“Sending arms to Ukraine tells their government exactly the opposite. It tells them that they should keep fighting on and not accept the need to make those concessions.” What concessions, you stupid fuck? Nobody is asking Ukraine for any “concessions.” It’s perfectly OK not to follow the Russian war against Ukraine but if you can’t be bothered to keep up, why chirp like an unhinged parrot?
[In Russian. But it’s a video, and the words are not important.] Students in Russia make fun of their teacher by adding a very dangerous drug to her cigarettes and then watching her very public freakout. This is a new drug that is devastating Russia right now. There are countless videos of people freaking out like this poor teacher while on it. Does anybody know what it is?
“A WaPo opinion piece sets out to debunk Putin’s poll numbers but in fact does the opposite, leading to the conclusion that Putin’s numbers today are real and that he has the resources to stay popular for quite some time.” Yes, they are absolutely real. Russians love him, adore him, worship him.
How come there are so many people who are not vaccinated? I had to be vaccinated 4 times for the same old measles because none of my campuses accepted the previous vaccinations. My shoulders are covered with dents from these repeated vaccinations. Two of them took place within months of each other. They were identical but campuses refused to have me without administering ones of their own. Is it just foreigners who are so insistently vaccinated?
Do you think this is just a pose? Or are there people who are so incredibly dense that they actually feel guilty for being good parents? “Sally may only be in kindergarten, but already she has visited museums in four major cities. Sally may be going to a “poor” school, but the simple act of growing up in our family will give her an advantage over other students, whatever school she attends. And I feel kind of bad about that. It’s easy to talk about “poor” schools and “rich” schools with their unequal funding and the ways kids in poor school district get shortchanged. It is harder, at least for me, to talk about the educational inequalities that begin in the home. Why? Because I am actively transmitting privilege.” When people start with this kind of thing, I feel intense vicarious shame because it’s embarrassing to see these fake holier-than-thou speeches.
Do you think these protesters are for real? Or were they hired to make Kissinger and McCain look good? Because they managed that. I’ve never had such warm and fuzzy feelings about either before.
Another hysterical, weepy manifesto by another academic hysteric. These people are so boring and monotonous.
Why reverse oppression simply cannot exist. And I can’t believe this still has to be explained.
Rauner is an idiot and Illinois is fucked.
[In Russian]. A mother of seven is arrested in Russia for high treason.
A beautiful post on a search for a former professor. Highly recommended. Not the search, I mean, but the post.
And a very rare good post on stumbling through college on Inside Higher Ed.
The story that finally convinced everybody of Bill Cosby’s guilt.
Is it true that Burj Khalifa was on fire?? I hope not because I so adore that building. I want to travel to see it for real one day.
Again, I’m wondering, is this a pose, or do people actually believe this sort of thing? “Who else is offering a competing, compelling message? Who else is making sure their lights stay on? Who else is standing up for their right to live in a decent society where we all take care of each other, take responsibility for each other, lift each other up?” Does anybody really want to live in a society where adults “take responsibility” for other adults? This imaginary society sounds absolutely horrifying. And the saddest part is that it was a good post before the author started preaching in this embarrassing way.
The multitude of ways in which people use psychiatric diagnoses to feel good about themselves. Why work on having an individuality when you can always use the DSM to provide an identity?
“Several states are looking into digitizing driver’s licenses for display on smartphones and Delaware wants to be the first to implement the system.” ‘Cause an actual license is so hard to carry around, or what?
A long and wordy illustration that oral traumas shouldn’t be left untreated for too long. Of course, there are sufferers like me, who don’t inflict our dysfunction on the world. And then there are those who derive exhibitionist pleasure from their masturbation around food.
For those who are fantasizing about basic income: here is what life on basic income looks like. You’ve got to hate people a whole lot to inflict it on them. “The rate of depression is 19 percent among people who have been unemployed for a year, compared to just 10 to 11 percent for people who went without jobs for just a few weeks.”
Hilarious bits from student essays.
[In Russian.] The burning of the holy images in Russia on February 2, 1930. And I feel happy every time I think about that.
Another blogger notices the phenomenon of the novels of female rage and their extreme popularity, a phenomenon that I’ve been writing about for years.
Do read this post on bullying for an example of somebody who has zero insight and zero maturity. Shocking and disturbing.
A good response to the favorite idiotic argument advanced by homophobes.
One of the many tragedies of Afghanistan.
[In Russian]. In Russia, a ritual murder of Obama will be part of a popular festival.
Get out of the meaningless gender wars! A really good video by our favorite Australian blogger.
“In college, you’re trying to stake out your own identity while navigating complex social situations in a setting that is most likely much more diverse than you’ve experienced in the past. The whole process is pretty stressful, especially when we note that most college campuses are also extremely competitive environments.” I keep forgetting these things because when I went to college, I was shouldering much, much heavier burdens than these lucky students ever get to face in their lives. But it’s important to be sensitive to their hardships.
Some freakazoid whose job title is “the Executive Director of the University of Texas System’s Institute for Transformational Learning” is suggesting in Inside Higher Ed that higher ed should be destroyed and substituted with job-training.
“The trouble is that the contemporary Western mind has a hard time grasping a basic truth about both Putin and ourselves; we are not the world, and Putin is not us.” Golden words, golden.
Should blogging substitute scholarly articles and books? My answer is, absolutely not, brr, yuk, what a horrible idea.
A pro-Ukrainian protest in Tel Aviv.
“I would like Putin strong enough to help destroy the Euro, and Europe strong enough to defeat his aggression in Ukraine. It will be interesting if one has to make a choice between the two goals.” God, why are people so irredeemably stupid?
Stalin’s grandson criticizes Putin. Yes, Putin is a lousy insect. But doesn’t Stalin’s grandson realize that the best thing he can do us crawl into a hole and pray nobody notices him?
“A recent survey revealed that companies expect a boost in pay, as well as a continued increase in hiring.” From experience, I know that this is going to make many people very depressed for some mysterious reason. Stay strong, folks! We can survive this good news! I believe in you!
And the post of the week is this brilliant post about small talk.
Clarissa's Blog 
@Drugged teacher: Krokodil? You don’t smoke it, as far as I know, but judging from the fact that this is russia, the drug was afforded by students and the massive effect, Krok is the only drug that comes to my mind.
@Reverse sexism: “The Dominant Group Has the Power to Define Reality”. Wow, are we in the fucking matrix or what? This is the kind of sentence I’d expect a red piller to write.
@NASA pictures: Space pictures are always cool. The mars rover also did a few really cool panorama shots: http://mars.nasa.gov/multimedia/interactives/billionpixel/. Beware though, quite a few images from various space agencies are either “digitally enhanced” or “artist renditions”.
@Stalin’s grandson: Stalin had children? And they survived? How did they not get disappeared?
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Yes, Stalin had 3 official and one unofficial child. I can write about them later if people want. Stalin had a fraught relationship with the eldest son but he adored the two youngest. He never did anything bad to the children or his wives.
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Would you kindly? I keep thinking about what I know of Stalins personality and I can’t imagine him raising children. And even if he had children, how did they survive? I would expect them to either die fighting for their father only to be called traitors to the motherland, or be killed shortly after Stalins fall.
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http://www.inquisitr.com/1807501/afghan-rugs-featuring-drones-tanks-jets-war-scenes-are-high-in-demand-in-u-s/
“Afghan rugs have traditionally depicted flowers, streams, and mountains. However, in a classic example of art depicting real life, the Afghani weavers have taken to weaving the scenes that have become all too familiar – aerial assault planes and ground attack vehicles, apart from events that altered the very course of history and their topography.”
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The morbid past of me wants to say ‘Well, at least we left a lasting impression”.
I can understand the Afghan side. They are either profiting the best they can from this situation, or are dealing with the trauma of having their nation torn apart in a decade long war. Both is really smart of the Afghan people.
But who are the people buying them? Why are Americans and other Westerners so interested in buying them?
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I’d buy. This is art. We’ll all die and turn to dust. Art is the only thing that will remain. And art is the only thing that redeems us all from the wars, and the horrors, and everything else.
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My first thought was krokodil, but Clarissa, you’re too shrewd to just jump to the drug that the American news media is making a big deal about being a problem in Russia, is it something pharmacological-based rather than back-alley cooked like krokodil or meth?
As for your vaccination question: It probably does have something to do with you being an immigrant. In my case, when I first came to Canada, being a new immigrant and bisexual worked against me, when I mentioned both these things, they scheduled me for a Hepatitis B vaccine, even though I’m not an IDU (intravenous drug user) and was in a monogamous relationship at the time.
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What is this krokodil thing? I never heard of it, and the word means “alligator or a green animal living in Africa” to me.
This new drug the Russians keep talking about is called “spice.” And it’s sold in the form of bath salts or whatever. And that’s the absolute extent of my knowledge but there is a very big deal being made about it in Russia.
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It’s basically home-cooked desomorphine. According to American journalists, the street name for this drug is “Krokodil” because long-term use causes the skin to turn scaly and green from necrosis, like a crocodile’s.
I’d heard about Spice before briefly in a really sensationalist Vice article, but seeing that video… yikes
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“According to American journalists, the street name for this drug is “Krokodil” because long-term use causes the skin to turn scaly and green from necrosis, like a crocodile’s.”
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There is a synthetic marijuana that goes under the euphemism, bath salts. In Australia it was called Kronic. It’s very bad for you. Some people have died..
Thanks for the video link, by the way.
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http://www.standard.net.au/story/2270242/kronic-user-warns-of-frightening-effect/
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Yes, this is it. Synthetic cannabioids.
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I’m beyond tired of the gender wars, as well. If there were ever a more pointless pastime, I don’t know what it is.
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It’s basically nutty. The recent guy accused me of having devious motives because I “liked” his YouTube videos. He’s a gay guy, and I’ being a woman, shouldn’t have “liked” them. People are so infantile.
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Spice is a catch-all name for dried plant matter sprayed with whatever high-making substance hasn’t been made illegal yet in the country where it’s sold, so it’s more of a brandname than a chemical substance (for example, none of spice’s iterations in Romania had those particular side effects). To find out what the hell is in that thing, you’ll probably need to find a Russian chemical analysis of it.
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Move a methyl group and a hydroxyl group and you can nearly split the difference between krokodil and heroin, literally as well as figuratively …
The problem with krokodil is the impurities — heavy amounts of reactive iodine and phosphorus are typically present, which eventually cause anything from septicaemia to necrotising fasciitis, the latter being the sort of thing that Fawkes Snooze likes to mention in its coverage.
Desomorphine isn’t exactly a gentle analgesic anyway, which is why it’s no longer prescribed — it’s been banned since the 1930s in the United States, for instance.
Someone taught an old drug new tricks.
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As for the horrific tendency of people to revel in their psychiatric diagnoses, I do believe this to be an extremely bad cultural trend. Now that I understand the lay of the land as it is for the majority in the industrialised English speaking world, I also understand why it was so difficult for me to find the means to solve my own problems, that is from the position of someone who had the opposite condition to most people brought up in the West. They are inclined to speak their minds to all and sundry. I was suffering from shame so deep it swallowed all my emotions and I couldn’t access them anymore. That was actually my state, and whenever I tried to speak, people accused me of being arrogant. I was suffering from profound repression. All I got from people was that I must be a female stereotype (a very Western one!) because I was trying to articulate something I could not actually articulate. When one’s emotions are buried deep, it is amazing how little it is really possibly to articulate. And then these Western types kept saying, “Oh, no, you are drawing attention to yourself,” as if I already had a typical Western character and was being flamboyant. And I’ve had random fly-by-night shooters label me with a lot of typical Western characteristics, due to the general prevalance of psychiatric terms in the contemporary culture. Severe emotional repression is the exact opposite to the highly integrated and/or emotionally charged character that most Western females are labeled with, which they also probably correspond to more or less. This attitude of flamboyant self-diagnosis that many contemporary people go in for really makes mental health into a very superficial cultural discourse, and does nothing to get to the bottom of the systemic pathologies that are engendered and reinforced by imposing gender stereotypes. To be deemed feminine and loquacious and emotionally volatile when my problem was an excessive tendency to impose control over myself has not been helpful. My level of emotional control always was and still is very high. It became pathologically high, though, when I was taking out my aggression on myself, rather than integrating it with the rest of my being.
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I understand completely the part about exercising complete control over oneself when one is surrounded by these blabby psychos who think that psychological health is a great area for them to engage in yet another round of identity wars. They first invent diagnoses and then declare the diagnoses to be the core of their identity. And then they start censoring everybody around them for not conforming to these diagnoses.
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Yeah, it is like sinking sand if you meet someone with this world view. They might seem ok on the surface, but then they start labeling you with this or that aspect of things. And I KNOW by all this time that I do not have, by any means, a typical Western modern character structure, so I KNOW when this happens that what is taking place is usually projection, if not just simply shoddy thinking. There tends to come a point when people reveal their shoddy thinking to me — or their incapacity for thought. Suddenly I become aware that somebody has been reading me as a Western character type all the time, whereas I had made clear to them that I am not. I have very much an austere, post-war character structure, and I’ve inherited the shame from my father who was beaten in the war. So I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve to the extent of the modern personality. This makes people uneasy. They think they know me, but they also feel they are not sure. And rightly so. They shouldn’t be sure because the lower reaches of my character structure are repressed and reticient. When the turning point comes and it is apparent that I am not as easy to “read” as I was thought to be, that is when the accusations fly that I have somehow been rather tricky. In an attempt toget to know me better, I am given many different labels that pertain to people dyametically different from I in character structure.
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It’s actually true. They do that. And the reason I know they will continue to do that is they are in denial! All too predictable, what they do.
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“I am so allergic to MFA-generated poetry, and the words ‘he has good writing credentials, he has an MFA’ make me want to run in the other direction with my fingers in my ears.”
I am reminded of Robert Service and Rainer Maria Rilke, given some recent events, and somehow I doubt that the penance of an MFA programme would have made their poetry better.
I have seen the effects of an MFA on a former girlfriend’s writing, however — it went from possibly marketable (yet a bit rough) to absolutely horrible (yet not even worth watching like a motorway wreck) within about two years.
Would I admit to breaking up with her over how her art turned crap?
Yes, actually, I would. 🙂
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This is what true love of art is like! 🙂
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Weird:
A 2008 Pentagon think-tank study claimed Putin has Asperger’s syndrome
http://www.businessinsider.com/pentagon-study-says-that-putin-has-aspergers-syndrome-2015-2#ixzz3QqeH9TeQ
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\ [Stalin] He never did anything bad to the children or his wives.
So you don’t think he drove Svetlana’s mother to suicide?
Weren’t there rumours that he killed her?
Also, I have been wondering about your and Kotkin’s answers to the questions you mentioned in this post:
Could you write a follow up post with answers? I am especially interested in “What was his relationship with Lenin like?” but also in others. Above I asked you “9. Did Stalin kill his wife?”
All those questions are interesting.
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“So you don’t think he drove Svetlana’s mother to suicide?”
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I haven’t known that:
In Israel, Charlie Hebdo would not have even had the right to exist
In France, freedom of speech is considered a universal right, an Israeli law bans ‘offending religious sentiments.’
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.636511
Yisrael Beytenu (Avigdor Lieberman’s party) protests ban on Charlie Hebdo distribution in Israel
[…]
The Yisrael Beytenu activists set up tables with the magazine – featuring a cartoon of Prophet Muhammad on the cover – on display, but did not hand it out because of the ban imposed by the Central Elections Committee.
[…]
“We were astounded to learn that the Central Elections Committee acceded to MK Ahmad Tibi’s request to stop the distribution of copies of Charlie Hebdo,” the petition read. “This is a serious blow to the freedom of expression. It’s capitulation to radical Islamic terrorism and its representatives in the Knesset.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4623435,00.html
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What would be really powerful is if they put up the cover that made fun of Jews. This is what I’d do. I’d put up the trinity cartoon and sit under it with my cross and my images of saints to create cognitive dissonance in freaks of all sorts.
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Look, what a beautiful project – a series of articles on how FSU Jews changed Israel and on how Israel changed them (about my family too!):
http://www.haaretz.com/st/c/prod/eng/25yrs_russ_img/
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“And they said it openly – we are here not just to integrate, we don’t necessarily admire your culture, we don’t necessarily admire the country, but we know how to improve it, and we are out to make it better and we know how”
Of course, my evidence is all anecdotal but I had the impression that Russian-speaking immigrants were finding it particularly hard to adapt in Israel. But they find it hard to adapt anywhere, so it’s not a reflection on Israel.
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\ Of course, my evidence is all anecdotal but I had the impression that Russian-speaking immigrants were finding it particularly hard to adapt in Israel.
I live in Israel and I don’t think you’re right. The immigrants who found adapting the hardest were / are Jews from Ethiopia, while Jews from Arab countries historically did worse than European Jews. (I consider FSU as Europe too here.)
\ but we know how to improve it, and we are out to make it better and we know how”
And how do they know that if what they are leaving behind is kind of a mess?
It’s not like European Jews, who built Israel, were leaving a paradise behind.
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“It’s not like European Jews, who built Israel, were leaving a paradise behind.”
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Have I shared this poem about immigration? One of the few things in my lit Israeli textbooks I loved. Here is its englisg translation:
Pine
By Leah Goldberg
http://poemsintranslation.blogspot.co.il/2010/03/leah-goldberg-pine-from-hebrew.html
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Over Christmas I finally got around to reading Eichmann Before Jerusalem by Bettina Stangneth. I cannot recommend this book – newly translated from the German – highly enough.
[…] The title of course refers to Hannah Arendt’s omnipresent and over-praised account of Adolf Eichmann’s 1961 trial, Eichmann in Jerusalem: a report on the banality of evil. I would say that Stangneth’s book not merely surpasses but actually buries Arendt’s account. Not least in showing how Arendt was fooled by Eichmann’s role-play in the dock in Jerusalem.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/01/adolf-eichmann-hoped-his-arab-friends-would-continue-his-battle-against-the-jews/
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I found the info about area C interesting:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4624580,00.html
After reading it, Palestinian state looks less likely than ever.
Interesting what would happen, if Israel made the annexation formal.
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Holocaust exhibit in Estonia prefers laughing at history, triggers mass outrage
http://rt.com/news/230555-estonia-holocaust-museum-exhibition/
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This is the most corrupt, lying info resource in the world. Stupid Putinoid liars.
“A museum in Tartu, Estonia, has sparked condemnation after a very unorthodox approach to Holocaust remembrance: by laughing at it. Among the exhibits is a scandalous video of children playing tag in a gas chamber, minutes before death.”
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Now watched Israeli news: in the next 5 years, Israel expects to receive 100, 000 Russian and Ukrainian Jews. This is a huge number, considering that the huge Post-Soviet aliyah (immigration) between 1989 and 2006 was about 979,000.
You formerly criticized Israel as the place for the Jews, but you see that most go to Israel, when times are hard, not to Canada or some other place.
I would be glad to see more Russian-speaking people arrive. They tend to be secular, while % of religous in Israel seems to be rising. And I love hearing Russian language on the street.
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“You formerly criticized Israel as the place for the Jews, but you see that most go to Israel, when times are hard, not to Canada or some other place.”
“And I love hearing Russian language on the street.”
“They tend to be secular”
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Ещё раз про свободу (и немного про семью)
From “ГОРИЗОНТ СЕМЬИ О некоторых константах традиционного русского сознания”
http://turtle-t.livejournal.com/629964.html
// “Some other place” is hard to access. There are only 100 Jewish families that can enter through the easy-access immigration program into Canada each year.
100 families is a joke.
I know about “hard to access” part. What I meant is that today’s situation proves once again how necessary having Jewish nation state is. You said Jews aren’t safe in Israel, but they’ll get better life here than in FSU and be safer than in attacked regions of Ukraine. No country, except Israel, is ready to receive numerous Jews when the need arises.
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Today, Jews are much safer in Ukraine and Russia than in Israel.
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Now I am wondering whether Egypt will want to get the Bomb at some stage (or am I paranoid already? Who knows which regime lies in Egypt’s future?):
Russia to help Egypt build ‘a whole new nuclear power industry’ – Putin
…
Besides nuclear cooperation … The two countries have agreed on establishing a free trade zone with the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and a Russia industrial zone in the Suez Canal area.
…
“We have agreed on the need to maximize efforts to restore the negotiation process between Israelis and Palestinians on a two-state basis, with East Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Palestine,” Egyptian President Sisi said
http://rt.com/news/231055-putin-sisi-egypt-talks/
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After everything that’s been going on, a country that doesn’t want a bomb of its own must be populated by aliens from a different galaxy.
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\ Today, Jews are much safer in Ukraine and Russia than in Israel.
Just a few days ago, I talked with a woman from our former region in Ukraine, whose parents were trapped in the war zone. She couldn’t reach them by phone and was very worried. (I don’t know her, simply began talking with somebody in a shop.)
As for Russia, I don’t think Russians should expect something good soon. Immigrants from Russia and Ukraine get a chance at much better life in Israel than they had there.
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“Immigrants from Russia and Ukraine get a chance at much better life in Israel than they had there.”
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I see many successful FSU immigrants. Not everybody, of curse. But not the way you describe either. My family is among those who are happy they immigrated.
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Freudian slip, eh?
Again, let’s define successful.
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Mad world:
Police arrested three suspects on Monday who are allegedly involved in a scheme to buy lands in the West Bank using forged documents and without the consent of the Palestinian land owners.
[…]
The three suspects were allegedly involved in transferring ownership of lands from their Palestinian owners to the Al-Watan NGO, a part of the Amana Settlement Movement, which buys lands in the West Bank for the construction of Jewish settlements.
The NGO was given an Arab name to keep the Palestinian land owners remain oblivious to the fact they were selling their lands to Jews, particularly since the Palestinian Authority has threatened to sentence to death anyone who sells lands to Jews. For this reason, the deal is made through Arab straw men, when the buyer himself is not always aware of the fact he’s buying the land for Jews.
The three suspects – a Jewish lawyer, an Arab lawyer and an Arab realtor – are all from Jerusalem. […] Attorney Avihai Hajabi, who represents one of the suspects, said in response: “This is an outrageous investigation. All proceedings in the sale were conducted lawfully. All of the complaints against the legitimacy of the deals arose after the Palestinian land owners were threatened by elements in the Palestinian Authority, where it’s common knowledge that those who sell lands to Jews are sentenced to death.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4625061,00.html
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Capital has no interest in ethnicity, religion, or anything of the kind. It is – paradoxically – the great equalizer and the biggest threat to ethnic, racial and gender divisions. It will sweep away all borders, physical and mental, in its relentless drive to move and expand, always move and expand.
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Одним из главных событий нового литературного сезона 2010 стал выход во Франции, к столетию со дня смерти Льва Николаевича Толстого, неизданной повести Софьи Андреевны Толстой «Чья вина?» в переводе Kристины Зейтунян-Белоус под одной обложкой с новым переводом «Крейцеровой сонаты». Ведь повесть «Чья вина?» разгневанная и униженная Софья Андреевна написала в ответ на «Крейцерову сонату» мужа.
http://ru.rfi.fr/kultura/20100823-neizdannaya-povest-sofi-andreevny-tolstoi-chya-vina-v-novom-literaturnom-sezone/
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Wow, fascinating! That was Tolstoy’s most chauvinistic piece.
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Saw this book (don’t know if it’s good):
“Eleanor Of Aquitaine: By the Wrath of God, Queen of England” by Alison Weir.
Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine was one of the leading personalities of the Middle Ages and also one of the most controversial. She was beautiful, intelligent and wilful, and in her lifetime there were rumours about her that were not without substance. She had been reared in a relaxed and licentious court where the arts of the troubadours flourished, and was even said to have presided over the fabled Courts of Love. Eleanor married in turn Louis VII of France and Henry II of England, and was the mother of Richard the Lionheart and King John. She lived to be 82, but it was only in old age that she triumphed over the adversities and tragedies of her earlier years and became virtual ruler of England.
Eleanor has exerted a fascination over writers and biographers for 800 years, but the prevailing myths and legends that attach to her name still tend to obscure the truth. By careful research, Alison Weir has produced a vivid biography with a fresh and provocative perspective on this extraordinary woman.
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What do you think about the latest post of tareeva?
http://tareeva.livejournal.com/147004.html#comments
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I stopped reading her after her recent posts on how there was no discrimination against Ukrainians in the USSR because she lived in Ukraine and didn’t notice any discrimination. Even the best Russian is still, unfortunately, a Russian.
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Some teachers are insane:
There was an uproar in Belgium last week after a high-school math teacher in Brussels told a Polish student to “go back to Poland” in a German accent, and then told a Jewish student “We should put you all on freight wagons.”
The 16-year-old Jewish student responded to the teacher, saying “we do not joke about these things.”
Belgian magazine La Derniere Heure reported Friday that the incident occurred at the Emile Jacqmain high school in the Belgian capital, considered one of the best in the country.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4625165,00.html
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Groom-less bride takes Cairo by storm
Samah Hamdi causes viral frenzy, featuring her in a wedding dress, questions stigma attached to unmarried women
http://theindiansubcontinent.com/pakistan-news/item/80322-groom-less-bride-takes-cairo-by-storm
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South Africa looks disgusting now:
South African Jews to protest against visiting Palestinian terrorist […] Khaled, now 70, is a former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and took part in two airplane hijackings between 1969 and 1970, is now in a speaking tour. Arrested after the second incident, she was later freed in exchange for hostages held by the PFLP.
In an email to supporters announcing her tour, the South African BDS movement termed Khaled an icon of the Palestinian struggle, showing an image of her clutching an automatic weapon and comparing her to late South African president Nelson Mandela.
[…]
The Jewish umbrella group also expressed its shock at calls for Jewish students to be deregistered issued following Khaled’s speech at the Durban University of Technology on Wednesday.
“We had a meeting and analyzed international politics. We took the decision that Jewish students, especially those who do not support the Palestinian struggle, should deregister,” Students Representative Council secretary Mqondisi Duma said according to the Daily News.
http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/South-African-Jews-to-protest-against-visiting-Palestinian-terrorist-390868
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Note the words: “We took the decision that Jewish students, especially those who do not support the Palestinian struggle, should deregister” . She means that all Jewish students should deregister, judging by the word “especially.”
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South Africa is such a mess that this is like pointing out a pimple on the body of a person dying of bubonic plague.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed down in a fight over Israel’s most prestigious arts and sciences award on Friday, saying he would not meddle in the prize days after removing several of its judges for not reflecting “Israeli society”.
Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein ordered Netanyahu on Thursday to desist from meddling with the Israel Prize […]
Established in 1953, the Israel Prize has been awarded every year to leading figures from the worlds of literature, art, music and science, with $20,000 going to winners.
[…]
On his Facebook page, Netanyahu said the panels had over the years come to consist of “more and more radical figures, including anti-Zionists” and described them as “extremists”.
“The situation must change,” Netanyahu continued. “The Israel Prize belongs to all of Israel.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4626035,00.html
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19th-century nation-building in its purest form. 🙂
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Uri’s column. Do you think he exaggerates about Sheldon Adelson’s influence? It read to me a bit like antisemitic stance “those rich Jews rule the world.”
http://www.avnery-news.co.il/english/
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I don’t normally read articles that mention Sheldon Adelson because they never cease to be profoundly stupid. And precisely because of what you say: the search for that scary rich Jew that owns the world is tiresome. If that’s not anti-semitism, I don’t know what is.
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Good news suddenly:
Only few people know what a leap Israel made in its gross national product (GNP) per capita in the past decade and that it now tops the list of European countries.
While the GNP was $15,600 in 2003, according to figures presented by the economist, it jumped to $40,620 per capita by December 2014, while the overall product jumped from $104 billion to $300 billion during that period.
The numbers per capita could have been even higher, except Israel has the highest birthrate in the West – more than three children per mother[…]
And where do we stand compared to the world? In Britain, for example, the GNP per capita reached almost $50,000 in 2008, while in Israel it was about half that number. Today, the Brits are only slightly ahead of us with $44,330. France and Germany (yes, the country from the pudding protest) are slightly ahead of us as well with $43,500 and $47,350, respectively. Behind us are countries like Italy, and Spain and Greece of course. In addition, for the first time this year Israel’s GNP passed Japan’s, which stands at $39,140.
This leap completely disconnects Israel from our region, with GNP figures standing at $3,700 in Egypt, $4,870 in Jordan and $6,070 in Iran. The only country in the Middle East with better numbers is Saudi Arabia – $26,510. But the Saudi celebration has also come to an end with the collapsing oil prices. Lebanon, meanwhile, is failing to pass the $10,000 threshold.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4625937,00.html
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why both sides are wrong in the race debate
Is race a biological reality? Or is it a social construction? It is a debate that shows no sign of being resolved. The more that we know of the genetics of human differences, ironically, the more fractious the debate seems to get, and the more entrenched the various positions seem to be.
https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/why-both-sides-are-wrong-in-the-race-debate/
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Terror against free speech inEurope continues. This time in Denmark:
One civilian dead after shooting at Copenhagen cafe free speech event
At least two also injured in shooting at gathering honoring Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, who published drawings of Mohammad as a dog in 2007.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4626479,00.html
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What do you think about safe spaces organized by university students’ unions? Read about it here:
The orthodoxy of the ‘safe space’ has now led to racial segregation at a British university
Props to Goldsmiths Students’ Union, for taking the ‘safe space’ concept to absurd new levels. Last week, one faction of the union hosted a screening of the film Dear White People and advertised it as being ‘for BME students’. For those not au fait with this lingo, BME stands for ‘black and minority ethnic’ – and the poster specifies that this screening is for students of ‘African, Caribbean, Arab, Asian and South American ethnic origin’. The union’s welfare and diversity officer and education officer both reiterated this message on Facebook and Twitter, then stated that before the screening, there was a BME ONLY social happening at Cafe Natura.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/lara-prendergast/2015/02/does-safe-space-actually-mean-racially-segregated-space/
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In Denmark, the wave of terrorism continues:
Jewish guard dead, two police wounded in shooting at Copenhagen synagogue where a Bat Mitzvah was underway a little after midnight Saturday.
Police shoot dead possible suspect hours after synagogue attack, which follows earlier shooting in Copenhagen at debate attended by Mohammed cartoonist.
Police did not confirm any link between the man they shot and the earlier attacks or give further details.
[…]
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in response to the shootings that “the series of terror events in Copenhagen, in the synagogue and the free speech event, proves what we have said over the years – that Israel and the Jews are hit by this terrorism first of all because they are the frontline in the war that terror is waging against the West and the entire free world.”
Lieberman added that “the international community needs to ask for more than declarations and demonstrations against this terrorism, but to shake off the rules of political correctness and fight a real all-out war against Islamic terror and its roots.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4626584,00.html
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Usually comments to those articles are quite bad, but I think this man would agree with your posts about people reacting with violence to modernity:
\ The Europeans still have themselves convinced that these attacks still have something to do with freedom of expression, and that they aren’t about a backwards arsed culture, coming to grips with the fact that the rest of the world wave bye-bye to their archaic line of thinking long ago.
Let’s face it, these attacks and the ones in Paris, had nothing to do with freedom of speech. Those Islamic nut jobs would have knocked off the nearest Synagogue, had they not been able to carry out the newspaper attacks first. Furthermore, I fail to see how this incident (Synagogue) and the incident at the Kosher grocery store, had anything to do with the subversion of free speech.
By pretending these attacks aren’t related to a barbaric line of thinking that a good number of their denizens support, the Euros will continue to deflect from addressing the real problem, bury their heads in the sand, and will ensure that these kinds of attacks can go on for the foreseeable future.
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Have you heard of “The Death of the Heart” by Elizabeth Bowen? The description sounds interesting:
“I don’t know what those who called this Bowen masterpiece “boring” expected of this novel. Perhaps they hoped for a simple, bland, beach-blanket novel they could skim in a day. I’m sure they were disappointed to find that this is an intense, at times intellectually difficult novel to read. Bowen’s descriptions of the inner workings of an adolescent girl often require a second or third reading. This is not because her writing is dull or too enigmatic; it is because Bowen materializes the thoughts of an unconscious mind, thoughts that for some are difficult to understand because we do not realize we have them until they are before us on a white page. This is the genius of this novel; the poignancy of it is not in the plot but in Bowen’s subtle display of humanity. This is not so much a novel as a psychological study, and it is brilliant. The simple-minded need not apply.”
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Found a good review of the novel:
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On the above blog, she also reviews a coming-of-age novel I loved:
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Uri’s column:
http://www.avnery-news.co.il/english/
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Uri’s column about coming elections (in 17 days):
http://www.avnery-news.co.il/english/
I disagree with his words:
// It may be the final battle for the future of Israel – between the zealots of Greater Israel and the supporters of a liberal state. Between a mini-empire that dominates and oppresses another people and a decent democracy. Between settlement expansion and a serious search for peace. Between what has been called here “swinish capitalism” and a welfare state.
Since that ship has sailed long ago, imo. Reminded me of this recent article:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4630223,00.html
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“Since that ship has sailed long ago, imo.”
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\ And? Who won the final battle? Don’t start being cryptic now.
Have you looked at the linked article? 🙂
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The one about the new settlements? It didn’t answer the question about the final battle.
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Scott Walker Wants Colleges to Stop Reporting Sexual Assaults
http://jezebel.com/scott-walker-wants-colleges-to-stop-reporting-sexual-as-1688375293
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This I actually agree with. Crime should be reported to police. Especially violent crime. And not to “Dean of students. ” I’ve long been extremely bothered by the idea that sexual assault is somehow different from other crime and should be “ptosecuted” by completely unqualified deanlets and deanlings instead of police officers. I believe that the current practice trivializes sexual assault and needs to be stopped.
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Запретить Иосифа Сталина
Однажды и навсегда
http://www.mk.ru/politics/2015/02/26/zapretit-iosifa-stalina.html
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You once said you loved long books, and I’ve just seen that:
House Divided (Rediscovered Classics) by Ben Ames Williams
First published in 1947, this bestselling historical novel is cherished and remembered as one of the finest retellings of the Civil War saga—America’s own War and Peace. In the first hard pinch of the Civil War, five siblings of an established Confederate Virginia family learn that their father is the grandfather of Abraham Lincoln. The family’s story, and the story of their descendants, is presented in this tale that includes both soldiers and civilians—complete with their boasting, ambition, and arrogance, but also their patience, valor, and shrewdness. The grandnephew of General James Longstreet, the author brings to life one of the most extraordinary periods in history, and details war as it really is—a disease from which, win or lose, no nation ever completely recovers.
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The Silk Road might have started as a libertarian experiment, but it was doomed to end as a fiefdom run by pirate kings
http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/on-the-high-seas-of-the-hidden-internet/
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Really bizarre form of “my child = me” syndrome or “I’m going to get attention/sympathy out of hardship that is actually my child’s.”
http://laughingsquid.com/parents-get-giant-tattoos-to-make-their-young-daughter-feel-better-about-her-large-red-birthmark/
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I read this and thought about Europe’s position:
An Egyptian court listed the Palestinian group Hamas as a terrorist organization, judicial and security sources said on Saturday, one month after a judge listed the group’s armed wing as a terrorist group.
[…]
The decision was reached for Hamas role in terror attacks on Egyptian soil. While the January decision against Hamas targeted only the armed wing, Saturday’s broader ruling could have greater consequences for the already strained relations between Cairo and Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip along Egypt’s border.
A source close to Hamas’ armed wing signalled the group would no longer accept Egypt as a broker between it and Israel after the January decision against Hamas’ Qassam Brigades armed wing.
Cairo has for many years played a central role in engineering ceasefires between Israel and Hamas, which dominates the Gaza Strip, including a truce reached between the sides in August that ended a 50-day Gaza war.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4631730,00.html
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