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.  

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.

50th Anniversary of My First Enlistment is This Month

 

Twas the night before Basic, and I drank way too much. 

I have no photos from my Air Force enlistment.

Fifty years ago today I arrived at Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio. I was hung over with shoulder-length hair and at the beginning of an on-again off-again relationship with the United States military that would finally end 44 years later in May 2016.  The story of that first haircut is here. 

Since my first of my four different service branches was the Air Force, basic training was mostly marching and learning military culture.  We had one afternoon on the rifle range, one hike, and one meal outdoors--at picnic tables.  In the nearly three years of my Air Force enlistment I never saw C-Rations let alone tasted them.  Decades later I did a comparison of C-Rations and the current MRE meals that got 100,000+ views on YouTube. Here is the video.

When I left my home in Stoneham, Massachusetts, the Beatles were still together, Elvis was still alive, the Vietnam War was still raging, the Cold War was heating up, the draft was in its last full year, the Muscle Car boom of the 1960s was nearly over, and Donny Osmond had two songs in the top ten singles of 1971.  

Speaking of music, while my shoulder-length hair was shorn from my head in the Air Force barber shop, Merle Haggard's "Okie From Muskogee" played in the background. The only country songs I heard up to that point in my life were some Johnny Cash breakthrough hits that ended up on Top 40 radio, like "A Boy Named Sue." In one of the ironies of military life, Fort Sill, Oklahoma, was the place I trained to deploy to Iraq 37 years later in 2009. In one of the many coincidences of dates in my life, my basic training and pre-deployment training both began on February 1. 

In 1972, phones had wires and were often attached to walls. Every Sunday at basic training we lined up at phone booths to call home.  Cameras had film. Barracks had liars.  Extravagant liars.  My basic training flight was forty men either 18 or 19 years old, from more than twenty states across the nation, living in one big room.  Before lights out, we would shine our shoes in groups and talk.  Some conversations were about training or life in the barracks, or the food we ate, but when the subject was home, the lies swelled to the size of a Goodyear Blimp.  I wrote about those lies and how Facebook killed the barracks liar.  

When we marched we sang songs about killing the enemy, Viet Cong mostly, occasionally a Russian, we sang about our nearly infinite appetites for sex and alcohol, and we sang about Jody--the guy who was back home sleeping with our wife/girlfriend, driving our car, emptying our meager bank account, and in its best country version, alienating the affections of a favorite hunting dog.  

At my last military training school in 2013, we were not allowed to sing any of those songs.  All five military services were in our marching formations, and none of them were allowed to sing any marching song that could be considered sexist. And even though we were in two active wars, we could not sing about an enemy. Jody was off limits.  I wrote about the change in the songs for the New York Times At War blog.

The world in which I enlisted is gone.  I am writing this in a cafe in Paris on a computer with more processing power than the computers that put a man on the moon in 1969.  The flight from home to basic training fifty years ago was the first time I had been west of Cleveland or south of Pennsylvania.  It was my first flight on an airplane.  Earlier this month, my flight to Paris was the beginning of what may be my seventieth trip to another continent either on business, pleasure or a military mission.   

I have a love/hate relationship with the military. Three times, I got out, and said I was done: in 1974, 1979 and 1985.  Three times, I re-enlisted: in 1975, 1982 and 2007.  I finally left the Army National Guard in 2016.  Now I am far too old to change my mind again.  And I am happy with that.  I spent some of the best years of my life in the military, but even if I were not too old, I am happy to let the men and women born in this century defend the country.

 

"Le Grand Remplacement"--Great Replacement Theory Began in France and Became the Trump Call to Arms

Le Grand Remplacement came to America as "Great Replacement Theory," the belief that Jews are 

replacing white people with brown people as a strategy for world domination

 

On my last day in Paris in July 2021, I stopped by La Nouvelle Librairie on Rue de Medicis across the street from Luxembourg Gardens. It is the fascist bookstore of Paris, on a shaded street with a half dozen bookstores and several cafes. 

In front of La Nouvelle Librairie was a book table with a dozen copies of Le Grand Remplacement by novelist, gay rights activist and fascist Renaud Camus.  The subtile "Introduction to Global Replacement" (Introduction au replacisme global) made me smile. A French intellectual could describe a 500-plus-page book as an introduction. An American publisher would insist on something less than a third that length.

The fascist bookstore and The Red Wheelbarrow English-language bookstore are next door neighbors. Not happily.  The Red Wheelbarrow always has anti-fascist books in the window display.

Penelope Fletcher, owner of The Red Wheelbarrow, the English-language bookstore next to the fascist bookstore, assured me in 2019 that the French fascists have nothing good to say about President Trump or American fascists.  "They see themselves as intellectuals," she said of the fascists next door. "They don't like to be associated with Trump and American fascists."

But American white supremacists, Nazis and others racists have made Great Replacement Theory their own, even if they don't know its French roots. When the Charlottesville Nazis chanted "Jews will not replace us" they were echoing the theory that Jews are moving brown people into white nations as part of a global takeover.  (I can't help wondering what Charlottesville racists would have thought if they knew they were quoting a gay activist French intellectual.)

The man who murdered Jews in Pittsburgh in 2018 was motivated by Great Replacement Theory.  When Trump said caravans were invading America he was echoing Great Replacement Theory back to his racist ChristianNationalist voters.  

The ADL (Anti Defamtion League) has an excellent summary of Great Replacement Theory.   I have some highlights below: 

• “The Great Replacement” theory has its roots in early 20th century French nationalism and books by French nationalist and author Maurice Barres. However, it was French writer and critic Renaud Camus who popularized the phrase for today’s audiences when he published an essay titled "Le Grand Remplacement," or "the great replacement," in 2011. Camus himself alluded to the “great replacement theory” in his earlier works and was apparently influenced by Jean Raspail’s racist novel, The Camp of the Saints.
• Camus believes that native white Europeans are being replaced in their countries by non-white immigrants from Africa and the Middle East, and the end result will be the extinction of the white race.
• Camus focused on Muslim immigration to Europe and the theory that Muslims and other non-white populations had a much higher birth rate than whites. His initial concept did not focus on Jews and was not antisemitic.
• The “great replacement” philosophy was quickly adopted and promoted by the white supremacist movement, as it fit into their conspiracy theory about the impending destruction of the white race, also know as “white genocide.” It is also a strong echo of the white supremacist rallying cry, “the 14 words:” “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”
• Since many white supremacists, particularly those in the United States, blame Jews for non-white immigration to the U.S. the replacement theory is now associated with antisemitism.
• The night before the August 2017 the Unite the Right rally, white supremacists, marching across the University of Virginia campus, shouted, “Jews will not replace us,” and “You will not replace us,” clear references to Camus’ theory.

Use By Individual Extremists

• In October 2018, white supremacist Robert Bowers killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA, after writing a Gab post blaming Jews for bringing non-white immigrants and refugees to the U.S.
• In March 2019, white supremacist Brenton Tarrant livestreamed himself killing 51 people at two mosques in New Zealand. Tarrant also released a manifesto online called “The Great Replacement,” an homage to Camus’ work.
• In April 2019, white supremacist John Earnest killed one and injured three at a synagogue in Poway, CA. In a letter he released online, Earnest claimed that Jews were responsible for the genocide of “white Europeans,” and cited the influence of Bowers and Tarrant.
• In August 2019, white supremacist Patrick Crusius opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, TX, killing 23 people and wounding almost two dozen. In a manifesto, Crusius talked about a “Hispanic invasion” and made reference to the great replacement.

Use by Media/Tech Personalities

• In July 2017, Lauren Southern, a Canadian far-right activist, released a video titled, “The Great Replacement,” promoting Camus’ themes. That summer, Southern was involved in “Defend Europe,” a project lead by European white nationalists to block the arrival of boats carrying African immigrants. Southern’s video further popularized Camus’ theory.
• In October 2018, on Fox News' The Ingraham Angle, host Laura Ingraham said, "your views on immigration will have zero impact and zero influence on a House dominated by Democrats who want to replace you, the American voters, with newly amnestied citizens and an ever increasing number of chain migrants."
• In October 2019, Jeanine Pirro was discussing Democrats' hatred of Trump on Fox Nation's The Todd Starnes Show. She declared, "Think about it. It is a plot to remake America, to replace American citizens with illegals that will vote for the Democrats."
• On April 8, 2021, on Tucker Carlson Tonight, the host explicitly promoted the ‘great replacement” theory. Carlson discussed “Third World” immigrants coming to the US who affiliate with the Democratic Party. He asserted, “I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term 'replacement,' if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate — the voters now casting ballots — with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World, but they become hysterical because that's what's happening, actually. Let's just say it. That's true."
• On April 11, 2021, Andrew Torba, the founder of Gab, posted on his own platform: “Now today the ADL is trying to cancel Tucker Carlson for daring to speak the truth about the reality of demographic replacement that is absolutely and unequivocally going on in The West. These are not ‘hateful’ statements, they objective facts that can no longer be ignored.”

Rural Drivers Hating Bicyclists is Nothing New

In 2004, a bicycle hater with the unlikely name John F. Kennedy threw tacks on the road when he knew bicyclists would run over them and get flats and possibly crash. 

He did it twice. The second time, I saw him do it. I got his license number and harassed the local police until they arrested and charged him. Here’s the story: 

From the mid-1990s until March of this year, I rode two or three times a week with a daily training ride group led by a former National Champion named Scott. Monday through Thursday at 4pm and Friday at 1pm, riders join the group from the west side Lancaster, Pa., and follow an unvarying route of 35 miles by the time the riders return to the city two hours later. 

The ride is so predictable, that I and other riders would join the ride at several different points knowing within two minutes when the riders would pass a given intersection or landmark. The ride goes southwest of Lancaster to Safe Harbor Park near the Susquehanna River, then turns north toward Columbia, and back to Lancaster through Millersville. 

Just before Safe Harbor Park is Conestoga Boulevard, the place where pickup trucks are most likely to pass too close, blow their horns or occasionally yell their displeasure at sharing the road—a nearly empty road. One day in 2004 passing over the crest of a half-mile hill, several riders got flats. 

There were tacks on the road. Recently a man in an old red pickup truck had yelled at us several times as he passed. The ride crests the hill at 4:40pm and that was when he was headed home to the apartment where he lived south of Safe Harbor Park. Apparently, he got ahead of us, threw tacks on the road and drove away. I thought it was him. 

Two weeks later he passed us yelling as we neared the top of the hill. I sprinted as hard as I could down the hill wanting to see where he went at the next intersection. As I neared the bottom of the hill, I saw him on the side of the road throwing tacks. He saw me, got in his truck and took off. I got his license number. It was a level road and he was speeding so he was gone in moments, but I did see that he went south. 

Two other riders had followed me and seen what happened. Now we had witnesses and actual tacks. I called the Conestoga Police Department and got little cooperation, but I insisted, and they relented. John F. Kennedy was charged two misdemeanors. I told the officers that I had witnesses and we would all be happy to testify. 

On the day of the trial, Kennedy arrived in the pickup truck I had identified. We learned later he had another vehicle. It turns out he did not have an attorney. Criminals, when you get to know them, are stupid. Those of us who were witnesses showed up at trial in suits and ties. 

Kennedy wore work clothes and had his sunglasses on top of his head. If he had a lawyer, the lawyer would have known that the judge had a son who was a Lancaster City police officer, a member of the bicycle patrol. The lawyer also would have known that one of the witnesses was a bicycle patrol officer and a veteran. But Kennedy was too arrogant to think he needed a lawyer. 

The judge presented the evidence. The witnesses said what they saw. Kennedy spoke in his own defense saying he did not throw the tacks on the road, but bicyclists should not be blocking the roads and we deserved what happened. After the testimony, the judge gave a summary of the evidence and the defense. He was so calm and impassive, I thought Kennedy would get the case dismissed. The police officer who rides with us and was a witness knew better but said nothing. 

When the summary was complete, the judge told Kennedy to stand to receive the verdict. He stood and smirked, also thinking he would get off. The judge exploded. Kennedy stood straight. All of us sat up straight. The judge lectured Kennedy for ten minutes, gave him the maximum fine of $880 dollars and said he would be in jail if every penny was not paid on time. 

Four of my kids were at the trial. They all rode bicycles and they knew all of the riders who were endangered by Kennedy. Like us riders, they sat very straight and still when the judge charged Kennedy. I was glad they could see justice served. 

Kennedy never bothered us again. I never saw him again.

When Walking I Don't Get Angry: Cycling is Different

Slowly healing. 

Today I saw the surgeon who put my arm back together with plates and screws  and considerable skill.  Tomorrow I begin a more sadistic physical therapy with pulleys to get more range of motion from my shattered elbow.

Three times during the visit, the doc said I should ride. I have enough range of motion in my arm to ride.

But during my three-mile walk home from the visit I had another moment of the making the contrast between bicycling and walking as exercise.  More than half the time I ride, someone in a vehicle--most often a plus-sized redneck in a pickup truck--will swerve at me or just pass too close. Occasionally he will yell faggot (women never do these things, only men).  A few times I have been hit with bottles and cans or got a "rollin' coal" cloud of smoke from a diesel pickup.

And I get angry.

Only rarely can I do anything about it. Once more than 15 years ago I got the license plate of a guy who threw tacks in the road because he hated us so much much. 

I have walked in hundreds of miles since surgery and no one has swerved at me, thrown tacks in the road, spit, called me a faggot, or any of the other things that have happened to me only in America and mostly on rural roads. 

So now I am really thinking about how much I want to ride.  I live in a rural area with lots of pickup trucks.  Do I want to return to getting pissed off at the pathetic cowards who think bicyclists don't belong on "their" roads? 

It's a question I never asked before. I love cycling so much that I thought the anger was part of riding. But knowing that I can walk and challenge myself makes the world look different. What is inner peace worth?  I will be asking myself that.

"Go Take a Flying F#ck at a Rolling Doughnut!" -- Kurt Vonnegut

  

In a touching scene in the movie “Ford v Ferrari” Carroll Shelby, a Texan, tells a boy who lost his father in a racing accident, “Your Daddy thought you was finer than fur on a frog.” I was watching the movie in France in English with French subtitles. The translator said something like “Your father thought you were a very good boy.”

Metaphor, like poetry, does not translate easily or well.

The moment brought me back to trying to figure out military metaphor when I first enlisted.  The American military is more than 60% southern and western, so for a Boston Yankee like me, I had trouble understanding what some of the sergeants were saying. 

One of the first metaphors that confused me was hearing a sergeant say of a soldier struggling hopelessly with the wrong wrench for the job, “He looks like a monkey trying to fuck a football.”  I have a literal mind, so I could picture what he was saying, but could not understand why he was saying it.

But those ten words hold lots of meaning. A monkey, at least in popular culture, is extremely sexually active and so might try to have an erotic relationship with almost anything.  The monkey is presumed to have great energy which it will use even in pursuit of an impossible goal. So, a soldier trying with great energy to do something impossible is like that monkey. 

In that era, the American military was trying to reduce the amount of swearing by sergeants. When one soldier was disagreeing with and rejecting another soldier, he could say, “Go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.”  This, like suggesting intercourse with one’s self, is an impossible task, and one that would be peculiarly painful in the likely event it failed or even if it succeeded. This insult had been in circulation at least since World War II. Many years later, I was reading “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, and smiled when I read the rolling doughnut metaphor.

But before I heard the traditional version, I heard my crew chief use the non-swearing variant using bureaucratic language to say the same thing. He said: “Please attempt aerial intercourse with a motivated, perforated pastry.”

After a while, the Army use of metaphor came easily to me. You could say I caught on, “quicker than chicken on a June bug.”

At the Armored Corps Museum, Latrun, Israel, a Patton Tank Sliced Lengthwise in Half

At the Armored Corps Museum in Latrun, Israel, one of the many tanks on display is an American-built Patton tank cut fully in half, lengthwise showing the inside of the tank from the driver's compartment in the front to the V-12 twin-turbo diesel powerpack in the rear.

Looking into the driver's compartment in the front of the hull of the tank.

The V12 Powerpack in the rear of the hull.

Looking into the gunner's seat on the right side of the main gun in the turret and ammo racks in the hull.

The main gun in the center of the turret.

Another view of the gunner's seat and the ammo racks in the front of the hull on either side of the driver.

Paris Training Race and West Along the Seine

Today I am back in Paris and riding longer distances getting ready for Israel. I rode 42 miles from the south side of Paris to the daily training race at l'hippodrome in the southwest of corner of Paris.

After an 8-mile warmup ride, I joined the with a small group going about 18mph. A half-lap later a faster group went by so I sped up and joined.  At the end of that lap, six guys went by going even faster, so I sprinted onto the end of that group that was averaging 22mph.

I stayed with them for three laps.  I was using Strava so riding with this fast group meant I set a half dozen personal records, and I moved up to 9,500th of 19,500 riders who set times on the two-mile oval.  I also moved up to 43rd among the 140 riders who set times in the 65-69 age group.

After five laps I turned off and made a tour of my favorite towns west of Paris. I rode up and over Mont Valerian through the town of Suresne. I used to stay there when I was in Paris on business 20 years ago because I could wake up early, roll down the hill and ride the daily training race.

After Suresne, I rolled down the long hill into Rueil-Malmaison. The company I worked for had an office there. It's a lovely town on a bend in the Seine.  After that I rode west along the Seine to Saint Germain-en-Laye. This town has an amazing park and Hotel d'Ville and is the setting for the novel Paris in the Present Tense by Mark Helprin--my favorite book by one of my favorite authors.

I rode back through Chatou and stopped for lunch a Maison Fournaise. I'll write a separate post about that.  Paris is a lovely pace to ride.

Knee Works Well Enough to Walk: Boarding in an Hour

Last night, I thought the sudden, painful swelling of my titanium knee could be the end of my trip.  I am still not sure how much I will be able to ride, but I can walk well enough to navigate train stations and Newark Airport.  In an hour I should be on the way to Paris to begin the trip.

I also wondered if carrying a backpack would be a problem, but so far, no problem at all.  While riding on the trains today, I have been making alternate plans of what I can see and if my bicycle riding is severely limited. Since I have only seen Jerusalem and nearby towns in all of Israel, there will be plenty to see.

The same is true in the Baltic States later in the trip.

This trip, like the one in 2017, is both a bike ride and a chance to visit Holocaust sites and memorials. In the Baltic countries, like Ukraine and Poland, the Jews were almost completely wiped out both by the Nazis and by their neighbors who killed Jews and took their property.  As with Rwanda and Bosnia, the genocide was personal and horrible.

I know I will be surprised by things I see and discover.  On the last trip, one of the saddest places I visited was the German Military Cemetery at Normandy. While there, I swung back and forth between sadness and anger, because this cemetery is how America should have treated the Civil War. The Germans started a racist war and lost. They memorialize the dead soldiers, but not the leaders or the cause.  America should have done that.

Almost 75 years after the end of World War II, Germany is a civilized country.  More than 150 years after the Civil War, we elected a guy who says Nazis are fine people.

Chinook Landing on a Roof in Afghanistan Honored in Original Art

On 10 November 2003 the crew of Chinook helicopter 

Yankee 2-6 made this landing on a cliff in Afghanistan.

Artist Larry Selman immortalized the event in a limited-edition print.

When I deployed to Iraq in 2009 with an Army helicopter brigade, nearly all the soldiers in our unit and every other unit were younger than me—a generation younger than me. But not the pilots.  Some were young, but many more were in their 40s and 50s.  Larry Murphy, a Chinook helicopter pilot, was one of the very few soldiers older than I was.  I was 56. He was 58. 

On Wednesday, 5 September 2019, Larry was honored with the unveiling of a painting commemorating an amazing bit of flying he and his crew did in Afghanistan in 2003.  Larry was deployed with a company of Chinooks and supporting equipment to Afghanistan. The tour was supposed to be a year and was extended to 16 months. The Chinook company was made up of soldiers from the Pennsylvania and Connecticut Army National Guard did not leave Afghanistan till 2004. They were in support of several companies of soldiers from the 10^th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, New York.

On 10 November 2003, Larry and the crew of Chinook helicopter Yankee 2-6 received an additional mission to pickup prisoners while they were on a resupply mission. These missions are a routine part of combat operations in Afghanistan.  But this mission was different. The prisoners had to be picked up from the side of a steep mountain at an elevation of 8,500 feet above sea level.  There was no place to land an aircraft with a 52-foot-long fuselage that is almost 100 feet long from tip to tip of its massive twin rotors. 

The pickup point was a shack on the side of a cliff.  Larry and the crew landed rear-wheels-only on the roof of the shack with the tail ramp lowered.  With the back of the helicopter on the shack roof, Larry and the other pilot, Paul Barnes, could not see the shack or any other close-in visual markers. From the cockpit, the pilots could see down the cliff to the valley 2,500-feet below.  The flight engineer James Duggan, crew chief Brian Kilburn and door gunner Margaret Haydock guided the pilots from the side and rear of the aircraft.  

Although technically a landing in the sense that the rear wheels were on the ground, the pilots were carefully keeping the full weight of the 25,000-pound (empty) helicopter from resting on shack, and keeping the front of the helicopter stable and level while the prisoners were brought aboard.

As soon as the prisoners were on board, the big helicopter returned to base. 

Five years ago, I was in a Chinook helicopter on Fort Indiantown Gap that landed rear-wheels-only on a cliff.  Twenty soldiers in full battle gear ran off the ramp and set up a security perimeter.  As the soldiers left the aircraft with their gear and heavy weapons, the weight of the aircraft dropped by 6,000 pounds, but the pilots held the helicopter level and steady.  I was looking out the door gunner’s window near the front of the aircraft. I saw nothing but sky above and rock-strewn valley hundreds of feet below.  I had heard about the roof landing since I joined the unit in 2007. It is amazing to see. It is more amazing to feel.

Larry Murphy signing prints at the Aviation Armory on 

Fort Indiantown, Pennsylvania  

The print by artist Larry Selman is available on his website.

In the years since the landing, the photo (above) has become an iconic image for Army Aviation, so much so that people question if the landing really happened.

Snopes.com answered the question: True. From their site:

I’m sure all of you have seen many choppers make some daring moves, but this one is spectacular. Hope you enjoy it. This attached shot was taken by a trooper in Afghanistan. Pilot is Larry Murphy, PA National Guard. Larry is a Keystone Helicopter Corp. EMS Pilot employee called to active duty. I must state that this is a “unique” landing operation. I understand that this particular military operation was to round up suspects.

We have some super reservists and National Guard folks out there in addition to our volunteer troops. God bless them all.