Conspiracy minded

Iran isn't actually powering missiles with money

George Orwell characterized the English "Rule of the Saints" under Oliver Cromwell as "a military dictatorship enlivened by witchcraft trials". Those words appear to describe Iran pretty well today. A dictatorship, and particularly a military dictatorship, needs an enemy, and the current regime in Iran had identified Israel as an enemy well before the Ayatollahs came to power. Iran's declarations of solidarity with the Palestinian people and support for Hamas in the current conflict continues a policy they have pursued for over forty years. It seems obvious the leadership in Iran strongly approves of  the current opposition to Israeli policy in the West, and it makes sense expect them to support organizing in opposition to Israel in any way they can.

Again with the modest proposals

A major impediment to systems to make traffic safer is resistance on the part of motorists. Like many other people, motorists tend to resist measures that could restrict what they see as their freedoms, even if they improve safety for everyone. The motoring public, which of course makes up a large proportion of the general public, will accept safety measures more willingly if these measures provide advantages for the drivers and owners of motor vehicles.

The genocide convention

Words is what we do here, Miss Kincaid. - Law & Order, Censure

Imagine for a moment a legal system with only one defined crime: intentional murder. It's not difficult to see the problems such a system would create. Many crimes aside from intentional murder seriously affect people's lives; this would create pressure to extend the definition of murder. Victims of crashes caused by drunk drivers could argue those who victimized them intended to kill and had simply selected their target at random. 

 

The natural human tendency to demand precise definitions for the offences we commit, while pursuing expanded definitions of the offences others commit against us, would make this problem impossible for a legal system to manage. Worse, a vague and broad criminal law would intersect with the difficulties of determining what really happened in a crime or tragedy. Because of this, almost every legal code defines a large number of offences with explicit definitions and punishments varying according to the severity of the offence.

Poetry and government

 

"The silent wheels roll through the quiet green," happens to be the first line of a sonnet, a poem written in a highly specific form. The word form here matters: a form, by definition, has a formal definition, one which a poem, or anything else with a formal definition, must fit. A Shakespearean sonnet must consist of exactly fourteen lines, divided into three stanzas and a final rhyming couplet. In the stanzas, each alternate line must rhyme: first with third and second with fourth. A line in a sonnet must consist of exactly ten syllables, or beats, with alternate strong and weak stresses, and each pair of beats must begin with the weaker beat. Like the drumming of Indigenous North Americas, this poetry mimics the beat of a human heart.

Many other formal definitions exist: computer languages have extremely specific formal definitions, many of which make the definition of a sonnet look very loose and informal. In each case, a formal definition acts as a scaffold. It does not define what people who employ the form may express, but it does define, and thus restrict, the means of expression. Above all, the scaffold, by itself, has nothing to say about the quality of the expression. The literary record contains a long list of very bad sonnets: trite, sentimental, poorly expressed, but none the less fitting the formal definition of the sonnet. Conversely, the world contains many magnificent poems that do not fit the definition of a sonnet.

There are no...

...settler colonialist children. There are no capitalist children. There are no wealthy children, for all children come into the world with nothing, and depend on others for their needs.

Every child deserves the support and love of the community. Every child deserves protection in conflict, relief in disaster, care in sickness, education, and connection with a family to love and care for them.

A tide in the affairs of men...

By now, most people know a massive container ship, named The Dali, struck a pier or support of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, plunging eight road workers into the water. At this time, rescue efforts have failed to find six of these workers, and the authorities now presume assume they have died, either in the accident or in the cold water shortly after.

Most news reports to date have emphasized the absence of information, saying authorities do not know what caused the disaster. We do not know exactly what caused The Dali to lose power at the worst possible time, but we do have a general sense of  the sequence of events. The ship quite clearly suffered a major failure in the engine room. The crew dropped the anchor, which did not stop the ship. When the crew or pilots saw their vessel drifting into the bridge, they sent out a Mayday, which allowed the port authorities to stop traffic on the bridge; this certainly saved lives.

Reciprocity

A basic principle for resolving conflicts and discussing moral issues is reciprocity. Turn the question around. Would it be OK if the positions if the people (or communities) were reversed? What if I did that to you?

I have written here about the obligation of people and communities protesting for Palestine and advocating for a ceasefire to avoid raising fears, by actions or statements, of antisemitism among Canada's Jewish community. I stand by that urging. That obligation applies reciprocally: the Muslim communities in Canada also have traumatic histories of colonialism, dispossession, and exile. Their concerns deserve sensitivity as well, particularly in this time of horrific violence. 

Oppression and atrocity

This post deals with the accounts of sexual violence in the Hamas-led assault on Southern Israel on October 7, 2023. It thus necessarily includes references to rape, homicide, and crimes of extreme violence.

A United Nations investigative team has now submitted a report, finding credible evidence the Hamas fighters committed acts of sexual violence, both during the initial assault on southern Israel on October 7, and also against those they held hostage.

In all the things people can say, and have an obligation to say about this report, a number of things stand out. Start with the obvious: "credible evidence" does not mean certainty. If subsequent investigation should disprove these allegations unfounded, we should all celebrate: any woman  not suffering rape, not violated in life or death, is good news. But that is also to say there is no excuse, whatever, for this kind of violence. Nor, now, do we have any excuse for ignoring or dismissing the possibility Hamas fighters, or people associated with them, did commit these atrocities. 

We can't justify the violation of Israeli women by Hamas by pointing to claims, also under investigation, that Israeli soldiers have assaulted and violated Palestinians. Nor do we have to justify, or ignore, claims about brutality by Hamas to uphold Palestinian rights. The children of Gaza are innocent, and their suffering is unjust. No actions of Hamas cancel or reduce the rights of Palestinians who had no hand and no say in them.

We've been here before: A personal view of the Israel-Hamas conflict

 

Flag of Kach/Kahane Chai

Over the last five months, the dialogue between Israel and the international community, including some of the strongest supporters of Israel in the international community, has begun more and more to resemble the conversation at an intervention. The participants all express support, sympathy, solidarity with Israel, emphasize their friendship, and slowly work around to the lengthening list of symptoms suggesting their friend has gone off the rails. The sense of dismay at the behaviour of the Israeli government grows steadily more apparent. Increasingly, we see calls for moderation, expressed willingness to broker and support a settlement leading to peace and freedom for Israelis and Palestinians alike, and behind those words of encouragement the seldom bluntly stated but increasingly solid consensus that the behaviour of  the current government of Israel will lead to catastrophe.

Perhaps a memory of my own can help explain why this is happening. 

Letter to Stephen Holyday

Last night, February 28, Councillor Holyday convened a meeting to discuss the Bloor Street bike lanes. The discussion revealed a number of things, including some of the illusions cherished by advocates for the car in this city. One thing the meeting made particularly clear was the extent to which transportation has evolved into a political and cultural issue, the way so many issues, in so many people's minds, have fused together into a picture they project, to themselves and others, of who they are. Thirty years ago, the fiercest cycling advocates I knew were ardent conservatives; today, despising bike and cycle lanes has become part of a prepackaged identity labelled "conservative". It doesn't have to be this way.

 In response to my observations at this meeting, I have written an open letter I am sending to Councillor Holyday, my own city councillor, and the mayor of Toronto. You can read it after the jump.

Yet another modest proposal

There is no such thing as he "war on the car". Whether we view cars as their physical reality, tin boxes with a wheel at each corner, or as concepts, or as cultural tropes, cars are not moral agents and do not have a right of self defence. If we as a society choose to limit or even eliminate the operation of private automobiles in our society, or particularly in our cities, we can do so. It requires no war and no conflict. We are not in a war; we are having a debate. 

Antisemitism

Memorial for victims of antisemitism

Start at the beginning: antisemitism is wrong. Full stop, no excuses, no qualifications. It's wrong.

Our society has a longer record of antisemitism than we have of anti-Black racism or anti-Indigenous oppression. Europeans persecuted the Jewish community before Columbus and after, before the Atlantic slave trade and after. Anti-Semitic hate has driven some of the most calculated and methodical mass murders in history.

In the empty spaces between the words...

Does "make America great again" signal a desire for a recovery of American self confidence and more products made in the United States, or a last clutch at a white supremacist social order? Either, or both, depending on who you ask. 

Does "defund the police" refer to a proposal to shift responsibility for social and mental health issues from the police, jails, and prisons, and redirect the associated funding to health and social service agencies, or does it mean disbanding all police agencies? It depends on who you ask; I have heard both interpretations of the slogan asserted with conviction.

Does the slogan "land back" mean Indigenous nations should have increased jurisdiction over resource development, land use, and environmental decision making within their traditional territories, or does it mean packing "white" people back to their place of origin?

 

Does the chant "from the river to the sea" call for a single, democratic, non-confessional state with room for all believers between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea? Does it mean a single Palestinian Muslim-majority state from which Jewish inhabitants, or most of them, have fled or forced to leave? Does it mean a single Jewish Israeli state from the Mediterranean, as a Likud slogan has advocated, or even beyond the Jordan, as some advocates of "Biblical Israel" claim?

Talk is cheap

Germany has come out strongly in support of Israel's position at the International Court of Justice and against the allegations of genocide brought by South Africa. The statement from Germany mentioned a sense of obligation felt by the current German government as a result of the mass murders of Jewish people committed by Nazi Germany. 

Tomoyuki Yamashita would like a word...

General Tomoyuki Yamashita

 Recently, Jonathan Cook published a substack essay, in which he questioned the evidence for widespread sexual violence associated with the Hamas breakout from Gaza on October 7. In his essay, he makes the following extraordinary statement:

The reason why Israel’s apologists for genocide need to inflate their claim is because, sadly, opportunistic rape would be entirely unremarkable in any violent, militarised situation – and indeed unremarkable in behaviours towards women in western societies in general.

First, it should go without saying: nothing justifies genocide. Those who believe the Israeli government, or apologists for Israel, have alleged sexual violence against Hamas to justify genocide or even ethnic cleansing in Gaza need to respond on principle: nothing justifies crimes against humanity. Nothing Hamas fighters did on October 7 justifies intentionally harming or killing the children of Gaza. 

Second: allegations of war crimes matter. They matter because of what Sr. Helen Prejean called the basic human solidarity against suffering and death. They matter because without investigation and accountability they will happen more often.They matter especially when people we might otherwise sympathize with stand accused, because if our solidarity depends on a political test it means nothing.

Finally: if you let loose armed fighters on a civilian population, you own what they do. The American government hanged the Japanese general Tomoyuki Yamashita on exactly that basis, and his fate has haunted more than one military commander since, with good reason. Our rules and standards for warfare exist to make resort to violence harder and less appealing, and to offer the maximum protection to uninvolved and unarmed persons caught up in a conflict.

We do not need to accept allegations of rape and sexual violence by Hamas fighters on October 7 without scrutiny, but neither should we dismiss them. Standards of human rights and human decency must apply to all of us, or they will come to apply to none of us.

Friends like these

 Recently, Barbara Kay published an opinion piece praising the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, calling the organization a "true friend of Israel". 

Israel does have friends, and quite possibly many supporters of the International Christian Embassy have the best possible intentions for Israel, Israeli citizens, and the wider Jewish community. However, by no means do all so-called "Christian" "Zionists" have the best interests of Israel in mind.

Trauma informed

The image carries a meaning in a way very few others do.A squat tower with an ill proportioned and ugly railway gate, it serves as an instantly recognizable shorthand and an indelible stain on the history of our civilization. In the history of past five hundred years, an age of endless empire, of ever more destructive wars and increasingly empowered hatreds, this one image in all its meanings occupies a unique place. This gate opens onto a killing machine capable of  efficiently carrying out a million murders, a large proportion of more than six million murders in the four years between the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and the fall of Berlin. Together, the murder and enslavement beyond this gate created the index trauma of our time. We measure other crimes, other catastrophes, and other horrors against this one.

 

...by omission

Last entry I wrote about my frustration at having no outlet during a time of even greater global turmoil than usual: the first major war in Europe during my lifetime, renewed war in Southwest Asia  (aka the "Middle East"), and looming over everything, global climate change. In the current round of crises, and in particularly the outbreak of war in Southwest Asia, so much remains unsaid, so many problems seem to me to have gone without a mention, I just feel a need to speak, if only to say things I think obvious.

Here we go again...

Whether or not it makes sense to pick up this web log again after over two years with no posts, I'm going to.

I have stopped posting on twitter; the present owner has expressed a foul antisemitism and I don't want to do any unpaid work to make him any wealthier. That has left me with no outlet for most of a very frustrating 2023, and since everyone I read promises an even more frustrating and frightening ride for 2024, I expect I will need someplace to write about what I see and feel and think. 

So... Open Hand, Open Eye might just come alive again for anyone interested in reading it.