Men, Women, the Law

There are plenty of silly memes on the internets, most of which have no relationship with logic or facts. One such is the “men should not legislate abortion laws” or “those without female reproductive organs shall not legislate female reproductive organs.” I’ve seen the latter a lot of late. One wants to ask the people who post these things – all of whom are pro-choice (as I am) — if they are not aware that the Supreme Court that legislated Roe v. Wade was all male, or that the Governor of Alabama – the state that recently passed the restrictive abortion bill that has inspired these memes — is female.

Of course, what these people mean is, “men shall not legislate abortion laws unless they agree with me about said laws.”

Another D-Day Story

I found this story particularly poignant.

D-Day veterans have returned to the beaches where they landed 75 years ago to lay crosses and remember their fallen comrades.

Trooper Albert Price, 93, was an 18-year-old gunner with the Royal Dragoon Guards when he landed on Gold beach on D-Day.

He took Betty – his wife of 67 years – by the hand and walked with her on to the historic beach for the first time today.

Read the whole thing and enjoy the pictures. As the kids say, “relationship goals.”

D-Day 75: the Second Front

My uncle’s letter to my grandfather on June 8th, 1944, mentions DDay. He and his Algonquin Regiment comrades were still in England training, and would join the battle in July. But you can see from this letter that the invasion had quite an impact on morale – a positive one. Excerpts:

I am well, of course, and quite happy. Also, of course, excited, for the Second Front is still in the process of being established. You have only a small idea of what it has done to our morale over here. It’s given everything a new meaning, and at day time we watch planes going south, and say, “Ahha!”, see them coming north and nod at one another, watch them going east & west, and murmur excitedly. We see huge convoys going in all directions and wink. We see the Higher Paid Help riding by in their command vehicles and say, “I’ll bet….”

But for the last few weeks you couldn’t imagine the air activity that was going on. Absolutely terrific, and something Canada has still to see. Every sort of plane has gone over us, in all sorts of combinations, by day and by night. We’ve been awakened at night by them, prevented from lecturing by the noise of them, and kept dizzy counting them.

At this date everything seems to be going well on the beachhead, tho’ it’s hard to say from here – just as hard, if not harder, here as it is at home. We get hourly reports, newspapers, radio reports, and all the latest rumors. All of which also make us dizzy.

Read the whole thing and other letters here. 

D-Day 75, a Few Stories

Impossible to overstate the significance of this date. I have a few links about soldiers – all but the last D-Day veterans, all men who served with honour: Windsor veteran going to the commemorations, likely his last; Ninety-nine-year-old veteran reflects on D-Day;  the D-Day experiences of the recently deceased fighter pilot Jack Henry Hilton, via The Memory Project (these folks do wonderful work); Louis Levi Oakes, last of the Mohawk code talkers, dies.

Blair on Corbyn

This is very astute, and, I think, correct. 

Asked if he believed Corbyn himself was anti-Semitic, Blair said yes.

“Some of the remarks are not explicable in any other way, I’m afraid, and that is sad,” said Blair. “Does he think he is? No, he doesn’t think he is at all.”

This is quite a common thing with bigots, in general, but specifically with anti-Semites. They convince themselves they are “anti-Zionists” or “critics of Israel” and so on. I have a sibling like this (possibly two) and there is no question this person is an anti-Semite. But they will say till the cows come home that they are not. Alan, my late brother, had this person’s number years ago – but then, Alan was always the smartest in our family.

While I find the anti-Semitism of certain of my family members appalling, what is even more appalling is the number of apologists they have among our relatives. Same could be said for Corbyn’s apologists, as well as those of Ilhan Omar and her ilk. Alan used to point out to me that both the anti-Semite(s) in our family and their apologists totally lacked self-awareness. Is this a trait of all bigots? Does Ilhan Omar not know she is an anti-Semite? Or is she well-aware of her bigotry but deeply cynical? Do white supremacists not know they hate black people (and so many others)? One wonders.