Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I can’t take this shit today. I just can’t.

We need fewer warriors in public service and more gardeners.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Militantly superior in their own minds…

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

I did not have this on my fuck 2020 bingo card.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Too inconsequential to be sued

Shock troops for the Unitarian Jihad.

Yes we did.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

This really is a full service blog.

Dinky Hocker shoots smack!

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Han shot first.

I swear, each month of 2020 will have its own history degree.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Good luck with your asparagus.

… down to kool-aid drinkers and next of kin at the trump White House

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Reality always wins in the end.

Screw the Judean People’s Front. Splitters.

You are here: Home / Archives for Adam L Silverman

Adam L. Silverman is a consulting national security subject matter expert specializing in low intensity warfare (asymmetric, irregular, and unconventional warfare, revolution, insurgency, terrorism), civil affairs, psychological operations, and cultural considerations for strategy and policy.

He routinely provides operational support to a number of US Army, DOD, and other US Government elements. Dr. Silverman holds a doctorate in political science and criminology from the University of Florida, as well as masters' degrees in comparative religion and international security. Full professional bio available here: https://www.balloon-juice.com/adam-silverman-bio/

Adam Silverman has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2015.

Muffaletta

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muffalata

In the comments to Betty C’s sandwich post on Tuesday I promised I’d post my muffaletta recipe later in the week. Since things seem to be a bit slow, I think now is the time and here is the place! I learned how to make muffaletta while I was doing my masters in comparative religion. I worked in a specialty, gourmet grocery and the catering manager, who managed the deli, butcher shoppe, and cheese department would make it based on her family’s recipe. She was an excellent caterer and a really good person. And she liked her muffaletta with bite! And that’s how I make it. You’ve got two serving options with it: fresh or let it sit and ferment for a few days. I prefer the former. To me it has a cleaner, sharper taste. But if you prefer your muffaletta fermented, that’s okay too.

Muffaletta:

2 8 oz cans of black, pitted olives

2 8 oz cans of green, pitted olives

Olive oil (to taste – this’ll make sense in a bit)

Ground Parmesan Cheese (to taste – this’ll make sense in a bit)

Red pepper flakes (to taste – this’ll make sense in a bit)

Directions:

Drain the green and black olives and run them through the robo-chopper until minced (medium – you don’t want big chunks, but you don’t want paste/tapanade either). Or, if you prefer, mince them by hand. Place the minced olives into a mixing bowl and add the ground parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes to taste and combine all ingredients thoroughly. Then drizzle in the olive oil while mixing until everything is basically in suspension. You don’t want it oozing oil, nor do you want it looking like just chopped olives. Once you have everything to your preferred taste/level of heat, refrigerate.

Once the muffaletta is chilled there are several ways to serve it. Before I get to the classic sandwich, you can also take a sourdough round, or any other type of bread round, slice the top off, and scoop off the inside. Then fill with the muffaletta and dice up the scooped out bread to dollop the muffaletta onto. Its also quite good with non-smoked brisket or other roasted meats in place of horse radish.

For the muffaletta sandwich:

Ingredients:

One large sourdough round

1/3 lbs of thinly sliced (but not shaved!!!!) genoa salami

1/3 lbs of thinly sliced (but not shaved!!!!) capicola

1/3 lbs of thinly sliced (but not shaved!!!!) mortadella

1/3 lbs of thinly sliced (but not shaved!!!!) provolone or mozzarella

Directions:

Slice the top off the sourdough round about 1/3 down and set it aside. Scoop out about 1/2 to 2/3 of the remaining bread inside the bottom of the round. Layer the cheese, the mortadella, the capital, and the genoa salami – the only thing that matters in this order is that the cheese goes in first and is on the bottom. Then scoop muffaletta on top of the top layer of meat – as much or as little as one prefers. Place the top of the sourdough round back onto round. Wrap in wax paper, place on a plate or a tray, and set something heavy on it. If you’re considered about food sanitation and you want to use, say a heavy, hardback book, then wrap it in silver foil. Place the wrapped and weighted sandwich into the refrigerator. Let sit overnight. Remove from fridge, slice, serve, and enjoy.

Bon appetit!

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Moving Day

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Tonight at midnight the trooping fairies will move the Seelie and Unseelie Courts to their winter demesne. This also means that tonight is the last night that The Fool is abroad on the wild hunt until next Spring.

Aasgaardreien_peter_nicolai_arbo_mindre*

So perhaps a little Halloween music is in order. Fairport Convention’s version of Burn’s Lay of Tam Lin, It tells the story of how the Princess Janet saved her true love, Tam Lin, from being sacrificed on Halloween by the Queen of Fairies:

So travel safely tonight, avoid The Fool, and don’t forget to set back your clocks!

* The Wild Hunt by Peter Nicolai Arbo

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Preparation is the Key to Success: Halloween Edition

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Just in case something goes really, really wrong between now and tomorrow night, I thought it was prudent to direct everyone to Field Manual (FM) 999-3: Counter Zombie Operations at the Fireteam Level*.

Stay alert! Stay alive! And if necessary: Strike Hard!

FM 999-3 Counter-Zombie Operations at the Fireteam Level

* I actually used this in the US Army’s first Warfighting Exercise in 2012. I was temporarily assigned control (TACON) as the Cultural Advisor for III Corps throughout 2012 and was on site as the Corps’ cultural advisor for the exercise. As the exercise was winding down some wise guy in exercise control (EXCON) decided to throw a massive solar flare generated EMP that wiped out all unshielded electronics into the scenario (added for clarity). Deciding rather to be safe then sorry, as I’d seen Night of the Comet, I immediately stepped out of the targeting synch meeting, went down the hall to my office, printed out a copy of FM 999-3, and brought it back to the meeting.

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Netanyahu’s Historical Revisionism: There is More Here than Meets the Eye

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Earlier this week Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu delivered a speech at the 37th World Zionist Congress. His remarks, which included a discussion of contested religious sites such as the Harem al Sharif/Temple Mount in Jerusalem, as well as settlements also included some very interesting content about the Holocaust. Specifically PM Netanyahu alleged/asserted that the idea behind the Final Solution to eliminate all Jews was not the creation of Hitler and his senior aides and associates, but rather was thought up and pitched to Hitler buy Haj Amin al Husseini. Haj Amin al Husseini was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and a member of one of the two most powerful Palestinian families/clans at the time. Haj Amin, who was involved with both the Palestinian resistance to the Jewish settlement of Mandatory Palestine (the Yishuv) and the British Mandatory Authorities, made common cause with Hitler and the NAZIs. However, the idea that Haj Amin came up with the idea for the Final Solution and convinced Hitler it was a better idea than mass deportation is simply fantasy.

And it is the fantastic elements of Netanyahu’s remarks that have received the attention. The Chief Historian at Yad Vashem has made it clear that this was not how the Final Solution was conceived of or decided upon based on the transcripts of Hitler’s meeting with al Husseini. Other’s have pointed out that the meeting actually happened after the Final Solution had begun. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has also come out and made it very clear who was responsible. And while Chancellor Merkel’s, all of the actual historians, as well as some Holocaust survivors remarks are a welcome antidote to PM Netanyahu’s revisionist history, I think there is something else going on here.

Netanyahu has always been known as someone that code switches. When he’s speaking in front of one audience he’ll describe an event or his actions or a proposed course of action one way and when he’s speaking before a different group he will switch his language up and address these matters another way. Or, in the same remarks, he’ll go back and forth. In fact he was caught doing this just this week where in the speech to the World Zionist Congress he claimed to have had the fewest settlements created under his prime ministership (largely by splitting this up by his terms of office) and to another group asserting that the most settlements have been built while he’s been prime minister – one of these things can not be true.

Now its not surprising that politicians or other leaders tailor their remarks to their audiences. In the case of Netanhayu, however, it is clearly more deeply purposeful. As the Haaretz reporting linked to above relates, PM Netanyahu is a stickler for writing his own speeches and remarks – he feel’s they are part of history and the historical record. So this is not the case of a hired word smith tailoring an argument to a specific constituency or audience. Rather, I think what happened here is that the “Hajj Amin al Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem developed the plan to kill all of world Jewry and convinced Hitler to implement it” portion of the speech was not intended for anyone at the World Zionist Congress. It was intended for an American audience of those who seek to equate Islam with genocidal aggression against Jews and Christians.

There are several reasons for this, not least among them is that the position of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, at the time that Haj Amin held the position, was an administrative one. Despite attempts to argue otherwise, Haj Amin was not an Islamic cleric or jurisprudential scholar from among the ulamah. He had very little Islamic education – a year at al Azhar in Cairo, but was mentored throughout his life by Rashid Rida. Moreover, after going from being a pan-Arabist to a Palestine Arab nationalist, the British exiled him from Mandatory Palestine in 1937. It was during his exile that he linked up with the NAZIs – the enemy of my enemy is my friend… While it is true that Haj Amin was not a member of the Muslim clergy and had only a limited amount of formal, Islamic religious training, he did become a promoter of Islam in his role as Grand Mufti, which is, itself, a title with religious connotations.

Netanyahu’s remarks make a lot more sense if they were directed at an American audience that has been primed by graphic images and reports of the evils that ISIS is perpetrating in Syria and Iraq, Especially as many Americans still have not established a new normal/reached a new equilibrium fourteen years after the al Qaeda attacks on 9-11-01. Politicians and special interest group leaders still routinely demagogue over issues pertaining to Islam and Muslims – everything from whether new mosques or cemeteries can be built/established to comparative historical/comparative religion material in social studies curriculums. Combine this with the fact that most Americans, including the most devout, tend to know very little factual material about their own, let alone other’s religions, and referring to an Arab and Palestinian nationalist leader by the Islamic religious title that came with his administrative office and asserting that he was the creator of the genocidal plan to kill all the Jews was a political-linguistic dogwhistle.

To most people who actually know the history of Haj Amin al Husseini, which is precious few in the US, it was immediately clear that PM Netanyahu made an incorrect statement. To the vast majority that have heard that ISIS, which claims to represent all of Islam through its new caliphate of the Islamic State, has specifically targeted non-Muslims for death, Netanyahu’s remarks will ring true. It is this latter group, and especially American elected officials, special interest group leaders, and commentators that PM Netanyahu’s remarks were aimed. Those of us who know better heard a serious error made by a hyperbolic politician with serious issues. The majority who don’t heard that in the 1940s an Islamic leader devised the plan for genocide, which reinforces the message that Islam is inherently evil and inherently in opposition, perhaps genocidally so, to all non-Muslims. PM Netanyahu is not a stupid man and he knows and understands Americans and American politicians better, perhaps, than any other foreign leader and some American ones as well. His remarks were not an accident, nor were they a mistake. They were not intended for the ears of those at the World Zionist Congress. They were intended for the ears of those in the US who have been primed since 9-11-01 to think the worst of Islam, Muslims, and Muslim-Americans. PM Netanyahu was providing cover for some of the most toxic ideas currently bounding around American politics and society and he was doing so for his own parochial purposes.

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Investigative Report on the Attacks on US Facilities in Benghazi, Libya, September 11, 2012

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In advance of Secretary Clinton’s appearance tomorrow before the House of Representative’s Select Committee on Benghazi I thought it might make a bit of sense to post the actual, definitive, and germane report on the events at Benghazi. This was produced by the US House of Representative’s Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. It is attached at the bottom of this post.

As you may recall this was the result of the 7th investigation into the events of September 11, 2012. The Select Committee on Intelligence’s report was supposed to be the definitive last word on the matter. Of course, because the US House of Representative’s Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence found that there was no there there to incriminate Secretary Clinton or President Obama or anyone from doing anything illegal or unethical, and the conspiracy theories were just that, the GOP majority caucus in the House decided it needed an 8th committee and investigation to get to the bottom of something…

Benghazi Report

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Please Allow Me to Introduce the Congressman who Represents Valley Forge

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TPM posted the MSNBC video of Arizona Congressman Trent Franks telling a reporter that what we need is a Valley Forge American to step up and become Speaker of the House. Fortunately for Congressman Franks, Valley Forge is mostly in the 7th Congressional District of PA so he doesn’t have to look hard for the one man that could fill his requirement.

Without further ado allow me to introduce Congressman Pat Meehan (R-PA) who represents the 7th Congressional District of Pennsylvania, which includes Valley Forge:

440px-Pat_Meehan,_Official_Portrait,_112th_Congress

I have no idea if Congressman Meehan is interested, nor if he would be a good Speaker of the House. But according to Congressman Franks he is THE only one who can do it.

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Bad Historical Analogy Theater: Jewish Armed Resistance Against the NAZIs

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Anne Laurie brought our attention to Dr. Carson’s recent comments regarding Jewish Armed resistance, or the lack thereof, against the NAZIs during World War II. Earlier today, between a conference call and doing some other work related stuff I came across Steve M’s much fuller treatment on the topic. Steve traces the history of the assertion that had Jewish Germans been allowed to keep and bear arms, then they would have been able to either provide significant resistance to the NAZIs. This argument originated, as Steve noted, with the founders of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO) who did an analysis of the German firearms laws and restrictions – both those from the late 1920s and the latter set from the late 1930s.

I recently dealt with this at another website – this is the unplanned guest post that I have mentioned a couple of times in comments. I want to follow up and address this here too and I’m adapting some of what I had written at the link above, as well as adding some new information. There are really three different issues to be addressed here: 1) is there really a historical analogy between the German context in the interwar period?; 2) what exactly was the context for Jewish Germans and based on that context would more permissive German firearms laws have made any difference?; and 3) was their actually any Jewish Armed resistance against the NAZIs during WW II? I’m not going to take these in order, in fact I’m going to go backwards (and jump around a bit) – it’ll make more sense this way.

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum actually covers the topic of armed Jewish resistance against the NAZIs. This is how it is treated on its website:

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005441

and here:

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005213

So to does the Yad Vashem in Israel:

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/about/07/resistance.asp

There was Jewish and non-Jewish armed resistance against the NAZIs. However, most of this resistance came late, after 1942, when it became very, very clear that the Final Solution was NOT simply ethnic cleansing through relocation, but ethnic cleansing through industrial scale extermination. Even where there was armed resistance, such as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, it was not effective for very long. And while I’m a big fan and supporter of the right of self defense, especially in extremis, in this case it simply would have prolonged the inevitable.

The reason for this is that the NAZIs were first fielding the powers of the state as they consolidated their control, then that of an actual military with the resources of the German state. Ultimately they were also able to utilize the resources of many of the states they had conquered. And all of this would eventually be directed to the support of the military, its needs, and its dual mission of conquering Europe and executing the Final Solution. So we know and can document as a fact there was significant, if somewhat belated resistance. This includes both the Jewish armed resistance and that of both non-Jewish Germans and non-Jewish citizens of other European countries. Some of this is the partisan activity of underground and irregular forces, but it also include the actual armed forces of a number of European states. These actual armies and militaries where unable to stop the NAZIs in one on one fights, so what chance would armed Jewish Germans have really had? Very little.

There are several reasons for this. Despite limiting formal party affiliation for several years out of internal security concerns, the NAZIs still managed to mobilize the vast majority of German society either explicitly or implicitly behind their activities. This is, essentially, the Goldhagen thesis, but even if the cooption of German state, society, and citizenry was not as complete as Goldhagen argues, it was still sufficient to have rendered any real Jewish German resistance futile. The NAZIs had a state and society as a resource, which allowed them to mobilize the power of the state through force – using all elements of national power (diplomatic, informational, military, economic, financial, intelligence, and law enforcement/DIME-FIL) to achieve their ends.

Prior to Kristallnacht in November of 1938, and despite being very vocally anti-Semitic, the NAZIs held their cards pretty close to their vests. Kristallnacht was basically an internal, blitzkrieg like pogrom. It is important to note that only 1% of the German citizenry were Jewish – about 500,000 out of a total German citizenry of 67 million. Only a portion of this 1% were emancipated (secular/assimilated as Germans who’s religion just happened to be Jewish as opposed to the very visible ultra-orthodox Jewish Germans). This means that there were less than 500,000 Jewish Germans that might have been acculturated/socialized enough to modern notions of self defense and that might have been willing to resist. Aside from the fact that these are not good odds, and ignoring the fact that Jewish Germans began to flee or go underground or actually engaged in forms of resistance, it ignores a more important concern: there was no Jewish German, let alone Judaic, way of war at that time.

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