Mister, We Could Use a Guy Like Dennis Kuchinich Again

On Easter, former Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich posted an excellent article  titled The Cross and the Pieta: The Passion of Palestine. I highly recommend it. It is the source for several of the numbers reported below.

In the article, Kucinich notes the cruel damage to children and the role of the U.S. in the ongoing genocide in Gaza:

“All of Palestine is a children’s graveyard. Numerous doctors have testified to the unusually large numbers of children who have been killed by sniper shots to the head. Most deaths, however, are due to a stunning array of U.S. munitions being used on defenseless Gazans.”

Kucinich was once a fairly serious contender for President. He ran in 2004 and 2008. But the American press couldn’t take him seriously enough. He was too, as they say, “liberal.” Even worse, he was short – five feet seven -- and had a sort of elfin appearance. Not presidential material

Nevertheless, in the 2004 campaign for the Democratic nomination, Kucinich was John Kerry’s toughest opponent. In it, he emphasized his opposition to the (second) Iraq war, which is now generally conceded by sane people as among the most foolish, cruel, lie-based, and destructive military adventures in world history.

In Kucinich’s second run at the White House, his platform included two other pretty darn good ideas: single payer health care system and the impeachment of then Vice President Dick Cheney.

 

Today’s Scull-Numbing Numbers

Minimum number of U.S. Reaper Drones shot down in Yemen since  October 2023: 15

Number of Reaper drones in U.S. inventory: 280

Cost, in millions, of each Reaper drone: 28

Approximate size, in square miles, of Historic Palestine : 10,400

Percent of that taken by force by Israeli militias in 1948: 77

Minimum number of Palestinians driven from their homes that year: 700,000

Palestinian villages and cities destroyed that year: 600

Percent of historic Palestine now occupied by Israel: 85

Tons of U.S. bombs dropped on Gaza since October 2023: 100,000

Ratio of the explosive power of the above to that of nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima in 1945: 6/1

Death ratio per capita (so far) in Gaza from U.S. bombs: .025

Number of Americans that would be killed at that ratio: 8,350,000

Minimum number of separate air strikes by the U.S. on a cancer hospital in Yemen since March: 14

Minimum number  of Yemenis killed in April 18 U.S. air strikes on  Ras Isa oil port; 80

Minimum number of countries in which U.S.-made bombs have purposely hit hospitals since 1950: 14*

 

*North Korea, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Gaza, Grenada, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama