Global
“Judaism is to do justice and to have mercy and to walk humbly with God; and all the rest is commentary and of secondary importance”.
So wrote Rabbi Elmer Berger, a leading Jewish thinker of the 50’s and 60’s, who opposed what he called Israeli-style “Jewish nationalism”.
Another renowned Jewish thinker, Arthur Koestler, warned that Israel was becoming “a nasty little Sparta”.
This past week, much of the rest of the world, sickened by the mass slaughter and destruction in Gaza wrought by Israel, joined in calls for creation of a Palestinian state. This obvious solution to the agonies of five million stateless Palestinian refugees would be a start to making whole one of the world’s largest refugee problems. Over 147 nations have recognized the Palestinian state. But until now, the United States, France, Britain and Germany have refused to heed the cries of the savagely abused Palestinian refugees.
In some ways it is refreshing to have a president who is so profoundly ignorant that one’s expectations regarding what good policies might actually come out of the federal government are really, really low. It took Donald Trump six months to accept the reality of the slaughter going on in Gaza where Israel is killing roughly one hundred Palestinians every day whose only crime is that they are looking for food, water and shelter. Admittedly Trump has actually been bold enough to challenge his Israeli masters by declaring that videos from Gaza show a lot of people who Trump admitted were “starving”, and promised to “take care” of it. Yet he has done nothing but support the Israeli blockade and repress or even deport any voices in America who protest against the war crimes.
I rarely visit Rome without stopping at the Campo de' Fiori to pay homage to Giordano Bruno, an Italian philosopher who, in 1600, was brutally burned at the stake by the Roman Inquisition. His crime was daring to challenge entrenched dogmas and to think freely about God and the infinite nature of the universe.
As I stood beneath his imposing statue, a strange ruckus suddenly erupted, growing louder as a sizable group of protesters drew closer. Dozens of people of all ages banged on pots and pans with fervent urgency.
The article on the front page of The New York Times this week began: “Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said on Tuesday that the Trump administration would revoke the scientific determination that underpins the government’s legal authority to combat climate change.”
“Speaking at a truck dealership in Indianapolis, Mr. Zeldin said the E.P.A. planned to rescind the 2009 declaration, known as the endangerment finding, which concluded that planet-warming greenhouse gases poses a threat to public health,” The Times piece continued.
It quoted Zeldin, the hand-picked appointment of President Donald Trump to be administrator of the agency, saying: “The proposal would, if finalized, amount to the largest regulatory action in the history of the United States.”
The film “Oppenheimer” focuses on the role played by the brilliant physicist, Julies Robert
Oppenheimer, in the creation of the first atomic and plutonium bombs. It suggests that he was
at the center of organizing the scientific and technical work on the first bombs. Then after the
bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945, he became tormented by
the destructive power of the bombs and advocated futilely for international control of these
weapons. He lost his security clearance as a result of this position and lived on in relative
obscurity without any influence on policy. However, the U.S. remained committed to nuclear
weapons, to a first-use policy, helped to precipitate the Cold War, and all this continues to this
day.
Here is a summary of what occurred in what became known as the Manhattan Project from the
Wikipedia public encyclopedia (https://wikipedia.org/Manhattan_Project).
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“The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that