Tariq Ramadan

No secret revealed here, just a very interesting and pleasantly level-headed times magazine article from back towards the beginning of the year that I only just now read:

Ian Buruma on Tariq Ramadan:

In American terms, he is a Noam Chomsky on foreign policy and a Jerry Falwell on social affairs.

It never gets less disturbing.

It's not like this was really a secret. And it seems clear to me that 'lack of training' is no excuse. To take Juan Cole's refutation of this claim one step further, it seems obvious to me that blaming acts of unhinged violence on lack of training is basically a way of trying to separate the criminality and brutality of this behavior from the nature and legitimacy of the occupation itself. But when would an occupier act any differently? There is no corrective to this inhuman brutality other than an end to the occupation, and the vast majority of the onus for making this happen falls on the dominant power, the occupier. Though it is a difficult fact to face for those who condone the occupation either directly or tacitly, this is really not a chicken-or-egg question.

Something else, from out of the Guardian article:

A spokeswoman for the Israeli army said that, if a soldier deviates from the army's norms, they could be investigated by the military police or face criminal investigation.

Where do I know that excuse from?

Meanwhile:

I'm studying for a calculus exam (because), which until the start of this semester is not something I've done for literally a decade. Leaving aside the fact that I can refer to anything as something I "haven't done for a decade," which freaks me out, I have a more immediate problem:

Conceptually, I'm having no problems, which on some level is reassuring. What's troubling is that I keep dropping signs (as in, positive/negative) as I work through the algebra, which inevitably leads to wrong answers, especially after several rounds of differentiation. In my paranoid mind, this repeated missing of signs must be a sign of something bigger in my life. I don't know what to do.

I've got a post in mind relating three recent bicycle exploits of mine which I've been meaning to write for a few days now. Soon as this calc test is over, I'm on it. And if you're wondering, I'm not telling you this, I'm telling me this, as though typing these sentences will keep me on track or something. Unlikely.

Cross our fingers? Take up arms? I'm at a loss.

However, there are reasonable voices out there, among which this is one. If there is any hope for us all (forget about justice, that's off the table for the time being), such voices must be heeded.

One note: I've read a few of Levy's essays and articles at this point, and it seems to me there are certain aspects of his involvement in certain attempts at a real Israeli-Palestinian peace that I believe do not go far enough to rectify wrongs. But while in my heart I want to side with the die-hard one-state solution camp, the fact of the matter is that at this stage, I cannot see how this camp carries any political weight whatsoever. It's just off the map, though I'd like to think that the indefinite future still holds a real degree of openness. For now we need solid, sensible voices that can actually throw some weight around in the political arena. Levy seems to me to fit the bill.

No frost on the windows.

I was strolling through Central Park a bit ago, on my way back home from doing some studying, rolling my bike along and about to hop on and start riding. I came to an intersection of two park drives, and heard this dude from a ways off singing at the top of his lungs, a moderately tuneful R&B acapella (his own invention? unclear): "Rainy days, fade away/ When you're gone, I can't do without you babe..." One of those moments when I'm wrapped up in my head and suddenly the world is strangely resonant with what I'm thinking on. He was walking up the bike path on the opposite side of the street I was now crossing. As I moved in front of him to hop over the wooden rail that sections off the pedestrian walkway, we passed so close that I was compelled to make eye contact with him. It was either that or look away deliberately like I thought him crazy- which he may have been, but when I'm alone these distinctions seem strange to me and for better or worse I tend towards engagement over distance. I shot him a glance, but he was staring up at the blank night sky. I hefted my bike over the low railing and continued along on the foot path.

I was moving faster than him and his song receded behind me- just as I gained enough distance to lose his words, he fell into some kind of breakdown at a tempo that clashed with the slightly brooding mood he was projecting just a moment before. After a bit I was ready to get riding, so I took a quick seat on the railing to hook my lights up. As I sat there the crooner caught back up to me, and I realized his breakdown was basically a vocalized personals ad carried to extremes. It was something between a rap and a simple list of his personal strengths: "All the works of my hands, they prosper/ I've earned many academic achievements/ I excel at every sport/ I am blessed, I am blessed, I am blessed..."

I kinda feel like Richard Dawkins is a douche.

I mean, maybe that's not totally fair. It just seems that as a public figure he does a terrible job of examining his own assumptions. He's got a new campaign a-cookin', to try to organize atheists as a viable political entity to counter religion in modern government, and while I might be all for the basic gist of it, he comes off as very arrogant in a way that I find hard to get with. (n.b.: I've got him on my reading list but I haven't tackled him directly just yet, so I really can't mount much of a critique of him without being a bit of a douche myself.)

One thing that always bugs me when I see his public pronouncements is this sense that rationality is something outside of time, pure unsentimental enlightenment that is accessible to anyone willing to shed the silly blinders of faith. Isn't it also possible though, for example, first of all that religion and rationality have had profound moments of coexistence among the precursors to modernity? Or that in modern times faith cuts both ways, just as absence of faith has been known to do from time to time? Dawkins's expression of his atheism is dogmatic and ideological in my view, and this was, from what I understand, a well-articulated critique of The God Delusion given by folks who are in a better spot to have a go at Dawkins than I am. There was a really interesting article in the nytimes mag back in the spring outlining the range of the debate around science and god among some seriously high-level thinkers, and Dawkins just doesn't seem to be my horse in that race.

Here's more that I can't get with:

In an interview with the Guardian, [Dawkins] said: "When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous I am told - religious Jews anyway - than atheists and [yet they] more or less monopolise American foreign policy as far as many people can see. So if atheists could achieve a small fraction of that influence, the world would be a better place."

Now look, if you scroll down and have a glance at my previous posts, you'll quickly guess that I'm not rooting for AIPAC or anything. But that quote right there is one goddamn silly way for Dawkins to address his own agenda. First of all, "monopolise" is a very unconsidered and uninformed choice of word there (which is not to imply that I agree with this, which is another pile of silly bullshit over which I groan). Second of all, dude apparently doesn't know much about the dynamics of the israel lobby (a vastly more appropriate way of terming it first of all, because this here jew, for one, is not spoken for by said lobby)- while I'm not going to bother parsing exactly how confused that quote from Dawkins is, I'm just going to wonder aloud what percentage of the israel lobby's clout derives from pretty much functionally atheist humans, and guess that it's a high enough number to render Dawkins's example totally off base. Isn't the israel lobby a prime example of harnessing religion to a highly secular agenda, therefor rendering the religion part of the equation something closer to a straight up political tool? And isn't this a fundamentally different and more complex case than religion informing politics? It would not be hard to find an example of a fully secular/atheistic individual who truly believes that zionism is the necessary and rightful path of self-determination for the jews. Meanwhile, without even thinking about it I can quickly call up this example of a man of faith, whose faith informs a moral stance that you'd have to be an asshole to try to diminish. I'd much rather have Archbishop Tutu on my team at this historical juncture than Archdickwad Dawkins.

Might it be the case that this eminent man of science isn't actually qualified to publicly address matters outside of science, like american foreign policy and u.s.-israel relations for example? (Of course, we've got to be leaving aside the ridiculously maddening christian fundamentalists who have gotten way in on the israel lobby game for a moment here, but I didn't say "Jewish lobby," Dawkins did.)

Now here's another, in my mind more interesting matter: I did both self-identify as a jew and also suggest that I might be an atheist. Possibly a contradiction, I'm still trying to sort that one out (and I'm not particularly vulnerable about the subject as long as anyone wanting to talk about it with me is actually thinking about what they're saying and realizing that these things are not necessarily obvious). I'm interested to talk to crypto-atheists, particularly, because I guess I've just been really fortunate to never feel like I couldn't just think whatever the fuck I want to. I don't doubt that there are many folks in the u.s. who fear oppression for coming out as full-blown non-believers. It's just that my contact with such people has been at most highly limited. Sure it's not hard to imagine someone growing up in strict religious confines in the u.s. and simultaneously wanting to shed the strictures and also fearing alienation by the only community said individual has known. But just 'cause I can imagine that doesn't mean I haven't taken my own experience for granted most of the time.

CLARIFICATION: I just noticed that Daniel Finkelstein went on to offer an elaborated version of his response to Dawkins's dumbass "Jewish lobby" remark. I want to point out that Finkelstein's elaboration (which he probably would've done well to post in full in the first place, unless he was baiting for the response that he inevitably got to his initial offhandish post on the matter) is almost really carefully considered and something I could agree with. But then he has to go and stretch his "fear" further and bother to introduce the word "Nazi." Dude, listen, Dawkins's comment was fucking dumb, no doubt, but c'mon. Don't say you weren't accusing him of anti-semitism, because you were- you were obviously distinguishing between overt and, um, 'unintended' versions of bigotry, but that is still what you were accusing him of in the first place, and then again in your elaboration, where you even manage to notch it up a bit. Accuse him of idiocy and ignorance, fine, he deserves it. But to conclude that that makes you feel afraid is one more step in the direction of making a trifle of actual and significant instances of bigotry (and I'm NOT saying that anti-semitism does not exist anymore). Please don't play semantics games with things that actually matter.

Today's post is about race.

On this subject, I'm hardly going to say anything at all.

(Disclaimer: my agenda here at drift. is basically to exercise my lack of an agenda to the fullest (which of course does little to set me apart in the blogosphere, but whatever), so while certain subjects will crop up more than others, I reserve the right to be as inconsistent as I please.)

So, as I was saying: race.
First, I'm going to link to this. Next, I'm going to thank my dear friend CM for that link.

Now, I'm going to pull the following secondhand quote out of the aforelinked article (which quote actually originates here, but Douthat cites it affirmatively, so same difference kinda):

This all seems resonant with a theory I have heard spouted (though never read) by and about young people today—that growing up in “diverse communities” with friends of every color and creed, they are “postracial.” It follows that they make racist jokes without malice, as a way of rebelling against the tyranny of political correctness. Perhaps this is true, and maybe it’s not even such a bad thing: racism isn’t racism anymore it’s just breaking of taboo.

For my next move, I'm simply going to point out that when taking this quote out of context, it is not apparent that the "young people" under discussion are actually quite specifically "the hipsters," as opposed to "all young people."

And now, the highly ambiguous and totally inconclusive coup de grace: I leave you with this link, in which Wayne&Wax takes a very different approach to discussing race and the "youth culture of today." Nary a "Wes" nor an "Anderson" in sight there, I might add.

Politics make me sick.

Juan Cole has a very worthwhile post up giving a quick survey of the various ways in which u.s.-turkish relations are going to shit at the moment, with the u.s. pretty much straight up to blame for all of it (um, that's surprising, huh?). Among the numerous points he touches on is the resolution just passed by the house foreign affairs committee condemning turkey for the armenian genocide. If you read this article, which link I plucked from Prof. Cole's post, you'll note with me that the events surrounding the genocide seem extraordinarily messy. And from the very little I've read, I can also say that when you expand the scope to include other ethnic groups in the region around the time of the genocide (the greeks are what I'm thinking of first), the whole thing gets really messy. Basically, the ottomans were pretty much not that awesome while their empire was crumbling, though I'm not sure really anyone got through the first half of the 20th c. without doing something awful. But that certainly does not absolve turkey from the need to acknowledge the genocide, even if the current turkish government, as Cole points out, is no direct descendant of the ottomans. (Find me a reasonable source that demonstrates within scholarly bounds that it was not a genocide and I will certainly give it its due, but from what I understand, the consensus is in.)

Anyway, there's another link in the Cole post that I want to call attention to: Andrew Mathis is new to me, though his subject here, the Holocaust and its particular status (if I may) with relation to other genocidal events is something I've begun to seriously delve into over the past year or so. (I've been trying with limited success to refer to it as the Shoah recently, but the term "Holocaust" is so entrenched at this point that it's hard to switch in spoken contexts, regardless of which word I use in my head or in writing.) Mathis articulates a number of points in the aforementioned article that I feel are very worthwhile. As this blog gathers momentum (which it feels like it's finally doing *fingers crossed* *no! not crossed! typing!*), Shoah politics are something I will surely dig into more deeply. My first post this time out was a signpost pointing in this direction, but I'm going to need to allocate some real time to getting my own thoughts down. Not an easy subject for me.

So maybe at this point I'll just note, totally unrelatedly and somewhat tactlessly, that this is the second time I've attempted to get a blog up and running (the first one is safely deleted, which is to say safely stored forever somewhere in the google vaults); on top of that, this particular particular blogger address got posted to a bit, got wiped clean, and then got started again about- hmmmm- I guess like a week ago. Feeling good about it this time out- sticking to the happy subjects, I guess that's why.

The wintertime is coming.

What's better than fall for a nice bout of nostalgia?

An example:

the active practice of discrimination.

So do you condone apartheid?

I've been familiar with Amira Hass for a bit now and have read some of her writing. I did not realize (or didn't realize that I realized) until today that she lives in ramallah. That's intense. (If you read her wiki page and note the bit about her being found guilty of slander- please also note "Jerusalem Magistrates Court" and "Israeli Army." I am not saying this means that the judgement against her was necessarily wrong, but I am emphasizing the ambiguities. I'm going to add this incident to my long list of items to be looked into.)

Here is a brief essay by Hass, from Ha'aretz about two weeks ago, outlining her thoughts on the depressingly lacklustre performance of most of those who claim some kind of oppositional stance to the racist policies of current israeli governance and the often brutally oppressive performance of the israeli military. (I unequivocally endorse what Hass argues in this essay, and I think it applies in many regards to us in the u.s. as well- 'us' being 'concerned' americans (jewish, non-jewish, doesn't matter one wink) who can do more to engage this fucked situation, but don't for whatever reason.)

And one more worthwhile link: I caught the above Hass article reading this post at Tony Karon's blog. south african jew, veteran of the apartheid struggle there, excellent journalistic writer, good heart, check him out.

Ps: for those (who somehow come to be reading my blog and) who might benefit from this bit of advice: when moving about the net and reading on israel/palestine, don't get bogged down in comment-section quibbling. Everyone's got an opinion, natch. Inform yourself independently- one solid bet is to gather search terms from the news and work from there. And always multiple sources! Feel free to stay tuned here, as I begin to assemble what I feel to be a collection of worthwhile (and diverse) links. Especially: if you're like me, then the insular left pisses you off as much as anything. No tolerance for uniforms here, fuck dogma, only honest inquiry is acceptable.

Listen:

this is fucking serious, and I could go pick any corner in this city of millions and scream at the top of my lungs about it, and it won't make an ounce of goddamn difference (except to get me excoriated as self-hating/locked away as insane). More PEOPLE are going to DIE. It does NOT need to be like this.

To give voice to

As a preface: this article.