January 24, 2017--Cortaditos at Bohio

Back to the road trip breakfast stories. This is the last in the series--

We were up at Bohio in Lantana, our favorite Cuban breakfast place where they serve a world-class cortadito--a scalding mix of dark Cuban espresso topped by a layer of steamed milk. It's worth the 10-mile drive up Federal Highway.

Before I could take my first sip, from the next table I heard someone say, "The news these days, man, is all about entertainment and distracting us from what's really going on."

Ah, I thought, there might be some good political conversation to go along with the cortadito.

"I couldn't agree with you more," I said, turning toward two men who were sharing the scrambled eggs special. "And I like your choice of food," I smiled to break the ice, "That’s my favorite. The onions and peppers and tomatoes and crisp pieces of bacon mixed in the eggs are wonderful."

"Man, what are they feeding us?" From his serious tone I knew he wasn't talking about the food. "And what do they take us for? They think we're children or something? I wish they'd treat us serious." I was nodding. "Now it's the Whitney Houston business. And contraception. How long do they think they can get away with those?"

"Until they have the toxicology report or gasoline is $5.00 a gallon," I suggested.

"In the meantime, man, look at Whitney’s record sales. Off the charts. And you know what?" He didn't pause for me to jump in, "they jacked up the prices. Doubled them. Can you believe that?"

"That I can believe."

"I'm all for capitalism, man. I don't have a problem with any of that, but I do have a problem with what the media are up to."

"What's that?" Rona asked.

"To keep us from knowing what's really going on." Neither of us said anything. "I'm in IT, man, I mean I used to be. I got laid off more than a year ago—it’s tough out there--but the things I learned I'm not sure you want to hear about on a beautiful morning like this." He gestured toward the east where the sun was shining through Bohio's wide-open windows.

"For example," he slapped his cell phone on the table, "they know where you are. From this." He tapped the phone. "Wherever you are on the planet. And I mean the whole planet, man.

"Why would . . . ?" Rona began to ask.

"Obvious, man. To control us better. Like I told you, I had this IT job. A big job down in Miami. Evaluating mortgage applications for a bank. One of the really big ones, man. No need for you to know just which. One day my boss called me in to let me know what the bank was really about. He said to me, 'Man, you've been here long enough and have proven yourself. I trust you, man, so you should know what’s going on.’ He told me my job, the bank's job, was to gain all kinds of information about everyone. Everyone, man. From the Social number and bank statements and taxes. From all of that and then to pass it along to the government, To a part of the government that you never heard of." He gestured toward me. "As I said, man, you don't want to know. You just want to enjoy the rest of the time allotted to you. To enjoy the sunshine and the good food and your lovely lady." He was smiling broadly.

"I can tell you from experience that the government knows everything,” he went on, “and I mean everything. And with that they control you and everything else."

"I find this hard . . ."

"I know, man, ‘to believe.’ Right?" I nodded again. "At first I too didn’t believe what they were telling me. So let me give you an example."

"I was just going to ask if you could do that."

"No problem, amigo. Do you remember the savings and loan scandal? From back in the 80s? You seem to be up on things. To most folks it looked like your typical banking scandal. The big boys, man, and this including a half-dozen senators, taking advantage of the government cutting regulations on the banks. And what happened? I mean from what you read in the papers?"

I tried to recall but while I was struggling to do so, he continued, now in part propelled by the two Cuban espressos he had downed, "Well, like recently, when these banks came crashing down and seemed to threaten the whole system, what happened?"

"The government stepped in to bail them out."

"That’s what they wanted you to think. The government I mean."

"I'm confused," I said. I truly was. "What did they want us to think?"

"That it was just another bail out. That's what they wanted you to believe. The truth is that this gave the government a chance to look into everyone's bank account. I mean of all these banks’ customers."

Squinting at him, Rona asked, "For what purpose?"

"It's part of a much bigger thing. About the government wanting to know, man, where we are every minute, who we're with, what we're reading, soon even what we're thinking. One of these days they’ll be able to plant a tiny chip in your brain,” he tapped his temple, “so they can know what you’re thinking. This isn’t science fiction, man. Remember, I’m from IT."

"Why do they want to know all this?"

"To sell us things. You got to realize that's government's main job. To make it easy for those corporations to get their hands on what’s left of our money. That's the whole point, man. I know you're skeptical. I used to be too until I looked into what's really behind all the new technology--these phones, our computers, our TVs, our GPSs, everything electronic, man. It's all about controlling us by taking away our freedom. Freedom is the most powerful thing. To take control of us they have to take it away. In ways, man, so that we don't notice it’s disappearing."

He paused to gulp down another shot of espresso. "Let me give you another example. Remember that Ted Kozinski Unabomber guy?"

"I do," I said.

"Well, man, what do you think his real story is? And I'll throw in something else for you to think about, man, since you're looking at me that way again. To fill out the picture. There's also that Timothy McVeigh. The Oklahoma City bomber. Remember him? Supposedly these two dudes acted alone. OK, McVeigh had that stooge Terry Nichols, or whatever, working for him. At least that's the cover story that they want you to believe. If you really look into his case, McVeigh’s, you'll discover that he was part of a big network. Guys who supposedly hated the federal government because of Waco, man, and Ruby Ridge. Remember them?"

"I do."

"And did you read the long confession he wrote while he was waiting for them to execute him?”

“I have a vague memory of that.”

“I recommend it to you. But in the meantime, I can tell you that the official stories in their cases are about these terrorist types--supposedly American terrorists--acting on their own. Unabomber, right? You know, man, what una means. One or alone, right?"

"About that I don't know," I confessed.

"Well, you can trust me on that one. But here's the real story, man,” he looked around and then leaned forward to whisper, “they were actually working for the government."

"Really? I find that hard . . ."

He put a finger up to shush me, "I know you do. That’s the whole point. For you not to believe this. As I said, trust me on this one, amigo. I know from where I speak. It was the plan for the government to make it look like these were militia-types. Hating the federal government. Acting on their own. And after doing their deeds they gave the feds the justification they needed to take away more of our freedom. They provided the excuse to order up more surveillance.”

“This seems s little far fetched to me,” I offered.

Waving me off, he said. “And if you think this is far out, do you know that McVeigh and Kozinski were both working with the al Qaeda terrorists?” He paused for that to sink in and then continued, “I can tell by the way you’re both looking at me that you don’t believe this.” He was right about that.

“As I said, man, at first neither did I. But I came around because what I’m saying is true. It's all tied together because after al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11 what happened?" Rona and I just looked back at him. "Well you know about that Patriot Act, don't you? That let’s the government listen in on our telephone calls and emails. You think Bush could have gotten away with that one if he hadn't allowed the Israelis to attack us?"

"The Israelis? Now you're going too far," I said. “Actually, that's been charged before, investigated, and dismissed as, frankly, anti-Semitic."

"That's not who I am, man. I love the Israelis and the Jews. To me they're the best people in this world. I wish we here in this country were more like them."

"But you just said the Israelis were behind 9/11." Quoting him back to himself, I asked, "How does that make them 'the best people in the world'?"

"Well, some of them, man, are involved in what I'm trying to explain to you. Like I said, Americans for the most part are good. And most Israelis too, But all these good people here--and that includes all of us--and in Israel are at the mercy of their governments. It's the governments that I have my problem with. Not the people, man. Get me?"

"I think I do," Rona said, wanting to begin to bring the conversation to a conclusion and to get back to her cortadito. It was getting cold. “I know we have our problems, but about what you’re saying I’m not so sure.” She picked up her cup and turned back to her eggs.

“Sorry if I got you all upset, man” he said, extending his hand to me. I shook it.

“That’s OK,” I said, “We like hearing all points of view.”

“One last thing,” he winked, “If you haven’t, you should read Kozinski’s Manifesto. Some of it’s crazy, that I’ll admit to you, but most of it's worth taking seriously. Especially how technology is taking away our freedom. And that McVeigh, who was in Desert Storm, was pretty liberal about foreign policy. He was against all these wars in the Middle East. Check them out, man.”

One the drive home, Rona wondered out loud, “How does someone as well informed as he come to such conspiratorial conclusions? You would think that after spending so much time reading he would see things in a much more balanced way. Sure there are problems with the government. Even most liberals would agree with that. But to see us and the Israelis conspiring to attack the World Trade Center just to help corporations make more money? I don’t get how someone that well informed would believe that.”

“I agree. We hear all sorts of anti-government things from people who really don’t know what they’re talking about. Who simply make things up and won’t accept any facts that contradict their beliefs.”

“Maybe the next time we run into him we’ll ask him about that—how he gets to his conclusions.”

“As for me,” I said, “the next time I think I’ll just pay attention to my cortadito.”

October 30, 2014--Time Wars

I hate it it when the clocks spring forward or fall back. I like my routines and this disrupts them.

Sunday they fall back when Daylight Savings Time ends. The worst of it is not a jet-lag-like hangover but the fact that it will be dark up here before 5:00 in the afternoon. Not my favorite thing; but we head for NYC early Sunday, and I suppose it will be light enough when we leave for us to see the first snow of the season that is forecast for then.

But over in the Middle East, as with virtually everything else, one more thing the Israelis and Palestinians aren't on the same page about is Daylight Savings Time.

The Palestinian Authority ended DST two days before Israel, out of stubbornness more than anything else, or as a pathetic declaration of independence, and so for those two days, those few workers allowed to cross the Gaza or West Bank border to get to jobs in Israel, going one way arrived, by the clock, at an earlier time that when they left and their return commute took an hour more of seeming clock time.

According to the New York Times, the website timeanddate.com reports that over the past 15 years the Palestinians and Israelis have changed time at the same time just seven times, for some unknown reason always when springing forward. Making matters even worse--which is difficult to achieve in that fraught region--three times it took a month before their clocks were in sync.

So here's my plan--

Forget entirely about Daylight Savings Time. I have confuted a decidedly unscientific survey and have found hardly anyone all that passionate about retaining it. They tell me that whatever time it is they get used to it. Even darkness in late December in northern places such as Maine that falls by mid afternoon.

On the other hand, I doubt Israel and Palestine would any more agree to this than settlement policy or work permits for Gazans. It seems the more things they have to disagree or fight about the better they like it.

August 7, 2014--Israeli (Jewish) Exceptionalism

The outrage and debate continues over civilian casualties in Gaza and Israel. More accurately, about what has been happening in Gaza. There have been relatively few Israeli civilian causalities and, even if there were many more, the outrage would, by comparison, be muted.

Hamas and the Palestinians are not just the underdogs in this fight--improvised rockets versus jet fighters and smart bombs--but they are also not Jews.

This must be said--being not-Jews means less is expected of the Palestinians.

More is expected of the Jews (and I mean Jews as distinguished from Israelis) because of the Holocaust. Because of it, it goes, Jews should know better when it comes to inflicting harm and worse on innocents--people who are killed or wounded not because they are enemy combatants but because of who they are.

Jews were rounded up and mass murdered in Germany, and in much of the rest of continental Europe, because they were Jews. Not soldiers, not resistance fighters. For this reason, Jews should know better. But they also know that the world stood by largely silent. And thus were complicitous. This complicates matters.

By this logic Israeli Jews, and the rest of us who are Jews, should be very careful about setting upon anyone just because of who they are. We should know that if we allow this, worse perpetrate this, "they" will come for us next. As they have for millennia.

This is the Jews' patrimony. Mine as well.

So here we are today seeing the slaughter of innocents in Gaza. Carried out by Israelis. By Jews.

That is not our patrimony nor the lessons we should have learned from our own history.

All right. Point made.

But there is another, related point to make--

To expect Jews, Israelis to act as if there is something often referred to as Jewish Exceptionalism is to apply a higher standard to them than to any other nation or people.

Where is the equivalent outrage about the United States being responsible for hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan? Yes, a few human rights group keep that tally and attempt to grab an occasional headline. But beyond that there is, again, silence.

How much "collateral damage" (that hideous euphemism that means killing of innocent people), how much has there been in South Sudan or Eastern Ukraine? How widely reported has that been? And what martial etiquettes have been assigned to the Russian-backed forces or the Sudan People's Liberation Army? Certainly not the same as those imposed on Jews and Israelis.

But stories about the 1,400 Palestinians who have thus far been killed--admittedly at least half of them noncombatants--have been on the front page of the New York Times for days. Including yesterday, explicitly, with multicolored graphs distinguishing among different categories of the dead, "Civilian or Not? New Fight in Tallying the Dead in Gaza."

This has the tincture of anti-Semitism.

It is no coincidence that anti-Semetic rallies and confrontations have been erupting in many places in Europe, horrifyingly also in Germany. This derives not just from a long history of festering hatred but from the conflation of Israel and Jews--of a nation with a people.

They, we are not one and the same. Many Jews, including me, though we recognize the existential threat to Israel that Hamas and its tunnels and rockets represent and Israel's right to defend itself, not all Jews support a separate state of Israel or the current reactionary, repressive government.

And thus to expect us to be any better than other people is unreasonable. And since it it expressed so one-dimensionally, and leads so quickly to condemnations and worse, all Jews are wise to have their radar tuned to high. Danger of the old sort is lurking.

August 5, 2014--Brothers Under the Skin

I always wondered why the late Chairman of the Palestinian Organization, Yasser Arafat, looked so much like my Uncle Louie.  Now I know.

We're related!

Take a close look at that punim, that face.

And then take a look at mine--just over there on the right.

Get the picture?

But there is more evidence than just from photos.

According to Wikipedia--

Genetic analysis suggests that a majority of Palestinians, including Arab citizens of Israel, are descendants of Christians, Jews, and other earlier inhabitants of the southern Levant whose core may reach back to prehistoric times. A study of high-resolution haplotypes [DNA sequences] demonstrated that a substantial portion of Y chromosomes of Israeli Jews (70%) and of Palestinian Muslim Arabs (82%) belonged to the same chromosome pool. 

So there you have it.

What is happening in the Middle East is a "family dispute" and we know how ugly these can be.

July 31, 2014--Blood Feud

This is the first Arab-Israeli war that isn't about territory--about expanding or protecting borders.

It is about hated and blood letting. Pure and simple, killing. That's the agenda. For both sides.

It is about Palestinians associated with Hamas trying to kill or capture any Israelis they can get their hands on purely in order to murder them or use them as bargaining chips. And on the other side, it is about the Israeli military, in spite of its denials, attempting to kill as many Palestinians as possible without regard to the distinction between fighters and civilian innocents.

There is no place to hide in Gaza--all available land is built up and there are no open spaces where refugee camps can be established and declared safe havens for non-combatants. And so those whose homes have been destroyed or live in fear are either trapped where they live, continuing to be subject to bombing, or flee to shelters provided by the United Nations.

But then, while cringing in these, they are not immune from attack. Just yesterday one of these shelters was destroyed and 20 more civilians were killed, many children. This is the third or fourth time a UN facility was destroyed with significant loss of life. In an era of smart bombs this cannot be explained away as "collateral damage."

So the Israelis claim it is the Palestinians themselves who have been attacking what should be sanctuaries. Hamas is doing this to its own people, they say, to make it look as if Israeli forces are intentionally targeting women and children.

The UN says it has evidence that it has been Israeli rockets and bombs that have destroyed these so-called sanctuaries.

And so it goes.

Each day we have updated body counts--remember body counts? More than 1,200 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 100 Israelis.

Both sides are seeing "progress" in those numbers--Israelis believe that if they kill enough Arabs Hamas will give up its struggle to expel Israelis from land they claim to be theirs while Hamas, recently losing power and influence in Gaza, will become resurgent if they kill enough Jews and thereby reestablish their credibility as warriors for the Palestinian cause.

This is thus a blood feud fueled by decades of hatred on both sides--equally vicious ethnic stereotyping and bigotry that is promoted in schoolbooks and popular media. Recall that this most recent conflict began after an exchange of barbaric killings of Israeli and Arab teenagers. It is Old Testament retributive tribal warfare waged lustfully and hatefully by both sides.

Both have legitimate issues. Israeli has the right to live securely within some version of its current borders and Palestinians have the right to a contiguous state of their own. Both have ancient claims to these lands. But both have moved beyond the normal range of political and geographic struggle, even warfare, and descended into hatred-drivien, senseless slaughter.

December 18, 2013--Professing

Having been one at a number of institutions, from up-close observation, professors are not among my favorite professionals. For the most part, I prefer dentists.

Professors--tenured professors--have about the best job in the history of the world.

With what other kind of work can one make a very comfortable living with generous benefits, work two to three days a week, eight or at most nine months a year, and have frequent vacations? Almost as many as members of Congress. And then every few years have sabbaticals, which for a half to a full year offer full or half salary with no classroom or other university responsibilities. And, perhaps best of all, with tenure a professor can work until he or she drops and in no way be let go. Even for demonstrable incompetence or lack of research and publications.

And with all of this, professors are often among the world's most prolific whiners. About their university responsibilities (many would like to be paid, and paid more, for doing even less); about university politics (usually much to do about nothing or at most very little); about their colleagues and administrators; and about much that goes on in the world.

Criticizing and complaining they are very good at, but doing something about it is another matter.

So I was not surprised when a day or two ago, the American Studies Association, with about 5,000 professors as members, voted by a two-to-one margin to boycott Israeli academic institutions to protest Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

This means they will oppose academic exchange programs and Israeli professors will no longer be welcome as ASA members; invited to ASA-sponsored events; or, if the ASA has anything to do about it, be allowed to have sabbaticals in the U.S.

Next month, the much larger and more influential Modern Language Association will vote to ask the State Department to criticize Israel for allegedly barring American professors from going to Gaza or the West Bank when invited by Palestinian institutions.

The boycott is the first the ASA has ever instituted and what the MLA is calling for is equally unprecedented. They have not seen fit to take similar action in regard to Russian or Chinese academic institutions even though those governments curtail basic freedoms for almost all of their citizens. They did not call for the boycott of South African institutions during the Apartheid years. They are apparently OK with Iranian, Egyptian, Cuban, Venezuelan, Saudi Arabian, and Pakistani academic institutions though basic freedoms are severely restricted in these and, sadly, many other countries.

The fundamental case in favor of lifetime employment--tenure--is to protect academic freedom. To make professors impervious to arbitrary or ideological retribution when they express their contrarian views. So it is more than a little ironic that the ASA, for which one of its principals is the protection of freedom of thought and scholarly activity, would so blatantly, for ideological reasons, take such a censorious position.

The good news is that the major higher education organization in the United States, the American Association of University Professors opposes the boycott, saying that it makes little sense to focus on Israeli universities where criticism of government policy often originates.

Even Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas opposes the boycott. He said that it is inappropriate, as the ASA did, to compare Israel to Apartheid in South Africa. Further--

We are neighbors of Israel, we have agreements with israel, we are not asking anyone to boycott products of Israel.

But members of the ASA do not perceive any contradictions in their position. One member said that--

People who truly believe in academic freedom would realize protesting the blatant and systemic denial of academic freedom to Palestinians, which coupled with material deprivation of a staggering scale, far out ways concerns we in the West might have about our own rather privileged academic freedoms.

I am having trouble figuring out why we in the West who have the privilege of academic freedom should be immunized from the consequences of denying it to others.

I may have once been a professor, but I need help from other professors to help me understand and parse this tortured tangle of rationalization.