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 8 Nov 2005 @ 17:47, by ming. Violence, War
A bunch of people have written to ask if we're ok, so I've better write something. I suppose these things always look a little worse when one watch them on TV from far away, and one doesn't quite know what is going on, and which areas are affected.
In case you somehow missed it, riots started in Paris suburbs a couple of weeks ago, after a couple of youths electrocuted themselves by hiding in a power station, thinking the police were after them. And that apparently set off a lot of latent anger in certain immigrant communities. Well, the actual damage seems to mostly have been done by teenagers who grabbed the opportunity to vent a bit. OK, a lot. My daughter's boyfriend is a schoolteacher in one of those suburbs in Paris, and it has been quite a mess, with many inconveniences.
I would have thought it would be very unlikely here in quiet peaceful Toulouse, but no. A bunch of cars were put on fire Sunday, and a bus yesterday. All mainly in the Reynerie and Mirail areas. Which is not far from here, a mile or two, but yet is quite a different area. Mirail is where the main university is, and Reynerie is close by, and they are what generally is considered the bad neighborhoods here. Where many immigrants live in large apartment complexes, where the streets are more dirty, and where there generally is a different vibe than in other areas.
Coming from the U.S. it seems kind of surprising that anybody has anything to riot about here. This is a very extensive wellfare state, where there's all sorts of public programs for helping you out in many ways. Free education and healthcare, social security, employment assistance, financial aid for many different things. OK, it is all very bureaucratic, but it isn't terribly hard to find somebody who actually cares about you.
But then again, there's a lot of unemployment. The French system is very competitive, and one usually needs the right education, the right diploma, the right certification, etc. The French natives bring up their kids to know the ropes, I suppose, and many are still unemployed. But when we're talking about immigrants who don't integrate very well, like, to a considerable degree the large muslim population. 10% of the French population are muslims, mostly from North Africa. So, the problem is then mainly with their kids, who might not really have learned to play well in the French system, so they'll see an even higher unemployment rate, and they live in ghettos and things look grim, I suppose.
So, combined with a right-wing interior minister who's kind of confrontational, often saying something inflammatory on TV, and various social programs that have been cut recently, I guess there's more to be dissatisfied with. Not that it seems like that riot is particularly focused on anything in particular. But the politicians are bending over backwards to try to address what they think might be the matter.
Judging by the sirens and helicopters that just went by headed towards Mirail, there's some kind of trouble tonight too. Or they might possibly just be enforcing a curfew, I don't know.
Here's where I'm missing the live news coverage of L.A. There would be non-stop coverage on most of the channels there. Here there are just the normal scheduled newscasts. More >
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 2 Nov 2005 @ 10:35, by jazzolog. Violence, War
In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while.
---Henry David Thoreau
Pride flees from the man who penetrates into the self as the light of a campfire before the rays of the sun.
---Zen saying
You should know that no one can hold the mind by himself, if it not be held by the Spirit. For it cannot be held, not because of its mobile nature but because, through neglect, it has acquired the habit of turning and wandering hither and thither....A mind thus inclined and withdrawn from God is led captive everywhere.
---St. Gregory Of Sinai
An Iraqi man cries over the bodies of his children in Hillah, some 110km south of Baghdad, after US troops bombed a residential quarter of the town. (Photograph:Reuters, April 1, 2003)
How many civilians, the elderly, women, children, male noncombatants, have died in the War on Iraq? It used to be that a casualty count was important in warfare. It's how you knew you were winning. Of course that's when soldiers would gather on a field of battle, face each other, march up with some fancy footwork and football plays, and shoot it out. Civilians got killed in the seige of a castle or city...or mass execution later...but it's been fewer than a hundred years of glorious history since we've improved ourselves enough to provide access to air attack. More >
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22 Aug 2005 @ 20:55, by vaxen. Violence, War
This past week, the lead "national news" story on AM radio seemed to be the forced evacuation of Gaza. Cindy Sheehan was a close second.
Every half hour, heartbreaking stories of crying Israeli soldiers and screaming American and Israeli protestors led the national news in the American heartland. Radio interviews with protestors in Gaza revealed one reason for the apparent U.S. media interest – several protesters spoke English with a clearly American accent.
But the second aspect of this story is cause for libertarian celebration. The Israeli settlers live courtesy of the state. Their assigned land, homes, security, transportation, and employment in the occupied territories are entirely subsidized by the Israeli government, and those countries who subsidize Israel. No doubt, another reason for Americans to care. More >
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 18 Aug 2005 @ 17:45, by scotty. Violence, War
Like a lot of people I've been watching the forceful evacuation of the Jewish settlers from Gaza.
My heart went out to the soldiers and police officers men and women alike who have shown such patience, compassion and courage in doing such a difficult and what must be for them a heart breaking task.
Bless 'em.
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9 Aug 2005 @ 00:58, by bkodish. Violence, War
In the August 8, 2005 NY Times, an article by Dina Kraft,
Coping With Adult Conflict in Gaza Can Be Child's Play, disgustingly demonstrates the Times policy of equating the Palestinian terror culture with that of the beleagered Israelis.
The attitude of moral equivalency expressed in this article truly frightens me. More >
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 5 Aug 2005 @ 09:53, by jazzolog. Violence, War
People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long course of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.
---St. Augustine
To begin with oneself, not to end with oneself;
To start with oneself, but not to aim at oneself;
To comprehend oneself, but not to be preoccupied with oneself.
---Martin Buber
The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad.
---Salvador Dali
Regular readers of my online ramblings expect something close to fun on Saturday mornings. True, sometimes there's a Friday evening release from the White House, meant to be overlooked, that I try to underline, but usually I try to spread the happiness of reaching another weekend...and maybe even some cash in the pocket from payday. It's difficult today though. The past 2 hours of reading the papers and the blogs have left me grim...and I'm preparing to share.
If that's not your cup of tea or coffee today, allow me to refer you to the delightful op-ed piece in this morning's Times about a novelist's revery of a very cold lake in the summertime. [link] And the Internet is buzzing with lots of coverage of Novak's stomping off the set of a live CNN broadcast yesterday as Carville began tightening the screws. Wonder what could be bothering him. [link] More >
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 8 Jul 2005 @ 01:24, by jmarc. Violence, War
Vik Rubenfeld of The Big Picture writes today
about how the terror attacks on London point out
an obvious fact. The current approach is not working.
Sure, there have been successes. We've put out a few
fires, beating back the Taleban, and finally removing
the mass murderer Saddam, but we can see that these are
just small victories in a much larger battle. More >
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7 Jul 2005 @ 14:06, by nemue. Violence, War
Yet again innocent people are torn apart by bomb blasts this time in beautiful London. There has been multi attacks with both a bus and the underground hit. The latest reports say that perhaps 15-20 people have died and the injured numbers many more. These were innocent people on their way to work. One has to ask the question yet again what does this achieve except misery, pain and more dangerously hate.
It saddens me to read many of the posts on various web sites to night where people are venting their anger against Muslims and various other groups. This serves nothing other than propagating hate of one group by another. Little has been said about the pain and loss of those impacted by this tragedy. .
I pray for those who have left this earth and I would hope that their passing (yet again) has not been in vain. I also send prayers to the families who have lost their loved ones as a result of the senseless act.
More shame on the human race.
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 10 Jun 2005 @ 09:25, by jazzolog. Violence, War
In the presence of eternity the mountains are as transient as the clouds.
---Robert Green Ingersoll
One bird sits still
Watching the work of God:
One turning leaf,
Two falling blossoms,
Ten circles upon the pond.
---Thomas Merton
Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know nothing else but miracles---
To me every hour of night and day is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.
---Walt Whitman
Bush in Ohio again yesterday.
Photo by Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
My right wing friends may be surprised to learn that since "they dropped (the Downing Street Minutes) out in the middle of (Tony Blair's) race," as Bush angrily put it the other day, I have been replying to emails and message boards about them by urging great caution. I say "surprise" because we on the left always are characterized in panic and hysteria by the right. What I've been writing in reply is that the incriminating evidence in the memo seems to be fixed upon the single word "fix." I just have used the word in that very sentence in a way that gives rather a different meaning than "let's fix the horserace"---or let's do something that will assure we will win and the others lose. Or let's fix the election. Essentially in the UK I think writers of minutes and memos are more likely to use the word "fix" in the sense of "affix" than we are over here in the States. Therefore, I've felt the sense of the memo can be construed to urge its readers to concentrate on finding evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, rather than just make stuff up.
However, now that I've seen both Bush and Blair respond to the issue---and a couple more days have passed---I've decided to get a bit suspicious. Blair and his team did not go into what "fix" might mean in the UK, and Bush just got customarily pissed that anyone would question his tactics. It seems to me this president does not possess the character to entertain either criticism or objection. I think it is the main trait the left finds so dangerous about this guy. He sits there dumb and confused until he gets a message in his ear, and then starts talking, usually derogatorily about a person rather than an issue, eventually gets angry, and then lashes out. There are diagnoses for people like this...and I find it an unnerving kind of personality to be revealed in the most powerful person on earth.
Most of you reading this now subscribe online to Truthout. I hope you send them some money from time to time. (It's easy and you feel so much better.) Truthout sends so much stuff each day that I want to underline the article written yesterday by William Rivers Pitt about the Memo. You might have missed it or, like us, been very busy with daughter graduations and such. His essay is the best summary of the Downing Street Memo that I've seen...and even if you too are cautious about calling the memo the smoking gun or some kind of evidence of chicanery, I think it will do you good to read it...and save it to read again. Have a great weekend! More >
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24 May 2005 @ 18:25, by bkodish. Violence, War
A Belgian correspondent of mine shocked and educated me several years ago, when he said that the Israeli army stood in the same position toward the Arabs of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza as the Nazis stood in relation to the Jews in 1939.
He was not a radical leftist by any means but--as I have since gathered-- a rather typical mainstream European one. Educated, 'progressive' and grossly ignorant of the antisemitism he was spouting.
Despite my admonitions, he appeared impervious to the obvious differences between Israel's seige by the Arab world and the Nazi Juggernaut. He was unwilling to admit that he didn't sufficiently know the history either of 20th Century Europe or of the Middle East. He felt insulted with the implication that he had uncritically absorbed the assumptions of anti-Israeli propagandists.
He resisted my suggestion that his "Israel is an apartheidt state" rhetoric echoed the dehumanizing rhetoric of Nazi Jew-hatred. More >
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