More Parries
December 2008
Stop Yesterday
Is the goal of Israel’s assault on Gaza to discourage Hamas from firing rockets, or is it to render Hamas incapable of firing rockets? These are two very different projects, yet we are hearing about both from the government, which worryingly suggests that the government isn’t quite sure.
Short-circuiting Place-based Longing
If there is one tangible benefit to having lived in a variety of places it’s that it furnishes evidence of the futility of longing to be elsewhere.
October 2008
Ebullience, Please
A President of the United States must be ebullient. At the presidential debates we should have seen McCain like we saw him at the Al Smith dinner.
September 2008
History Tonight, McCain vs. Obama
McCain pulled through but he’d better improve, better get relaxed. This was the big one, and Obama came off a 21st century Brat Packer.
Encounter at Wetherspoone’s
As if those glass double doors belong to a wild saloon wherein one must repulse brigands just for a peaceful drink.
August 2008
A Crawl Across Crawley, Part 1
Irit, the Jam and I walk from Brighton to Gatwick Airport.
July 2008
Suddenly Seymour
Time was, Seymour Hersh’s dispatches were a cause for minor celebration. They were full- and deep-throated journalistic tours de force, possible changers of paradigms. But his latest, “Preparing the Battlefield” on funding covert ops in Iran, leaves too many clues that reveal precisely where he’s coming from.
June 2008
Another End of Times
With the recent reported training exercises over Crete, perhaps Israel’s strike on the Iranian regime’s machinery of genocide has already begun.
Dead Till Eilenspiegel
Beyond steadfastness and vigor in prosecuting Islamofascism, John McCain seems an American president I’d love even more than the great liberator George W. Bush (most of you just left, I know) because he is more American on immigration than either his party or the other.
All So Simple
First, there is a general moode and desire to write.
March 2008
Why AAPL
Apple’s operating system will, I believe, become in time the dominant one, and with a current market share of only 6% or so, that’s a lot more computers to sell. And as the only operating system seller that also sells the computers it runs on, as well as owning the shops they’re sold from, Apple stands to become a colossus, even a frightening one.
Clash of the Midgets
My phone! One of the reasons I didn’t want an iPhone is that I’m invested in the T9 text entry method and like it. But while I do like the Nokia N95’s slider, it creates discomfort when entering text because all the weight in the phone is further up.
January 2008
Dangers of the Gaza-Egypt border breach
Hamas may try to use Egyptian territory to stage cross-border attacks on Israel, aiming to operate in parts of the Sinai as Hezballah does in southern Lebanon.
Glick Dismisses Gaza Border Breach
Caroline Glick, the strident Jerusalem Post columnist, seems to see the Gaza-Egypt border breach as yet another in a long line of Israeli strategic disasters by incompetent leaders. I’m not convinced however of her arguments, mainly because she doesn’t make any.
Israel’s Greatest Victory Since Osirak
The great tactician Ariel Sharon steamrolled through Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and today we see another step in the unfolding of this masterplan to staunch the damage caused by the victory of the Six Day War in 1967.
I Do Like Mondays
First procedure: clean out the 2-cup mokka from the previous usage. The sink here is metal and I enjoy lightly bashing the coffee holder against it to knock the damp grains out then putting them in the rubbish before swilling out the remains under the tap. The sound is just the same as baristas make in cafes.
The Small Adventures - Part 2
There in the empty restaurant by the water at Dieppe I had toast with foie gras, a carafe of red wine, a huge plate of mussels and chips, and finally a creme brulee. Somehow, though I’ve eaten in restaurants hundreds of times, I felt grown up sitting there alone on my travels.
December 2007
The Small Adventures
Of course we were late for the train. We enquired frantically among the taxis for one who would accept the two dogs—mine and Davide’s—and take us to Termini Station so I could catch the 11pm train to Milan that would be one third of our journey to Britain.
Tony Blair and the Four-State Vision
Ariel Sharon’s disengagement policy reflected an understanding that ownership of the Palestinian issue is shared with Egypt and Jordan. Once Tony Blair acquires this view, he can help facilitate an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Spooked, They’ll Annoint Rudy
Because of the recent US National Intelligence Report, the electorate will turn to someone who demonstrates not only the ideological conviction required to continue to prosecute Islamism, but also the administrative savvy to reform entrenched bureacracies.
October 2007
A Restoration and Return
There she was, sitting outside the apartment block! How did she do it? Dogs must have some sort of navigational sense we don’t understand.
Curs to Fate
Yesterday I lost Jam in Villa Borghese, the central park here in Rome. She has not turned up since.
This Trip’s Last Day
I went to Astor Place Haircutters. I crossed Manhattan Bridge on foot. I walked west along Canal St, seeking a bamboo steamer.
I, Thou and Pastor Bob
At Rome I felt queasy that they would paint and revere scenes that occured in Israel, but here, looking at the Calvary Church campus, I felt that the religious energy is actually here, that we are far enough away from the places of the events themselves that they can finally become abstracted and spiritualized and kept relevant. An ocean and a small continent separate Fort Lauderdale from Afula.
September 2007
The Big and Easy
The moon is shining through these tropical September clouds, directly above a neighbor’s palm tree, and it’s completely full. An airplane is landing at a nearby airfield. I ramble, unable to reach what I mean, perhaps because what I mean is an almost meaningless jumble of contradictory thoughts that are less thoughts than incomplete attempts to label fleeting tumbling emotions.
Flightblogging
With the squeaks from the front and the clatter from the bulkheads and the smell from the toilet, there’s a reason to prefer Gatwick and the train over Heathrow and the bus. It’s very misty but we’re here. Korean Air Cargo. A parking lot.
August 2007
A Drop in Time
To have a camera back again a personal epoch later feels like a time machine squared. Your chronicling device—itself a time machine of sorts—is suddenly back to what it was years ago, before much was changed, which in itself somewhat returns you to those times.
Sauna Losing Heat
Rather than reaching the heights, to exciting thoughts and feelings, I tend increasingly in the sauna to just sit and think about the work I’ve just done and the work I’m about to do after. Something’s missing.
A Ride to Gatwick Airport
Gatwick is my airport now, largely unchanged since 1986, so it now looks tawdry. Airports. They’re so charged, so symbolic, and so empty once you’re at one; I dream of them often.
July 2007
Busy, Busy City
There’s a bridge in London’s St. James’s park where you can see Buckingham Palace at one end of the pond and Whitehall at the other, with the London Eye behind. Whitehall looked less a thumping fast haven for bureaucrats than a fairytale town, with the improbable slowly-moving Eye completing the fantasy.
First Time in this House All Day
One reaction (in The Times) to Islamist terrorist doctors: “Nowhere can inequality be so devastatingly stark as in a well-resourced British hospital.” So now we know: it’s understandable that after removing an annoying woman’s varicose veins, why, one sets a car alight and drives it into an airport departure hall.
The Soft Ache of Cold Hotels
The back yard is now set up and quite effortlessly picturesque, with its greenage and raw brick walls. Until we start trying to grow wee vegetables nothing else need be done except the daily maintenance of clearing the butts from the ashtray and the leaves from the ground.
June 2007
Only the Rustle in the Trees
We all, like twinkles on a sunny day’s waves, shine briefly. That I do know to be true. Other perspectives are futile. Grief, loss—these are the great teachers surely. Understand that what one has will pass.
A Rash Appointment
I have a rash on my face these days, reaching from my forehead down the sides of my nose and to my mouth. It went away while I was in America but now back in Britain it’s returned. How can that be?
A Cabaret Old Chum
It’s a last bastion of civility, Brian mused ruefully (with that inability of his to be really rued), as we had a beer walking through Penn Station to his train. I realized that I don’t know people like him anymore: libertarian Democrats.
Fatahland and Hamastan
Wherein I obsess about developments in Gaza rather than recording the sights and sounds of New York City in the springtime.
Squelching in a Bath of Me
I rode the Metro subway for the first time—didn’t even known Los Angeles has one. It’s cheap and clean, but the problem is there just aren’t that many trains, as if the city sabotages its own public transport system and wants you to have a car.
Stars, Stripes and Superlatives
Here in Los Angeles I am bombarded with superlatives. Daniel’s record collection. The Bikram Yoga College of India world headquarters. Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. Cutting-edge web applications by people down from the Bay Area. All mixed in with the most ravaging mediocrity.
Pursuit of Hashemesh
Welcome to three weeks in America. Top story in USA Today: Tiger Woods is going to design a golf course.
May 2007
Bikram’s Yoga, Meet David Allen’s GTD
Both systems are comprehensive in their respective realms and, controversially, ground-up rather than top-down.
My City to Your City
A bunch of loud white kids came running down from the promenade shouting vilely to each other. I was reminded of El Topo (we saw it yesterday at the fabulous Duke of York cinema) and I was reminded of the scene when the three bandits gradually build up their cackling harassment of the man in black as he rides into their valley.
Shite on Brighton
“Like many provincial towns,” the Private Eye reviewer stabs, “Brighton, as depicted in this hacked-together tribute, defines itself more by what it isn’t than by what it is. It’s not London, for one thing.”
From DisneyWorld to Watford
I needed my wallet more than the gypsies did.
Back in Black
Please pardon the unannounced, unplanned and unbecoming two weeks off. Following are some memorable moments from them in the order they popped into mind.
Daily Yin
For my first test of the day as day, I open the back door and step outside to the little patio to see the sky and feel the air. I realize not everybody does this, so if people tell me I’m a miserable bastard then perhaps this little habit will correct their impression.
April 2007
Wetherspoones and Raisins
No that’s not right, said I, sipping strong tea just brewed. Klement wanted me to read over an email he wrote. “Thank you for taking your time to interview me,” it began. My Dad also called to tell me of his new socks.
Mind the Dream
Dreaming about our passed companions as if they are alive requires tricks to the dreaming mind to overcome what it believes and knows to be true.
The Meaning Addiction
I’m reading Shardik by Richard Adams, famous for Watership Down. I chose it because it’s about religion, and Adams demonstrated such insight there with the rabbits’ religion—“Oh Frith on the hill, he made it all for us!”—that he’s clearly a contributor to our understanding of ourselves and our meaning addiction.
Short Stuff
Persian civilization typefaces, Palestinian innovation, Flood worries, that’s life with websites, Brighton is slow, and bad Jajah.
hings in the Middle East are always developing, eh? People dismiss it as the same old conflict, but what’s happening today is nothing like what has ever happened before. Palestinian Arabs, quasi-sovereign for the first time, are descending into civil war in Gaza. Lebanon, acting militarily for the first time, is going after al-Qaeda cells within its Palestinian camps. Israel is undergoing political convulsions, at the beginning it seems of hammering out a new political system, the mechanics of which may involve direct representation at last and a change in the role of the political parties. And all these developments among the neighbors are in play each with the other.
And there is Iran. Currently, the Iraq war is both a success, in that it took the battle to a place of America’s choosing, and a failure, in that it is failing to win that battle. Failing to win that battle encourages rather than squelches militant Islamism, suggesting that militant Islamism can succeed anywhere it is extensively applied. This can only give Iran a swelling sense of success, particularly since it is now publicly assisting that battle. For America to announce and go on announcing that Iranians are assisting the terror campaign in Iraq, yet do nothing about this, suggests that America is on the path to surrender and withdrawal in Iraq. We’ll see. Certainly, mainstream politicians still say it’s vital to stay the course in Iraq—to wit, John McCain’s eloquent plea—but that is becoming an isolated position.
Given that it seems likely Iran will be able to continue to expand its harassment, either America or Israel will go to war with Iran. America and Iran at war we can almost conceive of. But Iran and Israel? Can soldiers of either power even confront each other? Iran will use the Palestinians and Lebanese to fight its war on the ground and with short-range missiles; if Iran does get involved, it can only be by missile. Chemical? Whereas Israel, with the flight codes from the United States, will bomb Iran. Bombs vs missiles. And the Arab countries? On the one hand, their war objectives are identical to Israel’s: stop Iran from getting the Bomb. On the other, each would rush in to grab a piece of Israel if she appeared sufficiently bedraggled. (Flourish and honor only appear similar.)
Which is why everyone— not just the Europeans but the US, even Israel—is asking: Can we live with an Iranian bomb? Stopping them from having it will require a big war that may not be actually necessary; the Pakistanis have it, Allah help us all, yet we’re all still here; and it seems sensible to assume the Iranians wouldn’t actually drop their bomb on anyone, but instead use it as a large pair of testicles allowing them to continue and expand with more impunity their current murderous but non-WMD undermining of other nations. And that, it could be argued, may not be worth launching a war over. But it certainly is; even that best case scenario—is intolerable.
This, it seems, is the true issue facing the allies, but in Israel it seems doubtful the current government is capable of addressing it. According to a Ynet Update, four Knesset motions of no confidence just failed! These are motions about a government that the public feels less confident about than any other ever, so why are the motions failing? And why four of them, incidentally? Couldn’t the various parties tabling them have gathered their forces and drafted a single motion that actually passed? What is going on there? Why are all the opposition parties defying the public to keep Olmert and Kadima in there? Is it because the only conceivable alternative is Netanyahu and the Likud, and the entire Knesset believes ‘Anything but Bibi?’ Hey, if we’re still talking fulfilling Sharon’s legacy, Netanyahu was as senior a minister of Arik’s as any, tasked with an economy about to collapse Argentina-style, as Netanyahu puts it—a vital fiefdom at a crucial time, and he succeeded royally.
Meanwhile Israel’s response to Hamas’s rockets is returning to form, the pressure growing gradually in a way far more ominous to an enemy, it seems to me, than bombing Beirut Airport. Israel can pretty much seize any Palestinian it wants, because Israel is still the legal occupier, and it just has. The media, for all its bias towards the Palestinians, still uses the verb “arrest” when Israel takes Palestinians, not “capture” or “kidnap”, with Israel always doing it according to her own procedures, always with legalistic and bureacratic cover, always with a charge. But these charges can be absurd, as Isabel Kershner reports for the Herald Tribune: among the charges against the detainees is membership in Hamas, which is probably still criminal in Israeli military law, so Israel can arrest whichever Palestinian leader it wishes to. This power is one of Israel’s key military assets in its struggle to meet the Palestinians.
This ability to disdain the spirit for the letter of law indefinitely is the rocklike, sophisticated side of the elite Israeli mind that I never acquired. Law, like anything and everything else, is subservient to national survival. Even as I respect, admire and am grateful for their tenacious grip on values—to me Herzl’s Israel is up there with Darwin’s natural selection and Adam Smith’s invisible hand in the pantheon of great modern creations—nonetheless, I have hostility to these methods, even if I can’t conceive of anything different or better. There are dangers, as Yishayahu Liebowitz warned: abuse of law to attend to enemies will in time coarsen a young society’s love of law.
That said, I believe prudence is valued highly in Israel’s security elite, even as initiative is correctly considered the key to advancement (I’m speculating, having never allowed my interest in officership past my belly).
One recent Israeli move I do very much admire is Disengagement. In order to defuse the Palestinian national movement, Israel is trying to have Gaza revert back to its natural state as a sphere of interest of Egypt’s, and the West Bank to Jordan. Already there are tantalizing lines in the papers pointing to the eventual success of this audacious withdrawal. Egypt objects to the possibility of foreign peacekeepers in Gaza, while Israel does not. Jordan has floated the idea of confederacy with the West Bank. This is how any improvement in the Levant will come about—Palestinians demonstrating to everyone, not just to Israel, that they are too weak, unstable and violent to be a constructive entity on their own—and Egypt, Israel and Jordan acting in concert to keep all four populations on a path towards peaceful prosperity.
What a fugue it is.
∞
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