peace demonstration

Tel Aviv, Israel

Women Wage Peace group hold up pieces of cardboard in formation to read ‘Ready for Peace’ in Midoun Park

Photograph: Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images

Trump's sharing of intelligence

Ronen Bergman

I cannot for a moment pretend to have a handle on the latest Trump-induced shit-storm in Washington, but if I had to guess, my guess is that Israel's displeasure may prove to be a cornerstone in the investigation yet to be. Israel, whatever else it may be, is a U.S. ally with some very savvy intelligence in the middle of an oil-rich part of the world. Playing fast and loose with its hard-won intelligence (its operatives kill and are killed in turn) is not something Israel is likely to sit still for ... and the United States cannot do without those intelligence efforts. The following is an excerpt from a public broadcast interview with an Israeli intelligence correspondent and sounds suspiciously like something of more importance than all the American talking heads on TV combined. Trading Israeli hard work for an American sociopath's posturing is going too far. Someplace in the interview, the correspondent suggests that Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is "afraid" of Trump. Imagine that -- one sociopath afraid of another.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM (PBS): It was The New York Times that first reported yesterday that Israel was the source of that classified intelligence about ISIS that President Trump allegedly divulged to Russian diplomats.

If true, what are the ramifications, not only for the political relationship between the U.S. and Israel, but the close ties between the nations’ intelligence services?

For that, we turn to Ronen Bergman. He’s the intelligence correspondent for Israel’s largest daily newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth. His forthcoming book is called “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations.”

And he joins me now from Tel Aviv.

Ronen, may I first ask you, were you able to confirm that this intelligence that the president allegedly divulged was in fact from Israel, and, if so, what the reaction among Israeli intelligence has been?

RONEN BERGMAN, Yedioth Ahronoth: This is not yet finally confirmed.

There’s an investigation going on in Israel, trying to check which of the many, many items of intelligence that was delivered to the United States during the last three or four months regarding Syria, the activity of ISIS, Russia, Hezbollah, Iran, all closely guarded by Israel, which of these items were given by President Trump to Foreign Minister Lavrov.

As per the emotions or the reactions inside Israeli intelligence community, I would say they are ballistic. (emphasis added).

In a suspicious age and viewing an ornately organized intelligence system, what a wonderful disinformation officer/mole for Netanyahu Bergman might make.

selling air

Farming the air

It may do little or nothing for you, but bottled air and newly-designed pollution masks seem to be wrapping up some big profits in China, India and other pollution-choked -- but wealthy, dontcha know -- nations.

Dehydrated water, anyone?

circus prepares to leave town

Ladies and gentlemen, children
of all ages, say goodbye to the
‘Greatest Show on Earth’.

A 14-year-old girl named Zazel was the first to be shot out of a cannon, in 1877 London. In the 140 years since, the act’s safety has been vastly improved but never perfected. One circus historian estimated that 30 human cannonballs have died in performance accidents. The most recent death occurred in 2011.

 The oohs and ahs and wonderment and elephants and tigers and clowns getting out of Volkswagens... well, this generation 'has an app for that.'

snorkeling in the Red Sea

To the best of my knowledge, I have never known anyone who went snorkeling in the Red Sea. Not that it is a signal achievement, perhaps, but it strikes me as a nice thing to have on a personal resume, even if it is never mentioned.

Yesterday I got a note from my younger son, who deployed to Sinai a couple of weeks back and is still, if I get it right, getting his feet under him. And one of the things that cropped up in the dull spaces that military life is so adept at handing out was snorkeling in the Red Sea. There were some astounding fish, he wrote. And I was jealous in the way I suspect all parents may be jealous of the new and wider adventures their kids encounter. My son has done something I have never done and never will. His life, in some very small way, is better than mine was, from where I sit.

Snorkeling in the Red Sea! Eeeeee-haw!

Trump impeachment odds

Speculators are throwing money into the betting pot, but I keep remembering all those who just knew Hillary Clinton would win the presidential election.

une first-class hoot

Guilty pleasure, but pleasure nonetheless -- this column about Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron, the newly-anointed first couple of France, had me laughing out loud. And it's not that she's 24 years older than her husband. I may be cussed out for some politically-incorrect gaff, but I am prepared to suffer ... this is too good to pass up:

No one should mind that the French president is 24 years younger than his wife, Brigitte. But the story of their romance? That is a bit weird.

nesting

This is a Google image and not quite right. One of my neighbors has a reddish throat. Maybe it's not a sparrow, though the size is right.

                                                                                    

Bit by tendril by browned bit of grass by twig, a boy and girl sparrow are building a nest under the front eave. Others have done the same in the same place in the past. Are they descendants of the ones I first saw there years ago? Are they the same duet? I have no clue how long sparrows live, but I feel charmed by their efforts.

terrorism -- made in the USA

The next time any 'terrorism' expert starts wringing his or her hands about the threat to 'this great democracy of ours' and suggesting we really do need a bigger and better military budget that will eat up things like schools and infrastructure and medical coverage and other relatively peaceful pastimes, at least consider the possibility that the terrorists do not live, were not born in and did not take their cues from the Middle East:

Daryl Johnson and other terrorism experts worry that a generation of people who came of age in the shadow of 9/11 may not understand that historically, most terror attacks in the US have been domestic in origin.
In fact, a 2016 report by the US Government Accountability Office noted that “of the 85 violent extremist incidents that resulted in death since September 12, 2001, far-rightwing violent extremist groups were responsible for 62 (73%) while radical Islamist violent extremists were responsible for 23 (27%).” (The report counts the 15 Beltway sniper shootings in 2002 as radical Islamist attacks, though the perpetrators’ motivations are debated.)

Marine Corps leads with a lady

A Marine Corps recruiting clip features a woman in a combat role. Different bits of spin can be put on the clip, but the one wafting around in my mind is that such women, despite their obvious grit ... are really showing some grit. Women in combat is one small way in which Donald Trump can goose his military-dependent administration ... and can also bring out the blindness of war. Everyone gets killed where the bullets fly and the bombs go off ... no preferences. But the mind makes preferences. Heroic men? Maybe that's OK for people who don't think through their "heroes." But heroic and shredded women (ours, not theirs)? Well, ummmmm.

"G.I. Jane" is a pretty good movie.

In my groundless bias, it is men, by nature of their wonderful imaginations, who wonder what it might be like to stick a fork in a light socket.  Women are by nature fiercier and say, "Don't be an asshole." Men can be ethical, but women -- leaving aside philosophical prattle -- are ethics ... by nature. Can women fight? You bet your ass they can fight. But they, I suspect, have a deep gene that is willing to review and reflect. Men, have the "Mother of All Bombs."

"Pollock"

Today, I watched part of the movie called "Pollock," a film about the abstract artist. Ed Harris, an actor
whose silences are often credible on screen, starred. I like Ed Harris. The movie was -- you guessed it -- all about Jackson Pollock.

I like people who are willing to lay down their chips for creativity. When it comes to the art work, this doesn't mean I like the outcome. It's the willingness to throw down.

The movie, after a while, presumed a bit too much for me. I kept wondering why I should care about this guy. It was the same feeling I would get when reading books about Pablo Picasso -- why should I like this man I don't much care for. With Pollock I was vaguely interested. With Picasso, the ego had miles too much volume and I disliked his distaste for women.

Why should I care about artists? I do care to look at the art. I'm not especially interested and do not like being arm-wrestled into pretending there is something important at hand. Does the art love me? Do I love the art?

Nuff said. You want your cock stroked, go somewhere else.

China takes on global posture

The latest U.S. budget allocates 54% of a $1.1 trillion kitty to the military. Even the Jesuits might have a hard time suggesting the military spending would create peaceful pastimes.

Meanwhile,

Chinese president Xi Jinping has kicked off a two-day showcase of what some call the most ambitious development project ever by comparing his country to a peace-loving explorer set on transforming the world with treasure-laden galleys not warships, guns or swords.
Speaking at the start of a high-profile summit about China’s “Belt and Road initiative”, Xi hailed his multi-billion dollar infrastructure crusade as a means of building a modern-day version of the ancient Silk Road and a new “golden age” of globalisation.

Even supposing that Xi Jinping is doing little more than a semi-camouflaged capitalist two-step, at least his bling has the look of something positive and creative and not just the U.S. posing once more for the most-like-North-Korea military posters.

China has been in a number of places (too lazy to look up) when the spotlight was not there. Africa comes to mind and the goal seemed to be to set up trading partners for the future. Will they gouge the customers? I imagine so -- that's money. But will they gouge the customer worse than its current masters? I sort of imagine not -- the Chinese want income and stability, not a bunch of raped girls and machetes flashing in the sunlight as arms fall away.

When, of late, did the United States initiate even the most egregious capitalist construction project or bit of international cooperation?

Donald Trump doesn't seem capable of creating anything. The only thing he can do is make a deal on someone else's back.

Israel's latest weekend scalp

Ramallah, West Bank

A Palestinian protester uses a sling to hurl stones towards Israeli troops during clashes at a protest in support of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike in Israeli jails.

Photograph: Mohamad Torokman/Reuters

Another example, I suppose, of a guy with a rock taking on guys with loaded weapons.

Smells vaguely like:  

A Jordanian citizen stabbed and wounded an Israeli police officer who then shot him dead in Jerusalem's Old City on Saturday, Israeli police said, the latest in a string of street attacks....

Police spokeswoman Luba Simri said the officer was walking down a street when he was attacked by a 57-year-old Jordanian who had arrived in Israel for a visit a few days earlier.

"The terrorist rushed toward him, whipped out a knife that he had in his possession, stormed him and began stabbing him. The police officer responded with determination and in a professional manner, managed to activate his weapon and neutralized him," Simri said.

Let that line sink in: "The police officer responded with determination and in a professional manner, managed to activate his weapon and neutralized him," I thought only George Orwell talked like that ... or maybe Joseph Goebbels.

Beleaguered and pummeled little Israel ... oh, and did anyone say "nuclear armed?" Am I wrong or is the weekend the preferred time for Israel to kill off yet another knife-wielding ... ummm.... "terrrorist" who is waving a knife in the face of loaded weapons? I honestly don't think anyone's blameless in this Israeli  apartheid campaign, but the arrogance  and the willingness of allies to lie down and spread their legs so that the stronger adversary can wreak his or her righteous havoc.....
The batting average of late:

Thirty-seven Israelis, two American tourists and a British student have been killed in the street attacks which have slowed in recent months, though not stopped.
At least 244 Palestinians have been killed since the violence began. Israel says at least 164 of them were carrying out stabbings, shootings or car ramming attacks. Others died during clashes and protests.

Whenever I read about another of Israel's venomous (but badly armed) foes dealt with in mortal fashion, and then read the batting average, I tend to think that for every one of Israel's soldiers or civilians under attack (sometimes, but rarely fatally) I automatically figure that for every Israeli or Israeli ally, three of Israel's under-armed opponents are likely to be dead.

Michelle Obama kicks some ass

Former first lady attacks president’s reversal of regulations to help improve school lunches: ‘Think about why someone is OK with your kids eating crap’

She may be making a packet of money like all the rest of them, but anyone would sound good next to Donald Trump's fork-tongued, parsimony in which every statement has to be interpreted either by staff members or by members of the press pretending to know what he actually said..

net neutrality

Received in email:

John Oliver just made it easier to contact the FCC about net neutrality

absolution

As a teenager in the late 1950's, I partook of the same pimples others my age did and succumbed to the typical teen-aged pastime of gradually uncovering the hypocrisies of my elders. What a bunch of fork-tongued chieftains they turned out to be, right? We, by contrast, had the ascending bright lights of the Beat Generation and other beacons of truth.

It was in that time that one of my best high school friends confided to me that he had bitten the bullet with his parents and declared he would no longer attend the Roman Catholic church that was a family habit. I watched his face as he retailed the story. I could see it was not without anguish. The church might be a lot of malarkey, but, but, but ... but the habit was long and not without comfort.

I'm not sure what prompted me, but when he had finished his tale, I asked, "Is there anything you will miss?" The grimness that had hidden on his face grew, if anything, grimmer.

"Absolution" was his one-word response. And the answer shot through me like a hot knife through butter. What a daring, naked response. What a piece of honesty from someone questioning the dishonesty of the world. "Absolution." It was, in its way, a cri de coeur for hypocrites and non-hypocrites alike. It was humanity in my ear and I was gob-smacked.

To believe you might do something in the present that would credibly forgive something in the past. Talk about a blessing ... talk about a binkie of gigantic proportions ... never mind the truth, never mind the hypocrisy ... mind the utter humanity of the wish and the blessing of its fulfillment. Not to put too much of a point on it, JEEEEEE-SUS!!!!!!

Ego te absolvo.... and suddenly sins of omission and sins of commission are dissolved like salt in sea water. Imagine imagining that something or someone could transmit such mana. Never mind whatever hypocrisies are woven within ... shit, just imagine it!

the rise of uselessness

Oh lord -- you might have known it ... a TED talk bushwacks my interest... passed along in email...

As technology renders jobs obsolete, what will keep us busy? Sapiens author Yuval Noah Harari examines ‘the useless class’ and a new quest for purpose....
The same technology that renders humans useless might also make it feasible to feed and support the unemployable masses through some scheme of universal basic income. The real problem will then be to keep the masses occupied and content. People must engage in purposeful activities, or they go crazy. So what will the useless class do all day?
One answer might be computer games. Economically redundant people might spend increasing amounts of time within 3D virtual reality worlds, which would provide them with far more excitement and emotional engagement than the “real world” outside. This, in fact, is a very old solution. For thousands of years, billions of people have found meaning in playing virtual reality games. In the past, we have called these virtual reality games “religions”.
What is a religion if not a big virtual reality game played by millions of people together? Religions such as Islam and Christianity invent imaginary laws, such as “don’t eat pork”, “repeat the same prayers a set number of times each day”, “don’t have sex with somebody from your own gender” and so forth. These laws exist only in the human imagination. No natural law requires the repetition of magical formulas, and no natural law forbids homosexuality or eating pork. Muslims and Christians go through life trying to gain points in their favorite virtual reality game. If you pray every day, you get points. If you forget to pray, you lose points. If by the end of your life you gain enough points, then after you die you go to the next level of the game (aka heaven).

My guess is that if this scenario is, as it seems, credible, the wealthy had better get creative with their shenanigans if they don't want to be murdered in their beds.

"Impeachara"

Passed along in email:

Step 1: Watch the commercial for Impeachara®.
Step 2: Talk to your doctor to see if this medicine may help with your symptoms of T.I.A.D.
Step 3: Buy Impeachara® online.

Amazon undercuts Buddhist funeral costs

Passed along in email today, this year-old story of the drip-drip dwindling of Buddhist fealty in Japan: 

Buddhist monks on demand: Amazon Japan allows customers to order rituals online at far cheaper rates than temples expect to be paid. 

Monk delivery services have emerged as many of Japan’s 75,000 temples are losing offerings and business within their communities, which traditionally have been the main source of financial support.

son's body fed, in the end, to pigs

This is a story I found so utterly depraved that I cannot sidestep it. But that doesn't mean anyone else needs to... The boy was seven.

When the charges were filed, Wyandotte County's district attorney at the time, Jerry Gorman, said it was one the worst cases investigators had seen. During Monday's hearing, a police investigator - Detective Stuart Littlefield - confirmed publicly for the first time that "what was left of (Adrian's body) was fed to his pigs." Often choking back tears, Littlefield asked for a 20-second moment of silence, reflecting the length of time Adrian at one point was shocked by a stun gun during his "tortured young life."

photos in The Guardian

Moscow, Russia 

Snow falls in a park. Photograph: Sergei Chirikov/EPA

Hebei, China

Nurses use chopsticks to practise smiling at a hospital in Handan

Photograph: China Stringer Network/Reuters

wish I could be wicked

Sometimes I think the spiritual way is not so much that people would like to be good as it is that they would love to be wicked but not be forced to take responsibility. When the desire is repeatedly thwarted, the path of goodness stands out as the last best option.

Ah, the fickle finger of fate....

what time is it in Spain? Ask the Nazis

So why are Spaniards living behind their geographic time zone?
In 1940, General Francisco Franco changed Spain’s time zone, moving the clocks one hour forward in solidarity with Nazi Germany.
For Spaniards, who at the time were utterly devastated by the Spanish Civil War, complaining about the change did not even cross their minds. They continued to eat at the same time, but because the clocks had changed, their 1pm lunches became 2pm lunches, and they were suddenly eating their 8pm dinners at 9pm.
After World War II ended, the clocks were never changed back.

blasphemy in Ireland

Police in Ireland are investigating a complaint of blasphemy regarding comments made by Stephen Fry on a television programme shown on Ireland’s state broadcaster, RTÉ.
Gardaí (police) in Dublin have contacted the man who reported the allegation following a broadcast in February 2015, and a full investigation is due to be carried out, the Irish Independent reported.
Under Ireland’s Defamation Act 2009 a person who publishes or utters blasphemous material “shall be guilty of an offence”. A conviction can lead to a fine of up to €25,000.

"Blasphemy."

How somehow quaint these days. Blasphemy requires hope. It requires trust. It requires broad-based social something-or-other.

Imagine that any more.

"Blasphemy."

Israel's wisdom reprised ... againandagainandagain

Israeli ministers have approved the wording of a new law that would downgrade Arabic as an official language and which states that the right to self-determination in Israel “is unique to the Jewish people”, despite the country’s sizeable non-Jewish minority.

There are an estimated 5.3 million Jews in the United States -- 2.2% of the population. The United States is where the money is. There are an estimated 6 million Jews in Israel, whose Arab population is estimated at 1.65 million or some 20%. There are 7.3 million Canadians (22% of the population) whose mother tongue is French.

Large minded-ness among the victors is not a common attribute. Look at the U.S. in Afghanistan where the Russians and the British had the good sense to skedaddle.

women's derring-do

Since 1999, the world's elite big-wave surfers have battled it out at an event known as the Mount Everest of surf competitions - at Mavericks in California. Until this year, female surfers were banned from taking part. But a small group of determined women have fought their way in.

When I was a kid, I went to a boarding grade school where boys and girls shared equally in the various fads that were bound to erupt among youngsters. When there was a jacks fad, boys and girls equally took up jacks. Girls carried sheath knives in much the same way boys did -- you needed a knife to cut the twine around hay bales destined to feed the horses and boys and girls both tended to the horses. When there was a knitting fad, I too took up knitting. And when it came to downhill and slalom ski racing, girls were sometimes slower by the nature of their musculature, not because of their sex ... and god knows some of them beat the shit out of me on skis.

I maintain to this day a distaste for distinctions made solely on the basis of sex. I can't carry a baby and I doubt that I can be as pretty, but that's the nature of the universe, not some god-given rule of division. Women aren't better because they have breasts or because they have been tamped down in the course of various cultural events. If they can do it, I am welcome to try too. If I can do it, they are welcome to try too. Why not? There are women klutzes and men klutzes, women experts and men experts ... it's the "klutz" or "expert" that counts. I know women who imagine they can write because they love the written word ... and couldn't write their way out of a paper bag. Men too. Get it straight: It's the humanity, not the sex.

As to women's derring-do in big-wave country ... go, get 'em, darling: I haven't got the balls for that.

unrasiert und fern der heimat

There are less direct, less indelicate translations available, but the 1960 Wildhagen German-English dictionary I have always made my heart soar with its translation of "unrasiert und fern der heimat." "Down on one's luck" or even the more literal "unshaven and far from home" simply could not hold a candle to the in-your-face "fucked and far from home."

Far from home without a handhold in sight. What a feeling. What a sorrow. In the fourth-and-a-half-grade, I was sent away to boarding school and on the first night away from home wept my eyes to their arid ends as I realized I had be shunted off by my mother. The house mother and father, who had probably seen it all before, sat in the darkness of night and consoled me until I ran out of steam.

I pulled the Wildhagen off the shelf just now and found the beloved translation nestled among other definitions which also had gnat-sized print. I knew it would be there because "fucked and far from home"  brought me such delight when I first saw it in Berlin... and noted it was hosted in part by an English publisher.

My own youthful tears reiterated themselves today as my younger son got closer and closer to a commercial flight that would take him and his National Guard comrades "fern der heimat" in Egypt-- far from home in a way that most of them have probably never been. Does it matter if you're in the fourth grade or your middle twenties if the trek to "fern der heimat" gathers momentum? My son wasn't crying on Skype, but I could feel the tears ... family, girl friend, country ... soon enough the rug would be pulled out from under his feet. Such a trip is an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) for anyone's belief system. Talk about feeling fucked, even if it's not entirely clear how.

How will things be when the way that they were and the beliefs they supported are taken away in a trice? And yet without such an experience, how can anyone's beliefs and footing be anything more than shaky at best? Not least is the surprise at how resilient (or forgetful?) anyone might be. By the sixth grade, when my mother asked me if I'd prefer to live in New York with her, I said without a backward glance, "no." Perhaps it will be the same for my son -- gathering and donning new armor and capacities in a fern-der-heimat that is no longer so far and so homeless.

Listen to Dylan Thomas in Under Milk Wood: "Time passes. Listen! Time passes."

savvy from a wealthy world

Warren Buffett

Actually, the guy whose words struck a chord with me at the Berkshire Hathaway hoedown in Omaha this weekend was not so much Warren Buffett, 86, as it was the words of Charlie Munger, Buffet's 93-year-old confrere: 

CHARLIE MUNGER ON BERKSHIRE'S ADVANTAGE
"I think we have one big advantage. A lot of other people are trying to be brilliant, and we're just trying to stay rational." 
MUNGER ON BUFFETT
"You're a fatter version of Mahatma Gandhi.

Blowhards like Donald Trump could take a lesson from men who know how to laugh and know how to admit a mistake.

global warming, plague resurrected

Climate change is melting permafrost soils that have been frozen for thousands of years, and as the soils melt they are releasing ancient viruses and bacteria that, having lain dormant, are springing back to life....
People and animals have been buried in permafrost for centuries, so it is conceivable that other infectious agents could be unleashed. For instance, scientists have discovered intact 1918 Spanish flu virus in corpses buried in mass graves in Alaska's tundra. Smallpox and the bubonic plague are also likely buried in Siberia....
Once they were revived, the viruses quickly became infectious.

Meanwhile in Hannover,

Around 50,000 people in Hannover will be evacuated from their homes on Sunday while experts defuse five World War Two bombs.

The operation is the second largest of its kind carried out in Germany, and will affect around a tenth of the city's population.

The past has reminders for the present.

Pete Seeger ... ahhh

Because it is what I am listening to:




AND THEN THE ODDBALL RARITY, "THE GOOFING OFF SUITE," .... TALK ABOUT AN ECLECTIC MIND AND A SENSE OF HUMOR       https://youtu.be/yiTBcD36_G4