Holocaust: Deux

The world is witnessing a modern-day holocaust, the likes of which we have not seen since the days of Hitler. It is being wreaked upon a helpless and hapless people trapped in what, for all intents and purposes, is an open-air concentration camp called "Gaza."  To escape the bombing, the Gazans can only flee from the northern barrier to the southern barrier. Like fish in a barrel, they cannot get out. 

We have not seen such purposeful destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, and families, except through the lens of the past.  The people sleep on the ground, out in the open. Small babies huddle against their emaciated mothers, who cling to them with barely the strength to give them the solace they need. Thousands fight over scraps of bread while hundreds of food-laden trucks are kept on the other side of the barriers, cruelly out of reach. 

The world witnessing this Gazan Holocaust appears as indifferent to the suffering of these Palestinians as the people, 80 years ago, were indifferent to the plight of the Jews. This time, however, it is the Jews who are wreaking havoc.

The hatred permeating from Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing government - hatred toward the people of Gaza - is frightening. Such barbarism is not worthy of the Jewish people and their historic faith. 

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, speaking on Fareed Zakaria's GPS - The Global Public Square (Sunday, June 1), stated: 

        "The damage Israel is doing to itself is far worse than anything anyone else could have             done to them." 

Gaza's entire population is living a dystopian nightmare directly parallel to our American lives. There is no graininess here. We see it, but it doesn't seem to bother us much. Over 55,000 Gazans have been killed; 20,000 of those dead are children. And of the children left alive, many are so traumatized they have descended into a wraith-like silence. Heartbroken? We should be apologetic. 

We are party to this massacre. We give Israel billions of dollars. We furnish the finest bombs to drop upon those scurrying unfortunates in the Gazan fishbowl. (Mr. Olmert must think: "A better friend of Israel would just say 'No' to Netanyahu.")

The American people say little, lest they incur the wrath of Jewish groups whose cries of "anti-semitism" drown out all calls for mercy. Meanwhile, the craven media - practiced in the art of self-preservation - bow down, and bang the drums of capitulation. 

It is our student body that bears the brunt of the caring here in the States. They cry tears of anguish at the inhumanities inflicted upon the Palestinians - inhumanities Ehud Olmert calls "war crimes." And for their pains, our young people are castigated and called "supporters of terrorists," when they should be called "Children of God." 

We worry and hope that our children will achieve money and mansions in their lives. We should be hoping that they care about other people and other things, as they care about themselves. That is our last, best hope.

I believe our children care. Thank God for that. The alternative is Holocaust: Trois

AfterLife

 I filed a civil complaint

    the magistrate rejected

I filed a Leave to Appeal

    I doubt he will allow.

Perhaps the Leave was not compelling

    A matter that occurred to me

        too late to matter... to them 

            only power to punish matters. 

Mad?

    (I shake my head)

To borrow a line from Jesus: 

"They know not what they do."

Plan "B":  Write "Unhinged:

    A Treatise on Corrections Corruptions"

That ought to amount to nothing.

    (Where is Elon now)

    ... as we clang along to eternity?

Obi Wan Kenobi fancied

    as Darth Vader readied to slay him

That Death will imbue us with depth

    and movement

The likes we never imagined?

Is that our hope:  Power over Earth - 

    to fly, to punish...

    Heaven, at last? 

Is this what we expend

    our death wishes on?

Woody Allan put it best when he said,

"Ya gotta admit, it doesn't look promising." 

Liberty: Lost in America

In 1999, the Michigan Supreme Court added an arrow to its criminal justice quiver that has dumbfounded prisoners and emboldened prosecutors and judges alike. Glover v. Michigan Parole Board recognized the concept of "no liberty interest".  That means a prisoner serving an indeterminate sentence - like "life" (parolable or mandatory) - has "no reasonable expectation of liberty" until he has served out his entire life in prison. Such a ruling ensures that only by the Michigan Parole Board's beneficence does such a prisoner get so much as a whiff of freedom. 

It was U.S. Magistrate Judge Ray Kent who broke the news to me on February 10, 2025, while denying my 1983 pro se complaint against the Michigan Department of Corrections. I was dumbfounded and filled with a sense of betrayal. I could not believe I have "no liberty interest," no matter what that means. I was born in Woodland Park, MI, in 1952, and have lived my entire life in this state. No one, I thought, could change my "liberty interest" or ignore my due process rights. Judge Ray Kent disagreed. 

There is something clillingly ironclad about the notion: "no liberty interest." It allows what they call "The Michigan System" to cut away the cornerstone of American democracy - the 14th Amendment - and say to lifers, "It doesn't apply to you." 

Liberty, for all of its inherent strength, is a nuanced and delicate thing, dependent too much upon the grace of our fellow Americans. Realizing that benevolent design can be a tricky prospect in this country. It is Americans' historic willingness to confine and otherwise degrade their fellow Americans - African-American slaves on the plantation, Native Americans on reservations, 120,000 Japanese-Americans in internment camps - that has cast a pall over this "Land of the Free." 

America has unilaterally decided the value of these people's "liberty interest". That value has always been less than the value of "real Americans", and America has entered it thus in its ledger. Is it any wonder that America, with a measly 4% of the world's population today, commands 24% of the world's prisoners and 40% of its lifers? 

In 2025, mass incarceration of blacks, Hispanics, and poor whites has replaced the plantation, and the reservation. many of these people cannot afford advanced legal representation, (which is the only kind these courts respect). This is a legal system that authorizes the legislature to strip rights and freedoms from prisoners at the stroke of a pen; at the sound of voices that have become mere echoes of voices centuries old - those steeped in denying the dark-skinned, and the poor. Then, they draw up moral codes to glorify their work. This nascent practice of employing "no liberty interest" is just another sojourn into psychological warfare against an ill-equipped collection of American citizenry.  

What a piece of work this Michigan Supreme Court: Took the concept of liberty, claimed it, clipped its wings, and now fancies that liberty has become a discerning entity, one that can be lifted above "those wretched lifer wraiths." 

After 400 years on this North American continent, America is right back where it started. Telling a prisoner has has "no liberty interest", and no due process right to pursue it, is the modern-day equivalent of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of the U. S. Supreme Court, telling fugitive slave, Dred Scott, in 1857, that "a black man has no rights a white man was bound to respect. 

Fortunately for America, Abe Lincoln was around to upend Judge Taney's "sub-citizen" doctrine. At some point, another Amnerican must stand up; perhaps someone in Michigan - a judge, a prosecutor, a human being - who will look into this abyss, and declare: "I can no longer, in good conscience, take part in this travesty." 

Patrick Henry didn't do it. In 1775, that great patriot acknowledged that slaver "is repugnant... inconsistent with the Bible, and destructive of liberty." He kept slaves, nontheless, because of "the inconvenience of living without them." 

Thomas Jefferson couldn't do it, either. He knew slavery was wrong. He stated: "We have a wolf by the ears. We cannot hold on forever, but we can never let it go." 

How does Michigan right itself, and let go of the "wolf's ears?" The very volume of Michigan prisoners assures thousands of well-paying jobs throughout the state. And how inconvenient it would be for politicians, whose endless queshing of these chained men's and women's spirits in the name of "tough-on-crime" politices, to suddenty have to come up with another vapid slogan to fuel their small-minded dreams of heroism.  

These politicians are built to mimic Jefferson, who offered this gem of an answer to the question of slavery: "They are to be removed beyond the reach of mixture." He spoke these words at the same time he was fathering children by his slave, Sally Hemmings.  

When it comes to liberty in America, it is a game of subtraction. Michigan has convinced itself that, like Taney in 1857, all it takes is a court order to hold the rights and liberty of the disenfranchised at bay. Michigan has foolishly taken a divine force - liberty - and corrupted it, similar to when America reduced black men to three-fifths of a person, then congratulated itself on its brilliant deduction. 

Trump Wants the Word to Cry "Uncle!"

Throughout modern history, no nation has been so resilient as the German people. Declared "Barbarians" by the Roman Empire, they rose to become the strongest nation in Europe at the turn of the 20th century. During World War I, it took the great powers of Europe - England, France, and Russia - along with the U.S., to defeat Germany. Twenty years later, under Adolf Hitler, they would, once again, become the most powerful nation in Europe. During World War II, it took the combined forces of those same powers - England, France, the USSR, and the U.S. - to conquer Germany again. In 2025, Germany is again the most powerful nation in Europe.  

Donald Trump is a lot like Adolf Hitler. He is not a mass murderer, like Hitler was; neither is he warmonger. But, like Hitler, Trump has a unique ability to win over a great nation of people. Hitler wooed the German people with the promise of "greatness" again, after the ruin of their WWI defeat. Trump woos America with the promise of truth.  

The American people are genuinely disenchanted with politicians, and the American media - people who lie to them because toeing party and network lines is more important. Trump, in their minds, does not "toe lines"; he draws them. He does not lie to them, he merely exaggerates. With Trump, everything is grandiose - "bigger", "darker", and "more fantastic" - and that is fine with them. Then, he says simple stuff, like "I will build a wall," or "From now on, there will be but two genders in America - male and female." They think, "He means it," and they understand.

Geopolitically, President Trump cares no more about the Ukraine than he cares about Panama, Gaza, or river smelt. And those tariffs: He doesn't appear to levy them out of necessity as much as he levies them out of hubris - because he can; because he wants contrary countries to cry "Uncle!" 

And, as for renaming the "Gulf of Mexico" the "Gulf of America", it may be something as simple as China having two international bodies of water named after it - the South China Sea and the East China Sea - while America has none. That's Trump. 

For the past 80 years, people have wondered how such a superb society as the Germans could have fallen so completely beneath the spell of a megalomaniac like Hitler. In 2025, the world is asking the same thing about "exceptional" Americans. 

Top 25 in NBA History

1. Jordan

2. Lebron

3. Kareem

4. Wilt

5. Russell

(Wilt Chamberlain is forever embedded in the Top Five. To leave him out would be like leaving Joe Louis out of the Top Five heavyweights of all time, or leaving Jim Brown out of the Top Five football players, or Babe Ruth out of the Top Five baseball players. Can't happen... ever.)

6. Hakeem

7. Duncan

8. Shaq

9. Kobe

10. Bird

11. Magic

12. Oscar

13. Giannis

14. Jokic

15. Durant

16. Pippen

17. Moses Malone

18. Curry

19. D. Robinson

20. D. Wade

21. Karl Malone

22. Bill Walton

23. Kevin Garnett

24. Dirk Nowitzki

25. Joel Embid

If you were to look to replace any of the Top 25 here, these are a likely five to choose from:  

Isiah Thomas

Jerry West

Elgin Baylor

Luka Doncic

Rick Barry

Popes, Presents, and Nebulas

Pope John Paul dropped a bomb on the 2024 presidential race, stating that the American voter "is facing a choice between the lesser of two evils... one candidate chases away the migrants, the other one wants to kill children." 

A billion people worldwide devoutly follow this leader of the Catholic Church; tens of millions in America alone. His message delves deeper than the mere threats and cajoling of politicians. There are no monies, armies, or weaponry driving his point - simply his conscience and ours. 

Have we ever heard a pope say such a thing out loud - "the lesser of two evils" - on the eve of an American presidential election? I've been listening since the early '60s, and have never heard the like. Will his words tip the scales one way or the other? In such a tight race, who knows?

This is certain: Democrats in America are much too gung-ho over abortions when they should be showing more grace.  

*******

The present is about the past and the future. We experience the present and think about how it came to be. We wonder what will happen to it at any moment.  

*******

Nothing is cooler than a nebula, those galactic cloud formations fully light-years in breadth - the Eagle Nebula, the Horseshoe Nebula, the Crab Nebula... "Pillars of Creation." They are the place where stars are born. What is cooler than that.  

Where Do You Go, Little Ones

What happens to their little souls

Those multitudes of babies aborted?

Might there be a realm

Where they go to grow into men and women

Where they can live out forever

    in some earthly bliss?

Do we truly believe in God

Is he not capable of such immense consolation

    for souls of such immense innocence?

There must be something for those 

Whose only chance at life was snuffed out

By those who thought too much of themselves.

Could not God retrieve their tossed spirits

Reclaim and refurbish their stolen breaths

Give it over to them

This wonderful place we would destroy

That they might become inheritors of Earth

    and give back to her the love she deserves?

Damned this slaughter of innocents!

Lest we pay eternity for this beastly sin.