Am I the last to know?

Here it is, 10:30 pm on June 4th -- and I just ran across a blurb that says today, June 4th, is National Doughnut Day. The first Friday in June -- it has been so since 1938, when it was established to honor the women who passed out free doughnuts to World War I soldiers.

And I didn't know.

It's worse: Krispy Kreme and Dunkin' Donuts were giving away free doughnuts.

I remember once when I was about 10 years old and working in my father's grocery store, I ate a whole dozen of the Krispy Kremes, all by myself. They just melt in your mouth -- and clog up your arteries.

My cardiologist is happy that I didn't know about National Doughnut Day. He's probably behind the conspiracy that didn't let me know until 10:30 on the night of, too late to rush out and find the original Krispy Kreme shop on Ponce de Leon still open.

[sigh]

Ralph

Israel V: control of the media message

Glenn Greenwald, noted writer for Salon.com, reports about Israeli attempts to suppress any accounts of the flotilla raid by passengers or newspeople on the boat. Now their version is beginning to emerge. Greenwald writes:

Israel was taking extreme steps to suppress all evidence about what happened other than its own official version. They detained the flotilla passengers and barred the media from speaking with them, thus, as The NYT put it, "refusing to permit journalists access to witnesses who might contradict Israel's version of events." They detained the journalists who were on the ship for days and seized their film, video and cameras. And worst of all, the IDF -- while still refusing to disclose the full, unedited, raw footage of the incident -- quickly released an extremely edited video of their commandos landing on the ship, which failed even to address, let alone refute, the claim of the passengers: that the Israelis were shooting at the ship before the commandos were on board. . . .

As Juan Cole says: "Many passengers have now confirmed that they were fired on even before the commandos had boots on the deck. Presumably it is this suppressive fire that killed or wounded some passengers and which provoked an angry reaction and an attack on the commandos." . . .

Nobody's claims are entitled to an automatic assumption of truth, including these passengers. But as Mackey argues, all of this compellingly underscores the need for an independent -- not an Israeli-led -- investigation.

I agree.

Ralph

Repubs say the darndest things

1. Alaska's Republican Rep. Don Young insists that the worst oil spill in U.S. history is "not an environmental disaster." Oh, no, it's just nature taking its course, a natural phenomenon, he says.

"Oil has seeped into this ocean for centuries, will continue to do it. During World War II there was over 10 million barrels of oil spilt from ships, and no natural catastrophe. ... We will lose some birds, we will lose some fixed sealife, but overall it will recover."

2. Louisiana's Governor Bobby Jindal and Rep. Vitter put the economics of oil money ahead of the enrivonmental effects on their state. Vitter just naturally calls for more drilling, not less, because . . . well, let's just say he gets a lot of money from oil companies.

Jindal at least has the intelligence to make a more logical case: Louisiana's economy is already in bad enough shape. A moratorium on off shore drilling will cost more jobs. He calls on Obama to lift the moratorium, at least on drilling permits that have already been let and meet the regulatory standards.

The problem is BP supposedly had met the regulatory standards, even though we now know that they had not. We need a complete house clearing in the regulatory agency to get rid of those who have cozy and lucrative ties to the oil industry.

3. But, of course, our prize goes to Sarah Palin, who says on her FaceBook (where she blathers even worse than in person, if that's possible) that the oil leak disaster in the Gulf is the fault of those environmentalists who have blocked drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, because that forces them to drill in the more risky Gulf waters.

Oh, I get it. If you gave me the keys to Ft. Knox, I wouldn't need to cheat on my income tax.

Yes, and by the same reasoning, we could say that it's Bush and Cheney's fault for not curbing gasoline-guzzlers during their eight years in charge. They only encouraged our insane appetite for the stuff, which made drilling in the Gulf waters "necessary."

4. Where's Michele Bachmann lately? She's been relatively quiet, not making zany headlines. Could it be that her re-election campaign thinks it might be good if she looked a little less loony going into November.?

Ralph

Israel IV: Amos Oz

Israeli novelist and essayist Amos Oz lives in Israel, writes in Hebrew, and is a leading spokesman for a non-violent solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In an op-ed in today's New York Times, Oz writes:

For 2,000 years, the Jews knew the force of force only in the form of lashes to our own backs. For several decades now, we have been able to wield force ourselves — and this power has, again and again, intoxicated us. . . . [E]ver since the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel has been fixated on military force. To a man with a big hammer, says the proverb, every problem looks like a nail.

Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip and Monday’s violent interception of civilian vessels carrying humanitarian aid there are the rank products of this mantra that what can’t be done by force can be done with even greater force. This view originates in the mistaken assumption that Hamas’s control of Gaza can be ended by force of arms or, in more general terms, that the Palestinian problem can be crushed instead of solved.

But Hamas is not just a terrorist organization. Hamas is an idea, a desperate and fanatical idea that grew out of the desolation and frustration of many Palestinians. No idea has ever been defeated by force — not by siege, not by bombardment, not by being flattened with tank treads and not by marine commandos. To defeat an idea, you have to offer a better idea, a more attractive and acceptable one.

Thus, the only way for Israel to edge out Hamas would be to quickly reach an agreement with the Palestinians on the establishment of an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as defined by the 1967 borders, with its capital in East Jerusalem. . . .

Even if Israel seizes 100 more ships on their way to Gaza, . . . force cannot solve the problem that we are not alone in this land, and the Palestinians are not alone in this land. . . . Until Israelis and Palestinians recognize the logical consequences of this simple fact, we will all live in a permanent state of siege — Gaza under an Israeli siege, Israel under an international and Arab siege.

I do not discount the importance of force. Woe to the country that discounts the efficacy of force. Without it Israel would not be able to survive a single day. But we cannot allow ourselves to forget for even a moment that force is effective only as a preventative — to prevent the destruction and conquest of Israel, to protect our lives and freedom. Every attempt to use force not as a preventive measure, not in self-defense, but instead as a means of smashing problems and squashing ideas, will lead to more disasters, just like the one we brought on ourselves in international waters, opposite Gaza’s shores.

I heard Amos Oz in an NPR interview years ago saying the same thing. His is a passionate voice, spoken out of love for his land and his people, yet seeing the futility of violence as a solution for either side.

Ralph

Money talks

Whether it's oil company lobbyists, small town bribery of elected officials, or out of state Mormons financing the Proposition 8 campaign in California, money talks and influences results.

Former Mormon missionary Reed Cowan, has made a documentary film of the church's efforts to pass California's Proposition 8 to outlaw same-sex marriage. The film, "8: The Mormon Proposition," uses personal narratives to portray church leaders' role in raising money, including telling members how much they were expected to give based on their income and threatening their membership if they did not contribute.

The interesting thing is that California does not have a lot of Mormons -- less than 2% of its population, yet according to the film more than 70% of donations for Prop8 came from Mormons. A strategist for Protect Marriage said that, of the early volunteers who went door to door in California to promote Prop 8, 80 to 90% of them were Mormons. They know how to do the door to door thing.

That's not illegal, but it does raise questions about how much Prop8 really represented the true values of Californians. I'm not suggesting election fraud, but the amount of money that flooded into tv ads -- and the armies of volunteers knocking on doors to spread disinformation and outright lies -- all took its toll.

It's as if Georgia were voting on a civil rights issue in the 1960s and the Indiana Ku Klux Klan descended on the state, spreading the word that giving Negroes the right to vote would lead to the rape of our women, force schools to teach inter-racial marriage, and destroy the whole fabric of our society. That, in effect, is what the Mormons -- with the Catholics' Knights of Columbus joining them -- did with their massive anti-gay campaign.

Ralph

Israel III: Gaza blockade

Both sides have video footage and versions of events that back their claims about what happened aboard the ship bringing aid to the blockaded Palestinians in Gaza.

What seems obvious to me is that they're both right and both wrong. Of course, the flotilla was meant to be a provocation, as well as bringing humanitarian aid. The Israeli's are probably correct in saying they offered to let the aid be delivered another way, and that was refused.

Those details miss the point. This is about the morality of the blockade itself. The fight was not about some tons of food and medicine being delivered; it was about world approval. The flotilla of humanitarian aid was an attempt to influence world opinion about the morality of the blockade. Even if it is legal, is it right?

Of course, it is not right either for Palestinians to throw rocks and rockets at Israelis. But much of the western world's people do not look approvingly when a powerful nation with abundant resources lays siege and blocks passage into and out of a poor and weaker nation, whose people are suffering and are no major threat to the region.

As much as I feel for the historical plight of the Jews, when Israel then becomes the oppressor and responds disproportionally to the provocations, my sympathy begins to shift to the underdog that could not possibly match them in resources or power. Their only recourse has been rocks and small-time rockets.

No solution is possible, however, as long as each clings to the role of victim. Mutual recognition of stalemate and mutual interests, brokered by a third party, is the only hope.

That's what I think.

Ralph

Israel II: Jews and Zionism

I was about to follow up on my May 23 blog about Peter Beinert's article, "Young American Jews and Zionism," with Foreign Policy's invited commentary, when news broke about the latest (apparent) heavy hand of Israel scuttling yet another U.S. major push to get peace negotiations re-started. The following is commentary from Foreign Policy magazine's Blake Hounshell, May 31st., 8:16 am, as the story is still breaking:

Why the Gaza Boat Deaths Are a Huge Deal

While we don't yet know all the facts, the apparent killing of at least 10 people aboard a ship bound for Gaza with humanitarian aid already has all the hallmarks of a massive public-relations disaster. . . .

. . . the international response has been swift. Turkey has recalled its ambassador and warned of "consequences," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for an investigation, European governments have expressed shock, and I imagine thousands of outside observers like me are wondering just what possessed the Israeli government to risk such an outcome when it sent naval commandos to board the vessel.

As Haaretz's Amos Harel puts it, "The damage that Israel has caused itself internationally can hardly be exaggerated."

Another liberal Haaretz commentator, Bradley Burston, comments, "We are no longer defending Israel. We are now defending the siege. The siege itself is becoming Israel's Vietnam.". . .

Israelis on the right end of the political spectrum -- and that is most of them these days -- are convinced there is a "propaganda war" against their country, that most if not all of the criticism is unfair . . . [A deputy foreignj minister] has already called the ships an "armada of hate and violence" and accused the activists of links to al Qaeda.

In other words, there's a huge unwillingness on the Israeli right to face reality -- that Israel is fast losing friends and allies in the world, and that this government in Jerusalem has only accelerated the shift. It's not hard to imagine boycott campaigns gaining momentum, damaging the Israeli economy and isolating the country diplomatically, especially in Europe.

The one thing that might extricate Israel from this mess is a violent response from the Palestinian side -- which never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Stay tuned.

Ralph

Rand Paul VII

The Kentucky legislature has passed a resolution declaring any form of discrimination to be inconsistent with American values.

Introduced by KY's only black state senator, Democrat Gerald Neal, it was an obvious response to Rand Paul's comments about the Civil Rights Act. Neal declared that Paul's remark had been "extreme" and had made a laughing stock of Kentucky.

It was adopted without objection from a mostly Republican legislature.

No, it won't change anyone's mind or likely anyone's vote. But it can be pointed to as an official repudiation of Paul's paleolibertarianism.

Ralph

Bush's answer: War

Here is a clip from an Oliver Stone documentary about South America, set to open in June. It is from an interview Stone did with former Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, apparently in Jan 2009, because at the end he says of Bush that he has only six days left (in office).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl446mXonu0

Here is the gist of the exchange:

Kirchner: I said a solution to the problems right now, I told Bush, is a Marshall Plan. And he grew angry. He said the Marshall Plan is a crazy idea of the Democrats. He said the best way to revitalize the economy is war. And that the United States has grown stronger with war.

Stone: War, he said that?

Kirchner: He said that. Those were his exact words.

Stone: Is he suggesting that South America go to war?

Kirchner: Well, he was talking about the United States. "The Democrats had been wrong. All of the economic growth of the United States hs been encouraged by wars.' He said it very clearly.

I think Bush is conflating the Marshall Plan (helping Europe's post-war recovery) with FDR's New Deal (to get us out of the Depression). The Republicans really believe that FDR's New Deal made the Great Depression worse, and that we didn't recover until World War II boosted the economy. But historians agree that the New Deal had the economy on the road to recovery until Republicans in Congress insisted on cutting back on the stimulus spending -- whereupon it began to slip backwards. And then the war came along and saved us from the Republican mistake. But they leave out that important, interfering step in FDR's plan and the result of his listening to them.

That is a typical Republican ploy: if you can't outright kill a social network program by abolishing it, you just underfund it, put incompetent people in charge, and watch it die.

There is no doubt that war stimulates the economy. We have to build lots of planes and bombs and stuff, and we have to hire lots of young folks to go fight. So like any government spending stimulus, it creates jobs. The key is jobs, not war. What they don't explain is why war jobs are better than jobs building roads, fixing bridges, teaching school, creating projects for artists and writers, etc. as the New Deal did.

With the New Deal kind of stimulus, you have things that last and benefit the people. With war spending stimulus, you spend the money on things that get blown up or shot down; soldiers get killed, and you have lots of wounded veterans to take care of. That doesn't happen in a peace economic boost.

Ralph

"Who could have predicted . . .?"

The bad news continues. The cap on the oil leak didn't work. Now in today's New York Times is a detailed story about the known risks they took in opening this well in the first place.

As long ago as last June, BP engineers were concerned that the metal casing might collapse under high pressure, and officials knew the casing was "the riskier of two options."

Wouldn't another option have been: don't do the drilling?

There was also concern about the blow-out protector, which was tested only at lower levels of pressure . . . . because they feared it wouldn't work at higher pressure levels.

Yet Mark Hafle, senior drilling engineer at BP, testified last week that the company had not taken risks. “Nobody believed there was going to be a safety issue. . . . "

That's the problem. Despite clear evidence in their own documents that there were serious risks, "Nobody believed there was going to be a safety issue."

Is anybody reminded of Alan Greenspan's infamous line: "Nobody could have predicted" the collapse of the financial system?

It's time these movers and shakers start paying attention to the people who DO see the risks, who DO predict disaster. There is a reason to have a (relatively) disinterested government agency oversee the risks, because money-making machines can't be trusted to act in the common good if it costs them money. They're designed to follow the bottom line, and this naturally leads to their taking more risks. The problem we've had, besides deregulation, is that agencies have been infiltrated or corrupted so that they are not disinterested -- but often bought and paid for by those they're suppose to regulate. This seems to have been the case in the Minerals and Mining agency.

That should be the lesson learned in all this. There is a good reason for regulations in this complex, interrelated world we live in.

If BP was drilling for oil in its own pond, that's one thing. But BP has fouled the nation's pond. And it wasn't just his own bank account that Alan Greenspan messed up.

Ralph

Overcoming prejudice is personal

Again and again, we learn that the most effective fractor in overcoming anti-homosexual prejudice is knowing someone gay in a personal way that exposes the myths of stereotype and gives the opportunity for empathic feeling with the gay person.

As this was happening in the American Psychoanalytic Association, I saw again and again how often our straight supporters would eventually tell me about the gay brother or son, the lesbian daughter.

I have been struck by how the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral McMullen, has spoken with such awareness and genuine compassion on how wrong DADT is and how repeal is the right thing to do. It is in such contrast with the negative or grudgingly tolerant attitude of most of the military brass. As we say, "He gets it."

I heard last night, from a friend who knows, that Adm. McMullen has a gay son.

Another improbable supporter of gay rights was Barry Goldwater, although as I learn more about libertarianism, it's not so far-fetched that he would oppose government regulation of lives. But I also know that Goldwater had a gay grandson who was close to him. Sen. Goldwater's famous retort about his opposition to DADT was: It's not whether they are straight but whether they can shoot straight.

It doesn't always work that way; sometimes it simply hardens the opposition, as in Phyllis Schlafley, who has a gay son; Charles Socarides, virulent anti-gay psychoanalyst whose gay son was Clinton's Liaison to the GL community; and Sallie Fields, former head of the Georgia Christian Coalition and champion anti-gay activist, who has a lesbian daughter.

We will owe a great debt to Admiral McMullen for his leadership -- and great appreciation for the relationship he must have with his son.

Look to those in Congress who vote against type -- ie conservatives who vote for repeal -- and I'll place wagers that each of them has a close relative or friend who is gay.

Ralph