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Toward Democracy

and the equality of all people in a world free of sexism, racism, classism, homophobia,the guarantee of fundamental human rights and an end to all forms of violence: rape, battering, exploitation, intervention and war
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Mothers & Others

08/08/06 · 3:27 pm :: posted by Zep     

"Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children."
     - William Makepeace Thackeray 

Mother JonesRegarding the "mother" question, I'm one of the step variety and thus can't speak personally to the role of bearing or adopting children and raising them.  I am a woman, however, and have noticed that we are, on the whole, different from men on the whole in significant (if lessening) ways -- including the willingness to ask directions on a road trip.  

For another thing, I didn't grow up seeing people who looked like me in positions of authority -- unless one counts school teachers, which of course is what I later became (history, to be precise). In the 1950s, teaching was sold to girls as "something to do until you have children and to fall back on if your husband dies." 

At any rate, gender imbalance is important in itself (we humans are creatures of nature, which tends to redress imblance, sometimes violently).  Exclusion also gives females, and some others, an often useful outsiders' perspective.  Balance and inclusion are preferable, however, and some progress has been made, thanks to second wave feminism and the Civil Rights Movement.
 
Meanwhile, back at the Holocaust
 
Regarding the U.S. bookends to World War II, Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima/Nagasaki, a major issue is the "Nixon question":  What did the government know and when did it know it?
 
There is a considerable paper trail, pre-Internet, indicating that the State, War and Navy Departments had information between November 26 and December 6, 1941, of the Japanese intention to attack Pearl Harbor. This is not news, including FDR's wish to join the war on the Allied side. The attack was real but the sneak is in serious question.
 
In the summer of 1945, with Germany defeated, negotiations were underway to end the war against Japan without an invasion or bombing of its mainland by the U.S. and/or Russia. It appears that this might have been accomplished by offering retention of the Emperor, but the new Truman administration chose military rather than diplomatic means of ending the war (shades of Lebanon). The bombing of Hiroshima certainly got the world's attention, and lest there be any doubt, Nagasaki followed in short order, 61 years ago Thursday.
 
As for the War Department, it was one of the first three executive departments, the other two being State and Treasury, created at the beginning of Washington's presidency.  In 1947, people generally fed up with war, the name was officially changed to the Defense Department.  There is a budding effort to change the name back, for the sake of accuracy.

4 comments
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08/08/06 @ 3:43 pm
Monponsett [Member] writes:
Mercy.... I taught History as well. We should go out and get stewed some time, maybe trade some Funny Student stories.
 [ Show all comments by this user ]
08/08/06 @ 6:33 pm
Balboa [Member] writes:
What's your point Zep?
We won the war, rebuilt Japan (and Germany), and have not used a nuclear weapon in anger since.

It's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback with over a half century of history to fall back on.
 [ Show all comments by this user ]
08/08/06 @ 6:46 pm
Monponsett [Member] writes:
Eff the Japanese.

If we didn't drop that Fat Man on their treacherous little asses, one of two things would have happened.

A) We slug our way onto the island, and kill a million or two of ours and theirs while inching our way north.

B) The Russians invade from the north, and we end up with a larger, more powerful Korea... and we'd probably have fought the Russians there in the 1950s.

While it's never happened to me, dying from a nuclear bomb expolsion is probably a pretty bad way to go. I just don't think it's any worse than a bayonnet to the stomach, or a head shot, or starving to death slowly.

All death sucks, and it's pretty hard to paint a picture of us conquering Japan with less than 200,000 casualties... on their side alone. That's the most conservative estimate I've ever read for an island invasion, and that doesn't take fighting the Russians there into account.

Instead, we blasted them. We gave them the full taste of the war they obviously wanted with us, and the time of many emperors will pass before they clamor for it again.
 [ Show all comments by this user ]
08/09/06 @ 8:16 am
David [Member] writes:
RE: War (vs. Defense) Department - I believe that 9/11 clearly showed that we don't have a defense department (with an hour and forty minutes warning, NORAD was unable to get a single fighter over our own capital!). And then a NEW department was formed, Homeland Security (to allow the 'defense' department to continue what it's good at: war).
 [ Show all comments by this user ]
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About This Blog

maryzepernick_01 Mary Zepernick, a former teacher and trainer, is a fulltime social change activist on Cape Cod, working with the Women's International League for Peace & Freedom and coordinating a national group, the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy. Mary has a Masters degree in Women's Studies from George Washington University. She served on the WILPF board and staff, and as U.S. Section president. A long-time teacher and trainer, she conducts workshops on the democratic arts, including dismantling racism, sexism, heterosexism, and homophobia.

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