Let's Blogroll!

An uncanny resemblance. Jeffrey at Iraqi Bloggers Central notes the striking similarity between Saddam's courtroom rhetoric and the pronouncements of certain other individuals we've heard lately.

A close call, and some thoughts on security. Zeyad reports on a too-close-for-comfort car chase by some bandits, and stresses the need for increased Iraqi visibility in the security forces. He reports that "overall ... Baghdadis are cautiously optimistic about new developments."

Battle of wits. Ginmar gets to interrogate a new prisoner (not Zarqawi, unfortunately), and explains the different philosophies of interrogation. "One of them is the one that took the dark road to Abu Ghraib. The other is the one that it seems everyone in my company pretty much believes in: the battle of wits. This is where you plot and plan and study your opponent, eyeing body language, and weighing what facts you have, and how you can use them." She also talks about R&R, the mood in Qatar, and women's intimate apparel. (And no, I don't believe she plans to employ any of the latter with her next subject.)

US blunder. Big Pharaoh is appalled at an incident involving US forces and the Iraqi Police. Read the post, and don't miss the discussion in the comments corner.

Immigrant smuggling. CaribPundit has a
thought-provoking report on immigrant smuggling. Immigrants from Mexico and Central America are often subjected to degrading and inhuman treatment, while criminal gangs reap huge profits.

Morning Report: July 1, 2004

"Real criminal is Bush." - Saddam Saddam Hussein was belligerent and sullen by turns at his first court appearance in Baghdad, giving his title as "President of Iraq" and challenging the judge's authority, but quieting down when ordered to do so. CNN's Christiane Amanpour reported: "He said please a lot, which I'm sure is a change for him." He defended the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, referring to the Kuwaitis as "dogs". He declared that "the real criminal is Bush", and, according to Fox News, labeled the hearing as "theater".

Nader's anti-Semitism

Don't have time for a full post right now, but Ralph Nader was recently quoted with some anti-Semitic remarks. More on this later. For now:

As a former Nader supporter, I wish I could say I'm surprised. I never knew Nader to be anti-Semitic, and I did not hear anything about his anti-Semitism during the 1996 and 2000 campaigns. But I probably could have found the information if I had dug for it, which I did not do. I knew there were anti-Semitic elements in the leftist world, but I didn't want to believe that they affected Nader or the Green Party. So I blame myself for not having asked enough questions.

Regarding the Greens (with whom Nader is no longer affiliated), there are both anti-Semitic and anti-anti-Semitic elements in the GP. I have been very favorably impressed with some European Greens' unequivocal denunciation of anti-Semitism in the past. Unfortunately, there is another side to the picture as well.

I'll post more on this as soon as I can.

Let's Blogroll!

Life after death. Right Thinking Girl has a 9/11 story you won't forget. Just read it. Thanks to Baldilocks.

Prejudice and the prairie. A Liberal Canadian MP's remark gets Kate hot under the collar, and it ought to bother you, too. Labeling conservatives as "droolers and knuckledraggers" and calling people from rural areas "rednecks" is disgusting, and it's typical of the hypocrisy of elite so-called "liberals" who fancy themselves defending freedom of thought. I grew up in Connecticut, and I love my native New England dearly but I don't love the bigoted attitudes towards Southerners that were all too often tolerated in our "enlightened" society.

"You are too dark. We want to make a light baby." CaribPundit describes rape as ethnic cleansing in Sudan in harrowing detail.

In the driver's seat. Citing the proverb that "nobody washes a rented car", BigPharoah expresses confidence in Iraq's future, saying that "Early indicators show that the vast majority of Iraqis are willing to give this new government a chance and they will base their judgment on how well Allawi does in providing security, jobs, clean water, and electricity." He cautions that Allawi's government must learn from the mistakes of the CPA, and make security and services a top priority or face the wrath of the Iraqi people. Drawing on his experience in the PR world, he also notes that the perception of sovereignty - or lack of sovereignty - is everything: multinational forces "shouldn't fire a single bullet" without the approval of the Iraqi government; and Iraqi visibility in security forces must increase.

Morning Report: June 30, 2004

Saddam, aides to go to Iraqi custody; arraignment Thursday. Saddam Hussein and eleven aides were transferred to the legal custody of the new Iraqi government on Wednesday, although the "dirty dozen" will remain in US legal custody. The deposed dictator will face formal charges in an Iraqi tribunal on Thursday, although the formal indictment may take months. US forces will retain custody of the prisoners until Iraqi security is ready to hold them. (CNN)

Alleged sex offender challenged to debate accuser. Bill Clinton, the former US President who was charged with sexual harassment, has been challenged to a debate by his alleged victim, Paula Jones. "I'm not embarrassed or ashamed to be out and meet him eye-to-eye and tell him he knows he did what he did to me. But Bill Clinton would never agree to something like that," Jones said. Jones' suit, filed in 1994, charged that Clinton, while he was still governor of Arkansas, groped her and exposed himself to her in a hotel room. The lawsuit was settled in November 1998, with a payment of $850,000 but no admission of wrongdoing by Clingon. (CNN)

Bush, Kerry, and Nader

I supported Ralph Nader in 1996 and again in 2000. This year, while I don't support him as a candidate, I will defend his right to run for office - and not just because I'm voting for Bush.

I was with the Green Party for seven years, from 1996 (Nader's first run) thru 2003. I registered Democratic around last spring, but my heart wasn't in it. I lasted about a year with the Dems.

If people like Joe Lieberman and the folks at The New Republic represented the majority of Democrats, I'd stay with them. But they don't.

The problem I'm seeing with the Dems now is, ironically, very similar to how the party looked to me from the Green side of the house: they don't seem to stand for anything except "not being Republicans". Every four years they try to convince you that the world is going to come to an end if a Republican gets into the White House. That was their whole case against Nader - because they couldn't challenge him on the issues or on integrity.

Well, whatever you think about the 2000 election, GWB has certainly not caused the end of the world. The only people whose world has come crashing down have been (a) the Taliban; (b) the Iraqi Ba'ath Party; and (c) their sympathizers and apologists in the West.

Nader isn't running on the Green ticket this year, but he will be running as "the anti-war candidate". Kerry will then be really screwed, because he's trying to take a middle position on an issue where there's no middle ground. The Democrats will scream (again) about Nader stealing "their" votes, but by this point it should be obvious that the Democrats never "owned" those votes in the first place. Ironically, this is an example of the very "entitlement mentality" that conservatives so often accuse liberals of.

I think American politics may end up being reborn as a result of all this. If they are smart, the Democrats could re-invent themselves as a centrist party within the next couple of election cycles. The Greens are strong - I still have a lot of respect for them - and could take in some of the far lefties. This three-party model could produce a much more interesting exchange of ideas than the current "duopoly".

But the Democratic Party will have to ask itself some hard questions first.

Morning Report: June 28, 2004

IRAQI SOVEREIGNTY DECLARED TODAY. Morning Report is taking the day off to celebrate.

Iraq handover is TODAY!!!

Iraqi sovereignty suddenly brought forward to today, according to latest reports.

Nader: Less is Moore

Ralph Nader tells Michael Moore to lose weight. Details, link, commentary to follow shortly.

Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, USMC

Terrorists in Iraq have kidnapped a US Marine, Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, and are threatening to behead him if their demands are not met. While little is clear at this stage, one or two points are immediately obvious:

(1) These pigs are making a huge tactical mistake.

(2) They are equal-opportunity, anti-human, anti-civilization killers.

(3) Let's roll.

Kabbalah Series - complete

The complete text of my series on Madonna, the Bergs, and the Kabbalah may be found here:

Kabbalah Series

The Kabbalah

The Kabbalah: Complete Series


THE KABBALAH - Part 7

No one is watching you, and yet you feel you're being watched. Maybe you've had this feeling from time to time; maybe you have it now. You don't believe in God - you gave up this guy named "God", this old man in the clouds with a white beard, long ago. So you subtract things - prophets and saints, churches, synagogues and mosques, you subtract the body from the soul and the soul from the body, and you subtract everything but the random interaction of subatomic particles. And this is the only truth you're left with, but because it has no meaning, none at all, you subtract even that.

And yet you are still left with something.

Where do you go from here?

Do you turn back to the guy named God? That was where the process started, after all; so perhaps you can begin there. But He always disappointed you - because you expected Him to be human, like a man, and idealized, powerful, all-good and all-compassionate man, but somehow human nonetheless. And God failed you; he failed your expectation. He failed to be human.

But God is not a man. You always knew this, intellectually, but it only hits you now. The guy named God is an illusion, but there's something else that is more than real. It is not human, and you hesitate to call it "He". You hesitate to give it any name at all, but you have to come up with something, so you write the word with letters missing - G-d - because the whole enterprise is futile anyway. Or you could use another word, something neutral, Spirit, or Light, or Mystery, or The Way.

Thousands of years ago, an Arab named Ayoub discovered the mysterious Spirit in the tempest of personal tragedy. His story comes down to us in one of the longest books of the Bible, written in an uncommonly opaque Hebrew and bearing the Hebrew form of his name - Iyov, or Job. Job's friends try to explain away his suffering, offering either blame or false hope. Job will accept neither. What galls him so is not the fact of his suffering, but the unfairness of it. Rejecting the sugarcoated theodicies of others, he finds no peace until he is confronted by the voice from the whirlwind, and declares: "I will ask, and you will inform me."

So evocative is the language of the Divinity's final address to Job, that the kabbalistic commentator Ra'avad discerns "fifty gates of wisdom" in chapters 38 and 39 of the book. But really, if you just read the passage aloud - even in a good English translation - you will get a sense of the mystery that Job must have experienced. And I think that is the main point.

Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, who lived in Warsaw at the time of the Nazi invasion, saw more death and cruelty than anyone should ever have to see. And yet - somehow - he kept teaching Torah, and he left a record of his teachings from the years 1940 to 1942. Unearthed by a construction worker after the war, this last work of Kalonymus, titled "The Holy Fire", is the spiritual diary of a man watching his world being destroyed.

In an entry dated Parashat Mishpatim, 5702 (February 1942), Kalonymus writes: "We learn from the commentaries that the voice of G-d at the giving of the Torah [on Mount Sinai] traveled from one end of the Earth to the other, and that Israel heard the voice of G-d in all the winds of the world. This comes to teach us that we must not think of the physical world as being far from the Torah, nor in opposition to it: it is not so. The voice of the Torah is heard from the whole world, because the world too was created by the word of G-d and the word of G-d is the essence of the world; it is only that human beings use the world in an evil way, and destroy the world that was 'created with ten commands' (Avot 5:1). And whoever uses the world for good, the world itself helps them in their study and deeds. ... For the world was created by the word of G-d, and the Torah is the word of G-d, and in fact the Creator is one with the Divine Word; and the whole Torah is contained in the Ten Commandments, and all the Ten Commandments were spoken as one word. And the Word of G-d in the creation of the world, and the Word of G-d in the Torah, are one."

Near the end of "The Holy Fire", shortly after the passage quoted above, Kalonymus (himself a kabbalist) returns to the Jewish mystical doctrine one more time. He is discussing the configuration of the ten Sephiroth, the potentialities or dimensions which kabbalists (and now physicists) tell us underlie the fabric of creation. In a conundrum going back at least to the sixteenth century, scholars have offered various ideas as to how the Sephiroth might best be schematically represented. Interestingly enough, Kalonymus eschews the familiar "Tree of Life" diagram (which can be found in any popular book on the Kabbalah) and returns to the older model of concentric rings. He presents two alternative views: "In the configuration of 'circles', each higher level encircles its [lower] neighbor, so that the Divinity surrounds all of them, and the World of Action [i.e., the lowest, material level] is at the center. In the 'direct' configuration [so called even though it is also circular], every lesser level enwraps its [higher] neighbor, so that the ray of the Infinite is found at the center, and the World of Action is outside." The first configuration, in which the greater surrounds the lesser, represents the body, for we stand surrounded by ever greater mysteries. The second, in which the greater is concealed within the lesser, is the way of the soul, for "there the soul, not the body, is of the essence."

Let's picture this. Warsaw is in ruins and Nazis are prowling the streets. Kalonymus' whole family have been murdered, and his people are being shipped off to the gas chambers day by day. He himself will make that trip in a few weeks. And here he is, writing about the unity of the world, and the soul, and G-d.

The paradox of the Jewish tradition is the tension between the individual and the universal. The festival of Purim plays on this tension by turning Jewish identity on its head ("queering" it, as we'd say nowadays) and deliberately blurring boundaries of identity. (Jews can dress like goyim, and even drink like goyim!) Because of a Jewish woman who went undercover in the Persian regime, the Jews of Persia were spared a fate like that which befell Europe's Jews in a later age. And this is the messianic symbolism of Purim: it calls on us to imagine a day when, without losing our Jewish identity, we will no longer be separate and segregated from "the nations"; rather, Israel and the nations will have evolved toward a higher commonality.

It would be easy to laugh at Madonna's interest in Kabbalah and to dismiss her as another shallow, fad-following entertainer; but I won't do that. I do hope that she can look beyond the Bergs' Kabbalah Centre for inspiration. I think she is looking for the same thing we are all looking for: to find meaning and our place in the world.

(End.)