It has been quite a while since I have posted on this blog, and I thought that as I wait for the Super Bowl to get started I ought to just say a few words about where I have been and what I have been doing.
I have been right here in Chapel Hill, of course, even more limited by my Parkinson's than previously, but I have been working very hard on my lectures at Harvard on volume 1 of Capital. This is for me an extremely exciting coda to my career, and I am putting everything I have into it. I only hope those who are attending and participating are enjoying it as well.
I am so appalled and distressed by the carnage in Gaza that I cannot speak about it rationally. I have no idea what it is going to happen and of course I have no influence on it at all so all I can do is anguish.
As for American politics, I am both optimistic about the election and terrified. I remain convinced that Biden will beat Trump more decisively this time than last, helped by the total dysfunction of the Republican Party and by the issue of abortion, which is our secret weapon.
Perhaps if I do a good enough job in my lectures, it will inspire one or two of those listening to take up the struggle as I pass from the scene.
Be well, all of you, and try to be nice to one another. In the larger scheme of things, we are all on the same side.
57 comments:
Good to hear from you.
I'm very pleased to hear that your lectures on Marx are going well.
"This is for me an extremely exciting coda to my career, and I am putting everything I have into it."
Inspiring!
I see Leiter is less electoally optimistic:
https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2024/02/2016-deja-vu-all-over-again.html#more
srry, bvsly mnt electorally
anon,
And if you read Lemieux at Lawyers Guns & Money, you'll see him pouring scorn on Douthat's idea and ridiculing the search for a "Johnny unbeatable" candidate. So it all comes down to which blogs one chooses to read (or not). You choose to read Leiter because he's more to the left, but that doesn't mean his insights on U.S. electoral politics are better. Of course, Leiter and Lemieux are both widely read, albeit by different sorts of people mostly. There are also bloggers who almost no one chooses to read for reasons best known to those who inhabit the Internet (i.e., for reasons that are mostly resistant to systematic investigation).
All that said, I share Leiter's concern with some of Biden's recent public appearances, and the Hur report was damaging. OTOH Leiter sells Biden short when he calls him an "empty vessel," or whatever the phrase is that he used. Biden has real legislative accomplishments to point to (e.g., the bipartisan infrastructure bill, the bill allowing, inter alia, Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, etc.), he has strong connections to organized labor and other base elements of the Dem coalition, and the campaign should start sending him out on the stump more frequently. A wild card is whether the defection of Arab-American voters in Michigan (esp.) will tip the balance in a key swing state. So I'm worried, but if Biden can pull himself together for a last effort he may be able to win.
LFC,
I'm a huge Leiter fan myself and from what I can see, the problem with Biden is that he's showing his age.
We're only in February and from now until November Biden is not going to get better and he may get worse.
Don't the Democrats have someone younger and more dynamic who can run against Trump and beat him? It could even be a movie star or a TV figure or a pop star. After all, Trump had no previous political experience himself.
We're in 2024, in an age where the presidential candidate is a media star and a product to be sold.
We need someone who can make Trump look "small" and "finished" and that could be Taylor Swift for all I know. You get my point.
This election is going to be decided by swing voters, who are not the most politically educated group, who are not interested in the fine points of infrastructure bills, but will select a candidate as one selects the winner of a reality show. That's the way the world is now. Let's get it together and beat Trump.
Leiter's post was quite disappointing (when someone with BL's priors finds value in anything Douthat writes, we may have a tell). The problem with Biden's recent (or past) appearances is the coverage. The media (in general) has a narrative. Follow the narrative and the stories write themselves (less work, more bar time) and then there is the matter of peer (as well as employer - looking at you NYT) acceptance.
As LFC points out, Biden has accomplished more with less then any president ever. God forbid any reporter or op-ed person would write (or for that matter actually know anything) about policy.
The Hur report by itself isn't damaging; the incompetent coverage of the Hur report is. Competent coverage would have focused on Hur's mendacity and he would have taken the hit (recall Barr and the Mueller report). There's a reason why Hur outright lied in the front - he knew most media folks wouldn't get past the first few pages and wouldn't understand it if they tried.
Meanwhile Trump is obviously deteriorating (I still believe that there is a non-trivial chance that he will crash and burn before the election).
This is about one thing: There is a very good chance that regardless of which of the two is elected, the term will be finished by whoever is vice president and in Biden's case that would be an AA/SA of the female persuasion. Quelle horreur!
Sorry, LFC, I don't choose to read Leiter because he's more to the left. I read him very occasionally for a variety of reasons. Mostly i find political blogs of all sorts tediously predictable.
I referred to the one I did because, having come upon it by chance, I thought it offered a contrast to RPW's optimism on this matter.
Jerry Fresia,
I was surprised to see that you deleted your comment.
I was just about to respond to it.
I am curious about why you deleted it.
It's not my point of view, but it seems like one that someone with an artistic sensibility like yourself might put forth and from which others, for example, someone without an artistic sensibility like myself, might learn.
anon @ 4:58 p.m.
As a rule I should not make assumptions about why you or anyone else reads any particular site. I'll try not to do that in the future.
But which websites someone reads is a very interesting question. For example, I often look at posts from people who I consider to be on the right. In my opinion, there is no better training for one's own thought process than to repeatedly deal with the counterarguments.
There is the German word "Kritikwürdig", which is used when something is worthy of criticism. This means that it is worth dealing with because the arguments put forward do justice to the complexity of the issue or because aspects are highlighted that have not yet been reflected in one's own argumentation.
Unfortunately, the search for positions worthy of criticism on the "right" is an extremely unpleasant affair. You walk through the desert for a long time until you come across positions that perhaps promise something. (The discussion between Slavoj Zizek and Gordon Peterson, for example, showed part of this problem. Peterson's understanding of Marx was "undercomplex" to an extent that Zizek had difficulty not exposing him).
Another unpleasant side effect of this search for arguments that challenge one's own position is caused by the way the internet works. If you don't have a VPN, you really have to delete your history and all cookies regularly, otherwise you will be bombarded with right-wing propaganda at all levels. The maelstrom of echo chambers on the internet really is a huge political problem.
That, Achim, is a wonderfully worthwhile comment!
decessero
A.K.
You've added a word to the rather small collection of German words that I know. Thanks.
@ desceccero and LFC,
i am pleased.
By the way, Kant's word "critique" in the title of "Critique of Pure Reason" is understood in this sense. Today, the use of this word has a rather negative meaning. I realized this when my young niece once asked me why Kant thought reason was so bad that it had to be criticized.
Biden certainly has accomplished more genocide than his more immediate predecessors, but it is coming with a terrible price...for all of us.
s. wallertsein,
thanks for your inquiry; I suppose I feel out of place, removed from the discussions of philosopy, moved in ways different from many of those contributing comments. I am saddened by the fact that I didn't see one comment in response to the professor's last blog post that cheered him on. (Maybe I missed one or more???) Here is a person whose absolute generosity has enriched our lives for years and now he's at the end of his academic days, pouring heart and soul into what I have termed "La Ultima Coda" and we, the commentariat express little or no solidarity and encouragement with regard to this specific focus in his life.
Now, I have been labelled obsequious or worse writing such things in the past so I felt it is probably better that I just move along. I could go on about the aesthetic which I think is unique to the professor's approach and is central to what I do although in an entirely different fashion, so I'm excited, curious, anxious to see what he does. I think what the professor is doing is what makes us human and is a revolutionary act. But I feel out of place saying these sorts of things. Again, thanks for asking. I'm sure some don't disagree but something wonderful - maybe magical, is unfolding here and our erudite commentariat, seems to be preoccupied and unable to acknowledge or grasp that fact.
Jerry Fresia,
Maybe you identify with Professor Wolff more deeply than the rest of us do, but there's nothing wrong with that.
When I began my sessions of psychotherapy now a bit over 30 years ago, during the first session, the psychologist asked me to describe myself and among other things, I said that people often have told me that I'm too sensitive.
You can't be too sensitive, was her instant reply.
You (Jerry Fresia) are very sensitive about things that others aren't and that's a gift, not something to apologize for.
This is a capitalism system. Today coming home from the supermarket carrying a heavy grocery bag in each hand, I tripped over a small hole in the supermarket which I had not noticed and fell, breaking my fall with one hand, which was cut, although not severely. As I tried to get up, a couple of people passed by trying not to notice me and I finally got up and walked the rest of the way home.
So in this world where no one slows down their busy pace to help others, you slow down yours to empathize with an exceptional being like Professor Wolff. That's a virtue, even if it not be all that "normal".
my error: I tripped over a small hole in the sidewalk, not the supermarket.
Your story of falling and people walking by trying to ignore you reminded me of a couple of incidents in my life.
When I first arrived in this country still obedient to the British mannerliness which had been instilled in me, I was in the NY subway system at Times Square when I noticed an elderly woman with two big suitcases. So I went over to her and said, “Excuse me. May I help you with your cases.” She turned and glared at me and shouted, “Get Lost!”
Many years later I lived on ‘the other side of the Midway’ in Chicago. One cold morning when the streets were covered with ice, as I headed into Hyde Park, a young man fell nearby. Being a slow learner, I went over and asked if I could help him. He jumped to his feet and started dancing around me with a knife in his hand. Luckily an elderly woman came over and told him he ought to be ashamed of himself. I survived.
I guess I’m a still a slow learner, s. w., for had I seen you fall I’m pretty sure I’d have come over and ask if I could help. On the other hand, . . . Besides, I'm of an age where I'm not sure I could be of much help.
Hope your cut heals quickly. Falling after a certain age is no fun.
"So in this world where no one slows down their busy pace to help others..."
The Chinese philosopher Mencius believed that the heart of man is naturally good. That he will try to stop a child from falling into a well because of basic human decencies & not out of a desire for any sort of gain.
However, Jesus had a prophetic understanding of the future post-modern world.
"Because of the increase in evil doing the love of many will grow cold."
I personally believe we are being tortured by the universe or nature. No matter how little that torture may seem. And that the lesson we must learn in this life is to try to do good anyway under this torture.
We shouldn't say HELLO, SIR; but rather HELLO, FELLOW TORTURED.
And, yes, I'm borrowing a little from Arthur Schopenhauer.
Anonymous,
Thank you for your words of support.
I seem to be functioning this morning, limping a little and with a bandage on my hand, but otherwise ok.
An unoriginal observation is that a degree of indifference to others in need has something to do with the mores, for lack of a better word, of urban life. Still, I'd like to think that many people would come to the help of a person "past a certain age" who'd tripped while carrying shopping bags.
LFC,
I've fallen twice in recent years, yesterday in my neighborhood, which is lower middle class, working class and just plain poor including lots of immigrants from other Latin American countries and no one helped me up although not so many people passed me.
The other time was in the downtown and immediately a well-dressed, elegant "gentleman", probably a bank executive or a lawyer, came to my aid, bent over, helped me to my feet and asked if I was ok or needed more aid.
That is hardly a representative sample of class behavior, but at a very anecdotal level it may say something about "good manners" in urban life.
s.w.
That's interesting, though as you suggest not really a firm basis for generalization.
I live in the sort of neighborhood where people occasionally, or more than occasionally, toss things in the street or a front yard (mine in particular, perhaps bc I'm on a corner) for no reason other than they can't be bothered to dispose of them by e.g. throwing them in the trash. This a.m. there was a cell-phone charger and power cord in the yard, just tossed there by someone who didn't want it anymore. I'm pretty sure that wouldn't happen in the more upscale parts of this great (cough!) metropolis.
I have enjoyed listening to the lectures of Dr Wolff about critique of pure reason. I wonder how the Kant's critique sheds light on the the effects of journaling. I am a counselor and have been journaling for a several years. I want to know what is happening in my mind and body when I write about my feelings and thoughts. Does Kant give any related information? Thanks for your attention.
Anonymous at 11:03:
You can look into the Critique of Pure Reason for a diurnal dose of amphibolies and paralogisms, but I don't think you'll find much directly relevant to thinking about the psychosomatic changes arising through daily writing about your thoughts and feelings. There's a line of inquiry in philosophy that reflects on such as part of so-called 'expressivism' (see in particular the writings, especially his book Hegel, of Charles Taylor, a philosopher who is a couple of years older than the young at heart Dr. Wolff and who has a big book on poetry forthcoming that no doubt will have relevant material). But what you'll want to look at are the three books written by the psychoanalyst Marion Milner under the pseudonym Joanna Field, above all the classic On Not Being Able to Paint.
Meantime, for those seeking affirmation or consolation, which is to return very obliquely to RPW's post, there's this
From a very public British sociologist
https://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-anomaly-by-herve-le-tellier.html
Excerpt: "For my money, The Anomaly is a polemic against what Le Tellier sees as the real anomaly - the unending eruption of unreason in culture and politics. "
The book referred to is all, it seems, about trump and his second coming.
I have nothing on journaling specifically, but regarding the general therapeutic use of Kant:
I was once in a group therapy session where the facilitator opened with a saying from Epictetus: We are troubled not by things, but by our opinions of things. I was reminded of a quote from my high school English class, whose author escaped me at the time (I thought it was Shakespeare, but it turns out it was Milton): "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven."
It's a stretch (and it might make Kant and his scholars groan), but I think it's possible to see such statements as relatives, albeit rather distant relatives, of Kant's "Copernican Revolution," according to which nature conforms to our knowledge of nature rather than vice-versa.
(Stated otherwise, perhaps with subtle, unintended changes to its meaning: It's the mind that shapes the world, rather than the world that shapes the mind. We experience the world, and the peculiar structure of our experience comes from us; the world itself does not have this peculiar structure originally and independently of our mind's organizing activity, which it needs to "make sense" of things.)
Now, I think for us to make progress in therapy (or in personal growth in general), it's often necessary to see our ways of interpreting ourselves and our experiences as just that: interpretation. It tells us simply about how we think, not about how the world really is apart from our thought. If our beliefs lead us to suffer, we might consider challenging our beliefs, experimenting with different narratives, rewriting the stories we tell ourselves. We might hope to find that our interpretations are "optional" - different people see the world differently, and no less legitimately - and accordingly that our suffering is optional.
Again, this is pretty remote from Kant in a way (he was writing as a theorist of knowledge, not a therapist; and he would not regard the structures of human cognition as "optional" for us), but I think it's possible to see a certain loose resemblance between Epictetus's/Milton's view and Kant's. You might have to "squint" a bit... :)
Jerry Fresia: we, the commentariat express little or no solidarity and encouragement with regard to this specific focus in his life....
[S]omething wonderful - maybe magical, is unfolding here and our erudite commentariat, seems to be preoccupied and unable to acknowledge or grasp that fact.
Jerry, to be fair, several of us showed our appreciation for Prof Wolff's efforts by trying to get him to see if he could tape the sessions and post them on YouTube. I asked pretty much the same question you recently did a couple of months ago:
"Any chance the study group will be taped & loaded to YouTube? Since it will be on Zoom, if a large part of the content will involve you lecturing, the other participants could be hidden/muted.
One of the lectures I watched on the recent observance of the National Day of Mourning was this recording that Prof Paul Kelton shared of his discussing the conflict between the Dakota & other Native Americans and white settlers, and Lincoln's policies on the latter's westward expansion...."
And more recently I posted:
"When I say change the world for the better, I mean change it so that it becomes more like the world of which Marx and Engels dreamed. The fact that Prof Wolff is offering this class at all is a positive. Now, I am not so naive as to expect everyone participating in a study group on Capital at Harvard would be likely to embrace Marx's ideas as their own, of course, but a deep exposure to Marx's thinking might be a first step for at least some."
(Yes, everything is about me. ;-) )
While Prof Wolff is otherwise preoccupied, I can content myself by rewatching YouTube interviews and lectures of John Stockwell and Philip Agee. Both of them highly recommended your book "Toward an American Revolution: Exposing the Constitution & Other Illusions."
Eric,
Understood
BTW, Phil Agee and I were friends for a time. And he did promote the book as you say. Interesting guy/life as you know - "on the run" for quite some time. Always nice to know there are those who take serious risks to challenge/expose power. I was unaware that Stockwell endorsed the book. Nice to learn. I also got a plug from Mumia. So it turns out that two designated "Public enemy no. 1s" endorsed my book. What a riot. The APSA was less enthusiastic.
s.w., given where you fell and cut your hand, I hope you are up to date on your tetanus shots. If not please consider getting one.
aaall,
Thanks for your concern.
I just googled "tetanus shot" and they last about 10 years.
I got one five years ago when I fainted, fell and hit my head, after which I went to the hospital emergency room where they gave me a tetanus shot as well as stitching the wound. In fact, as I recall, I had to get a second tetanus shot several months later, I don't recall how many months.
I saw this on X of the 102-year-old Edgar Morin, the French Jewish resistance fighter of WW2. I don't speak French but I was able to read the interpretation. The content is vital, but his delivery albeit in French evoked a sense of seminal importance to me.
I thought i should share it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COL6CZsm3cU
Charles Lamana,
Thanks.
I don't understand much French myself either, although this guy speaks slowly in very clear French. I read the text, which anyone with basic French can. For those who don't have time for a long video, it's only a minute and a half.
Very moving.
If you are accessing YouTube using a computer browser, you can often have YouTube translate the spoken content to another language and display the translation on screen.
Click on the gear icon (for Settings) on the lower right, choose Subtitles/CC. In this case, then click on French (auto-generated), choose Auto-translate, and scroll to English or whatever language you want.
There is a mistake in the YouTube auto-translation of these remarks. It occurs at the beginning, where auto-translate thinks he's saying: "I am blessed [sic] by the fact...." No. What he's saying is: "I am both stunned [or astounded] and indignant at the fact...." [je suis à la fois ahuri et indigné par le fait...."] I had to look up the word ahuri, since my French vocabulary is not all that it might be.
While I very much dislike the boorish title, Charles Lamana reminded me of this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVmCwhFk6Pc&ab_channel=DoubleDownNews
S.Wallerstein, Eric, and LFC, I appreciate your comments and enhancements to the YouTube clip, that I posted. MAD, please tell me if there is one specific YouTube clip that I can view.
In the morning I listened to the Greyzone with Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté. They have the perspective that the U.S. and Israel are generally duplicitous and act
imperialistically. From that they derive the corollary that the enemies of the U.S. and Israel are generally well-intended and can be believed. The corollary does not logically follow from the first proposition, but many people do make that jump.
In the afternoon thanks to Youtube's suggestions, I listened to Benny Morris, Israeli pro-Zionist historian, according to whom the state of Israel has generally acted with noble intentions from the 1948 war through the 1967 war and the failed peace processes during the Clinton administration. Morris believes that the IDF has to hit Hamas hard because in the Middle East if you don't revenge yourself immediately, you'll be considered soft and weak and easy to push around.
Who should I believe, the Greyzone or Morris?
Does it matter?
I really don't have the time and energy to research all these matters to the extent that Maté, Blumenthal and Morris do, although, given their original biases, they come to diametrically opposite conclusions, conclusions that they were probably seeking to prove before beginning their research.
There is one thing that I am sure of. Israel is committing atrocities and war crimes, probably genocide, in their invasion of Gaza and that is not acceptable in a civilized world.
That is independent of who fired the first shot in the 1947-1948 war or whether Israel was justified in attacking in 1967.
The same with Putin in Ukraine. It matters little the history of NATO expansion in Eastern Europe or whether Bush 1 lied to Gorbachov or whether Zelensky is corrupt or whether there are neo-nazis in the Ukrainian government.
Putin attacked Ukraine and that has no justification nor does the continuing Israeli slaughter in Gaza.
@charles Lamana
I thought the linked worked fine but it does have a strange format. Here's an updated one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVmCwhFk6Pc
@s. wallerstein,
Your point could be made about so many controversies: Tobacco smoking leading to cancer, man-made climate change, etc. When there are powerful interests at stake, the apologists' points of views are overrepresented in the media. RA Fisher, arguably the most important scientist of the 20th century (being a statistician ,to me this man is like Kant or Nietzsche for the audience here) argued against the impact of smoking in causing cancer at a point when most biologists were coming to adopt that belief. His views and that of other few apologists were used by the Tobacco interests to create a false middle ground. I do believe that overall the historical record and the reports submitted by several human rights organizations over the decades present a clear picture. That is not to say that the Palestinians have been angels or anything of the sort. Rather they show how the immense gap between reality and the manipulated points of views we have on the issue of Palestine and Israel. I can say these things even though I am not a historian of the conflict in the same way that I can say that climate change is real even though I am not a Climate Scientist, or smoking causes cancer even though I am not a biologist and so on.
But perhaps you are right though that these points are of secondary nature to the actual events aptly described by that horrible word.
MAD,
People lie a lot in politics. I have no doubt that Netanyahu is often lying, that Biden lies, that Trump and Putin lie even more.
However, from what I could see, Benny Morris is a reputable historian who believes that what he says is true, just as Ilan Pappé, another Israeli historian, with the opposite view does. I'm more familiar with Pappe's work, because being on the left, I tend to read books by leftist writers.
I live in Chile. There are differing accounts, depending on their political point of view, among serious scholars about the events leading up to the 1973 coup against democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende.
Those on the right often believe that Allende should and could have moderated his position, reined in the more radical elements in his coalition and struck a deal with center politicians from the Christian Democrats, thus avoiding a coup. Those on on the far left believe that Allende should have armed the workers, preparing them to resist the coming fascist coup.
However, once again in this historical debate, one thing is clear, to me and to most others, that there was no justification for the 1973 coup and the ensuing 17 year Pinochet dictatorship.
That is why I cited Fisher as an example. He wasn’t lying, but from our perspective (and that of most biologists at the time) he was just horribly wrong. For sure there are many topics were there are controversies which may never be resolved. There are several books on the rise of think tanks which explain how in many disputes of political importance certain viewpoints are overrepresemted in the media leading to a manipulated sense of reality.
Perhaps of interest:
https://infinitejaz.substack.com/
About time someone mentioned this:
https://wapo.st/3OOX097
@aall
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'In the larger scheme of things, we are all on the same side.'
What's wrong with "making sure we're on the same page"?
'RA Fisher, arguably the most important scientist of the 20th century (being a statistician ,to me this man is like Kant or Nietzsche for the audience here)'
You mean, Ronald Fisher, known as one of the three principal founders of population genetics. Though that's already a dubious accomplishment, 'arguably', if we insist on juxtaposing the point that he held strong views on race and eugenics, insisting on racial differences. I state that vaguely, although he was clearly a eugenicist.
You praise him for for his work in statistics. I'll return to how Fisher rejected the notion of smoking cigarettes being dangerous, calling it "propaganda."
Not really to pick on Fisher here, but I do think maybe this is an area which attracts people who like to pretend to know more than they do. I have nothing against math or statistics, and this could get more technical, as to his achievements, I do think praising this dude as 'arguably the most important scientist of the 20th century' was distracting. Like, not Einstein?
MAD,
I'll just repost where you were going with this, since it's your point of emphasis, this was about
'His views and that of other few apologists were used by the Tobacco interests to create a false middle ground. I do believe that overall the historical record and the reports submitted by several human rights organizations over the decades present a clear picture.'
Ingenuous, though, isn't it, to describe how to present a clear picture, in such desperately murky terms? Several human rights organization? How many?
'That is not to say that the Palestinians have been angels or anything of the sort.'
How many kinds of things are there? Anything like angels, or anything of that sort, this is something that we like to acknowledge? Have you ever heard a message about angels? Do you believe that they exist? Where did matter come from?
God equipped man with mind power. Man was put here for a great purpose. God is reproducing Himself. Oh, my friends, you haven't heard very much of the truth of your Bible. The world is not filled with understanding. I'm kidding, I think I'm hilarious.
'Rather they show how the immense gap between reality and the manipulated points of views we have on the issue of Palestine and Israel. I can say these things even though I am not a historian of the conflict in the same way that I can say that climate change is real even though I am not a Climate Scientist, or smoking causes cancer even though I am not a biologist and so on.'
Well, okay. You're trying to be reasonable. That is not to say that the Palestinians have been angels or anything of the sort. Then, they are wicked angels who follow Satan? That's not reasonable, I'm kidding. I don't actually really disagree about some notion of 'the manipulated points of views we have on the issue of Palestine and Israel'.
Dr. Wolff - as I called you when I took a course (two if I recall) long ago when you taught at CCNY. Recently, I met (at a B&B in Atlanta Georgia, of all places) a retired philosophy professor. Your name came up and he pointed me to your blog. The discussion of Marx is way above my pay grade - sorry about that. However, I was interested in your remarks on the current Israel-Hamas war. On 10/18/23, you wrote you were upset by the blowing up of a hospital in Gaza (I assume later you read all the corrections in the Times and other papers, admitting it was an errant rocket from a terror group in Gaza, and that the number of dead was no where near what was originally reported). I looked back to October 8th to see if you were upset by the attack on Israeli civilians (leftist all - the kind of folks who would agree with most of your politics, and who spend many hours trying to help their Palestinian neighbors in Gaza and who would never vote for Bibi) - but I saw nothing. I wonder if you saw the videos - posted gleefully by the terrorists to show the world they were proud of their carnage - or even the still photos which were interestingly enough taken as the horrific attack was on-going, but whose photographers denied they knew about the attack ahead of time. Then on 2/24, you reported being anguished by the civilian deaths in Gaza. Well, you might know that the folks who are not anguished are the architects of the attack on Israel- the leaders and supporters of Hamas (by Palestinian polls, large majorities of Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank). It was their intention that civilians in Gaza would die. So why am I upset? You were one of my favorite professors. I think you (and K.D. Irani) taught me how to think. The idea that you would uncritically accept "news" from Hamas (or from Al-Jazeeraa) is astounding to me. All that said, though I won't be reading your blog (which I was looking forward to doing), I will say that I am sorry for your health problems. And sorry for any innocent civilians who have died in this current war. And sorry that Palestinians have never given up their dream, their unrealistic dream, of destroying the only Jewish state in the world. It has led to disaster after disaster for them. No need to reply- I too am anguished, but for reasons quite different from your own. Ann Bardacke
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