The Rabbi at the Racetrack

[Hebrew horses, runing from right to left]

A fellow goes to the races for the first time and decides to look over the race horses in the paddock before placing his first bet. While there he sees a rabbi standing beside a horse due to run in the first race. The Rabbi is rocking back and forth in prayer.


He notes the number on the horse and for the heck of it puts a two dollar bet to win on the horse. It comes in paying 9-1.

Collecting his money he goes down to the paddock and sees the Rabbi praying over another horse, this one due to run in the next race. He puts all his winnings on that horse to win and again he wins.


By the end of the eight race his winnings total over five thousand. He decides the ninth will be his last race. He checks which horse the Rabbi is praying over and places all his money on that horse.


This time things are different. The horse the Rabbi was praying over trailed the field, ending up dead last and all the man's winnings are lost.


He spots the Rabbi, runs up to him, and says, " Rabbi, I do not understand. I watched you pray over horses and I bet and won on every horse you prayed over. That is, except on the ninth race. I lost all my money on the horse you were praying over.


The Rabbi looks at the fellow and says, "Tell me, are you Jewish?" The man answers, "Yes. I am Jewish. I am a member of a Reform synagogue." The rabbi replies , " That's the trouble with you Reform. You don't know the difference between a brocha and a kaddish."

Tipsy Ramblings

[Georges Saint-Pierre, the Pride of Montreal]

I am in the enviable circumstance of people conflating their good times at wedding celebrations with the excellence of my product, my house. Somehow, their good times become intertwined with where they had them, the part of the event they paid for.

Even as we speak there is a roar of a twenty voices of Quebecois geniality and family pleasure from the other side of the pocket doors. They have asked for barbecue implements and got them. I had to clean the damned barbecue for the first time. Disgusting. Even so I like having a barbecue. I may even use it myself some day.

Well that didn't last long..,,

[Muhammad preaching. Notice the dagger. Used for inflicting peace on his opponents.]

From today's NY Times -

At least six Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded in the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Friday when Hamas police officers stormed a mosque that had been taken over by a group of Islamic militants.

The group’s leader had declared during Friday Prayer at the mosque that Hamas was too liberal and that from now on, Rafah, and soon all of Gaza, would be ruled by pure religious law. “We declare the birth of the Islamic emirate,” he said.

Hamas, an Islamist but Palestinian nationalist group that has ruled Gaza for the past two years, sent dozens of security officers to the mosque, where gun battles went on into the evening. Medics at Rafah Hospital said there were 6 dead and about 50 wounded, though some reports put the death toll as high as 16. At least one Hamas policeman was killed.

The rebel group calls itself the Warriors of God, and its leader is Abdel Latif Moussa, known to his followers as Abu Noor al-Maqdisi. He arrived Friday at the Rafah mosque with more than 100 followers, many with long beards and flowing hair and heavily armed, according to witnesses.

Hamas police and security forces followed quickly and set up checkpoints outside Rafah as the battle for the mosque continued.

Warriors of God is a Palestinian group based in Rafah, on Gaza’s southern edge, with an unclear number of followers. It apparently has its own smuggling tunnels from the Egyptian Sinai, allowing it to bring in goods and weapons.

Israel has alleged that some foreign veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been getting into Gaza, but Hamas authorities have dismissed those accusations, saying the issue was purely a Palestinian one.

Hamas has insisted that it would bring order to Gaza’s streets despite a split with its rival, the Palestinian Authority, which is based on the West Bank, and despite an Israeli-led embargo on the movement of goods and people.

It is just awful that Hamas has been attacked by Muslim fanatics. [snicker] One certainly hopes this conflict can be resolved without further bloodshed. [chuckle] It would be sad to see honorable people like Hamas hoist upon their own petard of Muslim zeal and violence. [guffaw] A few people seem to have momentarily lost sight of Islam being the religion of peace. [chortle] It is not as though the leader of the Warriors of God, Abdel Latif Moussa, is a megalomaniac who has declared himself emir of all the world, starting with the town of Rafah. [giggle] I am sure he has just been misquoted. [snort]

Law and Order

[George III, King of America]

From the NY Times today, describing 20 killings in Dagestan in the Russian Caucasus -

Most of the violence centers on fighting between the police and various radical Islamist or more secular separatist organizations, some of which are remnants of the militant groups that fought federal forces in Chechnya’s two wars. Also common is violence among organized crime groups and competing ethnic clans.

So much of our history has been devoted to curbing too-strong governments that we do not think of the consequences of too-weak governments. The people of Dagestan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and until recently the West Bank, think about them more often.

Dignity and Respect

Which is the core of radical ideology. Everybody and even everything is entitled to dignity and respect. Which is so much fun to say and sounds so right. But is it true?

Where does the entitlement come from? Is it a right? Where do rights come from? Are they G_d-given? Are radicals, who rarely believe in G_d other than some sort of New Age vagueness, in good faith in claiming the agency of a deity in Whom they do not believe? If they are not in good faith, i.e. lying, why are they entitled to be listened to at all?

Many, perhaps most, radicals profess at least an interest in Buddhism, though almost always painfully, embarrassingly, ignorant of it. And Buddhism is quite pointedly atheistic. Not agnostic - atheistic. In Buddhism the underlying reality behind the world of appearance is the Void - emptiness, nada, zippidee do dah, nothing, zip. Not Hashem, not any system or order, and certainly not rights or entitlements.

So Goat's assertion that there is an entitlement to dignity and respect seems at best groundless, at worst hypocritical. When examined, the fundamental proposition is simply a bare assertion unsupported by any rationale. It is a prejudice. A superstition.

Are mosquitoes entitled to respect? Or entitled to be swatted for their bloodsucking? Are pneumococcus bacteria that invade the lungs to be treated with honor? Or treated with antibiotics?

Of course this is academic when speaking of insects or germs. The real debate is whether all people are entitled to dignity and respect - without regard to their actions or merits.

The seminal image in this discussion is Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks, for the benefit of the young and ignorant, that is to say the Irish, according to legend was the African-American cleaning lady who refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus in 1955. By so doing she sparked the Montgomery bus boycott of that year, led by a young preacher named Martin Luther King. Which rapidly blossomed into the Civil Rights movement. According to the legend, her reason for refusing was that she had worked hard all day as a cleaning lady and her feet hurt.

So the question has been proposed as "Is a humble cleaning lady entitled to dignity and respect?" In the dual context of a religion in which the meek inherit the earth (just not this earth) and a much spoken-of but rarely applied notion of the dignity of labor, the answer was yes.

Never mind that the legend is a lie. So far from a cleaning lady, Rosa Parks had been for 10 years the Secretary (i.e. head) of the Montgomery branch of the NAACP. Rosa Parks was neither meek nor was she labor. Her act was not that of a tired cleaning lady but a deliberate political provocation by the head of a political organization representing half the population of Montgomery. The Montgomery bus boycott was not a spontaneous uprising but a planned political campaign.

The fact that the legend is a lie does not change the equities and inequities of the struggle over integration. But it does show that politicians, even those representing downtrodden minorities, are lying scumbags. Hardly a revelation. And that any claim of vast moral superiority, such as that claimed by the Civil Rights Movement, is generally based on wanton and shameless lying. And, one might add, on the willingness 0f large numbers of the public to be duped. And it shows the power of a fun lie as opposed to a boring truth.

But that is an aside. The real question is not if Rosa Parks, whether cleaning lady or opposition politician, is entitled to dignity and respect. It is whether the guy who got on the bus in hopes of snatching a cleaning lady's purse is also.

Put differently, are dignity and respect things to be earned in some way? Do they flow from merit? Does one have to do or be something in order to deserve them? Or are they automatic?

And is everyone equally entitled to dignity and respect? Is a purse snatcher who preys on the poor entitled to the same dignity and respect as someone hard-working, underprivileged, harming no one, someone like the imaginary Rosa Parks, whose pitiful wages he steals?

Is the pathetic loser, given every opportunity but who nevertheless descends to exploiting and abusing everyone around him, entitled to the same respect and dignity as Mother Theresa? Whether the exploitation and abuse are local and personal like individual junkies or national like Idi Amin, are the undeserving to be accorded equal dignity and respect with the meritorious? If so, why?

The Panic in Needle Park

[Julie Andrews explaining fellatio]

Last night I saw 'The Panic in Needle Park' on a Netflix DVD. It is a "classic" because it is from 1971, before many of the reviewers were born, and because it stars a very young Al Pacino. Nothing else recommends it. For those of us who were alive and semi-conscious in 1971 and not that impressed with the supposed gifts of Al Pacino (Is it possible that bellowing is not the same as dramatic acting? That being the beneficiary of great cinematography isn't either?), nothing recommends it.

'Needle Park' is Sherman Square in New York, a hangout for junkies. And that is what the movie is about - junkies. There is some phony pretense that the movie is gritty cinema-verite about what low-lifes and losers junkies are. But the real moral is that junkies are cool and live more interesting lives than non-junkies who have to do boring stuff like work and not being in jail or passed out on filthy mattresses.

Non-junkies also do boring stuff like have sex. There is an oblique reference to the fact that junkies lose their libido, but the sound track is so poor that one can't quite hear what Pacino is mumbling. He appears to be promising to have sex with his girlfriend "tomorrow", a promise as good as any other junkie promise. But Loathsome Al can't start his career as Dickless Al, and it is hard to make a life without sex glamorous*, so it is glossed over. And we aren't trying to glamorize junkies to sell tickets are we? Of course not. This is honest fearless cinema-verite, remember?

In spite of endless offensive lingering closeup shots of people injecting heroin into their veins, and the glamorization of drug addiction, theft, prostitution, and ratting out your friends, this piece de squat is rated PG. Which shows what's wrong with the whole motion picture rating system. It is all about repressed sexual dysfunctionals pressing their anti-sexual attitudes on everyone else.

If one is going to keep children from seeing things one doesn't want them to do, sex is the last thing one should keep from them. I would be pleased as orgasm if my grand-nephews and -nieces never encountered any form of violence all their lives long. It would be just great with me if they never saw anything but vaccine injected into themselves or anyone else. Conversely, it is my fervent wish that they each find someone they love and spend the rest of their lives screwing their brains out with that person.

If I ran the circus, movies with injected drugs would be X-rated, violence would be XX-rated, and consensual fucking would be G-rated.

Jack's overall rating of 'The Panic in Needle Park': Feh.



*Which is what 'The Sound of Music' is all about - sex. Julie Andrews goes from a convent full of nuns to the castle of a man with twelve children. There is one and only one way to have twelve children (anyone about to mention turkey basters or in vitro, kindly shut the hell up) . And she promptly marries him. Why would that be? There is some chatter about Nazis and singing but that is only to maintain the pretense that the world's most wholesome movie is not all about getting it on between the sheets.

Other Good Things

[Scotland's royal coat of arms with national motto
'My Country, Drunk or Sober']

Among the not-so-good things in life are the annoyances of age, things that hurt when there is no good reason for them to.

Fortunately, among the good things that come with age is scotch whiskey (when is it 'whisky' instead?). It works much like codeine. Having taken it, it either doesn't hurt anymore or one doesn't care.

The cretins at Trader Joe's apparently bought their supply when sterling was over $2. So their prices reflect what they paid for it, rather than the more modest price of pounds today - $1.62.

Since I use it for medicinal purposes, it seems only right that Medicare should pay for it, no? But they won't. Write your congressthing now to right this inequity. Free the El Cerrito One! Involuntary Sobriety is Tyranny! Or something.

In spite of its high price ($30) I recommend Trader Joe's house brand 12 year old single malt 'Imperial'. Their same price, same age, same brand, 'Aberlour' is not as good.

Doughnut Peaches

Not being among the downtrodden (relatively speaking) I enjoy the better things in life. Among them are ripe doughnut peaches. They are in season now and they are wonderful. Get a bagful and leave them on a kitchen sideboard in the sun for a few days. Eat warm, possibly with milk. The rumor that they are peches beignets in French is false.

Wal-Mart Again

The standard denunciation of Wal-Mart is class warfare against the poor. Wal-Mart is where people with crappy jobs can afford to buy shoes, shirts, and steam irons, without saving up for weeks. "But it's so un-hip" the braindead whinny. Being poor is un-hip too.

For tens of millions of people in the United States and Canada, the choices available for ordinary consumer goods are buy it at Wal-Mart or don't buy it at all.

On the other side it is an outlet for industrial goods made by poor people in China and India. People with crappy factory jobs that provide standards of living vastly better than their only alternative - staying on small over-crowded farms if they're lucky, being landless agricultural laborers if they're not. Wanting to work in a factory is way un-hip. Poverty to the verge of starvation for tens of millions of people is even more un-hip.

Those, rather than which coffee beans are more politically correct, are the actual issues faced by hundreds of millions of people in the US and abroad.

OK, one last kick at the Arabs then I'll stop - for now

[Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal]

From the Near East Report--

Arabs Spurn Obama

In recent weeks, U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell has been meeting with Israeli leaders in an effort to resolve policy differences between Washington and Jerusalem on the issue of settlements. Reports indicate that the United States and Israel “have significantly improved the atmosphere” between them and are discussing their differences closely and in private, as one would expect from two allies.

The same cannot be said of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and most Arab states, which have not shown any interest in bridging their differences with the United States and reaching out for peace with Israel.

In fact, PA President Mahmoud Abbas has raised his demands on Israel higher than ever before. He has refused to talk to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu until Israel completely freezes all construction in areas east of the Green Line (the 1949 Armistice line between Israel and Jordan).

Abbas won’t even agree to ask the Arab states to take small confidence-building measures toward Israel. “We can’t talk to the Arabs until Israel agrees to freeze settlements and recognize the two-state solution,” Abbas said. “Until then we can’t talk to anyone.”

Abbas now says that he has no incentive to speak to his Israeli counterpart. “I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements,” he said. “Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality...the people are living a normal life.”

Most Arab leaders are even more obstinate than Abbas. In a visit to Washington last week, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal bluntly said no to President Obama’s request for gestures to Israel. Instead, al-Faisal insisted that Israel’s acceptance of the Arab Peace Initiative remains the only path to peace.

The initiative, first proposed in Beirut in 2002 and reaffirmed in the 2007 Arab League summit in Riyadh, calls on Israel—as a prerequisite for peace and “normal relations”—to completely withdraw from all territories captured in the 1967 Six-Day War and accept a “just” and “agreed upon” solution to the Palestinian refugee problem on the basis of U.N. Resolution 194, which calls for the “return” of refugees to Israel.

“The question is not what the Arab world will offer,” al-Faisal said of Obama’s strategy. “The question really is: what will Israel give in exchange for this comprehensive offer?”

The Israeli government has welcomed the Arab initiative, but insists that the peace plan must be negotiated among the parties involved rather than presented as an all-or-nothing ultimatum. “If these proposals are not final, they can create an atmosphere in which a comprehensive peace can be reached,” Netanyahu said.

Most Arab leaders are publicly rallying behind the Saudi position. Kuwait’s emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, and Jordan’s foreign minister, Nasser Joudeh, both came to Washington and said Israel is responsible for the lack of peace in the region. (There is one notable Arab contrarian: The crown prince of Bahrain, Shaikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, has written that Arab leaders need to be willing to talk to the Israeli public about the Arab Peace Initiative in order to “highlight the benefits of a genuine peace.”)

President Obama would obviously like to see more Arab leaders act like al-Khalifa. In his Cairo speech on June 4, Obama said that “the Arab states must recognize that the Arab Peace Initiative was an important beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities. The Arab-Israeli conflict should no longer be used to distract the people of Arab nations from other problems.”

What could Saudi Arabia do to show Obama that it is sincere about peace? Allow Israeli civilian aircraft to pass through their airspace. Terminate the Arab League boycott of Israel. Establish trade relations, cultural exchanges, postal routes and telecommunications lines with the Jewish state. Include Israeli diplomats in regional meetings. Invite Israelis to participate in educational programs and sporting events. Visit Jerusalem and speak directly to the Israeli people.

Many members of Congress are urging Saudi Arabia to take some of those steps. Reps. Brad Sherman (D-CA) and Edward Royce (R-CA) sent a letter to Saudi King Abdullah, signed by 226 House members, calling on him to follow the example set by Egypt and Jordan, both of which opened ties with Israel before the signing of a peace treaty. Sens. Evan Bayh (D-IN) and James Risch (R-IN) are circulating a similar letter to President Obama—already signed by more than half the Senate—emphasizing the need for Arab states to take dramatic steps for peace.

Mitchell, a dedicated and persistent diplomat, understands the challenges of Mideast peacemaking and has sounded optimistic about his private conversations with Saudi leaders. But so far, there is no public indication by Saudi Arabia—a key player in the Arab world and a country with a longstanding alliance with the United States—that 61 years of rejecting Israel is long enough.

It is a rule that whenever Israel is in trouble, she can rely on the Arabs to bail her out by being idiots and assholes. This time is no exception. They are dealing with an American president whose middle name is 'Hussein' and they still can't grasp the idea that they can't get a settlement without negotiation, that the side that has lost six wars in a row doesn't get to unilaterally dictate peace terms.

More Muslim Weirdness

It occurs to me that since Muslim men can marry four wives, does it mean that when they double-date that ten people go out together? How does it work if one gets lucky with dates 2 and 4 but shot down by 1 and 3?

Salam Fayyad

Tom Friedman's column in the New York Times today--

In 2002, the U.N. Development Program released its first ever Arab Human Development Report, which bluntly detailed the deficits of freedom, women’s empowerment and knowledge-creation holding back the Arab world. It was buttressed with sobering statistics: Greece alone translated five times more books every year from English to Greek than the entire Arab world translated from English to Arabic; the G.D.P. of Spain was greater than that of all 22 Arab states combined; 65 million Arab adults were illiterate. It was a disturbing picture, bravely produced by Arab academics.

Coming out so soon after 9/11, the report felt like a diagnosis of all the misgovernance bedeviling the Arab world, creating the pools of angry, unemployed youth, who become easy prey for extremists.

Well, the good news is that the U.N. Development Program and a new group of Arab scholars last week came out with a new Arab Human Development report. The bad news: Things have gotten worse — and many Arab governments don’t want to hear about it.

This new report was triggered by a desire to find out why the obstacles to human development in the Arab world have “proved so stubborn.” What the roughly 100 Arab authors of the 2009 study concluded was that too many Arab citizens today lack “human security — the kind of material and moral foundation that secures lives, livelihoods and an acceptable quality of life for the majority.” A sense of personal security — economic, political and social — “is a prerequisite for human development, and its widespread absence in Arab countries has held back their progress.”

The authors cite a variety of factors undermining human security in the Arab region today — beginning with environmental degradation — the toxic combination of rising desertification, water shortages and population explosion. In 1980, the Arab region had 150 million people. In 2007, it was home to 317 million people, and by 2015 its population is projected to be 395 million. Some 60 percent of this population is under the age of 25, and they will need 51 million new jobs by 2020.

Another persistent source of Arab human insecurity is high unemployment. “For nearly two and half decades after 1980, the region witnessed hardly any economic growth,” the report found. Despite the presence of oil money (or maybe because of it), there is a distinct lack of investment in scientific research, development, knowledge industries and innovation. Instead, government jobs and contracts dominate. Average unemployment in the Arab region in 2005 was 14.4 percent, compared with 6.3 percent for the rest of the world. A lot of this is because of a third source of human insecurity: autocratic and unrepresentative Arab governments, whose weaknesses “often combine to turn the state into a threat to human security, instead of its chief support.”

The whole report would have left me feeling hopeless had I not come to Ramallah, the seat of Palestinian government in the West Bank, to find some good cheer. I’m serious.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to the wider Middle East what off-Broadway is to Broadway. It is where all good and bad ideas get tested out first. Well, the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, a former I.M.F. economist, is testing out the most exciting new idea in Arab governance ever. I call it “Fayyadism.”

Fayyadism is based on the simple but all-too-rare notion that an Arab leader’s legitimacy should be based not on slogans or rejectionism or personality cults or security services, but on delivering transparent, accountable administration and services.

Fayyad, a former finance minister who became prime minister after Hamas seized power in Gaza in June 2007, is unlike any Arab leader today. He is an ardent Palestinian nationalist, but his whole strategy is to say: the more we build our state with quality institutions — finance, police, social services — the sooner we will secure our right to independence. I see this as a challenge to “Arafatism,” which focused on Palestinian rights first, state institutions later, if ever, and produced neither.

Things are truly getting better in the West Bank, thanks to a combination of Fayyadism, improved Palestinian security and a lifting of checkpoints by Israel. In all of 2008, about 1,200 new companies registered for licenses here. In the first six months of this year, almost 900 have registered. According to the I.M.F., the West Bank economy should grow by 7 percent this year.

Fayyad, famous here for his incorruptibility, says his approach is “to tell people who you are, what you are about and what you intend to do and then actually do it.” At a time when all the big ideologies have failed to deliver for Arabs, Fayyad says he wants a government based on “legitimacy by achievement.”

Something quite new is happening here. And given the centrality of the Palestinian cause in Arab eyes, if Fayyadism works, maybe it could start a trend in this part of the world — one that would do the most to improve Arab human security — good, accountable government.

This is shockingly false. We have it from no less an authority than the Face on the Barroom Floor that the problems in the Palestinian territories are caused by Israeli occupation. Especially in Gaza which has no Israeli occupation.

One wonders if the origins of Fayyadism have anything to do with the proximity of a country in which honest efficient accountable government is the norm.

But that certainly could not be true. We have it on the authority of the Jonathan Swift of Our Day that the current investigation of a politician (Avigdor Lieberman) for financial improprieties proves that that country is corrupt. From which we can readily conclude that the lack of investigation and prosecution of officials throughout the Arab world is conclusive proof that there is no corruption at all anywhere there - an obvious triumph for Islam.

Think about it - the unexpected presence of ONE honest Palestinian official is taken by the New York Times as a sign of hope for the entire Arab world. And, absurdly, they're probably right.

More Peaceful Palestinian Intentions

[Abbas in front of picture of famous truth-teller, Yasser Arafat]

from Haaretz today -

Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says his people must not "mar their legitimate struggle with terror" and that while his government seeks peace with Israel, it reserves the right to resort to "resistance."

Abbas spoke Tuesday to about 2,200 Fatah delegates gathered in the West Bank. The meeting is the first first convention held by the movement in two decades.

Presumably he said this with a straight face.

People On Our Side

from Le Monde [roughly translated] -

A group of angry Muslims today killed six Christians, including a child, and wounded ten others whom they accused of having profaned the Koran. The agressors also burned forty houses and a church in a village in the west of Pakistan, according to an official source.
...
[The Minister of Minorities said] "I have been told that they were burned alive."
...
Pakistani television showed the police using tear gas to disperse the angry crowd.

Note that the police attempted to disperse the crowd, not to arrest anyone.

These are our allies, the people we hope will remain in power lest Al Qaeda and the Taliban take power.

Why Girl Hookers are Better than Boy Hookers

[Pickens-financed Swift Boat Ad - 2004]

from the Washington Post -

Five years after he put his money behind the Swift Boat ads that helped tank John Kerry’s presidential campaign, Senate Democrats gave T. Boone Pickens a warm welcome at their weekly policy lunch Thursday.

Pickens' spokesperson said "Boone’s grateful for the impressive turnout of Democrats at the Democrat Policy Committee yesterday and for the interest they have shown in helping address this problem.”

[Minnesota Senator Al] Franken, who was seated talking to someone else, did not stand when Pickens said hello. Instead, Franken began to berate him about the billionaire’s financing

of the Swift Boat ads in 2004.

According to a source, the confrontation grew heated.

Said Franken spokeswoman Jess McIntosh: “It was a lively conversation.”

[T]he thought of Pickens being invited to a Democratic event angered some on the Hill and in the liberal blogs.

One apparent difference between street corner prostitutes and Senatorial ones is that the street corner variety won't let you beat them up twice, even for money.

The Protest Marches in Dublin

[Dublin, a city of outraged conscience]

This weeks thousand of protestors from across the political spectrum of the Irish capital took to the streets in angry protests sparked by the massacres in Urumchi in East Turkestan, called Xinjiang by the Chinese government.

The Chinese government admits to 197 deaths, mostly of indigenous Uighurs. Uighur sources, though understandably unable to be exact, say that in fact thousands of Uighurs have been killed by the Chinese authorities and in inter-communal clashes. Though reports are sketchy, it appears that in response to Uighur attacks, Han Chinese residents retaliated by killing a number of Uighurs. Most Han residents of Urumchi are settlers who have immigrated to the Uighur province of Xinjiang since China took control of it in 1949.

The violent killing of hundreds or thousands of innocent Uighur Muslims by Chinese authorities and settlers, sparked angry demonstrations all over Europe. In Dublin, the Dail voted a motion condemning Chinese aggression and withdrawing the Irish embassy from Beijing. The Irish Academics Association main executive body voted to suspend all contacts with Chinese academics.

The Irish National Student Association voted to boycott all Chinese-made goods. When it was pointed out that that included all iPods, cellphones, Blackberries, PDA's, Gameboys, Wii's, laptops, running shoes, and clothes, the resolution was amended to add the language, "in principle". Questions from the floor of "What principle?" were ruled out of order and the amended resolution was passed.

At the same time the Irish Socialist Party voted to divest from China in protest. As with the resolution of the Student Association, questions from the floor of "Divest what?" were ruled out of order. Sources indicated that the objectors were apparently the same persons as had objected during the Student Association vote. Their leader, Yitzhaak ben Diogenes, was escorted out of the hall by ushers.

In a public response interview, a Dublin-ite who gave his name as "Christy" was disturbed from his slumbers on the floor of a local alehouse. We asked him his opinion of the Urumchi massacres. Lying amid the sawdust and vomit, he opined, "Fuckin' Japs!" and passed out again.

Across town in another public response interview we spoke to a Dublin man named Damien. Damien said he regarded the massacre as a bad thing because it distracted public attention from real atrocities like Jews making Arabs wait in line at checkpoints to have their identity cards checked.

Israeli Intransigence

NETANYAHU: ARAB INITIATIVE CAN BE BASIS FOR PEACE Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the Arab states to negotiate with Israel on the basis of the Arab League's peace initiative, hinting that certain alterations in it would help to advance peace in the region, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported. "We appreciate the efforts by Arab states to advance the peace initiative," Netanyahu said. "If these proposals are not final, they can create an atmosphere in which a comprehensive peace can be reached." The prime minister added, "we hope in the months ahead to forge peace with the Palestinians and to expand that into a vision of a broader regional peace." Throughout its history, Israel has repeatedly demonstrated its commitment to resolving the conflict with all of its neighbors by taking risks for peace.

The Two-State Solution

GAZA CHILDREN STAGE MOCK ABDUCTION OF ISRAELI SOLDIER In a further sign of radicalization in the Gaza Strip, children in Hamas-run summer camps recently reenacted the abduction of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit in the presence of top Hamas officials, The Jerusalem Post reported. "This sends a message," one Israeli defense official said. "This is Hamas's way of showing Palestinian children that kidnapping soldiers is the correct way of life." Shalit was seized more than three years ago when Palestinian terrorists tunneled into Israel, abducted him and killed two other soldiers. In the past, Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups have used summer camps to train children to fire rockets, rally praise for Palestinian "martyrs" and preach an anti-Israel and anti-Jewish worldview.

Isn't a Blue Dog just a Blue Sonofabitch?

[Watchdog of the people's interests? Well, no.]

from an article about the health care reform bill, in today's LA Times -

The deal, worked out between a group of fiscally conservative [House] Democrats and Rep.Henry A. Waxman (D-BeverlyHills), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, changes the way a proposed government-run insurance plan would operate in order to allay concerns that it could crowd out private insurers.

This is excellent because it demonstrates what is meant by "fiscally conservative". It means "belonging to, or under the control of, business interests". These are Democrats mind you, the Party of Change. The Republicans, also fiscally conservative, are generally worse.

Apparently it is the considered opinion and honest, impartial judgment of this group of legislators that the problem with health care is that the insurance companies may not make enough money in the future.

At what point one wonders, does sacrificing the welfare of the nation to the interests of the few become treason? If not in law, then in fact?

Yikes! I am starting to sound like Ann Coulter. Forget I said anything.

Not As Important

as several thousand gay people being unable to marry is that tens of millions of Americans do not have medical coverage. Insignificant as that is compared to the unmarried state of the nation's gaiety, the President devoted a press conference to the issue anyway.

It is 54 minutes long, which is a long time to listen to even a good speaker like Mr. Obama talk about a subject notorious for its platitudes and boring technicalities. Nevertheless it is a huge subject and one that will loom large this year. It is good to hear the administration's side from the horse's mouth. Or if you don't care for the President, from the horse's ass. If 54 minutes is too long to endure, listen to the first eight minutes in which he summarizes the administration's position.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/The-Presidents-Press-Conference-Full-Video/?e=8&ref=text

One thing the President comes close to saying but never does say, is that most of the problem is the insurance companies. Doctors and nurses are expensive but they contribute to people's medical care. The pharmaceuticals companies are demonstrably greedy heartless bastards making unjustifiable profits, but they contribute to people's medical care. Hospitals and their staffs, medical labs and their staffs, medical equipment providers, are all expensive but they contribute to people's medical care.

Insurance companies make huge profits while contributing nothing to anyone's medical care. Worse yet, they actively prevent large numbers of people from getting medical care in order to reduce their risk of paying out. Yet accepting risk of paying out is the sole reason why there should be insurance companies at all.

The President elected to bring about "Change" is unwilling to change anything fundamental in what he publicly claims is the area of American life most in need of change. In his press conference he said his plan would create a public payer in competition with the insurance companies to "at least keep the insurance companies honest".

So far from keeping the insurance companies honest, this proposal is sure to enable them to fob off bad risks with pre-existing conditions onto the government while keeping only healthy low-risk insureds themselves. So far from keeping the insurance companies honest this is sure to mean that the insurance companies are free to cancel the insurance of any of their insureds who has the temerity to get sick. So far from keeping the insurance companies honest it makes them immune from suit by the canceled insured. He or she has a viable federally funded alternative, so in theory (and only in theory) suffers no monetary damages he can sue to recover.

The analogy is the private schools and the public schools. Every problem child, every disrupter, every slow learner, every kid whom the private schools don't want, gets fobbed off on the public schools who are forbidden to turn anyone away. So the well-funded private schools, rid of the more expensive problem children, do just fine. The public schools, with over-taxed budgets and full of the private schools' rejects, provide an ever-worsening sham of an education. They are even further handicapped because hamstrung by racial politics and polarization.

Can one imagine the relationship between the insured of private insurers and those of the public entity will be any better? Indeed, because so much money is involved, it figures to be a great deal worse.

When the candidate, and now President, spoke of "Change", we just assumed that it would be for the better. We appear to have been mistaken.

The Most Important Issue

[Connecticut newlyweds]

Real wages as a percent of GNP ( the workers' piece of the pie) have been falling for 30 years. Upward of 20 million American children have no health insurance. Most American schools have shown either static or declining educational results for the same 30 years. The nation is ever more dependent on imported oil. We are embroiled in two wars, one of which the "peace candidate" president last month in Cairo promised to extend to 2012, and the other indefinitely. The assets of most large American financial corporations seem to have mysteriously gone missing. Millions of people have lost their jobs as the economic contraction continues. The federal government is going ever deeper into an apparently unsustainable debt . We are ever more dependent on China and Japan for our economic survival. One is our global rival for world power and we have nuked the other. Iran is developing a nuclear weapon and long range missiles and has just re-elected Ahmadinejad.

Is gay marriage really the most important issue before the nation?

The Ballad of Rachel Corrie

[Corrie in Gaza burning paper replica of US flag ]

click on link :
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=368_1231135584


.

Today's Quote

[President of France Nicholas Sarkozy with wife Carla]

"It's good to be President"

.

Travel can be so narrowing

Jack writes:

I can't believe how many asians there are in this place. And everyone is eating and stinking of fish. You would think that I could at least find a decent fish taco, but noooo. Lots of rice but no refried beans.

At this point, even the Irish are looking good.

Jack is getting Oriented

Received this from Jack:

Because of the recent misunderstanding in Urumchi in which 197 or more people were misunderstanded to death, the Chinese government has closed access to Facebook and Google's Blogspot for now. The duration of "for now" has not been made public.

Could you post something on the Scenic Route blog and also on my wall in Facebook to the effect that I have not abandoned you all, but rather that I am momentarily indisposed.

Public Service Announcement

Hello All,

While making a Great Leap Forward, something backward occurred. I have not forgotten you but am indisposed at the moment.

More latter,

Jack

Machines versus Ladies

I was thinking of the way technology changes even our intimate social lives - curiously through the mediation of industrial corporations. In some ways it has been at the expense of women's competitive advantage over men.

When sex was dangerous because of the risks of pregnancy and death during childbirth, and of incurable venereal diseases, women did not consent lightly. Which gave them enormous leverage in negotiating consent. Pharmaceutical corporations now provide products which abate those risks to nil. And women's corresponding leverage of refusing repeatedly without the swain soon seeking greener pastures has vanished. Women have become free, but at the cost of their leverage over men.

Women used also to bribe with prepared food. Now frozen food sellers and microwave manufacturers offer the same. Women are free from having to cook, but again at the cost of their leverage over men.

At the beginning of feminism there was the issue of competing with men, and whether women could or should. Little did they realize that in some ways their real competitors would be corporations. To whom they are losing badly.

Alive and Well and Living in Gotham

The New York Times today -

Of course, Mr. Netanyahu has yet to endorse the two-state solution or even the road map agreed to by previous Israeli governments, which were not oral commitments, but actual signed and public agreements.

Curiously, Mr. Netanyahu says he has. I think what we have here is the Pravda of the Big Apple engaging in what is known in the reporting business as "a lie". On the front page.

My Day So Far

I have rented out my house to an Iranian wedding party for the coming week. When the house is rented I live in the mother-in-law 1 bdrm apt on the side. The Iranians were great. They even invited me to the reception.

AND THEN the main kitchen sink backed up this morning after somebody took a shower upstairs. I did all the denial moves with Drano before calling RotoRooter. The RotoRooter guy is Kennard. He has been here before and I have seen him work. He has a stammer but is an artist with the giant snake machine.

What freaks me out a mile is that the groom's father was looking forward to showing off his cooking by preparing a huge Iranian family feast for everyone. Instead he wound up having to call a caterer. For his son's wedding....

I feel like complete schmuck though there is nothing really I could have done differently, and Kennard did everything that could be wished. It was just bad luck but I still feel responsible. I am obviously going to wind up picking up part of the tab for the caterer which may cost most or all of the rental. Sigh.

LATER NOTE
Upon reflection I suspect there was something I could have done differently. A day or two earlier at Costco I decided to buy the fancy triple thickness toilet paper to add a tone of small luxuries and considerateness for my tenants. It is entirely possible that that led to the drain clog. Yet another demonstration of the maxim, "No good deed goes unpunished."

Replaced with cheap-feeling thin TP. Package says, "Septic tank safe" which presumably means that it is especially water soluble. A $340 lesson in label-reading.

Euclid Alone Has Looked On Beauty Bare

This is the kind of photography I want to learn how to do - to see abstractions in real life -

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=10091276

ABBAS REFUSES TO HOLD PEACE TALKS WITH ISRAEL

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reiterated on Sunday his refusal to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu without preconditions, despite the Israeli leader's repeated calls for an immediate resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, The Jerusalem Post reported.

"Israel must recognize the two-state solution and stop all settlement activities in order to resume peace talks over final status issues," Abbas said. Netanyahu, who has called for "two states for two peoples," noted last week that Israel has "removed many roadblocks; we decided to increase the operating hours of the Allenby Bridge for more goods; and I've decided to advance a series of projects with the Palestinians to promote peace. But all these efforts can only bring us to a certain point, and the results will be multiplied a dozen-fold if there is cooperation from the other side."

Nuestro Negrito

[Jimmy Hoffa is alive and well and living in Honduras under the name Enrique Ortez Colindres]

My fellow crackers,
The Honduran foreign minister, Enrique Ortez Colindres, recently criticized President Obama, referring to him as "Ese negrito que no sabe nada de nada," which has been translated as "that little black man who knows nothing" or "that little black man who doesn't know anything."

I am so glad that the first public figure to blurt out something racist about Obama turns out to be a foreigner, not an American.

But it is an opportunity to reflect on the current situation of American racism. Much is written about the current condition other American institutions like education, medicine, politics, literature, and so on. Why not about racism?

The emergence of Barack Obama has been a pivotal development. In his persona he has involuntarily provided wedge issues for both sides.

The traditional position of black people to biological racism is that the races are biologically equal (in spite of copious visual and anthropometric information to the contrary).

The more modern "cultural pride" position involved wearing dashikis and talking about African heritage as though modern Africa were not a dreary row of post-colonial impoverished AIDS-riddled corrupt dictatorships.

One effect of the cultural pride position was to add a new link to the chain of euphemisms running from the post-civil war "freedman" to "black" to turn of the century "colored" to "negro" to "minority", back to "black". Collectively "ghetto" was borrowed from the Jews and quickly morphed to "community". And now "African American", with the attendant quibble about whether the phrase should contain a hyphen or not.

The notion was that African Americans were just another immigrant group like the Italian-Americans or the Polish-Americans (but unlike Irish-American - it was not pejorative). The difficulty of the analogy was that there actually was little or no heritage actually handed down from Africa. Indeed unlike Italy or Poland, Africa is a continent, not a country. A geographic description, not a national one. The difficulty was illustated by the Arthur Haley in "Roots" and the almost magical coincidence of finding recollection of Kunta Kinte on both sides of the Atlantic.

In fact, the people it is meant to describe is one that come into existence here in the New World, not in Africa. Like the Brazilians, the Mexicans, the Cubans, and indeed the Americans. The metaphorical nature of the expression was brought home by the rise of Barack Obama, an American whose father was an African.

African Americans were uncomfortable with Obama during the primaries because he clearly wasn't one of them. Their historical experience was the poorer areas of big American cities, preceded by rural poverty in the American south, and before that, slavery. Obama shared none of that.

That discomfort with Obama is shared by white traditional racists as well. Their racism is an inarticulate hostility to a servile class in order to maintain their own minimal social status. This racism was all about the bottom of the overclass resisting the ambitions and pretensions of a servile underclass. Obama is not descended from anybody who was ever a member of a servile class.

The Republican Party has attempted to recycle the image of the Uppity Nigger to its modern incarnation, the "elitist". This image has failed to gain traction because Obama is not an upstart (of which "uppity" is an illiteralism) from a servile class. He really is elite.

The traditional formulation of this kind of social superiority was, "Would you want your sister to marry one?" This has lost its teeth because now your sister would definitely be marrying up if she married into the Obama family.

One curious kind of racial privilege is about the use of racism itself. The word "nigger" is forbidden to whites because it is seen as fiercely racist and pejorative when used by whites. By contrast, "nigger" is seen as ironic or affectionate when used by blacks.

As it stands now the rule is asymmetrical and unfair. Blacks may say something that whites may not. I propose to take that back. There should be one rule for all.

I propose that whites should call each other "cracker". It should be ironic and affectionate. And we should make a great show of pretending to become furious and offended at any black who uses that word in any way at all.

When they are talking about someone else using it, let them call it the "c-word". Any black of any note caught using it in public should be fired from his position and be forever tainted and unemployable as a racist.

So, my cracker brothahs, we have to give up rollin' over to the man. When any mo' fo' African American be dissin' us as crackers, we don't have to take it any more. Organize and kick his ass out.

POSTSCRIPT
Upon further reflection, erecting our own magical 'you may not say it' word does not address the issue. It merely makes two stupid prohibitions instead of one. Better to just pull the teeth of the nastiness.

The solution is to expropriate the word. Whites, and especially Chinese, must start calling each other 'nigger'. It should be a friendly and ironic expression of affection and solidarity. That will eventually make the black-to-black meaning of the word its only meaning.

Yo' Harvey, how ya doin', nigger? Yo' Dave and Xiao, how you niggers doin'? Well, I hope. It will take a little getting used to, but we can do it. Yes, we can.

I am disappointed by Damien and Christy's ingratitude in not thanking me for formulating a new definition of the Irish. I have called them "a heterogeneous rain-and-drink-addled congerie of passersby".

In all fairness I think that is a far finer and more truthful description of the Irish than Damien's false and bigoted description of the Jews, "not a people".

More than you wanted to know about what I learned in school today

Harvey's friend (whose name escapes me at the moment, but Harvey will surely supply it) is a professor of geology at CSU Chico. At my request he recommended a textbook for me to read, "New Views on an Old Planet" by Tjeerd van Andel.

Too much to tell but I will give an example or three.

As you know plate tectonics is caused by convection of semi-molten rock in the mantle of the earth. This causes earthquakes and volcanoes at the joints between the plates. Less well known is what keeps the earth's core still molten after 4.5 billion years and powers the convection - the radioactive isotopes in the core. As they decay they radiate heat.

He shows by simple arithmetic and the half-lives of the main radioactive isotopes involved that the amount of heat generated in the past has to have been significantly higher than it is today. Which means that there was more convection in the mantle and that it was shallower than it is today. Which means that there were far more and smaller continents in the past than there are today.

Which means that ocean currents flowed smoothly around the planet and global weather had relatively small gradients with latitude - no ice at the poles and relatively mild weather at the equator.

With the continuing decay of the radioactives in the core of the earth the amount of heat in the core diminished, continents continued to drift, albeit more slowly, and became bigger. Recent developments, particularly the emergence of the Isthmus of Panama and the Suez Peninsula, have broken up the around-the-world ocean currents that kept climates equable as late as the mesozoic (loosely speaking, the age of dinosaurs).

These east-to-west currents in our era have been replaced by south-to-north currents caused by the fact that the earth has a glaciated continent at the south pole but none at the north pole. Van Andel says that cold water sinks all around Antarctica and forms seabottom cold currents that flow north. Sea surface warm currents flow south to replace the cold water flowing north , which makes a constant circular convection. There are regional currents as well, such as the Gulf Stream.

According to van Andel the cold currents from Antarctica, together with the shutting down of the equatorial currents, are the main determinants of climate and explain why the earth has grown so much colder and drier during the cenezoic (the past 60 millions of year - again loosely, the age of mammals).

[As an aside I should mention that this has no relevance to the global warming debate because the time scales are so different. Five thousand years of global warming might be more than enough to wipe out us and many other species, but would be too brief a blip to even show on van Andel's graph of temperatures.]

However the sea floors are not uniform. There are two major bottlenecks to the seabottom cold currents; van Andel calls them "gateways". One is west of Samoa, the other east of the Falklands.

If these were disrupted, the current flow would cease. The climate of the earth would be radically and fairly quickly transformed. Permanently, in human terms. Did I say "if"? Given what we know of plate tectonics, I meant "when".

Another gem -
He explains that the early biological and pre-biological processes that were the earliest history of life cannot take place in the presence of oxygen. But that those very processes generate oxygen. So why didn't early life poison itself by oxygenating the atmosphere and oceans early on and become extinct before it could evolve metabolic pathways that could use oxygen? What are we all doing here?

It turns out according to the going theory that oceans contain lots of dissolved iron and that continental rock contains lots of iron as well. Iron readily oxidizes in the presence of oxygen. So for more than a billion years, life got away with surviving because there was enough iron in erosion products like sand and clay and in sea water to absorb all of the oxygen.

Oxygen accumulated only slowly from 2 billion years ago to half a billion ya as the surface of the earth and the oceans began to run out of unoxidized iron. Since then there has been a rapid accumulation to more than fifteen times as much as when the earth was 90% as old as it is now and over a hundred times as much as when it was 80% of its current age. Which is to say, in geological times scale the atmosphere is going through a radical transformation RIGHT NOW.

Another thing -
There is no explanation for the composition of the rest of the earth's atmosphere. No theory to explain it works. (As of 1985 when "New Views" was published.)

Similarly, no theory explains why the oceans are not far saltier than they are.

And in closing, did you know that the sun evolves as well? It is 30% brighter now than it was a billion years ago, and twice as bright as it was when the earth was half its present age. No one knows how this may have affected life and evolution.

One speculation is that a dimmer, cooler sun would have produced less ultraviolet,which is mutagenic. But before there was oxygen was also before there was an ozone (Ozone is O3) layer in the atmosphere. Which means that though there was less UV, more of it reached the surface of the earth.

So one guess (mine, not van Andel's) is that eukaryotic cells (like ours) with their large, easily-disrupted genomes could not arise until there was an ozone layer.

"New Views on an Old Planet" is chuckabluck (chocablock?) with startling new things to think about on every page. By the way all, all, of this took place right where you are now*, among other places. Not far away. Right here. It is all still going on, right now.


*Unless you are in Ireland. Ireland has always been a stupid, miserable shithole where nothing good or interesting has ever happened.

Stevie Wonder's Tribute to Michael Jackson

in his own words....

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Think Globally, Act Legally

[Jimmy Stewart, Frank Capra, the Richmond Superior Court, and me]

I am going off to do jury duty in a few minutes. The greatest likelihood is that I will sit around for a few hours and then be thanked and sent home.

In the movies, the juror who has gone to the trouble to take written notes is usually selected as foreman, so I am taking a notebook and pens. I would like to be on a jury, but it would be a huge pain in the ass if it conflicted with my going to China for the eclipse.

Curiously I find that I have no strong prejudices, as I would expect to have. I have no impulse to Hang 'em High, nor to sympathize with a youthful defendant facing a jail term. Which makes me a good venireman. (A venireman is a potential juror - only when the jury is selected and seated do 12 of the veniremen become jurors. The word has become obsolete apparently because 'venireperson' is thought ridiculous, in spite of being a perfectly good word.)

About civil cases, I do have a sense that insurance companies are moral sludge and it would be hard to find in favor of a corporate defendant against an injured plaintiff. But that is such a universal sentiment that it is grounds for instant mistrial to so much as mention insurance in a tort case. So there is not much prejudice that is out of the ordinary about that.

In any case, the greatest likelihood is that I will be sent home either this morning or this afternoon.

A Lesson in Values

[Roto-Rooter is my friend]

There is a line in the trailer for the movie, Project Valkyrie, in which a German officer opines, "There is no problem that cannot be solved with high explosives." The same could be said for money. Today the sink backup in the little kitchen became a sewer backup in the whole house. And this had to happen when there were paying tenants here, thankyouverymuch.

RotoRooter came out and the young man spent more than an hour excavating about a bushel of roots and attendant human products with a giant drain clearing machine. All the drains run freely now. I washed the hooey out of the toilet and shower stall. The sense of relief is as palpable as if the blockage had been personal. And it cost me nothing more than money.

Death and Disrememberment

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 10:38 PM, Burton J Abarbanell wrote:

Walter Cronkite

Patrick Swayze

Larry King

Barack Hussein Obama

Ted Kennedy

Elizabeth Taylor

Nancy Reagan

Andy Rooney

Mickey Rooney

Muhammed Rooney

Little-known detail from the life of Michael Jackson

[Art "Afro" Jackson]

It is not widely known that Art Garfunkel was a stage name. His real name before he changed it to his showbiz name was Arthur Jackson. He was the whitest of the Jackson 6 and the first one to make the crossover into mainstream. It is also not widely known that before the name change they were Simon & Jackson.

Though he was the brains and talent of the duo, because of rampant racism in the music industry, Jackson rather than Simon was forced to change his name. The rest is history. Sort of.