Is Tehran considering sending an aid flotilla to Gaza because it fears Turkey’s influence and feels it has to top Ankara? According to this article by columnist Muwaffaq Matar of Alhayat Aljadeeda, a newspaper in the West Bank, while Palestinians could certainly use more help, Iran’s game of one-upmanship is destined to come at the expense of Palestinian lives in Gaza. Exposing yet another chasm...

I was asked to do an interview for the web portal Care2.com with one of the two editors of a new book called, Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists (Seal Press). Given the prominence given lately to the topic of feminism, feminists, who “is” or “isn’t” one, who can or can’t be one and so on, I thought some TMV readers might find the resulting post for it (which you can read...

I’ve written before about what appeared to be a lack of conservative women running for office. So it’s with great satisfaction that I read and listened to not one but two stories from NPR on the statistically significant increase in the number of conservative female candidates in this year’s election cycle. First, from For Republican women, 2010 is already a huge year: Fourteen Republican women...

WH Commission on Remembrance Forgets Civil War on Memorial Day by Hart Williams Yeah. I can hardly believe it myself. The White House Commission on Remembrance forgot the Civil War … on Memorial Day. Here’s a screencap: No. This is not a joke. Take a close look at those wars: Yup. Not only are the Civil War AND the Mexican War of 1846 missing, but the BOXER REBELLION is included, almost as if to declare:...

Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story by Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould is a must read book for anyone who wants to understand world geopolitics since the Vietnam war and even before. It might be surprising what an important part the small country Afghanistan played in the politics of the cold war. This was a difficult review simply because there is so much information. Some of it I knew...

The recent nuclear deal brokered with Iran by Turkey and Brazil has caused alarm not only in the United States and Europe, but in the Arab oil states. According to this article from Kuwait’s Al Qabas, Arabs are concerned that once the pressure is off of Iran over its nuclear program, it will then be free to pursue many of its other foreign policy goals in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and the Persian Gulf. For...

Back at Open Salon they are having a contest for shrimp recipes in support of our fishermen along the Gulf Coast who are about to be hit by a horrible catastrophe. I submitted a family recipe. For a change of pace, instead of politics, I thought I’d share that family recipe with TMV readers. But first some background. Several of my relatives in my native country of Ecuador are in the shrimp business,...

So David Cameron, it appears, is “the youngest Prime Minister in the 200 year history of British government.” I’m older. He was born in late 1966. I was born in early 1965. I think that’s a first for me, being older than a prominent, contemporary world leader. Granted, there have been child and teenage heads of state — eons ago. And maybe some tiny kingdom somewhere has...

Here it is, midday on the West Coast, and my mind is filled with a rainbow of thoughts about my own mother on this Sunday, Mother’s Day, in May 2010. Carrie Eleanor (Ellsworth) Remmers died in 1983 at age 79. In so many respects, I feel fortunate to have had a mother that epitomizes why mothers are honored. As a child, she nurtured and protected me from my father’s wrath as seen through the eyes...

Exactly one week ago, I was born in a small town in Ecuador. From what I remember of the first day of my life, it was joyful, carefree, full of love, full of fun. I especially remember my Grandfather, the kindest person I ever knew. I was very close to him. His name was Justo Rodríguez. I called him “Papá Justito.” I still see his kind, smiling face. That first day went by much too quickly and when...

British physicist Dr Stephen Hawking warned on his new TV show that Extraterrestrials (ETs), if they ever arrive, might be looking for conquest and plunder. He believes aliens could be more interested in exploiting our natural resources than sharing their technology with us. Is Planet Earth prepared to take them on? Or, will the might of the rich/developing nations exhausted fighting their own wars? Long before...

Guess who built the world’s longest dam?

It’s Sunday morning, and I just finished watching the round table discussion portion of This Week on ABC. We were blessed today with a few special guests filling out the panel, including Bill Maher. The man seemed unable to open his mouth without causing my jaw to head for the floor in synchronized response. Apart from the subject of this column, I could probably have spent a while dissecting these gems: “Conservatives...

A reader writes: I appreciated your column. I’ve heard Wilbert on NPR, and I appreciate that prisoners can be rehabilitated. But I do think your article was a bit one-sided. The DA makes a valid point: Julia Ferguson is gone forever. Julia had a family too. What is a just sentence? What about the victim? How do we reconcile the two sides of this argument? I’m not a vindictive person; I think the...

My radio dial found a conservative station the other day and I listened for a while to one of the most stirring, hauntingly beautiful, patriotic songs I have ever heard: “Let Freedom Ring.” I left my dial there for a bit and listened to the talk-radio host, a Great American, taking a number of calls from several other Great Americans. It brought back memories of the 2008 presidential campaign, when righteous...

According to the Associated Press, the Arizona House on Wednesday approved a bill that would require U.S. presidential candidates who want to appear on the ballot in Arizona to submit documents proving they meet the constitutional requirements to be president. Of course, one of those constitutional requirements is that the candidate must be a natural born citizen, i.e. born in the United States. And, of...

Mr. B. You’re early today. And forgive me for saying so, but you look terrible. Bad day in the markets? Europeans sniveling again about those Greek swaps? Bonus complaints? More bad A.I.G press? No, Selig. it’s those fraud charges, that witch hunt. You heard about them? I did hear something about that, sir. On the portable radio you let your washroom attendants listen to during work hours. No need...

With inadvertent but very apropos timing, The New Scientist published an article on research showing how the weather in Europe is affected by solar activity: Quiet sun puts Europe on ice 14 April 2010 by Stuart Clark Magazine issue 2756. BRACE yourself for more winters like the last one, northern Europe. Freezing conditions could become more likely: winter temperatures may even plummet to depths last seen at...

I’ve written on defining “activism” before but this op-ed in today’s New York Times is superb, as an op-ed and as an argument for why U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is as activist as was the late U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger. From professor of law, Geoffrey R. Stone (University of Chicago – yeah yeah yeah where President Obama taught) who also is an...

What was it like for someone from Poland to be in the United States on the day that that Poland’s president, a good portion of his government and some of Poland’s leading lights were wiped out in a plane crash? Gazeta Wyborcza’s Washington correspondent Marcin Bosacki writes that if they were looking down from the heavens, those who died would have been happy at the way the nation they gave...

Not everyone is pleased with the nuclear rapprochement between the United States and Russia. According to this article by Maurin Picard of France’s Le Figaro, Eastern Europeans are looking on with a mixture of frustration and dread, as it appears to some that the NATO membership they obtained at such cost appears to be dropping in value. For Le Figaro, Maurin Picard writes in part: Barack Obama’s...

I went to college, studying modern foreign governments among other things, in the era of Lech Walesa (so much did it affect my college years and learning that I thought the song, Safety Dance, was actually, Save Gdansk) and the Solidarity Movement. Additionally, I’m a quarter-Polish – my paternal grandfather came over as a stowaway in a pickle barrel during the later part of World War I.  My first...

Or, The Mainstream Media Makes Itself Obsolete What happens when you strike flint and steel? Fire. In this case, lots and lots of fire. Back on March 25, the City of Flint, Michigan made the decision to lay off 23 of 88 firefighters and 46 of 150 police officers. Almost immediately, the fires started. Several fires, every night. Sometimes, 8 or 9 fires. Mostly, they were among the 3000 vacant structures in...

I adore the idea and goal of increasing our country’s energy independence from oil and oil-producing nations as much if not more than the average American.  But I also adore the Atlantic coast, having grown up on the Long Island Sound in Connecticut, working and summering in Coastal Maine and spending time on New Jersey and Massachusetts shores.  The vision of oil rigs bobbing in the waves just south...

FYI, you can still comment on my posts, which all go up at Conventional Folly as well as TMV. Each of my posts on TMV will continue to have (at the end) a link to the equivalent post on Conventional Folly. Also, I will be glad to publish e-mails from those who wants their opinions to go up on TMV. You can reach me at . Please put ‘TMV’ in the subject line, so the message gets sent to my inbox,...