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PresentMomentPersonalMemoryArchive for February, 2012
A Great Paper is Unpleasant to Read: Haaretz
“There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.”
Hannah Arendt
Recent Gleanings from Haaretz
From “Palestinian television still glorifies terror attacks against Israel” by Avi Issacharoff
At certain moments, while watching a scene from a program broadcast by Palestinian television on October 25 of last year, it is difficult to believe that this is the official television channel of the Palestinian Authority and the PLO, and not that of Hamas or the Islamic Jihad…
… the wonders of the master terrorist Abbas a-Said, who is jailed in Israel and was sentenced to 35 life sentences. “We are outside the home of the warrior hero, the commander, the lion of the prison, Abbas a-Said.”
Apparently, this example is not atypical on official Palestinian TV, even in the age of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ rule. Nan Jacques Zilberdik, an analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, explains that on Palestinian TV “there is no message of peace with Israel.”
… “There’s no education toward peace,” said Zilberdik in a conversation with Haaretz.
“The new Palestinian generation, who watches Palestinian television, does not hear that Tel Aviv or Ashkelon are Israeli cities. It hears about occupied cities that must be liberated. There is no discourse on compromise or concessions. In the Israeli media, on the other hand, one does see such discourse.”
… “the Jews are our enemies, right?” Suffice it to say that she refers to Israeli soldiers with much harsher words – “animals.” And in October 2010, the station takes pains to interview several Jordanian experts on the Middle East who explain that “the Jews are hated everywhere they have been due to their love of money.””… we found in the Palestinian Authority’s Zayzafuna magazine, a story about a young girl who meets four characters – the fourth is Adolf Hitler. He explains to her what is the killing of Jews and what needs to be done, but there isn’t even a comment on behalf of the editorial staff on who is Hitler and what he is responsible for.
“Today there is no incitement to killing Jews, but they do praise those who carry out terror attacks.”
From “Enemies, a hate story” by Gideon Levy
It is impossible to ignore what is happening to us: Palestinian children die in an accident, and many Israelis are happy about it – and are no longer even ashamed of it…
The Internet roiled – not with the usual anonymous comments, the last refuge of boors and perverts. This time they revealed their names and their Facebook photos, spewing forth nauseating, hate-permeated racism that seemed to exceed anything seen here previously.
“Relax, these are Palestinian children,” Benny Dazanashvili wrote on Twitter. To which Tal Biton responded, “It seems these are Palestinians … God willing.” Itai Viltzig offered up a prayer: “I hope every day there is a bus like this.” Dozens, if not hundreds, of Internet surfers said a prayer of thanks – for the terrible death by fire of young children on a school field trip – and the responses were featured on the web pages of the prime minister and the Israel Police and the Walla! web portal.
“They’ll want money, because money is more important to them than the children who were killed,” one person wrote. Others commented, “Can we send another truck?” and “I’d have sent a double semi-trailer to obliterate all those shits.”
From “Israel can rely only on America and (sigh) the countries of Western Europe” by Chemi Shalev
The New York Times reported this week that Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has bestowed a prestigious Pushkin Medal on Ali Ukla Ursan, a Syrian poet who has praised the 9/11 terrorist attacks and depicted Jews as “Nazi racists”.
From “Hitler’s little mustache” by Adar Primor
Zagreb, October 1999, the Croatian presidential palace. In an attempt to eradicate his country’s leprous image, Franjo Tudjman called a rare press conference at which he intended to present “a different Croatia” – democratic and pluralistic. Everything was carefully prepared. The marble floor tiles gleamed, the lawns were a manicured bright green and even the weather cooperated…
“You were quoted in the past as saying, ‘Thank God, my wife is neither a Serb nor a Jew,’” I addressed him “Moreover, in the English version of your book you corrected passages casting doubt on the extent of the Holocaust, but not in the versions of the book in other languages.” …. blurring between hangmen and their victims will not lead to real reconciliation. Stalinism, with all its terrible crimes, did not develop a racial theory and did not engage in the systematic slaughter of peoples.
“The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my capacities.”
Ortega y Gasset
Most people would rather die than think; many do.
Bertrand Russell
Norman Finkelstein: BDS is a Cult that Wants to Destroy Israel
In the context of IAW (Israeli Apartheid Week)…
Edith Bouvier/Paul Conroy/William Daniels – Seriously Endangered Western Journalists in Homs, Syria (AND the nameless 200,000?)
Along with the late Marie Colvin, Rémi Ochlik and the nameless inhabitants of Homs…
Edith Bouvier and William Daniels with Dr. Muhammad (English translation) in The Guardian Video
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Wiki about the Siege of Homs (with 2,052 opposition protesters killed – oppostion claim)
Paul Conroy doesn’t want to leave Marie Colvin’s carbonized body behind.
Rémi Ochlik: 1983-2012
Also killed in Homs

A gallery of his photojournalism work on his website
An English Wikipedia
Marie Colvin: 1956-2012
After 18 days of shelling…
“… many of the dead and injured are those who risked foraging for food.”
(from Marie Colvin’s last report)
“Fearing the snipers’ merciless eyes, families resorted last week to throwing bread across rooftops, or breaking through communal walls to pass unseen.”
“I watched a little baby die today,”
she told the BBC on the eve of her death.
“Absolutely horrific, a 2-year old child had been hit. They stripped it and found the shrapnel had gone into the left chest and the doctor said ‘I can’t do anything.’ His little tummy just kept heaving until he died.”
The next day her own charred body laid under the rubble.
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Marie Colvin in Wikipedia
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Colvin often focused on the plight of women and children in wartime, and Syria was the same.
Her final report for the Sunday Times
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She gave interviews to major British broadcasters on the eve of her death: her last report to the BBC, Channel 4, CNN and ITN News was appealing for the world to notice the slaughter taking place.
Apollinaire: À Travers le Temps/Across Time
Enregistrement/Recording:
Apollinaire
Lisant son Propre Poème
Reading his Own Poem
LE PONT MIRABEAU-THE MIRABEAU BRIDGE
LE PONT MIRABEAU
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Et nos amours
Faut-il qu’il m’en souvienne
La joie venait toujours après la peine
Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure
Les jours s’en vont je demeure
Les mains dans les mains restons face à face
Tandis que sous
Le pont de nos bras passe
Des éternels regards l’onde si lasse
Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure
Les jours s’en vont je demeure
L’amour s’en va comme cette eau courante
L’amour s’en va
Comme la vie est lente
Et comme l’Espérance est violente
Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure
Les jours s’en vont je demeure
Passent les jours et passent les semaines
Ni temps passé
Ni les amours reviennent
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure
Les jours s’en vont je demeure
Apollinaire, Alcools (1912)
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THE MIRABEAU BRIDGE
Under the Mirabeau Bridge there flows the Seine
Must I recall
Our loves recall how then
After each sorrow joy came back again
Let night come on bells end the day
The days go by me still I stay
Hands joined and face to face let’s stay just so
While underneath
The bridge of our arms shall go
Weary of endless looks the river’s flow
Let night come on bells end the day
The days go by me still I stay
All love goes by as water to the sea
All love goes by
How slow life seems to me
How violent the hope of love can be
Let night come on bells end the day
The days go by me still I stay
The days the weeks pass by beyond our ken
Neither time past
Nor love comes back again
Under the Mirabeau Bridge there flows the Seine
Let night come on bells end the day
The days go by me still I stay
Translation by Richard Wilbur
Science (Friday) To The Rescue!
NPR’s Science Friday
(Sci-Fi BE is a great app)
- Be Here Now: Meditation For The Body And Brain
An interview w. “Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World” author Mark Williams,
an Oxford University clinical psychologist
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The Oxford Mindfulness Center
&
The book’s blog
- Combating Depression With Meditation, Diet
An interview with “Spontaneous Happiness” author Dr. Andrew Weil
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His website
The Turin Horse/A Torinói Ló
At Webster University
Feb. 17, 18 & 19 – 7:30 p.m.
My review:
Highly celebrated by Jonathan Rosenbaum and Susan Sontag, cinema’s current Homo Hungaricus, Béla Tarr is famous for the rarely screened films “Sátántangó” and “Werckmeister Harmonies.”
Jancsó’s long takes and Olmi’s details, here with echoes of Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” and Bresson’s “Au Hasard Balthazar” – that legacy is quite present, but the punch and grit that Tarr delivers is all his own. Yet for all those so-called “difficult films,” including this one, mention must be made of his longstanding companion in crime, the famous Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, who knows his topic when he challenges all reviews with “You know, the problem is that anything that’s the least bit serious gets bad PR.”
This time again, in a tale that weaves a horse and the wind together as key characters, it is clear that there’s trouble. Is it Hungary, the earth, the land? Where to turn to? What causes insanity or Niezsche’s ten year silence? No answers… or at least nothing you can put in your pocket during the film or afterwards.
Survival must be madness…
2011 Berlin Film Festival’s Silver Bear Winner -> A-
Get your tickets…

