Nina Simone - Ain't Got No...I've got Life

Once again courtesy of Splicetoday.com via YouTube. Those guys rule.

The Walls are Closing in on Israel

A terrific op-ed from today's New York Times about the current situation in the Gaza Strip that I wrote about here earlier today. The author is a bit more lenient towards Israel than I was. Israelis think that Israel is in trouble:

"Between 1948 and 1982 Israel coped relatively well with the threat from conventional Arab armies. Indeed, it repeatedly trounced them. But Iran’s nuclear threat, the rise of organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah that operate from across international borders and from the midst of dense civilian populations, and Israeli Arabs’ growing disaffection with the state and their identification with its enemies, offer a completely different set of challenges. And they are challenges that Israel’s leaders and public, bound by Western democratic and liberal norms of behavior, appear to find particularly difficult to counter."

Well if the Europeans throw eggs...

...then surely it's ok to throw shoes. At least that's according to Muntazer al-Zaidi's (the shoe thrower) lawyer:

"Have you ever heard of anyone being killed by a shoe?" al-Saadi said. "In Europe, they throw eggs and rotten tomatoes to insult. In Iraq, throwing a shoe is a symbol of disrespect."

al-Zaidi's lawyers are trying to have the charge of assault against a foreign head of state, which carries a prison term of up to 15 years, dropped down to insulting a foreign head of state, which carries a sentence of 2 years. Maybe al-Zaidi should've stuck to tomatoes.

Avalanches

The fam and I are headed out to Whistler, B.C. for a week of skiing starting January 1st. I'm psyched, of course. But apparently over the last couple of weeks a lot of people have been killed in avalanches out west. The most disturbing item, from the LA Times:

"...the death toll in the backcountry was not unusual. It is the casualties at ski resorts, generally considered safe winter destinations, that illustrate how lethal the mountains have been this month."

Great. Luckily no one's been killed at Whistler so far this year. But my dad, brother and I will definitely be avoiding the backcountry and sticking to well-marked trails on the mountain.

The Israel article made it onto SpliceToday

Once again my friend John at SpliceToday was kind enough to post a reworked Israel article, which I posted on here yesterday, on his website. I'll post the link:

http://splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/end-israeli-hostility

I urge any/all of you who might be reading this to check out SpliceToday. It's a fun website with lots of news, music, and other cultural items that are sure to please.

The Sun Rises

After getting locked out of my apartment building last night and needing to call a locksmith, I woke up this morning to blazing sunshine.

I had forgotten during the long trip towards the winter Solstice, how nice it was to wake up and have the sun in your face. In recognition, I've decided to post a favorite classic of mine. Have a sunny day!

Mac Vs. PC

No More Bombs

Over the holiday (for Christians, anyway) weekend, Israel planes attacked several sites in the Gaza Strip (image below courtesy of the BBC).




For fun, I'll juxtapose that photo with one of Tel Aviv, Israel:




The two places look similar, no?

Anyway, the airstrikes have killed around 300 Palestinians (so far), and at last word the attacks are continuing.

For those of you who don't know much about the the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I'll give a brief, probably biased, version of events:

Around 60 years ago, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the United Nations decided that Jews should have their own homeland. Rather than giving up any of their own land in Europe or Eastern Europe, the UN made the wonderful decision to settle the Jews in what the Torah claims is the Jews' homeland: the area in and around Jerusalem.

The problem was that there were already people living on that land: the Palestianians. And there were, literally, millions of them. That problem was solved by simply forcing the Palestinians to move, allowing the Jews to move in and create the quasi-democratic state of Israel. I say quasi because, although the Palestinians are governed by Israel and there are many more of them than there are Israelis, the Palestinians don't vote in Israeli elections and have no official voice in the main Israeli government. They have their own pseudo-government, run by the political party Hamas, which the Israeli government has conveniently labeled "terrorist" and which was the target of the weekend's airstrikes.

But anyway. The vast majority of Palestinians now live in either the West Bank or the tiny Gaza Strip. To add to that, Jewish Zionist settlers are continually building settlements that encroach on the small amounts of land the Palestinians still control. The Palestinians are literally fenced in, not allowed to travel freely, and are denied basic necessities including food, medicine, and education. Every once in a while, Israeli bulldozers will raze a few houses in response to a salvo of rockets aimed at Israeli towns.

An Israeli might tell you something like "Well have you ever been suicide bombed? Have you ever been attacked with rockets? These Palestinians are dangerous!" But that is ignoring the fact that the Palestinians view the Israeli state as having stolen the Palestinians' homeland. 60 years ago. The struggle against Israel is not, for many Palestinians, a struggle against Judaism or the West: it's a struggle for political freedom and sovereignty. They resent the West only because it is complicit in Israel's aggression.

Yes, the Palestinians do sometimes resort to terrorism to further their political goals. But, looking at the situation from their perspective, what other options do they have? They have no leverage politically or militarily. They are second class citizens being governed against their will by a much smaller minority.

Israel claims that its Palestinian foe is an existential threat and must be dealt with harshly by, amongst other tactics, bombing its governing party's headquarters with warplanes. But really, how dangerous can a people be when all that they can do to resist Israeli aggression is to throw stones at tanks:

Israel claims that its struggle against the Palestinians is a life or death conflict. But surely there must be a better solution than to allow an entire generation of young people to grow up in what amounts to a lawless refugee camp. What better terrorist recruiting environment could there be?

Stop with the warplanes and start allowing the Palestinians to assert their humanity. Give them food; give them medicine; give them education; give them democracy.

"Virginity Pledges" Don't Work...

So says the Washington Post, via MSNBC:

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.

The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a "virginity pledge," but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.

Abstinence-only sex education was a hallmark of the Bush Years, and yet another demonstration of the Christian Right's refusal to connect with reality.

Happy Holidays

This is probably the coolest thing that I've ever seen.

Obama on Food

I've written before about my thoughts on the food industry in this country. Lots of others have also expressed hope that Obama might begin to do something about our over-reliance on King Corn. Alas, according to the New York Times:

Although Mr. Obama has proposed changes in the nation’s farm and rural policies and emphasizes the connection between diet and health, there is nothing to indicate he has a special interest in a radical makeover of the way food is grown and sold.

You can't really blame the guy. The economy's in the crapper and we're fighting two wars, after all. I suppose food policy can wait. For now.

Working on Christmas Eve

Out of a legal department of around 20 people, there might be 2 or 3 working today, including myself. You'd think that coming in on Christmas Eve would be a terrible thing, but to be honest it's not so bad.

I'm getting paid for a full day even though I'll probably only stay here until noon. On slow days like this I can almost hear my bank account growing before the inevitable weekend depletion.

I can basically phone it in on quiet days like this. I had NO new emails in my inbox. NONE. Plus both of my bosses are on vacation.

I don't have to travel very far to my parents' place, and coming to work gets me out of bed and I probably won't get on the road (train) any later than I would if I allowed myself to sleep in.

Anyway, just some quick thoughts for those people stuck in their cubicles on December 24th.

Torture Post Expanded

Hey all,

I decided to expand a bit upon my last torture blog entry and sent it to my friend at SpliceToday.com (which is a cool site that you should check out regularly). The link is:

http://splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/the-u-s-s-torturous-legacy-in-iraq

Thanks for the support!

Mexico's Drug War and Our Complicity

The Washington Post reports that 9 headless bodies were found near a busy road in southern Mexico, including several Mexican army troops. All of the bodies are believed to be casualties in Mexico’s increasingly violent drug war, which according to the Post has claimed around 5,800 lives so far this year. That’s more than two 9/11’s.

Condoleeza Rice, our oh-so-brilliant and effective Secretary of State (I nearly puked writing that) was in Mexico last week discussing the drug war. When asked whether she thought the Bush Administration’s decision in 2004 to let the US assault weapon ban expire (such guns are not sold anywhere in Mexico) had had any effect on the amount of weapons in Mexico, Rice said she didn’t think so.

Of course not. Because why would Mexican drug cartels cross the border, buy or steal readily-available assault weapons, and then use them to help kill other drug dealers and Mexican soldiers? That wouldn’t make any sense, would it?

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Torturing the Shoe-Thrower

The Egyptian shoe-throwing journalist being held in an Iraqi prison has, according to his brother, who recently visited him in prison, been tortured. As a result:

Uday al-Zaidi said his brother had said: “After the torture and the cold-water shower, I told them to bring me a blank sheet of paper and I would sign it, and they could write whatever they wanted. I am ready to say I am a terrorist or whatever you want.”

This is the point that people often miss about the reasons why governments (including ours) torture people. It’s not that we actually believe we’re getting sound information. Those who are tortured are often willing to say anything at all, even confessing to crimes that they did not commit, in the hopes that the torture will cease. Governments then take those sham confessions and hold them up to ‘prove’ that the torture was effective and that a criminal has been outted. That’s what Hitler did; it’s what Stalin did; it’s what North Korea still does. And now, apparently, it’s what the US-backed Iraqi government does.

Torturing has never been about acquiring reliable information. It’s about cowing your opponents, real and/or imagined, into submission; and it’s about governments trying to legitimize oppressive tactics by conjuring fake confessions from battered inmates.

I hope Obama follows through on his promises. This isn’t what America should stand for.

Japan Labor and US Torture

The Japanese government admitted today that during WWII it used POW’s as forced laborers at a coal mine owned by the current Prime Minister’s family, Taro Aso. According to the report:

“300 British, Dutch and Australian prisoners of war worked at a mine owned by Aso Mining during the last four months of World War II in western Japan.”

During WWII the Japanese frequently abused military prisoners and civilians alike. And there are still controversies relating to Japan’s refusal to acknowledge its abuses in parts of China during the 1930s. It’s taken more than 60 years for Japan’s government to admit the abuse of “only” 300 prisoners for a term of four months.

We Americans of the 21st century were taught that Japan’s atrocities at the beginning of the century were reprehensible and unjustifiable. We are perplexed by Japan’s government’s reluctance to admit their own culpability.

So how and what do we think when we are increasingly certain that the uppermost officials in our own government condoned the use of torture against suspected foreign terrorists (and even against American citizens)? I hope for the sake of our country and the world that our government admits its mistakes soon and takes steps to make amends. I hope that in 60 years we as a country are not still struggling to come to terms with our past mistakes and making half-hearted admissions and apologies.

To do that, let’s take a hard look at indicting those responsible for the implementation of torture in US-run interrogation rooms. I’m thinking of you, Cheney, and you, Rumsfeld.

Clinton Was Part of the Problem!

In 1997 Bill Clinton passed a law that nearly eliminated capital gains taxes on real estate. The result:

"…many economists say that the law had a noticeable impact, allowing home sales to become tax-free windfalls. A recent study of the provision by an economist at the Federal Reserve suggests that the number of homes sold was almost 17 percent higher over the last decade than it would have been without the law."

Are we all still sure that we want to hold Clintonism up as the ideal economic model?

Corruption in Iraq? Seriously?!

The New York Times reported today that several dozen Iraqi government officials had been arrested for allegedly plotting a coup that would return Saddam’s Baathist party to power. While such an event is no doubt disturbing, I also can’t help but wonder if Iraq’s Prime Minister, Mr. Maliki, isn’t using the arrests to consolidate his own power.

The truth is probably somewhere in between those two poles. The arrested officials were probably plotting to seize more power, whether lawfully or unlawfully. But according to this NYTimes article, Mr. Maliki has recently been firing government anti-corruption officials.

Were the arrested officials actually disloyal? Or is Maliki using the corruption – corruption that his own policies have helped flourish – to clean the government of officials he views as less-than-loyal to him? We might never know the answer.

Well That Answers That...

How does Santa deliver his presents?

Easy:

"He understands that space stretches, he understands that you can stretch time, compress space and therefore he can, in a sense, actually have six Santa months to deliver the presents,' Professor Larry Silverberg from North Carolina State University said."

Professional Sports and Race

Over the years I’ve had several conversations with different people about the prevalence of black athletes in professional sports. When Jeremy Wariner won the gold medal in Athens in the 400m, we were amazed that "a skinny white guy" could outrun everyone else. After all, a white man hadn't won the 400m sprints in something like 40 years.

I came across this interesting article in Slate magazine relating to this topic and thought I’d share. The guy acknowledges that, as far as entire populations go, black people are slightly more likely than whites and even more likely than Asians to have genes that indicate an abundance of the “fast twitch” muscles that are necessary in most sports. But that slight genetic predisposition does not explain the overwhelming presence of black athletes in, for example, the NBA, where around 80% of the athletes are black. There are other factors at work.

What those other factors might be is a bit beyond the scope of that article, but the question intrigues me. Certainly there’s the idea in poor, mostly minority cultures that the only way out is through sports. Not only will sports give you riches, but it will also give you fame. How could that not be appealing to a kid who goes to a school where there aren’t enough books in the classroom?

People will often look at the prevalence of minority players in professional sports as a sign that America is becoming increasingly colorblind. But the owners are white and the coaches are white. In fact, I’d bet that minorities are underrepresented in every service market related to the sports industry: agents; hospitality; marketing; vendors. We trip over ourselves to say how wonderful it is that we, a mostly white society, give young black players a chance at money and fame on the sports field, but at the same time the whole show is run almost exclusively by whites.

If a poor young black child has moderate football skills and moderate intelligence, what are his parents, coaches, and teachers going to tell him? “Work your ass off to be a better football player, son! It’s the only way that you’ll ever make it to college and then to the big time.”

What about a young white kid in the suburbs with moderate football skills and moderate intelligence? I guarantee you his parents, coaches, and teachers will say “You can keep playing football but you’d better hit the books hard, son! It’s the only way you’ll ever make it to college and onto a good career.”

Which position would you rather be in? If the black kid gets hurt or just isn’t good enough, what options does he have left? He’s neglected his education and probably can’t afford to go to college without a football scholarship. But if the white kid turns out to be terrible at football, he still might get into an Ivy League school and at the very least he’s got a solid educational background and can probably afford a decent local college.

In the end, who’s going to work harder to be a professional sports player? The young black kid, who has no other options; or the young white kid, who if he’s not quite good enough at football, can always just go to college anyway.

We’ve got to find a way to make the system work better.

Well I Guess This is Growing Up

I went to a Christmas party hosted by a New York friend of mine last weekend. My girlfriend joined me, as did both of my roommates and several other people that constitute my “group” here in the Big Apple. I’ve met all of them through my roommate, Tyler, who met them through his affiliation with Teach for America.

It didn’t strike me as odd at the time, but thinking back it does seem a little strange that peers of mine threw, and I attended, an “adult” Christmas party (i.e. there weren’t any kegs and we didn’t play beer pong). The host made a really good ham and grilled potatoes, and someone else had brought salad and crackers with cheese. My girlfriend and I provided chips and salsa. We made sure to buy a really good brand without telling anyone that we hadn’t made it from scratch. It was a hit.

Gone are the days when I was forced to attend my parents’ friends’ Christmas parties wearing ridiculous holiday sweaters. I have awkward memories of being forced to socialize with unlikable children, and I remember always being relieved when we would leave.

But now my age group, like our parents before us, is slowly starting to throw and attend our own Christmas parties. It’s ridiculously strange to think that some day soon, my friends and I will be hauling our own unenthusiastic children to awkwardly socialize with one another. I’m getting older, I can feel it.

Crazy dad scaring his son

This kid is definitely going to need therapy.

Airbone Toxic Event - Sometime Around Midnight