You've got mail. I just got my first piece of real hate mail. I've gotten into a few email arguments with bloggers whose politics and debate methods I don't respect, and we've had a few trolls in the comment threads here at KT. But this is an incoherent soundbitten email that arrived in my very own inbox. It's a right of passage of some kind - my blogger Bat Mitzvah. I'm guessing the troll is referring to
the Mazin Qumsiyeh post, but it's hard to tell. I'm not going to bother fisking this, just present it in its garish cliched entirety:
My, my, my. Are we getting a little paranoid about the truths being revealed, Judith? If you don't care for what the Professor is saying, then why not take some time and read what Seymore Hersh wrote about the Neo-Cons, the disciples of Leo Strauss, in The New Yorker? Perhaps you would rather read what the Wall Street Journal had to say about the same subject, or perhaps what Patrick Buchanan wrote in The American Conservative, etc. etc. etc.
The light of truth is finally starting to shine on the jackals who are controlling, and manipulating America's foreign policy. Not to worry though, the Neo-Cons, AIPAC, Sharon, and all of the other hardliners can count on their wolfpack of zealots to attack, discredit, and demonize anyone who dares to point out the truth of their actions, and motives.
I believe it was Nietzsche who said "When you label me, you negate me". So go ahead Judith, which is it, Anti-Semitic, Self hating Jew, Hitler lover, I can take it all, because you, and those of your ilk, are finally being revealed in all your colors.
What a great lead-in to these
accounts of major news media
misquoting Wolfowitz. Thanks, troll.
PS I emailed back, "So what do you think about
the "Democracy in Palestine" movement?" No reply yet.
Shavuot count-down: Day 45 of counting the Omer. Using
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the
Tiferet of Malchut: Compassion in Nobility. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:A good leader is a compassionate one. Is my compassion compromised because of my authority? Do I realize that an integral part of dignity is compassion? Tiferet - harmony - is critical for successful leadership. Do I manage a smooth-running operation? Am I organized? Do I give clear instructions to my subordinates? Do I have difficulty delegating power? Do we have frequent staff meetings to coordinate our goals and efforts?
(More on counting the Omer
here)
Shavuot count-down: Day 44 of counting the Omer. Using
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the
Gevurah of Malchut: Discipline in Nobility. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:Although sovereignty is loving, it needs to be balanced with discipline. Effective leadership is built on authority and discipline. There is another factor in the discipline of sovereignty: determining the area in which you have jurisdiction and authority. Do I recognize when I am not an authority? Do I exercise authority in unwarranted situations? Am I aware of my limitations as well as my strengths? Do I respect the authority of others?
(More on counting the Omer
here)
Shavuot count-down: Day 43 of counting the Omer. Using
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - we have travelled through all of the combinations of the 7 lower sephirot with the
the sephira of Yesod. Tonight we begin the last week of the Omer, which culminates in
Shavuot, Zeman Mattan Torateinu. During these 7 days we combine the 7 lower sephirot with
the sephira of Malchut, beginning with
Chesed of Malchut: Lovingkindness in Nobility. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:Healthy sovereignty is always kind and loving. An effective leader needs to be warm and considerate. Does my sovereignty make me more loving? Do I exercise my authority and leadership in a caring manner? Do I impose my authority on others?
(More on counting the Omer
here.)
McCarthy in a kaffiyeh. Mazin Qumsiyeh is a Yale professor active in pro-Palestinian causes, including the Right of Return. He recently sent a letter to the Yale Coalition for Peace attempting to discredit some of their Jewish student members because they are - gasp! - also pro-Israel.
I saw this story in the NY Sun as I was coming out of the subway last night, and I figured I could google it so I didn't buy a copy. Well, the Sun online isn't free, and so far, the only other place on the web I've found the story is at
Yale Diva, a Yale student blog. She has the usual Blogspot permalink problems, but if you scroll to
A Lesson On Our Biases you will find a summary of Qumsiyeh's letter which is very close to my memory of the Sun article.
Earlier today Mazin Qumsiyeh . . . informed the Yale Coalition for Peace of the Straussian/Jewish conspiracy at Yale. He wrote:For your information, I include here the list of members of Yale Students "for Democracy", the pro war cabal that subscribes to the same Straussian theology that the no-cons around Bush have been pushing (Wolfowitz, Perle, Wurmser, Kristol, Feith). I think you will find the list informative. Note that there is significant overlap of this list with the "Yale Friends of Israel" listserve.
The message above was followed by the names of about one hundred Yale Jews.
# posted by Eliana : 7:00 PM
Hmmmm.
"I have a list. . . " "Are you now or have you ever been. . . . " Where have we heard that before?
If you want to find out more about Qumsiyeh, he is
an extremely prolific polemicist. Yale Diva posts a rant of his (scroll to
"Mazin Qumsiyeh, Anti-Semite") which rivals Amiri Baraka for incoherent cliche-ridden false accusations. Sample:
"...It is about Richard Perle, who is a well paid Zionist lobbyist who is promoted to the highest branches of our government and whose "security" company Tritreme brags about how it is going to grow and benefit from the fear of attacks. It is money and control. It is now clearly evident from their own documents that those who put Israel and personal wealth ahead of US public interests were first to plan this war over 15 years ago. . . .
It goes on from there. And on. And on.
UPDATE: David Aaronovitch chronicles
similar witch-hunting among the British Left.
Shavuot count-down: Day 42 of counting the Omer. Using
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the
Malchut of Yesod: Nobility in Bonding. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer: Bonding must enhance a person's sovereignty. It should nurture and strengthen your own dignity and the dignity of the one you bond with. Does my bonding inhibit the expression of my personality and qualities? Does it overwhelm the one I bond with?
We have now moved through all of the combinations of the 7 lower sephirot with the
the sephira of Yesod. Tomorrow begins the last week of the Omer, in
the sephira of Malchut.(More on counting the Omer
here)
Media accounts of the YIVO Anti-semitism Conference. The
conference I attended several weeks ago has been written up in
the New York Times, the
Forward, the
Jewish Week, and
JTA. A
dissenting op-ed has even appeared. Reading all of these reports plus
my brief impressions will give you a panoramic view of the proceedings.
The news articles capture the conference fairly well, except for a slight inaccuracy in the
Forward's coverage:
When the occasional criticism of Israeli settlement policy was offered by audience members, it was often met with a chorus of hisses.
I was at all seven sessions. There was
one question at
one panel that precipitated about 30 seconds of hissing, which was quickly quelled by the moderators. There was no "often."
While organizing several months worth of bookmarks, I found that I had collected articles by some of the speakers which make the same points as their conference presentations. In the absence of video or transcripts, and in lieu of transcribing my voluminous notes, I will highlight as many of the presenters' ideas as I can in several installments over the next month or so, using the links I've collected.
However,
JTA has excerpts posted from several of the conference speeches, so let's start with a
muscular yet finely discriminating manifesto by
Leon Wieseltier, conference organizer and keynote speaker. If you tend to get confused by global anti-semitism or
find yourself internalizing some of it, this is a good one to tape to your refrigerator door.
Blog Round-up. Liberty Watchtower is the
Command Post-like nonpartisan group blog monitoring civil liberties issues. Bookmark it if that's something you are concerned about. (I know I am.)
Check out
The Fashionable Dictionary from Brit blog
Butterflies and Wheels, dedicated to puncturing of academic pretension. Here's a taste:
A
Acceptance
Nice, warm, cooperative way of evaluating ideas, much better than argument.
Accuracy
Exploded concept. Foolish, Platonic notion that we can get our facts straight.
Alphabet
The opposite of the Goddess. "But one pernicious effect of literacy has gone largely unnoticed: writing subliminally fosters a patriarchal outlook. Writing of any kind, but especially its alphabetic form, diminishes feminine values and with them, women's power in the culture." [Leonard Shlain, The Goddess and the Alphabet]
Does anyone have a link to Amish Tech Support's hilarious terrorism alert icons? I think they disappeared when he moved to blogmosis. Anyway, IMAO does a similar number on
the color alert codes.From the practical to the silly:
Google holiday logos you'll never see.
Next slide, please. Finally, insiders are noticing that a particular emperor of the organizational world has no clothes. Business guru Thomas A. Stewart says that
Friends Don't Let Friends Use PowerPoint.Never put more than three bullet points on a PowerPoint slide, experts say. It confuses people. Keep it simple. You know, the way life is. In "The American Scholar," Emerson warned against the tendency to believe something just because it is written down. How much greater the danger when it is also boiled down.
Edward Tufte, the eminence gris of information design, agrees. In fact, Tufte has written
a polemic on the subject.In the 24-page booklet, Tufte gallops with apparent glee through numerous examples of bad PowerPoint. He tears apart "the dreaded build sequence" (a series of slides, each of which reveals a single new line of text). He writes that Harvard School of Public Health templates for presentations "emulate the format of reading primers for six-year-olds," offering a side-by-side of the Harvard slides and just such a primer to prove his point.
Tufte is not merely having fun here. In many companies, important decisions come out of meetings in which PowerPoint slides define the agenda. If the method for making the decisions is childish, what sort of decisions do you think will come out of that method?
Peter Norvig decided to test this assertion by imagining
what Abraham Lincoln might have come up with if he had Power Point, a laptop, and a computer projection screen at Gettysburg. The results are
hilarious and disturbing.
Baghdad Spring. This guy goes
to Iraq on his lonesome to see for himself what's going on, and in the midst of
numerous adventures meets
Salam Pax in Baghdad and
hangs out with him.. . . i got into baghdad and my friend Ghaith started showing me around. Ghaith is hot shit. the guy's as fast as a whip, tough as leather, and has been raised in the middle east, so he speaks enough languages to tongue-tie a database. he's part of a small network of intense young iraqis that live in baghdad, among whom is salam pax, an online writer that has been kind enough to keep us posted on local news from a local perspective. [see http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/ fore more..]. actually, its not just that he's kind; as his father told me, salam has been doing this at risk of his entire family. his dad didn't find out about what salam was up to and if, prior to the regime's fall, the wrong someone had found out, heads would have rolled.
this is part of the reason salam's a good man; his freedom means something to him. he and i had a chance to talk in the middle of the mobile media empire named The Sheraton Hotel, Baghdad. we were surrounded by the mass media neither of us trusted. it was a good talk. Salam, like Ghaith, is smart, alert, and watching the distant waters of the US for ripples that will, when they break on the borders of iraq, bring problems. and he's smart enough to be ready for it. and smarter, still, to know how to use this energy to his own benefit.
salam unpacked for me the finer points of using media against imperialism, of what it means to speak iraqi arabic these days, and how important it is that americans take the time to familiarize themselves with cultures that aint theirs (noting that its even more important for non-americans to famliarize themselves with Amerika..). i appreciated what the guy had to say. he has a sharp eye, an honest smile and a firm handshake.
these guys - salam and ghaith - are the future kings of baghdad. they'll rule the city with a gentle insight and a fast wit and i think that the place will be better off for it. if, that is, the americans are smart enough to loosen the stranglehold.
Salam's take on the same event:
There was a very long talk with mark from [Boar.com] who was on a two-day trip in Iraq. I met him after he was in one of the presidential palaces looting. He had a stainless steel teapot hidden under his t-shirt when he came into the hotel where we were supposed to meet. Pah, amateur amrikaan! At least choose something that looks like it could be gold or something.
Don’t ask how we met, pure coincidence. We sat there for about two hours, talktalktalk. He was strangely gadget free; he only had a nifty digital camera and showed me the pictures he had taken inside the palace including the obligatory picture of a bathroom. Everybody has a fixation on bathrooms. The first images they showed of one of the palaces had shots of not-so-significant bathrooms. I am sure there will be a (Saddam bathrooms) special on one of the shows soon. Anyway. Great guy. mark not saddam.
Well, it's clear that one of these people has lived through a police state and a war and one is a corn-fed American tourist with political pretensions, but in spite of Boar's occasional juvenality, this is a wonderful diary. His descriptive writing is vivid. He meets ordinary Iraqis and US soldiers. He takes numerous incredible photos of urban destruction, the interiors of Saddam's palaces, and Iraqis of all ages and walks of life. His evaluation of his experiences has the same quality as Salam's: honest, unpremeditated, with an authentic voice, pulled by preconceived political agendas but managing to avoid being captured by them.
What comes through very clearly is the heady feeling of being a young, smart, energetic, iconoclastic guy in kinship with other young, smart, energetic, iconoclastic guys, generating intense feelings of community and possibility and idealism which color one's interpretation of events. Think
Prague in 1990. I have a feeling all the young dot.commers who got laid off two years ago are going to converge on Baghdad over the next six months. And I don't think that's a bad thing.
(via old Austin acquaintance
Jon Lebkowsky)
UPDATE: Salam is
massaging his
15 minutes of fame. Don't let it go to your head, kid. You'll read some of this stuff 5 years from now, and you'll be
so embarrassed.
Shavuot count-down: Day 41 of counting the Omer. Using
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the
Yesod of Yesod: Bonding in Bonding. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:Every person needs and has the capacity to bond with other people, with significant undertakings and with meaningful experiences. Do I have difficulty bonding? Is the difficulty in all areas or only in certain ones? Do I bond easily with my job, but have trouble bonding with people? Or vice versa? Examine the reasons for not bonding. Is it because I am too critical and find fault in everything as an excuse for not bonding? Am I too locked in my own ways?
(More on counting the Omer
here)
Political clarity, social confusion. While in bookmark-clearing mode I read through
the comments over by Matt Yglesias about John Derbyshire's
admission of his fondness for metropolitan bohemia, most of them attempting to label this particular intersection of political and social predilictions: bobo conservative, Telegraph Tory, blue-blood republican, Metropolitan conservative, Conservative In Name Only.
Derbyshire's essay was published shortly after the
blog debate on political labels organized by Michael Totten and inspired by
Gary Farber. (
Michael and
others have posted subsequent thoughts on the topic.) Although that discussion ranged over many aspects of the labeling problem, no one really examined the fact that most people organize their social lives around their hobbies, cultural activities, and domestic concerns,
not around their politics.
In fact, many people - especially young adults -
derive their political views from the social group wherein they feel the most comfortable. They want to feel part of a larger community, and the jargon, in-group jokes, soundbites, clothing styles, music tastes, et al, that identify this community assume a common underlying world view. They then adopt the politics that allow them to have companionship while enjoying their tastes, even though in most cases one is not dependent on the other.
Derbyshire says he really feels at home with urban bohos, even though their politics repel him. But he isn't the only person who feels a conflict between one's politics and one's cultural tastes. The
crunchy conservatives are staking out their turf, and
a few pro-war patriotic noises have been heard from the alt music scene. One wonders how many of the People in Black moseying about your average Soho gallery opening think that our intervention in Iraq was necessary for American security and the ultimate stability of the region, but are afraid to stick their necks out. One wonders how many Good Ole Boys moseying about your average Des Moines Wal Mart think the war was an unecessary expression of a disastrous foreign policy, but are afraid to stick their neck out.
These are stereotypes of course, but stereotypes are reinforced when people deform either their tastes or their beliefs to fit into a community. Most of us are much more varied and strange than that, and we need to challenge our communities to stretch to fit around us.
UPDATE:
Armed Liberal responds. I hope people talk about this more. We make jokes about how college students go to demos to get laid, and bemoan the fact that supporting Israel is considered nerdy and being pro-Palestinian is considered cutting-edge. The need for community and social acceptance are
huge factors in shaping political movements, and the anti-idiotarian movement (for lack of a better term at the moment) also fulfills a social need. There must be a way to leverage this to our advantage.
Meet the new boss... same as the old boss: Members of the armed wing of Fatah have begun receiving monthly salaries from the new Palestinian Authority cabinet in an attempt to persuade them to lay down their weapons. In an interview with
The Jerusalem Post (May 15), members of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the West Bank said they are each receiving $200 per month.
"We were told that the payments were from the new Palestinian cabinet," one of the group's members in Tulkarm told the Post. He said the money was being transferred through senior PA officials in the city. Sources close to the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in Ramallah, Nablus and Jenin confirmed that members of the groups in these areas have also received funds over the past few weeks.
"The money is aimed at keeping these men under control," the sources said. "[PA Prime Minister Mahmoud] Abbas wants to make sure that these men would not revolt against him when and if he tries to disarm them." But the leader of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in Tulkarm, Malek Jallad, told the Post Thursday that he and his men would not give up their weapons.
Shavuot count-down: Day 40 of counting the Omer. Using
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the
Hod of Yesod: Humility of Bonding. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:Humility is crucial in healthy bonding. Arrogance divides people. Preoccupation with your own desires and needs separates you from others. Humility allows you to appreciate another person and bond with him. Healthy bonding is the union of two distinct people, with independent personalities, who join for a higher purpose than satisfying their own needs. True humility comes from recognizing and acknowledging G-d in your life. Am I aware of the third partner - G-d - in bonding?
(More on counting the Omer
here)
Random links. More bookmark clearing.
The Council on Foreign Relations has a site
about terrorism. So does
the Dudley Knox Library of the Naval Postgraduate School. (These are backgrounders rather than breaking news sites.)
How to Create a Golem. Includes ingredients, instruction manual, and success stories (via
Making Light). (Meryl
needs to see this.)
Would an infinite number of monkeys, given typewriters for an infinite amount of time, eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare?
Watch the experiment in progress. Ah, but would Shakespeare
produce "The Hokey Pokey"? (via
Amygdala)
The
two oldest
people in the world. (I think this one's from Amygdala too.) (UPDATE: No, it was
Oxblog)
NYT bias Dept. Just a reminder that the bias and editorial disarray at the
New York Times isn't new: last year about this time, Professor Anne Bayefsky,
an expert in international human rights law, wrote an op-ed
critical of the United Nations and human rights groups for their distorted focus on Israel and their "diversion" from confronting actual rights abusers. . . . But so radically altered was the final column ("Ending Bias in the Human Rights System" May 22, 2002) that Bayefsky went public with the obfuscations demanded by the newspaper.
The original article is
here, on Page 11, with a note about the bowdlerization by the
Times.
Shavuot count-down: Day 39 of counting the Omer. Using
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the
Netzach of Yesod: Endurance in Bonding. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:An essential component of bonding is its endurance; its ability to withstand challenges and setbacks. Without endurance there is no chance to develop true bonding. Am I totally committed to the one with whom I bond? How much will I endure and how ready am I to fight to maintain this bond? Is the person I bond with aware of my devotion?
(More on counting the Omer
here)
Democracy in Palestine. Hmmmm. I wonder if President Bush
met with Palestinian Finance Minister
Salam Fayyad - a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Texas, who worked at the Federal Reserve in St. Louis and with the IMF in Washington - on the advice of
Palestinian banker Omar Karsou, who has been lobbying for years to have Arafat deposed in favor of a genuinely democratic state?
. . . younger leaders are starting to attack [Arafat] and his generation for mismanagement and cronyism. For them, the issue is not merely having a state, but what kind of state is worth having. Fatah members who grew up under the Israeli occupation are rebelling against the wrinkled exiles who came back from decades overseas to build a state and, in the view of these younger people, blew it. ''They can go to hell,'' said Khaled Elyazji, Arafat's former protocol chief, who is now running a center in Gaza for political change.
. . . . most Palestinian politicians and diplomats in Jerusalem expect [Abbas] to be a transitional figure between the era of Arafat and a new Palestinian leadership.
What alternative type of leadership does Fayyad represent?
. . . [Fayyad] dismissed the security detail that the Palestinian Authority offered him, in the belief he should never show fear. He travels by car service and taxi, walks alone across checkpoints and fields his own calls nonstop on a cellphone. The father of three children in a Jerusalem private school, he left a much more lucrative job to become finance minister at about $1,200 a month, and Israeli and American officials who study the Palestinian Authority say he is an honest man.
Can an honest businessman have credibility with unemployed Palestinians infatuated by
the rhetoric of revolutionary struggle against
the "Zionazi" oppressor?. . . the struggle for good governance could be seen by Palestinians as a struggle on behalf of Sharon and President George W. Bush. Fayyad . . . argues that improving governance would benefit Palestinians day to day, and also foster ''character rebuilding'' -- restoring a sense of what they can accomplish on their own.
This might seem patronizing and unrealistic to hot-headed kids egged on by terrorist factions, but the
"Democracy in Palestine" movement is speaking to the substantial Palestinian middle class, which has a reputation as
Westernized, educated, and hardworking, and which genuinely
grieves its children lost to the allure of suicide squads.
According to [Natan] Sharansky, "Karsou represents an authentic position of the Palestinian middle class, who are familiar with the democratic experience from our side. The Palestinians have found themselves trapped in a corrupt dictatorship that strangles not only business initiative, but freedom of expression as well."
I agree with Charles that the Road Map is
not to be taken at face value. I think Bush is playing for time by stroking the Road Map enough to keep Tony Blair and the EUnuchs happy, while encouraging methodical businessmen like Fayyad and Karsou to gradually pry political power from Arafat's grip and build
an infrastructure of law and property rights in the territories.
Will they be able to gain approval and trust from a critical mass of Palestinians, without being seen by the Israels as having been captured by terrorist agendas? Sari Nusseibeh
has been trying to walk this tightrope with
limited success. Perhaps enough has changed since the beginning of Intifada II almost three years ago: Saddam is no longer cutting checks, Arafat has been confined to quarters, the EU's financing of the PA is under investigation, and the Palestinians are hungry, broke, disillusioned, and tired of backing the wrong horse.
Also, Nusseibeh is an academic, a philosophy professor; although he has demonstrated bravery and integrity under difficult conditions, practical solutions to political chaos are not his area of expertise. I'm banking on the bankers.
(Much thanks to Gary Farber, whose
link to the Fayyad article got me thinking about all this.)
Roll call. My daily blog stops at
Instapundit, LGF, Sullivan, and
BotW have all had items about the
Road Map to Murderville, as Charles calls it. The huge number of concurrent suicide bombings that accompanied this latest attempt at peacemaking are predictable based on past experience, but
seem to be befuddling the White House. A bunch of Congress-critturs
wrote a letter to Prez Bush demanding
that he junk the Road Map, given that the Pals didn't waste more than a hot New York minute in violating it. A smaller bunch of Congress-critturs also wrote to Bush, saying
We join you in noting with satisfaction the appointment of a new Palestinian Prime Minister with real authority. . . . The new Palestinian government appears to be taking the first of many steps toward achieving these goals. We are heartened by the Prime Minister's address to the Palestinian Legislative Council, in which he unequivocally denounced terrorism in all its forms.
So my question is: when was the last time any of these Road map fans picked up a newspaper? And would they let
facts get in the way of their fantasy anyway? Never mind - I see the problem. They
do read the newspapers. Well, kudos to the legislators who ignore biased op-eds in favor of reading
the Road Map itself and comparing it to
the actual behavior of the Palestinians. The names of the legislators who signed the pro-Road Map letter are
at the bottom.Text of the anti-Road Map letter from the Senate, and
signatures.Text of the anti-Road Map letter from the House, and
signatures.
The planned Jewish terror campaign in Britain: Files were opened to the public for the first time recently which told of MI5 warnings to then-Prime Minister Clement Attlee of the threat of
Zionist terrorism.
These MI5 files apprently claim that Jewish extremists planned to set up
"IRA-style" cells in London with instructions to assassinate politicians including the Foreign Secretary to help achieve a Jewish state.
The Security Service was so worried about the threat posed by two Jewish militant groups in 1946 that they told Clement Attlee, the Prime Minister, to expect "indiscriminate" shooting of troops in Palestine and terrorist attacks in Britain.
