Month: November 2005

Talk Back – ʿOskar

רק שידאו אתם עוסקר היה זמר גדול

אני מעוד האהבתי אותו בגלל הוא שר שירים.
ועני מעוד עוהב שירים
ונתנו לו פרס בגלל הוא זמר תוב וקרעו לפרס הזה עוסקר מאז קורעים לפרס הזותי עוסקר

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Freedom – Wolność

Dear readers (all three of you), let me transport you again to Belarus. I’m becoming an obsessed fan of this country and of at least one of its self-proclaimed representatives, who calls himself rydel23.

He tells us today about a Polish political action of protest against the censorship in Belarus. It’s nice, you should really take a look at it. You know that i love freedom of speech/press.

I don’t have many comments about it. The slogan in the bottom says: “Tak wygląda wolność slowa na Białorusi” – “That’s how freedom of speech looks in Belarus”.

But i love conspiracies, you know? So i’ve gotta tell that there are three possibilities:

  1. Poles are longing for the good old days of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, where Warsaw and Wilno/Vilnius were the political centers and Belarus was … er … that big land in the middle with a lot of forests and good quiet people who considered themselves Russian, but didn’t mind paying their taxes to the Great Polish/Lithuanian Duke, even though actually they really wanted to be under the rule of the one true Tsar in Moscow. So now Poles are trying to bring down the current pro-Russian government and make Belarus its vassal. And even Belarus is just a little pawn in Poland’s bid to destroy all of Russia and make everyone catholic. Because, hey – they always hated Russians.
  2. Same as above, but with Jews. Because, hey – the Jews always hated Russians and helped Poles to hate Russians. Here, look – i’m helping them right now1.
  3. Poland is the original European democracy and they are fighting the good fight for democracy in Belarus. I don’t rule this out.

1 And didn’t you know that it was the Jews that together with the Poles taught Russians to drink vodka in order to hurt the strength of Russian men and destroy their families?

Christian

I love BBC News. They are quite like the Encyclopedia Britannica – as unbiased as one can find.

This article tells about millions of Russians left in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Information about them is surprisingly hard to find, considering their huge numbers; nearly nil compared to the wealth of data about less than half-a-million Israelis in the West Bank Judea and Samaria. They are quiet and non-violent, stuck in a weird situation – their language remains dominant in business, politics and education, despite the local politicians’ efforts to eradicate it; the style of government that came with them, the Soviet one, is almost unchanged, except now it’s artificially anti-Russian (very artificially). And their life is not horribly bad, but kinda illogical. Russia, the successor state or USSR that sent them there for work and development does nothing in particular to bring them back, even now that Moscow doesn’t (seem to) have any special plans for these lands. That’s a lesson in demography. I wonder what it’s like to actually live there. It’s hard to write complete truth about this; indeed this article does little more than reminding the indifferent world that they exist.

But here’s the really interesting part: there is one sentence towards the end, which is not so encyclopedic:

“The presence of a European and Christian population is a factor that encourages secular government. It’s a valuable yeast now in these countries,” Mr Starr said.

I don’t know exactly what this organization, “Central Asia Caucasus Institute”, that the said Mr Starr represents, is. But these are the curious points to note here:

  1. He calls Russians “Europeans”. Whatever.
  2. He calls Russians “Christian”. Almost all of them are atheists. If there would be a notable wave of Orthodox resurrection, i would hear about it. True, they are not Muslim, but that doesn’t exactly make you Christian. And the locals are not so Muslim either.
  3. He calls Russians “population”. On the behalf of Russians, i dare to proclaim myself offended.
  4. The most contradictive part, if you haven’t noticed it yet: Mr Starr says that Christian population encourages secular government.

And this is the New World Order for you: Christianity doesn’t mean Christianity anymore. It just means belonging to an amorphic, declining and suicidal pseudo-European civilization, whose relation to actual Christianity is – you guessed it – artificial.

It’s evolution, baby.

Politik

I don’t really want to turn this blog into a political news blog in which i fake being a professional journalist topping it with my uneducated reactionist opinion. I’ve got better things to do. I thought about that and then realized that there are no significant political blogs in Israel. In the USA they are a big deal, a real player in the political media scene. Many of them are famous in their own right and are read daily by thousands (i would name some, but i don’t know any myself, because i don’t actually care about American politics). But in Israel there are none. They exist – on Tapuz, Israblog and maybe even here on Blogger, but i have never heard about any of them; they are not mentioned in other news outlets and don’t come up high on search engines, like their American peers. Israelis – including myself, i admit – like to sound their opinions on talkbacks on the major news sites, of which there are only about five and on discussion forums, which i used to frequent once, but that’s a habit that i kicked, luckily, long ago. Almost all of it is unreadable crap, of course. And that makes me think – here, i have an opportunity to be the true voice of Israel. To be read by CNN and BBC reporters and political analyzers. To provide a balanced (yeah, right) view to the foreign public. I just need to dedicate some time to it, write well, etc. In English and Hebrew. I can speak for Israelis like me – Israelis that love their country and are proud of it, without too much religious bigotry; who also happen to be young and not too full of shit. A little like rydel, who speaks for Belarus. He promotes himself well and without too much effort on Wikipedia. I could do the same. Or i could put my time to better use. Better? Or more individualistic?

Really, could i do that?

The Most Precious Thing in the World

It’s official. Proved by an independent body. Empiric. Scientific. Israel is ranked number one in Middle East at political freedom. Our freedom index is 8.20 out of 10. Expectedly, Lebanon and Morocco are numbers two and three but the following is a surprise: Iraq and Palestine are tied with an index of 5.05.

They could not take our pride.

Dictatorship Rulez

If you want to connect to the internet in North Korea, this is the only website you can read. But it is not really that bad, because it is the best website on the internet.

Tolstoy wouldn’t write a Russian sentence which is as beautiful as this:

Великий руководитель товарищ Ким Чен Ир подарил юбилейный стол Ли Ген Чхану, непереметнувшемуся узнику долгосрочного отбывания

Which means:

The great leader comrade Kim Jong Il have given a jubilee table to Li Gen Chan, a non-line-crossing prisoner of long-time serving

In my English translation it sounds just as beautiful as it does in Russian, i assure you.

Under the Influence

A strong smell is in the air – the stench of elections.

I must meditate. I must convince myself. I need to use auto-suggestion of all possible kinds to tell myself this: my life won’t change fot the better if i will learn about Arik Sharon’s, Amir Peretz’s or Yisrael Katz’s latest trick right now instead of learning about it a few hours later. It can and it will change for the worse. I must not care … too much. It is important, but not that important.

Oh (edit): In addition to “Made Me Cry” and “People Speaking”, i’m starting a new series, dedicated to those elections. I shall call it “Gathering Moss 17”, because it will be the 17’th time that Israelis elect a new Knesset, Knesset means “gathering” in Hebrew, most of the MK’s aren’t worth much more than moss, and “Gathering Moss” is a pretty good Super Furry Animals song.

Sorry About Being Anal

From now on, only registered Blogger.com users are allowed to comment.

It’s not a spam problem. I would just like to make sure that i know who writes this brilliant prose.

I tried this system and it seems that those who don’t have an account can get one rather easily and i hope it won’t scare future commenters (is that a word?).