Frankie Boy is a taxi driver who might remind you of the Jackie Gleason character Ralph Kramden. He's big and loud. And truth to tell, crude. I'm old, arthritic and walk with a cane so I've not wanted to invite a beating which could end my working days.
At times Frankie Boy would ventilate his frustration with trips to the depths of Brooklyn or the Bronx, with no tip at the end of it. When Frankie Boy's face gets red and he goes off on Black passengers I worry for him in a way. You see, most of the drivers in my garage are African immigrants. Most barely react. There's one African guy who takes polite exception I sometimes tell Frankie Boy to can it, or stop over generalizing, and that if he doesn'tcalm down he's going to have a stroke . Frankie Boy is son of Cuban refugees. I don't think there are many of them driving taxis, but Frankie Boy is one, just like I'm a New York Jew. There are surely more New York Jews driving taxis than Cuban Americans. I never asked Frankie Boy his story, but part of it is probably about his dissappearances and trips to Cuba, trips he enjoys immensley as he reports. He's crude. He whips out his cell phone to show images of attractive naked brown skinned young women. He can work like a dog for a few months, save up a relatively small stash and live like a rock star for a month in Cuba. When you drive for a taxi fleet you can come and go as you please.
Anyhow I think he's on to The Frankie Boy Report. I've told him that some of his reports vaguely remind me of highlights of my own shifts, but while he seems to remember virtually everything that happens on his shifts, I remember next to nothing. If I want to have a really successful Taxi Driver Blog I'd better get working on remembering stuff.
Now, because I amble rather than walk, carry a black and silver walking stick, and maybe due also to my white beard, big belly one of the African drivers has dubbed me "the King ." Others call me Gino. Here's the first King Gino Report.
Once upon a time, long ago, when I was a boy, Rock 'n' Roll was mainly Black people's music. Then a swarthy complexion ed wiry haired Jewish guy named Alan Freid managed to mainstream it. It crossed the Atlantic a few years later and came back white as England was.
Celebrating Whyte Noize
I can't help but notice that the ones who hoisted the White Flag over the Brooklyn Bridge are from the White Power nation of Europe.
The sparring during Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders over whether Henry Kissinger is an elder statesman or a pariah has laid bare a major foreign policy divide within the Democratic Party.
Clinton and Sanders stand on opposite sides of that divide. One represents the hawkish Washington foreign policy establishment, which reveres and in some cases actually works for Kissinger. The other represents the marginalized non-interventionists, who can’t possibly forgive someone with the blood of millions of brown people on his hands.
Kissinger is an amazing and appropriate lens through which to see what’s at stake in the choice between Clinton and Sanders. But that only works, of course, if you understand who Kissinger is — which surely many of today’s voters don’t.
Some may only dimly recall that Kissinger won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the Vietnam War (comedian Tom Lehrer famously said the award made political satire obsolete), and that he played a central role in President Nixon’s opening of relations with China.
But Kissinger is reviled by many left-leaning observers of foreign policy. They consider him an amoral egotist who enabled dictators, extended the Vietnam War, laid the path to the Khmer Rouge killing fields, stage-managed a genocide in East Timor, overthrew the democratically elected left-wing government in Chile, and encouraged Nixon to wiretap his political adversaries.
First, let’s review what happened at the debate. Here’s the video, followed by the transcript:
SANDERS: Where the secretary and I have a very profound difference, in the last debate — and I believe in her book — very good book, by the way — in her book and in this last debate, she talked about getting the approval or the support or the mentoring of Henry Kissinger. Now, I find it rather amazing, because I happen to believe that Henry Kissinger was one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country.
(APPLAUSE)
I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend. I will not take advice from Henry Kissinger. And in fact, Kissinger’s actions in Cambodia, when the United States bombed that country, overthrew Prince Sihanouk, created the instability for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to come in, who then butchered some 3 million innocent people, one of the worst genocides in the history of the world. So count me in as somebody who will not be listening to Henry Kissinger.
(APPLAUSE)
IFILL: Secretary Clinton?
CLINTON: Well, I know journalists have asked who you do listen to on foreign policy, and we have yet to know who that is.
SANDERS: Well, it ain’t Henry Kissinger. That’s for sure.
CLINTON: That’s fine. That’s fine.
(LAUGHTER)
You know, I listen to a wide variety of voices that have expertise in various areas. I think it is fair to say, whatever the complaints that you want to make about him are, that with respect to China, one of the most challenging relationships we have, his opening up China and his ongoing relationships with the leaders of China is an incredibly useful relationship for the United States of America.
(APPLAUSE)
So if we want to pick and choose — and I certainly do — people I listen to, people I don’t listen to, people I listen to for certain areas, then I think we have to be fair and look at the entire world, because it’s a big, complicated world out there.
SANDERS: It is.
CLINTON: And, yes, people we may disagree with on a number of things may have some insight, may have some relationships that are important for the president to understand in order to best protect the United States.
(APPLAUSE)
SANDERS: I find — I mean, it’s just a very different, you know, historical perspective here. Kissinger was one of those people during the Vietnam era who talked about the domino theory. Not everybody remembers that. You do. I do. The domino theory, you know, if Vietnam goes, China, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. That’s what he talked about, the great threat of China.
And then, after the war, this is the guy who, in fact, yes, you’re right, he opened up relations with China, and now pushed various type of trade agreements, resulting in American workers losing their jobs as corporations moved to China. The terrible, authoritarian, Communist dictatorship he warned us about, now he’s urging companies to shut down and move to China. Not my kind of guy.
Let’s consider some of Kissinger’s achievements during his tenure as Richard Nixon’s top foreign policy–maker. He (1) prolonged the Vietnam War for five pointless years; (2) illegally bombed Cambodia and Laos; (3) goaded Nixon to wiretap staffers and journalists; (4) bore responsibility for three genocides in Cambodia, East Timor, and Bangladesh; (5) urged Nixon to go after Daniel Ellsberg for having released the Pentagon Papers, which set off a chain of events that brought down the Nixon White House; (6) pumped up Pakistan’s ISI, and encouraged it to use political Islam to destabilize Afghanistan; (7) began the U.S.’s arms-for-petrodollars dependency with Saudi Arabia and pre-revolutionary Iran; (8) accelerated needless civil wars in southern Africa that, in the name of supporting white supremacy, left millions dead; (9) supported coups and death squads throughout Latin America; and (10) ingratiated himself with the first-generation neocons, such as Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, who would take American militarism to its next calamitous level. Read all about it in Kissinger’s Shadow!
A full tally hasn’t been done, but a back-of-the-envelope count would attribute 3, maybe 4 million deaths to Kissinger’s actions, but that number probably undercounts his victims in southern Africa. Pull but one string from the current tangle of today’s multiple foreign policy crises, and odds are it will lead back to something Kissinger did between 1968 and 1977. Over-reliance on Saudi oil? That’s Kissinger. Blowback from the instrumental use of radical Islam to destabilize Soviet allies? Again, Kissinger. An unstable arms race in the Middle East? Check, Kissinger. Sunni-Shia rivalry? Yup, Kissinger. The impasse in Israel-Palestine? Kissinger. Radicalization of Iran? “An act of folly” was how veteran diplomat George Ball described Kissinger’s relationship to the Shah. Militarization of the Persian Gulf? Kissinger, Kissinger, Kissinger.
The late essayist Christopher Hitchins examined Kissinger’s war crimes in his 2001 book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger. He listed the key elements of his case:
1. The deliberate mass killing of civilian populations in Indochina. 2. Deliberate collusion in mass murder, and later in assassination, in Bangladesh. 3. The personal suborning and planning of murder, of a senior constitutional officer in a democratic nation — Chile — with which the United States was not at war. 4. Personal involvement in a plan to murder the head of state in the democratic nation of Cyprus. 5. The incitement and enabling of genocide in East Timor 6. Personal involvement in a plan to kidnap and murder a journalist living in Washington, D.C.
Kissinger’s role in the genocide that took place in East Timor is less well-known than the one he enabled in Indochina. Author Charles Glass wrote about that episode in 2011:
On December 6, 1975, Kissinger and Gerald Ford met President Suharto in Indonesia and promised to increase arms supplies to sustain Indonesian suppression of the former Portuguese colony. Kissinger, quoted verbatim in U.S. Embassy cables of that war council, insisted that American weapons for the Indonesian Army’s invasion could be finessed: “It depends on how we construe it; whether it is in self-defense or is a foreign operation.”
Since no one in East Timor had attacked or intended to attack Indonesia, Suharto could hardly plead self-defense. But Kissinger would make the case for him. All he asked was that Suharto delay the invasion a few hours until he and Ford had left Jakarta. He presumably relied on the American public’s inability to connect the Jakarta conference with the invasion so long as he and Ford were back in Washington when the killing began. As far as the American media went, he was right. The Indonesian Army invaded on the anniversary of a previous day of infamy, December 7, massacring about a third of the population. The press, apart from five Australian journalists whom the Indonesian Army slaughtered, ignored the invasion and subsequent occupation. Well done, Henry.
By the time Suharto was overthrown in 1998, Kissinger had gone private — charging vast fees to advise people like Suharto on methods for marketing their crimes. He also kept posing as an elder statesman whose views were sought (and often paid for) by a media that enabled his penchant for self-publicity. He was a patriot whose love of country stopped short of taking part in the 9/11 Commission if it meant disclosing how much the Saudi royal family paid him for his counsel.
The continuing role Kissinger plays in modern foreign policy is perfectly illustrated by Hillary Clinton, his longtime fan and friend. Just recently, in November, she reviewed Kissinger’s latest book, World Order, for theWashington Post. There’s a summary of that here.
Clinton called it “vintage Kissinger, with his singular combination of breadth and acuity along with his knack for connecting headlines to trend lines.” She wrote that “his analysis, despite some differences over specific policies, largely fits with the broad strategy behind the Obama administration’s effort over the past six years to build a global architecture of security and cooperation for the 21st century.”
And she said he came off as “surprisingly idealistic. Even when there are tensions between our values and other objectives, America, he reminds us, succeeds by standing up for our values, not shirking them, and leads by engaging peoples and societies, the source of legitimacy, not governments alone.”
A key passage:
Kissinger is a friend, and I relied on his counsel when I served as secretary of state. He checked in with me regularly, sharing astute observations about foreign leaders and sending me written reports on his travels. Though we have often seen the world and some of our challenges quite differently, and advocated different responses now and in the past, what comes through clearly in this new book is a conviction that we, and President Obama, share: a belief in the indispensability of continued American leadership in service of a just and liberal order.
The difference between the two views of Kissinger is not simply of academic or historical interest. How a presidential candidate feels about him is a clear sign of her or his worldview and indicates the kind of decisions she or he will make in office – and, perhaps even more importantly, suggests the kind of staffers she or he will appoint to key positions of authority in areas of diplomacy, defense, national security, and intelligence.
Sanders has not made clear who he is turning to for foreign policy advice, if anyone. (What’s your dream foreign policy team? Email me atfroomkin@theintercept.com.)
But Clinton is clearly picking from the usual suspects — the “securocrats in waiting” who make up the Washington, D.C., foreign policy establishment.
They work at places like Albright Stonebridge, the powerhouse global consulting firm led by former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, a staunch Clinton backer. They work at places like Beacon Global Strategies, which is providing high-profile foreign policy guidance to Clinton — as well as to Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. And they work at places like Kissinger Associates. In fact, Bob Hormats, who was a Goldman Sachs vice chairman before serving as Clinton’s undersecretary of state, is now advising Clinton’s campaign even while serving as the vice chairman of Kissinger Associates.
Despite the wildly bellicose andhuman rights-averse rhetoric from the leading Republican presidential candidates, they’re picking from essentially the same pool as well.
A few weeks ago, I talked to Chas Freeman, the former diplomat I once called a “one-man destroyer of groupthink,” whose non-interventionism and even-handed approach to the Middle East was so un-Kissingeresque that his surprising appointment to President Obama’s National Intelligence Council in 2009 lasted all of a few days.
He marveled at the lack of any “honest brokers” in the D.C. foreign policy establishment. “We have a foreign policy elite in this country that’s off its meds, basically,” he said.
“There’s no debate because everybody’s interventionist, everybody’s militaristic.” They all are pretty much in the thrall of neoconservatism, he said. You can see them “speckled all over the Republican side” and “also in the Clinton group.”
Henry Kissinger is thus a litmus test for foreign policy. But don’t count on the mainstream media to help you understand that.
Imagine two types of people: those who would schmooze with Kissinger at a cocktail party, and those who would spit in his eye. The elite Washington media is almost without exception in that first category. In fact, they’d probably have anyone who spit in Kissinger’s eye arrested.
Since they only see one side, they don’t want to get into it. And there was a little indicator at Thursday night’s debate, hosted by PBS, of just how eagerly the elite political media welcomes an honest exploration of the subject.
Just as Sanders raised the issue of Kissinger’s legacy in Vietnam, either Gwen Ifill or Judy Woodruff — both of whom are very conventional, establishment, Washington cocktail-party celebrities — was caught audibly muttering, “Oh, God.”
Top photo: Hillary Clinton smiles as Henry Kissinger presents her with a Distinguished Leadership Award from the Atlantic Council in Washington in May 2013.
247 Mulberry Street, located in Little Italy of yore, now SOHO, was the location of a mafia hangout known as the Ravenite Social Club. It is not located North of Hester and South of Grand, it's located North of Spring Street just South of Prince.
The neighborhood was pretty immense running from Worth Street near Bowery where it bordered Chinatown all the way West and uptown to roughly 14th Street at Eight Avenue. You could say in those days that Greenwich Village was a predominantly Italian neighborhood contiguous to or a part of Little Italy. Now Little Italy is a remnant of Italian restaurants where Mexicans wait table and very few Italians are found in the apartments above the storefronts.
I can choose any twelve hour shift I want. All I have to do is get to the garage by 2:30 or 3:00 pm and wait to be assigned a taxi at around 5:00 pm. Then I work till 5:00 am. Don't get me wrong. I socialize, joke around with the other guys and blog/Facebook/Tweet at the garage. I always get a place to sit. So this is not a complaint. Also over the past year I always get a taxi to work with. And I like driving, sometimes conversing, girl watching, stopping for a coffee or a nap. I even enjoy the challenges, like getting a heroin strung out night person trust fund kid out of the cab. But I am curious about panhandling. How much could I make?
I'm large so maybe I could stand outside 247 Mulberry Street singing "Big Man on Mulberry Street " and cage dollars from the passers-by?
Donald Trump, Grand Marshall, leading the 2002 Salute to Israel parade.
Anyone with half a brain saw it coming. Trump had showed signs but old style Jew haters as well as a few naive partisans of the Palestinians were living in hope, and we know that the wish is the father of the thought. And the thought? That Donald Trump will champion the Palestinian cause and break the power of the Jewish Lobby mainly embodied in AIPAC, the American Israeli Political Action Committee. David Duke called on his following to go all out for Trump, which they did.
Donald Trump's daughter converted to Orthodox Judaism, married an Orthodox Jew and is raising a Jewish child. There has been no public fighting, disowning, criticizing between Grampa Trump and his daughter.
Trump is heavily into hotels and casinos. Real estate is political. Can you imagine an open opponent of Israel, let alone an old fashioned Jew hater surviving in the world of New York City real estate? Las Vegas? Florida?
Donald Trump can and did crack a Jew Joke with the best of them and this no doubt impressed David Duke who masquerades as a reformed ex Klan Nazi but advocates White / European domination of the United States. He believes that current demographic trends endanger civilization and constitute "white genocide." Given that the majority of infants in the United States are not white, and many occupations have predominantly non white immigrant workforces very drastic, draconian and even violent means would be required to turn back the demographic clock. There is nothing moderate, reasonable, non-racist or democratic about this. Duke sees Trump's campaign promises as salvation for White Power in the USA.
Duke also has serious issues with "the Jews." Among other things he attributes the current demographic trend to a willful conspiratorial plan by "the Jews."
The fact that Trump offended a group of rich Jews who contribute big money to the Republican Party with a sly Jew Joke and told them he doesn’t want their money impressed Duke, who is considered a deep thinker by some. Of course, Trump's calls to deport 11,000,000 mainly non white immigrants whose labor is essential to the economy, to build a wall along 1000 plus miles of the United States/Mexican border and force Mexico or Mexican immigrants to pay for it and to bar Muslims from entering the United States was music to the reformed Nazi's ears.
So white power volunteers, called upon by Duke, helped make Trump the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. He turned around and thanked them by kissing AIPAC's ass and pledging loyalty to Israel on television.
He's a slippery fellow, this baby faced David Duke. I think he's spent too much time studying the Talmud. He plays on the general ignorance of both American history and of his own history. He was out-foxed by Trump whose hesitation to renounce Duke's support allowed him to dominate the news for days.
Duke got his start as a swatika wearing supporter of United States genocide in Vietnam. Below you'll see the iconic photo of young Duke dressed in nazi regalia carrying a sign calling for the execution by gas of Vietnam War opponents, political prisoners known as the Chicago 7 who were being tried for alleged multiple felony charges because they were outspoken opponents of the Vietnam genocidal war.
Were Duke to have ever renounced this activity since his nazi chicken hawk days (an expression meaning a fit young man who though enthusiastic about having a war he manages to avoid military service) it might be unfair to bring this out into the public once again .
Klansman Duke once urged his fellow KKK activists
to wear business suits and "get out of the cow pasture and into the hotel meeting room" which had nothing to do with renouncing racism. Duke's website featured anti African American visuals as part of his "coverage" of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
Duke cribbed this New York Daily News front page for his own website. African Americans were being demonized to cover the fact that they as well as whites, were victims of government refusal to build adequate dikes to protect the mostly but not exclusively African American low income Ninth Ward, which was below the level of the Mississippi River. The New York Daily News, by the way, was and is published by one Mortimer Zuckerman, an avid supporter of Israel.
From Duke's Hurricane Katrina report.
The "exJewish" clown car brings up the rear.
Gilad Atzmon is a London based Israeli Army veteran and a jazz musician of some repute. He believes that David Duke knows more about Jewish Identity than he, Atzmon does, and Atzmon is looked upon as an expert on the matter since publishing his book The Wandering Who?
Duke is a firm believer that Jewishness is a genetic condition and not a religion or caste. This is one reason why Atzmon should be regarded as a Jew, in spite of his laughable denials. Atzmon campaigns against the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement. Look at that Yiddischer Punim ( Jewish face).