Kesher Talk: 02/23/2003

Friday, February 28, 2003

KKK to protest at Augusta. Hate and ignorance are problems for Jews and blacks. Augusta is doing away with it's men-only policy. How dare they. See article.

America's poll tracks on Israel: According to Gallup, the percentage that rates Israel "very favorably" is the highest it has been since 1991. Additionally, the level of expressed sympathy for the Israelis, as opposed to the Palestinians, is also the highest since 1991. Conservatives and Republicans, typically among the most supportive of Israel, show even stronger support now than in 2002. The poll, conducted Feb. 3-6, shows Israel's favorable rating is at 64%, up from 58% last year. 22% of Americans rate Israel "very favorably," 6 points higher than last year. 58% of Americans say their sympathies lie more with the Israelis than the Palestinian Arabs, while 13% say they have more sympathy toward the Palestinians.

Meanwhile, 71% of Americans believe that the Palestinians should not be given a state, since they have not fulfilled President Bush's conditions for creating a state, according to a poll conducted last week by John McLaughlin and Associates and sponsored by the Zionist Organization of America. 13% believe the Palestinians have fulfilled these conditions and should be given a state.

Thursday, February 27, 2003

Latest on gay rabbis debate. As I previously reported (and follow that link back to more posts on this issue), The Jewish Theological Seminary (which produces rabbis for the Conservative Movement as well as scholarship in Jewish studies) continues to make its way through a minefield of halacha and inter-denominational politics to figure out how to fully include gays in Conservative Jewish life. A few weeks ago, a few students conducted an informal Internet poll on the movement's listserv for rabbis.

The poll, conducted on the "Ravnet" Internet list and tallied earlier this week, found that of 103 respondents, 66% said they would support the ordination of men and women who openly declare themselves homosexual, 26% would not, and 8% answered "maybe."

The main bind for the Conservative movement is that it claims to adhere to halacha, yet tries to interpret it in a way that legitimizes beneficial societal changes. Most Conservative Jews at this time (including most Conservative rabbis) would agree that homosexuals should be fully included in Jewish ritual life, but if they ignore centuries of Jewish law to do this, they reduce that law to historical quaintness. (More on interpreting halacha here and here.)

Interview Central. Did you know that the Atlantic Magazine website has an archive of incredible interviews with the likes of Daniel Goldhagen, Christopher Hitchens, P.J. O'Rourke, Kai Krause, James Fallows, Michael Oren, Studs Terkel, Jonathan Franzen, Charles Simic, Ian Buruma, Susan Sontag, Witold Rybczynski, Stephen Ambrose, David Gelernter, and many many more?

Wednesday, February 26, 2003

"I observed all the happenings beneath the sun, and I found that all is vanity and pursuit of wind," says Kohelet. Our weekly blogosphere digest Carnival of the Vanities may be an ephemeral pffft of vapor, but 27 posts on subjects ranging from boycotts to hockey to Texas affirm that there is a season set for everything and a time for every experience under heaven. (In an email Mike Finley sees me and raises me in the etymology game, pointing out that "carnival" is an ancient word for "meatfest." Meatfest. I have a mental image of buffed glistening gore-streaked gladiator types throwing huge slabs of beef at each other in the dead of night by a roaring campfire. Um, thanks, Mike.)

Next week's host is Gut Rumbles, and here is a list of hosts through May 7th.

This week's entries are arranged alphabetically by Blog Name, using the author's blurb wherever possible. No Favoritism Here.

Alisa in Wonderland is tired of psychoanalyzing the French. And the Germans, the Belgians, and the English.

Arguing with Signposts sez: "If the Canadians do nothing else in their existence, if they continue as third in the north american hemisphere, they can take distinct pride in the fact that they have given the world the best team sport." Some observations about why hockey is "the game."

Attaboy provides some travel advice for reporters, WMD inspectors and human shields heading to Iraq.

Even if BloggerRabbit doesn't get any emails (I mean zilch, nada, zero, not a one) they can still act as if they do, answering questions no one posed to them.

If I were listing these submissions by wonderfulness, But How's the Coffee? would be number two, right under Solonor's State-of-the-Union shout out. Finally, a post on feminism by someone who actually knows what it is!

Clubbeaux reads political meaning into Joe Millionaire's choice of women.

Dean's World asks: "Was there ever a more solid proof of the artistic potential of the electric guitar? Was there ever a more perfect marriage between two guitar players, or a rock'n'roll fivesome? Was there ever a musical work, save perhaps Billie Holiday's Lady In Satin, that was more emotionally raw, powerful, and genuine?"

Discriminations argues that the real issue in the Michigan affirmative action cases is not, as is commonly stated, whether diversity is a compelling enough interest to justify racial preferences. It is whether maintaining the traditional, meritocratic standards (grades, test scores) for whites and Asians is compelling enough to justify judging blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans by a different, lower standard.

Dissecting Leftism says that most of what we think we know about Nazi Germany is wrong.

Eleven Day Empire fisks Amos Oz.

Everything Must Go sez: It's not a boycott, it's the Italian Beer Festival! Or, how to boycott some European products without being unfair to people.

Head Heeb slices through Israel's demographic Gordian knot in The National-Minority Solution.

Heretical Ideas has some thoughts on the McCain-Feingold Bill.

Over at IMAO, Rumsfeld assaults a French stronghold; Condi has excess headless monkeys. Hmmmm.

In Context traces the history of political boycotts.

Kesher Talk (Judith Weiss flavor) has a homesick ode to Austin, TX wrapped around a juicy Fisk fisking inspired by his recent visit there, including some ethnographic intuitions about Cameraman Number Two.

You have to scroll down a bit for Martin Kimel's entry, where he takes issue with David Adesnik of Oxblog over a Muslim backlash if we invade Iraq.

Over at The People's Republic of Seabrook (last week's gracious Carnival host): "Chapter 7 Moral Bankruptcy: A good, God-fearing Liberal takes the clueless, anti-war Left to task. This just in- Saddam is a bad man; film at 11."

Ravenwood's Universe says that recent scientific studies have shown that the Kyoto treaty is suffocating plants to death. Hmmmm.

Reflections in D Minor tells us about a little-known side of classical music in In Honor of Black History Month #4: More Than Just Dead Europeans.

Revealed Truth on how a libertarian Yankee can support the supporters of the Confederate Flag.

If you haven't already tendered your congratulations to the blogosphere's first newlyweds to meet via their blogs, get on over to the Round Table and wish a long life of wedded bliss to Sasha and Andrew.

If I wasn't listing these in alphabetical order, Solonor's What's Not to Like? would be at the top. Go here immediately, read about your favorite state, and add your comments. Vote early, vote often!

Useful Fools proposes a map of post-war Iraq, divided into several "stans."

Viking Pundit is noting Saddam's nyah nyah nyah.

The World According to Pete gives us '(DE)PRESSING FOR WAR', a collection of three shorts which include:
* "Iraqi War Death Pool" gamble on when the first American casualty will occur during the War in Iraq.
* "Song & Dance" a meditation on U.S. citizens who plan to leave the country in the wake of impending war.
* "A (Geopolitical) Suicide Note" an old friend writes; a nation mourns.

World Gone Wrong gives us a woeful 1986 meditation on the Mercedes-Benz assembly line in Germany, and how the world made room for those slow-gliding monsters.

Over to you, Gut Rumbles.

Tuesday, February 25, 2003

Bookmarks for UN resolutions against Israel. The US has lobbed the Iraq ball firmy into the court of the UN., and every two-bit nation has lined up to whine to the Security council, "What about all the UN resolutions against Israel?" Predictably, the antiwar bloggers are joining the chorus. Keep these URLs handy for going out to do battle on their comment threads.

First of all, Jewish Virtual Libary has many excellent pages about the UN, including context for the UN treatment of Israel, myths and facts about the UN, and the Security Council and General Assembly resolutions themselves, in all their mindnumbing repetitiveness.

Expat Egghead looks up the many UN resolutions against Israel and finds not only very little similarity to the recent resolutions against Iraq, but notes that in almost all cases, the resolutions against Israel also call for various Arab states to do certain things for the resolution to be fulfilled.

Lets take Security Council Resolution 42 for example. It calls on all parties to cease violence. Well, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have refused. Why should only Israel be blamed for this? Or 438 as well. It calls for a just and durable peace. Just north of where I love there are around 20,000 Hezbollah fighters who think the Taliban are just peachy and would love to try out their recently acquired artillery on my house. Will they hold to 42 and 242 and 438? Snort. Not a chance. Takes two to tango and to make peace. 250 and 251 object to Israel celebrating the achievements of the IDF. Oh great, why just Israel for crying out loud?

Some countries get more attention than others. 271 for example condemns Israel for letting a mad Australian set fire to the Al-Aqsa mosque. Did you ever hear of a Security Council resolution condemning attacks on synagogues? Like the one today in France? Funny that.

487 condemns Israel’s 1982 attack on the Iraqi reactor. Well, I’m sure people around the world view that in a different light now, hence I’ve marked that one ‘Tough shit’. The ones from Lebanon I feel very confident about marking closed. How so? Well, because the Secretary General said they were. Israel has no outstanding issue re Lebanon. In fact it’s Syria who is in violation as it still has around 30,000 troops there. Having an extended picnic no doubt. Both Lebanon and Syria refuse to agree with the Un over this one. Does anyone mantion that in the press these days? The latest resolution, says in part ‘Condemning all terrorist attacks against any civilians, including the terrorist bombings in Israel on 18 and 19 September 2002 ‘ Did however gave you the info on 68 resolutions mention that? I suspect not. You’ll get an earful on ‘legitimate defence’. That’s blowing up OAP’s on buses to you and me.

. . . By my count, there are 17 Security Council resolutions that Israel and others need to address. There is only one, repeat one that I can fairly say that Israel could comply with all by itself and isn’t. (It’s really two but the same one repeated), numbers 452 and 465.That’s stopping to build settlements in the West Bank. All the other resolutions would need Arab entities joining in as well.

Egghead also labels the resolutions Open, Complete, or Tough Shit. The majority of them are Complete, meaning that whatever issue they spoke to has been resolved.

Palestine Facts has a good overview of the historical context of several of the more infamous resolutions, and points out

Resolutions of the Security Council are of two types, falling under either:

* Chapter VII, dealing with "Threats to Peace, Breaches of the Peace and Acts of Aggression", resolutions that require compliance by the subject nation and carry the threat of force that may be used to compel compliance, or
* Chapter VI, dealing with "Pacific Resolution of Disputes", resolutions that are meant to be implemented through negotiation or other voluntary means.

The article by Dore Gold, "Baseless Comparisons: UN Security Council Resolutions on Iraq and Israel ", explains the difference between Chapter VI and Chapter VII resolutions of the UN and the fact that Israel has never been subject to a Chapter VII resolution. [Emphasis mine - JW]

As UN Watch points out,

Chapter VII of the UN Charter refers to cases of aggression or threats to international security, and is entitled "Action With Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression.". . . All of the Iraq resolutions include the phrase "Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter." [emphasis mine - JW] Some also include the phrase “authorizes Member States … to use all necessary means” (i.e. the use of military force). . . . The other countries that, in the history of the UN, have been subjects of Chapter VII resolutions are: Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Haiti, Liberia, Libya, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Sudan and the former Yugoslavia.

Capitalism Magazine gives an overview of the UN trend in condemnations, with this fun tidbit:

The Women's Conference organized by the U.N. has adopted numerous resolutions condemning Zionism as one of the most serious obstacles for the emancipation of women. The first one of these resolutions was passed in 1975, a year after the resignation of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. A woman, of course, has yet to lead an Arab nation.

And here's an article about the farce that was the 4th Geneva Convention.

Remembrances of 1991. As the Iraq war draws closer, Gil takes us back to the thrilling days of yesteryear when SCUDs rained down on Israeli neighborhoods. He also has a series of war jokes and a very funny screen shot.

The Forward devotes an article to Dissent, the tiny journal of responsible Leftist thinking. Last week, I linked to an essay there on civic nationalism, religion, and the Left Go read it if you didn't already.

Whereas many on the left cringed at the surge in displays of patriotism in the immediate aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — with Nation columnist Katha Pollitt memorably tsk-tsking that the American flag "stands for jingoism and vengeance and war" — Dissent contributors have called for the left to embrace patriotism. And Dissent's editors, while opposing Israel's settlement policies, have been notably more sympathetic to Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians than have many other writers for left-wing publications.

"I hope [these stances] add up to a coherent picture of a magazine whose editors are committed to fostering a left that isn't so radically alienated from American society that it cannot speak to our fellow citizens," said Dissent's co-editor, Michael Walzer. Walzer, a pioneer of "just war" theory, has written that he would oppose a war for regime change in Iraq, but would support one if it was necessary to enforce the United Nations weapons inspections.

Dissent has a long honorable history of, well, dissenting from the left orthodoxies of its time:

Gerald Sorin, author of a recent book about Dissent's late founder, titled Irving Howe: A Life of Passionate Dissent (New York University), said that Dissent's role since the September 11 attacks is consistent with its history. Indeed, the socialist literary critic Howe founded the journal in 1954 in order to provide a home for radicals who were deeply anti-Stalinist.

During the 1960s, members of the Dissent circle clashed with some activists on the New Left whom, according to Sorin, they regarded as "romantic revolutionaries, in a non-revolutionary context" and "illiberal." More recently, many at Dissent supported the 1991 Gulf War and American intervention in the Balkans, although Sorin said these were subjects of debate in the journal. "There's a left that assumes that everything that is wrong with the world is the fault of the United States, and Dissent simply never took that position," he said.

Even David Horowitz, dragon-slayer of leftist stupidities, admires Dissent's principled stands:

During the Sixties Dissent’s founder Irving Howe symbolized the resistance within the left to the totalitarian elements who came to dominate its decade. Although in the 1980s its editors were seduced into a "critical" defense of the Nicaraguan regime, they have an otherwise honorable record of having opposed Communism throughout the Cold War, even if they only grudgingly supported or – worse – were often excessively critical of America’s efforts to contain the Communist threat.

One of the editors, Michael Walzer, caused a stir with a response to leftist breast-beating after 9-11, "Can There Be a Decent Left?" He says,

"The response that I've gotten has been pretty much 50-50 furious attacks and people who express gratitude."

Monday, February 24, 2003

Robert Fisk - inexhaustible inspiration for warbloggers everywhere. Bill Herbert conducts a grand fisking of the sorry excuse for a journalist who inspired the genre.

Having lived in Austin, TX for 10 years, and currently engaged in a propaganda war with a few peace weenies on my beloved Austin "women on the web" listserv, I have a personal interest in Fisk's adventures in my old stomping grounds.

Cameraman number two came striding towards us through the studio lights. "I want to thank you, sir, for reminding us that the British had a lot to do with the chaos in the Middle East, " he said. "But I have something else to say." His voice rose 10 decibels, his bare arms bouncing up and down at his sides, his shaven head struck forward pugnaciously. "Yeah, I wanna tell you that the cause of this problem is the fucking medieval Arabs and their wish to enslave us all ? and I tell you that it is because we want to save the Jews from the fucking savage Arabs who want to throw them into the sea that we are about to fuck Saddam."

There was a pause as Don Darling looked at the man, aghast. "And that," cameraman number two concluded, "is the fucking truth.". . . our nice anti-war chat had been brought to a halt by a spot of redneck reality. There really were right-wingers out there in the darkness who really did want George Bush to zap the Arabs. I asked the guy his name: "Gregg Aykins," he said. "And the FBI can do nothing to me if you give them my name."

Mr. Aykins, thank you for upholding the honor of Austin, and next time I'm in town I'll buy you endless rounds of Shiner and all the migas you can eat!

As for you, Mr. Fisk, your limited perspective as a condescending British middle-aged Lefty journalist leads you to assume that anyone who takes exception to your tired tropes, especially in the heart of Texas! must be a redneck (not that there's anything wrong with rednecks - unlike you, most of them have more sense than to publicly praise a mob for beating them up).

But you clearly don't understand Austin's potent brew of cultures: indigenous Chicanos, true Texas rednecks, aging hippie good ole boys, home-grown hackers, vigorous pockets of Indian and Vietnamese immigrants, gonzo cyberpunks, Kozmik Cowboys, waves of Californian dot.com millionaires, roots-music fanatic expat sons of eminent British historian poets, and other assorted eccentrics.

My years of Austin living would disincline me to characterize your tormentor as a redneck, as they are more likely to have mullets than shaved heads and tend not to gravitate to the broadcasting arts. If I know Austin, Mr. Aykins is probably a vegan UT Radio-TV-Film major who DJs techno at night, runs a Eutropian website, and writes gaming code on the side, when he's not shopping for leather accessories for his boyfriend. (That's just a guess. If I knew the themes of his tattoos and the locaitons of his piercings, I would have more semiotic clues.) Bill thinks Fisk is exaggerating how many times Mr. Aykins said "fuck." I don't.

I think this is a perfect occasion to tell my favorite Austin joke:

Three guys are in a bar: an Aggie, a Californian, and a guy from Austin. They drink and get a little rowdy. [editorial comment: Aggie jokes are in Texas what Polack jokes are in the Northeast.] Suddenly, completely without warning, the Aggie grabs a bottle of tequila, unscrews the top, takes a good swig, and throws the bottle in the air. He then jerks out a Colt 45 pistol and shoots the bottle, spraying tequila all over everything and everybody.

The patrons at the bar shout, "Hey bud, why'd you waste that tequila?"

The Aggie says "Heck, it's just tequila. Us Aggie's go across the border all the time and get all the tequila we want."

Not to be outdone, the Californian whips out a corkscrew and uncorks a bottle of wine. He pours a little bit into a glass, swirls it in the glass, sniffs, comments on the tart insolent piquancy of its bouquet, sips, tosses the bottle in the air, nicks it with a round from a little chrome plated pistol, and showers a couple of patrons at the bar with wine.

The patrons, upset by the casual waste and general lack of concern for their safety, express their displeasure and astonishment, to which the Californian replies, "Well, I'm from the Napa Valley, and we have more than enough wine where I come from."

The Austinite, a quiet observer until this point, touches the crystal hanging from his neck, checks out his tattoo, flips back his ponytail, and puts down his guitar. He pops the top off a Shiner beer, hammers it back, throws the empty bottle into the air, pulls a 9mm Beretta, takes careful aim, shoots both the Californian and the Aggie, and catches the falling bottle.

The patrons scream,"Why did you do that!?!"

The Austinite replies, "I'm from Austin. We've got too many Aggie's and WAY too many Californians, but glass bottles, now - those can be recycled!!

Darn. I miss Austin. NYC is crazy and edgy, but Austin is crazy and mellow. And it's 65 degrees there. I'm going back for a visit real soon. Where was I? Oh yes. Read all of Bill's post - he has many recent nuggets of obtuse Fiskiness on display and chops them up fine.

Carnival time. "Vanity of vanities," says Kohelet. "All is vanity." Prove him wrong by submitting your best recent post to the weekly edition of self-submitted blog essays, Carnival of the Vanities, hosted this coming week here at Kesher Talk.

Deadline for submissions is 9 PM, Monday, February 24th. Send a URL link to me - Judith Weiss - at the email address in the pull down menu on your left. Submissions will appear by morning of Wednesday, Feb 26th. If you want to make things easy for me, send a short blurb along with your URL. (That's a SHORT blurb.) I am looking forward to them.

(Upcoming Carnivals will be hosted by these blogs.)

Blog round-up. The big news is Thinking Meat, the brand-new blog by regular LGF commentor E. Nough. He's already getting lots of comments. His post on the cumulative reasons for invading Iraq now echoes previous comments by James Lileks which I quoted here. But E goes into much, much more juicy detail.

Next biggest news is that Ideofact is back, with much on the Mongols and occultism in Renaissance Europe. Don't assume you are not interested in these subjects - just start at the top and scroll down. Every post is fascinating.

Dr. Weevil on weasels, with much Latin etymology.

Shark translates another Der Spiegel article on Schroder's duplicity, and asks

Only two countries in the 20th century used poison gas on their own ethnic minorities. Can you name them? Bonus points if you can name the Arab country that used poison gas on the civilians of a different Arab country.

Answers in the comment section, in case you want to know about another obscure chapter of intra-Arab violence.

The Head Heeb on Antarctic political intrigue.

Like most Antarctic stations, Casey has a class system of sorts, and is divided between the scientists who run the station and the tradesmen - "tradies" - who keep it running. The scientists are not always respectful of the tradies, and resentment of high-handed management practices has created labor-management tensions much like those in the rest of the world.

Heeb also reports that the Antarctic has produced several peace demonstrations. Really.

Sunday, February 23, 2003

I love the Forward Dept. I have an enormous pile of Forwards and Jewish Weeks piled up that all had great articles in them that I wanted to blog about, and this weekend is for plowing through them and getting them off my desk. The things I do for my readers . . .

First, pull on your asbestos gloves before handling this somewhat misanthropic essay on philo-semitism.

Until now, Christians have been very interested in Judaism because it's where their faith came from, but they have never cared much for living, breathing Jews. On the other hand, Jews have never been particularly interested in Christianity because the "New" Testament is a barnacle on the ark of the Bible, but we've always been very interested in Christians, mostly because we want to know if they're going to kill us. Now the dynamic is turned askew. Most Jews, except for those in cultish enclaves ranging from Brooklyn's chasidim to Berkeley's new-age navel-gazers, are no longer very interested in Judaism and have left Bible study to the gentiles, while Christians can't get enough of Jews.

There's lots more, and I like it a lot.

Then there's a bit about the films of Julius Garfinkle (Hollywood knew him as John Garfield) and a tribute to recently deceased poet Kenneth Koch.

Linked with such New York School poets as John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara, Koch once said in an interview with British poet-critic David Kennedy:
There was a certain amount of humor in all our work. It seemed to me that here I was in my 20s and life seemed to me so exciting and full of girls and gardens and steamships and drinks and tennis games and countries and cathedrals.... I mean, it seemed absurd to be writing these drabs, depressed little poems. I knew there were things like death and poverty and injustice, but they weren't everything.

The brothers Joab Jonadav Keki — called J.J. by his friends — and Gershom Fizomu are leaders of the Ugandan Abayudaya Jews, and run a school outside Mbale, Uganda, that is open to students of all faiths and both genders. (The Abayudaya began in 1919 when their leader decided that Christian missionaries were misreading the Bible and led his followers to practice Old Testament law. Later Jewish visitors taught them about modern Judaism and last year a Conservative rabbinical court formally converted half of them.) The brothers have cut a CD of Hebrew songs with East African beats, and Keki, also a coffee farmer, ran for office locally in spite of Muslim opposition.

New York, Pennsylvania, and California are all thumbing their noses as divest-from-Israel campaigns.

"The divestment movement is not gaining ground. If anything, we are finding that people are rallying around investing in Israel," said a spokesman for State of Israel Bonds, Raphael Rothstein. Rothstein said 2002 was a banner year for his organization, which sold $1.3 billion in bonds. "We sold South Carolina, where there are very few Jews, $5 million. Illinois bought $10 million....We have close to two dozen states buying bonds. We've had very good support from states, labor unions and pension funds."

Nice to hear.

And there is a three-part series on the cuisine of the Golden Age of Spain. You know, that brief time when Muslims and Jews got along. After the Spanish took over, their Inquisition used food customs as evidence of secret Jewish practices among conversos.

One Inquisition list of Jewish food practices, quoted by David Gitlitz and Linda Kay Davidson in A Drizzle of Honey: The Lives and Recipes of Spain's Secret Jews (St. Martin's, 1999), reads in part:
cooking on the said Fridays such food as is required for the Saturdays and on the latter eating the meat thus cooked on Fridays as is the manner of the Jews;... cleansing or causing meat to be cleansed, cutting away from it all fat or grease and cutting away the nerve or sinew from the leg;... not eating pork, hare, rabbit, strangled birds, conger-eel, cuttle-fish, nor eels or other scaleless fish, as laid down in the Jewish law; and upon the death of parents... eating... such things as boiled eggs, olives, and other viands...

If you like historical and ethnic foodways and/or like to cook, you will drool over these recipes and their stories.

Did you know that there are words common to both Hebrew and Swahili? Because both languages have been influenced by Arabic.

Swahili itself is not a Semitic language. . . . it has become the lingua franca of much of east Africa and the official tongue of Kenya and Tanzania. The reason for this is that its original speakers were heavily concentrated along Africa's east coast, whose ports were the commercial hub for the interior. Because of this, too, they had intensive contact over the centuries with Arab traders from Egypt, Yemen and Aden, from whom they absorbed a large Arabic vocabulary. The word "Swahili" in fact comes from the Arabic swahili, "of the [coastal] plains."

Mainly because it accompanied the far-flung expansion of Islam, Arabic probably vies with English as the language that has most influenced the vocabulary of other languages. From Indonesia to Spain, numerous languages — among them Turkish, Persian and Urdu — have borrowed huge numbers of Arabic words.

it turns out that the centuries of Jewish residence in Poland lent some Yiddish words to Polish.

Hebrew mah.loket, "disagreement" or "dispute," which gives us Yiddish makhloykes, turns up in Polish both as machlojke (the Polish "j" is pronounced like a "y") and machloje, a machlojke being a little machloje. The existence of these two variants demonstrates that they were used by Polish Christians who had no knowledge of Yiddish and who took the ke of makhloykes to be the Polish diminutive rather than part of the original word.

And many other examples are given.

Incoherent ninnies for peace. Atrios leads off with a particularly snide comment about recent saber-rattling by North Korea:

Umm..shouldn't we be worrying about this?

Um, and why do assume we aren't, Atrios? But the comment section unfortunately reinforces my opinion of the antiwar movement's ability to make coherent arguments. Lots of sarcasm, name-calling, naivete about how diplomacy or the military actually work, warmed-over soundbites about "imperialism," "cowboys," "chickenhawks" . . .

Meanwhile, Blogs of War has the photo of a great peace "costume," and readers have supplied excellent captions. BoW also captures an essay from Houston Indymedia:

I explained the protest to him in terms that I though he would understand before hand. I wanted to make sure that he understood why we were doing this. "Right now son, the man who is in charge of our country, our house on the world, wants to do things like a bully. Like a bad guy. If he is a bad guy then a lot of other people will think that you and I are bad guys. I want to tell him that I don't want this country to act like a bad guy. Bad guys punch first. Good guys don't. Good guys try to avoid hurting others."

My son agreed. He's a good guy. We all are.

Again, great comments on this classic example of well-meaning sanctimonious idiotarianism, especially this one:

Okay, we'll do for you what you did for your son: use small, simple words.

Saddam is a bad man. He hurts people. He kills people. He makes bombs and gas and germs to kill people. He lies, too. We told him "stop" and he kept on doing it. Now we have to go stop him from doing more bad things.
Dumb people and scared people and mean people who just don't like us don't want us to. Remember the Charlie Brown cartoon you watched on TV? Remember how Lucy pulled the ball away every time? Saddam is like Lucy and these dumb, scared, and mean people are like Charlie Brown. And someday Saddam's going to beat them up for being so dumb.

Charlie Brown is a dummy. We're no dummies.

Kesher Talk

Friday, February 28, 2003

Thursday, February 27, 2003

Wednesday, February 26, 2003

Tuesday, February 25, 2003

Monday, February 24, 2003

Sunday, February 23, 2003

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