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The Middle East on the Anniversary of the Great War (to end All Wars)

February 17, 2023

"He Who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind..."

- Hosea 8:7


One hundred years after the Central Powers fought the Allies in the forests of the Ardenne, Flanders, and the trenches throughout France where millions died excruciatingly in bloody disembowelment, dismemberment and gaseous clouds of poison, Europe is deluged with the remnants of their colonial empires. the Sykes-Picot treaty artificially carving up the Middle East and that presided over the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire still lives with us today--as a creaking anachronism.  Some argue that the only real countries in the Middle East are Egypt, Persia (Iran) and Turkey. Recently, however, the boundary between artificially created Iraq and Syria is vanishing into a morass of perverted theocracy.


The warring tribes of Arabia, as depicted in T.E. Lawrence's classic tale, still exist in an even more virulent format. In one part of that great film, Anthony Quinn enters a tent to unify the Arab tribes in their British-inspired battle against the Turks.  Bedlam ensues, the tribes shouting insults and homicidal threats against each other. Lawrence is aghast but phlegmatically persists in his quest to become Lawrence of Arabia.


Nothing really has changed in the Arab world, except an exacerbation of the old conflicts partially because of the technological empowerment and unification of previously amorphous individuals who heretofore were mostly disconnected, and exacerbating the old religious dichotomies between the sects.  The tribes still exist, therefore, but with more cohesiveness because they are able to talk on cell phones, plotting a new Arab world order based upon Sharia law. Since the opinions as to whose Sharia is correct differ and there is little, if any rational discourse among the factions, we have religious war. In addition, US meddling created a power vacuum, filled by warring fundamentalists.


The Western colonial powers which had misanthropically built their oil-driven economies upon the subservience of these more primitive societies are now reaping the whirlwind. The European colonial powers, having participated in the carving up of the Middle East into artificial territories are now subsumed by immigrants derived from their colonial past.


However, in all fairness, it is not entirely their fault.  The Islamic world simply has not yet had a Reformation. That Reformation occurred in Europe in the 16th century. The Islamists are just a few centuries behind, steeped in ignorance, subjugation of women and barbarism. Most of us in the West cannot really any longer understand fundamental religious wars although much of our civilization arose from them. Getting involved in them is a zero-sum game.


The Arab world, wracked by tribalism, Islamism, fundamentalism, and a perversion of the faith is on a great particle-accelerator cultural collision course with modernity. What is hard to understand is why, in a more modern world, these religious differences have become even more pronounced.


Were all the beheadings and slaughter of religious minorities always present, or are they just more visible today because of information technology? Was it simply the rule of steel-fisted autocrats who suffered no dissent that tamped down any opposition? It sort of begs the question that if the concentration camps in Poland had been visible through satellite imagery, would the Nazis have been able so secretly prosecute their unspeakable crimes?


Many of the youth, in Iran, for example, would like to shed the religious strictures cast upon them by their authoritarian theocracy. They just do not have enough steam to do it.  The United States has lost much of its power to change the course of events, but perhaps can contribute to the destruction of the more radical elements through selective and covert activity and strategic bombing, such as is occurring now in Iraq and Syria. This, however, is problematic at best and useless at worst, because nation-building takes hundreds of years.


Here in the US there are some who fear that ISIS wishes to establish a caliphate and to kill all the infidels (us). Such marginal threats may exaggerate Islamophobia here, and fears of another 9/11, but with our security forces spying on everyone, it seems less likely that someone will bring a suitcase nuke to the Homeland anytime soon, although, who knows? This results in a demand for more vigilance, more effective means of defense strategy and less freedom.


But as dangerous as current threats seem, we have lived through much worse, such as over 700,000 Americans dead in a civil war, and 253,000 dead GIs in World War II and 53,000 dead in Viet Nam. War seems so 19th and 20th century, but the current television news broadcasts say not. President Obama in expressing this thought, invoked, of course, the ire of Lindsay Graham and John McCain, who, though not saying so, would probably like to send more US troops into the fray.


We think that moderation in addressing our problems today, as important as they are, seems more prudent than rushing into another war. Should the US be the world's policeman?  Should we have been afraid of the Communists dominoes falling in Southeast Asia? Is South Korea a product of American determination?  Should the Europeans, especially the Germans be devoting far more of their GDP to deter a egomaniacal kleptocratic, aggressive Vladimir Putin who has stifled dissent in Russia and has usurped control of the media? Believing that Putin has 80% internal approval means that Russians are stupid or that they do not have access to full information or, perhaps, Russian culture gravitates towards autocracy. After all, their democratic institutions are less than 35 years old. Finally, Russia reasserting control over Ukraine is not an entirely new condition. Why Putin wants a Ukrainian economic albatross around his neck does not entirely make sense, except an narcissistic, egomaniacal power trip, or a paranoid fear of NATO dominating what was former Soviet territory.  In any event, paranoid egomaniacs have been in charge of large nations before and the result has not been, shall we say, utopian.  This KGB gangster fits quite neatly in that paradigm.


Today, September 1st is the 75th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland, generating the conflagration of World War II, resulting in 50 million deaths. Churchill had warned about the dangers of appeasement.  Does the moderation of the Obama administration represent the actions of Neville Chamberlain?   These lessons of history are not so easy to interpret; today's world is far more open and, at the same time, more complex.  The new world order is not, by any means a bipolar environment of America and the USSR. Republicans such as John McCain and Lindsey Graham plead for more active US involvement, but do not advocate direct US "boots on the ground."  Democrats say that we need to do more to support the rebels. But which ones? Where are the moderates in the Arab world who speak out against ISIS? 


The Middle Eastern whirlwind sowed by Bush and Cheney has not even begun to be played out.

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GOP Hypocrisy at its Highest

By Engage Team • February 17, 2023
So the Supremes, appointed by Republicans, Bush I, Bush II, and three justices appointed by the Donald, who lost the popular vote by 3 million voters and who probably will soon be indicted in Georgia for election fraud, and maybe Federally for a failed coup d’état, have decided that 50 years of precedent be damned, that there is no constitutional right for a woman to make her own reproductive choices. Never mind an entire generation of women who have grown up under Roe. So let’s socially engineer by judicial fiat, what has been law for generations.N Let’s face the facts. The “justices” make up their own minds, and then build a constitutional rationalization to support their position from an infinite variety of decisions throughout the centuries of common law. And by the way, Bush II, like Trump, was also a minority president, except in the anti- democratic electoral college, designed originally to allow slave states to remain so. Our Constitution also ensured that woman and black people could not vote. So all you originalists and textualists can go back to where we were before Roe v. Wade, to that wonderful mid 20th century where segregation ruled, or the early 19th century where slavery ruled. Why not overrule Brown v. Board of Education to keep America white and segregated Justice Alito, that righteous avatar of Catholic abortion dogma rests at one of the pinnacles of governmental power, believes that American women should be the victim of state gerrymandered legislatures, representing a minority of the American polity. When Thomas Jefferson said famously, “keep the preachers away from government,” he surely should have included Alito. Let’s not forget the notion that the court is or should be not politicized. That train left the station in the early 20th century. When FDR’s National Recovery Act was shut down by the conservative Court, a court packing threat from the Democrats in congress caused the conservative majority to back off from shooting down the progressive programs that were to help the nation out of the great depression. The problem is now that there are not enough votes in the Senate to do any such thing because of successful Republican moves to suppress the vote; instead packing the court with ideologues, the most notable of whom is the handmaiden herself—Amy Coney Barrett, whom the Donald picked to fill the seat of a progressive giant, RBG. Never mind the hypocrisy of dissing Obama’s selection of Merrick Garland, not even given a hearing thanks to Mitch McConnell and his lieutenants, including Chuck Grassley, who should be in a nursing home feeding on double doses of Prevagen. Mitch at the helm has seen to our current “Justices”, helped by disinformation emanating from Rupert Murdoch’s FOX news, a money-grubbing Australian oligarch, no better than the Russian ones. Mitch’s net worth has increased ten-fold since he was elected and not on his Senate salary for sure, his wife benefiting from Chinese largesse to and from her uber wealthy family. Oh, and don’t forget Clarence Thomas, a black man who hates his own people, abetted by his wife, Ginny, encouraging the rioters to storm the capitol, sending emails to insurrectionists and GOP party leaders to stop the certification of the vote by the Senate. Thomas is all bent out of shape because of the dastardly leak, impugning the “integrity” of the court. But he will probably not recuse himself on Trump’s appeal if he is convicted of felonious conspiracy to precipitate an insurrection. Other dramatis personae include the repulsive Ted Cruz and the vituperative Josh Hawley, who voted against the purely ceremonial certification of a lawful election, necessary to enshrine the vote. Also, lets not omit a Bronx cheer for Bret Cavanaugh, the beer swilling frat boy, credibly accused of waving his penis in Christine Blasey Ford’s face at his fraternity house, assaulting her. While admittedly a college escapade, it does not speak well to his character. But no matter, he has absolved himself by joining in this sadistic exercise of Republican misogyny. “I like beer, Senator Klobuchar, don’t you?” Cavanaugh hubristically asked the Senator whose father died of alcoholism. No matter, there is no right to privacy in the Constitution, says the red spider veined nosed icon of the religious right. Now, poor women who live in Texas, Mississippi, or other places of enlightened Republican legislators will have to book an airplane flight or drive to a place where it is legal. But wait! They do not have the money to do so, instead they can carry them to term and drop their newly born at the nearest police station or underfunded Mississippi or Texas childcare facility. Thanks a lot, Amy. Perhaps you want to adopt some more children. This whole sordid episode of “Making America Great Again,” curdles the blood even of the most casual observer.

A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand

By Engage Team • February 17, 2023
"A house divided against itself, cannot stand..." - Abraham Lincoln From California to New York, from Oregon to Florida, a frightening division has descended upon our country. From rural to urban America, people wonder whether the nation and its institutions can survive this polarity. There have been times in American history that the nation was divided, never more so than in 1860. Throughout that history, there had been bitter partisanship and division. From the heat of the constitutional convention in steamy 1787 Philadelphia, the founders fought bitterly to a compromise that actually welded two nations into one in a constitution which just ninety years later devolved into a insanely bloody civil war, brother against brother, father against son, family against family. A partisan press with countless newspapers and pamphleteers spewed hatred and vituperative allegations against their countrymen both at the founding and throughout the years leading to the Civil War. Twitter has nothing on them. A rural south, an industrializing north, both parts of which employed slavery, regarded Negroes as inferior, abetted involuntary servitude and a racist ethos, challenging even the most enlightened of our citizenry. During the time between the founding and the Civil War forged compromises kept the Union together. The Missouri compromise (1820) and the Kansas-Nebraska act (1854) failed as attempts to reconcile admission to the Union of new states as either slave or free. The Constitution itself had slavery baked in to its original ratification (Article 4 sec. 2.3) imposing that, " No person held to Service or Labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any Law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or Labor, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labor may be due," Later, the Fugitive Slave act of 1850 imposed the duty on citizens and officials of the individual states themselves to return slaves to their owners or face civil fines, and that persons harboring slaves to criminal penalties. Slave catchers roamed the North, collecting bonuses for bringing slaves in; captured slaves were not permitted a jury trial. Sound like a rickety Constitution? Of course, the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments cured some of that, but still, it took the bloodiest war in the history of the Republic, 700,000 dead and wounded to get the amendments passed and only in the last few years was the Confederate battle flag removed from South Carolina government buildings. The Civil Rights act of 1964, race riots in Los Angeles, freedom riders, political assassinations of civil rights leaders, and a frothing George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door shouting "segregation forever!" interceded in the 1960s, almost 100 years after the end of the war and ten years after the landmark Brown v. the Board of Education outlawed segregation in the public schools. Well, that same Constitution has given us the Electoral College, a Federalist exercise in balancing the interests of the various states, and which now presents us with a highly undemocratic underrepresentation of large populations, California for instance, with its 40,000,000 people and North Dakota with its 500,000 each carrying two senators. Do the math on fair representation. Yes, I know the House is supposed to do that, but with present gerrymandering, the Democrats are obliged to win by much bigger majorities than Republicans. With Republicans dedicated to disenfranchising voters in Florida, for example, contrary to the will of the voters, Democrats must win votes in far greater numbers than Republicans to achieve a working majority. We now have entrenched minority government. With an unleashed president, sociopathically bound to his vindictive agenda, extreme anxiety pervades the Democratic Party, fearing that this president will be re-elected, boasting that "he alone" is claiming responsibility for the booming economy, acquitted from his misdeeds by a kangaroo court, comprised of quaking GOP senators afraid of tribal banishment to an ignominious gulag of GOP opprobrium, losing their congressional health plans, positions, prestige and power andthe ultimate loss of the dignity which they inartfully tried to preserve. Instead, they have lost it anyway by their surrender to political expediency. We need either a constitutional convention or a huge movement among voters to recognize that the divisions among us are not the result of a political agenda, but instead, tribal cultism. Many of the policy agendas result from identity politics, rural against urban, wealthy against poor, a displaced working class losing out in the battle against inevitable technological displacement, climate change and nuclear proliferation, the greatest threats to the world. A leader who can heal these divisions and create forbearance and a spirit of compromise is what we need more than ever. A president of either party who can understand reality, not phantasmagorical narcissism. It is said that great crises manufacture an FDR, a Winston Churchill, an Abraham Lincoln. Where may he or she be?

Running from Ennui

By Engage Team • February 17, 2023
Passion seems to be bestowed as a blessing on few people but seeking it is a not inconsiderable chore conferred on the many. I am not officially retired, but it seems that way. The clients call less and the work I did as a trial lawyer has become less and less appetizing. Business has diminished, not only because I am seventy-nine years of age, but because I have zero desire to market myself like a snake oil salesman. I leave that particularly odious practice to well-funded and battle stationed Morgan and Morgan and others, whose legions of paralegals, investigators, paid experts and well-staffed soldiers battle with insurance companies, and “fight for you,” its overworked lawyers all the while complaining to their colleagues and family that they hate what they do. Fifty years at the bar, and I do not mean Flanagan’s, is enough, so I leave the task of transferring wealth from one party to another and taking a piece of the action the alleged passion of the many. I do still consult with clients, if I can be of help them. I wonder if I can achieve a modicum of mastery the piano, considering that when I took violin lessons as a youth, the bandleader working at my dad’s upstate New York hotel, a Catskill fiddler by the name of Billy Rogers (nee Rosenberg) who, admittedly, was not a music teacher, told my father, that I was the “dumbest, most tone-deaf child he had ever met.” But then again, he was no Isaac Stern nor even a music teacher. Music teachers do not scream at their beginning ten-year-old students. The sole reason Dad asked him to teach me was because a guest had left a violin in one of his hotel rooms. Before my dad’s discovered violin aspirations for me, I had expressed neither the interest nor the inclination to play the most difficult, annoying instrument, or torturing everyone within hearing distance. “Press the strings until your fingers bleed and you develop callouses,” said Billy. I do not recall what happened to the violin or Billy, although he was aged in 1952. Dad either sold the violin or most likely, gave it away. Another serial disappointment from his son, I guess. After becoming a lawyer, I decided I would learn to play tennis. And I loved it. I was addicted. I became reasonably competent, starting at the age of 35, and playing regularly until I hit 70 and had spine surgery laying me up a few years. I was never the best, but I was pretty good, had a good serve and tried to play again a few years ago, losing to a younger fellow who had been playing just a few years. I had beaten him soundly before. Never fast on my feet, my molasses-like movements said, time to hang up the sneakers. Life is a series of things being taken from you. At 55 I had taken up golf. I think I have a pretty good swing, but athletically, I needed time to learn, ( a nice way to say I am a slow learner) and time is running out. Although that would not stop me, if I had some agreeable companions with whom to play. Many of the friends whose company I enjoyed have died or fallen away. There is nothing worse than spending 18 holes with someone monumentally annoying. “Nice putt,” they said, as my ball sped past the hole. Plus, most golfers do not share my politics and, inevitably, an afternoon of enjoyment turns into a dumpster fire. Most players who are Republicans, cheat. The shoe wedge or miscounting the score is a frequently insufferable habitude of the right-wing selfish, individualist, “let them eat cake” crowd. Now, when my days are not consumed by interminably long doctor’s visits or some new ailment appears, I am seeking something to do with my spare time. Going to the hospital or delivering goodies to the ill and infirm is too depressing, since I already am depressed about most people walking past me as though I did not exist. I have become irrelevant and invisible, both not particularly enviable results of my wrinkles and weathered skin and increasingly whitening hair. A grey ghost. I suppose I should take comfort that a geezer like Joe Biden could be president, gaining inspiration from him. But he seems so delicate, so frail now, that a stiff breeze would blow him over or he might stumble coming down the stairs of Air Force One. It is frightening to behold. Still, Joe beats the alternative--the orange-colored crook who is still peddling the big lie. The country is in the worst crisis since the great depression, and Joe is not FDR.  Which brings me back to the piano. I asked a neighbor who is a music teacher at an exclusive private school, “Is learning the piano at 79 doable?” He replied, “definitely, it will be good for your mind. Always keep two hands on the keyboard and learn musical notation.” I replied that I had purchased a book that said I will be able to play a Bach prelude within six weeks if I practiced 45 minutes per day. Encouraging. I guess I will find out if it can be my new passion.
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