Fragments

See also..poems 2010

Yoav
died from burns and shock and loss of blood
after his tank was hit
in the Saluki Valley
Lebanon
aged 21


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Everyone knows that the BBC has a programmatic agenda to demonise and dehumanise Israel and Israelis and that this agenda has been part of its corporate culture for the last 40 years. A young reporter who joins the organisation can quickly gain acceptance and approval from both peers and from those higher up in the hierarchy by producing news items which portray Israelis as brutal oppressors, or as corrupt, or as fanatical zealots, and Palestinians as an exploited indigenous people who nevertheless seek peace and accommodation. By contrast, having the courage to see or say otherwise is a revolt against the tacit concensus, and will quickly lead to punitive sanctions - social ostracision, or being fired on one or other pretext.
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I don't live in Israel because the narrative which took me there in the first place - two months before my 18th birthday - has been contaminated by another narrative to which I do not relate, or which I cannot relate to with enough of my being to make it possible for me to add to and perpetuate myself as part of that narrative.

I don't like the triumphalist discourse which has developed, or the viewing of territory and possession of territory as a value in of itself. territory must serve the people whose lives it was meant to enhance, not the other way round, else the whole thing becomes absurdly circular. Establish the State of Israel to redeem the Jewish people from their powerlessness, but if the Jewish people need always to serve the state of Israel and sacrifice themselves for it in order that it might be there to one day redeem them, then who is benefitting. Nevertheless the energy and vitality there are astounding - much more so than in carrot up the arse upper midle class Australia.

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I like them meat and milk..first the milk, then the meat, which is anyway permissible
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Comic possibility: the serial mangling of the Jewish surnames by the British/ Australian staff @ Emanuel

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Treat your love
to a Valentine day's special
juicy grain fed steak
prodded along with electric prods
to the

Treat her to a blood Diamond from Angola or the Congo

Celebrate!


In this world (and which world is this? It all depends on you...) it's often about choosing the lesser evil rather than the greatest good. I find this thought comforting when having to make difficult "choices" (assuming there is such a thing as choice) where something suffers, no matter what option is chosen.
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Here is a contradiction. How can I (supposedly) care about the whole, when I often resent and dislike many of the whole's component parts? How can I care about saving the earth (what a conceit!) when I resent or want to get rid of the person who parks me in, or the people whose party keeps me awake all night, or the people who left shards of glass on the children's playground, or all the people around me whose actions did not conform to my expectations, or even the ants that have invaded my worm farm, or the cockroaches who have invaded our flat ? Whose left to save the earth for? Riddle me that.

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The spirituality ( a much abused and com modified word) of sustainability. When does the advice about living in the now given by many teachers and traditions clash with the idea of planning for the future. Let the future take care of itself...we know nothing of it and projections and extrapolations based on current data are incomplete and imperfect ("current" is changing even as we "capture' it).

At present the spend on conservation and the environment and sustainability is a grudging afterthought, whereas the spend on a family car, holiday, makeup and home are the main course. Why? Because the latter are all linked to self esteem, to our sense of progress and value and achievement, whereas if a species becomes extinct its not my failure, and if indigenous forests are preserved its not my success, my having "made it". How can we create the same linkage that exists and is used by the devious sellers of unnecessary electronics and clothes and non-utilitarian goods of all kinds - like cosmetics - with their nauseating "You're worth it" slogans.


Is sustainability making you sick. Are you going green with nausea?
(Too much of anything applied inflexibly is generally not in service of freedom.)
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submissiveness is sexy
acquiesence is sexy
power is sexy
but not brutal, humourless, excessive power
power with limits
we all know this, don't we?
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Self esteem (you're worth it)

"wow these two smoking hot blonds are really having a good time"
"don't ignore your premature problems"
"stay regular like me"
"look and feel like a million dollars"
"health in a bottle"
"call and chat to me now"
"
"
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"I was born under the star
of timidity and there's nothing I can do about it...."
so my story goes
early infected by the mono coccus
of self doubt
I have lived my life
suspended over failure

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Article on donor fatigue - the overwhelming number of requests that arrive in my inbox each day, my own very finite resources, and the part of the poor in perpetuating poverty...this could become a Talmudic dialogue with an editor such as Steve Payne

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"Married man desperately looking for someone to share his life with"
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The Jews, backs bent from centuries of persecution, left the Thai restaurant.
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If I was a brilliant inventor
I would invent a ray gun
ZAP!
that softened people's hearts
and removed their fear
allowed them to act
on their deepest knowing
then factory farms would have no-one to sell to
journalists would not enroll others in their resentments
casinos and adult stores would go bust
and poppy growers would only sell their crop to bakers
people would not take out their anger
on the innocent and blind
and blame like smoke
would vanish from the earth
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I am a mouse by say, and a Tiger by write

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Who done it?

Was it the Germans, Latvians, Poles, and Lithuanians
who destroyed their bodies
or was it the gas and bullets and fire
or was it G-d who gave them bodies in the first place?

Surviving your forties

If you are a parent of adolescent children, Dr Phil will tell you your job is to get them through to adulthood. But what is your job re yourself? Given that by now you have realised:

a) That you cannot be fixed
b) Nothing helps

what to do with yourself? When someone has written this guide, please send it on to me.
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And further...the more I do to stave off the thought "I'm inadequate", the more inadequate I feel.

Australia Day

See also more-notes-on-australia

You have to take your hat off to Australia. Or Australians. I mean by this Anglo Celtic Australians. I mean look-a-here, they only came over a mere 200 years ago and in that short space of time they have managed to transform this continent and

a) eliminate or inebriate the indigenous inhabitants
b) turn pristine bush and forest into useable farm land and then
c) turn nearly six million hectares of that farm land into unusable salt marshes where nothing will grow
d) bring to near extinction more species than any other continent, via the introduction of exotic animals such as cats, dogs, foxes, cattle, rabbits, deer,and sheep

So hats off to yer, boys, you've done us proud.
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So shoot me. So dismember me. So have me quartered and eigthed. So have me pilloried and stone me with factory farmed chooks and doggie do. But I celebrated Australia day by ignoring it.

(Other ways of celebrating it. Fly the aboriginal flag. Don't own a dog and if you do own one, don't train it. But rather get an indigenous pet such as a blue tongued lizard or spinifex hopping mouse or plains rats. [with the appropriate license, of course.] Also the dingo, but that would require a large property. Plant an indigenous tree. Visit an old age home instead of a pub. Get together with some friends and write, and then perform, a song. Join a drumming circle. Have tantric sex with your partner, and if you don't have a partner, volunteer for a service organisation - who knows, you may meet somebody there. And if sex is not on the menu, give each other a foot massage - which is a kind of sex anyway. Instead of buying anything, make something delicious at home and then organise a tea-picnic somewhere that's so close you can walk there rather than drive.

Smoke grass/pot dagga rather than using alcohol as your drug of choice. Boycott fast-food outlets. Visit a land fill site or an abbatoir or a refuge for women and children fleeing domestic abuse to get in touch with the underbelly of our so-called 'civilisation. Don't go fishing, or, if you must, don't use a barbed hook and put the fish back once you've caught it. Unplug the television and read a book, or talk to the people you live with. Throw a sheet over the computer and ignore it for a day or two. It won't mind and you will benefit. Ride a bike. Put on a clown costume and visit a children's hospital. Do absolutely nothing. Ignore your thoughts, or better still, notice your thought and refuse to believe them. Support the opposing team instead of the one you regularly support. Have a vegetarian meal, or cook one for friends and family. Go rock climbing or hang gliding instead of to the horse (disg)races. Speak languages other than English loudly in public places. Write stories or poems or plays that illuminate the experience of your minority ethnic or faith tradition in this land.)

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Australian history begins in Southern India
Australian history begins in Ireland
Australian history begins in Poland and Greece and Lebanon and South Africa
The narrative does not start here it only continues here
we all bought our lives inside us with us, and tried to continue them here as best we could, in some shape and form, even if we had lost everything there...

Kangaroo Valley

Crocodile Rock

Say no to Optus, say no to Microsoft, say Yes to Ubuntu

Here are some excellent free open source software resources, that help you get away from Microsoft's endless "improvements" and ever proliferating and paralysing attempts to make what worked fine even "better".

As for Optus...had a ghastly experience with them. I don't reccomend them as a service provider.

A line in the sand....

Spread those Alephs and Tafs around - write a Hebrew word in the sand on a beach anywhere in the world, and send me the pic to put up here...preferably your pic shuld also contain visual evidence about where in the world you are...

Some suggestion for words:
the name of the place where you are
Your name
Emet - truth
Ahava - love
Moodaoot - consciousness
Shalva - tranquility
Chof shivat hamilin - seven mile beach

etc etc.

From Pillar to Post

Now I have received a letter that my subversive, nefarious vegetables that live their humble lives crouched behind some rubbish bins are looming large in the chairperson of the body corporate's vision...despite them being located hidden away besides the washing line in an area that doesn't get enough sun and is far from ideal anyway....how sad and petty. I think it says in Pirkei Avot that begrudging others their simple harmless pleasures - ayin tzara - literally a narrow eye - cripples the one who sees life in this way. Click on letter to enlarge:

Applying Gangaji's reminders to addictions

Whatever your addiction - work, thinking, blaming, resenting, drugs, pornography, food, sexual acting out, gamboling, controlling, avoiding, talking, silence, withdrawing, overwhelming, alcohol, complaining, money, shopping, accumulating - this offers a way to induce some life and movement in what will seem like a closed and stagnant system.

Alternatives to commodification - both internal and external

"The worst things happen in the name of the spiritual"

"Anything wil be used in the arsenal of ego"

"Everybody I meet then is the deepening of my Self"

"This meeting does not happen in time...True freedom has no past, no history, no future."

Gangaji

Spanish cartoonist killed by Islamists "bcause he portrayed Islam as violent."

this is a FICTITIOUS headline, inspired by the attacks on the Danish cartoonist, and meant to highlight the absurdity of the Fundamentalist's response.

But its sad when resentment completely shapes a national agenda, as is the case with the Palestinians:

Hello, police? Screw your sister!"

By YAAKOV LAPPIN
12/02/2010 02:16

Palestinians torment Judea and Samaria police with abusive phone calls.

Judea and Samaria Police receive between 30,000 and 40,000 abusive calls from Palestinians every month, The Jerusalem Post has been told.

Police operators at the Judea and Samaria phone center undergo special training to learn how to distinguish between abusive and real calls, and a computerized phone system is used to screen out the bogus callers, Ch.-Supt. Nir Carmeli, head of Judea and Samaria Police’s Control Room at district headquarters in Ma’aleh Adumim’s E1 (Mevaseret Adumim) neighborhood, said on Thursday.

“Without the screening, we would be getting 90,000 to 100,000 bad calls a month,” Carmeli said. The calls range from personally abusive to threats of terrorist attacks, he added.

“We often hear people cursing our sisters and mothers. Sometimes we get callers threatening to blow us up or carry out a suicide bomb attack,” he said. “When that happens, we treat the call as a real threat. We pass a warning on to the IDF and Shin Bet. It goes through intelligence, and the security forces are alerted. We know it could be bogus, but we don’t take chances,” Carmeli said.

“Efforts to trace the call continue until we can determine whether it is a real threat or not,” he added.

With 50-60 percent of all calls coming into headquarters being abusive, and operators fielding an average of 1,500 bogus calls a month, Carmeli said the problem has “really harmed our ability to respond to calls. New operators are insulted when they’re told to screw their sisters. Years ago, we would answer the calls by introducing ourselves, but this has stopped because harassers would call back pretending to be friends and asking for operators by name, and it became uncomfortable.”

Now operators give their first name only after a call is identified as legitimate.

“With all the threats and curses, officers are shocked during their first weeks on the job as operators. We train them not to curse back, but to simply hang up,” he added.

The training is designed to help operators identify a bona fide request for police assistance within the sea of hate calls.

“The decision must be made in seconds, and time is of the essence so that we can provide assistance when needed,” Carmeli said. “Let’s say we field a call and hear someone say, ‘Sharmuta [whore], want to get screwed?’ The phone number is immediately tagged by the system, and it cannot be used to get through to an operator for 21 days. The next time anabusive call is made from that number, it cannot be used to call an operator for over a month,” he said.

After several repeat offenses, the number is permanently banned from the system.

“The caller will hear a ring tone and the computer will pick up the phone and immediately hang up,” he said.

Some of the most determined offenders switch numbers and use stolen cellphones to keep up the harassment, Carmeli said.

No settlers are behind the calls, he said. “All the callers are Palestinians. They curse at us in Hebrew and in Arabic.”
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Gentle humour is well and good but there is something intractable and unyielding about the horrific and seemingly arbitrary violence engendered by the mind set (and could any mind be more set) of Islamic supremacism and Islamic supremacists (not that the US hasn't left an equally large swathe of destruction in its imperialist adventures of the last 50 years - nalpalm and agent orange and DDT and cruise missiles have no intrinsic moral superiority to suicide bombers from Gaza who detonate explosives packed with nuts and bolts to mutilate Israeli teenagers at a disco or shopping mall) but in the end perhaps the phenomenon has to be faced? Its like the debate betwen Bber and Ghandi about the correct response to Nazi Europe. Hashkem lehorgacha, horgo...one who rises early to kill you - kill him, to paraphrase the Talmud.

Truly a rain of terror has been established, where writers and painters and cartoonists look anxiously over their shoulders when questioning Moslem ways and mores, for fear of the death threats and fatwas that inevitably follow

By the way, in mano's collection of extremely thin books: "The self deprecating humour of Islamic Supremacists"

Drinking the words of the wise

The righteous and pure of heart do not complain about evil, but rather add justice.
They do not complain about doubt, rather they add faith.
They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom. ”

Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, First Chief Rabbi of The State of Israel, The Mists of Purity, p39


"It doesn't really matter what proportion of your pain body belongs to your nation or race and what proportion is personal. In either case you can only go beyond it by taking responsibility for your inner state right now. Even if blame seems more than justified, as long as you blame others, you keep feeding the pain body with your thought and remain trapped in your ego. There is only one perpetrator of evil on the planet: human unconsciousness. That realization is true forgiveness. With forgiveness, your victim-identity dissolves, and your true power emerges - the power of Presence. Instead of blaming the darkness, you bring in the light.

Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p159



If not NOW, when?

Hillel, Talmudic Sage, Ethics of the Fathers, in the Babylonian Talmud



“There is a person who sings the song of his soul. He finds everything, his complete spiritual satisfaction, within his soul.

There is a person who sings the song of the nation. He steps forward from his private soul, which he finds narrow and uncivilized. He yearns for the heights. He clings with a sensitive love to the entirety of the Jewish collective and sings its song. He shares in its pains, is joyful in its hopes, speaks with exalted and pure thoughts regarding its past and its future, investigates its inner spiritual nature with love and a wise heart.

There is a person whose soul is so broad that it expands beyond the border of Israel. It sings the song of humanity. This soul constantly grows broader with the exalted totality of humanity and its glorious image. He yearns for humanity’s general enlightenment. He looks forward to its supernal perfection. From this source of life, he draws all of his thoughts and insights, his ideals and visions.

And there is a person who rises even higher until he unites with all existence, with all creatures, and with all worlds. And with all of them, he sings. This is the person who, engaged in the Chapter of Song every day, is assured that he is a child of the World-to-Come.

And there is a person who rises with all these songs together in one ensemble so that they all give forth their voices, they all sing their songs sweetly, each supplies its fellow with fullness and life: the voice of happiness and joy, the voice of rejoicing and tunefulness, the voice of merriment and the voice of holiness.

The song of the soul, the song of the nation, the song of humanity, the song of the world–they all mix together with this person at every moment and at all times.

And this simplicity in its fullness rises to become a song of holiness, the song of God, the song that is simple, doubled, tripled, quadrupled, the song of songs of Solomon–of the king who is characterized by completeness andTranslated peace.”

Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, The Lights of Holiness II, p. 444,

Why humour is more profound than drama

This is a posting stub. Post to follow, be'ezrat hashem.

In my bathroom cabinet I have cortisone cream for my bum and I have sensodyne toothpaste for my teeth. Both are in white tubes that looks pretty similar. The other day I absent mindedly smeared cortisone cream (with anti fungacides) all over my toothbrush, and realised what had happened when I tasted it and spat it out!

A week later my bum was itchy, andf I reached for the cortisone, and smeared a big blob on my tussik, only for the itch to ramp up to a burn - and immediately I realised I'd put the tooothpaste on. From stories told me at high school about initiation ceremonies at KES involving shaved eyebrows and toothpaste, (by one Sauron Goldman, who now lives in Perth), I expected even more burn, but it wore off after a while and now feels quite good. Perhaps it is the anti-sensitivity ingredients in the toothpaste. After all bums and teeth are connected by a long tube...

Incomplete history - diary of a (self) condemmned man

This is a placeholder.

My life as a footnote.

And further...the more I do to stave off the thought "I'm inadequate", the more inadequate I feel.