I saw an ad for “clean coal” while watching the Winter Olympics. The actress was clean, in her neatly pressed pantsuit, her shimmering, freshly-washed hair falling to her shoulders. The background scenes were clean. You felt like you could drink the water without boiling it. There was no picture of coal in the ad and I said to myself, “I bet she never held a chunk of anthracite in her hands, ever.” It made me think back to my experiences with coal.

In the late forties and early fifties, when I was a little kid, we heated our house with coal. There were five apartments, all hooked up to the same furnace, with large pipes running out of the top, making it look like a giant squid. Every night, my uncle, grandfather, and on occasions when he couldn’t escape the duty, my father, shoveled coal into the maw of this monster, filling the firebox bottom to top. In the morning the shovel-man had to empty the box of the caustic, coral sediment that remained. And it was a foul brew. No sane person would want to touch, much less inhale the acidic residue. Read the rest of this entry »

I just returned from the First National J Street conference, which took place from Oct. 25-28, 2009 in Washington D.C. For those who do not know about J Street, it bills itself as “the political arm of the Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace movement,” and is viewed in the mainstream media as a progressive Jewish alternative lobby to the traditional AIPAC politicos. J Street is supported by a number of “participating organizations.” While I will not enumerate them all, they range from the pre-World War I (antediluvian) Workmen’s Circle, to which my grandparents belonged to the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations, to ALEPH, a Jewish Renewal group that claims to be “in partnership with the Divine” and The Jewish Peace Lobby, whose membership includes 400 rabbis. There were over 1500 participants at this event — a lot of suits and ties, plenty of jewelry and yarmulkes, but only a few tee shirts and no black hats. (I didn’t over-dress for the occasion.) Though J Street’s slogan is “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace,” during the event, the youth affiliate voted to drop the “Pro-Israel” part.) On the other side of the equation, there were a number of congress-people who took pains to hint at their bravery for appearing, given the financial arm twisting that the AIPAC crowd can muster. So, though it’s reputed to be a leftist outfit, I think that this means a spectrum from barely left of center to someplace to the right of advocacy of “Palestine from the river to the sea.” Read the rest of this entry »

So, if the People are going to come to the aid of capitalism, is that socialism? The Republicans think so. Let’s say they are right. Let’s say it is socialism. Okay. Fine. I say, let’s raise the red flag. Let’s sing the Internationale. Let’s take those shares in those debt-besotted companies that we’re going to get for the bail out and put some People on the boards. (I’m not saying Palin-people. I mean Krugman type people.)

Let’s invest the money in retooling and research and development of improved products. Let’s relieve those businesses of the burdens of health plans by creating the biggest pool of people that there can be — all of us. In the process, we can take all that money we already spend on health care, one way of the other, and use it to subsidize the system. And let’s restructure all that debt that industries have. Let’s cram it down the financiers’ throats. (After all, that’s one industry that can’t move offshore anymore than it already has. Where are they going to move to?) Read the rest of this entry »

Once upon a time, there was a country that lost an imperial war. The people’s national pride was wounded so they elected a doddering war hero who had no statecraft skills. Soon the country experienced a dire financial crisis. The old man was flummoxed. He struggled mightily to maintain the confidence of the people but was on the verge of failure. An election was rapidly approaching and things didn’t look good.

In his heart of hearts, the old hero preferred one of his cronies as a running mate, but his supporters saw that more of the same was a recipe for electoral disaster. Looming on the horizon though was a young, charismatic figure who, while bombastic, simplistic, hateful and ignorant, controlled a following of zealots and damn, if he couldn’t rile up the base with his blame-laying and simplistic solutions to complex problems.

The war hero was uncomfortable even associating with this crude fellow but his inner circle assured the dodderer that they could control this young upstart. Just then though they needed some new blood to invigorate their worn out and bankrupt followers. They urged an accommodation and they got it. The geezer was reelected. Within months Paul von Hindenburg was dead and Hitler came to power.

Not just another Holocaust story. La Petite Mama is the true story of a middle-aged mother of two who fought in the French Underground from 1940-1944 and who participated in the rescue of hundreds of Jewish orphans. In the February ‘08 issue The Jewish Magazine.

http://www.jewishmag.com/121mag/petite-mama/petite-mama.htm