2007 October «

Good Times in the Middle East

October 31, 2007 at 12:40 pm | In International Relations, Middle East | Leave a Comment

What do you do if you feel threatened, but you don’t have the British justice minister to personally protect you, and no vending machine to hide in? You go nuclear. (Or you show your breasts.) All the cool kids are doing it.

This was the inevitable result of the Iranian program, and one of the most serious repercussions it is engendering, in what is already a tinderbox of a region. But as Sunni Arab states are increasingly pushing for their own nuclear programs, Israel is staying quiet. Its hands are full dealing with the Iran issue, and it doesn’t want to draw any extra attention to its ~~quasi-secret~~ alleged nuclear program. And for the most part, the Israeli calculus seems to be, these countries aren’t really belligerent threats.

But what happens when a leader of one of these countries dies or is overthrown (this is the Middle East, so that happens more or less every Tuesday), and the guy who takes over is not just an everyday crackpot dictator, but a particularly dangerous crackpot dictator with nuclear capability?

I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure all this is Your fault.

Israeli Soldier Escapes Interrogation, Bra

October 31, 2007 at 11:35 am | In Middle East | Leave a Comment

It turns out that maybe all that Hamas prisoners would have to do to escape the clutches of Israeli security is to show their captors their breasts.

The Problem In Iraq? You.

October 30, 2007 at 9:10 am | In American Politics, Culture, International Relations, Middle East | Leave a Comment

I haven’t had a chance to read Foreign Policy’s new cover story, but I’m looking forward to it. The idea seems to be that You should be taking some blame for the debacle in Iraq, and not just passing on the blame to the president, the “neo-cons,” or others. You are the problem.

I think there is probably something to this on the merits – more on that once I read the piece – but the basic premise resonates with me. Ever since Time made You the person of the year, I’ve been waiting for someone to smack You down a peg or two. With Your smug, internet-driven independence and Your Reality Television, You seem to think that Time was right.

Well, I’ve met You, or at least lots of You, and I’m really not impressed. Frankly, You kind of disgust me most of the time. I don’t know yet whether Foreign Policy is right that You are to blame for the war in Iraq, but I wouldn’t put it past You. I do know that Time was wrong.

(But at least You’re not this guy)

GI Joe: A Real UN-Sanctioned Hero!

October 29, 2007 at 1:36 pm | In Culture, Europe | Leave a Comment

This is one of those somewhat frustrating things to blog about, because there really isn’t anything I can add to make this more amusing than it already is. According to Glenn Reynolds, in the new GI Joe movie, GI Joe will be a member of an “international force based in Brussels.”

Shout Out Out Out Out

October 29, 2007 at 11:54 am | In Culture, Miscellaneous | 1 Comment

You know how sometimes you’re not even thirty yet and you think you still have some idea what the kids are up to these days, but because your friends are having babies and buying houses, or maybe having houses and buying babies (you don’t know how these things work) and some kid tells you that “email is for old people,” you start to think maybe you really have no clue anymore?

So you go to a wild dance party with a crazy band, and then you think triumphantly, No, I’m not old yet.

But then you run into one of your university students there, and she calls you “Professor” – in sort of a mocking tone – in front of your inebriated, snickering friends, and you think, Wait! I have university students? Maybe I am old.

You know how that happens? I hate that.

Image by Flickr user ctoverdrive used under a Creative Commons License

To Life

October 29, 2007 at 6:53 am | In Middle East | Leave a Comment

I was of course shocked and saddened to hear this morning that my former boss, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, has been diagnosed with cancer. My initial thought was “here we go again,” because the first memories that came to mind were the dark, surreal days in the Prime Minister’s Office following Prime Minister Sharon’s debilitating stroke.

But Olmert will be fine. The cancer was caught early and is very minor, and the word I’m hearing from Jerusalem is that it probably won’t even disrupt his ability to govern much, if at all. That’s important, because the months ahead may be vital for Israel and the Middle East, and whatever you think of the prime minister’s performance, you’ve got to agree that stability is an asset right now.

What I wonder, though, is how long it will take for for the jackals of the Knesset to start trying to use this weakness against him. Cancer may beatable, but Israeli politics is fatal: Trust me.

Image by Flickr user jonklinger used under a Creative Commons License

What He Said

October 26, 2007 at 1:28 pm | In Canada, International Relations, Middle East | Leave a Comment

Canadian journalist Yoni Goldstein has a stellar column in Haaretz today about the weird – but probably entirely true – reports that Nativ, a formerly covert branch of the Israeli Government, is launching a big push to bring Russian Jews living in North America to Israel, beginning with those in Montreal. The heart of the matter:

It’s a peculiar strategy: aiming to do business in a country that has two significant, settled communities of Russian Jews (the other being Toronto, where some 90,000 live); a country that is safe for Jews and where Jewish communities have long prospered; and a country, moreover, to which disadvantaged immigrants flock and where they are welcomed in droves, where they can experience multiculturalism and inclusiveness. When you’re trying to convince people to leave peaceful, thriving Canada for a better life in the Middle East, you know you’re in trouble of some kind.

I can’t really add much to this, except to say that the article also notes that most of these people actually came to Canada by way of Israel in the first place. I could also, I suppose, mention that in the Israeli Government, it’s still a widespread notion that Jews living anywhere else are just sort of kidding themselves about what’s best for them – and suggest that this is anachronistic, paternalistic and insulting. But I’ve already received my share of angry emails this week, so I won’t.

Wishing for Martyrdom

October 25, 2007 at 10:11 am | In Culture | Leave a Comment

At an academic cocktail party not long ago – at a university that was not the one where I teach! – I was trying, at one point, to make small talk with two people whose scholarly activities are in literature. Both of them are deeply religious Christians, but one seems particularly…devoted. The somewhat less religious one is an expert on T.S. Eliot, and they were talking about possible reasons why Eliot is apparently not as popular as he used to be among academics. (Who knew? Maybe I don’t hang out with the cool kids enough.)

“Is it because he was a Christian?” the more religious one asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” the other answered. “It probably has more to do with the anti-Semitic allegations against him.”

“People probably don’t like that much,” I added lamely, wanting to slip away from this conversation and back towards the open bar.

They both looked at me sharply and didn’t say anything for a moment.

“But,” the more religious one continued, “maybe they don’t like that because he was a Christian.”

Queer Tools

October 24, 2007 at 11:56 am | In Culture | 1 Comment

This comes a bit late, but Martin Fackler had a very interesting piece in the International Herald Tribune a few days ago about some new products in Japan that allow someone to hide from robbers or rapists. For example: a skirt that turns into a mock-vending machine so that a woman can hide from her assailant, and a handbag that flattens out and looks like a manhole cover. I already had a pretty odd image of Japan – somewhere between The Future and The Twilight Zone – but these images pretty much sealed that.

These devices are part of a larger category of Japanese inventions called “Queer Tools,” which also includes “a roll of toilet paper attached to the head for easy reach during hay fever season, and tiny mops for a cat’s feet that polish the floor as the cat prowls.”

To me, the most interesting part of The International Herald Tribune article is the cultural analysis, partly because I teach this sort of thing in one of my classes. (Not the hiding in fake vending machine part – the cultural stuff.) Fackler writes that the devices that allow you to hide from criminals reflect a Japanese tendency to not “make a scene,” instead of actually confronting crime. And the other Queer Tools, he suggests, might arise from the fact that because Japanese society does not just laugh away new inventions, it fosters a climate of creativity.

As for me, I’m already sort of regretting what I did yesterday, and I think I might just go hide in a vending machine.