Panglossian Notes

So, propaganda does really work? Hmm, can that explain other thingies like ....

Now if only someone would analyze the wingnuts politicians in Western countries maybe I could understand why we all stand by and cheer while Israel gleefully kills and maims with our blessing (In North America our chant is so sweet, reminiscent of the Dixie Cup's version of  Iko Iko: Hey now, hey now 'cause Obama and Ignatieff have told me so ... ):

Is an Israeli Jewish sense of victimization perpetuating the conflict with Palestinians?

"A pioneering research study dealing with Israeli Jews' memory of the conflict with the Arabs, from its inception to the present, came into the world together with the war in Gaza. The sweeping support for Operation Cast Lead confirmed the main diagnosis that arises from the study, conducted by Daniel Bar-Tal, one of the world's leading political psychologists, and Rafi Nets-Zehngut, a doctoral student: Israeli Jews' consciousness is characterized by a sense of victimization, a siege mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness, dehumanization of the Palestinians and insensitivity to their suffering. The fighting in Gaza dashed the little hope Bar-Tal had left - that this public would exchange the drums of war for the cooing of doves.

Akiva Eldar
January 2009
Harretz

Technorati Tags: Confusing?, Gaza

A modest proposal (elementary first draft)

For preventing the spread of idiotic ramblings, half-baked theories, useless ideas, self-absorbed commentary, justifications of criminal acts, resurrecting failed political careers, serial pontifications and general bloviating

RING FENCE DAVOS NOW! YES HURRY! RIGHT NOW, QUICKLY.

PLAN:

See sketch attached.

DETAILS:

To be worked out.

DELIVERABLES:

Freedom from official and unofficial professional blowhard celebrities as well as general camp-following scum attracted to empty self-absorbed pontification fetes.

(h/t Jonathan Swift)

Technorati Tags: Sarcasm?, t Jonathon Swift

Mr Fish

cuts to the chase, so well doesn't he?

Technorati Tags: Israel

The new "Great Remaking"?

I wonder who of the crowd on the mall last Tuesday had not voted for Gore and Kerry?

Want to bet it was at least half?

Oh never mind, our neighbours are off on another remaking of themselves. Good, I guess, but I'm already wondering what and when the next collapse and retreat into paranoia will ooze out.

The few lines I liked, in the cliché ridden Obama speech last Tuesday, were the ones that set me to singing. The lines from the Field/Kern 1936 song "Pick yourself up". I still knew most of the lyrics, I was amazed. I hadn't hummed it for a long long time and broke into singing it under my breath immediately not paying any attention to what followed. I had to go online to read the rest of the speech and form my over all jaded view looking at a small screen.

I wonder if Obama, himself, put the lines into the speech? He could have. He was, after all, mostly raised by his mom's parents, and their attitudes and sentiments would have been formed in the 30's and 40's when the song was popular. Of course that was a time before all the arrogance, lunacy and monstrousness of the 50's on, so the lines, from the "Swing Time" song, in that time were determined but very very light hearted.

Anyway while waiting for the "great remaking" I can still enjoy Astaire and Rogers:

Technorati Tags: Bullshit??, Celebrity, Confusing?, Not political??, Nothing in particular,eh!, Obama, Outside view

Oh god the bullshit rains down

Revolutionary Road: Obama's Inaugural

Jesus I hope not. I suspect the lame reporter or some know nothing headline writer dreamed up that header, shown above, which was on top of a piece about the new POTUSs first speech.

Revolutionary Road, such an ingenious title grabber, eh.

But isn't the title of Richard Yates' 1961 novel about a depressing suburban Connecticut couple of ultimate fuck-ups: Revolutionary Road ?

Yes it is.

It is also now a movie, with everyones sweetheart of a disastrous actor, Leonardo DiCaprio, playing the weak, eminently dupable, husband and Kate Winslet his determined, but amateurish, wife.

So, I hope, the article, on the Obama speech, really didn't mean that the new POTUSs first official speech was the beginning of a new American tragedy. But that is what I assumed when I read the headline.

Words mean things, particularly paired together. Using the 2 words that form the title of a reasonably well-known novel, about a failed marriage between two really flawed individuals in the late 50's, as a lead to a, presumably significant speech, seems strange to me. Whoever wrote it was likely, I hope, unaware of the double entente nature of the headline. Or, of course, the writer simply assumed that anyone reading the article has a narrow reading scope and won't get the joke.

Funny? I don't know.

Technorati Tags: books, Reading

Best characterization of god

I've ever seen: a make-believe space-giant.

Its from the description of the 16th most loathsome person in America in 2008 from a list of 50.

16. Rick Warren

Charges: Dubbed “America's Pastor” by The Nation, he's duped people from both sides of the political spectrum into thinking he's the kinder, fatter version of James Dobson. Though he is fatter, how could anyone think a man who—professionally—quotes a book written by a make-believe space-giant, instructing the murder of homosexuals, could be anything other than a delusional bigot? Still riding the undeserved wave of fame onset by a meth-head kidnap victim’s ownership of his pop-psych hybrid of churchy prudishness and self-help pabulum The Purpose Driven Life, Warren had a big year hosting a presidential forum at his gay-sounding Saddleback Church, helping to pass Prop 8 and being tapped to invoke said make-believe space-giant at Obama's inauguration. Plus, his neatly trimmed goatee is the queerest thing we've ever seen.

Exhibit A: “God tells us that he created all the land animals on the sixth day of creation, the same day that he created mankind. Man and dinosaurs lived at the same time.” Can you feel the wisdom?

Sentence: He shalt giveth The Lord a blumpkin and eatheth of the pie until he bursts.

50 MOST LOATHSOME PEOPLE IN AMERICA, 2008
THE BEAST
Issue #134
January 2009

Technorati Tags: Fun & Games

A glowing tribute to 2 clowns of faith

I hope Nelson Mandela and Doris Day send back their medals of honor freedom. What a joke Blair collecting more crap from Bush. Some honor, thanks for the laughs faithinators.

The real picture of Gaza

Gaza reading - old and new

From: Henry Siegman
Former Senior Fellow and Director for the U.S./Middle East Project,
Council on Foreign Relations

In: London Review of Books, August 16, 2007

The Great Middle East Peace Process Scam

"When Ehud Olmert and George W. Bush met at the White House in June [2007], they concluded that Hamas’s violent ousting of Fatah from Gaza – which brought down the Palestinian national unity government brokered by the Saudis in Mecca in March – had presented the world with a new ‘window of opportunity’.[*] (Never has a failed peace process enjoyed so many windows of opportunity.) Hamas’s isolation in Gaza, Olmert and Bush agreed, would allow them to grant generous concessions to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, giving him the credibility he needed with the Palestinian people in order to prevail over Hamas.

______________________

From: Sara Roy
Senior research scholar, Center for Middle Eastern Studies,
Harvard University

In: London Review of Books, January 1, 2009

If Gaza falls . . .

"Israel’s siege of Gaza began on 5 November, the day after an Israeli attack inside the strip, no doubt designed finally to undermine the truce between Israel and Hamas established last June. Although both sides had violated the agreement before, this incursion was on a different scale. Hamas responded by firing rockets into Israel and the violence has not abated since then. Israel’s siege has two fundamental goals. One is to ensure that the Palestinians there are seen merely as a humanitarian problem, beggars who have no political identity and therefore can have no political claims. The second is to foist Gaza onto Egypt. That is why the Israelis tolerate the hundreds of tunnels between Gaza and Egypt around which an informal but increasingly regulated commercial sector has begun to form. The overwhelming majority of Gazans are impoverished and officially 49.1 per cent are unemployed. In fact the prospect of steady employment is rapidly disappearing for the majority of the population. ...

______________________

From: Sara Roy
Senior research scholar, Center for Middle Eastern Studies,
Harvard University

In: Middle East Policy Council Journal Summer 2007 and openDemocracy January 1, 2009

What is Hamas?

"At the beginning of the first Palestinian uprising, I was living in Gaza and spent much time in the refugee camps interviewing families about the political and socioeconomic changes taking place around them. Despite the harsh living situation, Palestinians were filled with a palpable sense of hope and possibility that has since evaporated. Hamas was then struggling to create a popular constituency, despite overwhelming support among Palestinians for secular nationalism. That was 18 years ago, and neither I nor anyone else ever thought that Hamas would one day emerge as a major political actor: democratically winning legislative elections, defeating the majority Fatah party and heading a Palestinian government.

Technorati Tags: Gaza, Hamas, Israel

Bush defends presidency

I read the headline on TMP and immediately rushed to the TV to watch an all-day news channel. I must have been day-dreaming too much as I drank my 3 coffees and read the morning e-papers to have missed the urgent news that Bush is defending the presidency.

I expected to see the WH surrounded by the usual masked gangs of security types with a near hysterical reporter, breathlessly looping, in the background, that the only information available was that George W was under attack but he was valiantly defending the presidency from boogymen.

I half expected to hear reports that Hamas had been seen entering the WH through the Rose Garden. While unconfirmed eyewitnesses said, George was holding the villains off with the presidential seal which he was swinging over his head, using it as a modified numchuck.

No such excitement.

George isn't even defending The Presidency, you know the concept, like with words in the form of a thesis about the constitutional nature of the office or something, eh.

Nope, just another case of poor headline composing, I guess. George is just defending his presidency like, you know the 8, almost, years he's been the president.