I myself don’t know what Israel’s leadership should do.  I have no inside information on Iranian defences or Israeli military options.

But I like what Tobin is saying.  He simply argues that the military option is not hopeless.  Iran is not invulnerable.  This doesn’t sound particularly controversial until you consider how many supposed “realists” treat with the contrary proposition as a default axiom, a matter that must be taken on faith.

Tobin also points to the similarity with 1967, when world opinion was united in urging Israel not to take preemptive action against Egypt’s planned holocaust.

What is most surprising is today’s “realist’s” claim that an Israeli strike would turn Iran into an implacable enemy of Israel!  Have these guys been listening to Iran’s leaders lately?  It’s worse, more openly genocidal, than anything Nasser ever spouted.

Here is the result of the voluntary blindness (deafness) of Western “realists”.  Iran is following a 2-track policy:  First, rattle sabres, threaten Israel and the US with destruction (which they cannot yet carry out); and at the same time, flout the world as you openly develop the weapons that will make the first policy possible.

And the US policy?  Admit military impotence (even shrink our own forces), worry about offending Iran, and put off serious sanctions until we can be sure they won’t affect oil prices.

I don’t know what Israel should do about Iran.  But it seems obvious what America and our president should do.

America should say to Israel and the world, both privately and openly, that we will stand by Israel with our full support in whatever actions its government decides are necessary to meet the Iranian threat.

We should do this because:

1: Israel is the frontline target of the threat, and has the most to gain or lose as a result of the decision;

2: Israel has shown itself to be judicious and cautious in making such security decisions in the past;

3: Israel is our only ally in the region, the only stable, democratic, free government in the region;

4: Israel is the only government in the region with a long-standing commitment to live in peace with its neighbors if given the opportunity.

Our duty is clear.  So far, we have fallen far short.

Now, we’ve been hearing about Iran’s invulnerability for years.  Yes, we know that some of Iran’s facilities are deep underground.  We’ve been hearing that for years from those urging inaction.

Fact:  In May of 2006, James Fallows wrote in the Atlantic: “Now that Iran unquestionably intends to build a nuclear bomb, the international community has few options to stop it—and the worst option would be a military strike.”

Fact: In 2009,  Defense Secretary Gates, obviously speaking at the president’s direction, has announced that the US has no military ability to destroy the fast-developing Iranian nuclear program.  All we would do would be “send it further underground.”

Fact:  In May of 2011, The AP reports that “Iran has moved some of its centrifuge machines to an underground enrichment site that offers better protection from possible airstrikes, the country’s vice president said Monday.”

Questions:  If they’ve been so bloody invulnerable for so long, why are the Iranians suddenly burying them?

Is it really that easy to build a nuclear weapons program while your weapons facilities are being bombed?  Has anyone ever done so?

It seems as if the bar is set a bit high here.  Must a single attack take out all weapons development capacity forever?  Can’t the prospect of the next in a series of strikes be a serious deterrent?

Yes, we know that some of Iran’s facilities are deep underground.  We’ve been hearing that for years from those urging inaction.

The indestructability of the Iranian facilities seems always to be the default assumption of those who want to pull the teeth from our rhetoric about how “all options remain on the table.”

But even underground, reinforced, bunkered arsenals must rely on massive above-ground support facilities.

So why is a staunch friend of Israel like Mr. Rubin joining this long-running effort to reassure Iran that it has nothing to worry about?

“Palestinians in Lebanon Shown Saluting Nazi/Hezbullah Style

Palestinians in Lebanon Shown SalutingPalestinian salute..

(You can view the TV footage here.)

Paul Berman, in the days after 9/11, wrote an interesting and perceptive book about the Fascist and Nazi roots of Islamist terrorism.  The book is Terror and Liberalism, and it was a call for the Left to remember which side it belongs on.  Sadly, too few on the Left have done so.

A friend of mine used to theorize that all conservatism, and therefore all defense of society, rests on the fathers of daughters – FODs, as he called them.

He explained that it is only when one has children that one begins to recognize how fragile is the future, how dangerous the present, and how great our responsibility to protect the vulnerable, such as children.

The problem is that women, for the most part, tend to believe that the world is dangerous only by accident, rather than as a basic, natural condition.  My friend claimed that he had never met a woman who would not agree with the statement that “People are basically good.”  And increasingly many men agree with them.

Of course, people are not basically good.  Any Christian who even slightly understands the doctrine of Original Sin can be in no doubt about this.  But most Americans, including most church-goers, would readily subscribe to the “basically good” hypothesis.

As Reinhold Niebuhr put it, “No cumulation of contradictory evidence seems to disturb modern man’s good opinion of himself.”  Yet it is modern woman who seems most undisturbed by human nature.

So women, even as mothers, tend to underestimate the degree of the risks their children face in society.

Fathers of sons are susceptible to a belief that “my boy” will be able to take on the world, and nothing can stop him.  “Go get ‘em, tiger,” is a common enough attitude. A son can even serve as an opportunity to extend one’s own adolescence – a tendency men find irresistible.

Except for the Fathers of Daughters.  Becoming a FOD forces the most immature male to grow up fast.  Such men look back on their own adolescence and wince.  FODs know that young men (at least) are not basically good, and their daughters are not safe with them.  Male adolescents exist in only two types: sexual predators and sexual-predator wannabes.  (Almost no women believe this; they think boys are either good boys or confused, troubled boys.)

This knowledge forces a FOD to recognize the necessity for strong societal institutions to enforce strict moral limits on behavior.  Without such institutions and limits, no street in America would be safe.  The worst sci-fi dystopian post-apocalyptic nightmare would be realized.

Anyway, that’s my friend’s FOD theory.  When he first explained it to me, Bill Clinton was president.  I asked him how Clinton, a FOD, seemed to remain such an adolescent at heart, pursuing any and every available woman as if he were a frustrated 17-year old virgin in an American-Pie sequel.

My friend wasn’t sure, but he guessed that there are some men for whom narcissism or ideology can overwhelm what other FODs can understand so easily.

We talked about many folks we both knew who typified and proved his FOD theory, and a few anti-FODs like Clinton who tested it.  I became a partial believer in the FOD factor.

Our new president-elect is of course technically a FOD.  With two daughters he must have thought about all this at least somewhat.  If so, he may have a personal conservative streak buried deep in his heart that may show itself someday, somewhere, somehow.

Or he may be an anti-FOD, blinded by ideology or narcissism.  Conservative pundits have spent a fair amount of ink and electrons debating which of those two pathologies dominate him.

As for me, I will hope (there’s that word again) that his inner FOD will yet speak up.

by Ben Finiti 

Over the recent years, I have developed an interesting new hobby. (Well, I find it interesting.)  I prowl through thrift stores in search of forgotten books by forgotten authors.  And then I liberate them (usually for a dollar) and read them.

I pass quickly over certain types of books.  For instance, I have never bought a 20th or 21^st century work of fiction. In my humble opinion as an accomplished literary snob, the last great writer of fiction was Anthony Trollope.  (I do not classify Orwell, Huxley, Waugh, or Koestler’s works as quite fiction.)

I do pick up curious books on subjects in which I have neither interest nor background.  For instance, I just finished a book called Let’s Talk About Port, by J.C. Valente-Perfeito, published in Portugal in 1948.  The author explains the varieties of port, sings (gushes, actually) its praises, and complains of how little his fellow citizens drink of it.   He offers eloquent warnings about the modern scourge of cocktail-drinking, and effectively rebuts those medical cranks who claim that alcoholism is a bad thing.  I had great fun reading it, and I may even try some of the stuff one of these days.

But the real goal of my pursuit is a category of books which was invented and flourished in the dreadful 20^th century:  the survivor’s tale of witness to the inhuman atrocities that reached such a peak (so far) in the recent past.

Some books of witness were instant hits and remained so, despite their crushing intensity.  Elie Wiesel’s Night describes Auschwitz and his father’s death there.  The Diary of Anne Frank is rightly famous, though I myself have never been able to read more than a few opening pages before dissolving in tears.  (I think this is because I have a daughter, and the words always come into my head in my daughter’s voice.)

In One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, Alexander Solzhenitsyn used a thin veil of fiction to recount a part of his experience in the prison camps of history’s most earnest experiment in “building a better world.”   His later massive Gulag Archipelago removed the veil and included more detail that most readers can stand.

In the mid-range stand works which once were read and discussed, and now dot the dustbins.  Whittaker Chambers’ aptly named Witness tells  of a man whose soul was driven by his embrace of communism into the vicious underworld of espionage against his country.  It becomes a story of redemption, as he rejects his past infatuation and attempts, at enormous personal cost, to warn his countrymen of the ugly reality facing them.

Primo Levi’s If This is a Man tells his tale of Auschwitz survival in clinical terms that reflect his scientific background.

Many a bookshelf could be filled with tales from heroic survivors from the dark side of the soul.  And most of them would be unknown, unread, unstudied, and out-of-print, available only through Amazon’s used-book network, or (for the lucky treasure hunter) the bins of a Goodwill store.

Who now reads Victor Kravchenko?  Peter Deriabin?  Jan Valtin?  Earl Weinstock?

Viktor Kravchenko’s is an interesting story. He was a Soviet engineer and factory manager, a coddled member of Stalin’s New Class.  His book is filled with the chilling details that lay bare the soul-destroying communist system.  During WW2 he defected to the US from a trade mission and wrote his story.  When it was finally published (I Chose Freedom, 1946) he was blasted by Communists worldwide as a liar and defamer of the Soviet Union.  Kravchenko responded by suing a prominent French communist leader for libel.  He won, and wrote a second book, I Chose Truth (1950) about the case.

With unimpeachable credibility, Kravchenko exposed the nightmare that it was to live under the Chekists’ never-blinking eye, even for top managers who were never arrested or imprisoned.  This book should be the primary text for any serious study of the reality of Soviet life under Stalin.In his second book he unmasked the puppetry whereby supposedly indigenous communist parties existed primarily to serve the demands of one man in the Kremlin.

Peter Deriabin was a KGB bureaucrat, agent, and finally a spy in Austria.  He, too, enjoyed the material luxuries the Soviets lavished on the New Class.  And he, too, ran for the US at the first opportunity.  His book, The Secret World (1959), unveils the State Security apparatus from the agent’s side, and it dovetails with Solzhenitsyn’s victim-view.   He gives fascinating insights into the power struggle after Stalin’s death, and dashes the naive hope that the system would then change.

An intriguing tale from another perspective is Jan Valtin’s Out of the Night (1940).  He was a German communist organizer and spy; like Chambers, he was a true believer who thought he was empowering the working class and eradicating poverty, only to discover that he was just eradicating the Leader’s enemies and empowering a new class of party functionaries.  His description of the tactics used to eliminate non-communist labor leaders is a unique eye-opener by itself.

Earl Weinstock’s case is perhaps saddest of all.  A young Rumanian Jew, Weinstock only dreamed of escaping Rumania’s poverty and anti-Semitism by getting out, going anywhere.  While he looked to France or Palestine, his mother had one unchanging dream: America.   In 1942 Weinstock, his mother and two brothers were sent to German concentration camps, where he survived after seeing his older brother shot, and being forced to shovel in dirt on the open mass grave where he fell.  After the war, Rumania went through another hell, this time under their Soviet “liberators.”  Weinstock contemplated the difference between the two tyrannies.

“In Transnistria [the German camp] I was a prisoner.  I was clothed in rags.  I slept on the dirt and potato peels in a barrack of filth and stink.  I was given little to eat and I stole food from garbage cans, for which I could have been shot. I saw and heard of murders and atrocities.  But my life and my captors made it plain to me that I was a prisoner. Nobody tried to convince me in the middle of all this that I was really free. That made a difference that I could not know then but that I knew now in Iasi [his hometown in Rumania]. I had made up my mind in Transnistria that I could outlast them if they did not shoot me.  It wasn’t easy, but filth and hunger and confinement were environments I could adapt to.   For those who shared my lot in my barracks would share everything. Our minds were free.  We could confide in each other, trust each other…But in Iasi, in 1947…what could I hope for?  To whom could I talk and feel safe in so doing? …What and who was I to be?  And I was not in a prison and I could not point to anyone who was my captor, but they talked to me of freedom and I was a prisoner.”

He and his aged mother escaped to America in 1949.  She died within a year, and he tried to forget the past, but too many ghosts pushed him to tell his story.  So he wrote a book, The Seven Years (his life from 1942 to 1949). E.P Dutton published it.  It was never re-printed.  Amazon lists a single used copy.

I found mine in a Goodwill bin.

Do these books matter?  True, many of them had considerable success in opening Western eyes and forcing them to recognize the truth.  But many people were able to dismiss all these eye witnesses and their stories as mere propaganda.

After reading Kravchenko no one could seriously doubt the real hell that was life in the Soviet Union, or the truly criminal nature of the worldwide movement that supported it.  Yet millions in the West continued to believe that this hell was heaven.

Deriabin demonstrated the intense hyperparanoid terror that was essential to the system’s survival.  Yet millions continued to believe that the police state was an aberration of the system, caused by one man’s suspicious nature.

Valtin makes it clear that the Nazis and Communists were history’s ugliest fraternal twins; differing mainly in the effectiveness of the former and the puppet-leadership of the latter.  Yet millions continue to believe that while the Nazis were uniquely evil, the communists were well-intentioned reformers who made unfortunate “mistakes”.

And the fashionable deniers of “American exceptionalism” have to figure out a way to debunk the iron determination of Earl Weinstock’s mother, pursuing a lifelong vision of freedom under the Statue of Liberty.

The truth is always worth telling, even if it never finds an audience.  And there is value in seeking out these lost truths.  Otherwise, too many lives, too much heroism ends up down the Memory Hole.

_____________________________________________________________________

If you want to read any of these books, your best bet is a university or big-city library, but keep your handkerchief ready for the layer of dust that will cover it.  Another source is the Inter-Library Loan system.  And, of course, Amazon.  And Goodwill.

Let me know what you think of any of these writers, or any other witnesses you come across.

Read about it here.

The headline:

Israeli officials: Obama too soft on Iran

The sub-head:

Top government officials laud France, UK, but tell Ynet White House policy with regards to Iranian nuclear program ‘hesitant’

Is there anything more humiliating than a United States president too timid to follow the lead of Britain and France?  I mean, they invented appeasement, for crying out loud!   (See my “The Arc of Appeasement” below or here.)

Has there ever been a more anti-Israel, pro-appeasement president than Obama?  Not even Eisenhower, no friend of Israel, would have stood for Iran’s outrageous actions.  Unfortunately, Obama cannot distinguish between speeches and actions.  He believes that when he speaks, the world listens.  But why would they?

In O’s first year, French President Sarkozy lectured Obama for his big talk unaccompanied by action.  He told the Security Council (I spotlighted it below, in “A French Lesson”):

“We live in the real world, not the virtual world. And the real world expects us to take decisions.    President Obama dreams of a world without weapons … but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite.  Iran since 2005 has flouted five security council resolutions. North Korea has been defying council resolutions since 1993…”

Since that scolding, Obama has continued to block any type of strong action, including serious sanctions.  As he has done before, he supports the weakest possible sanctions and hopes everything will somehow work out.

Flashback: Bullwinkle: “Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!”

Rocky: “That trick never works.”

Bullwinkle: “This time for sure.”

Bullwinkle (after trick fails): “I gotta get a new hat.”

Obama doesn’t need a new hat.  He needs a backbone.

This one is about “The Problem of Gratitude”, and what gratitude implies.  Check it out.

Unionism in the private sector is not just down; it’s almost out. Membership has been falling steadily for half a century and is now circling the drain, with membership at 6.9% of the workforce. In 1953 it was 36%.

This disastrous decline has been partly masked by the simultaneous growth of unions in the public sector. While private unions sank, public ones climbed from near-zero in the 1950’s to around 36%, where it has held steady since 1980. Decline has also been disguised by the growing political power of the union movement, as its electoral organizing skills have improved even as membership organizing has languished.

Why the decline? Why have private sector workers stopped joining unions?

The unions have a ready answer: it’s too hard to organize because employers cheat. They scare and intimidate and fire workers who try to organize.

Undoubtedly true, in too many cases. Union-busting consultants have a bag of anti-union tricks that can certainly make certification elections hard to win.

But that just begs the question. Why only now? Didn’t employers know these tricks during all the years unions were growing? Didn’t Henry Ford know how to intimidate workers? Didn’t the steel companies? Didn’t construction firms? Coal-mine operators? The Mohawk Valley Formula for union-busting dates back to 1936.

So why are so many unions now stymied by employer opposition?

Other possible explanations for union decline abound. Many heavily unionized manufacturing and textile industries have moved jobs overseas in search of lower costs.

But other industries that are largely homebound have not been organized in their place.

And in fact many newer industries (high-tech, for instance) are often fairly good employers, offering decent benefits and workplace flexibility in a conscious effort to attract a happy, productive, and non-union workforce.

Private sector unions may be short of members, but not of excuses.

One industry in particular looks like it ought to be a prime target for union organizers, no matter what: big-box retail. Walmart pays low wages and low benefits. Walmart can’t move its stores to China (they’ll open new ones there, but not close down ones here). Walmart workers are the very folks unions where created to help. So why aren’t they organized? You guessed it – because Walmart management is anti-union.

Walmart: One company, 1.4 million unorganized, low-paid, benefitless workers spread across America. And what has been labor’s response, after a few unsuccessful campaigns?

“STOP WALMART!” Boycott Walmart! Shop at their competitors, like Target and Costco (both mostly non-union). And of course, pass the laughably-titled “Employee Free Choice Act”, so in case we get cards (one way or another), we can bypass the election process with its secret-ballot nonsense.

While EFCA didn’t pass,  the NLRB has finally taken steps to facilitate speedier elections.  But I fear that, despite employer concerns, this will only call labor’s bluff.  Will unions now be able to organize Walmart? What do you think?

If unions could get past their anger, resentment, and frustration, they might ask: “What would it take to organize Walmart stores, or their counterparts like Costco, Target, and the rest?”

The answer is a tough one. It will take a new type of unionism, one we haven’t invented yet. One with no reliance on retro New-Deal Solidarity nostalgia. A unionism without a blue-state ethos. One that doesn’t make the Democratic Party the centerpiece of all its hopes and dreams. One that works to get workers better pay and benefits, not to serve a political party.  Indeed, a union that doesn’t take sides in political elections or culture war battles.

When unions bother to try talking to Walmart workers, are they liable to find eager volunteers for the next Obama campaign?  Will they emphasize their resolutions on unlimited abortion or gay marriage? Will they describe their eager lobbying for higher taxes?  Will they tell the workers how much of their efforts (and dues) will go to defeat Republicans everywhere?

Unions nostalgic for the 1930’s should re-examine the real history of the CIO.

A century ago, Henry Ford had a great idea: if he could make cars cheaper, he could sell more of them. Then he figured out how to make them cheaper. And he sold more.

Then, visionary union leaders had another great idea: if they could invent new unions that would be relevant to the new auto workers, they could help the workers and build the union movement.

So they did it. And America was better for both. In slightly simplistic terms, it is thanks to Henry Ford and the UAW that workers could afford to buy cars.

Sam Walton rediscovered Henry Ford’s idea, and has remade American society as a result. Some find Sam’s creation as distasteful and unaesthetic as the automobile itself, but a lot of Americans seem to like lower prices and broader selection. Walmart is here to stay.

But where are the union visionaries who can see their way to the future? If labor can’t figure out how to organize businesses like Walmart, they can kiss the private sector good bye. For those who think unions play a necessary role in our society, the consequences are worth contemplating.

The outlook? Not good. Not good.

Dear Senator Tester:

On Oct. 6, you issued a public statement raising the issue of US companies doing business with the dangerous regime in Iran.  I appreciate your doing so; it was long overdue.

Iran is clearly the number one threat to world peace: an apocalyptic regime committed to the destruction of a democratic neighbor state, implacably
hostile to the US, a fountainhead of terrorism, murderer and oppressor to its own people.  And for years this dangerous regime has bent all its efforts at developing nuclear weapons.  The response of the US and the West has been all too feeble.

But I was deeply disappointed to see you raise this all-important issue for the apparent purpose of taking a partisan cheap shot at a political enemy!  By spotlighting Koch Industries as the only mentionable company doing business with Iran, you used an international crisis to score points on a major Republican supporter, rather than unmasking just how serious this problem is across the board.

True, Koch Industries is on the list of companies doing business with Iran.  But so are the following:

High-tech firms like Advanced Micro Devices, Cisco Systems, Dell Computers, Honeywell, IBM, Intel, MCI, and United Technologies.

Resource industries like Alcoa, MMM, and Conoco Phillips.

Banking companies like Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo.

And others, like Whirlpool, Boeing, Halliburton, Marriott, even Pepsi and Coca-Cola!

Many of these companies also have large contracts with the federal government; some, like MCI and Wells Fargo, running into the hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money.

The best source on all of this is the organization “United Against A Nuclear Iran” (http://www.unitedagainstnucleariran.com) and its Iranian Business Registry.

As you know, the present “Iran SAD Act” restricts these companies from direct business with Iran, but not from doing business through their foreign-based subsidiaries.  More stringent US law could dry up this traffic.

There is a big problem here, Senator.   It needs to be addressed by stronger law, as well as by shining the public spotlight on these companies.  All of them – not just the ones who can be linked to Republicans.