May 9, 2020

For Some Holocaust Survivors, Even Liberation Was Dehumanizing

For Some Holocaust Survivors, Even Liberation Was Dehumanizing

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/magazine/for-some-holocaust-survivors-even-liberation-was-dehumanizing.html

“If their eyes were mirrors, it seems I’m not far from dead.” After being freed by Allied troops, some former prisoners continued to be mistreated.


By Jennifer Orth-Veillon

April 28, 2020

<snip>

Some liberators treated the surviving prisoners this way not only because they were disgusted by the reality of the heinous crimes committed upon them, but also because they were poorly prepared for what they would find. The historian Robert Abzug, who studied the way American G.I.s reacted to liberation, found that even the most “battle-weary” service members were stunned, unable to reconcile the Nazi terrors with their bloodiest memories of combat. Yet Allied intelligence had known that Jews were being rounded up, deported and massacred for years. In August 1944, major American newspapers covered the Soviet discovery of Maidanek, an extermination camp near the Polish city of Lublin. Similarly, in late January and February 1945, the Soviet liberation of Auschwitz made headlines, but these reports didn’t seem to prepare the soldiers for what they would find. When Captain Hagood was being taken to Hannover-Ahlem, he thought it was a prisoner-of-war facility, which he might have assumed would follow fair treatment laws outlined in the Geneva Conventions that Germany signed in 1929. He wrote: “All the grisly scenes I’d witnessed in four years of combat paled as I viewed the higgedly-piggedly stack of cadavers.”

Unlike Semprún and Levi, who met their liberators while still in Buchenwald and Auschwitz, Ruth Kluger encountered her first American in the town center of Straubing, Germany, after escaping Christianstadt. In her memoir, “Still Alive,” she recalled that when her mother told him they had fled a concentration camp, he put his hands over his ears, having apparently had his fill of those who claimed to be camp survivors. “Here was my first American, and he deliberately closed his ears,” she recalled. “One thing, I figured, was certain: this war hadn’t been fought for our sake.”


Some of these reactions suggest soldiers were experiencing a kind of shock, while others point to anti-Semitism, even within the most senior echelons of the military. After inspecting displaced persons camps in Germany in summer of 1945, Earl G. Harrison, a lawyer and American representative to the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, expressed harsh criticism of the ways Jews were treated by the Americans, claiming evidence of conditions similar to the Nazi-run concentration camps from which they had been freed. He summarized his observations by stating, “We appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them.” When President Harry Truman read the report, he ordered Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower to inspect displaced persons camps. During a visit to a camp in Bavaria, Gen. George S. Patton told Eisenhower that he blamed the refugees for the squalor. He complained they were “pissing and crapping all over the place,” and wanted to open his own concentration camp “for some of these goddamn Jews.” Maj. Irving Heymont, who was stationed at the Landsberg displacement camp, said in his letters that some Americans proclaimed that they preferred German civilians, who seemed normal, to the Jewish survivors, whom they characterized as animals undeserving of special treatment.

Despite these racist views, meaningful connections happened in the days and months following liberation — on physical and social levels. Survivors reported that liberators who handled their bodies gently in the days following liberation — when the slightest medical error meant life or death for those in the most critical condition — brought an immediate sense of restored humanity. Levi compared baths from Soviet nurses to the one forced upon him by American military personnel. The nurses washed “with tender hands” and “soaped, rubbed, massaged, and dried” him “from head to foot.” This bath was not one “of humiliation, no grotesque-devilish-sacral bath, no black-mass bath like the first one which had marked our descent into the concentration camp universe nor was it a functional antiseptic, highly automatized bath, like that of our passage into American hands many months later.”

<snip>



Jennifer Orth-Veillon, a freelance writer and university lecturer based in Lyon, France, holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Emory University. Between 2016 and 2019, she curated “WWrite: A Blog Exploring WWI’s Influence on Contemporary Writing and Scholarship” for the United States World War I Centennial Commission.


There are photos at the link. They are stark and while not graphic are possibly triggering.

May 7, 2020

The Ghost Dogs of the Amazon Get a Bit Less Mysterious

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It took 50 researchers to get a clearer picture of where this mysterious canid roams in the Amazon rain forest.Credit...Galo Zapata-Rios and WCS

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/science/ghost-dog-amazon-rainforest.html?algo=identity&fellback=false&imp_id=77413872&imp_id=834701063


The Ghost Dogs of the Amazon Get a Bit Less Mysterious

Scientists have produced data that shows the range of an enigmatic short-eared canid species that has yet to be widely studied.


By Cara Giaimo

May 4, 2020

It is one of the Amazon rain forest’s most elusive and enigmatic mammals. Experts call the species “shy” or even “a ghost.”

<snip>

Or at least a type of dog. The short-eared dog is the only member of the canine genus Atelocynus, and the only such species unique to the Amazon rainforest. In a study published last month in Royal Society Open Science, 50 researchers chipped away at the creature’s mysteries by putting together a large location data set gleaned mostly from camera trap cameos. By mapping the species’s range and determining its preferred habitat, the scientists, many of whom have never encountered the animal in person, hope to help protect it.

<snip>

(video at link)

<snip>

As a result, the species is “one of the least studied dogs worldwide,” Mr. Rocha said. We don’t know much about their life histories or reproductive strategies, or how many of them exist. We don’t even really know what they eat, although scat studies suggest that they like fish, small mammals and fruit.

Individual experts have gone to great lengths to change that. Renata Leite Pitman, a contributor to the study and the director of the Research Center for Atlantic Forest Conservation, once obtained a short-eared dog pup that had been raised with domestic dogs. She and her assistant, Emeterio Nuñonca Sencia, trained the dog to walk on a leash and took careful notes on what he sniffed at, ate and avoided. She has also managed to track several dogs with radio collars.

<snip>

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As scientists set up camera traps to study other animals and later looked through the footage, “these dogs would appear,” and they have seldom been studied.Credit...Daniel Rocha

<snip>

May 4, 2020

New Hampshire State Rep. Resigns After Graphic Tweet About Tara Reade Allegation

New Hampshire State Rep. Resigns After Graphic Tweet About Tara Reade Allegation

Richard Komi apologized to “anybody whose feelings may have been hurt” by his tweet dismissing Reade’s sexual assault claim against Joe Biden.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/richard-komi-resigns-biden-tara-reade_n_5eaeb712c5b62ee946018dbf

By Hayley Miller

<snip>

In his resignation letter to state House Speaker Steve Shurtleff (D), Komi apologized to “anybody whose feelings may have been hurt” by the tweet, The New Hampshire Union Leader reported.

“I am by this email offering my resignation as a member of the New Hampshire House,” Komi reportedly wrote. “I also want to offer my sincere apologies to anybody whose feelings may have been hurt by the tweets.”

He continued:

I am and will continue to be a supporter of victims of sexual and domestic assault. The tweets were very poorly worded and do not reflect who I am and what I stand for. I ask for the forgiveness of all who have been a victim of sexual or any other kind of assault. I in no way excuse my poor judgment on this matter and hope that every one will know that I am truly sorry for my mistakes.

Komi, who endorsed Biden for president in July 2019, faced calls for his resignation from liberal activists and state party leaders, including Shurtleff, following his bizarre defense of Biden in a tweet Friday.

<snip>


I read the tweet and I was shocked by it. Anybody who read it can understand why I did not include it.

I'm sorry he had to go, I was hoping there was some way to for him to walk this all back.

May 3, 2020

babylonsister posted about the slavery this man fell into, I still remember the story

still remember the story.

Willie Levi, 73, Dies; He Escaped a Life of Servitude


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/us/willie-levi-73-dies-he-escaped-a-life-of-servitude.html

He was one of a group of men with disabilities who worked for substandard wages at a turkey plant but found justice. He succumbed to the new coronavirus.


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Willie Levi in 2013. Intellectually disabled, he spent years working at a turkey-processing plant for $65 a month but found justice in a successful lawsuit.Credit...Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
Dan Barry

By Dan Barry

April 30, 2020


<snip>

But Mr. Levi never had much choice. He was sent first to an institution and then to Iowa, where he and other men with intellectual disabilities worked in virtual servitude at a turkey-processing plant for decades. He never made it back to Orange.

Mr. Levi — a claimant in a successful lawsuit by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that championed proper pay and working conditions for people with disabilities — died on April 23 at his home in Waterloo, Iowa, after contracting the novel coronavirus, according to Paula Passe, one of his court-appointed guardians. He was 73.

“He was a great advocate for himself and for the men he called ‘brothers,’ who shared the same pain,” said Robert A. Canino, the E.E.O.C. lawyer who tried the case. “Like many of the men, he was not as indignant as he was happily determined, as though he saw the coming of justice.”

<snip>

In 1974, Mr. Levi was sent to work for Henry’s Turkey Service, which then dispatched him and other men with disabilities 1,000 miles north to Muscatine County, Iowa, where the company had a contract with a turkey-processing plant.

<snip>



Dan Barry is a longtime reporter and columnist, having written both the “This Land” and “About New York” columns. The author of several books, he writes on myriad topics, including sports, culture, New York City, and the nation.

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This is the story baby,onsister posted:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/101688149


The ‘Boys’ in the Bunkhouse

Kassie Bracken/The New York Times
The ‘Boys’ in the Bunkhouse

Toil, abuse and endurance in the heartland.

THIS LAND By DAN BARRY
MARCH 9, 2014

snip//

Mr. Berg comes from a different place.

For more than 30 years, he and a few dozen other men with intellectual disabilities — affecting their reasoning and learning — lived in a dot of a place called Atalissa, about 100 miles south of here. Every morning before dawn, they were sent to eviscerate turkeys at a processing plant, in return for food, lodging, the occasional diversion and $65 a month. For more than 30 years.

Their supervisors never received specialized training; never tapped into Iowa’s social service system; never gave the men the choices in life granted by decades of advancement in disability civil rights. Increasingly neglected and abused, the men remained in heartland servitude for most of their adult lives.

This Dickensian story — told here through court records, internal documents and extensive first-time interviews with several of the men — is little known beyond Iowa. But five years after their rescue, it continues to resound in halls of power. Last year the case led to the largest jury verdict in the history of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: $240 million in damages — an award later drastically reduced, yet still regarded as a watershed moment for disability rights in the workplace. In both direct and subtle ways, it has also influenced government initiatives, advocates say, including President Obama’s recent executive order to increase the minimum wage for certain workers.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/03/09/us/the-boys-in-the-bunkhouse.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.z_sma=US_TBI_20140309&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1388552400000&bicmet=1420088400000&_r=0


I've just never forgotten this story.

May 2, 2020

Alex Jones Says He's Considering Eating Neighbors If COVID-19 Lockdown Continues

Alex Jones Says He’s Considering Eating Neighbors If COVID-19 Lockdown Continues

‘I’m ready to hang ’em up and gut ’em and skin ’em,” the InfoWars conspiracy theorist said of his neighbors.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alex-jones-cannibalism-covid-19_n_5eac56e7c5b624b39692b1f2

By David Moye

<snip>

If COVID-19 shutdowns continue, he said, he has “extrapolated this out” and may have to resort to drastic and disgusting methods of survival.

“I’ll admit it. I will eat my neighbors,” Jones said, predicting a dystopian future plagued by food shortages.

“I won’t have to for a few years ’cause I got food and stuff ― but I’m literally looking at my neighbors now and going, ’I’m ready to hang ’em up and gut ’em and skin ’em. My daughters aren’t starving to death. I will eat my neighbors. ... I will.”

<snip>

“You think I like sizing up my neighbor?!” Jones bellowed. “I’m gonna haul him up by a chain and chop his ass up! I’ll do it! My children aren’t going hungry! I’ll eat your ass! And that’s what I want the globalists to know — I will eat your ass first!”

<snip>

The most disturbing video known to man pic.twitter.com/izb038PBXB
— Barstool News Network (@BarstoolNewsN) May 1, 2020



(the tweets had a field day):


There have got to be better ways to make a buck these days than this.
— Raquel (@rann5818) May 1, 2020


I understand he’s being hyperbolic here but you know a person could try n hunt some animals first, just saying. Being pretty dramatic
— DakotaTone (@ToneDakota) May 1, 2020


No, his daughters won’t starve, because his ex-wife, Kelly Jones, has sole custody, having convinced the courts that Alex Jones is “not a stable person.”

I suspect this video would not help in his appeal.
— Political Spock 🖖 (@PoliSpock) May 1, 2020

May 2, 2020

Pig poops out a pedometer, starts a fire

Pig poops out a pedometer, starts a fire

By Mindy Weisberger - Senior Writer March 09, 2020

Copper in the battery sparked the pigpen blaze.

https://www.livescience.com/pig-stars-battery-fire.html

<snip>

The firebug (firehog?) had swallowed a pedometer worn by one of its fellow pigs to demonstrate that the animals were free range, the BBC reported.

But after the pig excreted the pedometer, copper in its battery sparked a flame in the pig dung and dried hay bedding on March 7 at approximately 2 p.m. local time, according to the BBC. The fire spread to cover about 807 square feet (75 square meters) of the farmyard before it was contained, according to The Independent.

Four pigpens caught fire at the farm, located near Leeds in the county of Yorkshire, and fire crews from nearby Tadcaster and Knaresbororough rushed in with hoses to "save the bacon," the North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service tweeted on March 7.

<snip>


In Yorkshire, firefighters responded to a blaze that enveloped several pigpens at a local farm on March 7.(Image credit: Russell Jenkinson/North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue)

In recent years, lithium-ion batteries in personal devices such as cellphones and vape pens have spontaneously combusted, sometimes causing severe burns and even broken bones, Live Science previously reported.

<snip>



No animals were hurt in this event.

May 1, 2020

Florida curtails reporting of coronavirus death numbers by county medical examiners

Florida curtails reporting of coronavirus death numbers by county medical examiners
David Knowles

https://www.yahoo.com/news/florida-curtails-reporting-of-coronavirus-death-numbers-by-county-medical-examiners-173503327.html

Yahoo NewsMay 1, 2020, 12:35 PM CDT


<snip>

The death count compiled by the Medical Examiners Commission was often found to be higher than the figures provided by Florida’s Department of Health, the Tampa Bay Times reported, prompting a review of the data and a suspension of its publication.

State officials have not specified what they find objectionable about the medical examiners’ count, nor when they might allow it to be made public again, the Times said.

<snip>

Dr. Stephen Nelson, chairman of the state Medical Examiners Commission, told the Tampa Bay Times that state officials informed him that they would remove the cause of death and a description of each case from statistics published by the examiners.

“This is no different than any other public record we deal with,” Nelson said. “It’s paid for by taxpayer dollars and the taxpayers have a right to know.”

<snip>

May 1, 2020

Guy To Travel Around Florida Dressed As The Grim Reaper To The Beaches That Opened Prematurely

Guy To Travel Around Florida Dressed As The Grim Reaper To The Beaches That Opened Prematurely

Jonas Grinevičius and Ilona Baliūnaitė

Imagine you’re at the beach enjoying the waves washing over your feet and the sun warming your skin. That’s when you notice a tall, black-robed figure with a scythe out of the corner of your eye. You take a better look and that’s when you realize it’s the Grim Reaper!



Florida lawyer Daniel Uhlfelder plans to travel around his state beaches from May 1 to warn people about the dangers of not social distancing—all dressed up as the Grim Reaper. Uhlfelder was quite obviously inspired to do this by New Zealand’s public service campaign where a person dresses up as the infamous Swim Reaper to promote water safety and tries to prevent deaths from drowning.

While Uhlfelder’s main message is to make sure that Floridians know how important it is to stay at home to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, he also plans to use his Reaper get-up to raise money for Democrats running for federal office.

https://swimreaper.co.nz/

May 1, 2020

An Accidental Navy Chief Steers His Service Through a Storm

Adm. Michael M. Gilday appears determined that his recommendations on the Roosevelt case will be made based on Navy principles and not on fears of what the White House might want.


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/01/us/politics/coronavirus-carrier-crozier-gilday-trump.html

WASHINGTON —

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In recommending the reinstatement of the captain of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, Admiral Michael M. Gilday put the Navy before his own career.Credit...Mark Makela/Getty Images


<snip>

The admiral, who took a bold step last week — recommending that the captain of a virus-stricken aircraft carrier be restored to command after he was removed by the service’s senior civilian — was plucked from the military’s Joint Staff last July to take over a scandal-plagued sea service, leapfrogging several more senior four-star officers.

<snip>

Now, just as with Captain Crozier, Admiral Gilday’s fate is up in the air, current and former officials say, as the Pentagon tries to divine what, exactly, President Trump wants it to do. Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper declined to endorse Admiral Gilday’s recommendations, and a final decision was kicked down the road when James E. McPherson, the new acting Navy secretary, ordered up another investigation. The Navy said Thursday it would be completed by May 27.

<snip>

Indeed, colleagues and friends say he is a sailor’s admiral — a quiet, self-effacing, no-nonsense officer who is comfortable in his own skin making what might be politically unpopular decisions.

“He is a high-speed intellect with low-drag ego, which is a very rare quality at the upper echelons of any government,” said James G. Stavridis, a retired admiral and former NATO commander. Admiral Stavridis, who commanded Admiral Gilday at NATO, said of him, “At 5-foot-6 and balding, Admiral Gilday hardly resembles the stereotypical tall, silver-haired admiral.”

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Admiral Gilday faces challenges beyond the Roosevelt case.Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times

<snip>








“And that’s a really difficult leadership challenge,” Admiral Mullen said, adding, “I think Mike Gilday is the right guy to lead in all of this.”

May 1, 2020

Amid a Rising Death Toll, Trump Leaves the Grieving to Others

Amid a Rising Death Toll, Trump Leaves the Grieving to Others

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-grieving.html

President Trump has led no national mourning for the more than 63,000 Americans who have died from the coronavirus, emphasizing confidence about the future rather than dwelling on the present.

By Peter Baker

April 30, 2020

WASHINGTON —

<snip>

Empathy has never been considered one of Mr. Trump’s political assets. He views public displays of sadness as weakness and has made a point of stressing resolve, even at the risk of overlooking the deep pain afflicting so much of the country. His favorite words in his televised appearances of recent weeks are “powerful” and “strong.” He talks of “incredible” days ahead without dwelling on the miserable days of now. He plans fireworks while Americans plan funerals.

The contrast with his predecessors could hardly be starker. President Ronald Reagan captured the emotions of the nation with his poetic eulogy to the crew of the space shuttle Challenger after it exploded. President Bill Clinton channeled the country’s anger and grief after the bombing of an Oklahoma City federal building 25 years ago.

President George W. Bush shed tears and shared hugs with the families of those killed on Sept. 11, 2001, and in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Even the famously stoic President Barack Obama wept openly after the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., and sang “Amazing Grace” at a service for black churchgoers killed by a white supremacist in Charleston, S.C.

<snip>

Indeed, Mr. Trump appears reluctant to talk about the more than 63,000 people who have died in the United States from the coronavirus. He mentioned a few times that a friend of his, Stanley Chera, a major New York real estate developer, had been infected and later died, but did not dwell on it for long. In response to a question this week, the president said that he had also lost a few other friends and had spoken with families of other victims, but he quickly shifted the conversation to distance learning for children.

<snip>