Lateef Syed’s biosensor may improve food, water safety and cancer detection
MANHATTAN,KS — A nanotechnology-based biosensor being developed by Kansas State University researchers may allow early detection of both cancer cells and pathogens, leading to increased food safety and reduced health risks.
Lateef Syed, doctoral student in chemistry is developing the biosensor with Jun Li, associate professor of chemistry. Their research focuses on E. coli, but Syed said the same technology could also detect other kinds of pathogens, such as salmonella and viruses.
“Kansas is a leading state in meat production and the poultry industry,†he said. “Any outbreak of pathogens in these industries causes huge financial losses and a lot of health risks. We want to prevent these outbreaks by detecting pathogens at an early stage.â€
Syed’s recent research poster, “Dielectrophoretic Capture of E. coli at Nanoelectrode Arrays,†was named a winner at the recent Capitol Graduate Research Summit in Topeka. An article on this work has been accepted for publication in the scientific journal Electrophoresis.
For more than three and a half years, Syed’s research has focused on developing nanotechnology-based biosensors for pathogen detection and cancer biomarker detection. He began the research as a doctoral student under the direction of Li, who has researched nanotechnology for 15 years.
“Nanotechnology is a very exciting area,†Li said. “It really provides an opportunity to solve problems for health care and food safety. It can also be helpful for the environment and energy issues.â€
“A goal is to integrate this technology into a hand-held electronic device for pathogen detection so that we can use this device for in-line monitoring of water quality or food quality at industrial processing sites,†Syed said. “We have some preliminary results that indicate this technology is feasible, and I’m quite happy about that.â€
The project is supported by a Canadian-based company called Early Warning Inc., which provided the K-State research team with $240,000 for two years as part of the developmental work. Recently, the project was also supported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence for Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Diseases, or CEEZAD, at K-State.
Shakila Ahmed receives FBI Director’s Community Leadership Award
CINNCINNATI, OH–An official with the Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati is being awarded by the FBI for her work in educating the public and bringing diverse communities together.
Keith L. Bennett, Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the Cincinnati Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced LAST WEEK that Mrs. Shakila Ahmad has been named as the recipient of the 2010 FBI Director’s Community Leadership Award.
An active member of the board of trustees at the Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati since 1995, Mrs. Ahmad has worked to educate law enforcement personnel and community leaders about the Muslim faith through the Tours & Talks program. She also spearheaded the creation of the nationally recognized A Visit to a Mosque in America, an educational DVD which has increased understanding of Islam and the Muslim community in the United States.
In addition to her extensive work at the Islamic center, Mrs. Ahmad has taken a proactive role in promoting peace through dialogue by establishing the Muslim Mothers Against Violence initiative. This group works to connect with mothers of all faiths to increase awareness about violence and find constructive ways to resolve conflict.
Mrs. Ahmad continues to be a dedicated supporter of the FBI’s outreach initiatives. In 2008, she worked with the Cincinnati Field Office in assembling a Multi-Cultural Advisory Council to strengthen ties between the office and local ethnic, religious, and minority communities.
Mrs. Ahmad also serves as the board chair of BRIDGES for a Just Community, a local organization dedicated to achieving inclusion, equity, and justice. In addition, she is on the executive board of directors for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, the Islamic Educational Council board of trustees, the Ohio Humanities Council, and the YWCA Cincinnati board.
Mosque to come up in Lincoln Township
LINCOLN,MI–The Islamic Society of Midland is trying to build the area’s first mosque. For almost a decade, Muslims have been renting spaces to conduct prayers and other cultural activities. The growth in the Muslim population has propelled them to have a permanent home.
Earlier this year the Lincoln Township Planning Commission approved a special land use permit to build a religious facility contingent upon approval of an adequate site plan that satisfies the township’s zoning ordinances, the Daily Midland News quoted one of the leaders of the mosque project as saying.
Lincoln Township will host a public hearing on April 18 at 6:30 p.m. during which time its planning commission is expected to review his organization’s site plan, Khan noted, adding he’s confident his organization will gain the necessary approvals to move ahead with construction plans.
The proposed mosque would be situated on five acres of a 92-acre parcel that is owned by one of the Islamic Society members.
Teenagers who attacked mosque get plea deals
CARLTON,NY–Five teenagers who attacked a mosque in 2010 have received plea deals and will have their cases adjudicated as youth offenders.
The five allegedly drove two vehicles outside the World Sufi Mission mosque yelling obscenities and beeping a car alarm while Muslim congregants prayed inside.
One of the members told deputies he was near the road and was hit by one of the vehicles, suffering a cut tongue and lip and a sore hip.
One of the teenagers was also charged with felony criminal possession of a weapon for allegedly firing a shotgun at the mosque three nights earlier. All five were charged with disrupting a church service and first-degree harassment.
The five appeared in Town Court Monday night and entered guilty pleas to unspecified charges. All of the files will be sealed because a judge granted them youthful offender status, Orleans County District Attorney Joseph Cardone said.
Franklin–April 2–Death seems to have reached to several unlikely places recently in Michigan’s Muslim community–and although religion is a contemplation of such almost unthinkable issues as the coming of death and the description of the invisible spiritual realities that surround us, it remains startling when we are confronted with the proofs of death’s ability to reach any creature at any time.
Recently Ramsey Saleh, a young man from the community of the Huda School in Franklin, passed away–really at the threshold of adulthood.
In honor of Mr. Saleh, a meeting was held Saturday at the Huda School to discuss his death with other young people–the event was coordinated by Ratib Habbal and Muhanad Hakeem after maghrib prayers. Slowly people trickled into a room set aside for the meeting, in total perhaps 150 souls were present, ranging in age from childhood to adolescence up to old age.
The imam, Shaykh Shadi, gave a beautiful speech emphasizing the wisdom of Allah in the timing of life and death, saying that since people die in stages rather than living and dying all together. He said that many people think they will live forever, but he quoted Prophet (s) as saying that death is a constant reminder. Believers, he said, should have death in mind at all times, should always calculate for akhira.
The father of Mr. Saleh gave a beautiful short speech which showed tremendous poise and faith. He showed sincerity but also real forbearance–he thanked all those who had come to the event, and the theme of his short talk was that as Muslims we must believe that everything is written. He said many other beautiful things but what was so striking about his speech was the poise and patience he showed after losing a son. Very few people could show such faith and strength. He reminded the audience of good qualities that his son had had–that he had bought artificial flowers from a man–flowers he did not really need but he wanted to help the man–he had done this to help the man and not for himself.
“We and our family submit to destiny,†he said, and quoted a poem from Imam Shafi’i with the point that if you do not believe in Divine destiny than your faith is lacking. The two moderators tried to elicit the responses of the audience to this death, and various members of the audience spoke on their fear of death, about the clear lesson that it could be any of us dying, about the lesson of gratefulness for our remaining life, and about asking forgiveness from people.
The format of this part of the event was almost a Phil Donahue show, with Mr. Habbal tossing questions back and forth with the audience, exhorting young people to give their honest opinions. At times the focus of the conversation devolved to unrelated issues of interpersonal relations in the community.
The mercy of this death was that it is a reminder to all of us of the fragility of life and the proximity of another world, it was a way of showing the beautiful faith of a family tested–faith that is so strong and few of us could emulate it. It is truly a reminder of God’s great power and perfect plan into which every one of us fits in some way that we cannot perceive, although He is always with us, and watches us until and after we leave this short life.
The American Empire is failing. A number of its puppet rulers are being overthrown by popular protests, and the almighty dollar will not even buy one Swiss franc, one Canadian dollar, or one Australian dollar.
Despite the sovereign debt problem that threatens EU members Greece, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal, it requires $1.38 dollars to buy one euro, a new currency that was issued at parity with the US dollar.
The US dollar’s value is likely to fall further in terms of other currencies, because nothing is being done about the US budget and trade deficits. Obama’s budget, if passed, doesn’t reduce the deficit over the next ten years by enough to cover the projected deficit in the FY 2012 budget.
Indeed, the deficits are likely to be substantially larger than forecast. The military/security complex, about which President Eisenhower warned Americans a half century ago, is more powerful than ever and shows no inclination to halt the wars for US hegemony.
The cost of these wars is enormous. The US media, being good servants for the government, only reports the out-of-pocket or current cost of the wars, which is only about one-third of the real cost. The current cost leaves out the cost of life-long care for the wounded and maimed, the cost of life-long military pensions of those who fought in the wars, the replacement costs of the destroyed equipment, the opportunity cost of the resources wasted in war, and other costs. The true cost of America’s illegal Iraq invasion, which was based entirely on lies, fabrications and deceptions, is at least $3,000 billion according to economist Joseph Stiglitz and budget expert Linda Bilmes.
The same for the Afghan war, which is ongoing. If the Afghan war lasts as long as the Pentagon says it needs to, the cost will be a multiple of the cost of the Iraq war.
There is not enough non-military discretionary spending in the budget to cover the cost of the wars even if every dollar is cut. As long as the $1,200 billion ($1.2 trillion) annual budget for the military/security complex is off limits, nothing can be done about the U.S. budget deficit except to renege on obligations to the elderly, confiscate private assets, or print enough money to inflate away all debts.
The other great contribution to the US deficit is the offshoring of production for US markets. This practice has enriched corporate management, large shareholders, and Wall Street, but it has eroded the tax base, and thereby tax collections, of local, state, and federal government, halted the growth of real income for everyone but the rich, and disrupted the lives of those Americans whose jobs were sent abroad.
When short-term and long-term discouraged workers are added to the U.3 measure of unemployment, the U.S. has an unemployment rate of 22%. A country with more than one-fourth of its work force unemployed has a shrunken tax base and feeble consumer purchasing power.
To put it bluntly, the $3 trillion cost of the Iraq war, as computed by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, is 20% of the size of the U.S. economy in 2010. In other words, the Iraq war alone cost Americans one-fifth of the year’s gross domestic product. Instead of investing the resources, which would have produced income and jobs growth and solvency for state and local governments, the US government wasted the equivalent of 20% of the production of the economy in 2010 in blowing up infrastructure and people in foreign lands. The US government spent a huge sum of money committing war crimes, while millions of Americans were thrown out of their jobs and foreclosed out of their homes.
The bought-and-paid-for Congress had no qualms about unlimited funding for war, but used the resulting “debt crisis†to refuse help to American citizens who were out of work and out of their homes. The obvious conclusion is that “our†government does not represent us.
The US government remains a champion of offshoring, which it calls “globalism.†According to the US government and its shills among “free market†economists, destroying American manufacturing and the tax bases of cities, states, and the federal government by moving US jobs and GDP offshore is “good for the economy.†It is “free trade.†It is the same sort of “good†that the US government brings to Iraq and Afghanistan by invading those countries and destroying lives, homes and infrastructures. Destruction is good. That’s the way our government and its shills see things. In America destruction is done with jobs offshoring, financial deregulation, and fraudulent financial instruments. In Iraq and Afghanistan (and now Pakistan) is it done with bombs and drones.
Where is all this leading?
It is leading to the destruction of Social Security and Medicare.
Republicans have convinced a large percentage of voters that America is in trouble, not because it wastes 20% of the annual budget on wars of aggression and Homeland Security porn-scanners, but because of the poor and retirees.
Pundits scapegoat the middle class and blame the struggling middle along with the poor and retirees. Fareed Zakaria, for example, sees no extravagance in a trillion dollar military budget. The real money, he says, is in programs for the middle class, and the middle class “will immediately punish any politician who proposes spending cuts in any middle class program.†CNN Transcript What does Zakaria think the military/security complex will do to any politician who cuts the military budget? As a well-paid shill he had rather not say.
Andrew Sullivan also has no concept of reductions in military/security subsidies: “they’re big babies. I mean, people keep saying they don’t want any tax increases, but they don’t want to have their Medicare cut, they don’t want to have their Medicaid cut or they don’t want to have their Social Security touched one inch. Well, it’s about time someone tells them, you can’t have it, baby.â€
Niall Ferguson thinks that Americans are so addicted to wars that the U.S. government will default on Social Security and Medicare.
Republicans tell us that our grandchildren are being saddled with impossible debt burdens because of handouts to retirees and the poor.
$3 trillion wars are necessary and have nothing to do with the growth of the public debt. The public debt is due to unnecessary “welfare†that workers paid for with a 15% payroll tax.
When you hear a Republican sneer “entitlement,†he or she is referring to Social Security and Medicare, for which people have paid 15% of their wages for their working lifetime. But when a Republican sneers, he or she is saying “welfare.†To the distorted mind of a Republican, Social Security and Medicare are undeserved welfare payments to people who over-consumed for a lifetime and did not save for their old age needs.
America can be strong again once we get rid of these welfare leeches.
Once we are rid of these leeches, we can really fight wars. And show people who is boss.
Republicans regard Social Security as an “unfunded liability,†that is, a giveaway that is interfering with our war-making ability.
Alas, Social Security is an unfunded liability, because all the money working people put into it was stolen by Republicans and Democrats in order to pay for wars and bailouts for mega-rich bankers like Goldman Sachs.
What I am about to tell you might come as a shock, but it is the absolute truth, which you can verify for yourself by going online to the government’s annual OASDI and HI reports. According to the official 2010 Social Security reports, between 1984 and 2009 the American people contributed $2 trillion, that is $2,000 billion, more to Social Security and Medicare in payroll taxes than was paid out in benefits.
What happened to the surplus $2,000 billion, or $2,000,000,000,000.
The government spent it.
Over the past quarter century, $2 trillion in Social Security and Medicare revenues have been used to finance wars and pork-barrel projects of the US government.
Depending on assumptions about population growth, income growth and other factors, Social Security continues to be in the black until after 2025 or 2035 under the “high cost†and “intermediate†assumptions and the current payroll tax rate of 15.3% based on the revenues paid in and the interest on those surplus revenues. Under the low cost scenario, Social Security (OASDI) will have produced surplus revenues of $31.6 trillion by 2085.
When I was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, Deputy Assistant Secretary Steve Entin worked out a way to put Social Security on a sound basis with the current rate of payroll tax without requiring one cent of general revenues. You can read about it in chapter 9 of my book, amazon The Supply-Side Revolution, which Harvard University Press has kept in print for more than a quarter century. Entin’s solution, or a variation of it, would still work, so Social Security can easily be saved within the current payroll tax rate. Instead of acknowledging this incontrovertible fact, the right-wing wants to terminate the program.
Treasury was blocked from putting Entin’s plan into effect by the fact that other parts of the government and the Greenspan Social Security Commission had agendas different from ensuring a sound Social Security system.
Wall Street insisted that the Reagan tax rate reductions would explode consumer spending, cause inflation and destroy the values of stock and bond portfolios. When inflation collapsed instead of exploding, Wall Street said that the deficits, which resulted from inflation’s collapse, would cause inflation and destroy the values of stock and bond portfolios. This didn’t happen either.
Nevertheless, the Greenspan commission played to these mistaken fears.
The “Reagan deficits†could not cause inflation, because they were the result of the unanticipated collapse of inflation (anticipated only by supply-side economists). As I demonstrated in a paper published in the 1980s in the US, UK, Japan, Germany, Italy, and other countries, tax revenues were below the forecast amounts because inflation, and thus nominal GNP, were below forecast. The collapse of inflation also made real government spending higher than intended as the spending figures in the five-year budget were based on higher inflation than was realized.
The subsidy to the US government from the payroll tax is larger than the $2 trillion in excess revenue collections over payouts. The subsidy of the Social Security payroll tax to the government also includes the fact that $2.8 trillion of US government debt obligations are not in the market. If the national debt held by the public were $2.8 trillion larger, so would be the debt service costs and most likely also the interest rate.
The money left over for war would be even smaller. More would have to be borrowed or printed.
The difference between the $2 trillion in excess Social Security revenues and the $2.8 trillion figure is the $0.8 trillion that is the accumulated interest over the years on the mounting $2 trillion in debt, if the Treasury had had to issue bonds, instead of non-marketable IOUs, to the Social Security Trust Fund. When the budget is in deficit, the Treasury pays interest by issuing new bonds in the amount of the interest due. In other words, the interest on the debt adds to the debt outstanding.
The robbed Social Security Trust Fund can only be made good by the US Treasury issuing another $2.8 trillion in US government debt to pay off its IOUs to the fund.
When a government is faced with a $14 trillion public debt growing by trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, how does it add another $2.8 trillion to the mix? Only with great difficulty.
Therefore, to avoid repaying the $2.8 trillion that the government has stolen for its wars and bailouts for mega-rich bankers, the right-wing has selected entitlements as the sacrificial lamb.
A government that runs a deficit too large to finance by borrowing will print money as long as it can. When the printing press begins to push up inflation and push down the exchange value of the dollar, the government will be tempted to reduce its debt by reneging on entitlements or by confiscating private assets such as pension funds. When it has confiscated private assets and reneged on public obligations, nothing is left but the printing press.
We owe the end-time situation that we face to open-ended wars and to an unregulated financial system concentrated in a few hands that produces financial crises by leveraging debt to irresponsible levels.
The government of the United States does not represent the American people. It represents the oligarchs. The way campaign finance and elections are structured, the American people cannot take back their government by voting. A once proud and free people have been reduced to serfdom.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
The jasmine revolution, started with the sacrifice by one individual in Tunisia, has spread to most of the Arab World. Tunisia and Egypt have achieved their freedom from the tyranny of their dictators. The flame of revolution is now enveloping Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen. In these countries people’s yearning for freedom can be seen in their resolve to confront even the most brutal dictator. They are sacrificing countless lives to achieve this goal.
The question is, why are there so many dictators in the Arab World? Is Islam compatible with democracy? Examining history will provide us with the answer to these questions. What European called Dark Ages was the Golden Era of Islam from 700-1800. The Muslims produced the largest number of scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, astronomers and discoveries. The name of people like Al-Khawarizmi (Algebra), Al-Baruni (Mathematics and Astrology), Ibn-Sina or Avveros (Medicine) are well known to the west. Baghdad was the seat of modern scientific learning with the best libraries in the world. In fact translation of these books in Europe was partly responsible for the European Renaissance. The invasion and ravaging of Baghdad in 1258 by Genghis Khan drove Arabs back by at least 100 years.
Loss in World War I weakened the Ottoman Empire which had banded together the Islamic world and was the seat of the caliphate. This weakened state allowed Britain, Spanish, French and Dutch to colonize areas of North Africa, Middle East and Asia. After World War II, these countries lost their grip on power there, leading to independence of these countries. Unfortunately the liberators of this land slowly became dictators of their own people.
Rising persecution, high unemployment, poverty, corruption, increasing young population and increasing frustration with political leadership have lead to the Jasmin revolution. This people power has shaken up the leaders who are powerhouses in their own land.
Islam promotes democracy. Decision and election are done with mutual consultation. Leadership is based on quality not lineage. Unfortunately this kind of example is hard to find unless we go all the way to Malaysia or Indonesia.
People want freedom to choose their own destiny. They are tired of false promises, corruption, poverty and endless rulers without any democratic election.
They want elections to choose leaders who will serve their needs and try to solve societies problem not serve their own need and desire. People are paying dearly this freedom in many countries. The harder the victory the more people will realize that freedom is a priceless commodity—they can’t let it go.
NEW DELHI: Bahrain Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid Bin Ahmed Bin Mohammed Al-Khalifa was in India last month as a part of diplomatic drive to assure the Indian government about the security of Indians living there. He held detailed discussions with his Indian counterpart SM Krishna on issues of mutual interest, including recent developments in Bahrain and the region (March 30). Ahead of their talks, the two ministers laid stress on “traditionally friendly relations†between India and Bahrain, “which are based on historical and civilizational ties.†This “long standing relationship†is reflected by presence of a large Indian community in Bahrain.
During their meeting, over lunch hosted by India in his honor, Bahraini foreign minister gave “firm assurance†about “safety and security of Indian community†in Bahrain. He also appreciated their contribution to “progress and development of Bahrain.†There are around 350,000 Indians in Bahrain. Khalid drew Krishna’s attention to his having met more than 200 Indians in Manama on 26th March, 2011. On his part, Krishna thanked Khalid for his reassurance with regard to Indian community’s well being. The former also expressed confidence that “law-abiding Indian community would continue to be a partner in Bahrain’s growth story well into the future.â€
Referring to recent developments in Bahrain, Krishna expressed the hope that “peaceful resolution of all issues through dialogue would pave the way for continued development and prosperity of friendly people of Bahrain.â€
During an exclusive interview with this scribe, Khalid acknowledged: “There is no doubt a wave of transformation in the Arab world.†Accepting that winds of transformation were sweeping across the region, he pointed to the human development index in the six Gulf Coordination Council countries – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar – being much higher than that of other countries. In other parts of the region, the people on the lower end of the scale were vying for a change, he said. Referring specifically to Bahrain, he said that though sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shias have prevailed for “around 1400 years,†they have taken such a major turn for first time, reaching the “stage of polarization.†“Sectarian turn is the biggest threat to whole region,†he said.
Laying stress that there was a need for “true transformation†in many parts of the area, Khalid expressed that this “movement†had been “hijacked and had taken a sectarian turn†between Sunnis and Shias. Expressing favor for a political dialogue to sort out the problem, he said: “Political dialogue would be way forward in future.†The priority at present was to maintain law and order, Khalid emphasized.
Refuting the impression generated about Bahrain taking help of Saudi forces to control protestors, Khalid said that these belonged to Peninsula Shield Force. “We take our security seriously,†he stated. The troops would stay as long as they were needed, he said. Khalid specified that their help was essential to prevent the tension from escalating into a civil strife. The situation was “under control,†he said.
A “very negligible†population had left Bahrain because of tension in the country, he said. Though certain elements’ aim was to scare the expat community, Indians were not targeted, he emphasized. “I am visiting India before Europe or America. This is more important. We are regional stakeholders. Without India, we do not have a solution. We need to reassure India about the Indian community in Bahrain,†the minister asserted.
Elaborating on security architecture in the region, Bahrain cannot envisage this without India, Khalid said. India’s Deputy National Security Advisor Vijaya Latha Reddy called on Khalid ahead of his meeting with Krishna. She discussed issues of bilateral interest with him.
Bahrain also favors a role for Pakistan as well as Iran. “We want Iran to be part of this security architecture. We want it to prosper and be as active as in the past as a responsible country in the region,†he said.
Without elaborating on diplomatic tension between Bahrain and Iran, Khalid categorically stated: “We are for good relations with Iran.†“The result of bad relations with a neighbor can be more lethal than that of a nuclear bomb,†he said.
Diplomatic tension between Bahrain and Iran has been marked by the former holding latter as responsible for provoking Shia-Sunni tension in the region. Bahrain has warned Iran to keep away from “meddling†in its internal affairs. On its part, Iran has strongly criticized the arrival of external troops in Bahrain.
Bahrain is also not pleased with external strikes supporting rebels in Libya. When asked to comment on this, Khalid said that Bahrain had no objection to maintaining a “no-fly zone†over Libya. He was, however, skeptical about role of external strikes. “We were a part of the GCC and Arab League resolutions supporting no-fly zone. But we feel there is no clarity whether external strikes can really help in protection of people and their security.â€
This was Khalid’s second visit to India. His visit, according to official sources, “has strengthened the excellent relationship between the two countries.â€
Chicago–April 5th–Last week your reporter conversed about the revolutions in in North Africa and the Maghreb, and those threatened in the center of Arab world. The purpose of this project was to “guess†(what effect – if at any– there would upon (Islamic) South Asia.
The big bugaboo in the Arab world is the claim by the repressive governments themselves that, if they are forced to leave, Al Qaeda will become dominant. It is true that there is a copycat Al Qaeda of the Maghreb, but as mentioned in the first part of this essay last week, your author opines that the appeal and sympathy for radical (violent Jihad) solutions will subside as an Arab democracies, hopefully, will thrive Of course, the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt like Gaza’s Hamas, whom they mentored, had a militant wing in the beginning, but for some time they have renounced violence, and have democratically contested elections within Egypt to the point that they are the second most substantial party over Cairo and its hinterlands, and, if they change their position to contest the forthcoming election s – provided they are free and fair – they certainly will be — at the least — entitled to a place in any coalition that might arise.
In a March 6th Aljazeera English broadcast, President Gadafi was quoted in a warning to the West, “…. [If he were driven from ascendancy in Libya,] There would be an Islamic Jihad in the Mediterranean…bin-Laden would…impose ransom on land and sea…†in which he referred to Jihad in relation to the Barbary pirates of his district that prompted America’s first foreign involvement in the early Nineteenth Century.
Along these lines, again, in the March seventh Los Angeles Times, the author Garret Theroff quoted a rebel fighter, Saleh Abdel Azziz that “We hate Al Qaeda! We fight Al Qaeda! We write slogans against them on the wall. I never see slogans for them on the wall!†(Graffiti is often the only political outlet that the Subaltern (non-elite) Arabs had.
It is easy to see that the democratization of the Arab Middle East would destroy the administrative repression that gave Al Qaeda and similar religio-political units their raison d’être within the expanse of their birth. Al Qaeda et al. began as an Arab area-wide resistance against the corrupt authoritarian governments within the Middle East before the C.I.A. recruited them as mercenaries for Afghanistan struggle to oppose the Slavic invasion who, in turn entered the terrain, to support a Communist revolt in the Kush (the I.S.I. acted the controllers for the Arab and Afghani ), for the (Third) Afghan War during the 1980s. As explained in the first part of this article, after they and the Afghans had essentially destroyed the Soviet (U.S.S.R.) Empire by 1989, the Americans and their local “lackey†deserted them into a vicious civil war until the Taliban brought a type of stability and “peace†over the Hindu Kush at, honestly, an unacceptable price. This led Al Qaeda and other regional Jihadi organizations to turn into a sub-national (military) force. They originally operated within and from the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
If, indeed, there will be a significant (Islamic) democratization in the Arab West, what will be the effect on the Islamic East – mainly South Asia — which includes, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Maldives and the large numbers of Muslims in India and Sri Lanka?
The Arab mercenaries first came to Afghanistan during the 1980s to fight the Russian Juggernaut. The Arabs are claimed to have been recruited by the U.S. C.I.A. The Russo-Afghani War of the 1980s has basically been a contemporary extension of the 19th Century Great Game only — now in the Post-Colonial period. The part of the former British Indian Empire (– basically Pakistan today) with their (American) Imperial allies (NATO), who like the Colonial British, did not wish to see the former “Tsarist†Empire reach the Arabian Sea, and, thus, attain their long-sought warm water port, and cut Pakistani territory in two. (In many ways, times and actors may change, but goals and policy remain the same!) There has been speculation that America’s initial involvement in the Theater was to block not only the U.S.S.R., but, also, to keep China from exploiting Southern Asia as an economic market and, further, further, to gain Central Asia’s mineral wealth.
Afghanistan is the buffer zone between Moscow and Islamabad, and, thus, Kabul will remain at the heart of Pakistani foreign policy. Therefore, your researcher would deduce that the newly unemployed Arabian Jihadist will do what the Jihad did in the past: Emigrate (primarily) into the Afghan theater and, secondarily, the Vale of Kashmir herself. (Before 9/11, the Kargil incident was initiated by left-over Jihadists from the Russian War forcing the Pakistani Army who had to make a defensive action in favor of the Arab privateers in the Mountains.) Your investigator would like to look at two papers of Rana Eijaz Ahmad. The Professor is only partially correct to blame the “Jews†for American foreign policy. (This is a particularly a “learned†Third World misunderstanding of the Beltway’s politics.) It is a small number of rich U.S. Zionists – (not necessarily the “Jewsâ€) who support AIPAC, and, thus, Israel-centered. It is true, though; that they have an unfair influence over American external policy, and it is true that Zionism is (a perversion of Judaism as the Mutakfirs are within Islam) who equate American interests with Israel’s to the determent of the U.S.A.’s security.
Because of AIPAC’s politically well-directed wealth, Tel Aviv’s interest on Capitol Hill is maintained to the point that it is almost impossible to be re-elected to a Federal office without their blessing. Certainly, calamity in the Abrahamic “Holy Land†presents the most dangerous flash point in the world; the second being Kashmir – both are Islamic struggles with non-Islamic opponents, but each are between closely culturally-related powers, and each is overshadowed by a nuclear “cloud.†Your speaker has states that Rawalpindi will look Westward — towards Jerusalem of “the Night Ride†if the Indo-Pakistani conflict can be stabilized.
Although, in the American Metropolis, the younger generation of Jews are more progressive in their avocation for rapprochement with Israel’s Arab neighbors either next to or within (Palestinian citizens of) “the Jewish State.â€
In another paper on M.K. Gandhi’s distain upon the establishment of a Jewish homeland – (Incidentally, Stalin had already done so in one of his Republics.) Your traveling intellectual still holds to Gandhi’s arguments as a historian, but it has happened, unfortunately. It is a fact, though, and Real Politick demand a real solution within the current political situation.
What does this mean within the Af-Pak and Kashmir theaters? Your Conferee has reached the limit of time allotted for his comments. He hopes to continue this study as the question becomes more defined (historically), but what is happening in the Arab West will make a difference in the South Asian Islamic East, for it should make Jihadism irrelevant for the Arabic due to the demise of these harsh regime, but it will impact Muslims in South Asia in that the Jihadi mercenaries will most likely head East. The effect of this likelihood only time (history) will tell. If the countries surrounding Palestine-Israel can stand together to pressure Tel Aviv to a just settlement within the “Occupied Territories;†not only will the world and the Middle East be a safer place, but South Asia less so – especially within the flashpoints of Kashmir and Afghanistan.
The allure of the Middle East, for western foreigners, is primarily found in monetary perks that makes life in the region more financially savvy than back at home. First of all, skilled and specialized workers from the US and Europe stand to earn three to four times more money than could be earned at home and they face less job competition. Second, not having to pay taxes and enjoying heavily governmentally subsidized utilities as well as health care are added bonuses. However, what most expatriates do not realize is that there is a heavy price to be paid. And it is in the form of the education of their children.
Wealthy Middle Eastern countries like Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE provide a cradle-to-grave welfare system that keeps their citizens living a very comfortable life with free education only being one out of hundreds of social benefits. Expatriate children are not allowed to attend public schools which are reserved exclusively for the children of the citizens of the country. Expatriate parents must put their children in private schools which are often costly, poorly managed, overcrowded and understaffed. Many Gulf nations are host to several European and American private schools which boast a curriculum on par with the most exclusive schools in the world. Unfortunately, the tuition fees are so high that many expatriate parents can only afford to send one child, if any, to school while the others must attend less expensive private schools. And that is in the event that the child can even get into the school.
For countries, like Kuwait for example, private schools are regulated by the Ministry of Education. Each school is ranked according to student performance and receives special preference as well as accolades based on the percentage of students that do well. What is unfortunate is that most private schools in Kuwait require an admission test to ensure that only the best and brightest students get admission which guarantees a high percentage of student performance. Prospective students are not given a book or even a manual to study from in preparation for the test. All they can do is hope that they have the knowledge to pass it. For those who do not pass, they will most probably miss an entire school year or more. Until a student can pass the admission test there is no hope that his journey for a quality education can begin.
What is painfully ironic is that, while there are stringent controls for the admission of students to private schools, there are no such requirements for the hiring of teachers. The private schools in Kuwait, and other regions of the Gulf, are full of teachers who do not possess college degrees and have little experience teaching in the classroom. It is not uncommon for housewives to become teachers without having even a basic college degree. And for many teachers who do possess a “degreeâ€, a careful inspection of the document will most likely reveal that it is a fake certificate obtained from a country in Southeast Asia. So even for children who do pass the admission test, the catch 22 is that the standard is far less than what the school administration purports.
For Shermyla Mohammad, a housewife and mother in Kuwait, her journey to enroll her son in school has been a twisted battle that has spanned more than five years. “My son studied the Holy Quran for several years and met with a tutor to teach him school subjects privately at home.†When her son was ten years old she began visiting various schools in order to enroll him. He is now fifteen years old and has never seen the inside of the classroom. “My son failed several admission tests because he could not prepare for the specific questions asked. One time he did pass but the school administration refused to accept him because the percentage was not high enough.†Her son is waiting to take yet another admissions test in the hopes that he can finally begin his education.
There are countless numbers of children all across the Gulf region who deserve an education but it remains out of reach. It is a basic human right to be able to attend school and not be barred from an education that will most certainly define every aspect of life and determine its quality.
PRINCETON,NJ–He is only 13 years old, but Syed Raziq Mohideen is already making heads turn with outstanding performances with the violin. An eighth grade student at the Herbert Hoover Middle School in Edison, New Jersey, he recently received the highest score of “grand prix†at the Music Fest Rising Talents Festival at Westminster Choir College in Princeton.
Raziq entered his second competition, the Golden Key Music Festival, on March 6, also at Westminster Choir College. He played “Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5†by Hector Villas-Lobas.
As a result of these accomplishments he was invited to perform onstage at the prestigious Carnegie Hall in New York City on March 27.
Raziq’s proud parents, who come from the state of Andhra Pradesh in India, are proud of their son’s accomplishments.
“I think I only cried twice, once when he was born and this time,†said his mother in an interview to the Sentinel.
After twenty-five years as a writer in America, I wanted something to soften my cynicism. I was searching for new terms by which to see.
The way one is raised establishes certain needs in this department.
From a pluralist background, I naturally placed great stress on the matters of racism and freedom. Then, in my early twenties, I had gone to live in Africa for three years. During this time, which was formative for me, I rubbed shoulders with blacks of many different tribes, with Arabs, Berbers, and even Europeans, who were Muslims. By and large these people did not share the Western obsession with race as a social category. In our encounters, being oddly colored, rarely mattered. I was welcomed first and judged on merit later. By contrast, Europeans and Americans, including many who are free of racist notions, automatically class people racially. Muslims classified people by their faith and their actions. I found this transcendent and refreshing. Malcolm X saw his nation’s salvation in it. “America needs to understand Islam,†he wrote, “because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem.â€
I was looking for an escape route, too, from the isolating terms of a materialistic culture. I wanted access to a spiritual dimension, but the conventional paths I had known as a boy were closed. My father had been a Jew; my mother Christian. Because of my mongrel background, I had a foot in two religious camps. Both faiths were undoubtedly profound. Yet the one that emphasizes a chosen people I found insupportable; while the other, based in a mystery, repelled me. A century before, my maternal great-great-grandmother’s name had been set in stained glass at the high street Church of Christ in Hamilton, Ohio.
By the time I was twenty, this meant nothing to me.
These were the terms my early life provided. The more I thought about it now, the more I returned to my experiences in Muslim Africa. After two return trips to Morocco, in 1981 and 1985, I came to feel that Africa, the continent, had little to do with the balanced life I found there. It was not, that is, a continent I was after, nor an institution, either. I was looking for a framework I could live with, a vocabulary of spiritual concepts applicable to the life I was living now. I did not want to “trade in†my culture. I wanted access to new meanings.
After a mid-Atlantic dinner I went to wash up in the bathroom. During my absence a quorum of Hasidim lined up to pray outside the door. By the time I had finished, they were too immersed to notice me. Emerging from the bathroom, I could barely work the handle. Stepping into the aisle was out of the question.
I could only stand with my head thrust into the hallway, staring at the congregation’s backs. Holding palm-size prayer books, they cut an impressive figure, tapping the texts on their breastbones as they divined. Little by little the movements grew erratic, like a mild, bobbing form of rock and roll. I watched from the bathroom door until they were finished, then slipped back down the aisle to my seat.
We landed together later that night in Brussels. Reboarding, I found a discarded Yiddish newspaper on a food tray. When the plane took off for Morocco, they were gone.
I do not mean to imply here that my life during this period conformed to any grand design. In the beginning, around 1981, I was driven by curiosity and an appetite for travel. My favorite place to go, when I had the money, was Morocco. When I could not travel, there were books.
This fascination brought me into contact with a handful of writers driven to the exotic, authors capable of sentences like this, by Freya Stark:
“The perpetual charm of Arabia is that the traveler finds his level there simply as a human being; the people’s directness, deadly to the sentimental or the pedantic, like the less complicated virtues; and the pleasantness of being liked for oneself might, I think, be added to the five reasons for travel given me by Sayyid Abdulla, the watchmaker; “to leave one’s troubles behind one; to earn a living; to acquire learning; to practice good manners; and to meet honorable menâ€.
I could not have drawn up a list of demands, but I had a fair idea of what I was after. The religion I wanted should be to metaphysics as metaphysics is to science. It would not be confined by a narrow rationalism or traffic in mystery to please its priests. There would be no priests, no separation between nature and things sacred. There would be no war with the flesh, if I could help it. Sex would be natural, not the seat of a curse upon the species. Finally, I did want a ritual component, daily routine to sharpen the senses and discipline my mind. Above all, I wanted clarity and freedom. I did not want to trade away reason simply to be saddled with a dogma.
The more I learned about Islam, the more it appeared to conform to what I was after.
Most of the educated Westerners I knew around this time regarded any strong religious climate with suspicion. They classified religion as political manipulation, or they dismissed it as a medieval concept, projecting upon it notions from their European past.
It was not hard to find a source for their opinions. A thousand years of Western history had left us plenty of fine reasons to regret a path that led through so much ignorance and slaughter. From the Children’s Crusade and the Inquisition to the transmogrified faiths of nazism and communism during our century, whole countries have been exhausted by belief. Nietzsche’s fear, that the modern nation-state would become a substitute religion, has proved tragically accurate. Our century, it seemed to me, was ending in an age beyond belief, which believers inhabited as much as agnostics.
Regardless of church affiliation, secular humanism is the air westerners breathe, the lens we gaze through. Like any world view, this outlook is pervasive and transparent. It forms the basis of our broad identification with democracy and with the pursuit of freedom in all its countless and beguiling forms. Immersed in our shared preoccupations, one may easily forget that other ways of life exist on the same planet.
At the time of my trip, for instance, 650 million Muslims with a majority representation in forty-four countries adhered to the formal teachings of Islam. In addition, about 400 million more were living as minorities in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Assisted by postcolonial economics, Islam has become in a matter of thirty years a major faith in Western Europe. Of the world’s great religions, Islam alone was adding to its fold.
My politicized friends were dismayed by my new interest. They all but universally confused Islam with the machinations of half a dozen middle eastern tyrants. The books they read, the new broadcasts they viewed depicted the faith as a set of political functions. Almost nothing was said of its spiritual practice. I liked to quote Mae West to them:
“Anytime you take religion for a joke, the laugh’s on you.â€
Historically, a Muslim sees Islam as the final, matured expression of an original religion reaching back to Adam. It is as resolutely monotheistic as Judaism, whose major Prophets Islam reveres as links in a progressive chain, culminating in Jesus and Muhammad (s), may God praise them. Essentially a message of renewal, Islam has done its part on the world stage to return the forgotten taste of life’s lost sweetness to millions of people. Its book, the Quran, caused Goethe to remark, “You see, this teaching never fails; with all our systems, we cannot go, and generally speaking no man can go, further.
Traditional Islam is expressed through the practice of five pillars.
Declaring one’s faith, prayer, charity, and fasting are activities pursued repeatedly throughout one’s life. Conditions permitting, each Muslim is additionally charged with undertaking a pilgrimage to Mecca once in a lifetime. The Arabic term for this fifth rite is Hajj.
Scholars relate the word to the concept of ‘qasd’, “aspiration,†and to the notion of men and women as travelers on earth. In Western religions, pilgrimage is a vestigial tradition, a quaint, folkloric concept commonly reduced to metaphor. Among Muslims, on the other hand, the Hajj embodies a vital experience for millions of new pilgrims every year. In spite of the modern content of their lives, it remains an act of obedience, a profession of belief, and the visible expression of a spiritual community. For a majority of Muslims the Hajj is an ultimate goal, the trip of a lifetime.
As a convert, I felt obliged to go to Makkah. As an addict to travel I could not imagine a more compelling goal.
The annual, month-long fast of Ramadan precedes the Hajj by about one hundred days. These two rites form a period of intensified awareness in Muslim society. I wanted to put this period to use. I had read about Islam; I [attended] a Mosque near my home in California; I had started a practice. Now I hoped to deepen what I was learning by submerging myself in a religion where Islam infuses every aspect of existence.
I planned to begin in Morocco, because I knew that country well and because it followed traditional Islam and was fairly stable. The last place I wanted to start was in a backwater full of uproarious sectarians. I wanted to paddle the mainstream, the broad, calm water.
Michael Wolfe (born 3 April 1945, United States) is a poet, author, and the President and Executive Producer of Unity Productions Foundation.
He is also a frequent lecturer on Islamic issues at universities across the United States including Harvard, Georgetown, Stanford, SUNY Buffalo, and Princeton. He holds a degree in Classics from Wesleyan University.
THOMAS: I’m not retired! I was fired. In fact, I’ll die with my boots on. I’m still writing and I’ll continue to write and ask hard questions. I will never bow out of journalism.
Take us back to the White House courtyard on May 27 when Rabbi David Nesenoff pointed his camera at you and asked for your comments on Israel.
THOMAS: He pulled that thing out like a jackknife. I mean, he started out very nice, introducing me to these two young boys who wanted to be in journalism. He said, “Got any advice? Go for it.†I didn’t know it was Jewish Heritage Month, which is why he was at the White House and also why he asked “So what do you think of Israel?†That’s when I said, “They should get the hell out of Palestine.â€
Did you realize how controversial those words were as you spoke them?
THOMAS: I knew I’d hit the third rail. You cannot say anything about Israel in this country. But I’ve lived with this cause for many years.
Everybody knows my feelings that the Palestinians have been shortchanged in every way. Sure, the Israelis have a right to exist—but where they were born, not to come and take someone else’s home. I’ve had it up to here with the violations against the Palestinians. Why shouldn’t I say it? I knew exactly what I was doing—I was going for broke. I had reached the point of no return. You finally get fed up.
What was life like in the immediate aftermath as millions started viewing the video on YouTube?
THOMAS: I went into self-imposed house arrest for two weeks. It was a case of “know thyself.†Isn’t that what Socrates said? I wanted to see if I was remorseful—and I wasn’t.
Did the phone ring off the hook?
THOMAS: No. Nobody called. But I still have some friends in the White House press pool, who reached out to me. I understand they formed Jews for Helen Thomas at one point.
That’s interesting.
THOMAS: I also heard from Jimmy Carter. He called a few weeks later.
He did? What did he say?
THOMAS: Basically he was sympathetic. He talked about the Israelis in the Middle East, the violations. It was very nice of him to call, but I don’t want to get him into trouble.
His reaction certainly wasn’t typical.
THOMAS: No. Every columnist and commentator jumped on me immediately as anti-Semitic. Nobody asked me to explain myself. Nobody said, “What did you really mean?â€
What did you really mean?
THOMAS: Well, there’s no understanding of the Palestinians at all. I mean, they’re living there and these people want to come and take their homes and land and water and kill their children and kill them. How many are still under arrest in Israel—never been charged, never been tried, never been convicted? Thousands. Why? Meanwhile, we keep giving Israel everything. Our government bribes the Israelis by saying, “Please come to the [negotiating] table and we’ll give you this and we’ll give you that.†Obama’s last offer to the Israelis was $22 billion in new fighter planes [Editor’s note: The offer was actually just under $3 billion], a veto at the UN for anything pro-Arab or pro-Palestinian and a three-month freeze on the colonization and settlers. I mean, what is this? They gave away the store, just as Reagan and every other president did. Why do you have to bribe people to do the right thing? I don’t want my government bribing anybody. I want them demanding. Stop all this aid to Israel when they’re killing people!
It was your follow-up comment, when you said the Jews should go back to Poland, Germany and America, that really infuriated people.
THOMAS: Well, that immediately evoked the concentration camps. What I meant was they should stay where they are because they’re not being persecuted—not since World War II, not since 1945. If they were, we sure would hear about it. Instead, they initiated the Jackson-Vanik law, which said the U.S. would not trade with Russia unless it allowed unlimited Jewish emigration. But it was not immigration to the United States, which would have been fine with me. It was to go to Palestine and uproot these people, throw them out of their homes, which they have done through several wars. That’s not fair. I want people to understand why the Palestinians are upset. They are incarcerated and living in an open prison. I say to the Israelis, “Get out of people’s homes!†It’s unacceptable to have soldiers knocking on a door at three in the morning and saying, “This is my home.†And forcing people out of homes they’ve lived in for centuries? What is this? How can anybody accept it? I mean, Jewish-only roads? Would anyone tolerate something like that in America? White-only roads?
You mean Israeli-only roads, not Jewish only, right? [Editor’s note: Israel closes certain roads to Palestinians, but roads are open to all Israeli citizens and to other nationals, regardless of religious background.]
THOMAS: Israeli-only roads, okay. But it’s more than semantics because the Palestinians are deprived of owning these roads. This is their land. I’m sorry, but we’re talking about foreigners who came and said, “God gave this land to us.†[Former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak] Rabin said, “Where’s the deed?†I mean, come on! Do you know that an Arab Palestinian trying to go home to see his mother has to go through 10 checkpoints and then is held there, while an American tourist can go through right like that? The Palestinian people have to carry their kids to hospitals and are not allowed to drive cars and so forth. What is this? No American Jew would tolerate that sort of treatment here against blacks or anyone else. Why do they allow it over there? And why do they send my American tax dollars to perpetuate it?
Do you acknowledge that some Palestinian behavior over the years, including hijacking and the use of suicide bombers, has been wrong and has added to the problem?
THOMAS: In an ideal world passive resistance and world disarmament would be great. Unfortunately we don’t live in that world. Of course I don’t condone any violence against anyone. But who wouldn’t fight for their country? What would any American do if their land was being taken? Remember Pearl Harbor. The Palestinian violence is to protect what little remains of Palestine. The suicide bombers act out of despair and desperation. Three generations of Palestinians have been forced out of their homes—by Israelis—and into refugee camps. And the Israelis are still bulldozing Palestinians’ homes in East Jerusalem.
Remember, Menachem Begin invented terrorism as his MO—and bragged about it in his first book. That’s how Israel was created, aided and abetted by U.S. money and arms. To annex and usurp an occupied people’s country is illegal under international law. The Israelis know that, but their superior military force has always prevailed against the indigenous people.
What’s your reaction to the changes sweeping through the Arab world as throngs of demonstrators take to the streets across the region?
THOMAS: I love the new revolutionary spirit in the Middle East and North Africa. The power of the people is removing ruthless dictators in Tunisia and Egypt—and that’s only the beginning. There is no stopping this free new movement. The Arab world is waking up to the possibilities of democratic life and freedom for its people, and I am happy to see this happening in my lifetime.
PLAYBOY: Do you have a personal antipathy toward Jews themselves?
THOMAS: No. I think they’re wonderful people. They had to have the most depth. They were leaders in civil rights. They’ve always had the heart for others but not for Arabs, for some reason. I’m not anti-Jewish; I’m anti-Zionist. I am anti Israel taking what doesn’t belong to it. If you have a home and you’re kicked out of that home, you don’t come and kick someone else out. Anti-Semite? The Israelis are not even Semites!
They’re Europeans, and they’ve come from somewhere else. But even if they were Semites, they would still have no right to usurp other people’s land. There are some Israelis with a conscience and a big heart, but unfortunately they are too few.
In the wake of your anti-Israel comments, a blogger from The Atlantic argued there’s really no distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. He wrote, “Thomas was fired for saying that the Jews of Israel should move to Europe, where their relatives had been slaughtered in the most devastating act of genocide in history. She believes that once the Jews are evacuated from their ancestral homeland, the world’s only Jewish country should be replaced by what would be the world’s 23rd Arab country. She believes that Palestinians deserve a country of their own but that the Jews are undeserving of a nation-state in their homeland, which has had a continuous Jewish presence for 3,000 years.…â€
THOMAS: [Interrupts] Did a Jew write this? [Editor’s note: The writer is Jeffrey Goldberg.]
“…and has been the location of two previous Jewish states.
This sounds like a very anti-Jewish position to me, not merely an anti-Zionist position.â€
THOMAS: This is a rotten piece. I mean it’s absolutely biased and totally—who are these people? Why do they think they’re so deserving?
The slaughter of Jews stopped with World War II. I had two brothers and many relatives who fought in that war against Hitler. We believed in it. Every American family was in that fight. But they were liberated since then. And yet they carry on the victimization. American people do not know that the Israeli lobbyists have intimidated them into believing every Jew is a persecuted victim forever—while they are victimizing Palestinians.
Let’s get to something else you said more recently. In a speech in Detroit last December, you told an Arab group, “We are owned by the propagandists against the Arabs. There’s no question about that. Congress, the White House and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists. No question, in my opinion. They put their money where their mouth is. We’re being pushed into a wrong direction in every way.†Do you stand by that statement?
THOMAS: Yes, I do. I know it was horrendous, but I know it’s true. Tell me it’s not true and I’ll be happy to be contradicted. I’m just saying they’re using their power, and they have power in every direction.
That stereotype of Jewish control has been around for more than a century. Do you actually think there’s a secret Jewish conspiracy at work in this country?
THOMAS: Not a secret. It’s very open. What do you mean secret?
Well, for instance, explain the connection between Hollywood and what’s happening with the Palestinians.
THOMAS: Power over the White House, power over Congress.
By way of contributions?
THOMAS: Everybody is in the pocket of the Israeli lobbies, which are funded by wealthy supporters, including those from Hollywood. Same thing with the financial markets. There’s total control. Who are you thinking about specifically? Who are the Jews with the most influence?
THOMAS: I’m not going to name names. What, am I going to name the Ponzi guy on Wall Street [Bernard Madoff] or the others? No.
Then how do you make the claim that Jews are running the country?
THOMAS: I want you to look at the Congress that just came in. Do you think [New York Democratic senator Charles] Schumer and Lehtinen—whatever her name is—in Florida [Republican representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a strong supporter of Israel] are going to be pro-Arab? No. But they’re going to be very influential. Eric Cantor, the majority leader of the Republicans, do you think he’s going to be for the Arabs? Hell no! I’m telling you, you cannot get 330 votes in Congress for anything that’s pro-Arab. Nothing. If you’re not in, you’re eased out, just as Senator William Fulbright was in the 1960s [after claiming that millions of tax-deductible dollars from American philanthropies were being sent to Israel and then funneled back to the U.S. for distribution to organizations with pro-Israel positions].
Congressman Paul Findley from a little old rural district in Illinois made the mistake of shaking hands with Yasir Arafat years ago. It ended up costing him his reelection. He later wrote a book called They Dare to Speak Out about how impossible it is to have a position in this country that takes on Israel. Maybe there is a handful that can, but in general you cannot speak against any Zionist movement in this country.
PLAYBOY: Do you begrudge people like Steven Spielberg? He created the Shoah Foundation to chronicle the life stories of Holocaust survivors.
What’s your feeling about him?
THOMAS: There’s nothing wrong with remembering it, but why do we have to constantly remember? We’re not at fault. I mean, if they’re going to put a Holocaust museum in every city in Germany, that’s fine with me.
But we didn’t do this to the Jews. Why do we have to keep paying the price and why do they keep oppressing the Palestinians? Do the Jews ever look at themselves? Why are they always right? Because they have been oppressed throughout history, I know. And they have this persecution. That’s true, but they shouldn’t use that to dominate.
PLAYBOY: In America you’re talking about a relatively small community.
Jews make up roughly two percent of the U.S. population. On a worldwide level, the percentage is well under one percent. Those numbers don’t exactly spell domination.
THOMAS: I get where you’re leading with this. You know damn well the power they have. It isn’t the two percent. It’s real power when you own the White House, when you own these other places in terms of your political persuasion. Of course they have power. You don’t deny that.
You’re Jewish, aren’t you?
PLAYBOY: Yes.
THOMAS: That’s what I thought. Well, you know damn well they have power.
PLAYBOY: Why did it take you so long to speak out like this?
THOMAS: It hasn’t taken that long. I’ve told all my friends and so forth. This has been an issue for me since I first came to Washington.
PLAYBOY: You’ve kept quiet publicly since the 1940s?
THOMAS: It was certainly on my mind back then. The United Nations Partition Plan was being debated at the UN and in the Arab community, and I knew what the Arabs were going through since I have an Arab background. I was part of that community. Like I said, I’ve never hesitated to tell my views to all my friends. They knew exactly where I stood. But I finally wanted to speak the truth. And I think I’m old enough to get away with it. Well, almost. Not quite.
PLAYBOY: Were you surprised that people like David Duke and even Hezbollah came out and said you were courageous and a hero for them?
THOMAS: I don’t want to be a hero to anyone. I just want to be me, and I want to tell the truth. I want everyone to accept the truth. It’s horrible to say some of my best friends are Jews, but they are and they have been.
PLAYBOY: Don’t take this the wrong way, but the question many people have is, Has Helen Thomas lost her mind? You’re 90, after all. Do you still have all your faculties?
THOMAS: I resent that question! I thoroughly resent it. Why are you interviewing me if I’m crazy? It wouldn’t be worth it to you, would it?
PLAYBOY: It’s not an unreasonable question.
THOMAS: I resent it. You should apologize.
PLAYBOY: But it’s the question everyone wants answered—and you’re the one who always tells journalists to ask the hard questions.
THOMAS: They want to know if I’m crazy? You have to be crazy to criticize Israel? You have to be crazy to criticize tyranny? I learned before Hitler that you have to stand up for something. You have to stand up. We always have to take a stand against human tyranny wherever it occurs. [pauses] Would you like a Coke or a ginger ale?
PLAYBOY: No, thank you.
THOMAS: We have Diet Coke. Wine?
PLAYBOY: No, we’re good.
THOMAS: Scotch?
PLAYBOY: No, thank you. How’s your health, by the way?
THOMAS: I’m a little rickety.
PLAYBOY: Do people live a long time in your family?
THOMAS: I had a brother who just died at 100.
PLAYBOY: Wow. How long did your parents live?
THOMAS: Into their 60s. I’d like to live a long life.
PLAYBOY: Do you fear dying?
THOMAS: No, but I’m not ready to go. You never know, though. It’s fate.
PLAYBOY: Life is unpredictable, that’s for sure.
THOMAS: There’s an Arab expression, “Maktub.â€
PLAYBOY: Which means?
THOMAS: “It is written.â€
PLAYBOY: Meaning whatever will be will be?
THOMAS: I don’t know if I’m that fatalistic, but yes.
PLAYBOY: Do you picture heaven in any way? What would heaven be for you?
THOMAS: I never thought about heaven per se. I think when you’re dead, you’re dead. If anything happens after that, you just hope you don’t go to hell.
PLAYBOY: When people write your obituary——
THOMAS: [Eyes suddenly fill with tears] Oh, I know what they’re going to say: “anti-Semite.â€
PLAYBOY: That has to bother you after all your years of hard work.
THOMAS: [Starts to cry] I’m a reporter.
PLAYBOY: What’s making you emotional?
THOMAS: I’m a reporter. [sobs] I know damn well what they’re going to say because they have their print, they have their ink. They don’t give a damn about the truth. They have to have it their way, and they’ll be writing my obituary.
PLAYBOY: Isn’t that their job?
THOMAS: Well, I don’t want to be treated that way. [pauses but continues to cry] I’m sorry. But what am I supposed to do, love every Jew because they want to take Palestine? It’s a real cause with me. They should have a conscience and they don’t if that’s what they’re going to do. Is there such a thing as a conscience? I think there is.
Stop taking what doesn’t belong to you! Stop killing these people.
These children throw stones at them, and they shoot them. Where is the Jewish conscience? I want to know. Have some feeling. They can’t just come in and say, “This is my home,†knock on the door at three in the morning and have the Israeli military take them out. That’s what happens. And that’s what happened to the Jews in Germany. Why do they inflict that same pain on people who did nothing to them? [takes another break to compose herself]I sure didn’t want to cry. But I do care about people. And I don’t care what they write about me. They’ve already written it. My family will be disappointed in me for crying.
PLAYBOY: We in the public never get to see you cry. Helen Thomas has always been the picture of toughness and strength.
THOMAS: Oh, I’ve cried all my life. I’m a crybaby. It’s not that I’m soft; I just cry at the drop of a hat.
PLAYBOY: Let’s shift gears. You have literally had a front-row seat on the presidency. What should the American people know about how the White House really operates?
THOMAS: They don’t know how intense the pressure from different special interests is on the president and congressmen. Politicians more often than not give in to that pressure. These elected officials are supposed to be doing what we want them to do. But I suppose that’s the reason we have the Tea Party. People are unhappy. The trouble is, swinging to the right is always dangerous. We end up losing so much in the rush to conservatism. But even Obama has fallen down that hole. He’s pushing a conservative agenda.
PLAYBOY: The right doesn’t see Obama that way. How is Obama conservative?
THOMAS: Look at Guantánamo. With a stroke of a pen, the day after Obama took the oath he should have said, “We’re getting the hell out of here.†Same thing with Iraq and Afghanistan. There’s no reason for us to be in a war. “They’ll all come here if we don’t go there.†That is baloney. Go halfway around the world to kill and die? Why? Now the veterans can’t get jobs. I see stories every day about soldiers being liberated from Iraq only to end up unemployed. Where is Obama? How can he continue these Bush policies that were so mean and rotten and unjust? People had this impression that Obama would be a peaceful president, but there he is, as hawkish as any of them. And Hillary Clinton is no liberal either. She put out the word to “capture or kill†for Afghanistan. What would she do that for, really? Capture or kill?
What does this mean? I thought, naively perhaps, that she and Obama would bring change, that they would be different. I assumed wrongly that they would be liberal because he’s black and she’s a woman. It’s maddening.
PLAYBOY: Who’s the greatest president you’ve covered?
THOMAS: Well, I think Carter was most impressive from the perspective of pure intellect. He was the smartest, if not the most effectual. A man of bold ideas and great wisdom. But that doesn’t mean he was a great president. He wasn’t a schmoozer. He didn’t know how to do that part of the job.
PLAYBOY: Incidentally, Carter recently said America is ready for its first gay president. Do you think that’s true?
PLAYBOY: So who was the greatest president you’ve covered?
THOMAS: I’d say it was a draw. Kennedy and Johnson both impressed me the most for knowing the country, knowing how to legislate and how to get things done and for having monumental ideals. They were presidents who served during remarkable times and lived up to those times.
PLAYBOY: Then there was Richard Nixon. Why didn’t you see Watergate coming?
THOMAS: Because we were on the body watch.
PLAYBOY: Meaning what?
THOMAS: When you’re with a wire service, you’re always with the president. You’re always trailing him; you’re always there when he’s in public. You don’t have time to chase the backstory. I mean, I didn’t think Nixon was totally honest, but I didn’t know about Watergate per se because when you’re following the president you can’t go digging.
PLAYBOY: You were the only female print reporter to accompany Nixon on his landmark visit to China in 1972. What’s your lasting memory from that trip?
THOMAS: Everything. It was a magnificent trip—eight days when you never wanted to sleep you were so afraid to miss something. Everything was a story: what the Chinese wore, what they ate, even what I ate. I would call my office and say President Nixon was going to meet with so-and-so, and they’d say, “No, wait a minute. We want to know what your room is like and what you’re having for breakfast.†Every reporter in Washington wanted to be on that trip, but it was very limited.
PLAYBOY: How do you explain your ability to get access like that?
Nobody else had the front-row spot at the White House as long as you did or got to ask the first question at press conferences. What was your secret?
THOMAS: I thought it was my due, actually. [laughs] I worked hard. And while I’ve always felt privileged to go to the White House, I felt this was what I was supposed to do, which is ask hard questions. So many people outside the White House gates wonder what’s going on in there.
When I walk in or out, they always ask, “Is the president there? Is he working?†You want to just say, “Come in. It’s your house. This is your house.†[points to plate of ham sandwiches] Here, have a sandwich.
PLAYBOY: No, thank you. Did you go into journalism because you wanted to make a difference?
THOMAS: Hell no. I got into it because I am very nosy, very curious, and because I thought it was a great profession. It’s an education every day to be in journalism, and it’s given me a great life.
PLAYBOY: Were you the kid in the front row at school, asking questions the teacher didn’t want to hear?
THOMAS: No. That came later. I was afraid of authority as a kid. I certainly wasn’t going to challenge teachers. But I had great parents who taught me never to be seen as less than anyone else. My mother and father couldn’t read or write English, but they were very involved with their friends in talking politics. We were thrilled when my father made a check mark for Roosevelt to be elected. He was a proud man. He ran a small grocery and fed our whole ethnic neighborhood in Detroit—Italians on one side, Germans on the other, everybody hungry. It’s the classic immigrant story, but they were more liberated than most. They always told me I didn’t need to get married or have children to be successful.
That was unusual in those days and still is. And I saw from an early age that women weren’t being treated right, weren’t getting opportunities. I wanted to be a newspaperwoman, and I got on the high school paper. I worked on the college paper at Wayne State University and loved it. When I came to Washington I got a job as a copyboy, running for coffee, cutting copy. This was during World War II. Soon enough, I was covering politics. Perhaps there was some element of wanting to do good. I saw what was happening with blacks, civil rights and everything else. Something had to be done in our country, by God, and I was going to help any way I could.
PLAYBOY: What’s your earliest memory of being at the White House?
THOMAS: I sort of assigned myself to the White House. I went to cover the Kennedy family on Inauguration Day. I covered men, women, children, animals, everything that moved in the Kennedy White House. I was like the woman who came to dinner; I never left. After the inauguration, UPI said, “Okay, Thomas, you’re assigned.†It was a three-person staff:
Merriman Smith, Alvin Spivak and myself. Merriman Smith was the brilliant reporter who won the Pulitzer in Dallas the day Kennedy was killed.
PLAYBOY: Where were you that day?
THOMAS: I was getting ready to go on a vacation and was in a fancy restaurant on Connecticut Avenue in D.C. with someone from Jackie’s office and an AP reporter and rival who was my closest friend. We ordered lunch and I heard a radio. It sounded like a sporting event, football maybe. But I thought, It’s Friday; how strange. So I went over to listen, and that’s when I heard “Kennedy’s been shot.†We all shot out of that restaurant and left Jackie’s staff with the bill. The AP girl ran to her office and I ran to mine. I walked in and they said, “You’re on vacation.†I said, “No, I’m not.†They said, “Okay. Get in a cab and go to Andrews Air Force Base. You’re going to Dallas.†It was assumed that Kennedy was still alive. By the time I was in the cab, it was formally announced that he was dead.
PLAYBOY: So you stayed in Washington?
THOMAS: I stayed at Andrews and waited there until Air Force One came in with the body. I saw Jackie and the pink suit and the blood. I was brokenhearted like everyone else. Kennedy was as brilliant as he was charming, and I had a wonderful personal relationship and rapport with him. He teased me a lot. I remember on St. Patrick’s Day one year JFK came over to the press pool, and I said, “It’s a great day for the Irish, Mr. President.†And he said, “Well, what are you doing here, Helen?†I mean, his wit was that quick.
PLAYBOY: What was it like being inside the White House during that time?
THOMAS: The days after the assassination were surreal. Jackie hadn’t yet moved out of the White House and LBJ hadn’t yet moved in, so every day we were going to LBJ’s home and talking to him in the motorcade.
It’s funny thinking about it now. Today Biden rides by like a monarch with all sirens blaring. He has eight outriders, two scout cars and I don’t know how many police trailing in the back. LBJ demanded total silence for his motorcade around town and into the White House.
PLAYBOY: What does that say about Joe Biden?
THOMAS: It was Cheney who started it, I think. That was his MO. Now, there was a vice president. [laughs] The idea that he could have been president. I think Cheney is diabolical. How much money has he made from Halliburton? Now they’re all in hiding, he and his men. They’ve all slipped away into corporate life, universities or think tanks. But getting back to LBJ, he used to do these moving press conferences, which was especially hard since I was in heels and would be falling this way and that trying to keep up with him. He had this habit of whispering, so we had to stay close. On walks around the South Lawn he would let his hair down. We were privileged because we were getting what was really on his mind. Then he’d say, “You know, this is all off the record.†Well, none of us thought it was off the record. We knew, whatever he was trying to tell us, that he wanted the story out but not attributed to him. We’d have to go and find the information on our own. It was quite a study in press relations. You had to work hard not to be manipulated.
PLAYBOY: You certainly never had a problem asking hard questions.
George W. Bush moved you to the back of the briefing room to get you off his back.
THOMAS: Actually, it was Ari Fleischer, the number one liar in the White House. He didn’t like that I was asking too many mean questions about where the Israelis were getting their arms and whatnot. So I got pushed to the back. But the first opportunity I had to challenge Bush, I did.
PLAYBOY: You asked him a bold question in 2006. You said, “Your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is, Why did you really want to go to war?†He danced around the answer.
Did you have an answer in mind when you asked that question? What do you think has driven America’s involvement in these recent wars?
THOMAS: You tell me.
PLAYBOY: No, you tell us.
THOMAS: Well, no president has ever told the truth about why we’re there. I think oil has a lot to do with it. I think there’s an Israel connection. Our government feels compelled to protect Israel. With Bush, some people say it was George Jr. avenging for Daddy. At least Bush’s father understood what war was about. He had been in war. He was more cautious. He certainly lined up the Arab countries to support fighting the invasion of Kuwait. The Bush family has always been rich people in search of a job, but George Sr. had been head of the CIA and chairman of the Republican National Committee. He knew politics and he knew foreign policy, but he didn’t give any of that to his son. Dubya was a hip-shooter. If you look at the Downing Street Memo from 2002, you see the chief of British intelligence had come here just before George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. It concludes that the president simply was determined to go to war and that he wanted to fix the facts to do it. But there were no facts. We just went to war for no reason.
PLAYBOY: So you never believed the line that the world would be “a safer place†without Saddam Hussein?
THOMAS: I think it was wrong to hang Saddam Hussein. He should have been put before an international court for war crimes and everything else. But for us to just bypass the law and have him hanged was wrong.
Not that the press called the president on it. The press rallied around the flag on that one.
PLAYBOY: Who’s your most trusted news source, by the way?
THOMAS: Nobody, really. I like the liberal press. I like E.J. Dionne Jr. in The Washington Post. I like Sam Donaldson. I believe he’s an honest man. I loved Walter Cronkite. I certainly loved Ed Murrow. But I don’t see replicas around.
PLAYBOY: What do you think of Fox News?
THOMAS: I don’t watch Fox and I don’t follow Fox.
PLAYBOY: Not even Glenn Beck?
THOMAS: Who?
PLAYBOY: Glenn Beck. He’s on Fox.
THOMAS: No, don’t know him.
PLAYBOY: Do you know who Bill O’Reilly is?
THOMAS: Yes, I do. He sent me flowers after insulting me for something or other.
PLAYBOY: Is anyone asking the tough questions about Israel?
THOMAS: We’re still not getting the full story on Israel. I asked both President Obama at a news conference and Hillary if they knew of any nations in the Middle East that had nuclear weapons. Obama danced around it and said, “I don’t want to speculate.†Hillary said, “Oh, Helen, you’re cute†or something to that effect. She laughed it off.
PLAYBOY: Why would our government remain quiet if Israel had nukes?
THOMAS: Years ago we made a pact with Golda Meir never to say it. In her era, they would never say it, and they can’t say it now because they can’t tell Iran and all these other countries that they have nukes. That’s my opinion. Our government won’t tell the truth, and neither will the Israelis. Everyone knows, but I can’t write “Everyone knows.†You have to attribute it to somebody. Again, you don’t see these stories in the news. You have to go to a magazine like The Nation or the offbeat press to find out what is really happening. They don’t say that in The New York Times.
PLAYBOY: Or we can get our news from comedians like Jon Stewart. What’s your take on him?
THOMAS: I don’t know. He called me anti-Semitic. What is this crap?
Anti-Semitic? What is he?
PLAYBOY: What about Bill Maher?
THOMAS: I like Bill Maher. Remember when he said the 9/11 bombers were not cowards? He lost his job temporarily, but he was right: Anybody who flies an airplane into a building isn’t a coward. That was too logical for people, though. You can’t be that honest. [laughs] It’s like the Japanese kamikazes in World War II. They were diabolical, flying right into ships, but they certainly weren’t cowards. There are two sides to every story. I guess the trouble is certain stories just don’t sell newspapers.
PLAYBOY: Nothing’s selling newspapers these days.
THOMAS: And it’s a tragedy. I still like a newspaper in my hand. I get The Washington Post and The New York Times outside the door every morning and run to them. I like the print press. You don’t get anything in depth anymore without a newspaper. Everything is a headline, a sound bite. I worry about young people really getting to know what’s going on in our world.
PLAYBOY: How much time do you spend online?
THOMAS: Uh-uh. I’m a paper-and-pencil person. I probably should look at Facebook and Huffington Post and these other things, but I don’t.
Everyone with a laptop thinks they’re a journalist and everyone with a camera thinks they’re a news photographer. Where are the standards? How can we get back to the ethics and standards of journalism? There’s no editing, no oversight. It’s just thrown to the wind. I’m afraid of what’s happening.
PLAYBOY: But you can’t deny the power of the web. Look at WikiLeaks.
What did you think of those diplomatic revelations?
THOMAS: I think it’s great. It’s important to reveal what’s going on behind the scenes. We wouldn’t have known half this stuff without this information, and it’s going to change everything as far as diplomacy.
It’s hard to believe we didn’t know some of this stuff before. Maybe I should have been digging into these things myself. I’m probably not a good reporter. [laughs]
PLAYBOY: By the way, did you ever see Marilyn Monroe backstage at the White House?
THOMAS: [Laughs] Now these are the questions I like, not the ones that make me cry. No, I never saw Marilyn. But I saw a lot.
PLAYBOY: What about Monica Lewinsky? Was there talk in the pressroom that Bill Clinton was having sex with someone before that news got out?
THOMAS: There’s always talk, but I never assume anything. That’s the first law of journalism. Your mother says she loves you, check it out.
So no, I didn’t suspect.
PLAYBOY: Were you surprised?
THOMAS: No. I knew how women liked Clinton very much.
PLAYBOY: Do you think it’s the public’s right to know what’s happening in the president’s private life?
THOMAS: Absolutely. We need to know everything a president’s up to.
He’s on our time, on our payroll. He’s a public servant.
PLAYBOY: Were you all aware that President Reagan was taking naps in the White House when he should have been at meetings?
THOMAS: We knew he fell asleep a lot. But I still feel he was making the decisions, even if some of them weren’t great. Ketchup was a vegetable on the school lunch program. I think Reagan was so conservative, he really believed people could pull themselves up without any government assistance, get out of wherever they were to find a job and so forth. That created a real underclass in this country. But there were also things I liked about Reagan. He began to bend toward the Soviet Union. It was Nancy who pushed him on that. She convinced him to go to Russia to see for himself that these people were real. That began a whole transformation personally for Reagan. He saw that the Russians laughed and cried and were human. After he came back from meeting Gorbachev for the first time, I said to him, “Mr. President, to think that if you had gone to Moscow 10 or 20 years ago, you might have found out back then that they laugh, they cry, they’re human.†“Nope,†he said. “They’re the ones who’ve changed.â€
PLAYBOY: How much was Nancy Reagan controlling things behind the scenes?
THOMAS: Nancy certainly was important and powerful, but I think it’s because their marriage was so close. Everybody liked Reagan, but he wasn’t particularly connected to anyone aside from Nancy. It was morning in America and all that jazz, but you never got the feeling he was warm. He’d rather be alone with his wife up in the family quarters.
PLAYBOY: Press secretaries are paid to obscure the truth, are they not?
THOMAS: [Laughs] Tell me about it. But we had a few good ones. I loved Pierre Salinger—loved his joie de vivre, his intelligence, his wit—though he was really the first press secretary to attempt to control the press. He exerted tremendous influence in shifting the story to places he wanted it to go. Bill Moyers tried to do the same, and I had to fight him on it. I once accused him of not being honest and he said, “Well, I might shade the truth a little.†Shade the truth?
There’s no room for shading the truth in journalism. What’s funny is that so many of these guys ended up working in journalism. Look at George Stephanopoulos. He’s Mr. Journalism now, which is ironic because he started closing the door to the press secretary’s office his first week on the job. “Journalists keep out!â€
PLAYBOY: It sounds like he wasn’t your favorite gatekeeper.
THOMAS: I was very unhappy with him when he came to the White House.
Dee Dee Myers was the press secretary under Clinton, but Stephanopoulos was head of communications and he kept forcing her out of the way and taking over. He ran the office with tight control, and since he made the mistake of wanting his briefings to be on TV, I kept asking, “Why have a press secretary if we can’t freely go and ask them private questions?†And it was heard from coast to coast. He didn’t treat us civilly. But then immediately after he’s out of the White House, he wants to go into our profession. It’s like he couldn’t stand being out of the limelight. I mean, why should George Stephanopoulos have been a great journalist? Well, he’s not, in my book. The way he treated us. I don’t want to sound like I hold a grudge, but you do have a memory for certain personalities.
PLAYBOY: Has there ever been an honest press secretary?
THOMAS: Jerry terHorst. He lasted one month. He was President Ford’s press secretary. He had covered Ford in Washington. He had been here for 29 years as a reporter from the Grand Rapids paper and then The Detroit News. He understood the press. But he was incapable of lying, and he quit when Ford pardoned Nixon, on the very day. He couldn’t take it. Poor Jerry Ford. He just wasn’t ready to be president. He had prepared himself to be Speaker of the House and stepped into those shoes okay, but he just wasn’t equipped for the big job. We saw that Betty Ford struggled too, of course.
PLAYBOY: You and Douglas Cornell, a White House correspondent for rival Associated Press, were married for 11 years before he died, in 1982.
Did you ever regret not having children?
THOMAS: Well, until Doug, boyfriends weren’t exactly beating down the door, so I had a clear path to be a reporter. I worried about having children, actually, what it would have meant for them to have someone working all the time. I know I should have done it, but I feel I didn’t miss anything. Can I get you some wine?
PLAYBOY: It’s still pretty early in the day. No thanks. By the way, is it true what they say about political journalists being big drinkers?
THOMAS: It used to be. Not so much anymore.
PLAYBOY: Were you ever a drinker?
THOMAS: I don’t think I’m a heavy drinker, but I like to drink.
PLAYBOY: What’s your beverage of choice?
THOMAS: Scotch. On the rocks. I like wine, too, and I like vodka and tonic. [laughs] With lots of limes. Sure you don’t want something?
PLAYBOY: No, thank you. Do you miss being at the White House every day?
THOMAS: Of course I do. There’s nothing to replace being there as a reporter with your eyes and your ears. You see things. You’re not always in the know, but you get the atmosphere and so forth. I’ve had a great career.
PLAYBOY: What’s your hope for the future?
THOMAS: On a political level, I hope for disarmament. Billions and billions are being spent every week on the war in Afghanistan. We have 700 military bases around the world. What do you think it costs to keep that war machine running? It’s not working. I thought Obama would be for peace, but he’s not. There are no peacemakers left. There’s no antiwar movement to speak of. America just keeps going, keeps fighting, keeps spending. I want the killing to stop.
PLAYBOY: How would you like to be remembered?
THOMAS: As the person who asked why. That’s what I want as my epitaph:
“Why?†It’s always been my favorite question, even though it rarely gets answered. As I said before, because of what happened recently, people are going to remember me a certain way. The truth is, I don’t hate anybody. I care deeply about people. I care for the poor, the sick, the lame, the harmed, those who’ve been treated unjustly. I like the fact that you asked me if I’m nuts. People think you’re nuts if you take a stand in this life. I’ve always cared about what happens in the world, and I think what the Israelis are doing is wrong. We have to care about our fellow man, and we don’t. Somehow we’ve lost that sense.
It’s become almost a sin to care. But we are all God’s children, right?
[laughs]
PLAYBOY: Do you believe in God?
THOMAS: Who knows? I was raised Greek Orthodox, but I never understood what was going on. In college I moved away from religion, and then when I went to work I would go to church with the president. I’d pray to whatever god the president prayed to. I prayed to all of them—just in case. Now I just pray in hopes that something good will happen. I pray to whoever the gods may be.
PLAYBOY: That makes sense. One last thing: I heard you once say journalists shouldn’t say thank you after an interview with a politician. But you famously said “Thank you, Mr. President†for almost 50 years.
THOMAS: I was following a tradition. My old colleague Merriman Smith was the one who invented the phrase during the Truman era. After that, whoever was the senior reporter at a news conference would say it. That was my role for many years. It’s okay to say thank you.
Metal detectors are popular devices that have many practical applications. They are used for security purposes as well as by hobbyists. A metal detector is defined as an electronic device that is used to detect the presence of metal. They are offered in sweeping models, archway models and handheld waving models. There are several different technologies that can be used to detect metal.
o The three most popular types of metal detectors are handheld wands, walk-through arches and handheld sweeping metal detectors. Metal detecting wands are most widely used by security personnel. They are lightweight, powerful, easy to carry and portable. Walk-through arch metal detectors are used in airports, government buildings and retail centers. Sweeping metal detectors are mostly used by hobbyists in their leisure time.
o All metal detectors employ one of a few different technologies to detect metal. “Very low frequency†metal detectors create a magnetic field that reacts with metallic objects in its path. “Pulse induction†metal detectors create magnetic pulses that reverse polarity suddenly resulting in electrical spikes. Pulses take longer to spike when the metal detector is over a metallic object. “Beat-frequency oscillator†metal detectors let off radio waves, when the detector passes over a metallic object, magnetic currents interfere with the radio waves.
Benefits
o Beat-frequency oscillator metal detectors are the most affordable metal detector due to their low production costs. Pulse induction metal detectors detect metallic objects that are deeper underground than other metal detectors can sense. Very low frequency metal detectors are unlike other types of metal detectors in that they can tell the difference between metals in the ground below them.
Facts
 Walk-through metal detectors usually employ pulse induction technology to detect metals. Beat-frequency oscillation is the technology that is most widely used in handheld security metal detectors. The most popular technology used in metal detectors is the very low frequency technology.
A metal detector is a device which responds to metal that may not be readily apparent.
The simplest form of a metal detector consists of an oscillator producing an alternating current that passes through a coil producing an alternating magnetic field. If a piece of electrically conductive metal is close to the coil, eddy currents will be induced in the metal, and this produces an alternating magnetic field of its own.
Nowadays, there are metal detectors that can pinpoint metals so accurately that they have become indispensable tools in fields like mineralogy, engineering, security and even in the military.
From the crude models of the 19th century, the modern detectors had its debut in the 1930s when Gerhard Fischer released and patented his very own metal detector. Fischer’s design used resonating coils to detect the presence of metal under the ground. These metal detectors proved to be an asset during World War II.
Metal detectors were used during the war to find land mines scattered across the paths of troops. They saved a number of soldiers back then. However, these metal detectors could have been more useful if they were not that heavy. Early designs of metal detectors were not that convenient as compared today. These detectors require a great amount of “juice†to power up which means lugging behind heavy batteries.
The modern detectors basically are made up of coils and uses electromagnetic induction to detect the presence of metal. Aside from the portable metal detectors that we have grown accustomed to and use in hobbies and games like treasure hunting, there are some bigger models that are used mainly in security and related fields.
Other uses for metal detectors include detection of foreign objects in food. These pieces of equipment are of course very useful in the construction industry as well. You could easily detect steel reinforcing bars, pipes and wires that are buried in walls and floors with a detector.
Powerful metal detectors are also used to determine the location of mineral ores for the mining industry. In the field of archaeology, artifacts can be detected even if they are buried deep underneath sand or soil. During rescue missions, sometimes metal detectors also come in handy. In places like airports, security uses walk in metal detectors to determine if people are carrying metallic objects like knives and guns which can cause potential dangers to passengers or commuters.
The standard coil detectors were the trend back then, but recent technologies have brought about new breeds of metal detectors. You can now see the Beat Balance and Coil Coupled Operation metal detectors which were made available to the public just a couple of years ago.
Most machines are operated using microchips. This can be seen when opening the hood of the car and looking at the control box, the remote control of the television and the interior of the microwave oven. These little things can be programmed to do whatever the person wants in a matter of seconds, which is something everyone needs living the digital age.
Metal detectors also operate using the same concept. Though this machine has been around for quite some time, advances through the years has made it much better than it was before allowing the person to use it to even detect the smallest metallic object in any terrain.
The kind of chip commonly used by the metal detector is known as the 7400 series logic. These are the tiny pins located in each card that becomes the controls of the machine. Manufactures have to be test this out so that only those who pass quality control will end up in the display shelves and into the hands of the customer.
The control box is powered by one or two 9 volt alkaline batteries. When it is activated, the person can already adjust the settings and start searching for objects buried underneath. Before using the metal detector, it is always best to study the model and be familiar with how to use it. The individual should let it warm up for 30 minutes and then practice using it.
Lately, there have been some improvements with these devices. A better chip known as the 18 pin IC allows the individual to home in on an object up to more than a few inches away from it.
While its true that treasure hunters don’t pay that much attention to this and are only concerned with how well the detector performs, this is something worth knowing should any problem happen. The person will be able to understand what the technician is talking about to know which part will be replaced.
