Friday, December 17, 1943. Black Sheep Raid.

F4U Corsair at the Natrona County International Airport, 1985.  The Black Sheep flew Corsairs.

Marine Attack Squadron 214, the "Black Sheep", made use of the fighter sweep technique for the first time, sending 76 fighters over Rabaul.

The Battle of San Pietro Infine ended in an Allied victory.

The Magnuson Act, which repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act, was signed into law.

Statement on Signing the Bill to Repeal the Chinese Exclusion Laws.

December 17, 1943

It is with particular pride and pleasure that I have today signed the bill repealing the Chinese Exclusion Laws. The Chinese people, I am sure, will take pleasure in knowing that this represents a manifestation on the part of the American people of their affection and regard.

An unfortunate barrier between allies has been removed. The war effort in the Far East can now be carried on with a greater vigor and a larger understanding of our common purpose.

Franklin Roosevelt. 

President Roosevelt announced Wright Flyer would be returned from the United Kingdom and displayed at the Smithsonian.  The Wrights had allowed the flyer to go to the UK after the Smithsonian and originally refused to recognize their flight at Kitty Hawk as the first powered flight.

Tuesday, November 20, 1923. Navy Debutantes, Not giving up, Germany returns to the Gold Standard, Traffic light patent.

The National Photo Company published some photographs of "Navy Debutantes", which were likely the daughters of Navy officers.

Oklahoma's governor had been impeached, but he wasn't giving up.

Germany returned to the gold standard as a successful measure to address hyperinflation.

Oddly, the Reichsbank's president, Rudolf Havenstein, died on this day at age 66.

Patent No. 1,475,024 was issued to Garret Morgan for the three position traffic light.

Morgan, an African American who had only a 6th Grade education, was an inventor with a number of inventions to his credit.  Very unusual for the day, he was also a party to a "mixed marriage", his wife being a Czech immigrant.

A thought about not thinking things through on Indigenous Person's Day.

Wyoming politician Bob Ide is saying he's going to sponsor a bill to take the Federal domain into state hands, requiring, as if Wyoming can require the Federal Government to do anything, the fulfillment of a promise that the Federal Government never made at the time Wyoming became a state.

In fact, the opposite was true.  Wyoming promised not to seek any more Federal land than it was getting.

But a promise was made regarding those lands. . . to the Cheyenne, Arapahoe and Sioux tribes. . . that being that they could keep them for hunting grounds.

And a larger reservation than they currently have was originally given to the Shoshone.

In her campaign to displace Liz Cheney, Harriet Hageman emphasized the hardworking nature of her family and forebearors, and has been a standard-bearer of conservative and populist values in her brief time in Congress. She's from, she related, a fourth generation ranching family.

But most families that have been in agriculture in Wyoming that long, outside the descendants of British remission men, are remote beneficiaries of a gigantic government system which used Federal agents, in the form of the U.S. Army and Federal Indian Agents, to dispossess the occupants of that land, sometimes by force, and remove them to where they did not want to go, so that the land could be transferred free or cheaply to European Americans.  Those original European American occupants, we might note, in the case of homesteaders, were not the wealthy and were perfectly willing to take advantage of a government program.

My point?

Well I don't mean to be one of those who are going to engage in hagiography of any one group of American people, Natives nor European Americans, but on this day it might be worth remembering something.

The "pull up by the bootstraps" argument that the middle class, or lower upper class, so frequently states, or imagines about themselves, fails pretty readily upon close examination.  Almost every class of American with longstanding roots in the country that have been here for quite some time benefitted from a government program, whether that be homesteading, Indian removal by the Army, the mining law of 1872, the Taylor grazing act (which saved ranching in the West), the GI Bill, and so on.

That is, in fact, the American System.  Not the Darwinian laissez-faire economics that libertarians so often proclaim.

I'm not demanding reparations, or that injustices committed to people of the past be retroactively lamented.  Indeed, that's pointless.  What I’m suggesting instead is that justice be done for those now living, and that as part of that we admit when we are vicariously beneficiaries of some Federal program in the past, as I am.

And as part of that, I'm also suggesting that we don't engage in myths or hagiographies about our own predecessors.  Nobody carved a civilization out of an empty wilderness, unless we go back in North America 15,000 years.  Nobody promised that Wyoming could have the public domain.  None of us are as independent or virtuous as we pretend, if we pretend that we are, and nobody's ancestors were hearty bands of go it alone giants.

Shoot, even Columbus, if you prefer to ponder him on this day, was on a state funded mission.

Local demographics and the Synod.

When I was growing up, the Parish we normally attended, if it had a noticeable ethnic component, which I can't say that it truly did, would have been Irish.  First and second generation Irish Americans, as well as some native born Irish.  There were also people of other European extractions, and a Hispanic population, although the latter was nowhere near as large as it currently is.

When I attended university in Laramie, as an undergrad, I normally went to the local parish rather than the Newman Center.  That parish had a large Hispanic population and the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe was a big deal.  A king and queen were chosen from the local Catholic school, and a complete brass band played at the Mass, which was partially in Spanish, although most Hispanics in Laramie are multiple generation Albany County residents whose ancestors moved up from New Mexico in the mid 20th Century.  I.e, they didn't all speak Spanish.

By the 2000s, one of the three parishes in my home county had a fairly large Hispanic population, as did many other parishes around the state, that included many people born in Mexico, typically Chihuahua.  This is still the case.  By the 2010s, a Spanish language Mass had been added.  By the late 2010s the downtown parish had fairly clearly, if silently, been dedicated to serving the immigrant Mexican population, with a priest who is a native speaker of Spanish (from Puerto Rico), the second priest there to have a fluent command of Spanish.  The first had been a very conservative priest who was not universally liked by the English-speaking population, but interestingly, as is sometimes the case, was loved by those who spoke Spanish.  Interestingly, the priest prior to that was an immigrant himself, from Zambia.  He didn't speak Spanish, but incorporated a little of it into some Masses, otherwise taking a "we're all Catholics and we're all in this together approach".

Additionally, an immigrant population in the county that hailed from Vietnam saw the introduction of periodic Vietnamese language Masses in one of the three parishes.  The same parish very occasionally has a Tagalog language Mass.

The priests, which at one time jokingly included a fair number of the "FBI", "Foreign Born Irish", now include Africans, Filipinos, Vietnamese, and Indians.  Wyoming has never generated enough seminarians to supply its own needs, and has always relied on priests from elsewhere, mostly Ireland at first (although there was an English-born priest at one time).  Now, other nations supply the need.

Wyoming has sent a lay delegate to the Synod, or rather, the Pope, through some means, has chosen a Wyomingite.  The handful, and they are just a handful, of lay delegates from North America, according to the Diocese of Cheyenne, are:

Canada 

• Sami Aoun is a Maronite academic from Montreal immersed in issues touching the Church in the Middle East. He is Professor Emeritus at Université de Sherbrooke and professor, at the Center for Contemporary Religious Studies in Quebec. He is Co-founder of the first Global Chair in the prevention of radicalization and violent extremism.
• Catherine Clifford is a theologian at St. Paul University in Ottawa who has written and lectured on ecclesiology and synodality. Dr. Clifford has been invited as a panelist, presenter and guest keynote speaker on numerous occasions; especially on topics such as: “Theological and Pastoral Contributions to Synodality from North America,” “Synodality: What Have We Learned along the Way?”, “Leaning into the Distant Goal of Vatican II: Pope Francis, Synodality, and Christian Unity,” among others.
• Sr. Chantal Desmarais s.c.s.m. is a woman religious from the Diocese of Joliette who was involved in drafting the Canadian National Synthesis as well as the North American Final Document. She is very involved in catechesis and evangelical animation for her diocese. Sr. Desmarais also studied religious education and physical education.
• Linda Staudt is the Director for Safe Environment Services for the diocese of London. She has extensive experience as a leader in Catholic education in Ontario. The Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario appointed her chair of the committee to prepare the provincial synodal report.

United States 

• Cynthia Bailey Manns, D.Min, is the Adult Learning Director at Saint Joan of Arc Catholic Community in Minneapolis and adjunct professor at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. Dr. Bailey Manns was a delegate from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis to the Continental Assemblies. 
• Richard Coll is the executive director of the Department of Justice, Peace, and Human Development at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He was appointed as the liaison for the U.S. bishops for the Synod in the United States in 2021 and is a member of the North American Synod Team. Mr. Coll is a parishioner at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington, D.C.
• Rev. Ivan Montelongo is a priest of the Diocese of El Paso and serves as the diocesan contact for the 2021-2024 Synod. Fr. Montelongo is Vocation Director and Judicial Vicar for the diocese and was a delegate from the Diocese of El Paso to the Continental Assemblies.
• Wyatt Olivas is a student at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming. He serves as music minister at his parish, St. Paul’s Newman Center in Laramie. Mr. Olivas was a delegate from the Diocese of Cheyenne to the Continental Assemblies.
• Julia Osęka is an international student from Poland attending St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She has been active in the Synod through her participation in Synodality in Catholic Higher Education in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia (SCHEAP). Ms. Osęka was a delegate from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia to the Continental Assemblies.
• Sr. Leticia Salazar, ODN is with the Order of the Company of Mary Our Lady, a religious order. She is the Chancellor of the Diocese of San Bernardino, and the diocesan contact for the Synod. Sr. Leticia was a member of the U.S. National Synthesis Writing Team, and a member of the North American Synod Team, and she was a delegate from the Diocese of San Bernardino to the Continental Assemblies.   

The NCR regarding the participants notes the following regarding Wyoming's contribution are:

Wyatt Olivas

Non-episcopal pontifical appointment

Wyatt Olivas is a student at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, where he is studying music education. He attends St. Paul's Newman Center, where he is a music minister and works with high school parishioners. He is one of the youth representatives on the Cheyenne Diocese's Pastoral Council.

Olivas believes the synod is especially important for young Latinos, who recent studies suggest could make up more than half of U.S. Catholics under 30.

"It hurts our feelings when people don't want to listen to us and when people push us aside and make us 'tomorrow's church' and not part of our universal church," Olivas said. "The youth feel pushed aside and not getting bigger responsibilities because it's not 'their turn.' "

Olivas is from Cheyenne, where he attended St. Joseph Parish. He served as a music minister and catechist there, teaching third graders and assisting with confirmation classes. This past summer, he served as a missionary with the Catholic youth evangelization program Totus Tuus.

I'd note, this states, as other things do, that he's from Cheyenne, and he does seem to have graduated from high school there.  Other things claim him for St. Rose of Lima in Torrington. That's significantly different.

I know very little about him personally, and what I do know is solely from what's available online.  He seems to have graduated from high school in Cheyenne a couple of years ago, and is, as noted, a music minister at the Newman Center.

Cheyenne has a large Hispanic population. Torrington, however, not so much.  Cheyenne's Hispanic populations' origins are much like Laramie's, and both are tied to the Union Pacific Railroad. 

 I have known a fair number of Hispanics in Natrona County over the years.

I have no doubt that Olivas is a devout Catholic.  I have some reason to doubt, although its all just preception, that he may be either conservative or fully orthodox in his view, but that's preception only.  Beyond that, I wonder how representative he may be, but then maybe representative isn't what was fully sought.

In southern Wyoming, the Hispanic population, as noted, stems from New Mexico originally.  It's interesting for lots of reasons, one of which is that the original Wyoming Hispanic population that came in after the Mexican War also did.  That population had roots dating back to 1598 when Spain first colonized what is now New Mexico.  In that region, which includes Southern Colorado, they formed their own, very long-lasting, culture, which still exists.  That population supplied immigrants for railroad and agricultural labor to Wyoming starting probably around the 1910s and stretching into the 1950s.  For a fairly long time, the population actually had a significant number that moved back and forth, but of course not everyone did and that ultimately ceased.  The agricultural employment eventually faded, but the blue collar railroad jobs were still going strong in the 1990s.  Perhaps they still are.

The post 1990 oil booms, and the collapse of American border enforcement in the 1970s, brought in a new Mexican immigrant population since then. They do speak Spanish, of course, but they are particularly well represented by people who were born in Chihuahua.  They've found employment in the oil and gas industry and in the trades, where they are very heavily represented.  

Olivas has stated, “once younger generations begin to take ownership of the church, things will change”.

That may be the point.  It will, and it has been, but not really in the direction that would seem to be indicated by the photo of a young man wearing a rainbow wristband and majoring in music, quite frankly.

That recalls the Church of the 1970s more than the one of the 2020s, save for the fact that the Boomer generation that took so influenced the Church back then is partially still in control, but less and less every day.  Indeed, Masses today, nearly anywhere, incorporate more of what once was, than those of the 80s.

And hence the point.

I don't know if Olivas' parents were born in Mexico or not, but a lot of the Hispanics locally were born there, including the young. They're in early adulthood or high school right now. They don't tend to go to university, just as their earlier immigrant predecessors from other countries didn't.  And there's a lot more of them working construction than attending university, anywhere.

Olivas has been asked what Hispanics want from the Synod.

What not ask a 20-year-old from Chihuahua working laying concrete in Rawlins? It wouldn't be hard to find one.

And hence the concern.

Julia Osęka isn't an American at all, but Polish. The young woman is also a university student and has expressed her support of LBGQT causes.  Her native land is sending very conservative representatives to the Synod.  In  her, they get a liberal one, by some appearances, unless of course she stays in the US, which we have no reason to suspect will be the case.

Fr. James Martin, SJ.  Well, we hardly need to comment regarding him, other than perhaps noting that he was born in 1960 and therefore is a late period Baby Boomer.  Fr. Martin became deeply involved in the faith, ultimately leading to him becoming a priest, after watching a documentary on Thomas Merton, which is interesting in that the Merton was both a priest and a monk, and a deeply mystic one who was attracted to Eastern Mysticism.  He was, in some ways, a mystic for his age.

Cardinal Robert McElroy is another, like Martin, who has called for a radical reassessment of what St. Paul condemned in this area.  He called, in the case of divorce and remarriage, for the allowance for Communion in an article in the Jesuit publication America.  This lead to an American Bishop to accuse him of heresy.

Fr. Iván Montelongo is from Chihuahua, Mexico.  He's commented that he has no agenda but wants to address the divorced and remarried, migrants and members of the LGBTQ community.

The others?  

Well, I don't really know anything about them.  You don't either.  The Canadian ones, which are four in number to the American six, seem to be more conventional and potentially conservative.  Interestingly, given though the population of the US is about ten times that of Canada, Canada has nearly equal representation.  Also interesting is that while two hail from Quebec, which makes sense, only one is a French Canadian, which is the most deeply Catholic, and most deeply imperiled Catholic demographic, in that country.

The idea, of course, was to get a cross sample of Catholics from around the country, and indeed from around North America.  That makes some sense in the abstract.  A Hispanic, for example, from a rural state would fit that description.  But only if he's representative of real rural Hispanics. . . A Polish student at an American university isn't representative of a significant American demographic at all.

And the ongoing focus, at least to some degree, of accommodation for sin that St. Paul expressly warned against is interesting.  Indeed, it's worrisome.  It's so threaded through this by now that the Synod almost has to make some statement about it, and it won't be what St. Paul stated.

Indeed, while this body isn't as slanted as often suggested, there remains a bizarre ongoing focus on homosexuality.  No matter which way the bread is sliced, this present three pretty significant problems, which are: 1) St. Paul is blisteringly blunt on condemning homosexuality and gender bending conduct, 2) its mostly a culturally European (which includes American culture) thing for whatever reason which also burdens a very small, but very vocal, percentage of the population; and 3) no mater what people wish to say, its the demographic that in the Church has been heavily associated with scandal.

In other words, if we wish to present problems and joint approaches to healing them, ratifying them as non problems really isn't hte solution, to African and Asian Catholis this must appear hopelessly strange and largely irrelevant, and to non Catholics that already suspect every Catholic Priest is a homosexual this goes a step or so in reenforceing that view.

Or perhaps it distreassingly just tells a select group that their cross to bear need not be borne.

And if we're discussing representation from the young, and we should, why are the increasing number of young Trads I see at Mass every Sunday not represented.  Even five years ago, I rarely saw a young woman wearing a mantilla at Mass.  I see that now.  I have no reason to believe that the young, unmarried, early 20s woman I see every Sunday morning so adorned doesn't represent her generation, or an aspect of it, just as well as Olivas does. Why is he there, and she isn't?

In short, the lay panel isn't as one sided as some suggest, but it does have an unusual number of people who express views that are outside of the historic norm of Catholicism with there being no clear reason why that should be done.  And at least locally, if I were a Mexican man driving 80 miles one way to the oil patch each day, and trying to catch Mass on Sunday, with a Mexican wife at home taking care of the children, I'd wonder what a musically inclined University of Wyoming student had in common with me.

Blog Mirror: Photograph of Members of the Headquarters Company, 480th Port Battalion Set Up Between the Columns of the Ancient Greek Temple of Neptune

 

Photograph of Members of the Headquarters Company, 480th Port Battalion Set Up Between the Columns of the Ancient Greek Temple of Neptune

On toleration.

We posted this the other day:

Lex Anteinternet: A Sorority (Fraternity) lawsuit, and a subject who...: Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence. To say that I must not deny my opponent's faith is to sa...

In it, we noted this:

But in our political purity of the age, we're not doing that.  And that's destructive for the people making the declaration, who could have been helped.

We might, before concluding, stop to ask two questions. Does it really matter, would be the first.

After all, if somebody wants to drink themselves into oblivion, does it matter, if that's their choice?  Or more particularly, if somebody wants to present as a woman, who is a man, what does it really matter to me or anyone else?

Well, it does matter if your view of humanity is that we are our brother's keeper.  Oddly enough, in our contemporary world, it's the political left that claims that we are, while the political right, as exhibited by Jeanette Ward in a common in the last legislative session, feels we are not.  But most decent societies, and all Christian societies, feel that we are.

So there's a duty to the individual to help them live an ordered life. We know that living a disordered one leads to unhappiness.

There's a wider duty, however, to society.  Assaults on individual natures are assaults on nature in general, are destructive to us all.

And, additionally, telling a lie to yourself is one thing. But demanding, even with the force of law, that everyone else adopt the lie is quite another. That's completely destructive to the social structure, as enshrining lies as part of them inevitably leads to decay.

And finally, and more particularly, it's damaging to women in the extreme. Real women, that is.  Women know that they aren't men.  We all know that the biological life of a woman is radically different from a man's in nearly every sense.  Psychologically, it isn't the same either.  Reducing womanhood to appearing to have boobs is the most Hefnereque position of all, and an insult to women in every fashion.

After posting it, an irony occured to us that is another reason the entire transgender fantasy, as society approaches the topic, does damage to society.

It's extremely logically inconsistent.

A consistent drum beat in this are by the progressive left is that "tolerance" and "acceptance" are all that's required here, and that this all is a straight line from earlier civil rights movements, with the most common analogy being it's a straight line to "transgender rights' from 1) civil rights for blacks, or 2) civil rights for women, or 3) civil rights for homosexuals.

Nothing could be further from the truth, as none of those other movements requires suppressing reality and acceptance of self definition.

The civil rights movement that brought political and societal rights on par, almost, with whites in the US very much demonstrates this.  The oppressed class were African Americans, or as Martin Luther King would state at the time, "Negroes".  Skin color is actually a secondary feature of our appearance and an evolutionary adaption to intense sunlight, which means that the entire concept of "race", as we've noted before, is a patently false one. Race really doesn't exist, but ethnicity and culture do, and nobody could rationally argue that African Americans in general have a culture in the country which reflects their long presence in it, and the origin of that presence being rooted in the crime of slavery.

But here's the thing.  You don't sense your self to be black.  Your ancestry either goes back to Africans or it doesn't.  Under the "one drop of blood" silliness of American culture, you are an African American if you are of mixed ancestry, and almost all African Americans are (lots of "white" Southerners are as well), which is a social construct, but it's one based on a reality. Somewhere, and for the rule to apply somewhere relatively recently, you had an African ancestor.

If you don't, and you claim you feel your self black, you will be justifiably socially derided.  And that's because you really haven't endured what African Americans do on a daily basis, and growing up.  

In other words, if you run around claiming to be black, and aren't, you are going to be despised by everybody as a fake.  Indeed, the proposition is so absurd, it was used as a running joke in the movie The Jerk, with Steve Martin, whose obviously not black, giving the lines "I was born a poor black child" in the opening scenes of the movie.  More seriously, Jessica Krug, a professor at George Washington University who claimed to be black, had to resign when it was revealed she wasn't.  In fact, over time, Krug to be an Algerian American, a German American, and an Afro Boricua, when in fact she was a white American of Jewish ancestry.

Nobody tried to justify this on the basis that she "self identified" as black.

And nobody demands that you accept her claim, as she feels herself to be black.

Let's turn, then, to homosexuality.

Whatever a person feels the origins of male or female same gender attraction to be, it is.  That is, nobody really doubts that there are men sexually attracted to men, or women sexually attracted to women. The question may be why, and what that means, but people aren't faced with claims of "I feel myself to be attracted to the same gender".  We know that occurs.  That doesn't actually change the fundamental nature of a person's genetically determined gender, however.  Homosexual men are men.  There's also no doubt about that, and in some odd way, that's the point.  The same is true with homosexual women. They may be attracted to other women, but that doesn't mean they aren't women, they are.  Therefore, when a person reveals themselves, or is revealed by others, to be homosexual, it isn't as if you have to accept that their morphology and nature is different.  It just all remains the same.

Transgender claims, however, are radically different, in that the man claims he's a woman, or vice versa, just like a white person claiming they're black. And that not only doesn't have to be accepted, it can't be.

Indeed, hearkening back to that example, if a white person deeply and sincerely asserted that they were black, when they weren't, it not only would be pointed out, but if it persisted, at a bare minimum the person would be regarded as odd.  For most people, it probably wouldn't be so odd that it would be socially destructive (in some cases it could be), but it would definitely be odd.  But pretending you are a woman, if you are not, is destructive by its very nature.

We've already pointed out why, but the physical and psychological natures of women are radically different, which is the main reason.  It's also, however, deeply offensive to the nature of women, and reduces them to mere attributes, which is insulting in the extreme.

Finally, there's a certain intolerant insistence on tolerance here.  Toleration really means that I put with your nature, no matter what I think of it.  We do that in order to make society work.  For some things it should be obvious that it isn't really toleration that is required, but acceptance, ethnicity being one, but for many things that's not the case.  In American society, for example, there are many religious groups and all should be tolerated, but that doesn't mean in any way shape or form individual acceptance is required.  A person is free and should be free to disagree with the tenants of a religion, and even vehemently disagree with them.

That's toleration.

Toleration here, however, means accepting a person's self definition, no matter how deluded.  We ask that of nothing else.  

Put another way, we don't demand that Christians accept that Mohammed was a prophet, and we don't demand that Muslims accept Christ as the Son of God and part of the Trinitarian God.  We don't demand that blacks accept Jessica Krug as black.  We shouldn't demand that people accept men as women.

Toleration would really mean that if you see a man in a dress, you don't harrass the perseon about it.  It doesn't mean you have to pretend the man is a woman.

Thursday, August 23, 1923. Trotsky schemes, Turkey votes yes, Bluebeard's 8th Wife, Nancy Hayes Green dies, Fr. Giovanni Minzoni assassinated.

The Grand National Assembly of Turkey ratified the Treaty of Lausanne.  British, French, and Italian troops were withdrawing from Istanbul in accordance with the treaty.

Germany announced that it was introducing heavy taxation in order to address the country's economic woes.

Trotsky persuaded the Politburo, in a secret meeting, to finance the German Communist Party, the KDP, in order to overthrow the Weimar Republic.  A revolution in October was the goal, which planned for a Communist Germany to develop the agricultural Soviet Union, demonstrating how Communism, at the end of the day, always has an industrialized corporatism view of things, posters of smiling buxom peasant girls aside.

Bluebeard's 8th Wife was released.

Nancy Hayes Green, born in 1834, died after being hit by a car as a pedestrian. The car had hit a laundry truck.

Born into slavery in Kentucky, Green was already a widow by the end of the Civil War, having suffered the loss of her children as well.  Relocated to Chicago, she was employed in the household of Charles and Amanda Walker, transplanted Kentuckians.  Upon the Walkers recommendation, she was hired to portray "Aunt Jemima" for the RT Davis Milling Company.   The role was frankly demeaning by modern standards as it portrayed a happy picture of the antebellum south, including the status of slaves.  She continued to play the role for twenty years until replaced by Agnes Moodey, as Green would not travel to the 1900 Paris Expedition.  She used her fame from the role to advocate for the poor and for equal rights.

Portrait of Green, maybe, in character.  This could also be successor model Anna Robinson.

The depiction used for the pancake mix changed over the years as society became awakened to its inherent racism.  There was no real way, in the end, to disassociate it with its racist past, however, and Quaker Oats, the then owner of the brand, discontinued the image in 2020, during which time a variety of such depictions of brands were taken out of use by various companies.

Horrifying 1909 advertisement using the Aunt Jemima theme.

1935 Quaker Oats advertisement using a more familiar theme.

The name of the brand was changed completely to Pearl Milling Company, but interestingly minor use of the name and its branding continues by current owner, PepsiCo, so as to not have it become abandoned and become public domain.  Descendants of Robinson, it might be noted, protested the change in branding on the basis that ignored the history and heritage of the brand and American society, for good or ill.

Fr. Giovanni Minzoni, age 38, a Catholic Priest who opposed the fascist rule of Mussolini, was murdered in Argenta.  It is widely assumed that fascist Italo Balbo ordered his murder.

Balbo briefly resigned from office, but would return and was the Governor General of Libya when World War Two broke out.  He died in 1940 when an airplane he was a passenger in was shot down by friendly fire while trying to land at Tobruk.

Sunday, July 25, 1943. The surreal end of Mussolini's Premiership.

Having been voted out of office the night prior, Mussolini left the meeting of the Fascist Grand Council that had voted to remove him, he went to award prizes at a farm festival and carried on business as usual.  The Fascist Grand Council reported its decision to King Victor Emmanuel III, who ordered Mussolini to report and asked him to resign.  Mussolini asked for more time and was arrested.

Marshal Pietro Badoglio was appointed Premier.

Badoglia had been Chief of Staff of the Italian army from 1925 to 1940, but had resigned following the disastrous performance of the Italian Army in Greece.

On the same day in the same country, Ubaldo Pugnaloni won the Giro d'Italia.

The Navy commissioned the USS Harmon, a destroyer named after Leonard Roy Harmon, a mess attendant who had been killed at Guadalcanal saving a fellow shipmate.  It was the first ship named after an African American in the U.S. Navy.

Harmon's citation reads:

The President of the United States of America takes pride in presenting the Navy Cross (Posthumously) to Mess Attendant First Class Leonard Roy Harmon, United States Navy, for extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty in action against the enemy while serving on board the Heavy Cruiser U.S.S. SAN FRANCISCO (CA-38), during action against enemy Japanese naval forces near Savo Island in the Solomon Islands on the night of on 12–13 November 1942. With persistent disregard of his own personal safety, Mess Attendant First Class Harmon rendered invaluable assistance in caring for the wounded and assisting them to a dressing station. In addition to displaying unusual loyalty in behalf of the injured Executive Officer, he deliberately exposed himself to hostile gunfire in order to protect a shipmate and, as a result of this courageous deed, was killed in action. His heroic spirit of self-sacrifice, maintained above and beyond the call of duty, was in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

 

Thursday, July 22, 1943. Palermo falls to the Seventh Army. Greeks riot over Macedonia, US landings at Munda Point.

Patton's Seventh Army entered Palermo to an enormous celebration by the residents of the ancient city.  Two captured Italian generals, in turn, claimed to be happy about the event because "the Sicilians were not human beings but animals" ("i Siciliani non erano esseri umani ma animali").

Seventh Army staff aboard SS Monrovia, en route to Sicily, June/July 1943.

The Italian fascist government had held anti-Sicilian views due to Sicily's long peculiar history.  

The island has been inhabited since ancient times and was a destination for Italic and Phoenician colonists as far back as 1200 BC, who displaced the already existing Sicilian population.  Greek colonization commenced around 750 BC.  In antiquity, it was contested by the Greeks and Carthaginians, both of whom conquered it at different times.  The Romans conquered it and displaced the Carthaginians and declared that the island should be latinized, although its culture remained, at the time, Greek.  With the fall of the Roman Empire, it fell to invading Germanic tribes, with the Vandals taking Palermo in 440.  The Byzantine Empire then retook it, as the Eastern Roman Empire, and ruled it from the 550s to the 960s, during which time the Arabs began to attempt to take it.  From the 820s through the 960s, it slowly fell to Muslim invaders.

The Normans arrived starting in 1038, around thirty years prior to their invasion of England, and began to take it from the Arabs.  They formed a Norman kingdom that lasted until 1198, becoming part of the typical drama of European kingdoms at the time.  The Normans imported European settlers to the island, which went from being 1/3d Greek speaking and 2/3s Arabic speaking to being latinized once again.  It went back and forth to varying European households until 1860, when the Italians conquered it.  It became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.

During the fascist period the island was subject to unwelcome attention in part because Italians have never really regarded Sicilians as Italians, given their multi-ethnic heritage, and part because the strong local character of the island was unwelcome. Also, unwelcome was the fairly strong local Communist Party and the Sicilian Mafia. The fascist nearly crushed the Mafia during their period in power.

A general strike was called in Athens over Bulgarian intentions to annex Macedonia, which resulted in a massive protest in the city over the same thing.

The protests were successful in that they postponed the Bulgarian plans to the point that they were never carried out.

The SS executed all of the remaining 2,500 inmates of the Tarnopol concentration camp.

US infantry during the battle.

The Battle of Munda Point began on New Georgia.  The object was the points' airfield, in what would become a hard fought campaign.

The U.S. Navy raided Kiska.

Sunday, July 18, 1943. Alexander appointed governor of Sicily.

Showing how far the invasion of Sicily already gone, British Gen. Harold Alexander was appointed the Allied Military Governor of Sicily. 

For his first act, he banned the Fascist Party.

The U.S. airship K-74 depth charged the German U-134, which returned fire with its 20mm deck guns. The K-74 was shot down.  The unsuccessful attack was the only such instance of an airship attacking a submarine during World War Two.

K class airship.

Japan's counteroffensive on New Georgia ended in failure.

MGM released Stormy Weather, showcasing a host of African American talent. The movie featured 20 musical pieces in 77 minutes.

Western angst and spinning history.

I don't know if it was the anniversary of the raid, or what, but my Twitter feed for some reason picked up a link to a story about a large raid by the Barbary Pirates on the coast of Ireland.  In 1631 the pirates raided Baltimore, Ireland, in the County of Cork.  The town was not large, but between 100 and 300 of its inhabitants were abducted.  Only two made it back to Ireland, in part because the English government had just enacted a law which forbid paying ransom, which was often the goal of such raids.

The article that was linked in was scholarly, and noted that what would have occured is that, for the most part, children would have been separated from their parents and everyone sold into slavery when it became obvious that they would not be ransomed.  The male slavery would have been of the grueling work variety.  Women would have largely been sold as sex slaves, which the articles like to call "concubines".  

The reason that I note this here is that the author, again it was a scholarly article, felt compelled to blame the raids on the Spanish expulsion of the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula.  That process has commenced in 1492, and it was completed, effectively, in 1614.  The entire period wasn't a peaceful one, and in the Mediterranean various nations raided each other.

The final stages of the story are more complicated, in Spain, than might at first be imagined, as by the 1600s the "Moriscos" weren't actually Muslim, but rather Spanish descendants of Berbers and Arabs who were Catholic, but who retained Berber/Arab ancestry. Some claim they were "crypto Islamic", but more likely they were Catholics who retained some folk connection to their ancestor's prior religion.  Indeed, it'd be worth noting that Islam itself has a murky origin connection with Christianity, and this may have been confusing at the street level.  Anyhow, the last stages of this seem to be an ethnic spat, but it did have the effect of expelling Moriscos to North Africa, where they were absorbed ultimately into the local population, or to distribute them across Spain where the same thing occured.

Anyhow, blaming the Baltimore, and other Barbary Pirate, raids on this event is stretching it.  I suppose you could argue that the general belligerency of the Mediterranean contributed to the raiding atmosphere, and both sides did that, but that traces back to the rise of Islam in the first place, which was spread by the sword.  That this process went on, in one fashion or another, for a thousand years, and in some cases to this very day, does not mean that much except that the long arch of history and the fact that events play out over decades or centuries is the rule, and only seems to be odd to us, as we're used to everything occurring rapidly.

Anyhow, the author claimed that the children were treated with "utmost kindness".  Really?  Separating them from their parents, sending their fathers off to early grueling slave induced deaths and selling their mothers as sex slaves?  And then they'd end up slaves themselves, with boys often ending up enslaved soldiers and girls. . . sex slaves.

What BS.

The same author claimed that the women were sold into "concubinage", which is sex slavery in this context, and lived lives of "relative luxury", as if this weird image of the Playboy ethos had the women looking forward to this life of chattel status while they still retained their desirability.  The reality of it is that they had value as they were exotic, and bought for their physical attributes alone.

Why this story has to be spun in this fashion is really remarkable. We're supposed to feel some guilt for the story of the kidnappers and slavers, and even look kindly upon some of the grossest examples of slavery that are around.

None of this is to excuse Western conduct, whatever might be sought to be excused. Slavery was common amongst all Mediterranean societies, Christian and Islamic, but what played out with the Barbary pirates was not.  They engaged in slave raids, and forced sex slave status of captured women was endorsed by the Koran, although frankly probably not really in the form that was practiced here (it likely applied to women captured as a result of warfare, not that this makes it a lot better).  Putting a gloss on any kind of slavery, moreover, is bizarre.  When people attempt to do that, as many once did and a few still try to do, in regard to American slavery, we're rightly appalled.  This isn't any better.

The West has had a hard time reconciling an imperial past with its democratic values, and one way it tries to cope with it is by making Westerners always be the baddies.  The story of empire is a complicated one, but the 100 to 300 inhabitants of Baltimore didn't have much to do with it, and neither, really, did the Barbary pirates. Slavery was always bad and this sort of slavery gross.  Kidnapping people is always bad.  There are always bad people.  The Barbary Pirates don't need to be portrayed as if they're Captain Morocco, or something, in a Marvel movie.

Sunday, July 1, 1923. Chinese exclusion and untimely death.

For those who may have followed yesterday's drama about a policeman (actually sheriff's officer) shooting into a car that refused to dim its headlights, the story plays out today:

The paper was just packed with accidental and untimely death, for that matter.

The Chinese Immigration Act, which we posted about earlier, and which banned Chinese immigrants from entering Canada, save for a few exceptions, came into effect.

A Rin Tin Tin movie was released.

Can't win for losing. Supreme Court Strikes Down Affirmative Action.

For the reasons provided above, the Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.

At the same time, as all parties agree, nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. See, e.g., 4 App. in No. 21–707, at 1725– 1726, 1741; Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 20–1199, at 10. But, despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today. (A dissenting opinion is generally not the best source of legal advice on how to comply with the majority opinion.) “[W]hat cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly. The Constitution deals with substance, not shadows,” and the prohibition against racial discrimination is “levelled at the thing,not the name.” Cummings v. Missouri, 4 Wall. 277, 325 (1867). A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.

Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.

The judgments of the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and of the District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina are reversed.

It is so ordered.

After a series of decisions on cases which liberal pundits were in self afflicted angst about in which the Court didn't realize their fears, the Court finally did realize one and struck down affirmative action admission into universities, something it warned it would do 25 years ago.

The reason is simple. Race based admission is clearly violative of US law and the equal protection clause. That was always known, with the Court allowing this exception in order to attempt to redress prior racism.  As noted, it had already stated there was a day when this would end.  The Court had been signalling that it would do this for years.

Indeed, while not the main point in this entry, it can't help be noted that when the Court preserves a policy like this one, which it did last week with the also race based Indian Child Welfare Act, liberals are pretty much mute on it.  There are no howls of protest from anyone, but no accolades either.  Political liberals received two (expected, in reality) victories from the Court in two weeks that they'd been all in a lather regarding. They seemed almost disappointed to have nothing to complain about, until this case, which gave them one.

Predictably, the left/Democrats reacted as if this is a disaster.  It isn't.  Joe Biden instantly reacted.  Michele Obama, who has a much better basis to react, also made a statement, pointing out that she was a beneficiary of the policy, which she was.  That's fine, but that doesn't mean that the policy needed to be preserved in perpetuity.

At some point, it's worth noting, these policies become unfair in and of themselves.  Not instantly, but over time, when they've redressed what they were designed to.  The question is when, and where.  A good argument could be made, for example, that as for the nation's traditionally largest minority, African Americans, this policy had run its course.  In regard to Native Americans?  Not so much.

Critics will point out that poverty and all the ills that accompany it still afflict African Americans at disproportionate levels, and that's true. The question then becomes why these policies, which have helped, don't seem to be able to bridge the final gap.  A whole series of uncomfortable issues are then raised, which the right and the left will turn a blind eye to. For one thing, immigration disproportionately hurts African Americans, which they are well aware of.  Social programs that accidentally encouraged the break-up of families and single parenthood hit blacks first, and then spread to whites, helping to accidentally severely damage American family structures and cause poverty.  Due to the Civil Rights movement, African Americans became a Democratic base, which was in turn abandoned by the Democrats much like Hard Hat Democrats were, leaving them politically disenfranchised.  Black membership in the GOP has only recently increased (although it notably has), as the black middle class and traditionally socially conservative black community has migrated towards it, but that migration was severely hindered by the legacy of Reagan's Southern Strategy, which brought Southern (and Rust Belt) Democrats into the party and with it populism and closeted racism.

While the left will howl in agony on this decision, it won't really do anything that isn't solidly grounded in the 1960s, and 70s, and for that matter probably moribund, about the ongoing systemic problems.  Pundits who are in favor of institutionalizing every child during the day will come out mad, but they won't dare suggest that immigrants take African American entry level jobs.  Nobody is going to suggest taking a second look at social programs that encourage women of all races to marry the government and fathers to abandon their offspring, something that Tip O'Neill, a Democrat, noted in regard to the African American family before it spread to the white family.  The usual suspects will have the usual solutions and the usual complaints, all of which aren't working to push a determinative solution to this set of problems.

Hardly noted, yet, we should note here, is that this decision, just like Obergefell and Heller, will have a longer reach than people now seem to note.  If college affirmative action is illegal, then similar race based programs (save for ones involving Native Americans, who are subject to the Indian Commerce Clause) are as well. And maybe so are gender based ones, including ones that take into account the ever expanding phony categories of genders that progressive add to every day.  In other words, if programs that favor minority admission into university are invalid, probably Federal Government policies that favor women owned companies over others are as well.

Indeed, they should be.

Societies have an obligation to work towards equality before the law, and before society, for all.  But the essence of working on a problem is solving it.  The subject policy was successful for a long time, but this institutionalized favoritism was no longer working to a large degree, and for that matter, in some instances, impacting others simply because of their race.  It's not 1963, 1973, or 1983 any longer.  New thoughts on old problems should be applied.

Some of those new thoughts, frankly, should be to what extent must we continue to have a 1883 view of the country as if it has vast unpopulated domains to settle that it needs to import to fill.  Another might be, however, that American society really has fundamentally changed on race even within the last 20 years.  While racism remains, and the Obama and Trump eras seem to have boiled it back up, for different reasons, a lot of street level racism really is gone.  For one thing, seeing multiracial couples with multiracial children no longer causes anyone to bat an eye anymore, and that wasn't true as recently as 20 years ago.  We may be a lot further down this road than anyone suspects.

Friday, June 25, 1943. Murder in Ukraine, tragedy in Nova Scotia, race riot in UK.

The Germans completed the eradication of the Jewish population of Stanislav (Ivano-Frankivsk) in Ukraine.

The "Battle of Bamber Bridge" occurred in the UK when white Military Police intervened in a pub which had stretched out drinking hours for black US troops and then attempted to cite one for improper uniform.  Shots were ultimately fired and one of the soldiers was killed.

The Smith-Connoally Act was passed, which allowed the government to seize industries threated by strikes.  It went into law over President Roosevelt's veto.

 No. 21 Squadron RAF Ventura attacking IJmuiden, February 1943.

A Ventura AJ186 crashed in Summerville, Nova Scotia, killing P/O John C. Loucks, air gunner, Bracebridge, Ont., P/O George W. Cowie, pilot, Wellington, New Zealand., P/O Clifford A. Griffiths, navigator, Auckland, New Zealand., Sgt. Arthur Cornelius Mulcahy, wireless air gunner, Sydney, Australia.

The men were undergoing training.  A memorial service will be held for them today in Summerville.

Classified as a medium bomber, the Ventura is one of the numerous Allied warbirds that are now basically forgotten, in spite of having received widespread use.  It was an adaptation of a civilian airliner.

Sarah Sundin notes, on her blog:

Today in World War II History—June 25, 1943: 80 Years Ago—June 25, 1943: Bob Hope begins his first major USO tour; he will spend 11 weeks touring England, North Africa, and Sicily.

Tuesday, June 22, 1943. Race Riots in Detroit, Cruxhaven bombed,

Today in World War II History—June 22, 1943: In Detroit race riot, 24 Blacks & 9 whites are killed, 800 wounded (75% of the wounded are Black), 1800 arrested (80% Black); governor requests federal troops.

From Sarah Sundin's blog. 

It's worth recalling that the Detroit riots came hard on the heels of the Zoot Suit Riots.  The US was obviously not doing well with race relations in the heat of the war, or perhaps more properly the heated economy, mass movement of people, and the induction of huge numbers of men into the service were bringing the nation's race problems to a head.

The U.S. Army Air Force bombed Cuxhaven, the second heaviest raid of the war to date by the US, losing 16 aircraft. This compared favorably to the June 11, raid, in which it had lost 85.

A large exhibit of captured German equipment was held in Gorky Park.

Thursday, June 21, 1923. Dawn of the advertising age. Somewhere West Of Laramie.

The modern advertising age dawned on this day in 1921 with an ad for the Jordan Playboy automobile:

Today In Wyoming's History: June 21: 1923   This advertisement first ran in the Saturday Evening Post:

The advertisement is the most famous car ad of all time, and the ad itself revolutionized advertising.  Based on the recollection of the Jordan Motor Car Company's founder in seeing a striking mounted girl outside of Laramie, while he was traveling by train, the advertisement is all image, revealing next to nothing about the actual product.  While the Jordan Motor Car Company did not survive the Great Depression, the revolution in advertising was permanent.

Anyway you look at it, it's still a great ad.

This, by the way, is the print date.  The actual issue of the magazine would be a few days later.

President Harding gave a speech in St. Louis on his first stop of his western whistle-stop tour.  The speech was carried live by radio.

Marcus Garvey was sentenced to five years in prison for mail fraud.

The Jamaican born Garvey was a controversial black nationalist who had been in the United States since 1916.  He appealed his conviction and ultimately Calvin Coolidge would commute the sentence in 1927, acting on advice that the conviction was regarded as racial in nature.  As a condition of his commutation, he was subject to deportation.  He spent the rest of this life in the United Kingdom, dying in 1940 at age 52.

The downfall of the Consolidated Stock Exchange of New York commenced when William S. Silkworth, its president, was forced to resign due to financial irregularities in his personal finances.  Investigations of the exchange followed, and it ceased operation three years later.

Sunday, June 20, 1943. Race riots in Detroit, Action in the Pacific.

A three-day race riot that would result in the deaths of 34 people broke out in Detroit, starting at the Belle Island park as a fistfight.

Race riots were a feature of Detroit life for many years. The city had been a major destination during the Great Migration, given its industrial employment opportunities.

The Allies commenced the New Georgia Campaign against the Japanese.  The first action was a Marine Corps landing on the Kula Gulf on New Georgia.

The Battle of Lababia Ridge began on New Guinea, with Australians advancing on Japanese positions.  The battle would last for three days and result in an Australian victory.

Sarah Sundin noted that Oscar Holmes became the first black pilot in the U.S. Navy on this day, but only because the Navy was not aware that the light skinned Holmes was in fact black.

The Navy did discover his ethnicity later on, but by that point judged that it would have been too embarrassing to note it in any fashion.

A U.S. meteorological flight over northern Quebec discovered the The Pingualuit Crater (Cratère des Pingualuit:), formerly called the "Chubb Crater" and later the "New Quebec Crater" (Cratère du Nouveau-Québec).

Saturday, June 19, 1943. Internees released, Murders planned at Obersalzberg, Eagles and Steelers merge.

Japanese American servicemen of the 442 Regimental Combat Team at a dance, June 1943.

On this day in 1943 a large number of Heart Mountain internees were released for seasonal employment or on indefinite leave.

Hitler summoned Himmler to Obersalzberg to discuss ending all Jewish resistance in Easter Europe over the next four months by mass evacuation, which of course would ultimately entail mass extermination, of the Eastern European Jewish population.  

This implicitly acknowledged, it should be noted, declining German fortunes on the Eastern Front.

The Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburgh Steelers combined into a single wartime team, due to wartime manpower shortages.

Friday, June 18, 1943. Marine Corps Life Lessons, Allied Action in the Med, Churchill shuffles the deck, Australia safe from invasion.

"How to disable an armed opponent is demonstrated by two girl Marines in training at Camp Lejeune, New River, North Carolina. The Marines with their backs to the camera are watching another display of feminine skill in the art of self-defense, June 18, 1943." 

Sarah Sundon notes, in her blog:

Today in World War II History—June 18, 1943: Allies intensify bombing of Sicily, Sardinia, and Naples . Australian Prime Minister John Curtin declares that the risk of Japanese invasion is over.

The all black 99th Pursuit Squadron, part of the those groups nicknamed the Tuskegee Airmen, flew in action against the Luftwaffe for the first time when six of their P-40s encountered 12 FW 190s over Pantelleria.  The 99th was outmatched in terms of what they were flying but suffered no losses.

Churchill removed Field Marshall Sir Archibald Wavell and Gen. Claude Auchinleck from command by promoting them uphill to Viceroy of India and Commander-in-Chief, India.

One of Wavell's first tasks in India was attempting to relieve the Bengal Famine of 1943. Auchinleck would go on to reorganize the Indian Army.

Tuesday, June 15, 1943. Riots in Beaumont.

Riots occurred in Beaumont, Texas, a city just to the north of Port Arthur, when white men, half employed by the Pennsylvania Shipyards, attacked homes, businesses and automobiles of African Americans.

Acting Governor A. M. Aiken had to call out the wartime Texas State Guard and deploy Texas Rangers, while also declaring martial law.

It was the first flight of the jet engined German bomber, the Arado Ar 234.

The twin engined jet bomber was the first of its kind in the world, and would enter service in the fall of 1944, too late to be of consequence.