The Shaming of Israel

Despite being extremely busy at the moment, I couldn't let today's events pass without a brief comment. The so-called 'prisoner exchange' between Israel and Lebanon is, in fact, no such thing: the term 'prisoner exchange' implies some degree of reciprocity, prisoners exchanged for prisoners, whereas what has actually taken place today is the exchange of five Lebanese prisoners for the corpses of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, two Israeli soldiers kidnapped and murdered during Hezbollah's illegal incursion into, and assault upon, sovereign Israeli territory in July 2006.

The images of Samir Kuntar, the most infamous of the five Lebanese prisoners released today, being welcomed as a hero in Beirut are more sickening and disheartening than I can possibly put into words. Indeed, these words - 'sickening' and 'disheartening' - really are inadequate, for they entirely fail to communicate the absolute rage and indignation filling not only my stomach, but the collective stomach of the entire Israeli nation. To briefly recap Kuntar's crime:

In 1979 Kuntar and his small band of PLF terrorists landed on the beach at Nahariya, a small coastal town in the north of Israel. After murdering a policeman, they proceeded to break into the home of an Israeli family, the Harans. Kuntar and another member of the group dragged the father of the family, 31-year-old Danny Haran, and four-year-old Einat, down to the beach. After shooting Danny in the back of the head at point blank range in front of his daughter - and after drowning Danny's body to ensure that he really was dead - Kuntar smashed Einat's head open with rocks, stamped on her body, and crushed her skull with the butt of his assault rifle. Meanwhile, the mother of the family, Smadar, hid in the house with her two-year-old daughter Yael. After throwing grenades into the house and starting a fire in the hope of flushing out Smadar and Yael, Yael began to whimper. Fearing that her cries would alert the terrorists, Smadar covered her mouth, in the process accidentally smothering and killing her daughter.

Kuntar never expressed any remorse for his crimes. He should have died in prison for his crimes. The idea of him living free and healthy in Lebanon - much less welcomed as a hero, a "resistance fighter returning from the prisons of the occupier", to quote Lebanese President Michel Suleiman (how long, one wonders, until Hezbollah and Syria conspire to have Suleiman murdered as they did Rafik Hariri? Statements like this will do nothing to save him from his inevitable fate) - is one that is, I'm sure, too much for many Israelis to bear.

Understandably, some people might be a little perplexed as to why Israel would agree to such a disproportionate exchange in the first place. Indeed, this is not the first time that Israel has acquiesced to such an exchange: in 2003 Israel released over 400 Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one Israeli (drug dealer) who had been captured by Hezbollah and the corpses of three other Israels. Part of the answer is to be found in Jewish law, which requires that every possible effort must be made to bury Jewish bodies as intact as possible, i.e. with all of their body parts. Hence the uniquely Israeli figure of those Orthodox Jewish medics who, after a suicide bombing, scour the surrounding area looking for any limbs, digits, organs - in fact any body part at all, no matter how small - which have been scattered by the impact of the explosion, and then match them up to the relevant corpse, ready for burial.

For too long now Israel's enemies have taken advantage of this requirement, and Jewish law more generally. The Arabs launched the Yom Kippur War in 1973 in the full knowledge that - in fact, precisely because - the overwhelming majority of Israelis, including their military, were observing the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, a day on which all eating and drinking is prohibited. If Israel attempted something similar during Ramadan, the world would be in uproar. Three years ago, Shin Bet (Israel's internal security service, a bit like MI5 in Britain) foiled a Hamas plot to infiltrate an Israeli army outpost (in Israel). Hamas intended to kidnap a number of soldiers in order to use them as bargaining chips for the release of Palestinian prisoners. Knowing that they wouldn't be able to kidnap so many soldiers, the leaders of Hamas hit upon another idea: rather than kidnap the soldiers, they would instead kill them, decapitate them, and, after displaying their severed heads on television, hold them to ransom.

How long will Israel continue to be humiliated in this way? What happened to the policy of never negotiating with terrorists? Israel used to be the one country which actually stuck to that policy, recognising, correctly, that if they started to negotiate no Israeli would ever be safe anywhere in the world. And, indeed, this is the case today. Although quoting Yitzhak Rabin is one of those habits that Israel must learn to overcome, I think that it is worth recalling his maxim that Israel must fight for peace as if there were no terror, and fight terror as if there was no peace. There is cautious optimism that Israel and her enemies are, finally, making progress with the former. But this process cannot take place at the expense of the latter. Israel cannot allow itself to be humiliated in this way. There is a difference between making necessary concessions and sacrifices to attain a genuine peace with legitimate partners in the Arab world and capitulation. Israel must rediscover its backbone, its pride, its sense of fighting spirit. It must understand that the fight for peace ought to be carried out with an absolutely ruthless determination, but that the fight against those who would kidnap, torture, bomb, decapitate, and murder its citizens must be pursued with the same degree of ruthless vigour.

1776 And All That

Yesterday I experienced my first Fourth of July. It was really great, both as a day off spent with friends, and as a holiday. People seemed to be genuinely happy and excited to be celebrating Independence Day, although it might have something to be with the fact that, including me, four of the people I spent last night with were non-Americans for whom all of this was new.

A few days ago I went to Rucker Park, known locally as 'The Ruck'. Rucker Park is probably the most famous basketball/streetball court in the US, the breeding ground for dozens of NBA players including Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Dr. J, and Wilt Chamberlain. Two summers ago Kobe Bryant played a few games there, as did Keven Garnett. The Ruck has also just been the subject of a new documentary made by Beastie Boy Adam Yauch. The game was fantastic, really entertaining and fun to watch, and there was also a very local feel to the place; one had the impression that everyone knew everyone else, and the MC/commentator was constantly interacting with the crowd.

155th is a pretty poor area, not to mention quite unsafe (although, as usual, everyone I spoke to was very friendly, and I didn't feel at all unsafe, in spite/because of being searched for weapons and drugs before entering the park) and I wondered how the people living here perceived or thought of July 4th. As my friend and I left the subway stop we were handed 'Anti-Fourth of July' leaflets, which didn't surprise me much. But what was surprising was the disdain with which the protesters were met by the vast majority of locals. It seemed like even here, in one of the most deprived areas of the city, July 4th meant something. Exactly what it meant wasn't clear; I can't imagine that it meant a holiday for most people in the area: those with jobs probably had to work, and for those without it's a moot point anyway. Maybe it was just apathy or tradition or the need to conform to social norms - Bourdieu's 'habitus' - which caused the reaction to the protesters, but I get the impression that, in spite of the disasters of the last eight years, Americans are generally proud to be American. Not academics, of course, but that's because academics don't actually like or support anything (tangible) and, besides, academia as a whole must maintain its position of being out of step with everyone and everything around it.

Yesterday's festivities began in the afternoon (the morning was spent reading/finishing The Dialectic of Enlightenment - as Adam and I observed whilst watching the fireworks, it is difficult - not to mention amusing - to imagine Adorno's reaction to all of this) when my friends and I went down to Battery Park to see a free Sonic Youth show. Despite being very overcast, the rain was brief and the big storm we feared never came to pass. Sonic Youth were excellent, closing their 90-minute set with Schizophrenia and, much to my glee, a brutal version of 100%. Realizing that we were all very hungry, we took the subway and went for that most quintessentially patriotic of American foods, Korean BBQ (at the hilariously-monikered KumGang BBQ), followed by Pinkberry. After a debate about our next move, we chose dancing over karaoke and, after bidding farewell to Frank and his friend Raul, took a cab to Alphabet City. As we were driving down 12th the fireworks suddenly began, so we all jumped out and went to find a good viewing spot. We ended up on 12th and Avenue C, the huge factory in front of us imbuing the whole scene with a paradoxically Soviet feel. The fireworks were spectacular and, even after Sonic Youth, incredibly loud. At one point, following a brief lull, two enormous fireworks went off like thunderclaps, causing every car alarm in a two block radius to suddenly wail into life, much to the amusement of everyone, even the police.

Following the fireworks, we headed off to find the bar/club I'd heard about. Unfortunately, I had failed to make a note of either a) the name of the place, or b) its actual address. Nor had I really made any kind of effort to memorise these pieces of information. So, unable to find it (it was actually on 3rd and C), we headed to a different bar. Because I was looking for the other place, I arrived a few minutes later than everyone else, at which point Mary promptly chucked her drink all over me, her, and the floor. After finding out that they didn't have any milk for a White Russian (a recurring problem...) and that the jukebox was broken, we left and went to a bar on Houston. Therein Mary, Adam, and I picked 26 songs on the jukebox (highlights included Sonic Youth's Teenage Riot, Adam's dissection of the lyrics to TV on the Radio's Wolf Like Me, and the VU's Waiting for the Man. Also the misunderstanding between me and Mary regarding her query about the band X) before we all proceeded to get very thoroughly drunk. Then we headed back up to Morningside and, on walking into 1020, we ran straight into Frank and Raul. We left at about 3:30. I woke up this morning feeling shockingly grim but, happily, my usual equilibrium has quickly reasserted itself.

Now begins my movie marathon: Sword of Doom was, sadly, scrapped as a result of my hangover, but later today I'll be seeing Samurai Rebellion followed by Wall-E, and tomorrow it's Kurosawa's Kagemusha followed by La Regle du Jeu.

Other things I've done since last posting: went to see Sigur Ros at the MoMA; had my sister to stay for a very happy week; went to see Pearl Jam (twice!); went on the world's fastest and tallest (not to mention uncomfortable) rollercoaster; saw Kurosawa's 'High and Low' and Herzog's fantastic 'Encounters at the End of the World'; played a lot of basketball; babysat for Matt and Kendra; read.

Songs for the Deaf: 'Ante Up' - M.O.P. feat. Busta Rhymes; 'Discipline' - Nine Inch Nails; 'W.M.A.' - Pearl Jam; 'Dies Irae' - Verdi

Quotation of the Day: when I inexplicably and in all seriousness referred to the Capra-Stewart classic 'Mr Smith Goes To Washington' as 'Mr Chips Goes To Hollywood'.

The Present Age

I just read the following story on msn.co.uk:

"Virginia man loses nearly 80 pounds in 6 months by eating at McDonald's every day

A Virginia man lost about 80 pounds (36 kilograms) in six months by eating nearly every meal at McDonald's. Not Big Macs, french fries and chocolate shakes. Mostly salads, wraps and apple dippers without the caramel sauce. Chris Coleson tipped the scales at 278 pounds (126 kilograms) in December. The 5-foot-8 (1.7 meters) Coleson now weighs 199 pounds (90 kilograms) and his waist size has dropped from 50 inches (127 centimeters) to 36 inches (91 centimeters). The 42-year-old businessman from Quinton says he chose McDonald's because it's convenient.

Coleson says his goal is to get back to the 185 pounds (84 kilograms) he weighed when he married Tricia Summer ten years ago."

That, my friends, is some spectacular bullshit. It is a fact that McDonald's salads contain more fat than their burgers - all you need to do is check the nutritional information on their website. Which, because I apparently have nothing better to do with my time, I did.

A double cheeseburger contains 440 calories and 23 grams of fat. The exhaustively-named Premium Bacon Ranch Salad with Crispy Chicken contains (once you add the salad dressing, which their website doesn't as standard) 470 calories and 26 grams of fat. Even the healthiest salad combination contains 340 calories and 13 grams of fat, both of which are considerably higher than the standard hamburger (at 250 cals and 9g of fat). Admittedly, neither quite reach the levels of a Big Mac, which has 540 calories and 29g of fat (45% of your RDA). But I would hardly call it the cornerstone of a healthy diet, much less one which would facilitate losing 6kg a month for 6 consecutive months. And whilst I'm at it, their wraps are hardly a picture of nutritional value either.

Leaving that aside for a moment, what a strangely written article. Is this what passes for prose on the internet? Sentence fragments. And. A general lack of coherence. And why, exactly, should anyone care that his goal is to get back to the 185lbs he weighed when he married Tricia Summer (whoever the hell she is)?


I'm enjoying the post-Irish vote Lisbon Treaty squabbling taking place at the moment. At least in the Czech Republic we have one voice of sanity and common sense.

Songs for the Deaf: 'Feed the Animals' - Girl Talk (not as good as I'd hoped, but anything that samples Temple of the Dog's 'Hunger Strike' and Ace of Base in the same track is fine by me); 'One-Armed Scissor' - At The Drive-In; 'Tired of Sex' - Weezer

Quote of the Day: "The neon signs which hang over our cities and outshine the natural light of the night with their own are comets presaging the natural disaster of society, its frozen death. Yet they do not come from the sky. They are controlled from earth. It depends upon human beings themselves whether they will extinguish these lights and awake from a nightmare which only threatens to become actual as long as men believe it. - T. W. Adorno, 'The Schema of Mass Culture' (my goodness, what would he have made of all of this?)

The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy?

So, voters in the Republic of Ireland have voted against the Lisbon Treaty, rejecting it by a margin of 53.4% to 46.6% in yesterday's referendum. The Lisbon Treaty, let us remember, is itself a compromised and attenuated version of the European constitution which was so resoundingly rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005. The Treaty of Lisbon requires ratification by ALL 27 member states in order to become law. It would, as such, be natural to assume that the Treaty has been withdrawn - that bureaucrats, politicians, and lawyers have gone back to the drawing board (again); one might even hope for an acknowledgment that plans for a 'greater' or more integrated Europe are finished, an understanding that even the watered-down version has been rejected by the only EU nation whose citizens were allowed to vote on the Treaty.

But, then, of course, one remembers that this is the EU we are talking about, and that nothing so trifling as the democratic will of the people ought to derail the vision of a United States of Europe to rival that of the USA or China. Ireland, declared EU President Jose Manuel Barroso against all evidence to the contrary, remains "committed to a strong Europe." Now, let us not forget that this was the country which rejected the Treaty of Nice (effectively a referendum on joining the Euro) back in 2001 by a margin of 46.1% in favour and 53.9% against (it is worth noting, as an aside, that as yesterday's referendum demonstrates, the 'No' vote has actually increased in Ireland). What was the EU's reaction? They forced Ireland to vote again, the bill finally passing in October 2002.

There is, of course, precedence for this kind of disregard for democracy within the EU: when Danish voters rejected the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, they too were told to vote again, presumably until the 'correct' result came up. The fact that Maastricht was initially rejected by such a narrow margin (0.7%) is entirely irrelevant: firstly, voter turnout was extraordinarily high (83.1%) and, moreover, that is the way the democratic process works: on a simple 'yes-no' question, a win by one vote, by 0.1% of the vote, or by 100% of the vote is the same. That is the point of such a vote; the losers cannot turn around and proclaim that they 'almost won', or that they would have won had voters only understood the question adequately. There is no 'almost'; 'almost' is nothing. 'Almost' is defeat, defeat in a democratic vote undertaken by the citizens of a democracy.

Where does the EU go from here? Ah yes, "Ratifications should continue to take their course," stated Barroso. And what, in effect, does this mean? It means that in all of the other EU member-states - the ones in which voters do not get a say in proceedings - the Lisbon Treaty will be ratified. And then, with Ireland the only obstacle remaining, the EU will exert such immense pressure that, in the end, the inevitable re-vote will take place. But what happens if the Irish reject it again? What then? How many rejections is enough for the EU? One? Apparently not, even if it has come from four separate countries (France, Holland, Denmark, and - twice - Ireland). Two? Three? At what stage will the EU get the message - the clear, unambiguous, democratic, and legitimate message - that its citizens (although, of course, let us be clear: the EU itself has no 'citizens', at least not yet. This is precisely what is at stake here) do not want federalism, a common foreign policy, a united army. The EU's sheer contempt for the democratic process, for the will of the people, is breathtaking. The EU is like the stalker (the sex pest?) of Europe, unable to take 'no' for an answer.

The EU is a body whose co-legislative organ, The Council of the European Union, is entirely unaccountable, holding secret votes the results of which cannot be scrutinised by member-state parliaments. It is an organisation whose one deference to the democratic process - MEPs - are, likewise, unaccountable to member-state parliaments. The EU Commission is served by commissioners whose membership is proposed by member state governments and approved by the European Parliament, entirely bypassing any notion of accountability of democracy. It is, finally, an organisation whose central body, the Council of the European Union, has relative voting weights rather than outright democracy. 'One person, one vote' clearly means nothing to the EU.

For too long the opponents of the EU have been branded as nationalist, insular, parochial, ignorant, and racist. No doubt a very few of them are, but many, many more have been poorly served by fringe political parties who do more to de-legitimise their cause than to strengthen it. So-called 'Euro-skepticism' is a legitimate point of view. But the future of the EU is an issue which goes beyond simple left-right, Labour-Conservative dichotomies. Not only is the EU undemocratic, it is actively anti-democratic, not to mention bloated, incompetent, corrupt, self-serving, and wildly unpopular. Even those people who are in favour of the Lisbon Treaty, of the European constitution, of a federal Europe modeled after the USA, ought to be gravely concerned about the EU's democratic deficit. You cannot simply shrug your shoulders and tell the people that you know what is right for them. Europe has been down that road before.

Ouch

According to theweatherchannel.com, the 'Feels Like' temperature at 3 and 4pm tomorrow will be exactly 100F.

By the way, expect that as the Summer goes on, my posts will become more and more weather-obsessed.

Walking in the Sun...

I am a man living in fear: the weather forecast predicts that tomorrow will be a cloudy 96F. Cloudy = humid. 96F = atrociously hot. Will my English constitution survive? Luckily, I'm supposed to be spending most of tomorrow in Brooklyn, where it will, hopefully, be mildly less appalling. But I fear that I might simply melt in the sun - I guess I'll just have to shelter in the shade of the trees. Tomorrow morning, before all of that, I'm going to check out the open air book fair at one of my favourite NY bookstores, Housing Works, and then head over the Brooklyn Bridge to try to speak with/see my parents and sister on that big HG Wells-esque New York-London video pipe thing. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're missing out. Hopefully I won't have dissolved into a puddle by then.

Tomorrow calls for the deployment of drastic, terrible measures: sandles or, as they prefer to call them over here 'flip-flops'. Truly, I have sunk as low as one can possibly go.

On the plus side, England's cricket team are currently murdering New Zealand. And I'm about to see Toby! Huzzah!


Songs for the Deaf: 'You' - Atmosphere; KROQ LA (in general); KEXP Seattle (ditto): I've discovered the iTunes radio function, and it is a thing of wonder.

Quote of the Day: "I'm melting, MELTING, oh what a world!!!" - The Wicked Witch of the West, Wizard of Oz.

Pulchritudo et Salubritas

I see that my hometown has been in the news today:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/7430008.stm

I remember a time when my sister and I derisively nicknamed Bournemouth 'BOB' (Boring Old Bournemouth - we were about 12 at the time) - now its all corpses in suitcases, drug-dealing gangsters (sorry Mr Carr, "legitimate businessmen"), and dead students. Still, some things never change:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bournemouth_School

Good to see that Mr Granger is still at the helm, slowly steering a once-fine school into the abyss.

And whilst I'm running down my homeland, this story didn't exactly fill me with patriotic pride:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7429638.stm

The choicest line? "It's sweaty on there but I'm going round and round until I vomit" - well said Mr Peter Moore from Brighton. Still, all of this is perhaps understandable: the Circle Line is liable to reduce even the most saintly of souls to violence and vandalism, even without the presence of alcohol.

I'll leave with some words from that ardent and spare chronicler of the decline of modern England, Philip Larkin:


'Nothing To Be Said'

For nations vague as weed,
For nomads among stones,
Small-statured cross-faced tribes
And cobble-close families
In mill-towns on dark mornings
Life is slow dying.

So are their separate ways
Of building, benediction,
Measuring love and money
Ways of slow dying.
The days spent hunting pig
Or holding a garden-party,

Hours giving evidence
Or birth, advance
On death equally slowly.
And saying so to some
Means nothing; others it leaves
Nothing to be said.


From 'The Whitsun Weddings'

There we were aimed. And as we raced across
Brights knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
Travelling coincidence; and what it held
Stood ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.