The Five Names of Beatrice Kaye…(Part One)
Grandma Sarah, Mom, Aunt Mal
Today marks the 100th Anniversary of the birth of the woman who during the course of her life had five names: Beatrice Magaziner, Beatrice Magazine, Beatrice Prensky, Beatrice Prince, Beatrice Kaye. We, the family in Denver, including my wife Nancy, our daughters Molly and Abbie, their partners K and Logan, along with brother-in-law David Fey, are celebrating this family landmark by having a blowout dinner at a chic Denver restaurant, where we will eat and drink and celebrate the life of my mother, a classic “Yiddisha Mama.”
1.
One hundred years ago on this day, December 4, 1918, in Boston, Massachusetts, Sarah Magaziner, wife of Julius Magaziner, gave birth to her last daughter whom she named Beatrice. It was Sarah Magaziner’s fourteenth birth, seven of whom survived into adulthood. The seven surviving siblings were in order of birth (to the best of my memory), Louis, Molly (who changed her name to Malvina), Joseph, William (called Willie), Hyman (called Hymie), Ira and last but not least, Beatrice.
Ninety years and eight months later, on July 23, 2009, that same Beatrice, now surnamed Kaye, died in a nursing home in Great Neck New York. She is buried in Montefiore Cemetery, Long Island, New York next to her lifetime companion through it all, her older sister by ten years, Malvina Stone, known us our whole lives as “Aunt Mal.” When she died, after almost criminally poor treatment at Long Island Jewish Hospital in Long Island, Aunt Mal had blessed the planet with her irascible presence for a few months shy of a hundred years. In death the seven surviving siblings are reunited in the same family plot there. Uncles Joe, Lou (first name actually Robert), Hymie, Willie, Ira, Mal and “Beattie”. Finally together again.
Every one of my uncles pn my Mom’s side died of heart conditions, heart attacks, most in their forties. Read more…
Iran: A Rumor of War — Guest Editorial by Conn Hallinan
Iran: Rumors of War Dispatches From The Edge Dec. 1, 2018 “The Iran Agenda Today: The Real Story Inside Iran And What’s Wrong with U.S. Policy” By Reese Erlich Routledge Taylor & Francis Group New York and London 2019 Want another thing to keep you up at night? Consider a conversation […]
click on the underlined title just above Iran: A Rumor of War to read the article
Dr. Mark Johnson, Jefferson County Colorado Department of Health Director on Rocky Flats
And on that point, Mark Johnson is onto something…He’s explained why the federal government has been so adamant about pushing through a shallow, sloppy clean up at Rocky Flats that would be comical if it weren’t so serious. They simply cannot afford to, or not willing to shell out the money necessary to do the kind of clean up that is necessary, not at Rocky Flats nor at the other Superfund site clean ups to follow. A Rocky Flats, they’ve done less than the bare minimum.
Public relations demanded that the federal government go through the motions and that they did, knowing exactly how to repress any information, studies that would get in their way. Instead of a serious clean up they offer us a scaled down, cheaper version, declare “success” ruthlessly disregarding the remaining dangers involved, the unanswered questions. And then they use this hollow victory (over what? – the public interest?) as a model to market similar prescriptions to Hanford and other radioactive contaminated sites giving us short-term, band-aid like solutions.
These folks are messing with plutonium…not a good idea.
1. A full house at Arvada’s Trinity Presbyterian Church
The audience was surprisingly large…even Dr. Mark Johnson noted it. “I thought we’d have a little intimate group, that we could have something of a dialogue, I didn’t expect so many people” he said. And people were there and in large numbers. Don’t know who was more surprised, the event’s organizers or Dr. Johnson. Could suggest a new level of interest in the continued impact of Rocky Flats on the surrounding area – burgeoning with growth and the new social cancer called “development.”
The event was sponsored by “Rocky Flats Right To Know,” a local community group “devoted to educating the public about Rocky Flats.” The group is organizing a series of public forums on the continued dangers of Rocky Flats radioactive contamination, the next program scheduled for February, 2019.
I estimate between 200 and 250 who filled the Trinity Presbyterian Church in Arvada, suburb northwest of Denver and in the proximity of the closed down Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant. Not a Brown or Black soul among them, a reflection of the ethnic and racial composition that experienced exponential growth as are result of white flight to the suburbs in the last 1950s through 1980s, but overwhelmingly people from Jefferson County. They were in attendance to listen to Dr. Johnson, the County health officer talk about what the county knows – and mostly doesn’t know – about what is left of radioactive contamination from the closed down Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons plant. Read more…
Tonight on KGNU – “US Middle East Policy Adrift: Kashoggi Murder and the Fallout: Hard Times Ahead for Salman and Netanyahu”
Syria on our minds…
Hear Ibrahim Kazerooni and Rob Prince on KGNU Boulder (88.5 FM, 1390 Am, Streaming at http://www.kgnu.org) on Hemispheres, Middle East Dialogues hosted by Jim Nelson. Tonight, Tues, November 27, 2018 @ 6-7 pm Mountain States Time
The program is available for streaming/downloading tomorrow at KGNU’s achives
Ethiopian Protests in the Oromo Region in 2016. It was mass protests like this that brought the former government to its knees and forced a liberal wave of change in the country.
Ethiopia – al Amoudi – Whatever Became of Mohammed al Amoudi – 2: Amoudi’s Ethiopian Connection
Blunting China’s Belt and Road Initiative in the Horn of Africa is a priority for Washington. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – as it is elsewhere in the region – (Syria, Afghanistan, anti-Iranian alliance) – are little more than Washington’s thanes in Ethiopia and the Horn. Mohammed al Amoudi, until he was arrested, was Riyadh’s man in Addis Ababa, nothing less. It appears they no longer require his services and are confiscating his assets there.
(For general background on al Amoudi, his ties to al Qaeda through BCCI, what is generally known of his wealth, the possible reasons that he was arrested by bin Salman, see Part One; Part Three)
As of this writing (Nov. 22, 2018) the fate of Mohammed al Amoudi, Saudi billionaire businessman with $3 billion in investments in Ethiopia, remains unknown. Arrested in Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s anti-corruption sweep in November 2017, a year later no one knows if he is still alive or has been “Khashoggi-ized.”
1
Since the November 2017 arrest of Saudi billionaire Mohammed al Amoudi along with a slew of Saudi billionaires, government officials and members of the royal family, on charges of massive corruption, little is know of his current situation.
As noted in Part one of this series:
Whatever became of Mohammed al Amoudi? Is he still alive? Has he been tortured? There, in Saudi’s Al Ha’ir prison, there would be no Turkish listening devices to record his last moments? Did he meet a ghastly fate in Riyadh as Jamal Khashoggi’s in Istanbul with body parts dismembered while still alive until he died in unspeakable pain? Are his fingers or their ashes sprinkled at different sites throughout the Riyadh region?
Or is he alive and will soon be released as the Saudis claim? Read more…
Ethiopian Women, Gambella, Ethiopia, home of the al Amoudi Saudi Star Rice Farm, producing rice for Saudi Arabia
(Author’s note: It had been my purpose in this piece to explore al Amoudi’s long standing economic interests in Ethiopia and his long term ties to the dictatorship in that country which was just partially removed from power by the selection of the new prime minister, Ahmed Abey, who has given hope to a new dawn both to Ethiopia and the Ethiopian diaspora. But if one is persistent enough, research takes one far and wide as it did below. That said, in order to understand Mohammed al Amoudi’s defining role in Ethiopia, it helps to read this particular intro. At least that is what I hope. The “Ethiopian connection” will follow. RJP)
Whatever Became of Mohammed al Amoudi? And Why Haven’t the Saudis Released Him? …
Maybe because there is nothing of him left to release? …and all the king’s horses and all the kings men couldn’t put Mohammed al Amoudi together again?
Whatever became of Mohammed al Amoudi? Is he still alive? Has he been tortured? There, in Saudi’s Al Ha’ir prison, there would be no Turkish listening devices to record his last moments? Did he meet a ghastly fate in Riyahd as Jamal Khashoggi’s in Istanbul with body parts dismembered while still alive until he died in unspeakable pain? Are his fingers or their ashes sprinkled at different sites throughout the Riyadh region?
Or is he alive and soon to be released as the Saudis claim?
The Saudis keep hedging on sharing information about al Amoudi. The longer Riyadh hedges, the more the speculation that he is no longer “this side of the great divide” resonates in the world press. And who knows, if not for the Khashoggi debacle, which continues to be played out as I write, Mohammed al Amoudi’s fate might have simply slid from the public consciousness, his fate ignored. But the Saudi monarchy-directed-planned and executed murder of Jamal Khashoggi has, literally, resurrected the fate of others whose treatment and ultimate fates remain unknown, among them al Amoudi. Read more…
Gotland, Sweden, Äland Finland – Launching pads for war against Russia?
Is The United States Using Neutral Sweden (and Finland) as “Platforms” to launch war against Russia?
Is The United States Using Neutral Sweden (and Finland) as “Platforms” to launch war against Russia? Driven by Washington, if NATO is preparing for war, what kind of war could it be other than nuclear war?
1. Trident Juncture 18 (TRJE18)
Neither climate change – the largest cloud hanging over life on earth – nor foreign policy in general played a role in the recently completed mid-term elections here in the United States, although the results of the elections will have a bearing on the Trump Administration’s to conduct is global initiatives. First appearances indicate that U.S. punishing sanctions against Iran will not be as thorough as planned, with large countries – India, Turkey, China, Russia – refusing to submit. There are also indications that the trade war with China is not working in U.S. favor either and that some adjustments are in the offing.
On the other hand, Russia sees no prospects for improvement in Russian-American relations after the U.S. midterm elections. The view of these relations continues to look more and more somber in fact. While in Washington DC the accusations of Russian meddling in these elections is again beginning to surface, in Europe the concern is quite different: the unending U.S. military build up in Europe, bases approaching the outskirts of Russia and unending NATO military exercises, each one somewhat larger and more ominous than the last. For example, during the weeks leading up to these mid-term elections, with virtually no media publicity in the United States – and not much in Europe either, NATO held the largest military maneuvers since the end of Cold War – 1 in Northern Europe, close to the Russian border. Read more…
Initial Thoughts on the Mid Term Election Results – Right wing juggernaut was slowed, but not stopped (for discussion)
Initial Thoughts on the Mid Term Election Results – Right wing juggernaut was slowed, but not stopped. It is a minor set back for the Republicans with mixed results (as detailed below) but even a minor setback can cause difficulties for Trump within his party. Situation in the country remains fluid, but still markedly tilted to the right. It will take more than elections (ie – Grassroots organizing to turn the tide).
When Trumpty-Dumpty says that the election results were a “great victory” for Republicans, – translated it means the Republicans didn’t do as badly as he/they feared but better than the Democrats predicted.
On the national level:
• The fact that the Republicans increased their strength in the Senate they will be able to fill federal judicial offices with probable control for a long time to come. This result is catastrophic for Democrats and will have dark long term consequences.
• But then the Republicans took a beating in the House of Representatives – although not as badly as the Dems hoped and predicted. As a result, the House Dems now will be able to challenge Trump on fiscal policy and tax issues some. This somewhat blunts the Trump Administration’s ability to implement repressive and racist legislation. It also means that the Democrats will be able harass the Trump Administration with more investigations.
• The Democrats gained 7 gubernatorial races ad now control 22 state executives. But the Republicans still have governors in 25 states. This means the Republicans will still be able to gerrymander election results for at least the next decade…although not as aggressively as they did in the past. Read more…
Rally against the nuclear arms race, June 1982, Denver, Colorado. It coincided with what is referred to as the Second Session on Disarmament at the United Nations in New York. There, a million people demonstrated against the nuclear arms race. In Denver, I don’t remember the number, but believe it was between 25,00-30,000, one of the largest in Colorado until Trumpty-Dumpty was elected and hundreds of thousands took to the street in protest. We’re (we = the world) are going to have to get back in the streets again on this one.
Trump Pushes the Envelope: NATO Military Exercises Near Russian Border in Northern Norway – August – November, 2018: Part Two. (Part One) (Part Three)
1. Some Global Considerations Behind Trident Juncture 18
Trident Juncture 18, the largest NATO military maneuvers in nearly forty years in northern Norway and the adjoining Arctic Ocean are about to come to an end. They were meant, essentially, to scare the bejesus out of Russia and I have little doubt that they did just that. NATO is preparing for war against Russia. There is no other reasonable conclusion that one can make from the evidence presented. Driven by Washington, if NATO is preparing for war, what kind of war could it be other than nuclear war.
In the midst of these maneuvers close to the Russian border, as a kind of icing on the cake to put the Russians in their place, U.S. President Trump announced that the United States would soon be withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty for short). A double whammy – first the maneuvers themselves, then the announcement of the political consequence: a renewed nuclear weapons arms race.
Having withdrawn the United States from Paris Climate Accord, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (known in the USA as the misleading “Iran Nuclear Deal,” the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the U.S.-Korean Free Trade Agreement (KORUS), the Universal Postal Union (UPU), the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Social Organization (UNESCO), his recent announcement that now the United States is pulling out of I.N.F. Treaty – as ominous a development as it appears – should come as no great surprise. Read more…
Trump Pushes the Envelope: NATO Military Exercises Near Russian Border in Northern Norway – August – November, 2018: Part One
Area of military exercises
There is a long post WW2 history of US plans to militarize the Arctic; these plans go back to 1946 with plans to encircle the Soviet Union to limit their influence in Europe after the war. Norway figured large in these plans and its postwar leadership, purged of the left elements who had been among the most active elements in the Norwegian resistance against the Nazis, Norway essentially gave itself over to US plans. Early on radar and sophisticated listening devices were installed transforming Norway into a base for intelligence and sabotage. The militarization of the North also included the building of a major U.S. military base on the Danish controlled mega-Island of Greenland and a complex radar and anti-missile system established in northern Canada. Virtually almost immediately after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, through NATO – using Eastern European and Russian instability as the pretext – the United States began an intensified U.S. military build up in Europe’s most northern sectors, drawing in both Sweden and Finland, both of which, while not formal members of the alliance, have been drawn in to a great degree, this despite the denials, increasingly hollow, of their governments. (1) (for Part 2, click here) (for Part 3)
1.
On the phone with an old friend in Helsinki. He was a little boy when I knew him there, now a full-grown man in his early forties who spent a good part of his life struggling with drug demons. He overcome them, no small feat. At the end of a conversation about possible trips to India and Thailand to escape the dark Finnish winter, he casually mentions, with some displeasure, that Finland, along with Sweden and 29 NATO countries, is participating in the NATO military exercises, Trident Juncture 18 (TRJE18), in the north of Norway. It is the largest of its kind in Norway since the 1980s, ie, before the end of the Cold War.
Part of the exercise includes air activity in the airspace not only of Norway but of Sweden and Finland. Although Sweden and Finland are not formally members of NATO, their militaries have been increasingly integrated into NATO military plans. As for NATO member Norway, it has hosted a permanent deployment of 700 U.S. marines from Camp LeJeune, North Carolina. The United Kingdom has announced that it will soon send some 800 commandos to re-enforce the U.S. military presence.
Statements, like those of NATO Secretary General Jens Stolenberg that “the exercises are not directed against any specific country” cannot be taken seriously. They are little more than public relations drivel. Of course the exercises are a major provocation against Russia, nothing less. Driven by Washington, if NATO is preparing for war, what kind of war could it be other than nuclear war. Read more…
Idlib Province, Syria…last mercenary stronghold, about to be liberated
As the dust settles now 23 days after the vile highly planned murder of Khashoggi, here are thoughts what happened and why, where the situation is going.
The most important development at the moment – the three main players center stage – Salman, Trump and Erdogan – are in the process of trying to work out some kind of triangular deal in order to stem the global anger over this incident. The essence of the deal is that neither King Salman nor his son, Mohammed bin Salman, will be held responsible for Jamal Kashoggi’s vile murder, a number of Saudi intelligence officers and military personnel will be targeted (and have already) as fall guys. There is a good deal of horse trading going on over what Saudi will have to give in exchange, some of the parameters of which are discussed below. Will the deal hold? Or will it break apart?
What has come rushing to the surface though in a most open manner is the profound bankruptcy, backwardness of the Saudi government as well as the long-term bankruptcy of the U.S.-Saudi political and economic cooperation. None of this is new to anyone having followed those relations over the years, but now they come out of the closet, so to speak. The allusion of Saudi as “a moderate” Arab state has just suffered an irreparable blow to their image.
As to how it will effect the balance of power in the Middle East in general and U.S. Saudi relations in particular, given how much Washington has invested in this relationship, most especially the Trump Administration, it is no so easy to see the U.S. changing course. Israel too is counting on Salman’s political survival as the alliance between Riyadh and Tel Aviv, long in the shadows, has come public full force of late. That said, there are pressures building up under the surface, both in Saudi and in Washington and who knows in what manner they will burst forth. Read more…
While the media focuses on the brutal murder of one man, admittedly a heinous act, the UN Warns 10 Million More Yemenis Expected to Starve to Death by End of Year. According to the UN, the number of Yemenis in danger of starving to death would rise from the current figure of 8.4 million to 18.4 million by this December. That’s three times the estimated death toll of Jews killed during the Holocaust.
The murder and dismemberment of Saudi journalist and political insider Jamal Kashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul Turkey has triggered a storm of protest, unprecedented in many ways. He certainly is not the first journalist who has been killed in the line of duty nor the only Saudi a victim of his country’s repressive practices. Nor, despite the effort to paint him as such, was he a great democrat nor particularly that much of a dissident if one is objective about it. Instead he was the consummate insider with a long history of being close to certain members of the Saudi royal family. One commentator simply put it “he bet on the wrong princes.”
Why was Kashoggi murdered in such a barbaric what did he know? Who benefits from his death? How is the whole affair shaping the geopolitics of the Middle East as the Syrian government, with Russian and Iranian support are preparing to cleanse Syria’s Idlib Province of mercenary forces? Will it change U.S.-Saudi Relations? Why is the Israeli media from the more conservative Jerusalem Post to the more liberal Haaretz – in tandem with Christian Fundamentalist ultra-conservative Pat Robinson publicly arguing against holding Saudi Arabia accountable (while saying little or nothing about the Saudi war against Yemen?
Tune in at KGNU’s Hemispheres “Middle East Dialogues” 1390 AM, 88.5 FM in Denver, live streamed at http://www.kgnu.org
As to what happened with Jamal Khashoggi and why…Frankly I don’t think we’ll ever know all the details…but now a nearly two weeks later there are some themes that are emerging…
Basically Khashossi is a man who knew too much, about Turkish, Saudi machinations here and there (Syria, 9-11) ..and with his death a number of possible embarrassments for both the Saudi and Turkish government are less likely to see the light of day. Plus as one knowledgeable commentator, As’ad Abukhalil, noted, “he did not bet on democracy in Saudi Arabia, he bet on the wrong princes.”
Ultimately, a man who is known to be a part of the Muslim Brotherhood network, yet close to the Wahhahbist leadership of Saudi Arabia not only has intimate knowledge of these two competing wings of Sunni Islam, but also probably knows what Washington has been up to as well. Thus for different reasons and probably with different levels of involvement, all three would not shed too many tears at his death and were willing to sacrifice him for “higher causes” – ie, protecting their own reputations.
There are some suggestions, yet to be proven – that all three of the main players – Saudi, Turkey and the U.S. had prior knowledge that some foul deed would occur to Khashoggi in the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul and to one degree or another are complicit in Khashoggi’s cruel fate. While the Saudis are ultimately responsible for killing him, one of their own, none of these three are innocent. A killing of this nature – torture, murder and the hack-sawing of the body – could not take place without the approval of the highest authorities in Saudi. To think otherwise is to more than a bit naive.
Mohammad bin Salman, de facto ruler of Saudi has changed the rules by which key decision sin the kingdom are made. Before his coming to power and instituting what amounts to a palace coup, decisions were actually made collectively by the king but in cooperation with those closest him. Salman dissolved that system and now rules virtually by himself. Read more…
Quivira National Wildlife Refuge, Cheyenne Bottoms, Fall, 2018
Returning to Cheyenne Bottoms and Quivira National Wildlife Reserve
We came a little earlier this year than last. The migratory birds are arriving from the north, feeding up a storm, waiting a few days until the winds die down and then heading to points south, the south Texas coast, Central America and even further. But the height of the migratory season at Cheyenne Bottoms and Quivira is still a couple of weeks away. Managed by the state of Kansas, Cheyenne Bottoms is just north of Great Bend, Kansas, Quivira, a national wildlife preserve, lies some 25 miles south of town.
Taken together the two wetlands are among the world’s most crowded migratory bird stop overs. The data from 143 weather stations gleaned from satellite radar predicts that some four billion – you read correctly – will fly from Canada over the United States during the fall migration this year. They will be met by another 700,000,000 avian residents of the lower 48 states and together the two groups, numbering 4,700,000,000 birds will head to points south this time of year. The birds passing through Cheyenne Bottoms and Quivira in Kansas are a part of a migration through what is called “the central flyover.” Read more…
United Steelworkers Protest at National Mining Hall of Fame 31st Induction Banquet – Denver, September 29, 2018
It was the 31st Induction Banquet of the National Mining Hall of Fame held at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in downtown Denver, a formal event of tuxedos, and women dressed to the nines. A friend pointed out that by some oversight that there are no miners who are in the National Mining Hall of Fame, only corporate types.
A small group of protesters gathered outside.The protest was organized by the United Steelworkers of America’s Local 5114 from Mullan, Idaho. A delegation from the union were protesting the unfair labor practices of of the Hecla Lucky Friday mine management. They were there to underline the refusal of Hecla Lucky Friday mine CEO, Phillip S. Baker, Jr ,attending the event. Several union members went inside to confront Baker
Production at the mine stopped on March 13, 2017. Since that day more than 560 days ago, the miners have been on strike. Since then, Hecla has used replacement workers for limited production. From April 2016 until the strike began, union workers stayed o the job without a contract for eleven months while negotiations proceeded, removing 3.6 million ounces of silver from Lucky Friday in 2016. CEO Phillips Baker described 2016’s production as “the most in sixteen years.”
As a result of the companies unfair labor practices, the state of Montana officially deemed Hecla and CEO Baker to be in violation of its “bad actor” law in a an effort to recoup over $30 million in environmental cleanup costs associated with another mine, the Pegasus Gold Corporation, where Baker was an executive until the company went bankrupt in 1998 leaving taxpayers with a massive bill.
CEO Baker made nearly $11.5 million between 2016 and 2017 – more than fifty
A delegation from Colorado WINS, state employees union representing 33,000 state employees is on hand to support USW 5114
times what the company pays its average hourly employee, but Hecla insists that major concessions from union workers are necessary to ensure the future of the mine. Protesters handed out information leaflets outside the hotel
View from the Left Bank: Rob Prince's Blog 