Antigonos' Annals: December 2009

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Health "Reform"

Cartoon by Clay Bennett Bennett editorial cartoon

Clay Bennett
Chattanooga Times Free Press
Dec 16, 2009

Like Mom, the flag, and apple pie, "health reform" has such a nice ring to it. And soon, I am sure, Obama will market this deformed and aborted baby to America as a victory. But nothing's going to get better...

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Endless War

(click here to view)

Bruce Beattie
Daytona Beach News-Journal
Dec 2, 2009

EditorialCartoonists.com

I don't understand exactly what the American goal is in Afghanistan. Eliminate Al Qaeda and bin Laden? Prop up the Karzai government? Rebuild the country? Guarantee women's rights? Stop the opium trade?

For one thing, bin Laden may not even be in Afghanistan right now. The geography creates a porous border, wherever there actually IS a border anyone recognizes. Anyone other than an Afghani stands out like a sore thumb, and terrorists can always find support, and hide, among the natives. The Karzai government is part of the problem, not the solution. Rebuild the country as What? The 52nd state of America, complete with McDonalds'? The Afghanis don't want to be democratized, or Americanized. They've got a lot of customs that we think are barbarous, but they have always lived that way, and want to continue to do so. Tribal systems and modern democracy are really quite antithetical.

Afghani men want to continue to have absolute control over their women and families. Their religion backs this. America is fooling itself if it thinks it can change this in any appreciable degree. The opium trade pays better than any other cash crop; until it becomes more lucrative NOT to grow it, it will continue, and the cost to the US taxpayer if that were to happen would be immense [and would have to continue indefinitely, or the farmers would just go back to growing opium.

Pakistan is very ambivalent, and cannot be regarded as a partner of the Americans. If fighting can be suppressed in Afghanistan, the Taliban and other terrorists will just go over the border [indeed, they're doing it now] and return to Afghanistan when the heat is off.

The Russians and the British can testify to the fact that there cannot be any real victory in Afghanistan. The most the US can hope for is to quarantine it like a malignant disease, until the entire face of radical Islam changes, and, for that, I'm not holding my breath.

Milon (Glossary)

OLEH: an immigrant to Israel. The root of the word comes from the verb "to ascend". The plural is "olim". A female is an "olah", and a bunch of female immigrants is "olot".

YORED: an emigrant from Israel. The word means "to descend". Plural is "yordim".

MA'ABARA: pl. "ma'abarot". Tent cities which were built as transit camps in the years immediately following Israel's independence, as nearly two million Holocaust survivors and Jews from Arab countries arrived, often only with the clothes they wore.

MEDURA: pl. "medurot". Campfire.

TZENA: austerity, the name given to the period between Israel's independence and the mid 1950s, when times were very tough.

SHEMITTA: every seventh year, the land in The Land is supposed to lie fallow. Since this would lead to starvation, the ancient Sages developed a whole body of law that permitted cultivation using certain methods and/or the legal fiction that the fields in question were "sold" to a non-Jew for the year. Not all the ultra-Orthodox (virtually none of whom are farmers, and who lived for centuries in non-Jewish communities in the Diaspora where this wasn't a problem) will accept these ways around the commandment, and will only eat either imported produce or produce grown at vast expense in trays of soil raised OFF the ground (therefore not technically being grown "in" the Holy Land. Only a Jew would think of this)

CHAMETZ: literally, "leaven". It means all food which it is prohibited to have "in one's possession" during Passover. Different Jewish ethnic groups interpret this in different ways. Obviously yeast and fermented items are forbidden, but some communities will eat legumes and others will not; some will not eat anything made with matzah or matzah meal which has been in contact with water (gebrochts) like matzah balls. Some communities will eat rice, others will not.

TZITZIT: ritual fringes that males wear, often on the edges of a scapular worn under a shirt, or on the prayer shawl worn in the synagogue. There is a precise way to tie them, so that the knots and twists will add up to 613, the number of the commandments in the Torah.

SHAKSHOUKA: Eggs cooked in a spicy tomato sauce. See http://www.recipezaar.com/148450 for a recipe.

TESHUVA: Penitence.

LITVAK: An very Orthodox Jew from Lithuania. The foremost sage in that community, in the 19th century, was the Vilna Gaon, who excommunicated the hassidim as schismatics because of their mystic belief in their "wonder-working" rabbis. The Hassidim promptly returned the favor. "Litvaks" are noted for their minute, but rationalist, dissection of Jewish texts, and have a distinctive accent in Hebrew. The two communities both wear the black long coats (capotes), have long beards and sidelocks, and are often confused by outsiders as being the same.

Antigonos' Annals

ANTIGONOS' BRAIN

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

"Read My Lips"

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Health "Reform"

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Endless War

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Milon (Glossary)