Lest We Forget the Ugliness of War: Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

The image above reminds us of the ugliness and death that accompanies war, something Der Trumpenführer seems to have forgotten as he inflames relations with North Korea and tries to ignite a conflagration in the Middle East with his declaration that the United States will move its embassy to Jerusalem.  

Brief statistics on the damage done by the attack on Pearl Harbor:  All eight U.S. Navy battleships were damaged, with four sunk. All but the USS Arizona were later raised, and six were returned to service and went on to fight in the war. The Japanese also sank or damaged three cruisers, three destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship,^{[nb 5]} and one minelayer. One hundred eighty-eight U.S. aircraft were destroyed; 2,403 Americans were killed (the vast majority aboard the Arizona) and 1,178 others were wounded.

Three days later, British Royal Navy battleship HMS Prince of Wales (which earlier in the year damaged the German battleship Bismark and led to its demise) and battlecruiser HMS Repulse were sunk by land-based bombers and torpedo bombers of the Imperial Japanese Navy as the Japanese swept into  French Indo-China and  Britain's fortress at Singapore.

Frighteningly, Der Trumpenführer  knows little of history or of the true situation in the Middle East.  As always, satiating his ego and narcissism - and on occasion throwing bones to his evangelical Christian supporters - is all that really motivates his actions.  

As we remember the dead today, we must remember that we have an occupant of the White House who truly cares nothing about the lives that may be lost all because of his arrogance and ignorance.

How Russians Lost the War

Today is Victory Day in Russia - the day that marks the remembrance of the defeat of Nazi Germany.  The irony is that if one looks at Russia and Germany today, it is the German people who ultimately won the war through defeat.  Germany is a rich and prosperous nation and its people enjoy a enviable standard of living.  The cannot be said for Russian and its people.  Russia's leaders over all have squandered the victory of World War II just as so many prior leaders failed to put the interests of the Russian people.  One can argue that Vladimir Putin's Russia is governed by fear more than during many of the reigns of Russian Tsars.  I noted in the past I read the book "Red Fortress, History and Illusion in the Kremlin," and the over arching take away is that Russia people have been repeatedly condemned to substandard lives by Russia's leaders who typically use nationalism to distract attention from their failed leadership.  Putin is but the latest leader to do so .  A column in the New York Times bemoans this sad reality.  Here are excerpts:

Every year on May 9, Victory Day in Russia — marking the anniversary of the day that news of the German surrender in 1945 reached Moscow — my father would go to the closet and take out his sailor’s uniform, which required regular alteration to accommodate his growing belly, and pin on his medals. It was so important to me to be proud of my father: There had been a war and my papa had won it!

My father fought the evil of fascism, but he was taken advantage of by another evil. He and millions of Soviet soldiers, sailors and airmen, virtual slaves, brought the world not liberation but another slavery. The people sacrificed everything for victory, but the fruits of this victory were less freedom and more poverty.

My father was 6 when his father was arrested. A son wants to be proud of his father, but his father was called an enemy of the people. My grandfather perished in the gulag.

When the war began, the persecuted population heard from the loudspeakers, “Brothers and sisters!” The baseness of Russia’s rulers lies in the way they have always taken advantage of this remarkable human emotion: the love of homeland and the willingness to sacrifice everything for it.

So my father went off to defend his homeland. He was still a boy when he went to sea, in constant terror of drowning in that steel coffin. He ended up protecting the regime that killed his father.

The victory gave the slaves nothing but a sense of the grandeur of their master’s empire. The great victory only reinforced their great slavery.

During the Gorbachev era, we had lean times, and my father, as a veteran, received a ration that included items from Germany. For him, this was a personal insult. He got drunk and hollered: “But we won!” Then he quieted down and began to weep.   “Tell me,” he kept asking no one I could see, “did we win the war or lose it?”

I wish my homeland victory. But what would constitute a victory for my country? Each one of Hitler’s victories was a defeat for the German people. And the final rout of Nazi Germany was a victory for the Germans themselves, who demonstrated how a nation can rise up and live like human beings without the delirium of war in their heads.

Russians have been called, once again, to fight a war against fascism. The patriotic hysteria on the television is the regime’s miracle weapon. Thanks to the “zombie box,” the population now has a make-believe idea of the world: The West wants to destroy us, so we are compelled, like our fathers and grandfathers, to wage holy war against fascism and we must be prepared to sacrifice everything for victory.

Once again, the rulers are rewriting history and leaving in it only military victories and martial glory. They have added a chapter to school textbooks about Crimea’s glorious return. A stream of hysteria flows from TV screens: “Great Russia,” “Defend the Russian language,” “Gather in the Russian world” and “We will save the world from fascism.” Anyone who objects is a “national traitor.”

In the 16th year of his rule, President Vladimir V. Putin has achieved everything a dictator could strive for. 

[T]he Putin regime has set our peoples against each other. Sometimes, I think it’s good my parents did not live to see how Russians and Ukrainians are killing one another.  It is impossible to breathe in a country where the air is permeated with hatred. Much hatred has always been followed in history by much blood. What awaits my country? Transformation into a gigantic version of Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region?

Once again, the dictatorship is calling on its subjects to defend the homeland, mercilessly exploiting the propaganda of victory in the Great Patriotic War. Russia’s rulers have stolen my people’s oil, stolen their elections, stolen their country. And stolen their victory.  Father, we lost the war.

I find what has happened to Russia to be immeasurably sad.   Meanwhile, Americans need to be mindful to never allow themselves to be exploited by calls for patriotism and nationalistic agendas that only will further the interests of cynical leaders and plutocrats.  Russia can teach Americans a much needed lesson.

The Imitation Game - Review and Reflections

The movie, The Imitation Game, is finally showing in Hampton Roads - albeit at a small number of theaters - and the husband and I along with a number of friends saw it at the Naro Theater in Norfolk (It is also playing at the AMC theater in Hampton).  The movie is a must see and I hope that some of the praise the movie is receiving will prompt those who might not otherwise go to a movie involving anything gay to nevertheless see the movie.  Benedict Cumberbatch is amazing as Alan Turing - indeed, the entire cast does a stellar job. I won't go into movie details here - readers need to go and see the movie for themselves and encourage others to do so as well.

Turing, and his team at Bletchley Park for that matter, remains perhaps the most unsung heroes of World War II.   As the movie ends, the fact that their work is estimated to have shortened the war by two years and saved 14 million lives is noted.   Also noted is Turing's possible suicide - there remain questions about the circumstances - after his conviction for "gross indecency" following an encounter with another man. The end notes also make note that the machines that Turing pioneered are what we now know as computers. That's right, the British basically killed the father of computers.

I sincerely hope that people will see this movie.  To me, what was done to Turing after the War - and which the movie sensitively portrays - underscores the evils of ignorance embracing religious belief which seeks to punish those who don't subscribe to the cult's mythology. A mythology not supported by historic fact or objective reality.  Queen Elizabeth II recently pardoned Turing.  While that gesture rehabilitates his image, it doesn't make up for the horror done to him and so many others. Some 49,000 individuals were prosecuted under Britain's anti-gay "indecency" laws. When one multiplies that number worldwide and includes all those killed, all those whose lives were ruined (and continue to be ruined) by "godly Christians" and their opportunist political prostitutes, the toll is horrifying. 

The Alan Turning Tragedy

I've mentioned Alan Turning before - the breaker of the Nazi enigma code in World War II - and his horrific treatment by the British government and his suspicious death.  Now, in “The Imitation Game,” set to hit theaters later this month, Benedict Cumberbatch plays Turning and the movie will hopefully highlight the evils of homophobia.  No doubt the likes of One Million Bitches Moms, Tony Perkins and Bryan Fischer will condemn the movie because it shows the evil of the poison they peddle.  I cannot help but wonder how many amazingly talented individuals have been lost to society since neurotic - and I would argue mentally ill - Church fathers turned homophobia into a leading cause of the Church which was then exported worldwide. The Washington Blade looks at the movie which I am looking forward to seeing.  Here are highlights:

“The Imitation Game,” which had its area premiere at the Middleburg (Virginia) Film Festival last weekend and opens in Washington on Dec. 12, is about one of the most fascinating figures in 20th century history: Alan Turing, the gay cryptologist who broke the Nazi Enigma Code. Turing was an unsung hero of World War II and a victim of the legal and social turmoil that followed in its wake.

The movie’s director, Morten Tyldum, is fascinated by the man and his story.  “His achievements are so staggering,” Tyldum says. “Alan Turing theorized the computer in 1935 when he was 23 years old. He broke the Nazi Enigma machine which shortened the war by years and saved millions of lives. This man should have been on the front page of my history book when I was in school.”

Instead, Turing’s story was kept hidden for years. After the war, Tyldum explains, the newly formed British intelligence service MI6 hid Turing’s exploits from public view.

“They put the lid on it. Everything was kept secret. All the papers were burned and they threatened everyone to keep quiet about it. And then after the war he was persecuted for being a gay man.”

In 1952, Turing was arrested for acts of “gross indecency” and forced to undergo chemical castration.

[Screenwriter Graham] Moore reveals that “among awkward nerdy teenage computer science dorks, Alan Turing is an object of intense fascination and cult-like devotion. He’s the patron saint of folks like me, the consummate outsider. And because he was an outsider in so many ways to his own society and to his own times, he was able to see the world in a way no one else did, and he was able to accomplish wonders that no one else thought were possible.”

Moore wanted to tell Turing’s story, but he thought the odds were against him.  Luckily, Moore met producers Nora Grossman and Ido Ostrowsky at a Hollywood party and the trio decided to make the movie.

They brought Norwegian director Morten Tyldum on board, and the pair had a period of six months to refine the script. They left Moore’s fascinating overall structure in place. He tells the story from three different vantage points: Turing’s experiences at boarding school where he falls in love with both his friend Christopher and the science of cryptography (the socially awkward Turing discovers he is better at deciphering codes than reading human emotions); Turing and his colleagues working at the top-secret Bletchley Park facility to break the unbreakable code; and, the aftermath of Turing’s arrest for homosexual acts.

According to Tyldum, this elegant structure turns the movie into an investigation.  Many of the scenes were shot on the sites where they really occurred, including the interior scenes at Bletchley Park (which is now a museum). Leech says that was an incredible experience.

“We used the real Enigma machines,” Tyldum says. “There is something about touching those buttons. It’s a reminder that this really happened. It does something for the performers. It’s about the responsibility we have to do justice to the legacy of these people.”

Are The Trigger Points for World War III In Place?

One Hundred years ago tomorrow, Germany invaded Belgium and Great Britain declared war on Germany.  While what became known as World War I had actually begun in the east a few days earlier when Germany declared war on Russia, August 4th was when the rest of the dominoes for that disaster for millions began in full earnest.  While the lead up to World War I differed in some ways  from German aggression in the late 1930's, a common thread in the events leading up to both wars was the same: imperial ambitions on the part of some rulers and rabid nationalism.  Some argue that one hundred years after the beginning of World War I, the triggers are now in place for World War III.  It would be nice to hope that humankind might have learned from the disasters and horrors of the past, yet if one looks at events in Ukraine and Gaza and and the personalities of Putin and Netanyahu, it is easy to see aspects reminiscent of Kaiser Wilhelm, Adolph Hitler, and Mussolini.  Here are excerpts from an article in The Atlantic which looks at today's triggers for disaster:

Pessimism is a useful prism through which to view the affairs of states. Their ambition to gain, retain, and project power is never sated. Optimism, toward which Americans are generally inclined, leads to rash predictions of history’s ending in global consensus and the banishment of war. Such rosy views accompanied the end of the Cold War. They were also much in evidence a century ago, on the eve of World War I.

Then, as now, Europe had lived through a long period of relative peace, after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Then, too, rapid progress in science, technology, and communications had given humanity a sense of shared interests that precluded war, despite the ominous naval competition between Britain and Germany. Then, too, wealthy individuals devoted their fortunes to conciliation and greater human understanding. Rival powers fumed over provocative annexations, like Austria-Hungary’s of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908, but world leaders scarcely believed a global conflagration was possible, let alone that one would begin just six years later. The very monarchs who would consign tens of millions to a murderous morass from 1914 to 1918 and bury four empires believed they were clever enough to finesse the worst.

The unimaginable can occur. That is a notion at once banal and perennially useful to recall. Indeed, it has just happened in Crimea, where a major power has forcefully changed a European border for the first time since 1945.

Events cascade. It is already clear that the nationalist fervor unleashed by Putin after a quarter century of Russia’s perceived post–Cold War decline is far from exhausted. Russians are sure that the dignity of their nation has been trampled by an American and European strategic advance to their border dressed up in talk of democracy, the rule of law, and human rights. Whether this is true is irrelevant; they believe it. National humiliation, real or not, is a tremendous catalyst for war. That was the case in Germany after the Treaty of Versailles . . . .  Russia, convinced of its lost greatness, is gripped by a Weimar neurosis resembling Germany’s post–World War I longing for its past stature and power. The Moscow-backed separatists taking over government buildings in eastern Ukraine and proclaiming an independent “Donetsk People’s Republic” demonstrate the virulence of Russian irredentism. Nobody can know where it will stop. Appetite, as the French say, grows with eating.

[T]he realization that the Russian bear can bite as well as growl is timely. It is a reminder that a multipolar world in a time of transition, when popular resentments are rising over joblessness and inequality, is a dangerous place indeed.

The international system does not look particularly stable. The Cold War’s bipolar confrontation, despite its crises, was predictable. Today’s world is not. It features a United States whose power is dominant but no longer determinant; a one-party China that is a rising hegemon; an authoritarian Russia giddy on nationalism and the idea of a restored imperium; and a weak, navel-gazing, blasé Europe whose pursuit of an ever closer union is on hold and perhaps on the brink of reversal.

Pacifist tendencies in western Europe coexist with views of power held in Moscow and Beijing that Bismarck or Clausewitz would recognize instantly.
A century ago, in the absence of clear lines or rules, it was just this kind of feel-good hope and baseless trust in the judgment of rival powers that precipitated catastrophe. But that, it may be said, was then. The world has supposedly been transformed.

But has it? Consider this article in my father’s 1938 high-school yearbook:

The machine has brought men face to face as never before in history. Paris and Berlin are closer today than neighboring villages were in the Middle Ages. In one sense distance has been annihilated. We speed on the wings of the wind and carry in our hands weapons more dreadful than the lightning … The challenge of the machine is the greatest opportunity mankind has yet enjoyed. Out of the rush and swirl of the confusions of our times may yet arise a majestic order of world peace and prosperity.

The ghosts of repetition reside alongside the prophets of progress. From the “rush and swirl” of 1938 where “distance has been annihilated” would follow in short order the slaughter of Stalingrad, the mass murder of European Jewry, the indiscriminate deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the anguish of all humanity. We should not lightly discard a well-grounded pessimism or the treaties it has produced.

 

Putin’s Deadly Doctrine Reprises Hitler

While we are nearing the 100th anniversary of World War I, events in Ukraine and the downing of a civilian airliner by Russia backed separatists/terrorists is in some ways more reminiscent of the eve of World War II when Adolph Hitler used a doctrine now being copied by Vladimir Putin to justify the invasion of Czechoslovakia, then Austria, and then Poland: protecting ethic Germans just as Putin claims to be protecting ethnic Russians.  Recently Andrew Sullivan aptly described Putin as a 21st century would be fascist Tsar.  An even better description would be to say it like it is: Putin is recycling Hitler's dangerous agenda both in terms of the claims to be "protecting" ethnic Russians and of scapegoating minorities like gays to fuel xenophobia.  A column in the New York Times calls out Putin.  Here are excerpts:

SOMETIMES, just sometimes, you should pay attention to annoying things said by tiresome people at worthy conferences.

In 1994, I was half asleep at a round table in St. Petersburg, Russia, when a short, thickset man with a rather ratlike face — apparently a sidekick of the city’s mayor — suddenly piped up. Russia, he said, had voluntarily given up “huge territories” to the former republics of the Soviet Union, including areas “which historically have always belonged to Russia.” He was thinking “not only about Crimea and northern Kazakhstan, but also for example about the Kaliningrad area.” Russia could not simply abandon to their fate those “25 million Russians” who now lived abroad. The world had to respect the interests of the Russian state “and of the Russian people as a great nation.”

The name of this irritating little man was — you guessed it — Vladimir V. Putin, and I know exactly what he said back in 1994 because the organizers, the Körber Foundation of Hamburg, Germany, published a full transcript. For the phrase that I have translated as “the Russian people,” the German transcript uses the word “volk.” Mr. Putin seemed to have, and still has, an expansive, völkisch definition of “Russians” — or what he now refers to as the “russkiy mir” (literally “Russian world”). 

The transcript also records that I teased out the consequences of the then-obscure deputy mayor’s vision by saying, “If we defined British nationality to include all English-speaking people, we would have a state slightly larger than China.”

Little did we imagine that, 20 years later, the St. Petersburg deputy mayor, now uncrowned czar of all the Russians, would have seized Crimea by force, covertly stirred up violent mayhem in eastern Ukraine and be explicitly advancing his 19th-century völkisch vision as the policy of a 21st-century state.
It is impossible to overstate the degree to which this is a threat not just to Russia’s Eastern European and Eurasian neighbors but to the whole post-1945 international order. Across the world, countries see men and women living in other countries whom they regard as in some sense “their people.”

Poland has expressed concern for the position of Polish speakers in Lithuania. Hungary has handed out both passports and voting rights in national elections to citizens of neighboring countries whom it deems to be members of the Hungarian people. To pin down what is illegitimate, we have to explain more clearly what is legitimate.

As of Friday, American and Ukrainian officials were saying it was likely that a Russian-made antiaircraft missile had brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, in yet another harvest of sorrow on Ukrainian fields already blood-soaked by history. It was not clear who fired it. But it is hypocrisy on an Orwellian scale for Mr. Putin to maintain, as he did on Friday, that “the government over whose territory this happened bears the responsibility for this terrible tragedy.” There is undoubtedly bitter discontent among many self-identified Russians in eastern Ukraine, but the violence of their protests has been stirred by a massively mendacious narrative on Russian television, and their paramilitaries have been supported, to put it no more strongly, by Mr. Putin’s Russia — including the presence of members or former members of Russian special forces.

It is precisely the ambiguous mixtures created by Mr. Putin’s völkisch version of the “responsibility to protect” that produce such disastrous possibilities. He subverts and calls into question the authority of the government of a sovereign territory, and then blames it for the result.

So if an obscure deputy mayor starts sounding off in alarming terms at some conference you are attending, my advice is, Wake up. Of course, most such ranters do not rise to the top. But when they do, their ideologies of resentment may be written out in blood.

In the early 1930's people did not see Hitler as a serious threat and the world paid a huge price for such inattention.  Putin has all the same megalomania of Hitler and  has shown that he is only too willing to recycle the Furher's deadly tactics.   What is equally sad is that with Putin, the Russian people are again being betrayed and harmed by a failed ruler.  In Russia, history keeps repeating itself.

Is Vladi­mir Putin Truly a Modern-Day Hitler?

I have likened some of Vladimir Putin's actions - particularly his excuse of invading Ukraine to "protect ethnic Russians" to some of Adolph Hitler's actions in the 1930's in the lead up to World War II.  Like all comparisons, the fit is not perfect, but there are indeed some uncanny parallels as laid out in a column in the Washington Post.  While Putin is hopefully not as insane as Hitler - and therefore, hopefully capable of avoiding a disaster such as was launched in August, 1914 - the situation remains most dangerous.  Here are some column excerpts:

The mother of all analogies, of course, is the Hitler analogy. No less an authority than former secretary of state (and possible future presidential candidate) Hillary Clinton has reportedly likened the Russian president’s excuse for invading Ukraine — the “defense” of ethnic Russians — to Hitler’s claim that he needed to protect ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia.

Superficially plausible though the Hitler-Putin comparison may be, just how precisely does it fit? 

In some respects, alarmingly so. As young men, both Hitler and Putin zealously served their countries on the front lines of international conflict, one as a German soldier on the Western Front in World War I, the other as a Soviet KGB officer in East Germany during the Cold War.

Each was cast adrift when the empire upon which he had staked his future collapsed. In “Mein Kampf,” Hitler wrote that “everything went black before my eyes” when he heard of Germany’s capitulation in 1918; his heart filled with “hatred for the originators of this dastardly crime.” Putin has recalled the dramatic moment when he felt obliged to hide his Soviet Communist Party membership card in a desk drawer; he has said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was “a genuine tragedy” for the Russian people.

Each considered his nation no more culpable than any other for the global conflict that precipitated its downfall — its humiliation therefore not only undeserved but also inexplicable, except as the product of weakness, betrayal and conspiracy. For each man, post-imperial chaos in their respective countries bred profound contempt for Western-style freedom and democracy.

For both, agreements codifying their respective countries’ defeats — the Treaty of Versailles for Hitler, NATO’s eastward expansion for Putin — represented not international law but victor’s justice, which trampled legitimate national interests and stranded millions of their respective ethnic brethren in new nations that outside powers had set up, hypocritically, in the name of self-determination. 

Having attained power in their respective societies, Hitler and Putin both set their sights on economic and military renewal and on reversing their respective nations’ unjust humiliation, by force if necessary. 

The latter co-opted some former Soviet republics and militarily occupied others, just as Hitler marched the Wehrmacht into the Rhineland in 1936, took Czechoslovakia in 1938 — and, well, you get the idea. 

It’s at this point, however, that the analogy begins to break down. Whereas Hitler was an ideologue and a charismatic movement leader, Putin is an opportunist, a political mafioso who schemed his way to power and clings to it for its own sake.

Immense as his sense of Russian grievance, or his hostility toward Muslims or gays, may be, Putin is not driven by the kind of all-encompassing racism that led Hitler to perpetrate the Holocaust, or by anything like the crazed notion of Lebensraum that motivated Hitler’s attempted conquests in the East. 

Unlike Hitler, Putin must temper his adventurism with due regard for a West that, however war-weary, fractious and self-absorbed it may be, is still powerful enough to cripple his economy — and still headed by a United States that possesses a nuclear deterrent and is formally committed to defend its NATO allies. (Of course, unlike Hitler, Putin has nukes, too.)

In short, Putin’s capabilities and intentions, in the context of the power arrayed against him, make him more capable of rational calculation and more containable than Hitler — but still plenty dangerous.

The nightmare scenario, though, is that recent events have permanently destabilized Ukraine and that the resulting shock waves will slowly radiate to the Baltic states, former Soviet republics with large Russian minorities. As NATO members, they enjoy a guarantee of Western help against external aggression — as Poland did in 1939. 

1939 is not the only year with possible analogy - think 1914 when the competing alliances of  Germany and Austria on the one side and that of France, Russia and Great Britain on the other dragged Europe into World War I and unleashed a horror that none of the participants ever contemplated.

British War Hero Alan Turing Belated Pardoned for Being Gay

I guess it is better late than never, but the fact that Alan Turing, the inventor of the computer and breaker of the Nazi enigma code, was driven to suicide (or murdered as some have speculated)  in 1954 and has only now been pardoned for his criminal conviction for being gay, speaks to the sad status many gays wrongly prosecuted suffered.  Turing's life was but one of many ruined and destroyed by the improper privilege given to hate and fear based forms of Christianity.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Turing's brilliance as well as his far too late posthumous pardon.  Here are story excerpts:

Alan Turing was one of the greatest minds of the 20th century. He laid the theoretical foundations for computer science, and his code-breaking efforts during World War II greatly aided the Allies's effort to defeat Adolf Hitler.

But Turing, a gay man, had the misfortune to live in an intolerant era. In 1952, he was prosecuted for "gross indecency" for having a sexual relationship with another man. He lost his security clearance and was forced to take hormone treatments. Two years later, he was found dead of cyanide poisoning. His death was ruled a suicide.

Now, the BBC reports, the computing pioneer has finally received a pardon from Queen Elizabeth. It only took the British government 61 years to recognize its mistake. Hopefully, it won't take the British government long to acknowledge that other gay men prosecuted under the same law also suffered an injustice.

There was no subject called computer science when Turing began his work in the 1930s, so he set to work laying its foundations. He first described what came to be called the Turing Machine in a famous 1936 paper. The Turing Machine consisted of a paper tape with characters written on it and a "head" that could read and alter the tape, one character at a time.

The Turing Machine was a thought experiment, not a practical computing device. But Turing used it to prove some of the fundamental theorems of computer science. He showed that given enough time and paper tape, the Turing Machine could perform every calculation that can be performed by any other sequential computing device, including those that would be invented far in the future.

Today these fundamental insights about the nature of computation are taught in computer science departments around the world.

When the war came, Turing threw his considerable genius into defeating the Nazis. Turing was a key figure at Bletchley Park, Britain's wartime code-breaking lab. The Nazis used a sophisticated mechanical cipher machine called the Enigma to send coded messages. Turing and his colleagues at Bletchley Park built some of the most sophisticated mechanical computing devices yet seen to help break the Enigma code. And they succeeded, giving the Allies priceless intelligence about Germany's war plans.

Some gay-rights advocates fault the British government for waiting so long to acknowledge the injustice it perpetrated against Turing 61 years ago. More importantly, they say, thousands of other British men were also prosecuted under the "gross indecency" statute, and some are still alive today. They hope that Turing's pardon will be the first step toward a pardon for all gay men who were prosecuted under Britain's homophobic laws.

Hate, bigotry, the rejection of science and knowledge and a trail of ruined lives - these are the main fruits of conservative Christianity.

A Father Remembered

Today would have been my father's 91st birthday.  He died in September, 2006, on of all possible dates my son's birthday.  Needless to say, it's been a bitter sweet day for me with thoughts of my father lingering at the back of my mind.  As long time readers know, my relationship with my dad was not always that good.  In part because of his difficult childhood and youth since he was orphaned at the age of 3 years old.  Then there was the glass wall I erected between myself and virtually everyone as I struggled to try to deny to myself that I was gay and I feared letting anyone too close to me because of my fear that they'd discover "my secret" even though I had not even conceded to myself that I was gay.  Over my 37 years in the closet I missed so many opportunities to be close to others because of my fear of rejection.  

When I did finally come out I was blessed to have parents who accepted me totally and never flinched at standing by me.   So many gays have not been as lucky and have faced rejection by parents and family.  That's why in honor of my parents I funded the initial endowment for the Hamar/HRBOR Scholarship ( a four year scholarship) for graduating high school seniors who face financial need either because of family rejection or through financial  limitations.  My contribution allows for a grant every four years, but to offer the scholarship, HRBOR needs to raise another $75,000.00 - hence the contribution link on this blog.  I hope readers will consider making a tax deductible gift.

The photo of my dad above is from the World War II years when he served in the Army Corps of Engineers. He was likely somewhere between 19 and 23 when the portrait was done.  He served most of the war in France having crossed the English Channel the day after D-Day.  His last post was as Fire Marshall of Marseilles before mustering out and returning to Syracuse University where he met my mother.

It's been nearly six years but I still miss him.  I miss our talks and his pragmatic way of looking at things.  I still remember when he first met my former partner and summed the situation this way:  "I've gained another son."  They went on to bond well together.  One of the last times I saw him as we were getting ready to head back to Norfolk he said "you will always be my little boy."  Yes, I'm crying as I type this post.  I hope he knows what a wonderful gift he gave me when he accepted me just as I was.  I miss him everyday.

Navy Clears Gay WWII Vet's Record

I guess the saying better late than never still has meaning. However, it is disturbing that it took the Navy 70 years to correct a wrong that should never have been allowed to occur in a nation that claims to offer equality and freedom of religion to its citizens. The case in point involves now 89 year old Melvin Dwork (at left) who was expelled from the Navy for being gay during World War II. The Navy belatedly is changing his discharge from "undesirable" to "honorable." The kicker is that Dwork has discovered that it was his former boyfriend who outed him back in the 1940's. For years Dwork was denied military benefits because of the "undesirable" discharge. Sadly, there are many, many others who have suffered the same wrongful denial of benefits because of illegal religious based discrimination. Time magazine looks at the story and here are excerpts:

(SAN DIEGO) — Nearly 70 years after expelling Melvin Dwork for being gay, the Navy is changing his discharge from "undesirable" to "honorable" — marking what is believed to be the first time the Pentagon has taken such a step on behalf of a World War II veteran since the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell."

The Navy notified the 89-year-old former corpsman last month that he will now be eligible for the benefits he had long been denied, including medical care and a military burial.

Dwork spent decades fighting to remove the blot on his record. "I resented that word 'undesirable,'" said Dwork, who was expelled in 1944, at the height of the war, and is now a successful interior designer in New York. "That word really stuck in my craw. To me it was a terrible insult. It had to be righted. It's really worse than 'dishonorable.' I think it was the worst word they could have used."

For Dwork, victory came with a heartbreaking truth: Last year, when the Navy finally released his records, he learned that his name had been given up by his own boyfriend at the time.

The decision to amend his discharge papers was made by the Board for Corrections of Naval Records in Washington In its Aug. 17 proceedings, obtained by The Associated Press, the board noted that the Navy has undergone a "radical departure" from the outright ban on gays that was in place in 1944. The board pointed out Dwork's "exemplary period of active duty" and said that changing the terms of his discharge was done "in the interest of justice."

So many lives damaged because of the special rights wrongfully given to Christianity in denigration of the Constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion for all. Thankfully, Dwork went on to be a successful designer in New York City despite his mistreatment by his own country and government.

Veterans Day Reflections

On this Veterans Day it's hard not to think of those who have served their country in the armed forces - particularly in an area such as Hampton Roads with such a large military presence. Moreover, my late father and all of his brothers served in World War II and my mother's father and mother both served in World War I which gave rise to Veterans' Day observances even though the "war to end all wars" or "great war" proved anything but the world's last conflict. On this Veterans' Day 2009, I especially think of my maternal grandmother who refused to fit the typical mold for Southern women and enlisted in the Army nursing corps and saw assignments in both Italy and France during World War I. Despite her Southern manners and accent, she was definitely unconventional by the standards of New Orleans of that time.

*

Even though I do not support the current Middle East conflicts, I respect the sacrifices of our men and women in the military. Would that past and present civilian leaders valued their lives and sacrifices as much as many rank and file citizens. The Chimperator and Emperor Palpatine Cheney head the list of those who dishonored our military through their deceptions and lies that took the nation to war in Iraq.

*

In ending, my honor and respect goes out to all veterans, both past and present and gay and straight, including my father, grand father and grandmother, and my various aunts (e.g., one of my mother's sisters was a Wave in the Navy during World War II) and uncles.

Remebering D-Day

With today being the anniversary of the D-Day landing in Normandy I find myself thinking of my father who died three years ago this coming September. As a 22 year old he was in the Army Corps of Engineers and followed the troops ashore as his division was tasked with building pontoon brides and other structures to allow the troops to continue the push inland. Generally, he did not talk a great deal about the combat he witnessed other than as a kid I do recall watching the old TV show Combat which would get him to occasionally talk about friends lost and things he witnessed. He preferred to think of the better experiences such as being Paris, living off the Champs Elysee, or his time as Fire Marshall for Marseilles after hostilities ceased.

*

Many of today's younger generation will never know the experience of hearing first hand accounts of those who were there and the horrors they witnessed and the extreme heroism exhibited by so many. I hope everyone will take a moment today to remember the brave men and women who gave their lives to stop the Nazi regime.

In Memory of Nils O. Isachsen

This past week one of my uncles died. He was married to my mother's oldest sister and was very much a part of my childhood at the family summer home on Brantingham Lake (pictured above) where we had regular large gatherings of friends and relatives. He truly loved Brantingham. By a strange coincidence, he had known my father since both were boys at Graham School - my father as an orphan and my uncle as the child of a widow who was working at the orphanage. As I have written before, The Graham School, was part of a orphanage system founded in 1806 by Elizabeth (Mrs. Alexander) Hamilton and Isabella Graham. The orphanage was (and still is) located on a 40 acre site in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, and employed a "cottage system" of smaller residences with a house mother. My uncle's mother was one such house mother.

*

As children, my uncle Nils entertained us with outrageous stories and contraband fireworks that he always managed to have on hand for the Fourth of July each summer. He loved to sail and also gave me my first lessons on snorkeling and scuba diving. During World War II he was an Army medic and was wounded while heroically tending to wounded troops while under heavy enemy fire. He waived his heroism off as nothing, but for his conduct he received the Silver Star, the third highest decoration that can be awarded to a member of any branch of the United States Armed Forces. He met my aunt after the war at Syracuse University which he attended along with my mother, my father and my aunt.

*

He had an interesting life and I will greatly miss him. Here is a small piece of his obituary:

*

Nils O. Isachsen, 86, died Wednesday, May 6, 2009, at Albany Medical Center. Born in Arendal, Norway, he was the son of the late Nils Isachsen and Katrina Jensen Isachsen and husband of Mary Phelps Isachsen of Troy. Raised in Norway, he came to the United States in 1924.

*

He was a graduate of Syracuse University and Cornell University Veterinary School. Mr. Isachsen was a first lieutenant during World War II, serving in the European-African Middle East, receiving a Purple Heart and Silver Star.

*

He was former owner of the Troy Veterinary Hospital on Hoosick Road, retiring in the early ’80s. Nils specialized in the care of farm and small animals. He was a member of the Saugerties Power Boat Association. He enjoyed fishing and especially sailing with his wife and family.

*

Like the rest of my family, he accepted me fully when I came out.

Update - Catholic Bishops Fluff Piece Blog for Papal Visit to USA

I checked the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' blog on the papal visit this morning to see if my comment had been published. Not surprisingly, it has not and I suspect that it will never be published. I will continue to visit the blog from time to time and fully expect to only see servile and pandering comments that never take a serious look at the Roman Catholic Church's cancerous problems. In respose to my post, however, I did receive an interesting e-mail from a reader who is quite the European history buff and with whom I have had many exchanges on history. His message included some references to more dirty laundry the Church hierarcy pretends does not exist. In my opinion, in many ways, the Roman Catholic Church has to be one of the most corrupt and hypocritical institutions in the world. Here are my reader's comments:

Interesting comments on the Pope and the Catholic religion. It reminded me of an article I read a while ago in Le Nouvel Observateur, a French magazine from Paris, kind the French equivalent of Time, but that's a very rough comparison (maybe you know the mag?). Anyway, the comment about the church not doing any house-cleaning at the higher levels brought to mind the fact that after WW II, the church didn't do much house-cleaning or atonement for siding with the Nazis, and apparently, right up in to the 1970s, some catholic churches were used to hide clergy who should have been brought to trial for war crimes, but were protected instead by Catholic hierarchy.

I haven't looked, but there might be articles on the Net about this now. The Catholic Church has never taken responsibility for any of the crimes it's committed throughout the ages - no wonder some radical Muslims think that they're just getting back at what the West has perpetrated against them "in the name of Christ..." If there's no atonement for war crimes among the clergy, why should there be atonement for any other kind of abuse? They've always gotten away with it, and people's memories are just too short for the Church to be brought down. Maybe a better way to look at it is that if people don't seek justice, there won't be any. "The opium of the people" is still legal trade in many communities in the world. And not just among Catholics. Sad...

One story that looks at a rare instance of an apology by portions of the Catholic hierarchy can be found here. Sadly, as my reader points out, it is the exception to the rule: http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_yad/magazine/data5/jedwabne.html