What Now?
How did this make it but “kum fumble” didn’t? Why do you torture me so, Urban Dictionary? You can’t kum punt without first kum fumbling. You’ve ruined me.
-J91@u$
A Fair Assessment
Gaza strategy divides Israeli military analysts
Sharp differences of opinion over how Israel can achieve aim of reducing Palestinian rocket fire
Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 December 2008 16.16 GMT
Israel has said the goal of the past three days of intense bombing in Gaza is to stop rockets being fired by Palestinian militants into southern Israeli towns.
The rockets have claimed fewer than 20 lives in the past eight years, but have become an increasingly serious problem for the Israeli government.
To reduce the rocket fire, Israeli military analysts argue, is a modest goal. However, even within Israel there remain sharp differences of opinion about how to achieve that.
Most believe the latest conflict will eventually end with a new lull in the fighting, or at best another short-term ceasefire agreement – the latest in a long line of temporary ceasefires in the conflict between Israel and militants in Gaza.
Although Israel has put in place some preparations for a major ground invasion – preparing a call-up of reserves and deploying tanks near the Gaza border – that is still seen as by no means an inevitable step.
Shlomo Brom, a retired Israeli general and a military analyst at the Institute for National Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv, said the point of the conflict was for Israel to exact the best conditions it could in a future ceasefire with Hamas, the Islamist movement which controls Gaza after winning Palestinian elections three years ago.
“The military operation is changing the dynamic, making it clear to Hamas that it is going to pay a very high cost for violations of the ceasefire,” Brom said. “I think Hamas deluded itself by thinking Israel is kind of paralysed because of its political system or the possible reaction of its population to some suffering.”
For nearly six months until mid-December Israel and Hamas held a ceasefire in Gaza, although it broke down in the final weeks with violations on both sides. Now both Hamas and some Israeli leaders have said they are not willing to return to a ceasefire deal.
Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, told Fox News on Saturday when the bombing began: “For us to be asked to have a ceasefire with Hamas is like asking you [the US] to have a ceasefire with al-Qaida. It’s something we cannot really accept.”
Despite his words, the reality is that a new ceasefire agreement is probably the best Israel could hope to achieve. As Alex Fishman, a columnist in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, put it bluntly today: “The answer to the question of what we want is simple: To stop the fire. In order to stop the fire, we have to reach an arrangement, and in order to persuade Hamas to reach an arrangement, we are now breaking its bones – among other reasons, so that the price it demands will not be high,” he wrote. “But we have not yet decided, amongst ourselves, what price we are willing to pay.”
Yet there are others who raise broader questions about Israel’s policy towards Gaza, particularly in the past three years since Hamas won the surprise electoral victory.
Yossi Alpher, a former senior official at Mossad and a military commentator, agreed that Israel was seeking a ceasefire on more acceptable terms. But he was critical of the tough economic blockade Israel has imposed on the Gaza Strip in recent years, limiting imports to humanitarian supplies and preventing all exports, a policy that has all but wiped out private industry and brought Gaza’s economy to collapse.
“The economic siege of Gaza has not produced any of the desired political results,” he said. “It has not manipulated Palestinians into hating Hamas, but has probably been counter-productive. It is just useless collective punishment.”
He said that in future Israel would have to choose either to recognise Hamas was around to stay and to talk to the movement, however unpalatable that might be for most Israelis, or to fully re-occupy the Gaza Strip, topple Hamas and bear all the costs involved.
Some have even spoken out publicly against the current devastating bombing in Gaza. Tom Segev, one of Israel’s most respected historians, has been particularly critical, arguing that the premise of bombing to secure a peace agreement was false. The government was failing to learn the lessons of the past, he said.
“Israel has also always believed that causing suffering to Palestinian civilians would make them rebel against their national leaders. This assumption has proven wrong over and over,” Segev wrote in yesterday’s Ha’aretz newspaper. “Since the dawn of the Zionist presence in the Land of Israel, no military operation has ever advanced dialogue with the Palestinians.”
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
You’ll Go To Hell For What Your Dirty Mind Is Thinking
A Book of Matches=recording.
In other news:
Does anyone want to buy my Macbook Pro?
</JGlaus>
Liars Own The World
I bought a textbook for college. The semester is over and now I’m going to sell the book on Amazon since I don’t need it anymore. This is perfectly legal. I could sell it on the streets and that would also be legal. The writer, publisher, editor, and everyone else involved with the making of that book won’t see a single penny from my sale. MP3’s don’t magically appear on the internet. Someone bought a cd, ripped it to their computer, and uploaded it to the internet. If I then download the MP3 that someone else uploaded, that’s illegal. Got milk?
-JGlaus
Dear Diary
Before the internet, people just kept journals; now we have blogs. Most people would describe a blog as an internet journal. On the surface, this is correct. The only apparent difference is that a journal is generally written in a book, but a blog is typed on a computer. Other than that, they are essentially the same. In both a blog and a journal people write about their experiences, their feelings, and their thoughts. However, while the blog and the journal may be a similar medium, they both serve very different purposes.
Except for the diaries of famous dead people, journals are typically private. They act as a way to express one’s feelings or recount the day. Keeping a journal is a good exercise for your brain. Recounting the events of the day improves memory skills, while expressing your thoughts and feelings boosts intelligence and enhances communication. But whether your journal is simply a retelling of your experiences or a cathartic way to get out your feelings, it is your own personal tool for doing so.
So how is a blog any different? Well, if you’ve ever kept a journal, most likely no one has ever read it. It is usually something private. There is the cliché of the bratty little brother stealing his sisters diary and finding out about all her secret crushes. The blog, though, is published on the internet and has the potential to be read by thousands of people.
You could make the argument that people write blogs instead of journals purely because computers have replaced the pen and paper, and therefore a blog is not just for attention. But if this were true, why wouldn’t people just type up documents and save them on their computer instead of publishing it to the internet?
This doesn’t just apply to blogs. Any form of art that is created and put on display is done so for a reason. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I’m not making a judgment. I’m not really saying much at all. It might not be done purely for attention. Maybe it’s part of our very human need to connect to others; to know we’re not alone in what we’re feeling (I apologize to all my English teachers for using a semicolon up there). Anyway. I started writing this post a long time ago and just found it again and decided to finish it. So there’s that. Think about things. It’s healthy.
-JGlaus
I Didn’t Write This
The Dark Knight: Not the Best Superhero Movie Ever
(Warning: although I don’t spoil specific plot points, I do discuss in depth some themes of the movie that would give a lot away.)
Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight is not the best superhero movie ever.
The good superhero movies of recent years (Spider-Man 2, Iron Man) have followed a fairly standard plot structure: the superhero’s powers define not only his own moral code, but the framework of his nemesis. What takes place in the course of the story is the external projection of an internal struggle, until the superhero defeats his enemy in a fistfight symbolic of the overtaking of his own demons.
Batman Begins, in my opinion, was the best superhero movie of all time for this reason. Bruce Wayne’s “powers” come to him through his dedication to the greater cause of Justice. Alfred represents his own conscience, and Ra’s Al-Ghul articulates the thirst for vengeance that sleeps deep down inside Batman. Ultimately, Wayne’s moral code triumphs: that of justice, not born of vigilantism, but out of a real thirst for peace and harmony.
The Dark Knight has its own superhero: Harvey Dent. He is described throughout as the “white knight” of Gotham, while Batman’s “dark knight” moniker is only implied by contrast to it. The real dychotomy, the dialog that takes place in The Dark Knight is between Batman and Harvey Dent. Batman is initially rendered obsolete by Harvey Dent, who rallies Gotham under his leadership and banishes the ghosts of crime. Harvey Dent couldn’t have accomplished this without Batman, of course; but Batman likewise needs Harvey Dent to center his morals in a coherent frame. Dent, quite simply, is the pillar on which Batman’s moral code rests. Without Dent, there would be no justice in the way Batman envisions it.
And then the Joker comes in. He is not a villain in any traditional sense of the word. Even using the word “character” is rather inappropriate. The Joker’s role in The Dark Knight is closer to that of the Oracle in homerian tales, which announces the wrath of the gods. He is the Oracle, but also the god itself, striking chaos into the heart of Gotham. He is not a terrorist but Terror itself. He is Shiva, come to this world to test its mettle. To test Batman and Dent’s equilibrium.
The sense of gloom and despair seeping out of The Dark Knight comes from this very traditional device of the Oracle announcing impending doom, then the gods enacting it. The Joker never loses; he is never truly put to the test. All he does is carry out his plans, assaulting not only Gotham, but Batman and Harvey Dent’s own moral framework. The Joker puts it in sublime terms himself when he says to Dent, “I am just a mad dog chasing cars.”
Until the framework breaks.
What happens next is the deconstruction of the white knight: how Harvey Dent’s approach simply cannot work in the context of chaos and social frenzy brought on by the Joker. Dent holds on for the longest time, while Bruce Wayne doubts his own role, as he naively sees himself as a white knight lurking in shadows. Alfred is the first one to point out the need for a new approach, that of realism: “Endure. You can be the outcast. You can make the choice that no one else will face – the right choice.”
And so, as the white knight of Gotham falls and becomes a creature of pure chance, the Dark Knight rises from its shadow.
Batman, who will spy on the whole of Gotham to get at his enemies. Batman, whom cops fear and accuse of murder. Batman, who must take upon himself the pain and anger of others so the city will endure. Gordon says it himself: Batman is not a hero. He’s a guardian.
Batman rises from the corpse of Harvey Dent like a malevolent shadow, prepared not to do what’s right, but what’s necessary. The Joker never won, and never lost; he is above this contest. He defines it, rather than play a part in it. Chaos has come and gone, and the balance is broken.
The Dark Knight is a morality tale, a conflict between two men in balance who see their roles crushed by the arrival of fate. It is a moral tale of the post-9/11 era, where good and evil simply dissolve in the face of chaos, and we are left to wonder how to reframe the world.
And that is why The Dark Knight is not the best superhero movie ever. It is something entirely different, much darker, and much more satisfying.
+ + +
Update [2008-07-22 18:30]: I just want to point out that I’m not dismissive of the source material, or of the medium of comicbooks here. I’m fairly well-read in comics, and my point was more addressed to the existing conventions of superhero movies. Thing is, superhero movies, even when excellent, follow a fairly simple superhero formula. The Dark Knight, in my opinion, really transcends this formula, and offers a story that is set in the superhero genre, but well outside the superhero movie formula. The title of this post was specifically chosen to counter expectations, but loses in clarity. Hope that makes more sense.
-Daniel Roy
