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The War of Ideas in the Middle East
poor bob simon. take solace, bob, at least you can fit in a bit of first rate journalism in between advertisements for the tel aviv chamber of commerce. which is more than i can say for NPR. the lead in to the tel aviv riots yesterday was 'clashes between israelis and immigrants' or some such nonsense, as if it were a boxing match as opposed to a violent tantrum by racists.
great piece, annie. more divide and conquer racism. the poor mizrahim need a scape goat so they don't turn their anger on the 'elites'.
phil is the proud parent of an entire tribe, citizen. he just has to say something positive about the most cretinous offspring. i'm sure he could find the bright side of madoff's ambition.
yeah, phil, right. god bless facebook, and god bless tiny mark zuckerberg too. how could i not see the democratic potential of a website designed to reduce human interaction to easily digestible, commercially lucrative bits, all the while big brother trolls just below the surface, hunting for actionable information. omg! wtf was i (not) thinking? well, i'm not the visionary who came up with the idea of a site that allows people to write short notes to friends. and post pictures too? kind of like a bulletin board, but only on your computer. fucking brilliant! and how could i also fail to see the humanitarian potential of the great minds behind the pump and dump that just took place with facebook stock? billions bilked from the little guy by the facebook crew and a select few investers. why i just bet that 'palestine' is near the top of the pile in mark's in-box. he'll clean up that disaster lickety split right after he feeds his puppy. you did see his puppy, didn't you?
exactly, toivo. isn't 'remember darfur' the response of american zionists when the OT are brought up? we need to fix the sudan before we can move on to the 'lesser evil' of the OT. so we can be certain that these said same americans will be advocating for better treatment of the sudanese in israel. can't we?
but I just cant put my finger on it.
r.silverstein has put his finger on it. poor commenters over there also trying to rationalize the racism of these pigs.
link to richardsilverstein.com
dime con quién andas, y te diré quién eres.
tell me who your friends are, and i will tell you who you are.
i read about all the casting problems they had for the 3 stooges movie, but with ch'avi and bibi, there's curly and moe. who to play larry, though?
It turned out the lobby was only too happy to preserve the settlement project, and the guy from Kansas too.
i know that you'd like to spread the blame in smooth, even strokes, but that's an inequitable pairing. the 'guy from the lobby' spends half his time educating the 'guy from kansas', so much so that by the time class is out, the 'guy from kansas' couldn't pick out gaza on a map of the levant.
i'm not a great fan of roth the author (although 'nemesis' is a nice little allegory on jewish male guilt over WWII) but at least he's a mensch.
tree, from what i can see in the two videos, the most logical interpretation of what occurred is that the settlers baited the palestinians into a stone-throwing exchange, swapping out stone throwers for armed IDF/settlers during the exchange. there is absolutely no evidence in these videos that the palestinians set the fires or that settlers were attacked while 'battling' the fires. and as i said before, if a palestinian had opened fire on a settler who threw stones, these psychopaths would be bleating on about the 'murderous' palestinians.
you see a raging fire at 1:28 in this video?
annie, you're debating a psychotic.
it is as if the settlers set out on a hunting expedition that day. they came looking for prey, and they knew just where to look too.
yes, that's what it looks like, annie. their 'god' needs a blood sacrifice apparently. these people are criminally insane, along with the repulsive commenters here trying to explain that we didn't just see the IDF and 'settlers' advancing on palestinians and then crying like babies about the threat of a thrown rock while they shoot live ammunition. i can just imagine the spittle flecked shrieks if a palestinian responded to a settler throwing rocks at him by squeezing off a few rounds from his automatic rifle. we'd be subject to wailing and gnashing of teeth worthy of a bible passage, the foreskins of their enemies piled high in revenge.
Rabbinic Judaism developed the concept of Sabbath to the point where it supersedes a whole list of Biblical commandments.
The settlers reading of Judaism is regressive. They promote “The Land” to supremacy. The settlers have revived a defunct Talmudic law that states: if non-Jews are encroaching on Jewish property in the Land of Israel, you are required to violate the Sabbath and take up arms to fight them off.
so in effect they are not worshipping the word of god but are worshipping themselves. that explains quite a bit.
Now how could i reach an opinion
about the artistic value of this piece if i didn’t think
that the review did a good job describing it ? :)
try another pose, olerg. you don't do 'clever' convincingly. presumably you could have read other reviews, including those linked by annie, which, for all you know, could have contradicted her review. or you could have visited the exhibition personally. or you could have concluded that annie's review, brilliant as it is, doesn't provide sufficient basis for an informed opinion of about the artistic value of this piece. or maybe you could admit, in an uncharacteristically lucid moment of humility, that you aren't equipped in the first place to have an opinion about the artistic value of this piece. so many possibilities, and yet you quickly reach one brittle, myopic conclusion. a pattern of behavior, i'd say.
Though Kirsch should mention the sociological rise, too, Jewish success. Success makes people identify with the power structure.
so 'altruism' isn't an integral component of judaism? or have these 'successful' 'cynical' jews stopped being jews? and i hate to beat the dead horse of the meritocracy, but how does a minority which has become closely aligned with the 'power structure' conclude that social mobility is a benefit? educational opportunities are becoming increasingly limited, with financing structures ensuring that many qualified students can't attend elite, private universities, and every indication confirms an increasing generalized lack of social mobility. for all the horseshit talk of no one being turned away from yale, princeton, etc. on account of finances, the numbers don't support that argument. anecdotally i have had many clients whose children have chosen Northeastern over Cornell, UMASS/Amherst over Brown, etc. on account of the piss poor financial aid packages offered to middle class/lower middle class families from the ivies or ivy-type schools.
as a close a thing to a true meritocracy existed in this country from roughly WWII through 1980, but the corpse isn't even warm anymore.
The NYRB is of no significance to people under 60 who live outside of the 10024 and 10025 zip code.
i'm under 60 and don't live in manhattan, and the nyrb and lrb are the only magazines i pay money for regularly. but thanks for trolling to the rescue, scotty. luckily you and a few selfless others have the time to invest in saving us from the insignificant, irrelevant and ineffectual. if you only had time to devote to important matters as well, the world might be a better place.
which one is Terry, and which one Scott?
what's the difference? i like both of their towels. useful after a birthright handjob i hear.
Grow up, Philip.
wtf are you talking about, junior? 'philip' isn't complaining about anything. it's the selectively thin-skinned foxman who's whinging on about the cartoon.
here you go, dan. sy hersh also lays blame for the neverending war on the catholics as well. from foriegn policy
He then alleged that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, "are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta."
Hersh may have been referring to the Sovereign Order of Malta, a Roman Catholic organization commited to "defence of the Faith and assistance to the poor and the suffering," according to its website.
"Many of them are members of Opus Dei," Hersh continued. "They do see what they're doing -- and this is not an atypical attitude among some military -- it's a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They're protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function."
aiman, an integral part of the evolution of the permanent war ethic is public relations, and what public relations has managed to do is to invert the matter of national security. the distinction between a specific, discrete threat, and general existential dread has been erased. you can hear part of it here, the not so subtle argument that zionism is a necessary response to anti-semitism, which, in any event, is ineradicable. even the anti-semitic thoughts of some ineffectual, pimply-faced adolescent constitute an existential threat. when generalized fear replaces specified threats, an ethic of permanent war is the 'logical' response. ('even one death from a terrorist threat is one too many.') paola virno, channeling kant, explains the distinctions, though i don't agree with his subsequent conclusion.
I have mentioned Kant for one specific reason: because he offers a very clear model of the world in which the dialectic of dread/refuge has been conceived in the last two centuries. There is a sharp bifurcation here: on one hand a particular danger (the snowslide, the malevolent attentions of the Department of the Interior, the loss of one's job, etc.); on the other hand, there is the absolute danger connected to our very being in this world. Two forms of protection (and of security) correspond to these two forms of risk (and of dread). In the presence of a real disaster, there are concrete remedies (for example, the mountain refuge when the snowslide comes crashing down). Absolute danger, instead, requires protection from... the world itself. But let us note that the "world" of the human animal can not be put on the same level as the environment of the non-human animal, or rather, of the circumscribed habitat in which the latter animal finds its way around perfectly well on the basis of specialized instincts. There is always something indefinite about the world; it is laden with contingencies and surprises; it is a vital context which is never mastered once and for all; for this reason, it is a source of permanent insecurity. While relative dangers have a "first and last name," absolute dangerousness has no exact face and no unambiguous content.
The Kantian distinction between the two types of risk and security is drawn out in the distinction, traced by Heidegger, between fear and anguish. Fear refers to a very specific fact, to the familiar snowslide or to the loss of one's job; anguish, instead, has no clear cause which sparks it off. In the pages of Heidegger's Being and Time (Heidegger, S 40) anguish is provoked purely and simply by our being exposed to the world, by the uncertainty and indecision with which our relation to this world manifests itself. Fear is always circumscribed and nameable; anguish is ubiquitous, not connected to distinctive causes; it can survive in any given moment or situation. These two forms of dread (fear and anguish), and their corresponding antidotes, lend themselves to a historical-social analysis.
link to generation-online.org
dan, i've heard of sympathy sex before, but a sympathy hand job? i don't know exactly what emotion that gesture was born out of, but i doubt it's sympathy.
arab culture? what arab culture? those were israeli rugs and tapestries. and the double-h of birthright, the hummus and hookah? mmm, yeah, israeli.
i found the article funny, taxi, but when putin does something like this in russia (see 'nashi') encouraging the 'right' type of young russians to procreate, hooking up at patriotic youth camps, the natural analogy to the lebensborn program is made.
linke
i joined because i had family members who served in wwi, wwii, korea, vietnam. it was considered a patriotic tradition, particularly for immigrant families like my parents. a way of proving their loyalty in a way, i guess. that's how my polish grandfather wound up permanently in the states, by fighting for the americans in wwi. but my children won't serve if i have anything to say about it. i can't say that i have the discipline to be a pacifist(more of a luddite) but that's the direction i'm leaning. consumer capitalism and militarism are dead ends.
and annie is right. it's not an excuse, but very few americans really have the slightest idea about what goes on in our wars. i know you don't have much sympathy for soldiers, but the public is shielded as much as possible from the amputees and brain damaged. all the public sees is some soldier being honored at a football game on TV.
Do you still live in Germany?
no. my father was stationed near idar-oberstein after the second world war and i was stationed at a base in the hunsrück in the late 80s-early 90s. my father was fluent in german, but i didn't learn it nearly as well. by the time i was there, most germans around the various bases spoke english. i last visited about three years ago when my brother was living in bruxelles.
no, frau links, i don't find it all that funny either. but it's how i deal with the likes of olerg on the internet. don't let my callousness scare you away. another fellow lefty is always welcome. die linke oder SPD? ich verfolge die karrier von lafontaine seit ich in deutschland gelebt. (or something like that)
But I think when Oleg asked me about my father and WW II he was actually interested to know wether my father had fought in the war against Soviet Russia . . .
i think you give olerg too much credit, klaus. he sees the world in two shades: jew and anti-jew. all of his questions and commentary are rhetorical, affirming in his mind the supreme importance of the 'jews' and the natural anti-semitic inclinations of the 'anti-jews'.
Nazi Germany Sumud Nazi Germany.
??
I asked you a serious question Oleg. Are you going to answer sensibly?
what do want, sumud? a man can only give so much. he said nazi germany twice, and i understand that that he was scratching his chin pensively as he said it.
“any german child physically capable of lifting a luger who didn’t rush the podium to kill ...
I am not sure what to think of this.
das war ein witz, mann.
Germans are individuals, not a homogeneous crowd.
what is this madness? of course they're a homogenous crowd. any german child physically capable of lifting a luger who didn't rush the podium to kill hitler got what s/he had coming when the allies dropped an incendiary on his/her head, and any offspring of the survivors are guilty too. and their children after them just for good measure.
/P-S. I didn’t take your question to mean I must be inherently murderous./
Good.
that's a comic worthy exchange. klaus absolves the racist of racism, and then the racist rants for another 20-odd comments about the indivisible DNA strand of judaism, the collective guilt of germans, the *ho hum* justified incineration of german children who didn't prove their 'innocence' sufficiently by taking up arms against the nazis, etc. etc.
There were no innocent Germans in the Nazi Germany.Not enough anyway to speak off. Every one of them who did not actively resisted (bore arms) but stayed and worked have made a contribution to the Nazi war machine.
so in your view the german jews who suffered silently and acquiesced to the rise of the nazi party werent 'innocent' either and ultimately got what they deserved as well? the same for the jews who remained in germany after the outbreak of the war and didn't bear arms against the nazis? and those german or polish jews who had the foresight and financial means to emigrate, leaving behind others who couldn't, they're guilty as well? (i've heard/read the opinion of jewish religious leaders describing the holocaust as a justified punishment by god for 'the jews' straying from the path. this, and olerg's variation, seem to be a symptom of the true self-hatred.)
olerg despite my smart ass attitude i truly to try to find the best in people, but you are challenging me. i can't find a peppercorn of humanity left in you.
Well Klaus we don’t remember the Holocaust for the early years
now do we?
you don't, olerg. because the germans were preoccupied with murdering the (primarily catholic) polish elite by the tens of thousands before they later moved on to the murder of polish jews. tell me olerg, when you use the term 'holocaust' are you referring to millions of gentiles murdered by the nazis too? you do know that hitler et al intended to murder all poles, gentile and jewish alike, and that over 3million polish non-jews were killed in the war?
american, his commenter profile says he participated in 'cast lead'.
Fighting in front agains your grandfathers. Who made pact with nazi germany and attacked to my country. Thanks for asking.
my maternal uncles were on the soviet side of german-soviet poland. they 'volunteered' to serve in the red army, as in, 'you can volunteer, or we can shoot you.'
Tell me Klaus.
. . .
What were your grandfather’s doing during the war?
that's real subtle, olerg. yes, we know, all germans are murderers and nazis. it's in their blood.
since you're on a quest in search of personal histories why don't you tell us what your дедов (or great grandfathers in case the age does not fit) did to stop stalin from murdering his millions?
don't forget golda meir's quote:
When peace comes, we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to rape their daughters.
annie bis, i'm not a fan of the headline, but i don't think that your comment is entirely accurate. i have seen mainstream media articles regarding the rape of syrian women by government forces, and there was a strong immediate reaction to the amina arraf hoax. many in the west are arguing for military intervention in syria in response to the assad government's treatment of protesters, which is not strictly a reaction to the rape of syrian women, but is certainly more of a muscular response than you'll ever hear to the killling and abuse of palestinians by israel.
His arguments are loaded with “may haves” and “perhaps-s” and “stands to reason-s” and plain old speculations based on projections.
so, allenbee, this is history as practiced by freud as well, in 'moses and monotheism'.
In 525 B.C., Alexandria did not yet exist, and, while there were some Greeks in Egypt, they were not there in anything like the numbers they achieved after Alexander’s conquests.
what's a bit of history, lysias, compared to benzion's intuition.
interesting, in louis malle's 'au revoir les enfants', the jewish child being sheltered in a carmelite school in France during the 2nd WW refuses to study greek. now i know why.
there isn't a more oppressive, exploitative relationship than this, annie. aside from the personal revulsion i feel, the relationships and the inherent shame are part of what perpetuates authority in these circumstances. i can't even begin to understand the relationship between someone in a position of esteem who has molested a child and that child's parents, or others in the community who know of or suspect of the abuse. the absolute power that the abuser holds over the parents and enablers, as well as the child obviously, unless someone is willing to expose the abuse. this is the ultimate assertion of the 'i own your ass' ethic. who/what else has such control over your child? just god, who can tell you that you have to have the will to kill your own child to prove loyalty. in this case you just have to be willing to assent to the metaphorical murder of your child, or someone else's child, i.e. assent to the loss of their innocence. it really is like a ritual sacrifice, some members of the community willing to overlook the abuse, particularly if the abuser is in a position of authority and if the victim is somehow 'defective' in the first place, the developmentally retarded, fatherless, etc. being prime targets.
fred, again that's just your perspective. from my perspective phil goes out of his way to find the best bits in even the most ignorant, talentless of jews. take tom friedman or jeffrey goldenberg for example whom he still finds a way to refer to as 'intelligent' or whatever misnomer he employs. for christ sake, he tried to find a way to make that shully hecht character sound like a mensch, and tied himself into drunken pretzels doing it. phil is fixated on jews/himself, the jewish question, jews in america, jewish authors, jews in the matchbook industry, .... so you can't wheel out the charge of obsession selectively. his disorder is what makes him so informed.
mark, it's easy to say, but yes, you're right, alot has been done, particularly at the local level. i had my kids in parochial school for years and have nothing but good things to say about the experience. on the other hand i see that creep the former archbishop of boston bernard francis law flying off in his skirt to the vatican to live out his golden years in luxury and i just see bright red.
fred, that's your interepretation of what 'this website is supposedly about . . ..' but it isn't, and you don't even have to go off the scroll to see other articles that discuss the topic of the relationship between american jews and larger society. admittedly this article does not place some jews in a very complementary light, but its their medieval conduct that invites criticism. i don't have any more sympathy for your feelings of persecution here than i had for catholics who complained about the bad press the church got for covering up sexual abuse.
and by the way, thank you for not couching your questions in the snide, arch tone taken by others. i mean that sincerely.
annie, there were similar issues regarding the insularity of the brooklyn jewish community after the murder of Leiby Kletzky last summer.
link to thejewishweek.com
There was a sign outside the apartment in Borough Park where Leiby Kletzky’s family was sitting shiva for him last week that said: “DO NOT share rumors, stories and information you have heard – at all!!”
Or is it an off topic article ?
really just shut the eff up olerg. what mental process lead you to believe that your inmmature snark could be appropriately inserted at this particular moment is a question for you and your psychiatrist and probably shouldn't be publicly exposed.
the article and the conduct speak for themselves, at least to anyone capable of the slimmest of objectivity, but since you're apparently too busy masturbating your ego to notice, israel and the occupation are not the only topics discussed here. putz.
scum. and to be clear, this isn't just protection of the abusers from outside scrutiny, this policy effectively promotes the abusive conduct. the catholic church's handling of its culture of abuse ended any hope of reconciliation between me and my immediate family and the church (my mother is a member of many groups actively advocating for the open inclusion of homosexuals in the church, the ordination of women, etc. who advocate reform not revolution necessarily) i consider myself catholic only in the ethnic cultural sense. the vatican and its enablers can go f*ck themselves. and so can these pigs.
and besides that, the security benefits are neglible, 'security' being breached on a daily basis by hundreds of palestenians seeking working on the other side of whatever WB fence, wall, checkpoint they live behind. they uncovered another underwear bomb 'plot', fred (the informant/double agent doing most of the plotting as usual). are you ready to start dropping your trousers and coughing for the TSA?
the difference scotty is that 'bill' is still capable of recognizing the humanity of jewish israelis in spite of his visceral reaction, unlike the zionist cab driver who is completely comfortable with his prejudices, the means of justifying mistreatment of the palestinians. you do get the difference, or is this just too subtle for someone who finds this all so amusing? everyone has unpleaseant, superficial or impolitic emotions, the point is to overcome them, not celebrate them.
our dunkin' donuts will steamroll your tim hortons, eljay. you know what happened the last time i ordered coffee at a tim hortons? they spoke to me in french. and this was in north america. it was all very disorienting. i don't mind a bit of an accent, like at the international food court at epcot center, but i can't order coffee in subtitles.
“Sure, you’re married, but are you happy?”
i just heard maurice sendak in an interview describe his confusion over his neighbors in brooklyn growing up. he said he couldn't tell the difference between jew and sicilian, and that he always just assumed that the italians were 'happy' jews.
“The Avengers”? “Iron Man”?
i feel a humanitarian intervention coming on. hang in there, shmuel. we'll liberate you from your ignorance. no matter the cost.
Socialism was reason…
a bit more on this left dangling declarative would be nice. was that the end of the sentence/paragraph?
no need to apologize. i just get a bit agitated when someone suggests that there might be something more to the human experience than 'the avengers' or 'iron man'. really, what more could anyone want?
Are the works of Ibsen or Chekhov (or Sophocles or Molière) any less universal for their specific cultural contexts?
what are you, european or something? and who are these people, anyway. we're talking miller here, not some effeminate french guy who uses an accent over his e. europe is dead. the old world. kaput. morto. there is no universality unless we (americans) first approve of it.
sports is one of my favorite forms of entertainment too, dan (good father-son bonding material too.) but i'm growing more and more disenchanted with 'sports'. i told my wife i'm not going watch anymore football after jr. seau blew a hole in his chest, and i got one of those glances. 'so are you going to stop watching boxing and MMA, too?' she has a point. anyway, i agree with your argument about talent, it's just that the system is so friggin' exploitative and corrupt. bob kraft all weepy-eyed over the death of seau was a bit much. that's how you make alot of your money bob, off of brain trauma and crippling debilities.
i like zosia in 'mad men', though not a great fan of her father's schtick.
“Iris Murdoch once said that all art seems to be aspiring to the condition of pornography, and it’s certainly come to pass in this country.”
what a succinct summation of 21st capitalism. every commercial development must be bigger, faster, more spectacularly grotesque and intrusive. even the more mundane parts of culture like fashion are straight out of pornography. i don't mean 'borrowed' either, just plucked and planted into the mainstream. it's even fashionable to have porn 'stars' associated with mainstream celebrity. tony bourdain, the TV chef, once had a show on 'food porn' or some such crap, and there were continuous references to a porn actor whose apparent claim to fame is his obese, hairy body. talk about an odd food pairing, buffalo chicken wings and some guy who reminds you of a clot of hair in your shower drain. blech.
dan, i heard garry marshall in an extended interview recently and he explained that he felt that part of his responsibility as a producer/director was to employ members of his extended family, and i don't think that his sense of obligation is all that different from many others in his position. that doesn't necessarily add up to a 'kinship network' as phil so delicately puts it, but it certainly doesn't add up to a meritocracy either.
oh, and i forgot. i didn't hear the interview. was gross being critical of this dimwit's myopia? that would be rich.
TV as a medium just sucks, dan. the few well done productions just proving the rule even more so. and the problem is, if i might sound like a middle-aged crank, that many of this generation's creative class are emotionally and intellectually retarded. TV/internetTV is their sole source for inspiration it would seem. a TV show is now just a cute concept, with a series of one-liners strung together in a semi-coherent narrative, none of which can be done without repeated allusions to prior TV shows/TVads/celebrities. as if that were the same as shared history. anyway, mooser has the most intelligent point to make on the subject. don't let it get its foot in the front door of your home in the first place.
go rudoren!! a nice bit of writing.
OT. gershom gorenberg has a good article on the settlements and bibi.
The decision broke with a policy that Israel has held for 20 years: no new settlements will be established. Right-wing Israeli governments, in particular, have broadcast that policy as part of their international PR efforts. Yet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his most senior ministers granted official approval last week to three West Bank settlements. No big deal, say government spokesmen.
"This is only a technical matter," Netanyahu's staffers told U.S. Ambassador Dan Shapiro, the Daily Ma'ariv reported on Sunday. There's actually a measure of truth in that claim—but that dollop of truth is an indictment of 20 years of settlement policy.
The settlements of Rehelim, Brukhin, and Sansanah already exist. They are just three of the settlements erected over the last two decades with the government's aid and abetment. The ministerial decision merely relabels a rogue operation as an official action. If hypocrisy is tribute that vice pays to virtue, this is the moment when vice stops coughing up the tribute. Or, in diplomatic terms, it is the moment when the client state decides that it no longer needs to pay any attention to the preferences of its patron in Washington.
link to prospect.org
that was my impression, woody. i think that she knew all along what her inclinations were and let the situation build into the drama that it turned out to be. i have had friends seemingly like her who have to work themselves into a state of near nervous breakdown in order to make a decision about anything of consequence. and frankly i don't find fervent 'converted' atheists, like the former pastor, any less tiresome than their fire-and-brimstone, bible-thumping opposites. faith (or lack of faith) is a bit more nuanced than the dogmatics treat it.
no offense to you if you're an atheist. i'll pray for your sole. may it always be smothered in butter and lemon.
ps at the risk of repetition, the whole story and its timing smell suspicious to me.
i was in the car when this piece aired and caught most of it. frankly i found it strange, and the 'pastor's' dilemma contrived. some might say that the timing of this 'soul searching' piece on the methodist/atheist and the 'cultish' non-responses of the Methodist church to NPR inquiries are curious. (if i remember correctly, she reached her final decision about leaving the church in the middle of march and subsequently attended an atheists conference later in the month. thank g_d NPR was able to put this bit together so quickly!)
sumud, any little opportunity to pick at that bloated ignoramus. friedman and goldenberg. only in america. maybe steve frank is right about remnick's incompetence: he did keep goldenberg on the payroll for almost a decade.
If Iran’s nuclear program is, metaphorically, Amalek’s arsenal, then an Israeli prime minister is bound by Jewish history to seek its destruction, regardless of what his allies think...
am i reading this wrong (or maybe just being pedantic) but that's not a metaphor. iranians, in goldberg's rabbinical schematic, are amalekites. so iran's nuclear program is 'amalek's arsenal', not a metaphor for it. pffft.
i wonder how many new yorker subscribers he interviewed for this hack job?
i'm not a fan of the 'New Yorker' or Remnick, but i'll assume that Frank's scientific poll of readers' habits consisted of Frank carping on about Remnick at a dinner party, and a few polite nods of the head from the host. but since this is such a serious problem in his mind, where has Frank been for the past 14 odd years? (Remnick took over as editor in 1998 with 'no prior editorial experience since high school'. *gasp*. so why was Remnick was promoted to that position in the first place? Frank doesn't venture a guess.) When did Remnick's sophomoric management of the 'New Yorker' became an issue for Frank? you'd think that if the health of the magazine was a concern to Frank, that he might've piped up earlier. (my unscientific poll by way of google didn't turn up any prior public criticism of Remnick by Frank.)
obsessing over israel's misdeeds is a sign of mental instability, but obsessing over the obsessions of obsessives is a symptom of what exactly?
i'm with you radii, so far as the film goes. 'inception' was a big budget excuse to slap together a 'matrix'/'bourne'/'oo7' horseshit sandwich, each level of consciousness revealing another action 'blockbuster'. i go to the movies about 3-4 times a year at most, and wadda waste of 7 bucks and three hours that was. but i take nima's more serious point, although it needs a bit more development.
just goes to show you, annie. we can all get seduced by something or another (thank god for that). if it's any consolation it appears that she has been hard at work cultivating that authorly look for some time now. i'm sure it's helped sell a copy or two of her books.
what an amazing face. i have not even read the article yet, i just had to say that. wow.
ick, annie. that's not what i see. and i'm not talking aesthetic beauty either.
that was an incredible interview, the 'incredible' part having nothing to do with gross's bumbling style. gross is a lost cause in my estimation. i don't sense the slightest inclination 'to open up the Jewish conversation to liberal non-nationalist voices.' her post-cast lead interview of bronner was embarrassing.