Remember All The Children, Mr. President.

Bill Quigley, a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans and Associate Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights posted the following:

Remember All the Children, Mr. President
Including those whose lives were destroyed by United States policies, actions and inaction.
by Bill Quigley

"Remember the 20 children who died in Newtown Connecticut.

Remember the 35 children who died in Gaza this month from Israeli bombardments.

Remember the 168 children who have been killed by US drone attacks in Pakistan since 2006.

Remember the 231 children killed in Afghanistan in the first 6 months of this year.

Remember the 400 other children in the US under the age of 15 who die from gunshot wounds each year.

Remember the 921 children killed by US air strikes against insurgents in Iraq.

Remember the 1,770 US children who die each year from child abuse and maltreatment.

Remember the 16,000 children who die each day around the world from hunger.

These tragedies must end.

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Lessons of the Eastland Lost:: When Technology and Profit Trumps Humanity:

Early, one sunny Saturday morning, July 24, 1915, 7,000 eager and excited men, women and children, dressed in their summer Sunday best, prepared to board chartered lake steamers that would carry them across Lake Michigan, from the Chicago River piers to the picnic site in Michigan City, Indiana for Western Electric's 5th annual company picnic. The festive mood was thoroughly contagious.  Laughter and shouts filled the air as a mandolin-and fiddle orchestra belted out upbeat ragtime tunes, making the tens of thousands of people gathered at the dock, looking out at the "sea of white shirts, white duck trousers, and fluttering white handkerchiefs" waving from on deck of the large steamship, [1] totally immune to thoughts of potential tragedy.

Of all the chartered steamers, it was the SS Eastland that was the star. Bold and breathtaking, with her sleek lines, twin funnels from which rose tall plumes of smoke, at 265 feet long, 38 feet wide, weighing 1,963 tons, she was built for speed; her reputation, the fastest boat on the lakes. Despite, the Titanic tragedy, just three years prior, "newspaper ads heralded her as: 'the Twin-Screw steel ship, Eastland, Largest, Finest, and Fastest Excursion Steamship...' The ads neglected to mention that the Eastland had a history of being an unstable ship." [2]

It wasn't long before hints of impending disaster became obvious to anyone paying attention; however, the jovial atmosphere, and the encouragement of uniformed officials, and crew blinded all, but the most observantly realistic to what was to become one of the greatest and heartbreaking maritime tragedies in recent history. Oh, people noticed the tilt of the massive ship, especially upon embarking, but, apparently, thought nothing of it, given the celebratory festivity, and, even more importantly, the emboldening promotions of authority. 

Yes, the star of the show, the Eastland, was listing at an angle of at least thirty degrees! That's before the massive ship even departed. People were herded like cattle, pressed cheek to jowl, on the upper deck, waving their handkerchiefs in the air as the captain gave the order for the tug to pull her down the river, out into Lake Michigan

“When boarding the boat we all remarked jestingly: ‘The boat is listing!’ Reaching the big dancing hall on the lower deck where many hundreds of excursionists were enjoying the music, we noticed that the floor was strongly tilted. Then a man cried: ‘All hurry to the other side, lest the boat tip!’ Even now we enjoyed rushing up the sharply inclined dance floor, when suddenly the mighty boat rolled to the opposite side, and all occupants were hurled into a helpless heap. In the dance hall the furniture, the tables and chairs, the heavy piano, the large icebox and counter of the tavern, crashed upon the poor victims, so that many were killed outright. Those who had been on deck were trapped deep down in the river, under twenty-three feet of water.”

“I was one of the few who came out of the water although I was imprisoned inside the dance hall. I could swim well and tried to rescue a little girl, but a man took hold of my arm and pleaded, ‘Lady, please save me!’ I screamed: ‘Let me go! I have all I can do to save myself and this child!’ Then the fellow pulled me and the child down to the bottom. I fought him off, and in the scuffle I lost hold of the poor child. Only five other girls and men were swimming within the dance hall. Luckily they found a ledge to which they now clung, and they called me to come and hold on. For half an hour we took this rest, but the suspense became unbearable. We screamed for help. Finally we were noticed and strong arms drew us through a porthole.” - an anonymous passenger gave her account to a news reporter after she was rescued

While still moored to the dock, all aboard suddenly noticed that the ship was tipping over into the river.  After a moment of surreal silence, the horrified screaming began. "Men, women and children slid from her like ants brushed from a plank. ... The entire surface of the river was black with writhing, drowning humanity." [3] Out of the 2,500 on board, 812 met their death in all of six terrifying minutes. The death toll later reached up to as many as 1080, wiping out 22 entire families.

Later, it was disclosed that the SS Eastland was known as "the crank ship of the Lakes." This was not the first time the ship started to tip. Several times before, passengers had been ordered to shift from side to side until she stabilized. However, on this perilous day, the passengers couldn't have shifted if they wanted, they were so tightly packed together. In fact, reports of the Eastland's instability had become so widespread that in 1910 her owners, the Port Huron firm,  had run an ad in the newspaper offering $5,000 to professionals who would claim her seaworthiness.

People lined up outside the temporary morgue at the Second Regiment Armory to identify victims of
the Eastland disaster

All of the evidence pointed to the fact that the only goal of the shipbuilders was "a ship fast enough to make the 170-mile round trip between Chicago and Grand Haven Michigan, twice, in 24 hours", safety, be damned. Lawsuits were brought into the courts, by survivors courts as late as 1935.  Despite overwhelming evidence of neglect and conspiracy to cover up life threatening flaws, no one one was indicted for contributing to the disaster.

The entire Sinclair family- all eight members -perished on the Eastland

Fireman holds dead child after the Eastland tipped over.

Moreover, in a tragic twist of fate, the mandated - by the 1915 federal Seaman's Act passed because of the  Titanic disaster - complete set of lifeboats, absent on the Titanic, made the already top heavy Eastland, more so.  Although the lifeboats required by this act were said to have the potential to cause many Great Lakes boats to capsize, it was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, anyway. Never mind that the SS Eastland was already so top-heavy that it had special restrictions concerning the number of passengers that could be carried. The additional weight of the new lifeboats made the ship even more unstable than before.

The interior of the Eastland changed suddenly, as if by the dark magic of a fun house mirror. Floors became walls, port holes became skylights, and the gigantic influx of water turned the mahogany trimmed rooms into sealed chambers worthy of Harry Houdini’s worst nightmares. - Jay Bonansinga wrote in his book, The Sinking of the Eastland: America's Forgotten Tragedy

One has to wonder why this tragic event was brushed under the rug while the memory of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, is as fresh as if it happened last year. Could it be that the Eastland's passengers were not as worthy of the attention, due to their "working class" status? Possibly. But more than likely, it has to do with the lessons that could have been learned from this atrocity that could've been easily prevented. What lessons? The danger of blindly trusting "officials" or so-called "authorities", while ignoring the proverbial elephant in the room. The danger of valuing profit and technology over human life. In other words, diminishing the value of humanity to a technological, profit-above-all-else society is not only dangerous to mankind, left unchecked, this type of society can wipe out mankind, or, at least, those of us who aren't in "the club".

Reference:

[1] Griggs, John. "Excursion to Death" American Heritage. February 1965: 32-35, 111.

[2] ibid.

[3] ibid.

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Exploiting 9/11

"Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return."

It evokes a tragedy that marks an epoch. From the outset, the warfare state has exploited "9/11," a label at once too facile and too laden with historic weight -- giving further power to the tacit political axiom that perception is reality.

Often it seems that media coverage is all about perception, especially when the underlying agendas are wired into huge profits and geopolitical leverage. If you associate a Big Mac or a Whopper with a happy meal or some other kind of great time, you're more likely to buy it. If you connect 9/11 with a need for taking military action and curtailing civil liberties, you're more likely to buy what the purveyors of war and authoritarian government have been selling for the past half-dozen years.

"Sept. 11 changed everything" became a sudden cliche in news media. Words are supposed to mean something, and those words were -- and are -- preposterous. They speak of a USA enthralled with itself while reducing the rest of the world (its oceans and valleys and mountains and peoples) to little more than an extensive mirror to help us reflect on our centrality to the world. In an individual, we call that narcissism. In the nexus of media and politics, all too often, it's called "patriotism."

What happened on Sept. 11, 2001, was extraordinary and horrible by any measure. And certainly a crime against humanity. At the same time, it was a grisly addition to a history of human experience that has often included many thousands killed, en masse, by inhuman human choice.

It is simply and complexly a factual matter that the U.S. government has participated in outright mass murders directly -- in, for example, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Panama, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq -- and less directly, through aid to armies terrorizing civilians in Nicaragua, Angola, East Timor and many other countries.

The news media claim to be providing context. But whose? Overall, the context of Uncle Sam in the more perverse and narcissistic aspects of his policy personality. The hypocrisies of claims about moral precepts and universal principles go beyond the mere insistence that some others "do as we say, not as we do." What gets said, repeated and forgotten sets up kaleidoscope patterns that can be adjusted to serve the self-centered mega-institutions reliably fixated on maintaining their own dominance.

Media manifestations of these patterns are frequently a mess of contradictions so extreme that they can only be held together with the power of ownership, advertising and underwriting structures -- along with notable assists from government agencies that dispense regulatory favors and myriad pressure to serve what might today be called a military-industrial-media complex. Our contact with the world is filtered through the mesh of mass media to such a great extent that the mesh itself becomes the fabric of power.

The most repetitious lessons of 9/11 -- received and propagated by the vast preponderance of U.S. news media -- have to do with the terribly asymmetrical importance of grief and of moral responsibility. Our nation is so righteous that we are trained to ask for whom the bell tolls. Rendered as implicitly divisible, humanity is fractionated as seen through red-white-and-blue windows on the world.

Posing outside cycles of violence and victims who victimize, the dominant vision of Pax Americana has no more use now than it did six years ago for W.H. Auden's observation: "Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return."

We ought to know. But we Americans are too smart for that.

The U.S. media tell us so.

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Recruiting Kids to Hell

It occurred to me, after reading the article, "Waldorf Mother Is Furious at Soldier Daughter's Death", in the Washington Post, what a tragedy this girl's death, and so many others her age who have suffered and will suffer the same fate, really is/was and will be.

Recent studies conclude the brain continues to change into the early 20's with the frontal lobes, or the area responsible for "executive function" developing last. "that govern impulsivity, judgment, planning for the future, foresight of consequences...", which are all necessary characteristics to make major decisions about one's future.

In addition to the profound changes taking place in the brain, adolescents are also going through overwhelming hormonal and emotional changes which make them easy targets for overeager recruiters who have a vested interest in making joining the military sound better than a Club Med vacation.

Parents are less likely to encourage their children toward the military today, forcing recruiters to paint an even rosier picture of war. Unfortunately, the recruiters know the most vulnerable of all, the kids least likely to have involved parents, are the discouraged, disempowered, and disconnected poor kids with little or no hope for the future. These young people, especially the males, are almost guaranteed to swallow the recruiter's propaganda hook, line and sinker. After all, what else sounds more empowering to teenage boys than traveling the world to kick ass?

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