There are times when the internet gives me great joy. Often this is because I get to experience someone else's life vicariously, and equally often it is because a point of view that I had not theretofore considered is made crystal clear.
Sometimes it is a bit of both. Or actually a large whumping chunk of both.
Such as here:
http://deathbynoodles.blogspot.com/2009/03/worst-creeps-in-world.html
In the piece, the author waxes lyrical about a recent experience which discomfited her. She says everything that she wishes to say clearly, and with a tightness of speech, a conciseness, which is utterly admirable. She makes her point, and does not dwell unnecessarily on the rhetoric.
QUOTE 1
" - What she does out back behind the dumpster with her drunken victims, well, that doesn't concern me in the slightest."
QUOTE 2
" - Auntie there's a WORLD of difference between a friendly glance and a hamsahp leer! And entirely aside from me puking my guts out afterwards, you would go to jail."
The subject of that blogger's post is a group of enablers and fellow-travelers of anti-Semitism in the Bay Area. A group which inexplicably seems to have bamboozled their way into the warm fuzzy feelings of many people, despite their affectionate fondness for angry Muslims screaming Jew-hating slogans, or their joining with International ANSWER in advocating the ethnic cleansing of all of Israel from the river to the sea.
You'll just have to read the post to get the full flavour of her ire.
And be glad that at least somebody gets it.
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Friday, March 06, 2009
ISRAELI APARTHEID
Now that the usual participants have contributed to make Israeli Apartheid Week a splendid success at campuses all across America - swastikas, threats, and strange theatre performances - about the only thing left is to highlight how the press happily collaborates.
See this post:
http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2009/02/israel-apartheid-week-message.html
Well, that about says it all, doesn't it?
See this post:
http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2009/02/israel-apartheid-week-message.html
Well, that about says it all, doesn't it?
YOUR BLACK NUTS!
This is not a racist rant. It is about an ingredient used in Javanese and Indo food. Pangium edule, called kluwak in Dutch and Indonesian. They are soaked and mashed, then added to stock or stews. The flavour they contribute is a somewhat fruity muskiness, quite pleasant and not very strong. For a dish for four people, about five or six kluwak are sufficient.
In the Netherlands they can be found at the local toko, where one can also find most other Indonesian and Chinese ingredients required for Dutch cooking. Many Dutch use some Indonesian ingredients, some Dutch use a lot of Indonesian ingredients. Tokos are, consequently, a recognizable feature of Dutch population conglomerata.
Here in the States you will find Indonesian ingredients in the larger Chinatowns - jars of unidentifiable substances or packets of 'what-the-heck-is-that' with Dutch orthography on the labels, imported from 'sGravenhage, Kuala Lumpur, Foochow, or Shanghai. In San Francisco there are stores with Indo products in both Chinatown (Kearny, Grant Avenue, and Stockton Streets between Bush and Vallejo) and New Chinatown (the Clement Street corridor), plus in several other neighborhoods. The New May Wah on Clement Street has a vast selection of products from all over South-East Asia, as well as fresh meats and seafood.
Oh, one other thing that I suppose I should mention about kluwak nuts - they will make the food black. Well, so extremely dark brown as to be nearly black. Makes for an interesting visual contrast on your table with a golden curry and a plate of stir-fried greens.
[Plus white white rice, bright red sambal, and a seafood vegetable tamarind broth soup - life is very good, isn't it?]
Kluwak are described here:
http://recipes.wikia.com/wiki/Kluwak_nuts
Here's a link to a recipe that uses them:
what-is-that-mess-on-my-plate
Note re ingredients mentioned in the recipe:
Kaffir lime leaf (daun perut) = a leaf that adds a fragrance between tea-rose and citrus. No substitute, but not essential.
Lemongrass (sere, serai, sae) = smells like candied lemon. Keeps bugs away, so worth growing in the backyard.
Galangal (lengkuas, langkwang) = related to ginger, has an old-fashioned almost medicinal smell.
Sambal terasi = Sambal (chili-paste) made with trassi (hard fish paste). Delicious.
Tempeh = A weird soybean leather that only goofy white people eat; it is the food of poverty and the pow camps. I will not touch it, and neither should you. Healthfood freaks love it, and write long poetic disquisitions praising it. It is not the best thing since slice bread.
Obviously kluwak can be added to a lot of dishes. Bear in mind that they go best with slow-cooked foods like braises and stews, especially if not in competition with a lot of other bold flavours. They play very nicely with garlic and chilies.
The next time you make Texas Chili or Son Of a Bitch Stew, freak someone out by adding kluwak. It will taste great.
-------------------------
So, what am I eating right now? Roast meat, yam, carrot, and sticky white rice. It is very beautiful.
In the Netherlands they can be found at the local toko, where one can also find most other Indonesian and Chinese ingredients required for Dutch cooking. Many Dutch use some Indonesian ingredients, some Dutch use a lot of Indonesian ingredients. Tokos are, consequently, a recognizable feature of Dutch population conglomerata.
Here in the States you will find Indonesian ingredients in the larger Chinatowns - jars of unidentifiable substances or packets of 'what-the-heck-is-that' with Dutch orthography on the labels, imported from 'sGravenhage, Kuala Lumpur, Foochow, or Shanghai. In San Francisco there are stores with Indo products in both Chinatown (Kearny, Grant Avenue, and Stockton Streets between Bush and Vallejo) and New Chinatown (the Clement Street corridor), plus in several other neighborhoods. The New May Wah on Clement Street has a vast selection of products from all over South-East Asia, as well as fresh meats and seafood.
Oh, one other thing that I suppose I should mention about kluwak nuts - they will make the food black. Well, so extremely dark brown as to be nearly black. Makes for an interesting visual contrast on your table with a golden curry and a plate of stir-fried greens.
[Plus white white rice, bright red sambal, and a seafood vegetable tamarind broth soup - life is very good, isn't it?]
Kluwak are described here:
http://recipes.wikia.com/wiki/Kluwak_nuts
Here's a link to a recipe that uses them:
what-is-that-mess-on-my-plate
Note re ingredients mentioned in the recipe:
Kaffir lime leaf (daun perut) = a leaf that adds a fragrance between tea-rose and citrus. No substitute, but not essential.
Lemongrass (sere, serai, sae) = smells like candied lemon. Keeps bugs away, so worth growing in the backyard.
Galangal (lengkuas, langkwang) = related to ginger, has an old-fashioned almost medicinal smell.
Sambal terasi = Sambal (chili-paste) made with trassi (hard fish paste). Delicious.
Tempeh = A weird soybean leather that only goofy white people eat; it is the food of poverty and the pow camps. I will not touch it, and neither should you. Healthfood freaks love it, and write long poetic disquisitions praising it. It is not the best thing since slice bread.
Obviously kluwak can be added to a lot of dishes. Bear in mind that they go best with slow-cooked foods like braises and stews, especially if not in competition with a lot of other bold flavours. They play very nicely with garlic and chilies.
The next time you make Texas Chili or Son Of a Bitch Stew, freak someone out by adding kluwak. It will taste great.
-------------------------
So, what am I eating right now? Roast meat, yam, carrot, and sticky white rice. It is very beautiful.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
NETANYAHU ANSWERS BRITISH INTERVIEWER - AGAIN!
An e-mail going around, and being quoted on several blogs, has Benyamin Netanyahu answering a question on British Television very well indeed.
The problem is that the interview, if it ever even took place, was in 2006. The question did not deal with Palestinians fatalities in Gaza in 2009, as is being quoted, but Lebanese fatalities a little bit further north, in 2006.
Circulated quote:
* Even those who aren't particularly sympathetic to Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, could get a good measure of satisfaction from this interview with British Television this week. I guess it can be attributed to Minister Netanyahu's days studying history at Harvard.
The interviewer asked him: "How come so many more Palestinians have been killed in this conflict than Israelis?"
Netanyahu: "Are you sure that you want to start asking in that direction?"
Interviewer: "Why not?"
Netanyahu: "Because in World War II more Germans were killed than British and Americans combined, but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that the war was caused by Germany's aggression. And in response to the German blitz on London, the British wiped out the entire city of Dresden, burning to death more German civilians than the number of people killed in Hiroshima. Moreover, I could remind you that in 1944, when the R.A.F. tried to bomb the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, some of the bombs missed their target and fell on a Danish children's hospital, killing 83 little children . Perhaps you have another question?" *
Bibi's answer is quite to the point. And very pointed.
I note, however, that the same exchange was recorded in 2006.
See here:
http://hezbollahwar.blogspot.com/2006/08/well-answered-even-those-who-arent.html
And here:
http://www.yourish.com/2006/08/17
And also here:
http://noiri.blogspot.com/2006/08/must-watch-netanyahu-interview.html
And several places elsewhere on the internet.
I am not entirely surprised that the material above is being spammed forward now. It is good stuff. Apposite, and appropriate. But it is not germane or timely.
The problem is that the interview, if it ever even took place, was in 2006. The question did not deal with Palestinians fatalities in Gaza in 2009, as is being quoted, but Lebanese fatalities a little bit further north, in 2006.
Circulated quote:
* Even those who aren't particularly sympathetic to Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, could get a good measure of satisfaction from this interview with British Television this week. I guess it can be attributed to Minister Netanyahu's days studying history at Harvard.
The interviewer asked him: "How come so many more Palestinians have been killed in this conflict than Israelis?"
Netanyahu: "Are you sure that you want to start asking in that direction?"
Interviewer: "Why not?"
Netanyahu: "Because in World War II more Germans were killed than British and Americans combined, but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that the war was caused by Germany's aggression. And in response to the German blitz on London, the British wiped out the entire city of Dresden, burning to death more German civilians than the number of people killed in Hiroshima. Moreover, I could remind you that in 1944, when the R.A.F. tried to bomb the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, some of the bombs missed their target and fell on a Danish children's hospital, killing 83 little children . Perhaps you have another question?" *
Bibi's answer is quite to the point. And very pointed.
I note, however, that the same exchange was recorded in 2006.
See here:
http://hezbollahwar.blogspot.com/2006/08/well-answered-even-those-who-arent.html
And here:
http://www.yourish.com/2006/08/17
And also here:
http://noiri.blogspot.com/2006/08/must-watch-netanyahu-interview.html
And several places elsewhere on the internet.
I am not entirely surprised that the material above is being spammed forward now. It is good stuff. Apposite, and appropriate. But it is not germane or timely.
GOOD BROWN FLAKE
In the seventies I experimented with a lot of tobaccos which nowadays I wouldn't touch with a dead skunk. Most of them were really nasty products from formerly respectable Dutch manufacturers whoring themselves out to the gold-chain bare hairy chest crowd. Stuff no one in their right mind (assuming a modicum of taste) would stuff into their pipe.
As my father so succinctly put it about several of them, "it reeks like a Turkish cat-house".
The Netherlands was not exactly a pipe-smoker's paradise at that time.
Bright spots were some of the English flakes which did, remarkably, come across the channel. That was when I first smoked Capstan (from Imperial Tobacco); not the best of it's kind, but a breath of fresh air compared to the Dutch Cavendish abortions so frightfully common at the corner tobacconists. The little blue tin had immense appeal, the thin sliced pressed leaf seemed fresh and virginal. And it was fun to smoke.
Capstan claimed to be Navy Cut - that term had a mysterious charm, even though I had no clue what it meant. And given that the tobacco industry calls damn well everything 'Navy Cut', the term is as good as meaningless.
Capstan was a pressing of flue and air cured tobaccos that behaved nicely if coddled.
Some of the other 'Navy Flakes' I smoked at that time were odoriferous monstrosities better suited to pimps and Bible-salesmen than nice upstanding teenagers.
That was over thirty years ago. Most 'Navy' tobaccos have gone the way of the dodo. Pimps and Bible-salesmen are still around. Alas.
Which brings me to a recently opened tin.
NAVY CAVENDISH
McClelland Tobacco Co.
"With this tobacco, we reintroduce the smoker to the traditional Navy Cavendish, pressed in cakes and aged naturally with dark Jamaican rum to achieve its rich depth of flavor, color and aroma."
Did I already mention that 'Navy' is a near-meaningless word in a tobacco context? Add to that the term Cavendish.
If the Dutch can shamelessly label every ghastly smoking-disaster a Cavendish, and the Danes call something a 'Cavendish mixture' because of steampressing of any proportion of the blend, then like 'Navy' it ceases to signify.
That being said, this is a rather nice product. Yes, it has the infamous McClelland ketchup undertone (acetic acid - a mold retarder), and does need quite some drying. The rum is not really noticeable - probably served more to speed a unification of flavours than to contribute any of its own.
Short brown flakes that rub out crumbly for the bowl, and a pleasant fresh sweetness at first light. But do not flame the entire surface of the tobacco, and do not pack it tightly either. Smoke it slow.
The taste is not overly complex or full, the darkness is deceiving (it was the Rum soak that made it appear darker than it actually would have been). There is a faint hint of spice cookies in the fumes, and like Capstan, it behaves nicely if coddled.
There was a neighborhood with train tracks that terminated on the eastern bank of a canal in Eindhoven. It was a depressing industrial area with condemnable houses scattered among godowns and metalshops. I cannot remember the name of the canal, and the last time I went back they were filling it in - that part of the city was changing. The weather was the same as I always remembered from thirty years ago - much the same as the weather in San Francisco these past few days - occasional sunlight interrupting chill gloom and showers.
I took some photos of the district, gratefully noted the buildings I remembered from the past, and left.
The next time I go back I shall smoke some Navy Cavendish for old times' sake.
TOBACCO INDEX
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
As my father so succinctly put it about several of them, "it reeks like a Turkish cat-house".
The Netherlands was not exactly a pipe-smoker's paradise at that time.
Bright spots were some of the English flakes which did, remarkably, come across the channel. That was when I first smoked Capstan (from Imperial Tobacco); not the best of it's kind, but a breath of fresh air compared to the Dutch Cavendish abortions so frightfully common at the corner tobacconists. The little blue tin had immense appeal, the thin sliced pressed leaf seemed fresh and virginal. And it was fun to smoke.
Capstan claimed to be Navy Cut - that term had a mysterious charm, even though I had no clue what it meant. And given that the tobacco industry calls damn well everything 'Navy Cut', the term is as good as meaningless.
Capstan was a pressing of flue and air cured tobaccos that behaved nicely if coddled.
Some of the other 'Navy Flakes' I smoked at that time were odoriferous monstrosities better suited to pimps and Bible-salesmen than nice upstanding teenagers.
That was over thirty years ago. Most 'Navy' tobaccos have gone the way of the dodo. Pimps and Bible-salesmen are still around. Alas.
Which brings me to a recently opened tin.
NAVY CAVENDISH
McClelland Tobacco Co.
"With this tobacco, we reintroduce the smoker to the traditional Navy Cavendish, pressed in cakes and aged naturally with dark Jamaican rum to achieve its rich depth of flavor, color and aroma."
Did I already mention that 'Navy' is a near-meaningless word in a tobacco context? Add to that the term Cavendish.
If the Dutch can shamelessly label every ghastly smoking-disaster a Cavendish, and the Danes call something a 'Cavendish mixture' because of steampressing of any proportion of the blend, then like 'Navy' it ceases to signify.
That being said, this is a rather nice product. Yes, it has the infamous McClelland ketchup undertone (acetic acid - a mold retarder), and does need quite some drying. The rum is not really noticeable - probably served more to speed a unification of flavours than to contribute any of its own.
Short brown flakes that rub out crumbly for the bowl, and a pleasant fresh sweetness at first light. But do not flame the entire surface of the tobacco, and do not pack it tightly either. Smoke it slow.
The taste is not overly complex or full, the darkness is deceiving (it was the Rum soak that made it appear darker than it actually would have been). There is a faint hint of spice cookies in the fumes, and like Capstan, it behaves nicely if coddled.
There was a neighborhood with train tracks that terminated on the eastern bank of a canal in Eindhoven. It was a depressing industrial area with condemnable houses scattered among godowns and metalshops. I cannot remember the name of the canal, and the last time I went back they were filling it in - that part of the city was changing. The weather was the same as I always remembered from thirty years ago - much the same as the weather in San Francisco these past few days - occasional sunlight interrupting chill gloom and showers.
I took some photos of the district, gratefully noted the buildings I remembered from the past, and left.
The next time I go back I shall smoke some Navy Cavendish for old times' sake.
TOBACCO INDEX
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
THIRD ANNUAL SECOND DAY CELEBRATION OF 'LINK TO JACK DAY'
Today is the second day of the third annual 'link-to-Jack-day'. Chag sameach!
Yes, al pi halacha, we celebrate this day for two days in golus.
http://wwwjackbenimble.blogspot.com/2009/03/third-annual-link-to-jack-day.html
I honestly don't know what happened last year, I completely overlooked it. Sorry. I know how important it is to keep track of the passage of time by observing the festivals. But I forgot.
The same happens whenever International Talk Like a Pirate Day rolls around - aaaarrrghghh!
And speaking if which, how much should I charge a pirate to pierce his ears?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Answer: a buck an ear.
Yes, al pi halacha, we celebrate this day for two days in golus.
http://wwwjackbenimble.blogspot.com/2009/03/third-annual-link-to-jack-day.html
I honestly don't know what happened last year, I completely overlooked it. Sorry. I know how important it is to keep track of the passage of time by observing the festivals. But I forgot.
The same happens whenever International Talk Like a Pirate Day rolls around - aaaarrrghghh!
And speaking if which, how much should I charge a pirate to pierce his ears?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Answer: a buck an ear.
CATCHING JVP IN BED WITH THE BAD GUYS
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) asserts that they have no bias and are merely in favour of a peaceful solution to the Israel-Palestine issue. And, like many in the peace-activist community, they claim that criticism of Israel is valid, and cannot possibly be anti-Semitic - being pro-Palestinian does not, in their statements, necessarily mean supporting the destruction of Israel.
In such a manner they have bamboozled concerned yet uninformed people into believing that they are a valid voice for peace, and not at all involved in anything that enables or empowers bigots, racists, and Israel-haters.
Sometimes, however, their kommisars show their true colours.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/02/28/18574196.php
Thursday 3/5, 101 Wurster 7:30 PM
Making the Connection: What was Done and What is to be Done
Professor of History at Stanford University Joel Beinin, Berkeley PhD candidate and Electronic Intifada journalist Osamah Khalil, and Director of Campaigns and Programs at Jewish Voice for Peace Sydney Levy will be discussing the U.S.-Israeli relationship and the potential for an effective Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction Initiative.
In such a manner they have bamboozled concerned yet uninformed people into believing that they are a valid voice for peace, and not at all involved in anything that enables or empowers bigots, racists, and Israel-haters.
Sometimes, however, their kommisars show their true colours.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/02/28/18574196.php
Thursday 3/5, 101 Wurster 7:30 PM
Making the Connection: What was Done and What is to be Done
Professor of History at Stanford University Joel Beinin, Berkeley PhD candidate and Electronic Intifada journalist Osamah Khalil, and Director of Campaigns and Programs at Jewish Voice for Peace Sydney Levy will be discussing the U.S.-Israeli relationship and the potential for an effective Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction Initiative.
----------------------------
The Electronic Intifada unreservedly speaks in favour of several terrorist organizations, Israel-hater Joel Beinin's reputation is pungently rotten. It should be surprising to find Sydney Levy at the same table as the other two gentlemen.
Given his background, however, and his work in other fields, this blogger feels that it should have been entirely predictable.
Sydney Levy is instrumental in several anti-Israel campaigns, most notably divestment. On the other hand, he is also extremely active in immigrant rights campaigns and various other very worthwhile causes, and it is probable that he is sincerely humanistic in that context.
But regarding Israel, he is profoundly and terrifyingly ignorant, and biased.
As with many people, an activist role in one area flatters him into assuming an expertise and credibility in other areas that is entirely unwarranted.
The enslavement of liberalism in America to the hatreds and bigotries of the new anti-Semites starts with precisely such enablers and apologists.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
THE FULL ELVIS
Years ago, when I was working at a computer company down the peninsula, Savage Kitten thought of me. And sent me an article about chicken-fried bacon strips. As served at a famous eatery in Texas. Her added content was some snide remark about heart-attack on a plate, ooh yummy goodness, smirk.
Thick-cut bacon double dipped, nuked in the fryolator, with a bowl of cream gravy on the side.
Geshmak!
I've never eaten chicken-fried bacon strips (just add ranch dressing and it sounds like the breakfast of champions), the computer company headed down the financial tubes like an out-of-control rollercoaster ("we're crashing, wheeeeee!!!!!"), and Savage Kitten denies ever sending me something like that.
This is the same 'inspired' woman who once, in the middle of a dark night, posted flyers on the doors of the company where I worked three blocks from our apartment, advertising 'Round Rhonda's Snack-o-dise', with menu items like 'deepfried corn and walnut lard balls', 'lobster fritters in bacon & butter goop', and 'sugar-crusted crawdaddy nuggets'.
Eating at Round Rhonda's "make you SLAP yo' momma, Ah garontee!".
Free delivery to retirement homes and incarceration facilities.
I never did get a straight answer out of her about why she did that. Something about "brightening up your day", along with "broadening your colleagues' cultural horizons".
GIVE THEM BREAD AND BANANAS
I have often thought that indeed my coworkers needed cultural horizon expansion.
Daily brightening is probably a good thing too.
Especially during rainy weather.
Lunch options in this neighborhood are gloomy, and limited.
I really really wish that the sandwich joint across the street did peanut butter, banana, honey, and bacon sandwiches. Yes, there are such things - Elvis Presley used to eat them all the time. They were probably a contributing factor to his demise (he exploded like a cholesterol and illegal substance bomb while sitting on the crapper), but lawzy, he musta died happy!
Surely one Full Elvis couldn't hurt? One? Once in a blue moon?
Which means no more than twice a week, at most three times. Four during rainy weather.
On fried bread.
You should probably omit the soda and chips if you are dieting.
Thick-cut bacon double dipped, nuked in the fryolator, with a bowl of cream gravy on the side.
Geshmak!
I've never eaten chicken-fried bacon strips (just add ranch dressing and it sounds like the breakfast of champions), the computer company headed down the financial tubes like an out-of-control rollercoaster ("we're crashing, wheeeeee!!!!!"), and Savage Kitten denies ever sending me something like that.
This is the same 'inspired' woman who once, in the middle of a dark night, posted flyers on the doors of the company where I worked three blocks from our apartment, advertising 'Round Rhonda's Snack-o-dise', with menu items like 'deepfried corn and walnut lard balls', 'lobster fritters in bacon & butter goop', and 'sugar-crusted crawdaddy nuggets'.
Eating at Round Rhonda's "make you SLAP yo' momma, Ah garontee!".
Free delivery to retirement homes and incarceration facilities.
I never did get a straight answer out of her about why she did that. Something about "brightening up your day", along with "broadening your colleagues' cultural horizons".
GIVE THEM BREAD AND BANANAS
I have often thought that indeed my coworkers needed cultural horizon expansion.
Daily brightening is probably a good thing too.
Especially during rainy weather.
Lunch options in this neighborhood are gloomy, and limited.
I really really wish that the sandwich joint across the street did peanut butter, banana, honey, and bacon sandwiches. Yes, there are such things - Elvis Presley used to eat them all the time. They were probably a contributing factor to his demise (he exploded like a cholesterol and illegal substance bomb while sitting on the crapper), but lawzy, he musta died happy!
Surely one Full Elvis couldn't hurt? One? Once in a blue moon?
Which means no more than twice a week, at most three times. Four during rainy weather.
On fried bread.
You should probably omit the soda and chips if you are dieting.
Monday, March 02, 2009
I SMELL SMOKE!
One of the things boys do is push boundaries. By which I mean that they engage in a pattern of behaviour calculated to extend the limits of the permissible. This despite the rules that have been set by adults. It's an addictive behaviour. Boys do it much more than little girls, hence the sexist generalization in my statement.
Many little boys grow up. And still push the boundaries. Which explains the large number of twenty-something males yelling slurs and puking on sidewalks every weekend. Or driving down busy downtown streets looking for prostitutes, screaming, shouting, and gaily waving their privates.
Somehow these are good things, beneficial to business, economic achievement, or something. Money is being spent, which pleases the San Francisco merchants and politicians no end.
It's very middle-class, and one of the rocks upon which our great country is built.
I mention all of this, because Savage Kitten lacks a certain balanced perspective regarding my behaviour.
The other night I was sitting in the television room, very innocently minding my own business, when she yelled from her room "I smell smoke!"
This was not apropos of nothing at all, by the way.
So I hollered back "whut?"
"I smell smoke!!"
"Probably your imagination!!"
"I smell smoke!!!"
"Oh, so you're over your cold, then???"
This exchange could've gone on for several more minutes, except that she came stomping into the room and glared at me.
I pointed at the monkey and said "it was him!!!!!".
[The monkey was introduced in this post:
http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2008/09/happiness-is-quarrelling-with-monkey.html
He is less than a foot tall, missing a leg since that unfortunate accident in the product-development department, and he wears a colourful silken women's shirt which was "just lying there ownerless in the womany-thing's room". He looks very innocent.]
This accusation generated howls of outrage. The monkey, it was forcefully asserted, was wholly blameless. Nay, far otherwise even, the monkey undoubtedly had remonstrated with the smoker, and warned him against puffing a pipe in the television room. The monkey was resolutely opposed to many and several of my behaviours, my dissipation appalled him! And it was obvious that I was a bad man, and did not love the monkey!
For the rest of the evening I 'pushed the boundaries of acceptable behaviour' in the kitchen.
I was undisturbed in this endeavor, as Savage Kitten and the Monkey enjoyed each other's company without my sulfurous presence. They were very firm about this.
Consequently I smoked THREE bowls of strong Virginia flake - finished the bowl in the two-tone Canadian which had betrayed me, continued with a fully bent billiard with a natural finish, then enjoyed a large semi-natural Canadian. All smoked slowly. It was yummy.
This morning, when I woke up, it felt like a camel had climbed into my mouth and died. Rasty. Fur-tongue. Dry, acrid, pelt-like. Slightly rotten and rancid. Yech.
I must have spent too much time in the kitchen last night.
I'm blaming the monkey. He could have put in a good word for me with Savage Kitten.
TOBACCO INDEX
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Many little boys grow up. And still push the boundaries. Which explains the large number of twenty-something males yelling slurs and puking on sidewalks every weekend. Or driving down busy downtown streets looking for prostitutes, screaming, shouting, and gaily waving their privates.
Somehow these are good things, beneficial to business, economic achievement, or something. Money is being spent, which pleases the San Francisco merchants and politicians no end.
It's very middle-class, and one of the rocks upon which our great country is built.
I mention all of this, because Savage Kitten lacks a certain balanced perspective regarding my behaviour.
The other night I was sitting in the television room, very innocently minding my own business, when she yelled from her room "I smell smoke!"
This was not apropos of nothing at all, by the way.
So I hollered back "whut?"
"I smell smoke!!"
"Probably your imagination!!"
"I smell smoke!!!"
"Oh, so you're over your cold, then???"
This exchange could've gone on for several more minutes, except that she came stomping into the room and glared at me.
I pointed at the monkey and said "it was him!!!!!".
[The monkey was introduced in this post:
http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2008/09/happiness-is-quarrelling-with-monkey.html
He is less than a foot tall, missing a leg since that unfortunate accident in the product-development department, and he wears a colourful silken women's shirt which was "just lying there ownerless in the womany-thing's room". He looks very innocent.]
This accusation generated howls of outrage. The monkey, it was forcefully asserted, was wholly blameless. Nay, far otherwise even, the monkey undoubtedly had remonstrated with the smoker, and warned him against puffing a pipe in the television room. The monkey was resolutely opposed to many and several of my behaviours, my dissipation appalled him! And it was obvious that I was a bad man, and did not love the monkey!
For the rest of the evening I 'pushed the boundaries of acceptable behaviour' in the kitchen.
I was undisturbed in this endeavor, as Savage Kitten and the Monkey enjoyed each other's company without my sulfurous presence. They were very firm about this.
Consequently I smoked THREE bowls of strong Virginia flake - finished the bowl in the two-tone Canadian which had betrayed me, continued with a fully bent billiard with a natural finish, then enjoyed a large semi-natural Canadian. All smoked slowly. It was yummy.
This morning, when I woke up, it felt like a camel had climbed into my mouth and died. Rasty. Fur-tongue. Dry, acrid, pelt-like. Slightly rotten and rancid. Yech.
I must have spent too much time in the kitchen last night.
I'm blaming the monkey. He could have put in a good word for me with Savage Kitten.
TOBACCO INDEX
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Friday, February 27, 2009
VISIT YOUR LOCAL BLOODBANK
Yesterday evening I came home to discover Savage Kitten flaked out exhausted in bed.
She was pale and wan, and too tired to even eat (and being Cantonese-American she pretty much LIVES to feed - seeing her fiercely hunt down helpless comestibles is a sight to behold).
No, not a cold, nor flue. Not even the monthly .... errm, you know. Instead, something far better. She gave blood yesterday.
[Please note: the 'monthly .... errm you know' is pictured as a large porcupine wearing granny-glasses and native-bead necklaces who does a fearsome rhumba. I just thought you should know this. She visits us every .... errm, month. Yes.]
Giving blood is a fine thing, entirely a commendable practice. It is one of the best things you can do, and you should make it a practice to do it regularly.
Just never gonna do it myself. I'll leave it up to you.
I got a needle-phobia going on.
The last time a medical person drew blood out of my arm, I took one look at the hypodermic slowly filling with warm pulsating blood and went into shock.
- - - - - - -
Now, where was I? Oh yes, warm crimson fluid filling up a glass tube ......
- - - - - - -
Please understand that it isn't the blood. I have no problem with blood. Seeing the back of the driver's head explode from a sniper bullet in Mindanao was not a problem, and attending a boucherie is always fun - especially if they cook the odd parts. Horrid accidents absolutely fascinate me.
I would not object at all if they allowed me to donate blood by gashing myself fiercely. But needles, are, well, an issue.
One of my earliest memories is being chased around a doctor's office by an ogre in a white lab coat intent on giving me a wholly unnecessary flue-shot. This memory got relived and refreshed every year for fifteen years until I finally had the stones to rebel against egregious needling.
[And then promptly spent three weeks having the worst flue ever - that entire holiday season is a solid blur of buckets, shaking fevers, and hallucinations.]
In my youth it seemed like the solution for every conceivable medical issue involved a sadist, reeking of antiseptic, in a white lab coat, holding an instrument of punctuation. That drop of fluid expressed from the tip in preparation of the inevitable jab is enough to .......
- - - - - - -
There is a small bright side to the needle-phobia, though. I am entirely unlikely to ever become addicted to injectable substances. Even the mere idea of swabbing an area near a vein, boiling a solution in a spoon, tying off the arm, and sticking a shiny sterilized needle ........
- - - - - - -
Yes, the thought of doing something like that is entirely unappealing. And heck will freeze over before I even come close to it. Needles disconcert me that much. Because of that phobia, heroin will never be part of the programme.
But this is not as comforting as you would think.
You see, it wouldn't be possible EVEN IF I didn't have the nee ... nee ... nee ...
- - - - - - -
Why is the n-phobia not the main reason for avoiding poppy derivatives?
Because opiates send me into shock. The last time I had a root canal (2002), the dentist prescribed painkillers for when the novocaine wore off. So I took one (just one!) before leaving the house that evening. And then spent over an hour sitting on the cold pavement with sweat pouring from every pore, ready to pass out.
There were thirty pills in that bottle when I got it - there are twenty nine of them left. The expiry date was five years ago.
I now carry a card in my wallet that instructs emergency personal to under no circumstances give me any codeine, penicillin-type anti-biotics, or raw bananas.
Anyhow, it is both good and noble to donate blood. I thoroughly encourage your doing so.
She was pale and wan, and too tired to even eat (and being Cantonese-American she pretty much LIVES to feed - seeing her fiercely hunt down helpless comestibles is a sight to behold).
No, not a cold, nor flue. Not even the monthly .... errm, you know. Instead, something far better. She gave blood yesterday.
[Please note: the 'monthly .... errm you know' is pictured as a large porcupine wearing granny-glasses and native-bead necklaces who does a fearsome rhumba. I just thought you should know this. She visits us every .... errm, month. Yes.]
Giving blood is a fine thing, entirely a commendable practice. It is one of the best things you can do, and you should make it a practice to do it regularly.
Just never gonna do it myself. I'll leave it up to you.
I got a needle-phobia going on.
The last time a medical person drew blood out of my arm, I took one look at the hypodermic slowly filling with warm pulsating blood and went into shock.
- - - - - - -
Now, where was I? Oh yes, warm crimson fluid filling up a glass tube ......
- - - - - - -
Please understand that it isn't the blood. I have no problem with blood. Seeing the back of the driver's head explode from a sniper bullet in Mindanao was not a problem, and attending a boucherie is always fun - especially if they cook the odd parts. Horrid accidents absolutely fascinate me.
I would not object at all if they allowed me to donate blood by gashing myself fiercely. But needles, are, well, an issue.
One of my earliest memories is being chased around a doctor's office by an ogre in a white lab coat intent on giving me a wholly unnecessary flue-shot. This memory got relived and refreshed every year for fifteen years until I finally had the stones to rebel against egregious needling.
[And then promptly spent three weeks having the worst flue ever - that entire holiday season is a solid blur of buckets, shaking fevers, and hallucinations.]
In my youth it seemed like the solution for every conceivable medical issue involved a sadist, reeking of antiseptic, in a white lab coat, holding an instrument of punctuation. That drop of fluid expressed from the tip in preparation of the inevitable jab is enough to .......
- - - - - - -
There is a small bright side to the needle-phobia, though. I am entirely unlikely to ever become addicted to injectable substances. Even the mere idea of swabbing an area near a vein, boiling a solution in a spoon, tying off the arm, and sticking a shiny sterilized needle ........
- - - - - - -
Yes, the thought of doing something like that is entirely unappealing. And heck will freeze over before I even come close to it. Needles disconcert me that much. Because of that phobia, heroin will never be part of the programme.
But this is not as comforting as you would think.
You see, it wouldn't be possible EVEN IF I didn't have the nee ... nee ... nee ...
- - - - - - -
Why is the n-phobia not the main reason for avoiding poppy derivatives?
Because opiates send me into shock. The last time I had a root canal (2002), the dentist prescribed painkillers for when the novocaine wore off. So I took one (just one!) before leaving the house that evening. And then spent over an hour sitting on the cold pavement with sweat pouring from every pore, ready to pass out.
There were thirty pills in that bottle when I got it - there are twenty nine of them left. The expiry date was five years ago.
I now carry a card in my wallet that instructs emergency personal to under no circumstances give me any codeine, penicillin-type anti-biotics, or raw bananas.
Anyhow, it is both good and noble to donate blood. I thoroughly encourage your doing so.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
HIGH LEVEL OF BLONDE
Coworkers know that I am not the most patient man in the world. My forbearance is at a particularly low-ebb early in the morning, when still grumbly and bleary-eyed I stumble in to the office to listen to my voice-mails and swear under my breath.
This is NOT an aspect of my loveable personality that Savage Kitten is familiar with. From the moment I wake up till when I leave the house I have a smile on my face and a twinkle in my eye. I am sparkling, cheerful, and good natured.
The pretence is draining.
At the office, however, I revert to my instinctual pattern of morning behaviour.
It's called rabies.
Yesterday morning, while attempting to listen to my messages, I was subjected to a massive flood of inane chatter coming from the other side of the wall. That is where the blondes live.
It was a pulsating high pitched squeal-drone of several voices speaking of their wonderful personal experiences while shopping and eating and shopping and visiting friends and shopping and going to movies and shopping and having dinner and shopping and boys and shopping and chocolate and shopping and handbags and shopping and coffee and shopping and file folders and shopping and clothes and shopping and fabulous jewelry and shopping and make-up and shopping and last night's television show and shopping ....... !
Sweet pickles, ladies, but you lead dreadful lives! Why are you sharing the details? Are you trying to make the rest of us miserable as well?
Have you ever thought of shutting up? For the good of mankind?
Do I need to zap you-uns with a tazer?
I am ever so grateful that Savage Kitten is not blonde. I do not think I could maintain my gracious mask of gentle wonderfulness in the morning if she were.
I am also very glad that she does not visit me at the office. She would probably take one look at the blondes, and decide to poke them with a sharp stick. Or worse.
This is NOT an aspect of my loveable personality that Savage Kitten is familiar with. From the moment I wake up till when I leave the house I have a smile on my face and a twinkle in my eye. I am sparkling, cheerful, and good natured.
The pretence is draining.
At the office, however, I revert to my instinctual pattern of morning behaviour.
It's called rabies.
Yesterday morning, while attempting to listen to my messages, I was subjected to a massive flood of inane chatter coming from the other side of the wall. That is where the blondes live.
It was a pulsating high pitched squeal-drone of several voices speaking of their wonderful personal experiences while shopping and eating and shopping and visiting friends and shopping and going to movies and shopping and having dinner and shopping and boys and shopping and chocolate and shopping and handbags and shopping and coffee and shopping and file folders and shopping and clothes and shopping and fabulous jewelry and shopping and make-up and shopping and last night's television show and shopping ....... !
Sweet pickles, ladies, but you lead dreadful lives! Why are you sharing the details? Are you trying to make the rest of us miserable as well?
Have you ever thought of shutting up? For the good of mankind?
Do I need to zap you-uns with a tazer?
I am ever so grateful that Savage Kitten is not blonde. I do not think I could maintain my gracious mask of gentle wonderfulness in the morning if she were.
I am also very glad that she does not visit me at the office. She would probably take one look at the blondes, and decide to poke them with a sharp stick. Or worse.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
SOMETHING HE SAID .....
Now is a good time to remember the people of the past. I don't know why, it just feels that way.
My mother died in 1977 in springtime, a few days before her birthday. She had been sick for seven years, and we had seen her fade from able-bodied and mobile to substantially non-ambulatory, though up till a few days before her death, still vibrantly alive, and alive with stubbornness.
For long after she passed away the evidence of her life still surrounded us. Her vast book collection, in every room of the house. Her objets d'art. Her antique Bohemian crystal. Her Waterford. And the collection of exceptional teacups and saucers.
Her tastes in colours, textures, and literature, had been bold. It was from her that I learned to read Beowulf in Old-English, Gretir's Saga in Old-Norse. Both of those languages are a bit beyond me now, but I can still hack my way through the Green Knight and several other oddities.
The collection of teacups and saucers lived on the tea trolley in the dining room, in the corner. The dining room was my brother's realm (we never actually ate there). His chess books lined the walls, his Dickens and Proust were on the table. Odds and ends which fascinated him were on the mantelpiece. We did not enter save by his leave.
But the tea-trolley was hers. And the teacups and saucers breathed age, grace, a style of living.
I had my own favourite tea cup and saucer in the sera, where I often sat until deep at night reading and smoking. It was not antique, and not even very nice, being a rather pedestrian blue and white pattern mass-produced in kilns from Yokohama to Tierra del Fuego. But it was bowl-like, deep and broad, and showed off the green-amber glow of jasmine tea nicely, cooling it down to drinkability in moments. My teacup. In imitation of hers.
In retrospect, I spent the better part of my adolescence zipped to the gills on caffeine. Whacked out of my mind. No wonder my classmates did not consider me sane, I bounced from the walls and gibbered. But caffeine is a drug that blesses the addict. Just as Doctor Johnson stayed up till all hours while off his rocker on tea, so likewise did I explore science fiction, English and Dutch poetry, Kipling, Maugham, Nabokov, mediaeval history, and everything I could lay my hands on that spoke of Afghanistan, Samarkand, India, South East Asia, and China, till far far past midnight.
I learned much of the world, and absorbed entire empires. Tea and books - boruch Hashem.
That summer I moved my reading and tea-drinking out to the patio. When it rained one could sit under the broad corrugated overhang and enjoy the cooling humidity. My pipe smoke would curl back and into the house through the French doors, and eventually my brother might come out and join me, or merely move from the dining room into the sera, where in silence he moved the pieces across the board, pondered, leafed through his book. We did not speak much. We really had less in common at night than during the day, though both of us were night people.
He hated my pipe, and thought the jasmine tea an affectation (which it was).
I did not obsess over chess (a failing, I admit), and preferred devouring the printed page at great speed, rather than dawdling over it at length as he did.
He would sit for hours in the stillness and in thought.
Click. Hmmm. Click - another move. A rustle of paper as he read the analysis of the game. Long pause, click again.
In the silence of the night, when the conditions are right - dry Latakia tobacco, humidity in the air, and a certain light - I can still hear the clack of chess pieces, hear the flick of one page, as he reviews the games of the masters.
Tobias passed away in 1992. And I miss him.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
My mother died in 1977 in springtime, a few days before her birthday. She had been sick for seven years, and we had seen her fade from able-bodied and mobile to substantially non-ambulatory, though up till a few days before her death, still vibrantly alive, and alive with stubbornness.
For long after she passed away the evidence of her life still surrounded us. Her vast book collection, in every room of the house. Her objets d'art. Her antique Bohemian crystal. Her Waterford. And the collection of exceptional teacups and saucers.
Her tastes in colours, textures, and literature, had been bold. It was from her that I learned to read Beowulf in Old-English, Gretir's Saga in Old-Norse. Both of those languages are a bit beyond me now, but I can still hack my way through the Green Knight and several other oddities.
The collection of teacups and saucers lived on the tea trolley in the dining room, in the corner. The dining room was my brother's realm (we never actually ate there). His chess books lined the walls, his Dickens and Proust were on the table. Odds and ends which fascinated him were on the mantelpiece. We did not enter save by his leave.
But the tea-trolley was hers. And the teacups and saucers breathed age, grace, a style of living.
I had my own favourite tea cup and saucer in the sera, where I often sat until deep at night reading and smoking. It was not antique, and not even very nice, being a rather pedestrian blue and white pattern mass-produced in kilns from Yokohama to Tierra del Fuego. But it was bowl-like, deep and broad, and showed off the green-amber glow of jasmine tea nicely, cooling it down to drinkability in moments. My teacup. In imitation of hers.
In retrospect, I spent the better part of my adolescence zipped to the gills on caffeine. Whacked out of my mind. No wonder my classmates did not consider me sane, I bounced from the walls and gibbered. But caffeine is a drug that blesses the addict. Just as Doctor Johnson stayed up till all hours while off his rocker on tea, so likewise did I explore science fiction, English and Dutch poetry, Kipling, Maugham, Nabokov, mediaeval history, and everything I could lay my hands on that spoke of Afghanistan, Samarkand, India, South East Asia, and China, till far far past midnight.
I learned much of the world, and absorbed entire empires. Tea and books - boruch Hashem.
That summer I moved my reading and tea-drinking out to the patio. When it rained one could sit under the broad corrugated overhang and enjoy the cooling humidity. My pipe smoke would curl back and into the house through the French doors, and eventually my brother might come out and join me, or merely move from the dining room into the sera, where in silence he moved the pieces across the board, pondered, leafed through his book. We did not speak much. We really had less in common at night than during the day, though both of us were night people.
He hated my pipe, and thought the jasmine tea an affectation (which it was).
I did not obsess over chess (a failing, I admit), and preferred devouring the printed page at great speed, rather than dawdling over it at length as he did.
He would sit for hours in the stillness and in thought.
Click. Hmmm. Click - another move. A rustle of paper as he read the analysis of the game. Long pause, click again.
In the silence of the night, when the conditions are right - dry Latakia tobacco, humidity in the air, and a certain light - I can still hear the clack of chess pieces, hear the flick of one page, as he reviews the games of the masters.
Tobias passed away in 1992. And I miss him.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
GRANT PATEL IN HIS OWN WORDS
I am delighted to see that Grant Patel, long both a bane and a blessing to this and other blogs, has decided to open his own site for business.
His personal scribblings can be inspected here:
http://grantpatel.blogspot.com/
The selection offered thus far is eclectic, to say the least.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Twisting your Arab knickers!
Arab female underwear.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Jimmy Boy in Horniman, Fort
A Parsee restaurant in Bombay.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Dutch news, or Palestinian Propaganda?
Well, I moved him to post this....
If its' berry pullao, it must be Britania!
Parsee food at the Britania.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Mumbai Terrorists
Hah! Damned Pakis! - A rant.
Monday, February 16, 2009
She got lace!
An exercise in obsession, in which mr. Patel waxes lyrical about miss Wong's underwear (sorry, Snooky), and demands details which miss Wong refuses to give him.
There is more. Explore at your own risk.
He claims he is unmedicated - And I believe him.
His personal scribblings can be inspected here:
http://grantpatel.blogspot.com/
The selection offered thus far is eclectic, to say the least.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Twisting your Arab knickers!
Arab female underwear.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Jimmy Boy in Horniman, Fort
A Parsee restaurant in Bombay.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Dutch news, or Palestinian Propaganda?
Well, I moved him to post this....
If its' berry pullao, it must be Britania!
Parsee food at the Britania.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Mumbai Terrorists
Hah! Damned Pakis! - A rant.
Monday, February 16, 2009
She got lace!
An exercise in obsession, in which mr. Patel waxes lyrical about miss Wong's underwear (sorry, Snooky), and demands details which miss Wong refuses to give him.
There is more. Explore at your own risk.
He claims he is unmedicated - And I believe him.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
DUTCH INSANITY
Last week, protesting soccer hooligans in Rotterdam screamed obscenities and insults at burgomaster Ahmed Aboutaleb.
Among other things, they called the honourable Ahmed Aboutaleb a "Filthy Jew" ('vuile Jood'), and chanted 'Hamas, Hamas, all Joden aan het gas' (Hamas, Hamas, all the Jews to the gas). They also offered to gas the aforementioned "Filthy Jew".
This pursuant a decision by the burgomasters of Rotterdam (Ahmed Aboutaleb) and Amsterdam (Job Cohen) to limit fan-attendance at matches between Feyenoord (the Rotterdam soccer team) and Ajax (the Amsterdam soccer team) for the next five years, due to violence and misbehaviour at such matches - the rivalry between Feyenoord and Ajax is representative of the cultural superiority of Amsterdam ('good') versus the depravity and criminal tendencies of Rotterdammers ('evil'), and soccer matches are, more than just symbolically, wars. It is a complex situation with many layers.
Two articles in Dutch from the Algemeen Dagblad:
http://www.ad.nl/rotterdam/stad/3020182/Grimmig_protest_Feyenoordfans.html
Quote: Circa tweehonderd demonstranten trokken het drukke centrum van de stad in en liepen dreigend tussen winkelend publiek door. Ze scandeerden leuzen en er zouden vernielingen zijn aangericht.
[Around two hundred demonstrators marched through the busy centre of the city and mingled threateningly with the shopping public. They chanted slogans, and there was vandalism.]
http://www.ad.nl/rotterdam/stad/3028447/Hooligans_vrijuit_na_uitschelden_Aboutaleb.html
Quote: De Feyenoord-hooligans die de Rotterdamse burgemeester Ahmed Aboutaleb dit weekend in de binnenstad uitmaakten voor ‘vuile Jood’ en scandeerden dat hij ‘aan het gas moet’, gaan vrijuit.
[The Feyenoord hooligans who called Rotterdam burgomaster Ahmed Aboutaleb a "Filty Jew" this past weekend and chanted that he should be gassed will not be prosecuted.]
I should probably mention that the nickname of Ajax is "de Jooduh'' ('da Jooz'). That has some bearing on this.
Mr. Ahmed Aboutaleb (the aforementioned "Filthy Jew"), is the son of a Moroccan Imam. Which seems beside the point, but is nevertheless a relevant detail.
The gentlemen who so helpfully offered to chuck him into a gas chamber are mostly Moroccan Dutch - many of the Moroccans in Rotterdam are fanatical supporters of their soccer club.
The Moroccan-Dutch supporters of Feyenoord are furious over the tendency of Ajax supporters in Amsterdam to beat the living daylights out of them whenever they scream anti-Jewish obscenities or burn an Israeli flag in a public place while visiting. The Israeli flag is the guerilla banner of the Ajax fans, waved from the stands whenever Ajax is playing, especially at Ajax-Feyenoord games. The primary purpose of waving the Israeli flag is to irritate the spit out of the Feyenoord supporters on the other side. Who hop up and down red-faced and gibbering whenever this is done.
Many of the Ajax supporters are also Moroccan-Dutch. Who thoroughly enjoy the apoplexy they have thus given their cousins from a city the name of which no true Amsterdammer will even admit knowing ("Rotterdam" - it's probably some German word that means garbage or prostitute or something like that, totally unimportant").
Amsterdam is probably the only town in the universe where an anti-Semite burning an Israeli flag may have the crap kicked out of him by angry Arab teenagers.
Among other things, they called the honourable Ahmed Aboutaleb a "Filthy Jew" ('vuile Jood'), and chanted 'Hamas, Hamas, all Joden aan het gas' (Hamas, Hamas, all the Jews to the gas). They also offered to gas the aforementioned "Filthy Jew".
This pursuant a decision by the burgomasters of Rotterdam (Ahmed Aboutaleb) and Amsterdam (Job Cohen) to limit fan-attendance at matches between Feyenoord (the Rotterdam soccer team) and Ajax (the Amsterdam soccer team) for the next five years, due to violence and misbehaviour at such matches - the rivalry between Feyenoord and Ajax is representative of the cultural superiority of Amsterdam ('good') versus the depravity and criminal tendencies of Rotterdammers ('evil'), and soccer matches are, more than just symbolically, wars. It is a complex situation with many layers.
Two articles in Dutch from the Algemeen Dagblad:
http://www.ad.nl/rotterdam/stad/3020182/Grimmig_protest_Feyenoordfans.html
Quote: Circa tweehonderd demonstranten trokken het drukke centrum van de stad in en liepen dreigend tussen winkelend publiek door. Ze scandeerden leuzen en er zouden vernielingen zijn aangericht.
[Around two hundred demonstrators marched through the busy centre of the city and mingled threateningly with the shopping public. They chanted slogans, and there was vandalism.]
http://www.ad.nl/rotterdam/stad/3028447/Hooligans_vrijuit_na_uitschelden_Aboutaleb.html
Quote: De Feyenoord-hooligans die de Rotterdamse burgemeester Ahmed Aboutaleb dit weekend in de binnenstad uitmaakten voor ‘vuile Jood’ en scandeerden dat hij ‘aan het gas moet’, gaan vrijuit.
[The Feyenoord hooligans who called Rotterdam burgomaster Ahmed Aboutaleb a "Filty Jew" this past weekend and chanted that he should be gassed will not be prosecuted.]
I should probably mention that the nickname of Ajax is "de Jooduh'' ('da Jooz'). That has some bearing on this.
Mr. Ahmed Aboutaleb (the aforementioned "Filthy Jew"), is the son of a Moroccan Imam. Which seems beside the point, but is nevertheless a relevant detail.
The gentlemen who so helpfully offered to chuck him into a gas chamber are mostly Moroccan Dutch - many of the Moroccans in Rotterdam are fanatical supporters of their soccer club.
The Moroccan-Dutch supporters of Feyenoord are furious over the tendency of Ajax supporters in Amsterdam to beat the living daylights out of them whenever they scream anti-Jewish obscenities or burn an Israeli flag in a public place while visiting. The Israeli flag is the guerilla banner of the Ajax fans, waved from the stands whenever Ajax is playing, especially at Ajax-Feyenoord games. The primary purpose of waving the Israeli flag is to irritate the spit out of the Feyenoord supporters on the other side. Who hop up and down red-faced and gibbering whenever this is done.
Many of the Ajax supporters are also Moroccan-Dutch. Who thoroughly enjoy the apoplexy they have thus given their cousins from a city the name of which no true Amsterdammer will even admit knowing ("Rotterdam" - it's probably some German word that means garbage or prostitute or something like that, totally unimportant").
Amsterdam is probably the only town in the universe where an anti-Semite burning an Israeli flag may have the crap kicked out of him by angry Arab teenagers.
Friday, February 20, 2009
DUTCH STATE SPONSORED MIS-INFORMATION ABOUT ISRAEL
During operation Cast Lead, the Dutch state-sponsored news organization featured reportage from Sander van Hoorn in Israel.
It turns out that Sander van der Hoorn had a jaundiced view - one that largely accorded with the anti-Israel bias of his organization.
[The Dutch state sponsored news organization is the NOS - Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (Dutch broadcast foundation).]
This blogger has already fulminated about the BBC, the Guardian, Volkskrant, Telegraaf and the Algemeen Dagblad as examples of press engaging in propaganda, and you have possibly already visited 'bad news from the Netherlands '(http://badnewsfromthenetherlands.blogspot.com/) for an interesting perspective on informing the public. Generally speaking, news slants towards a point-of-view that supports the praeconceptions of the news-organization. Many European news orgs are sodden with Israel haters. The British are particularly notorious in that regard, but the Dutch are certainly no slouches, and probably surpass them.
[I will confess that I am not the person to judge whether the Dutch are in fact worse than the British - I am by no means unbiased, and sometimes the Dutch fairly nauseate me. Having read their pestilential news rags for four decades, I cannot be equitable and balanced about Dutch journalism or its readers. There are times that I wish the sea would erase that smarmy little earthblob off the map. It takes effort to remember that there are decent Dutchmen. Many decent Dutchmen, but nevertheless monumental effort. I rather like the British, though.]
Sander van Hoorn and his editors decided that the Dutch viewers did not need impartial and independent news, but required slant, bias, propaganda, and fuel for hatred of Israel. To that end, they engaged in a pattern of omission, distortion and manipulation.
An English language précis of a report detailing what they did can be found here:
http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2009/02/israels-gaza-war-in-dutch-state-funded.html
You may read the Dutch language original here:
http://www.israelfacts.eu/03c1989ac60b34213/03c1989af207bce14/index.html#03c1989bb4009a304
The combination of Dutch newspapers and Dutch broadcasting, deliberately massaging the news about Israel, may explain why Dutch anti-Semitism thrives as never before. Those who rely on Dutch newssources are mal-educated and mis-informed. And frequently vicious.
The Algemeen Dagblad and the Telegraaf have ever been neck-and-neck for the title of 'Worst Newspaper of the First World'. But the NOS may well have no competition for the Most Biased Broadcaster prize.
Dutch journalism has seldom been so diseased, and the public so ill-served.
It turns out that Sander van der Hoorn had a jaundiced view - one that largely accorded with the anti-Israel bias of his organization.
[The Dutch state sponsored news organization is the NOS - Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (Dutch broadcast foundation).]
This blogger has already fulminated about the BBC, the Guardian, Volkskrant, Telegraaf and the Algemeen Dagblad as examples of press engaging in propaganda, and you have possibly already visited 'bad news from the Netherlands '(http://badnewsfromthenetherlands.blogspot.com/) for an interesting perspective on informing the public. Generally speaking, news slants towards a point-of-view that supports the praeconceptions of the news-organization. Many European news orgs are sodden with Israel haters. The British are particularly notorious in that regard, but the Dutch are certainly no slouches, and probably surpass them.
[I will confess that I am not the person to judge whether the Dutch are in fact worse than the British - I am by no means unbiased, and sometimes the Dutch fairly nauseate me. Having read their pestilential news rags for four decades, I cannot be equitable and balanced about Dutch journalism or its readers. There are times that I wish the sea would erase that smarmy little earthblob off the map. It takes effort to remember that there are decent Dutchmen. Many decent Dutchmen, but nevertheless monumental effort. I rather like the British, though.]
Sander van Hoorn and his editors decided that the Dutch viewers did not need impartial and independent news, but required slant, bias, propaganda, and fuel for hatred of Israel. To that end, they engaged in a pattern of omission, distortion and manipulation.
An English language précis of a report detailing what they did can be found here:
http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2009/02/israels-gaza-war-in-dutch-state-funded.html
You may read the Dutch language original here:
http://www.israelfacts.eu/03c1989ac60b34213/03c1989af207bce14/index.html#03c1989bb4009a304
The combination of Dutch newspapers and Dutch broadcasting, deliberately massaging the news about Israel, may explain why Dutch anti-Semitism thrives as never before. Those who rely on Dutch newssources are mal-educated and mis-informed. And frequently vicious.
The Algemeen Dagblad and the Telegraaf have ever been neck-and-neck for the title of 'Worst Newspaper of the First World'. But the NOS may well have no competition for the Most Biased Broadcaster prize.
Dutch journalism has seldom been so diseased, and the public so ill-served.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
ZIONIST CLAIMS, APARTHEID, AND OTHER TROPES
Recently an anonymous reader discovered a post I wrote a back in November, in which I defended Zionists and pro-Israeli activists on the Berkeley campus. As is widely known, the campus of the University of California at Berkeley is one of the most Jew-hating environments on the planet, coddling racists and bigots flying under "cause of the day" colours.
University officials, while aware of the problem, and happy to take money from donors on both the Jewish and Arab sides of the fence, gently close their eyes and pretend that all is well.
The posting was this one:
http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2008/11/pro-palestinian-activists-attack-jews.html
It is dated 11/14/2008.
The anonymous commenter who discovered it shortly after ten o'clock yesterday evening wrote:
"I don't understand Zionists' claim to a land that was already inhabited by other people. We live in a modern era. Why should Americans support an apartheid state because it believes that religious texts have 'granted' a single people the right to establish a racially defined state to the exclusion of the residents who were living there throughout the 19th and 20th centuries when Jesiwh immigrants were being imported from Europe. While the Holocaust is a horrendous legacy, how does the Jewish state honor the memory of those who were killed by Nazi Germany by perpetrating similar acts of exclusion and oppression? I really don't understand the Zionist mentality...Also, many Jews are anti-Zionist."
I have responded to his query in the comment string, but as the tropes he trumpets are common, it may serve some useful purpose to deal with them in a new post.
I don't understand Zionists' claim to a land that was already inhabited by other people.
There were always Jews living there among the other people. The other people came in with conquerors over the centuries. Jews, however, have ALWAYS lived there. Furthermore, the Zionist purchased land - and developed the barren areas which they bought. It was the economic development of those lands that drew in even more people.
Also, the Jewish quarters of Jerusalem and Hebron, as well as other places inside the land, were ethnically cleansed by Arab mobs in the twenties and thirties - how do you justify Arabs even daring to claim those areas?
Why should Americans support an apartheid state
America does not support an Apartheid state - Israeli Arabs have the right to vote, to own property, and to participate at all levels in Israeli society. And there are Arabs in the ranks of most political parties and all ministries. There are also Arab parties in the Knesset. There are jobs and stations where having served in the IDF give you a much greater entry - Arabs are free to join the IDF. Druze Arabs and many Bedouin do serve in the military (and note that there are Knesset speakers, ministers, officers, and department heads from the Arab Israeli side). All who stayed in 1948 became citizens.
The distinction is with the population in the territories - who are not citizens, and do not wish to be citizens, of a praedominantly Jewish state. They have their own institutions, which are overwhelmingly Judenrein - this despite there having been Jewish populations in both the West Bank and Gaza (that latter population ethnically cleansed several times, the last time during the British period) which date back to the pre-Roman period. Obviously, a population which will not become citizens, and is not even desirous of that - which in fact is acknowledged by all sides as heading towards eventual statehood of its own - cannot be administered in the same way as citizens. They are administered under British Mandate codes and Ottoman law. As they were when the Jordanians ruled over them, and as they were after Egypt had seized Gaza. The laws in those areas are a confusing and oppressive welter, due to it being illegal to change them until locally valid representative bodies do so.
Apartheid state ....
Like Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Japan, Germany, and several others which have nationality laws based on racial and religious exclusionism, coupled with a large number of 'guest-workers' who are treated worse than animals?
But Israel treats its guest-workers and resident aliens far better. So, NOT like the countries just mentioned.
Do you wish to talk about Mexican dishwashers and lettuce pickers? How about Turks who have been three generations in Northern Europe, and are still "foreigners"? Chinese and Indians in Malaysia who have been there for centuries and are discriminated against?
Koreans in Japan? Indians and Pakistanis in the Gulf?
[02/20/2009: Adding Italy to the list above. Per Italian law, children born to foreigners do not automatically receive citizenship, some are left in limbo. This particularly applies to Gypsies and Eastern Europeans. ]
because it believes that religious texts have 'granted' a single people the right to establish a racially defined state to the exclusion of the residents who were living there throughout the 19th and 20th centuries when Jewish immigrants were being imported from Europe.
Zionism is not based on the Bible but on that land being the historic homeland of the Jewish people - even the Romans admitted precisely that.
As did the Arabs - in the Quran, during the various Caliphates, under the Ottomans, and even in the 1920s when the Arabs were becoming nations. Kings Abdullah (assassinated by a Palestinian in Jerusalem) and Hussein (of blessed memory) also admitted the Jewish right to the land.
Nor is the state racially defined (and 'race' in any case is no longer used as a defining term by most anthropologists). There are Jews of every "racial" stripe known to man. In what way is a glow-in-the-dark Hassid from Lithuania the same race as a Persian Jew, an Egyptian Jew, a Baghdadi, a Jew from Samarkand or Bokhara, or a Sfard from Morocco?
And exclusion? Did I already mention that those who stayed, contrary to the commands of the invading Arab armies and at the express request of Jewish leaders in 1948, were automatically granted citizenship? If I didn't mention it yet, I apologize - I should have.
And speaking of 'exclusion', I should also mention that since 1948 the Jews were excluded in very large numbers from Islamic countries - were they had lived since before Islam, in many cases, and in some cases before the current population settled there (that being most notably ALL the lands inhabited today by Turkic majorities, all of which were conquered by invaders from the steppes between ten and four centuries ago - Istanbul used to be Constantinople, and the Greeks still want it back).
Jewish immigrants imported from Europe? Indeed, many of the citizens of Israel have ancestors who came from there (though, of course, the ancestors of the European Jews were not from Europe - see 'Historic Homeland' mentioned above).
Over half the Jewish population however came from Arab and Muslim lands that they were kicked out of in 1948 and years since.
And do not forget, there were already Jews there when they returned to Israel. Many of whom had never been elsewhere - the territory 'assigned' to them by the United Nations was the area of Jewish majority, not the total area where there were Jews. Those who were thrown out of the Arab countries were robbed by the Arabs before they left, and arrived with nothing. As the US Congress in fact recognizes. Note also that these exiles were absorbed by their kin - precisely as the Arabs have refused to absorb their own brothers who fled.
to the exclusion of the residents who were living there throughout the 19th and 20th centuries
The Jewish return to the land was already happening in small measure long before Zionism - Jews returned to Jerusalem, Hebron, Tzfat, and Gaza throughout Ottoman times, and there were Jews who already lived there.
For eight decades till 1948, Jewish population there increased more markedly than under the Caliphate.
Since 1948, it has been the Jewish state - but all in all, Jews have been a majority in their land now for several generations, since before independence. Many were born there, their parents were born there. And many even have grandparents, great grandparents, and even further kin who were born there. They live there now, and most have not lived anywhere else.
If being born in the US makes you an American, or a citizen of many other countries, then by that same reason the Jews in Israel are validly of Israel, and the "Palestinians" born in Nahr El Bard or Jordan are Lebanese and Jordanian.
Oh wait, Arabs practice an exclusionism even more bitter than Europeans and Malays. They discriminate against their own family.
While the Holocaust is a horrendous legacy, how does the Jewish state honor the memory of those who were killed by Nazi Germany by perpetrating similar acts of exclusion and oppression?
The comparison is obscene. After 1967, the Arab population in the territories more than tripled. Even in Gaza since the intifada, there has been a forty percent increase in the population, as per a news item on the BBC website which quotes UN figures. There are more Palestinians now than ever before. They have thrived most marvelously since 1948.
There are no death camps. There are no gas chambers. There are no torture rooms. The Arabs in the West Bank largely have their own officials to blame for the mess they are in (corruption nurtured and encouraged by the UN), and the Arabs in Gaza can thank Hamas (whose nickname, by the way, is SHIA - in snarky acknowledgement of the Iranian contribution) for their situation.
I really don't understand the Zionist mentality
That may be due to ignorance. Give it another shot.
Also, many Jews are anti-Zionist
That also may be due to ignorance. Provided we give them the benefit of doubt.
But more because they desperately wish to be unobjectionable to all, in every possible way. Blending in is a powerful motivator for Uncle-Tomism.
As is profound self-hatred.
[02/20/2009: I actually thought of refering to the anti-Zionist Jews as Kapos-in-training, but the situation is more complex than that. As "A" points out, "The whole issue of Jewish anti-Zionism is much more complex and should be treated in better detail and with less acrimony toward non-Jews.
Ultraorthodox Jews (Neturei Karte) did not want Zionism to usurp the traditional rabbinic leadership of the Jews.
Assimilationist Jews were/are afraid that Zionism will cast doubt on their loyalty to their current state.
Both Marxist and Assimilationist Jews believed that "progress" in a liberal or communist society would allow them to integrate and be part of larger society. In Germany and USSR, this proved to be an illusion.".]
By the same token, many pro-Palestinian activists assert that they are not anti-Semites because their 'best friends' are Jewish (in other words, strictly anti-Zionist Jews). A more common tendency among them is to avoid Jews who they feel are too "Jewish", especially as regards the Israel and Palestine issues.
And, of course, there are still convinced anti-Semites in their ranks.
Not wishing to associate with a taboo minority is also a powerful motivator, as is profound subconscious hatred.
Any questions sofar? There will be a test.
APARTHEID
Now, I find it interesting that the word 'apartheid' is so often used by the anti-Israel crowd. Interesting, because it does not mean what they intend it to mean, nor what they wish to think it means.
Apartheid is a Dutch word that strictly speaking means 'separateness', and in the South African context referred to a legal separation within the same country into ethnic classes (based, in fact, on old Dutch-Roman law and the feudal concept of Romans, nobles, freemen, and serfs) - something which in so varied and diverse a country as Israel is patently absurd.
The West Bank, of course, is different; the Arabs wish their eventual state to be as Judenrein as possible, and have made abundantly clear that they wish Jews to keep out, but do not object to dogs or Persians.
As my regular readers know, I speak, read, and write Dutch fluently. I also understand a number of Dutch dialects, including Afrikaans. Do not presume to lecture me on what 'apartheid' means. Do not even think of doing so. It is a word in my language, not yours - you have merely hijacked it, and 'colonized' it - precisely like the Arabs did to the Christian lands in North Africa, the Levant, and Iberia, exactly like Muslims did to Asia Minor, Western India, Central Asia, and parts of Indonesia. If you use that word, you betray your ignorance, and your linguistic carpetbaggery.
Plus, in this case, you devalue that word to the point of irrelevance.
As you are also doing by comparing the fairly minor Gaza war to the full-scale extermination of six million people over a five year period.
University officials, while aware of the problem, and happy to take money from donors on both the Jewish and Arab sides of the fence, gently close their eyes and pretend that all is well.
The posting was this one:
http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2008/11/pro-palestinian-activists-attack-jews.html
It is dated 11/14/2008.
The anonymous commenter who discovered it shortly after ten o'clock yesterday evening wrote:
"I don't understand Zionists' claim to a land that was already inhabited by other people. We live in a modern era. Why should Americans support an apartheid state because it believes that religious texts have 'granted' a single people the right to establish a racially defined state to the exclusion of the residents who were living there throughout the 19th and 20th centuries when Jesiwh immigrants were being imported from Europe. While the Holocaust is a horrendous legacy, how does the Jewish state honor the memory of those who were killed by Nazi Germany by perpetrating similar acts of exclusion and oppression? I really don't understand the Zionist mentality...Also, many Jews are anti-Zionist."
I have responded to his query in the comment string, but as the tropes he trumpets are common, it may serve some useful purpose to deal with them in a new post.
I don't understand Zionists' claim to a land that was already inhabited by other people.
There were always Jews living there among the other people. The other people came in with conquerors over the centuries. Jews, however, have ALWAYS lived there. Furthermore, the Zionist purchased land - and developed the barren areas which they bought. It was the economic development of those lands that drew in even more people.
Also, the Jewish quarters of Jerusalem and Hebron, as well as other places inside the land, were ethnically cleansed by Arab mobs in the twenties and thirties - how do you justify Arabs even daring to claim those areas?
Why should Americans support an apartheid state
America does not support an Apartheid state - Israeli Arabs have the right to vote, to own property, and to participate at all levels in Israeli society. And there are Arabs in the ranks of most political parties and all ministries. There are also Arab parties in the Knesset. There are jobs and stations where having served in the IDF give you a much greater entry - Arabs are free to join the IDF. Druze Arabs and many Bedouin do serve in the military (and note that there are Knesset speakers, ministers, officers, and department heads from the Arab Israeli side). All who stayed in 1948 became citizens.
The distinction is with the population in the territories - who are not citizens, and do not wish to be citizens, of a praedominantly Jewish state. They have their own institutions, which are overwhelmingly Judenrein - this despite there having been Jewish populations in both the West Bank and Gaza (that latter population ethnically cleansed several times, the last time during the British period) which date back to the pre-Roman period. Obviously, a population which will not become citizens, and is not even desirous of that - which in fact is acknowledged by all sides as heading towards eventual statehood of its own - cannot be administered in the same way as citizens. They are administered under British Mandate codes and Ottoman law. As they were when the Jordanians ruled over them, and as they were after Egypt had seized Gaza. The laws in those areas are a confusing and oppressive welter, due to it being illegal to change them until locally valid representative bodies do so.
Apartheid state ....
Like Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Japan, Germany, and several others which have nationality laws based on racial and religious exclusionism, coupled with a large number of 'guest-workers' who are treated worse than animals?
But Israel treats its guest-workers and resident aliens far better. So, NOT like the countries just mentioned.
Do you wish to talk about Mexican dishwashers and lettuce pickers? How about Turks who have been three generations in Northern Europe, and are still "foreigners"? Chinese and Indians in Malaysia who have been there for centuries and are discriminated against?
Koreans in Japan? Indians and Pakistanis in the Gulf?
[02/20/2009: Adding Italy to the list above. Per Italian law, children born to foreigners do not automatically receive citizenship, some are left in limbo. This particularly applies to Gypsies and Eastern Europeans. ]
because it believes that religious texts have 'granted' a single people the right to establish a racially defined state to the exclusion of the residents who were living there throughout the 19th and 20th centuries when Jewish immigrants were being imported from Europe.
Zionism is not based on the Bible but on that land being the historic homeland of the Jewish people - even the Romans admitted precisely that.
As did the Arabs - in the Quran, during the various Caliphates, under the Ottomans, and even in the 1920s when the Arabs were becoming nations. Kings Abdullah (assassinated by a Palestinian in Jerusalem) and Hussein (of blessed memory) also admitted the Jewish right to the land.
Nor is the state racially defined (and 'race' in any case is no longer used as a defining term by most anthropologists). There are Jews of every "racial" stripe known to man. In what way is a glow-in-the-dark Hassid from Lithuania the same race as a Persian Jew, an Egyptian Jew, a Baghdadi, a Jew from Samarkand or Bokhara, or a Sfard from Morocco?
And exclusion? Did I already mention that those who stayed, contrary to the commands of the invading Arab armies and at the express request of Jewish leaders in 1948, were automatically granted citizenship? If I didn't mention it yet, I apologize - I should have.
And speaking of 'exclusion', I should also mention that since 1948 the Jews were excluded in very large numbers from Islamic countries - were they had lived since before Islam, in many cases, and in some cases before the current population settled there (that being most notably ALL the lands inhabited today by Turkic majorities, all of which were conquered by invaders from the steppes between ten and four centuries ago - Istanbul used to be Constantinople, and the Greeks still want it back).
Jewish immigrants imported from Europe? Indeed, many of the citizens of Israel have ancestors who came from there (though, of course, the ancestors of the European Jews were not from Europe - see 'Historic Homeland' mentioned above).
Over half the Jewish population however came from Arab and Muslim lands that they were kicked out of in 1948 and years since.
And do not forget, there were already Jews there when they returned to Israel. Many of whom had never been elsewhere - the territory 'assigned' to them by the United Nations was the area of Jewish majority, not the total area where there were Jews. Those who were thrown out of the Arab countries were robbed by the Arabs before they left, and arrived with nothing. As the US Congress in fact recognizes. Note also that these exiles were absorbed by their kin - precisely as the Arabs have refused to absorb their own brothers who fled.
to the exclusion of the residents who were living there throughout the 19th and 20th centuries
The Jewish return to the land was already happening in small measure long before Zionism - Jews returned to Jerusalem, Hebron, Tzfat, and Gaza throughout Ottoman times, and there were Jews who already lived there.
For eight decades till 1948, Jewish population there increased more markedly than under the Caliphate.
Since 1948, it has been the Jewish state - but all in all, Jews have been a majority in their land now for several generations, since before independence. Many were born there, their parents were born there. And many even have grandparents, great grandparents, and even further kin who were born there. They live there now, and most have not lived anywhere else.
If being born in the US makes you an American, or a citizen of many other countries, then by that same reason the Jews in Israel are validly of Israel, and the "Palestinians" born in Nahr El Bard or Jordan are Lebanese and Jordanian.
Oh wait, Arabs practice an exclusionism even more bitter than Europeans and Malays. They discriminate against their own family.
While the Holocaust is a horrendous legacy, how does the Jewish state honor the memory of those who were killed by Nazi Germany by perpetrating similar acts of exclusion and oppression?
The comparison is obscene. After 1967, the Arab population in the territories more than tripled. Even in Gaza since the intifada, there has been a forty percent increase in the population, as per a news item on the BBC website which quotes UN figures. There are more Palestinians now than ever before. They have thrived most marvelously since 1948.
There are no death camps. There are no gas chambers. There are no torture rooms. The Arabs in the West Bank largely have their own officials to blame for the mess they are in (corruption nurtured and encouraged by the UN), and the Arabs in Gaza can thank Hamas (whose nickname, by the way, is SHIA - in snarky acknowledgement of the Iranian contribution) for their situation.
I really don't understand the Zionist mentality
That may be due to ignorance. Give it another shot.
Also, many Jews are anti-Zionist
That also may be due to ignorance. Provided we give them the benefit of doubt.
But more because they desperately wish to be unobjectionable to all, in every possible way. Blending in is a powerful motivator for Uncle-Tomism.
As is profound self-hatred.
[02/20/2009: I actually thought of refering to the anti-Zionist Jews as Kapos-in-training, but the situation is more complex than that. As "A" points out, "The whole issue of Jewish anti-Zionism is much more complex and should be treated in better detail and with less acrimony toward non-Jews.
Ultraorthodox Jews (Neturei Karte) did not want Zionism to usurp the traditional rabbinic leadership of the Jews.
Assimilationist Jews were/are afraid that Zionism will cast doubt on their loyalty to their current state.
Both Marxist and Assimilationist Jews believed that "progress" in a liberal or communist society would allow them to integrate and be part of larger society. In Germany and USSR, this proved to be an illusion.".]
By the same token, many pro-Palestinian activists assert that they are not anti-Semites because their 'best friends' are Jewish (in other words, strictly anti-Zionist Jews). A more common tendency among them is to avoid Jews who they feel are too "Jewish", especially as regards the Israel and Palestine issues.
And, of course, there are still convinced anti-Semites in their ranks.
Not wishing to associate with a taboo minority is also a powerful motivator, as is profound subconscious hatred.
Any questions sofar? There will be a test.
APARTHEID
Now, I find it interesting that the word 'apartheid' is so often used by the anti-Israel crowd. Interesting, because it does not mean what they intend it to mean, nor what they wish to think it means.
Apartheid is a Dutch word that strictly speaking means 'separateness', and in the South African context referred to a legal separation within the same country into ethnic classes (based, in fact, on old Dutch-Roman law and the feudal concept of Romans, nobles, freemen, and serfs) - something which in so varied and diverse a country as Israel is patently absurd.
The West Bank, of course, is different; the Arabs wish their eventual state to be as Judenrein as possible, and have made abundantly clear that they wish Jews to keep out, but do not object to dogs or Persians.
As my regular readers know, I speak, read, and write Dutch fluently. I also understand a number of Dutch dialects, including Afrikaans. Do not presume to lecture me on what 'apartheid' means. Do not even think of doing so. It is a word in my language, not yours - you have merely hijacked it, and 'colonized' it - precisely like the Arabs did to the Christian lands in North Africa, the Levant, and Iberia, exactly like Muslims did to Asia Minor, Western India, Central Asia, and parts of Indonesia. If you use that word, you betray your ignorance, and your linguistic carpetbaggery.
Plus, in this case, you devalue that word to the point of irrelevance.
As you are also doing by comparing the fairly minor Gaza war to the full-scale extermination of six million people over a five year period.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
TROPIC OF SPINACH
Outkitchens, in insular South-East Asia, are the places where most of the cooking takes place.
A simple clay stove, or bricked fire range, on which both iron pans and clay pots are equally at home, with a brazier for roasting. Plus a table for preparing food, a vat for water, and basins for washing vegetables and rice. Stone tile flooring. Cover it all with a corrugated roof, and leave at least one of the sides open so that smoke can clear.
The advantage is that one does not risk burning down the house if the fire gets out of control. But the real advantage is ventilation and the relative ease of clean-up.
Many people now have two kitchens. There's the expensive Western Kitchen, with electric appliances and the fancy imported range, as well as running water, refrigeration, and air-con. But most of the cooking is not done there. It serves to show off how modern the family is, and is also used to store the tinned and bottled foods (often still kept in a cupboard with woven slat or wire-gauze doors to keep out the pests). The real kitchen is outdoors.
Fresh ingredients are still bought daily, still washed out back, still cooked plainly in clay pots on the brick range. Real food does not require electric devices and complicated gadgets. People still cook what they have always been accustomed to eating. Food is not complicated.
Simplicity of cooking, however, by no means implies boring food. One can eat very well without ever using a blender. A soupy dish, a mild wet curry (mostly vegetables), a spicy dry-fry of vegs or meat, and a steamed fish, plus rice and blanched vegetables with a funky dip. And a chili-paste (sambal) on the side.
Easy, tasty, scant fuss.
The following spinach dish can also be cooked indoors, if one lacks access to a climate that averages nearly a hundred degrees Fahrenheit year-round. It will be just as good.
GULE BAYEM
One pound spinach, rinsed and chopped.
Three cups coconut milk.
One stem lemongras, trimmed and bruised.
Two or three Romas, peeled seeded and chopped.
Two or three green Jalapenos, left whole.
Some slivered ginger.
Squeeze of lime.
One Tsp ground coriander.
Half Tsp turmeric.
Half Tsp ground cumin.
Dash of Tabasco.
Pinch salt.
Put everything except the spinach and lime juice in a large saucepan and simmer uncovered until slightly thickened, 8 to 10 minutes.
Add spinach, simmer until tender. Squeeze the lime over, and garnish with a little parsley and cilantro.
Serve with other dishes and rice.
Note I: It is best to fire-roast the Roma tomatoes to blister the skin before peeling.
Note II: Leave the Jalapenos whole so that their fragrance will be imparted to the dish, but not their heat. If you wish you can eat them separately yourself.
Note III: It is authentic to include either dried smoked fish or dried shrimp in the coconut milk. Authentic, but not necessary. Same goes for stinky fish-paste. It is up to you.
Bayem is actually Amaranthus leaf, rather than spinach. But you are more likely to encounter spinach at the market, and any type of greens will do. You could also use mustard greens, chard, or even chili leaves (called daon tjabe in Tamarao). All of these leafy things, collectively, count as bayem in modern parlance.
Gule ('goo-leh') means a wet coconut milk (santen) based mild curry.
The quantities given above would be suitable for four people. If it is just the two of you, adjust accordingly.
A simple clay stove, or bricked fire range, on which both iron pans and clay pots are equally at home, with a brazier for roasting. Plus a table for preparing food, a vat for water, and basins for washing vegetables and rice. Stone tile flooring. Cover it all with a corrugated roof, and leave at least one of the sides open so that smoke can clear.
The advantage is that one does not risk burning down the house if the fire gets out of control. But the real advantage is ventilation and the relative ease of clean-up.
Many people now have two kitchens. There's the expensive Western Kitchen, with electric appliances and the fancy imported range, as well as running water, refrigeration, and air-con. But most of the cooking is not done there. It serves to show off how modern the family is, and is also used to store the tinned and bottled foods (often still kept in a cupboard with woven slat or wire-gauze doors to keep out the pests). The real kitchen is outdoors.
Fresh ingredients are still bought daily, still washed out back, still cooked plainly in clay pots on the brick range. Real food does not require electric devices and complicated gadgets. People still cook what they have always been accustomed to eating. Food is not complicated.
Simplicity of cooking, however, by no means implies boring food. One can eat very well without ever using a blender. A soupy dish, a mild wet curry (mostly vegetables), a spicy dry-fry of vegs or meat, and a steamed fish, plus rice and blanched vegetables with a funky dip. And a chili-paste (sambal) on the side.
Easy, tasty, scant fuss.
The following spinach dish can also be cooked indoors, if one lacks access to a climate that averages nearly a hundred degrees Fahrenheit year-round. It will be just as good.
GULE BAYEM
One pound spinach, rinsed and chopped.
Three cups coconut milk.
One stem lemongras, trimmed and bruised.
Two or three Romas, peeled seeded and chopped.
Two or three green Jalapenos, left whole.
Some slivered ginger.
Squeeze of lime.
One Tsp ground coriander.
Half Tsp turmeric.
Half Tsp ground cumin.
Dash of Tabasco.
Pinch salt.
Put everything except the spinach and lime juice in a large saucepan and simmer uncovered until slightly thickened, 8 to 10 minutes.
Add spinach, simmer until tender. Squeeze the lime over, and garnish with a little parsley and cilantro.
Serve with other dishes and rice.
Note I: It is best to fire-roast the Roma tomatoes to blister the skin before peeling.
Note II: Leave the Jalapenos whole so that their fragrance will be imparted to the dish, but not their heat. If you wish you can eat them separately yourself.
Note III: It is authentic to include either dried smoked fish or dried shrimp in the coconut milk. Authentic, but not necessary. Same goes for stinky fish-paste. It is up to you.
Bayem is actually Amaranthus leaf, rather than spinach. But you are more likely to encounter spinach at the market, and any type of greens will do. You could also use mustard greens, chard, or even chili leaves (called daon tjabe in Tamarao). All of these leafy things, collectively, count as bayem in modern parlance.
Gule ('goo-leh') means a wet coconut milk (santen) based mild curry.
The quantities given above would be suitable for four people. If it is just the two of you, adjust accordingly.
OLIE BOLLEN - SWEET DOUGH, POWDERED SUGAR, HOT FAT
About a week ago a mailinglist of which I am a subscriber was startled out of its collective slumber by a desperate wake-up call. One of the members had a crisis.
A gentleman named A, who is married to J, requested a recipe for Oliebollen ('oil balls'). That being one of the few things that his spouse liked in the Netherlands, and their anniversary coming up, led him to his e-plea.
Naturally, I was somewhat distressed to find out that an American woman wasn't entirely enchanted by the Dutch and their marvelous cuisine (what, you didn't know?), but I papered over my disappointment at her disappointment, and provided the recipe.
OLIE BOLLEN
4 (four) Cups white flour.
1.75 (one and three quarters) Cups warm (scalded) milk.
3 (three) TBS Sugar.
3 (three) Eggs.
1 (one) TBS oil.
1 (one) Tsp. Salt.
1 (one) TBS active yeast.
1.5 (one point five) cups chopped raisins.
A few drops vanilla essence, a little fresh orange or lemon zest.
Plus oil for deep-frying and powdered sugar for dusting.
Proof the yeast in the milk, with one tablespoon of the sugar dissolved therein (meaning: stir sugar and yeast into the warm milk, and let the yeast foam up and become all nice and active again).
Mix all other ingredients, and add the yeasted milk gradually after it has foamed. Mix well. Cover with a damp cloth, put in a warm place, and let the batter sit two hours or more till doubled in size.
Heat the oil for frying to 375 - 400 degrees. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot oil (use a second spoon to push the batter off the first). Fry golden, remove from oil when done, drain on papertowels, and dust with powdered sugar.
Note I: A teaspoon of cinnamon can be added to the batter, or to the
powdered sugar.
Note II: If the milk is too hot for you to put your finger into,
it is too hot for the yeast. Better wait a moment - you don't want to kill the yeast, do you?
Note III: Leave plenty of space in the deep-fryer or the cauldron
- there is nothing worse than bliksems hot oil splashing up or boiling over.
Note IV: Some folks may want to avoid lactose and or gluten. Sorry, this recipe is not for you. Get real.
These things are usually available from stands of dubious cleanliness outside trainstations and in public squares from end of October through the beginning of March.
When exiting the train station in Eindhoven into the biting cold wind of late autumn, on the side where all the regional buses await passengers, it is sheer heaven to purchase a fresh bag of these, hot from the deep fat, and inhale them one after another, the powdered sugar getting up one's nose and all over one's clothes, fingers and lips tingling from the contrast with the frigid air.
The first time I went back for a visit, nearly nineteen years ago, there were some Cantonese girls standing by the fry-stand doing the same thing, and I surreptitiously listened in on their conversation. They were all students of the Chinese grammar school in the city, heading back to the villages in the Kempen where their folks ran restaurants. Their parents would have utterly disapproved of the expenditure of precious funds on hot dough (though, as children themselves, they had probably done exactly the same thing in Naam Hoi, Suen Tak, or Poon Yip). How delicious the guilty delight of shared funds invested in toasty comfort, the powdered sugar on their faces betraying their decadent spendthrifting, or perhaps even that all five had been snorting mega-lines of cocaine before going home!
Chinese-accented Dutch, Dutch-accented Chinese, and reverent little moans of pleasure as each hot airy doughpuff disappeared into a greedy mouth. Chan-hai ho sik! Sheer heaven.
I am not surprised that A's wife J fondly remembers oliebollen. It is also one of my more golden memories of the Netherlands.
As long as the Dutch do not speak, but simply feed me oliebollen, I should be happy there.
A gentleman named A, who is married to J, requested a recipe for Oliebollen ('oil balls'). That being one of the few things that his spouse liked in the Netherlands, and their anniversary coming up, led him to his e-plea.
Naturally, I was somewhat distressed to find out that an American woman wasn't entirely enchanted by the Dutch and their marvelous cuisine (what, you didn't know?), but I papered over my disappointment at her disappointment, and provided the recipe.
OLIE BOLLEN
4 (four) Cups white flour.
1.75 (one and three quarters) Cups warm (scalded) milk.
3 (three) TBS Sugar.
3 (three) Eggs.
1 (one) TBS oil.
1 (one) Tsp. Salt.
1 (one) TBS active yeast.
1.5 (one point five) cups chopped raisins.
A few drops vanilla essence, a little fresh orange or lemon zest.
Plus oil for deep-frying and powdered sugar for dusting.
Proof the yeast in the milk, with one tablespoon of the sugar dissolved therein (meaning: stir sugar and yeast into the warm milk, and let the yeast foam up and become all nice and active again).
Mix all other ingredients, and add the yeasted milk gradually after it has foamed. Mix well. Cover with a damp cloth, put in a warm place, and let the batter sit two hours or more till doubled in size.
Heat the oil for frying to 375 - 400 degrees. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot oil (use a second spoon to push the batter off the first). Fry golden, remove from oil when done, drain on papertowels, and dust with powdered sugar.
Note I: A teaspoon of cinnamon can be added to the batter, or to the
powdered sugar.
Note II: If the milk is too hot for you to put your finger into,
it is too hot for the yeast. Better wait a moment - you don't want to kill the yeast, do you?
Note III: Leave plenty of space in the deep-fryer or the cauldron
- there is nothing worse than bliksems hot oil splashing up or boiling over.
Note IV: Some folks may want to avoid lactose and or gluten. Sorry, this recipe is not for you. Get real.
These things are usually available from stands of dubious cleanliness outside trainstations and in public squares from end of October through the beginning of March.
When exiting the train station in Eindhoven into the biting cold wind of late autumn, on the side where all the regional buses await passengers, it is sheer heaven to purchase a fresh bag of these, hot from the deep fat, and inhale them one after another, the powdered sugar getting up one's nose and all over one's clothes, fingers and lips tingling from the contrast with the frigid air.
The first time I went back for a visit, nearly nineteen years ago, there were some Cantonese girls standing by the fry-stand doing the same thing, and I surreptitiously listened in on their conversation. They were all students of the Chinese grammar school in the city, heading back to the villages in the Kempen where their folks ran restaurants. Their parents would have utterly disapproved of the expenditure of precious funds on hot dough (though, as children themselves, they had probably done exactly the same thing in Naam Hoi, Suen Tak, or Poon Yip). How delicious the guilty delight of shared funds invested in toasty comfort, the powdered sugar on their faces betraying their decadent spendthrifting, or perhaps even that all five had been snorting mega-lines of cocaine before going home!
Chinese-accented Dutch, Dutch-accented Chinese, and reverent little moans of pleasure as each hot airy doughpuff disappeared into a greedy mouth. Chan-hai ho sik! Sheer heaven.
I am not surprised that A's wife J fondly remembers oliebollen. It is also one of my more golden memories of the Netherlands.
As long as the Dutch do not speak, but simply feed me oliebollen, I should be happy there.
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GRITS AND TOFU
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