The world has lost a great man who dedicated his life to the pursuit of truth and justice, whether delving into the depths of the Pentagon bureaucracy, the thorniest Middle East conflicts, American literary history, baseball, or just about any topic that grabbed his attention. Mark Perry was a dear friend, a source of endless insights, and a person who never drew the line between active engagement and dispassionate analysis. He did both and made lasting contributions that will impact long after his untimely passing this week at the age of 70.
For years, Mark was actively involved in pursuing dialogue between intractable Middle East adversaries. Through the Conflict Forum which he co-founded, he brought scores of American diplomats, think tankers and intelligence officials to meet with leaders of Hezbollah, Hamas, and various Lebanese political factions. This gave the participants a human depth of insight that is so difficult to convey without person-to-person contact.
Mark earned the trust of many American military leaders because of his honesty and integrity. He gave voice to their views without spin or embellishment and as the result, he was always in a unique position to give his timely and informed insights during many wonderful breakfast and lunch get-togethers at the Tysons Corner Silver Diner or Summers at Courthouse Square in Arlington.
Mark was always open to learning. When he was writing his biography of General Douglas MacArthur, he admitted that he went into the project with a bias against MacArthur, but after spending enormous time reading through the MacArthur archives, he came away with a totally different view, which he brilliantly presented. This book followed his groundbreaking biography of Marshall and Eisenhower–Partners in Command.
No one can claim to understand the complexities of the Iraq War without reading his Talking With Terrorists, a polemical title of a book that was half history and half memoir about his own active work with the Palestinians going back to his unique relationship with Yasser Arafat.
Mark was such a talent that his analytical pieces were published in a wide range of places, from Politico, Foreign Policy, Quincy Institute, to The American Conservative. He will be sorely missed by family, friends, and the millions of people he touched through his writings.
“The dispossessed set out early in the mornings. They were the outsiders, the scorned, the voiceless. But weekend after weekend—unbowed and undeterred—they rallied together. They didn’t have much going for them in their great battle against the privileged elite, but they did have one thing—their yachts.
During the summer and fall of 2020, a series of boat parades—Trumptillas—cruised American waters in support of Donald Trump. The participants gathered rowdily in great clusters. They festooned their boats with flags—American flags, but also message flags: don’t tread on me, no more bullshit, images of Trump as Rambo.
The women stood on the foredecks in their red, white, and blue bikinis, raising their Pabst Blue Ribbon tallboys to salute the patriots in nearby boats. The men stood on the control decks projecting the sort of manly toughness you associate with steelworkers, even though these men were more likely to be real-estate agents. They represent a new social phenomenon: the populist regatta. They are doing pretty well but see themselves as the common people, the regular Joes, the overlooked. They didn’t go to fancy colleges, and they detest the mainstream media. “It’s so encouraging to see so many people just coming together in a spontaneous parade of patriotism,” Bobi Kreumberg, who attended a Trumptilla in Palm Beach, Florida, told a reporter from WPTV.
You can see this phenomenon outside the United States too. In France, the anthropologist Nicolas Chemla calls this social type the “boubours,” the boorish bourgeoisie. If the elite bourgeois bohemians—the bobos—tend to have progressive values and metropolitan tastes, the boubours go out of their way to shock them with nativism, nationalism, and a willful lack of tact. Boubour leaders span the Western world: Trump in the U.S., Boris Johnson in the United Kingdom, Marine Le Pen in France, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Matteo Salvini in Italy.” Brooks
Comment: I knew Brooks slightly. Larry Johnson was his neighbor in Maryland. Brooks accused me of anti-Semitism in the makeup room of the “News Hour.” I see that he has learned a lot. Professor Paul Fussell sat across a long table from me at a conference in New York. One of those long-winded things about the future of warfare. Fussell focused on me, ignoring the clutch of generals at the other end of the table which included the four star chief of staff of the air force. “You are the real deal. You remind me of my regimental commander in the Vosges mountains. He was Regular Army, like my platoon sergeant who was killed by an air burst while begging me to get down from a large rock where the Germans could see us. I was wounded. The colonel came upon me in the process of evacuation.” “A damned fool, you cost me a good man, a real soldier.” Fussell had a good eye. He is dead now. pl
Jonathan McGreevy (a convicted felon who claims without proof he holds advanced degrees) who also has used the name Ryan Dark White and the Twitter tag–JohnHereToHelp, is a certified fraud (you can read the evidence supporting my statement here and here). And Attorney Lin Wood and former Trump Administration employee Garrett Ziegler have foolishly and stupidly relied on his groundless assertions that Supreme Court Justice Roberts and Jeffrey Epstein hung out.
Here’s the bottomline–the allegation that Supreme Court Justice Roberts had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and flew on his plane at least twice is false. It is a lie. Not true.
Here is the evidence. Garret Ziegler and Lin Wood have posted a pdf document about Supreme Court Justice John Roberts and list two flights from Jeffrey Epstein’s flight log that show someone by the name of “John Roberts” traveling the following ititnerary:
22 March 2010 “John Roberts” travels from Palm Beach to Oakland, Michigan
10 February 2011 “John Roberts” travels from Palm Beach to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey.
The published document presents a series of “facts” as if they all pertain to Supreme Court Justice John Roberts. But “John Roberts”, like Larry Johnson, is a common name. Here is an easy want to show that the John Roberts on the Epstein log is not the Supreme Court Justice.
On March 22, 2010, the Supreme Court was in session hearing “Arguments.” It is impossible for John Roberts to be on a plane flying from West Palm, Flordia to Oakland, California (it is at least a five hour flight depending on headwinds) while sitting in his chair at the Supreme Court hearing legal arguments.
“Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is moving to have all active duty members of the US military vaccinated against the Covid-19 virus, he said in a memo released Monday.”I want you to know that I will seek the President’s approval to make the vaccines mandatory no later than mid-September, or immediately upon the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) licensure, whichever comes first,” the memo states. “By way of expectation, public reporting suggests the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine could achieve full FDA license early next month.”Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley also communicated a related message to the troops, saying in a memo that the “health and readiness of our force is critical to America’s defense.”
Austin’s memo noted that he was asked by President Joe Biden “to consider how and when we might add the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines to the list of those required for all Service members.”” CNN
You might be thinking that those “Democratic” Texas legislators abandoned their oath of office when they flew to DC in an attempt to prevent a vote on legislation they didn’t agree with. You are wrong! There is only one reason they flew – on a private plane – without masks – without “social distancing”.
In the 15 years I’ve been here, I’ve moved several times for different reasons — twice the buildings sold, too much maintenance, or something better came along.
Earlier this year, I relocated to a two-bedroom, 1,100-square-foot apartment with 10-foot ceilings, just a few minutes from one of my favorite beaches. The rent is $420 per month, not including utilities.
Here’s what the apartment hunting process was like, and why this is one of my favorite places I’ve lived:
Finding a rental in Mazatlán, Mexico
It’s challenging to find a rental here. Near the coast, where everyone wants to live, there’s an increased demand for vacation rentals, from which the owner earns more money (faster) than if they were to rent it out as a one-year lease.
A previous landlord, for example, now rents my old one-bedroom apartment for a three-day weekend for $200 — the same price I paid monthly.
Asking friends and locals is a good way to find something. I also looked on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, but found nothing in the area I wanted that was in my budget.
Then, a good friend told me an apartment in her building was going to be available, and as soon as we peeked in the windows, I was intrigued.” CNBC.com
“The U.S. embassy in Kabul told Americans in Afghanistan to leave the country immediately in response to an increase in violence, and to not “rely on U.S. government flights” in the process.
“The U.S. Embassy urges U.S. citizens to leave Afghanistan immediately using available commercial flight options. Given the security conditions and reduced staffing, the Embassy’s ability to assist U.S. citizens in Afghanistan is extremely limited even within Kabul,” the embassy said on its government website Saturday.
Fox News has reached out to the U.S. State Department for comment. ” Foxnews
“In a tunnel 40 feet beneath the surface of the Greenland ice sheet, a Geiger counter screamed. It was 1964, the height of the Cold War. U.S. soldiers in the tunnel, 800 miles from the North Pole, were dismantling the Army’s first portable nuclear reactor.
Commanding Officer Joseph Franklin grabbed the radiation detector, ordered his men out and did a quick survey before retreating from the reactor.
The Army called the reactor portable, even at 330 tons, because it was built from pieces that each fit in a C-130 cargo plane. It was powering Camp Century, one of the military’s most unusual bases.
Camp Century was a series of tunnels built into the Greenland ice sheet and used for both military research and scientific projects. The military boasted that the nuclear reactor there, known as the PM-2A, needed just 44 pounds of uranium to replace a million or more gallons of diesel fuel. Heat from the reactor ran lights and equipment and allowed the 200 or so men at the camp as many hot showers as they wanted in that brutally cold environment.
The PM-2A was the third child in a family of eight Army reactors, several of them experiments in portable nuclear power.
A few were misfits. PM-3A, nicknamed Nukey Poo, was installed at the Navy base at Antarctica’s McMurdo Sound. It made a nuclear mess in the Antarctic, with 438 malfunctions in 10 years including a cracked and leaking containment vessel. SL-1, a stationary low-power nuclear reactor in Idaho, blew up during refueling, killing three men. SM-1 still sits 12 miles from the White House at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. It cost US$2 million to build and is expected to cost $68 million to clean up. The only truly mobile reactor, the ML-1, never really worked.
Nearly 60 years after the PM-2A was installed and the ML-1 project abandoned, the U.S. military is exploring portable land-based nuclear reactors again.
In May 2021, the Pentagon requested $60 million for Project Pele. Its goal: Design and build, within five years, a small, truck-mounted portable nuclear reactor that could be flown to remote locations and war zones. It would be able to be powered up and down for transport within a few days.
The Navy has a long and mostly successful history of mobile nuclear power. The first two nuclear submarines, the Nautilus and the Skate, visited the North Pole in 1958, just before Camp Century was built. Two other nuclear submarines sank in the 1960s – their reactors sit quietly on the Atlantic Ocean floor along with two plutonium-containing nuclear torpedos. Portable reactors on land pose different challenges – any problems are not under thousands of feet of ocean water.
Those in favor of mobile nuclear power for the battlefield claim it will provide nearly unlimited, low-carbon energy without the need for vulnerable supply convoys. Others argue that the costs and risks outweigh the benefits. There are also concerns about nuclear proliferation if mobile reactors are able to avoid international inspection.” Salon
Comment: Answer – “He glows in the dark.”
In the winter of 1963, I was sent to Ft. Greely in the heart of Alaska 100 miles south of Fairbanks. My battalion was on the troop list for a contingency plan in the Norwegian Arctic. So we had to have officers skilled in training troops for arctic warfare. Accordingly a cadre of lieutenants were sent to the US Army Arctic Warfare Training Center.
The point? When I was Ft. Greely the whole place was run on nuclear generated electricity. pl
