One sees, on occasion, bumper stickers [usually courtesy of Code Pink, but the sentiment probably predates them] proclaiming that "War Is Terrorism". The unspoken corollary should be "Pacifism is Murder". It might be ironic that another longtime ally of the US, South Korea, has been forced by political consideration involving matters outside of its own security to be forced to sit tight while under direct attack from a historical sworn existential enemy. I guess it isn't just Israel.
One personage who didn't buy into the classic doctrinaire pacifist fallacy was Yitzchak Rabin; despite, with great misgivings, having decided to embark on the Oslo process, he realized two things that have eluded other [if not all] peace processors: one, you make peace with your enemies, not your friends--meaning that said enemies don't suddenly become your friends; and, two, peacemaking is, counterintuitively, a messy business [as evidenced by his comment in the immediate aftermath of Oslo that "Arab governments do not operate on Western democratic principles". He knew who he was working with, and wasn't suffering from the illusion that a "new Middle East" was about to be created.]
Certainly we don't need to be reminded of the fallacies of doctrinaire pacifism and peace processors. But everyone else does.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Corrections
WE NOW KNOW that the Obama Administration was planning nall along to drag the political center as far left as possible, and when he made overtones during his inaugural about governing from the center, this is what he meant to happen.
WE NOW KNOW that the American people don’t want this, but the Administrsation and its leaders really didn’t care. This was a case, as they saw it, of enacting a program of social justice with or without anyone’s consent.
WE NOW KNOW that the Tea Party may become a force to be reckoned with on par with what the Christian Coalition used to be. Even if it remains an idea more than a movement, without a clear leader or tangible center of gravity [other than Sarah Palin], conservatives ignore it at their peril. Despite the fact that a few of their more visible prominent candidates lost high profile races [specifically, the O’Donnell and Angle losses], Tea Party gains far outweighed the losses.
WE NOW KNOW that Sarah Palin is not necessarily a lightweight on the order of a Dan Quayler, or even a Dubya. She has been positioning herself to run for it all ever since the last election ended, and she’s figured out how to do it…and get rich at the same time.
WHAT WE DON’T KNOW yet is whether there is a possibility of an analog to Clintonian “triangulation” occurring, whether Obamans plan to work with the new majority or take the stance of becoming a new party of “no”—that is, “no” to compromising with the new class. [Dick Morris has written that Obama’s program is so far left that no compromise, and hence no triangulation, is possible.]
It might just be right at this moment that Obama believes so strongly in his program that he’s willing to sacrifice his second term the same way he sacrificed 15 percent of his party’s House seats and the Speaker’s gavel. When LBJ passed the Civil rights Act, he commented that the Democrats had lost the South for generations. One wonders whether Obama thinks his program’s element of social justice is as lofty as Johnson’s and therefore worth the political price. Judging from the sympathetic media [CNN. MSNBC, et al] attempts to whitewash the magnitude of the electoral correction, one would think that the media certainly hopes not, but the question would remain when the President would ever get an inkling that he harbors two contradictory concepts in his head: social engineering and further electoral success.
WE NOW KNOW that the American people don’t want this, but the Administrsation and its leaders really didn’t care. This was a case, as they saw it, of enacting a program of social justice with or without anyone’s consent.
WE NOW KNOW that the Tea Party may become a force to be reckoned with on par with what the Christian Coalition used to be. Even if it remains an idea more than a movement, without a clear leader or tangible center of gravity [other than Sarah Palin], conservatives ignore it at their peril. Despite the fact that a few of their more visible prominent candidates lost high profile races [specifically, the O’Donnell and Angle losses], Tea Party gains far outweighed the losses.
WE NOW KNOW that Sarah Palin is not necessarily a lightweight on the order of a Dan Quayler, or even a Dubya. She has been positioning herself to run for it all ever since the last election ended, and she’s figured out how to do it…and get rich at the same time.
WHAT WE DON’T KNOW yet is whether there is a possibility of an analog to Clintonian “triangulation” occurring, whether Obamans plan to work with the new majority or take the stance of becoming a new party of “no”—that is, “no” to compromising with the new class. [Dick Morris has written that Obama’s program is so far left that no compromise, and hence no triangulation, is possible.]
It might just be right at this moment that Obama believes so strongly in his program that he’s willing to sacrifice his second term the same way he sacrificed 15 percent of his party’s House seats and the Speaker’s gavel. When LBJ passed the Civil rights Act, he commented that the Democrats had lost the South for generations. One wonders whether Obama thinks his program’s element of social justice is as lofty as Johnson’s and therefore worth the political price. Judging from the sympathetic media [CNN. MSNBC, et al] attempts to whitewash the magnitude of the electoral correction, one would think that the media certainly hopes not, but the question would remain when the President would ever get an inkling that he harbors two contradictory concepts in his head: social engineering and further electoral success.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
From Republikarma to Barackarma
He plugs one leak, and a bigger one develops. The President might want to conjure up the spirit of Nixon and call the plumbers.
One can never truly say whether the tide has turned, and whether the various conservative tendencies that used to pop up to bite Republicans in the ass has abated somewhat, and now the Democrats’ almost genetic propensity for political self-destruction will now assert itself in its truest form. The President, who was such a beneficiary of the Republican refusal to play by their own rules and the economic mess that resulted, now has created himself a dual quagmire, almost completely of his own volition.
The first irony involves BP. No one can blame him directly for the disaster, and the culture of deregulation and corner-cutting that led to it is a particularly conservative invention; but, Republicans will not be blamed for it, because even when the disaster reached the proportions that it did because they did not see the need to perform any mea culpa for it [it helps immensely that they were the minority power]. Instead, the President looked both impotent and hypocritical, because he couldn’t stop the leak faster and he was loath to actually punish BP too publicly, oil companies—even foreign ones—being not only too big but too important to fail. This despite the fact that he was considered to be a true environmentalist president.
The second irony involves the Afghanistan war and the leaks surrounding both this and the previous Administration’s conduct thereof, which seems to be reminiscent of the incidents surrounding the Pentagon Papers’ revelations of a Democratic administration’s prosecution of a war they believed to be unwinnable. If this the moment where the President has truly assumed ownership of this war, it was certainly not in the way he intended: he will be saddled with the responsibility of things he had no control over at the time [Bush’s policies] because the current leaks indicate he has no control over events now, if he ever did. Attempts to blame the previous administration—which even Nixon realized wouldn’t work in 1971, which was why he tried to quash the Papers—will not only backfire; it would remind the public that there was another war that everyone was making a fuss about that seems to have been forgotten about will continue to be forgotten about, and Obama will find out just how recursive karma is.
In short, Obama has succeeded in taking what might have been once been considered two major conservative-created failures and making them his own. At this point, Republicans might actually best be advised to rest on their laurels to a point, because if they don’t and they continue their infighting, they might remind the electorate of why they became the minority party in the first place. Instead, if they sit back and let the Democrats continue to fail the way Rush hoped they would, they might reap the greatest benefit come November 2010, and maybe 2012.
One can never truly say whether the tide has turned, and whether the various conservative tendencies that used to pop up to bite Republicans in the ass has abated somewhat, and now the Democrats’ almost genetic propensity for political self-destruction will now assert itself in its truest form. The President, who was such a beneficiary of the Republican refusal to play by their own rules and the economic mess that resulted, now has created himself a dual quagmire, almost completely of his own volition.
The first irony involves BP. No one can blame him directly for the disaster, and the culture of deregulation and corner-cutting that led to it is a particularly conservative invention; but, Republicans will not be blamed for it, because even when the disaster reached the proportions that it did because they did not see the need to perform any mea culpa for it [it helps immensely that they were the minority power]. Instead, the President looked both impotent and hypocritical, because he couldn’t stop the leak faster and he was loath to actually punish BP too publicly, oil companies—even foreign ones—being not only too big but too important to fail. This despite the fact that he was considered to be a true environmentalist president.
The second irony involves the Afghanistan war and the leaks surrounding both this and the previous Administration’s conduct thereof, which seems to be reminiscent of the incidents surrounding the Pentagon Papers’ revelations of a Democratic administration’s prosecution of a war they believed to be unwinnable. If this the moment where the President has truly assumed ownership of this war, it was certainly not in the way he intended: he will be saddled with the responsibility of things he had no control over at the time [Bush’s policies] because the current leaks indicate he has no control over events now, if he ever did. Attempts to blame the previous administration—which even Nixon realized wouldn’t work in 1971, which was why he tried to quash the Papers—will not only backfire; it would remind the public that there was another war that everyone was making a fuss about that seems to have been forgotten about will continue to be forgotten about, and Obama will find out just how recursive karma is.
In short, Obama has succeeded in taking what might have been once been considered two major conservative-created failures and making them his own. At this point, Republicans might actually best be advised to rest on their laurels to a point, because if they don’t and they continue their infighting, they might remind the electorate of why they became the minority party in the first place. Instead, if they sit back and let the Democrats continue to fail the way Rush hoped they would, they might reap the greatest benefit come November 2010, and maybe 2012.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
There Will Be Peace--When:
I mostly—no, completely--disagree with Nick Kristof’s take on the Arab-Jew conflict. And I definitely disagree with his conclusions drawn in his column in today’s NY Times.
However, I found one paragraph particularly instructive, if counterintuitively so.
I reprinted the particular paragraph as it was, then replaced “Israel” with “Islam” and “Palestinian” with “Jew”.
When a salient paragraph can be written the second way, there MIGHT be peace in the Middle East.
Kristof:“The most cogent critiques of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians invariably come from Israel’s own human rights organizations. The most lucid unraveling of Israel’s founding mythology comes from Israeli historians. The deepest critiques of Israel’s historical claims come from Israeli archeologists. This more noble Israel, refusing to retreat from its values even in times of fear and stress, is a model for the world. “
Me:“The most cogent critiques of Islam’s treatment of Jews invariably come from Islam’s own human rights organizations [sic!]. The most lucid unraveling of Islam’s founding mythology comes from Islam’s historians. The deepest critiques of Islam’s historical claims come from Islam’s archeologists. This more noble Islam, refusing to retreat from its values even in times of fear and stress, is a model for the world. “
However, I found one paragraph particularly instructive, if counterintuitively so.
I reprinted the particular paragraph as it was, then replaced “Israel” with “Islam” and “Palestinian” with “Jew”.
When a salient paragraph can be written the second way, there MIGHT be peace in the Middle East.
Kristof:“The most cogent critiques of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians invariably come from Israel’s own human rights organizations. The most lucid unraveling of Israel’s founding mythology comes from Israeli historians. The deepest critiques of Israel’s historical claims come from Israeli archeologists. This more noble Israel, refusing to retreat from its values even in times of fear and stress, is a model for the world. “
Me:“The most cogent critiques of Islam’s treatment of Jews invariably come from Islam’s own human rights organizations [sic!]. The most lucid unraveling of Islam’s founding mythology comes from Islam’s historians. The deepest critiques of Islam’s historical claims come from Islam’s archeologists. This more noble Islam, refusing to retreat from its values even in times of fear and stress, is a model for the world. “
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Shul Cake
Shul cake, for those of you who haven’t had the experience of going to a Kiddush, is generally the cheapest sponge cake available next to the schnapps and herring. Sometimes one can sing “Happy Birthday” to the cake. Personally, I love Shul Cake. But not the kind I’m about to describe.
In this pages I’ve definitely been critical of all three of the “great” monotheisms. From the outset, I have not spared my own co-religionists, especially when it comes to “washing dirty laundry in public” when trying to give the impression that one’s laundry never gets dirty in the first place.
At the risk of employing another cliché, it seems certain groups of Rabbis want to eat their cake and have it too. [Talmudic of me; that actually is the way the statement is supposed to go]. Two incidents in the news this week underscore the salience of said cliché.
The first story has to do with the brouhaha surrounding the synagogue in Syracuse that had the “temerity”, as an Orthodox congregation, to appoint TWO women as president of the lay synagogue board. Not, mind you, Rabbis, or Rabbas, or any other perceived hidden equivalent: this was the lay board. It seems in response, the National Council of Young Israel has decided to expel the congregation, and in thesponse to THAT, there has been a vote of no confidence tabled by nearly 150 member congregations of the council.
Now, I’m not one to raise issues of Jewish law unless they seem to be absolutely clear, and this isn’t one of those cases. I personally believe there shouldn’t be a problem with this even from the perspective of Orthodox law, but I could be wrong. However, what the NCYI has done is to avoid the question and claim that the expulsion has to do with unpaid dues. This is one of those cases where, for whatever the reason, those in charge of the Council should be forced to stand up and state their position and not hide behind technicalities. If you believe this is wrong, you’ll endure the dissolution of your organization, like Rabbi Naftali Berlin did when the Russian authorities tried to take over the Volozhin Yeshiva; he closed it. You can’t eat your cake and have it too.
More disturbing was the next story, that the Rabbinical Board of Queens—the “Va’ad”—allowed a member under a cloud of suspicion that he has “inappropriate contact” with students was allowed to resign—in October!!!—without any reference to said “cloud” hanging over him. A prominent religious psychologist accurately called out the Va’ad on this by claiming that they had “protect[ed] one of their own” by “g[iving] him a hekhser and ma[king] him kosher”. No further explanation is necessary. No one should give credence to any reason given for allowing this rabbi to stay on; if the board wants to avoid a defamation suit, it can pay him to do nothing, like the rubber room teachers.
My reasons for publiczing events like this and contributing to the pressure upon these bodies—aside from possible personal reasons, as I was victimized as a child by staff in two different right-wing Orthodox settings—is that Orthodoxy MUST be morally consistent, and they MUST learn to adjust to the fact that their behavior will be placed under a microscope, because their way of life announces automatically that its adherents are held to an ostensibly “higher” standard of conduct.
There would be nothing wrong if there would be an admission that some of our co-religionists stray from even basic human standards; it happens. But when disingeuousness is the order of the day, the very goal of the religious behaviors are not only short-circuited, they are re-presented as the height of hypocrisy. Adding fuel to the fire are then accusation emanating from clerical quarters that the bad press is simply the result of a hostile culture and media, almost as if these issues would go away of the media and culture would go away. Well, they’re not, and in this case, they may be part of the solution if they force certain powers that be to pay attention.
No cake for you.
In this pages I’ve definitely been critical of all three of the “great” monotheisms. From the outset, I have not spared my own co-religionists, especially when it comes to “washing dirty laundry in public” when trying to give the impression that one’s laundry never gets dirty in the first place.
At the risk of employing another cliché, it seems certain groups of Rabbis want to eat their cake and have it too. [Talmudic of me; that actually is the way the statement is supposed to go]. Two incidents in the news this week underscore the salience of said cliché.
The first story has to do with the brouhaha surrounding the synagogue in Syracuse that had the “temerity”, as an Orthodox congregation, to appoint TWO women as president of the lay synagogue board. Not, mind you, Rabbis, or Rabbas, or any other perceived hidden equivalent: this was the lay board. It seems in response, the National Council of Young Israel has decided to expel the congregation, and in thesponse to THAT, there has been a vote of no confidence tabled by nearly 150 member congregations of the council.
Now, I’m not one to raise issues of Jewish law unless they seem to be absolutely clear, and this isn’t one of those cases. I personally believe there shouldn’t be a problem with this even from the perspective of Orthodox law, but I could be wrong. However, what the NCYI has done is to avoid the question and claim that the expulsion has to do with unpaid dues. This is one of those cases where, for whatever the reason, those in charge of the Council should be forced to stand up and state their position and not hide behind technicalities. If you believe this is wrong, you’ll endure the dissolution of your organization, like Rabbi Naftali Berlin did when the Russian authorities tried to take over the Volozhin Yeshiva; he closed it. You can’t eat your cake and have it too.
More disturbing was the next story, that the Rabbinical Board of Queens—the “Va’ad”—allowed a member under a cloud of suspicion that he has “inappropriate contact” with students was allowed to resign—in October!!!—without any reference to said “cloud” hanging over him. A prominent religious psychologist accurately called out the Va’ad on this by claiming that they had “protect[ed] one of their own” by “g[iving] him a hekhser and ma[king] him kosher”. No further explanation is necessary. No one should give credence to any reason given for allowing this rabbi to stay on; if the board wants to avoid a defamation suit, it can pay him to do nothing, like the rubber room teachers.
My reasons for publiczing events like this and contributing to the pressure upon these bodies—aside from possible personal reasons, as I was victimized as a child by staff in two different right-wing Orthodox settings—is that Orthodoxy MUST be morally consistent, and they MUST learn to adjust to the fact that their behavior will be placed under a microscope, because their way of life announces automatically that its adherents are held to an ostensibly “higher” standard of conduct.
There would be nothing wrong if there would be an admission that some of our co-religionists stray from even basic human standards; it happens. But when disingeuousness is the order of the day, the very goal of the religious behaviors are not only short-circuited, they are re-presented as the height of hypocrisy. Adding fuel to the fire are then accusation emanating from clerical quarters that the bad press is simply the result of a hostile culture and media, almost as if these issues would go away of the media and culture would go away. Well, they’re not, and in this case, they may be part of the solution if they force certain powers that be to pay attention.
No cake for you.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Oil, Water, and Other Strange Bedfellows
The ongoing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has given rise to all sorts of “obvious” conclusions to be drawn, specifically that America’s addiction to oil is a proximate—if not THE proximate—cause of all environmental and natural despoliation, and only drastic legislative measures to curb said hankering for fossil fuels will ensure the continued survival of the human race.
More specifically, if there was a more propitious opportunity to pass so called “climate-change” legislation, one might be hard pressed to find it.
Really, one shouldn’t have to overtax one’s mental faculties to discern reasons why this ain’t necessarily so. However, in case one might need some sort of “learning aid” to help one clear the muddy [if not oily] waters of such thinking, consider the recent rumors that the “Oracle” of environmentalism—former Vice-President Al Gore—has taken the notion of “common cause” to its most logical conclusion with fellow traveler and Gulfstream environmentalist extraordinaire Laurie David, the woman who fought the scourge of the SUV from her private jet.
It seems as if Gore, whose carbon footprint is notoriously nearly as wide as David’s, has finally provided a salient analog for his purported “environmental science”: it’s as solid as his 40-year marriage to Tipper. Then again, one might wonder whether the Gore’s ill-advised PDA at the 2000 Democratic National Convention also provided a prescient analog to oil spills: the ick factor.
In any case, the Obamans—ostensibly the most pro-environment and anti-corporate administration in US history—have progressively more tightly bound their already rather securely tied hands until mere attempts indignant wringing have induced sympathy arthritis in even the President’s most avowed political enemies. Said spectacle really serves to illustrate two notions which are, nevertheless, as elementary as they are contradictory.
One is that, as much as we NEED our oil, there’s a LOT of it out there [for once, we can’t seem to get it to stop flowing], and much of it rather inconveniently located [hello—Middle East?] There is no reason—even in the face of the current environmental tragedy [and let’s face it, that’s what it is, and you can be a global warming “denier” like this writer is and still understand that]—that we not make any and all attempts to locate and drill for oil wherever we can find it in places other than the Fertile and Golden Crescents…IF—and this is a big IF—
--we figure out how to REGULATE, how to actually implement required legal safeguards and basic procedures, which by all accounts, seem to have been blatantly discarded by BP which directly led to the current mess.
As previously noted in these pages, Big Oil isn't going anywhere. Alternative energy strategies will be pursued when we have no other alternative, pace Churchill’s observation that Americans do the right thing when they’ve exhausted all other possibilities. However, if Big Oil were smart, they could turn this crisis somewhat to their advantage by working with legislators to allow some semblance of independent regulation and monitoring into the industry by throwing BP under the bus, by saying, in effect, “We don’t want this to happen again; who wants to waste all that oil? What BP did was greedy AND stupid. We may be greedy, but if keeping the landscape clean will save our profits, we’re all for helping clean this up. Do to BP what you want; we’ll help make sure this never repeats itself.” If the public is actually prepared to expect and accept this level of disingenuousness, it may be the first step towards an eventual win-win: more oil and less disaster.
It won’t happen any other way.
More specifically, if there was a more propitious opportunity to pass so called “climate-change” legislation, one might be hard pressed to find it.
Really, one shouldn’t have to overtax one’s mental faculties to discern reasons why this ain’t necessarily so. However, in case one might need some sort of “learning aid” to help one clear the muddy [if not oily] waters of such thinking, consider the recent rumors that the “Oracle” of environmentalism—former Vice-President Al Gore—has taken the notion of “common cause” to its most logical conclusion with fellow traveler and Gulfstream environmentalist extraordinaire Laurie David, the woman who fought the scourge of the SUV from her private jet.
It seems as if Gore, whose carbon footprint is notoriously nearly as wide as David’s, has finally provided a salient analog for his purported “environmental science”: it’s as solid as his 40-year marriage to Tipper. Then again, one might wonder whether the Gore’s ill-advised PDA at the 2000 Democratic National Convention also provided a prescient analog to oil spills: the ick factor.
In any case, the Obamans—ostensibly the most pro-environment and anti-corporate administration in US history—have progressively more tightly bound their already rather securely tied hands until mere attempts indignant wringing have induced sympathy arthritis in even the President’s most avowed political enemies. Said spectacle really serves to illustrate two notions which are, nevertheless, as elementary as they are contradictory.
One is that, as much as we NEED our oil, there’s a LOT of it out there [for once, we can’t seem to get it to stop flowing], and much of it rather inconveniently located [hello—Middle East?] There is no reason—even in the face of the current environmental tragedy [and let’s face it, that’s what it is, and you can be a global warming “denier” like this writer is and still understand that]—that we not make any and all attempts to locate and drill for oil wherever we can find it in places other than the Fertile and Golden Crescents…IF—and this is a big IF—
--we figure out how to REGULATE, how to actually implement required legal safeguards and basic procedures, which by all accounts, seem to have been blatantly discarded by BP which directly led to the current mess.
As previously noted in these pages, Big Oil isn't going anywhere. Alternative energy strategies will be pursued when we have no other alternative, pace Churchill’s observation that Americans do the right thing when they’ve exhausted all other possibilities. However, if Big Oil were smart, they could turn this crisis somewhat to their advantage by working with legislators to allow some semblance of independent regulation and monitoring into the industry by throwing BP under the bus, by saying, in effect, “We don’t want this to happen again; who wants to waste all that oil? What BP did was greedy AND stupid. We may be greedy, but if keeping the landscape clean will save our profits, we’re all for helping clean this up. Do to BP what you want; we’ll help make sure this never repeats itself.” If the public is actually prepared to expect and accept this level of disingenuousness, it may be the first step towards an eventual win-win: more oil and less disaster.
It won’t happen any other way.
Monday, June 7, 2010
A Proportionate Response to Helen Thomas
Lost in the dark cloud of the unjustifiable brouhaha surrounding the terrorist-supporting Gaza-bound flotilli [if that sounds bacterial, even better] is the silver lining of the swift retribution meted out to that erstwhile pillar of the Fourth Estate, Helen Thomas, for her revealing antisemitic ramble.
One might actually take heart [warily, to be sure, but still] in the fact that some diatribes aimed at Jews, Israel and their supporters are still considered out of bounds enough that said diatribes and their utterers are stigmatized and that a measure [however insufficent] of opprobrium is elicited.
Following a modicum of give and take on my facebook stati regarding my rather draconian ill wishes for Ms. Thomas, based loosely on Yiddishist sentiments ["She should live to 120. And spend every second of those 30 years in endless pain and agony"] and the subsquent commentary ad loc regarding the apparently disporoportionate nature of my statements and wishes, I finally arrived at a formulaic response to Ms. Thomas' comments:
Helen Thomas should get the HELL out of this country and go back where SHE came from, which, I think, is Lebanon.
I'm sure her commentary will be much appreciated there.
One might actually take heart [warily, to be sure, but still] in the fact that some diatribes aimed at Jews, Israel and their supporters are still considered out of bounds enough that said diatribes and their utterers are stigmatized and that a measure [however insufficent] of opprobrium is elicited.
Following a modicum of give and take on my facebook stati regarding my rather draconian ill wishes for Ms. Thomas, based loosely on Yiddishist sentiments ["She should live to 120. And spend every second of those 30 years in endless pain and agony"] and the subsquent commentary ad loc regarding the apparently disporoportionate nature of my statements and wishes, I finally arrived at a formulaic response to Ms. Thomas' comments:
Helen Thomas should get the HELL out of this country and go back where SHE came from, which, I think, is Lebanon.
I'm sure her commentary will be much appreciated there.
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