A View of Gramercy Park in April (2006)

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Just finished my friend Alice Goldfarb Marquis's biography of Clement Greenberg, The Art Czar. Finished reading it, appropriately, in a guest room at the National Arts Club on Gramercy Park South, a magnificent 19th-Century mansion formerly home to New York Governor Samuel J. Tilden. There were announcements of a testimonial dinner for Arthur Gelb, long-time New York Times "culture czar" in the lobby. So, when Marquis' described the incestuous and inbred New York art scene, so inbred that even I desperately tried to find a personal connection--someone I know had been a student of Rosalind Krauss, Greenberg's disciple turned nemesis, and I once delivered a term paper to her downtown loft; I met Hilton Kramer once or twice; gee, Greenberg knew Irving Kristol at Commentary; my cousin went to Syracuse University, etc.--to the incredibly juicy and melodramatic story of alcohol, sex, money, and "Painterly Abstraction" (not "Action Painting," please! That's Harold Rosenberg's heresy). Don't forget Greenberg's former life as a Trotskyist cum Cold Warrior.

At one level aesthetic, at another political, deeply personal, Marquis' book is also about the twin seductions in Greenberg's life--Avant-Garde (aka holiness) and Kitsch (aka sin). Greenberg may have been an art czar, but he was, as Marquis makes clear, also an art rabbi, making Talumudic pronouncements, koshering the work of artists in their studios, and ensuring a moral dimension. Did he strip paint off David Smith's sculptures? Yes, he did--to make them look better.

This high moral purpose, interestingly, sounds somewhat Victorian from the vantage point of 2006. Today, it seems that Kitsch has triumphed in the Art World. So, Marquis looks back nostalgically to the days of Clement Greenberg--a critic who may not have known much about art, but who certainly knew what he liked. Unlike today, the post-war period was a time when art mattered, and Alice Goldfarb Marquis has done a marvellous job of explaining how and why, through the life of Clement Greenberg.

Bush Loses Face

The heckling of Chinese president Hu Jintao appears to be turning into a mini-crisis. The heckler has been arrested. What's the big deal? From the Chinese side, it is understandable. Someone explained to me that the Chinese leader "lost face" from a cultural standpoint, when the heckler was elevated to the same level as the president, just by being able to heckle.

On the other hand, Americans might see the situation differently. Americans are used to heckling, it is no big deal, it is freedom of speech and democracy in action. People heckled Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, LBJ, Johnson, you name it. So what?

But President Bush's apology to the Chinese leader, especially public statements that Bush apologized, send a bad signal. Rather than celebrating democracy, Bush has apologized for an example of freedom of speech. A lone protester, like at Tienamien Square.

By apologizing when he did not need to, President Bush has lost face. Where Ronald Reagan would have made a joke, Bush has kow-towed.

A Mass Grave in New Jersey

At the foot of the Delaware Memorial Bridge in New Jersey, next to Fort Mott State Park, lies Finn's Point National Cemetery, which contains the mass grave for some 2,500 Confederate POWs who died while incarcerated at at Ft. Delaware prison on Peach Pit Island during the Civil War. The prison held some 12,000 rebels. It is a sobering site, marked by a large obelisk erected in 1910 over plaques listing two thousand four hundred thirty-six names. There is also a small memorial to Union soldiers who died while on duty as guards, and a special section in a corner for a small number of German POWs who died while in custody at Fort Dix during World War II.

Finn's Point National Cemetery can be reached via I-295, on New Jersey State Road 49 towards Pennsville, NJ, located just before the beginning of the New Jersey Turnpike. Ft. Mott State Park is part of the New Jersey Coastal Heritage Trail, a new National Park.

Some stanzas from Theodore O'Hara's poem, The Bivouac of the Dead, are posted on cast-iron tablets near the obelisk:

The muffled drum's sad roll has beat
The soldier's last tattoo;
No more on life's parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few.
On Fame's eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And Glory guards, with solemn round,
The bivouac of the dead.

No rumor of the foe's advance
Now swells upon the wind;
Nor troubled thought at midnight haunts
Of loved ones left behind;
No vision of the morrow's strife
The warrior's dream alarms;
No braying horn nor screaming fife
At dawn shall call to arms.

Their shriveled swords are red with rust,
Their plumed heads are bowed,
Their haughty banner, trailed in dust,
Is now their martial shroud.
And plenteous funeral tears have washed
The red stains from each brow,
And the proud forms, by battle gashed
Are free from anguish now.

The neighing troop, the flashing blade,
The bugle's stirring blast,
The charge, the dreadful cannonade,
The din and shout, are past;
Nor war's wild note nor glory's peal
Shall thrill with fierce delight
Those breasts that nevermore may feel
The rapture of the fight.

New Suicide Bombing in Israel

Haaretz has the story.

The Notice Board at the Evergreen, Alabama Public Library

  

How Stalin Created Israel

It wasn't Harry Truman alone who supported the creation of Israel.Johnson's Russia List's Research and Analytical Supplement runs Stephen D. Shenfield's interesting review of Leonid Mlechin's book, Zachem Stalin sozdal Izrail? [Why Did Stalin Create Israel?] (Moscow: Yauza / EKSMO, 2005):

Did Stalin create Israel? To the extent that any one individual can be held responsible for the creation of a state, it does seem, on the basis of the evidence presented by Mlechin, that Stalin has a better claim than any other individual to this particular honor. Why did he do it? Apparently it was a gamble in the context of the more assertive Soviet foreign policy that followed victory over Nazi Germany, made in the hope of establishing a lasting Soviet presence in the Middle East. It failed, but it can be seen as a precursor of similar and more successful efforts in the post-Stalin era, this time backing the other side in the Israel-Arab conflict. It does show that the standard view of Soviet penetration of the Third World as a post-Stalin development is not quite accurate.

The episode also helps us fill in a broad historical view of the nature of Zionism-Israel as an international phenomenon. What made possible the remarkable rise of the Zionist community from a small and vulnerable minority in Ottoman-ruled Palestine at the beginning of the 20th century to a nuclear-armed regional superpower in that century's last quarter? Many things, to be sure. The Holocaust had a decisive impact. But we should not underplay the significance of the Zionist movement's ideologically flexible and repeatedly successful search for great power patrons. As the relationship with one patron becomes less viable, a new patron is always found:

1. Britain with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, whose Mandate provided a roof for building an autonomous quasi-state (the Yishuv).

2. Stalin's Soviet Union played the crucial role in the creation and initial consolidation of an independent Zionist state.

3. France gave Israel nuclear weapons.

4. US support was crucial in creating a Greater Israel.

5. Next great power patron -- China, perhaps?

Rev. Willaim Sloane Coffin, R.I.P.

The death of Rev. William Sloane Coffin reminded me of the time he did me a favor. I was trying to put on a panel about the plight of Vietnamese "Boat People" and Cambodian refugees during the Carter administration. A lot of antiwar activists didn't want to help (at that time I was a liberal Democrat). It was getting depressing to be turned down again and again looking for help from places like The Nation. I remember Emile de Antonio telling me they (the Vietnamese & Cambodians) chose the wrong side (with the US) and so deserved to drown.

Well, in the end Martin Peretz of the New Republic agreed to pay for the event, and Rev. Coffin offered a room in Riverside Church. Coffin's participation helped fill the panel with experts like Frances Fitzgerald. The event was a big success, the room was full. And it helped change the Carter administration's policy towards refugees,many of whom who were admitted to the US.

I was touched.

No matter what I may have had by way of disagreements with some of his views, because of this I'll always remember William Sloane Coffin as a mensch. May he rest in peace.

Read President Bush and Vice President Cheney's Tax Returns

You can download PDF versions of Bush and Cheney's IRS Form 1040s on the Tax History Foundation website. President Bush declared $397,000 in wages, tips, etc. Cheney declared $7, 423,433.

Tax Day Tips from the US Postal Service

In case you need to find the location of the closest Post Office.

The Wall Street Journal on Zacarias Moussaoui

The Wall Street Journal explains why the Moussaoui case is important

The further we move away from 9/11 without another domestic attack, the more tempting it is to believe that awful day was an aberration, to think that we can return to normalcy if we merely leave Iraq and the other Middle Eastern regimes to their own purposes. But the forces of radical Islam aren't going to leave us alone merely because we decide that resisting them is too hard. The men and women on that plane weren't soldiers overseas; they were traveling to work, or on vacation, or to their homes within the United States.

The main political difference in the U.S. today is between those who appreciate that Islamic terrorists represent an existential threat to American life and liberty and are prepared to do what it takes to defeat them, and those who think the threat is overstated and can be ameliorated or appeased. Only yesterday, al Qaeda kingpin Ayman al-Zawahiri exulted in a videotape posted on the Internet that "the enemy has begun to falter." He's wrong, but the transcript of Flight 93 is a reminder of our fate if we do.

There's more detail about the case on the BBC News website devoted to it, including this quote:

Moussaoui took the stand against his lawyers' advice on the opening day of their defence.

He gave a lengthy explanation about why he hates Americans, and criticised US support for Israel.

"You are the head of the snake for me. If we want to destroy the Jewish state of Palestine, we have to destroy you first," he told the court.

He turned to the Koran for evidence he said backed up his claims that Muslims are called to fight for supremacy for Allah.

"We have to be the superpower, we have to be above you," he said.

The Story of Easter

From the US Naval Observatory:

Easter is an annual festival observed throughout the Christian world. The date for Easter shifts every year within the Gregorian Calendar. The Gregorian Calendar is the standard international calendar for civil use. In addition, it regulates the ceremonial cycle of the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches. The current Gregorian ecclesiastical rules that determine the date of Easter trace back to 325 CE at the First Council of Nicaea convened by the Roman Emperor Constantine. At that time the Roman world used the Julian Calendar (put in place by Julius Caesar).

The Council decided to keep Easter on a Sunday, the same Sunday throughout the world. To fix incontrovertibly the date for Easter, and to make it determinable indefinitely in advance, the Council constructed special tables to compute the date. These tables were revised in the following few centuries resulting eventually in the tables constructed by the 6th century Abbot of Scythia, Dionysis Exiguus. Nonetheless, different means of calculations continued in use throughout the Christian world.

In 1582 Gregory XIII (Pope of the Roman Catholic Church) completed a reconstruction of the Julian calendar and produced new Easter tables. One major difference between the Julian and Gregorian Calendar is the "leap year rule". See our FAQ on Calendars for a description of the difference. Universal adoption of this Gregorian calendar occurred slowly. By the 1700's, though, most of western Europe had adopted the Gregorian Calendar. The Eastern Christian churches still determine the Easter dates using the older Julian Calendar method.

Cherry Blossoms in Washington, DC

  

Mutiny at the Pentagon

What does a widely-reported insurgency, by retired Major General Paul D. Eaton, General Anthony C. Zinni, Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold, Major General John Batiste, Major General John Riggs and Major General Charles H. Swannack Jr., demanding that Donald Rumsfeld resign as Secretary of Defense, mean?

One guess is that the military is uncomfortable about the prospect of launching a war against Iran under Donald Rumsfeld. Retired officers are able to voice public criticisms that serving military are unable to put forward. Jim Lehrer interviewed retired General John Batiste on the Newshour last night

JIM LEHRER: So where do you fit Don Rumsfeld into that then? He's one person. Everybody wants him to -- you guys want him to go. So what are you saying to me?

MAJ. GEN. JOHN BATISTE: I think an honorable man would take account, be responsible for what he did, and step down.

JIM LEHRER: What would you say to a skeptic who would say, "Wait a minute, General. One secretary of defense is solely responsible for everything that's gone wrong in Iraq, and there is nothing that any of you military leaders could do about it on the ground?"


MAJ. GEN. JOHN BATISTE: I didn't say that. What I'm saying is that the strategic underpinnings of this war can be traced back in policy to the secretary of defense. He built it the way he wanted it.

JIM LEHRER: Do you expect Secretary Rumsfeld to do what you want him to do?

MAJ. GEN. JOHN BATISTE: I have no idea.

JIM LEHRER: I mean, do you...

MAJ. GEN. JOHN BATISTE: He's his own man.

JIM LEHRER: Is that a bottom line for you? Have you talked to these other generals about this? Is this an organized effort?

MAJ. GEN. JOHN BATISTE: You know, surprisingly, it's not, not at all. We haven't talked; this is all spontaneous.

JIM LEHRER: Did you talk about it at the time when you were on active duty in private?

MAJ. GEN. JOHN BATISTE: Sure. We were all disgruntled.

So far, the White House has dismissed the revolt of the generals:

SCOTT MCCLELLAN, White House Press Secretary: The president believes Secretary Rumsfeld is doing a very fine job during a challenging period in our nation's history.

Translation: "Heck of a job, Rummy..."

Iraqi Claims Saddam Gave WMD to Syria

Melanie Phillips reports on former Iraqi Air Vice Marshal General Georges Sada's charges (ht LGF):

He also says that he lived and worked with the ever-present daily reality of Saddam’s tactics of hiding his WMD from the weapons inspectors. Whole environments were transformed and rebuilt – buildings, whole factories – in the largely successful strategy of hiding the stuff. The idea that Saddam suddenly stopped hiding it and secretly destroyed it instead, he says, is utterly ludicrous. Hiding WMD was the unchanging pattern of his regime.

He has listened to the tapes that recently surfaced of Saddam’s discussions with his top brass about the problems being caused by the UN weapons inspectors. He says the translations that have so far been made of these tapes are inadequate because the translators, who are of course Arabic speakers, do not however speak Tikriti Arabic, the dialect in which these discussions were conducted. Sada does speak Tikriti. He has translated a crucial three and a half minutes of these tapes, he says, in which Saddam and his generals are discussing how to outwit the UN inspectors; in which they say that the problem of the chemical weapons is solved but the biological are still causing a problem; that this problem will probably be solved with the help of the Russians and the French; and in which Saddam says: ‘In the future the terrorism will be with WMD’.

In April 2004, a group of al Qaeda terrorists was caught in Jordan with 20 tons of Sarin gas. When Sada heard of this, he says, his blood ran cold. There was only one place which was capable of producing 20 tons of Sarin: Saddam’s Iraq. To his horror, he says, he realised at that moment that Saddam’s WMD had got into the hands of al Qaeda.

Did Comedy Central Censor South Park's Mohammed Cartoon?

Michelle Markman thinks so...

Konstantin on Applebaum on Yushchenko

Konstantin thinks today's oped by Anne Applebaum about Viktor Yushchenko sounds like old Pravda articles about Comrade Stalin:

But the truth seems much more straightforward to me. There is Yushchenko, alone in his big office. There is Ukraine, a country of 50 million people. And in between the two are thousands of people -- civil servants, politicians, journalists, business people -- who have deep financial and personal interests in maintaining the corrupt status quo. For Ukraine, the Orange Revolution was the easy part, compared with what lies ahead.

This passage is a good example why Washington Post proudly bears the name of Pravda on Potomac. As Petrovich from inosmi forum pointed out, here we see almost a word-by-word translation of numerous Pravda “op-ed” published in the early 30’s just before the infamous “purification” of the Communist Party. The picture is the same. There is good and hardworking Comrade Stalin, working late at night in his Kremlin office. There are millions of Soviet workers and peasants. And in between the two thousands of people – corrupt civil servants, secret Trotsky admirers, American spies, and unrepentant White Guards officers – who have deep interests in maintaining the corrupt status quo. For the USSR, the Great October Socialist Revolution was the easy part, compared with what lies ahead. What lies ahead, Mrs. Applebaum? How can we get rid of these enemies of the people? Should we tolerate them or should we crush them with our revolutionary implacable fist of steel? Should we be afraid of their nasty conspiracies or should be wipe them clean from the book of history? In the name of freedom, democracy and equality. Amen.

President Bush's Passover Message

Don't let Walt and Mearsheimer see this:

Passover, 5766

"Say therefore to the people of Israel, "I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment."

Exodus 6:6


I send greetings to those observing Passover, beginning at sundown on April 12.

The story of the Jewish people throughout history reflects the triumph of faith, the importance of family, and the power of hope. During Passover, Jewish people across America and around the world gather together with family and friends to celebrate the liberation of the Children of Israel from slavery. By reading the Haggadah, singing traditional songs, and sharing the Seder meal, Jewish people relive the story of their redemption and ensure that their values and heritage are passed on to future generations.

During this celebration of faith and hope, we are reminded that freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man, woman, and child. We pray for a more peaceful and hopeful world where the blessings of liberty are bestowed upon all mankind.

Laura and I send our best wishes for a blessed Passover.

GEORGE W. BUSH

Leon Aron: Why the USSR Collapsed

Leon Aron credits a moral revolution led by Aleksandr Yakovlev

Unlike Khrushchev, who knew firsthand how precariously poised was the house that Stalin had built on terror and lies, the Gorbachev group appeared to believe that what was morally right was also politically manageable. There is hardly a better example of the primacy of the moral component in Gorbachev’s opening crusade than the campaign against alcohol consumption, undertaken and sustained in the face of obviously and extremely adverse political and economic consequences. In 1985, the state’s annual income from the sale of alcoholic beverages constituted between 12 and 14 percent of total budget revenues. (In 1990, Gorbachev disclosed that, alongside oil exports, the vodka trade sustained the Soviet Union between 1970 and 1985.) Between 1985 and 1988, the anti-alcohol campaign cost the Soviet Treasury 67 billion rubles--the equivalent of almost 9 percent of the 1985 GNP, 17 percent of that year’s revenue, and nearly four times the sum spent on health care. Yet when Ryzhkov objected to the campaign’s excesses he was overruled by other members of the Gorbachev “team” because, as they put it, he was “concerned about the economy instead of morality” and the “morals of the nation must be rescued by any means available.”

The closest approximation to a well-integrated vision of perestroika as a revolution of ideas and ideals--a normative, conceptual, even cognitive overhaul--is to be found in articles, interviews, and memoirs by the “godfather of glasnost,” Aleksandr Yakovlev, who died in Moscow last October, six weeks shy of his eighty-second birthday. When he returned to the Soviet Union in 1983 after a ten-year stint as Moscow’s ambassador to Canada, Yakovlev’s memory of what he saw was much the same as Gorbachev’s and Ryzhkov’s: "[T]he moment was at hand when people would say, “Enough! We cannot live like this any longer. Everything must be done in a new way. We must reconsider our concepts, our approaches, our views of the past and of our future.” There had come an understanding that it was simply impossible to live as we lived before--intolerably, humiliatingly."

Yakovlev makes clear that, for both himself and Gorbachev, democratization was the most urgent imperative, that it came far ahead of any economic objectives in the initial impulse forperestroika. In his remarkable final book Sumerki (Twilight), published in Moscow in 2003, Yakovlev refers to the upheaval a few times as the “March–April [1985] Revolution,” but far more frequently calls what happened a “Reformation” to underscore the moral and spiritual transformation. For him, perestroika was an “attempt to. . .end the amorality of the regime.”

In a secret memorandum that Yakovlev handed to Gorbachev in December 1985, a few months after Gorbachev had made him a secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Yakovlev argued, “The main issue today is not only the economy. This is only the material side of the process. The heart of the matter lies in the political system, that is, its relation to man.”[29]Hence, the “main principles of perestroika”: democracy first and foremost, understood as freedom to choose in multicandidate elections; glasnost, or freedom of speech and the press; judicial independence; and laws safeguarding key human rights--the inviolability of individual persons, property, and communications; freedom to travel, assemble, and demonstrate; freedom of religion; and the ability of a citizen to sue any official or official body in court. For Yakovlev, glasnost was the touchstone of perestroika. Soviet society was tormented by lies--“ubiquitous and all-consuming lies.” Without glasnost, he repeated to newspaper and magazine editors, perestroika would be “doomed.”

Francisco Gil-White: The Problem of Jewish Self-Defense

I found this essay by Francisco Gil-White by accident, while googling the Iranian hostage crisis for the article on Mrs. Palfrey's premiere. At first, I thought the site came from a Lyndon LaRouche organization, it seemed so strange. But then, I read an essay in which Gil White predicted that Bush's Iraq policy would lead to Islamist takeovers and a stronger Iran. Written before it happened. He has another essay predicting the Iranian nuclear crisis will end in the disarmament of Israel and victory of Islamist fundamenalism. Contra Walt and Mearsheimer, Gil-White believes that Islamism is the favorite religious lobby of the American Elite, and that Israel has few friends in Washington.

I'm somewhere in-between on this--believing that Israel has friends, enemies and people who don't give a damn--but it was interesting to see Walt and Mearsheimer turned on their heads.

So I read on.

I found his very long essay on "The Problem of Jewish Self-Defense" to be absolutely fascinating, not least because it deals with the case of Peter Bergson (aka Hillel Kook). He was the central character in my documentary, Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die? He may be wrong about other things, but he gets Bergson right, IMHO.

What Gil-White has to say is summed up here, where he relates American tolerance of Islamic fundamentalism today to American acquiescence towards Nazi extermination of Jews during World War II:

There is a joke told of two Jews, right before they are killed:
“Sam and Irving are facing the firing squad. The executioner comes forward to place the blindfold on them. Sam disdainfully and proudly refuses, tearing the thing from his face. Irving turns to him and pleads: ‘Please Sam, don’t make trouble!’”

The structure of this joke is identical to what happened when Peter Bergson tried to pressure the US government to save Jewish lives in Europe, causing “some mainstream American Jewish leaders” to say to his protesting rabbis: “Please, don’t make trouble.” The joke makes fun of a pathology of reasoning but the extermination of the Jewish people is not funny; if we do not want more exterminations of the Jewish people, we must understand this pathology of reasoning....

Later he adds:

I am predicting that soon -- very soon -- there will be another antisemitic genocide. It will take place in the State of Israel, and it will be directly carried out by the antisemitic forces of the Muslim world. The Western world will look the other way. Later, it will build Holocaust museums and people will put on grave looking faces and shake their heads. Or perhaps they will celebrate. It all depends on which direction culture takes in the coming years. But though time may be running short, this genocide can still be prevented. In order to do so, good people in the West must understand what is at stake. They certainly don't understand it now. They have no clue why there is hatred of Jews, and they are utterly confused about their own antisemitic prejudices.

Another curious thing about Gil-White is that he has lived in Mongolia and Kazakhstan, and shares an an interest in Central Asia.