Returns and Exchanges

Op-Ed Contributors - Lifting Iran’s Nuclear Veil - NYTimes.com

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:40:26 -0400

Op-Ed Contributors - Lifting Iran’s Nuclear Veil - NYTimes.com:

A precise assessment of Iran’s capability to enrich weapons-grade uranium in light of the discovery of the centrifuge facility at Qom. Bad news, my friends, if Iran’s obfuscation is allowed to continue. In the worst case (yet realistic, by some projections) scenario, Iran could have 5 nukes after the following 7 months. The possibility of other secret enrichment plants scattered all around Iran is quite high. Obama’s intelligence people better get cracking at tracing the secret sources of uranium trickling into Iran, so they can be shut down. Without this critical intel, the upcoming “talks” with Iran will prove yet another in a long string of “West gets duped by Iranian tactics” headlines. The margin for error right now is miniscule. Needless to say, crushing sanctions and a complete air, sea and land blockade of Iran is damn well the only thing that would work to stop Iran’s drive to nuclear weapons, short of all-out war.

"The Real Story About the Palestinians" by Steve Kramer

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:22:44 -0400

I highly recommend for everyone to read this. It makes quite clear that Palestinians are far from living in an “impossible situation,” as major news outlets consistently report and Israel bashers everywhere falsely scream. In fact, Pals enjoy a higher standard of living, on average, than Egyptian, Jordanian or Syrian Arabs. Naturally, therefore, Palestinians have no incentive to move to or live anywhere else other than the Western world, since the UNRWA and “blackmail payments” from Western countries keep them much better than afloat. No, Palestinians in the PA territories do not enjoy the same standard of living as Israeli Arabs, but this exception only further proves the rule. Thanks for the enlightening piece, Mr. Kramer.

——- Original Message ——- From: MS Kramer To: Jewish Times Sent: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 1:18 PM Subject: for 9 Oct: The Real Story about the Palestinians by Steve Kramer

THE REAL STORY by Steve Kramer

What’s the real story about the Palestinians? Are they in an “intolerable situation”, as President Obama said in his groundbreaking speech in Cairo? David P. Goldman says, “The simplest explanation is that they [Palestinians] like it there [West Bank and Gaza], because they are much better off than people of similar capacities in other Arab countries.”

How’s that? Palestinians are better off than many other Arabs? Goldman, in his article “Palestine problem hopeless, but not serious,” give the facts. “The standard tables of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita show the West Bank and Gaza at US$1,700, just below Egypt’s $1,900 and significantly below Syria’s $2,250 and Jordan’s $3,000. GDP does not include foreign aid, however, which adds roughly 30% to spendable funds in the Palestinian territories.”

Goldman doesn’t accept population figures from UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. He says, “Adjusting for the Begin-Sadat Center population count [www.biu.ac.il] and adding in foreign aid, GDP per capita in the West Bank and Gaza comes to $3,380, much higher than in Egypt and significantly higher than in Syria or Jordan. Why should any Palestinian refugee resettle in a neighboring Arab country?”

From the UN website: “Under UNRWA’s operational definition, Palestine refugees are persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict.” In contrast to the counting of any other refugee population, the UN gives refugee status to subsequent generations of Palestinians. The result is that the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Arabs who may have lived in Palestine for only two years are counted as “Palestinian refugees”. [Emphasis added.]

UNRWA receives compensation per capita, so the more refugees, the more money pours into the agency, which itself employs tens of thousands of Palestinians. Obviously this situation encourages the over-counting of the population and under-recording of deaths. The population figures from the Begin-Sedat Center show an UNRWA disparity of more than one million people!

Goldman writes, “Without disputing Obama’s claim that life for the Palestinians is intolerable, it is fair to ask: where is life not intolerable in the Arab world? When the first UN Arab Development Report appeared in 2002, it elicited comments such as this one from the London Economist: ‘With barely an exception, its [the Arab world’s] autocratic rulers, whether presidents or kings, give up their authority only when they die; its elections are a sick joke; half its people are treated as lesser legal and economic beings, and more than half its young, burdened by joblessness and stifled by conservative religious tradition, are said to want to get out of the place as soon as they can.’”

“Palestinian Arabs are highly literate, richer and healthier than people in most other Arab countries, thanks to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the blackmail payments of Western as well as Arab governments. As refugees, they live longer and better than their counterparts in adjacent Arab countries. It is not surprising that they do not want to be absorbed into other Arab countries and cease to be refugees.”

Goldman avers that the Palestinians are blackmailing the West, which is reluctant to defend itself against Palestinian terrorism. He says they have no other obvious source of income other than handouts, due to a lack of industry, natural resources and infrastructure. “The Palestinians cannot form a normal state. They cannot emigrate to Arab countries without accepting a catastrophic decline in living standards, and very few can emigrate to Western countries. The optimal solution for the Palestinians is to demand a state and blackmail Western and Arab donors with the threat of violence, but never actually get one [a state]. That is why the Palestinian issue is hopeless, but not serious.” I find Goldman’s argument compelling, given the fact that the Palestinians concentrate more on destroying the Jewish state than building a state of their own. The West condones this behavior, preferring that Israel bears the brunt of Palestinian terror.

What’s the real story about Palestinians being made homeless in Jerusalem? President Obama has declared that Israelis (that is, Jews) have no right to evict two families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, a predominantly Arab neighborhood in Jerusalem. Actually, Obama has said that Israelis shouldn’t build anywhere near the Palestinians, neither in Jerusalem nor in the West Bank. What’s up with that?

Sheikh Jarrah is as good an example as any of the misperception about Palestinian “rights” to the land. Seth Frantzman, in his recent article, “Terra Incognita: East Jerusalem’s lost years,” outlines the history of the neighborhood, putting the situation into its proper context. “What is today called Sheikh Jarrah, in the 19th century included two Jewish neighborhoods known as Nahalat Shimon and Shimon HaTzadiq. The latter commemorated Simon the Just, a Jewish high priest from the 4th century AD and was purchased by Jews in 1876. Nahalat Shimon was built by Sephardic and Yemenite Jews in 1891. Sheikh Jarrah was primarily a Jewish neighborhood in the late 19th century and remained so up until 1948.”

Muslims began building in the neighborhood around the same time as the Jews. By the end of the 19^th century, Sheikh Jarrah was a “cosmopolitan neighborhood that included the American Colony compound, St. George’s Anglican Cathedral, an ancient Muslim mosque commemorating a soldier of Saladin and the ‘Graves of the Kings’, a site with graves of various Jewish figures, which had been acquired by a Jewish family and given to the French government in the 19th century.”

Frantzman continues: “In December of 1947 fighting broke out between Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem. Initially the leading Muslim families asked Arab fighters from outside the city to leave their neighborhood, and the Jews [residing] there, in peace. By March 1948, however, Arabs from a unit called “al Shabab” (The Youth) invaded the neighborhood [Sheikh Jarrah] and set the Jewish synagogues and houses on fire, causing the residents to flee. In April, the Hadassah Convoy massacre, where 79 Jews were murdered, took place in the neighborhood.”

Other Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem were destroyed in Israel’s War of Independence, including parts of Silwan (David’s City), where Yemenite Jews had settled in 1882, and the Old City’s Jewish Quarter, which was razed in 1948 by the Jordanians.

After 1948 East Jerusalem was occupied by Jordan, dividing Jerusalem into Jordanian controlled East Jerusalem and the modern, Jewish West Jerusalem. The Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site, was closed to Jews. The Christian population of East Jerusalem during Jordanian occupation dropped from about 30,000 to 11,000. The UN settled Palestinian refugees in East Jerusalem, including in the disputed houses in Sheikh Jarrah. Beginning in 1956, Jewish graves on the Mount of Olives, Judaism’s most storied gravesites, were destroyed. 38,000 grave stones were removed and used in construction by the Jordanians.

Frantzman’s conclusion: “In fact, none of the rampant destruction of Jewish sites in Jerusalem was condemned by the UN during the period of Jordanian rule.

Had the international community cared then as much as it does now, perhaps the disputes would not have come about. If people understood more about the period of Jordanian rule and the dynamic Arab changes of Jerusalem, one might better understand the actual history of the city, rather than focusing merely on Israeli actions and Palestinian victimization.”

Both Goldman and Frantzman point out the emphasis by the media on Palestinian victimization, with little mention of Jewish victimization and Jewish rights. Jews have an ancient history in Israel. Even in the modern period, Jewish claims often precede those of the Palestinians. The Palestinians will never have their own state unless they are willing to recognize that Israel is the Jewish state. That’s the real story about the Palestinians.

(To read either article in full, search on the web for the article title and author.)

Rematch of Karpov and Kasparov Reflects New State of Chess - WSJ.com

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 01:08:25 -0400

Rematch of Karpov and Kasparov Reflects New State of Chess - WSJ.com:

This is an absolute dream rematch for a child of the 80s, especially one born in Russia and whose childhood hero was Kasparov. Too bad Karpov is but a shadow of his old self to make this intriguing…

William Safire, Nixon Speechwriter and Times Columnist, Is Dead at 79 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 15:12:44 -0400

William Safire, Nixon Speechwriter and Times Columnist, Is Dead at 79 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com:

R.I.P., Mr. Safire. You were an inspiration to untold writers, linguists, undergrads, and all people of uncommonly acute common sense. Your sharp and witty columns and insights into the corridors of power in D.C. and human nature will stand as the golden standard for years to come.

The Iran Attack Plan, in Wake of News on Qom - WSJ.com

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 11:47:18 -0400

The Iran Attack Plan, in Wake of News on Qom - WSJ.com:

An updated assessment of Israel’s military capacity to pre-emptively attack Iran to destroy at least part of its nuclear installations, dispersed purposely all around the country. While the author only briefly mentions Israel’s first- and second-strike nuclear submarine capability, as well as the ability to send nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles to permanently collapse such facilities as Natanz, which is largely underground, these capabilities, along with mid-air refueling ability and an apparent quid pro quo between Israel and its Arab neighbors for use of their airspace for an Iran strike in exchange for a settlement freeze (for now, only rumor, not independently verified), make the pre-emptive situation a lot more threatening to Iran than it lets on. The main component, as always, is the presence of lack of Israeli political will to defy Obama and Putin to protect itself. Israelis at all levels know all too well to refrain until the last possible moment (as in ‘67) to strike the enemy, but knows to strike first before the point of no return is reached. It is clear that Netanyahu and the generals don’t want to carry out this operation, but it is also apparent that they are ready to do so, if and when called upon.

Poem - "I Grow Weary of the Public Face"

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:38:06 -0400

“I Grow Weary of the Public Face”
By Yuri Kruman

__________________________

I grow weary of the public face
That saunters to and fro, in vain,
Parading, as impostors may, inside my inner sanctum’s hold.
- - - - - - - -
I.
A surreptitious genius watched a soiled and sand-filled litter box,
Dynastic hopes betwixt precocity, projection.
Impressed upon a brow unfurrowed by regret,
Cantankerous ambition nested, thin,
Beguiled by careless joy unknown to Daddy Dearest.
- -
With unaffected skill, I render myself masked for spectacle to come.
I toil to cut away that fat of life
Which startles men to riot for their souls.
To charge myself with glory to the end,
I dole out thinly veiled distractions to inconsequence.
- -
The vengeance stirred the lad, betrothed, beholden to four walls.
His innocence, returned, convenienced so the cosmic order.
Prepared he jealously, to watch, the wee bit one attain his due,
Yet something in his look of industry installed the ego to its rightful cavern.

Mary returned, in white; the summer’s over…She would be Magdalene this evening.
She was his rib, his mother, sister, essence, yet his equal. She held
The Cards, with him the dealer; they played this game to check the scales.
Instinctively embraced, and off from duty, he went to filter smoke and effervesce outside.

It would have been a stark departure, in days past or in lives untold.
Could have been war, or plague, or worse, to mold
His honorable christening away from bread and hearth.
Yet here he stood, steadfast, eliciting concision.
- -
II.
Incensed and famished at my lot, I flee the castle for the countryside.
The peasants scatter, lest they genuflect, for my importance knows no bounds.
Would I much rather they condense, before me, earth’s new dowry, perhaps,
Or send an honest tailor, in short order?

A part of me instructs my aimless wanderings away
From pilgrims, yet toward the Holy City.
I amble not to Dulcinea, courage, nor for truth.
Forgetting how to walk, perforce, for me presages idol worship.
- -
“The ice has moved.” He threw away the fag.
Igniting brush, the threat was carried out.
To sin, to feel unquenched, to celebrate his doubts,
He trained himself on errant, pulsing prey,
As if the hunt were nothing of its own.

He was assured, undressed, and pedestaled, apocalyptic kuros.
In stride, the fairer sex and demigods alike
So held his every utterance as hostage,
That naught may come to light save for his apostile.
- -
I hear the elves and sense the hermits in the wood.
I was not made to countenance such imprudence.
If I were lost here and forgotten, left in peace,
Would disappointed be the hounds with paltry hide instead?

I shall live out my days like Robin Hood,
With sympathy from villagers and theft from those grown fat.
I will require no sustenance save love from people and the Princess,
And need no band to heed command, as I am for myself.
- -
III.
Grown taxed by worship, dandy despot,
Our hero’s virulence was shadowed.
Of scribes and sycophants, pretenders, ‘twas no shortage; yet none were means to banish.
In thunderous, unheralded resolve, the Father-King stormed out, instructing none to follow.

Upon the parapet, in guise, the restless royal “We” were up in arms.
No longer doubts of self, nor care for rest, preoccupied him now.
A stultifying loneliness and doubt of purpose – so familiar…
He found himself and others in contempt.
- -
I venture weakly to the forest’s edge.
If I may find my death throes there, to hell be damned this impotence!
I spy a lass there, maybe Princess, so fair to view and bringing bread…
I shall not put her out of mind at all, and make her mine forever more!
- -
The tunic shed, a king disgraced, but never happier,
He fled the Holy City as if Acteon, beset by dogs.
The youth embraced his Princess at the door, grateful and hungry as the wolf,
Assuming rightful place as King of Kitchen Table.
- - - - - - - -
I grow weary of the public face
That saunters to and fro, in vain,
Parading, as impostors may, inside my inner sanctum’s hold.

Poem - Four Walls

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:36:56 -0400

Four Walls – by Yuri Kruman

I graduated school and moved into a new apartment.
A fourth floor “beauty” in a 5-floor walkup, with a loft.
The windows of this cave faced back; “the womb” I did not miss.
Illumined sources were consulted in deciding the very tembre of the tint of this abode.

Northwest exposure, I was stuck with a dreary inner courtyard to behold.
For lack of inspiration, I bought shades, erected lamps with mixed success.
By this light, to read tractates and print papers to present and compile.
By its absence to caress a smooth-skinned cello or to wail in silence.

Determined to remake the innards of the place with craftiness and guile,
I re-imagined it smartly, as I had seen others do it, now with a budget.
Roaches would be poisoned quickly; mice would be trapped and writhing in glue.
Walls would scream sophistication in cranberry and others eggshell, so reserved.

Invisible vanities could not be ignited by others, I as always convinced myself.
Not even by thoughts that meander in as uninvited guests, or worse, Chinese menus under the door.
All such intrusions from the past would be flattened with a flycatcher’s resolve.
The awe now radiated upstairs to Sven Ericsson, the famous Swedish writer in the loft.

I was invited over two weeks after moving in, at first for coffee, then a party.
Sven was as socially apt as he was a recluse; women wandered out
With the same rapture as that which they carried inside. Minimalism
Did not suit him or his fiery alcoholic innards, guarded by decorum.

This Sven had naught save inertia to continue in the vein of success.
I felt at an advantage for my youth, for boundless curiosity had long ceased to illumine his eyes.
He had a decorating acumen inherited from his mother, a lovely and cold Nordic woman.
This was an aspiration to earn for. I descended the stairs grudgingly.

Maestro Ericsson had spoken about the organicity of form which consumed him while Writing, at once upkeeping a modicum of arrogance and giving away little of use.
His sensualism was checked by social occasions and by a small measure, his mother.
This organicity was at once an uncompromising descent into a Wildean whirpool.

Upending the sacrosanctness of my own improvised temple with lingering glances,
I pondered what the myriad other sensualists and perverts and pious petit bourgeois
Had upended to make their existence “organic” or superficially self-consistent,
What shrines to artifice, what separate piles of familiar refuse they must have kept year to year.

How many had recognized their own faults and virtues in this shell,
How many more would praise or denigrate my objectively sad oyster?
I loitered on and scoured the walls and the other surfaces for what little of mine
Could have had time to inhabit this space, this intriguingly worthless collection of matter Awaiting its anti-matter for the instant trip to oblivion.

What have these procured, the walls and surfaces and windows?
Have they witnessed and absorbed an original idea or a grand pronouncement,
A witty retort or a worthy toast? Have they witnessed the
Progression of many life cycles, are they aware of their own impending liberation by the wrecking ball?

Are the babies and boys and young men and Misters and Maestros who were
All born in the same throes of unionization, in the beginning pleasant, in the end Cathartic, present in the masked holes and crevices that beheld geometric genius?
Where have the lullabies and admonitions, sighs and secrets send these mortal giants of flesh and wind?

- -
I prepared solemnly for the arrival of guests that obliged my humble noblesse,
The eminent symbols of concision and wit, as well-timed as well-placed.
The horror vacui of microinsects in my carpet was tested just cursorily.
The film of dust and hair and grime and habit made a run for the borders.

The heaviness of periodic complacency hid from all but the most motherly types.
Vegetables, mingled with fruits and nuts, became tanned in oil and spruced by acid.
Fish transmogrified into “sea bass à la mediteranée”; strange melons and berries swam in Molasses. All jumped into the gaping voids of educated people who braised the chef with Compliments, and laughed and coaxed and tickled and flattered and were fattened and Obliged.

Not a single guest had noticed an esoteric reference, not a single one
Irked by an undusted corner or sideswiped by a frank intimation.
In their own noblesse, they had forgotten to make deference to the references
Of another, ad finitum to a pregnant nothingness.

To what did I owe my existence? An accident of fate> A complex molecular
Tango? An encounter with eroded relevance save for a test result? Perhaps
The mother of my mother’s mothers, a Sarah, a Mother Earth, a Female G-d?
Do the four grandparents of DNA count in this grotesque equation? I wondered as I washed the dishes.

- -

A walk to Gramercy at night, a ritual of vested interests
Begotten vainly in ambition’s wake, occasioned singularly on this eve.
The rhyme and meter quickened at my temples, beholden to philosopher’s lament.
Perchance the brook of wisdom gestured gently at the entrance, a
Certain pathos veiled by an insincere curmudgeonry.

I looked about me as I made ascent and landing onto said high ground.
Before me passed parades of blackened cloth, here
Cut with purpose, there ripped absently. By habit turning into quiet
Lane, designed to be vicinitous of wealth, I cut a glance at setting
Sun, with torpor of red wine receding, thin.

One man of cloth, who gestured wildly at me, a poetic lad with aplomb,
Spouted truculent gospels with his gesticulating Greek arms.
In avoiding the “quixotic bum,” I inadvertently encouraged a
Performance of stultifying proportions. Looking up while passing by instinct,
The man, of visage most transfixingly aquiline and mythologically powerful
In its disarmament, I made as if to sideline him, but was mesmerized as
If by Medusa Gorgona. The curls themselves were unspeakably magnanimous.
And thus, the play unfolded before me, in a story as unusual to him as
Typical for the legions of other indisposed homebodies.

“I was a man of noble lineage, in Dante versed was I as of demeanor gentle.
My father, out of honor, had me to West Point to learn,
The finest forms of New World gallantry. Betwixt my lessons of
Great armaments and battles, of handling, discharging duty thus, was raised I
At the teat of Gaea and mighty Aristotle’s feet.
In battle was I undeserving, Euphrates being of virgin lore.
My arms I then uplifted up and over, and sat in brig for those 3 months.
Upon dishonorable mention, my father led me to the door.
Eviction was but a catharsis, one I had never had before.”

- -
In sympathetic understanding, I managed brother to console
I bid him well and good and then adieu, with twenty dollars
To get him precious little provenance. My paces quickened ‘round the fence, blacker than Night. The last true privacy of spirit, displayed therein, under lock and key.
The ultimate pedestrian of plenty closed there the door for end of day’s third shift.

I stood there, gaping at the darkness, outlined in shapes of naked branch and dying leaf.
The lawn’s due shimmered still with light of taxis; I stammered on around.
“Eviction,” thought I, “and what of it? What danger have I of Brooklyn living?
After all, a stable job awaits me in the morrow, a home, a personable hearth.
The very thought was damnable and shameful, yet hardly did it matter.
Compulsively obsessed had I become of sudden, the terrors filling me like sponge cake.
What if I were to get evicted? What if this price I mayn’t afford?
How shall my very life continue, on what wouldst essence, mine, then feed?
I am not made to live my days in anonymity. I shall inhabit no other hill!”
My scraping boots resumed a soldier’s march to them, my four walls of relief.

I nearly fell in my enthusiasm, as the stairs had other ideas.
My neighbor, the super, gave a dirty look that stayed accusatively, and fell off
As a reproach and a good riddance, even as a falsely friendly “Good Evening” escaped.
I fumbled with my keys uncharacteristically, and slammed the door, as if the real jail Were on the outside. I let my feet dangle off the couch as I sat back and thought,
“Take this and evict it, asshole.”
Hours later, my eyes closed with the dew of wisdom shining,
“Morning is always wiser than the night.”

On my desk at 9:05 AM, I detected a peculiar pink slip and an order to be out by noon.
I huffawed and guffawed and accepted the verdict, and left the floor.
Escalator or elevator?

Photo

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:09:45 -0400