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Divide and Conquer
In Gaza, the loyalty of many ordinary Palestinians lies with Hamas. And the creation of a Hamas police force has pointed up the fact that actual law enforcement was never much of a priority for Fatah during its years in power.
The watchful, disciplined demeanor of the Hamas men contrasted sharply with that of Fatah police officers, who can often be seen lounging, smoking and taking tea breaks. The Islamist group’s image of fiscal incorruptibility, burnished by its years of running an extensive charity network, gave it greater credibility as a crime-fighting force.
O’Reilly Pwn3z “Web 2.0″
O’Reilly Media, the open-source, creative commons darling company, has threatened to sue a small Irish company into smithereens for daring to use the words “Web 2.0″ without permission.
“CMP has a pending application for registration of Web 2.0 as a service mark, for arranging and conducting live events, namely trade shows, expositions, business conferences and educational conferences in various fields of computers and information technology.”
Rainbow’s Twangers
Rainbow was an old UK TV show that ran for ever. It featured some puppets, Zippy was the foil, Bungle was the Godless Killing Machine furry bear apparently married to Jeffrey, the human authority figure. There was also some feebleminded pink hippo thing, and some vaguely hippy types that played songs. Anyway, the show itself was quite homoerotic, and obviously the cast realised this as well. Somewhere along the way they managed to produce this opus:
Alternatively: Google Video.
Tripping Out
I read in passing a typical urban myth concerning LSD, something to do with “rival LSD gangs” dosing each other.
they give them waaay too much liquid LSD, enough to permanently remove them from anything resembling reality.
Most adverse LSD reactions resolve within 48 hours.
During one notable incident, eight partygoers assumed that a basin of white powdered anhydrous LSD was cocaine and ingested it nasally and orally, inhaling massive amounts of LSD (ie, up to several hundred times a typical recreational amount). Five went into coma and suffered vomiting, fever, and mild internal bleeding. Their serum LSD was 2.1-26 ng/ml, with 1000-7000 micrograms/100ml stomach contents. No psychological or physical abnormalities were noted a year later during a follow-up exam. A majority of the five continued to use LSD recreationally.
The complete article makes interesting reading and, of course, it’s from San Francisco.
Reconquista
I have a suspicion that in a few hundred years the idea and creation of Israel (as a homeland for expatriated people of many different ethnicites sharing a common class of religious behaviours categorized as “Jewishness”) will be recognized as very closely paralleling the creation and development of the Ghettos in late medieval society.
These were a social innovation to the “problem” of dealing with increased migration, immigration, and multiculturalism resulting from Europe’s increased trade links during that era. It’s noteworthy that the first ghettos were instituted in Northern Italy to corral German traders and craft workers. Coralling people on the basis of religion was a later “innovation”. Thus social engineering, new urban construction technologies, and military coercion combined to create an enduring apartheid system that inaugurated the Early Modern Era and increased the nationalistic momentum leveraged by the emerging nation states and their absolute rulers.
The slightly increased vogue for ethnic and religious ghettos in the modern post-Colonial Era is self-evident. The 20th century, especially the latter half, was a period of radical “ethnic cleansing” and the dismantling of the idea of multicultural Empires and pan-ethnic hegemonic alliances. Paradoxically, considering what change a naive contact hypothesis might have predicted from omnipresent media, we live now in an Era of Celebrated Difference where every ethnicity, culture, sub-culture, faction, sect, and mutation demands its own Bantustan.
The idea that many people in Israel today would willingly construct for themselves one of the largest Jewish ghettos in history would have struck earlier observers as fantastic. That they would enable countries all over the world effectively to remove or reduce their Jewish populations and send them to one of the more dangerous, infertile, and unstable parts of the world seems almost Machiavellian, and very apropos. That some in Israel seem determined to voluntarily build around their national ghetto a Wall of enduring lethality and permanence just adds insult to injury.
Because of the effective elimination of the native inhabitants of North America, the expansionary United States always seems to have favoured Year Zero and other segregationist approaches over integrationist approaches when it comes to building socialities. This probably arises from the former widespread availability of “open canvases” upon which to write new, similar communities. This commonality probably accounts for the relatively high sympathy of many in the US to the idea of Israel as a separate living space for people identified as Jews. After all, the Mormons got Utah. What could go wrong?
The difference is that Europe and the Middle East have been very densely populated relative to North America for several hundred years. Instead of displacing a few minute, scattered remnants of the former masters of the land, Israel found itself embedded in the middle of a demographic explosion. In the Middle East, demographics have usually won out over the long run – just ask the Northern European citizens of Edessa, Antioch, Tripoli, Jerusalem, Jaffa, or Galillee.
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