irredenta

"Beitar Jerusalem captain Aviram Baruchyan met Thursday evening with fans belonging to the “La..."

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:18:57 -0500

“

Beitar Jerusalem captain Aviram Baruchyan met Thursday evening with fans belonging to the “La Familia” organization and apologized for saying that he would like to see an Arab play in the football team.

The fans told him they were hurt by the remark he made about 10 days ago at an anti-violence conference.

Advertisement Baruchyan said at the end of Thursday’s meeting, “The most painful thing is that I unfortunately hurt Beitar’s fans, and I understood that I hurt them very much. It’s important for me that the players know and that everyone knows that I am with them through thick and thin, and I don’t care what other people think or write.

“However,” he added, “it’s important for me to stress that I’m not the one who decides on these things, but if at the moment the fans don’t want it, there won’t be an Arab player in Beitar.”

”

- Beitar Jerusalem captain: Sorry for wanting Arab player - Israel Culture, Ynetnews

Apologizing for not being sufficiently racist. Sad, sad state of affairs.

brooklynmutt: Night Walk Adam Haslett: “The expectancy was...

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:14:34 -0500

brooklynmutt:

Night Walk

Adam Haslett:

“The expectancy was exquisite. Sheltering the tip with his right hand, he lit it with his left. First came the heat on the lips and then the warmth in the mouth and then his lungs slowly filling. A deep, full breath. Instantly, the calm rose up through the back of his neck, spreading like a flood of perfectly cool water across the surface of his overheated brain. He was in it now—that longed-for gap in time, that merciful pause.

The girls were asleep. The phones were quiet. The media had gone home.

Exhaling was a meditation unto itself.

The speed at which he moved from one performance or task to the next had grown vertiginous. Which, strangely, made the pleasure of executing each one all the keener. Not only to reply by hand to a few of the public’s letters each night, but knowing precisely how to communicate his sincerity through the dark eye of the camera as he explained for the White House website what reading the letters meant to him—there was a pleasure in the exactitude of all this. The strain of it and the pleasure twinned.

A cigarette suspended all that. And for a moment, even here amid the splendor and consequence, it joined him back to the counterlives: the kid who didn’t care about his grades; the freshman listening to the young leftists quote Nietzsche and Foucault; the short-story writer alone in his room after a day miming faith in progress (kneel and you shall pray), believing for a few evening hours that a well-wrought sentence might set people free. Before the organizing principle of Michelle. Before the sorting power of a more concrete ambition. Taking him briefly back to the comforts of the slacker and the cynic. That dark, scattered home promising its own kind of safety.”

via generic1

Tough-guy John Bolton, hiding under his bed

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:11:06 -0500

Tough-guy John Bolton, hiding under his bed:

Brilliant post by Glen Greenwald.

“

John Bolton is the prototypical right-wing pseudo-tough-guy: cheering on every war he can find without ever getting near any of them. And as usual for this strain of play-acting, chest-beating warrior, all of the belligerence and craving of vicarious power masks a deep and pitiful cowardice. That is often the principal purpose of warmongering from a distance. Yesterday, Bolton — on “Washington Times Radio” — revealed that he is so petrified of Terrorists that he would not feel safe in New York City during the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and would not even allow his family there (audio here):

Host Melanie Morgan: Given the nature and danger of bringing these terrorists to American soil, where do you think is the most safe place to be when they get here and this trial begins? Where would you put your family? John Bolton: Well, not New York City, I’m afraid to say. This is part of the callousness and the really, lack of professionalism and judgment to put them on trial anywhere in the United States in civilian courts. “

If this weren’t so comical it’d be frightening. Only...

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:37:22 -0500

If this weren’t so comical it’d be frightening. Only one person is responsible for this sad state of affairs as far as I’m concerned: that greedy, elitist son-of-a-bitch Rupert Murdoch. (Thanks to SB for alerting me to it)

"Palin’s extraordinary ability to inspire major national controversies around these injustices done..."

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:19:33 -0500

“

Palin’s extraordinary ability to inspire major national controversies around these injustices done to her immediate person is going to guarantee her some kind of major role in American politics for the next dozen years. In this regard she is going to have a willing ally in her supposed keen enemy, the mainstream media, which likewise loves nothing more than a political narrative that has nothing to do with politics. It’ll be a virtually endless war over nonsense like this latest Newsweek cover, which hilariously is being seen as one or the other of a) a liberal media plot or b) a sexist assault on a prominent female politician by the male-dominated media world when in fact, as all of us in this dying print media business know, the magazine’s motive was grounded entirely in the nihilistic desperation to sell newsstand copies.

And Sarah Palin sells copies. She is the country’s first WWE politician — a cartoon combatant who inspires stadiums full of frustrated middle American followers who will cheer for her against whichever villain they trot out, be it Newsweek, Barack Obama, Katie Couric, Steve Schmidt, the Mad Russian, Randy Orton or whoever. Her followers will not know that she is the perfect patsy for our system, designed as it is to channel popular anger in any direction but a useful one, and to keep the public tied up endlessly in pointless media melees over meaningless nonsense (melees of the sort that develop organically around Palin everywhere she goes). Like George W. Bush, even Palin herself doesn’t know this, another reason she’s such a perfect political tool.

With Going Rogue, the 2012 reality show has already begun. As brainless political theater, she can’t be topped. It’s just too bad for conservatives that she happens to be unsustainably divisive and, as Newsweek points out, a really good bet to permanently marginalize the Republican party by reducing it to a pissed-off, semi-coherent mob that repulses independent voters on a visceral level. To paraphrase John Doman’s Deputy Ops Rawls character from The Wire, she’s “brilliant — fuckin’ shame it’s gonna end our careers, but still.”

”

- Matt Taibbi - Taibblog – Sarah Palin, WWE Star - True/Slant

Brilliant analysis - Taibbi never disappoints. Thanks to CoC for bringing this to my attention.

"I detest following, but also leading. To obey? Never! And just as bad—to govern! He who wishes not..."

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:08:26 -0500

“I detest following, but also leading.
To obey? Never! And just as bad—to govern!
He who wishes not to be terrified, will summon no terror for others:
Yet only he who peddles fear can lead others.
I even detest having to lead myself!
Like the creatures of the forest and the sea, I love
To lose myself for a while
In meek error thoughtfully to cower
Drawn home at length by distant things
Being enticed by myself to my Self.”

- –Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Einsame (ca. 1882) in Gedichte und Sprüche p. 75 (1908)(S.H. transl.)

"“Mr. Bahari, you’re an agent of foreign intelligence organizations,” he began. I had gotten a look..."

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:07:29 -0500

“

“Mr. Bahari, you’re an agent of foreign intelligence organizations,” he began. I had gotten a look at him when he and his men had dragged me out of bed and arrested me a few hours earlier. He was heavyset—I later learned that the guards called him “the big guy”—taller and wider than me, with a massive head. His skin was dark, like someone from southern Iran. He wore thick glasses. But I would know him now only by his voice, his breath, and the rosewater perfume used by men who piously do their ablutions several times a day before prayers, but rarely shower.

I could see Mr. Rosewater’s slippers right in front of my foot. He was towering over me.

“Could you let me know which ones?” I mumbled.

“Speak louder!” he shouted. He bent toward me, his face an inch away from mine. I could feel his breath on my skin. “What did you say?”

“I was wondering if you could be kind enough to let me know which organizations,” I repeated.

“CIA, MI6, Mossad, and NEWSWEEK.” He listed the names one by one, in a low but assured voice.

”

- Maziar Bahari tells the story of his four months in an Iranian prison. (via newsweek)

David Edwards Matte, painter and visual effects artist

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:28:13 -0500

David Edwards Matte, painter and visual effects artist

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:27:11 -0500

David Edwards Matte, painter and visual effects artist

"And now the farmer Ibrahim Imran tells us in Burin: “These trees are like my children.”..."

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:41:52 -0500

“And now the farmer Ibrahim Imran tells us in Burin: “These trees are like my children.” Hands or children, the grief of those who tend their olive groves is searing and deeply moving. The inability of the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces and of the officers of the Israel Police to protect the groves of these farmers, to protect their property and their honor, is the inability of all of us.”

- Mourning uprooted olive trees in West Bank villages - Haaretz - Israel News

The Galbraith Affair and the Business of Think Tanks

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:48:00 -0500

From Stephen Walt’s blog over at FP:

The whole sordid business got me thinking: is there any way to clean up the marketplace of ideas here in the United States? We are drowning in information and opinion, much of it claiming to be objective and authoritative when it may in fact be inspired and funded by moneyed special interests eager to sell the public a story that advances their particular objectives. Most “think tanks” in Washington portray themselves as objective, quasi-scholarly institutions (indeed, they increasingly give researchers endowed chairs and other quasi-academic titles), but unlike most universities, most think tanks remain heavily dependent on “soft money” and are bound to be especially sensitive to what potential donors might be thinking. And some of them aren’t really scholarly at all; they are just public relations operations or “letterhead organizations” seeking to mold public opinion and push the policy process in a particular direction. But unless you know who’s paying for it, it’s hard to decide who’s giving you an honest opinion and who is just shilling for some powerful interest group.

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:48:00 -0500

Husband-and-wife ambassadors head to Europe

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:22:58 -0500

From FP’s The Cable:

The Washington “power couple” is a familiar model: officials are often hitched to journalists, staffers to academics, lawmakers with lobbyists, and on and on. It’s a natural phenomenon in such a small and social town filled with so many policy professionals.

But in what is much less common, a husband-and-wife team is set to represent the United States as ambassadors in adjoining European countries. Mary Bruce Warlick is set to be confirmed as the U.S. ambassador to Serbia and her husband James Warlick is on his way to represent America as ambassador to Bulgaria.

“This is actually the first time ever in the history of our diplomatic corps where we’re having hearings for a husband-and-wife team at the same time,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH, said at the couple’s confirmation hearing on Wednesday.

“They can meet up at the border,” noted a congressional staffer with a smile.

Mary Warlick was most recently the acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasian policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Prior to that, she was the acting deputy assistant secretary for European and NATO policy.

James Warlick was principal deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of International Organizations, and, prior to that, director of the Office of European Security and Political Affairs in State’s Bureau of Eurasian and European Affairs.

The Warlicks aren’t the only husband-and-wife team to find new homes in the administration. In fact, it turns out that these sorts of “Obamarriages” are surprisingly common.

Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Kurt Campbell is married to Treasury under secretary nominee Lael Brainard. His former CNAS partner Michèle Flournoy, the new under secretary of defense for policy, attended the confirmation hearing for her husband, W. Scott Gould, on his way to becoming deputy secretary for veterans affairs.

The National Security Council’s Samantha Power has a short walk if she wants to have lunch with her husband, White House regulatory czar Cass Sunstein. And White House Communications Director Anita Dunn shares a commute (although not for long) with her husband Robert Bauer, the next White House counsel.

And there are many more: Shere Abbott and James Steinberg, Sarah Feinberg and Dan Pfeiffer, Antony Blinken and Evan Ryan, Tom Donilon and Cathy Russell, just to name a few. Meanwhile, the next generation of White House power couples is already on the way. For example, White House Deputy Press Secretary Tommy Vietor is engaged to Michelle Obama’s spokesperson Katie McCormick Lelyveld.

Presidents at the Great Wall

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:58:22 -0500

From Eliot Weinberger at the LRB Blog:

Richard Nixon, visiting the Great Wall of China in 1972, said: ‘I think you would have to conclude that this is a great wall.’

Ronald Reagan, visiting the Wall in 1984, said: ‘What can you say except it’s awe-inspiring? It is one of the great wonders of the world.’ Asked if he would like to build his own Great Wall, Reagan drew a circle in the air and said: ‘Around the White House.’

Bill Clinton, visiting the Wall in 1998, said: ‘So if we had a couple of hours, we could walk 10 kilometres, and we’d hit the steepest incline, and we’d all be in very good shape when we finished. Or we’d be finished. It was a good workout. It was great.’

George W. Bush, visiting the Wall in 2002, signed the guest book and said: ‘Let’s go home.’ He made no other comments.

Barack Obama, visiting the Wall on Wednesday, said: ‘It’s majestic. It’s magical. It reminds you of the sweep of history, and that our time here on Earth is not that long, so we better make the best of it.’ During Obama’s visit, the Starbucks and KFC at the base of the Wall were closed.

"Iranian reformists and liberals worldwide can be forgiven for thinking that the election and..."

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:05:11 -0500

“Iranian reformists and liberals worldwide can be forgiven for thinking that the election and crackdown last summer strengthened the hardliners. In the short term, they’re right: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is still president and his opposition has gone to ground. In the long run, though, they may have already won the battle: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is likely to be the last all-powerful Supreme Leader of the Islamic republic, even if the theocratic system manages to survive this tumult.”

- Today’s analysis from Iran. (via newsweek)

Gord Smith was at the top of the Canadian art world in the late...

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:29:25 -0500

Gord Smith was at the top of the Canadian art world in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. A Montreal-born sculptor who originally learned to weld with a torch his older brother used to rebuild old cars, Smith’s rise to prominence was a rapid one. By the time he reached his early thirties, he had already built up an impressive list of public and private commissions, collaborated with architects like Arthur Erickson, and exhibited with such international heavyweights as Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. More here.

All About Academe Readings...

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:31:00 -0500

John Hartley (QUT): Lament for a Lost Running Order? Obsolescence and Academic Journals (and a reply). From The Chronicle, here’s a manifesto for scholarly publishing. Publishing genius: A graduate student in Baltimore proves that a small press can hit the big time. There should be two more scholarly periodicals in medicine: “Duh!”, for findings that never seemed to be in doubt in the first place, and “Huh?”, for those whose usefulness remains obscure. Is there any point to “frivolous” academic research? From THES, academic styles of referencing are confusing and outdated, so why not simplify the whole thing?; and knowledge transfer is often perceived as a concept that is limited to science, but Hannah Fearn discovers it is equally relevant for the arts and humanities. The first chapter from Educating Scholars: Doctoral Education in the Humanities. From IHE, can scholarship in the humanities be done outside the ivory tower? Scott McLemee goes to Iowa to find out. How is the university, specifically the humanities and social sciences, with its rampant anti-Americanism, anti-intellectualism, muddle-brained identity politics, hostility to the unvarnished truth and all the rest to be re-conquered and restored to sanity? (and part 2) AcaWiki, a “Wikipedia for academic research”, allows scholars, students, and bloggers to easily post summaries, and discuss academic papers online. PH.Dotcom: What if professors could lecture 24-7? Blog culture invades academia. From Harvard, Louis Menand on the Ph.D. problem: On the professionalization of faculty life, doctoral training, and the academy’s self-renewal. A review of Socrates in the Boardroom: Why Research Universities Should Be Led by Top Scholars by Amanda Goodall (and the first chapter and a video).

Anti-government activists are not allowed to express themselves...

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:58:14 -0500

Anti-government activists are not allowed to express themselves in Iranian media, so theses activists have taken their expression to another high circulation mass-medium, banknotes. The Central Bank of Iran has tried to take these banknotes out of circulation, but there are just too many of them, and gave up. For the activists’ people it’s a way of saying “We are here, and the green movement is going on”. See more here.

Barbarians

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:20:06 -0500

The other ~~night~~ morning, as I triumphantly slapped shut my laptop and crawled into bed, my mind reverted back to the image of Barack Obama saluting the military dead at Dover air force base. Hours earlier I was arguing over the phone with a friend based in Europe about this dreadful war - neither of us had anything remotely insightful to say about it except to go over the banal details of news stories and wonder out loud what the administration ought to do…. Back to me in bed…. Unable to sleep, I decided to turn on the bedside lamp and continue reading J.M. Coetzee’s novel, Waiting for the Barbarians, which I had begun re-reading on a recent trip to Nashville. (I’m a great admirer of Coetzee’s humane imagination) And then, as if guided by divine providence, I came across a most striking passage, which may as well have been written for an American or Israeli audience. It is a hauntingly honest reflection on the perversion of reality in the time of war (especially a misbegotten one). Think Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Gaza…:

“The rumor going about brigade headquarters,” he says, “is that there will be a general offensive against the barbarians in the spring to push them back from the frontier into the mountains.”

I am sorry to break off the train of reminiscing. I do not want to end the evening with a wrangle. Nevertheless I respond. “I am sure it is only a rumor: they cannot seriously intend to do that. The people we call barbarians are nomads, they migrate between the lowlands and the uplands every year, that is their way of life. They will never permit themselves to be bottled up in the mountains.”

He looks at me oddly. For the first time this evening I feel a barrier descend, the barrier between the military and the civilian. “But surely,” he says, “if we are to be frank, that is what war is about: compelling a choice on someone who would not otherwise make it.” He surveys me with the arrogant candor of a young graduate of the War College. I am sure that he is remembering the story, which must by now have gone the rounds, of how I withheld my co-operation from an officer of the Bureau. I think I know what he sees before him: a minor civilian administrator sunk, after years in this backwater, in slothful native ways, outmoded in his thinking, ready to gamble the security of the Empire for a makeshift, insecure peace.

He leans forward, wearing an air of deferential boyish puzzlement: I am more and more convinced he is playing with me. “Tell me, sir, in confidence,” he says, “what are these barbarians dissatisfied about? What do they want from us?”

I ought to be cautious but I am not. I ought to yawn, evade his question, end the evening; but I find myself rising to the bait. (when will I learn to keep a cunning tongue?)

“They want an end to the spread of settlements across their land. They want their land back, finally. They want to be free to move about with their flocks from pasture to pasture as they used to.” It is not too late to put a stop to the lecture. Instead I hear my voice rise in tone and abandon myself regretfully to the intoxication of anger. “I will say nothing of the recent raids carried out on them, quite without justification, and followed by acts of wanton cruelty, since the security of the Empire was at stake, or so I am told. It will take years to patch up the damage done in those few days. But let that pass, let me rather tell you what I find disheartening as an administrator, even in times of peace, even when border relations are good. There is a time in the year, you know, when the nomads visit us to trade. Well: go to any stall in the market during that time and see who gets short-weighted and cheated and shouted at and bullied. See who is forced to leave his womenfolk behind in the camp for fear they will be insulted by the soldiers. See who lies drunk in the gutter, and see who kicks him where he lies. It is this contempt for the barbarians, contempt which is shown by the meanest ostler or peasant farmer, that I as magistrate have had to contend with for years. How do you eradicate contempt, especially when that contempt is founded on nothing more substantial than differences in table manners, variations on the structure of the eyelid? Shall I tell you what I sometimes wish? I wish that these barbarians would rise up and teach us a lesson, so that we would learn to respect them. We think of the country here as ours, part of our Empire - our outpost, our settlement, our market center. But these people, these barbarians don’t think of it like that at all. We have been here more than a hundred years, we have reclaimed land from the desert and built irrigation works and planted fields and built solid homes and put a wall around our town, but they still think of us as visitors, transients. There are old folk alive among them who remember their parents telling them about this oasis as it once was: a well-shaded place by the side of the lake with plenty of grazing even in the winter. That is how they still talk about it, perhaps how they still see it, as though not one spadeful of earth had been turned or one brick laid on top of another. They do not doubt that one of these days we will pack our carts and depart to wherever it was we came from, that our buildings will become homes for mice and lizards, that their beasts will gaze on these rich fields we have planted. You smile? Shall I tell you something? Every year the lake water grows a little more salty. There is a simple explanation - never mind what it is. The barbarians know this fact. At this very moment they are saying to themselves, ‘Be patient, one of these days their crops will start withering from the salt, they will not be able to feed themselves, they will have to go.’ That is what they are thinking. That they will outlast us.”

“But we are not going,” the young man says quietly.

“Are you sure?”

“We are not going, therefore they make a mistake. Even if it became necessary to supply the settlement by convoy, we would not go. Because these border settlements are the first line of defence of the Empire. The sooner the barbarians understand that the better.”

Despite his engaging air there is a rigidity to his thought that must derive from his military education. I sigh. I have achieved nothing by letting myself go. His worst suspicion is no doubt confirmed: that I am unsound as well as old-fashioned. And do I really after all believe what I have been saying? Do I really look forward to the triumph of the barbarian way: intellectual torpor, slovenliness, tolerance of disease and death? If we were to disappear would the barbarians spend their afternoons excavating our ruins? Would they preserve our census rolls and our grain-merchants’ ledgers in glass cases, or devote themselves to deciphering the script of our love-letters? Is my indignation at the course that Empire takes anything more than the peevishness of an old man who does not the ease of his last years on the frontier to be disturbed? I try to turn the conversation to more suitable subjects, to horses, hunting, the weather; but it is late, my young friend wants to leave, and I must settle the reckoning for the evening’s entertainment.

"The standard “f@ck you” carries its weight, no doubt, but it is simply over used, and frankly, I get..."

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:20:12 -0500

“The standard “f@ck you” carries its weight, no doubt, but it is simply over used, and frankly, I get very offended when I hear it. “F#ck” should be verboten, unless, of course, it’s used in reference to a good f¥ck, a simple fΩck, a f∆ck-wit, or the like. Then I am okay with it. People love “f®ck” because of its versatility. I’ll give them that, but must we be so redundant? I suppose this is no surprise, we love embellishment, especially when we have come up with something clever. Fπck is pretty darn brilliant—and the act itself is nifty, too. But when almost every other word out of a person’s mouth is fck, I wish I were deaf.”

- Taki’s Magazine, edited by Taki Theodoracopulos