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A Week from Hell

Unfortunately, a machine has not yet been developed that can take one back in time and undo terrible mistakes being made due to lack of appreciation of possible downstream consequences of certain actions. If Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary had been somewhere else other than in Sarajevo back in June 1914 Serbian Gavrilo Princip might never have been able to assassinate him and the European system of military alliances might never have been triggered to start World War I. Going through the subsequent history of wars since the Great War, there are certainly any number of historical mistakes or omissions that might have been rectified to stop those wars from starting in the first place.

Will Trump Go After the War Party?

In 54 BC, Marcus Licinius Crassus, a rich, ambitious Roman businessman, got himself named governor of the wealthy province of Syria. Crassus had been sharing power in Rome with Pompey and Julius Caesar. Call him the Donald Trump of his day. Crassus decided to invade neighboring Parthia, which is today Turkey and Iran. At the battle of Carrhae, retreating Persian horse archers loosed arrows over the back of their horses, giving us the literary term for a parting shot, `Parthian shaft.’ The moribund Biden administration loosed its own Parthian shaft this week by having Ukraine fire US-supplied ATACMS tactical missiles – with the help of US military technicians. A handful of British Storm Shadow and French Scalp air-launched missiles were also fired at Russia. This was clearly an act of war between nuclear powers. Russia responded by launching one of its new hypersonic missiles with multiple warheads at Dnipro, Ukraine. The new Russian medium-ranged missile carried conventional, not nuclear, warheads. But the message was loud and clear: all western Europe was in range.What, one must ask, was the lame duck Biden administration doing?

No Bad Peace, No Good Wars

This week we observe the end of the “War to End All Wars”, also known as World War I. The memorial week will be filled with the usual platitudes and patriotic guff designed to benefit the politicians who sent millions of young men to their deaths in this most stupid of all wars.I consider World War I as the greatest tragedy to befall civilization. World War II killed more civilians but World War I killed or wounded more soldiers and it destroyed much of Europe after a century of glittering civilization.We still feel the consequences of this brutal conflict today: the war in Ukraine, the butchery in Gaza, high tensions in the Balkans. WWI led to the collapse of the Russian Empire and the advent of Communism that killed millions in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. This included six million Ukrainians starved or shot by the Soviets.The rapacious Treaty of Versailles led directly to the rise of National Socialism in Germany and, in part, to fascism in Italy.

Trump nomination of Lee Zeldin to head the EPA is a Disaster.

“Unqualified,” declared Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club, about Lee Zeldin being nominated by President-elect Trump to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The nomination, Jealous said, “lays bare Donald Trump’s intentions to, once again, sell our health, our communities, our jobs and future out to corporate polluters. Our lives, our livelihoods, and our collective future cannot afford Lee Zeldin—or anyone who seeks to carry out a mission antithetical to the EPA’s mission.”

In issuing the statement, the Sierra Club noted that it “is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization with millions of members.”

A Nation in Denial: Why Israel’s Defeat is Imminent

The paradoxical phrase, 'running away forward' is one of the most apt descriptions that illustrates the state of Israeli affairs now. 

 It seems that everything that Israel has done in the past year or so is a mere attempt to deny, distract from or escape imminent future scenarios - all of which are bleak. 

 Indeed, the last year has repeatedly proven that Israel's military supremacy is no longer able to win wars or decide political outcomes. 

Post-election: Bringing Hope Back to Life

If you want to play the game of politics, here’s step one: Reduce everything to a linear political viewpoint: “right” or “left.” No matter how deep and large and complex that viewpoint is, politicize it, turn it into something that’s either right or wrong. It’s all about winning or losing.

Did Harris lean too far left? Oh gosh. Neither Liz Cheney nor Taylor Swift could save her.

I’m still immersed in my own recovery process – recovery from the election, of course. And yes, I’m feeling pain because “my side” lost, but my emotions are complicated by the fact that I didn’t really have a side in the election. It wasn’t simply that I was frustrated with the campaigns and claims of both major parties (the only ones that mattered, right?). I’ve apparently reached a point in my life where the entire political game feels problematic; it minimizes our world in a way I can no longer tolerate.

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