when the participants were being released from prison. I remember quite well my father being stunned that prison hadn’t had the effect he’d expected, and there weren’t any forthcoming apologies.

"They treat prison like an opportunity."

I suppose I remember it because it was one of the few times the old man actually "got it." Not that he agreed with it, but he understood.

Another point that was understood at the time, even by hawkish/conservative types like my father was that Catonsville wasn’t a protest, but a direct action. Those draft files that were set ablaze with homemade napalm were the draft files of people who would not be heading to Vietnam forced to decide if they wanted to die for their country or worse, kill for it. They probably saved a number of lives on both sides that day.

I have a commentary posted at Unknown News, if you feel like reading it.

This evening I was getting caught up with my reading at Jason’s blog, An Absolution Revolution and decided rather than link to a single post, to just encourage going over there and spending some time reading.

Jason has a great ability to take complicated subjects and make them accessible without resorting to generalisations or being condescending. I always leave feeling more uncomfortable than I was, but that’s probably all the more reason to go over there and read. You won’t feel better, but you might be confronted with an unpopular opinion that’ll make you think.

So while I resort to posting photographs of stuffed animals and lighthearted stories about my long-dead grandmother as a way of avoiding serious discussion about the violence being inflicted around the world with my tax dollars and participation (I may not be dropping bombs or firing weapons but I obviously understand my complicity in keeping the horror going) you can click on over to Jason’s blog and read some well-thought out ideas and reflections.

As I just said to someone this evening, I never envisioned I’d be turning on the radio and hear an NPR segment on the value of torturing prisoners.  We’re so quick to use the term "evil" yet passive enough, disinterested enough to keep going about our days listening absently to the radio presenting the vilest of actions as open to debate.

Anyway, please stop by An Absolution Revolution and have a look around.

I’ll re-post this from July of 2006, as I really don’t have anything new to add.

On the 90th Anniversary of the Somme

The rich and powerful are still sending the working class off to die in their wars.

I’ve spent a good part of my life thinking about the Somme, as I lived for many years nearby a forest preserve named for that horrific battle. I’d sit in traffic looking at the sign welcoming visitors to Somme Woods, and think how odd it was that it was filled with oblivious hikers, suburbanites out for picnics, and children on bike trails. I’m sure at the time of it’s dedication, the preserve was intended as a memorial for a battle still present in memory. Today? I don’t know, do they even teach the first World War in history classes anymore? It must be difficult to teach the dangers of nationalism in public schools that now have required courses in "Patriotism." Maybe they just stick to the oversimplification that the war was fought because the Archduke took a bullet in the head at Sarajevo-at least that’s how it was taught when I was in high school.

I remember looking up the Somme, and being so shocked by the numbers of dead that I had to re-read passages just to be certain I was reading correctly.

Seems remarkable that after something so awful, with so much death, that nations would ever be able to rally people to fight for another "cause" again. Remarkable, isn’t it?

-For protesting at the Oak Ridge Nuclear Facility. That’s my kind of nun!

I realise that many people reading this will laugh it off as some batty old nun without appreciating the importance of what she’s doing. As a society, we have a collective attention span of a toddler. Just as children need continual reminders to lest they become distracted and forget their chores at hand, we need reminding as well. This is the lab that manufactured the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. We shouldn’t permit ourselves the distraction that pushes that fact out of our daily thoughts. Sister is helping us by keeping us from our worst tendencies to ease our discomfort through excuses.

"8:15 AM August 6 1945. The people of Hiroshima had just begun their day’s work. Suddenly, the sirens sounded, warning that a plane was approaching, but the sirens soon stopped and everyone went about their work…

I thought I heard the sound of a plane, but it seemed a long way off and very high up. I was hit by a thunderous flash and an explosion of sound. My eyes burnt-everything went black. I held my sister. Everything faded away-I thought I was dying.

When I crawled outside, I found that the whole of Hiroshima was destroyed. Everything was blown away, torn apart. Everything was burning. The banks of the river were crowded with people, everyone wanted to be near the water. There was a child, screaming, trying to wake-up her dead mother.

Every school became a hospital for the badly injured. I heard people screaming and moaning in pain, and there was the horrible smell of burnt skin."

-Junko Morimoto, My Hiroshima.

70,000 people died instantly the morning of 6 August 1945. By the end of 1945 70,000 more would die.

Sadako Sasaki was two years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. At the age of eleven she was diagnosed with leukemia, a result of exposure to radiation from the blast. Believing a legend that would grant a wish to anyone that folded a thousand paper cranes she began folding and had folded over a thousand when she died at the age of twelve.

-Jonah House Faith and Resistance Retreat, etc.

There are usually a number of people keeping a vigil at STRATCOM between the 6th and the 9th as well.

From around 1981-1986 I had an uncontrollable eye twitch that would come and go in concert with the risk of nuclear war. I’m not making this up. After Reagan made his quip about "We start bombing in five minutes", I twitched for hours nonstop until it was clear he was joking. I remember watching The Day After, and my eye wouldn’t stop for days. The twitch was clearly a manifestation of stress, yet only in response to things out of my control-I suffered not a single twitch through deaths, divorce, serious illness-but plant the suggestion of nukes in my head and off goes my eye.

It’s not actually my eye that twitches, but the baggy skin beneath. It is visible as the skin flutters away-something my friends always found thoroughly amusing:

"Hey, Armageddon must be around the corner-Jen’s twitchy eye is at it again."

Oh ha, ha, ha.

Anyway. It’s been years, (well, since around 1986) and my eye has largely left me alone, until recently. For the past week my twitchy eye has been back in full force. Of course my family isn’t helping matters much. I looked up one evening last week to notice my husband reading…On The Beach.  Then, because the Universe obviously has a perverse sense of humour, I see my son hunched over a volume from our set of "The United States Encyclopedia of History" (catchy title, eh? It was published in 1967). Curious what he found so interesting, I get up to have a look and he has the book open to "Atomic Age" with a photograph of the launching of a nuclear submarine (decked out in red, white and blue for the occasion) on one page and a mushroom cloud on the facing. I never heard of "Operation Desert Rock", -see you can always learn something you didn’t want to know about. Oh my twitchy, twitchy eye.

And I am worried, very worried. Much like the 1980’s, there isn’t much I can do about it, but sit here with my eye fluttering away.