Heretics' almanac

Hitchens, thinking he's clever

I find Christopher Hitchens to be an insufferable, pretentious blow-hard, and his latest article in Slate only confirms this perception.

Ironically, Hitchens, who thinks the Zionist enterprise is dubious to begin with, argues that "Cindy Sheehan is at best a shifty fantasist" because she (very likely) has said that the war in Iraq is being fought on behalf of Israel.  He further points to her paranoia by claiming that her allegation that an e-mail attributed to her was "easily and convincingly refuted."

But after having made this ad hominem attack Hitchens's real point is that Sheehan's activism is futile and kind of ridiculous, because the basis for her case is unlikely to find support on the left, right, middle, or anywhere.  He asks rhetorically, what if we actually did what she demanded?

Wikipedia dialectic

If anybody needs an introduction to the mess that is the debate on the Arab-Israeli conflict (never mind the actual conflict), Wikipedia is a pretty good place to start.  Pretty much every article that touches the conflict has an NPOV tag, which translates to The neutrality of this article is disputed.  And it nearly always is.

One example is the article on "Palestine."  This term, you must understand, is distinct from "The Region of Palestine" and "the State of Palestine," or for that matter, "Eretz Israel."  So to avoid any further confusion, there's a separate article called "Definitions of Palestine," which is arguably the most interesting of the lot.

In any event, I waded into the Palestine article and found it to a disjointed mess of partisan arguments that were largely redundant to the same arguments found in other articles.  Since the open source concept of Wikipedia allows anyone to edit anything, I radically got rid of all redundant stuff and left it mostly like a link farm.  Another editor prompty reverted it to its mess without making further comment, and I reverted it back,and it seems most people are cool with my changes.  At least so far.

Not yet my Christmas greeting

Charles Krauthammer wishes everyone a Merry Christmas, after he made it clear that:

It is the more deracinated [big word there, Chuck] members of religious minorities, brought up largely ignorant of their own traditions, whose religious identity is so tenuous that they feel the need to be constantly on guard against displays of other religions -- and who think the solution to their predicament is to prevent the other guy from displaying his religion, rather than learning a bit about their own.

Krauthammer - as is his habit - isn't particularly interested in the actual facts or arguments here - he simply assumes certain things with no evidence for it.  Among other things, he is "struck":

... by the fact that you almost never find Orthodox Jews complaining about a Christmas creche in the public square.

So there it is: Christmas may be about wishing Christian friends a happy holiday, but it is also an opportunity to:

Slam the non-Orthodox!

Now, the paucity of Orthodox complaints may have something to do with the fact that most Orthodox Jews send their kids to private schools, where Christmas is barely mentioned.  And that the haredi live in close-knit communities where the Christmas creche isn't an issue to begin with. 

This kind of Jewish divisiveness is just so 90's, but since Krauthammer feels free to put forward "facts" for which he has no evidence but his own prejudice, why can't we?  Nah, never mind.

But is anyone else struck by the irony that Krauthammer uses his column to call for greater tolerance and acceptance of one religious group (Christians) while maligning another (non-Orthodox Jews?)

"Fetus" or "unborn" child

NPR's On the Media talked today about the power of terminology in the political discourse, against the background that several media companies now have adopted the term "unborn baby" rather than "fetus" when it comes to described third-term, ehm, fetuses.  It turns out that several "anti-abortion" groups complained that while Scott Peterson was accused of second degree murder of his and his wife Laci's "unborn baby" Conner, a woman who terminates her pregnancy in the third term aborts a "fetus." 

The anti-abortion groups clearly have a point.  If Scott Peterson's conviction is based on the premise that Conner Peterson was fully a human, then Conner's legal status should apply to all fetuses at the same level of gestation.  And if such a status applies, then women who terminate their pregnancies at this stage are just as guilty of murder as Scott is.

The logic is straightforward, but it quickly gets complicated once you look more deeply into it.

The terminology of "occupation"

I came across an excellent series of articles (first, second, third, fourth) written by Jonathan Edelstein on "the language of the Israeli-Arab conflict."  Highly recommended reading for everyone.

Jonathan - who is an attorney - notes that the term "occupation" gets a lot of commentary from readers of the series.  He sums up the definitional problem by writing:

...an occupation exists when a state maintains military control of territory outside its internationally recognized borders.

I think that's a workable definition, but not necessarily helpful for describing the status of areas outside the green (and purple) line that Israel controls.

The problem is in the clause "internationally recognized borders."

Poisoning in Kiev and not in Ramallah

John Henry must feel vindicated.  On November 23rd, he said that Yushchenko's acne was consistent with dioxin poisoning, and today the doctors at Rudolfinerhaus in Vienna confirmed that they found way too much dioxin in Yushchenko's blood and tissue.  He's been poisoned by a "third party," who obviously doesn't know enough about toxicology to use a less traceable toxin.

You'd think poisoning went out of fashion as a political tool with Rasputin (who was eventually shot to death), but there obviously are some people who favor it.  Of course, there are Palestinians who believe that Arafat was poisoned by the Israelis, and so it happens that Arafat's nephew Nasir al-Quidwa (who by strange coincidence having nothing to do with nepotism is the PA's "observer" at the United Nations) released all relevant medical records to Palestinian leaders. 

Stop blaming Islam

Daniel Pipes puts it most eloquently, but the prevailing consensus is that the solution to "radical Islam" is "moderate Moslems."  Although this makes sense, it never sounded quite right to me. And now I think I know why:

"Conservative" shmuckism (updated)

In a response to a point of protest I made against Daniel Pipes, David Wolf writes:

Liberalism is part of a larger pathology that includes a willful ignorance of the pernicious aspects of other cultures in favor of well-intended tolerance.
Liberals, in my experience, are rarely the type of people who traffic in facts. Their stock in trade is emotionalism-- hence the reactionary embrace of false panaceas such as multiculturalism.

Big words for a little mind.  It would be entirely possible to write a corresponding passage about "conservatives," and it would be equally wrong and insulting.   

So let's do this instead:

I disagree with what I want you to say

Fellow members of an e-mail list I belong to have been sending out various and sundry anti-Kerry articles, even though the purpose of the list has nothing to do with the presidential campaign. After objecting to this abuse of the list a few times, I resigned myself to responding to the messages instead.

Now, let me be clear that I have misgivings about Kerry. I am on the fiscally conservative side when it comes to the role of government, and I'm a libertarian when it comes to individual freedom. I don't think Kerry's position on foreign policy is all that coherent, and I am nervous about the way he might handle Israel. I'd vote for a Democrat more often than a Republican, but McCain would get my endorsement over all the Democratic primary candidates, with the exception of Edwards.

But the debate seems to be based on the premise that if you can fault Kerry for anything at all, you better vote for Bush. And the standard doesn't apply the other way.

So this online debate quickly got down to the phrase "global test."

And the most remarkable series of exchanges was this:

A hymnal of cowardice

Two entirely different sources draw my attention to two entirely different articles today.

Imshin writes an article on hatred of Israel, coupling it with an article that appeared both in the UK Guardian and Front Page Magazine, titled An American Scapegoat in London. It's pretty scary reading.

Then there is an article in the Duke University newspaper titled The Jews , where a Benjamin N. Duke scholar thinks that "the Jews" took their "privilege" too far by seeking to prevent the Palestine Solidarity Movement from holding a conference there.

So, before you read more of my rantings, read all the stuff I've linked to above and think about it all.