Open Thread - Thurs 03 Oct 2024 - Bringing Mulligan Home

Submitted by Sima on Thu, 10/03/2024 - 5:00am

Bringing Mulligan Home:

I gotta admit, I haven't had it in me to watch the recent debate and all the other crude, although, as always, I am enjoying reading Caucus99% blogs. So, here's a bit about a good book...

A few weeks ago I read a book that really hit me. It's called Bringing Mulligan Home: The Other Side of the Good War> by Dale Maharidge. It's about a man, a marine, who served in the Pacific during WWII. Like many who served, he spoke little at all about the war, and like many who served he was messed up by his experiences in the war. After his death (his name was Steve Maharidge) his son, Dale, decided to try to find out what his father's experiences had been, and why his father was like he was (angry, loving, mean, quiet, screaming, soft...) and who was in the picture his father had hung on the wall in his basement work area. Mulligan, it turns out, was in that picture.

Herman Mulligan and Dale Maharidge. Mulligan is a bit taller than Maharidge, with his hand on Maharidge's shoulder. From these two articles (and audio interviews) on www.wbur.org 'A Son Faces his Father's WWII Ghosts' and 'A Son Uncovers his Father's WWII History'.

Mulligan never came home, but was killed on Okinawa and buried there. The book contains the war experiences of over two dozen Marines in Love Company; men who knew Maharidge and Mulligan. And those experiences make it clear that no war is 'good', ever - not for the men who fought it, not for the civilians caught in the middle.

The book is hard in a way, but important, to read. If you have a chance and are in the frame of mind to be able to tackle some truth about the WWII battle on Okinawa (I have to admit I was not able to do so, even a few years ago, but I can now) give it a read or give the audio version a listen and you can also listen to 'The Dead Drink First', a continuation of Bringing Mulligan Home in an audible documentary.

Thanks for reading this post. Here's the open thread - remember, everything is interesting if you dive deep enough, so tell us about where you're diving!

Tags:

Open Thread

#WWII

#mulligan

#maharidge

#marines

#okinawa

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Comments

Submitted by Sima on Thu, 10/03/2024 - 2:15am

Happy Thursday!

Hope all is going well. I lost the plot last week, and forgot it to check in and respond! Not gonna happen this week! Let us know what's up, how you doing and whatcha doing!

—

If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so

Submitted by QMS on Thu, 10/03/2024 - 8:37am

Good morning

.
.
War is hell. Driven by power hungry psychopaths.
Having a war economy is inhumane.

Defense Contractors Are Bilking the American People
Congress should curb war profiteering with a new Truman Committee.

-- Bernie Sanders

We apparently have unlimited amounts of money for nuclear weapons, fighter planes, bombs, and tanks. But somehow we can’t summon the resources to provide health care for all, child care, affordable housing, and other basic needs.

Yes Bernie, we can see the global suffering caused by US wars of choice. But why is it
you vote for all of these bloated military budgets?

thanks for the OT Sima

—

truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security

Submitted by enhydra lutris on Thu, 10/03/2024 - 10:42am

Heh, today, in 1873, they hanged Kintpuash,

aka Captain Jack, for leading what was a totally justified rebellion against colonizer/settler rogues and militias and the US for breaking treaties and persecuting his people.

On the upside Ginsberg's "Howl and other poems" was ruled Not Obscene on this date in 1957. What was obscene was that it was ever charged with being obscene and that our obscene obscenity laws existed an, in fact, still do.

War too is obscene and I think I'll skip the book. My dad's unit was wiped out at Anzio, he was one of the less than 1% that survived. The unit was disbanded and the survivors were sent to other units as replacements A close family friend survived the war in the Pacific as a Marine. They did make it home, but ...

be well and have a good one

—

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Submitted by snoopydawg on Thu, 10/03/2024 - 11:48am

If anyone is interested

This feature length investigation by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit exposes Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip through the medium of photos and videos posted online by Israeli soldiers themselves during the year long conflict.
The I-Unit has built up a database of thousands of videos, photos and social media posts. Where possible it has identified the posters and those who appear.
The material reveals a range of illegal activities, from wanton destruction and looting to the demolition of entire neighbourhoods and murder.
The film also tells the story of the war through the eyes of Palestinian journalists, human rights workers and ordinary residents of the Gaza Strip. And it exposes the complicity of Western governments – in particular the use of RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus as a base for British surveillance flights over Gaza.
“The west cannot hide, they cannot claim ignorance. Nobody can say they didn’t know,” says Palestinian writer, Susan Abulhawa.This is “the first livestream genocide in history … If people are ignorant they are wilfully ignorant,” she says

I don’t have the stomach to watch inhumane act and especially those being done by people whose grandparents went through the same trauma. Hell I can’t even read articles on Gaza atrocities because my heart can’t handle it. But others might be inclined to look.

—

“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

Submitted by QMS on Thu, 10/03/2024 - 12:15pm

thanks snoop

@snoopydawg
.
.
like you, am very well aware of the pogrom manifested by
the zionistas and western complicity in the atrocities
do not have the heart to view the death and destruction
being aware of it is almost too much as it is

—

truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security