Name:     Michael L. S.   [E-Mail]
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      Website:  Middle East Resource Center


 

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Got my ADSL yesterday!!

Wow, I met some very nice people today. I was with a friend at a bistro (that's akin to a cafe, for all you peasants out there )--which is what I've been doing a lot of since returning permanently to Spain. I should've started brushing up on my Spanish by now but I haven't found a Latin American teacher yet and I'm loath to learn that hideous ceceo that characterizes (or, should I say, bastardizes) Castellan Spanish. I have secured a part-time job which pays a shitload of money for practically no work. Some people are so dumb: they're paying me EUR 30 an hour for something they could easily do themselves. But hey, I'm not complaining!!

ANYWAY, so I was there sipping my orange juice (which invariably gives me a helluva toothache later but I can still never resist it) engaged in a conversation, and a group of young Muslims walks in (two guys and three girls). I had no idea where they were from--could be anything from Morocco to haFilipinim--but I was quite happy because normally the only "foreigners" we get around here are dime-a-dozen teabags, much to my annoyance. Sometimes it seems half the damn England is down here. Some of them have been living here for ten, twenty years and their level of Spanish is STILL along the lines of "yo wanto un cheeseburgero." And they don't think there's anything amiss with that but they're the first to bitch about all the "immigrants" back in England who "don't want to accept our culture, speak our language, or dress like we." Pricks. Howbeit, our friends there were engaged in a fast-paced discussion (in Arabic, which narrowed my dilemma down a little) when all of a sudden one of the gents addressed us and asked if we spoke any French. My friend doesn't but I (kind of) do so we got talking. They initially wanted to know if we could recommend a place to stay up in Murcia for the night and things to see. Well, I couldn't be very helpful there but all the same we continued talking and eventually joined them at their table. And then they said they actually approached us because we were Jewish (they saw my kipah) and, to cut a longish story short, cared for some dialog. They turned out to be siblings from Morocco on their travels through Portugal, Spain and France. Naturally, we talked about le Moyen-Orient and they showed common sense, maturity and humanity. Of course there were differences but we agreed on most things and the rest were merely details. It only goes to show that we are all but humans and those of us who and normal and unburdened people can most definitely get along with each other. We agreed to stay in touch by e-mail--crap, I'll have to brush up on my French as well!--and some of them should be returning this summer. AND, last but not least, the girls were DROP DEAD GORGEOUS. Too bad they'd only want to marry a Muslim. Anyway, it put me in a good mood after Schindler's List had totally pissed me off two days before. And then I just read on Habibee's blog about more inter-faith cooperation in Florida. Don't get me wrong: it makes perfectly no difference to me what religious, ethnic, national and other such characteristics my collocutor possesses. A stimulating conversation is a stimulating conversation, with whomever you conduct it. But it's still heart-warming when it happens with people who are meant to be on the "other side."

Anyway, something some of you may've seen already but I came across it yesterday and thought it was bags of fun. Some are stupid but most are hilarious. Enjoy!

How to Brighten Your Day
Ways to maintain a healthy level of insanity:
1. Run one lap around the office at top speed.
2. Groan out loud in the toilet cubicle (at least one other "non-player" must be in the toilet at the time).
3. Ignore the first five people who say "good morning" to you.
4. Phone someone in the office you barely know, leave your name and say, "Just called to say I can't talk right now. Bye."
5. To signal the end of a conversation, clamp your hands over your head.
6. When someone hands you a piece of paper, finger it, and whisper huskily, "Mmmmmmm, that feels soooooo good!"
7. Leave your zipper open for one hour. If anyone points it out, say, "Sorry, I really prefer it this way."
8. Walk sideways to the photocopier.
9. While riding in a lift, gasp dramatically every time the doors open.
10. Say to your boss, "I like your style" and shoot him with double-barrelled fingers.
11. Babble incoherently at a fellow employee then ask, "Did you get all that, I don't want to have to repeat it."
12. Page yourself over the intercom (do not disguise your voice).
13. Kneel in front of the water cooler and drink directly from the nozzle (there must be a "non-player" within sight).
14. Shout random numbers while someone is counting.
15. At the end of a meeting, suggest that, for once, it would be nice to conclude with the singing of the national anthem (extra points if you actually launch into it yourself).
16. Walk into a very busy person's office and while they watch you with growing irritation, turn the light switch on/off 10 times.
17. For an hour, refer to everyone you speak to as "Bob."
18. Announce to everyone in a meeting that you "really have to go do a number two".
19. After every sentence, say "mon" in a really bad Jamaican accent. As in "the report's on your desk, mon." Keep this up for one hour.
20. While an office mate is out, move their chair into the elevator.
21. In a meeting or crowded situation, slap your forehead repeatedly and mutter, "Shut up, damn it, all of you just shut up!"
22. At lunchtime, get down on your knees and announce, "As G-d is my witness, I'll never go hungry again!"
23. In a colleague's diary, write under 10 am: "See how I look in tights."
24. Carry your keyboard over to your colleague and ask "You wanna trade?"
25. Repeat the following conversation 10 times to the same person: "Do you hear that?" "What?" "Never mind, it's gone now."
26. Come to work in army fatigues and when asked why, say, "I can't talk about it."
27. Posing as a maitre d', call a colleague and tell him he's won a lunch for four at a local restaurant. Let him go.
28. Speak with an accent (French, German, Porky Pig, etc) during a very important conference call.
29. Find the vacuum and start vacuuming around your desk.
30. Hang a two-foot long piece of toilet roll from the back of your pants and act genuinely surprised when someone points it out.
31. Present meeting attendees with a cup of coffee and biscuit, smash each biscuit with your fist.
32. During the course of a meeting, slowly edge your chair towards the door.
33. Arrange toy figures on the table to represent each meeting attendee, move them according to the movements of their real-life counterparts.
34. At lunchtime, sit in your parked car with sunglasses on and point a hairdryer at passing cars. See if they slow down.
35. Tell your children over dinner. "Due to the economy, we are going to have to let one of you go."
36. Every time someone asks you to do something, ask if they want fries with that.
37. Put your trash can on your desk and label it "IN."
38. Put decaf in the coffee maker for 3 weeks. Once everyone has gotten over their caffeine addictions, switch to espresso.
39. In the subject field for all your e-mails, write "FOR SEXUAL FAVORS."
40. Finish all your sentences with "In accordance with the prophecy."
41. Don't use any punctuation.
42. As often as possible, skip rather than walk.
43. Ask people what sex they are. Laugh hysterically after they answer.
44. Specify that your drive-through order is "to go."
45. Sing along at the opera.
46. Go to a poetry recital and ask why the poems don't rhyme.
47. Put mosquito netting around your work area. Play a tape of jungle sounds all day.
48. Five days in advance, tell your friends you can't attend their party because you're not in the mood.
49. Have your co-workers address you by your wrestling name, Rock Hard.
50. When the money comes out of the ATM, scream "I Won! I Won! 3rd time this week!!!"
51. When leaving the zoo, start running towards the parking lot yelling, "Run for your lives, they're loose!"



A note to Schwartz: CharlieBravo is full of Pataqs--five e-mails!! אין קולומביאנים! What's the big idea??! No hice todavía bastante de ellas, coño? Jajaja!! Te suplico, ayúdame, por favor!!

Have a shabat shalom everyone.

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The Holocaust, symbolized by Auschwitz, the worst of the death camps, occurred in the wake of consistent, systematic, unrelenting anti-Jewish propaganda campaign. As a result, the elimination of the Jews from German society was accepted as axiomatic, leaving open only two questions: when and how.

As Germany expanded its domination and occupation of Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, the Low Countries, Yugoslavia, Poland, parts of the USSR, Greece, Romania, Hungary, Italy and others countries, the way was open for Hitler to realize his well-publicized plan of destroying the Jewish nation.

After experimentation, the use of the gas called Zyklon B on unsuspecting victims was adopted by the Nazis as the means of choice, and Auschwitz was selected as the main factory of death (more accurately, one should refer to the “Auschwitz-Birkenau complex”). The green light for mass annihilation was given at the Wannsee Conference, January 20, 1942, and the mass gassings took place in Auschwitz between 1942 and the end of 1944, when the Nazis retreated before the advancing Red Army. Jews were transported to Auschwitz from all over Nazi-occupied or Nazi-dominated Europe and most were slaughtered in Auschwitz upon arrival, sometimes as many as 12,000 in one day. Some victims were selected for slave labor or “medical” experimentation. All were subject to brutal treatment.

In all, hundreds of thousands of people, almost all Jews, were slaughtered in Auschwitz alone (the number is generally put at 1.3 million but believe to be two, maybe three, times that). Other death camps were located at Sobibor, Chelmno, Belzec (Belzek), Majdanek, Treblinka and elsewhere where--in all--six million Jews were murdered.

Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet Red Army on 27 January 1945, sixty years ago, after most of the prisoners had been forced into a Death March westwards. The Red Army found in Auschwitz about 7,600 survivors, but not all could be saved.

For a long time, the Allies (particularly the British) were well aware of the mass murder, but deliberately refused to bomb the camp or the railways leading to it. Ironically, during the Polish uprising, the Allies had no hesitation in flying aid to Warsaw, sometimes flying right over Auschwitz.

There are troubling parallels between the systematic vilification of Jews before the Holocaust and the current vilification of the Jewish people and Israel. Suffice it to note the annual flood of anti-Israel resolutions at the UN; or the public opinion polls taken in Europe, which single out Israel as a danger to world peace; or the divestment campaigns being waged in the US against Israel; or the attempts to delegitimize Israel’s very existence. The complicity of the Allies in WWII is mirrored by the support the Palestinians and, crucially, Palestinian terrorists have been receiving from Europe, China and Russia to this very day.

If remembering Auschwitz should teach us anything, it is that we must all support Israel and the Jewish people against the vilification and the complicity we are witnessing, knowing where it inevitably leads:




(A massacred body.)





(An emaciated child awaiting his death. The picture was taken on the day of the Soviet liberation.)





(A pile of corpses.)





(A man following unremitting torture.)





(A bulldozer pushing hundreds of corpses into ditches (seen later).)





(Deportees en route to the concentration camp... - the last stairs they'll ever have walked.)





(A Jewish woman scrubbing a sidewalk. This was a common punishment, particularly in Vienna and Salzburg. Punishment for being born a Jew.)





(People herded onto cattle wagons where they'll have spent days traveling in a cooped up space on their final journey.)





(Barbed wire surrounding the camp.)





(A pile of corpses. Crime? Being Jewish.)





(Another bulldozer clearing away another mass of corpses.)





(Young men arrested, imprisoned and murdered for being Jews.)





(Children were by no means spared.)





(Camp prisoners in their "sleeping" cubicles.)





(Crowded cubicles unfit for even animals.)





(Destitute Jews awaiting their impending death.)





(A pile of shoes whose owners perished in the ovens on Auschwitz.)





(A woman and her grandchild among corpses in the camp.)





(A ditch impregnated by Jewish corpses.)





(Another ditch--they were used after the Nazis had found that the ovens couldn't cope with the sheer number of the murdered Jewish martyrs.)





(More Jews, wearing a yellow magen David, led to their slaughter by sadistic Nazi beasts.)





(A look from the outside.)





(ID numbers were tattooed on the martyrs' arms.)





((Children showing theirs.)





(Clothes of the perished.)





(And a heap of their glasses.)





(One-way tracks leading to the camp.)





(Endless barracks filmed by the Allies a few months prior to camp liberation. Had the camp been bombed, hundreds of thousand of lives would have been saved. The Britishers were the ones who vetoed bombardment.)


And possibly the most shocking datum for last: "45% of Britishers have never heard of Auschwitz".

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OK, back to my rants. And who other to piss me off but our dear settlers. About a week ago a group of them violently assaulted a Tzahal officer who intercepted them as they were very courageously doing their bit for Eretz Yisrael by plastering idiotic little post-its around a Sch'chem Army base under the cover of darkness. The motherfuckers sat in their auto and backed right into the officer, mowing him to the ground. I'm really SO indignant I cannot describe it to you. I've tried volunteering with Tzahal to participate in the evacuation of these assholes come spring time, but you gotta be an Israeli resident for that. Shit. I was so looking forward to taking it to these lowlifes with a truncheon. No, I'm not violent in any way and I've to date not managed to come to hate anyone--thankfully--but these scoundrels need someone to give them a good beating. This was not an isolated incident either. Every single day there's a confrontation somewhere between the settlers and our khayalim or shoterim. And remember, these are not your donut-munching piglets who occasionally show us how tough they are by beating the shit out of some poor African European kid or abusing a be-hijabed lady. Oh no, these are real heroes who risk their lives daily to protect these ungrateful assholes. They've stopped protecting Israel quite a while back because Israel no longer needs protection (except in the north). Now the only reason we need such a huge army is to perpetuate the occupation. And Israel is perpetuating the occupation for the benefit of the settlers... - who wantonly attack Israel's soldiers without a second thought!! I used to think the vast majority of settlers were crazed immigrants who made aliyah primarily from North America. However, only four per-cent. of American olim settled in the territories last year. This only confirms that the settlers--especially religious ones--are no more than a lunatic fringe which is saddling Israel with a totally unacceptable cost. The occupation must cease and the disengagement is the first right step in the right direction.

Speaking of the Palestinians, the past couple of weeks have been a roller coaster ride for those of us who still have some hope that the conflict can be resolved, and soon. First Mahmood Abas gets elected as PA chairman on a non-violence ticket. He won with a landslide. Unfortunately, only a few days later Chamas staged a murderous terrorist attack which claimed six civilian victims and they kept showering Sderot with Qassams on a daily basis. Tzahal responded and it seemed that the vicious cycle of tit-for-tat would resume. But then Mr. Abas bestirred himself and pledged to put an end to the shelling by deploying PA police into the troublesome areas of Aza. This should be done in the next couple of days so fingers crossed. But there have been two other piece of excellent and propitious news. First off, an opinion poll conducted among the Palestinians shows a marked change in their attitude and aspirations. In essence, the vast majority of them would now support a deal along the lines of the Geneva Accord in whose favor I am, too. The same is the case among Jews. Differences remain but the foundations are there and they're solid. Read the full poll analysis here.

The second development occurred today. Chamas has made the revolutionary step of recognizing Israel's 1967 borders and modifying its goal to now be the creation of a Palestinian state, as opposed to the destruction of Israel. Of course, one is not deluded into believing Chamas has become a peace partner. This statement is as much the result of pressure from Mr. Abas, from emasculation of the terrorist outfit after Israel had dealt it severe blows in the past months and from the probable dawning on them that a settlement will have to be reached because neither side is going anywhere, as it an attempt to save face and participate in the building of the Palestinian nation. Nevertheless, although tentatively, the Palestinian side seems to be taking steps toward reaching peace.

And lastly more news from Croatia regarding the Catholic church there. Apparently, a few vicars--or whatever they're called--have been sending out letters to their parishioners demanding they pay the church alms. Some have demanded a particular sum (about 7% of the average local monthly salary!!) but all have threatened their parishioners to the effect that they would not be able to avail themselves of the services of the church (eg. christenings, weddings and burials) if they do not comply. Hahahaha...what can be said to this? If you're such a schmuck to give deference to that church, then don't be surprised when they screw you over. You deserve it.

Phew, that takes care of that. One thing I did a few days back was watch Charlie's Angels--the 2000 movie (yes, I know, old news ). I loved it. Of course, it wasn't a profound testimony by any means but it was entertaining, funny and fast-paced. And of course, the girls were really sexy, especially Lucy. In the unlikely event you haven't seen it yet, do so.

And something that really made me chuckle--taken from Habibee's sister's blog. You see, I LOVE cows. Yes, I know. Crazy, amusing, weird. But I do. Just look at this:



How cute is that!! Well, I love cows and I'm an expert "mooer." I'd add an audio file documenting my talent if it weren't so damn embarrassing for a 25 year old guy to moo!! Anyway, to put this into a saner context, I cannot believe we actually eat these creatures. That is so sad. But blow it, they taste good. Still, if you feel guilty, click below to assuage it.




Later, everyone. Shalom and be good.

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