Reimer said:
. . .I grew up in the Germany of the 70s, with RAF (Red Army Faction) terrorism being a constant concern, but if there is one thing that I've always considered axiomatic in politics, it is that our governments do not make deals with terrorists. . .
Given that you were growing up in Germany of the 70s, I can only assume that you're aware that in 1972, there were Olympics in Munich? Which, as far as I know, is part of Germany? Further, I can only assume that you're aware that there was some sort of hostage thing that went on at those Olympics?
Now, here comes the tricky part. After the German counter-terrorist forces managed to get all the hostages killed, and capture a certain number of the terrorists involved, what do you think happened to those terrorists?
I'll give you a hint: they were released after about eight weeks. You see, there was a Lufthansa jet, which was, coincidentally enough, only carrying Lufthansa employees and terrorists that got hijacked.
Whether you believe that there wasn't any negotiation that took place before the plane was taken, I find it rather hard to imagine that you believe that there wasn't negotation with the terrorists after the plane was taken, and that the releases were coincidental.
While generalizing from Germany of the 70s to all of Europe of the 00s is clearly problematic, given that it seems clear that the plane was hijacked with prior German approval, I could easily believe Germany of the 70s would have been happy to take Bin Laden up on his offer.
Randolph, what I was trying to say can be summed up as follows: you said some stuff that I found offensive. I did not find your explanation for what you said to be at all convincing; though I squint as hard as I can, the ideas you indicate that you wanted to get across aren't showing up in the initial post, and less pleasant ones still are.
I've made mistakes as a reader, of course, and in conversation, doing so can create awkwardnesses that are my fault. Only I'm not seeing that here. I'm seeing a smack, followed by an "oh, don't worry. That wasn't really a smack." This is not something that I much care for, in conversation or otherwise.
And, honestly, I find those last two paragraphs above a bit baffling. At no point did I say anything at all about you dropping an attribution. What I said was that by quoting Lydia, you are implying a) at least a partial agreement with what she had to say, and b) that you felt that what she had to say had some relevance to the points you were trying to make. The idea that since it was Lydia who said it initially meant that I should adress my comments to her is a strange one.
To take an extreme example, if someone were to show up at a pagan event holding a sign saying "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," even though that's a quote, rather than something that person came up with, most people would find it reasonable to adress the guy with the sign, rather than with the original author.
Further, it wasn't a simple matter of finding your poetic reference obscure. To continue with the case above, say that same guy would explain that he had heard that these pagans happened to be vegan, and as that's in keeping with many of the biblical dietary laws, he wanted to show his support for the idea with his sign. It's not an entirely believable claim, given the section of the bible he decided to quote.
Similarly, you spent a while defining some people as certain, and others as uncertain, and then quoted the bit of the poem where Yeats says that "The best lack all conviction/While the worst are full of passionate intensity". It may be that there are people who believe you when you say that by that you wanted to say, "hope may yet come from an unexpected source," rather than "the certain people are bad, and the good people are uncertain". I'm not one of them.
I could go back, and continue to debate other specifics. But I'm not certain there's much of a point. If you want me to expand on anything that you've found unclear, or see as wrong, I'll do so, but unless there's someone out there who is actively interested in this, it's really not worth my time.
Oh, and. This is a conversation on a weblog. I can construct hypothetical situations wherein I'd engage to the point of emnity, but I've not encountered them yet. The worst animosity I've managed to come up with thus far is a longing for some sort of comment thread killfile when faced with an individual's posts, and you've not even made that threshold.
Again, as I'm seeing this, I found your initial comment objectionable, and your subsequent clarfications unconvincing. In other words, you are, currently, a guy who made a post that ticked me off. I reserve my emnity for people who've committed more serious offenses, like whoever it was that suggested Carrot Top as a pitchman for AT&T.
I've been offline for a week or so; sorry for the delay, and for continuing a subthread that's mostly died down.
That said, there were a pair of replies to my posts that I'd like to adress.
In one, Randolph said:
Alter quotes me as saying,
"The absolutes almost always win, and one of the reasons is that the people who believe in relativity are embarrassed by it."
But that was what Lydia said, not me. Wasn't clear about the attribution. Me bad. Me have been put to the flames for it.
Yeah. Yeah, I did, in fact, quote you as saying that. The reason I quoted you as saying that is because you said that.
I've got no problem with Lydia having said it first. However, quotation marks are not sigils that indicate, "I take no responsibility for the ideas contained herein."
I had no problem with Lydia's post. I had, and have, a problem with your post -- the context in which you put Lydia's remark admits to no reading other than a rather poisonous one.
Randolph continues:
When I quoted the bit of Yeats, I actually had the final lines of the poem in mind, hinting that I believed there is hope, but it will come in an unexpected form and at an unexpected time.
It is extremely difficult for me to conduct a conversation when I suspect that the other party is not making a good faith effort towards communication.
Quoting one passage from a work, which has a clear contextual relevance to what's being said, and later explaining that what was meant was a different section of the work, whose connection to what's being discussed is considerably more tenuous is. . . a problematic approach, at best.
In a different post, Randolph said:
I'm sorry--I meant it other way round; people who respect the authority of the OT--especially christians--acting out of fear and looking for certainty grab onto OT rules, usually simple and harsh interpretations of selected rules.
Stripping this of qualifiers, I get "people who respect the authority of the OT due to fear and a desire for certainty grab onto OT rules."
The problem with this is that what this comes down to is that "people who respect the authority of the OT grab onto OT rules." Respecting the authority of the OT seems to me to imply the following of OT rules. I'm not sure what metric of grabbiness is being used here, but I'm willing to take on faith that it's something that can be clearly observed.
Thus, as you would have us read your post, all that you meant to say was that people who turn to the OT due to fear are really intense in their rule following. Grabby, even.
The problem with this reading is that it's a fairly vacuous observation, and that it makes no sense in the context of the previous discussion, the remainder of the post, or in your words themselves. The only way that it makes sense, in context, is if the moral absolutes, if the list of rules found in the Old Testament and, as you would have it, in Paul, are intrinsically bad, wrong, or evil.
I never intended to imply the converse. This was never intended as a swipe at people who study the OT for other reasons and in other ways, like most Jews.
I've not been talking about "most Jews." I'm fully aware that most Jews don't describe themselves as traditional or Orthodox, and that most Jews don't follow the OT's lists of rules. I've been discussing rabbinic or Orthodox Judaism, who honest to God, do.
I don't mean that they take a naive reading of the text, of course -- there were biblical literalist movements in the past, and there probably will be again. But those movements are specifically opposed to rabbinic Judaism, and aren't part of the mainline tradition.
Orthodox Jews take the lists of the OT extremely seriously. With deep convinction, even. They prefer the rules of the OT to the precepts of Jesus. While they're not literalists, the manner in which they read the OT is to better understand those lists of rules -- there's really remarkably little theology in rabbinic Judaism, when compared with lists of rules, and analysis of those rules.
And you've not said anything that changes the fact that your original post implies that this will render Orthodox Jews relatively immune to messages of "love, tolerance, humility, charity, etc," barring "unexpected intimacy which conflicts with their convictions, "religious experience", and so on."
Okay, some expansion of my post above:
What Randolph said:
It is scared people who grasp for simple moral absolutes; sets of rules like those of the Old Testament and Paul, rather than precepts like those of Jesus. Hence outbursts of religiousity in times of great travail like ours.
"The absolutes almost always win, and one of the reasons is that the people who believe in relativity are embarrassed by it."
"The best lack all conviction/While the worst are full of passionate intensity."
What I read:
Par 1:
People who look to the Old Testament are morally inferior to those who look to the precepts of Jesus -- they are scared, rather than thoughtful, in the pursuit of their faith. (Of course, those who look to Paul rather than Jesus are similiarly inferior, but that's something for someone else to argue, if there's someone irritated by that). Teaching such as the precepts of Jesus are more nuanced and complex than those similar to the lists of rules the Old Testament provides.
Par 2.
Those who 'grasp for simple moral absolutes', again, those who turn to the Old Testament or similar texts, are likely to win, because absolute arguments present more strongly than relative arguments.
Par 3.
The good people are uncertain, while the bad people are certain.
It's quite difficult, in the context in which it has been quoted, not to see that last bit, the quote from "The Second Coming", as meaning "Jews and Pauline Christians are bad and likely to triumph, while true Christians are good, but lacking in conviction."
In truth, though, it probably wasn't meant exactly in that manner. It was probably more along the lines of "I dislike some religious Christian, but like other ones. Perhaps I can come up with a unifying theory to explain my likes and dislikes."
And yet, I cannot read the first paragraph I quoted without it saying that people who turn to the rules of the Old Testament are acting on baser motives than those who turn to the teachings of Jesus. And I cannot read the quotes that follow as meaning anything other than those who turn to the Old Testament's certainties are wrong, and bad people, but certain, as opposed to those who follow the precepts of Jesus, who are right, and good people, but uncertain.
Make no mistake about it -- while Orthodox Judaism has a certain amount of theological discussion, the primary focus of the religion is halacha -- that is, the law, those lists of "thou shalts," and "thou shalt nots", both biblical and rabbinic. There is a vast rabbinic literature devoted to defining the exact boundries of the shalts and shalt nots. If there is one religion that can be described as grasping sets of rules like those in the Old Testament, it's Orthodox Judaism.
And what Randolph is saying is that while there may be some Christians -- those who turn to the Old Testament, or to the teachings of Paul -- who are as bad as the Orthodox Jews, there are no Orthodox Jews who are as good as those who turn to the teachings of Christ.
I'm pretty sure Randolph didn't mean to talk about Jews at all, but I cannot see how what he said doesn't mean that about Jews.
And, yeah, that made me turn to bad language. Or, to be more accurate, it made me turn to coarse language. I'd prefer to call speech good or ill depending on its content, rather than by the presence or absence of swear-words.
Randolph Fritz: It is scared people who grasp for simple moral absolutes; sets of rules like those of the Old Testament and Paul, rather than precepts like those of Jesus.
Hey, Randolph?
Fuck you.
A side note: it's just Hillel, not Rabbi Hillel. "Rabbi", at the time, had a technical meaning, and Hillel wasn't one.
And I gotta say, I've got no idea whatsoever as to what his opinions would be in regards to immigration law in California.
Way back, in the long-longago, when I lived in the US, I went fishing in one of those commercial trout pool things.
Now, in the Catskills, there are a great many trout put into the various rivers, lakes, and reservoirs, and a great many of them are taken out, for varying lengths of time, and for varying purposes. The problem is, there are a great many people chasing after these trout, which leaves the trout somewhat difficult to catch, both due to a certain measure of condition, and due to the more accessible areas being over-fished.
This is not what happens at the places where you pay by the pound after the fishing is done. There are a great many fish in a small place, and they're even stupider than your standard issue fish, which, for all that Aquaman seems to be able to carry on meaningful conversations with them, is a fairly high level of stupid. I mean, we didn't have guns, and the fish weren't actually in a barrel, but the degree of skill and effort involved wasn't all that different from the whole fish-barrel-shooting thing.
I caught nine good-sized fish in an hour and a half, which was better than I had done in the previous two years. It was fun, too, albeit a different sort of fun than spending a few hours at a riverbank and lazing about, with a fishing rod in hand. While I didn't personally eat all the fish I caught, they were all eaten within the next few days.
Perfect analogies are impossible, of course, but this seems to me to be fairly close to the sort of thing that Cheney and company were doing. I mean, we conspicuously consumed, by driving for a couple of hours each way, and paying almost as much as the fish would have cost in a store once they were caught.
I guess I just don't understand the sort of morality that surrounds hunting and such. If I found wild ducks to be tasty, and had no religious objections to converting live ducks into food by firearms, I'd shoot them in whatever manner was legal, be they flying, or sitting, or riding small duck bicycles. In fact, to my mind, refusing to shoot them unless they're moving seems a bit. . . wrong -- if I'm going to be killing animals, it seems incumbent on me to avoid causing them unnecessary pain, and the odds of getting a less than perfect shot seem higher when the birds are on the wing.
On a similar note, I don't understand catch and release fishing at all. Even assuming that the fish survives being caught and released, which it often doesn't, it's still torturing a fish for nothing other than simple amusement. And yet, catch and release is seen as somehow morally superior to catch and eat; hell, it's often seen as being somehow morally superior to sit at home and watch TV, which, in most cases, doesn't involve the torture of any wild animals at all.
Sorry about having missed the link the first time around -- I tend to be a poor reader of hypertext.
However, having checked both links, I'm still not certain whether or not the state the vase was in when recovered was significantly worse than the condition it was in when it was taken from the museum.
The coalition spokesperson says that it was returned in exactly the same condition as it was taken. The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (at the University of Chicago?) strongly implies that it isn't, though they don't actually say so, by giving the 1962 image of the whole vase as a "before" shot, and an uncredited third party picture of half the vase as an "after" shot.
The title of the post is "Mechanics of the Lie". And I'm honestly confused about who's lying here. It's possible that it's the nice Mehta woman. Lord knows that it wouldn't be the first time that a military spokesperson has not been completely frank with the people of the country that spokesperson ostensibly serves. And it's equally possible that it's the implication of the OI at UC's webpage, though that's something they can weasel out of, as it is only an implication, rather than a direct statement.
It's also possible that the Washington Post didn't have access to the picture on the OI's website, either through laziness on the part of the guy getting the pictures for the article, or because the copyright on that image might be legitimately hard for them to track down, let alone get. It might not even have been taken when the Washington Post ran its article -- the OI page was last updated June 20th. If that was the picture being put in, they got it later than the Post's article, which ran on the 14th.
If the Post didn't have access to the picture of the recovered vase, the 62 picture is what they had to work with, and using a close-up rather than a picture of the whole vase is actually what I would have done; the Warka vases importance is the figures more than the shape of the vase as a whole, and there wouldn't be enough space to run the picture of the whole vase while still maintaining the detail.
As far as focusing on the vase rather than on the media in general, I'm not sure that's a hazard of arguing from the specific to the general that it's possible to avoid. I have to admit, I'm far more interested in the vase than in the newspapers. However, to make a comment on your main argument, if there is a lie here, it's something that's more attributable to laziness and a general lack of interest in testing a previously adopted point of view than it is a deliberate attempt to force a lie down people's throats. And I think that's true regardless of whether it's the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago or it's the Washington Post whose pictures are conveying a false impression of what happened to that vase.
The think about the Warka vase is that it wasn't found in one piece.
Archaeological reconstruction of things like the Warka vase isn't designed to be robust -- it's designed to do as little damage as possible. The fragility of the piece is one probable reason why it was left behind while many less important pieces were stashed elsewhere.
When something like that breaks, it tends to break along the lines of the pre-existing fractures. If all of the fragments were returned, and the picture shows the largest whole chunk of the vase, while reassembling the vase will be difficult and time consuming, it shouldn't be any more difficult -- it shouldn't be as difficult -- as it was the first time that was done.
On the other hand, if what you see is the whole of what they got, well, there's not much that can be said to ameliorate the damage.
In re: pickles.
Leviticus 19:19 (you can't grow those cucumbers as an admixture with other crops)
Leviticus 25:3-7 (you can't grow those cucumbers during the sabbatical year)
Leviticus 27:30 (you have to give a tenth of those cucumbers as a tithe -- if said tithe isn't taken Orthodox Jews don't eat it.)
Deuteronomy 14:22 (you have to take a second tithe of your produce and eat it in Jerusalem.)
Dueteronomy 26:12 (in years when you don't take the previous second tithe, you have to give a second tithe to the poor).
There are other rules that will apply to wheat or other cereals, as well as rules that apply specifically to fruit, rather than vegetables.
And that's ignoring the possibility that the vinegar in question is wine vinegar, in which case it's going to fall under all of the above rules, as well as having additional stringencies associated with wine.
As I said, most of the agricultural rules only apply to the produce of the land of Israel, and thus tend not to be an issue in the states.
And yes, because the list of ingredients on packaging is not sufficient to pass halachic muster, prepared foods will generally require some sort of rabbinic certification to be considered kosher.
Avram:
While Jews won't avoid the majority of vegetable products due to the laws of kashrut, it's possible to have vegan food, prepared in a vegan kitchen that Orthodox Jews will avoid due to certain agricultural laws (Shmittah, Trumot and Maasrot, and so on.)
In most cases, these laws are generally assumed to apply either only in the land of Israel, or only to produce of farmers who you know are Jews, so it generally doesn't enter into the equation for most Jews living in America.
Also, my cat's breath smells like catfood.
Psalms, 2:1 "Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?"
In this case, heathen = "Goyim".
Samuel 2, 22:44, "Thou also hast delivered me from the strivings of my people, thou hast kept me to be head of the heathen: a people which I knew not shall serve me."
Again, "Goyim".
Nehemiah, 5:8 "And I said unto them, We after our ability have redeemed our brethren the Jews, which were sold unto the heathen; and will ye even sell your brethren? or shall they be sold unto us? Then held they their peace, and found nothing to answer."
Again, "Goyim".
I'm not exactly interested enough to go through every instance in the KJV, and I can't read Greek, so early New Testament versions are a closed book to me, so I'll leave it at that.
But I have to say, if the Sgt. Major in question had said, "We have the president of the United States coming to tell us what a great job we did destroying those goyim up in northern Iraq", while it might have added accuracy, more, and different people would probably be upset by it.
I'm inclined to agree, as far as Pax's believability. If he were a fake, those responsible would almost have to have someone in Iraq, given the number of things that he's said that could have been disproven by people on the ground, were they to have been false.
Even if you're willing to grant those commiting the fraud the ability to come up with a supremely believable character, it seems really strange to go through all of that effort to come up with a blog that's ambivalent about the war. I could understand either pro-war or anti-war people faking up a mouthpiece. But I'm not quite as willing to believe that those ambivalent about the war (though on the balance, on the anti-war, anti-Saddam side) would go to the trouble.
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