Israel has a sordid history of its dealings with the United States. This has been documented in a recently released FBI file, Isaiah L. Kenen: Foreign Agent to Founder of AIPAC. According to this document, Isaiah Kenen and the Israeli government have abused the trust of the American people since 1948. The evidence suggests that the State of Israel is a false friend. This is a summary and timeline of the relevant events.… Read the rest
In the video summarized below, Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Professor Wen Yang claim that Western Philosophy has deviated from the right path. A more blunt way of saying it is Anglo-Saxon philosophy lost its way.
I don’t disagree that the West needs guidance. I appreciate Professor Sachs’s speech and I think the Eastern cultures represented by Professor Wen Yang have a lot to offer the West.… Read the rest
In a Neutrality Studies interview, Professor Dr. Dr. H.C. Wolfgang Streeck explains why no one denies anything to Netanyahu. They fear he might use nuclear weapons on his neighbors. This interview was based on an article Dr. Streeck wrote on this subject in December of 2023.
If Streeck is correct, this explains President Biden’s unwavering support of Israel’s brutality during an election year. It also suggests why Biden’s support of Israel is not unique among American leaders, including Donald Trump.… Read the rest
The book, Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile1, paints a disturbing but convincing picture. It’s convincing because it explains the way the world behaves. Did the Germans win the war?
I’m not just referring to the claim that Martin Bormann lived out his days as a free man in Argentina. Or that after the war, he took the wealth looted from defeated countries with him to Argentina. And it’s not just that he took that loot out of Germany with the knowledge and approval of Germany’s industrial leaders.… Read the rest
This article presents the views of Professor David Harvey on class, nation and nationalism. Harvey’s recent video, published by Politics in Motion, touches on an important element of the Pinker-Mearsheimer debate about the Enlightenment. I review the relevant points here.
In part two of John Mearsheimer’s case against the effectiveness of Enlightenment, he says that because people are social animals, they belong to tribes. We still belong to tribes.… Read the rest
This is a summary and critique of a debate hosted by the Institute of Art and Ideas. In the videos linked below, Steven Pinker and John Mearsheimer are debating The Enlightenment and its alternatives. The subtitle is, Which ideals are the best guide to human betterment? In my opinion, this debate is an important addition to questions I have raised about the Enlightenment, and so I’m providing a summary of it here. I apologize for the length, but I think it was necesssary for analysis.… Read the rest
Now that Gaza as been destroyed and her people are starving and dying of infection and disease, our conversation can’t help but change. We no longer feel we are talking to fellow beings when we address our elected officials. And anyway, there is nothing left of the world we hoped to save. Both physical infrastructure and human life have been destroyed. For survivors in Gaza and their sympathizers, the mental and spiritual wounds will never go away.… Read the rest
Morris Jastrow1 wrote in 1919 that Israel is a ‘glorified ghetto’. When you think about it, the conditions of Jewish life before the Enlightenment have been perfectly reproduced in Palestine. It’s no wonder the Israelis and their allies are cracking up. Political Zionism is an anachronism.
Many Israeli leaders have claimed religious sanction for their treatment of the Palestinians. At the center of the current bombardment of Gaza is Benjamin Netanyahu, who claims to be following the admonition of Moses (Deut.… Read the rest
Accusations of leftist magic leveled by right-wing members of Congress led me to research the question, is magic a left-wing thing? The closest connection I was aware of was the association of the drug culture of the 1960s with shamanism. It seems to me the right-wing is more magical-minded. It turns out the story of magical politics in 2016 begins by blaming the left for the whole phenomenon. Bothsidism is apparently the handmaid of American politics, even its weirdest manifestations.… Read the rest