I will have order! So I've changed the settings to order my posts reverse chronologically
within each day instead of chronologically. This stems out of a primal fear
I have that I will post something new, it will show up at the bottom of
that day's posts, and someone who visited earlier in the day will never read
the new post because it sits beneath a bunch of posts they've already read.
I never cry. I never scream. I'm MacArthur Parker the Fucking Invincible, God Damnit. "There's just too much loss going on here."
(idea) by MacArthur Parker (print) ? 10 C!s - Wed Sep 12 2001 at 07:51:24 UTC
It's a long time since September 11, but I am posting this link anyway. I'm doing
it to introduce you guys to everything2, something I found on Ian's blog, and
MacArthur Parker's post is a good way to do it, I think.
The Secret of Thanksgiving "Today marks two months of Matt and me. In celebration, we have given the nation the day off, scheduled football games and parades, and are recommending a feast of turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes. For dessert, you are obligated to have some pie, preferably pumpkin, in our honor."
I just read that and thought it was clever / funny. Also, the Matt she
mentions has a cool web site of his own which I've linked to before.
________________________________________
Secret Santa Yay! Just like back at college, or back at my big consulting firm job.
Secret Santa has now come to the web.
"To use Secret Santa, all you need is a wishlist* at Amazon and some kind of website. First you tell Santa about yourself. Then on December 10th you will be told who you're buying a gift for. And by Christmas Day, everyone has a sparkly present to open!
Blogdex As of today, Objectionable Content has been added to blogdex. If you're
reading this, and you have a blog, you should also link to blogdex. It crawls
blogs and tallies the most linked-to themes, which is an interesting way of seeing
what other bloggers are talking about. It will also tell you how often your own site is
linked to by other bloggers (who are registered with blogdex). I've known about
blogdex for a while, but it was reading a post in bad samaritan that prodded me to
register this humble site.
... I'm bummed about George.
Song of the day: "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)," by George Harrison
________________________________________ posted by Jim Somewhen | Link | Guestbook | Add Comment
All Things Must Pass "I think people who can live their life in music are telling the world: 'You can have my love, you can have my smiles. Forget the bad parts, you don't need them.
Just take the music, the goodness, because it's the very best,' and it's the part I give most willingly."
George Harrison (1943-2001), rest in peace.
________________________________________ posted by Jim Somewhen | Link | Guestbook | Add Comment
Thursday, November 29, 2001
"All them health nuts are gonna feel real stupid someday, lying in the hospital, dyin' of nothin'." -- Redd Foxx.
"They are the same people that once argued that steam trains would asphyxiate all their passengers if they travelled at more than thirty miles per hour, and that dangerous electricity could leak from uncovered light fittings."
I have added a guest book. Woohoo! Go sign it. Up at the top of the page is the permanent link to the guest book. Sweet, neh?
________________________________________ posted by Jim Somewhen | Link | Guestbook | Add Comment
Wednesday, November 28, 2001
The Other Side
And when time is running out
You wanna stay alive
We all live under the same sky
We all will live, we all will die
There is no wrong,
There is no right
The circle only has one side
We all try hard to live
Our lives in harmony
For fear of falling swiftly overboard
But life is both a major and minor key
Just open up the chord
I've been thinking about the other side, lately. Palestinians have killed Israeli civilians.
I don't blog about it, or link to articles covering the deaths.
I don't feel I have a responsibility to give equal time to that side of the news because
this is a personal blog about the things that matter to me emotionally. The fact is, I'm
half Palestinian. I have relatives in the occupied territory, and news about what is
happening to them and their group has a personal relevance to me.
Also:
1. I feel that people in the U.S. often get a lopsided view of things from other
sources. I'm countering lopsidedness in favor of Israel with lopsidedness in favor
of Palestine. Maybe then the average person reading this blog and also watching
the news will get a blend that approximates balance. That said, I try only to present
what is true, though decent people can have differences of opinion.
2. I feel that some people argue that since Palestinian terrorists have killed
Israeli civilians, the occupation (and all it entails) is justified. I find this idea abhorrent.
As of midnight, November 27, 2001, 826 Palestinians have been killed and 16,661 have
been injured in the West Bank and Gaza since the Al-Aqsa Intifada began on
September 29, 2000 (data from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, a group like the
Red Cross).
In the first month (September 29, 2000 - Octover 31, 2000), the Palestinian Red
Crescent recorded 141 deaths. This was written about this same period, "approximately
80 percent of the victims, according to Amnesty International's estimates, were killed in
demonstrations in circumstances where the lives of members of the security services
were not in danger." (emphasis mine) That quote is from Chapter 2, page 14 of a
report called Broken lives – a year of intifada, Israel/Occupied Territories/Palestinian Authority which you can get here.
What? So This means it is OK to kill Israeli Civilians? Children? Women? No. I guess that is what I have been leading up to. It is sad that such a non-
controversial statement had to be prefaced by so much explanation. It does have
to, because so many condemnations of Palestinian terror in the U.S. media carry with
them a subtext attacking the legitimicay of Palestinian resistance to occupation and
justifying Israel's subjugation of these people. This too, is wrong. But the fact remains:
every civilian death is terrible, and even in resistance of occupation, Palestinians have
no moral right to use force against non-combatants, particularly those Israeli civilians
not even living in the Occupied Territory.
Israeli settlers--occupying civilians--are often armed, and often violent. Human Rights
Watch has reported on incidents of settler violence against Palestinians. Whether any
particular settler can be considered a non-combatant is something that I believe
depends on the circumstance.
But an innocent is an innocent and there is no doubt that innocent Israelis have
been murdered. It's terrible, and wrong.
________________________________________ posted by Jim Somewhen | Link | Guestbook | Add Comment
"The five children were all from the Al Astel family - Mohammed, 14, Omar, 13, Anis, 11,
Mohammed-Suleiman, 11, and Akram, 6, left their home in the al-Star al-Arabi
neighborhood of Khan Yunis refugee camp, to go to school. There is no need to dwell
at length in the tragedy of their death. Their blood-drenched school bags and books tell
the whole story."
If you read A Ghaza Diary from my archives (11/19/01), you'll recognize Khan Yunis as
the same refugee camp mentioned in that account. This article is from an Israeli paper,
Ha'aretz, where I've read a number of (to be frank) Palestinian-friendly stories. I'll have to
ask Naomi how Ha'aretz is viewed by American Jewry.
According to Ha'aretz, "160 children and youngsters below the age of 18 - 72 of them
below the age of 15 - have been killed in the past year alone."
________________________________________
NERVOUS Industries A few years ago (1997), Saurabh and Sam and I spent a month
touring Europe. Like so many children of the bourgeoisie we
graduated Harvard (well, some of us), jammed our possessions
into backpacks, purchased Eurail passes and spent 30 days
wandering the paterland trying to find ourselves.
I like to tell people that our trip was the result of something my
dad said to me in high school. One day he explained to me that
I was unlikely to keep the friends I had. "Jim," he said, "your
high school friends aren't the ones that last you your whole life.
You're too young to form meaningful friendships now. You haven't
yet become the person that you're going to be for most of the
rest of your life. But that will happen to you in university--or a lot
of it will--and you'll find that it's the friendships you make there that will remain."
"After college," he explained, "you'll find that you've changed and
that you don't have as much in common with your old friends from
high school."
Because he's my father, you have to understand the subtext of this
philosophical observation, which is: you should get new friends. And
the sub-subtext: get rid of that Sam guy before he drags you down!
(Heh. Hey there Sammy boy). ;-)
Fortunately or unfortunately, I'm a lot like my father. I told Saurabh
and Sam, my two best friends, about my dad's opinion of the
chances our friendship had of surviving. Like any good friend, I
expressed incredulity that there could ever come a time when me
and my cohorts weren't a perfectly happy bunch of malchicks. Of
course our love for a bit of ultraviolence and our bragging about the
old in-out would last forever. Unfortunately, I'm a lot like my father,
and I didn't express absolute and total incredulity.
Out of this evil seed of doubt was born our pact: If we three were
still friends after graduating college, we would go backpacking
through Europe together.
Four years later, we met in a banhoff in Vienna, tired, eager,
unshaven, and blissfully innocent of the future that waited to
overtake us in Bob's Youth Hostel (Amsterdam).
Which brings me to my point.
In the last week of our trip, after Sam had returned to the States to
start his job at GE, Saurabh and I found ourselves in a laundromat in
Nice, France. It was owned by two Greeks, or Iranians, or Arabs. Two
ethnic people of some kind. (Hey, Saurabh, tell me what they were so
I can change this before anyone sees it.) It was a father and son. Or
two brothers.
A friendly ethnic duo of some kind.
They had a very cozy laundromat, with an atmosphere like an Italian
restaurant in Venice. Like family. Like a commercial for The Olive
Garden. And they also had a guest book. The kindly ethnic duo owned
a laundromat in Nice after all--many of their customers were tourists.
Their book was signed by backpackers from all over, and drawn-on, and
pasted-on with photographs and post-cards. Me and Saurabh signed it,
and I remember making fun of some Yalies who'd signed the book a few
pages ahead of us. They'd made fun of Harvard, thinking they were so
clever, never suspecting that The Almighty would place us close on their
heels, for vengeance. The suckers.
It was a wonderful guest book. Not all of the notes were in English or
French (the only two languages that Saurabh and I could reliably read),
but enough were. We passed the time waiting for our clothes to be
ready by reading it, signing it, talking to the kindly ethnic duo about
how long they'd kept it (a long time, this wasn't their first guest book).
I remember being happy, and envying the duo their laundromat and
their guest book and their fleeting contacts with the wild race of
backpackers that roamed the planet, pausing in Nice. And their
record of it.
Which brings me to my point.
NERVOUSNESS Industries is doing something called Land Mail
Experiments. A Land Mail Experiment is an experiment involving
multiple people, and the post (that's land mail as opposed to e-mail).
The one I saw that led me to the NERVOUSNESS web site is
called Kind Words For Tough Times and I came to it via mockerybird.
Here's the description:
Kind Words For Tough Times
I've found that there are a lot of kind souls here at nervousness, and I hope this is a project that many people would like to be a part of. Here's how it works: I'll send out a big blank notebook. Please fill it with positive, uplifting stories, quotations, poems, drawings, photographs - anything you feel would cheer someone up. I want this to be a helpful book!
I'm keeping the sign-up list short at first, because quite frankly I'm going through some bad times myself right now, and I need to read it!
But after I get it back, I'll send it out again. We'll keep it moving on, to anyone who needs it or would like to add to it.
If this sounds like something you'd like to be a part of, then please sign up! :)
**The book went out today to the first person on the list! 11-27-01
After I saw Kind Words For Tough Times, I started peeking around the
rest of the NERVOUSNESS site, and I liked what I found. Some of the
other experiments that I liked:
I will send my best friend hans to you, to visit the nervous people in the world hans is a pretty and kind young german man. who would like to see him?
by: skeaghshee
From A to Z: Do something with a letter from the alphabet.
Each person adds a page representing a letter from the alphabet. You can pick any letter, that hasn't been taken before you. You can draw, write, use any material or technique to decorate your page. The only rule: it has to be clear at the first glance which letter the page is about. When I get it back, I'll make a book of it. If you want, I can scan the pages for every participant. If you'd like to have a certain letter, you can always try to make a deal with the people before you on the list! ***The object has started its journey at Nov. 14 !***
by: Tinkerbell
The Milk Carton Project: I am missing so many things: friends, dreams, my silver sweater i loaned to a tall girl at a party, the rest of the lyrics to songs from my younger daze . . . what are you missing - 1) design a milk carton for WHO you are missing, 2) write a creative piece on WHAT you are missing and 3) and a token of a TIME you are missing (or went missing). Entries are up to you - these are just suggestions. Don't miss your opportunity to find something you miss.
by: northangerland
Rock the shack!: Got a local underground band? in a small band? hopefully a punk band?get their music (and faces) out here with a little disposable camera and blank cassette tape to be filled with songs and pictures from and of your local band(s) . Save the ears of western oklahoma kids and sign up!
by: putridpants
funkyfresh holidays mixtape: Awesome holiday music. I swear it exists. I'll start it off with a few songs of my own; it's up to you to add the rest. ( No more than 2 pieces of music each, please.) They don't have to be tied to a specific holiday; they just have to bring back good (or at least decent) holiday memories, remind you of winter, or of that oh-so-special commercial time. Diversity is greatly encouraged. Please, no crappy Kenny G lite-pop stuff. Classical, international, experimental, your punk band's rendition of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"... that's all good. I'll send everyone who participates a copy of the tape :)
by: avalyn1 Every Experiment has a fixed number of people that can sign up, to
guarantee that the projects are completed. It's a really neat site and
I recommend you go check it out.
Whcih brought me to my point.
Since I've started writing this post, it's gotten me thinking about another
thing that these Land Mail Experiments represent, which is tied in to
some ideas I've been tossing around about bandwidth and
processing power as concepts abstracted from technology and applied
to human society (to the extent that human society is an information-
processing entity). A lot of my thoughts on this stuff were inspired by
The Control Revolution, which I highly recommend you read. I might blog more
about it someday, but as it related to NERVOUSNESS. . .
These Land Mail Experiments involve people reaching out across space to
connect. The internet, the telephone, all communication media attack this
same problem. What's so interesting about LMEs is the bandwidth
limitations of the medium. That is, an LME is more limited than a face
to face interaction or a phone call: first naturally by the fact that you can only
convey so much information, and second artificially by the rules of each
particular Experiment. "Write about things you are missing," or "Decorate
this map," or "Send me a sock-puppet," or "Kind Thoughts For Tough Times."
The rules are self-imposed, and they limit but also define and enable
communication.
This is a common phenomenon. If you tell me to talk about anything I might
have nothing to say, or I might ramble without conveying much meaning. If
you tell me to talk about the last time I went to a church, I can launch right
into the story.
I imagine all these humans as if on a map, scattered across the world, and
they find out about these Land Mail Experiments and they participate
because they want connection. They want to reach and be reached by
others; they want to create and to get what others create; they want to
share. But distance limits the connection, and bandwidth limits the
connection. Then, self-chosen rules limit (define) the connection. What I find
interesting is the way that these rules enable meaningful communication not
just in the context of limited bandwidth, but by limiting the
scope that the communication can take so that, as a secondary
consequence, less bandwidth is required.
If we had infinite bandwidth, might we still have self-imposed rules to limit
communication? Possibly, because they allow you to save processing
power. If I received an infinite-bandwidth communication, I'd still have
to do the work of parsing it. Rules like the LMEs say: hey, just send a
very limited bandwidth communication. This means the recipient can
parse it.
As a counter-example, I could mail you War and Peace.
The postal system would deliver it, so the bandwidth is there, but
for you to process it you'd have to spend hours reading it. And there
are many meanings you could take from the book: the author embedded
multiple messages in the novel, and there could be additional messages
coming from me, having to do with why I sent it. Figuring this out becomes
hard work--ie. a heavy drain on processing resources.
An LME, with it's wonderfully limited focus, is therefore economical of
processing power. Yeah, that's it. And this economy of processing is
actually more important than the economy of bandwidth. It's the key.
This leads me to think that rules are a third interesting thing, apart
from bandwidth and processing power. Rules are self-imposed limits that
have value (let's think first about utility, not morality). A Land Mail
Experiment is an example of this.
I hate you. I hate you so much you piece of crap, because you have
just crashed on me and made me lose the best blogger post in weeks.
Weeks.
And now I have to re-create it, and it will be impossible to produce the
same instant of genius that made the original post special.
________________________________________ posted by Jim Somewhen | Link | Guestbook | Add Comment
"Academics who have already received copies of Human Immunology have been urged to rip out the offending pages and throw them away."
What's this all about? It's about a study that looked for genetic variations
among Middle Eastern Jews and Palestinian Arabs--and found very few.
But what it is really about is censorship.
"The journal's editor, Nicole Sucio-Foca, of Columbia University, New York, claims the article provoked such a welter of complaints over its extreme political writing that she was forced to repudiate it. The article has been removed from Human Immunology's website, while letters have been written to libraries and universities throughout the world asking them to ignore or 'preferably to physically remove the relevant pages'. Arnaiz-Villena [the lead author of the study] has been sacked from the journal's editorial board."
The proper response to science is more science. If the paper's claims are
incorrect, certainly others in the field can challenge the findings, propose
alternative interpretations of the data, or critique the methodology of the
study. What should not be tolerated is exactly what happened, a
complete repudiation of the entire concept of inquiry-after-truth. And, of
course, it is possible that Arnaiz-Villena's findings are true.
Human Immunology's argument for censoring Arnaiz-Villena's paper is
that he made inappropriate remarks. In particular, he uses the word
'colonists' rather than 'settlers' to refer to Israelis living in the occupied
Palestinian territory, and he uses the much more loaded term
'concentration camp' rather than 'refugee camp' to refer to the places in
Syria and Lebanon where Palestinians of the diaspora live.
Editorial criticism of Arnaiz-Villena's choice of words may be approrpiate,
and his language may suggest a wider bias that should be examined and
criticized if found to be true. The camps in Syria and Lebanon are most
assuredly not concentration camps (on the other hand, if the Israeli
settlers aren't colonists, then I don't know what they are).
That said, if these are the flaws in the paper, they do not merit the kind
of censorship that is occuring here. Even the editors of Human
Immunology obviously found little wrong with the paper originally, or they
wouldn't have published it in the first place. It is difficult to defend writing
that one hasn't seen (which is naturally the point of censorship), but the
facts that we do have suggest little reasonable justification for the
muzzling of Arnaiz-Villena's work.
I'm going to look for copies of the paper (since naturally it isn't available
from Human Immunology). I'm also thinking of writing a letter to these
people. Maybe there is a petition that can be signed.
At any rate, you should read the entire article. It presents the case for
Human Immunology's removal of the paper, and it documents in (slightly)
more detail another sorry incident in the history of science and politics.
This is great. It comes to us via nerdalert. What it is is a record of a bet.
Our hero, Brian Perry, has to spend two days in a Home Depot. Hilarity ensues. Here are some of his entries,
chronicling the slow degeneration of his mental faculties. Heh.
4:56 AM It's 4:56... FUCK
[ Yes, they degenerate from this auspicious start. - Ed.]
6:30 AM I think I am going to ask one of the HD employees out on a date. When she (or he) asks when and where I will tell her "after your shift, in the rug asile".
8:50 AM Hot chick in leather pants in the tile asile. Tile asile. That rhymes. I'm gonna go walk by her.
By the time I finished writing and walked over to her asile she was gone. I think she may have been a mirage. None of this is real.
10:33 AM I have come to the conclusion that there are a number of non-employees that have been here as long as I have. Go home, you fucks. Go home and cut your hair and sleep and eat real food. I may kill someone by the end of this. Suck on it Bob Bacconet!!!
10:49 AM Seen lots of dykes today.
11:19 AM I am in the garden section right now so it seems logical that I dwell on something else that I have no idea about. Women. There is quite a wide range of things that I don't understand about women, but one of the things that bugs me the most often is when women place the strap of their purse right in-between their tits. Ok. I admit it. I was staring at your tits. But that gives you no reason to put that strap there. Are you trying to make sure that magically and delicious don't fight? Or are you just looking for attention. Well let me save you the trouble, you look like a moron. A male equivalent would be for me to duct tape my balls to my stomach in order to get them out of the way (Note to self: Stay away from duct tape aisle). It doesn't look good and it doesn't serve any purpose. Ladies if you want to draw attention to your breasts just shove them in my face. Forget this purse strap bullshit. Ladies and gents, Nightwing has just taken you to school.
Clones are People Two "After months of trying, on October 13, 2001, we came into our laboratory
at Advanced Cell Technology to see under the microscope what we’d been
striving for—little balls of dividing cells not even visible to the naked eye.
Insignificant as they appeared, the specks were precious because they
were, to our knowledge, the first human embryos produced using the
technique of nuclear transplantation, otherwise known as cloning."
The experiment described in the above article actually fails to reach the
blastocyte stage (a post-embryotic stage of development consisting of
about 100 cells). The promise this kind of research holds is tremendous
though, starting with treatments for diabetes and Parkinson's.
The article I link to above is written by the scientists at Advanced Cell
Technology. They give a good deal of space in the article to ethical
considerations (like this question: Is it permissable to create such a
developing human entity only to destroy it?). The authors also propose a
distinction between "therapeutic cloning" and "reproductive cloning." The
latter is cloning for the purposes of producing a living human baby, while
the former is cloning for the purpose of producing healthy cells of various
types (ie. stem cells) to be used in combatting disease. On reproductive
cloning, the authors say: "We believe that reproductive cloning has
potential risks to both mother and fetus that make it unwarranted at this
time, and we support a restriction on cloning for reproductive purposes
until the safety and ethical issues surrounding it are resolved."
This is big news and the article is worth reading. Meanwhile, Bush urges that
cloning be banned while the House of Lords (yes, that's in the UK) debates a
bill to ban the cloning of persons.
________________________________________
________________________________________
"I Dare You to Steal This $100" Art Piece Stolen -- Artist Shocked "The piece from acrylic paint and real money was up for a month before someone noticed the $100 bill was missing . . . Whoever took it left five 20 dollar bills in place, but the artist claims the pieced is 'ruined.' "
So you've heard of the $25 million reward that the U.S. Government
put out for the capture of Osama Bin Laden? Well, this is apparently
for real:
Taliban Doubles the Ante, Offers $50 million for Dubya The Taleban upped their defiance of the United States and its allies yesterday by posting a $US50 million ($124 million) reward for the capture of President George W. Bush.
Why Blog? and Secrets I came across this from the blog of some Texan. It's worth stealing from,
so voila:
My friend Dave once summed up one of the problems with blogs and the community behind them. Some blogs contain nothing of interest and are the equivalent of "Today I ate a cheese sandwich." Inevitably the cheese sandwich phenemenon grows as the blog community feeds on itself and comments on the original cheese sandwich blog, "I too had a cheese sandwich." I didn't want to be a part of that, and I don't have the story telling abilities that some of the bloggers out there have.
. . . Then something changed . . . I applied for a job with the government that entailed getting a security clearance. I didn't get the clearance and I was baffled as to why, angry even. I wrote and requested all the documentation they had on me using the Freedom of Information Act. I got back 100+ page book on me. I read the interviews they conducted with past and current friends. I read notes from psychologists. It was fascinating. People were honest with strangers about me and said things they had never said to me. Some of them made up things and thought they were being honest. All in all though I got back a painfully candid view of myself, warts and all as they say. I was forced to acknowledge dark and unpleasant facts about myself. It changed me. Then a few months later it really started to dawn on me that the secrets you keep about yourself own you, you don't own them. All those secrets just hold you back and make you anxious someone will find them and hold them against you. What an absurd way to live. That has made me see the Internet as some sort of self-improvement tool. Oh sure, nobody will probably read this, just as nobody was willing to read the clearance documents about me. But I will have purged those secrets from myself and I will live my life in the open and honest way that I have to.
Interesting, huh? It's from this blog. There are other interesting
things I'll mention from this same blogger, another day.
________________________________________
Basically, the purpose of this blog is to provide more publicity for adnan's blog.
Obviously not much more, but a little.
Today I noticed that adnan put up a link to the full text of the Mitchell Report
on Israeli-Palestinian Violence (commonly known as The Mitchell Commission
Report). This report is worth reading as a relatively objective third-party view
of the intifada that began in September, 2000. Here's an excerpt:
We are not a tribunal. We complied with the request that we do not determine the guilt or innocence of individuals or of the parties…
In late September 2000, Israeli, Palestinian, and other officials received reports that Member of the Knesset (now Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon was planning a visit to the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Palestinian and U.S. officials urged then Prime Minister Ehud Barak to prohibit the visit. Mr. Barak told us that he believed the visit was intended to be an internal political act directed against him by a political opponent, and he declined to prohibit it.
Mr. Sharon made the visit on September 28 accompanied by over 1,000 Israeli police officers. Although Israelis viewed the visit in an internal political context, Palestinians saw it as highly provocative to them. On the following day, in the same place, a large number of unarmed Palestinian demonstrators and a large Israeli police contingent confronted each other. According to the U.S. Department of State, "Palestinians held large demonstrations and threw stones at police in the vicinity of the Western Wall. Police used rubber-coated metal bullets and live ammunition to disperse the demonstrators, killing 4 persons and injuring about 200." According to the GOI, 14 policemen were injured.
Similar demonstrations took place over the following several days. Thus began what has become known as the "Al-Aqsa Intifada" (Al-Aqsa being a mosque at the Haram al- Sharif/Temple Mount).
The GOI asserts that the immediate catalyst for the violence was the breakdown of the Camp David negotiations on July 25, 2000 and the "widespread appreciation in the international community of Palestinian responsibility for the impasse." In this view, Palestinian violence was planned by the PA leadership, and was aimed at "provoking and incurring Palestinian casualties as a means of regaining the diplomatic initiative."
The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) denies the allegation that the Intifada was planned. It claims, however, that "Camp David represented nothing less than an attempt by Israel to extend the force it exercises on the ground to negotiations."
[ The Mitchell Report ] this one via Ha'aretz and formatted for better readability than the one via the link below
[ The Mitchell Report ] via adnan ________________________________________
A Plethora of Hits So we are approaching the 200 hit mark. Cool.
El Guapo: Jefe, would you say I have a plethora of pinatas?
Jefe: A what?
El Guapo: A plethora.
Jefe: Yes, El Guapo, you have a plethora.
El Guapo: Jefe, what is a plethora?
Damn The Three Amigos is funny. Speaking of funny, check out Star Trek on Ice.
I networked my two computers together I networked the two home computers today. It was relatively easy. I had to go out and buy a NIC card for the old computer ($20 and it came with a free 6' ethernet cable), a five port ethernet switch ($49) and another ethernet cable ($14!!). Then a few hours of fiddling (mainly because the old computer is a piece of junk that me and Saurabh built ourselves) and voila: file sharing, printer sharing, even internet connection sharing. I moved 600 megabytes of MP3s from old computer to new computer in no-time.
Thanksgiving So as on every Thanksgiving, we started to put up the Christmas Tree. Me and Tom dragged the box up from the basement and got to work. We have an artificial tree that's nine feet tall. Every Thanksgiving weekend we unpack it and set it up. In the background is Dean Martin, or Simon & Garfunkle, or a CD of Christmas songs, or the Monkees, or the Beatles, or Nana Mouskouri every once in a while.
Our trees branches are labeled from F to P in order of length (no, this does not make any sense). So last night me and Tom emptied out the tree's box, sorted the branches into piles by letter, and got to work. Before you attach a branch to the base you have to spread out every twig that's on the branch--all the months spent in the box press the branches flat. It took Tom and I about two hours to get the tree built.
Mom and Dad will come by to help with the ornaments, and the lights, and the fake snow.
We have a thoroughly man-made set-up, but I don't mind. Do families with real trees get to spend two hours putting theirs together? No.
Besides, once it's done, it looks beautiful.
Stories So I've been really happy with these stories I've been hearing and posting (go read the November 13 entry if you haven't yet). Here's another story, from Ian's blog.
Alex and the ICBM
by Jonathan Shute
The piano player at the bar brought in a board one night and we played during his breaks. I knew how the pieces moved but that was the extent of my knowledge of the game. He beat me twice within the first four minutes or so, using two variations of "the fool's mate," and I was hooked. I've kept a chessboard on every bar I've tended since that day.
We play a version in the bar that I call "gentleman's chess." You are not allowed to lose a piece accidentally. If, due to the ravages of bourbon, your queen should unknowingly stumble into the path of my bishop, I will warn you of the faux pas. The player is allowed to return the queen to safety and subtly encouraged to buy another cocktail. Everyone's a winner and I come out looking like the benevolent guru.
If you beat the bar you win a drink but beating the bar is a rare occurrence. Give me a strong chess player and a bottle of rum and my money's on the rum every time. Every so often a rocket scientist or a rated Master will strut in, order black coffee and unceremoniously kick my ass. These matches are my favorites and are the only games that are etched in my memory.
_____ _____ _____
It's not as if I had just fallen off of the turnip truck. When I heard the Russian accent I knew I was in for a humbling exchange on the chessboard. There are some generalizations that can be safely adopted. You shouldn't tug on Superman's cape; you shouldn't spit into the wind and you shouldn't play cocky chess against a cat from Russia.
Alex thumped me soundly, five games straight, before we were even introduced. In my defense, I was playing black, but that was hardly a relevant factor. I had castled early and often but his ruthless aggression laid waste to my battlements every time. The worst of it was his arrogant sneer. There were far too many witnesses for my taste and all of them would attest to his irksome air of superiority. At one point he called one of my moves "foolhardy" and shoved the piece back into position with a huff. I was beginning to feel like a bitch-slapped wolfhound and I didn't like the feeling.
"Ah, that's sound advice Alex. In America we have a name for your type of player.....obnoxious f**khead."
You could have heard a ruble drop.
He politely pretended not to understand the vernacular but his demeanor softened considerably from that point forward. I acknowledged his superiority on the chessboard and asked him if he was a rated player. He explained that his rating was below that of Master but that he had trained his ten-year old son to be the Australian chess champion for his age group. He explained that he had taken a job with British Aerospace and they had relocated him from Moscow to Sydney.
"British Aerospace? What are you, some kind of rocket scientist?"
He sheepishly explained that he was exactly that; his job in Moscow had been to solve trajectory equations, which would guide Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles to specific locations in the United States. He was expressionless when he told me that he had performed the calculations for the missiles that were now targeted at Minneapolis and the bar we were in at that moment.
He explained that Minneapolis was a central food distribution point and that it was near enough to the Strategic Air Command in Grand Forks, North Dakota that the entire region was designated for "overkill." Several hundred ICBMs were poised to eradicate everybody but the cockroaches in my home state within the first twelve minutes of the last war.
We stood mute under the weight of his words for a long moment.
Alex broke the silence and brought us back to the smaller battle. "You are not a terrible player. Your concentration on defense is your undoing." His harsh logic and faint praise stung a little. "You are a man without arms in a fist fight."
_____ _____ ______
I followed Alex's suggestion to come out of my castle and kick a little ass and it worked. Our final game dragged out over two shifts at the bar and ended in a draw. At various times during the sixteen hour grudge match I assumed the advantage and actually got to see him sweat. I look for small victories in this life and playing black to a draw against the rocket scientist is one of my favorites.
I wanted to bust his chops a little so I told him he played pretty well for a guy with all of those missiles aimed at him.
Alex replied, without lifting his gaze from the board, that since he had accepted a position in Minneapolis he must learn to ignore them.
"Alex and the ICBM" was originally published on the web, at Everything2. It's now made its way to print, in Humane Society, an anthology of stories by Jonathan Shute. The anthology is subtitled "Stories about tragedy and golf." It is republished here with tentative permission from the wonderful people at Magnas Press. Magnas has an excellent web site, where you can preview other stories by Jonathan and order the book.
I held out for over two weeks. This one, also, is via adnan.
It is still. The camp waits, as if holding its breath. And then, out of the
dry furnace air, a disembodied voice crackles over a loudspeaker.
"Come on, dogs," the voice booms in Arabic. "Where are all the
dogs of Khan Younis? Come! Come!"
I stand up. I walk outside the hut. The invective continues to spew: "Son
of a bitch!" "Son of a whore!" "Your mother's cunt!"
The boys dart in small packs up the sloping dunes to the electric fence that
separates the camp from the Jewish settlement. They lob rocks toward two armored
jeeps parked on top of the dune and mounted with loudspeakers. Three ambulances
line the road below the dunes in anticipation of what is to come.
A percussion grenade explodes. The boys, most no more than ten or eleven years
old, scatter, running clumsily across the heavy sand. They descend out of sight
behind a sandbank in front of me. There are no sounds of gunfire. The soldiers
shoot with silencers. The bullets from the M-16 rifles tumble end over end through
the children's slight bodies. Later, in the hospital, I will see the destruction:
the stomachs ripped out, the gaping holes in limbs and torsos.
Yesterday at this spot the Israelis shot eight young men, six of whom were
under the age of eighteen. One was twelve. This afternoon they kill an eleven-year-old
boy, Ali Murad, and seriously wound four more, three of whom are under eighteen.
Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered--death squads
gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined
up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and
watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo--but I have never before
watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.
I woke up at 4:20am on Sunday morning to go downstairs and see the meteor shower. Tom was already down there, out on the deck. The two of us stood out there til a little after five, watching the shooting stars.
Each of us made a wish. We'd sing a little bit, quietly so as not to wake anyone: Shooting Star by Bad Company and Catch a Falling Star which Perry Como made famous but which was written by Lee Pockriss and Paul Vance. Then we'd laugh. It was fun, and cold.
We saw a lot of meteors. The close ones were bright green streaks, the distant ones were white.
________________________________________ posted by Jim Somewhen | Link | Guestbook | Add Comment
Saturday, November 17, 2001
The Naked Gun is on. Me and Tom and Dad are gonna watch it. Nobody's Lily is watching it too. We were IM'ing and I was saying how I was going to go watch it and she said, "Dude, I'M WATCHING IT!" That was cool. :-)
I'm listening to Time the Revelator right now. My parents got me the CD for my birthday. It's really good. My three favorite songs right now are "I Want to Sing That Rock and Roll" and "Elvis Presley Blues" and "Everything is Free." Gillian Welch's voice is beautiful.
There's a meteor shower tonight, sometime around 4am the astronomers say. Gillian Welch is good meteor shower music.
"Everything is Free Now" is actually about stealing music.
Everything is free now
That's what they say
Everything I ever done
Gotta give it away
Someone hit the big score
They figured it out
"They were gonna do it anyway,
Even if it doesn't pay."
I can get a tip jar,
Gas up the car
And try to make a little change down at the bar
I can get a straight job
I've done it before
Never mind the working hard
It's who I'm working for.
Today's Topic Will Be Falling Short I want to be brave.
When I think about this it doesn't relate to the heroic. I don't think about risking my life. What I think about is the times when I've hesitated, when I've been afraid to do something I hadn't done before. Like love a certain woman. What I think about is the times when I take the easy way out. What if I was honest about the things I always lie about?
Next: How does he figure this is a counter-example? I was going to list other things, but maybe that's all there is. I thought about dropping out of Harvard once, one summer. I thought I would stay in Washington D.C. and start something: a magazine or a web site or the opposite of a think tank. Liz Koch would encourage me. I remember hanging out with her, going to an ice cream shop or just sitting on the floor in my apartment talking about it, and Elizabeth saying I should do it. What was life if you didn't follow your dreams? Why be here if you didn't do the things that you wanted to do, that you had real passion about?
I remember calling my parents and telling them what I was thinking about, and I remember them trying to stay calm--and basically pulling it off--while they must've been freaking out inside at the same time; they said calmly that they they thought it was a bad idea.
And the thing was, I agreed with them in the end. I was a junior at Harvard. One year to go and I would have the degree. It didn't make sense to throw it away to do something that would probably be easier to do a year later, with a degree.
And the thing was, Liz Koch's dad is a billionaire. Taking risks means something else for her, which is lucky I think, but I'm not in that position.
If I had a billion dollars / I would buy you a ...
So I went back to school. I'm glad I did.
But I remember talking to Liz about the idea. The point is, even though it did make me nervous to think about quitting school and chasing an idea, I would've done it. I don't regret it.
But I regret the other things.
My brother John is talking more these days. One day I came home from work and into the kitchen, where he was watching television and my mother was doing the dishes. I said hi to her and I didn't say a word to him. A few minutes later I noticed what I did, and I thought that it was wrong. I wouldn't have done it if he didn't have Downs Syndrome. That was this year, not long ago. I was ignoring him, out of habit. He could be in a room but he might as well be alone, because his own family's expectations of him were low, and their demands were low, and he was suffering because of it.
Every day when I come home now I say "Hi John," and he says "Hi Jim" back, and if I don't say it first he might wait or he might say "Hi Jim" himself first. And he says hi to other people when they come home too. He expects to be acknowledged now and he acknowledges others. He's become a lot more talkative in general recently, and I think it's because of this. It isn't a small thing.
I want to be a good brother to John.
But I am selfish too. I am often more interested in television, or the internet, or reading, than in playing with him--because playing with him is repetitive, it's fun for a little while and then you want to do something more interesting.
Sam is up from Atlanta for the weekend, so today he and I will celebrate. We'll pick up Frances and hang out with her for a while, and then we'll have to ditch her (she has to go to bed early for some reason). Sans Frances, me and Sam will head into New York where I am hoping for a replay of what happened the last time Sam was in town and we went out drinking.
I think the story is best told via the series of e-mails between me and Courtney the next day.
========== How long do you typically wait before...? ==========
-----Original Message----- From: jim@isnotputtinghisworkemailuponthisblogforanyonetosee.com Sent: Friday, May 11, 2001 6:40 PM To: Courtney Subject:
So if you're out drinking (pretend you're single), how long do you typically wait before squeezing the thigh of a guy you've just met, five minutes or ten? Jim
PS: Be in NY so we can hang out some more.
-----Original Message----- From: courtney@hersecretemailaddress.com Sent: Monday, May 14, 2001 9:30 AM To: Content, Jim Subject:
You are so funny! Who is squeezing your thigh??????? I normally wait at least ten minutes...unless he is a hottie of course!
I wish I was in NY! HARTFORD STINKS!!!! [Rest snipped to protect the innocent -Ed.]
-----Original Message----- From: jim@notmyworkaddress.com Sent: Monday, May 14, 2001 9:51 AM To: Courtney Subject: RE:
Her name was Saba. I went out two weeks ago with two friends (Sam and Saurabh, you met them once) ... and anyway she didn't even wait five minutes. It was awesome. ;^)
Plus I looked like the man in front of my friends.
I was sitting with my pals at this bar called Big Sur, drinking and talking. It was late and we were pretty mellow by this point. And she walks in to the bar with this other girl and these two guys (ie. looking like two couples). They sit down right next to us, and this Saba girl (who is a bona fide hottie herself) gets up and vanishes to some other part of the bar, leaving the rest of her group. She's gone for ten, fifteen minutes. She comes back to her table, and then the guy she came in with gets up and /he/ leaves. He's gone for like fifteen, twenty minutes.
So, whatever.
While he's gone, the girl gets up and comes over to our table and to me and just goes "Hey, you're cute!" (which, you know, I can't argue with). We start talking and like the smart guy I am, I don't invite her to sit down with us. So she invites me to sit down with her. So now I'm back at her table with her, the girl she came with, and the guy who was with that girl. No sign of the guy that Saba came with.
We're talking, blah blah, and maybe 45 seconds into the conversation she is grabbing my thigh. So I'm loving this, and we keep talking, and I'm thinking it is time to ditch my friends and invite her to step outside or something, when Mr. Saba or whoever he is comes back to the table.
It turns out him and the other guy went to Harvard too, and we have something in common, and the four of us start talking, and Saba stops with the thigh rubbing. So, now that it's a group thing, I don't want to be rude to my friends, so I introduce them around. And so this Mr. Saba guy meets them and he says, "It's nice to meet two people who aren't hitting on my girlfriend."
So, for those of you not paying attention, there were three of us.
Mr. Saba is Class of '86 or something, by the way, even though the hottie was only 26.
Pretty much immediately after this, the four of them get up and leave. But it sure made for a good story! :)
Jim
So keep your fingers crossed everybody. If anything happens I'll be sure to blog about it nine months later, like last time. ________________________________________ posted by Jim Somewhen | Link | Guestbook | Add Comment
Two (two!) people sang to me in e-mail today. I got Courtney's first. It says:
Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you...happy birthday dear Jim, happy birthday to you!!!
and then it goes on to say some other stuff. I didn't tell her it was my birthday, she just sent the e-mail. I'm so lucky. People love me.
Kristen sent me hers after I mentioned it was my birthday. But it's not like I demanded a song or anything.
"When life gives you lemons, shut-up and eat your damn lemons."
I stole that from Ian's blog. I am only the 10th visitor ever to Ian's blog. This is more of a credit than an advertisement for it. He's an OK guy except he uses the word woot! or w00t! or something. This is proof that I'm not a kid anymore, which brings me to my point . . .
Today's my birthday. Happy birthday to me. (You should be reading this with the melody of the Beatles song).
I heard another story today. This one is on the web, so I'm just going to link to it (below, just wait for it). The preface is that there is a person called Hanh, who is a girl. I've never met, spoken to, e-mailed, or otherwise had any contact with Hanh or heard of her before today. It appears she's just a regular person. A college student. And, she has a website dedicated to her greatness. Here's an excerpt.
We were all at this party and there was plenty of drinking going on,
Hanh being, as always, the glorious exception. I mingled my way
into a group of friends, and one was noticably silent. I asked him if
he was okay, and he wasn't. He was dripping with sweat and his
eyes were bugging out of his head and it took him almost a minute
to respond. But when he said he was okay, I believed him because
we were all at this party and there was plenty of drinking going on,
like I said. It was a party and everyone was focused on having a
good time, screw the consequences.
Hanh, as always, the glorious exception. She mingled her way to us,
and saw our shaky friend and also asked him if he was okay. She
saw the sweat and the eyes and knew. She told him "stand up. I'm
taking you home." And she got him to his feet, and I stood up to help.
I knew what it meant when I saw Hanh doing something that I hadn't.
It meant I had screwed up. I wanted to help because I want to be a
better person, a glorious exception, but I'm pretty bad at it.
Hanh's birthday was yesterday. I know I am digressing. It just caught my attention. A whole web-site dedicated to the greatness of a college student. And it isn't some kind of stalking thing, it is multiple posters attesting to hanh's greatness, not just this rob macgregor guy. The story is pretty good too. Nothing spectacular, but good.
I wonder sometimes if I am so opaque to other people that when I tell them to look at something I like, they will have no idea why I said so or what the point was or anything, like when I linked to the spoof ad of Hitler and the gap in Adbusters back on my August 29 posting. I also feel this way when I tell jokes sometimes. I have a powerful urge to say "get it? get it? he said posse."
On October 30th, I posted a link to a speech Noam Chomsky
gave about how U.S. actions were imposing massive
starvation on Afghani civilians.
This very short tidbit has been written in refutation of some of
Noam's points. Go take a look. Here's how it begins:
"MIT professor Noam Chomsky is one of the most influential leftist critics of the United States. Since September 11, he has condemned the war against the Taliban and its effects on food aid to Afghans at risk of starvation. But a basic review of his argument shows that much of his criticism ranges from inflammatory rhetoric to outright deception."
Michelle Branch is the 18 year-old girl who sings the song "Everywhere" that you've probably heard on the radio (you know, "turn it inside out so I can see..."). Here's what she had to say on the radio today (95.5FM for those keeping track):
I've always liked to sing, and just before I turned fourteen
I decided I wanted to learn to play the guitar. So I asked my
parents and luckily they gave me one for my birthday.
... I used to write song lyrics during Algebra class. Math
wasn't my strong suit and I used to get really bored so I
would hide a sheet of paper in the pages of my math book,
and when the teacher would walk by I'd turn to one of the
math pages. When she went past me I'd turn back to the
page with my sheet of paper in it and I'd spend the class
writing poems and lyrics.
I failed Algebra but I did end up with four or five good songs.
How I got my record deal was sort of weird. I'm from
Arizona, and my manager--before he was my manager--well
he took a trip to Arizona. He got roped into one of those
time-share deals where they give you $100 if you agree to
take a tour of their property. Becuase he's a manager he
was like, "$100? Sure I'll take a tour!" and so one day he
was in my town for this tour. Well, one of the ladies who
works for the time-share company knows me, and she
was talking to my manager, you know, "what do you do?
where are you from?" and when she found out he was
from LA and worked in the music business she said
"Wait, you have to meet this girl."
She called me up and told me to get over there right away.
My parents were out, I was home alone, and to get there
I ended up stealing my neighbor's golf cart.
I drove up to the time-share in this golf cart with my guitar
and a demo tape. I think I scared him.
But two months later, he called me from L.A. . . . ________________________________________
When I was a girl, in Russia, the bookstore only carried approved books. There was only one bookstore in the city, and even an approved book was hard to get if it was popular. You could not just go buy The Three Musketeers, because it was a Western book and they did not like Western books then; even in the 80s it was hard. For unapproved books it was impossible.
Except, I remember being little, and my father taking me to a dark forest at the edge of town. We would see people standing amidst the trees, their silhouettes hard to make out at first. But when you got closer you could see it was a person standing next to a shopping cart, and the cart was always covered with a sheet or a blanket. When you came close, they would pull the sheet away and show you: the carts were full of books.
That is what it was. We would all gather at the forest, just outside our town, coming when we thought it would be safe--always some people would stand watch as lookouts. And we would trade books. "I will give you War and Peace if you have Candide." I was just a girl the first time my father brougth me, and I remember it. It was ... like forbidden fruit. posted by Jim Somewhen | Link | Guestbook | Add Comment
Sunday, November 11, 2001
Feed the Hungry with the Shirt Off Your Back I received my t-shirt from The Hungersite in the mail this week. It's a great looking blue shirt and the Hungersite people say it will provide 25 cups of food to people who need it. Sweet.
Five Bozos With $40,000 I also saw a great, great movie last week, called Tape. It's really a filmed play. There are three characters, and there is one set, the interior of a hotel room. The whole thing was shot on $2000 digital video cameras and apparently the cost for the entire movie was under $200,000. Obviously they didn't pay Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, and Robert Sean Leonard in cash. What happens when five bozos with $40,000 each can make a movie?
Aside from the fact that this movie is probably the first high-quality demonstration of this phenomenon (no, I haven't seen Blair Witch Project), it is a very well done story. It might legitimately be criticized as not meant for the silver screen. It's a play. Should plays be on film? People with more free time than I have can argue about this. If you want to use your time wisely, go see Tape.
My To-Do List It's been almost a week since my last post, and I got the crazy idea (I think from seeing it on Stephanie's blog once) that putting up my to-do list would give you guys an idea of what's going on with me these days. So here it is.
1. Tell my parents what I want for my Birthday (just show them my Amazon wish list?)
2. Start thinking about (and buying!) Christmas presents for the family
3. Send Christmas cards this year. Do it, damn you. Don't let it slide.
4. Buy for self (new sneakers, a winter hat, a television set?)
5. Finish reading Waiting by Tuesday so I can go to the little book circle I joined (yes, I am the perfect young, cultured New Yorker)
6. E-mail my uncle Farid with the Amazon links to study guides he can buy for the Architecture exam
7. Get an ear-piece for my cell phone so I can talk and drive legally in NY. Oops, should've put this under item #4
8. Get EZ-Pass already
9. Plan a trip to Atlanta for the weekend of December 15th to visit Sam, which means missing Naomi's holiday party
10. Go see Trembling Before G-d (their spelling, not mine) with Naomi, to make up for #9.
11. Pay bills, file all my receipts, bank statements, tax documents, and generally Get Organized
12. Find out when Live is playing in NY and get tickets
13. Have dinner with Courtney
14. Visit Lively (go up to Boston? Ugh.)
15. Move my stocks and money out of Datek and into Quick & Reilly because Datek started charging fees (the bastards)
There it is for now. Oh, while I was blogging I did #6! Three cheers for multi-tasking! posted by Jim Somewhen | Link | Guestbook | Add Comment
Monday, November 05, 2001
(1) Yes, the Yankees embarassed themselves in Game 6. They lost Game 7 too.
Oh well. You can't really argue they deserved to win.
(2) The Xth Annual Content Halloween Party was pretty much a success, and I did indeed find a suitable hat.
(3) Me and Tom are going to have a band, now that I've come up with a great name for it: The Two Yewts.
(4) I'm not going to apply to B-School (this year anyway). The long-term plan is to avoid it alltogether. I'm very happy about this.
(5) I went to D.C. a few weekends ago for a reunion of former Charles G. Koch Fellows, and the 40th Anniversary of the Institute for Humane Studies. What the weekend reminded me most was that I used to read a lot more grad-school material: political theory, sociology, evolution, economics. I'm still very interested in that stuff. There are still questions, things people--the human race as a whole--hasn't figure out. That is the one thing I would be doing if I wasn't doing what I do now. I'm going to see how much of it I can do regardless. ________________________________________ posted by Jim Somewhen | Link | Guestbook | Add Comment
Greg R. Fishbone, (An All Around Good Guy) says my superhero names are:
: The Dinnertime Guardian
: The Neato-Keen-Supercool Cobra
Kinue (hey imouto) is The Golden Mastermind.
Who are you? Find out.
________________________________________
I don't know how long I will go on posting about Israel and Palestine. Even
for me, thinking about this stuff isn't fun and can get tiring. I sometimes feel
like I should apologize to the visitors to my site for assaulting them with my
views on such a controversial issue without providing any forum for
comment or argument. I sometimes feel I ought to apologize just for being
tedious.
Of course, it is sick that murder can be so frequent that it becomes tedious.
Of course, there are two sides to this issue.
We can talk about it in real life sometime, if you care. There's so much to
cover: The Balfour Declaration, The UN Partition Plan, 1948, The Mitchell
Commission Report, Christian Fundamentalists in the U.S. Or, Black
September (a group, not a date), Sabra and Shatila, 1956 and 1967, the
USS Liberty, Barak's "generous offer," even Auschwitz, even the Bible,
even the genetic similarities between Palestinian Arabs and Jews.
I could talk about it for a long time because I've become an expert, and I'm
becoming more of an expert every day. Somehow as if against my will I've
been hijacked by Palestine.
When I was in high school I didn't know what was going on the Middle East.
I thought Jews and Arabs had hated each other for thousands of years. I
thought it was an irrational, tractless ethnic conflict. Me, half Palestinian
and half Egyptian, and that's what I thought. All that is totally wrong, for
those of you who don't know. There are specific reasons for the Middle
East conflict and they don't date back thousands of years, they are a
century old at most. Before then, Jews and Arabs lived in peace.
I used to be oblivious to this. I used to never think about it.
Now I can't hear the words 'Israel' or 'terrorist' without wanting to get into an
argument or wanting to escape getting into one. Now I am so fucking angry
sometimes; and so helpless.
Now I donate hundreds of dollars to Human Rights Watch, to ANERA, to
everyone I can think of.
Now I slowly introduce my friends, one by one, to my obsession. "How do
I break it to him?" I think. "Should I tell her?"
I have other things I care about. Art, sex, science, humor, love. But this
thing, it won't let go of me. It infiltrates everything. Ask me about human
nature and I will tell you that most of us are animals. Ask me about
government and I'll tell you its a tool that's inevitably used to oppress no
matter how noble the framing intent. Ask me about truth and I'll tell you it
is sacrificed every day by people who value power more.
Ask me about self-pity and I'll point you here. ;-)
But so. You're all along for the ride now. Don't ask me anything and I'll
still throw my propaganda at you. Here it is, today's ration of information.
"Both the Arab governments and the intellectuals have failed in important ways ... "
"Above all, the brave secularists who protest at human rights abuses, fight clerical
tyranny, and try to speak and act on behalf of a new modern democratic Arab order
are pretty much left alone in their fight, unassisted by the official culture, their
books and careers sometimes thrown as a sop to mounting Islamic fury. A huge
dank cloud of mediocrity and incompetence hangs over everyone, and this in turn
has given rise to magical thinking and/or a cult of death that is more prevalent than
ever."
"...The real culprit is a system of primary education that is woefully piecemeal,
cobbled together out of the Qur'an, rote exercises based on outdated 50-year-old
textbooks, hopelessly large classes, woefully ill-equipped teachers, and a nearly
total inability to think critically ... this antiquated educational apparatus has
produced the bizarre failures in logic, moral reasoning, and appreciation of human
life that lead either to leaps of religious enthusiasm of the worst kind or to a servile
worship of power."
In my opinion, there are other things that cause a servile worship of power.
Namely, being its victim. A Palestinian who sees Israel's ability to invade his
cities and kill his neighbors at will will learn what power allows and what
weakness permits. The lesson comes through clearly. Maybe education would
add nuance to the bluntness of this reality, maybe it would make
impressionable minds less fertile ground for the rhetoric of violence and sacrifice.
But every day, subjugation plants the seed.
"Similar failures in vision and logic operate on the Israeli side. How it has
come to seem morally possible, and even justifiable, for Israel to maintain and
defend its 34-year occupation fairly boggles the mind ... military occupation is
taken as an acceptable given and is scarcely mentioned; Palestinian terrorism
becomes the cause, not the effect, of violence, even though one side possesses
a modern military arsenal (unconditionally supplied by the US), while the other
is stateless, virtually defenceless, savagely persecuted at will, herded inside
160 little cantons, schools closed, life made impossible. Worst of all, the daily
killing and wounding of Palestinians is accompanied by the growth of Israeli
settlements and the 400,000 settlers who dot the Palestinian landscape without
respite."
"The US has underwritten Israel's intransigence and brutality: there are no two
ways about it -- $92 billion and unending political support, for all the world to
see ... The plain truth of the matter is that anti- Americanism in the Arab and
Muslim world is tied directly to the US's behaviour, lecturing the world on
democracy and justice while openly supporting their exact opposites. There
also is an undoubted ignorance about the United States in the Arab and Islamic
worlds, and there has been far too great a tendency to use rhetorical tirades and
sweeping general condemnation instead of rational analysis and critical
understanding of America. The same is true of Arab attitudes to Israel."
"It is simply inadequate to keep repeating clichés about struggle and resistance
that imply a military programme of action when none is either possible or really
desirable. Our defence against unjust policies is a moral one, and we must first
occupy the moral high ground and then promote understanding of that position
in Israel and the US, something we have never done ... Why do we fear
confronting our oppressors directly, humanely, persuasively, and why do we
keep believing in precisely the vague ideological promises of redemptive violence
that are little different from the poison spewed by Bin Laden and the Islamists?
The answer to our needs is in principled resistance, well-organised civil
disobedience against military occupation and illegal settlement, and an
educational programme that promotes coexistence, citizenship and the worth of
human life."
Yankees continue to amaze. Another last-minute victory over the Diamondbacks, this one in the bottom of the 12th inning.
And, in answer to my adultery rant yesterday and the question I asked about the human race, I found this little tidbit (via Doyce Testerman's page). Go ahead and click on it, there's always time for a little restoring your faith in humanity.
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For the past week I have been avoiding writing a rant about married women who write blogs about being in love with--or having affairs with--other men. I've seen two of these blogs lately: women writing about how they really love their husband, but how Mr. X--his boss--is the one they can't stop thinking about. Or how they don't love their husband at all, he was just a safe choice to marry. Or ...
It makes me sick.
These women didn't have the heart to tell their husbands the truth, so they live a secret life behind his back (except that they post about it to the whole world on their blogs). These women didn't have the courage to be independent, so they married someone just to feel safe. They told this person they loved them, they committed faith and fidelity, but it was all bullshit based on their own fears and insecurities. Eventually it will blow up and hurt the men they made these promises to, if it hasn't already. But the women are willing to have that happen because they are too pathetic to be honest. They can't even own up to their current situation and just leave their husbands for the other men (at least one of the two blogging ladies doesn't have any kids).
When is the human race going to grow up?
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I'm not a big baseball fan, but the New York Yankees tied the World Series vs. Arizona yesterday at two games a piece. Last night's game had Arizona ahead in the 9th until Tino Martinez homered to tie and then Jeter homered in the 10th, with a full-count on him, to win. Pretty impressive for the home town team.
The Annual Content Family Halloween Party (by Egyptians, for Egyptians, heh) is Saturday, at the Content residence as usual. This is probably the 10th or even more than that Halloween Party we've had, so it is a long-standing tradition. Good for us. I'm hoping to go as the Mad Hatter if I can find a suitable hat. ________________________________________ posted by Jim Somewhen | Link | Guestbook | Add Comment
Objectionable Content 
Friday, November 30, 2001
