February 2011
1 post
fighting for freedom: a modern day crusade
Title pretty much says it all. Crusades are now generally acknowledged to be a bad idea, even among Christians. Crusades = killing Arabs to bring Christianity to their lands. Now we’re killing Arabs to bring ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ to their lands. I put those in quotes because forcing people into a ‘free democracy’ doesn’t really make sense (you...
January 2011
2 posts
cousin showed me
http://i.imgur.com/cKUlg.jpg
so good…
a-musing or two.
So Pins has been gearing our conversations towards evolution and consciousness, and a few things popped up in my head I thought I’d share.
So first of all, it seems a pattern for Pins to propose that evolutionary theory can be applied to this or that other field as well (as though expecting disagreement). I thought I’d articulate what I think some authors I’ve read have taken...
December 2010
5 posts
bro's friend found sumthing funny
http://gizmodo.com/5660618/this-is-the-simpsons-title-scene-secretly-created-by-banksy
w000000 banksy
bro found sumthing funny
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shah-nukeIran.jpg
wikileaks
I have no problem with wikileaks. The problem people have is that they do not want a world where our top secret government dealings are made public (for security/diplomatic reasons). I agree with this. However, I believe that if someone is risking death by committing treason to reveal information to the people of the world, then there should be a way for them to reveal that information. Treason...
just so I can listen w.o. looking it up all the...
July 2010
2 posts
aaaah, yes...
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/arab-man-who-posed-as-jew-to-seduce-woman-convicted-of-rape-1.302895
“Arab man who posed as jew to seduce woman convicted of rape”.
-abridged: Arab guy had consensual sex with a woman on the same day he met her, then walked out on her. She went to the police. Dunno details, but rape!
“The court is obliged to protect the public interest...
lil taste o' my brother
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5nk9JfSA0o
June 2010
8 posts
saying I'd like to coin
Peace is the inclination of men’s hearts, war is their habit.
more general thoughts on Sachar/Finkelstein
I think that most of Sachar’s p.o.v. is very closely wound up in the ‘higher standard’ idea, sort of an ‘okay but wrong’. He thinks that on the whole Israel has expansionist policies, not treated its Arab population fairly, and refused to take responsibility for the people it has expelled in the progress of its expansion (the refugees). Sachar looks at these facts,...
General Views of Sachar/Finkelstein contrasted
Sachar portrays Israel as having elected ‘hawkish’ and generally militant leaders out of fear of genocide at the hands of Arab armies. He portrays the orthodox and religious maximalists (those who believe Israel should be restored to all its 2000-year old claim) as swing voters that Israeli political parties have been reluctantly forced to tolerate and empower. Policies of expansion...
the "higher standard"
so my friend josh posted quote i reblogged in the next post. not sure what he believes about it. But it got me thinking about some things. I think the most interesting of these things is not the whole racism thing, but the “higher standard.”
So, has the world held Israel to a higher standard than other countries, how/to what extent/what are the implications?
...
“This sense of widespread shock at Israel’s blockheadedness in the aftermath of...”
– Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, in an outstanding op-ed in the New York Times today that examines the consequences of the myth of Jewish intelligence and how it affects Jews’ perceptions of themselves, as well as gentile...
palin
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/03/sarah-palin-blames-enviro_n_598977.html
back to Israel: Finkelstein/Sachar contrasted
Seeing as how I have to return Finkelstein to the library tomorrow, I thought I’d go through it one last time and highlight some differences between Image/Reality and History of Israel.
First though, a good quote that Finkelstein takes from Ben-Gurion in 1938:
When we say that the Arabs are the aggressors and we defend ourselves - that is only half the truth. As regards our security and...
tea partiers
thought i’d briefly include the following for an outline of tea partier beliefs. I am particularly struck by, “If blacks would only try harder, they would be just as well off as whites” (46% agree)
http://www.washingtonpoll.org/results/June1_teaparty.pdf
May 2010
9 posts
oil spill
wish I knew where to suggest ideas for how to clean it up…not that my idea is likely to be better than what they’re doing, but since oil will stick to non-polar stuff like charcoal, they should make a fine net (a filter) of non-polar material to strain the top of the ocean, and drop a non-polar ‘blanket’ or gigantic filter on the spill, which would just be a huge charcoal...
but he redeems himself a bit on the 67 war
Haven’t gotten far in the chapter, but he’s really making some strong cases here. He and Sachar have very different accounts of this. Sachar largely dismissed as false the Russian intelligence report that Israel intended to attack Syria. (This report was shared with Syria and Egypt, and caused Egypt to move troops to the border). From Finkelstein’s writing it sounds like Israel...
Fineklstein goes a mile too far
This guy is so quick to accuse people of the worst shit. He rarely seems to give enough of a quote for the reader to form his/her own informed opinion. You just have to take it on faith that you’ve been given enough of the big picture. I quote:
“As noted above, labor Zionism was not averse to breaking any moral threshold in fulfillment of its ‘historical mission’. Its...
on the news.
so random, just watch for it.
http://www.ksby.com/player/?video_id=4126&categories=1
wikipedia
btws, I have entered into the realm of those famous elites who write popular history by editing the wikipedia. On the six day war I actually thought it was too Pro-Palestine in terms of whether or not Nasser intended to attack, so I included, from Sachar’s book:
Speaking to the UN General Assembly in September 1960, Nasser had stated that “The only solution to Palestine is that...
early populations
in 1880 there were 450,000 Palestinians. In 1946 there were about 1.3 million (Arabs) or something like that, I dunno, that’s off some random website but it sounds about right.
in 1880 there were 50 million Americans, in 1946 there were 141 million. So doesn’t seem like Israel was such a barren wasteland before Zionists moved there (they started in the 1880s), nor like the increase in...
the problem
People place so much blame on individual leaders of each movement/country/whatever, but I think they neglect to blame the beliefs and voting tendencies of the people (particularly those of Israel, the Arab people get plenty of hate for religious extremism). I have met many who believe that the majority of each population wants mutual peace and understanding, but I’m not so sure. To my view,...
FInkelstein
Hates Joan Peters with a personal vengeance. She does seem (from his evidence) to have been rather off about a great many things, perhaps knowingly so, but still…the hatred…
Israel Palestine 1
Seeing as how I just finished that epic tome, the History of Israel from the Rise of Zionism to the Modern Era. How I frequently have lots of thoughts on this subject, am reading Finkelstein’s Image and Reality of Israel-Palestine conflict (At my Chomsky-honk-brother’s request), and will probably pick up Dershowitz’s case for Israel at some point just to see what he’s...