arkee_titan

Titan rants away

2012-01-14T23:04:00.000+02:00

Titan is back and the world has been too generous in providing him with a plethora of rant topics. Before we get into what is so wrong with our world, he would like to show you the view he sees from his bedroom window when he gets up in the morning.

Those who bother to look up at the sky will have noticed these days that Venus is the Evening Star. What is not obvious is that right near by is Neptune, the farthest planet from the Sun. To find it, simply look for Venus - unmistakable in the southwest after sunset as it shines at magnitude -4.0, the brightest object in the night sky besides the Moon. Then use this handy finder chart from Astronomy magazine to spot Neptune about 1° away. Neptune should have a distinctly bluish tint. Please let us know if you succeed in seeing it - especially if it's the first time you've spotted it. This tip comes from the Year in Space, an interesting site and we recommend subscribing to it if such things interest you.

RANTS FOR THE FORTNIGHT

There are so many things in bad shape that it is hard to know where to start. Let us start with the employees of the five star hotel at Angkor Vat in Cambodia who have been wrongfully fired. They won their court case and then mirabile dictu the verdict was reversed by the same judge who had originally issued it, with no further evidence presented. Please let the Minister of Tourism in Cambodia know what you think of this corruption and exploitation of working people.

From there, let us go on to look at the situation of the world with respect to overpopulation and climate change. Bob Park delivers a better rant than we could although our feelings on this subject are as strong as those of anyone. What is frightening are the political/religious forces that are militating against doing anything about it. Around the world you see right wing parties busy protecting short term corporate profits at the expense of doing something about both of these issues. The corporations need a steady resupply of consumers and they need to be able to pollute to maximize profits. For example, the Dutch Freedom Party, a fascist group headed by Geert Wilders , which did far too well in the 2010 elections, has in its platform a proposal to eliminate all funding for climate change research and also to require all Dutch citizens to carry ID cards that specify their ethnicity. (For the record, the Netherlands are among the EU countries that do not require their citizens to carry identification.) In return, the worldwide oligarchy funds the election campaigns of the latent and real neofascists, a beautiful case of symbiosis or mutual back scratching. Wilders goes around the world blathering nonsense but there are people who will listen. BTW, a lady from our Natanya Reform congregation circulated a speech delivered in New York by Wilders(someone even translated it into Hebrew) in which he called for a modern crusade to protect Europe and the world from the Muslim hordes. In a previous blog we told you how she sent around the good word that Moses was told on Mt. Sinai about the exact period of the Moon. Never mind that tidal forces have changed the period of the moon and the period of rotation of the Earth since then by a measurable, albeit small, amount. The main point we are making is best phrased by Bertrand Russell:

NIGERIAN SECTARIAN VIOLENCE

The sectarian conflict in Nigeria between the Muslim majority and the large Christian minority rages on. The religious composition is Muslim 50%, Christian 40%, indigenous beliefs 10%. The bloodshed is totally out of control with attacks on churches by the Islamist Boko Haram group on Christmas Day followed by more lethal activity by the same group. In return, Christians attacked a mosque in Benin City.

Muslim sites in Benin City in the south have come in for revenge attacks

In addition there is a general strike called in reaction to the rise in fuel prices caused by the termination of a subsidy.

Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images Thousands of protesters gather at a park in Lagos on Wednesday to protest the higher prices brought on by the removal of fuel subsidies.

It is not clear why a country which is a major oil producer should be beset by fuel price problems. When people take to the streets, it is a clear sign that decades of corruption and exploitation have driven them there. In that context, it is interesting to read a discussion of the future of the Occupy movement in the United States and by extension everywhere.

The attacks on Christians are not confined to Nigeria. In Egypt, the status of the Copt community has become more precarious since the revolution. There have been several attacks upon them and they are feeling insecure to the point of trying to emigrate.. Their Christmas took place this week and it was encouraging to see that Muslim and government leaders made a point of attending the central mass and that young Muslims volunteered to provide security for the services.

A Coptic priest wafts incense near General Sami Anan (2nd R), Army chief of Staff and member of the SCAF at the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, and other high-ranking military officials during the Coptic Christmas eve mass at the main cathedral in Cairo January 6, 2012. Egypt's Christians are celebrating their first Christmas Mass after the public uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak from power last February. Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters

THE CORRUPTION THAT REFRESHES
Coca-Cola maintains a plant in Swaziland, the last absolute monarchy in Africa. We were there on Joey's Bar Mitzva trip in 2004 and we saw the abject poverty of the subjects of Mswati III who buys himself 2,000 new cars a year, takes the pick of the country's virgins at will and in general lives high. It is disgusting that such a corrupt despot is supported in his position by a major corporation that should know better. This is a prime example of how neocolonialism works: buy out the leaders, rip off the resources, in this case water, and make billions. This is another reason to boycott Coca-Cola as if the nature of the drink were not enough.

HESCHEL AND KING--KINDRED SOULS.
On Friday 13 January, 18 Teveth, the 39th anniversary of the death of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, arguably the greatest Jewish religious and moral leader of the century, was marked. He was closely associated with Dr. Martin Luther King in two great struggles, civil rights and the opposition to the war in Vietnam. We recommend the links as required reading for those who still espouse liberal values in this day and age.

HOME SWEET HOME
In Israel the fan is so clogged with our national excrement that there is not room in this blog for the rants that have to be shouted from the rooftops. Let us start with taking teenagers into (Lord Help Us) the Border Police youth movement , arming them and sending them to catch illegal workers, i.e. Palestinians struggling to put some food on the table for their families. It gives them a big kick, the joy of wielding power over defenseless victims (a need for a future soldier in the occupation army) and indeed meaning to their lives. In Hell, Hitler can chuckle over his conquest of the soul of the Jewish people. These kids will grow up to become animals like former Military Advocate General Avichai Mendelblit who thinks there is no real need to open an investigation whenever a Palestinian child is killed. What the hell, just a dead sheikitz, read "Torat Hamelech" for inspiration. He belongs in our Clarence Darrow catalog.*

HUMAN RIGHTS FOR WHOM?
Last month on World Human Rights Day there was a march sponsored by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and included other human rights organizations etc. All went well, except that one principal of an Arab school had the chutzpa to take his pupils to participate in the march. Naturally the powers that be in the Ministry of Education were incensed and took a blast at the school and headmaster. . Indeed, what would this country come to if Arab children got the idea that human rights belong to them or that they are even human? Human rights in Israel apply only to Jews, who can get a government subsidy to build a house on stolen private Palestinian land. Things heated up when the matter came up in a Knesset committee and one of the champions of justice from the right threw a glass of water at a colleague. At least she was sanctioned by the Ethics Committee, but it tells you where we are heading.

THE ANTI-INFILTRATION ACT which is a national disgrace was passed by our fascist Knesset with many of the opposition not even bothering to show up to vote against it. It enables the government to send people to prison for three years without a trial. Any detention without trial is an extreme act that should be foreign to a law-abiding state, much more so when the victims are work migrants who harbor no ill intentions against the state. Instead of just a link, I am quoting here the entire text of the editorial in Haaretz on the subject:
Of all the antidemocratic laws that have descended on us of late, it is perhaps the most shameful. After a long, late-night session on Monday the Knesset plenum approved the second and third reading of an amendment to the Prevention of Infiltration Law. Only eight Knesset members voted against the amendment, while 37 supported it.
From now on, work seekers from Africa who enter Israel illegally can be imprisoned for three years, without the benefit of a trial and without any distinction between asylum seekers and labor migrants. Anyone who aids migrants who smuggle drugs or weapons, including by providing shelter, could also face a lengthy sentence. Even the courageous objections of Knesset legal advisor Eyal Yinon were to no avail, and the law was passed.

Foreign workers and asylum seekers in Tel Aviv park - Moti Milrod - July 2011

Words fail in the face of such a disgraceful act of legislation. Sending desperate human beings, who come to Israel to find gainful employment, to jail for an extended period is completely antidemocratic and inhuman. Any detention without trial is an extreme act that should be foreign to a law-abiding state, much more so when the victims are work migrants who harbor no ill intentions against the state. The fact that the original law from 1954 was aimed at the fedayeen and Palestinian refugees seeking to return to their homes, if only to salvage some of their belongings, after the 1948 War, only underscores its problematic nature. If during the state's early years it was somehow possible to accept such a draconian law, in 2012, when those who cross the border illegally do not pose a genuine security threat, sending them to prison for such a long period is intolerable.The problem of the labor migrants must be solved in other ways, certainly not through long incarceration without trial. Israel has the right to close its borders and set its own immigration policy, like the world's most developed nations. But it does not have the right to imprison people - some of whom have been recognized as refugees, to whom no door should be closed and certainly not that of Israel. On Monday a jingoistic and unnecessary law that is unlikely to solve the problem for which it was intended was added to Israel's legal code.

ON FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Yossi Gurevich writes a blog in which he chronicles the decline and fall of the State of Israel, a sort of modern day Gibbon. He names his blog, appropriately, "Friends of George" (Orwell). He blogs in Hebrew and for those who can read it, we keep a link to it next to this blog. He recently was called in by the police for investigation at the instigation of a West Bank settlers' organization for, get this, "incitement." What was his sin? In the past, he had held that the right of an occupied population to resist the occupation applies not only to a struggle against the uniformed soldiers enforcing the occupation, but to the settlers as well, since their presence there certainly violates the Fourth Geneva Convention. Personally, we disagree and hold the view of Amnesty International that the settlers, independent of the legality of their presence, constitute a protected civilian population. In the wake of the terrible atrocity committed by Palestinian terrorists at Ittamar in which an entire family, including an infant, were murdered, he posted a change of heart in which he declared that only armed settlers, functioning as soldiers, albeit not in uniform, are legitimate targets of resistance. Note that he thus narrowed the category of targets of resistance. For this, the settler organization filed a criminal complaint and he was called in by the police and ordered to refrain from revealing any details of the interrogation. He was advised by his lawyer to comply and we all must certainly respect his wishes. A few months ago something similar happened to the journalist Gideon Spiro who was not only interrogated but actually incarcerated for a few hours by our lovely police. The case against him was thrown out by the judge as soon as it came to court as will certainly be any case against Yossi Gurevich.

The point is that such vexatious and trivial complaints are taken up with glee by our neofascists in blue uniforms and the result is an effective harassment of anyone who dares to speak out against the anointed of the Lord who live on stolen Palestinian land. For the record, one of them has just taken a seat on the Supreme Court, which saw no reason for refusing to accept a war criminal onto its lofty bench. This same court has also just ruled that the law forbidding married couples, one of whom is a Palestinian, from living together in Israel is constitutional. Falastin Hajaj, whose husband lives in the West Bank and sees her and the children rarely, when he can get permission to visit, is an example

Falastin Hajaj with her children at her home in the Galilee village of Kaukab.
Photo by: Abdullah Shama

We slide cheerfully into our role as a worthy heir of apartheid South Africa. Life is Good?

EQUALITY FOR WOMEN AND OTHER MARGINALIZED GROUPS
The scene has been dominated recently by the long-awaited mutiny of the secular-liberal component of the population against the excesses of the religious extremists, so-called haredi groups. They have run wild, are doing everything to put women "in their place" and finally have struck a nerve. Peter Beinart points out, however, that this issue cannot be separated from the question of the status of the Arab minority in Israel. The Israeli left, at best somnolent and at worst effectively dead, seems to be incapable of confronting the major issues confronting our society. The summer tent protest fizzled since it did not address much beyond the price of food and housing and access to education (for Jews). Carlo Strenger with at least part of his tongue in cheek, proposes a four-state solution., one for the Palestinians and three for Jews, haredi, settler and liberal. Bradley Burston takes a more serious approach and tries to look through the political and cultural smog and to see a future when all the impedimenta of two millennia of persecution and victim mentality will be stripped away and a new Judaism will evolve that will save Israel. As our grandmother used to say, albeit paraphrased from the Yiddish, "from your keyboard to God's monitor." Of course, if you really want to fly modestly El Al has an option for you.

Let us wind down this overlong rant in a lighter vein:
Good news for our atheist friends

The creationism-evolution debate gets hot

Fresh from his New Hampshire victory, Mitt Romney tells us how he will undo the actions of the Obama administration, down to down to the last one...

Gene Weingarten took the Washington Post buyout and is doing other things including coauthoring a comic entitled Barney and Clyde. His collaborator, cartoonist David Clark, is a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and has worked as a freelance illustrator for various newspapers and magazines for more than 20 years. In 1996, Clark received the National Cartoonists Society's Newspaper Illustration Award.

As Lysander said to Hermia about the course of true love,

*This weeks book review is of two biographies of Clarence Darrow a great trial lawyer who took on many famous cases, worthy of reading about. His relevance to Mendelblit lies in his famous statement, "I have never killed anyone, but I have read many obituaries with delight."

Titan wishes all a Happy New Year

2011-12-31T16:17:00.000+02:00

Titan too came back from California all full of nice experiences and tons of jet lag. For this blog he decided to pose with little Dione on the background of the Kronian rings

DIONE

Wispy Star Moon

Click to enlarge >

Saturn's moon Dione
A distant view of Dione showcases the "wispy terrain" first observed by Voyager. A close Cassini flyby proved that the wisps were the bright walls of fractures on Dione's surface. Credit: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute

Size: 1,120 kilometers - 4th largest moon of Saturn
Orbital radius: 377,400 kilometers - 6.26 Saturn radii - within the E ring
Orbital period: 2.737 days - about 1/6 of Titan's
Discovery: 1684 by Giovanni Domenico Cassini

For the record, Dione in Greek mythology was among other things the mother of Aphrodite, the love goddess, as the result of an affair with Zeus. Here we see her on a coin, sharing billing with Zeus.

Pyrrhus Tetradrachm, Zeus Dodonaios, Dione with a stephanos on a throne, Basileos Pyrrou Greek Text produced probably in Italy

HABEMUS CANEM WITH WHITE SMOKE
As some of you may recall our dog Chilik vanished a few months ago and presumably has gone to her reward. After a decent period of mourning, we decided that we needed a dog. Titan, Pollyanna and YandA are happy to introduce you to Murphy whom we adopted a few days ago. He came from the kennel where we leave dogs when going abroad. His mother is an Australian Cattle Dog who was supposed to whelp pedigreed puppies. In fact, a lustful Labrador of dubious antecedents broke through a fence and, alas, miscegenation took place. The puppies were given away to good homes for which designation we qualified. Please meet Murphy:

Murphy, photo Yosefa

HUMAN RIGHTS
It is holiday time and human rights organizations are also taking some time off, but there are still some things to rant about this week. Let us start with China, the usual culprit in major human rights abuses. The latest is a nine year sentence handed down to activist Chen Wei and ten years to Chen Xi.

Chen-Wei was one of more than 130 activists detained during the "Jasmine crackdown" in February.

for writing critical articles about the Communist Party which to Titan and Amnesty is unacceptable.. He was convicted of "incitement" but the Chinese government uses this vague charge of over and over to silence its critics and suppress discussion of human rights and political change. If we look back at the human rights year in China we see, as listed by Amnesty, the following outrageous actions toward human rights defenders, all of whom "subverted state power" which is of course nonsense.

"Netizen" Liang Haiyi,

was reportedly taken away by police on 19 February in the northern city of Harbin for sharing videos and information about the "Jasmine Revolution" on the Internet. Liang Haiyi, perhaps the first person to be arrested as part of the Jasmine crackdown, is reportedly being held on suspicion of "inciting subversion" and could be tried at any time.

Veteran activist Chen Youcai, also known as Chen Xi was detained 29 November for being a member of the Guizhou Human Rights Forum, which authorities declared was an illegal organization. Chen Xi was given a ten year sentence.

Human rights lawyer, Gao Zhisheng

was sent back to prison last week after “violating” his probation, according to reports in China’s state media. Authorities charged him with “inciting subversion” in December 2006 and sentenced him to a three–year suspended prison sentence. He was initially held under house arrest and then subjected to enforced disappearance repeatedly over nearly three years.

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Liu Xiaobo, who was awarded the prize in absentia on 10 December 2010, was sentenced in 2009 to 11 years in prison for his role in drafting Charter 08, and other writings which called for democratic reforms. His wife, artist Liu Xia, is under illegal house arrest. She has not been charged with any crime and Amnesty International has called for authorities to immediately restore her freedom.

Sichuan-based activist Liu Xianbin,

Portrait of Liu Xianbin and his wife, Suining City, Sichuan Province, 1994. Photo courtesy of the family.

was sentenced in March to 10 years in prison for his role in promoting democratic reform, including his support of the Charter 08 petition movement.

Beijing-based activist Hu Jia , who was released from prison in June after serving three and a half years for "inciting subversion" but now lives in conditions equivalent to house arrest along with his wife, Zeng Jinyan, and young daughter.

DESPITE IT ALL, as we look back at 2011, we see many hopeful developments such as the Arab Spring, despite sputtering here and there, the demise of Bin Laden, social justice protests around the world, including Israel and the fall of incompetent leaders in Italy and Greece. On the other hand we see the economic downturn, the outbursts of terrorism in various places and a general crisis atmosphere. An editorial in Haaretz sums up the situation very well. In particular, we are very disappointed with the youth protest movement in Israel, which evaded all real issues that effect the country and concentrated solely on economic matters, while the conflict with the Palestinians seems more and more hopeless. Titan is also appalled by the lack of political will to confront the climate change issue. The short sighted policies of major governments that represent the greatest polluters in the world are a major source of concern and frustration..

THE CRYSTAL BALL
א"ר יוחנן מיום שחרב בית המקדש ניטלה נבואה מן הנביאים וניתנה לשוטים ולתינוקות

בבא בתרא י"ב,ב

Although the Talmud tells us that, since the destruction of the Temple, the gift of prophesy has been given only to children and fools, we would like to call upon the pundits of the BBC to give us their predictions for 2012.

OOPS!!
As scientists we all are painfully aware of our finite wisdom and common fallibility. Of course, sometimes, far too often, scientific "results" appear based on fraudulent studies or no studies at all. Usually the only victim is the reputation of the perpetrator, but sometimes severe damage can be caused such as the anti-vaccination movement that derives its ideology from cooked up data and scientific fraud. By and large, scientific goofs are the result of honest error. Here is a list of the ten most famous scientific recantations of 2011. We also would like to call your attention to a summary of the science of 2011 as presented by Science News. On each of the sublinks here you can find a resume of 2011 in the various areas covered by this great little magazine. For example:

Boom, then zoom Telescopes capture a white dwarf star going supernova just 21 million light-years away

LIFE IN ISRAEL has not been going very well. The latest internal flap involves the rise of religious extremism in the so-called Haredi, ultra-orthodox community. Women in particular are being targeted, sent to sit in the back of the bus, being cursed and spat upon. Women soldiers are being told that they should not sing at military ceremonies, although to be fair we must say that the high command has not adopted this as policy. The treatment of women reached a new height when a young woman soldier was called a slut for refusing to move to the back of a public bus. The issue has attracted attention around the world, vid. this story in a newspaper in New Zealand.. Last week 10,000 people demonstrated in the town of Bet Shemesh where an eight year old girl was spat upon and cursed for presumably dressing "immodestly", whatever that may mean.

Not all the components of the Haredi community support these actions. A haredi rabbi in Los Angeles, Rabbi Eliyahu Fink, from the synagogue on the beach,

has issued a condemnation that goes far beyond what the rabbis in Israel have produced. Thanks to Hadass for passing this post on to us. It has been pointed out that this rise of extremism is a function of a struggle within the haredi community against the increasing trend amongst them towards higher education, work, integration and enlightenment. The rabbis are fighting this tooth and nail. For a long but certainly interesting analysis of the haredi minority in Israel, we refer you to Tzvia Greenfield who writes about The Haredi Minority between Reciprocity and Rights.

BEWARE WHEN YOU PLANT A TREE
During the past year, the Keren Kayemet aka the Jewish National Fund has been getting some spotlight space because of its actions in driving Bedouin citizens of Israel out of their villages, presumably to plant forests, including a forest funded by evangelical Christians in the USA. We suppose this will buy them an exemption from burning when the Rapture Day comes and the good guys ascend to heaven and Jesus burns the Jews. In any case, Uri Blau, the investigative reporter who got Anat Kamm a long jail term for publishing things that the Army wanted kept quiet, has written an expose of the JNF that everyone, especially people who donate to it or whose children go to Jewish schools where the JNF is touted as a good guy, should read.

We could not let you off without a dose of Gene Weingarten and the joys of having your house painted, room by room with creative colors chosen by your spouse.

Titan is taking a vacation--you can relax

2011-12-02T21:50:00.001+02:00

Titan is getting in a last blog before joining his sister Pollyanna and their alter ego YandA for a two week trip to San Francisco and Los Angeles. You will therefore be spared our blogs for a few weeks. He would like to show a bit of his interior. He may be tough on the outside, but inside he is all soft and even liquid. The blue layer in this illustration indicates a very probable subsurface ocean.

CANADA MERDE!
This blog begins with a rant at the Canadian government. We are told that they are pulling out of the Kyoto treaty on preventing climate change. This is totally unacceptable and most irresponsible. If there are any Canadians amongst you, please call your MP and let him/her know that you are an unhappy constituent on this issue.

FORCED EVICTIONS
One of the worst human rights abuses that occurs in countless places around the world is forced eviction. It can happen whenever a rich and powerful entity can exercise influence on government to evict vulnerable and defenseless people who happen to be in the way when there is money to be made. Usually it is a matter of land developers who want to use the land for building, plantations or mineral exploitation. We have seen this phenomenon even in democratic countries such as Canada where indigenous people were pushed aside by oil companies, as well as in Mexico and Brazil where again indigenous people are the victims of land developers. This week we will call your attention to women in Cambodia whose basic human rights are being violated by forced evictions for the benefit of tycoons who want to use the land for a huge sugar plantation. Amnesty International has called on the government of Cambodia to intervene. Let us hope they will respond.

Vanny, 31, helps lead community resistance to the Boeung Kak Lake eviction

CALLS FOR ACTION FROM AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Titan would like to call your attention to and request your action on a few egregious human rights violations from around the world. Amnesty International has a Web site where you can register and protest just with a click.

In Russia, legislative initiatives are under way that would adversely affect the freedom of expression and assembly of individuals who are or are perceived to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex (LGBTI), and advocates of the rights of LGBTI people, thereby violating their rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, and the rights to non-discrimination and equality before the law. Similar initiatives are being advanced in Nigeria as well.

In Japan victims are still waiting after 60 years for justice for survivors of Japan's military sexual slavery system that involved hundreds of thousands of Korean women during WWII. Please help these women to overcome the systematic denial of the Japanese government.

We have an Urgent Action request via AI Belgium(Francophone) relating to a land dispute and forced eviction in Argentina Children, the son and grandson of Félix Díaz, the leader of the Toba Qom indigenous community of La Primavera, Argentina, were attacked by men with guns on 8 November. They were fired upon by security guards who work for a landowner who disputes the community’s claims over land. The police were singularly inactive in the matter. Please act. You should have no difficulty in locating the Argentine Embassy in your country.

BURMA
US Secretary of State Clinton is visiting Myanmar/Burma this week.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is on an official visit to Myanmar

We hope that she will insist that Myanmar’s leaders release all political prisoners and stop targeting ethnic minority civilians. Myanmar has released a few hundred political prisoners, but many more still languish in prisons. Amnesty International has issued a call for her to use the leverage that the US has to promote the cause of democracy in Myanmar.

LABOR ISSUES
We are referring you to an action call from Labour Start (it is a British site, hence the spelling) that Eric Lee sent around. One of the most pernicious aspects of the global spread of neoliberal capitalism is the systematic abuse of workers and the infringement of their fundamental human right to organize and bargain collectively with their employers. We urge you not only to act, but to check the little window to subscribe to the action calls of the site.

NEW PHYSICS From the wonderful What's New blog of Bob Park: "SPEED OF LIGHT: IT'S STILL THE SPEED LIMIT. The only thing faster is the speed at which the media goes to print with unverified accounts that seem to violate natural law."

THE GOP CIRCUS
Normally we try to stay out of American domestic politics here, but the withdrawal of Herman Cain from the GOP race caused us to identify with the comment of the liberal former congressman, Alan Grayson “I hope he gets the nomination because clearly, if both parties nominate African-Americans, every racist in this country will have to commit suicide. . . . What is his business genius? That he paid people $8 an hour to deliver $15 pizzas.” He also apparently had a few other problems as described by Andy Borowitz who shows us that Newt is really the paragon of marital fidelity and the pro-adultery vote will shift to him. Seriously, Der Spiegel online drives home the point that the party of Lincoln is now offering the American people and the world a choice among a group of liars, demagogues and ignoramuses. Meet them:

Meet the 2012 crop of Republican Presidential candidates.

HOME SWEET HOME
It is incredible to what lengths our Orthodox brethren will go to impose their will and control our lives. In particular, their treatment of women and their attitude toward them is indicative of a medieval mind set and a complete rejection of the humanistic values that we hold dear, even out in the cold methane atmosphere of Titan. Let me quote our Culture and Sports Minister, Limor Livnat, who usually toes the Fascist line in politics, but does sometimes recall that she is a woman too:

"Lately, there has been a worrisome deterioration in the status of women in the public arena. The exclusion of women is also violence against women – women need to get on buses from the back door, posters depicting them are banned or otherwise burnt, they cannot sing before men nor mourn for their loved ones at funerals," Livnat added, calling these happenings attempts to deprive women of the most basic rights in a democracy – freedom of speech, freedom of movement, and the right to dignity."

"Where there's an exclusion of women, violence against women eventually grows", the Culture and Sports minister added.

In general what is happening is a war against democracy. It is impossible for the religious right or the expansionist right in Israel to tolerate criticism of its illegal and immoral actions. This is expressed very well in an article by the publisher of Haaretz, Amos Schoken. It is required reading for anyone who believes in the value of liberal democracy. It is indeed questionable whether Israel has a future that is worth defending. What will happen is that the best and the brightest among the liberals will be forced to emigrate and we will have a country of Torah studies and military war-mongering. It is sad that our people in America support these goals although they would scream and are screaming when similar things happen to them in their homes. The Republican Party is the Christian Likud and support for the most inane and immoral policies of the Israeli government has become a party mantra. The Democrats, alas, are not much better and so we roll off to Hell with the applause of the world.

IRAN AS A FIG LEAF AND THE HOLOCAUST
We are constantly being told that at any moment our heroic Junior Bird Men(thank you Tom Lehrer) will be loading up with the bunkerbuster bombs that Obama sent us as toys and flying off to teach the Iranis that one must not mess with God's chosen people. The fact that the real risk of a nuclear attack from Iran is negligible and that the response to any attack of ours will cost the lives of thousands of innocent civilians (one might argue that people who elect such a government are hardly innocent and should be held accountable) is not considered important. Besides scaring us with blather, it has become fashionable to invoke the Holocaust, which is a true obscenity, as is pointed out by MJ Rosenberg.. We would like to believe that all this is bluster intended among other things to keep the Defence budget up and to defuse the social protest successfully. Quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius--so very true. Uri Avneri makes a convincing comparison to the Weimar Republic.

Our BOOK REVIEW for this week falls into the category of the decay of our country. The book is The Unmaking of Israel, by Gershom Gorenberg (325 pp. HarperCollins Publishers. $25.99) reviewed in the New York Times by Jeffrey Goldberg. The thesis is that Israel indeed lost the Six-Day War and in the wake of the conquest and occupation is turning into a most illiberal chauvinistic state. The settler tail wags the national dog and the agenda of the settlers is what sets the tone. The future indeed is bleak. Gorenberg is a left-liberal Israeli of US extraction and writes with a sense of true sorrow over what is happening to our country.

MALE COGNITIVE FACULTIES
Gene Weingarten brings up an issue that has often been a bone of contention between the Y and the A of YandA. People who go to social functions may notice that many women are indeed impoverished and never seem to have enough money to buy an entire dress. Y claims that this has an effect on A that also shows up when we walk on the beach and somewhat incomplete sports attire intrudes upon our attention. Titan,as noted above, seems to have his own beaches and his own nymphs to observe around Saturn. In any case, Gene has researched the issue of the claim that the mental acuity of males of our species is reduced when in the presence of sexy attractive females. I am pleased to commend Gene on his scientific confrontation of the issue and the data.

I might also note that the geek of XKCD is familiar with the problem from the aspect of apparent parapsychology.

Titan is ranting, is anyone listening?

2011-11-18T11:27:00.001+02:00

Titan and Pollyanna along with their alter egos YandA wish all who celebrate Thanksgiving a very happy holiday. This time Titan wants you to know what his home environment at Saturn sounds like. This noise or music comes from his little neighbor Enceladus with a bit of human background. These sounds were recorded by the Cassini spacecraft which has been in orbit around Saturn since December 2004. The clip was called to our attention by our friend and colleague Abi Rymer from APL. Thank you Abi. We hope you like it. At the site there are other videos of sounds from space.

What is done is to record natural electromagnetic fluctuations, in this case, the plasma wave detector on board the spacecraft Cassini in orbit around Saturn and to convert them to the mechanical fluctuations in your loudspeaker. Enjoy and listen to the great god Kronos. For some more weirdness from Saturn, Titan refers you to Phil Plait whose Bad Astronomy blog link is to the right of each of our postings.

RANTING AKA TILTING AT WINDMILLS
Having regaled you with that, Titan can get on with his normal business of ranting about what is wrong with the world. This week there is much to rant about, as is the case almost every week.

EVIL IDIOCY
We will start with something in the US that makes our blood boil. As is well known, the great beloved, 84 year old football coach of Penn State University was fired after 50 years for covering up child abuse by one of his assistants, a monster named Sandusky. We have all fumed at the covering up of child abuse by the Catholic Church and indeed they eventually shaped up albeit late, in many cases far too late, and with insufficient strength. We so far have not seen Jesuit seminary students rioting in support of a priest defrocked for raping the altar boys. Here the president of the University not only fired the coach, but resigned himself, since it happened on his watch (Israeli generals please note). The abuse and cover-up were bad enough, but what exacerbates the crime is the fact that 2,000 Penn State students rioted in support of their coach.

Can you imagine this? Five percent of the student body of a major and respected academic institution rioted in support of child abuse. The sports blogger Jon Fucile lays it on the line well. We saw idiots rioting in Vancouver over a hockey game loss and historically there have been sports riots going back to the sixth century, but nothing rivals the evil idiocy of the Penn State students. The blogger Sara Whitman says it better than we could. Andy Borowitz has a practical suggestion for Penn State.

HUMAN RIGHTS AROUND THE WORLD
We start with a student in Azerbaijan who is in jail for a Facebook posting. Jabbar Savalan

was jailed after calling for protests against the Azerbaijan government on Facebook. If there was ever a need for a "Dislike" button on Facebook, this is it! Please read more and act.

We move on to China where the blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng and his family

Cheng Guangcheng with his wife and son

are being subjected to severe restriction on their freedom of movement and contacts. In Tibet and China , we have seen two monks and nine nuns immolate themselves in the past six months, in protest against the repressive policies of the Chinese government. Then we have Belarus where a past candidate for the presidency has been jailed for his political views and moved around to frustrate access to a lawyer. He is defined as an Amnesty Prisoner of Conscience.

Back to the United States, presumably the world's greatest democracy, where Idaho is gearing up for an execution and police in New York are cracking down on the Occupy Wall Street movement.


This movement has spread around the world since September 17

Nonetheless the movement continues to spread and appears to be preparing for a long winter. Indeed it may be ironically true that the police helped the movement to move on from physical occupation of space to political action that can have real long term and significant effects.

Next door to us in Syria the massacres continue and the opposition fights on. King Abdullah of Jordan has called on President Assad to step down. Turkey and France are making noises but hypocrisy continues to be the order of the day. We are told that Russia will take steps to prevent intervention such as took place in Libya.

In Italy the clown has resigned after 17 years of misrule and degradation of a great European nation. In Britain the scientific journal Nature is facing a libel suit by an Egyptian scientist who took some criticism of his work as a journal editor in 2008. We think that there is a real need for current libel laws to be reformed because the existing system can be used to suppress robust scientific debate and discussion. Europe, alas, is also not free of things for us to rant about, including ending with a preposition...

LABOR AROUND THE WORLD
As usual, there are labor issues around the world that require attention. In New Zealand we have the usual flexing of management muscles as unfettered capitalism goes global. Please click and send your protest. In Manitoba, Canada, the Faculty Association of Brandon University has been on strike since October 12 over wages. As a former Board member of a Faculty Association I have full sympathy for them and I hope their solidarity holds, although the report is ominous. At the Turkish-owned Mega Textile plant in Egypt workers have been protesting ill-treatment at the hands of management and are now on strike to protest arbitrary dismissals. The company has had a history of bad labor relations since it was founded five years ago.

Workers from Mega Textiles and Shebin El-Kom in a protest mid October. (Photo: Yassin Gaber)

HOME SWEET HOME
Here at home, it is hard to decide where to begin our rants. The right wing is chipping away at our democracy, bit by bit, law by law and there is nothing to stop them. Gideon Levy likens our PM to a man riding on the back of a tiger. As is well know, if you ride a tiger, you will end up inside, as the famous limerick tells us:

Well drawn by anon.

There was a young lady of Niger
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger;
They returned from the ride
With the lady inside,
And the smile on the face of the tiger.--variously attributed to Monkhouse, Nash and Lear but most likely written by the famous anon. It certainly applies to the conservative democrats in Israel today. This is all consistent with the history of fascism as pointed out by Paxton in his book The Anatomy of Fascism(Knopf, New York, 2004) who shows that fascist parties never achieve power on their own, but are aided by right wing democratic parties who either lose control or try unsuccessfully to exploit and manipulate them. Paxton debunks the consoling fiction that Mussolini and Hitler seized power. Rather, conservative elites desperate to subdue leftist populist movements ''normalized'' the fascists by inviting them to share power. It was the mob that flocked to fascism, but the elites who elevated it. We are well on our way to becoming a second Iran, because the secular fascist wing has a theocratic ally and between them we are seeing our democracy collapse before our eyes. The religious movement to isolate women, not to allow them to sing in public, to force them to ride in the back of the bus and to be silenced in the media is part and parcel of the fascist push in Israel. Indeed politics makes strange bedfellows. Yes, Mussolini made the trains run on time, but look at what happened to the Italian people.
The danger from a nuclear Iran pales before the real danger of the internal dissolution of our state and its values. This is of course also connected to the Occupation of the West Bank and our evil actions as rulers of a victim nation. Ilana Hammerman, who has long been on the front line of the struggle for our values, leaves no doubt about the hopelessness of our situation. and the depth of the moral pit into which we have fallen. We go to our demonstrations ,

Pro-democracy demonstration in Tel Aviv

write letters to the editor of Haaretz, read Ari Shavit on the op-ed page and, as pointed out by Yosefa, are reminded of Cassandra.

RED RAG COLUMN
For some cogent comments on the occupation and its implications, we would like to refer you to a weekly column by Gideon Spiro   in the Occupation Magazine. In particular, he relates to the case of Anat Kam, a young Israeli woman soldier who was convicted of leaking classified documents and given a stiff prison term. The fact that the documents revealed crimes committed by the military establishment was not a mitigating factor, alas.

REFUGEES AND THEIR FATE
Our policy on refugees is far from enlightened and they are often thrown back into the Sinai desert where they are in the hands of Bedouin people smugglers. In addition to taking huge fees from the people who desperately want to get to Israel, the smugglers have come upon an additional source of income, trafficking in their organs.
"Organs are not useful if they're dead. They drug them first and remove their organs, then leave them to die".-- Rights campaigner Hamdy Al-Azazy.
The Egyptian government has largely lost control of the Sinai Peninsula and it has become a no-man's-land of crime and corruption. In general, refugees are treated badly, be it incarceration on Christmas Island by Australia, rebuffs at the border between Kenya and Somalia, Burmese trying to cross a river to Thailand or Darfurians trying to get to Chad or Israel or wherever they can be safe. It is sad that so many signatories of the UN conventions on refugees are evading their responsibilities when it comes down to the real thing.

To end on a lighter note, here is a video of an Italian auction of a vase that sold in auction for a million euros.
A Chinese Ming vase is up for auction.   The bidding opens at a half-million Euros.   Bidding is brisk and each bidder is clearly identified as each raises the bid by 100,000 Euros.    Within seconds, the bid stalls at one million Euros, and the gasp from the crowd identifies the excitement that prevails in the room.   The successful bidder is the last one who bid one million, and the auctioneer counts down the bid,

"Going once, going twice, and sold to the gentleman sitting in front of me for one million Euros."

Now, you are going to have to see the video for yourself.   The auctioneer is exuberant.   The pace is fast.   The conclusion? Priceless.

MAHLER FLOW CHART
You are driving along the highway listening to your favorite classical music station.   Jim Sjveda or his colleague wherever you are tells you "now we shall hear symphony number burst of static or enter underpass by Gustav Mahler." In order to identify the symphony, a kind soul in Michigan sent the following flow chart to Yand which she is sharing with Titan and his readers. For the record, #7 starts with a tenor horn solo and not a baritone horn, but that is a minor detail.

TITAN NEEDS IMPACT
We asked before if anyone was listening to us. We have decided that we have to take matters into our own hands and XKCD shows us how to go about it. Titan and I now realize what we are doing wrong in terms of having some impact. We realize what we need to do to help save the world as Ender is doing for us in outer space.

Locke and Demosthenes

Here comes Titan again

2011-11-04T16:49:00.000+02:00

Two infrared views of a mountainous region on Titan, with snowy peaks

This week Titan is back with much to rant about, as is usual. First, of course, a bit of Titanic self promotion as he does in every blog. Last time he posed for the radar imagers, this time it is for the infra red cameras of our friend Bob Brown who runs the Visual & Infrared Mapping Spectrometer aka VIMS on the Cassini orbiter. Titan just wants to show off his high mountains that are best seen in the infrared. Note the methane snow--why is it unsuitable for skiing? Your answers in comments please.

There is much to rant about this week and Titan also intends to bend your ear on what is wrong with governments all over the world. First let us start with some nasty human rights violations.
MEXICO
Community activists and members of an indigenous community protesting against the construction of a wind farm in Oaxaca, southern Mexico, were attacked and injured on 28 October. Amnesty International is concerned that the death of a man at the scene of the protests may be used to prosecute protestors unfairly and to deter future protests. It is the usual story that we see too much of, big bucks and little people. I am appending a link in English from Amnesty Belgium Francophone that calls for action and gives you addresses of functionaries to rant at. You should be able to find the address and fax number of your local Mexican embassy without difficulty

LABOR ISSUES
This one from Turkey is hard to believe, but again it is the strong trampling the weak and vulnerable. In this case it is a leather factory in Turkey where there is a dispute between the workers and the owners. Now read this quote from Eric Lee's site:
"At one point the employer invited the workers to come to work in Istanbul, but refused to give them a day to find a place to live. So workers stayed overnight in the factory.
Here's the amazing bit: the employer decided that this constituted an "occupation" of the factory and tried to call in the police. When that didn't work, they sacked 36 workers. " .Please act. If the site comes up with my name etc. (Eric is making it too user-friendly), erase and put in your own and then please register for Eric's network that fights for the rights of working people around the world.

Nestle is a huge food company. It is also a prime example of corporate greed overcoming ethics. For decades it was the focus of a major controversy over marketing breast milk substitutes in developing countries, sometimes with lethal results. Its corporate values also spill over into its labor relations. Please join this campaign that comes in the wake of Nestlé sacking workers in both Indonesia and Pakistan for daring to organize themselves into trade unions.

In the past, we asked you to help striking Suzuki workers in India. 96 hours after the launch of the campaign, the company had reached agreement with the union and the strike was over. Nestle is going to be a lot tougher.
TIBET/CHINA
It is terrible to have to report on the self immolation of another Tibetan, the nun, Qiu Xiang, 35, in southwest Sichuan Province. This wave of fiery suicides is a direct result of the persecution and repression of the people of occupied Tibet by the Chinese authorities.

Exiled Tibetans in Dharamsala, India, on Thursday with pictures of a Buddhist nun who set herself on fire to protest Chinese rule.

JUSTICE THROUGH THE UN?
Some people might consider this an oxymoron. There is a global NGO Coalition for an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) which is calling on all governments worldwide to ratify the Protocol. The Optional Protocol creates a new international mechanism that will enable people whose rights have been denied – and do not have a remedy in their own country – to seek justice through the UN.

As France holds the Presidency of the G20, the NGO Coalition for an Optional Protocol calls on President Sarkozy to seize this opportunity and show leadership in promoting and protecting economic, social and cultural rights for all, especially those living in poverty. We urge France to become party to the Optional Protocol to the ICESCR. The G20 are meeting now in France, so please sign the petition to President Sarkozy to get France and the rest of the G20 on board.

We have seen how the UN has failed in Darfur, Somalia, South Sudan and countless other places around the world. I am appending a link to a speech by Simon Deng, a former slave from South Sudan, before a conference of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, the Association for World Education, and the Association of World Citizens in Geneva.

Simon Deng: Credit Heather Robinson

I also append another speech given at the Durban Watch Conference in which he comes down hard on the Israel bashing that takes the place of pursuit of justice for oppressed peoples. Make no mistake, the Palestinians are an oppressed people and Titan, Pollyanna and YandA hold no brief for the conduct of the occupation forces funded by our taxes. What has happened, however,is that of all the oppressed peoples around the world, the aboriginal Canadians forced off their land by oil companies, the Dalits (Untouchables) of India,

A Dalit family

the Copts in Egypt, the victims of anti Christian prejudice in Nigeria and Indonesia and many others, the Palestinians have managed to take and hold center stage. Simon Deng describes the suffering and oppression of the black Africans in Sudan at the hands of the Khartoum regime all in the name of Jihad and Islam. Of course, the UN and the world community remain silent about that. China is invested heavily in Sudanese oil and therefore the g word, for genocide, could not be included in a Security Council resolution because it would have triggered automatic sanctions. China was having none of that. The Palestinians have managed to become the poster child of the conscience of the world. Let me quote Simon Deng in his Durban Watch speech:
"By exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale."
I think that this sentence is the key. I hate to use the arguments of the Israeli right wing who consider all criticism of Israel and its policies to be a manifestation of antisemitism. Yet, if I ask myself why the suffering of the Palestinians (and indeed they suffer) resonates more strongly with Western liberals than does the suffering of black people in Darfur and South Sudan or of low-caste people in India, I cannot avoid thinking that bashing Israel goes back to something embedded in the Western Christian DNA. Indeed Pope John XXIII and Vatican II absolved us of guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus, but blaming Jews for whatever is wrong is almost Pavlovian. Where religious prejudice is absent or insignificant you find the canards that Jews control the world economy etc. etc. When antisemitic propaganda catches a ride on the back of legitimate criticism of Israel and its policies, the right wing finds it easier to discredit the criticism, which is a shame and harms the cause of justice for the Palestinians. Israel exists because Jews were first exterminated and then expelled from Europe. Europeans may well feel guilty towards the Palestinians because of the role of Europe in the migration of the Jews. The establishment of Israel could have been done with much less injustice as pointed out by Chaim Gans in his book on a just Zionism, but the exigencies of turbulent times exacted their cost.
I would like to point out that in his Durban Watch speech, Deng paints a far too rosy picture of the reception granted to Sudanese refugees in Israel. Instead of open arms they were met with closed detention camps and when possible turned back at the border into the tender mercies of the Egyptian army. When people in a Tel Aviv salon talk about infiltrators coming through the border, I usually point out that a similar conversation most certainly took place in Spanish in Madrid circa1943 about Jews infiltrating through the Pyrenees. It makes some(not all) people uncomfortable.

SOCIAL PROTEST IN ISRAEL AND ELSEWHERE
We are seeing all around the world a protest movement against the excesses of laissez faire capitalism In the USA, Wall Street and the economic centers of other cities are being occupied by people who have had enough. In Israel a protest movement began in the summer and is putting pressure on the government to make radical changes in its priorities. Of course, the oligarchy is not sitting still for this and their hired pundits are filling the press with sharp criticism of "naive Utopian fantasies" and other choice phrases. Nonetheless, the protest continues. Last Saturday night, tens of thousands of people came out to Rabin Square in Tel Aviv to make it clear that business as usual is over and ended. The question of how a movement like that can function without a formal leadership hierarchy is raised in the latest issue of the American weekly The Nation. There are interesting articles there by Melissa Harris-Perry, Benjamin Barber and others. Locally Stav Shaffi,

speaking before the demonstration, puts things in perspective very well and makes it very clear that this movement will not go away. She was also interviewed by Time magazine and made some very good points. In particular, her comment on the lack of hierarchy was very relevant: "As a movement that goes up against the most powerful force, if you act like an organization, like an institution, you lose. If you have one head, they know what to cut off. You have to be like water, to be everywhere, to be unpredictable. We work like an open code. Everybody should act their part. Everybody should act like a leader."
Titan thinks that this is in the spirit of the new politics in Europe, the Pirate Parties that have sprouted in Germany, Sweden and elsewhere. The Berlin Pirates took 8.9% of the vote in the Berlin State elections and have taken 15 seats in the legislature.

We think a Pirate Party in Israel might do well, although there is a major political issue that could shoot it down. So far the social protesters have remained apolitical and have not taken a stance on any noneconomic issue. The question of the occupation, the peace process (such as it is) and foreign policy could be overly divisive for such a party in Israel. Titan and Pollyanna both think it is not intellectually honest to strive for social justice on one side of the border and the movement will have to take a position. Certainly change, if it is to come about, will have to come through the electoral process, although the Wall Street occupiers seem to have given up on that route.
POLITICAL MADNESS AT HOME
The press in Israel is full of a discussion over a possible attack by Israel on the nuclear facilities of Iran. I find it hard to believe that adult and presumably intelligent people are actually considering such a suicidally crazy step. The implications are terrible, a ferocious retaliation by Iran's clients in Lebanon and Gaza that would cost the lives of tens of thousands of our citizens, total ostracizing by the civilized world and a break in relations with the United States that would be devastating. One can only conclude that this is a political circus and that there is no serious intention to carry out such a folly. For an analysis of this subject, we refer you to Uri Avnery who puts it much better than we could.
WELCOME TO UNESCO
UNESCO has just voted to admit Palestine as a member. For some reason both the US and Israel have reacted in a totally paranoid manner. The USA is punishing the organization and Israel is punishing the PA. . Titan and I fail to understand what is so terrible about the PA joining UNESCO and why we have to steal their money to make a point that itself is silly.
BOOK REVIEW:
This week we have two new biographies of the famous movie critic Pauline Kael,

one of them with her collected works. She was the authoritative voice on film during the 1970-1990 epoch. The review by Frank Rich appeared in the New York Times last week. It is worth a read.

LET US WIND UP IN A LIGHTER VEIN.
Gene Weingarten is in fact quite serious in his rant about what "branding" has done to the journalism profession. Of course, people brand cattle, but now young journalism students are told to brand themselves. I like Gene's response to a student who asked him how he branded himself: "The best way to build a brand is to take a three-foot length of malleable iron and get one end red-hot. Then, apply it vigorously to the buttocks of the instructor who gave you this question. You want a nice, meaty sizzle." We invite you to enjoy the images attached to Gene's diatribe.

We also have some good commentary from Andy Borowitz on a famous bank and how it preys on its customers.

We all, wherever we live, can understand this because we all have banks. Greg Greenberg of The Street, who lists the dumbest things done each week on Wall Street, managed to get his hands on the letter that Brian Moynihan's nice Jewish mother sent him:

1. Bank of America's (Symbol : BAC) Yiddishe Mama

Moy-vey Brian! Bank of America's (Symbol : BAC), so-called system "upgrade" is driving all your customers absolutely meshugenah!
As if CEO Brian Moynihan didn't have enough tsuris with a stock price now below $6, America's biggest bank -- which boasts 29 million online customers -- was struck with a new headache this week when its efforts to improve its online banking platform turned into a total mish-mash. For six days ending Wednesday, customers had problems accessing their accounts without a single word from BofA brass.
And as any yiddishe mama would say, 'Brian, bubbeleh, you don't call? You don't write? Why do you treat me this way?'
Of course, the timing could not be worse for BofA's money mavens. The computer glitches started at the same time the company announced it was sticking its customers with a $5 monthly debit card fee. And while that may be a bissell for a big shot like Brian, over the course of a year that's some serious gelt for consumers who need another expense like they need a loch in kop. So much so that an online petition at Change.org asking the bank to reconsider the farkakta fee had more than 132,500 signatures by Wednesday afternoon.
Things got so bad, in fact, that this whole mishegos reached all the way up to America's main macher, President Barack Obama, who said on Wednesday, "Well, you can stop the fee if you say to the banks, 'you don't have some inherent right just to, you know, get a certain amount of profit if your customers are being mistreated.'"
To which Moynihan replied, "Butt out you yenta! I'm no schlimazel!"
Actually, he didn't say that (although it would be hilarious if he did). But he did issue a retort to the president, saying "we have a right to make a profit."
And while we agree that's truly the emmes, and Brian's bank has a right to make money for its shareholders, we don't think it was the brightest move in the battle for public opinion to tell both his customers and the President of the United States to kish mir in tuchas.
Farshtayst? We bet you do.

For the record, BofA backed down on the $5 debit card fee when it became apparent that its customers would not put up with it. What is missing from Mama's letter are the two words goyishe kop but that might have been considered an ethnic slur. I once had my ATM card swallowed by a BofA machine and it took me six months of phone calls and emails to get it replaced. I learned that the bank is very benevolent and hires the graduates of the best schools for retarded children. Nice indeed.

Titan says Welcome Home to Gilad

2011-10-21T00:27:00.000+02:00


Gilad comes home

Titan is happy along with the rest of the community to welcome Gilad Shalit home after well over five years of captivity in the hands of the Hamas. Of course, the media and the politicians are having their usual festival of self admiration and sentimental blah blah , but that is something that we have learned to live with. Itzhak Laor puts it well into perspective. Titan, Pollyanna and YandA are happy that he is home and frustrated that a) it took so long and b)no one has ever been held accountable for the failures of the army that caused him to be taken prisoner and his comrades to be killed. Let us hope that he will be left alone, given privacy with his family and manages to get on with his life. He is 25 years old and there is a future before him.

Much is being made of the fact that killers of Israeli civilians are being released. Indeed, these are criminal terrorists since by all criteria deliberate attacks against civilians are crimes against humanity. Their actions did nothing to advance the cause of Palestinian independence which would be better served by a Gandhi-Mandela-King type of nonviolent resistance. They spilled innocent blood and are now are being welcomed as heroes by a brainwashed hate-ridden Palestinian public and the temptation to puke is very strong. Still, something rings hollow in our remonstrations. Are these despicable murderers substantially different from the soldier who gunned down Abir Aramin in 2007 and has enjoyed full impunity with the backing of the Army since then? Why are they worse than the air crew and the chain of command above them who dropped a one ton bomb on an apartment building and killed 15 innocents including 11 children? Does it really matter whether a terrorist is in uniform or not? The Palestinian terrorists did do some tough jail time. Dan Halutz went to Harvard and now wants to enter politics.

Titan would like, however, to get on with his traditional matters. Scientists have long known that the lower atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan contains organic aerosols, or tholins, formed from simple organic molecules, such as methane and nitrogen. Researchers had assumed these tholins formed at altitudes of several hundred kilometers, but new information gathered by three particle spectrometers aboard the Cassini spacecraft shows tholin formation happens in Titan's atmosphere at altitudes greater than 1,000 kilometers.The results also show tholins form differently than previously thought

Scientists at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), the University of Kansas, University College London and The University of Texas at San Antonio reported results of the observations in the paper "The Process of Tholin Formation in Titan's Upper Atmosphere," published in the May 11 2007 issue of Science.. "Tholins are very large, complex organic molecules thought to include chemical precursors to life," said Dr. Hunter Waite, an Institute scientist in SwRI's Space Science and Engineering Division, and leader of Cassini's Ion Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) team. "Understanding how they form could provide valuable insight into the origin of life in the solar system."

RANTS AROUND THE WORLD

We start with China where the atomization of society by the regime can lead to dehumanizing of people. A toddler was run over in a narrow market place street and people just walked or biked past in total indifference. I do not think this degree of inhumanity is specifically Chinese. It does not even require a dictatorship as anyone old enough to remember the Kitty Genovese murder knows. She was stabbed to death while 38 people people in Queens looked on and did nothing to save her. It is known now as the Kitty Genovese syndrome . The degree of apathy and lack of empathy in modern society is frightening.

Another issue in China is the way people are treated after their release from prison. The punishment does not end at the prison gate. We call your attention to the case of Chen Guangcheng and and his wife Yuan Weijing

who are being held in arbitrary house arrest by the authorities in his home village. Please take a minute to click and act on their behalf

LIBYA
One might have expected that the regime that toppled Qaddafi would itself be supportive of human rights. We are finding the opposite to be true. The apparently arbitrary execution of Qaddafi himself

does not bode well for the future. In our opinion, he should have been brought to trial in The Hague for his crimes against humanity. The new regime is detaining people, executing them arbitrarily and in general putting a terrible stain on its first steps towards, we hope, establishing democracy in that long-suffering country. Shlomo Avineri, the political scientist with much experience with post-totalitarian states, has often pointed out that it is nearly impossible to set up democracy in the absence of a traditional connection to it. He most recently cites Egypt and Russia , but apparently the idea holds for Libya as well, which is indeed sad. The counterexample that comes to mind is postwar Japan where democracy was imposed by the occupying power, the USA. I wonder what Avineri has to say about that. It is also not clear how Iraq will navigate the post Saddam era. You might find this debate in print on the subject of democracy in Iraq interesting.
.

INDIA
Seven thousand Suzuki workers in India are being abused by their employer and have been fired upon by police. Please act on this along with the other labor issues mentioned in the letter from Eric Lee.

First, Suzuki broke its agreement. Now shots have been fired at strikers, and the government has called the strike "illegal"

Just as this blog was being published we got the delightful news that the international uproar worked and the company has settled with the workers. This is a great victory for the solidarity of workers and unions around the globe.

ON OUR IDENTITY AND CHARACTER
Recently Uri Avneri wrote an article in which he made the point that our history has so warped our identity and character that we, as Jews, are incapable of creating a democratic nation state that would satisfy the expectations of the modern world. He attributed this both to the historic past and to the Holocaust and its long term influence on our mentality, our distrust of the "other" and of an overreaching supranational solidarity that places a Jew in Vancouver in a privileged position relative to any non-Jewish citizen living in Um el Fahm or Issefiya. He thinks we need a second Herzl to set us on the right path. It is interesting food for thought, although I do not agree with all of his contentions. I think the plight of democratic values and the takeover by the settlers and the right in Israel derive from an absence of democratic tradition (vid. Avineri above) in the host countries of Jews, both in North Africa and in Eastern Europe. The democracy that existed here in the early decades had its source in the Jews from Western European countries, most notably Weimar Germany, who have long passed on to their reward. I do not think that we are on our way to classical Fascism as in Germany and Italy because we do have an ideology and we do not have a charismatic leader who can impose his will as Hitler and Mussolini could. We are on our way to a much more authoritarian regime as can be seen in the anti democratic laws and initiatives. R.O. Paxton points out (vid. THE ANATOMY OF FASCISM By Robert O. Paxton. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,) that fascism requires a charismatic leader and a lack of real ideology. This review from the NYTimes, by Samantha Powers will serve as our book review of the week. How this connects up to us in a cultural sense is another important issue. Saul Bellow discusses his identity as a Jewish writer in a two part series in the NY Review of Books. Part One has been published and is worthy of attention.

Let us wind up with a report on some criminal activity that should be dealt with firmly...

We also have good advice from Goldman Sachs via Andy Borowitz on how we all can profit from Occupy Wall Street. We hope that now that the holidays are ending our protesters will return to the streets and be part of the worldwide protest against capitalism run amuck.

Titan after Yom Kippur

2011-10-09T13:43:00.000+02:00

Yom Kippur has come and gone and Titan, Pollyanna and I have broken our fast and are back with the world. Titan wishes you all a Chatima Tova (to be inscribed in the Book of Life) since, although Yom Kippur has past, the Book is still open for alterations and emendations and the Editor is still accepting repentance until Hoshanna Rabba, which this year falls on October 19. That is the day when we Jews make it clear that we want rain this year by pounding on the floor with willow branches, just in case the message is not getting through, as you can see in the image. When I was a kid I thought this was great fun.

Titan has had a hard week and has much to complain about as usual. First however, he owes you a picture of himself. To make it interesting, he is showing himself as a radar image, with an impact crater. As you can see, it is not easy being a moon of Saturn.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL
This image was acquired by the Cassini radar instrument in synthetic aperture mode during a Sept. 7, 2006, flyby of Titan. The image is centered at 70 degrees west longitude, 10 degrees north latitude, and measures about 150 kilometers high by 190 kilometers wide (93 by 118 miles). The smallest details in this image are about 500 meters (about 550 yards) across. Full resolution image.

This image from Cassini's radar instrument shows an impact crater with a diameter of 30 kilometers (19 miles) on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan.
Cassini data have only revealed three definite impact craters on Titan so far, so each new discovery adds significantly to our body of knowledge. Impact craters are particularly important, as their shapes give scientists insight into the structure of the crust beneath Titan's surface.
The difference in overall appearance between this crater, which has a central peak, and those without, such as Sinlap, indicates variations in the conditions of impact, thickness of the crust, or properties of the meteorite that made the crater. The dark floor indicates smooth or highly absorbing materials.
NOBEL PRIZES FOR SCIENCE 2011
Titan is pleased to congratulate the winners of the 2011 Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry. The links lead to the Nobel page where you can send a congratulatory note to the laureates. The Chemistry prize went to Prof. Daniel Schechtman of our own Technion for his discovery of quasicrystals in solids. He took a lot of flak for the idea back then, but he stuck to his guns and long has had vindication for his views. The Physics prize went to three people for the discovery of the acceleration of the expansion of the universe. In Israel we have ten Nobel Laureates, although I only count seven, four in Chemistry, two in Economics (a related prize) and one in Literature. I discount the Peace Prizes for none of them have brought real peace, although you can make a case for Menahem Begin whose peace treaty with Egypt is still holding, albeit barely. Danny Kahanman who won the Economics prize has not lived in Israel for many years, but he was educated here.

We also wish to congratulate the three women who share the 2011 Peace Prize for their unflagging and courageous efforts on behalf of women and peace. In particular, Tawakkul Karman from Yemen, serves as a shining example of what can be achieved by a woman leading a nonviolent struggle. While on the subject of women's rights, Titan would like to refer you to a compelling blog posting by Diana Russell, on the killing of women, qua women and a proposal to use the name "femicide" to define the crime more clearly.

Women's Terror Is Not "Just a Movie" image by the late graffiti artist, photographer, and anti-femicide activist Chris Domingo, of Berkeley, California

CHILIK IS GONE
Titan, Pollyanna and YandA are all very sad at the loss of Chilik, our dog of the last decade. She was old and ill, living with a malignancy, but we were keeping her alive on steroids and she seemed happy enough. A few weeks ago she wandered off at the beach and simply vanished as if into thin air. We have searched high and low, posted notices, phoned the pound, but no sign of her has shown up. We miss her very much.

Chilik being kept out of trouble

Congratulations to the Berlin Zoo on the birth of Indochinese tiger cubs quadruplets

recently. Read more and enjoy the pictures and video.

IN MEMORIAM

Steve Jobs(1955-2011) has just died after a long struggle with pancreatic cancer. He started from scratch and built one of the greatest technology companies in the world and revolutionized the world of computing and communication. His creativity and innovative genius were without peers. I am writing these lines on a PC, but I am well aware of the world of MAC and what impact it had on society. I think the CNN obituary is quite comprehensive about his life and work. I am also appending a link to a site that contains the commencement address that he gave at Stanford in 2005 along with a detailed biography. It has some good points along with a healthy dose of egomania. This man enjoyed abusing his employees and parking in the handicapped slots. Nonetheless, he left a major impact on our society.

There is also a dark side to Apple and by association Jobs. The factories in China that make the goodies that Apple sells have been hit in recent year by a rash of worker suicides, to say nothing about abuse, illness from substance exposure and more. The conditions in these factories are worse than appalling, but Jobs and Apple, as well as the people who buy their goods, chose not to notice. Mike Daisy ,who is putting on a one man Steve Jobs show, gave an interview in which he lashed out at the company for its indifference to basic human rights. Titan and Pollyanna have both lashed out at companies that buy from Third World suppliers who abuse their workers, but in general, indifference is the mode when there is money to be made. We consumers have little leverage in these matters, alas. The film China Blue by Micha Peled gives you an idea.
Micha Peled showed this picture at various venues including the Cinematheques around the country. It was also shown here on television. He won a human rights award from the Dutch section of Amnesty International for the film.

Bullying in schools is a terrible thing especially when the victim is particularly vulnerable. I had my share as the only Jewish kid in my class in elementary school. In junior high and high school, our numbers were greater and there was enough solidarity to generate counter pressure. Titan is pleased at a story of how the bullying of a girl with Asperger syndrome backfired because some high school kids showed a social conscience. Cheers for the Poway CA High School students!
A recent study has shown that racism and prejudice are imbued into us by our cultural environment. The new study finds that while people are quick to associate word pairs that bring to mind stereotypes (think "black - poor" versus "black - goofy"), this tendency is rooted not in the social meaning of the words, but in the likelihood of the words appearing together in literature and media. In other words, this implicit prejudice is driven more by culture than by any innate horribleness in the person, said study researcher Paul Verhaeghen, a Georgia Tech psychologist. Read more.

WHALING AGAIN
The Japanese whaling fleet is going off again on its "scientific" whale hunt.. Last season they were hampered by activists from the group, Sea Shepherd, that has pledged to follow the fleet again this year and obstruct its hunt.

Sea battle ... crew member Laurens De Groot hurls a bottle of butyric acid at a Japanese harpoon whaling ship / Pic: Sea Shepherd

We wish them good luck and all success. Japan also kills dolphins indiscriminately as can be seen in the film The Cove. We own a copy of the film and will be happy to share it. Maybe we should stop buying Japanes cars.

ROMA HOUSING AND FORCED EVICTIONS IN ROUMANIA
This rant deals with a vicious form of racism, segregation and discrimination practiced against the poorest and most disadvantaged citizens in Roumania. Titan calls upon all of you to sign up and take action against the new housing law that makes no provision for marginal minority groups. It just takes a few clicks to get your message across.

Romania’s poorest and most disadvantaged citizens cannot access adequate housing

THE LOCAL SCENE
There is so much to rant about that Titan would run out of silicon if he took on everything. We do want to complain bitterly about the POGROM that took place in Anatot on September 30. (The dictionary definition is an organized massacre of helpless people; specifically : such a massacre of Jews. )
What do we call it when the perpetrators are Jews? Please read the description in the link and then take action. What is most frightening is the passive complicity of the police who took no action to protect the victims of settler violence. This couples with the burning of a mosque in a northern village

Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

An Israeli Arab boy in a burned mosque in the Bedouin village of Tuba-Zangari

and the desecration of Muslim and Christian cemeteries in Jaffa

"Death to Arabs" sprayed on a grave in Jaffa, October 7, 2011
Photo by: Team palestina

all part of the "price tag" violence campaign of West Bank settlers. The failure, because of either lack of will or incompetence, of the Israel Police to deal with the phenomenon of settler violence is leading to dire consequences. Let us hope that the leaders of the Arab community in Israel will be able to restrain their hotheads and avoid playing into the hands of the instigators of the violence. It is most pathetic also that the left in Israel seems to be unable to mount an effective counterattack. The right has a propaganda rag called Israel Today that is handed out free in railroad stations, malls, wherever and the brainwash is total. The message of peace, conciliation and the values of liberal democracy does not get across to the public. It is relevant, therefore, to read a similar complaint from the US by Phil Rockstroh, who is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He points out that we on the liberal-left side are rendered impotent by our very trait of being nice and amiable. His posting Running from Right Wing Clowns should be read carefully. It is about the USA, but it fits Israel like a glove. In particular I want to quote his ending statement--"At present, among the things we can ill afford are fantasy-prone kids, duped into believing modern soldiering bestows nobility and involves heroic sacrifice. Instead, the times call for brave misfits, encouraged to embrace rejection by a dysfunctional society and primed to endure the inherent bumps and buffeting inflicted from a culture that has gathered into the formation of a flying wedge of self-destructive, crash-fated crazy. "
"
HAPPY BIRTHDAY GENE WEINGARTEN

Gene Weingarten whose humor graces our blogs has turned 60. Both Titan (4.6 Billion) and I (80) regard him as a mere youngster, but we will share his thoughts on aging and ultimate mortality.

His friend and fellow blogger Joel Achenbach has some nice thoughts on Gene's birthday that we will also share with you. In his comments, he notes one of Gene's greatest blogs about The Great Zucchini from 2006, which is indeed beautiful. There are countless gems in the Weingarten archives.

Titan is ranting loud and clear

2011-09-25T10:20:00.000+03:00

Titan has much to rant about. First, however, he would like to show you some nice lakes or oceans near his North Pole. You can have a nice swim in liquid nitrogen but beware of bumping into a methane iceberg

Image of Titan lakes from Cassini credit NASA

RANTS OF THE WEEK
Titan is very sad and angry this week. This was a bad week for human rights around the world. The death penalty was implemented in the United States, China and Belarus. The time has come for enlightened people around the world to speak up and let these benighted nations see how isolated they are in killing their own citizens by means of the judicial system.
JUDICIAL MURDERS
Troy Davis, 42, who had been on death row since 1991, was executed by lethal injection at the Georgia state prison in Jackson on Wednesday, despite serious doubts surrounding his conviction.

On the same day, Iran publicly hanged a 17-year old boy convicted of killing a popular athlete despite international prohibitions against executing juveniles, while China executed a Pakistani national convicted of drug smuggling even though drug offences do not meet the threshold for “most serious” crimes in international law.
Iranian teenager Alireza Molla-Soltani was hanged Wednesday morning in front of a large crowd in the city of Karaj.
Zahid Husain Shah, who was arrested in 2008 for drug smuggling, was executed in China by lethal injection on Wednesday.
On the same day, Lawrence Brewer was also executed in Huntsville, Texas. He was sentenced to death for his role in the killing of James Byrd, Jr. in June 1998.

Titan along with Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases, without exception. Indeed, there are heinous crimes committed, but the resources invested in executions could be better spent on law enforcement and community protection.

“The death penalty is a symptom of a culture of violence, not a solution to it,” said Guadalupe Marengo, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Americas.
“Hopefully the harrowing executions that have been carried out today will spur Amnesty International members, and other activists on to continue the fight against the death penalty,” she added.
The full Amnesty press release gives more detail.

ERITREA: PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE
The government in Eritrea has been holding 11 prominent politicians, including three former cabinet ministers, incommunicado without charge for 10 years. Their "crime" was to call for democratic reforms. This situation is intolerable and the governments of the democracies of the world should take action.

Aster Fissehatsion has been held incommunicado for ten years

Amnesty International has issued this call for action: People who want to take action are encouraged to mark the 10th anniversary of Aster Fissehatsion's and the other G15 prisoners' arrest by urging their Ministry of Foreign Affairs to write to the Eritrean embassy in their country and call for their immediate and unconditional release, or at the very least, to provide information on their health status and whereabouts.

This week we listened to Obama's speech at the UN. I would like to have my vote back, although the alternative was worse. Titan and I will discuss his pandering to Jewish money (the votes are not significant) over our region, but we wanted to vomit when he mentioned Bahrain The brutal repression of the popular uprising by the Saudi Army with tacit approval from Washington did not count for a tinker's damn compared to the logistics of the US Navy in the Persian Gulf. To give you an idea of what the repression involved, here is a link to the blog of a female activist who was imprisoned and abused in custody.


After the demolition of the Pearl Roundabout, many activists were targeted for arrest © Amnesty International

HAITI AND JUSTICE
The people of Haiti were subject for decades to the corrupt and autocratic role of the Duvaliers, father and son. The son "Baby Doc" Jean-Claude Duvalier has returned to Haiti after 25 years of exile. The time and opportunity have come to put him on trial for his many crimes against the Haitian people.

Jean-Claude Duvalier returned to Haiti in January after 25 years in exile in France

ACTION FOR WORKERS
The old USSR seems to be alive and kicking, at least as far as oppression of workers is concerned. Of course it was billed as the workers' paradise, but we know what that meant. Here is an action call for workers in Georgia and Kazakhstan. Please help out with a few clicks.

LIBERIAN PRISONS
Liberia is struggling to come out of a long civil war, but it must take steps to improve conditions in its prisons. Amnesty International has issued a report on these appalling conditions which constitute a violation of basic human rights. The human rights organization has submitted a detailed report with recommendations to the Liberian government.

There is a lack of adequate food and water

ITALY

It is incredible that seismologists are being held responsible for failing to predict the earthquake that devastated the town of L'Aquila and killed more than 300 people. They are actually being put on trial and could go to jail. It is well known that nobody can predict earthquakes and the entire process is a disgrace to a civilized nation.

A rescuer looks for survivors in the remains of a collapsed building on April 8, 2009 in the Abruzzo capital L'Aquila. (Getty Images)

SEX STRIKE--LYSISTRATA LIVES!
A group of women in a violence-plagued area of the Philippines came up with their own weapon to end the fighting -- a sex strike. It appears to have had an effect in Mindanao where violence has ruled for far too long. So let's hear it for the smart ladies of the Phillipines. This technique should be used elsewhere in this strife-ridden world of ours.

HOME SWEET HOME
Titan, Pollyanna and YandA all watched Obama's speech at the UN. It was the only important one because we all knew what Abbass and Natanyahu would say. The speech was a great disappointment and it tells us that there will be no real help forthcoming from the US in bringing about a real settlement here. Obama has his own fish to fry including the support of wealthy and influential Jews in the United States. Natanyahu is in the clutches of several forces that will not let him take the steps needed to create a viable Palestinian state in the 1967 borders. His family, his radical wife and fanatic 100 year old father, will not tolerate giving up an inch of land. The coalition of oddly matched right wing components has outflanked him from the right. They are held together by a desire to keep all the land and a hatred for the values of liberal democracy. The coalition and its ideology are very well analyzed by Carlo Strenger; I recommend his article for your perusal and thoughts. In the past few weeks, we have blogged about the issue of liberal democracy and the attacks upon it from the fascist component of the Israeli body politic. The public in Israel has been inculcated with irrational fears, racism and distrust of all the world and they will probably continue to reelect the right wing. The election of a right winger to head the nominally leftist Labor Party makes the situation every more dire. Israel is becoming isolated and a siege mentality has developed. Thomas Friedman in the NYTimes has given us a cogent analysis of the situation. His article was published in Hebrew in Haaretz, but I suspect it will have little or no impact. Friedman says that our foreign policy makers are inept. He is too charitable. They know what they are doing and that is even more frightening.
BET JALLA
The four bloggers, Titan, Pollyanna and YandA went to Bet Jalla this week to participate in a celebration of Palestinian statehood. There were many Jewish Israelis there and our presence was appreciated. Yossi Sarid, a former MK and Minister,

gave an excellent speech. Besides the speeches, we were regaled with song and dance by the locals and in general we are glad that we went.

WEIRD PHYSICS

As if we did not have enough trouble with retrocausality and entanglement we now seem to have neutrinos moving faster than light. Scientists at CERN sent neutrinos to Italy and came up with a superluminous velocity. Of course extraordinary results require extraordinary proof and the people involved are asking their colleagues to try to replicate. The results have been published online.

THE BOOK REVIEW OF THE WEEK is of a collection of essays by Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks in 2009. Chris McGrath/Getty Images

that deal with the frailties and difficulties of ordinary people. The book is entitled The Mind's Eye, reviewed in the New York Times by Anne Murphy Paul.
FALLEN SPACECRAFT
As you all know, the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, long past its operating lifetime, finally fell to Earth and landed in the Pacific. If any of you wondered why UARS fell, the Reverend Pat Roberston has an explanation.
LECHERY TEST FOR PURE SOULS
Our guardian of morality Gene Weingarten has come up with a test of human lechery. You are invited to take the test, in accordance with your age and gender to see how you stack up against the population at large.
Click as appropriate:
Females under 32
Females 32 or older
Males under 32
Males 32 or over
Our friends from XKCD also know something of age and the stages of life(click on comic strip to enlarge)

Last Titan before terrestrial Autumnal Equinox

2011-09-09T16:04:00.000+03:00

Cassini captured this image of a dimly lit Titan as Saturn's largest moon was eclipsed by the planet on May 7, 2009. Lit terrain seen here is on the Saturn-facing side of Titan. In Saturn's shadow, the southern hemisphere of Titan is lit by two sources: sunlight scattered through the planet's rings and refracted sunlight passing through the edge of Saturn's atmosphere. Stars in this image are smeared by the long camera exposure time of 560 seconds needed to capture the faint light on Titan. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) #

Titan has had a busy week as have his blogger friends YandA and sister Pollyanna. In honor of our equinox he is showing us a picture of himself at Saturn's equinox when he was captured in eclipse by Cassini's cameras. The equinox at Saturn happens every 15 earth years or so. If I were wont to make such statements, I would say that he is like a shadow of himself.

IN MEMORIAM
Salvatore Licitra died nine days after the 43-year-old suffered severe head and chest injuries in a scooter accident in Sicily. As is common in southern Italy, he was not wearing a helmet. He was considered the heir of Pavarotti and will be missed in the world of opera. We append an obituary from the NYTimes.

Opera singer Salvatore Licitra in La Forza del Destino at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Photograph: Mark Ellidge/ArenaPal

Ayala Zacks Abramov, a collector of modern and Israeli art who gave scores of works to museums in Israel and Canada, died Aug. 29 at 99 in Tel Aviv.

She collected works by Delacroix, Corot, Pissarro, Gauguin, Rodin, Picasso, Matisse, Kandinsky, Chagall, Paul Klee and Giacometti, and the works of Israeli artists such as classic painters Marcel Janco, Mordecai Ardon, Reuven Rubin and Anna Ticho, as well as contemporary Israelis Ofer Lalush, Liliane Klapisch, Yigal Tumarkin and Joseph Zaritsky. She was certainly Israel's greatest collector of art and patroness of living artists. We append an obituary.

AROUND THE WORLD WITH HUMAN RIGHTS OR THE VIOLATION THEREOF
EGYPT:
A blogger has been in prison since March for "insulting the Army" on Facebook. Obviously, any protest from us in Israel would do him more harm than good, but we are posting the Amnesty call for letters in the hope that our readers outside of Israel will make their displeasure known to the Egyptian authorities.

PAKISTAN: Many people have been "disappeared" since the beginning of the so-called "war on terror" in which Pakistan has become an ally of sorts of the United States. We in Israel are again unable to help, but the rest of you, please act on this terrible matter.

UNITED STATES: It is incredible that people will kill one another just because of racism and skin color. We have a case from Mississippi in which teen agers were filmed beating up a black man and then running a vehicle over him. They had the bad luck to commit their crime in the field of view of a security surveillance camera.   Here is a video of the story from CNN.

The difference between this story and the past is that the alleged killers are being prosecuted by a black District Attorney. It is a reversion to the dark past of the American South. We would like again to refer you to Cornell West who points out the pernicious nature of racism in society. Titan discussed this in detail in his last blog two weeks ago and you are invited to revisit it.

LIBYA: The war in Libya seems to be winding down and many embarrassing things are coming out that should cause the great Western Democracies to blush violently. The collaboration with Gaddafi predated his so-called rehabilitation in the wake of his pledge to help in the war on terror and his renouncing of nuclear-weapons in 2004. Kudos to the good people of Human Rights Watch who got on the ground quickly and made sure that nothing was destroyed. There will have to be an accounting for this although the establishments are already fighting their defensive battles. We fear that a whitewash will ensue. Another aspect of the barbarity of the Gaddafi regime has come out in reports of the arrest and abuse of women.

CHINA The persecution of dissidents in China is particularly harsh in the so-called autonomous regions, Tibet and Xinjiang, which are really conquered regions where ethnic Chinese rule the indigenous populations with an iron hand. Please join this protest for prisoners in Tibet.

BURMA Despite the release of Aung Saung Suu Kyi, the repression goes on.    Please lend your voice to the protest.

Nwanaokwo Edet killed as a "witch"

CHILD WITCHES IN AFRICA A frightful combination of superstition and Christian evangelism has led to the abuse of children denounced as "witches" in Africa.   The phenomenon is widespread and it is incumbent on the governments of Africa to put a stop to it.

POLLUTION IN AUSTRALIA : Please sign the petition to support the bill that would make polluters pay. You may be sure that if Murdoch is against it, it must be a good idea.

FINALLY A BIGOT GETS HIS DUE
You will all recall the case of John Galliano who shot his filthy mouth off in Paris vilifying Jews and expressing his love and admiration for Hitler. The courts have dealt with him, possibly a bit leniently.

NOW BACK HOME
LEADERSHIP AND THE BANDITS
In this article in Haaretz, the question is raised whether our leadership that has over the years primarily come from the military will ever be able to break the mold and change a paradigm. The article discusses some of the disasters caused by charismatic leaders in the past.     Indeed, we are in a rut and I hope that new leadership comes out of the civilian revolt that is happening now. We were reminded of General Stanley McChrystal who was fired by Obama for a Rolling Stones interview.   In his biography posted on Reuters we are told
"By McChrystal’s account, at West Point Military Academy he was “a troublemaker” who endured hundreds of hours of punishment drills for violating the   drinking ban. Once he was nearly shot by police when he organized a mock attack on a school building, using real guns and rolled-up socks as grenades. Yet he was made a battalion commander, one of only a   dozen. He graduated in 1976 and two years later enrolled in special forces, where he discovered his true metier."
Indeed, one would like a creative general like him in the field, but please not in the corridors of political power.   When we look at our leadership and the foolish decisions that they make, one is tempted to subscribe to the theory that they are suffering from decision making fatigue.

The quality of the decision making ability of our government shows up on the political scene. For example, the deterioration of our relations with Turkey which could have been anticipated under the Lieberman foreign policy doctrine has reached a pathetic stage. The idiotic handling of last year's flotilla has come home to roost. As Akiva Eldar points out, the effects of this foreign policy blunder (one of many) may well create a situation in which Israel will be up to its neck in financial catastrophes associated with the collapse of our international position. Indeed, those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. There may be no source of money to implement any social changes. Of course, we elected these characters, so presumably we deserve what is happening to us. Israel also will be in a state of political isolation from the world, as pointed out very cogently by Roger Cohen in the NYTimes (thanks to Yosefa who pointed this article out to me.)

Social activist Anat Hoffman, pictured in Melbourne, is taking on what she calls Israel's ''holiest cow''. Photo: Rodger Cummin

Before getting on to the social protest movement, I would like to pay a tribute to a local human rights defender, an Israeli version of Erin Brokovich or Rosa Parks. I refer to Anat Hoffman who heads the legal arm of Reform Judaism in Israel and has fought relentlessly against social injustice and gender discrimination for many years. She was arrested for wearing a prayer shawl and carrying a Torah scroll in public. It shows what sort of country we are and how hard it is to bring about change.

PROTEST IN ISRAEL Last week, Pollyanna gave a full description of the big rally that took place in Tel Aviv last week. Titan and I would like, however, to expand the coverage a bit by linking you to the Daily Kos which provides the full text of the main speech by Daphni Leef in English. In a related article, Merav Michaeli calls on the female leadership of the protest not to succumb to the sexist pressures exerted both by the establishment and their macho colleagues. She makes the valid point that the male leadership may cut a deal that will obtain a few paltry concessions, but a feminist voice is needed to institute real change of the social system. Of course, we are being told that we must not break the budget. Nobody talks about increasing the budget by having employers chip in on health costs, levying corporate taxes and charging those who use and despoil the nation's resources such as the Dead Sea Corporation or the natural gas concerns. Tom Toles says it for us too:

HOLY GRAIL
One of the many Holy Grails that physicists seek is the detection of gravitational waves. These are perturbations in space-time, predicted by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Gravitational waves are produced when massive objects in space move violently. The waves carry the imprint of the events that cause them. Scientists already have indirect evidence that gravitational waves exist, but have not directly detected them. When I was a graduate student at the University of Maryland in the 1960's, the professor who taught me quantum mechanics Joseph Weber was one of the people who devoted their careers to devising a means of finding gravitational waves. There have been many spurious "detections" including a claim by the late Dror Sadeh of Tel Aviv University to have fount them in seismic records. The book review for this week Gravity's Ghost: Scientific Discovery in the Twenty-First Century, Harry Collins, 2010 University of Chicago Press £22.50/$35.00hb 200pp describes the history of this search. Collins has followed it for four decades. The review is in Physics World and we hope you find it interesting.

In the absence of Gene Weingarten we look elsewhere for humor

Of course, we could not let you go off without some pearls of new knowledge from Andy Borowitz on the Republican Party and politics in America and a few goodies from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal who give us a good take on Creationism


and on the Catholic Church:


and on quantum mechanics

Titan is back in orbit, pontificating and ranting

2011-08-26T23:55:00.001+03:00

Titan and atmosphere as seen by Cassini

Titan thinks that if Pollyanna can get a picture on every blog, he should have the same right. To the question of whether he wants mythology or planetary science, he responded with a titanic sneer. So here he is with his atmosphere showing. Titan would also like to continue the process of introducing you to his fellow Titans, many of them commemorated by names of the moons of Saturn. Meet Epimetheus (S/1980 S3), Janus' Co-Orbital Moon.

Cassini captured this view on March 30, 2005, from a distance of only 74,600 kilometers. The view is in enhanced color, comprised of three images captured through infrared, green, and ultraviolet filters. Color variations in the image are most likely a result of "photometric effects," changes in the reflectivity of the surface of Epimetheus with the angle of the incoming sunlight. The large circular crater in the lower center is Hilairea, which has a diameter of about 33 kilometers (21 miles). To the lower left is the crater Pollux, with a reddish interior. Source Credit: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute

Stats:
Size: Irregular, 144 x 108 x 98 kilometers - 12th largest moon of Saturn Orbital radius: 151,522 kilometers - 2.51 Saturn radii - between the F and G rings - co-orbital with Janus Orbital period: 0.6942 days - about 1/23 of Titan’s - 26 seconds faster than Janus Discovery: 1966 by R. Walker; Stephen Larson and John Fountain showed in 1977 that Epimetheus and Janus were distinct.

Epimetheus was a stupid Titan, whose name means "afterthought". He was the son of Iapetus. In some accounts he is delegated, along with his brother Prometheus (name means forethought) by Zeus to create mankind. He also accepted the gift of Pandora from Zeus, which led to the introduction of evil into the world. I wonder if Pandora did not get a bum rap in sexist mythology.

THE NIGER DELTA
Before I get into my hysterical local rants let me call a few things to your attention. The pollution scandal in the Niger delta is completely out of hand.

The UN shows evidence of the devastating impact of oil pollution on people in the Delta

The oil companies that started to rape the resources of the Nigerian people during colonial times and hardly stopped for breath with independence are failing to live up to minimal standards of accountability according to a UN report. The health and well being of the people of the region are being sacrificed for the balance sheets of Shell Oil and others. The call by Amnesty International to institutional investors might have some effect. We can also take action by petitioning and demanding government and corporate responsibility. Please click the link above.

CHINA

Wang Lihong's health has deteriorated after months in detention

The activist Wang Lihong in China is going on trial in another attempt of the regime to put down all dissent. Here are the details from Amnesty International . Please pick up this link and take action on her behalf. Kudos to the Belgian/Francophone section of Amnesty International for their great work for human rights.

A bit of favorable news is the movement towards the abolition of the death penalty in Benin. Let us hope that this progresses rapidly and another step toward stoppage of the judicial murder of citizens by their own government is near. On the other hand, an execution date will soon be set for Troy Davis. Please pick up this link and spread the word. This man's guilt is in severe doubt and his execution by the state of Georgia is indeed in the category of judicial murder. See below for a profile of Rick Perry who has executed hundreds in Texas and whose administration dispersed a committee that was investigating the possible execution in 2004 of an innocent man. A Texan was quoted, 'Wow, it takes balls to execute an innocent man!" Welcome to America.

This week there is much to rant about. The main news is of course the fall of Qaddafi. Let us hope that the new regime in Libya manages to keep the squabbling tribes from frustrating the establishment of a liberal democratic regime. I hear my fellow Israelis laughing and pointing out that there is no Muslim country with a liberal democratic regime and I point at what is coming about in Tunisia and hope for the future of Egypt. There is no reason to consign our Arab friends to live forever under corrupt tyrants when they can aspire to live under corrupt democracy as we do. I refer you to an interesting analysis of the Arab Spring from the Nation, which devotes its latest issue to the topic. Indeed, one can be ambivalent about democracy and one must be careful about conflating it with liberty and liberal values uncritically:

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

~ Winston Churchill

"Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried."

~ Winston Churchill

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!"

~ Benjamin Franklin, leader of the American Revolution

In Israel, as I wrote in the last Titan blog, democracy and its values are under terrible attack as they are in the US. I am tempted to write a comparison of Michele Bachman and Avi Dichter, but it is hardly worth the space on the silicon. I wish, however, to pontificate this week on the topic of liberal vs what is called totalitarian democracy. The term was coined, I believe, by the late Hebrew University Professor Jacob Talmon (I took a course from him in 1950 and still remember the impression he made on me) in his book (THE RISE OF TOTALITARIAN DEMOCRACY. By J. L. TALMON. Boston, The Beacon Press, 1952. ) in which he analyzes the issue. I think this is an important question for us today, for certainly Michele Bachman and Avi Dichter both regard themselves as supporters of democracy. (The libertarian philosophy of the American right is basically the elimination of a social contract and is not the topic here.) I promise to get to it in a future blog. There are parliamentarians in Israel of Russian background who regard liberal democracy as we understand it as a form of anarchy and cannot imagine real individual freedom as a positive value, yet they certainly regard themselves as democrats as well. When a stupid Swedish journalist wrote a vile article in a Stockholm tabloid accusing the Israel army of dealing in organs of Palestinians, our Foreign Minister thought it proper and natural to protest to the Swedish government for being lax in its task of controlling the press.

I would like to give you a brief summary of the question of liberal as against totalitarian democracy from a review of Prof. Talmon's book by George H. Sabine published in The Philosophical Journal 1953. The full review is available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/2182735. If anyone has difficulty with library access, just email Titan and he will be glad to send you the pdf.

The ground for the antagonism between the two types of democracy Professor Talmon finds in a radical difference of attitude toward politics, which grows out of a radical difference of philosophy. Liberal democracy is in general empirical. It assumes that politics is matter of trial and error, and it regards political systems as mainly "pragmatic contrivances of human ingenuity and spontaneity." In
consequence it takes for granted that human beings have many interests, personal and social, which fall legitimately outside politics. Totalitarian democracy is "based upon the assumption of a sole and exclusive truth in politics" and it "postulates a preordained, harmonious and perfect scheme of things" toward which history inevitably tends and toward which recalcitrant human nature must, if necessary, be driven. In consequence, though totalitarian democracy affirms the value of liberty, it defines liberty, or "real liberty," not as individual spontaneity or the absence of coercion but as participation "in the pursuit and attainment of an absolute collective purpose" (p. 2). Its philosophy is in origin rationalist, but it is a rationalism that has become intrinsically messianic. It thinks of human beings not as personalized individuals but as examples of a type which determines once for all what under proper conditions they may become, and "in so far as they are at variance with the absolute ideal theymay be ignored, coerced or intimidated into conforming, without any real violation of the democratic principle being involved" (p. 3).

I recall a lecture by Prof. Talmon in the late 1960's in which he complained that the liberal component was missing in the Zionist ideal of a democratic Jewish state and that we will pay bitterly for this lack. Perhaps if we had a constitution that would limit the power of the majority things would be better. The erosion of liberal democracy is happening now as Titan types.

I would like to get back to right wing politics, what Richard Hofstedter called a political neurosis, and to call your attention to Rick Perry, the governor of Texas who has also entered the Republican ring. Roger Cohen and Amnesty International put him in perspective.

We also had a visit by Glen Beck
the right wing demagogue who was given a hero's reception by our lunatic right and drew a large crowd in Jerusalem. He is said to be supported for this trip by radical antisemitic groups in the US. These groups are the best friends of our stupid settlers who seem to fail to understand that this support derives from a belief the they are helping to bring the Second Coming of Christ and that they will be expected to accept Jesus or burn. The large turnout did not surprise nor dismay me. I recall watching Israelis on Independence Day standing in line for free steaks courtesy of Arkady Gaidemak, a Russian Jewish oligarch who cleaned up on blood diamonds in Africa and then came here and bought the soul of the public with a few pennies of his wealth. No other than Earl Browder, the head of the US Communist Party in the far past, said, "the masses are asses."

In Israel, we have had a series of tragic events caused by an attack on civilians by some radical Islamic group operating out of Gaza that went through Sinai, crossed the porous border and killed many people.. It was a compound of Islamic fanaticism and incompetence in the armies of both Israel and Egypt that lead to a large number of deaths including Israeli civilians and Egyptian police and soldiers. The inevitable Israeli air attack drew a response of rocket fire from Gaza and for a while it looked as though we were about to be drawn into another senseless war. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, on both sides and we were spared another full scale orgy of bloodletting, although rockets still fly. A man was killed and an infant was injured by missile fire. The Islamic Jihad is still firing rockets and Gaza is being bombed, but let us hope a major war can be avoided. I am baffled by how this advances any cause for the Palestinians or anyone. These escalations appear to have a distorted logic of their own.

If, as Natanyahu might have hoped, this would put an end to the social protest in Israel and scatter the tent cities, he must be disappointed. Merav Michaeli points out that the social protest is far from dead and will go on. The government has appointed a committee headed by a well known professor of economics, but the protesters are not buying the fig leaf. Carlo Strenger makes the point that the social protest is a much more successful, coherent and promising way to unify Israel behind a common vision than the rampant nationalism of our lawmakers. Cornell West writing in the New York Times about the Martin Luther Memorial refers to King's feeling that his dream of a more democratic America had become, in his words, “a nightmare,” owing to the persistence of “racism, poverty, militarism and materialism.” He could have been writing about Israel as well, since our government has spent the last several decades importing everything negative about America that they could find. The four items, a modern Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, fit Israel like a glove. Let us briefly quote, adapt and paraphrase West to Israel on each one:

Militarism is an imperial catastrophe that has produced a military-industrial complex and national security state and warped the country’s priorities and stature. Titan would add that in Israel it has provided an excuse for every evil action and created a corrupt military caste of which many leaders eventually find their way into the corridors of government power.
Materialism is a spiritual catastrophe, promoted by a corporate media multiplex and a culture industry that have hardened the hearts of hard-core consumers and coarsened the consciences of would-be citizens. Clever gimmicks of mass distraction yield a cheap soulcraft of addicted and self-medicated narcissists.
Racism is a moral catastrophe, most graphically seen in the treatment of Arabs and of Jews who are not white enough.
Poverty is an economic catastrophe, inseparable from the power of greedy oligarchs and avaricious plutocrats indifferent to the misery of poor children, elderly citizens and working people

Yes, Professor West, we both live in sick societies. Maybe the young people in the tents on the streets of our cities will provide a cure for us.

The doctors' strike in public medicine in Israel has come to an end after 168 days. I cannot but ask myself why this had to take so long. It tells you how much our government cares about us and our well being. Allow me to show a graphic representation of this care.

OK, enough blathering form Titan for the nonce. Here is this week's book review from the NYTimes.

Gene Weingarten is still on vacation, but we have alternative sources of humor. The following is dedicated to all the young parents we know

and of course we have to think deeply about cosmic questions impinging on our religious beliefs and faith in our parents and their advice.

I also have some advice from XKCD for those of us who give talks at meetings, colloquia etc.

In view of the strong criticism that the educational systems in various countries in the world, including Israel and the US, have had to absorb recently, I would like to point out that the Walmart chain has found a way of dealing with the results of modern education:

Titan is back and ranting as usual

2011-08-12T17:30:00.001+03:00

Please meet Helene.

Cassini passed within 36,000 kilometers of Helene to take this image on July 20, 2007. Helene is the leading co-orbital companion to Dione and is a small, irregular body measuring approximately 36 by 32 by 30 kilometers in size. This image has been enlarged by a factor of two. Credit: NASA / JPL / SSI Size: Irregular, 36 x 32 x 30 kilometers
Orbital radius: 377,400 kilometers - 6.26 Saturn radii - within the E ring - at Dione’s leading Lagrange point (L4) - co-orbital with Dione and Polydeuces
Orbital period: 2.7369 days - about 1/6 of Titan’s
Discovery: 1980 by P. Laques and J. Lecacheus
Helene is a tiny moon that orbits in Dione's leading Lagrange point (L4). That is, Helene orbits Saturn on the same circular path that Dione does, but ahead of Dione, and the centers of Dione, Saturn, and Helene form an equilateral triangle.

Titan is back with you after a hiatus caused by things known as life and work and such like. His vacation was spent orbiting Saturn and chatting with his fellow orbiter, the spacecraft Cassini as it flew by. While touring the environment of Saturn, Cassini came past one of Titan's really tiny little sisters, La Belle Helene, who coorbits with Dione at a Lagrange point. She is small, but beautiful and we are pleased to introduce her to you before getting on to the serious business of ranting about what is wrong with our world. Her stats are given in the caption.

IN MEMORIAM MARK HATFIELD.

I mark the passing of a man whom I admired greatly over the years, former US Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon who died Aug. 7 at age 89 in Portland. I did not agree with all his positions, most notably on freedom of choice for women, but by and large he represented a nearly extinct species, the liberal Republican, or if you will, the compassionate conservative. In the era of the Tea Party and Natanyahu, this is something to be nostalgic about. His liberal Republican politics during five terms in Congress made him an increasingly rare breed in his party, and he used his chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee to denounce what he considered the “madness” of excessive defense spending. I wish we had a Mark Hatfield in the Likud, it would make a difference today. I quote a newspaper from his state of Oregon: Look around: Where are the independent, gracious, courageous national leaders who dare to question the wars or the enormous spending on national defense, and demand that more be done to combat hunger, poverty and illness? Yes Senator Hatfield, we miss you. I append an obituary from the New York Times.

RANTS
There is plenty for us to gripe about together, both at home and in the wide world of human rights and the struggle for democracy. Before that, however, I would like to pontificate (Yosefa says I do this all the time, so why not in the blog?) about what is meant by patriotism. We have in Israel a faction of politicians who come from a country, Russia, where dissent has long been equated with treason. They are now trying to teach us "patriotism" of the Stephen Decatur kind, "my country right or wrong." This same faction is driving us towards fascism with the help of some home-grown rightists, such as Avi Dichter and to its lasting shame members of the Kadima party, who are proposing a constitutional law that would ensure that in any conflict between Jewish and democratic values, the Jewish side would always trump democracy. This law is a form of Jewish Sharia as pointed out by Zvi Barel. The National Home of the Jewish People' bill presumes to represent Diaspora Jews; they will have to decide whether they want to continue living abroad in a democratic country that lets them practice their faith as they wish, or in a Jewish state that robs the foundations of democracy from them.

In 1991, over twenty years ago, the magazine, The Nation, published a chatauqua or forum on patriotism and on the question if dissent from the left from government policies is unpatriotic. We are confronted by this question here in Israel all the time and I refer you to the forum in The Nation for some thought-provoking reading. I will quote part of just one article:
Richard Falk
Professor of international relations, Princeton University

Confusing patriotism with unconditional support for government policy does core damage to the meaning of citizenship, especially during time of war. In 1736 Lord Bolingbroke identified the essence of patriotic fervor as devotion to the public good, whether as official or citizen. To uphold a policy that is believed harmful to the country is then, with such an understanding, highly unpatriotic, exhibiting either weakness of spirit or fear of consequences.

There are many things to talk about, but obviously for us, it is the "uprising" of the middle class in Israel that takes center stage. Last Saturday night 300,000 people marched in Tel Aviv.
It is to be hoped that the government that over the years has dismantled all vestiges of the welfare state in favor of a swinish neo-liberal capitalism that would make American Republicans proud is being shaken out of its complacency. Bradley Burston has some cogent comments on the the hopes kindled by the new Israeli protest movement.

Monday night we went to the tent city of the protesters in Rothschild Blvd.

to hear the traditional reading of the Book of Lamentations (Eicha) at the tent of the Reform movement. We heard also some interesting talks and

discussions led by Rabbi Gilad Kariv, Rabbi Yoram Mazor and Prof. Aviva Halamish about Tisha B'Av in Jewish tradition and and on social justice as envisioned by Herzl and Achad Ha'am. It was an impressive experience and we are glad that we went.

Let us take our usual swing around the world and its usually dismal human rights scene.

THE WORLD SUCH AS IT IS
For a change, we can start out with something positive. The legislature of California is working on a bill to abolish the death penalty in the state. If this indeed happens, it will be a major boost for the abolition movement in the United States and around the world. If any of you are California voters, please let your representatives know that you support this initiative.

Another nice item to report (maybe we should have left it for Titan's glad sister Pollyanna) is that Daniel Barenboim has been nominated for the Nobel Peace prize in honor of his work towards peace and
conciliation through music. It is sad that the nomination came from Argentina where he was born and not from Israel where he spent most of his formative years and with which he identifies as a citizen. When he received the Wolf Prize in Israel in 2004 he made a strong statement for peace which aroused the ire of then Education and Culture Minister Limor Livnat, whom we all know to be a fully qualified fascist. Bravo Maestro Barenboim!

Now on to the nitty-gritty.
One of the things that both Titan and Pollyanna froth at the mouth about is the abuse of women. Right across the border from us in Jordan there is a factory where female workers are regularly raped with total impunity. Please join the thousands of Change.org members who have already spoken out against abuses at what's becoming known as the "rape factory" in Jordan.

“We only went to Jordan to earn money to help our families; we had no idea that factory managers would rape so many of us young girls,” said a young woman who goes by the name Nazma to protect her identity.

Nazma is one of the dozens of Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi young women who have been sexually assaulted by supervisors at Classic Factory in northern Jordan, which makes clothes for American brands such as Walmart, Target, and Macy's. Leading up to next week’s trial against a Classic supervisor charged with rape -- the first such trial-- managers are escalating abuses. Supervisors are locking victims and witnesses in the factory, threatening and intimidating them to ensure they will not testify. Although the Jordanian government promised that Anil Santha, the manager accused of rape, would not be allowed to return before the trial, he is back on the factory floor. Despite global outcry over Classic’s abuses and the tactics they’re using to dodge justice, international customers such as Walmart, Target, and Macy's are still buying Classic clothing. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!!

CHINA
Mao Hengfeng,

a human rights defender in China, was sent home from Shanghai City Prison Hospital on July 28, 2011 without any advance notice to her family. She was sent home in a wheelchair, showing clear signs of torture. When her family saw her outside their house she was unconscious and in very poor health. The most recent detention of Mao Hengfeng stems from her 2009 protest of the detention of Liu Xiaobo, another prominent human rights defender in China and the recipient of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. While she had been released on medical parole in February, she was re-detained a few short days later when more than 30 police officers surrounded her home claiming that she had violated her medical parole. Please act to obtain accountability for her torture.

BELARUS
Prominent Belarusian human rights defender Ales Bialatski was arrested in central Minsk , Belarus, on 4 August . Amnesty International is concerned he is being targeted for his legitimate work on behalf of human rights. This is all too common a pattern around the world and Belarus is a prime example of a country that was liberated from despotic rule and proceeded to continue it. Please act on this matter , every signature and protest helps.

KENYA
A group of seven Eritrean refugees and asylum-seekers are at imminent risk of being forcibly returned to Eritrea by the Kenyan authorities. If returned they would be at grave risk of arbitrary detention and torture. Please open the link and take the action requested. These are matters of life and death.

For this week's humor we shall go afield a bit and bring you something from Dilbert: Please click on the cartoon if it does not show all three boxes.

Of course, Titan would not deprive you of your dose of Gene Weingarten.

Titan is back and ranting

2011-06-17T23:50:00.006+03:00

This may seem US specific, but it is a universal issue

A Muslim anti free speech demonstration in London, utilizing freedom of expression

Titan is back and wants to rant about a very specific issue, namely the right to freedom of expression. We have seen that this right, which is at the cornerstone of liberal democracy, has come under attack from the people who should be the first to defend it, namely Jews in the US and in Israel. We had the cause celebre of Tony Kushner and the honorary doctorate from CUNY and the attempt to cancel it because someone, obviously a big time donor, did not like his views on Israel. I recommend reading his interview in Haaretz. In Israel, we saw the arrest of a human rights activist, Gideon Spiro,

because someone in the settler community did not like the opinions he expressed in an article. He was called to a police station and after interrogation was incarcerated in a crowded cell with chain smoking illegal immigrants. He called on the human rights lawyer Michael Sfard for help, but the police were adamant. Eventually Shai Nitzan, the deputy State Attorney intervened and he was released. The Association for Civil Rights protested. Gideon is a senior member of the local section of Amnesty International and serves on the Monitoring Committee and the section sent a letter of protest (Hebrew) to the State Attorney.

The implications of all this are chilling. One of the tests of true democracy is the ability of dissidents and people who disagree with the reigning ideology and policy to express their views freely, to assemble peaceably to vent their disapproval of policy and to do all these things without fear of retribution. Tony Kushner lives in the United States where he enjoys protection of both the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, i.e. freedom of expression and equal protection of the laws for all citizens. Gideon Spiro and I live in Israel where only right wingers and religious fanatics enjoy freedom of incitement and a radio station run by the Army(!!) called for violence against the left. Anyone who has ever participated in a demonstration against the settlers or the separation wall or anything held dear by our fascist leadership and its settler bosses has had the opportunity to see how the police operate. One of their favorite tactics, beyond free use of taser guns and physical intimidation is to arrest people on trumped up charges of "attacking a police officer" and the judges who reside in their back pockets will usually convict. I append a report by the Association for Civil Rights on police violence in Jerusalem. The report calls upon Jerusalem's new police chief to "fundamentally change" what it said was his officers' violent treatment towards the city's Palestinian residents.

This week marks the annual celebration of Hebrew Book Month. Ha'aretz, our last bastion of liberal journalism, turns the paper over to well known writers who replace the regular staff of reporters for one day. The result is fascinating and I recommend it to you (English edition).
This newspaper is really all we have left for the expression of dissent and protest. The tabloids cater to the whims of the public, the government controls television and radio but for the moment we still have Haaretz. Yossi Sarid puts it much more eloquently than I could in his column today. There is also an article by the poet Haim Guri that enlightens a major struggle of old-time left wing Zionists who in the past managed to blend a desire for social justice with a dream of the Greater Land of Israel, i.e. a blind spot to the existence of another people with whom we must share this land. It may not be relevant for all, especially the younger readers, but for me it resonated with my own past. I never believed as he did in the Soviet Union, but I did believe that we as Jews had a historical title to the land. My awakening began with touring in the West Bank after our return in 1968 and culminated with the First Lebanon War when I suddenly realized that Israel would and could initiate a war of conquest.

One of the strongest articles in this special issue of the paper is by the poet Nathan Zach who writes about why we should not expect this government to bring about the return of the return of the prisoner Gilad Shalit. Zach lays the fundamental problems of our society and country on the line in a strong indictment of our leadership.   As might have been predicted, the right wing hounds are already baying for his head.

I would like to comment on another issue that caused me embarrassment as an Israeli. Our PM made a trip to Italy to buddy up the most despised and ridiculed head of state in all of Europe,    Sylvio Berlusconi,   I suggest you follow this link to the New Yorker article about hedonism and then read Akiva Eldar about this not so odd couple. I recall that Berlusconi came to Israel, fell all over us with love, suggested we should join the EU and went home and told an antisemitic joke in a news conference. Show me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are.

One of the tricks used by our government to keep us in line is the old Goebbels gambit of inculcation of fear. Their favorite bogyman is Iran and the threat of a nuclear war. Thus they keep everyone trembling while making totally incredible threats of an attack on Iran, which of course could never succeed and would precipitate a major war in the area. Roger Cohen strikes a tone of rationality that puts things in proper perspective. Please read.

THE WORLD
Titan has not forgotten the wide world of human rights and their wholesale violation and repression. First let us look at what is happening with the repression of the rights of workers and trade unions. Of course sometime the collective rants of outraged people can actually have a positive effect.

The repression of ethnic minorities in China goes on. Tibet and Xinjiang are not alone. The Mongolian people are being also reduced to a minority in their own country.

I also wish to protest the shameful hypocrisy of the US government that indeed turned on Mubarak and Gaddafi, but continues its support for a repressive monarchy in Bahrein. We are told that they want to induce change by persuasion, but we all know that the navy needs a base and the Shiite majority in that country is not friendly to the US. Why should it be? To this we can add the pitiful relationship between the world's only superpower and the corrupt regime in Pakistan.

THE ANTIVACCINATORS
If there is anything that gets foam onto my lips it is the phony movement that exploits the misery of the parents of autistic children by claiming that vaccination against infectious diseases causes autism.
The question will not go away: Do vaccines cause autism? Some 1 million to 1.5 million adults and children in the United States have received autism diagnoses, and there is no clear insight into its causes. What surprises many scientists is that their findings against a vaccine connection keep failing to quell the debate, giving the antivaccine movement the potential to become a genuine public-health problem.
In February the U.S. Court of Federal Claims attempted to provide some clarity, ruling that a widely used vaccine and a vaccine preservative, both targets of concern over the past decade, do not cause autism spectrum disorders. That decision put a stamp of approval on what multiple peer-reviewed studies have concluded for years: The MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine and the mercury additive thimerosal (which was removed from nearly all vaccines by 2001) are not responsible for the rise in autism diagnoses. “I think the tide clearly turned this year, and the court decision, more than anything else, was responsible,” says Paul Offit, a pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a vocal vaccine advocate. “It showed that good science does win in the end.”
Environmental attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responded to the ruling by comparing government-sponsored vaccine safety studies to cigarette research conducted by Big Tobacco. In the ruling’s wake, conspiracy theories and false claims continued to dominate some autism Internet forums, while television shows featured lengthy interviews with antivaccine stalwarts.
Fueling all this confusion is the complicated nature of autism, which encompasses a range of neurological disorders characterized by “social impairments, communication difficulties, and restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior,” according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Those symptoms usually appear at around 18 months of age, precisely when children receive many of their vaccinations. In October Michael D. Kogan of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and colleagues announced that about 1 of every 91 American children has a disorder on the autism spectrum. A 2008 study by the California Department of Public Health found that the number of children receiving services for autism in the state has risen steadily, despite a decrease to trace levels of mercury in their inoculations. Many experts attribute the growing prevalence to new diagnosis guidelines and increased awareness among doctors.
Meanwhile, the reluctance of some parents to immunize their children can lead to the return of vaccine-preventable diseases such as a measles, which broke out this past summer in Brooklyn, New York. According to Christopher Zimmerman, medical director of the New York City Health Department’s Bureau of Immunization, the virus spread quickly among children who were not fully vaccinated, including those whose parents put off the shots because of concern about the autism-vaccine link. “Measles can be a serious and life-threatening disease,” he says. “Parents are putting their children at risk by not vaccinating on time.” Across the United States, reported measles cases shot up from 43 in 2007 to 140 in 2008, and more than 90 percent of those reported in 2008 were among children who were unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status.
In the midst of the ongoing controversy, scientists have made notable progress in understanding autism. A May study in Nature found that 65 percent of autistic children share a set of mutations that may regulate genes known to influence communication among brain cells. Many scientists say that environmental exposures, perhaps even in the womb, may activate such genetic vulnerabilities. Over the past three years the NIH has spent about $100 million annually on autism research. One possible trigger it has studied exhaustively and dismissed: vaccines. “Exploring the broad question of vaccines and autism is not fruitful. The questions have been answered,” says University of Utah pediatrician Andrew Pavia, co-chairman of the vaccine-safety working group at HHS.
Pavia nevertheless believes it would be worth further investigating a link between vaccines and autism once specific biological pathways are identified. To that end, his committee recommends researching whether some children, including those who may be genetically predisposed to autism, are at higher risk following certain vaccinations but in numbers too small to have shown up previously.
“There are some who suggest that scientists shouldn’t bring up vaccines and autism in the same breath, but I think we should keep an open mind until we understand the biology better,” Pavia says. Offit disagrees. The evidence has spoken, he argues, and pursuing additional research only wastes resources and gives false hope. “Parents are being horribly misled by leaving the door open,” he says.
One positive side effect of the media frenzy is that autism science is finally getting its due. In September the NIH committed nearly $100 million in additional funding from the stimulus package to studying autism. Scientists also hope to gain crucial insights into autism’s risk factors from several large new studies, including the federally funded Early Autism Risk Longitudinal Investigation, which will enroll 1,200 mothers of autistic children at the start of a subsequent pregnancy and then track the newborn child’s first three years of development.
“This issue will not go away until there is a clear cause,” Offit says. “But the important story you never hear is that the research is evolving very quickly.”

LUNAR ECLIPSE

This week we had a lunar eclipse that was most impressive. The moon at totality was still visible, but blood red. It was reflecting light that had gone through the atmosphere of Earth and was scattered in all directions, including to the moon. The light was reddened by the dust emitted into the stratosphere by the recent volcanic eruption in Chile. What boggled me was the degree to which superstition still abounds, especially in India , which purports to be a rising and soon First World country. People there behaved in all kinds of weird manners. Of course, I am not being fair. People in Israel ride around with bumper stickers with an incantation invoking Rabbi Nachman and most people in the US and I suspect in Israel do not believe in evolution or cosmology, but think that Genesis is literal truth.

I have much empathy for Gene Weingarten this week. He writes about subpoenas envy, i.e. he bemoans the fact that he has never been threatened with jail or badgered by the government. I read some time ago in Haaretz that members of the Anarchist Society (sounds oxymoronic to me) were called in by the Shabak (the secret police) and warned by a charming lady name Rona that although their activities are formally legal, they are under surveillance because the Shabak does not like their vision. I complained bitterly that these guys are getting to make out with Rona and I am ignored although my vision of what Israel should be is just as subversive as theirs and I feature on the right wing S.H.I.T. (self hating Israeli traitors) list as well as the Likud boycott list. My late dear friend, Prof. Baruch Kimmerling was left off the Likud boycott list and felt crushed. Yes Gene, we second rate subversives just need to subvert more effectively.

TienanmenSquare 22 years on

2011-06-04T23:20:00.000+03:00

This is a special post of the blog to commemorate the killing and wounding of countless protester in Tienanmen Square by the Chinese government and army on June 4, 1989.


This famous picture speaks for itself

Now that protest movements are rising throughout the Arab world and elsewhere, it is right that we should remember the martyrs of liberty and human rights who died that day. We should also look at the Chinese picture of today and realize that really very littel has changes since then. I append the press release that Amnesty International put out to mark the anniversary.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
PUBLIC STATEMENT
Index: ASA 17/025/2011
2 June 2011
China: Tiananmen, 22 years on, the repressive patterns continue
It’s been 22 years since the People’s Liberation Army fired on peaceful protesters in Beijing and other cities , killing hundreds, if not thousands, of students and other ordinary people who had gathered to demand a more open and responsive government.
In the two decades since the harsh crackdown on the unarmed protestors, the Chinese government has deflected any calls for an open and honest accounting of what happened in and around Tiananmen Square on June 3rd and 4th. What many call a massacre, the Chinese Communist Party now calls a mere “political disturbance.” This week, China opened up its secret national archives, but justified keeping any of the historical documents on Tiananmen Square (and other unpleasant disturbances) under wraps, lest they damage anyone’s “privacy” or “reputation.”
But the brutal tactics and ensuing crackdown employed by the government to suppress the student-led democracy movement of 1989 are not only history. They are a continuing tool used to suppress even the possibility of a challenge to the Communist Party’s monopoly on power. Their use regularly undermines freedoms of expression, association and assembly enshrined in China’s own constitution.
Recently, the government has responded to the popular uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa by intimidating, threatening or detaining anyone it deems a potentially outspoken critic.
Since late February, Amnesty International has documented more than 130 cases of activists, bloggers, lawyers, and others who have been detained by police, subjected to monitoring and intimidation by security forces, or who have disappeared. Some are veterans of the 1989 student democracy movement who have once again found themselves the victims of persecution. Many face vague, potentially catch-all, charges of “inciting subversion” like the "counter revolutionary"charges imposed so liberally in the 1989 crackdown. They include:
Chen Wei: Sichuan activist taken away by police on February 20th, since charged with “inciting subversion of state power”.
Ding Mao: Also a Sichuan activist, and founder of the Social Democratic Party, denied legal recognition. Police detained Ding Mao on 19 February and he has also been charged with “inciting subversion”.
Li Hai: Police arrested Li Hai on 26 February [where] on suspicion of "provoking trouble" for publicizing the Jasmine Revolution in the Middle East. He is currently under surveillance and awaiting trial. Li Hai was imprisoned in the mid-1990s for "divulging state secrets" after compiling a list of people imprisoned after the 1989 Tiananmen protests.
Wang Lihong: A former doctor, Wang Lihong was placed under surveillance on 20 February and detained the following day. She has been charged with “gathering a crowd to disturb public order”.
The Chinese government increasingly uses the charge of “inciting subversion of state power” to jail critics. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaoboand activist Liu Xianbin, both of whom helped to draft Charter 08, the political manifesto that calls for peaceful political change in China are serving prison sentences of 11 and 10 years respectively for inciting subversion. Both previously served prison time for their role in the 1989 student movement.
Other activists who have recently been charged with inciting subversion include activist Hu Jun and writer Ran Yunfei.
End/

Titan with the bad news

2011-06-03T16:26:00.000+03:00

Enceladus over the atmosphere of Saturn: Cassini imaging team photo

This is Titan's week and we start with a shot of his friend Enceladus looming up over Saturn. Note the geyser vents near the South Pole of Enceladus. (the spell checker wants me to write enchilada, but I resist)

GOOD NEWS There is much to rant about, but let me start with some good news. An Azerbainjani journalist who ha been imprisoned on trumped up charges was released after a major campaign by Amnesty International in which some of us here took part as well. Here are the details. Here are the details.

I only wish things like this would happen more often. Of course, we would all prefer a voiding of his conviction over a mere pardon, but as always we take what justice we can get. Part of the success can be attributed to a massive Tweet campaign by AIUK aimed at the President of the country.

TRADE UNION MATTERS Before getting on to our local mess, I would like to bring up two matters involving trade unions anD their importance. The chambermaid who blew the whistle on Strauss-Kahan needed courage, but fortunately she also has the support of her union that will protect her from being fired for her pains. The importance of trade union protection cannot be overemphasized. In other parts of the world, being a trade union activist can be very dangerous. In Guatemala Idar Joel Hernandez Godoy a leader of the banana workers union was recently murdered and to say the least the Guatemalan government is not overexerting itself to find the perpetrators. Amnesty International has a press release out and there is a petition site provided by the international union federation. Please act .

THE WORLD NEVER-NEVER LAND
As I observe the Never-Never Land of politics, I wonder what it is in our mental makeup that causes the irrationality that we see around us. I have argued with Holocaust deniers (they usually have a political agenda and are dangerous), but creationists (note the saddle on the dinosaur), astrology believers, moon-landing hoaxers, UFO seers and fundamentalists of all creeds are beyond me and usually not worth the time to argue with. I have declined many invitations to debate these people on various platforms and media. I refuse to grant them the aura of legitimacy that sharing a platform with a scientist would impart. (Click the cartoon to enlarge.)

A large number of the hoaxes we see on the Web (thank the Lord for Snopes and Lo-relevanti ) come about because many people find the modern world too hard to deal with. Thus we get a fantasy about a student, usually attributed to Einstein, standing up and proving the existence of God to an atheist physics professor and other things of that ilk. These things appear harmless, but the delusionary attitude of the public can indeed be attributed to the marketing of fantasy in place of news and analysis designed to stimulate, forgive the expression, thinking.. I append a well written commentary on this phenomenon. Some people enjoy conspiracy theories and I must confess that I often attribute particularly idiotic and pernicious behavior of our government in Israel to evil volition because it is hard to conceive of such monumental stupidity, e.g. an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. I am learning, however, and acquired much useful insight from a book by Norman Dixon on military incompetence.

from which one can extrapolate to other areas of government.

As an example of this sort of thing we have a monster best seller book describing how a four year old "died" during an appendectomy, went to Heaven, met Jesus (with wounds on his hands), various Biblical figures and his great-grandfather. People believe this sort of claptrap and the book is selling like hotcakes. The New York Times reviewed it. Titan says that this is your book review for the week. Gene Weingarten commented on it a few weeks ago and compared it to the poor sales of his book about old dogs. This is at most harmless albeit cynical exploitation of human gullibility by these authors or even benign naivete. I might mention that the reported sighting of wounds on Jesus' hands contradicts what is known historically about the mode of crucifixion practiced by the Romans and indicates that the entire story is pure hokum. I quote from an article in the South African Medical Journal, 2008 by F P Retief and L Cilliers on The History and Pathology of Crucifixion
The crucifixion process
In Jerusalem, according to custom, women offered the victim an analgesic drink consisting of wine and myrrh or incense.1,2 If not already naked he was then stripped and made to lie on his back with his arms extended along the patibulum. The arms were tied to the beam, or fixed by means of iron nails driven through the wrists, rather than the hands which sometimes could not carry the body weight without tearing loose. There is also evidence that these square nails (13 - 18 cm long, 1 cm thick) were occasionally driven through the upper forearms.
So much for seeing stigmata!

What is not harmless is the use of lies and delusion to attack innocent people, to ruin careers and lives and to give vent to prejudice and venom. One such example is the brouhaha about a so-called lewd picture of Anthony Weiner's crotch featuring an erection Wow!! A political adversary hacked his Twitter account and sent a lewd picture to some innocent woman and the result is a cause celebre. I am not a fan of Weiner who is a Natanyahu sycophant and attacked Obama on the 1967 borders speech, but he does represent in the House a constituency that mostly supports such attitudes. He would like to run for Mayor of New York and he may have been harmed by a malicious trick.

WATER AND LAND The spectre of war and starvation looms over Africa. This New York Times article delineates the dangers awaiting this part of the world unless drastic steps are taken. One of the most important is limitation of population growth which is a difficult issue, but one that must be met. Egypt in particular is in real danger of collapse.

HOME SWEET HOME
Last Friday I participated in a demonstration called by Solidarity against the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem. I went to Ras el Amoud and it was quite an experience. I invite you to read a description of the event.

The police initially arrested several people and claimed that rocks were thrown. When the pictures and the films and the threat of lawsuits hit them, they retracted and released everyone. I also append a link to some video footage of the demonstration and a posting on the role of the camera in keeping the cops honest.

I find it encouraging that the left seems to be coming up with a young and energetic leadership, many of them very committed young women. I attended a symposium on Wednesday evening marking the phony holdiay of so-called United Jerusalem. Amira Haas the journalist, Shirin el Adaj a community leader from Wallaje and Maya Rotem from Solidarity described respectively journalism when the public wishes not to know, life under the Wall and the struggle against ethnic cleansing in Silwan.

Tomorrow night we shall attend a mass demonstration called by Peace Now and other organizations in support of the Palestinian declaration of statehood. Our establishment are all against it and they have apparently succeeded in convincing some of the world, including Obama, to oppose it, but it will pass in the General Assembly, which means nothing. You could get that august body to decide that the moon is made of green cheese. What is important is how the Security Council votes. Obama will have a hard time convincing anyone that he is sincere about peace if the US vetoes it.
OK, this blog is long enough for the week and we can send Titan back to his orbit around Saturn. For satire I introduce someone new, Rabbi Waskow with his Dissociated Press.

Titan is back

2011-05-21T22:29:00.010+03:00


Titan and Saturn

This is Titan's turn to rant at you about all the things that neither he nor his sister Pollyanna, despite her sunny disposition, are glad about.
The world scene of human rights is as dismal as usual, but we have no choice but to continue our struggle in solidarity with all our friends and supporters around the world. I am appending a link to several cases of individuals at risk and call upon you to act, to write letters, to raise your voice in protest. It is not true that individuals cannot change anything. When we act together, we have tremendous power. So please open this link and do what is right. Expand the pdf to 100% size or more and it should be legible. I suggest that Israelis refrain from writing to places where our voice will do more harm than good, such as Sudan. The addresses and fax numbers of foreign embassies in Israel can be found at this link.

The Arab Spring is moving at its own pace. In Egypt and Tunisia, there seems to be some hope of democracy evolving, but Libya and Syria are festering sores. Lest you consider me a cynical paranoid, I shall give you Noam Chomsky's take on it. Of course, he invokes his bete noir of US imperialism and indeed the waffling of the Obama administration during the first part of the Tahrir Square events lends some weight to his analysis. To be fair, Obama seems to have embraced the wave of change in the Mideast and North Africa as may be seen and heard in this speech. He also predicted that the Mideast and North Africa would soon be in ferment (vid. The New Yorker, May 2 if you can open the link) and wrote to his staff in August 2010, inter alia,
“Progress toward political reform and openness in the Middle East and North Africa lags behind other regions and has, in some cases, stalled,” the President wrote. He noted that even the more liberal countries were cracking down on public gatherings, the press, and political opposition groups. But something was stirring. There was “evidence of growing citizen discontent with the region’s regimes,” he wrote. It was likely that “if present trends continue,” allies there would “opt for repression rather than reform to manage domestic dissent.”

Good News sometimes does appear. The Uganda parliament has adjourned without passing the terrible law that would have imposed the death penalty on LGBT people. Let us hope that it is dead and gone and is not revived in the next session.

Elephants in Africa, on the other hand, are facing bad news, as poaching and sale of ivory continue. Please sign this petition calling for an end to the ivory trade. It is disgraceful that these magnificent animals are being driven to extinction by human greed.

Before moving on to our home turn, I would just like to express my disgust at the behavior of two famous Europeans. One is Lars von Trier who gives as#$%les a bad name. He was justifiably kicked out of the Cannes Festival and should be shunned forever by all decent people. Anyone who can identify with Hitler has lost his credentials as a member of the species Homo Sapiens.
The other is Dominique Strauss-Kahn who allegedly tried to rape a hotel chambermaid in New York and is now awaiting trial. His buddies in France leaped at this opportunity for some USA bashing and made jerks of themselves. A few years ago he had an affair with a subordinate at the IMF which did not cost him his job, but prompted the formulation of a new ethics code for the organization. BTW, in Israel, use of authority to obtain sex from a subordinate is defined as rape. If we are to judge by the amount of victim-blaming coming from France, we must conclude that French women are fair game for sexual predators. The former president of Israel, Katzav, has been sentenced to jail for seven years for that kind of behavior. I would like to add something from the Gene Weingarten chat in the Washington Post, for once serious, on why this is disgraceful and can be defined as a Shanda For the Goyim:

Gene Weingarten :

Fact: The loyal readers of this chat have come to expect from us the most comprehensive and accurate information on Shandas For the Goyim, those rare but horrifying examples of Jews Misbehaving In Ways that Give Gentiles Reason To Point and Say, “See How Bad Jews Are?”   In the past, in this space, by mutual agreement, we have elevated to the universal Shanda Hall of Shame Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Judas Iscariot, Jack Abramoff, Daniel Snyder, and, finally, Bernard Madoff, whom most of you believe to be the greatest Shanda for the Goyim in history.   I concur.

[Producer's note: Here's a reprint of Gene's definitive "Shanda" post from March of 2009.]

We have a new candidate for the pantheon.  Mr. Dominique Strauss-Kahn,  the naked ape.   He doesn’t really qualify in the sense that his transgressions do not reinforce a negative Jewish stereotype – my people are not notorious as sexual predators – but I’m giving him a pass on this because he is (or was) The World’s Most Influential Moneylender!   Yay!  Welcome to Shandaland, Dominique.  We are SO not proud of you.

Now, I know what you are thinking. You are thinking that I am making too much of Dominique's Jewishness. No one thinks that way anymore, you are thinking. And, see, that's where you are wrong. Go to Google,and enter "Domique Strauss-Kahn" and look what appears on the drop-down bar as the number two hit, based on people's searches to date.

I am delighted to see that after about 24 hours of this, the media stopped referring to DSK as a “womanizer,” which seems like an unacceptably mild term for a recidivist attempted rapist and serial creep.  It would be like calling Hitler “rude.”

HOME SWEET HOME

This week in Israel was marked by Nakba Day, on which the Palestinian community marks the catastrophe that was caused to them by the creation of Israel. It is tragic that the achievement of self determination by people who had been driven out of Europe by the Nazis caused the displacement of another people. Last Sunday, thousands of Palestinians approached Israel’s borders to claim, at least symbolically, their right of return on the anniversary of Israel’s founding. Israeli and Lebanese troops opened fire and more than a dozen people were killed. While the numbers of protesters were relatively small, there are Arabic social media pages calling for such marches to the fences to occur with greater frequency, especially as September approaches and the Palestinian Authority seeks membership in the United Nations. If tens of thousands of Palestinians were to march, Israel would find itself in great difficulty. The army was poorly prepared and the marchers from Syria managed to enter the town of Majdal Shams.

As the time for action approaches, all sides are trying to present their position. Mohammed Abbass the President of the Palestinian Authority published an op-ed in the New York Times. He made some valid points, but negated his impact by indulging in a fabricated version of the early history of Israel. I would like to quote the relevant paragraph to illustrate what I mean:
"It is important to note that the last time the question of Palestinian statehood took center stage at
the General Assembly, the question posed to the international community was whether our homeland should be partitioned into two states. In November 1947, the General Assembly made its recommendation and answered in the affirmative. Shortly thereafter, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued. Indeed, it was the descendants of these expelled Palestinians who were shot and wounded by Israeli forces on Sunday as they tried to symbolically exercise their right to return to their families’ homes."
This is simply an unmitigated piece of mythology. In fact, the Jewish community accepted the UN decision and it was the Arab side, with British connivance, who went about trying to wipe out the Jewish presence in the land. Even the most revisionist of the New Israeli Historians do not sweep this fact under the rug. The Palestinians failed miserably in their attempt to abort the new state and the Arab military intervention that began on May 15, 1948, with the departure of the British, failed as well. There is plenty of mythology on our side as well, but of all the wars in the history of Israel, the War of Independence in 1948 was certainly one that was forced upon us. The others could probably have been avoided by negotiation, but this was a matter of life and death. Indeed, there were great injustices done, but a la guerre, comme a la guerre, as our French friends say.
Certainly no one can accuse me of being an Israeli chauvinist or of being indifferent to Palestinian suffering. I agree fully with those who say that Natanyahu is stalling and the settlements are a major impediment to peace. Nonetheless, the op-ed by Abbass is divorced from reality. Let me link you to two major analysis articles on the present situation, one from the Guardian, somewhat right wing biased, and the other, more objective, from the New York Times, which published the initial op-ed.
Natanyahu is going to Washington with shopworn goods that he might sell to the older generation of American Jews, but not to the younger people who see Israel to be a moral failure as long as the Occupation persists. As pointed out by Haim Gans last year, the fundamental attitude of the Israeli right that Jews and only Jews have rights in this country and that Arabs are inferior interlopers cannot be maintained unless Israel is willing to become a pariah state. New voices are being heard abroad and at home. A recent attempt to prevent Tony Kushner from getting an honorary doctorate because of his legitimate criticism of Israel's policies failed miserably. Roger Cohen puts it well into perspective.
Of course, the political geography gets complicated but we all do our best...
There is also good news from Israel. A bilingual school in Beersheva brings together Jewish and Arab children. as shown in this video. This is the hope for the future.

BOOK REVIEW If sister Pollyanna can bring book review, so can I says Titan. He would like to call your attention to a new biography of Mahatma Gandhi by Joseph Lelyfeld review by Vilas Bajaj and Julie Bosman in the NYTimes Review of Books. Gandhi certainly had a life worth documenting and indeed several biographies have been published over the years. This one is controversial since it deals with the possibility that Gandhi may have had a homosexual relationship, which has caused the book to be banned in one state of India and may lead to a nationwide ban. That also says something about Indian democracy.

Of course we end with some good news from Andy Borowitz about Donald Trump and a socially beneficial effect of the advent of the iPad. We also see how our friend Gene Weingarten strikes a blow for the common man in confronting a powerful corporation.

The Bad News Blog is Back, May 7, 2011

2011-05-07T23:58:00.000+03:00

The dominating event of the week is connected to this man. Osama bin Laden is dead. As I just commented in The New Yorker, I certainly do not mourn him, but it would have been better to have captured him and then turn him over to the International Criminal Court to be tried for crimes against humanity. Indeed the ICC does not impose capital punishment, but that is OK for me since I oppose capital punishment in all cases. If there was indeed a fire fight with his people then the issue is moot and he was just another casualty of war. Certainly no soldier needed to be risked because of bin Laden. On the other hand if this was indeed an extrajudicial execution as practiced by Israel and the US among others, it is unacceptable and taints the legitimate struggle against terror by basically adopting the values of the terrorists.

I would like to express my revulsion at the unseemly reaction to the death of bin Laden. The struggle against terror is not a sports event and the elimination of one arch-terrorist does not imply that the movement that he founded is defunct. Our Jewish tradition has something to say about these raucous celebrations and how to deal with the killing of our vicious and even murderous enemies, first King Solomon Proverbs XXIV, 7
משלי כד יז בנפל אויביך [אויבך] אל תשמח ובכשלו אל יגל לבך
or in English Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when he stumbles, do not let your heart rejoice, and then Peter Gabel and Rabbi Michael Lerner who point out something very relevant: The Midrash tells us that when Pharaoh’s troops were drowning in the Reed Sea as they sought to re-enslave or kill the Israelites, the angels began to sing praises (the Hallel prayers,: Psalms 113-118). God proclaimed:

“My children (the Egyptians) are sinking in the sea, and you are singing praises?” Yet God did not silence the Israelites, knowing that at that moment it would be hard for humans not to celebrate the death of an oppressor. ..(Still our tradition mitigates our joy at redemption to show that the death of enemies is not a source of joy.) ..For far too many people, the war on terrorism seems to be an extension of the football games where we cheer on our team: “USA! USA! Hey, you are tough!”

Modern Israeli Orthodox rabbis are not comfortable with this concern for the life of non-Jews and try to reinterpret is as God's worry before the crossing that Israelite people might drown, but that is a separate issue..

I do not wish to join the chorus of our far left friends who are ranting that the whole thing is a put up job,but on the other hand I find some aspects of it troubling. I would appreciate comments. Of course, the blathering of Haniya in Gaza who mourns the killer of thousands is not worthy of comment. I would like to believe that most the details of the New York Times description quoted on Truthout are true although some of the official American flip-flops on the story can make one suspicious about what really happened. In fact there were three versions of the story and I am not sure what to believe. As Michael Moore says and I agree with him: "Look at the Nuremberg Trials. We didn’t just pop a bullet in the heads of the worst scum in history. We thought it was important to put them on trial and expose their evil. In a democracy we believe in a system of justice and we believe in a judicial system that gives people a day in court...and then we hung them." For his full comments see Wrap.
As Uri Avnery says the Empire requires an enemy. So be it. El Qaeda became irrelevant in Tahrir Square and the desire of young Arabs to look forward is now the driving force instead of nostalgia for the Caliphate. This weekend 2,000 young leaders are meeting in Cairo to form a new democratic secular party in Egypt to counteract both the military class and the Islamists. The future lies with them.

OK, enough of this. There are other things to rant about. We can start with a torture victim in Swaziland .

Wandile Dludlu

This is one of the many instances in which the liberation of Africa has not brought liberation to individual people as the tyranny of colonialism has been replaced by local tyrants. We can see this inhumanity and lack of basic human rights everywhere, such as in Sri Lanka , Brazil and China. Amnesty International makes these actions very easy, just a few clicks and you have told some corrupt tyrant that you disapprove of what is going on in his country. Note that there is no ambiguity about the pronoun because these dictators are invariably male.
TROY DAVIS has faced execution three times for a crime he may not have committed. Several of the witnesses in his murder trial in Georgia have recanted, but the courts have refused to review his case. Please act on this petition request.
HOME SWEET HOME
Let me start with something nice. Daniel Barenboim took an orchestral group to give a concert in Gaza. Maybe just a gesture, but it was a beautiful one and gave some quality to the lives of people there. I cheer you Maestro Barenboim.

The rest is the usual garbage, our leaders trembling in fear that peace may be forced upon them and us as the Palestinians mend their fences with one another and the world prepares to welcome a new State of Palestine.
I invite you to read an insightful article on our situation by Daniel Levy in Haaretz.
Since Gene Weingarten is on vacation, I can only give you a column from a while back, but enjoy anyhow. while Andy Borowitz presents some stark choices.

Pesach Titan

2011-04-24T06:36:00.000+03:00

We are back with Titan in the middle of the Pesach (Passover) holiday after a hiatus caused by a trip to the US for the Bat Mitzva of a sweet young girl,

Meet Eva

Yosefa's grandniece, and a bout of cataract surgery in my right eye. Let us hope that this helps me see clearly, although as I look around me in our pathetic little country, it is not much fun to see too well. In the meantime, it is interesting to look at the origins of Had Gadya, whose purpose seems to be to keep the kids awake and aware until the end of the Seder. Afikoman and its associated instruction in theft and blackmail have the same effect.

HUMAN RIGHTS MONDIAL

As usual, before we focus on our God's Little Acre, we start with a world tour. I will spare you the Libyan mess and the massacres in Syria since they are well covered in the press and anyone who cares to know what is going on is certainly able to do so with little or no effort.
CHINA
Let me start with an outrage in China. I am quoting the entire Amnesty International call for action because of difficulties with passwords etc. Please act on this.

URGENT ACTION

FAMOUS ARTIST HELD INCOMMUNICADO IN CHINA

Ai Weiwei, an internationally known Chinese artist and critic of the government; Wen Tao,his friend and assistant; Zhang Jingsong, his cousin and driver; Hu Mingfen, his accountant; and Liu Zhenggang, a designer, are all detained incommunicado in China at unknown locations. They are at risk of torture and other ill-treatment.

Ai Weiwei was stopped by police at an airport in Beijing on his way to Hong Kong on 3 April. He has been held since then. His family has not received any formal notice about his detention, reasons why the authorities are holding him or information about his whereabouts. On 6 April, the Chinese authorities issued a statement stating that Ai Weiwei is being investigated for suspected economic crimes. His family believe the authorities are holding him because of his political activism.

On 3 April, the police also took in Ai Weiwei’s wife Lu Qing and eight employees and volunteers of his design firm for questioning, but they were all released by the following day.

Wen Tao, Ai Weiwei’s friend and assistant, was detained separately in Beijing on 3 April. Wen Tao is a former journalist who was forced the resign from his job after he wrote an article about a protest against the demolition of the artists’ colony in Beijing in 2010. Ai Weiwei’s accountant, Hu Mingfen, was taken away by police on 8April. She has not been heard from since and is believed to have been detained. On 9 April, Liu Zhenggang, a designer working at Ai Weiwei’s design firm was taken away by plain-clothed police. His wife has reported him missing. On 10 April, the police detained Ai Weiwei’s cousin and driver Zhang Jingsong (aka Xiao Pang) on 10 April.

PLEASE WRITE IMMEDIATELY in English, Chinese or your own language:

n Calling on the authorities to release Ai Weiwei, Wen Tao, Hu Mingfen, Liu Zhenggang and Zhang Jingsong immediately and unconditionally, unless the authorities can show reasonable grounds for suspecting them of having committed an internationally-recognizable criminal offence;

n Urging the authorities to ensure they have immediate access to their families, legal representation of their choice, and any medical care they may require;

n Calling on them to guarantee that Ai Weiwei, Wen Tao, Hu Mingfen, Liu Zhenggang and Zhang Jingsong will not be tortured or ill-treated while they remain in custody;

n Urging the authorities to take effective measures to guarantee freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly in line with China’s Constitution and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which China has signed and declared an intention to ratify.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 26 MAY 2011 TO:

Minister of Public Security

MENG Jianzhu Buzhang

Gong’anbu, 14 Dongchang’anjie

Dongchengqu, Beijingshi 100741

People's Republic of China

Salutation: Your Excellency

Minister of Justice

WU Aiying Buzhang

Sifabu, 10 Chaoyangmen Nandajie

Chaoyangqu, Beijingshi 100020

People's Republic of China

Fax: +86 10 65292345

Email: pfmaster@legalinfo.gov.cn

Salutation: Your Excellency

In the meantime he has "confessed" to whatever the regime wants.

LATIN AMERICA
I have a few cases from Latin America for your edification and action. We have a horrible case of murder of a human rights defender in Mexico, most probably by organized crime gangsters. Mexico has a new Attorney General, Marisela Morales , the first woman ever appointed to this position with a mandate from the President to fight the drug cartels and organized crime. Let us all call upon her to do her job right from the beginning. Please click on this link and write to her and the officials of the state of Guerrero and let them know that the world does not stand by idly when human rights are trampled upon.

While we are dealing with human rights in Latin America, there is a severe danger that a human rights defender in Colombia will be killed unless steps are taken. Please act on this case as well.

Thanks to the Belgian (Francophone) section of Amnesty International for their Web site on individuals at risk.

HOME SWEET HOME
HOW WE HATE ONE ANOTHER
Recently a group of artists, intellectuals and such like (I am not important enough to be invited to these events) met in Tel Aviv to express their support for the declaration of a Palestinian state and its recognition. A group of right wingers attacked the group and shouted the usual curses, with the addition of "they should have cut off both your legs" to Hannah Meron the actress who lost a leg in a Palestinian terrorist attack in Munich airport in 1970. The lack of tolerance and respect for opposing views that characterizes right wingers (vid. Limbaugh and the Tea Party in the US) saps at the basis of society and generates a polarization that can have disastrous results. The recent vandalism of the Reform Synagogue of Ra'anana is another example of the inability of certain types of people to live in peace with the fundamental values of liberal democracy. The ostracism faced by all who dare to break the mold continues to intensify. I wonder how the establishment of today and public opinion, controlled by fear and brain washing, would deal with Abie Nathan were he alive today. Let me quote what our President Shimon Peres said at Abie's graveside in 2008 "he was the greatest freedom fighter." and "We were annoyed with him for not acting like everybody else, for crossing borders, breaking laws - why wasn't he obedient? But woe to us had he listened to us."

I bring this up now because it appears that we are heading towards an internal calamity unless we learn to understand that no one has a monopoly on Zionism or patriotism. Let me refer you to an appropriate post by Bradely Burston who says it much better than I could, although I fear that many of you do not follow the links, alas.
IN MEMORIAM JULIANO MER-KHAMIS

Our neighbors appear to be as adept at self hate as we are. The noted actor was shot dead by militants earlier this month in Jenin. He was active and instrumental in his striving for peaceful coexistence between our communities. He was the son of an Arab father and a Jewish mother and tried to bridge the gap and it cost him his life. Gideon Levy wrote the following eulogy.

QUO VADIMUS?
Gideon Levy asks this question most eloquently in his article on what Natanyahu should say in his forthcoming speech in the US Congress. The spin doctors have held sway for far too long. Frankly, as an Israeli, I am offended by his going to Washington to make his major policy speech in English. He should make it in the Knesset in Hebrew with straight talk to the Israeli public.

It is getting late and my new lens is getting tired. I will wind up with a Gene Weingarten report on what goes on in Heaven and the new book that he is going to write about it. Apparently there is a boom in books by parents whose dead children come back to tell them about Heaven and Gene sees no reason not to cash in on his own experience.

Titan is Back

2011-03-26T19:41:00.000+02:00

It would be nice to be this kind of demonstrator and maybe there is such a place on the planet.

In 1938 a very wealthy American decided to retire and enjoy peace and quiet in the South Pacific. He set up a lovely retirement estate on an island named Guadalcanal. For myself, when the cabinet in New Zealand resigned because the All Blacks had lost in the World Cup rugby semi-finals, I thought it might be a place for relaxation and tranquility I forgot about the Pacific Ring of Fire. Obviously, there are no really safe or quiet places on our planet and we just have to deal with things as they are where we are.
..

Last week the normally optimistic Pollyanna blog had to deal with the real world and she had very little to be glad about. This week we are back to the nasty Titan blog and it has plenty to be nasty about. It is hard to decide where to start. For the Libyan war, the best I can do is to refer you to the excellent coverage by the BBC and their continuously updated live news site. Ghaddafi continues to harangue his people and promise eventual victory, which is amazing.

I can only hope that the coalition of forces confronting Ghaddafi can hold together until he is eliminated from power one way or the other. There is no guarantee that all or any of the revolutions sweeping the Arab world, in fact the world in general, if we look at China and other places ready to blow up, will indeed lead to the type of liberal democracy that we hold dear as a sacred value. One can never predict how such events will evolve, when they will explode and what will trigger them. We do well to expect the unexpected as Rebecca Solnit points out in this interesting essay. In the meantime, it appears that the help from the air is not enough to enable the rebels to win since their forces are poorly trained and inadequate.

JAPAN

I apologize to anyone who was frustrated last week in trying to open the report from Japan by my colleague Nick Schneider. It has been published on the Planetary Society blog whose link is on the right of this text and you can get it there. I also circulated it on Facebook and Twitter and sent it to my regular readers. In the meantime, the nuclear reactors are still a cause for grave concern. The water in Tokyo is unfit for babies and the danger of real calamity still exists. The question of nuclear safety is a major issue and if you have politicians sitting in the pockets of the nuclear utility industry, as was true during the Bush (both) years, you have a recipe for disaster.

As Japan struggles to to recover from its disaster , another earthquake, smaller at 6.8, struck near the Thai-Burma border.

More than seventy people are dead and the toll may yet rise. I fear that in Israel we are ill prepared for an earthquake despite our proximity to a major fault.

Four days after the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, a local newspaper in Sendai - the city closest to the quake's epicenter - reported there had been 40 incidents of theft and looting since the disaster. When you think of the tsunami-devastated conditions, that number is pretty low. Many shops were left unattended. There was an almost total blackout, but there was hardly any crime reported. I recall visiting the Miami area after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and there great looting was reported. It tells you something about their society. To be fair, it is also true that there was almost no looting in Iowa when the Mississippi flooded in 1993 nor in Winnipeg when the Red River overflowed its banks in 1997. I think this is indicative of societal cohesion

There has been much talk about radiation dangers including putting tap water off limits for Tokyo infants. I would like to post a link to a radiation danger chart posted on the xkcd site. It is for information only, but it is illuminating and helpful.

DEATH SENTENCE
I am calling your attention to the mpending execution of a mentally impaired person in Arizona. Daniel Cook is due to be executed on April 5 after 23 years on death row. The lead prosecutor from the 1988 trial has said that he would not have sought the death penalty if he had known about Daniel Cook’s background of severe
childhood abuse and mental disorders. Please urge Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to grant clemency in this case. It only takes a few clicks and you may save a life

ROMA
It is always especially discouraging to see evidence of racism and discrimination in EU countries that claim to bear the banner of human rights for all of us. I am calling your attention to the question of access to clean water by the Roma population of Slovenia. We hear much about the water problems in Africa and indeed they are severe, but it certainly should not be happening in Europe. Amnesty International is starting a campaign on housing and water access in Slovenia.

CHINA
The paranoid fear of revolution that drives the Chinese leadership is causing them to crack down even more strongly on all forms of dissent. Human rights defenders are being persecuted and the government appears impervious to any outside influences.and the status of human rights continues to deteriorate.

HOME SWEET HOME
Here in Israel it is hard to know where to start. We have long range rockets falling on cities in the South, a bomb attack in Jerusalem that took a life and wounded many, our ex-president has just been sentenced to seven years in prison for rape and other sex crimes.and fascist anti-democratic laws are being passed.

Of course, we start with the bomb attack. One woman was killed and at least three dozen people were injured when a bomb exploded in central Jerusalem.When we couple this with the murderous attack at Itamar that we reported on last week in the Pollyanna blog and the escalation of fire and rocket exchanges in the South, we see that there is a concerted effort being made by someone to torpedo any chance of getting serious negotiations under way between us and the Palestinians. One must ask cui bono? Certainly not Israel and if indeed the start was the Itamar murder spree. it is most probable that Hamas and its attendant bodies such as Jihad are behind it. Sources in Islamic Jihad claim that Palestinian security forces in the West Bank have arrested two of its members in Jenin. The two, Khaled Jaradat and Tarek Kaadan, were arrested in the wake of Israel's claims that the organization is responsible for the terror attack in Jerusalem. This indicates that the Fatah was not behind the attack and is interested in cooling down the violence. In the meantime, the army in its search for the Itamar culprits victimized the village of Awarta during a five day curfew.

Then we have our beloved ex-president who was sentenced this week. The stiff punishment contrasts with very mild actions of the courts in such cases in the past and sends a signal that women are not fair game for any oversexed bigwig. General Yitzhak Mordechai, who also had served as Defense Minister, was convicted on sexual offense charges several years ago and got off very lightly. In March 2001, the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court convicted Mordechai of indecent acts .and let him off with an 18-month suspended sentence. I regard the sentencing of Katzav as a major step forward for society at large and women in particular, especially at this time when gender segregation is applied in public transportation, albeit illegally. Indeed the Supreme Court has ruled that segregation cannot be enforced except "voluntarily" but Orthodox women are vulnerable to pressure. So kudos to the Tel Aviv District Court.

The Knesset has just passed two laws that are designed to strike a mortal blow at our democracy. One allows small communities to screen prospective new residents and the other outlaws the marking of the Nakhba, the memory of the catastrophe that hit the Arab community with the establishment of the State of Israel. It has also passed or is considering other laws that would put an end to our democracy altogether. It is just a question of time before all dissent is quashed and the true face of our establishment will be disclosed to the world. The fear of delegitimazation comes from people who lack confidence in the legitimacy of Israel and they are the danger. The dissidents, such as Women in Black to which my daughter Zohar belongs, show that democracy still exists. This film in Hebrew shows what I mean.

Dissidents have no need to apologize.

Let us wind up with something about what makes us tick as scientists. Click on the strip to enlarge it.

The Bad News Blog is Back

2011-03-10T18:59:00.002+02:00

The Libyan conflict is what concern us these days, but there are other issues as well. Events are moving very rapidly in Libya and elsewhere and it is impossible to keep up with a bi-weekly human rights blog, but I will do my best. I will rant and rave to the best of my ability.

It appears that the Security Council deliberations will fall victim to a Russian veto just as the initiative against the Darfour genocide was blocked by China. It is to be hoped that some way can be found to prevent a bloodbath and a return to full power of a ghastly dictator. Indeed, the entire Western democratic world has much to answer for, in particular the blind support for such dictators. The UK alone sold Ghaddafi GBP200,000,000 worth of military hardware that is now being used against the Libyan people. For an update go to the BBC news link.

The battleground

Roger Cohen in the NYTimes makes a point about the moral bankruptcy of the West and why it is hard to justify a unilateral intervention now, since it would be regarded as illegitimate by the Libyan people. It is extremely difficult to decide how to intervene without creating an impression that neocolonialism is behind it. As a result of this dilemma, lives were lost in Rwanda, Darfur and Sierra Leone, to name a few. In a few cases, such as Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast, the former colonial power did eventually intervene, but today it seems inconceivable. The imposition of a no-fly zone would at least ground Ghaddafi's mercenary pilots, change the balance of power and give the rebels a chance

The wave of revolution spreading across the Arab world will certainly spread elsewhere. China certainly is ripe for an uprising of the exploited working class in this supposedly socialist country. Others may be in the queue. Here are some predictions by pundits , for whatever they, both the predictions and the pundits, are worth. Of course, pundits can make useful contributions to the energy balance and even help with pollution, well sort of.


New Yorker but of universal relevance

(thanks to the New Yorker, I hope they forgive me for linking this in) .

China, which relaxed the grip a bit during the Olympics in 2008, is showing all the signs of paranoia. After threatening Norway with "dire consequences" for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 2010 to Liu Xiaobo for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China it now is reacting with panic to the threat of the Jasmine Revolution, i.e. casual strolls past ministries and reporting by foreign journalists

I recall a conversation in 2008 with Alex Gileadi, the Israel member of the IOC, who said that the Olympics would serve to crack the Chinese Wall, just as the 1980 Moscow Olympics started the cracks that eventually brought down the Soviet Union. I wonder--maybe he has a point, but it also seems possible that in the short run the dictators will hang on because of the lassitude of the so-called international community. There are also many nay sayers and racists, including Israelis and Jews, who fear the new winds blowing in the Arab world and talk about the danger of the liberated Arab masses turning against Israel. I suspect that the new governments in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere will have more pressing problems. I also believe that the work of Fayyed in cleaning up the administration of the Palestinian Authority is worthy of our respect and not of our disdain.

SLAVERY Yes, the next rant has to do with slavery. It has not gone away and the UN estimates that about 27 million people throughout the world satisfy the definition of forced work without compensation. Possibly the worst hell hole of slavery is Mauritania where it was indeed abolished formally in 1981, but the holding of slaves was made a criminal offense only in 2007. As one might expect,. there have been no indictments under the law and the government is in a state of denial.

Please go to this petition site and take action. We have no Mauritanian embassy in Israel, but if there is one in your country, please find it and give them a piece of your mind. You also would do well to tell your Foreign Ministry how you feel about this subject. People who are trying to fight slavery on the ground are incarcerated for their pains.

CHILEAN MINERS You will recall the Chilean mine disaster and rescue. You would have thought that something would happen with mine safety laws, especially in light of the investigation results. Wrong!! Broken promise: Chilean miners are still waiting for reform of mine safety laws Immediately after the successful rescue of 33 copper miners in Chile on October 13, 2010, President Sebastián Piñera proclaimed to the world that within 90 days Chile would reform its mine safety laws. In fact, he has done nothing of the kind. Nearly five months on, Chilean miners are still waiting. The ICEM, the global union federation that represents miners around the world, is calling for a massive online campaign to flood the Chilean government with emails of protest. Please take a moment to send off your message by clicking here. Just erase my pre-entered data and insert yours before sending it off.

BEAUTIFUL AMERICA
This week I am going to rant about my birthplace, the USA, which has turned away from its own fundamental values in ways that are shocking. I am indeed pleased that an African-American was elected to the presidency, but since then the wellsprings of evil greed and racism have burst out along with what amounts to a takeover of the country by the oligarchy. They are getting back at Roosevelt and basically attempting to turn back all social progress that has been made since the New Deal. Of course, the people elect these clods, but then we elect the Likud and Lieberman, so I suppose I should not bitch. Nonetheless, I am going to raise a few issues with Uncle Sam before getting on to the home scene.

Let me start with the war on unions in Wisconsin that is showing its main impact in my neighboring state but is spreading. In the latest New Yorker,(not linkable because of copyright rules)there is an article on the decline of the labor movement in the US and it is sad indeed. The Supreme Court unleashed the oligarchy as a political monster and we are seeing the results. The start of the reaction of the people is under way and we can only hope that indeed Robert Reich is right about the birth of the people's party.

Then we have the power of religion that can trample on everyone. We see the anti-abortion fanatics coming up with a new way of justifying the killing of abortion doctors. It is done by means of laws that allow "justifiable homicide" to protect a fetus. South Dakota has a proposal for allowing a woman, her husband, or her family to commit "justifiable homicide" in defense of a fetus. Nebraska would apply those same protections to any third party. Pro-choice supporters suspect that the intent is to create a possible broad defense for attacks on abortion providers. For details see Mother Jones.

Amos Guiora, blogging from Oxford , points out the danger of fundamentalist religion in a piece that should be required reading for all progressives and believers in liberal democracy. Of course, you have a body like the Catholic Church, that is busy trying to overpopulate the planet, while not doing a very good job on cleaning up its own house, as we can see from what is happening in Philadelphia. In general, while all child abuse is execrable, there is something special about it when it comes from priests, rabbis, any religious functionary in whom families expect to be able to place infinite trust. It makes me foam at the mouth beyond the usual rant.

GUANTANAMO Candidate Obama promised to do away with the military commissions serving in place of courts and the indefinite detention of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. He has not done a very good job and we are back at square one with the commissions. Amnesty International is protesting but to deaf ears.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMERICA

Freshly arrived some good news, the state of Illinois has abolished capital punishment! The governor had a hard time with it but eventually signed the bill into law after two months of agonizing. Thank you Governor Quinn.

Women's Day came and went this week. I want to mark it with a poem called Refuser and some comments by the poetess. Instead of a link, I am posting the entire text.

The 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day

By Eve Ensler, Reader Supported News

08 March 11

For the Builders, the Planters, and the Refusers, on the 100th Anniversary of International
Women's Day

n this, the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, I want to take a minute to honor grassroots women's activists across the planet - women, like those working tirelessly in Haiti, who have inspired their communities, united their communities, and led their communities, holding them together and pushing them forward.

Today, I want to particularly honor the women on the ground in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who have organized and worked for peace and freedom over the many years of conflict that has been fought in their country and on their bodies. On February 4, the women of Congo, in partnership with V-Day and the Fondation Panzi (République Démocratique du Congo), opened the City of Joy, a revolutionary leadership community for survivors of sexual violence that will be the headquarters of a grassroots women's movement in Eastern, DRC.

A group of women, called "Friends of V-Day," built the City of Joy - they were possibly the first female construction crew in Congolese history. These women mixed the cement, carried loads on their shoulders, made the bricks. They built the City of Joy with their own hands, understanding, with each careful step, that making a world and living in the world are not separate. Each day that the women built, they took time to dance and sing. It was part of the day's work, and now that spirit is literally built into the walls of the City of Joy. These women were aware that it takes a very specific constellation of ingredients to create a community, the way water, sun and earth all come together to build a new world. In the final days before the opening, the women planted grass, blade by blade, on the grounds of the City of Joy. That is how movements are born - individual green blades, planted one by one, nurtured by water and light, protected until they have grown into grass.

Today, I dedicate my piece, REFUSER, to all the builders, all the grass planters, all the individual, green, sparkling blades of grass. I dedicate it to all the girls and women joining forces across the earth, to create change and revolution.

REFUSER
From the Lebanese mountains
To the Kenyan village of El Doret
We are practicing self-defense
Versed in Karate, Tai Chi, Judo, and Kung Foo
We are no longer surrendering to our fate.
Now, we are the ones who walk our girl friends home from school.
And we don't do it with macho. We do it with cool.
Our mothers are the Pink Sari Gang
Fighting off the drunken men
With rose pointed fingers and sticks in
Uttar Pradesh.
The Peshmerga women
in the Kurdish mountains
with barrettes in their hair
and AK47's instead of pocket books.
We are not waiting anymore to be taken and retaken.
We are the Liberian women sitting
in the Africa sun blockading the exits
til the men figure it out.
We are the Nigerian women
babies strapped to out backs
occupying the oil terminals of Chevron.
We are the women of Kerala
who refused to let Coca Cola
privatize our water.
We are Cindy Sheehan showing up in Crawford without a plan.
We are all those who forfeited husbands boyfriends and dates
Cause we were married to our mission.
We know love comes from all directions and in many forms.
We are Malalai who spoke back to the Afghan Loya Jurga
And told them they were "raping warlords" and
She kept speaking even when they kept
trying to blow up her house.
And we are Zoya whose radical mother was shot dead when Zoya was only a child so she was fed on revolution which was stronger than milk
And we are the ones who kept and loved our babies
even though they have the faces of our rapists.
We are the girls who stopped cutting ourselves to release the pain
And we are the girls who refused to have our clitoris cut
And give up our pleasure.
We are:
Rachel Corrie who wouldn't couldn't move away from the Israeli tank.
Aung San Suu Kyi who still smiles after years of not being able to leave her room.
Anne Frank who survives now cause she wrote down her story.
We are Neda Soltani gunned down by a sniper in the streets of
Tehran as she voiced a new freedom and way
And we are Asmaa Mahfouz from the April 6th movement in Egypt
Who twittered an uprising.
We are the women riding the high seas to offer
Needy women abortions on ships.
We are women documenting the atrocities
in stadiums with video cameras underneath our Burqas.
We are seventeen and living for a year in a tree
And laying down in the forests to protect wild oaks.
We are out at sea interrupting the whale murders.
We are freegans, vegans, trannies
But mainly we are refusers.
We don't accept your world
Your rules your wars
We don't accept your cruelty and unkindness.
We don't believe some need to suffer for others to survive
Or that there isn't enough to go around
Or that corporations are the only and best economic arrangement
And we don't hate boys, okay?
That's another bullshit story.
We are refusers
But we crave kissing.
We don't want to do anything before we're ready
but it could be sooner than you think
and we get to decide
and we are not afraid of what is pulsing through us.
It makes us alive.
Don't deny us, criticize us or infantilize us.
We don't accept checkpoints, blockades or air raids
We are obsessed with learning.
On the barren Tsunamied beaches of Sri Lanka
In the desolate and smelly remains
Of the lower ninth
We want school.
We want school.
We want school.
We know if you plan too long
Nothing happens and things get worse and that
Most everything is found in the action
and instinctively we get that the scariest thing
isn't dying, but not trying at all.
And when we finally have our voice
and come together
when we let ourselves gather the knowledge
when we stop turning on each other
but direct our energy towards what matters
when we stop worrying about
our skinny ass stomachs or too frizzy hair
or fat thighs
when we stop caring about pleasing
and making everyone so incredibly happy -
We got the Power.
If
Janis Joplin was nominated the ugliest man on her campus
And they sent Angela Davis to jail
If Simone Weil had manly virtues
And Joan of Arc was hysterical
If Bella Abzug was eminently obnoxious
And Ellen Sirleaf Johnson is considered scary
If Arundhati Roy is totally intimidating
and Rigoberta Menchu is pathologically intense
And Julia Butterfly Hill is an extremist freak
Call us hysterical then
Fanatical
Eccentric
Delusional
Intimidating
Eminently obnoxious
Militant
Bitch
Freak
Tattoo me
Witch
Give us our broomsticks
And potions on the stove
We are the girls
who are aren't afraid to cook.

"Refuser" is published in Eve's newest work - "I AM AN EMOTIONAL CREATURE: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World," just released in paperback from Villard Trade Paperbacks.

Eve Ensler, a playwright and activist, is the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls. In conjunction with "I AM AN EMOTIONAL CREATURE," V-Day has developed a targeted pilot program, V-Girls, to engage young women in our "empowerment philanthropy" model, providing them with a platform to amplify their voices.

I hope you read it. I have nothing to add.

The Israeli flag-draped coffin of Avi Cohen is seen during a special public memorial service at a football stadium near Tel Aviv December 29, 2010/Nir Elias

ORGAN TRANSPLANTING is an area in which medical technology and science have outstripped the social advances needed to cope with the problems that are raised. Many moral and ethical issues dog the path of saving lives. Ideally, the default should be the automatic use of organs of any person who dies and certainly of someone who wills his/her organs. On the other hand, because of the shortage of organs a criminal black market has developed. In Israel, we also have the superstition that masquerades as the Orthodox brand of Judaism which prevents many donations. The case of the soccer player , killed in an accident, who had willed his organs but whose wishes were blocked by rabbis gave rise to a surge of donations. I bring this up because of an ethical dilemma in the US. Normally the organs of executed prisoners are not available for transplant because, as we saw in China, this leads down a slippery slope to executions for organs. Now a man facing execution in Oregon wants to donate all his useful organs, but the state is blocking it. I suggest you read this as food for thought.

HOME SWEET HOME
Here in Israel the country staggers along under a government composed of crooks, fascists and idiots, which, as I look around the world, does not make us unique. The reaction of our genius defense minister Barak to the wave of rebellion in the Arab world is to ask the US for $20 billion in military aid, i.e. there is no capability for any thinking .except in military terms.

In our society we see racism booming. We have rabbis, such as Dov Lior, who pump out poison to young people and when the police try to investigate their actions, simply tell the state to eff off. He supported a book by one of his colleagues "The King's Torah - The Laws for Killing Gentiles" that called for killing Gentile children. For the full scale rant on this issue, I refer you to Sefi Rachlevski

Our ex-president Moshe Katzav has been convicted of rape and other sex crimes. He received a letter of support from another fascist rabbi, Shlomo Aviner in which the victims are slandered and the judiciary is heavily maligned. Some voices of protest have been raised but the government just lets it go by.

The question of BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) as a means of influencing policy in Israel has always been problematic for me since it is an overly blunt instrument. I note that Pete Seeger has signed on to it and I find my arguments becoming weaker and weaker. I see what the Jewish National Fund is doing in El Arakeeb and I am troubled that my grandchildren in Canada are being encouraged to support it. Note that this complaint does not come from some marginal left wingers, but from a mainstream political party, Meretz.

This blog is far too long, so let us wind up with some serious stuff from Andy Borowitz about a joint interview on CNN with Jesus and Satan

Titan is back, February 25, 2011

2011-02-25T15:51:00.000+02:00

This has been a very stormy week and there is much for a nasty blogger to write about. If it appeared that we had enough trouble in the world with political turmoil, Nature found it necessary to step in with a 7.2 Richter earthquake in Christchurch New Zealand. The death toll is expected to reach the hundreds and a major city has been struck a frightful blow. In the picture above we see the the effects of the shock. Here is a view of the center of the city and an aerial view.

Debris litters central Christchurch after it was struck by the 6.3 magnitude earthquake

The disaster is hard to comprehend--what happens in such an event is that the soil and rocks are liquified and the city just slides. I recall seeing the signs of the Good Friday 1964 earthquake in Alaska thirty years later during a tour of Anchorage. We should all try to think what we can do to support these unfortunate people.

The revolutions in the Arab world continue, but whereas in Tunisia and Egypt there was not major carnage we see that Bahrain and Libya are a different story. Amnesty International has put out a diary of the wave of demand for change and the repressive response. I recommend subscribing to the RSS for continuous updating by email.

JUSTICE FOR RAPE VICTIMS
I would like to report some good news from Congo. A commander has been sentenced to prison for ordering his troops to commit mass rapes.

CROATIA AND JUSTICE
Nearly twenty years have passed since the bloody war in the former Yugoslavia but impunity for the war crimes committed has yet to be removed. Please act to support witnesses who are being intimidated in Croatia.

PROTEST THE KILLING OF WOLVES
Before I get on to the local scene I would like to put out a call to protest the actions of the government of Norway that are leading to the extinction of the wolf population of that country. Norway projects an image of a liberal and progressive nation, yet they continue to hunt whales and wantonly destroy wildlife. Please
respond to this call for action
I would like to add to the call for action the comment that in my native Minnesota timber wolves have been reintroduced with the positive effect of controlling the rodent population. If here and there some predation of cattle occurs, compensation is paid and it is regarded as a good investment in ecology. In Alaska, on the other hand wolves are being hunted down and zoologists predict a calamity if this is not stopped.

HOME SWEET HOME
The first subject for a rant is the US veto of a UN Security Council resolution denouncing the settlements in the West Bank. I realize that if it had passed, it would have made little difference on the ground in the short term, but it is still disgusting to see the Obama administration giving in to lobby pressure and joining the Likud.
I think it means that we should understand that we cannot expect any politician in the world to go out on a limb to solve our problems for us. The only time we have seen a settlement imposed was in the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia and later Kosovo, and that came about because there was a real interest in suppressing instability in Europe. In this case, the so-called international community dragged its feet until a quarter of a million people were killed. I wonder how many will have to die in Libya before they move. Certainly no one is going to lift a finger to bail us and the Palestinians out of the pit that we have dug for ourselves.

IAN McEWEN
There has been a lot of verbiage expended on the acceptance of the Jerusalem Prize by the novelist Ian McEwen. Many of my good friends believe that he should have rejected it. I beg to differ and think that the fact that he stood up and told the Israeli establishment a few home truths about their treatment of Palestinians and their misguided policies was a worthy thing to do. I append a link to his Web site which contains the full text of his acceptance speech. I invite you to be the judge.

VIOLENCE VS NONVIOLENCE IN OUR PART OF THE WORLD
As I watched the events in Egypt and elsewhere unfold, I asked myself why the insistence on violence by the Hamas and others in the Jihadi community persists when it is clear that it is the nonviolent protest that succeeds. No amount of stone throwing or even missile attacks or suicide bombings is going to end the Occupation of the West Bank and the building of settlements. People like Archbishop Tutu and the Dalai Lama have tried to get this across to the Palestinian leadership but to no avail. The continued armed struggle just plays into the hands of the occupiers. I wonder if any of them have read the work of Gene Sharp and his advice to revolutionaries around the world. Indeed the nonviolent demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrakh and Bil'in do not appear to be going anywhere, but eventually they will have their effect.

MY POST ON THREE DEAD CHILDREN has been republished on the Only Democracy blog and I hope it reaches a wider audience.

Let us wind up with some lighter news from Andy Borowitz and of course some cultural upgrading from our guru in Washington Gene Weingarten.

The Titan post is here again Friday February 11, 2011

2011-02-11T21:42:00.002+02:00

Debby Friedman

This is the week of the nasty human rights blog, but just as I allowed the real world to invade Pollyanna last week, there will be some nonpolitical stuff in this week's blog. This was the week of the Super Bowl and I must confess that I sat up all night watching. There was a good football game, but so much of what goes on around it is revolting. The trophy was honestly won by the Green Bay Packers, but a stadium costing $1.15 billion in an era of economic distress for countless people who are having a hard time putting food on the table is an abomination. The NFL owners have become the Marie Antoinette of modern America. Still Aaron Rodgers and his teammates gave a great show and we can expect more from him and them in years to come.

IN MEMORIAM

DEBBIE FRIEDMAN
The lady who brought the guitar into the synagogue and brought back Judaism into the hearts of alienated people is gone at age 59 and it is a great loss. Debbie Friedman (Picture above) was something special. I never got to hear her live, but I feel that she will be greatly missed. Here is a brief. obituary Baruch Dayan Haemet
Donald M. Hunten:

My field of science lost one of its mainstays in December. Don Hunten and I had many a scientific discussion and even tangled antlers but always remained friends. His colleagues have written an obituary that I feel honored to post. Maybe he is getting some answers now from a Higher Source.

BIRTHDAYS
Last week in the Pollyanna blog I mentioned the birthday of Ludwig Boltzman, one of the iconic figures in the history of Physics. His name came up in connection with the discussion of the Holy Grail achievement of a first full solution of the seven-dimensional Boltzmann equation with which all physicists grow up. He and I share the same birthday, February 20, 1844/1931 but shared astrology did not help me become Boltzmann, alas. We also mark the birthdays of two other luminaries of science this month, Nicolaus Copernicus was born on 19 February 1473

and Galileo Galilei on 15 Feb 1564.

Copernicus allowed his heliocentric model of the Solar System to be published only as he lay on his deathbed and Galileo ran afoul of the Church because of his espousal of the Copernicus model. In fact, the Church did not allow mention of motion of the Earth until 1822. I wonder how different things are today when we are told that 64% of the public in Israel favor limitation of freedom of expression. I wonder what they think of academic freedom--maybe I should not ask.

SELLOUTS
There are sellouts and sellouts. When Tom's of Maine was sold to Colgate, I did not begrudge Tom and Kate the $38 million because they stayed around to make sure that the standards were held up, no animal testing, ecological responsibility, the works. When Arianna Huffington sold her Post to AOL for $315 million, she sold out ideologically as well. Indeed, over the years, liberal-progressive politics have been taking center stage on the Huffington Post less and less during the last decade, but now we can be sure that it will no longer be a voice of the progrsssive community and that is a shame. For a detailed discussion I refer you to Dana Milbank in the Washington Post. The Post itself is centrist and not as progressive as the NYTimes, but it usually has its heart in the right place or nearby.

EGYPT

Anti-government protesters demonstrate in front of Egypt's national television headquarters in Cairo. Furious demonstrators protested throughout Egypt a day after President Hosni Mubarak announced that he would remain in office through the September elections. (John Moore / Getty Images / February 11, 2011)

Events in Egypt are moving at a furious pace. I have more or less written what I have to say on the subject, but will add some cogent comments from Gideon Levy on the subject of stability and why it is so grossly overrated. The latest from the Los Angeles Times indicates that Mubarak has left Cairo and the protesters are not buying what he offered in his speech last night. The protesters seem sophisticated and smarter than their opponents.
Breaking news, Murabak has resigned and the military have taken over. Let us hope this is indeed a new day for Egypt.

HUMAN RIGHTS SUCCESS STORIES
It is nice to hear sometimes of some success in our ongoing and never-ending struggle to protect human rights around the world. Our friends at AIUK have provided a list of success stories.

Other stories are not so happy. The blind human rights activist in China Chen Guangcheng

is being held under house arrest and and he and his wife have been beaten . Human rights organizations around the world have taken up the cudgels in the case of Chen Guangcheng including Amnesty International and others. In general, it is dangerous to be a dissident under a repressive regime such as that of China. I append a link to profiles of three famous dissidents, one of whom, Liu Xiaobo,

received the Nobel Peace Prize this year. Hu Jia, a prominent environmentalist and AIDS activist, was jailed for three-and-a-half years in April 2008 for "inciting subversion" - the same charge as Liu Xiaobo.

Gao Zhisheng

a writer and self-taught lawyer, became known in China for defending citizens against the state. All three of these heroes have been the subject of human rights outcries in the West, but the Chinese regime appears impervious to pressure and the governments of the West hesitate to anger the economic giant.

Mexico is having its share of troubles with the economy and other internal difficulties and now is witnessing struggles by labor unions to uphold the basic rights of working people. Please act on this call for help. Just insert your data in place of mine.

THE LOCAL SCENE
Instead of my usual rants about human rights in the area I am going to inflict upon you a long discourse on my thoughts in the wake of the Tucson shootings and how political killing of children comes about in the wake of extremist thinking.

THREE DEAD CHILDREN

AHARON EVIATAR

The recent ghastly events in Arizona, especially the killing of Christina Greene, gunned down by a political lunatic at age nine, lead one to think of the phenomenon of political killing of children and what it implies for society. In particular, I would like to bring up along with Christina, two other cases of killing of little girls, one in Arizona and the other in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The story of Christina is well known and documented in all its horror by the media. The other two cases are less well known.

Brisenia Flores, like Christina Greene was 9 years old, and she also lived in Pima County, Arizona, not far from Tucson. Like Christina, she was gunned down in cold blood by killers with strange ideas about society and politics. A quote of some detail from Will Bunch in his blog County Fair on the site Media Matters : 'As her mother tells it, 9-year-old Brisenia Flores had begged the border vigilantes who had just broken into her house, "Please don't shoot me." But they did -- in the face at point-blank range, prosecutors allege, as Brisenia's father sat dead on the couch and her mother lay on the floor, pretending that she too had been killed in the gunfire."
Abir Aramin was 10 years old and lived in the town of Anata in the Occupied West Bank. In January 2007 she was killed by a rubber bullet to the head fired by an Israeli Border Policeman (the Border Police are really ordinary soldiers who serve in this capacity) as she was going home from school. The Army has consistently denied that she was killed by a soldier despite pathology reports and concocted a cock and bull story that she was hit by a rock during a riot. In fact there was no riot at the time.

It might appear to the cursory glance that these cases are similar. In fact, there are important differences between them, While the seriously warped mind of Christina's Tucson murderer, Jared Lee Loughner, is a muddled mess, the motives of one of Brisenia's alleged killers-- a woman named Shawna Forde -- are pretty clear: She saw herself as the leader of an armed movement against undocumented immigrants, an idea that was energized by her exposure to the then-brand-new Tea Party Movement.

The anonymous killer of Abir was motivated purely by blood lust and while Loughner and Forde are in custody awaiting or facing trial, the murderous soldier is being shielded by his commanders and by the legal and military establishment in Israel.

Arizona is not the loveliest state in the Union. For decades it refused to recognize the birthday of Martin Luther King as a legal holiday and last year enacted racist legislation against immigrants. Nonetheless, it has put Forde on trial for murder despite the fact that the victims are of Mexican origin. Even Arizona, fascist and racist as it may be, has red lines with respect to the rule of law that it refuses to cross.

In Israel, on the other hand, it took Bassem and Salwa Aramin, Abir's parents, three years to fight the Israeli court system with the aid of the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din and a devoted human rights lawyer, Michael Sfard. Eventually they won some semblance of justice for Abir. Initially police investigators closed the file on their daughter's death without attributing blame for it. The child's mother, Salwa, who had always contended that her child had been killed by a police rubber bullet, broke down in tears when she heard that there was to be no prosecution, feeling "that they had killed her again". Then, when they contested the police decision in the High Court, it refused to re-open the case on the grounds that she could have been killed by a stone thrown by Palestinian rioters.

The family's subsequent civil suit succeeded last August when Jerusalem District Judge Orit Efal-Gabai declared unequivocally in open court: "Abir and her friends were walking down a street where there were no rock-throwers; therefore there was no reason to shoot in their direction. It is clear that Abir's death, caused by a rubber bullet shot by border guards, was due to negligence..."

Judge Efrat-Gabai gives the Border Police the benefit of the doubt with respect to why Abir was shot and the Army will certainly continue to drag its feet forever in investigating the case. Let us all pray for the day when Israel progresses to the level of Arizona in terms of respect for the rule of law and the accountability of the holders of power for the lives of those of the "wrong" ethnicity.

As usual I shall try to wind up on a lighter note with the latest news analysis from Andy Borowitz and some cogent thoughts from Gene Weingarten on political correctness and literary classics.

The Bad News Blog is Back, January 27, 2010

2011-01-28T15:01:00.000+02:00

Al Capone

This week we open the nasty blog with what I think is an appropriate picture, the mug shot of Al Capone at Alcatraz prison. It is appropriate because this arch criminal, head of an empire of prostitution, gambling, bootlegging and drug dealing, who murdered countless people, went to prison for violation of Prohibition laws and income tax evasion. It is analogous to investigating land grabs as a possible impediment to appointing the new Chief of Staff of our glorious IDF, the most moral army in the world. Gideon Levy has pointed out most aptly that the land theft, false statements and self-aggrandizement of Yoav Galant pale in comparison with his war crimes and brutality towards the civilian population of Gaza during Cast Lead over which he presided as Southern Command General. The furor over the greed and arrogance seems silly when the man is not tried for his real crimes. Alon Idan notes sarcastically, but correctly, that the greed, arrogance and general turpitude of Galant qualify him perfectly to be the Chief of Staff. I say that if his appointment is blocked, we should settle for the justice that we can get.

ישעיהו מ"ב ו אֲנִי יְהוָה קְרָאתִיךָ בְצֶדֶק, וְאַחְזֵק בְּיָדֶךָ; וְאֶצָּרְךָ, וְאֶתֶּנְךָ לִבְרִית עָם--לְאוֹר גּוֹיִם.

For the Hebrew-challenged amongst the readers:
Isaiah 42:6
I, the Lord, Have Called you in Righteousness, and Will Hold your hand and Keep you. And I Will
establish you as a Covenant of the people, for a Light unto the nations.

THE WORLD Before we get on to the calamities in Israel let us take a look around the world.

UPRISING IN EGYPT

The successful uprising in Tunisia, which, we have reason to hope. will lead to a democratic regime, is having echoes elsewhere in the Arab world. Tens of thousands are protesting the Mubarak regime in Egypt and, while the government is trying to put it down by force, the demonstrations are going forward and deserve support from all of us. Here is a. report from Amnesty USA. The establishment of a democratic government in Egypt and other Arab countries can only be good for Israel and the cause of peace. The opposition is led by the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Nobel peace laureate and Egyptian opposition politician Mohamed El Baradei who has arrived in Cairo as anti-government protests continue to spread. For more details, I refer you to the BBC. If El Baradei becomes the leader of Egypt, the country will enter a new age. Let us hope for the best.

JUSTICE FOR WORKERS

Cambodian textile workers protesting

If you buy clothes from Gap, Zara and H&M, you should know that you are wearing the fruits of the labor of exploited sweatshop workers. Events at a factory in Cambodia came to a head and workers were fired for striking and demanding better working conditions. Please raise your voice to protest this injustice which, alas, is only too typical of the way corporations from the developed world exploit and abuse the Third World.

IN THE USA the situation is not much better for workers at a food plant. The US AFL-CIO and the global union federation ICEM have joined the IUF in lodging a formal complaint against French-based sugar and starch maker Roquette Frères for violating the Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The workers have been locked out since September 28 in a contract dispute. Please join the protest against this abuse of working people.

REPRESSION OF WORKERS IN TURKEY While we are talking about workers' rights, the time has certainly come to reform the abusive and repressive labor laws of Turkey. This country, which considers itself a progressive democracy has shameful laws on the books. Please let the Turkish government know that this is
unacceptable to you.

RETRIBUTION FOR WIKILEAKS--ILL TREATMENT OF US SOLDIER We do not usually think of the United States as a country where human rights are trampled upon by the military establishment. A 23 year old soldier,Bradley Manning, accused of collaboration with Wikileaks, is being held in inhuman pre-trial detention conditions. Amnesty International has protested to the American authorities. "The repressive conditions imposed on Manning breach the US's obligations to treat detainees with humanity and dignity," said Susan Lee. It seems that they are taking revenge on him for the embarrassment caused by the disclosures, although he has not yet been tried nor convicted of any offense

TUNA IS BAD NEWS for all of us who are concerned about mercury pollution in our food supply. The FDA says: “Nearly all fish and shellfish contain traces of methylmercury. However, larger fish that have lived longer have the highest levels of methylmercury because they’ve had more time to accumulate it.”
What can methylmercury do to us humans? For starters: brain damage, memory loss, personality change, tremors, spontaneous abortion, and damage to a developing fetus. Fatigue and memory loss caused by mercury poisoning from eating fish is so common that doctors even have a name for it: fish fog. Read more.
Global warming which leads to loss of sea ice also plays a role in the enhancement of the risk of mercury poisoning in the food chain. This is not a trivial matter and I think we should all reconsider our consumption of top-of-the-marine-food chain fish in which mercury accumulates.

NOW TO THE SITUATION IN ISRAEL The brouhaha concerning the appointment of a new Chief of Staff for the Army is discussed above. It is symptomatic of the general state of affairs. The latest Al Jazeera leaks have shown that we could have had a peace deal long ago if only our government had had the cojones to face down the settlers. Gideon Levy points out what a catastrophic error was made by our government. It is not the first. As far back as 1983, we could have given the West Bank back to King Hussein in framework of the London Agreement between Hussein and Peres, which was rejected by Shamir and his right wing government. That Zipi Livni would reject a most generous Palestinian offer because of Har Homa and Maaleh Adumim, two settlements near Jerusalem, is shocking, although it should not be in view of her track record as a right-winger. To be fair, we should recall that this is Israel and that she and Olmert might have well paid with their lives for accepting such a deal. It is becoming apparent that peace is not a high priority for Israel, government and people, and that holding on to territory is more important.

In the light of these disclosures it is hard to know what to make of two op-eds, one in the New York Times by Jeffrey Goldberg and Hussein Ibish on so called Good News from the Middle East and the other by Bradley Burston, who should know better, in Haaretz online. The articles are both upbeat with respect to the prospects of peace and ending the occupation. These writers, with all due respect, are, in my humble opinion, whistling in the dark. There is a grasping at straws in both articles. I participated in the big demonstration for democracy in Tel Aviv and indeed thousands turned out, but we in the liberal community in Israel are still highly marginalized and the signs of peace that Goldberg and Ibish as well as Burston grasped at are ephemeral at best. Yes, Niztan Hurwitz and even Meir Shitrit gave inspiring speeches, but there was no sign of Zipi Livni nor Shaul Mofaz, the real power brokers in Kadima I would be delighted to be proven wrong and promise to eat my favorite Tilley hat in public if indeed all these beautiful prophecies were to come true.

I attended the granting of the Yishayahu Leibowitz prize this week to Shulamit Aloni and Sara Beninga the leader of the Sheikh Jarrakh struggle.

A banner from a demonstration against the Sheikh Jarrah evictions.

We saw film clips of Leibowitz predicting exactly what is happening today as a result of the continued Occupation, our steady descent into bestiality as he described it and what he called the nazification of our society. Again, inspiring speeches were made, but it was all preaching to the choir. Indeed many young people see the futility of our path and some even are broken by it, as was Khalil Givati-Rapp , but too many others buy the brainwashing and a large part of the population just enjoys the good life in the bubble known as the State of Tel Aviv.

DUMB
I often wonder why we are so DUMB as to believe that the Palestinians will all pack up and move to Jordan at our behest and that we shall inherit the Greater Land of Israel from a benign God who knows only us. I came across an article by William Rivers Pitt in Truthout that helps to put it in perspective. The DUMB that we are dealing with here is the same DUMB that drives the Tea Party and the rest of the right wing around the world. I would like to share his article on DUMB with you, not that there is much consolation in it.

Let us least make some noise. There will be a demonstration on Tuesday Feb. 1 in front of the JNF office in Jerusalem to protest the barbaric actions of that organization at El Arakeeb. For details write to manor12@zahav.net.il. Buses from Tel Aviv Central Railroad station at 1300.

Lest I send you off completely depressed, I wind up with some good news about the progress towards recovery of Gabrielle Giffords, a new years greeting from the Elders and a few smiles from Andy Borowitz on Michelle Bachman and Gene Weingarten whose Below the Beltway blog deals with nothing more momentous than life at the laundromat.

The Bad News Blog is Back, January 12, 2010

2011-01-12T23:24:00.007+02:00


Gabrille Giffords

MADNESS EVERYWHERE

It seems that the nutty world has gone even more over the edge since the last of these postings. The shooting of Gabrielle Giffords,
the Congresswoman, in Tucson is an example of how the world is evolving and what violent political discourse can generate. I agree totally with William Rivers Pitt that the crazies who fire the shots are driven by the rhetoric of the fanatic right. Indeed there are people who will say this was just one bad weed (e.g. Yigal Amir who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin) or a single deranged individual, in order to avoid accountability of the right, as claimed by Charles Krauthammer . As said by Shulamit Aloni
about Amir, these weeds are raised in a well fertilized flower bed by people who cannot abide certain things such as a black President or a peace agreement or whatever drives their madness. For the Tucson case no one can claim a direct connection between Loughner and Sarah Palin, Glen Beck and the rest, but in the Rabin assassination, I have no doubt that rabbis from the West Bank settlements sent him and the government lacked the cojones to investigate them. It was convenient to hang it all on a deranged loner.
Robert Kennedy Jr. brings back his memory of the assassination of his Uncle Jack and the wild right wing incitement that gripped Dallas at that time. He ends with "Gabrielle Giffords lies in a hospital room fighting for her life, and a precious nine-year-old girl is dead along with five others. Let's pray for them and for our country and hope this tragedy prompts another round of examination of conscience."
Christina Green, born on Sept. 11, 2001, a day of unmatched terrorism, died at the hands of a terrorist.
It is sad that her funeral required protection from anti-gay activists by emergency legislation. These nuts from Topeka claim that all the bad things are a result of homosexuality and indeed will picket the funeral of Judge Roll and the hospital where Gabrielle Giffords is fighting for her life. How beautiful is life in a world of hate, all in the name of God and Christ.
The Westboro Baptist Church is a travesty of religion.

SAVE THE BEES Bees are dying off in the billions and our entire food supply is in danger. I append a call to sign a petition to put a stop to the use of pesticides that are causing the catastrophe. Please sign and pass it on.

ARCHBISHOP EMERITUS TUTU
I also would like to ask you to sign a petition to protect Archbishop Desmond Tutu from the horrible personal attacks that have been made on him by Jewish organizations because of his criticism, most justified, of human rights violations. Archbishop Tutu deserves better of us.

ISRAEL TODAY--IN THE PITS
We are living through terrible times in Israel today. The anti-democratic elements in the body politic have found a leader in our Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and legislative initiatives designed to stifle dissent and impose a fascist style political culture are being passed in the Knesset, one by one. The latest is a law to set up a parliamentary committee to investigate left wing and human rights organizations. Some of us are old enough to remember HUAC and the excesses of the McCarthy
era. One might consider converting to an Eastern religion that preaches reincarnation since Joe McCarthy is alive and well in Israel,
Lieberman's party pushed through the law on investigating human rights organization in a debate in which they referred to people like myself as "germ" and "traitors." To be fair, we must say that several right wing MK's stood up against him and incurred his wrath. People like Begin and Meridor, although conservative and nationalist in their views, understand that such legislation is dangerous for our society as a whole and for our democratic way of life, or what is left of it. They incurred the wrath of Lieberman who attacked them as weak on patriotism and claimed that left wing groups are collaborators with terrorists.   For his part, Meridor defended his position and referred to the initiative as "dangerous." Indeed it is.
People on the left were much more explicit. In truth, two years ago Shulamit Aloni lamented the demise of democracy in Israel. Yossi Gurvitz has published a blog statement on the question of the appointment of the new Chief of Staff. The question of the legitimacy of Glantz as CoS is now before the Supreme Court and YG casts serious doubt on the courage and integrity of the court. He has a point and I wish I could share his blog with all of you. Those who read Hebrew are invited to open the blog link that appears alongside this blog.
Amnon Dankner, the writer and former editor of the mass circulation Maariv, has apparently also walked the Road to Damascus and has responded the latest round of fascist outbreaks in the country with a very strong essay. in Hebrew in which he tells us that he is now ashamed to be an Israeli. Where has he been he all these years, on Robinson Crusoe's island?    Richard Silverstein has a partial translation into English on his blog .
Yossi Sarid the former Minister of Education and former Head of the Meretz party invokes the memory of the late and unlamented fascist rabbi, Meir Kahane in describing Lieberman. There is much to be said for this simile.
TUCSON IN ISRAEL
We have experienced something similar to the right wing incitement that led to Tucson. A film was posted on YouTube calling for the assassination of Shai Nitzan the deputy state attorney. In this case, the man was found and is now in custody.   The same person also posted a call to   assassinate Ehud Barak the defense minister. As in the United States, such motivation derives from the inflammatory rhetoric of the right wing. We also see a repeat of the Sarah Palin blood libel complaint in the reaction of a right wing parliament member to the arrest in the Nitzan/Barak case.
DEATH IN BIL'IN


A protest against the separation fence in Bil’in in 2009. Jawaher Abu Rahmah can be seen in the second row in a black and white shirt. Photo by: Hamadi Abu Rahmah

Jawaher Abu Ramah died young. She stood facing the demonstrators against the separation fence in her village, inhaled very large quantities of the gas that Israel Defense Forces soldiers fired that day, collapsed and died several hours later at a Ramallah hospital.
Since this event, the Army has been spinning one lie after the other in a vain attempt to avoid responsibility. It is indeed surprising that they care, since they shot an old man in his bed this week and then shrugged it off as an identification error. I wonder if a day of reckoning for these bloodthirsty killers will ever come. Let me link you to Gideon Levy who can rant better than I can and who has more details.
GENOCIDE?
I must add another link from Richard Silverstein in the blog Tikkun Olam who points out that Orthodox rabbis in a so-called family publication are calling for bringing "Amalek" to death camps. This is an attack on rabbis who objected to the command not to rent or sell to Arabs. We should all be proud of our rabbis.
מעניין אם את ריכוז העמלקים במחנות
השמדה הם ישאירו לאחרים או אולי יכריעו
שמחיית עמלק כבר לא רלוונטית. ימים יגידו.

Gene Weingarten has nothing new this week , but I can give you a Tom Toles cartoon on the situation in the US:

and a Borowitz comment on the same issue.
Have a nice week. Next week we will have a Pollyanna blog.