Kesher Talk: 10/26/2003

Friday, October 31, 2003

Honest Reporting branches out. Media watchdog Honest Reporting now has a blog. Both sites are well worth your time if media bias on Israel and Islam upset you. If you like writing letters to the editor HR has plenty of suggestions, and every time I have reported biased stories to HR I got a courteous reply, and once my story made it to the front page of the site.

UPDATE: HR now has a campus version as well. Lots of articles, fact sheets, etc. Good for us civilians too.

International Zionist Conspiracy Dept. Sometimes you absorb a certain amount of news and commentary, you notice an aspect of the issue that no one else is addressing, and you begin to form a response in your head. Then someone gets there first, but you don't mind because they do it better than you would have. A reader sent me this excellent response to Mahathir's blatherings. Here's a taste, but read the whole thing:

Why, Arabs (and many Europeans) ask themselves, should the greatest power in the world care about the fate of a few million leftovers from an ancient past, colonizing a corner of the Mediterranean in order to preserve their battered nationhood? Why would America make so many enemies and lose so many friends over the Jews? Can anything but a vast and insidious conspiracy explain such irrational behavior?

That is a fatal error. America may be a great power, but it is composed of individuals who consider themselves weak. They want the respect of their leaders and the protection of their laws even when they are weak, poor and despised. Their ancestors came to America in the hope of finding such a haven. Fairness and sympathy for the underdog are not merely a sentimental issue in the US; they are woven into the fabric of America's being. America is the political realization of the slave-religion, the cult of the creator of heaven and earth who cannot help but answer the cry of the widow, the fatherless, the poor, and the stranger. The more you tell Americans that they should abandon their friends in the interest of political advantage, the likelier they are to reach for their guns (and most of them own guns).

They want a Jewish sort of God who hears the prayer of the widow and the fatherless, and they want a government that protects the widow and the fatherless from the powerful and the arrogant. Through America's inherent sense of justice, Jews do rule the world, just as Mahathir believes, although not of course in the way he imagines it.

Here's more on how the American democratic republic was developed in accordance with Jewish ideas of representative democracy as prescribed in the Torah.

UPDATE: I don't know who this Asian Times columnist is, but damn he's good. He really gets it. Us Jews should take over the world - the world would be a better place.

Its that time of year. Hallowe'en week chez Lileks, with appropriate graphics.

Extreme pumpkins.

"Support our troops" pumpkins.

Jesus O' Lantern.

Scary story blogburst, courtesy of the Axis of Weevil.

A quest to achieve utter damnation.

More Halloween madness! Bwahahahahah!

Jews in sports: Olympic swimming gold-medalist Lenny Krayzelburg:

As a young, Jewish child growing up in Odessa, Ukraine, in the former Soviet Union, Lenny Krayzelburg was faced with many challenges. A major issue was anti-Semitism, and this brought the Krayzelburg family to the United States in 1989.

... He had begun swimming at the age of 8, and, by the time he was 10, Krayzelburg was swimming five hours a day. In addition, he was lifting weights and running, a workout regimen that many U.S. swimmers do not encounter until they get to college.

At the age of 14, two years after Krayzelburg realized he had a special talent for swimming, he had to put his athletic career on hold during and immediately after his family's migration. He worked as a lifeguard at an LA area Jewish Community Center and attended a high school that had no swimming team.

Krayzelburg did not let his dreams fade, though. He enrolled at Santa Monica College and after one season won the state junior college title.

When asked where he went to college, though, Krayzelburg responded, "I went to USC (University of Southern California) and studied finance." That is because soon thereafter he worked out for USC swimming coach Mark Schubert, who accepted Krayzelburg into his program and told the young man that he had the potential to be the best in the world.

Krayzelburg said he settled on the backstroke soon after he began swimming seriously. "At a young age, it was the best for me," he said. "I have seen the most improvements, and it is comfortable for me."

With USC, Krayzelburg won the national collegiate backstroke title in 1997, followed by a world title in 1998. "They were obviously satisfying experiences," he said. "I have dedicated a lot of years and am very proud of my career. It is good to set goals and make them."

He also set world records in 1999. Krayzelburg holds the world records for the 100-meter (53.60 seconds) and 200-meter (1:55.87) backstroke. He set both records at the 1999 Pan Pacific Championships in Sydney. In addition, he was named as the USA Swimming Swimmer of the Year as well as the Swimming World magazine's Male American Swimmer of the Year in 1999.

Thursday, October 30, 2003

Action alert! Protest Warrior will be gathering to protest the ISM conference at Ohio State next week, and they welcome your participation.

Most recently PW staged a counter-demonstration at the antiwar rally in Washington DC last weekend, where they - including one 5-mos. pregnant woman - were shoved and has their signs ripped up by those staunch defenders of dissent, A.N.S.W.E.R. "security personnel."

This article on the recent ISM schism is worth sitting through some Salon ads for the title alone. For those having trouble keeping track of the players without a scorecard: the more-revolutionary-than-thou white kids led by an ex-Scientologist zealot held the conference in Rutgers a few weeks ago, the moderate-by-comparison splinter group which includes all the actual Arabs in the organization are holding the conference in Ohio. Clear?

I've been following the International Solidarity Movement for some time - if you want to learn more about them start here and work your way back.

UPDATE: Local Jewish groups are also planning for the conference:

A coalition including Chabad, OSU’s Hillel, the Columbus Jewish Federation, AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish National Fund was planning the Israel Activism on Campus campaign Tuesday featuring noted attorney Alan Dershowitz, author of the new book “The Case for Israel.” The campaign is a pre-emptive response to the third annual Palestine Solidarity Movement student conference, which was forced to move to OSU from Rutgers University last month because of a squabble between pro-Palestinian groups and apparent pressure from Rutgers officials and local Jewish organizations.

October memories. When I moved from Philadelphia to Austin in 1992, I took 10 days to drive the length of the Blue Ridge Parkway in early October, stopping to hike as my mood took me. It looked like this. I still have my book of BRP hiking trails.

And when I was growing up in Dallas in the 60s, I got a day off school every fall to go to the State Fair, and it looked like this. It's nice to see some things haven't changed. Dallas is an armpit, but I'm glad I grew up a Texas Jew - it's given me a different perspective from many of my New York co-religionists. (I like the song reference too.)

Jews in odd places: Portugal: It is tough being a hidden Jew.

Fernando Manuel da Costa has been attending Shabbat services at the Ashkenazic synagogue in Lisbon for nearly two decades. Now da Costa wants to tell other Portuguese with suspect Jewish roots how they can return to the fold.

But older members of the congregation sometimes would tell him to take off his tallit and would call him — a member of a crypto-Jewish family that hid its Jewish roots since the 16th century Inquisition — “a guy playing to be Jewish.”

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

Sort of maybe against the Iraq war. Next time you see TV footage of antiwar protesters, remember that the actual range of viewpoints in the crowd is greater than the signs and slogans would have you believe. And so is the range of intellectual laziness and irresponsibility.

Allan Johnson . . . held a sign saying "U.S. Troops Out of Iraq. Bring Them Home Now!" at Saturday's "End the Occupation" rally in Washington. In fact, though, Johnson isn't sure he wants to bring the troops home now, or to end the American occupation of Iraq. At least, not yet. "We've made a giant mess," said Johnson, a handsome man who wore his long snowy hair in a ponytail and had a sparkling stud in one ear. "I would hate for the Bush administration to halfway fix things and then leave, and then blame the Iraqis if things go wrong. Once you go to somebody's house and break all the windows, don't you owe them new windows?"

Why, then, was he marching at an End the Occupation rally? "I don't agree with all the people here, believe you me," he said. But his own sign? He glanced at it, startled, and explained that someone had handed it to him. "I didn't even look at it," he said. "I was just waving it."

. . . The conversation turned to the wisdom of the protest's call for an abrupt American pullout, and Lazarus said, "It may sound like an irresponsible thing to say, 'Bring the troops home now,' but it's an attempt to get the dialogue started. Look, the U.S. isn't going to pull out. It's not a part of the national debate."

He had hit on one of the key dynamics shaping both Democratic and leftist demands on Iraq -- the sense that since progressives have so little power, it doesn't much matter what they call for. That's why Johnson, who was surprised by the sentiments on his own sign, could say, when asked what he wants to see done in Iraq, "We should announce to the world that we're going to commit to using our power for good." Pressed further, he said, "I voted for Nader, so I'm not a realist." [emphasis mine - ed.]

Well if you're not a realist, and nothing matters anyway, why should you have a problem lending credence to an organization whose positions you disagree with?

. . . the majority of the demonstrators were not Judeophobes or Baathist stooges. They were people who'd opposed the war all along, who felt betrayed and marginalized by their government and the media's failure to take their concerns seriously, and who wanted a new American foreign policy. For many of them, "end the occupation" was a kind of shorthand. They didn't take it literally. But the people who called the protest did.

Unlike many Democrats, ANSWER isn't confused about where it stands on Iraq. According to an ANSWER pamphlet, "Counter-revolution & Resistance in Iraq," "The anti-war movement here and around the world must give its unconditional support to the Iraqi anti-colonial resistance." . . . According to an ANSWER newspaper that volunteers were distributing at the rally, "The ANSWER Coalition promotes the demand, 'Bring the troops home now, end the occupation of Iraq.' Some other groups call instead for turning the Occupation Authority over to the United Nations ... The Iraqis have shown they want no foreign, imperial forces to become the arbiters of their political and economic process ... Given the U.N.'s record in Iraq the last 13 years, why would the Iraqi people agree that this same UN should be the institution to serve as the guarantor in a transition to renewed sovereign control?"

All this reminds me of my friend who was just going to the NYC rally last February because her friends were, but who had no position on the issues. As Michael Totten and others have pointed out, there are no eloquent powerful liberal hawks to rally behind, so people who don't agree with A.N.S.W.E.R. but want an alternative to Bush dispiritedly attend rallies like the one last weekend, in the absence of a movement they can wholeheartedly support. This disaffected population could be a goldmine for a Democratic candidate with both charisma and guts. Unfortunately, Lieberman has the guts and Dean has the charisma.

But at the same time this disaffected population is breathtakingly apathetic about the extremism it supports by its presence. It does take time and energy to monitor the news and search out different viewpoints (blogs have begun to fill the gap, but we are not mainstream media as yet); I have certainly been guilty of not educating myself on every issue that affects me. But if you have enough energy to travel to a rally and stand around in the sun or rain all day with a sign (and political rallies of this type are incredibly boring unless you use them as social occasions, and even then), you are not just a good German, who keeps your mouth shut while atrocities are being perpetrated all around you. You have chosen to tacitly condone rhetoric which includes blatant bigotry and lies, rhetoric you claim to disagree with. This is irresponsible beyond belief, especially for mature adults. If you can get yourself to the rally, why can't you create a movement which reflects your values?

You can't make this stuff up Dept. From Moveon.org:

Sick of the propaganda being beamed at you from the current administration's media mavens? Here's a new way to fight back: Enter MoveOn.org Voter Fund's political ad contest. You don't have to be formally trained in the art of filmmaking, just ready, willing and able to create an ad that tells the truth about George Bush. All eligible submissions will be posted on this web site and rated by visitors. The top rated ads will then be voted on by our panel of esteemed judges, including Michael Moore, Donna Brazile, Jack Black, Janeane Garofalo, and Gus Van Sant.

These people really think Michael Moore and Janeane Garofalo add glamour and credibility to their cause.

Jews in odd places: The Netherlands:

When the Dutch Jewish Weekly was founded in 1865, it was one of many Jewish publications in the Netherlands. Now known as the Nieuw Israelietisch Weekblad, or New Israelite Weekly, it´s the oldest — in fact, the only — Jewish weekly left in the country.

Unless the newspaper secures substantial funding soon, however, it may be in danger of folding.

Recently the paper admitted its precarious financial situation and its board and editor in chief began a rescue effort. Initially it will target the Jewish community in Holland and abroad, but the paper also is considering asking non-Jewish groups for assistance.

The paper also wants to discourage readers from passing on their copies of the paper to others, hoping this will lead more people to take out subscriptions.

Time to go to Internet publishing, guys...

Its not just Jews who study Hebrew: A couple of Christians in the American mid-West indulge their biblical interests by Hebrew and the Torah.

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

Sex and the City. The Craig's List Men Seeking Women personals are very inventive this week.

Resume in Appplication for Boyfriend Position. (Husband.com, Inc. October 1991 – November 1999 (Company Out of Business) )

A taxonomy of Women Found On Craig's List. (Includes Zoloft Girl, Too-Specific Girl, and Yuppie Village (or Chelsea) Girl.)

HI, this post is not really for me - 211. (It is for a penis that I have just obtained the legal rights to. . . )

seeking comitted relationship with no strings attached. Okaaayyyy.

I 'd like a Kazakhstan model who speaks purrfect English Be Cool/Exotic - 45. Okaayyyy.

GreatGuy.Com Files For Emotional Bankruptcy. (The CEO went on to state that the staggering emotional debt load was chiefly caused by women who don’t know what they want, aren’t honest about what they are looking for, play too many games, aren’t real, read too many books on dating rules . . .)

To Live and Die on the Planet of the Apes. (Just read it. This one too. I think they are both tongue in cheek but it's hard to tell.)

Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but... he does.

I'm 4'11", 300 pounds and have large boils on my face - 32. (I'm looking for someone . . . who despises Bush and Cheney as much as I do.)

Another anniversary.

Forty years ago today at 9 a.m., in a light rain, jackhammers began tearing at the granite walls of the soon-to-be-demolished Pennsylvania Station, an event that the editorial page of The New York Times termed a "monumental act of vandalism" that was "the shame of New York."

This grim anniversary falls in Halloween week, when spirits of the departed seem so notoriously restive, and those searching for the insistent phantoms of Penn Station can find them deep in the bustling, claustrophobic warren that has been carved out of the old terminal's subterranean remains. Ghost hunters need only know where to look. . . .

Jews & the GOP: Senator Norm Coleman: The Washington Times follows Senator Coleman as he stumps for President Bush and the Republican Party:

Some 30 years ago, Mr. Coleman was a rock group roadie for the band Ten Years After, setting up the stage and steadying the bass amplifier during concerts for the 1960s musicians. Today, Mr. Coleman is a roadie of a different sort. The freshman senator, one of only three Jewish Republican Party members of Congress, is traveling around the country appealing to Jewish groups to support President Bush and hoping to reverse a nearly century-long trend of Jewish support for Democrats.

... The Democrat-turned-Republican talks up Mr. Bush's efforts to combat terrorism and the president's support for Israel, but Mr. Coleman also focuses on his own personal transformation — a Brooklyn-born Jew who switched parties — in hopes of swaying Jewish voters.

... The 53-year-old senator, who jokes that before he went to college — "I never met either a Republican or a Lutheran" — gives his testimonial with the passion of a convert.

"I became a Republican to make come to life the ideals I had as a Democrat," Mr. Coleman told a gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington last month. "I believe in equality and social justice. The key to justice and equality is for Mom and Dad to have a job."

Mr. Coleman's roots are hardly Republican. During his college days, he protested the Vietnam War and attended the Woodstock rock festival. After receiving his law degree from the University of Iowa, Mr. Coleman worked in the Minnesota Attorney General's Office. He later served as Democratic mayor of St. Paul, Minn., before switching to the Republican Party in 1996, halfway through his eight-year term.

Last fall, Mr. Coleman defeated Democrat Walter Mondale, a replacement for the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, in a close election, and this year joined Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the other Jewish Republicans in Congress.

Monday, October 27, 2003

Tony Judt revisited. Last week I rounded up some critiques of Tony Judt's bone-headed piece on Israel - bone-headed in factual errors as well as its central thesis - and I wanted to add this masterful fisking by Leon Wieseltier, in whose sights you do not want to be when he is loaded for bear. Since it's a registration-only site, let me share some choice quotes:

"The time has come to think the unthinkable." . . . Only truly free minds think the unthinkable. The rest are shackled by dogmas and sentiments and clichés and interests. The thinker of the unthinkable may even envy the others their intellectual tranquility, but now "the time has come," he has no choice any longer but to wound the others with the truth, to utter something bold and new, to "speak out" or "tell truth to power" or otherwise indicate that the unpopularity of his opinion is evidence for its correctness. Is it dissent? Then it must be right.

If ever an idea was not unthinkable, it is the idea of a bi-national state of Israelis and Palestinians. The fantasy is as old as the conflict itself. It has been thought and thought and thought--by Jews in the late 1920s and early 1930s and by Palestinians and Israeli Arabs during the last decade. Azmi Bishara, an Arab member of the Knesset, propounded the notion in the early 1990s. Edward Said championed it in his final years, as a way of maintaining his moral elevation without having to assent to the finality of the other. Noam Chomsky has been virulently advocating an anarcho-socialist version of it for decades. Palestinian intellectuals and journalists in the occupied territories and abroad have been discussing the blandishments of bi-nationalism with increasing fervor in the years of this intifada. Even Thomas L. Friedman, a creature of the thinkable if ever there was one, recently speculated on CNN that "maybe there's actually a whole different framework here. Maybe we're actually beyond the two-state solution anymore and we're now in a one-state solution. OK, that either there is going to be a bi-national state in some way or there's going to be, you know, some kind of ethnic cleansing." So we are not exactly in the kingdom of advanced thought. . . .

. . . [Judt] does not acknowledge the most inexorable feature of his Levantine erewhon: that in a matter of a few years the demographic realities between the river and the sea would determine its social composition and its political character. It would be a Palestinian state with a Jewish minority: Greater Palestine. . . . The nightmare of ethnic cleansing in Greater Israel disturbs his sleep, but the nightmare of ethnic cleansing in Greater Palestine does not. Greater Israel means war, but Greater Palestine means peace. Will the jihadists of Hamas really stay their hands when Afula finally is theirs? And who will protect the Jews in Greater Palestine from their wrath? An "international force"? The suggestion is outrageous. The record of international forces in conditions of ethnic cleansing is a sentence of death for any people who would look to them for salvation. . . . Judt has not replaced a national state with a postnational state; he has replaced a national state with another national state. He wishes to relieve Palestinian statelessness with Jewish statelessness, to exchange one vulnerable minority with another (even more) vulnerable minority. This, justice? The moral calculus of Judt's proposal is baffling.

Judt's history is also awry, which is unlike him. Israel was hardly the last or the latest nation-state to come into being. India and Pakistan were established at the same time as Israel. They, too, were born in violence and in partition. And the partition did not quell the violence. Was the partition of the subcontinent, therefore, a mistake? If it was, why does Judt not demand also the dismantling of Pakistan? Moreover, the United Nations is swollen with post-colonial nation-states that were created since the late 1940s, whose moral authority in the General Assembly and the Security Council does not seem to be vitiated for Judt by their belatedness. . . . Where is this beautiful cosmopolitan planet, this merrily deracinated family of man, in which Israel is the disfiguring exception? "A world of individual rights [and] international law"? Tell it to the Bosnians, the Rwandans, the Albanians, the ... well, he knows the list.

. . . Judt's characterization of Israel as "a faith-driven ethno-state" is wildly erroneous, a tendentious caricature. There are places in Israel that are hybridity heaven. (And there are places in Palestine where a little hybridity would go a long way.) It is true that national feeling, which exists in abundance even in "post-Zionist" Israel, is a scandal for the hallowed fluidity that the contemporary catechism prescribes for human affairs, but there are worse scandals. It might even be argued that national feeling, and group membership, and the engagement with tradition, and the preservation of peoplehood--all in a critical spirit, of course, and diversified by alienation and other affiliations, and vigilant about the corruptions of self-love--is all another blow against the philosophical casualness of the age. Anyway, the problem of the spirit of the age is not a Jewish problem. Zionism is not the only "constraint" in the world. Judt does not explain why the rectification of identity hangs upon the rectification of Israeli identity.

. . . Judt is embarrassed by Israel. And so Israel must be gone. What follows is a passage of the sort that I never thought I would read in my time, at this late date in the modernity of the Jewish people. I squirm and type:
Today, non-Israeli Jews feel themselves once again exposed to criticism and vulnerable to attack for things they didn't do. But this time it is a Jewish state, not a Christian one, which is holding them hostage for its own actions. Diaspora Jews cannot influence Israeli policies, but they are implicitly identified with them, not least by Israel's own insistent claims upon their allegiance. The behavior of a self-described Jewish state affects the way everyone else looks at Jews. The increased incidence of attacks on Jews in Europe and elsewhere is primarily attributable to misdirected efforts, often by young Muslims, to get back at Israel. ... The depressing truth is that Israel today is bad for the Jews.
. . . The behavior of the self-described Jewish state seems to have affected the way everyone else looks at him. I detect the scars of dinners and conferences. He does not wish to be held accountable for things that he has not himself done, or to be regarded as the representative of anyone but himself. It is disagreeable to be falsely represented by others. These are old anxieties. But there is a new source of relief, as Judt himself reports. There is the saving elasticity of contemporary identity. Why doesn't he simply delete his Zionism or his support for Israel from his inventory of multiple elective identities? Why must Israel pay for his uneasiness with its life?

. . . the notion that all Jews are responsible for whatever any Jews do, that every deed that a Jew does is a Jewish deed, is not a Zionist notion. It is an anti-Semitic notion. But Judt prefers to regard it as an onerous corollary of Zionism ("not least by Israel's own insistent claims upon their allegiance"). He refuses to place the blame for this unwarranted judgment of himself upon those who make it. Instead he accepts the premise of the prejudice, and turns on Israel. He makes a similar mistake in his evaluation of "the increased incidence of attacks on Jews in Europe." He knows that they are "misdirected," but still he describes them as "efforts, often by young Muslims, to get back at Israel." In what way, exactly, is the burning of a synagogue a method for getting back at Israel? In the anti-Semitic way, plainly. It is the essence of anti-Semitism, as it is the essence of all prejudice, to call its object its cause. But if you explain anti-Semitism as a response to Jews, and racism as a response to blacks, and misogyny as a response to women, then you have not understood it. You have reproduced it.

. . . [Judt] is not alone in his mood of hopelessness, in his desperation for a solution. But he has forgotten the dangers of desperate solutions, and adopted one. It is necessary to note that in other hands the elegy for the peace process does not have the integrity of sorrow and the turn to a bi-national state does not have the integrity of despair. The Palestinians who espouse binationalism are acting on their fondest and most uncompromising dreams. It is their device for defeating Zionism and gaining dominion over the entirety of the land, the shrewdest form of the Palestinian rejection of the idea of partition.

It is worth remembering, then, why partition was, and still is, the only admirable answer to the question of Palestine. . . . the idea of partition, the two-state solution, does not deny the nationalisms and it does not pander to them. It limits the fulfillment of the one only by the fulfillment of the other. It transforms the problem--the sharing of the land--into the solution. It insists that fairness is a variety of justice. And that variety is not Greater Israel with a Palestinian minority (or worse, a Palestinian majority) or Greater Palestine with a Jewish minority, but Israel and Palestine.

UPDATE: Andrew Northrup offers his usual sanguine spin on the topic. Commenters - who obviously didn't read the Weiseltier essay - knock down many straw men. Andrew's tooth-brushing analogy (in the comments - search on "tooth") is worth the price of admission.

Creepy antisemitic British academics - update. Remember Andrew Wilkie? Well, after mucho international publicity, thousands of emails and letters, and Wilkie digging himself in deeper every time he opened his mouth Oxford did the right thing.

The Vice-Chancellor has accepted the recommendation of the Visitatorial Board that Professor Wilkie should be suspended from his academic duties within the University, without pay, for two months. Suspension is the most serious penalty that the University can impose, short of dismissal or removal from office. The decision follows an investigation by the Board of matters surrounding an email which Professor Wilkie sent in response to an enquiry from an Israeli student regarding the possibility of graduate study in his research group. The Board has made other recommendations, including that Professor Wilkie is required to undergo further equal opportunities training.

I imagine it must be particularly galling for someone in the vanguard of the Left, who probably thinks of himself as a champion of multiculturalism, to be ordered to undergo remedial diversity training. "You mean . . . I have to apply my nuanced sophisticated appreciation for diverse cultures to . . . Jews?" (link via LGF comments)

PS Is Britain antisemitic? We report, you decide.

Welcome to Kesher Talk! I want to extend a warm welcome to our newest contributor, Joanne Palmer, a resident of New York's Upper West Side who is a writer and editor for a Jewish newspaper in New Jersey. I personally recruited Joanne for the blog because of her writing skills, fierce intelligence, dedication to liberal Judaism, and uncompromising bullshit detector. Look for more Joanne in the weeks and months to come.

Baghdad 2003 = Prague 1990 Dept. I've written before that the burgeoning entrepreneurial activity in Iraq reminds me of Eastern Europe after the wall came down. The head of the UN Development Program sees it too:

the Iraqi economy could transform itself as quickly as those in Eastern Europe did, with abundant ‘‘latent talent’’ that would begin to flourish by 2005, with the help of investment, privatization and loans. He also said he expected oil revenue within a year to pay for the cost of government and food imports.

International corporations - including those headquartered in France, Germany, and Russia - don't seem to have gotten the memo that

[Capital] doesn't go places where it feels threatened. Companies will not send employees to places that aren't secure.

Here's another example.

Afganistan too:

For Kabul the future is arriving at last: the city is experiencing an internet boom. Without any infrastructure to build upon, the Afghans are rushing to install wireless connections across the city. Internet cafes are appearing in every neighbourhood, mobile phones are the must-have item, e-government initiatives are transforming the way the country is run, and e-commerce is kicking off. And even while the official infrastructure struggles to produce electricity for more than a few hours a day, home-built antennae pointed at the hills are producing an ad hoc broadband network faster, cheaper, and simpler than anything in the UK.

Jews in odd places: Greece: Greek President Costis Stefanopoulos will unveil a monument to the Greek Jews killed in the 1940-1941 war, at 12 noon local time today, in the Jewish cemetery in Stavroupoli.

The leader of the opposition will also attend the unveiling ceremony.

According to information from the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, 12,898 Greek Jews enlisted in that war, of whom 343 were officers. The casualties were 513 dead and 5,743 wounded. The 50th and 63rd regiments mainly consisted of Jews from Thessaloniki and other regions of Macedonia.

Sunday, October 26, 2003

Antisemitism watch. Is Britain antisemitic? One woman's experiences on the streets of London. One man's experiences on the streets of Cambridge (scroll to "Email of the Day"). Meanwhile, British Iranians are staking out British synagogues and Jewish community centers.

The UK needs an Evan Coyne Maloney to document and broadcast this stuff.

Remember when we all thought Holocaust Museums and memorials to tolerance would enable to world to learn the lessons of the Shoah? Read what some Arabs wrote in the guestbook at a Holocaust museum in Slovakia.

Meanwhile, Al Qeda targets El Al Airlines around the world. So far El Al isn't letting this stop them. More background here.

(links via LGF comments)

Sorry for the interference: Big apologies to our readership for this past week -- Hosting Matters changed our servers following the big computer attacks and it took us a while to fix all our references/codes.

Regular Jewish Blog service will now resume!

Kesher Talk

Friday, October 31, 2003

Thursday, October 30, 2003

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

Monday, October 27, 2003

Sunday, October 26, 2003

Navigate this site

Previous Posts

Links

Archives