April Fools

"Been a Long Time since I rock and Rolled!" I shake my head whenever I reference a rock band as decadent as the Led Zeppelin. Their glory days of wanton English Rock Blues wanderings across America in the 1970s combined immoral excess and soaring, anthemic rock music into a potent brew that remains with every Zep fan of that age. That is, if you were into their sound then, you're into their sound now; it sticks to your memory banks and continues to entertain. So I plead guilty to subscribing to the Zeppeling-line of thought. By the way, the picture to your right came from the "official Led Zeppelin Website, http://www.ledzeppelin.com/." Visit the website for the multimedia scoop on this legendary band.

The verse I quote above, of course, comes from their song Rock and Roll, and the lyric describes the attention I have been giving this website for the last two months, when in fact much has occurred. Like what you may ask? Well, like BASEBALL SEASON! With Detroit Tigers attempting another run to the playoffs. They missed it last year, and the year before lost in the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals in 2006, and now, Good Grief, they begin the season losing game after game. Their record currently is 3-10, but their looking to sweep the Minnesota Twins for their first sweep of the season. Come on Tigers!

Visit their Official Major League Website at http://detroit.tigers.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=det


President Jimmy Carter is visiting the Middle East in his capacity as diplomat, peacemaker, gadfly. He plans to talk to Khaled Meshal, the exiled leader of Hamas in Syria. President Carter says that not negotiating with your enemy is counterproductive. I would have have to agree. As much as I dislike Hamas and their style of governance, and their public rhetoric against Israel and support for low-level resistance against Israel's violent occupation, there is value in talking to them and persuading them to lay off the anti-Israel rhetoric, and publicly state their acceptance of a two-state solution to the Palestine-Israel conflict. Of course, it would also help if Israeli actions were in sync with its public statements of the need to erect and support a democratic Palestine in the West Bank. It is shameful that Israel has shunned President Carter's visit to Israel and Palestine because of his political philosophy. After all, his efforts in the 1970s secured a peace treaty with Egypt, which in turn allowed Israel to focus her attention on its colonization of the West Bank and Gaza. President Carter has devoted his life to peace and justice throughout the world for everyone. Treating him with diplomatic disdain like this is a truly classless act for which Israel should be embarrassed and ashamed. I hope President Carter can knock some sense into Hamas.

I ran across an interesting article, keeping the subject focused on the Middle East, and this article concerns Israel's purchase of oil from Iran. Israel enjoys calling attention to Iran's purported nuclear weapons program, and scolding people who do business with Iran, but it happily purchases oil from the country, know full well where the oil comes from. I bet America gets lots of oil from Iran also. And Iran also, while calling for Israel's dismantling, has no problem selling oil to her. All this talk about boycotting Iran and shunning Israel appears to be a sham when money and energy needs are involved.

Article from commentisfree.guardian.co.uk - Israel's Tehran connection

In the Words of Noam Chomsky

I have always enjoyed Noam Chomsky's droll, but heavily researched writings on the Arab-Israeli conflict. He speaks with an eloquence and authority that is virtually unmatched in the world of talking heads that dominate mainstream American commentary on this tortured war between two Semitic tribes. Unfortunately, his brilliance and commanding knowledge of chains of events that precede dramatic and violent acts rarely makes it to the dominant airwaves, and we are left with an abysmally superficial, one-sided narrative of the war between Jews and Arabs.

Mr. Chomsky, world-renowned linguist and first-rate critic of American foreign policy now writes about the recent assassination of a certain Imad Moughniyeh, a senior commander
of Hezbollah,in Damascus, Syria. American State Department officials hailed it as a triumph in our war on terror. But who was this man? And how is his death a blow to terrorism? And what does the word mean anyways? Is the word terrorism a useful term or one so laden with political, prejudicial bias that it is rendered meaningless to a more discerning public? Read the article by Professor Chomsky and decide for yourself. His writings are really required reading for folks interested in the Middle East Wars.


The World's Most Wanted - by Noam Chomsky

Let's See . . . . What's New?

Tons of things, like tonight a Lunar Eclipse entertaining Earthlings in the Western Hemisphere. Always a nice show for terrestrial sentients, if anything to pry people away from the gadgets and gizmos for a second to look up into the heavens. Check out the Astronet, a Dutch-based website on all things astronomical, for a preview of this celestial event.

My favorite website for world affairs, antiwar.com, is having their regular fundraiser. I would encourage all armchair foreign ministers who care about war and are angered at those who advance it to support this important web-based portal to alternative viewpoints on the state of the world today.

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows a certain Hans Schlegel, a German astronaut, doing a spacewalk and working on the Columbus Laboratory which is now a part of the International Space Station. Note the German flag on his sleeve.

Upcoming and beyond

By the end of the week I'll be in New York, NY for a couple of days, getting acquainted with the GAPP Exchange Program that I inherited from the former German teacher at Enloe High. She worked hard to create the exchange with a school in Schwetzingen, German, who are looking forward to a visit this summer from a group of German students at Enloe. At their website, linked above, the Hebel Gymnasium has a nice log of their time spent in Raleigh North Carolina. It's in German, but any translator could render it in readable English for you, if interested. I'd recommend freentranslation.com. I am working hard to get things in place for this monumental visit. International travel I am familiar with, but carting and supervisors teenagers overseas I am not; regardless I am moving ahead. The kids who've expressed an interest in spending three weeks in Schwetzingen and German are excellent students, however, so I forsee no problems at all. The picture to your left is one I took the last time I was in New York, in 2004. Looking forward to another visit to that grand city.

So if I do go to Germany this summer, I'd probably skip again travelling to Ramallah, Palestine, which had consumed my summers of 2005 and 2006. Those were fantastic trips, but last summer of 2007 I chose to remain stateside, for various reasons. Travelling to that region, however rewarding it always has been, can be difficult for many Americans. An utter irony, given the fact that Israel, recipient of unimaginable financial and diplomatic largesse frm American taxpayers, controls the borders to the Palestinian territories. Click the picture to the right to see a short collection of photos I took of Ramallah, Jerusalem and Bethlehem in the Summer of 2005.

Speaking of that wretched part of the world, I take issue of course with our Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice pusing for a UN Security Council resolution against Iran's alleged nuclear program. Even after a National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran had halted its drive to acquire and develop nuclear weapons, America still wants to beat the drums of war against that Islamic Republic. All the while Israel maintains a squeeze on the open air prison that is Gaza and while Hamas hardcores continue to launch crude homemade missiles into southern Israel. I mean, how about a UN Security Council resolution demanding an end to the siege of Gaza's 1.3 millions Palestinians and an immediate start to negotiations that would result in a peace treaty between Gaza, the West Bank and Israel? Resolution to that age-old conflict would do more to strengthen our security than provoking Iran into a war with us. Clicking the picture to your left will lead you to a Yahoo! Slide show of the conflict in Gaza and southern Israel.

January is here, 2008

Two-thousand and eight is already shaping up to be a great year. I ushered it in after a fantastic visit to Michigan for my brother's wedding, and now I am chest-deep in teaching German at Enloe High. Which by the going great....what kinds of things are we doing in the five levels of German I teach? In German 3, we are learning key vocabulary in reminiscing, for instance, at class reunions or family reunions, and they're also studying elements of searching and securing a job. We also played a terrific game, Hansa, that purports to simulate sailing experience in the Hanseatic League of the 13th and 14th centuries. We'll continue to read about the Hansa in our class. As far as grammar goes, double infinitives with modal verbs, past tense, indicative and subjunctive, of said verbs, etc.

AP German are lampooning our current crop of American presidential candidates; they deserve to be ridiculed and also praised; their lampoons will include their platforms expressed in German key phrases and statements.

German 4 are preparing a skit between a therapist and patient who is having doubts about his current family situation. I hope to get audio recordings of their efforts online shortly.

German 1 are writing postcards describing an eating establishment in the German city of Mittenwald, learning how to order food and drinks from an ice cream parlor, and future tense.

German 2 are writing postcards about a sojourn in Düsseldorf while preparing a skit concerning a visit to a department store.

It's a crazy week, in that I want to finish these chapters and projects before the end of the week, which thereby ends the semester, so I am driving the kids fairly hard in class. They ar eup to the task.

More news? I ran across an article written by John Mearsheimer, who along with Stephen Walt wrote a devastating critique last year of America's relationship with Israel, and this new article by the bold Professor states eloquently what I have said all along: American politicians unwavering support, uncritical support of Israel does no party involved in the conflict any favors. Instead of coddling Israel's failed leadership while supporting its economy with billions of American dollars, we should be smartly pressuring them to make peace with the Palestinians in a two-state solution and do it NOW. American should not tolerate breaches of agreements by Israel and should assist them them in making a secure and lasting peace. It'll do the world many a favor. The name of the article is Candidates’ Unconditional Support Isn’t Right for Jewish State and is a good read about the nefarious nature of America's special relationship with this rather belligerent state in the Middle East. And if you want to read the critique they published about America and Israel, then zoom to Amazon and read about the book they created from their paper. The actual article, The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy, is also available online.

Because in the end, solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict equitably would largely deflate Muslim animus toward America and the West, despite what the pundits want to tell you.

By the Mearsheimer article was found at an interesting left-leaning website called commandreams.org - Breaking News and Views for the Progressive Community.

What's Going on?

It's high time I update this blog. Sorry for the delay. Not that anyone ever reads it, although I do get comments from students about it. Ah, yes, those Enloe students. I send them with great regularity to kandah.org to get their assignments, and they notice the lack of updates at the main page. So astute they are.

I recently completed the book The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East, by the incomparable Robert Fisk. He's a correspondent for the British newspaper the Independent, and he's based in the Middle East and has been for many a year. Robert Fisk has been covering wars in the all the tormented regions of the Middle East for years, and his firsthand accounts of the atrocities and the politics and the bloodthirsty megalomania of the conflicts' main players are unsparing and without peer. The most astounding aspect of this dense and compelling book is the thread that winds its way throughout: the Western powers' zeal to control and manage the regions according to its own geopolitical goals has resulted time and again in failure. Nobody has been able to force the Arabs and Persians to bend completely to the will of the Western powers, and current attempts to forge new realities on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan through military means is yet another example of the failures of Anglo-American foreign policy folly. We in the West simply continually to repeat mistakes of the past. We support corrupt dictators, and when they begin to put the interest of the countrymen above that of the American interests, we work, either explicitly or covertly to undermine and take down the regime. It's depressing, this book is, but Americans need to know how bankrupt American foreign policy is the primary cause of the regions current political malaise.

I am working my way through a Pimsleur series of language CDs, namely, Eastern Arabic I. My familiarity with this particular dialect of Arabic is generally advanced, but I thought I could benefit from a more aural, formalized course of study in the language. The dialect offered in this particular series is closer to that spoken in say Damascus Syria than the one I would be more exposed to in Palestine, but I am skilled enough the appropriate lexical and pronunciation adjustments. I would recommend the series. Makes for decent listening on my 45 minute jaunt to work very morning.

Step Right up

I stumbled across an interesting article in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, which by the way is an excellent source of news about Israel and its struggle with Palestinian nationalism. The article describes how Arab Christian clergyman, representing a tiny minority of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, are now being prevented from traveling easily from church to church in the lands they minister. Now, Israel has always limited movement of Palestinians in the lands they occupy militarily, mostly in rather cruel and overbearing ways, but in this case Christians, whom Israel has historically supported in Arab lands, are now bearing the brunt of these restrictions imposed on the non-Jewish majority in the West Bank and Gaza. My point is, since American Christian groups are quick to cry foul when they feel their rights to practice their religion are trampled upon, I would hope they would file formal complaints with the Israeli government on the treatment of Arab Christian ministers. And perhaps some will protest; my faith in the human race to express support for oppressed peoples remains strong. But given the recent lovefests between American Christian groups and Israeli Zionists, a bizarre, self-serving relationship if there ever was once, I am afraid this violation of the right of Christians to practice their religion in the lands of their birth might go unnoticed.

The pictures in this section are ones I took at the Church of the Holy Sepulchure in Jerusalem. The massive edifice is a testament to the significance Jerusalem and its environs should hold for the Christians of the world. Let's hope that Israel's propaganda allies in the American Christian Church, mostly a conglomerate of ultra-rich, rabid right-wing Evangelical sects, step right up and condemn the restrictions imposed on their brothers in the future Palestinian state. Read the article:

Israel rescinds Arab Christian clergy travel rights in W. Bank - Haaretz - Israel News