Seventy Eight years ago today, on January 1st 1934, the German law entitled “Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring” went into effect. Under it the Germans sterilized some 400,000 retarded, blind, deaf, and mentally diseased individuals. Most were sterilized by the time World War II really got up to full speed. When they ran out of clinically identifiable genetically diseased individuals the Nazis began sterilizing Afro-Germans.
During the Nuremberg trials there was a move to prosecute Nazis who took part in the sterilizations. The Nazis were able to successfully defend their actions by referring to virtually identical laws in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, and (the country they suggested provided them with the inspiration) the United States of America.
The US forced sterilization eugenics campaigns may have begun in 1897, but they did not really take off until 1927 when they were legitimized by the Supreme Court in Buck v. Bell. The Supreme Court never ruled that compulsory sterilization was in-and-of-itself unconstitutional. In 1942, with Skinner v. Oklahoma, it ruled that compulsory sterilization of criminals was unconstitutional only if white collar criminals were excluded from the sterilization program.
After the Nuremberg trials connected the US sterilization laws to some of the same Nazis who helped run the death camps, support for compulsory sterilization in the US declined. The last compulsory sterilization in the US (under the eugenics laws) took place in Oregon in 1981. The Oregon Board of Eugenics, later renamed the Board of Social Protection, existed until 1983.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Lost Day in Paradise
Seventeen years ago today, on December 31st 1994, almost 9,000 residents of the nation of Kiribati found themselves in January 1st 1995. For those people the date of December 31st 1994 would never exist.
This was not a natural phenomenon.
The nation of Kirabati consists of some 726 square kilometers of land spread out over 33 million square kilometers of ocean. Half the nation (including the uninhabited Starbuck Island) was on one half of the international data line, and the other half, including the capitol were west of the line. This was somewhat inconvenient, so the line was moved over from the 180th meridian to just east of the 150th meridian.
To put this into perspective New York City is just east of the 75th meridian, and Los Angeles is just east of the 120th meridian. The date-line was moved two thirds of the distance from LA to NYC, or roughly the distance from LA to Chicago.
Kirabati is one of the least developed nations in the world. Their easternmost island, formerly Caroline Island, became the first location to see the sun on January 1st 2000, and so was the first location headed into the new millennium. Caroline Island was re-named Millennium Island. Caroline Island is home to a large population of potentially endangered Coconut Crabs, and no people.
The residents of Kirabati face the consequences of another potentially important unnatural phenomenon. Since most of the islands are at sea level any significant rise in sea level would make them disappear entirely.
This was not a natural phenomenon.
The nation of Kirabati consists of some 726 square kilometers of land spread out over 33 million square kilometers of ocean. Half the nation (including the uninhabited Starbuck Island) was on one half of the international data line, and the other half, including the capitol were west of the line. This was somewhat inconvenient, so the line was moved over from the 180th meridian to just east of the 150th meridian.
To put this into perspective New York City is just east of the 75th meridian, and Los Angeles is just east of the 120th meridian. The date-line was moved two thirds of the distance from LA to NYC, or roughly the distance from LA to Chicago.
Kirabati is one of the least developed nations in the world. Their easternmost island, formerly Caroline Island, became the first location to see the sun on January 1st 2000, and so was the first location headed into the new millennium. Caroline Island was re-named Millennium Island. Caroline Island is home to a large population of potentially endangered Coconut Crabs, and no people.
The residents of Kirabati face the consequences of another potentially important unnatural phenomenon. Since most of the islands are at sea level any significant rise in sea level would make them disappear entirely.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Happy Holodomor
Seventy-nine years ago today, on December 28th 1932, Pavel Petrovich Postyshev called for the installation of New Year trees (Yolka; literally “spruce”) in schools, children's homes, Young Pioneer Palaces, children's clubs, children's theaters and cinemas. The New Year Tree should not be confused with the Christmas tree left up till New Years (or if an artificial tree till Midsummer’s Eve); though they are both similarly decorated. The Yolka had been banned since 1916; first by the Ukrainian Synod because it was seen as German (the enemy in WWI), then by the Russian SFSR because it was “bourgeois and religious”. Resurrecting the tradition invigorated a resurgence of New Years Day celebrations across the USSR. It was party time, and people thought this was a “good thing”.
Pavel was not your typical early 20th century Martha Stewart. Five years before his Yolka letter Pavel had been secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) in Moscow where he was in charge of propaganda. I think he kept a little of the propaganda flair when he moved to the Ukraine (he would eventually head the Kyiv Oblast) because in 1932 fancy new media items began popping up there.
The first were a series of Agitprop films which depicted peasants as counterrevolutionaries hiding grain and potatoes at the time when workers, who were constructing the “bright future” of socialism, were starving. At the same time (late 1932) Pavel had State police and party brigades scouring the Ukrainian countryside collecting up anything that looked like food. The name Agitprop came from “Department for Agitation and Propaganda”, which was part of the Central and regional committees of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The department was later renamed Ideological Department. People in the Ukraine began to go hungry. In January 1933 Ukraine's borders were sealed in order to prevent Ukrainian peasant from fleeing to other republics. 190,000 people were forcibly stopped at the border.
The depictions of Ukrainian peasants as counterrevolutionaries was not just the product of good character development as Stalin was convinced that the Ukraine was a hotbed of "nationalist deviation". Stalin wanted Pavel to clean this out. Pavel started out strong by ousting 100,000 people from the Ukrainian communist party in his first year there(he would oust another 168,000 by 1938). In order to weaken any popular support for this huge number of defrocked communists Pavel hatched a plan to thin out the Ukrainian population. Eventually the implementation of that plan would be called the Holodomor.
In 1933 the soviets began putting up catchy propaganda posters which read “To eat your own children is a barbarian act”. Over 2,500 people would be convicted of cannibalism during the Holodomor.
From 1937 on a marvelous New Year Tree was erected at the Moscow Palace of Unions. An invitation to the Yolka at the Palace of Unions became a great honor for Soviet children.
Pavel was not your typical early 20th century Martha Stewart. Five years before his Yolka letter Pavel had been secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) in Moscow where he was in charge of propaganda. I think he kept a little of the propaganda flair when he moved to the Ukraine (he would eventually head the Kyiv Oblast) because in 1932 fancy new media items began popping up there.
The first were a series of Agitprop films which depicted peasants as counterrevolutionaries hiding grain and potatoes at the time when workers, who were constructing the “bright future” of socialism, were starving. At the same time (late 1932) Pavel had State police and party brigades scouring the Ukrainian countryside collecting up anything that looked like food. The name Agitprop came from “Department for Agitation and Propaganda”, which was part of the Central and regional committees of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The department was later renamed Ideological Department. People in the Ukraine began to go hungry. In January 1933 Ukraine's borders were sealed in order to prevent Ukrainian peasant from fleeing to other republics. 190,000 people were forcibly stopped at the border.
The depictions of Ukrainian peasants as counterrevolutionaries was not just the product of good character development as Stalin was convinced that the Ukraine was a hotbed of "nationalist deviation". Stalin wanted Pavel to clean this out. Pavel started out strong by ousting 100,000 people from the Ukrainian communist party in his first year there(he would oust another 168,000 by 1938). In order to weaken any popular support for this huge number of defrocked communists Pavel hatched a plan to thin out the Ukrainian population. Eventually the implementation of that plan would be called the Holodomor.
In 1933 the soviets began putting up catchy propaganda posters which read “To eat your own children is a barbarian act”. Over 2,500 people would be convicted of cannibalism during the Holodomor.
From 1937 on a marvelous New Year Tree was erected at the Moscow Palace of Unions. An invitation to the Yolka at the Palace of Unions became a great honor for Soviet children.
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