Buy or Rent? I Bought a Bike in Panama

 

My second day in Panama, I bought a Giant SCR 16-speed aluminum road bike.  I bought the bike for $500 at a used bike shop in a residential neighborhood near the canal called ReCyclingPTY. They had road and mountain bikes of many vintages.  They also rent bikes for $50 per day  or $200 per week so $500 to buy for 6 to 9 months is a much better deal for me.

Andre, the owner, will also sell the bike on consignment when I leave. 

Right after I bought the bike I rode to the first lock on the Panama Canal.  Soon I hope to ride the length of the canal continuing on the same road.   

In Terror of Ducatis on Sestriere: My First Climb in the Italian Alps

In 2000, I made the first several climbs up to the Sestriere ski resort.  It was a beautiful September day as I toiled the seven-mile climb. At several point on the way up, I was riding through avalanche tunnels--they are a roof over the road, open on the cliff side. 

 It's dark inside the tunnels, not totally but dark compared to ride in bright sun.  As I rode through first tunnel I could hear the roar of Ducati race-replica motorcycles climbing between the turns, then the odd silence as they coast through the hairpins and roar to life again out of the turns. 

I have this experience before on Mount Palomar in San Diego county.  But there are no tunnels on Mount Palomar.  As the bikes got closer I pedaled faster, not that it would make any difference, but I wanted to get out of the tunnel. I had a sudden vision of the bike at the back of the group moving right to pass one of his mates then slamming into me.  

The roar went from deep rumble to deafening howl as the pack swung out of a hairpin and accelerated into the tunnel. The tunnel had about a six percent grade so the roar swelled as they approached, throttles wide open.  I put my head down and kept pedaling.   I could see the end of the tunnel. I hoped the roaring bikes could see me.  

Then it was over. The bikes flew past me in a line. Clearly they had passed many bicyclists on this mountain.  They shot from the tunnel into the light and disappeared. I continued to pedal, a little more slowly.  

Mount Palomar has many more motorcycles than any alpine climb I have ridden, but they are almost always single or in pairs.  They also are mostly four-cylinder high-revving Hondas, Kawasakis and Suzikis.  When they were near me in a turn, I could hear the best riders dragging the hockey-puck pad on their knee as they leaned into the turn at 45 degrees or more.  

Only on Sestriere did I have packs of motorcycles fly past. In 2005, three different packs flew past me on my way up. 

Usually, the excitement on these rides is descending and feeling the rush of speeding around the hairpin turns. On this ride, the biggest rush was the pack of Ducati race-replica motorcycles that shot past me on the way to the summit.

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On Tuesday, July 2, 2004, the Tour de France will climb to Sestriere then to Col de Montgenevre, through Briancon, up to Col du Lauteret on the way to Col du Galibier then downhill to the finish in Valloire.  

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.

Here is the original post.

Hannah Arendt Center Summer Social: Preview of Fall Conference on Friendship and Politics

This week I went to the Summer Social at the Hannah Arendt Center on the campus of Bard College.  The campus is set in rolling wooded hills on the east bank of the Hudson River between Albany and New York City. I arrived just after a short downpour so the weather was cool and cloudy. Tables had been set up for dinner outside, but the wet tables meant the event was indoors.

Christine Gonzalez Stanton, 

Executive Director, Hannah Arendt Center

As soon as I entered the large old dwelling that houses the HAC I was greeted by Christine Gonzalez Stanton, Executive Director of the HAC and the kind of enthusiastic person every organization would love to have in charge of operations.  She signed me up for the book raffle and pointed me toward the appetizers and drinks in the kitchen. 

As soon as I entered the kitchen I met Ken Landauer in person.  We had been in one of the smaller Zoom groups discussing Hannah Arendt's lectures on Kant.  Ken makes zero-waste furniture in a nearby town.  The website of his company FN Furniture lists Ken as "Chairperson" of the business noted for making things to sit on. In person he is even more dryly funny as he is on Zoom.

Ken Landauer in one of his chairs

I have been a member of the HAC for several years and attended three annual conferences in person. Since 2018, I have joined weekly meetings of the Virtual Reading Group of the HAC.  As many as 200 people participate in these 90-minute calls on Friday afternoons year-round with seasonal breaks.  At the the Summer Social and the Annual Conference I have met many people who were only faces on Zoom.  

The VRG format is a 20-30 minute introduction of the reading followed by a discussion. The discussion leader is the Founder and Academic Director of the HAC Roger Berkowitz.  I sometimes stay on line for the discussions, but I always listen to Roger's introductions of the reading.  Here is a short clip of Roger welcoming us to the social:

After the introduction, we walked through the woods up a small hill to the Bard College Cemetery. Hannah Arendt and her husband Heinrich Blucher are buried there and have small markers next to each other.  

Hannah Arendt's grave in the Bard College Cemetery. 

We all placed stones on Arendt's grave. As with so many things in Arendt's life and work, her death was controversial. She wanted to be cremated, not a usual practice in 1975 for Jews. Her wishes were carried despite resistance from a relative. Her ashes are interred in the Bard Cemetery.  

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After the walk to the cemetery, we went to the library. Arendt's personal library is in a special collection in the Bard Library.  Four scholars connected to the Bard and the HAC made short presentations about their work.  

Jana Mader, with some of the books 

from Arendt's library.

First was Jana Mader, Lecturer in the Humanities at Bard. She will present at the HAC fall conference on the friendship between Arendt and the poet W.H. Auden.  Arendt credits Auden with teaching her English and helping to edit the works she wrote in English. The poet Robert Lowell was also a friend of Arendt. Mader put books with inscriptions to greetings to her by the poets on display. 

Born in Germany, Mader teaches literature at Bard and is a writer and artist.  She just had a book published that made me wish (again) that I could read German fluently. Her book Natur und Nation cooperatively analyzes 19th century literature inspired by the Hudson River with texts inspired by the Rhine River. In October her curated walks to women's history in New York City will be published, this one in English.

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Next Nicholas Dunn spoke about Hannah Arendt's lectures and writing about Emmauel Kant.  He talked about a conference he is hosting on June 20 with the author of the book Hannah Arendt's Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, Ronald Beiner.  

Nicholas Dunn, postdoctoral fellow at HAC

Dunn talked about the way unique Arendt looked at Kant's thought and some of the response to her views.  Dunn is the Klemens von Klemperer Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College. He will also teach courses in the Departments of Philosophy and Political Studies and for the Bard Prison Initiative. 

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Jana Bacevic is a visiting scholar at the HAC. She led a conference at the HAC earlier this month on the Social Life of the Mind.  She explained Arendt's reading of and view of the The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System by Milovan Dilas, a Yugoslav intellectual. As with the Kant volume, Arendt had a unique perspective on Dilas and his work.  Dilas was jailed when the book was published in 1958 because he sent it to western countries for review.  Foreign Affairs magazine published a one-paragraph review of the book in 1958 that said: 

The manuscript of this book was sent abroad for publication and the author is now in prison as a consequence. It is important both for the quality of its thought and for the fact that it is a root-and-branch criticism of Communism, including Titoism, from within the Party itself. Since he was formerly one of the ranking Party leaders in Jugoslavia, his picture of the Communist monopoly of power is particularly telling, and the indictment is made with a typically Montenegrin lack of restraint. 

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Thomas Bartscherer, the Peter Sourian Senior Lecturer in Humanities, was the final speaker.  He announced that his volume in the series Hannah Arendt--Complete Works. Critical Edition will be published this year. He was so happy about the firm publication date that he had the audience chant a call and response of 

"When?"  
"This year!"

He told us each volume of the critical edition includes images of works in Arendt's library that she used for reference in her works.  Underlines, notes, starred items, are all included in the published book along with the text itself. His volume is on Arendt's The Life of the Mind, her last and uncompleted work. She died on the week she was to begin the third volume on judgement.   

Bartscherer talked about some of the complexities of finding and compiling annotations.  Arendt had five copies of Aristotles Nichomachean Ethics: two in Greek, two in English, one in German. She made notes and underlined passages in all of them, on different passages in each book.

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After the library we went back to the HAC building and ate dinner together, a buffet meal set up in the kitchen.  During the dinner I met more people who read and admire Hannah Arendt.  I am very much looking forward to returning for the conference on Friendship and Politics in the fall and possibly the event on Kants lectures next month.  

PanzerMuseum East Gift Shop

The Gift Shop at Panzermuseum East, Slagelse, Denmark, is crowded with uniforms, gas masks, models, spent brass, radio equipment, flags and more.

 

Museums, like their creators, have personalities. Panzermuseum East in Slagelse, Denmark, is neat with immaculately restored guns and vehicles and displays.  And it is very crowded.  Tanks, trucks, guns, armored vehicles, tank engines, radios, field hospitals, field kitchens, missiles, missile launchers, helicopters, a transport plane, and decontamination equipment crowd the buildings and the area around the buildings.  

I wrote about the museum two weeks ago.

The neat, organized, crowded feel of the museum displays carries over into the amazing gift shop near the entrance. In the photo above, are full uniforms, jackets, spent cartridges from every kind of gun: rifles to howitzers.  The snack bar table is atop 55-gallon oil drums.  

Near the entrance, by a window is a display of dozens of scale model tanks and armored vehicles, soldiers and toy helmets.  

There are hundreds of scale models of planes, ships, tanks and trucks from World War II to present day equipment.

Even landing craft....

Along with the models are racks of uniforms.

Spent cartridges up to 105mm cannon ammo. Radios, field mess kits, cases and other gear. 

Gifts and toys.....

Even toy guns!!!!!

Maria, who runs the gift shop, said  they sell nine of these Soviet era replica gas masks each week to kids who want these masks!! 

Hundreds of packs and pouches.....

Lots of belts......

And uniforms.......

A long rack of dress and fatigue uniforms and hats from various armies and eras.

Flags and canteens....

Hats....

Top Gun gear....

Flight suits......

Tank Museum Designed as a Warning: Panzer Museum East, Denmark

Most military museums, particularly tank museums, display the best and most lethal weapons of their country. Part of the intent of these museums is to say,

"Look at the awesome firepower our soldiers had." 

When I visited the Deutsche Panzermuseum, one hundred years of German innovation and technology was clearly on display. The Armored Corps Museum at Latrun, Israel, displays tanks Israel fought with right up to the Merkava (chariot) developed and built in Israel. 

So I was quite surprised when I toured the many exhibits of Panzermuseum East in Denmark. All of the exhibits are of Cold War Soviet weapons and equipment.  The museum was designed and built as a warning to what could have happened to Denmark if the Soviet Union had invaded.  Their official intent: 

At Panzermuseum East we tell the story of the Cold War and our focus since its inception has been to show visitors from around the world what would have been seen on the streets and in the air if the Warsaw Pact, led by Russia, (The Soviet Union), had attacked Denmark during the tense and heated period leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union. We also document what would have happened if nuclear weapons had been used, and the terrible consequences of this, namely that there would have been a total Ragnarok throughout Europe, with millions of dead and destroyed.

The collection is several buildings crowded with Soviet tanks, trucks, missiles, guns, motorcycles, radar stations, ambulances, field kitchens, and other equipment. 

BMP armored personnel carrier 

T-72 M1

T-55 AM2

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the museum has been tagging displayed vehicles, like the BMP and T-72, that are being used by the Russian invaders of Ukraine.

Here is what the head of the museum says about the Russian invasion of Ukraine:

Regarding the horrific and heinous attack on Ukraine. 

Ukraine is being brutally attacked right now, with a lot of material that the Panzer Museum East has on display, which the heroic Ukrainians are also using to defend themselves. Unfortunately, the brutal superpower also has far more modern equipment than the Ukrainians, so it's an unequal battle. That is why it is so important that we all support and help the Ukrainians in their fantastic fight for freedom and democracy. 

On 28 February, Tank Museum East asked the Danish army for a donation of 1,200 boxes of field rations for the brave soldiers of Ukraine. If they are donated, we will immediately drive to one of the major border crossings between Poland and Ukraine and hand them over to all those who enter Ukraine to fight for freedom and democracy and a happy future. Right now, as you read this, what I myself was terribly and cruelly afraid of when I was young is becoming a harsh reality. I myself, together with my wife, visited Chernobyl and experienced Kyiv, and we had only positive experiences and great respect for the people in their struggle to build a healthy democracy and live as free people. 

Out of my pacifist ideology and to point out that war and enmity can and will never lead to anything good for humanity, I have founded my very own private tank museum East. That is why spreading the word about history is so important, even if it seems that at the moment no one cares about the atrocities of the past. Of course I have deep contempt for the cruel and blunt attack on Ukraine.

Best regards 

Owner of the Panzermuseum East 

Allan Pedersen and staff

BMP armored personnel carrier

PRAGA M53/59 "Lizard" with 30mm anti-aircraft guns

Tank transporter flatbed truck with a T-72 tank on the end of its bed.

Danish Ferry Crewman Who Worked in Thule Greenland and Served with Elite British Regiment

 

On Wednesday, I waited on the dock in Elsinor, Denmark, to board a ferry to Sweden.  A member of the crew walked up and asked if I was just waiting or boarding the ferry that was leaving in two minutes.  I said I was waiting for the next one to meet up with my friend who was a foot passenger.  I told him I was going to Sweden just to ride my bike. 

We started talking about travel. Then about the military. He was in the Danish Army in the 90s and served with the elite British Army cavalry reconnaissance unit known as the Life Guards.  He had seen my armor tattoo and showed me the Life Guards tattoo on his shoulder.

Then he said he worked for a year on the American Air Base in Thule, Greenland. He still had the THULE identification tag on his key ring.  He was there between 2008 and 2009, about the time I left for Iraq. We made a couple of jokes about differences in climate between the two bases.  I told him I have an uncle who was assigned to Thule in 1972, around the same time I first enlisted. Martin said with a huge smile, "I wasn't even a dirty thought back then!"   

Martin said his job on the ferry didn't pay much, but he really liked his co-workers and the work. I told him that was my goal in work, to be with great co-workers and do a job I liked.  We talked about how different travel is now compared to before the 9-11 attacks. But for both of us travel is worth whatever hassles come with it.  We both prefer trains, ships and cars to flying.  

After we talked, Martin continued went to work loading the ferry. I was delighted to find it was the ferry "Hamlet" within sight of Elsinor Castle.  

Deutsche Panzer Museum--World War II Tanks

Panzer I, the little tank with no cannon and two machine guns that was the majority of the tanks used in the invasion of Poland and France.

On Saturday, June 18, after we left the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, I saw a sign for the Deutsche PanzerMuseum. We stopped and tour the large facility for a couple of hours.  The museum has tanks from World War I to the recent years.  The tanks on display are painted and restored and in very good condition. There are so many tanks on display I decided to break them up into categories. This post is World War II main battle tanks.  

The museum did not have a Panzer II, but they had a turret. The Panzer II has the same chassis used later on the Marder self-propelled gun. 

The Panzer II has a 20mm cannon and a machine gun in the turret.

The Panzer 38(t) was developed in 1935. It has a 37mm gun, like the Panzer  II. It was a very reliable tank used early in the war.

Panzer III with a 50mm main gun.

Panzer IV, with a 75mm gun, the main tank of the Wehrmacht on every front from the beginning of the war to the end.

Panzer V, "Panther" with a long-barrel 75mm gun.

Used from 1942 to the end of the war on all fronts.

The Panzer VI "Tiger" tank is the most famous German tank of World War II. It was used in service from 1942 to the end of the war. It was armed with an 88mm gun and had heavy armor. It had reliability problems early. Production ended in 1944 in favor of the Tiger II "King Tiger".

 

The Tiger II "King Tiger" was a larger more heavily armored version of the Tiger I produced only in the last year year of the war in limited numbers.