Tidbits - February 1, 2011

* New York event on Tunisia, Egypt... What next?
* Correction - Re: Iran, the New York Times and the Laws of
  Physics (Conn Hallinan)
* Re: Iran, the New York Times and the Laws of Physics
  (Michael E. Green
* Re: Stanley Aronowitz's post in Tidbits of Jan. 31, 2011
  (Carl Davidson and David Arocho)
* Re: Where's the Protest at Home? (Nora Engel)
* Moderator's Note about Portside delivery problems

==========

* New York event on Tunisia, Egypt... What next?


Tuesday February 8th, 2011 7:30 PM 
SPECIAL FORUM Tunisia, Egypt.... What next? 
Nizar Aboud, Younes Abouyoub, Talal Assad, Norman Finkelstein
&  Fadhel Kaboub

After the wave of democratization in the former Eastern
European countries, many scholars wondered why the Arab World
was still lagging behind. Some argued that this was due to
cultural and religious factors that make Arab societies a
natural locus of the so-called 'oriental despotism'. This
panel will discuss the unexpected uprisings which are shaking
the Arab world, starting from North Africa. What are the
reasons behind theses revolts? Is there a domino-effect after
Tunisia and Egypt? Who is leading these social movements?
What are the regional and global implications of regime
change in the region?...etc These and other questions will be
discussed by a panel of scholars and journalists whose work
focus on the region.

Nizar Aboud, NYC correspondent of the Lebanese newspaper, Al-
Akhbar

Younes Abouyoub, political sociologist, Columbia University

Talal Asad, Anthropologist, CUNY

Norman Finkelstein, Author&  Political Scientist.

Fadhel Kaboub, Economist, Denison University.

==========

* Correction - Re: Iran, the New York Times and the Laws of
Physics

Dear Portside: People quite correctly identified my errors in
the blog on Iran, the NY Times and physics. I actually
corrected it (the correct version is up at my blog,
dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com) and in the version I
sent to the Daily Planet. I also sent a corrected version in
to Portside, but clearly too late. Yes, the Nagasaki bomb is
a fission bomb. Fusion is altogether a different process.
What happened is that I saw the piece in the Times and wrote
it quickly. No excuse, we sometimes get things wrong. I am
particularly unhappy about this one because it eclipsed the
point that the Times is lending its pages to print bad
science, which in turn can mean bad politics. There was also
an awkward sentence on U-238 and U-235. Natural Uranium is
composed of both, but U-235 is a very small part of it.
Enhancement means separating the two. But that was an awkward
construction. Anyhow, sorry, things like that happen and they
should not.

Best

Conn Hallinan

==========

* Re: Iran, the New York Times and the Laws of Physics

Conn Hallinan's call for recognizing that the laws of physics
cannot be repealed, for political or any other reasons.
However, two comments: plutonium bombs are, like uranium
bombs, fission weapons, not fusion. The word Hallinan was
seeking with regard to plutonium weapons is implosion, not
fusion (which applies to the fusion of hydrogen nuclei).
Plutonium weapons are much more sophisticated, but the
plutonium can be recovered from reactor nuclear waste. Hence
the concern with what happens to this waste.

Second, the uranium that is enriched to 19.75% is quite a bit
more than 1/4 the way to 90%--one starts from 0.7%, and
should count more nearly geometrically than arithmetically;
this material has been enriched more than 25 times, and only
another factor of 4.5 is needed. Of course the amount of
U-235 is still only 19.75% in 19.75% enriched uranium, so to
make 1 kg of 90% enriched uranium requires 4.5 kg of 19.75%
material. To this extent Hallinan is correct. If there is
only 90 kg of 19.75% enriched uranium, this will produce only
20 kg of 90% material, not quite enough for a bomb.

Michael E. Green Professor of Chemistry City College of New
York

==========

* Re: Stanley Aronowitz's post in Tidbits of Jan. 31, 2011

I find Stanley Aronowitz's argument in 'Tidbits' that 'The
Left's' supposed love affair with Obama is keeping them off
the streets rather tiresome--and unfortunately, he's not the
only one making it.

First, whatever 'honeymoon' Obama had was over more than a
year ago. Second, what about the 150,000 or so at 'One
Nation' in DC in Oct? Doesn't that count for something? The
peace and justice groups are shells of their former selves
not because of any deference to Obama, but cause the liberals
had defunded them and they are having difficulty adapting to
the economic crisis being number one.

If Stanley has a particular group in mind, he should name
them and do some polemics with them. But I think we suffer
from a different set of problems holding us back.

Number one is antipathy to organization-building over 'we
need a mass movement' cheerleading. In short, we've somehow
come to see ourselves mainly as 'activists' rather than
mainly as organizers. Only one out of a hundred socialists in
the country actually belongs to a socialist group of any
sort, and a lot of semi-anarchist notions kept many groups.
like the new SDS or the Campus Greens, from ever getting off
the ground in a big way.

In the trade unions, we have one major sector, especially the
United Steel Workers, chomping at the bit to hit the streets,
but they find themselves relatively weakened by de-
industrialization and a dearth of young members. We have a
few other unionists dragging their feet, but not out of love
for Obama.

There are more causes, but I simply don't think it's true
that 'many progressives are ambivalent about taking on
Obama.' I only know a tiny handful, and their main concern is
not to carry water for the Tea Party. They want their message
carefully framed--but they're not afraid of hitting the
streets otherwise. Most leftists these day are more that
willing to trash Obama, often to a fault. But other long-
standing weaknesses have self-sabotaged the ability to
organize among too many.

Carl Davidson

===

Stanley Aronowitz is someone whom I respect and his comments
are, as always, insightful.  However, his call for
progressives to take on Obama after the election comes too
late.  The mistake was indeed not to capitalize on the
election campaign to present voters with an alternative to
the tea party candidates and the tea party message.  Having
thrown in their lot with the democrats, they also suffered
the democrat's defeat and today are far less relevant.  The
astounding phenomenon is that so many so-called progressives
were taken in by the Obama campaign in 2006, and even more
astounding is that they did not present any significant
challenge to the Obama agenda once he took office.  His
appointments to key posts should have been more than enough
warning of what was to come.  Perhaps it is not too late to
abandon the failed hopes that democrats would ever usher in
real change.  At the same time we might also do away with the
old baggage from the left soviet era utopian dreams and
concentrate on the real concerns of every day Americans who
have, over the past 80 years, seen their rights eroded, their
financial base practically destroyed, and their vote
practically invalidated by the elite strata of
corporate/military/banker interests.

David Arocho

==========

* Re: Where's the Protest at Home?

Thank you, PORTSIDE.ORG for coming back!!! We have missed
you. And without you, we didn't even know that there was a
march to be had in Cambridge. Had we known my husband and I
and our young adult children would, I'm sure, have
participated. And I'm sure that would have been true for many
other folks.So please, please ramp back up and provide us
with your excellent views and articles on a more frequent
basis. Thanks for all you do!!!

Nora Engel

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