Wonderland or Not

Sun­day notes: links, fun and such.

Shall we ligh­ten it up?

OK for a second.

This first:

Secu­la­rism in Action .

So, I have deci­ded to take refuge from all these illo­gi­cal and bru­tal mili­tary actions by hiding and shel­te­ring within my scho­larly armour. I shall leave to others, more expert than myself, the con­dem­na­tions, the scream of sup­ports, the sharp indig­na­tions, the terro­rist labe­ling, and the human rights mys­te­rious and magi­cal spells. I am an anth­ro­po­lo­gist, an academic.

My only defence to all this mind­less mad­ness is to try to make sense of it; of course, in a flood of use­less words, fra­gile quo­ta­tions, and gothic cathe­dral cons­truc­tions of the inte­llect, which, howe­ver, can­not save even half of one life.

So, here my shel­ter from the bom­bing of unwished con­tem­po­rary rea­li­ties. First, it is impor­tant to decons­truct one point.

Israel is not “the Jew”, my very reli­gious Rabbi friend repea­ted again and again to me. I have no pro­blem to believe him: a state can­not be a per­son or repre­sent what today is a very hete­ro­ge­nic faith: Judaism.

A per­son is a human being. To be Jewish means to be a per­son born within (or rarely con­vert to) a cer­tain reli­gion and hol­ding cer­tain beliefs, or ‘fee­ling to be’ a Jew (i.e. identity).

I have not the space (actually time) to expand further this reduc­tio­nist dis­course, so let me pass to the second logi­cal point. Zio­nism is not Israel; leave aside ‘the Jew’.

An ideo­logy can help to build a state, but a state can­not be an ideo­logy, leave aside the per­so­ni­fi­ca­tion of a per­son, ‘the Jew’. Hence, to really unders­tand what is hap­pe­ning today, not just in the abs­tract geo­graphi­cal label Middle East, but in the Israeli and Leba­nese bom­bed hou­ses, and in their hos­pi­tals and mor­tua­ries, means to stop obser­ving the antithe­sis (terro­rist vs. non-terrorist, axis of evil vs. axis of good, pro-Israeli vs. anti-Israeli and so on) and focus on more com­plex macrostructures.

This often invol­ves sug­ges­ting con­tro­ver­sial views which need a bit of effort to unders­tand and digest. My inte­llec­tual pro­vo­ca­tion is this one: we are wit­nes­sing this car­nage because of secu­la­rism in action.

Tab­sir: Insight on Islam and the Middle East

I can’t keep up with it all these days honestly.

Because some peo­ple seem to think that twenty — one year old fema­les can only talk about pan­ties here is a link to some high tech under­wear. Wun­der­wear : Skiv­vies just sit­ting there? Time to upgrade to power pan­ties. We tes­ted the latest and greatest

I sug­gest the boy shorts.

Video pos­ted by vegan­kid at Taking Place.

Slip of the Tongue

Check it out.

And oh damn, cry me a river.

Duke con­sor­tium: In other words a bunch of crap from the Duke Archi­ves from over the least week.

Duke Lac­rosse Pla­yers Speak Out. You can defi­ni­tely see the poor me atti­tude here and it just goes to affirm my ori­gi­nal impres­sion of all these little brats. And please give me a break…. From a Times Select Paid Link on July 16. Our Towns; As Duke Accu­sa­tion Fes­ters, Dis­be­lief Grows

Morris­town, N.J. — PATRICIA CRAPO has been teaching reli­gion and wri­ting college recom­men­da­tions for a quar­ter cen­tury, but only once did she allow her­self to put so much of her heart on the page. ”If I had a son, I would hope he could be like Reade,” Mrs. Crapo wrote three years ago on behalf of a stu­dent appl­ying to Duke . ”I have been teaching at the high school level for 24 years, and I have never said or writ­ten that about another stu­dent.” The let­ter, writ­ten about a stu­dent, Reade Selig­mann, whom she taught for four years at the Roman Catho­lic Del­bar­ton School here, still rings com­ple­tely true to her.

Is Reade Selig­mann a saint? Not many of us are. Some kids at that party beha­ved like jac­kas­ses, and there are cer­tainly cases where good kids do uns­pea­kably stu­pid things — par­ti­cu­larly when alcohol is invol­ved. It’s pos­si­ble to be con­vin­ced that Reade Selig­mann did nothing, and it’s another thing to be cer­tain that no one did. But it’s easier to spin the narra­tive of race, class and pri­vi­lege when it’s not attached to a real per­son, something true for all three. So Mrs. Crapo has dug out an old pic­ture she took of her for­mer stu­dent in class and put it on her dres­ser at home to blot out the pic­tu­res from mug shots and cour­trooms, the sic­ke­ning ima­ges that look to her like a good kid caught in a bad movie he can’t escape.

Well as I sta­ted before if you hang with pigs some­ti­mes the pig crap gets on your shoes.

Yes, it is much easier to spin the narra­tive in the case without the familys,friends and priest all over the place telling ever­yone just how “spe­cial ” these boys are, but for the “good kid caught in a bad movie” .….if indeed he is as inno­cent as they claim.….think about it.

Can you ima­gine being a poor black kid or even just a poor kid with no family sup­port who was accu­sed of a crime that he didn’t com­mit due to the fact that he hung around with a gang of peo­ple who were racist, sexist, drunk jac­kas­ses and who may have com­mit­ted the crime them­sel­ves or not?

Can you ima­gine what it would be like to not  have fif­teen priests, teachers, friends of girl­friends, neigh­bors and parents all tes­tif­ying to your good name and clou­ding the issue in your favor?

Espe­cially if you had done nothing wrong?

No?

Didn’t think so.

Wha­te­ver hap­pens this is what it is, and some­ti­mes peo­ple have to go through a rough time.

Some­ti­mes it is even unjust.

Unjust treat­ment is not desig­na­ted only to cer­tain groups of peo­ple des­pite the fact that it is per­pe­tra­ted most often on peo­ple without the funds to pro­perly defend them.

At least you all appear to have good lawyers.

Let jus­tice pre­vail in the end one way or another.

I’m sure those ban­king jobs will be there at a later date — banks rule the world after all.

And oh…congratulations on the new coach  — I’m Sure the daddy will keep things in line this year.

And please shut it all off . At least Dan Abrahms got pro­mo­ted so we don’t have to lis­ten to his inces­sent babble. 

Just got home from work and am going out to eat so I plan to read you all later…please write something.