Latest Parries
July 2009
At Modi’in Mall
There’s nothing else around here except empty desolate pretty hills. The Israel Trail passes by a bit to the west. It’s a hot July Wednesday morning. Things are reasonably busy. The shops are mostly franchises, almost all homegrown — Super-Pharm, Aroma, Tzomet Sfarim, Cup O’ Joe’s, LaMetayel, Mega, Fox, Castro, H&O.
Israel, the Bad So Far
I’m surprised at the general appearance of Tel Aviv folks. Yes, it’s hot, but people appear dressed as if they’re in, I don’t know, Be’er Sheva. And the people in Be’er Sheva, last time I was there, looked to me like they’re dressed for Gaza.
March 2009
Namaste, Dharma Workmen
What do the Lost characters mostly want these days? It’s not to get off the island. Increasingly, the island is just where they live and love. If anything, they’ve found home — or, rather, their home found them.
February 2009
24, Lost Get Soft
When life gets fast, unlike how it’s lived by most of us out here in the dark, loyalties are quickly superceded by new circumstances. This is not despite values but because of them. Such Darwinian churn is a theme shared by the very different Lost and 24 and so might just be a defining one for our times.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Buddha
If someone is living life in reverse time while the rest of us are living it forwards, then our world is Buddhist, because such an impossibility falsifies reality, which must therefore be a dream.
January 2009
Shanghai Europe
So, finally, we stopped yesterday; the Israeli assault of late 2008/early 2009 on Gaza is over. With it, Israel lost moral purity and made vital strategic gains.
Panning for MacBook Pro
Even if it did nothing, was just a prop in a futuristic movie, the MacBook Pro would be impressive. It’s like a sculpture of my previous computer, the MacBook, except it’s actually an improved computer! So even though I’m looking at it now and touching it to write these words, I’m going to stop now just to look at it and touch it.
December 2008
Stop Yesterday
Is the goal of Israel’s assault on Gaza to discourage Hamas from firing rockets, or is it to render Hamas incapable of firing rockets? These are two very different projects, yet we are hearing about both from the government, which worryingly suggests that the government isn’t quite sure.
Short-circuiting Place-based Longing
If there is one tangible benefit to having lived in a variety of places it’s that it furnishes evidence of the futility of longing to be elsewhere.
F or the first time I feel some excitement about the presidency of Barack Obama. Nine months after the exultation of electoral victory, he has come crashing down to humiliation and defeat on almost all fronts. In January, the only way was down. Now, the only way is up.
In the wake of his very public defeat over the Chicago Olympics bid (and really, it makes perfect sense that Brazil got it), he need no longer fulfil the role of humanity’s saviour. Instead, he can get back to and on with what is after all his job: leading the USA. So I think it was okay to go to Copenhagen and lobby the IOC and lose. Fine. In fact — and maybe this is very British of me — his having lost makes me like him better.
So today I’m open to the notion that it was wise to make a first move vis-a-vis Russia with the very public gesture of shifting the missile system away from Eastern Europe and seeing how Russia reciprocates regarding Iran. I would wager Russia won’t give anything of value in return, but the missile system move can always be reversed at some point if it bears no fruit.
Recently we’ve already seen the Administration tone down its rhetoric against Israeli settlements and begin backpedalling on closing down Guantanamo Bay. Obama did demonstrate willingness to throw friends under the bus to get elected; hopefully he’ll be willing to do so to his left-wing base now that he has been elected, and continue moving to the center.
All this is presuming of course that he does want to be President of the United States more than he wants to be saviour of humanity. I believe the jury is still out on this, but today in the wake of clear defeat it seems reasonable to hope that the man will hunker down, retrench, and let the majesty and the significance of the office he does hold reach in and touch him and infuse this obviously capable soul with the desire and the will to fulfil the office well.
Which leads us to the one thing hovering over all: Afghanistan. This is the hot war, and as such it rides roughshod over any and all other policy like a set of tank treads. If Obama is feckless here, he will have zero credibility on any other front. And throwing the left under the bus is not enough; he must be steely, adamant in his own personal will to victory. Otherwise it won’t happen.
War may not be what this Commander-in-Chief would like to be doing. Fair enough. Bush would no doubt have preferred to focus on things other than Iraq — remember, the first foreign leader he met with was Vicente Fox of Mexico. But once there is war, everything else, even national disasters at home, is secondary. And furthermore, though not that this really matters too much, Obama didn’t only inherit Afghanistan, he made it his own during the campaign by saying it’s the war that should be fought, rather than Iraq.
So prevailing in Afghanistan is the key to everything else now, even if it requires so much attention that it saps away the energy to do anything else. The problem is that Obama seems not yet to have the will to decisively win the war; the story about his lack of meetings with General Stanley McChrystal, the commander on the ground there, is chilling. But that’s what I mean by the majesty and the significance of the office itself reaching in and touching him. After the minor but public Olympics debacle, the President may ask himself, or hear a portrait of Lincoln or FDR ask him: Where must you prevail first and foremost, Brother 44? And we will get a properly prioritized presidency, a strong America, and the day will be saved once again.
