Author Archives: advocate

Full Body Burden

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body-burdenThis book by Kristen Iversen was a challenge for me to review The book is mixture of the author’s autobiography and negative stories and rumors about the Rocky Flats nuclear weapon plant. Those familiar with this web site know I have a very positive opinion of what the people of Rocky Flats accomplished and won’t be surprised I have many disagreements with what is written in the book.

A review of “Full Body Burden” by Hank Lamport in the July 1, 2012 Denver Post contains a passage that explains the anti-Rocky Flats tone of the book. He writes about “…the profoundly shocking history of the Rocky Flats site that few bothered to inform themselves about even as it actively spewed and dripped a toxic compote of chemicals and elements into Denver’s environment over the course of more than 30 years.”

I’m using that statement to bend my commitment to write about a book without editorial comments. I’ll try to reserve those for the blog link. The full body of evidence developed by the State of Colorado and other governmental agencies found that the plant had a remarkable history of controlling the dangerous and toxic materials involved in the operations. The blog posting has a more complete description of at least a few disagreements with what is written in the book and links to references. I won’t say much more about the Rocky Flats half of the book here. The often sudden transitions from the autobiography to complaints about was or might have been going on at Rocky Flats was distracting from the parts of the book I found interesting.

I was interested in the descriptions of the author and her love of her many pets, although pets often didn’t last that long. The author describes her shyness and preference to be with her animals in general and her horses in particular. There is a much too brief reference to the author and her sister being in the horse riding organization called “Westernaires.” The daughter of some good friends became one of the “star riders” for Westernaire shows before she “graduated” to college. I would have enjoyed reading more about how far the two sisters advanced.

The book recounts the author’s lonely life during school years and the difficulty she had making friends because she preferred books and horses over people. She also had a difficult family life with a father who drank himself from being a successful lawyer to making a living driving a cab, a mother who maintained a state of denial with pills, and siblings who struggled to either deal with the parents or rebel against them. There is a particularly sad account of the young man who had proposed marriage to the author dying in a climbing accident fall. There are also several references to illnesses of family, friends, neighbors, and animals that are suggestive of growing up in a toxic environment.

I enjoyed the descriptions of the family drives to Golden Gate Canyon or Rocky Mountain National Park. There is one particularly memorable traumatic description of the family car hitting a deer on the return from Estes Park. There is another story of a wreck that injured the author while the father was probably too drunk to drive.

There are interesting descriptions of the neighborhoods, businesses, and landmarks around Rocky Flats, and Standley Lake has a central role in the lives of the author and other children growing up in the area. There are long periods of financial struggles for the author’s family when she was a youngster and into her adult life. Those descriptions made me wish for her book to be a financial success, although I’m disturbed at how many people will form their opinions from this one source. I suggest that you read my free book titled “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats,” or, as I suggest in the blog posting, Chapter 25 might make you less fearful. My book It is available for sale on Amazon in paperback or Kindle for those who prefer paying for books, although the cost is a bit less than “Full Body Burden.”

There is much more about a few of the many inaccuracies and misinterpretations in “Full Body Burden” in my blog posting where I also suggest reading my book for another point of view. Enjoy the human interest parts of the book and be at least skeptical about the rest.

Until the Cows Come Home

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The idiom is understood to mean that something will take an indefinitely long time based on cows being known to make their way at an unhurried pace. Phrase Finder says it appeared in print in Scotland in 1829. I enjoyed the reference to Groucho Marx saying to a female character in Duck Soup, I could dance with you till the cows come home. Better still, I’ll dance with the cows and you come home.”

In the Garden of Beasts

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garden-of-beastsThe title reveals of the book reveals what Erick Larsen thinks of Hitler and his henchmen. The subtitle “Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin” begins to explain the content of the book. William E. Dodd, his wife Martha or “Mattie,” daughter Martha, and son William Jr. “Bill” was the American family, and William Senior was appointed to be ambassador to Nazi Germany in 1933 after several others had turned down the position. The Dodds arrived in Berlin believing initially that the mistreatment of Jews might have some understandable basis. Daughter Martha commented, “We sort of don’t like the Jews anyway.” Dodd clung to the idea Hitler wanted peace for several months.

By the time the Dodds left they had become disgusted with the Nazis and concerned that the German people had been drawn into the clutches of monsters. The outside world did not understand Hitler was merely playing for time while he consolidated power and built a military machine that he intended would dominate the world. It should have been quite easy to understand Hitler’s motives. He announced that Germany was withdrawing from the League of Nations and the disarmament conference underway in Geneva. Consul General Foreign Service officer George Messersmith was filing frequent reports to warn about what he was observing. He wrote that “What they most want to do, however, definitely is to make Germany the most capable instrument of war that has ever existed.” He called the Nazis “a global threat.”

The book was recommended to me by my wife. She knew I would be fascinated with the content. She also knows I am a fan of any book that refers to the Venona project and the uncovering of the massive espionage network established by the Soviet Union in the United States during World War II. (The Venona project was the subject of the first book review I posted on this web site.)The two Dodd children and Martha’s second husband Alfred Stern make it into the Venona list of 349 Americans and U.S. residents who had covert relationships with Soviet intelligence agencies.

It is easy to understand why the first choices for the German ambassador position refused the appointment. The primary assignment of the new ambassador was to see that the $1.2 billion dollars owed by Germany to American creditors was repaid, and that must have been considered an impossible task in the midst of the Great Depression. Also, the atmosphere in Germany was anything but diplomatic. The brown-shirted Sturmabteilung, Storm Troopers or SA, had launched brutal state-condoned violence and were arresting, beating, and murdering Jews, Socialists, and Communists. Dealing with Hitler would not be a prize assignment. The Gestapo and SA are described as being attractive to sadists.

Dodd was not the typical diplomat. Most were wealthy and lived extravagantly. Dodd was not wealthy and strongly believed that frugal living was appropriate. That attitude gained him many enemies in the State Department who decided to think of him simple and shallow instead of frugal. I will admit that I became a fan of Dodd’s as I read the book, so I didn’t think highly of the people in Washington D.C. who undermined Dodd’s reputation and the advice he was giving Roosevelt. His detractors called themselves the “pretty good club,” and Dodd was not a member. At least one member of the club called him “Ambassador Dud.” Germans who dealt with Dodd referred to him as kind, brilliant, and willing to accept open discussion of difficult issues.

Ambassador Dodd and his wife were the picture of proper decorum and daughter Martha was not. She had numerous affairs in the U.S., including one that ended in a failed marriage, and with dignitaries including Carl Sandberg. In Germany she has affairs with several senior Nazi officials, and at one point she was even suggested as a mistress for Hitler. Hitler, proving his reputation of being ambivalent about women, wasn’t interested. She did have a lengthy romantic relationship with the first secretary of the Soviet embassy who was also an “operative” of the NKVD. (He was eventually executed in one of Stalin’s innumerable purges after being forced to write Martha a farewell letter designed “…to keep his death from destroying her sympathy for the Soviet cause.”) One of the staff members of the U.S. embassy referred to it as a house of ill repute. Martha made many other friends, and not all survived the Nazis.

The American reaction to the treatment of Jews is difficult to comprehend with the advantage of historical hindsight. Roosevelt and most State Department officials were eager to avoid any direct statement of condemnation regardless of any inhuman and outrageous behavior reported to them. There was a baffling policy that only a small percentage of the visas available were issued to Jews desperate to escape. Even more baffling is the large number of Jews who did not try to escape. They apparently believed they could “ride out the storm” with careful behavior. Germany’s economy was improving in late 1933 and Hitler seemed to be moderating his hatred. Some Jews actually returned to Germany.

The book has many interesting details and asides. As an example, there is a description of the “bold, black broken cross, or Kakenkeuz” that later became known as the “swastika.” I found it quite odd that Hitler’s favorite movie was said to be King Kong.

Ambassador Dodd rented the bottom floors of a mansion for a very low price by a Jewish family who retained the top floor. Dodd did not understand that the family was buying their safety by having the American ambassador living under them. Daughter Martha especially enjoyed the library’s large brown leather sofa as an asset to her romantic life.

The Dodds began to be swayed against the Nazis by attacks against U.S. citizens who failed to give the Nazi salute as they casually watched parades. Ambassador Dodd said he had hoped to find decent people around Hitler. He then wrote, “I am horrified to discover that the whole gang is nothing but a horde of criminals and cowards.” The State Department reacted to comments such as those by criticizing Dodd. Martha was the slowest to change, saying that she was in the early days intoxicated with the spectacle of the Nazis. “I Heiled as vigorously as any Nazi.”

The trial of five people accused of the Reichstag fire, which Hitler blamed on Communists despite the evidence to the contrary, has a central place in the book. Marinus van der Lubbe insisted he was the only person responsible for the fire, but the prosecution presented massive amounts of evidence there had to be several people involved. Only van der Lubbe was convicted, and he was beheaded by guillotine.

The greatest risk to Hitler was internal. One Nazi observed “There is nobody among the officials of the national Socialists party who would not cheerfully cut the throat of every other official in order to further his own advancement. The commander of the SA Ernst Rohm wanted to take control of the military. Hitler responded by publically praising Rohm while beginning to plan for the murder of Rohm and several hundred other SA members in the “Night of the Long Knives” under the code name ” Kolibri,” or “Hummingbird.” Official Nazi reports said there were under a hundred people executed, but other reports were that as many as fifteen thousand were arrested and several hundred disappeared. All doubt the Dodds had about the possibility that Hitler might have a peaceful nature was eliminated as they noted numerous people who had attended various diplomatic functions had been removed by imprisonment or execution. Dodd hoped the murders would outrage the German people and Hitler would be overthrown. Hitler’s power instead increased. No country filed a protest and the populace did not rise in revulsion. Hitler assumed the position of president as well as chancellor when Hindenburg died, and the world was doomed to endure a long and brutal war.

Dodd’s critics in the State Department finally won their quest to have him ousted. Hull sent Dodd a letter in November 1937 saying that Roosevelt was “requesting” that he leave Berlin. Dodd embarked on a tour giving speeches warning of the German threat that brought protests from Germany. Hull responded that Dodd was a private citizen and could say whatever he wanted. Dodd died a hero to many Germans.

I have violated my guideline of keeping reviews to two pages or less. There are enough interesting and important facts described in the book that would fill more pages. I recommend reading the book to learn how much I left out.

Pay Through the Nose

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There is no dispute that the expression means to pay an excessive amount for something. The origin is less clear. The Idioms Dictionary thinks it might come from the “nose tax” imposed in Ireland in the ninth century. Delinquent taxpayers were punished by having their noses slit. The Word Detective says it first appeared in the seventeenth century, and might equate being overcharged to being punched and given a nosebleed. “The theory is strengthened by the use of ‘bleed’ …to mean ‘cheat or defraud’.”

Understanding the Palestinian—Israeli Conflict: A Primer

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israeli-conflictThis is the second book I’ve reviewed by Phyllis Bennis, and she uses answers to questions about an issue to present her views. The writing isn’t engaging, and the views are clearly anti-Israel and by extension anti-US, especially in regard to any of George W. Bush’s policies. However, there are many interesting tidbits of history.
 
I did find it somewhat disappointing that there is no discussion of Harry S. Truman’s pivotal role when the UN created the State of Israel. I lost track of the number of times it is mentioned that Israel’s occupation of Palestine violates international law and creates violence. The Palestinians in Israel are citizens, can vote and several Palestinians serve in the Knesset, or parliament. However, the Palestinians are dominantly second class citizens living mostly unemployed and in poverty.

Palestine became part of the British Empire after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Britain was weakened by World War II and pulled back from Israel after the 1947 UN Partition Agreement that designated 55 percent for a Jewish state and 45 percent for a Palestinian Arab state. Jerusalem was to be left as a separate body under International control. The United States moved into the breach when the British pulled back. Israel took over the West Bank, Gaza, and the last of historic Palestine after the 1967 war. Israel had been giving the green light by President Johnson for that war. The areas taken are called the occupied territories. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but controls the lives of residents. There are about a million Palestinians living in the occupied territories with millions more as refugees in neighboring countries. General Sharon was elected prime minister in 2001 and created the “Jordan is Palestine” campaign in 2002.

There are interesting discussions of the Jewish people who make up 80 percent of the population of Israel. About half arrived from Europe, and many of the earlier settlers were Jews who escaped pogroms in czarist Russia. The other half is called the Mizrahi Jews who arrived from diverse origins in Africa, Asia, Spain, and Latin America. Most of this group emigrated from Arab countries.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization or PLO was formed in 1964. Yasir (or Yasser) Arafat untied several factions to become the leader in 1968. The UN recognized the PLO as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian People” in 1974. The PLO was invited to participate as an observer within the General Assembly. The PLO drafted a “two-state solution” in 1976 that was put before the Security Council. The US vetoed and the resolution. The PLO was significantly weakened by their decision to side with Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Oil-rich Arab countries that had bankrolled them withdrew their support and Palestinians were expelled from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other Gulf states. There were secret negotiations between the Israelis and PLO in 1993 that led to the famous handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat presided over by President Clinton. The Oslo peace process established the Palestinian Authority (PA), a quasi-governmental body with limited authority.

The intifada or uprising began in 2000 saw resistance in the form of suicide bombers. Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for most of the attacks. The al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade linked to the Fatah organization led by Yasir Arafat began a suicide bombing campaign. Most were in public places such as cafes when. Israel responded by beginning construction of a 24-foot high wall in the western sector of the West Bank. The International Court of Justice ruled the wall to be illegal. The author names some dignitaries who have described Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians as “Apartheid,” which was the Afrikaans word for “apartness” or “separate.” Arafat died in 2004, and with him died much of the Palestinian national identity.

The book has little if anything good to say about George W. Bush. The “illegality of the Iraq war” and the negative effect on the entire region is mentioned. Bush also accepted Sharon’s plan to annex the West Bank settlement blocs and repudiate the Palestinian right of return, which the author judges banished the possibility of a solution to the Palestinian—Israeli conflict.

There is an interesting history of Hamas, which is a Palestinian Islamist and nationalist organization. It was basically a Muslim Brotherhood organization that was created in Gaza in 1987 and was soon seen as a competitor of the PLO. It gained support by establishing a network of social welfare agencies including schools, clinics, hospitals, and mosques that provided services to Palestinians. Hamas also targeted Israel for suicide bombings, and Israel has targeted many Hamas leaders for assassination. The author writes that the huge turnout for Hamas in the 2006 election was created by frustration with the status quo and “…was not really a statement of an Islamist social agenda…” Sanctions imposed by the U.S. created a dramatic decline in the already dangerous humanitarian crises. Non-political civilians were and are paying the price for the conflict. The conflict spread to include the Hezbollah in Lebanon with Israel destroying infrastructure and hunting enemy soldiers while Hezbollah began indiscriminate rocket attacks into Israel.

The U.S. has long welcomed Israel as a valued ally in the Middle East, and supports that country with financial, military, and diplomatic aid. Israel is said to receive 25 percent of the entire U.S. foreign aid budget. Israel receives about $4 billion in aid from the U.S. government and another $5 billion in tax-exempt contributions from private citizens. The U.S. has used the veto power in the UN to protect Israel on numerous occasions. Israel is referred to as the “fifty-first state.”

A peace conference to resolve the Palestinian issue was convened in Madrid in 1991 under joint U.S. and Soviet invitation. However, the U.S. was in charge as the Soviet Union was about to collapse. President George H. W. Bush proposed a plan close to the Oslo formula. The negotiations that plodded along for months and years made little if any progress. The process went on into the Clinton administration, and Secretary of State Warren Christopher accepted Israel’s positions.

The lack of a solution is discussed in the later parts of the book. The author believes a comprehensive peace plan would include establishing equal states for Israel and Palestine and include recognition of the right of Palestinians to return to their homes. The Zionist political movement was established to call for creation of a Jewish State. The Zionist slogan was, “a land without a people for a people without a land.” Adherence to the idea that Palestine was “a land without a people” continues to be accepted by Israel. They therefore have refused to agree that the Palestinians are entitled to any of the land now occupied.

In answer to the question of whether a Palestinian state would be a threat to Israeli security, it is mentioned that Israel has at least 200 nuclear weapons at Dimona in the Negev desert and that it has refused to be a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). There is no discussion of how nuclear weapons could be used in a conflict within the borders of Israel.

Dime a Dozen

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There is no argument that the idiom refers to the obvious explanation that something is cheap and sufficiently abundant to be easily acquired. Knowyourphrase.com explains that the dime, or “dimes” as it was originally called when the coin was introduced as U.S. currency in the 1790s, was actually worth a dime with the dominate metal being silver. The Coinage Act of 1965 changed the composition to 75 percent copper and 25 percent nickel. That debasement could have been the origin of the expression, but there was a reference in the Galveston Daily News in   1866 about peaches being a dime a dozen and pigs being even cheaper. A 1937 reference describes “Smiles being a dime a dozen in the Yankee clubhouse.”