Veteran of four wars, four enlistments, four branches: Air Force, Army, Army Reserve, Army National Guard. I am both an AF (Air Force) veteran and as Veteran AF (As Fuck)
Monday, November 13, 2023
Transcript of HAMAS Terrorist Bragging About Murder--To His Parents
Wednesday, November 1, 2023
How to Tell If You're a Left Anti-Semite: A Checklist by Ben Wittes of Lawfare
The last few weeks have been rough. Your Jewish friends have been extra needy. It’s not enough that you support their right to own land and enter the professions, that you don’t keep them out of clubs and universities, that you accept their citizenship, and that you don’t describe them as “rootless cosmopolitans” or “international banking conspirators.”
Now it feels like you’re walking on eggshells around them every time you comment on the news. They have you suddenly wondering: Am I actually an anti-Semite? It’s a painful question. You want to be a good person. You believe in diversity, equity, and inclusion—including of Jews.
And we all know that antisemitism is not a thing that good people do. And it’s not inclusive. And yet you keep saying things that create what seems to be a stricken look on the faces of Jews of your acquaintance. But then when you ask them whether it was okay to say that thing you just said, they all sound reassuring. But you’re not sure. Is that because it was innocuous? Or is it because they are just being polite and are secretly judging you? It can be hard to tell.
So as a public service, I thought I would create an “Am I a Left Anti-Semite?” checklist. The checklist consists of ten probing yes-or-no questions, each with an assigned point value of associated with the anti-Semitism of the left. Go through the checklist, add up your score, and see where you rank on the scale of 0 to Pogrom. I have added explanatory notes as needed to each question. By the way, this is an official publication of the entire Jewish community, for which I speak.
Question #1: Have you ever referred to Hamas fighters as “our martyrs”? If so, give yourself ten points. If not, have you ever referred to Palestinians killed in the Israeli fight against Hamas as “our martyrs” in a context in which a reasonable person might understand you as referring to Hamas fighters as martyrs? If so, give yourself two points.
Question #2: Have you ever expressed the sentiment that Palestine must be free “from the river to the sea” or any similar slogan that calls for the destruction of any Jewish sovereign presence in Israel proper and that might reasonably be construed as a call to remove or kill Jews from that region? If so, give yourself ten points. Deduct two points if you cannot identify the river in the slogan. Deduct another three if you can’t identify the sea in question. If either or both of these two conditions are met, you might be less of an anti-Semite than an ignorant idiot who has no idea what you’re saying.
Question #3: Do you find yourself radically more engaged by the plight of Palestinians displaced, injured, or killed in Gaza in response to a massacre of Israeli civilians than by the millions of Syrians displaced, wounded or killed in the murderous war by the Syrian government against its own people; by the millions of Ukrainians who have been killed or made refugees by Russia; or by the brutality of the Taliban? If so, give yourself ten points.
Question #4: Do you have an urge to shout at or harass Orthodox Jews or others who are visibly Jewish—or to protest at Jewish or kosher institutions—because of your objections to Israeli policy? Give yourself ten points if you have this urge. Give yourself 50 points if you have ever acted on it.
Question #5: More generally, do you believe the rise in antisemitic incidents, on college campuses and elsewhere, around the country is understandable under the circumstances? Give yourself five to fifteen points depending on how understandable you think it is.
Question #6: When 1,400 Israeli civilians were massacred, did you have a strong urge to add a “but” to any statement of condemnation you may have issued on social media or elsewhere? Give yourself three points if you had the instinct. Give yourself five points if you, in fact, qualified whatever public statement you made.
Question #7: Have you ever secretly wondered whether there is such a thing as an Israeli civilian? If so, give yourself ten points; that’s some dark shit. Give yourself an extra ten points if you’ve had this thought about Israelis but never had a similar thought about the nationals of any other country.
Questions #8: Was any part of you secretly relieved by the speed and ferocity of the Israeli response to the October 7 massacre, as it allowed you to stop talking about the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and instead talk about Israeli policies and actions you could condemn? If so, give yourself five points. Give yourself an extra five if you never seriously contemplated what realistic alternative options Israel might have to protect its people than the course it is taking. Give yourself an extra five still if the first statement you made or protest you attended took place in response to Israeli action, rather than the Hamas action.
Question #9: When you heard about the riot that broke out in an airport in Dagestan the other day, in which rioters looked to attack passengers on a flight from Tel Aviv, did you instinctively want more “context” or to understand the rioters’ point of view? If so, give yourself five points.
Question #10: Do you interpret the Biden administration’s support for Israel principally as evidence of Jewish political power in the United States? Give yourself five points for a soft yes, ten points for a more emphatic yes.
Scorecard
0-to-10 points: Not an anti-semite. I absolve you of sin.
11-to-30 points: You have been infected with left antisemitism, but it’s nothing a little reading on the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the history of the left won’t cure.
31-to-50 points: You’re dabbling in some serious antisemitic ideation. You clearly don’t mind violence against Jews very much.
51-to-75 points: You’ve got a serious problem.
76-and above: You’re a member of the Raging Bigot Club.
Saturday, October 28, 2023
Breakout Sessions at the Hannah Arendt Conference 2023: Friendship & Politics
In addition to the general sessions at the 2023 Hannah Arendt Conference, I enjoyed the breakout sessions. I wrote about some of the general sessions at the conference here.
The first was a session titled: Is Reading a Poem an Act of Friendship? led by Ann Lauterbach and Jana Mader.
The session began with Ann Lauterbach talking about her work, particularly her eleventh collection of poetry Door published this year. She also read from her work.
Jana Mader, Director of Academic Programs at the Hannah Arendt Center, guided the discussion on poetry as an act of friendship. I chose this breakout session because of the group I formed on Camp Adder in Iraq 2009 to read Inferno and Aeneid.
Mader is also the host of the new podcast "Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz.
After the breakout session, I talked with Stephanie Frampton, a literature professor at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Her research area is Ancient literature so she was delighted to talk about soldiers reading Virgil and Dante.
I was the only one in the room who had taught a class inside a tank turret.
Thursday, October 26, 2023
Fetterman Backs Ukraine 100%! Ukraine Action Summit, Washington DC
On Monday and Tuesday, I was in Washington DC at the Ukraine Action Summit: more than 500 people and dozens of organizations in the US Capitol to support Ukraine. I was a member of the Pennsylvania delegation, more than twenty people from around the commonwealth advocating for Ukraine.
Senator John Fetterman was our last visit on Tuesday. He was the most full-throated in his support of Ukraine among all of the lawmakers we spoke with during the visit. He said he will support Ukraine in every way he can as long as he is in office. It was a very positive end to two days of meetings.
On the first day, I was part of the group that visited the office Congressman Scott Perry. We met with a member of his staff. Perry was not in the office. In 2009-10 Perry was my battalion commander in Iraq, where we deployed for a year. Perry is a Blackhawk pilot. I worked in his headquarters and flew on his aircraft. Perry is the head of the Freedom Caucus. We completely disagree on politics, including on aid for Ukraine, but he was a good commander. I wrote about him in 2010.
We met with a staff member in the office of Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan. She is very supportive of aid for Ukraine and behind Ukraine's fight against the Russian invasion. Houlahan's grandfather (then 4 years old) survived The Holocaust because he was hidden from the Nazis by a Ukrainian Catholic Priest in Lviv. Houlahan keeps her grandfather's teddy bear in a display case in her office.
Another delightful meeting was with Mike Kelly, the Congressman from the northeast corner of Pennsylvania. He said he will support all aid for Ukraine and was especially concerned about the children kidnapped from their families in Ukraine into Russia for re-education.
During the two days, there were wry comments from the representatives and their staffs about the how the House of Representatives was unable to do anything without a speaker. All of the legislation we hope will pass is frozen without a speaker. Then on Wednesday, the day after our meetings, the Republican party voted in a new speaker, Mike Johnson of Louisiana.
On the one hand, it is good to have a speaker so something can get done, but on the other hand, the new speaker has an F rating on support for Ukraine and was deeply involved in trying to overthrow the 2020 election.
The fight for support continues here in America while Ukrainians give their lives every day to defend their homes and nation.
Saturday, October 21, 2023
Friendship & Politics: 15th Annual Conference at the Hannah Arendt Center, Bard College
Thursday, October 12, 2023
Friday, October 6, 2023
Yom Kippur War, 50th Anniversary, Remembering the Carnage of Armor
On 2pm on October 6, 1973, near the end of the Yom Kippur fast by Jews, Egypt and Syria, backed by auxilliary soldiers from many Arab nations, attacked Israel. It was a surprise attack with devastating Israeli losses of 2,521 killed and more than 8,000 wounded.
This week I learned that in addition to the soldiers from Arab countries who went to Egypt and Syria to fight, Cuba sent 500 tank commanders to the Syrian Army. These tank commanders led crews that fought in The Valley of Tears near Mount Bental in the Golan Heights between Israel and Syria.
In the battle, 160 Israeli tanks stopped the advance of 1,500 Syrian tanks. The Syrian tanks had to funnel through a narrow valley. At the end of the battle 153 of the Israeli tanks were damaged or destroyed. Nearly all the Israeli casualties in the battle were tank crewmen. Only seven Israeli tanks survived the fight.
The Syrians lost more than 600 tanks with many more damaged. Thousands of armor crewmen in these Soviet-built tanks were killed and wounded. Of the Cuban tank commanders, 188 were killed, 250 were wounded. Just 62 went back to Cuba uninjured after the war.
In June of 1975, I re-enlisted in the Army and went to Fort Knox, Kentucky, for Armor School. The 1973 Yom Kippur War informed a lot of what we learned about tank tactics and about the short, violent life of tank crews in war. For instance, we were given the breakdown of casualties among Israeli tank crewman in the Yom Kippur War.
Tank Commander 60%
Gunner 25%
Loader 10%
Driver 5%
Tank commanders, according to the reports, "suffered fatal head injuries and hideous face and neck wounds." They had their hatch open and heads out to see the fight. Which helps to explain why almost 90% of the Cubans were killed or injured fighting on the losing side of one of the biggest tank battles in history.
Within three days, the Israel Defense Force rallied and launched counter attacks against the invading armies. By October 25, the IDF was shelling Damascus and was less than 60 miles from Cairo.
Thursday, September 28, 2023
Ig Nobel Prizes 2023
Tuesday, September 19, 2023
Eurail Pass App--So Much Better and Cheaper than Tickets
When I wrote about airlines, good and bad, my conclusion was: choose the airline with the best app, because data matters. This year I bought a Eurail pass rather than individual tickets partly based on great reviews of the app. My experience was better than my best expectations.
I bought a seven-day pass in one month. It allowed me to pick any seven travel days in a thirty-day period and travel as much as I want on those days. I could book the tickets in advance or just take the next train as I arrived in the station. I did both.
The advance ticket was for the last travel day. I took the Eurostar from Brussels to London. It required a reserved seat which I bought through the app two weeks in advance. Many trains require buying seat reservations and on the most popular trains the seats can only be reserved on line well in advance.
But in major stations you can buy a seat any time up to departure in their ticket offices. I had to do this with several tickets. But in person the reservations are often cheaper than on line.
When buying tickets from on line apps, the prices rise cheap to pricey to crazy as the departure approaches. The Eurail app allows last-minute changes with no penalty. Any train in the network (most trains) are included in the price of the pass. I have seen Eurostar tickets costing nearly $300. Mine cost $51--one seventh of the $358 cost of my Eurail pass.
One of my travel days was from Vienna to Geneva--11 hours on two trains. The prices on Omio range from $227 to $304. With the Eurail pass, it was $51 plus a $12 seat reservation. My trip from Amsterdam on the four-hour express train would be $180. The 6.5-hour slower train $94. I took an unreserved fast train.
When I was in Grenoble, I could not book a seat reservation for Paris. Grenoble did not have a ticket office. So I took an unreserved train to Lyon, then got a seat reservation to Paris for $20.
When I left Paris for Caen in Normandy, I could not book the seat reservations on line. I went to Gare Montparnasse and made the reservations in Person using the SNCF on line system in the station. The seat reservations were $2 each way.
The seven days of rail travel:
August 26: Amsterdam to Frankfurt
August 29: Darmstadt to Vienna
August 31: Vienna to Geneva
(September 1, bought a $20 local train ticket from Geneva to Grenoble to avoid using a travel day.)
September 3: Grenoble to Paris (through Lyon)
September 8: Paris to Caen
September 9: Caen to Brussels (through Paris)
September 13: Brussels to London
Friday, September 8, 2023
Rode Alpine Climbs Near Grenoble
Sunday, September 3, 2023
Talking About Language, America, the Cold War, and Sherlock Holmes on a train in Austria and Switzerland
Tuesday, August 29, 2023
Ig Nobel Moment on a German Train
Monday, August 28, 2023
Escher Museum, The Hague
Tuesday, August 22, 2023
Anxious people. A Novel. By Fredrik Backman.
I just finished Anxious People: A novel by Fredrik Backman.
It is hilarious. Really. Actual Laugh Out Loud Hilarious.
Below is the first page and a half. If you like this, you will love the book. Enjoy!!!
A bank robbery. A hostage drama? A stairwell full of police officers on their way to storm an apartment. It was easy to get to this point. Much easier than you might think. All it took was one single really bad idea.
This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots. So, it needs saying from the outset that it's always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is, especially if you have other people you're trying to be a reasonably good human for. Because there's such an unbelievable amount that we're all supposed to be able to cope with these days.
You're supposed to have a job, somewhere to live and a family. And you're supposed to pay taxes and have clean underwear and remember the password to your damn Wi-Fi. Some of us never managed to get the chaos under control, so our lives simply carry on the world spinning through space at two million miles an hour while we bounce about on its surface like so many lost socks. Our hearts are bars of soap that we keep losing hold of. The moment we relax, they drift off and fall in love and get broken, all in the wink of an eye. We're not in control, so we learn to pretend. All the time, about our jobs and our marriages and our children and everything else, we pretend we're normal, that we're reasonably well educated, that we understand amortization levels and inflation rates, that we know how sex works. In truth, we know as much about sex as we do about USB leads. And it always takes us four tries to get the little USB in. (Wrong way round, wrong way round, wrong way round there. In.) We pretend to be good parents when all we really do is provide our kids with food and clothing and tell them off when they put when they put chewing gum they find on the ground in their mouths. We tried to keep tropical fish once and they all died, and we really don't know more about children than tropical fish, so the responsibility frightens the life out of us each morning. We don't have a plan, we just do our best to get through the day. Because there will be another one coming along tomorrow.
Sometimes it hurts. It really hurts for no other reason than the fact that our skin doesn't feel like it's ours. Sometimes we panic because the bills need paying and we have to be grown-up and we don't know how because it's so horribly, desperately. Easy to fail at being grown up.
Because everyone loves someone, and anyone who loves someone has had those desperate nights where we lie awake trying to figure out how we can afford to carry on being human beings. Sometimes that makes us do things that seem ridiculous in hindsight. But which felt like the other way. Like the only way out at the time?
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