(Note: These are the notes done and more or less
Predator Drones - considered in their infancy, these unmanned attack and reconnaissance airplanes kill people in Afghanistan and Pakistan, directed by pilots in Las Vegas Nevada and Texas. Weird
the basis of a presentation of Tom Engelhardt’s book `The American Way of War: How Bush’s War Became Obama’s. It was `a joint book review’ done by Ibrahim Kazerooni and myself today – July 25, 2010 – at the Universalist Church in Denver. Both of us think the book is well done but with some reservations mentioned below. Our presentations were about 20 minutes each, followed by an hour of question and answers)
Notes for talk at the Universalist Church in Denver (July 25, 2010)
The American Way Of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obamas by Tom Engelhardt
1.
Thanks.,..
An interesting format – responding to a book on US foreign policy and making a speech about it.
Have been doing an inordinate amount of reading this summer – in part I need to – it is what I do for a living and what sustains me in other ways.
Among the books that I have read…just a few..
– Two by Tony Judt – Ill Fares The Land and Reappraisals, the latter a collection of his essays most of which appeared in the New York Review of Books over the past decades
– In French – La Mediteranee Fasciste and now Magreb: La Traversee du Siecle by one Juliette Bessis – born a Tunisian Jew in Gabes. The first book is about how Mussolini tried, with some success to work the Italian community of Tunisia before WWII to `confiscate’ Tunisia from French control. While a few Tunisian national leaders were seduced by Mussolini’s feigned support for Tunisian independence, most of them were not taken in by his fascist arguments
– I’m now reading Marc Bloc’s The Strange Defeat – about France’s debacle before the Nazi juggernaut in 1939. Bloc, an assimilated Jewish Frenchman – culturally Jewish, but essentially, like myself an atheist – besides being an outstanding historian – represents that spirit of pre-World War II humanism that included such figures as Stefan Zweig,
US and Polish Special Forces in Iraq
Albert Camus and others. He was tortured and shot by the Nazis a few days after D-Day. He was not, from what I could tell, a Zionist.
– On the Middle East there is Jeremy Salt’s excellent The Unmaking of the Middle East in which he pulls no punches on the roles of Great Britain, the United States and Israel and Gilbert Achcar’s The Arabs and the Holocaust which I am just now getting into
I hope to use the insights, historical knowledge from these readings somehow – (but how?) in my teachings. It takes some time and thought to figure out how to integrate such works
2.
The same goes for the book at hand – Tom Engelhardt’s The American Way Of War Read more…
When Dems Court `The Left/Peace Movement’…
(related posts –
– Kinsey’s The Man – July 16, 2010
– Bennet and Romanoff – Again or is it `Still’? – December 16, 2009
– Bennet-Romanoff: Wesleyan vs. Yale: Colorado’s Non-Race of the Decade – October 13, 2009
(slightly updated – added a few paragraphs August 2, 2010 – rjp)
note: this piece is today (September 24, 2012) more than two years old. it speaks of the U.S. Senatorial Democratic Primary between Michael Bennet and Andrew Romanoff, which Bennet won. To my never ending wonder, the piece has received 10,000 hits (there is way for me to track this) . The beat goes on. As a result, I have had to do something I really find displeasure-able – rereading what it is that I wrote to try to understand its popularity. Concerning the Bennet-Romanoff contest, I do believe the piece has survived `the test of time’, even if it is unkind to both. If anything Bennet is even worse that I suspected. My friends who believed they had a direct pipeline to Bennet were cut off at the knees, and this already before, not after the election. They seem bitter, but I cannot help thinking that they should have known better. The deeper issue explored here – the relations between the Democratic Party and `the Left’ – however that is defined – I believe remains as valid today as it was two years past and my approach, sketched out towards the end, remains unchanged. cheers. Rob P.
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1.
So little in return…
The Left/Peace Movement – I use the terms interchangeably although
Gaza – January 2009 – Have either Bennet or Romanoff even used the word `Gaza’ or shown any sympathy for the Palestinian victims this entire campaign?
they are not always so – is so used to being out of power that when they do have the opportunity to influence events, peace activists are often at a loss. That is how things are shaping up here in Colorado around the Democratic Party race for the US Senate nomination, pitting Michael Bennet, the current US Senator and Andrew Romanoff, his challenger. As the Bennet/Romanoff competition for Colorado’s Democratic nomination for the US Senate tightens, both candidates are scrambling for `progressive support’ from peace movement and left types. But how little both of them are offering in return for an endorsement! And frankly, how few have been the demands that the peace movement itself has made on either of them!
Bennet, whom admittedly had no experience in foreign affairs, was chosen by Colorado Governor Bill Ritter to fill the seat of Ken Salazar, whom Barack Obama appointed as Secretary of the Interior, and who, by supporting and expanding the deregulation of offshore drilling, bears some responsibility for the BP Gulf oil spill. Bennet has been able to get a good deal of outside (outside Colorado that is) financial and political support, including the endorsement of President Barack Obama.
Miffed that he was passed over both for this Senate seat and other higher posts for which he thought himself deserving, Andrew Romanoff launched a primary challenge. I don’t think much of him (as I have written below). Like Bennet, minus a few questionably sponsored trips to the Middle East and a perusal of the Democratic Leadership Conference’s handbook on Cold War liberalism foreign policy, Romanoff lacks any serious knowledge or experience in foreign policy. A close look at his record in the Colorado State legislature suggests he is not as liberal as his supporters claim. Read more…
Kinsey’s The Man
Kinsey’s The Man
“ Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” – attributed to Albert Einstein
1.
Yesterday at a local NW Denver coffee shop, I ran into a friend
Bob Kinsey (left) - Colorado Green Party Candidate for the US Senate - campaigning
active in Denver’s Democratic Party. Indeed, NW Denver is something of a Democratic breeding ground, one of the most heavily Democratic precincts between St. Louis and San Francisco. Not alot of Tea Party supporters around here. Not interested in climbing the ladder – my friend Willie L. has long worked on a local level and like so many other Denver Dems that I know – Willie has cast his lot for Andrew Romanoff who he sees as a progressive and grass roots alternative to Michael Bennet.
He’s annoyed that I don’t share his enthusiasm, a subject on which I have previously written on this blog.
I respond in what is becoming something close to my mantra on this election: that Romanoff is posturing – I call it the Mike Miles approach, without Miles’ consistent politics – and that in the end there is little difference between Romanoff and Bennet on the issues and that I expect that both of them will turn out to be the same variety of spineless Democrats who support the deregulation and privatization of everything, talk peace but vote all the time for more money for war, duck into the nearest closet whenever that scary word `Palestinian’ is spoken, etc. Should either one actually become Colorado’s US Senator it is more than likely that will follow the same worn path to supporting increased military budgets and war abroad, the Patriot Act and like erosions of US civil liberties – all this while assuring Colorado Dems of their liberal credentials. Read more…
Back In The Shtetl
Hasidic Jewish Rabbi with Neturei Karta, from Williamsburg Brooklyn, protesting Israel’s Treatment of Palestinians during Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent NYC visit
I am not far from where it all began – for me at least – in the Brooklyn Women’s Hospital five months to the day the troops stormed the cliffs at Normandy. Am a few miles away. Not too far – in Great Neck. The family tended to move east in generations – from Flatbush in Brooklyn to Queens, from Queens to Long Island – Great Neck and `points east’. As usual, getting my directions mixed up as they moved east, I moved west – to Denver. This has been good for my mental health over the years. Make occasional forays back into the old country, until recently to see my mother and aunt, both recently deceased, now to see sisters, nieces, nephews and the only brother in law in my life who has not been a complete asshole. Good man. Nice to have a non-asshole brother in law (on this side of the family) – a rare treat in my later years.
Actually came back here this time primarily to meet my Barcelona friend – one Aurelia Mane Estrada, professor of Political Economy at the University of Barcelona with whom a few years ago I team taught a graduate level course called `Democracy Development and Energy’ at the University of Denver where I teach. It was essentially a course on Algeria – and how it was that a people who had suffered so egregiously at the hands of the French culminating in their horrific war of independence – could turn on one another in the 1990s and slaughter each other with such wanton violence. Nice story. Warms the heart. Anyhow Aurelia is coming into NY with her mom for a week – and as she has hosted me in Barcelona – I wanted to reciprocate and came back here to shlep Aurelia and her mom around Manhattan. Aurelia’s mom and dad (now deceased) lived with difficulty through the Franco years in Spain and suffered along with the rest of the country through those painful and trying times.
Their plane lands at Kennedy in a few hours and I look forward to seeing them both. Have spent the intervening time with family and friends with mixed emotions. A strange land.
Examples –
- A young man who wants to study history to probe his strong belief that extra-terrerstrials built the Mayan temples and the pyramids of Egypt. I try to tell him to no avail that it is an old racist tale to think that the Mayans or Egyptians couldn’t do it themselves but he is pretty set in his extra-terrestrial world.
- A middle aged woman – clearly on some level what could be considered `intelligent’ – who grew up in the orthodox Jewish tradition, studied the mystical Jew ish Kabala texts for many years, but then `found Jesus’ . She prays to Jesus secretly because she is afraid to share her Jesus epiphany with her orthodox Jewish family – who knows anyway
- A young man who – with no other possibilities – has learned the skills of killing – is proud to be going to Afghanistan – to where he is about to be shipped out to – to, in his words, `kill terrorists’.
- A 60-ish woman at a public swimming pool in Great Neck in response to my telling her I live in Denver: `Do people live in Denver’ – `No just buffalo but unfortunately no moose.’ I tell her.
- In a Queens coffee shop someone shows me a copy of the NY Times and asked in a rather agitated manner: `Have you ever been to one of those weddings?’ – I am not sure to what she is referring – so she has to clarify – it is a gay wedding. I answer – `No not yet, but perhaps soon,’ and she looks at me with some hostility mumbling aloud what a strange place Denver must be.
- A strange and sometimes wondrous land – although the thermometer today topped out at 105 degrees Fahrenheit – spent the day with Sarah and Aurelia Mane Estrada – the Barcelona superwomen – wandering around Wall Street and then after a brief boat ride – 4-5 hours in the Ellis Island Museum – in my opinion one of the best museums in the world.
- Got the Michael Myerson special tour of Park Ave today. It started on
NYC Labor Led Rally To Cancel Next Year’s All-Star Game in Arizona
46th St. at the Major League Headquarters and ended at 67 St where Bibi Netanyahu was attending a meeting. 300 or so people, mostly trade unionists, people from immigrant organizations and a scattering of folks in left groups (DSA, Workers World Party) showed up to call on major league baseball to cancel next year’s all star game in Arizona to protest the state’s anti-immigration bill.
- Further north, on 67 St there were two demonstrations – a `pro-Israel’ rally of about 100 people who were breathing fire and saying unkind things to another 100 people standing across the street protesting the visit. Met a rabbi in the anti-Netanyahu contingent from the Jewish orthodox group `Neturei Karta’. I asked him if his anti-Zionist orthodox Jewish movement is growing. `Yes’ he said with no little enthusiasm,` it’s growing by leaps and bounds mostly because we don’t believe in birth control.’. That was a pretty good one.
- Met someone today who was in the Israeli army from 1987-1990. I said, `oh, you were there during the first Intifada (Palestinian uprising in the late 1980s). How was that?’ He responded `oh, that was fun!’. Fun?
more later…
Blog News
Every once and a while, I hope to comment on responses to the blog that I have gotten. It is interesting what people gravitate towards and why. Through the program I use `wordpress’ – a very popular, free and easily maneuverable one – I can tell how many `hits’ (people who visit the site), which entries or articles they read. I can also tell what searches led people to the site. Some of these are obvious enough `Yemen’ or `savings and loan crisis’; others are a bit ominous; yet others people `fishing’ for pornography of one kind or another (example below).
- The articles from the Silverado Series (still in progress), collectively have received more than 1000 hits and have resulted in several interesting new contacts and friendships here in Denver. Now seven months old, different articles from that series continue to get hits almost daily –
- I have been genuinely surprised at the number of people who have read the articles on Farhad Hached, the Tunisian trade unionist assassinated by French intelligence in the early 1950s. More than 700 people have read this article. I can tell how many people read an article and when, but do not know where the readers are from – although I did get two communications – one from Tunisia, the second from Paris.
- More than 500 people have read the different articles on Yemen or downloaded the powerpoint presentation
- 150+ people have read the op ed statement in the Denver Post `Colorado Christians Must Break Silence’ – a letter calling on Colorado Christians to show a bit more courage about criticizing Israel. It was signed by a number of local religious figures and me (although I am not a religious figure)
- I wrote a blog that was three short film reviews (Zinnemann, Fuller, Imamura) – more than 150 people have clicked on to that review (which also surprised me)
- 75 people have looked at the entry on the union drive for SODEXO workers (who man the concessions) at the University of Denver
There is also something else that is interesting and that is the titles of the searches used to get to the site…Here is a list of just a few
- `UN Houthi Rebels’ (obviously about Yemen)
- `Larry Mizel’ (from the Silverado series and `The CELL’)
- `Excellent sex movies in Japanese – oldies but goodies’ (I presume it’s the Imamura films although I wouldn’t call them `excellent sex movies’ – just excellent movies with a bit of sex)
- `David Mandarich indictment Denver Post’ (from the Silverado series – Mandarich was and is Larry Mizel’s assistant/partner at MDC)
- `Yemen Cruise Missile Civilian `Al Qaeda’ – looking for the US cruise missile attack on Yemen in December 2009 that resulted in a large number of civilian casualties
- `New Frontier Bank-Bush’ – I think confusing the collapse of the Greeley bank (New Frontier Bank) with the Silverado Bank bust in Denver in the 1980s in which Neil Bush served on the board of directors
- `Melanie Pearlman’ — director of the CELL – Mizel funded `anti-terrorism’ museum in downtown Denver.
- `Act of Violence – Janet Leigh’ – about the film that stars Janet Leigh (knifed to death in Psycho), Van Heflen (I think his best role) and Robert Ryan – an excellent film on post World War II psychological tensions/revenge.
- `Adam Rayski and Pere LaChaise’ – Rayski was a Polish Communist who hailed from Grudno, (now in Byelorus), the home of both my paternal and maternal grandfathers and Meir Lansky. Rayski who had a fascinating life (according to the obituary in Le Monde,) is buried in Paris’ famous `Pere Lachaise’ Cemetery
- Finally I get at least 5 spans a day for Viagra ads all of which are deleted. I figure I’d die of a heart attack if I tried to stuff and am old fashioned enough not to be interested at all, partly because, admittedly, one of my asshole former brothers-in-law can’t get enough of the stuff. Viagra and tatoos …
Just thought such information, occasionally would be interesting. Will do it again in a few months.
The Journal of Global Governance is a quarterly academic journal that explores the possibilities of multi-lateral solutions to different international problems. It is co-edited by two faculty members at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies where I happen to teach – Dr. Tom Farer, the current dean at Korbel, and Dr. Tim Sisk, tenured faculty member and expert on global conflict resolution
In its most recent issue – April-June 2010, Volume 16, #2 (pp 139-207) – there is, what is referred to as `an agora’ on the Goldstone Report, the UN report critical of Israel’s practices during its military incursion into Gaza, from December 2008 – January 2009. An `agora’ refers to an open place of assembly in ancient Greek cities where issues could be openly discussed and debated. Global Governance is one of the few academic journals (are there others? – if so I am not aware) to try to seriously evaluate the relevance of the Goldstone Report and to do so in a spirit of `civil debate’.
As is well known, the Goldstone Report has generated a great deal of heat and opposition here in the United States, so much so that the US Congress actually issued a resolution condemning and rejecting its findings. It is highly unusual for the the US Congress to take such an action. At the same time, while the Goldstone Report has generated serious discussions elsewhere in the world, the subject has been largely ignored by mainstream academia and media, so much so that it has become a taboo subject. Goldstone himself, a lifetime dedicated Zionist, has been the focus of what amounts to savage attacks for his unsparing criticisms of Israel’s military Gaza `practices’.
The journal has brought together four scholars. They are:
Dinah Pokempner – General Counsel to Human Rights Watch
Ed Morgan – Professor of Law at the University of Toronto
Richard Falk – Special Rapporteur to the Occupied Palestinian Territories for the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Nigel S. Rodly – Chair of the Human Rights Center of the University of Essex
The reading is not easy and takes some time to seriously consider. Remember this is a serious academic journal. I hope that although it takes a bit of effort to get through the articles, that you will take the effort and read this discussion in its entirety. It is worth the effort.
For the said articles, Journal of Global Governance – Goldstone Report …
Related Articles…
(Note: John Kane – not to be mixed up with a Denver federal judge of the same name – recently retired after many years teaching Philosophy at Regis University, Denver’s Jesuit University. For some time, I am not sure how long but it is many years, Kane has also edited `Leaven’ – which he describes as an Independent Catholic Voice In The Rocky Mountain Region. As I publish the Colorado Progressive Jewish News I was interested in knowing more about this`alternative’ Catholic publication. We met once over coffee near Regis and had what I consider to be a memorable exchange. Both of us are dealing with religious-cultural communities whose histories lie strongly within what might be called `the progressive movement’.
Yet at the same time both groups – US Jews and Catholics – in different ways are moving right politically. In the past, both have been victimized in this country by bigotry, a bigotry that has not entirely disappeared by any means. Although it often forgotten, one of the more persistent forms of racism in this country was (and remains to a certain extent) anti-Catholicism. This was especially true around the end of the 19th and turn of the 20th century but it has never really disappeared. This state’s KKK which was one of the nation’s strongest for a short period of time in the 1920s – was based largely on an anti-catholic thrust and that despicable and organization burned their racist crosses on the Regis campus (among other places) . More or less at the same time – Jewish immigrants, largely from Eastern Europe,were facing similar large doses of bigotry.
Flash forward a hundred years and how both communities have evolved and changed. There are differences – American Jews, other than on Israel remain generally moderate and liberal on social questions, minus, of course, the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Surveys on the political preferences of American Catholics show a shift in a more conservative direction for may. A publication like `Leaven’ which I suppose within American Catholicism can be considered on the liberal or left side of American Catholicism’s political spectrum would have represented mainstream Catholic thinking 50 or 75 years ago. Today that is not the case as the progressive base is narrowing. As for myself and the Colorado Progressive Jewish News – I’ve long felt that the publication a half century ago would have been within the mainstream of American Jewish thought. Then at dinner, young Jews would agonize as to whether they join the Socialist or Communist Parties, as many did. Today, young Jews agonize over whether they should drop their Democratic Party credentials and become Republicans, as so many young Jews have here in Denver.
Not all that long ago, I went to a labor-related event sponsored by a labor research organization called FRESC (which as I recall stands for something like Front Range Economic and Social Council). They do good work. It was a fund raising dinner and some three to four hundred people attended to show support, most of the from local unions. I had not been to such a clearly working class event in Denver for a long time and was deeply satisfied to reconnect to the movement from which I have, my whole adult life, gotten my political and moral values. Mayor Hickenlooper was there, pounding flesh and lying through his teeth about how he supports labor. I remember looking at him and thinking what a pathetic figure – essentially run by the city’s developers – this phony guy is. And now, run by those same folk, there is a good chance he’ll be governor.
That said, I suddenly felt a wave of sadness, of a kind I rarely experience, as I looked around the room. There were lots of Chicanos – many of them young, some blacks, many people whose ethnicity I could not identify for sure… but precious few Jews. Where were the Jews? At the Green Gables Country Club cutting deals? What happened to the likes of Rudy Schware, Harry Nier, Walter Gerash? And I thought – fifty years ago, half the people in this room would have been Jewish – now it’s just a few burnt out leftie stragglers like me, while the sons and daughters of Denver’s working class Jews of past generations have `moved on’. True there was one rabbi, Silverman? – I forget his name – who won an award.
I know, I’m drifting. My hunch is that John Kane could tell similar stories about Catholics who had, it seems, `lost their way’.
In any case, John Kane put a great deal of thought and emotional struggle into this statement and I hope that it is read far and wide)
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Working For Peace In Israel/Palestine
Whither Europe?
(Note – this entry, already 2500 words long – is `in progress’. I’ll be working on it over the next week. Where I’m heading is the shift of ties between the United States and Europe in which the US has made concessions to the Europeans on economic matters, trade in particular but has tried to retain (and largely succeeded) its control over Europe’s global security policies, mostly through the greater integration and coordination with NATO)
Twenty years ago, in the beginning of March I traveled from Finland,
Prague - 1983
where I was living with my family, on a journey that took me to Sweden, Norway, Denmark and ultimately Germany. It was 1990 – a time of dramatic change on the continent
– Although the Soviet Union would continue to exist for another 21 months, virtually all of the Eastern European communist countries had collapsed.
– a few weeks into my trip, on March 18, 1990, voters in what was then East Germany had opted for reunification with the West. East Germans had good understanding of what it was they were rejecting but, time suggests, only the foggiest idea of what they were uncritically embracing – Western European capitalism. Still, all the signs pointed in one direction: in a short time East Germany would cease to exist Read more…
(note: I had put some notes together contrasting the way that the media in the USA has dealt with the Israeli commando raids and killing of 9 peace activists, a part of the Free Gaza Flotilla, with the manner in which they have covered Helen Thomas’ intemperate – but from my view point – not very serious remarks about Israel-Palestine which cost her, her job. But as usual, Jim Wall has put it together better and more succinctly than I could – so I gladly enclose his most recent remarks below. I’ll write about how all this has played out concerning US-Israeli-Turkish-Iranian relations in the near future. Just three quick comments before turning to Jim’s column:
1. Helen Thomas’ remarks were made before the Free Gaza Flotilla attack by Israeli commandos. It is pretty obvious that these remarks were picked up, the significance of them grossly exaggerated, in order to take media attention in the USA away from Israel’s `Free Gaza Debacle’ . There was a special viciousness in the manner in which Thomas, an 89 year old who has consistently been one of the only members of the Washington Press Corps to challenge both Presidents Bush and Obama on the war on terrorism, Israel’s unjust policies towards the Palestinians, etc. I am reminded of a former journalist for the now (deservedly) defunct Rocky Mountain News, who was brought down by more or less the same people for the same reason a number of years back here in Denver.
2. The underlying cause of all this has been Israel’s ongoing blockade of Gaza – that has now gone on for three years and done untold human damage to the 1.5 million people living in Gaza – a punishment for the Gazan-Palestinians having voted for Hamas over Fateh in the 2006 elections. This blockade compares in cruelty to two others – the Nazi blockage of Leningrad during World War, and the US sanctions blockade against Iraq in the 12 year period leading up to the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. In both cases, millions died of starvation, lack of medical treatment, etc. The callousness with which the Israelis continue to maintain this blockade with full support of the Obama Administration and the US Congress is, in a word, both predictable and unconscionable, as is the notion that somehow Israel is the victim, rather than the perpetrator of aggression. `Free Gaza’ has become the cry of peace and human rights activists the world round. )
To Jim Wall’s column
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by James M. Wall
A Lebanese-American journalist, a few months shy of her 90th birthday, nearing the end of a distinguished journalism career, makes a few irrational comments during a Jewish Heritage Week event at the White House.
She was responding to a question from a young man who stuck a microphone in her face.
The short interview was posted on the website of a rabbi, whose son was the cameraman. Thomas failed to follow the Number One You Tube Rule: Never give a flippant response to any questions from a stranger.
Meanwhile, Israeli Naval commandos storm a Turkish relief boat traveling with supplies to Gaza. In the attack, the commandos kill a 19-year-old unarmed Turkish-American man, one of nine passengers who died in the attack. To continue reading this column, click here.
Cluster Bomb
I remember reading how the Obama Administration had ok’ed the use of a cruise missile in Yemen last December 17. What I didn’t know is that, according to an Amnesty International Report released a few days ago. this particular cruise missile delivered anti-personnel cluster bombs to its target. The Obama Administration claimed that the missile attack targeted and killed Al Qaeda (or Al Qaeda – like) operatives in Yemen’s Abyan Province.
The bombing raised many questions in my mind then and now…
- if Amnesty’s claim is true, wouldn’t this bombing, given the civilian casualties be considered a war crime?
- Are we reaching to the point where our government considers anyone, including women and children, potential terrorists because of where they reside, as the Israelis do in Gaza?
- Was it a sea or air based cruise? (It turns out, according to recent information it was launched from a US naval vessel).
- Although the usual pretext was put forth of `countering the Al Qaeda threat’, I wondered about the more salient reasons for the US launching such an attack? What were the regional considerations?
- As the United States does not make a move militarily without some connection to long term strategic regional goals, I wondered how they fit in too?
All that led to a series of blog entries on Yemen, a powerpoint presentation and several speaking engagements – one at the University of Denver where I teach, the second an hour long radio program on Boulder’s KGNU. Read more…
The Trillion Dollar Question by John Feffer
(note… one of the links to the right is to Foreign Policy In Focus, whose articles and pieces on US foreign policy – and bloggers – I rank among the best. This piece by John Feffer, whose small volume `Power Trip‘ I used as a text in course on global politics recently – is about the bloated US military budget and the US Congress’s tendency to pass every request for more weaponry. Good piece. We’ve got to build a movement around cutting the military budget and using those funds for jobs, education and social programs here in the US of A. rjp)
The Trillion Dollar Question
The full-page ads in The Washington Post seem so reasonable. The military contractor Pratt & Whitney has been arguing that America doesn’t need to spend $485 million to develop a second engine for the F-35 jet fighter. It’s a compelling argument. We’re in a serious economic crisis, so why on earth would we build another jet engine when the first one is sufficient?
Pratt & Whitney has supporters in high places. Pentagon Chief Robert Gates doesn’t want the second engine, which would be built by General Electric and Rolls Royce, and neither does his Air Force. President Obama, too, has come out against the unnecessary spending.
Pratt & Whitney isn’t spending hundreds of thousands of advertising dollars simply out of a spirit of fiscal rectitude. They’re the builders of the original F-35 engine, and they don’t want the competition muscling into their territory. Still, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is already a terrible boondoggle – Lockheed Martin recently confessed that the per-plane cost has nearly doubled since the initial estimate – so adding a second engine would be nonsense on stilts.
For the rest of the article, click here
Protesting The Israeli-Egyptian Blockade of Gaza - Downtown Denver - June 2, 2010
I have been preparing some notes on developments in Israel-Palestine which I intended to publish in the next few days. As usual, my thoughts have been overtaken by events – in this case the unconscionable Israel attack on the Free Gaza Flotilla of six ships delivering 10,000 tons of aid to Gaza, which has now suffered three years of blockade and a major Israeli military offensive of late 2008-early 2009.
There is another aid ship on its way to deliver food and medical aid to Gaza – the MV Rachel Corrie – named after the young American peace activist killed in Gaza, run over by an Israeli tractor in March 2003 just before the US-led invasion of Iraq got underway. Maybe this time the Israeli’s will simply torpedo the ship, since they can’t seem to get of Rachel Corrie any other way. Since their international image couldn’t be any worse, what do the Israelis have to lose? And then the Nobel Prize Laureate who had no compunction about letting a Cruise missile fly against civilians in Yemen and or destroying many an Afghan wedding with drone attacks can issue another insipid statement of how he is `concerned’.
What I will do at present is collect what I find to be the most salient articles on the attack here on this blog site. I’ll put up some articles today (Monday, May 31, 2010). Others will follow over the coming days so those of you who follow this subject might check in from time to time
1 International Reputation To Fall Further – (Financial Times – May 31, 2010)
2. Gaza Flotilla Drives Israel Into A Sea Of Stupidity – (Haaretz – May 31, 2010)
3. Statement of Richard Falk – UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories (United Nations Human Rights – May 31, 2010)
4. Statement of Tikkun Spiritual Community (progressive Jewish organization) (May 31, 2010)
5. Inteview with Norman Finkelstein on the Gaza (Russia Today – June 1, 2010)
6. Israel’s Murderous Attack on Peace Activists Provokes International Outrage and Diplomatic Crisis (Alternet – June 1, 2010 by Joshua Holland)
7.Ad about Gaza flotilla (Gush Shalom Statement of June 1, 2010)
8. From Istanbul: Outrage Over Massacre On The High Seas (Huffington Post – Phyllis Bennis – June 1, 2010)
9. Israel Founders In International Waters (Asia Times – Simon Thurow – June 2, 2010)
10. We Are All Gazans Now (Asia Times – Pepe Escobar – June 2, 2010)
11. Israel’s Latest Violation (Common Dreams – Stephen Zunes – June 2, 2010)
12. Kill A Turk And Rest‘ (an article by Uri Avnery – June 5, 2010)
(Part One of this Two Part Series: Film Reviews – Two Jewish Films – Among The Righteous: Look Into My Eyes – [1 of 2])
Robert Satloff wrote the book and produced the documentary by the same name `Among The Righteous’. It aired on public television last month. It claims to be `lost stories from the Holocaust’s Long Reach Into Arab Lands’, but this is overstated as the film concentrates exclusively on the fate of Moroccan and Tunisian Jews (with a snippet of info hardly worth mentioning on Algeria). Although the title suggests a broader subject matter, it is silent on the situation of Jews elsewhere in the Arab world – Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, etc, from the outset the subject matter is more restrictive than the title would leave one to believe. This would be a minor point if not for the fact that it infers a much broader field of inquiry than it actually covers and thus generalizes about the rest.
The film version received generally positive reviews. I wish that I could share in the enthusiasm thus generated, but in fact I cannot. Too many mixed metaphors, too much skewed history. In the end, rather than an honest treatment of what is an interesting subject, the more I think of it, what we get is scrambled history, at some points admittedly moving, but overall an intellectually dishonest piece. Read more…
View from the Left Bank: Rob Prince's Blog 
