Poetry

Poetry

A spark
to start,

the rest
is sweat.

Russia's Split Personality

Is Russia Manic-Depressive?
by Mort Malkin

Russia may be manic-depressive, but Russians are nowhere as delusional as George Will or James Inhofe on the subject of global heating (formerly global warming). Every Russian knows the planet is heating up and that we “civilized” humans are the cause. The present debate in bipolar Russia is over whether global heating is good or bad for the Motherland.

One group says that global heating has decreased the need for home heating oil world-wide and, thus, the need for Russian oil exports. Bad! The same people look back on the good old days when the severe Russian winters saved Russia from the invasions of Napoleon in the 19th century and Hitler in the 20th century. They see global heating as a net negative, and they can be relied on to vote against it in the Politburo.

The manic half of the Russian personality welcomes global warming. Russians have no Florida or Arizona where they can spend winter vacations. Oh, for some nice tropical resorts on the Black and Caspian Seas. They would gladly trade in vodka & tonic for rum swizzles. In northern Russia, global warming promises to open the Arctic Ocean to shipping year round. Russia would become an economic power. These positive-outlook folks also seek to change the world’s perception that Russians have a dark personality. They are going to show the world what real change is.

The Wherefores of Warfare

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

The Wherefores of Warfare

In the good old days, the purpose of war was plunder. Plain and simple. History tells us it started in Akkadian times, about 2300 BCE, in the Fertile Crescent. Before that, the Sumerian First Cities found that trade was the way to gain wealth. But, trade spread the wealth around among the commercial class, and the king received only a small part of it through taxes. Politics demanded war.

So, Sargon I became the first King by conquest, and his grandson, Naram Sin, expanded Akkadian dominion to become the King of the Four Quarters of the World. Over the next five centuries, war and peace took their turns into the Old Babylonian period. Hammurabi came into power and the First Dynasty of Babylon became established in Mesopotamia. Yes, it was the same Hammurabi who proclaimed his famous Law Code and had it carved in stone, but the Law was not so applicable in the occupied city states of Uruk, Kish, Sippar, Esunna …

Later in that millennium, Greece and Troy found a more personal rationale for war. Paris, son of King Priam of Troy seduced Helen, the wife of King Menalaus of Sparta. The two went off to Troy, and a thousand ships were launched to take her back. Ergo, the Trojan war — all mixed up between the Greek gods & goddesses and Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world.

The next millennium saw intense competition between Greece and Persia. It became conquest for the sake of being Number One. Those upstart Greeks, how dare they start colonies on the Asian mainland & off shore islands, the Persian sphere of influence? In the fourth century BCE, a new reason for war was perceived. Alexander III, from barbarian Macedonia, felt a calling to civilize the rabble of Egypt and Asia in the superior culture of Greece. The skills of war were the means to the end. By the end of the 13 year campaign , Alex the Great became more orientalized than the hordes of the adjacent continents became westernized.

Further West, Rome and Carthage advanced the technologies and strategies of warfare,up to and including elephant cavalry. The conflict between the two powers started over which of them would have suzerainty over the Greek Colonies on Sicily and ended with a battle between the great generals Scipio and Hannibal. It was personal, but it was also political. In Rome, even in the Republic, it was always the Generals who were selected for political office. One could hardly expect to be elected Consul without a string of victories that enlarged the control of Rome.

Just before Chronology Zero and the Reign of the Prince of Peace, Rome changed from Republic to Imperium. Military campaigns went on right through the transition. It was as if warfare were the Law. Territorial expansion continued — the Near East, Northern Europe, Spain and France, England — under the Caesars until the reign of Hadrian. As Caesar, Hadrian actually gave up some of the territories conquered by his predecessor, Trajan. Hadrian sought to improve the Empire — law, literature, art, manners — rather than enlarge it. How unRoman.

The Middle Ages were rife with war, and reasons for war. Most (in)famous were the Crusades. History has it that the Crusades were fought for religious reasons — to reclaim Jerusalem from the heathens. Roman Christianity would conquer the Holy City for the true believers, the likes of Pope Urban II. But, gaining ascendancy over Byzantine Christianity was the understood reason. Power. It is curious that in the First Crusade, Jews and Arabs living together in Jerusalem were considered equal enemies and were killed for who they were. [How times have changed.] Other wars were over national honor, but markets and access to raw materials usually played an equal role. National honor, national interest, and national security have always been roughly synonymous. The Hundred Years War was fought for each and all of the above reasons, with Joan of Arc thrown in for human interest. Though the Hundred Years War lasted only 116 years, it started a tradition of enmity that lasted five centuries between Great Britain and France.

Entering relatively modern times, the 20th century and World War II, Hitler’s reasons for war started with national honor and were soon transformed to becoming king of the four quarters of the world, just like Naram Sin. At the end of the Pacific war, the atomic bomb was used by the US not so much to defeat Japan, a country that was already offering to surrender, as to show Russia that we were Number One and they had better not mess with us. The 21st century seems to have followed the earliest cycle of war — plunder (pillage, loot, booty, spoils… how many words we have). In Vietnam, we were there, not for democracy, but to block Communist dominoes. A less stated reason was to test the capability of Soviet SAM missiles. Completely under the radar of the time was the testing of Agent Orange and Agents White, Blue, and Purple. Neither was the Iraq War fought for democracy. A case may be made for war for oil — Dick Cheney was, after all, an oil baron
during his years as CEO of Halliburton. But his friend, Donald Rumsfeld, was more interested in testing new weapons: B1 bombers, white phosphorus, depleted uranium (U238), cluster bombs, and pilotless planes. Technology was driving warfare.

Recently, in 2006, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) used cluster bombs in Southern Lebanon against Hezbollah. Most recently, in the invasion of Gaza, Israel has been accused by doctors and journalists — a team that can dissect the news — of using inert heavy metal weapons that explode into micro shrapnel (DIME or HMTA explosives) against Hamas. The DIME explosives were developed at the Pentagon to cause intense damage in a small target area, thus limiting collateral damage. But, Murphy found out about the technology and invoked his Law. DIME explosives also cause rhabdomyo-sarcoma (cancer, for short) without waiting. Technology is getting too frisky. It’s time to modernize the Geneva Accords.

Will Obama Spend The Political Capital We Gave Him?

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Will Obama Spend The Political Capital We Gave Him?

The Gadfly Revelry & Research gang (GRR) lives and plays amidst a politically right-wing population. Many of them who voted against Obama for President now have their arms folded across their chests and say, “Let’s wait and see.”

The Gadfly gang, too, casts a jaded eye on coming events, except that they are going to wait and see how progressive the Obama Administration will be. We are hopeful, maybe more so than those who last voted for Rick Santorum.

Oh, Obama says nice words — the very words Bush could have used for taking apart safeguards that: protect the poor, keep greed-motivated hands off Mother Nature, and prevent a free-for-all in financial markets. Bush & Cheney employed such all-purpose words as “reform” and “modernize” to retranslate the Constitution from its original quaint, irrelevant form.

In his Inaugural Address, the new President spoke of “hope over fear,” “peace and dignity,” “unity of purpose,” and “a new era of responsibility.” Was it all “have a nice day” rhetoric? On his first day in office he said “I really mean it.” He signed an executive order closing Guantanamo — within a year anyway. He stopped torture, requiring the CIA to follow the Army Field Manual. [Why not the Geneva Convention?] He met with the generals re: leaving Iraq. [But, what about closing the “enduring” US bases there?] He brought transparency to government by restoring the Presidential Records Act and removed exceptions from the Freedom Of Information Act. He signed an order restoring funding to the UN Population Fund and other organizations that include abortion in their compendium of women’s and children’s services. Bush’s Global Gag Rule was consigned to history. Lobbyists were sharply restricted, and happily he stopped short of declaring satirists to be lobbyists. It’s a fairly good beginning, but now we will have to watch what else our Number One Public Servant does in coming months.
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Gadfly here presents a list that will measure Obama’s will (and won’t) to bring us change:
• Will he establish a Department of Peace, a Peace College, and a couple of Peace Academies to balance the Department of War (ah, Defense), the War College, and the Military Academies at West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs?
• OK, so he’ll close the prison at Guantanamo (on Cuban soil). Will he also close Baghram in Afghanistan and those in Romania & Poland? Will he replace them with the watering halls in Belarus?
• What about the 737 US military bases around the world, way more than the membership of the UN? The presence of US citizens carrying guns instead of cameras & credit cards has created hatred everywhere.
• Will he forbid extraordinary rendition to places such as Saudi Arabia where the corrections department cuts off hands for burglary convictions and executes murderers by beheading?
• Will he replace 21 gun salutes (such as at his inauguration) with a pealing of the bells of a carillon?
• Will he establish a Department of History and nominate Howard Zinn as its first Secretary?
• Will he pardon Leonard Pelletier, the Indian activist who says he is innocent but who has already served 33 years in federal prisons? Amnesty International, after going through the case, agrees he is innocent. The federal Appeals Courts that have reviewed the original trial, say there are holes in the government case, including the disappearance of FBI documents favoring Leonard. [How convenient.] He was recently transferred to the new federal high security prison at S Canaan PA where he was attacked by two other inmates who did not know him. It appears that the security is not high enough. Barack, don’t wait until the end of your presidency to pardon him.
• During the election campaign, Obama was accused by McCain & Palin of planning to spread the wealth around. No wonder he was elected — there are precious few voters who think the obscenely rich CEOs, derivatives brokers, and hedge fund managers should not share a little of their wealth. Now that Obama is President, will he make those who made out like bandits in the growing ownership society bubble, from the 1990s through 2006, give back their ill gotten commissions. Those nouveau riche include the mortgage brokers, the investment brokers who packaged derivatives into collateralized debt obligations and created credit default swaps, and the managers of the rating companies such as Moody’s and Standard & Poors.

The GRR gang is also waiting to see what Obama does about education, health care, and guaranteed maternity leave with child care thereafter. You, dear readers, are invited to add to the wait-and-see list.

A last matter that has been going on for at least sixty years, perhaps since the Exodus around 1300 BCE, is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Israel feels threatened by Hamas rockets. Hamas, legally elected, complains that Israel has been restricting entry of not only rockets but also food, water, oil, medical supplies, books, and CDs. The Israeli blockade — air, sea, and land — is even keeping Palestinians from their olive groves, adversely affecting their martinis. Israel says Hamas is a terrorist group that fires rockets at their civilian population. So, in fair and proportionate response,Israel sends F16s (made in USA), tanks, and troops into Gaza to shoot up the place. Of course they were targeting only secret military installations. Casualty figures tell the story of who was a terrorist. The total Israeli deaths were 10, 7 military and 3 civilian. Palestinian dead total well over 1000, mostly civilians. Israel didn't let any foreign journalists in during the fireworks, but the Israeli attacks on hospitals, schools, the Red Cross, and the UN couldn’t be kept secret. It was as if Fallujah was a model. Now we will wait to see what Obama will do. He has plenty of leverage, what with all the military goods the US sends to Egypt and Israel. Maybe his Envoy, George Mitchell, will convince the belligerents that they are both Semites and both worship Abraham as their Patriarch. Peace, brothers!