I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. W.H. Auden, September 1, 1939 Understanding the more than seven decades of Israeli – Palestinian conflict, including the recent rounds of extreme violence, starts and ends with three words. All of it. Zionism, a religious nationalist movement for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, emerged in Central and Eastern Europe in the late 19th century, and the Holocaust gave it the final impetus. On November 29, 1947, the United Nations partitioned Palestine, which since 1922 had been governed…
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Ukraine Never Was Russia, Never Will Be
On February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin launched a massive military assault, a war, on Ukraine, because he claims, Russians and Ukrainians are “one people, a single whole,” and Ukraine is not a real country, only a part of Russia that has fallen into the hands of “fascists, nationalists and corrupt puppets controlled by the West.” Turning truth on its head. The big lie. Putin condescendingly calls Ukrainians “little Russians,” the “Younger Brothers” to Russia’s “Big Brother.” If they are brothers, it has been an appallingly abusive family relationship for the last 300 years, one replete with…
Antarctica
February 2018, the ice-rated expedition ship Hebridean Sky, 110 passengers and 70 crew, throttles up the Beagle Channel out of Ushuaia at the southern tip of Patagonia. Anticipation and, yes, trepidation hang in the air. Just ahead, a wild and woolly 48-hour, 620-mile crossing of the Drake Passage en route to the peninsular pinkie finger of Antarctica. In the Drake Passage, average depth over 11,000′, where the Pacific, Atlantic and Southern oceans converge, the powerful Antarctic Circumpolar Current is funneled west to east at a staggering 125 – 200 million cubic feet per second, more than 100…
The Handshake
Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color line with the Montreal Royals, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ AAA International League farm team, on Opening Day, April 18, 1946. Wearing No. 9 – not the 42 for which he is now famous – and starting at second base, he had four hits, including a three-run homer, in a 14 – 1 win against the Jersey City Giants at Roosevelt Field in Newark. But the iconic moment that day was not Robinson’s homer, it was a handshake. In the third inning, two on and nobody out, Robinson smashed the first pitch 330′…
The Chilling Cost of Open Carry & Assault Weapons
Most Americans were appalled, horrified, by the Trump-instigated January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, in which five people were killed and 140 injured. But it could have been worse, much worse. Contemplate what the toll would have been if the Trump mob had invaded the Capitol with guns. Fortunately, in the District of Columbia all firearms must be registered, and it is unlawful to possess one without a license, issued only after a 10-day waiting period and background check. Open carry, assault weapons and magazines with more than a 10-round capacity are banned outright. But…
One on One with the Dalai Lama
Twenty-nine years ago today, I sat knee to knee with the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, at his home just outside Dharamshala in Northern India. We talked for one hour. The road there was long, five years and thousands of miles. It started in Chengdu, Sichuan province, April 1986. I arrived there with two friends via Japan and Hong Kong, five weeks into what for me was to be a 90-day journey around the world. China then was just opening up to Western travelers, one region, one village, at a time, and backpackers like us, on our…
Say Again? Who’s Packing the Courts?
After majority leader Mitch McConnell rammed Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination through the Senate only eight days before the 2020 election, Senator Ed Markey (D. MA) declared, “When Democrats control the Senate in the next Congress, we must abolish the filibuster and expand the Supreme Court.” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D. NY): “You may win this vote, and Amy Coney Barrett may become the next associate justice of the Supreme Court. But you will never, never get your credibility back. And the next time the American people give Democrats a majority in this chamber, you will have forfeited…
Trump is Trying to Steal Our Election. Again.
Donald Trump will stop at nothing to stay in power. For starters, despite the pandemic, and putting self-preservation above public health, he is trying to make it more difficult to vote by mail because, he says, “Mail ballots, they cheat.” For the last six months Trump has repeatedly tweeted that voting by mail, especially universal mail-in voting – where every registered voter receives a ballot by mail and votes by mail – will make 2020 “the most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history. . . . The universal mail-ins that are just sent all over the place,” he…
Why These Posts?
“My name is Khaled. I don’t wish to alarm you, but watch your back, my friend over there wants to kill you.” The first week of May 1986, Urumchi airport in far western China, I was waiting for a flight to Kashgar en route to the Khunjerab Pass over the Karakoram mountains into Pakistan. A well-dressed man in his 40’s, Egyptian it turned out, had sidled up to me. Over his shoulder, 20 feet away, a younger man glared, giving me the evil eye. I extended my hand. “Thank you for the warning, but why on…
Intro. A Century of U.S Meddling in the Middle East
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana. “I’ve got news for Mr. Santayana: we’re doomed to repeat the past no matter what.” Kurt Vonnegut. George W. Bush opened Pandora’s box when he ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Beyond the phony intelligence, i.e., lies, about weapons of mass destruction and the utterly bogus notion that Iraq was involved in 9/11 – incredibly, 28% of Americans, 40% of Republicans, still believe that – the worst of it is that no one in the Bush administration bothered to think about what…
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