Shomer HaZikaron - שומר הזיכרון
In honor and tribute to Israel's first hero since the Zealots of the Matzadah, Prime Minister Gen. Dr. ARIEL SHARON (Sh"lyta)


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

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אריק -- מלך על כל הארץ

Posted on: Monday, November 21, 2005
ב''ה

* הבה נגילה *



POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE - KADIMA (AKHRAYUT LEUMIT) IS BORN!!

Dr. Sharon Leaves an Imploding Liqud

Kadima to Sail to Victory




This is too much! I'm simply delirious!!

I got some shit to take care of in the afternoon but will proffer more thoughts on this soon. Rejoice!!

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Zikharon, Humanity, Women

Posted on: Tuesday, November 08, 2005
ב''ה

Ahojky!

I cannot write about my FedEx nightmare just yet because I'm still going through it. Suffice it to say that I'm NEVER enlisting the services of those assholes EVER again. I don't care if I have to pay five times the price and use DHL, FedEx is a pile of worthless, lazy, no-good, motherfucking pinko shit.

Yes, I am somewhat put out. Full details to come when (and if!) I ever overcome my instant predicament.

* * *

Anyway, following are a few random matters...





Or TamidZIKHARON
Yitzkhak Rabin: 1922-1995
Or Tamid


Dr. Yitzkhak Rabin(HY''D)
Our martyred rosh memshalah Yitzkhak Rabin (HY"D) -- this week marks the tenth anniversary of his murder


For an excellent reflection on Dr. Rabin's final moments, see Shimon's blog. See more on his glorious life in a nutshell and, for a more detailed look, consult Misrad haKhutz or Wikipedia.

There are two quintessential things we must not forget. Firstly, Yitzkhak Rabin(HY"D) did not come to prominence when he shook the hand of that ghastly Arafat. No; just like Dr. Sharon, Chief-of-Staff Rabin played pivotal roles in Israel's many struggles--first for independence and later for survival. He was a hero on the battlefield, as well as on the diplomatic circuit. He gave his Country and his People his all.

Secondly, despite the crypto-fascists' unremitting efforts in haAretz and especially in the Galut to demonize him and besmirch his memory, it is imperative that we remember that his inaugurating the Oslo Accords paved the way for at least COMMUNICATION between Israelis and Palestinians (if objectively for little else) and indeed for the normalization of our relations with Jordan. Fortunately, the majority of Israelis believes that the Oslo Accords were a positive development.

Dr. Yitzkhak Rabin A"H, your memory is for a blessing.

* * *

This young boy...

Akhmad
Akhmad Ismail Khatib (N"E)

...was mistakenly shot by Tzaha"l a couple of weeks ago. He lay in coma for several days in an Israeli hospital before passing away. His grieving family showed immense courage and a giant heart when they decided to donate Akhmad's organs to Israeli children! A couple of days later, his organs were transplanted to six Israelis. (When visiting the linked websites, do also have a look at the readers' comments: particularly those from idiots who cannot pass up any opportunity, no matter how incongruous, to score cheap points and spew bile.) This one action totally eclipses the utmost efforts of all the hatemongers in mizrakh hatikun and wider. Yasher koakh to the family--they are truly exceptional human beings--and well done to Dr. Sharon who offered to meet them in person.

* * *

That's under the Progress rubric for today. And by way of Regress, I bring you "Old Habits Die Hard", courtesy of the Austrians. Austrians, a nation that elected a former Nazi as its president, also have as one of the top executives of its government broadcasting agent a man who attends neo-Nazi commemoration events. At least he's not a painter... - so nothing to worry about, right?

* * *

And following Iranian "president's" recent remarks to the effect that Israel should be wiped off the map (he forgot WE're the ones with the nukes here, jerkoff), thousands of people in Italy and elsewhere in Europe held spontaneous rallies in support of haAretz. Look at the pictures: they're easily the most stirring part.

Probably as importantly, a lone voice of dissent: a female Iranian student in Hungary apologized to Klal Yisrael on behalf of all normal Iranians.

And most importantly, can anyone intimate if the girl in question is single!?

* * *

...Which brings me to:

Saw a fun article a few days ago on MSN: Ten ways to ask him out. lol! Ladies, take note!

Non-Sequitur -- three types of women I despise: (1) women who are arrogant, (2) women who are interested in money (mine, or their own - read: career freaks), and (3) women who play games. So WHY OH WHY do I keep meeting only one or more of the three kinds??

Aych...

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L'orgie en France

Posted on: Sunday, November 06, 2005
ב''ה

So, how about those riots in France! Pretty gruesome stuff. And according to some, the disturbances may spread beyond France; the Italian administration is somewhat perturbed in this respect. Naturally, there is much more to all this than the thousands of gutted autos, parts of Paris and other French cities trashed beyond recognition, or ever multifarious analyses as to why the immigrant community in France felt alienated enough to take to the streets in such a vociferous manner in the first place.

Surely enough, diverse racists, xenophobes, Islamophobes and other turd wasted no time crawling out of the sewage and offering their two cents' worth on the whys and wherefores. The essence of their contributions? "Blah-blah-blah ISLAMOFASCIST blah-blah-blah HOSPITALITY OF XIAN EUROPE blah-blah-blah BLOODY IMMIGRANTS blah-blah-blah SEND THEM BACK blah-blah-blah blah-blah-blah." Now yes, there IS evidence of terrorist involvement but this is not about religion or even culture. I was quite amused/bemused by the Slovakian reaction: one guy who left ex-Czechoslovakia during the communist era for France protested most indignantly that immigrants are well accepted, that he integrated in the society and thus had no problems; i.e. that all the immigrants' real and fictitious problems are of their own making. Unfortunately, he had failed to look in the mirror prior to making such tendentious remarks or he would have seen that he LOOKS quite different from "immigrants"--in fact, probably indistinguishable from the French--, which would definitely have spared him any police harassment and prevented his encountering nearly as many obstacles in the process of integration as face people hailing from such regions as North Africa. Oh, did I mention the obnoxious neo-cons and their cling-ons* who couldn't but gloat: see! you opposed our righteous fight against Islam--oops, we mean, terrorism--in Iraq, and now you have it.

* Joke: what do toilet paper and the star-ship Enterprise (from Star Trek) have in common? They both fly around Uranus and fight Klingons.

So what ARE the riots about? Yes, religion, ethnicity and culture do play a part in it. Not in the sense that Arabs/Muslims/North Africans/non-Europeans/non-Xians/non-Caucasians riot because they ARE Arabs/Muslims/North... but because these people HAVE objectively undergone decades of discrimination. If you're an immigrant, your skin "color" is "wrong." If you're the child of an immigrant, your name is "wrong." If you're the grandchild of an immigrant, your hijab is "wrong." Third and fourth generation of immigrants (i.e. people as French per ius soli as Napoleon) still live in the same conditions as their grandparents. Surely it's not because they're ALL "lazy" and "insular."

But all the foregoing is symptomatic of another, far more dangerous problem: the creation of an underclass. The underclass is being created very rapidly everywhere: from the most corrupt "third world" countries all the way to the most enlightened social democracies of Scandinavia. This underclass is not demographically definite or predictable any more, particularly not in the "west" where it has long thought to encompass principally immigrants. The reason is simple: fifty years ago it took twenty people to plough a field; now it takes two and a tractor. Twenty-five years ago it took a hundred people to assemble an automobile; now it takes fifteen and a well-oiled assembly carousel. Today it takes two hundred people to operate a call center; in ten years' time it'll take a sophisticated computer with voice recognition, etc. and twenty people. See where this is going? In order to have meaningful and gainful employment, one has to be increasingly well educated. And yet, in even the most developed of countries, less than a quarter of the populations have a college degree (and these degrees also include things like "media studies" and "history of art"). (V. an interesting OECD study.) In ten, twenty, fifty years' time--when even the sweatshops masquerading as call centers in India are supplanted by sophisticated machines, when GM foods will have become staple diet, when more and more menial jobs have been automated--what employment prospects will the remaining 75+ per-cent of people have? If one combines the increasing longevity of people (i.e. more pensioners to support and for longer), the collapse of pension schemes in many parts of the "west", and the antecedent, it becomes quickly obvious that these people will (a) not have secure income of their own, and (b) will not be able to rely on the state either to support them. Already people employed in even the tertiary sector of production cannot count on the security of their jobs--and, as the market continues to globalize and be further imbued with the capitalist mentality (and let's face it, capitalism IS the only option), this problem will only exacerbate.

Rich people (regardless of how they became it) are already withdrawing behind gated communities. Parts of London have private security guards patrolling the streets. How far is a future of this underclass--people with no prospects--revolting in the way a section of the French community has been doing for the past one and a half weeks? The seeds are already here and they're germinating--underground, at the moment. But give it a little spark, and small explosions are instantaneous. The spark can be the two boys killed, or not (it doesn't even matter), by the Gendarmerie or a natural disaster like Katrina. Those without hope jump at the opportunity to express their pent-up frustration. Things are not looking good and it'll be interesting to see what happens in the long run.

Coming tomorrow: FED-EX NIGHTMARE, ZIKHARON, HUMANITÉ SANS FRONTIÈRES...

Shavua tov.

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