Titan is grumpier than usual, if that is possible

Our take on the world this week

Titan is back, grumpy and ranting even more than usual. Poor Cassini has to drop in on each revolution around Saturn for an orbit shift and has to put up with the old curmudgeon. You, of course, can tune out, but Titan thinks that you should pay a little attention to what is wrong in this nasty world of ours.

For starters, let us refer you to the Miriam Shlesinger Human Rights action blog. As the weeks and months go by without Miriam, we continue to realize what we have lost. She got us into the human rights struggle. Please act on behalf of people who are so much in need of support in their trials and tribulations at the hands of oppressive regimes and corporations.

SCIENCE IN CANADA 
We would like to start out with a complaint about the Neanderthal policies of the Conservative government of Canada vis a vis basic science.

Science is not about the bottom line.
Photo by NRC, modified by Phil Plait

 Phil Plait,writing in Slate in his Bad Astronomy blog,  has a few strong rants on this issue in which, he makes the valid claim that the shortsighted decisions of the Harper regime are doing major harm to science and to Canada as a whole. Fair disclosure, Titan has relatives who are adversely affected by the closing down of research that does not support business.  The tack that  the Canadian government is taking amounts to corporate welfare. It is shocking that a G8 country can conclude that science is only about the bottom line. If Ludwig Boltzmann, for example, were an employee of the Canadian NRC, our knowledge of physics would be much poorer. These clods to not understand that science is done for its own sake and that the benefits to society are long-term. The laser and the transistor are the fruits of basic research in spectroscopy and solid state physics respectively.  The people of Canada in their infinite wisdom chose to give the Conservative Party a majority in Parliament. We can see the results in many areas, but one of the worst is the attack on basic science by the government. For a G8 country to sell out its future or to expect the rest of the world to do science for it is criminal. Perhaps we should invoke Tallyrand, "this is worse than criminal, this is stupid."

A STEP TOWARDS PEACE IN COLOMBIA 
It is good news to learn that the FARC and the Colombian government have reached an agreement on land reform as a step towards bringing to an end an insurgency that has flamed for over four decades and brought calamity to an entire nation. Let us quote Sarah Rainsford, the BBC correspondent at the talks in Havana:

" This is the first, significant milestone in the peace talks and a welcome advance for the Colombian government which initiated the process.

Rural reform was always going to be a tough issue, so closely entwined with the causes of the conflict. But there was pressure to show results after six months of discussion. So the teams worked late over the last few days, hammering out the deal.

Precise details have not been disclosed. Neither side took questions from journalists. Colombia's government wants to minimize outside pressure during the process, keen to avoid the fate of previous, failed talks: it argues that any final peace agreement will be put to a referendum.

But the agreement centers around "fair access" to land. Those closely involved say land will be reclaimed from those who seized it illegally and reallocated via a 'land bank' along with areas currently underused. The government's chief negotiator stressed that "legal landowners have nothing to fear".

BURMA IS STILL A PLACE OF REPRESSION 
Although reform is supposed to be going on in Burma, the country is still far from being anything similar to a democracy. It appears that the acceptance of the "New Burma" by the international community and the lifting of sanctions, up to even a White House visit, was premature.There are still hundreds of political prisoners who remain in jail two years after the reform process started. The Burmese government has used releases of political prisoners as public relations exercises to achieve good publicity, and to persuade the international community to lift sanctions. The persecution of the Muslim minority is a major scandal unto itself. As the Burma Campaign writes on its Web page: "Genuine political progress cannot be achieved while democracy activists remain behind bars and the rights of ethnic people continue to be ignored. The release of all political prisoners is an essential first step in a transition to democracy, but only a step. The international community must not be fooled by tactical releases of political prisoners that in reality may be a tried and tested ploy by the government to gain international credibility without introducing genuine democratic change."

MALNUTRITION AS A WORLDWIDE THREAT 
A quarter of the children in the world suffer from malnutrition according to a report entitled Food for Thought put out by the UK charity Save the Children. The stunting of growth of body and brain causes these children to grow up with inhibited intellectual ability and their lack of capability to perform in the modern work place has a real cost. They could earn as much as 20% less in adulthood, and the global economic impact of  malnutrition could be up to $125bn (£83bn), Save the Children said. The G8 are being called to address this burning issue at their next summit conference. The UK government is holding a special nutrition summit in London on 8 June, ahead of the main G8 gathering, which is expected to look at issues such as food security and the need for more African countries to have their own national nutrition plans. One way to measure malnourishment is to look at the level of daily calorie intake per person. In an age when the world is producing more food than ever before it is a scandal to see that many people have a calorie intake that is below what is necessary for decent survival (2000 calories).
 
The mean caloric intake is about 2800/day, but the distribution is most nonuniform.One might feel guilty over the thought that our dog Murphy probably enjoys a higher daily caloric intake than many children around the world.


DISSIDENT SAYS DUMBASS TO CHINESE GOVERNMENT. 
 The Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei has released a heavy metal video in which he blasts the Chinese government and reconstructs his prison stay. Ai himself sings the lyrics, which include: "Stand on the frontline like a dumbass, in a country that puts out like a hooker... tolerance be damned, to hell with manners, the low-life's invincible." Here is the video for your edification.

POLLOCK PAINTING RESTORED 
The beloved painting by Jackson Pollock “One: Number 31, 1950,” has been restored by conservators at MOMA after 15 years of waiting and a year of work.

Last Tuesday, “One” was rehung in its place on the museum’s fourth floor, considerably cleaner and its conservators a bit wiser.Anyone of you in the New York area, hie thee to MOMA to see it. We look forward to our next visit.

CONGRESSIONAL IQ SCHEDULED TO RISE IN 2015 
Michelle Bachman has chosen not to seek reelection in 2014. Andy Borowitz predicts the result.Of course, the lady could move to Texas and raise the mean IQ of both states.

HOME SWEET HOME 
There is much to rant about in Israel this week, including the handcuffing of a wounded victim of a shooting in a bank out of pure racism (apparently the Bedouin victim was shot by the police) and political shenanigans that we will not even bother to link to you. We would like to focus this week on the fundamental dangers that are facing our society and our democracy. We refer you to a long, but fascinating article by Prof. Eva Illouz of the Hebrew University on the Trinity that rules Israel, settlers, religious and the wealthy. She invokes a 16th century French philosopher, Etienne de la Boétie. In 1548, at the age of 18, he wrote a slim book titled “Discours de la Servitude Volontaire” [Discourse on Voluntary Servitude], which managed to slip past the censors and attack the autocratic rule of Francois I. His bottom line is that people give up their freedoms because, under pressure of the regime, they forget that they are entitled to them. Prof.Illouz eventually lays the voluntary servitude of the public in Israel at the door of the Army, which is the main instrument that breaks the spirit of the young and keeps it broken throughout life. We find that her thesis makes sense since the willingness of Israeli soldiers and in particular officers to commit unspeakable crimes in the name of the "security needs of the state" can only be understood if their basic humanity has been stripped from them by the system. In Israel  the pressures to conform to a norm set down by the system also contribute to crushing theindependence of spirit and thought that is so badly needed.

Illustration by Yael Bogen.

A factor that is often overlooked is the fact that Israel throughout its history has been an immigrant society in which the immigrants are regarded as less "Israeli" than the native-born. This results in even greater conformity pressures and the Army incurred praise as a framework in which the immigrants could be absorbed or integrated, i.e. repressed into a state of servitude possibly more pernicious than that of the natives. It worked as a machine grinding all down to the Israeli stereotype and causing you to deny your own past. The late cartoonist Friedl Stern depicted it well

Obviously not everyone is crushed as can be seen in the demonstrations at Sheikh Jarrakh and elsewhere, in the refusals to serve in the army and in the voices of protest that are raised, albeit weakly. The so-called J14 protest movement, that started on July 14, 2011 and brought huge crowds out to protest, eventually fizzled and was put down by the regime with no real results except for Parliamentary seats for a few of the leaders. Prof. Lev Greenberg, of Ben-Gurion University, provides a penetrating analysis of the movement and why it failed.
Dan Almagor in Haaretz writes about the poet Nathan Alterman and the conscientious objector Nathan Blanc, of whom we have posted on this blog in the past.

Nathan Blanc, the Army blinked

Almagor's article which is not available in English (self-censorship by the newspaper?) compares Alterman's famous poem "About That" (we append a link for those who read Hebrew) in which he indicted the army of 1948 for war crimes, to the voice of protest of his young namesake. The military censor tried to suppress the poem, but Ben-Gurion, then PM, ordered it printed up in thousands of copies and distributed to soldiers. How times have changed.

Nathan Blanc was sentenced to prison ten times and but always refused to back down. His example is worthy of support from all of us. Almagor invokes the famous conversation between Thoreau (imprisoned for refusing to pay a poll tax to fund the unjust Mexican War)and Emerson, "Henry, what are you doing in jail?"--Ralph, what are you doing out of jail?" Blanc could have gotten out of jail and the army by taking the route of asking to be declared "psychologically unfit," but he declined to take that route.  Experience in our family has taught us that the reaction of the army to an unwillingness to commit war crimes is to send the young person to a psychologist since the person must be hallucinating if he/she thinks that the "holy moral army of Israel" would ever commit a war crime. To release Blanc amounts to an admission of war crimes. The Army, with characteristic arrogance and stupidity, painted itself into a corner. We are informed now that the Army blinked and Natan Blanc is to be  released next Thursday after 177 days behind bars. He  has great moral courage and did  not break.

Another person of great moral courage and integrity is Anat Kamm.

Anat Kamm at a Tel Aviv court before hearing the verdict of her trial, Oct. 2011

 She is serving a long prison sentence for leaking documents that showed high officers of the army to be in gross violation of Supreme Court decisions and to have issued orders to murder certain Palestinian leaders. The information was published and the chief criminal, her commander, was "punished" by promotion to an even higher position in the military hierarchy. Itzhak Laor, writing in Haaretz, compares her to Antigone, who, in Sophocles' eponymous play, chooses to violate the commands of the king in order to obey a higher law of ethics and decency. Laor goes on to berate the Israeli Left for its failure to stand up for Kamm. One might suspect that the weakness of the left support for Kamm derives from the slavish mentality described so well by de la Boetie.

Both Blanc and Kamm are alone in their struggle, although and maybe because they are in the right. Jules Renard once wrote, “If you are afraid of being lonely, don't try to be right." A few people of good will can write on their behalf and cheer from the sidelines, but as long as our society is run by the Israeli equivalent of the US Tea Party, there can be no real hope. To quote Martin Luther King, “We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

What can we do about this? Prof. Illouz comes up with an optimistic conclusion and ends her article with the following:
"Israeli society has long ago been hijacked by the holy trinity of settlers, religious and the wealthy. Can we oppose the tyrannies that have liquidated the democratic spirit of Israel? The 18-year-old Etienne de La Boétie gives us hope: “Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed.” La Boétie probably had not intended to write an anarchist call to resistance, but his book was later read as a
manifesto for civil disobedience (Ralph Waldo Emerson and possibly Henry Thoreau drew heavily on the book to articulate their ideas of civil disobedience). Today, too, we can and must say: Withdraw consent, and political power comes crumbling down like a house of cards."

Indeed "consent" is the operative word here. Thomas Jefferson wrote in the US Declaration of Independence as follows: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government..."

When people who live in the slums of South Tel Aviv or in the so-called development towns vote for their exploiters and oppressors, i.e. the right wing parties, they are giving their consent to their own poverty and lack of security. Until this fact and the destructive role of the settlers and the army become understood, we shall continue our downward spiral to the doom of Israel as we know and love it.


RELIGION AS A RACKET
Both in Israel and in the Diaspora we are witnessing a takeover of the Jewish scene by fundamentalists, known as haredim. They are a minority but a well-organized minority can easily dominate an uncommitted, fragmented and ideologically weak majority. What is particularly sad, as pointed out by Jay Michaelson in The Forward, is the fact that we liberals are being conned into supporting them. In Israel, they have managed to manipulate themselves into power, to avoid military service and work (let the secular goyim support us...) and to divert millions into schools that do not provide a basic education, thus condemning the next generation to depend on handouts from their corrupt rabbis who milk the public treasury. In the US they have attached themselves to the public teat and are sucking away furiously For example, seventy-six percent of students at one of the most prominent yeshivas in the country, in Lakewood, New Jersey, are receiving Pell grants. Indeed, the top three institutional recipients of these grants are ultra-Orthodox yeshivas. The Chabad affiliated Michigan Jewish Institute scored $25 million in federal aid meant to go to low-income students, despite an appalling academic record and due largely to chicanery involving an online application mill.

Many well-meaning, but naive people, voted for Yair Lapid who promised to clean out the Augean stables. As Finance Minister, we see that he has the cojones of a Vestal Virgin. It is about time the public made its demands known in this area as well

GENERAL GANZ TAKE NOTICE
 In view of budget cuts, the Army has announced that it is discontinuing all operational training for reserves until the end of the year. It has also come out that our great Chief of Staff Ganz negotiated a secret deal with the Finance Ministry to raise the salaries and benefits of the SENIOR officers. The oft-proclaimed aim of attracting bright young people to chose a military career by offering compensation for young officers that is  competitive with salaries in the civilian sector somehow got lost on the way to a general's bank account. What Dilbert says about a corporation can just as well be said of our Army.


OK, TITAN HAS RANTED ENOUGH
We would like to move on to more pleasant things. Instead of a book review, we will give you a New Yorker review of a movie that we saw last week, the Steven Spielberg film Lincoln. We enjoyed it greatly despite the nits that the reviewer picks at and then retracts. If you have not seen it, do so.

What If is interesting and amusing. It deals with alien astronomers looking our way. They would not see much. We wonder if anyone will ever trap a Voyager spacecraft and look at the  Golden Record on board.

With great empathy for the fathers of daughters everywhere--we have been through this.



In Memory of our lovely Nikon camera that was stolen in Paris:
 

Here is Titan again

Titan is a bit late this week, mainly because of the Shavuot holiday that disrupted normal schedules. He would like to show you a bit of his internal structure. You may ignore the artist's conception of Huygens on its way down to the surface..

For starters, as usual, we refer you to our Miriam Shlesinger Human Rights Action blog. As the weeks and months go by without Miriam, we continue to realize what we have lost. She got us into the human rights struggle.Please open it and help the people who are so much in need of support in their trials and tribulations at the hands of oppressive regimes and corporations.

This time around, we do not have a real coherent thread, but instead are going to rant about a number of unrelated matters. What they have in common is that most of them are bad.

GAY LIFE IN EUROPE
We start with a salute to President Hollande and France in general for the new law, just signed, that legalizes gay marriage.

The first gay wedding can be held on 28 May - 10 days after Mr Hollande signed the bill

It makes France the ninth country in Europe to pass such a law, not, of course, without opposition from the self-appointed guardians of our morals, such as the Church and the right wing political class. This comes in contrast to a recent survey that shows the high prevalence of homophobia is some EU countries. It implies that the struggle for human rights never ends and that there will always be enemies of liberty who try to impose their mores on all of us. We see it everywhere. Thousands of people, led by priests,  attacked a gay pride event in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Thousands of counter-demonstrators attacked LGBTI activists at a rally in Tbilisi, Georgia.

© VANO SHLAMOV/AFP/Getty Images

INDIGENOUS TRIBES 
There are many indigenous tribes around the world who have no desire to join our industrialized society and wish for nothing more than to be left alone to pursue their traditional way of life. This usually fails when it turns out that their ancestral lands contain resources to which the corporations who feed on the planet  want access. The First Nations of Alberta are such a case. We ask you to take action on behalf of the Awa tribe, the most threatened at the moment. The pillaging of the rain forests and the resources of Brazil constitutes a scandal unto itself, but the tribes of the jungle add a human aspect to the atrocity. Please call upon the government of Brazil to do the right thing.

HUMAN RIGHTS IN ERITREA
This African country has been independent for 20 years, but it has not evolved into anything resembling a democracy. The dictatorial government has thrown thousands of people into prison without charge or trial in order to suppress all dissent. Titan asks all to join the protest by Amnesty International and to call upon the government to put a stop to this brutal repression.

Eritrea prisoners composite image.© Private

ORANGUTANS NEED YOUR HELP
In Indonesia, there is a place where orangutans, tigers, rhinos and elephants roam free together. It is the last such place. Now big corporations are set to wipe this place off the planet for the sake of short-term profits. Please sign this petition to the President of Indonesia asking him to scupper this nefarious plan.


MEDIA TAKEOVER 
The Koch brothers are not content with using money to control journalists. They are now intent on buying the Tribune Company that runs newspapers across the United States. The thought that they could be the owners of the LA Times, for example, makes Titan shudder in his orbit. Greenpeace asks all to sign a petition to the CEO of the company calling upon him to reject their offer. The environmental implications alone are shattering. This call is aimed not only at our US readers, but to everyone in the Solar System. Do you hear us Mercury?

CREATIONISM BAH HUMBUG! 
Phil Blait of Bad Astronomy fame has come up with a blatant case of creationism taught in schools. It is, as he says, not only wrong, but it is the worst type of wrong. It plants anti-science in young minds and the pupils grow up to be ignorant and misguided citizens. Here is an example of an exam given in the fourth grade at a so-called Christian school.
 

Unfortunately, this type of obscurantism is not confined to Christians. In ultra-orthodox Jewish schools and in Muslim madressas, similar garbage is promulgated. A Saudi Arabian imam Shaykh Abd al-Aziz Bin Baaz, one of Saudi Arabia's most respected scholars of Islam, once declared the earth to be flat and said it was blasphemy to claim otherwise. This is presumably based on the Quran.

"The earth is flat. Whoever claims it is round is an atheist deserving
of punishment. That is a well-known religious edict, or fatwa, issued
two years ago by Sheik Abdel-Aziz Ibn Baaz, the supreme religious
authority of Saudi Arabia."
[Youssef M. Ibrahim, "Muslim Edicts Take on New Force," The New York
Times, February 12, 1995, Sunday, p. 14]

It is up to all enlightened people as well as parents of school children to be aware of the creeping danger of creationism in our schools.

OK, enough ranting around the world, let us take a look at HOME SWEET HOME

BEWARE THE ARMY--KOWTOW AND SHUT UP 
The libel laws in Israel are designed to protect individuals from slander. Criticism of any anonymous group that does not constitute an incorporated entity is immune from litigation. Instead, a criminal indictment can be filed, but only by the attorney general or with his consent. If we wish to declare that the bureaucrats at Social Security are a bunch of lazy insensitive jerks or that we hold all Orthodox rabbis accountable for the assassination of Rabin, no single bureaucrat nor rabbi can sue us. This is about to be changed and the most sacred of sacred cows, the all-powerful Army, is going to be given special protection. It all started with Mohammed Bakri’s film, Jenin Jenin  (that has now had a law named after it, no small matter?) and the vociferous criticism of a handful of reservists. This is another link in the chain of repression of civil rights by the right wing. Not the first and not the last, it outlines the new Israel: one that will try to spread an atmosphere of fear, to discourage journalists, to strangle non-profit organizations and weaken the courts. It is hard to imagine anything worse, but the Knesset session is just starting, so stay tuned for more attacks on our freedoms.

BEDOUIN AS VICTIMS OF RACISM 
The Bedouin population of Southern Israel is being subjected by the government to a racist campaign to destroy their home villages and to steal their land. The Jewish National Fund is a major co-culprit and is using the stolen land to plant forests. It is naked racism of the worst kind. Titan asks you to respond to  the call of Rabbis for Human Rights to send letters of protest.
 
If any of you think of donating money to the JNF, we recommend that you think again. 

FAYED AND THE HOPE FOR PEACE 
For a long time Salem Fayed, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority did his best to help his people and move the peace process along.
 
He cleaned up corruption, stopped terrorism and set a new standard in Palestinian leadership. He has now given up and resigned, to some extent because it has become patently clear that Israel has no interest in peace. The Arab League initiative, as modified recently in Washington, has been gathering dust for a decade with no substantive Israeli response. Roger Cohen recently  interviewed Fayed for the New York Times. Titan strongly recommends reading the interview.

HISTORY REWRITTEN 
The art of rewriting history is common to all political leaders. We recall the old Encyclopedia Sovietica that was in the form of a loose-leaf notebook so that pages could be replaced as needed by the regime. What has come out recently is the rewriting of the history of the 1948 war to make it appear that the Arab population fled and became refugees of their own free will or by command of their leaders.

Arab refugees from villages near Tulkarm. Most historians say Ben-Gurion knew in real time about the expulsion of Palestinians. Photo by Bettmann/CORBIS

This myth has long been apart of the Israeli narrative. Information indicating otherwise is strictly hidden. Shai Hazkani, writing in Haaretz this week, had a stroke of luck. We quote: 
 "The Israeli censor’s observant eye had missed file number GL-18/17028 in the State Archives. Most files relating to the 1948 Palestinian exodus remain sealed in the Israeli archives, despite the fact that their period as classified files - according to Israeli law - expired long ago. Even files that were previously declassified are no longer available to researchers. In the past two decades, following the powerful reverberations triggered by the publication of books written by those dubbed the “New Historians,” the Israeli archives revoked access to much of the explosive material. Archived Israeli documents that reported the expulsion of Palestinians, massacres or rapes perpetrated by Israeli soldiers, along with other events considered embarrassing by the establishment, were reclassified as “top secret.” Researchers who sought to track down the files cited in books by Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim or Tom Segev often hit a dead end. Hence the surprise that file GL-18/17028, titled “The Flight in 1948” is still available today."
What comes out of the file is that the official version that is taught to our children was fabricated by establishment "historians" under the orders of Ben-Gurion, then Prime Minister, during the early 1960's. Most historians of any integrity believe that the Arabs were expelled and that Ben Gurion knew about it in real time.

NATAN BLANC CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR 
Natan Blanc is a 19 year old Israeli who refuse to serve in the Army because of his belief that the actions of the Army are unconscionable. He has been jailed by an Israeli military court for the tenth time in six months for refusing to enlist for compulsory military service. Ten consecutive prison sentences for being a conscientious objector is thought to be a record in Israel. As he told the Guardian, he is willing to undertake national service in lieu of a stint in the army, but his refusal is a matter of principle.

"I have no idea how long this will go on for," he said. "The bad scenario is that I will be put in front of a military court and sentenced to something like a year in prison. The better scenario is that they'll get tired of this, and will let me do national service instead."

What we are witnessing here is a struggle over the soul of the nation. Natan Blanc, whose grandfather, the late Prof. Haim Blanc (1926-1984) lost his sight by being wounded in Israel's War of Independence, refuses to take the easy route that the Army offers to conscientious objectors, namely the status of "psychologically unfit for service." This establishes an Israeli norm that anyone who objects to war crimes etc. must be insane, since it is a matter of common knowledge that the Israeli Army is as pure as the driven snow and never commits criminal actions. For example, during the infamous Cast Lead operation, a soldier gunned down three Gazan women who were carrying a white flag. He was tried by a court-martial for "improper use of weapons" and sentenced to 45 days in prison. A battalion commander who ordered a soldier to shoot a prisoner who was handcuffed and blindfolded was given a mild reprimand. An anonymous soldier shot and killed a ten year old girl, but the Army refused to even investigate the case. If the Army were to admit that Natan Blanc is correct in his refusal, it would be an admission of guilt for actions that are beyond the pale of any kind of decency.
Cheers to Natan Blanc and let him be followed by thousands of other young people who might embarrass the criminals who lead the Israeli military hierarchy.


THE LIGHTER SIDE
Andy Borowitz has some great news--President Obama announces that he has no role in government and will deal harshly with any members of his administration who deal in governing. Hooray!! We are all so relieved. When we voted for him, we were really afraid that he would try to govern.

What If is too silly even for us this week. If you want to read it, do it on your own nickel. We would like to share some insights about philosophy from Clyde and his friend.

You may have noticed that Titan was a bit acerbic above about our glorious military establishment, the kind of people who think it is fun to abuse ten year old kids etc. Note that Dilbert has come up with something in the corporate world that is certainly relevant to the military.

You thought you were rid of Titan?

As was announced by sister Pollyanna last week, we have returned to blogging after a bit of a vacation in Canada and France with our amanuensis and our imaginary playmates YandA. Details of the ceremony in France in which we participated can be found on last week's Pollyanna blog.

For starters, let us refer you to the Miriam Shlesinger Human Rights action blog. As the weeks and months go by without Miriam, we continue to realize what we have lost. She got us into the human rights struggle.  Please act on behalf of people who are so much in need of support in their trials and tribulations at the hands of oppressive regimes and corporations. We also note sadly the death of Moshe, Miriam's husband. May they both Rest in Peace.

IN PERDITUM ET OBLIVIUM 
The quality of the beings inhabiting the third planet from the Sun took a quantum jump for the better with the death of Margaret Thatcher, the former PM of Britain and one of humanity's major apostles of evil. She was not a true sociopath in the usual sense because she did not really acknowledge the existence of society, much less something similar to a social compact. She lacked a single positive trait--she hated everything that was good for people, for the planet, for anyone except the coterie of plutocrats that she served. As the singer Morrissey writes in the Daily Beast, "Thatcher was a terror without an atom of humanity". She belongs according to Dante on the seventh level of hell, reserved for tyrants and the like.

Durer: Thatcher is third from left

It is no accident that champagne corks popped all over Britain (to say nothing of Argentina)when her death was announced. Frankly, Titan thinks she was worth no more than weak beer. We append the anti-eulogy by Glenda Jackson in Parliament.




CHEERS QUEEN BEATRIX
The Queen of the Netherlands is stepping down and passing the crown on to her son Willem-Alexander who has now become the country's first king since 1890. She has served her people well and we wish her long life and a happy retirement.

Right on Princess Beatrix

Writing about her helps us get the foul Thatcher taste out and encourages us in our faith in humanity. Yes, there is such a thing, even in orbit about Saturn.

POACHING OF ELEPHANTS
As government collapses in the Central African Republic, poachers are entering parks and preserves to prey on elephants. These magnificent animals are being hunted with impunity,their meat sold in markets and their tusks marketed in Thailand and China. We note, incidentally, that the only European leader who opposed the ban on the ivory trade was the Thatcher monster described above. The poaching is costing the lives of 20,000 to 30,000 animals per year.

 The rhinoceros was hunted to extinction because of the demand for its horn, superstitiously believed in China to have medicinal value. The Asian ivory market that drives the poaching needs to be stopped. Many people in China believe that elephants grow replacement tusks and do not understand the butchery that is going on. We hope that the governments of Africa and Asia will confront these issues honestly and with courage. The poachers are not just single hunters, but armed soldiers from the various wild militias of Africa that hunt the herds down with helicopters and will be a formidable force for law enforcement to confront.

LION BONES AS MEDICAL SUPERSTITION 
The impact of Chinese medical superstition on wildlife continues to expand. Tiger bones are thought to be of value for various medical conditions such as rheumatism and as a result tigers have been hunted nearly to extinction. With tiger bones in short supply, lion bones have been invoked by the quacks and now South African lions are being poached and their skeletons exported. This is still legal, but it must be stopped. Please sign the petition.

MEASLES AND THE ANTI-VACCINATION MOVEMENT
Phil Plait in Bad Astronomy (alongside this blog) calls our attention to the measles epidemic in Wales that has already claimed a victim. Wales has a low rate of vaccination and the blame for that can be apportioned between Andrew Wakefield the bogus scientist who published a connection, as it were, between vaccination and autism in children, the Lancet journal that betrayed its standards by publishing this garbage which it eventually withdrew, politicians who pussy-footed, media that let the rating urge overcome ethics, just to name a few. Last week Pollyanna described an Italian quack who claims vaccination causes homosexuality. There appears to be no bottom to the pit of pseudoscience, with all its pernicious consequences..

DEMAND JUSTICE FOR NOXOLO NOGWAZA 
A 24 year old South African lesbian Noxolo Nogwaza was raped and murdered in 1911. No real efforts have been made to find, apprehend and punish the perpetrators. Her attacker(s) raped, repeatedly beat and stabbed her, apparently because of her sexual orientation, before dumping her body in a drainage ditch. Taunts and insults against LGBTI individuals in South Africa are common, as are hate crimes like sexual assault and other physical attacks – particularly in rural areas. The authorities’ inaction leads to a greater sense of fear and insecurity for the LGBTI community. Please join the demand for justice.

TRAGEDY IN DHAKA 
The death toll from the collapse of an eight story building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, could reach as high as 1300. The owner of the building is in custody and certainly will be held to account for the disaster.

Rescue workers attempt to rescue garment workers from the rubble of the collapsed Rana Plaza building, in Savar, outside Dhaka Photo: REUTERS

Titan  calls your attention to a call from Eric Lee and the IUF to demand better labor laws, work conditions and the possibility of worker organization. We also ask about the accountability of the corporations in the world garment industry that exploit the cheap labor and the savings from lack of investment in workplace safety for profit. British and Canadian companies in the supply chain are now talking about compensation. We hope this is not a feeble attempt at damage control. The problem of exploitation of Third World workers is not unique to Bangladesh. Anyone who has seen the film China Blue by M.X. Peled knows how pervasive this practice is and to what extent we, the consuming public in the West, as well as the importers and the Chinese and other Asian systems are responsible for these abuses. A fashion designer speaking on BBC-TV estimated that the labor cost of a pair of jeans in Bangladesh is about six cents. Titan hopes that this cataclysmic event might precipitate some change in the system.

ON MORAL COURAGE 
The recent failure of the US Senate to pass gun control legislation caused by the fear of certain Senators that the gun lobby would bring about their defeat in the next election raises the issue of moral courage of political leaders. In 1848 Abraham Lincoln lost his seat in Congress because of his opposition to the jingoist, imperialist war against Mexico. Times have indeed changed. We tend to become cynical about our leaders, possibly with good cause. We no longer see statesmen in the spirit of Ghandi or Mandela or many academics in the image of the Gottingen Seven. We see principles being sold out, e.g. when a cabinet member will oppose something and then vote for it to please the PM and then be suitably rewarded. During the Second Lebanon War, Shimon Peres opposed a stupid ground operation and then voted for it. He received PM Olmert's support in his bid to be President and 33 soldiers paid for it with their lives. There are countless such cases to be found. Salman Rushdie in an essay on moral courage urges us in the end to continue the struggle, to demonstrate, to sign the petition, not to give up. Titan will continue to rant and support ranters such as Yossi Gurevich and the +972 group.

SATIRE REQUIRES COURAGE 
We have long noted that politicians of an authoritarian stripe are very thin-skinned and do not take kindly to satire and ridicule. In the US, Borowitz, Stewart and Colbert can fire their arrows with no fear of retribution, under First Amendment protection. Elsewhere, things are very different. The Palestinian cartoonist Mohammed Sabanah was sentenced to five months in prison for "contact with hostile elements" which is a ridiculous excuse for persecution for his cartoons. The hostile elements were not specified. His colleagues have rallied to his defense. Perhaps something will penetrate the rhinoceros skin of the Israeli establishment.
It is equally dangerous to be a satirist or cartoonist in post-Chavez Venezuela. A year ago, Rayma Suprani found herself facing up to 30 years imprisonment for threatening to undermine the Venezuelan government, and labelled one of a group of terrorists whose subversive activity was harmful to the future of the nation. Yet Suprani had not detonated a single bomb, nor was she a member of any militant group. Rather, Suprani’s alleged terrorism sprang from her work as a satirical cartoonist.

"Crime doesn't exist! I've been wounded by a caricaturist. . . . " Cartoon by Rayma Suprani

 People have been arrested for tweeting about politicos. Reporters without Borders has spoken up and we all need to be aware of the dangers. Pussy Riot can happen here or anywhere.

MAYDAY 
We present you with Labor Start for May Day 2013. Hit the links and think a bit about the rights of working people around the world.

HOME SWEET HOME 

FIRST THE GOOD NEWS
Here in Israel so much has happened during Titan's holiday that he hardly knows where to start. He is as pleased as a tick on a fat dog about the judicial victory of Women of the Wall.

Women of the Wall director Lesley Sachs is detained by police for wearing a prayer shawl at the Western Wall on April 11 (photo credit: Miriam Alster/Flash90)

 They should now stick to their guns and reject the Sharansky compromise since the verdict has rendered it irrelevant. Titan is also pleased that the Supreme Court has ruled that Ben Gurion University has no right to limit political freedom of expression of students on its campus. Cheers to Judge Sobel for the former case  and Chief Justice Grunis in the latter,  who caused the University to concede its case five minutes into the hearing.

HUNGER STRIKER WINS 
Samer Issawi has been released from prison after being at the gates of death because  of his hunger strike against his return to prison. Eventually the public outcry had its effect. Please read the long but important blog by Adam Keller on the saga of Samer Issawi. It gives you an insight into the occupation and how it works. It helps you understand how our border police can use a handcuffed child as a human shield.




Yes we know, police in the US handcuff small children as a matter of routine, but we would like to think that we have different standards.

Wilson Reyes' mom snapped this photo of him handcuffed in a Bronx precinct.

YOUR EMAIL IS IMPORTANT TO THE STATE 

If you hold opinions that might be considered subversive, such as a belief in human rights, opposition to the occupation of the West Bank and other seditious ideas and plan to visit Israel, you would do well to leave your laptop computer at home. The Attorney General has just confirmed that the security gorillas at the airport or border crossing have the right to read your emails. One might imagine that your extra-marital affair or the address of your pot supplier could be of great interest to the establishment and make you an undesirable tourist. Israel is supposed to be a Jewish and democratic state. As MK Ahmed Tibi puts it so well, it is democratic to Jews and Jewish to Arabs. For Arabs read all others. In the eyes of our leaders, there is no such thing as humanity. There are Jews and there are others. Period

OK, Titan is feeling long-winded and would now like to relax with you a bit. Start off with a nutty WhatIf? and then we will go on from there. This week we went out with Murphy to the local dune where he picked up a turtle and then vanished. We went home without him nursing the hope the the dog catcher would get him. He showed up for breakfast eventually with the turtle, which once released made tracks for home. It led us to the thought of why people need dogs, as we are assured constantly.We present a few models for this.


Then the dog is good for our health:

We are also aware of how we as good citizens contribute to the building up of canine egos.

We have long enjoyed the resourcefulness of our beloved little Cynthia. Today she invokes no other than the great 19th century mathematician and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss. Right on Cynthia. Once, when visiting Gottingen we devoted our morning run to a pilgrimage to his grave.



We often wonder about social media and how much harm they bring us. We have been endorsed on Linkedin for every skill one might imagine and the energy expended on clicking on delete is beginning to add up. We note that Doonesbury has addressed this issue quite cogently.