Six Years

Geeez, has it been almost six years since I first started Dreams Into Lightning?

I feel like I should do something to celebrate.

Like, post or something.

Anat Kam, Uri Blau: Israel's Fourth Estate and Fifth Column

Arutz Sheva reports on the indictment of Anat Kam, the Israeli journalist who stands accused of stealing classified documents during her tour as a soldier in the IDF and passing the secret material on to a reporter for the left-leaning Ha'Aretz.

Journalist Anat Kam, 23, is accused of stealing over 2,000 IDF classified documents, many hundreds of which are termed “secret” and “top secret.” The alleged crimes occurred when she served as a soldier clerking in the IDF military - specifically, in the office of the Commander of the Central District - between 2005-2007.

She allegedly handed over many of the “top secret” and “secret” documents to Haaretz reporter Uri Blau. Blau, who was abroad when the investigation started, has refused thus far to return to Israel for investigation. It is suspected that many of the classified papers are still in his possession – despite an offer made to him that the returned documents would not be used to prosecute him or his source, Anat Kam.

Kam, who was secretly arrested during the investigation, has been indicted in the Tel Aviv District Court. She stands accused of collecting secret information, giving it to unauthorized individuals, and attempting to harm state security. ...

Debka has more.

In September 2009, the Shin Bet and Haaretz signed an agreement whereby Uri Blau promised to hand over all the documents in his possession, in return for which the Shin Bet agreed not to use them to initiate a criminal investigation against him or track his sources.

Two months later, in December 2009, Anat Kam was identified as the source of the leak and placed under house arrest. On January 14, she was indicted on charges of grave espionage.
It turned out later that the reporter Blau handed over only 50 secret documents. The rest he is suspected of keeping back.

In 2009, he left Israel and moved to London, apparently to avoid arrest and questioning about the missing documents.
In interviews with foreign journalists, Haaretz chief editor Dov Alfon said this week the newspaper will take care of all Blau's needs for as long as necessary. This Israeli daily is therefore protecting its reporter despite the breach of his agreement with the Shin Bet and is treating his case as the fundamental issue of a journalist's right to immunity and the immunity of his sources.

The Shin Bet chief warned that Blau has chosen a hazardous course by exposing himself to hostile agents as an intelligence target.

I'm thinking, if the Mossad don't get him first .....

UPDATE (2010-04-10): Arutz Sheva - Anat Kam studied under far-leftist professor Shlomo Sand.

In the interests of fairness, here is what Ha'Aretz has to say for itself:

1. Does Haaretz's insistence on protecting its reporter and his sources in the Anat Kam affair endanger state security?

Of course not. All the reports Uri Blau published in Haaretz based on his documents were submitted to the military censor and approved by her before publication, as required by law. In fact, in one case Haaretz's editors decided not to publish one of Blau's stories after it had gone to press, after senior defense officials changed their minds and requested that it not be released.

The state's security depends not only on upholding the censor's regulations, which Haaretz has done and continues to do, but also on upholding Israel's democratic values, including a free press. The agreement signed between Blau and the Shin Bet security service proves that the Shin Bet understands this as well.
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2. Does Blau possess classified documents and why doesn't he give them to the Shin Bet?

Blau left on vacation abroad with no classified documents in his possession. But like any investigative journalist, he has documents on which he bases his articles. These include, for example, the documents that led him to expose that Itay Ashkenazi, the chief of staff's son, was employed in companies that do business with the Israel Defense Forces - or documents he used for the report on Knesset Constitution Committee chairman David Rotem's involvement in the purchase of lands in Beit El with false papers. This is also the case with documents detailing money transfers to Ehud Barak Ltd., the company controlled by the defense minister's daughters.

Haaretz, therefore, believes that it cannot pass on all the documents Blau has to the defense establishment because its senior officials may use them to trace his sources. ....

Read the rest at the link.

At NYT, not all anti-Semitisms are created equal.

Noah Pollak at Commentary has an illustrative case of what it takes to get a story on anti-Semitism into the pages of the New York Times.

Here’s a pop quiz that I’m sure nobody will have a hard time passing: Which of the following two stories made it into the New York Times?

1. One of the top leaders of Hamas, Mahmoud Zahar, a man who has been written about on hundreds of occasions in the Times, responded to the dedication of a synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem by delivering a viciously anti-Semitic rant in which he promised the annihilation of Israel and said that the Jews “killed and murdered your prophets” and “have always dealt in loan-sharking” and are “destined to be destroyed.”

2. A Vatican preacher compared condemnation of the Church over its sex-abuse scandal to the persecution of Jews, remarks from which Church officials immediately distanced themselves.

No prizes for guessing which one got front-page coverage, and which got none at all. Why?

The reason, I think, is because the Times is a left-wing paper and adheres to one of the central tenets of enlightened progressivism: people who can be identified as Third World, or who are not members of the Judeo-Christian/European world, must not be held to the same standards to which white, First World people are held. This double-standard — it is the racism of the enlightened — pervades the treatment of different cultures and religions in the strongholds of Western liberalism, that is, in the media, academia, and the “human rights” community.

Please go read the rest of the article at the link. I'm quoting it here because it makes a point that, sadly, can't be stressed often enough. Organized liberalism often ignores its legitimate ideals and instead pursues a blind veneration of anything 'exotic' and unsullied by the corrupting taint of Western culture.

I could tell you about the Passover Seder I attended where the host invited everyone to name a country or place that needed improvement in human rights; she started the ball rolling by declaring, "America!" I could tell you about that, but why? You've probably heard something similar yourself.

Of course America isn't perfect, and of course there is room for our nation to become more just, more humane, more wise. But isn't it patriotism of the worst kind - or more correctly, nationalism - to care only about improving one's own country?

I can't resist bringing in this 1945 essay on nationalism from George Orwell. Here are a few passages that jumped out at me:

In England, if one simply considers the number of people involved, it is probable that the dominant form of nationalism is old-fashioned British jingoism. It is certain that this is still widespread, and much more so than most observers would have believed a dozen years ago. However, in this essay I am concerned chiefly with the reactions of the intelligentsia, among whom jingoism and even patriotism of the old kind are almost dead, though they now seem to be reviving among a minority. Among the intelligentsia, it hardly needs saying that the dominant form of nationalism is Communism -- using this word in a very loose sense, to include not merely Communist Party members, but "fellow travellers" and russophiles generally. A Communist, for my purpose here, is one who looks upon the USSR as his Fatherland and feels it his duty t justify Russian policy and advance Russian interests at all costs. Obviously such people abound in England today, and their direct and indirect influence is very great. But many other forms of nationalism also flourish, and it is by noticing the points of resemblance between different and even seemingly opposed currents of thought that one can best get the matter into perspective. ...

The old-style contemptuous attitude towards "natives" has been much weakened in England, and various pseudo-scientific theories emphasizing the superiority of the white race have been abandoned. Among the intelligentsia, colour feeling only occurs in the transposed form, that is, as a belief in the innate superiority of the coloured races. This is now increasingly common among English intellectuals, probably resulting more often from masochism and sexual frustration than from contact with the Oriental and Negro nationalist movements. Even among those who do not feel strongly on the colour question, snobbery and imitation have a powerful influence. Almost any English intellectual would be scandalized by the claim that the white races are superior to the coloured, whereas the opposite claim would seem to him unexceptionable even if he disagreed with it. Nationalistic attachment to the coloured races is usually mixed up with the belief that their sex lives are superior, and there is a large underground mythology about the sexual prowess of Negroes. ...

Within the intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism of the intelligentsia, which persisted long after it had become clear that the Axis powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly pleased when Singapore fell ore when the British were driven out of Greece, and there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news, e.g. el Alamein, or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle of Britain. English left-wing intellectuals did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese to win the war, but many of them could not help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated, and wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia, or perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics many intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong. As a result, "enlightened" opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy. Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle, the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.

There is little evidence about this at present, because the Nazi persecutions have made it necessary for any thinking person to side with the Jews against their oppressors. Anyone educated enough to have heard the word "antisemitism" claims as a matter of course to be free of it, and anti-Jewish remarks are carefully eliminated from all classes of literature. Actually antisemitism appears to be widespread, even among intellectuals, and the general conspiracy of silence probably helps exacerbate it. People of Left opinions are not immune to it ...

In our day, of course, this carries over to opinions about the State of Israel and its foreign policies. (But then, I'm an American Zionist - the most "violent and malignant" kind, according to GO - so I would say that!)

February 15: Washington's Birthday

Union Leader:

Today is not Presidents' Day. The holiday's official title is George Washington's Birthday. It is a day for celebrating the Father of our Country, whose greatness is often forgotten.

Few Americans know that George Washington never received more than elementary-level schooling. But he was a whiz at math, and his sharp mind and appetite for adventure led him to surveying, then to the Army.
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Incredibly, in his first military adventure, the totally untrained soldier led an attack on a French force near the Ohio River, killing a French ambassador. Thus began the French and Indian War. ...

Via GayPatriot.

But, what do you mean, it's not Presidents' Day?

Wikipedia:

Washington's Birthday is a United States federal holiday celebrated on the third Monday of February. It is also commonly known as Presidents Day (sometimes spelled as Presidents' Day or President's Day). As Washington's Birthday or Presidents Day, it is also the official name of a concurrent state holiday celebrated on the same day in a number of states.

And here'w Wiki on Washington himself:

George Washington (February 22, 1732 [O.S. February 11, 1731][1][2][3]– December 14, 1799) was the commander of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) and the first President of the United States of America (1789–1797).[4] For his central role in the formation of the United States, he is often referred to as "the father of his country".[5][6]

The Continental Congress appointed Washington commander-in-chief of the American revolutionary forces in 1775. The following year, he forced the British out of Boston, lost New York City, and crossed the Delaware River in New Jersey, defeating the surprised enemy units later that year. As a result of his strategy, Revolutionary forces captured the two main British combat armies at Saratoga and Yorktown. Negotiating with Congress, the colonial states, and French allies, he held together a tenuous army and a fragile nation amid the threats of disintegration and failure. Following the end of the war in 1783, King George III asked what Washington would do next and was told of rumors that he'd return to his farm; this prompted the king to state, "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world." Washington did return to private life and retired to his plantation at Mount Vernon.[7] ...

Go read it all, and have a pleasant Washington's Birthday.

Caprica: It's the story of a woman named Zoe, who's trapped in the wrong body ...

... and A. E. Brain can relate.

And It's About Damn Time

CNN:

Washington (CNN) -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates will unveil the Pentagon's plan to prepare for repealing the controversial "don't ask, don't tell" law regarding gay soldiers at a committee hearing Tuesday, a Pentagon spokesman said.

"The Defense Department leadership is actively working on an implementation plan and the secretary will have more to say about this next week," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said on Thursday.

President Obama said in his first State of the Union address Wednesday night that he would work with Congress and the Pentagon this year to repeal the law that prohibits military members from acknowledging openly that they are gay. ...

Why I follow the Middle East.

It's never dull.

Mousavi: Mohammadi was killed by US/Israel, not IRI after all. Debka:

In a gesture of reconciliation toward the regime, Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi conceded Sunday, Jan. 17, that the Iranian scientist Mehsoud Ali-Mohammadi murdered outside his home last Monday was the victim of Iran's "enemies," namely the US and Israel.

The opposition had previously blamed his death on the "tyrannical regime's" campaign to wipe out the intellectual elite backing the reform movement.

Reversing this position, Mousavi said: "The depressing martyrdom of the renowned physicist and Tehran University academic Mehsoud Ali-Mohammad signifies the harsh reality that enemies of Iran are set to take advantage of today's critical situation to pursue their own interests."

He added: "This criminal action is definitely part of a huge plan that obliges all of us, irrespective of our political tendencies, to give some thought to discover its other aspects."

Arutz Sheva: Mohammedi was killed by Hezbollah, not US/Israel, and he wasn't a nuclear bomb scientist after all. A7:

Evidence is mounting that Hizbullah may have been behind last week's assassination of Professor Ali Mohammadi, a physics professor who was murdered in a booby-trapped motorcycle explosion near his home.

Contrary to initial reports, Mohammadi apparently was not a nuclear physicist and had no connection with the development of Iran’s nuclear program, thus ruling out a motive that opposition groups were responsible for killing him.

Exclusive analysis from Dreams Into Lightning. Now you know as much about it as I do.

Undisclosed Location

Where is the Secretary of State?

Nile Gardiner at the Daily Telegraph writes: “The White House should send a search party to track down Hillary Clinton. America’s foreign policy chief has been missing from the world stage for several days, and has become as elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernel at the height of the French Revolution.”

Come to think of it, we haven’t seen or heard from her since the Flight 253 bombing attack. ...

RTWT.

Barry Rubin on Obama and Iran

Barry Rubin at GLORIA Center: Obama's 2010 Policy

A friend of mine is angry, saying I'm too tough on President Barack Obama and that nothing he does pleases me. Well, I wish he'd do more that pleases me, and disconcerts America's enemies.

True, he has done three good things lately: his Nobel speech, which sounded like it was actually given by a U.S. president; his remarks on the demonstrations in Iran (better six months late than never), and his tough verbal stance about investigating the mistakes that led to the near disaster (though I worry they're less about dramatic change and more just a show to reassure the public that something will be done). I also pointed out that the administration's relationship with Israel was pretty good overall.

Yet on the single most important Middle East issue, Iran's nuclear program and its aggressive ambitions, hints about his policy are getting worrisome both because of what this administration isn't doing and what it's obviously thinking. The year has now ended with no major public move toward imposing serious sanctions. True, there are a few statements you can dig out indicating a turn in that direction. Yet what should have happened was a major public speech by December 31 about the administration's sanction plans. After all, it set that date as a deadline for action ten months ago yet let it pass with no visible action.

There are other bad signs that the administration still doesn't comprehend the problems it faces. ...

Full post at the link.

Iran's Khamenei Planning to Escape to Russia?

According to this report, Iran's Supreme Leader and his family and henchmen may be planning to escape to Russia in the event that their criminal regime falls. Zand-Bon at Planet Iran:

December 29, 2009

Iran Global website has exposed a document that discloses information on Khamenei and various authorities of the regime’s possible escape to Russia.

The document is on the National Security Agency of the Islamic regime’s letterhead addressed from the office of the High Assembly of the Islamic Republic’s National Security official [name is redacted] to an individual [name redacted] in the revolutionary guards. The letter is dated 6th of Dey (December 27th).

It reads:

Re: Response to a letter number [redacted] written on the 5th of Dey (December 26th).

Salam Aleykom

With respect, we would like to inform you of the inspection, check up and preparation of the aircraft, destination Russia, for the purpose of transporting the Supreme Leader ....

Noel, Noel (Christmas 1940)

... I wanted to tell you about us, how wicked we are.
And yet also to say that the Star—you know the star I mean—
Is for some of us clearly visible still in the east at midnight rising, and all the night long burns serene—
And that on such nights on unaccustomed knees we kneel and in sweet discomfort
Pray for hours, and mean it, to be better than we are.
I am not one of these, I fear;
I loved you always for the things I read
About you in a book we had.
I did not meet you for the first time through the incense and stale smell
Of a room seldom aired, where people purred of heaven and howled of hell.
I used to read all day, when I was ten:
—You and Don Quijote were my heroes then.

Perhaps because of him I have been kind
Often with my heart, before consulting my mind.
I might have been wiser, had I learned direct from you—
Learned to make curlicues in the sand or on a scratch-pad while deciding what to say or do ...
Such as, "Sin—the waves come in—all pushing pebbles—each alone ...
I have it!—Let him among them who is without sin!—cast the first stone!"

I learned so young to know you, I could never see
Why we should not be playmates; you were wonderful,—
Oh, you were shiny!—and for some strange reason, fond of me.
But nothing will be done. I can do nothing. Nothing at all.
Only remember what you said, your voice, the way you said it,—
For it never was like something read, it was something heard, even while I read it—
And try to be wiser and kinder, in a world where Pity from place to place
Flees under cover of darkness, hiding her face;
Give Pity breathing-space.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay
from Make Bright the Arrows

Sailor

One more for the holiday, couldn't resist; it's Leonard Cohen with 'Suzanne'. Dutch subtitles at no extra charge.

O Light Divine

Oh, all right. Here's something for the holiday. It's Celine Dion with an utterly breathtaking version of "O Holy Night". Enjoy.

Funny, there doesn't seem to be a problem with Western-style Communism.

Normblog:

You can bet that if there's someone saying that some particular culture isn't receptive to the idea of human rights, they'll be hoping to foist on you a view that identifies that culture with the power-holders within it. I happen to have an example to hand. It's a man telling us that 'The Chinese have a powerful sense of their identity and worth. They have never behaved toward the West in a supplicant manner'. He goes on as follows:

The issue... is much deeper than Western-style democracy, a free media or human rights. China is simply not like the West and never will be. There has been an underlying assumption that the process of modernization would inevitably lead to Westernization; yet modernization is not just shaped by markets, competition and technology but by history and culture. And Chinese history and culture are very different from that of any Western nation-state.

So no need to worry about democracy and rights for them, they being so different and all?

Go read the rest at the link. Original source of that quote is here; Norm also quotes a different view, from two writers who are actually, like, Chinese and stuff.

Feds to Seize New York Properties Linked to IRI

Via Cyrus at Facebook, here's The Daily News:

Putting the squeeze on Tehran, the feds moved Thursday to seize a mosque in Queens and a Fifth Avenue skyscraper from a nonprofit organization suspected of secretly funneling money to Iran.

"The Alavi Foundation has effectively been a front for the government of Iran," said Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara, who sued to grab more than $500 million in assets.

Read it all at the link.

El Día

When describing my father to people, I used to like to say, "Picture a cross between Albert Einstein and Captain Kangaroo." The soft-spoken, bookish Ken McLintock was, for most of the years I knew him, on the editorial staff of Choice Magazine. But in another lifetime, he had been a machine gunner in the Second World War. In a memoir written years later (and left unfinished), he recalled his experiences up until (but not including) his unit's arrival at New Georgia.

Dad's career as an editor seems to have begun during the war years; at any rate, he assembled a collection of original writings by his fellow soldiers of the 146th Field Artillery Battalion.

It was pure curiosity which led me to investigate a Japanese who had been killed about eight hours before, during the night. Before I saw the body itself, I saw a heap of clothing - or rather, rags - and I thought to myself: Is it possible that that shapeless object is a man? As I got closer, however, I saw the fallen enemy. After the first brief shock at the sight, I went ahead, dispassionately, coldly looking at him.

He was lying on his back, resembling a piece of wax statuary, with one hand flung across his waist, holding a bloodstained handkerchief (he had been machine-gunned in the stomach), and the other arm was crooked up with the hand resting near his head. His age was certainly under eighteen, and his youthful flesh was firm though colored a strange, waxy, yellow-white hue. His head was turned to one side, revealing a clean, bloodless hole in the neck where he had been shot by one not knowing he was already dead. His eyes were slightly open, and his lips parted. His boyish, beardless face was not entirely expressionless. On it I fancied I could see an expression revealing a boy trying to solve one of the great mysteries of life, a mystery that was beyond his grasp. ...

Dad also left a body of original writing. His remembrance of his mother recounts his memories of her singing career:

Mother's training, though, was not for the opera stage. Instead she sang with New York's Oratorio Society for years, and was soloist in a number of churches in the New York area. She also was a member of at least one church choir and even one synagogue choir (that of the famed Temple Emanu-El). Among the members of one of the choirs was Harry T. Burleigh, composer and arranger of Negro spirituals (as they were then called), including "Deep River". Burleigh was already well on in years when Mother knew him, and as the years went by, he would announce solemnly each year that this would be the last year he would sing "The Palms" at the Palm Sunday service.

In the one extant piece of writing that could be called a diary - dated New Year's Day 1968 - he speaks of feeling a quiet but invincible optimism:

despite having been uprooted a week before Christmas and kept until a week after Christmas in a warm house, somehow it will survive the shock of having been replanted (in a new location) this 15-degree day. And I know that, despite the cold, I will get the tree planted today. This is what I mean by invincible optimism. In other years I should have left the tree in the garage for a day or so -- letting the tree get accustomed to the cold, I would tell the world -- before planting it. Today I don't feel the need for any such evasion: I shall go out there within the hour, not joyfully, perhaps, but but at least without hesitation.

On pondering his qualifications for a certain job, he mused:

The job that I must do some day --
Fill an excavation or fule a flame --
I hope will not be asked of me too soon.
Were it tonight, or, say, tomorrow noon,
The fire would sputter, to my shame,
Or else the hole that's dug would be
So unexpectedly full of space
They'd think they'd buried in that place
Someone already more than half a ghost. ...

I do not know whether he ever got over the feeling of having lived "a life spent on the perimeter". In his later years, he embraced Judaism and became affiliated with a couple of local synagogues. For a too-short period of time, he was able to fulfill his own love of singing (and of Jewish music) in the choir of one of those synagogues.

Alzheimer's robbed him of his faculties quickly and ruthlessly. You know that scene in '2001: A Space Odyssey' where Dave has to disconnect HAL? Kind of like that.

***

My mother survived my father by about two and a half years. Her mother was the only grandparent living when Stephanie and I were growing up; we'd travel from our home in South Windsor, Connecticut to visit her in Bath, Maine every Thanksgiving.

I remember my mother as fiercely idealistic and intellectual, mistrustful of the world but relentless in her efforts to improve the world in spite of itself. She left no written works, but played a critical role in helping several friends - children and adults - to achieve literacy.

Her relationship with her mother was deep and deeply troubled. Long after the old woman was buried, Mom's voice would quiver with hurt and rage over things her mother had said or done to her as a child.

***

Stephanie was with us for twenty-eight years. She was preoccupied with mortality; one of her earliest poems observes:

Man is a fragile being,
Within himself and by himself,
Man is a dream,
An impossible dream,
And thinking he knows everything
Knows nothing
And is lost in the dream.
Imprisoned in him is a heart
That beats and stops, and all is lost.
Man fears death, though it must come ...

And then there is this:

The rain is water
from the sea
to the sky.
These rocks will be fossils,
my heart, thistles.
Only the sun consuming itself
will die.

Stephanie never felt at home in this world, as if she were migrating

through this country and out again
towards a greater desolation
than that from which I came.
Some days I am a gypsy
lying on sweet green grass or yellow fields
under a sky wide and full of sun;
some days I am a ragged dog
barking in alleys
among trash and empty bottles;
and some days I nearly forget -
but I can feel this body planning,
gathering forces,
signing documents;
all my time is borrowed time.

Even now, I find myself reading her poems and stories over and over again, always discovering something new.

Where the Night Water Runs

Once I chased a dream, a bird song,
a peacock feather,
through midnight down to the lapping water
silver crickets like ear-stars singing
all along the fields where fieldmice hide.
There is no place to go
but down to where the night water runs,
and runs black and slow,
slow like feet running in a dream.
Kind water, sweet and black
whispering, "I take nothing back.
I only go on."
The dream was really a beast
covered by night; I did not know,
and I followed the rank smell far,
too far away,
to find it, large
and turning, white clawed and snorting
too awful for fear,
too awful for running,
the song of my living too awful for fear -
and now to go on,
walking;
dawn is near.

Even now, she still visits me from time to time in my dreams.

Stephanie again, for a short time. I think we must have been teens or young adults. We were visiting the home of another family, perhaps relatives. It was getting late at night. I don't know if our parents were there or not. She was ready to drive home. Oh good, I thought, this will give us a chance to catch up; I haven't spoken with her in a long time. Even after I woke up, it was several minutes before I realized just how long it had been, and why.