Is Zionism Racism?

A Palestinian friend shared (he wasn’t the originator) the following photo and caption:

Some of my friends, neighbors and colleagues consider themselves to be Zionists. Some declare themselves anti-Zionists, and many others don’t wake up at night wondering about it at all.

I’m not going to start looking up “Zionism” in Wikipedia, but as I understand it, in its broadest sense, it mainly expresses the aspiration by some Jews to “return” to the “promised land”. Of course others (both pro-and anti-) have attempted to define that further, such as by saying that Zionism holds that the land of Israel belongs exclusively to the Jews. But if we take it in the broadest sense, I wouldn’t say that Zionism necessarily equates to racism. Zionism has certainly been used as a motivation for racism at many levels, including racist policies towards Palestinians by the State of Israel. By the same token, many other ideologies and religions (perhaps all of them) have been used as a motivation for reprehensible and often genocidal policies. I’m not positive that Zionism is demonstrably more tainted than other isms.

The aspiration of Jews to “return” to the land of Israel is not necessarily something evil. People all around the world, now and in the past, have been expressing the aspiration to go to other places. The entire history of the human race has been one continuous migration of peoples across continents, and sometimes these migrations have been back to perceived homelands or promised lands. There is no doubt that many mass migrations have been responsible for the displacement or extermination of indigenous peoples.

Did the newly United Nations in the 1940s understand that by sanctioning the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine this would entail both the birth of a decades long conflict and the birth of a state that embodies racist policies towards its non-Jewish population? Maybe, but I prefer to think, regarding the latter, that they had higher expectations from a people who had just suffered their own holocaust. The European states that are Christian in character do not necessarily treat non-Christians as second-class citizens. A state that is Jewish in character need not necessarily treat its Palestinian citizens, or refugees from other places, badly. That’s only a choice that it makes. It isn’t or needn’t be inherent in the fact that the state has a Jewish character, or is founded on Zionist principles, if this only means that the state has decided that from its own perspective it is “Jewish” and will preserve an option for all Jews to live here in their “homeland”. It could maintain a similar option for Palestinians and place limits on both. It could proclaim itself entirely secular while still being the “homeland for the Jewish people”. The existence of Jews in a Jewish homeland does not necessarily preclude that others can see it as their homeland too, and that everyone can live in peace together. In the same way, no reasonable person disputes that Jerusalem is sacred to three religions: its sacredness to one religion does not preclude its sacredness to the others.

When we talk about entities such as “the Jewish people” or “the Palestinian people” we are actually only giving credence to myth. That is not important. People are what they believe themselves to be. They are the illusions they cling to, and the affiliations by which their enemies know them too. Those who see the myth, do so only because they are outsiders or have somehow managed to break free of it. Probably they are clinging just as strongly to other illusions or delusions from which they are unable to extricate themselves.

To return to the picture of the children with the flags, the question is not whether the Israeli flag, or all flags should be burned. They won’t be. People will always keep their flags. Flags are not racist. They are only symbols drawn upon fabric. We humans decide for ourselves what the symbols mean. The swastika has meant one thing, over millenia, to Hindus and meant something entirely different for Nazis (and their victims).

I look forward to the day when the Israeli flag will not mean that the land of Israel belongs only to Jews, and when it and the Palestinian flag can fly together, or even be merged as they are in this optimistic picture. For that to happen will require an arduous struggle. May it be waged humanely and nonviolently, so that these children and other children will not have their hopes dashed.

Obama’s NSA speech

EFF’s scorecard on Obama’s announcements

I’m not a clever or sophisticated presidential speech analyst, or even very knowledgeable about the issues, but I realized that listening to Obama’s speech on NSA and national security, was that besides the multiple contradictions, such as about protecting dissidents (like Snowden?), the speech could be interpreted as a kind of mirror writing, which illuminates the unresolved problems by his drawing attention to them and claiming to resolve them. A lesser speech might simply omit mention of the major unresolved problems. But Obama’s technique is to show full awareness of the issues that trouble everyone and pretend to address them, without really doing so.* If you’d submit the speech to analysis, it could therefore be read point by point as an admission of guilt, as if a murderer’s testimony in support of his innocence would mention details known only to himself.

And, “As the nation that developed the Internet, the world expects us to ensure that the digital revolution works as a tool for individual empowerment rather than government control.” That’s indeed what the world wants, Mr. Obama, but what it has come to expect is exactly the opposite.

There is also some comedy, in the way Obama echoed Snowden himself. In his cheery Christmas message, Snowden demanded: “Remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel asking is always cheaper than spying.” Obama: ‘The leaders of our close friends and allies deserve to know that if I want to learn what they think about an issue, I will pick up the phone and call …’ Snowden: “privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.” Obama: “When you cut through the noise, what’s really at stake is how we remain true to who we are…”

Someone** tweeted a photo of an Obama speech in which Bill Clinton suddenly comes on stage waving to the audience and said, imagine if at the end of the speech, Snowden would show up behind Obama, all smiles.

The full speech is here.

* Others say he didn’t:

“It was not what was in the President’s speech that was particularly noteworthy, as The New York Times aptly put it, but what was left out entirely. President Obama neglected to address many of the worries of the world’s largest tech companies — like Apple, Facebook, and Google, among others — delivering no assurances that the NSA would give up its practice of monitoring and sucking up the billions of bytes of data flowing to and from these companies’ users on a daily basis. It was a practice Google’s Eric Schmidt called “outrageous” at best and potentially illegal late last year.”

Recode

** sorry, couldn’t find who this was when I looked again, though I found the famous photo.

Computing for Dummies

Computerworld has an article about the success of Chromebooks this year: “Chromebooks’ success punches Microsoft in the gut” and Dave Winer has written his response in a blog post Microsoft and netbooks, in which he rues Microsoft’s failure to capitalize properly on Netbooks. As a result of its missteps, i.e., not understanding the need for cheap computing solutions, not creating a malware free environment, etc., Google was able to step in with Chromebooks and Apple with tablets. As Winer says, “We all lost here. Because the new netbooks, from Google and Apple, are closed systems, where the netbooks were wide open. I could access my file server from my netbook. I could put any software on it, or take it off, same with music and movies. Apple and Google are running gulags, the netbooks were Woodstock.”

The advent of dumbed-down, closed systems increases the momentum towards simplification of the computers that people use at work, or for other things than checking email and social media. The trend is towards computers as home appliances that run apps available in App stores.

This only reminds me of the time, not so many years ago, when nerds bemoaned the transition from text-based to graphical user interfaces. Other than Linux users, no one ever needed to see a command line again.

Every move forward makes computers easier to work with but takes us further into a technocracy where only a minority are truly in control and the rest are consumers of ready-made goods. If we can’t find a size that properly fits, we’ll accept the nearest approximation.

India’s violent history

Yesterday finished Khushwant Singh’s Delhi, which tells the story of the capital from invasion to invasion, massacre to massacre, and concludes with the pogrom on the Sikhs in 1984. And today I was reading a horrifying story about the Muzzafanagar and Shamli District riots last September. The location of the places where the recent atrocities took place is around 100 km from Delhi.

Social network engine I’d like to see

Most existing social networks are built upon the model of a timeline. But if we come to a network to find out what our friends are up to, what we probably would like to see is what Y has been doing or saying lately. While it is true that it is possible to pull up the profile and posts of Y, this is not very practical. Furthermore, perhaps they have been active on Pinterest but not on Facebook, and if I really want to follow them, I’m going to need to go into each of their networks, then check their profiles there. There are plug-in services for email like this, such as Rapportive. When we begin to write to someone, it will check their network activity. But this is not an average use case.

So what I would really like to see is the following arrangement. There would be a contacts list, on the left hand side, and on the right, a series of columns, one for each social network, as well as personal sites and blogs. The engine pulls in activity feeds for each place. If a person has been active somewhere, anywhere, a green light shows up by her name, with a matching light in the column corresponding to a certain network. If I am friends with them on a given network, or if the post is public, I can hover over the green light in the column, and the post itself pops up so that I can read it without having to go into that social network. The social networks can monitize this activity by sending ads along with the posts.

My ideal network engine would do more. It would suggest new networks where I can meet my friends. If a person is a member of a network of which I’m still not a member, or if I am not acquainted with them on that network, it will tell me. If a number of friends have joined a network of which I am still not a member, it will also suggest to me that I might consider joining that network too. Because people sometimes use different identities on different networks, there would be the possibility to add content manually, as well as personal sites, blogs etc.

The contacts list would also be a source for additional contact information such as phone numbers, email addresses, etc. and provide an indication of the preferred method of contact.

Further, the engine will present a number of different views. It will be viewable as an alphabetical contacts list, but it will also be able to sense, via my interactions, which persons I’m closest to, and then order the list according to this. There will also be a view which shows which posts are trending among my friends, or are most viral, across all networks. It will also be able to show me which recent posts by a given person are most popular, based on likes, re-tweets, comments, etc. Finally, it will show me, based on tags and topics, what my contacts have to say upon a given topic, and be able to prioritize this activity according to popularity.

This isn’t a very complicated idea. But it would certainly be something of value to many of us. It would build engagement in social networks, provide the opportunity for new ones to surface, and give us a much clearer view of what our friends are doing, how they are expressing themselves, and where.

A third approach to software

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has an article in ZDNet, They’re killing the PC, about the rise of the app stores, “Software as a Service” running under Google Chrome, IOS, etc., and the corresponding decline of interest in computers running traditional operating systems. He isn’t the only one to notice this trend, and I think he is right about it.

I’ve just been thinking though that there is a a third approach, which is for software developers to create applications that run in a browser, that are installable on one’s own computer as a local service, on one’s own server via the web, or hosted services. I think that this is a likely trend, which will only grow as browsers and code become more sophisticated and capable. Software created for the browser runs on any operating system. If there’s something worthy of support, it is open source browsers such a Firefox, rather than proprietary browsers like Google Chrome. We should support efforts like Firefox OS on mobile phones, and perhaps one day on PCs.

Linux distributions have many such applications available in their software repositories. Hosting services offer many one-click-install possibilities, usually under CPanel. Such software services can be set to upgrade themselves and backup automatically.

The advantage is continued independence from the likes of Apple, Google, Amazon and the rest, and the ability to retain control of one’s computer experience, without much of the hassle associated with installing and maintaining software on traditional operating systems.

Update: I see that Google is developing a Chromium framework for HTML / Javascript apps that work outside the browser and offline by default. Apps will be hosted on GitHub. So this provides additional support for the argument made here.

how the Snowden affair illuminates cultural identity and political conceptions

I continue to read all the main threads of the Snowden affair, as well as reflections by journalists and writers. British journalist Jonathan Friedland’s story for the New York Times (Why Do Brits Accept Surveillance?) about what he conceives of as the differences in the reactions to the revelations in Britain and America was interesting. Basically, he says that these reactions indicate differing conceptions regarding the relationship between government and citizen in the two countries:

And this might be the heart of the matter. Britain has a fundamentally different conception of power than, say, the United States. In America, it is ‘‘we the people’’ who are held to be sovereign. Viewed like that, the N.S.A., and other arms of the government, is a servant of the people: It is meant to do what it is told.

The British system, by contrast, still carries the imprint of its origins in monarchy: Officially, it remains “Her Majesty’s Government,” not the people’s. Power still emanates from the top and flows downward, with the public allowed a peek only when the state chooses. It means that Brits can be quite resigned toward the level of government power over, and intrusion into, their lives — because they don’t really see government as their servant in the first place. Britons remain subjects, not citizens.

Once again, I was reminded that despite having been born in the UK, my cultural frame is more American than British, because of the two systems he describes so well, my own way of thinking is closer to the American one. American influence on the world being so strong, it’s surprising that the Brits are not swayed to a greater degree by the U.S. However in my case, the influence is not surprising since I grew up in Virginia from the age of 13.

Another area in which I have noticed such cultural influence is in spelling and syntax. For years I staunchly attempted to use British modes, until one day I read a comprehensive article on the differences between American and British usage, and realized not only that American usage came easier, but that I didn’t really understand British usage in any case. And I remember being similarly surprised when spending an undergraduate year in a British university. I did not adjust well to the British system.

In their view of the Edward Snowden revelations, Israelis are closer to the British than the Americans. They are happy to accept surveillance, and assume that they are being watched. They also take for granted that the threat to the personal security does not come from their state, but from their “enemies”.

OK back to WordPress again for this not…

OK, back to WordPress again, for this not very real blog. Previous actions haven’t been working for me. But perhaps this time I’ll be happy.

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Recent Reading

I purchased Julian Barnes “The Sense of an Ending” for my Kobo, having forgotten that I’d read another work of his over the summer, “Arthur and George”. This didn’t matter. I’d enjoyed the earlier one, though it had not especially endeared me to the author. “The Sense of an Ending” is a different sort of book, though there are similarities of style. One affects a biographical style; the other an autobiographical style, I suppose. “The Sense of an Ending” has a harder edge on it, as books by British writers often do. Now, thinking of it again, I realize that it didn’t leave a strong lasting impression. There are writers whose books sear themselves into my memory; other writers who I keep going back to even though I don’t remember well the storylines or details of their novels; and then there are writers who I remember with distaste because I occasionally recall certain meaningless ugly details they have deliberately planted in order to disturb the reader. Barnes didn’t quite make it to this latter category, with me, but seemed to be aiming for it.

On my phone I finished “Office Girl” by Joe Meno, which has a fresh, indy style and lots of atmosphere. It wasn’t a bad read. Set in a snowy Chicago winter. I started it in the summer and went back to it when the weather got cooler.

I’ve also been reading Ali Abunimah’s “One Country” which is well-written and persuasive, and completed an autobiographical manuscript by a person living in my community. But mainly now I’m reading Sonia Faleiro’s “Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars”, a non-fiction book by a Mumbai-based journalist and writer. It’s written, probably, for Indians or people with a deeper than usual familiarity with India: Occasionally I realize that I didn’t quite “get” something. I don’t completely trust Faleiro. Sometimes I feel that she has put words into the mouths of her characters, like: “‘When you look at my life,’ she taught me, don’t look at it beside yours. Look at it beside the life of my mother and her mother and my sister-in-law who have to take permission to walk down the road…'”. That seems a bit too eloquent for Leela, the dance girl. But is it my own hidden sense of cultural superiority that makes me suspect that?

And I find myself wondering about style. Is it really necessary to change the spelling of “kustomer” when this appears in speech? Does that add something, such as a special, localized meaning of the word? The repeated phrases or sentences in Hindi (I’m not sure that I can properly differentiate it from Marathi), which are sometimes, though not consistently, explained become tiresome, though they would not for those who understand them. Te book may be a bit of an unpolished diamond, though is certainly important and interesting. And “interesting” doesn’t quite say it.

If I start to give more time to my reading, I may begin to look at more indy writers who publish their books on the internet without DRM or copyright. I find this approach very attractive. Cory Doctorow seems to have hit on a good formula, where payment is optional.

The Console is addictive / God’s li’l creatures

The console is addictive

Now the strange thing is that even though I’ve “proved” to myself a couple of times that there’s stuff that just doesn’t work so well in Mutt, and that I’d be a lot better doing them in webmail, I find that I keep on clicking F12 (for Guake) and going back to Mutt. I’m not sure exactly why. I think I’m just tired of the Gmail interface and longing for simplicity. It’s addictive. I seem to be doing more and more in the terminal. Will it last?

My imaginary illness

Since returning from India last time my digestion ain’t what it used to be. Loose stools and itchy bum seems to imply worms. I didn’t actually test for parasites, because I hate taking samples of my shit. But I’ve been reading up on what to do in case they’re there. It seems that there are certain substances that worms despise, so I’m feeding them with these. Between meals drinking wormwood tea (fortunately there are a few plants around the village), sometimes mixed with sage. NB though I haven’t actually read that they hate sage, I figure they should. And at meal times I’ve been adding desiccated coconut or nibbling on raw carrot. And neem capsules, which I still have a supply of from Auroville. Worms also hate garlic. But I do too. One website recommends putting it in your socks, or between 2 layers of socks, in order that the garlic will be absorbed into yer blood. But something tells me that nothing is going to work unless I do something extreme, like eating raw pumpkin seeds followed by a wormwood enema. There’s always vermex.

Real fleas

In dogs, worms follow fleas. I don’t think that’s the case with me, but in one room, The End Room, we have the fleas. In the days when we still let her in the house, MarryDog used to sneak in there to sleep on the rug. Then one day we discovered fleas. Since then, MarryDog has been outdoors, and the door to the End Room has been closed. We’ve vacuumed a couple of times, and gone in with anti-flea spray – which involves rapidfire commando raids while holding the breath then running out for air. And we’ve vacuumed and sprayed other kinds of insecticides. But the sad fact is that every time we go in that room, a flea or two jumps on us. And a bit later in the day we discover a bite somewhere. The latest strategy is a glass oven dish filled with water and detergent under a reading lamp. The fleas jump in and they drown. But not all of them. Adult fleas survive only a couple of weeks, while their pupae are supposed to hatch “only in the presence of a host”, which usually means a dog. Anyway, they’re under siege. We’re waiting them out.

An odd thing about fleas is that, as far as we know, they eat only a single meal in all the four stages of their lives: a meal of blood.