The “Back Story” on the Suspension of Regular Operations

[solutions]

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---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: The “Back Story” on the Suspension of Regular Operations
From: Solutions
Date: Thu, October 10, 2024 1:41 pm PDT
To: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Attachment:
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Dear John,

I just read your e-mail of a few hours ago about the “irregular” Zoom Meeting this coming Wed at the “regular” time.

It reminded me that I had intended to ask you after your immediately-preceding e-mail of 3 weeks ago suspending “regulation operations,” why "we no longer have sufficient participation in our regular monthly meetings to fulfill our mission as a non-partisan public-policy study/action group.”

Your friend,

Solutions


---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Re: The “Back Story” on the Suspension of Regular Operations
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Thu, October 10, 2024 4:27 pm MDT
To: Solutions
Attachment:
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Dear Solutions,

Thank you very much for your e-mail.

I had forgotten that you didn’t participate in either the 8/21/2024 meeting on Stu Eizenstat’s “The Art of Diplomacy: How American Negotiators Reached Historic Agreements that Changed the World” or the 7/17/2024 meeting whose participants voted for the Eizenstat book.

Which explains why you didn’t know the “back story.”


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OUR WORKING GROUPS CONTINUE UNAFFECTED

Since you often post our e-mail exchanges on our website, please permit me to emphasize that the operations of our Working Groups are NOT affected – as explained in the 9/19/2024 e-email suspending REGULAR operations & posted at viewtopic.php?f=824&t=2560&sid=1f1025d8 ... d60ca760f4.


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OUR MISSION AS A NON-PARTISAN PUBLIC-POLICY STUDY/ACTION GROUP FOR THE LAST 19 YEARS

Yes, Sec. 1 of www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org summarizes 59 public-policy campaigns aimed at national/international decision makers, many of which have been surprisingly effective.

Some were undertaken by our Working Groups and some resulted from our regular monthly meetings.

As explained on the face of Sec. 8 of www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org, we invite all of our weekly e-mail recipients to join a “Working Group” whenever a particular policy issue (1) may require immediate action on the spur of the moment (rendering addressing it at the next regular monthly meeting impractical), and/or (2) may require long-term attention.

And as explained many times over our 19 years, such campaigns can also result –

(A) from a regular monthly meeting at which there were at least 6 participants (historically average attendance has been more than a dozen), AND

(B) when there is no more than one dissent -- which means that the vote was at least 5-1 (if not a more typical 12-0).


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MAINTAINING STANDARDS

And yes, participation in the regular monthly meetings has dropped below six for our 8/21/2024 and 9/18/2024 meetings with no immediate prospects for returning to normal, which is more than a dozen.


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THE REASON(S) FOR THE LACK OF PARTICIPATION IN THE REGULAR MONTHLY MEETINGS

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FIRST, “NORMAL” TURNOVER IN MEMBERSHIP & PARTICIPATION

There is nobody else who has participated in our regular monthly meetings since the beginning and rarely has anyone participated for more than 5-6 years.

Constant replenishment came from two sources –

(1) Skiing friends – As the premiere ski resort in North America, Snowbird/Alta attracts successful people who want to retire here -- for example, Calvin Burgart (PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the U/Tenn - Oak Ridge National Nuclear-Research Laboratory) who led all of our meetings on nuclear topics beginning with our 4/3/2011 meeting on Fukushima Daiichi and who chaired several of our Working Groups including until recently the Thorium-Fission Working Group; and

(2) Fellow congregants of Utah churches that I have attended.

NB: no participants have ever come from such seemingly-likely sources as the Salt Lake Committee on Foreign Relations, etc., etc.

UNFORTUNATELY –

(1) I lost my sense of balance a few years ago and no longer ski (and such old ski friends as Cal Burgart have also encountered health problems – in Cal’s case needing an oxygen tank whenever he is significantly above sea level).

(2) For the last decade or so, I have been attending a “Mega Church” (South Mountain Community Church) and its Wed morning men’s group – but have never been able to recruit anyone there who has participated in any of our meetings.

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THE COUP DE GRÂCE – GEORGE KUNATH

George and I had been strong friends for 36.5 years since when we were partners in the worldwide headquarters of Ernst & Young, then located in NYC.

We always had lunch together once/week until I moved to London in 1997 to become a managing director in the worldwide headquarters of the investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, following which we had weekly multi-hour gabfests via Skype and then Zoom.

He began participating in the regular monthly meetings of Reading Liberally via Skype just before COVID hit.

And when our organization was the victim of political censorship (i.e., cancel culture) in July 2019 (please see the four postings in Sec. 2 of our website at viewforum.php?f=547&sid=1f1025d8ac152d6 ... d60ca760f4), George was a loyal friend who, as described on the face of Sec. 2, joined in the pledge that –

“George Kunath and I (John Karls) will discuss each focus book at the scheduled time whether or not anyone else has even learned about the meeting.”

Accordingly, I was incredulous when George engaged in an extensive e-mail campaign beginning 8/10/2024 and aimed at the participants of the 7/17/2024 meeting who had unanimously voted for Stu Eizenstat’s “The Art of Diplomacy: How American Negotiators Reached Historic Agreements that Changed the World,” to boycott the discussion of the Eizenstat book at our 8/21/2024 meeting.

George’s stated reason???

Stu had lied!!!

Specifically, since George was unable to cite any other lie, that Stu had engaged in the Big Palestinian Lie that in 1948 the United Nations “stole” Arab land and gave it to the Jewish survivors of Hitler’s Holocaust.

BTW, George is NOT Jewish, but instead a devout Roman Catholic.

NB: The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) had actually simply tabulated who owned what as a result of the policy of the Arab Empire and its successor, the Ottoman Empire, for more than a thousand years until the demise of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, that everyone including Jews were welcome to buy land and settle down in their domains.

Not surprisingly, UNSCOP ascertained that there were only 1,077,000 Muslims in Palestine out of a total population of 1,846,000 – or 58.3%.

Accordingly, the UNSCOP Report resulted in U.N. Resolution 181 ending the British Mandate on 5/14/1948 and partitioning Palestine into what the Resolution called a “Jewish State” and an “Arab State” based on who owned what even though the Jewish State and Arab State resembled a “checker board” of land ownership.

Israel accepted U.N. Resolution 181 and declared its independence on 5/14/1948. And was immediately invaded by Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon.”

[Please see “chapter and verse” re Stu repeating the Big Palestinian Lie at viewtopic.php?f=816&t=2540&p=3374&hilit ... 60f4#p3374.]

Needless to say, Stu’s repeating the Big Palestinian Lie was mentioned in the meeting materials posted on our website for the 8/21/2024 meeting on Stu’s “The Art of Diplomacy: How American Negotiators Reached Historic Agreements that Changed the World.”

EVEN THOUGH THE BIG PALESTINIAN LIE WAS NOT (REPEAT NOT) MENTIONED IN “THE ART OF DIPLOMACY” – STU HAD ONLY REPEATED THE BIG PALESTINIAN LIE IN SPEECHES TO VARIOUS ORGANIZATIONS.

AND “THE ART OF DIPLOMACY” CONTAINED 364 PAGES (sans notes & index) OF VALUABLE INFORMATION.

The result???

George was so persuasive that there was only one other participant (my brother James) for our 8/21/2024 meeting.

Ditto for our 9/18/2024 meeting on “The Power of Film” by the Founding Chair of UCLA’s famous Film & TV Producers Program where he taught for 53 years

George and my 36.5-year friendship???

My protests over George’s 8/10/2024 et seq. e-mails attempting to sabotage the 8/21/2024 meeting culminated in my two e-mails last month whose title nearly quoted (“end” in lieu of “beginning”) Humphrey Bogart at the end of George’s favorite movie, Casablanca –

“I think this is the end of a beautiful friendship.”

We have had no contact since.


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VALEDICTION

Yes, our Working Groups continue their operations.

And I have a few ideas about how to recruit new participants for our regular meetings.

But first, it seemed more appropriate to follow our IRREGULAR procedure and ascertain whether anyone is willing to participate in a Zoom Discussion THIS WED Oct 16 of 2 movies – "The Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot" and "Room For One More."

Thank you again for your e-mail and your long-standing support for our organization.


Your friend,

John K.