There was a time, long ago before my eyes starting going bad and when foolishness was that bit of mischief all of us get into whether someone is there to see it or not, and that our parents secretly laugh about because it was the same stuff they did.
I was Bat Masterson, Billy the Kid or Wyatt Earp with my bb-gun. No, I didn’t have a Red Rider, I had a Crossman! And, I was a wiz, the terror of chipmunks everywhere. And, of course, me and my friend Benny had bb-gun fights, but we had a rule: no shooting in the face.
Some of you who have read my past writings are not surprised by this, but some of you may for the first time realize that yes, the boy is that dumb. And you have also recognized that this is, yes, another post on the demise of Charlie Kirk by someone who mistakenly believed a gun would solve his problems.
As I grew older I advanced my gun ownership advanced to a Marlin 22, then later to an older 30-06. I liked guns – until one day I realized that gun could solve all my problems, all my days of hatred, loneliness, my want to be different than what I was. One simple pull of one simple finger…
Dad talks of a time when he was in school and was part of an after-school gun club. He would get on the school bus with his gun and take it to school for his after hours activities. I remember when I took my hunter safety courses as a kid. Guns then were a tool; it was how we went hunting, sport targets, and in extreme moments perhaps, personal safety. Somehow they have gone beyond this. Now there are magazines by the truck-load telling us how we need a personal protection weapon as they peddle fear. Our politicians aren’t talking about how we need to deal with the issues that people think they need a gun to help them, but how they have the right to guns and how great and cool guns are.
I guess I’m a horrible person, because I just couldn’t really care less that Kirk is gone. He wasn’t an innocent by any stretch of the word. He advocated hate, he advocated second-class citizenry for those he didn’t like, he advocated for the right of the government to limit the rights of others that he didn’t like, and he even advocated for the loss of life so the importance of keeping his gun rights could be underscored. He advocated for the very scenerio that took his life, in a crushing bit of sad irony.
Who I do care about are those small children in that Catholic School who were shot while praying. No one flew them home on Air Force 2. I didn’t see Cenk Uygur crying for them! I didn’t the sitting republican party politicians calling out in outrage. I didn’t see fucking drumpf demanding retribution for the victims of the Colorado High School that happened that very same day! Somehow seeing one of their own shot was a bridge too far and little innocent children was not. And now, seeing that the shooter was a cis white male maga son of a cop, there went their favorite scape-goat that he was a plant of the Democrats.
But, evidently the nra checks cleared because I’m not seeing any hopeful measures to limit guns to ANYONE! Oh, let me take that back – drumpf wants to limit guns to the Trans community. Haven’t heard from the nra about the atrocity of such a statement yet…?
I once asked myself just what it would take before our children and young people became more important than our guns. I wondered what would it finally be to get people to demand that there be no more. Then I realized that the fear, the anger, the hatred that has been generated has just made us all tense and numb to it all; we are forlorn to the realization that it will never change because those in power are all too willing to sacrifice everything we care deeply about and even one of their corrupt mouthpieces to the money and power that death brings them.
On Wednesday morning, Poland shot down several Russian drones that entered its airspace—a first since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The incident disrupted air travel and set the region on edge.
Early Wednesday morning, Poland shot down several Russian drones that had violated its airspace during a massive strike against western Ukraine. The Polish military operation, confirmed by Prime Minister Donald Tusk through a social media message in the early morning hours, marks a turning point in Warsaw’s involvement in the conflict that has affected the region for more than two and a half years. The Polish defense agency reported the presence of more than 10 objects coming from Ukrainian airspace and called the violation an “act of aggression.”
In response to the raid, Poland activated Article 4 of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty, requesting immediate consultations with allies. Tusk urgently convened a meeting of the Council of Ministers at 8 am local time, maintaining constant contact with the alliance’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, to coordinate the political and diplomatic response.
Article 4 allows a NATO member to solicit consultations whenever it believes its security, territorial integrity, or political independence is threatened. Unlike Article 5, which provides for collective military action in the event of an armed attack, Article 4 does not compel immediate military action, but its activation nevertheless constitutes a significant political escalation, as it emphasizes the unity of the alliance in responding to perceived threats against NATO members.
Poland had already been on high alert for possible aircraft overruns since at least November 2022, when a stray Ukrainian missile accidentally hit a village in the south of the country, killing two people. Until now, however, there had been no recorded cases of Polish or allied defense systems shooting down drones on national territory. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky claimed on Wednesday that “at least eight” Iranian-made Shahed drones were “aimed in the direction of Poland” during the nighttime attack, suggesting the incursion into Polish airspace was intentional.
Residents of the affected Polish areas reported hearing explosions in the sky during the night, followed by the activation of warning sirens. The alert was triggered precisely during a large-scale Russian attack on Ukraine’s western regions, particularly those in Volyn and Lviv that directly border Poland.
According to information released by the Polish military command, national and NATO air defense systems were activated immediately after radar detected the entry of unmanned aircraft into Polish airspace. The interception operation continued for several hours, with the armed forces neutralizing objects deemed dangerous using air defense systems. The search for the wreckage of the downed drones is still ongoing in the eastern parts of the country as of midday Wednesday.
The intervention led to the temporary closure of four airports, including Warsaw-Chopin and Lublin, as well as the Rzeszów airport, which has become a crucial hub for sending Western military aid to Ukraine in the past two years. The United States Federal Aviation Administration confirmed the temporary closure of the Polish airports for “unplanned military activity related to national security.”
The Russian drone strike also hit eastern Ukraine hard: According to reports by the BBC citing local Ukrainian officials, 24 people were killed and 19 wounded in an air raid on a village in the Donetsk region, where the victims were standing in line to collect their pensions. The incident comes amid a particularly intense phase of the conflict, where Moscow’s troops are carrying out a slow but steady offensive in much of Donetsk, in western Ukraine. Meanwhile, diplomatic attempts to reach a peace agreement have essentially stalled, and contacts between Washington and Moscow in recent months have produced no concrete results.
The incident comes at a time of particular tension in the region. Only 24 hours before Poland shot down Russia’s drones, the Polish president warned during a press conference in Helsinki that Russian president Vladimir Putin would be ready to invade other countries after the aggression against Ukraine. The timing of the incursion takes on even greater significance when one considers that on Friday, September 13, Russia and Belarus will kick off joint military exercises dubbed “Zapad,” which have already raised regional security concerns.
Poland had announced Tuesday that it was closing its border with Belarus precisely in response to what Warsaw calls “very aggressive” maneuvers, in addition to the growing number of provocations by Moscow and Minsk. Neighboring Lithuania has also decided to tighten border controls, a sign of widespread alertness among NATO member countries that border Russia and Belarus.
Wednesday’s incident also comes at a delicate time for international diplomacy: US president Donald Trump declared over the weekend that he was ready to move to a second phase of sanctions against Russia after months of unsuccessful negotiations for a peace agreement between Moscow and Kyiv. The downing of drones on Polish territory now risks further complicating any mediation efforts.
This story originally appeared on WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian.
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| September 8, 1756 Colonel John Armstrong and troops under his command destroyed the Indian village of Kittanning. The Corporation of the City of Philadelphia awarded a silver medal to Armstrong and his officers for their action. |
| September 8, 1941 In Norway, 2000 workers in the shipyards went on strike against diversion of milk, “depriving mothers and babies,” to military use by the German soldiers in Finland. In retaliation, Oslo was placed under a 7 o’clock nightly curfew, after which transportation was stopped, public meetings prohibited, radios seized, dancing forbidden. Boy Scouts, Girl Guides and Salvation Army organizations were all dissolved. More about the Milk strike |
September 8, 1965 Table grape pickers, the mostly Filipino members of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), led by Larry Itliong, went on strike for higher wages in Delano, California.  Larry Itliong More about Larry Itliong |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september8
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