310,000 can't be wrong

Surely not; 310,000 marched in NYC. Matt Sutkowski,  writing about yesterday's global climate march, praises the intent if the marchers, but wonders if the momentum for policy change will be maintained - and will the politicians listen? He's got his doubts, and so do I.  (Juan Cole's Informed Comment gives background on their effectiveness, with a little history about these protests.). It's all about momentum. Sustained momentum.

Because there's this, from the Guardian:

US will not commit to climate change aid for poor nations at UN summit

PLAYING CHICKEN

For today, two quotes from a local Vermont blog I have just discovered - a friend has posted/linked them on his Facebook. They are worth pondering.

"You ignore the cyclist making a frantic "stop/slow down" signal (left arm out straight, forearm down, waving frantically at the ground) and you maybe even hear him cry out "YOU HAVE NO SAFE PASS ! NO SAFE PASS! before accelerating around him. Then you make a panic braking/right merging movement so as to avoid a head-on collision with the oncoming maroon pickup truck."

...

"We have ingrained car culture so deeply in our psyches, we have assumed the risks of injury inherent in driving so completely, we don't even think about them any more."

Lordy, Lordy! The way some automobile drivers behave, it's like they're playing chicken with cyclists. I've seen it. "I double-dare you, sonofabitch," they seem to say to the cyclists. (While they play with their iPad app or text "Honey, I'll be late for dinner, because this guy on a bike is slowing me down!" ) :(

I respect cyclists on the road. I guess it's from my experience bicycling in The Netherlands (where there are real bike paths). I used to get miffed by the stupid bicyclists on roads in Burlington - the "share the road" graphics on the lane and signs advising that bikers can use the complete lane. Tap, tap, tap. Hurry the fuck up! Now I realise it's a way for us to slow down, too. I mean, I left Houston because of the dog-eat-dog, frenetic pace. Burlington's rush hour is a nanosecond compared to Houston's. Yeah, slow down, Jay. Now, if only the cyclists would take off their ear pieces and listen to what's going on, and realise they are driving vehicles (cyclists are not pedestrians according to Vermont law) and should stop at 4-way stop signs, too. Grrr.

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! I'm back!

I'm back among the blogging. Hooray!

On February 17, I received an email from Blogger, announcing that Blazing Indiscretions was no more.

Your blog at http://blazingindiscretions.blogspot.com/ has been reviewed and confirmed as in violation of our Terms of Service for: SPAM. In accordance to these terms, we've removed the blog and the URL is no longer accessible.

Very little information was given about SPAM, but I did find out that Blogger had an automatic SPAM detection mechanism. Surely mine wasn't guilty - at least I thought so. But after clicking away to obtain more information (very badly organised by Blogger), I was able to find out that I could request a review for reinstatement. And fortunately I am registered as a contributor to other blogs - Blazing Indiscretions was listed as deleted, and the reinstatement button was a click away. I gave them my contact info with my request, was told that I'd hear back within 15-20 hours. Nothing, Nada, Zilch came back. And each time I tried to resubmit, all I saw was the date of my request, with no resubmit button. Friend bloggers commiserated with me on my loss. I checked out other blog hosting sites as I considered resurrecting BI. Last Friday, after randomly checking my Dashboard - amazingly, I was able to resubmit a reinstatement request. On Saturday...

Hello, We have received your appeal regarding your blog http://blazingindiscretions.blogspot.com/. Upon further review we have determined that your blog was mistakenly marked as a TOS violator by our automated system and, as such, we have reinstated your blog. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused in the meantime and thank you for your patience as we completed our review process. Thank you for for understanding. Sincerely, The Blogger Team

So I'm back, but Blogger should not leave account holders hanging for such a long time. And they could provide better and faster ways to get information on that faulty automatic spam detection, which I had been told sometimes has "false positives."

Blogger Problem solved

In mid-May there was a surprise on my blog. I found it immediately redirected to another website, an annoying spam sales site. Not being a geeky person, I was stymied - first thinking it was a problem with my computer. But others told me that it was happening to them when they clicked my blog url. So I checked Blogger help - others were having the same problem, and after some trial and error clicks, I found it was a gadget or a widget that causing it. So I removed it. Bingo! I swear that either Blogger was hacked or, more likely, they cause the problem themselves. Because I certainly didn't put the widget in my blog. I may move to WordPress, as some of my friend bloggers are using that program.

PEOPLE MUST SEE THIS

ISRAEL DESTROYS THE VILLAGE OF AL-ARAKIB...FOR THE THIRD TIME!

A Bedouin woman sits in front of her rebuilt home in al-Araqib after it was destroyed by Israeli forces, again. (Joseph Dana photo)

Max Blumenthal:

"In the middle of the night on August 10, residents of the unrecognized Bedouin village of al-Arakib sent a panicked text message to Israeli activists in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Israeli police helicopters were buzzing overhead, surveying the scene ahead of what was likely to be a new round of demolitions." You can read Max's full report here.

Joseph Dana has also written an eloquent essay.


Max and Joseph collaborated on a video from the scene of destruction.

"You've got to be carefully taught..."

While Vermont hosted children of 3 faiths from Israel and Palestine - last week they attended a 10 day "Kids4Peace Camp" with Vermont children at Rock Point in Burlington - Max Blumenthal reported (in depth, with photos - taken by Ata Abu Madyam of Arab Negev News) on Israeli high schoolers who have helped demolish a Bedouin village of Al-Arakib, as part of their summer service indoctrination.

It is not hard to imagine what lessons the high school students who participated in the leveling of al-Arakib took from their experience, nor is it especially difficult to predict what sort of citizens they will become once they reach adulthood. Not only are they being indoctrinated to swear blind allegiance to the military, they are learning to treat the Arab outclass as less than human...

[T]he scenes from al-Arakib, from the demolished homes to the uprooted gardens to the grinning teens who joined the mayhem, can be viewed as much more than the destruction of a village. They are snapshots of the phenomenon that is laying Israeli society as a whole to waste.

Other blogger/reporters have commented on Max's story, too: Mondoweiss; PULSE (cross-posted), Helena Cobban. I doubt NPR and other corporate press in the USA would cover this as much as Max has. I first read this when I saw Max had posted it on his Facebook. While there are more horrendous actions in Palestine/Gaza for sure, this was not pleasant to read while eating dinner!

David Brower must be wincing from the grave

Sierra Club Foundation writes "Enough is Enough!" and urges people to write Obama to stop coastal oil drilling. Today Jane Hamsher has an excellent post up at FDL:

Josh Gerstein has an article in Politico on the massive silence coming out of the enviros on the BP oil catastrophe, which has been notable ever since the rig collapsed. This weekend the groups took out an ad in the Washington Post, not to criticize the administration for their response, but to praise the President for putting a hold on a drilling project in Alaska:

“President Obama is the best environmental president we’ve had since Teddy Roosevelt,” Sierra Club chairman Carl Pope told the Bangor Daily News last week. “He obviously did not take the crisis in the Minerals Management Service adequately seriously, that’s clear. But his agencies have done a phenomenally good job.”

If they aren’t saying anything negative, it’s because they believe there’s nothing to criticize:

Asked if Sierra Club has any concerns about the administration’s response to the spill, [Sierra Club's Dave] Willett said, “Overall, we’re satisfied with the cleanup and recovery effort.”

[...]

These groups have demonstrated by both their action and inaction that they do not deserve that public trust. Unlike the Center for Biological Diversity, fawning groups like the Sierra Club have been successfully manipulated both by corporate money and by partisan gamesmanship. They’ve become such complete Washington DC creatures that they don’t know how to be advocates from the outside any more — their primary function is to give political cover in the midst of a PR battle. They have abdicated the role of non-partisan watchdogs, and the public should find new organizations independent of party control in which to place their trust.

While the SC may push for clean energy, however, as the the FDL link shows, big money and access to governmental power corrupt. The Sierra Club is included (implicit) in that equation. David Brower must be wincing from the grave.

Immortalised by Google

When Grandmère Mimi made her state visit to England last year we met up in Yorkshire and visited the quaint village of Lastingham for lunch.

After our meal, Mimi and me went to have a look in the church. On the way back to the car, we were Googled and have been immortalised on their street view function.

UPDATED: Helen Thomas Retires | Helen Thomas has nothing to apologise for.

UPDATE: Thomas has announced her retirement.

My reaction: Oof! Shock. Dismayed. Unbelievable. But she can say whatever she wants now. She covered the White House since JFK.

"[Helen Thomas'] comments [telling Israelis to leave Palestine and "go home" to Europe] do not reflect a desire to see Israel/Palestine judenrein, but rather an ominous sense of what a dangerous place Israel has become, and will only increasingly be, for its people," - Jack Ross, Mondoweiss

_________________

My original post from this morning.

From PULSE

The question posed at the end of the short clip is "Does Helen know that Jews lived in Israel way before the Holocaust?" The glaring fact of course is that before WWII and 1948, there was no modern state of Israel. It was Mandate Palestine: a land that was populated by a thriving Palestinian population, the majority of whom were driven out in their hundreds of thousands, with a great number murdered, by the zionist thugs who later established the state of Israel. This Prussia of the Middle East is propped up by gargantuan amounts of US military aid, refuses to make peace with its neighbours who have offered recognition of 1967 borders via the Saudi Peace Plan, has continued to encroach upon Palestinian land, regularly attacks its neighbours in assaults that kill hundreds, flouts international law, continues to build illegal outposts on stolen land, and has refused to define its borders to this day.

Thomas has nothing to apologize for. It is the Israeli regime, the illegal settlers (check out this charmer) and their enablers who owe the world -- particularly Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians -- an apology and restitution. At most, her choice of words may have been unqualifiedly quick and injudicious, particularly in the ill-advised choice of words `go home'. But `despicable', `beyond disturbing' and Judeophobic? The attempts to discredit her -- which include rightwingnut calls for her resignation -- are overblown. She'll probably win even more fans with her courage, and her regret for causing offence is in stark contrast to the unremitting racism and unstinting support for ethnic cleansing and expulsion from the Israel-at-any-cost camp, from whom there is no apology.

Paul Jay, Senior Editor of The Real News Network has a new blog on Canada.com, one of Canada's busiest news websites. This is an excerpt from his most recent blog post, "IN DEFENSE OF HELEN THOMAS - on apologizing to apologists."

Her apology was not enough to stop calls for her head from those who have wanted to shut Thomas up for years.

Ari Fleischer, President George W. Bush's press secretary, led the call in an e-mail Friday to the Huffington Post saying Thomas' comments amount to "religious cleansing."

"She should lose her job over this," Fleischer wrote. "As someone who is Jewish, and as someone who worked with her and used to like her, I find this appalling."

Perhaps Fleishcher should also add that he is someone who knows something about apologies . . . being the leading apologist for the Bush administration as their war led to the deaths of at least one million Iraqis.

But Lanny Davis, former special counsel to and White House spokesman for President Bill Clinton, went even further than Fleischer. He issued a statement on Sunday saying Thomas, "has showed herself to be an anti-Semitic bigot."

Now, Davis should know something about apologies and apologists as well. TheHill.com reported that Davis led a lobbying effort against deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya on behalf of Honduran business leaders. This is in defense of a regime that came to power in an illegal coup and is killing journalists and activists. Hmmm . . . defending those that kill activists . . .

UPDATED! Blogs News/Update

Ten Percent has moved to HERE (I've updated my blog list on the side bar, too.) And my favourite Cajun who writes at Wounded Bird is taking a much needed rest.

UPDATED! Another milestone, fancy that!

Oh, and here's a "traffic report" I received from Sitemeter this weekend on visits to Blazing Indiscretions!

Visits

Total ....................... 50,000
Average per Day ................. 49
Average Visit Length .......... 4:20
This Week ...................... 341

R.I.P. Burlington's Spirit of Generosity

Yesterday, I wrote about the proposed ordinance changes against street people and Burlington's Phoenix House. Here's my comment on the Blurt/Seven Days post:

"I've said it before to my friends here (and I'll say it again): Burlington is a small town pushing hard to be a city. And if you read all the accolades Burlington has received in the PR "Best of..." categories, you'd think we were the most hospitable, liveable place in North America! We're not! As I read the whining comments on here, hardness of heart comes to mind. You've lost that spirit of generosity that has made Vermont great!

"When I lived in London ten years ago, I might have been irritated by the constant panhandlers, but recognised that this is part of life in a big city. Actually, I stopped frequently outside my neighbourhood tube station and talked with the people who sat there ("Spare some change, sir?") and heard their stories. Turns out the majority were human! Fancy that! And several friends I made had once been among the working class, laid off unemployed (one pay-check away from poverty), and were struggling to find food for their own families. (With the new ConDem government it will get worse!)

"The memo accompanying this resolution was written by police chief Schirling. He heads up that same force that sends deputy officers as department liaisons to NPA meetings, encouraging citizens to act as block wardens and report on citizens' "undesirable" activities in neighbourhoods. So much for friendly, community policing.

"I'm actually more concerned about the despicable NIMBY resolution against Phoenix House. "The Other America" is alive right in our own backyard.

Thinking about the new use of "curated."

Last month Green Mountain Daily reported the Burlington Free Press VTBuzz blog "is curating (their word) a six part exploration of the gubernatorial candidate websites."



Not so fast, BFP. The use of the word is not as "newfangled" as you thought, and you certainly didn't coin it. As I read today on JEREMIAH'S VANISHING NEW YORK:--

I like thinking about how words are used and how they travel virally through groups of people. Words like "Doucheoisie," and prefixes, too, like "Celebu-." And now, thanks to a few blog posts about the opening of Mast bookshop on Avenue A, I'm thinking about the word "curated" and what it means these days.

[...]

The Times actually did a whole story about this word in 2009. They wrote that curate:

- "has become a fashionable code word among the aesthetically minded, who seem to paste it onto any activity that involves culling and selecting."
- "is code for 'I have a discerning eye and great taste.'"
- is "an innocent form of self-inflation."
- "can be good for one’s image and business."

"Pretentious?" asked the Times, "Maybe. But it’s hardly unusual for members of less pedigreed professions to adopt the vernacular of more prestigious ones."

So the use of "curate" is aspirational, which does put it in the same league as "artisanal." And that makes some people nervous because it signals to consumers something very specific. It signals "exclusivity" and is meant to attract people who yearn to be in the club. It may also repel people who find the use of such words pretentious and exclusionary.

In addition, museum curators really aren't happy about it.

Photo: source
via Jeremiah's.

The Peace Tree

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace."

The Peace Tree, a blog devoted to social justice and peace activism, and to which I was graciously invited by Mark Prime as a contributor, has stopped publishing.

Mondoweiss: NPR report on West Bank expulsion order makes horror a she-said/she-said story

From Mondoweiss: "NPR report on West Bank expulsion order makes horror a she-said/she-said debating point" Here's a bit but I recommend you read the whole post.

... nowhere does Garcia-Navarro grapple with the terrible inhumanity of a regime that has kept other people stateless for 60 years, depriving them not just of civil but human rights. A military occupation that arbitrarily defines the legitimate owners of a land as "infiltrators" is unspeakable. Why is "our" U.S. government paying for the illegal expulsions?

To do Garcia-Navarro justice, the on-air report gives details curiously absent from the transcript, but holes nevertheless remain. NPR’s transcript changes many terms and the order of the actual Garcia-Navarro report that aired this morning.

I've included choice bits of the actual broadcast that were not included in the online transcript of the story below. Why were they removed? They smooth over the ugly facts of the original broadcast. I guess we should also ask Lourdes Garcia-Navarro about the alterations.

COMMENTS ARE NOW MODERATED

I appreciate visitors and comments on posts, but I've been forced to moderate comments. Lately there have been a number of off-topic spam comments.

This blog does not allow anonymous comments. Please, no off-topic, racist, sexist or homophobic comments, either.

I know it's a pain - for you, and for me.

Comment moderation has been enabled. All comments must be approved by the blog author.

Yesterday's Hits

Wow, yesterday was a record indeed. BI had 596 hits


with visitors coming mostly from a gay UK celebrity messageboard thread.

Man on run after committing criminal damage to a donkey. With his penis.

onthehushhush 22:24, arf, barf, reply
[...]
maybe he'd had a glass too many?

blazingindiscretions.blogspot.com/2010/01/chardongay.html
sgtpeppersstoneyhardcoreband 10:20

HiccUP!

The work is never over

Paul Fromberg, the rector of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco and whom I knew briefly when he was rector of a parish in Houston, writes about yesterday's California Supreme Court decision on marriage equality:

"In terms of political organizing, the fight for gay marriage can’t be separated from California’s budget crisis: from our struggles for immigrant rights, education reform, and tax reform that will allow us to provide humane health care and educate all our children. The fight for gay marriage can’t simply involve gays throwing a bit of money at a campaign so we can all have fabulous weddings. It means, as we say in my business, doing the hard work of becoming a community."

Palestinian rights deserve Anglican action

P U L S E has a post up (by David Thomson) commenting on an opinion column from Thursday, May 21, by Ben White, a regular contributor to the Guardian's Cif/belief. (Ben White has also written for the Anglican website, Fulcrum.) I had to chuckle at the comments on Mr White's Guardian piece. Ben White takes on "even handedness" of Anglicans [that typically Anglican - and sometimes maddeningly frustrating - "via media" approach to any theological, political or cultural controversy] regarding resolutions on Israel-Palestine at the recent Anglican Consultative Council meeting. Mr Thomson sees the heavy-handed influence of a pro-Zionist right-wing organisation in the Anglican Communion which has campaigned vigorously against Anglican efforts to promote divestment and sanctions against the State of Israel.

Ben White writes that “a obsession with even-handedness is stopping Anglicans taking a firm stand on Israel’s disregard for Palestinian rights.”

However I’d argue that the obsession with even-handedness is not a cause but an effect — an effect of paranoia induced by the Israel lobby, strongly represented in the Anglican community by Anglican Friends of Israel.

This group spread the fear that criticising Israel will damage relations with the Jewish community, even if this were so, should it stop the church’s quest for justice? They also use ‘anti-Semitism’ (or Judeophobia) and therefore the Holocaust, to create an atmosphere of intimidation saying Anglican peace activists are “singling out” Israel (thus implying there is no good reason to criticise Israel and the reason must be anti-Jewish racism). No individual or organisation wants to be threatened with anti-Semitism and have themselves compared to some of the worst criminals in history.

It’s sad that these tired old tricks are still accepted and work as a distraction from the real issues of colonialism, occupation, international law, basic morality and justice.

At the 14th Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) meeting, held in Jamaica earlier this month, a resolution on the Middle East was passed, criticising the Israeli occupation. An original version of the resolution was originally submitted by the Anglican Peace and Justice Network (APJN)[JayV: APJN website], but as the language was felt by some to be too “strong”, a new resolution was put forward and adopted.

The resolution staked out a position based on international law, a rejection of violence as a means of conflict resolution, and opposition to Israel’s occupation and colonisation of the Palestinian territories.

It also called for a “two state solution”, and “lamented” the fact that Israeli policies in the West Bank “have created severe hardship for many Palestinians” and are “experienced as a physical form of apartheid”. There was an affirmation that a “just peace must guarantee the security and territorial integrity of both Israel and the future state of Palestine so that all the people of the area can live in peace and prosperity.”

For some, however, this call for two states living side by side – a state of affairs that would necessarily require one party to stop its domination of the other – was a cause for “dismay”. Anglican Friends of Israel released a statement (faithfully reproduced by The Times’s religion correspondent) which regretted how “once again”, Anglicans had “singled out Israel for criticism” without any “context” or taking into account “the Palestinian contribution to the conflict”.

Where the resolution condemned illegal policies like settlement building, the ICJ-condemned separation wall, and house demolitions, Anglican Friends for Israel saw a call for Israel to “lay down all measures which protect her citizens from Arab terrorism”. Apparently, not even Palestinian “interests” are served by such a “ghastly pronouncement”, which, the statement warned, “threatens to completely sabotage Anglican-Jewish relations”.

The resolution, passed “overwhelmingly”, was publicly backed by a number of those present, including the Anglican Church of Southern Africa Archbishop Thabo Makogba, who told the council how he had “lived under apartheid” and knew its “pain”. He went on to describe seeing the “‘the brutality’ in the West Bank and Gaza that ’segregates God’s people’.”

The original wording submitted by APJN had been specifically criticised by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who took particular issue with “a section that ‘condemns the judaisation of the city (of Jerusalem) by the government of Israel”. The Archbishop was reported as saying that “judaisation is a word that I cannot, in conscience, accept”, since “it equates ‘the political machinations of the Israeli government’ with the people of faith in Jewish society”.

That there is a deliberate policy of judaisation in Jerusalem is not a secret in Israel; politicians and policy-makers routinely talk of strengthening the “Jewish character” of the city (and other areas too for that matter).

So in fact then, while Williams is right to critique the conflation of the Israeli state’s policies with “people of faith in Jewish society”, his target should be that very same Israeli state which in the name of Jews worldwide maintains a regime of racial exclusion.

The archbishop’s other concern, according to the same report, was to avoid saying anything in such as a way as to “jeopardise the Anglican Communion’s dialogue with the Rabbinate”. This was a worry also taken up by others, including the coordinator of the Anglican Communion Office’s Network for Interfaith Concerns, who helped produce the alternative resolution that was eventually passed.

The Anglican Church has trodden an uneasy path in recent years when it comes to words and actions on Israel/Palestine. Despite recommendations by the APJN to pursue divestment as means of opposing Israel’s occupation, this has never been followed through.

While many individual church members and ministers across the worldwide communion are active in working for a just peace in the Middle East, the senior leadership is typically shy of going much beyond hand-wringing statements of sorrow and “even-handed” reproach.

It is unfortunate that the division, such as in the case of this recent ACC resolution, is often expressed in terms of those seeking stronger expressions of protest over the Israeli occupation against those seeking to avoid tension in Jewish-Christian relations.

The two shouldn’t be mutually exclusive, of course. But even when these worries about interfaith dialogue are sincere (rather than a disingenuous smokescreen), how long can they hamstring serious action by the Anglican Communion in the face of Israel’s entrenched – and worsening – disregard for basic Palestinian political and human rights?

Cross-posted at Antemedius.

RebelReports - In Closed-Door Meeting With Rights Groups, Obama Suggests He'll Use 'Preventive Detention'

By Jeremy Scahill

Just when you think President Obama’s policies on war, civil liberties and Guantanamo couldn’t possibly look any more like the Bush/Cheney regime’s than they already do, the administration goes ahead and proves you dead wrong. In a meeting Wednesday with several human rights groups including the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights and Human Rights Watch, Obama said he was “mulling the need for a ‘preventive detention’ system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried,” according to two participants in the “private session.” [read all of Scahill here]

Dowd's Deep Doo Doo

I don't anymore, but when I did read the NYT regularly, I'd check out Maureen Dowd for her sarcastic opinion pieces.

Dan Kennedy: ... I continue to be troubled by her explanation of how she came to lift a paragraph from Josh Marshall's megablog, Talking Points Memo.

OK, so Dowd was "talking" in a "spontaneous" manner with a friend, as she put it to the Huffington Post. Fine. I had decided to assume for the purpose of moving on that by "talking" she meant "e-mailing." It would be completely believable if she had copied and pasted from a friend's e-mail who had volunteered to help her write her column.

COMMENT: Weird times we live in, and of course, liberal bloggers and the busy media gotcha gang are having a field day with yet another diversion from the real news. But I do think this bowdlerization of language is troubling. 'Talking,' 'e-mailing.' On Gmail, when you want to write an email, you click "Compose Mail." After you click "send," the confirmation reads, "This message has been sent."

It gets worse. After you delete an email, the confirmation reads, "This conversation has been moved to the Trash" (with a capital 'T,' for typographical emphasis!).