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From the Annals of Religious Intolerance & Chutzpah

February 29, 2012 /0 Comments/in /by

Wow, what a toxic mix.

In Gaithersburg, MD, Marcel Guarnizo, a Catholic priest officiating at the funeral of an 85-year old Catholic woman refused communion to Barbara Johnson, the late woman’s daughter, after learning that 51-year old woman is gay. Johnson was a guest Wednesday night on “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.” Appearing on the program, only days ago having buried her mother she explained to O’Donnell that after denying her the sacrament, as Johnson began eulogizing her mother before the congregation, Guarnizo rose from his seat near the altar and left the sanctuary. She added that later he failed to attend the burial or arrange for another priest to be present at the graveside. She was grateful to a funeral director who at the last minute found a willing cleric to officiate over the burial.

The Boston Globe, with research assistance from former Mormon Helen Radkey, reported today that Daniel Pearl, the Wall St. Journal reporter who was murdered in Pakistan in 2002, was posthumously baptized in a Mormon church earlier this year. The revelation is the latest in a litany of similar discoveries made over the past few weeks, including so-called conversions done for the parents of Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal, and even Barack Obama’s late mother, Stanley Anne Dunham.

As discussed earlier on this blog, in Hitchens’ Book of Mormonism and  “‘A Crass Attempt at Mass Identity Theft’,” Mormon officials in 1995 had agreed to end this bizarre and unwelcome practice, but they now have told the Globe “it is difficult to police 14 million members worldwide.” And yet, it seems they have also declined to condemn these freelance baptizers. I first read about this issue, also in 1995, when I republished Alex Shoumatoff’s excellent book The Mountain of Names, a study of kinship and the history of the human family.

Netanyahu & the Right Wing vs. President Obama

February 29, 2012 /3 Comments/in /by

Trenchant and disturbing analysis by Andrew Sullivan, who sees a disturbing strategy by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in concert with right-wingers in the U.S., to depose President Obama. From Sullivan’s piece, “Obama’s Most Dangerous GOP Opponent.”

I don’t think you can understand the Republican strategy for this election without factoring in a key GOP player, Benjamin Netanyahu. He already has core members of the US Congress siding openly with him against the US president. . . . Netanyahu’s war would be designed to rile up not only his own neo-fascist base, but also encourage American evangelical voters to turn out against Obama, the “anti-Christ”, while other Greater Israel fanatics, like Sheldon Adelson, keep bankrolling as many Greater Israel GOP nominees as they can. A global war which polarizes America and the world is exactly what Netanyahu wants. And it is exactly what the GOP needs to cut through Obama’s foreign policy advantage in this election. Because it is only through war, crisis and polarization that extremists can mobilize the emotions that keep them in power. They need war to win.

It should be noted that Majority Leader Eric Cantor has already made clear he will side with the PM in a confrontation with President Obama. Following the midterm elections, in November 2010, after a one-on-one meeting with Netanyahu, Cantor said “The new Republican majority will serve as a check on the Administration.” About this, veteran correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Ron Kampeas wrote, “I can’t remember an opposition leader telling a foreign leader, in a personal meeting, that he would side, as a policy, with that leader against the president.”

So, if Israel attacks Iran, and Cantor and the Republican presidential candidates are all watching Netanyahu’s back, who’s going to be in the President’s corner?
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A late add-on to this post: TPM is reporting tonight on a poll conducted of Israeli citizens regarding their attitudes about Iran.
  • 19% of Jewish Israelis support a strike against Iran even without the backing of the United States.
  • 42% say they support only if there is US support for the move.
  • 32% say they don’t support it under any circumstances.

A clear majority, 74%, either don’t support attacking Iran or would do so only with the support of the U.S. Yet, Netanyahu is showing signs of going it alone. His unilateralism is reminiscent of George W. Bush’s prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Meanwhile, as Peter Beinart has reported that Israeli intelligence officials and military officers have urged that their country refrain from attacking Iran, also reminiscent of the stance that prevailed in much of the U.S. intelligence and military community before 2003. Unfortunately, it turned out that even their opposition couldn’t stop Bush’s war. In the current situation with Israel, a dangerous situation is only made worse by members of the U.S. Congress who would enable Netanyahu’s war.

Ereading Devices in Independent Bookstores?

February 28, 2012 /0 Comments/in , , /by

Today my publishing friend David Wilk has posted Booksellers and Co-opetition, an intriguing commentary on his blog, suggesting that indie booksellers should consider selling ereading devices in their brick & mortar stores, even Kindles and Nooks, as a way to maintain their connections with customers who are migrating to digital reading, even as many of them continue to read print books too. I suggest you read David’s piece, and think about how independent bookstores might carve out a new place in the emerging ereading environment.

Not Shutting Up

February 27, 2012 /0 Comments/in , /by

Last month, on January 14, I published a blog essay Three Years Ago Today, on my layoff from a publishing house job in 2009. It elicited widespread reaction, measured in sheer numbers of responses on Facebook and Twitter; on this blog, altogether totaling more than 200; in the engaged remarks from many friends and colleagues; and in the new contacts and readers it’s attracted to this website. The essay’s also attracted interest from a website that my friend and author Michael Goldfarb, former NPR correspondent, had referred me to, Over and 50 and Out of Work: Stories of the Great Recession. This a remarkable site and I’m very proud they’ve now published it on their site, among the company of extraordinary people featured on their web pages. You may see it here, and while you’re there, view some of the videos they’ve posted, with personal testimony from individuals like myself. Additionally, a magazine called NY______, or NY Underscore, is running a condensed version of the essay in their upcoming ‘Jobs’ issue. Clearly, the piece has struck a chord with many readers, and at least two web and magazine editors.

I should add that the essay also elicited one remark that wasn’t so kind, which I learned about from a friend. A person I shall not name, though I will say it was someone with a fulltime job, said to this friend, “He should stop talking about getting fired.” This was evidently meant as free advice, as if I should refrain from damaging my chances of regaining employment by being too open about my experience. I felt like a person with a serious illness might feel, who’s told not to speak of their malady in public, to spare those not afflicted the discomfort of learning about it. At first, I was stung by this, as if I’d been told to “Shut up,” and then I realized this person’s reading was so reductionist and witless that they didn’t even register the difference between getting “fired” and being laid off–of being one employee in a group of dozens in a corporation who’re all relieved of their jobs on the same day. After a few days, I laughed about it, and am now just bemused. It reminded me of Mitt Romney’s plea, made on January 11, just a few days before I published the essay, that income inequality and unfair tax burdens on the middle class may be discussed, but only “in quiet rooms.” Clearly, I haven’t entered any quiet rooms, I’m not “shutting up,” and the essay is proving to have an emerging afterlife; that is very gratifying indeed.

Iran and Iraq–Deja Vu All Over Again?

February 25, 2012 /1 Comment/in /by

I find that Daily Beast/Newsweek columnist Peter Beinart is writing some of the most incisive commentary on the Middle East these days. His views on Israel, coming from a committed American Jew who is able to see flaws in the current Israeli government policies and rhetoric, is a welcome tonic for this committed American Jew. One column of his last week was especially apt, Experts Say Iran Attack is Irrational, Yet Hawks are Winning Debate. There is a disturbing deja vu in the campaign to attack Iran being mounted by some elected officials and coming from some quarters of the American opinion establishment–whether the attack would be done by Israel or the U.S.  Beinart, author of a forthcoming book called The Crisis of Zionism, is determined to slow the momentum toward war. I was especially appreciative of the penultimate paragraph in last Tuesday’s column:

“And who are the hawks who have so far marginalized the defense and intelligence establishments in both Israel and the U.S.? They’re a collection of think-tankers and politicians, most absolutely sincere, in my experience. But from Rick Santorum to John McCain to Elliott Abrams to John Bolton, their defining characteristic is that they were equally apocalyptic about the threat from Iraq, and equally nonchalant about the difficulties of successfully attacking it.The story of the Iraq debate was, in large measure, the story of their triumph over the career military and intelligence officials—folks like Eric Shinseki and Joseph Wilson—whose successors are now warning against attacking Iran.”

To recap, General Eric Shinseki was punished and sidelined by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld after he had the temerity to testify to Congress that stablizing Iraq after Saddam’s fall would take “several hundred thousand soldiers.” And in the case of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, it should be remembered that before his wife’s CIA identity was revealed by multiple members of the Bush Administration, he had published numerous op-eds and given many interviews urging that the U.S. not invade Iraq. His background and experience–which included his key role as the last U.S. diplomat in Baghdad during Operation Desert Shield, before the beginning of the first Gulf War–informed his opposition to the 2003 invasion, not a reluctance to be tough with Saddam. Both Shinseki and Wilson, and it must be said, Valerie Plame, were caught up in the Bush Administration’s mania for war with Iraq, and the whole country, indeed the whole world, has been paying the price ever since. I see that the two situations–the Iraq situation and the one with Iran–are dissimilar in important ways, but I still believe we must ask what costs may an attack on Iran exact from the U.S. and the rest of the world? I’m glad that a well-informed Peter Beinart is asking this question.

**Full disclosure: I edited and published The Politics of Truth–A Diplomat’s Memoir: Inside the War that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity by Ambassador Joseph Wilson (Carroll & Graf, 2004)

Original Bretton Woods Transcript Found

February 24, 2012 /2 Comments/in /by

A pretty amazing discovery: an original transcript of the 1944 Bretton Woods economic conference has surfaced. Evidently, all accounts since the end of WWII have relied on second-hand sources and recollections, but an 800-page transcript of the summit that viewed the wreckage from the war and set the course for the postwar financial structure–when the World Bank and the IMF were set up–has now been found in the US Treasury Library. The transcript would be of tremendous value to historians and scholars in an annotated edition, and I’ve contacted the Daily Telegraph‘s business commentator Jeremy Warner who broke this story to see if he’d be interested in developing a book with me and the people who discovered the transcript.

In the attached black & white photo, US Treasury Secretary is seated on the right next to John Maynard Keynes. In his Daily Telegraph blog Warner has written about the discovery of the transcript and observes that:

“Those who have seen it say it is hard to point to any outright revelation about the talks, in which for Britain, the economist John Maynard Keynes was a leading player. But the level of intellectual debate is said to have been extraordinarily impressive, with exactly the same arguments as to voting rights and undue Western influence at the IMF and World Bank as exist today. The Indian delagation is said to have been particularly outspoken, despite the fact that India was still then a colony of the UK. It was at Bretton Woods that Keynes identified one of the key problems at the heart of international economics – that imbalances in trade are next to impossible to resolve in a fixed exchange rate system without surplus countries accepting that they have as much of an obligation to do something about them as the offending deficit countries. As the eurozone is demonstrating all over again, the lessons have plainly not be learned.”

I’ve been fascinated by the conference for a long time, not least because it was held at the majestic Mt. Washington Hotel, near where I went to college in New Hampshire, at Franconia College. Bretton Woods is an alternate name for the hotel, and the moniker has also always been used to describe the historic conference. Useful histories of the hotel and the conference can be found here and here.

#Fridayreads/Feb. 24–“Something Fierce”

February 24, 2012 /0 Comments/in , /by

#Fridayreads Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter, Carmen Aguirre’s chronicle of her upbringing in flight from Pinochet’s Chile, winner of the 2012 Canada Reads: True Stories competition. Aguirre’s family first fled to Canada after Allende’s fall, but her firebrand mother moved them to Bolivia, on the doorstep of their homeland, so she could participate in the revolutionary struggle to liberate their country. When Carmen turns 18, she becomes an active member of the struggle. Gripping and good.
Also, finishing John D. MacDonald’s the chiller, The Executioners, the 1957 novel on which the movie “Cape Fear” would be based.