My latest Letter to the editor (NY Times):
To the Editor:
(Re: “Poverty Doesn’t Create Terrorism, “ Business Section, May 29)
Mr. Krueger’s assessment that terrorists are more likely to be born out of societies that don’t protect “freedom of expression and other civil liberties” offers a poor excuse to replace poverty as the leading cause of terrorism.
While his research may be complete, he fails to consider two points. Often terrorist acts are spawned by extremism, and no matter how “open” a society might be, some extremist views should be repressed. Timothy McVeigh lived in one of the most open societies ever, and still resorted to terrorism. White supremacists across the US do the same. As for Al Qaeda and Palestinian terrorists, the irony is that both come from the most restricted societies in every respect, yet their message of hate is far from repressed, it is celebrated.
This entry was posted
on May 29, 2003 at 5/29/2003 02:38:00 AM.
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The other day I was standing on the subway platform watching a surveyer at work. He was your standard union worker with a huge beer belly, a mustache, and filthy clothing. He had one of those devices mounted on top of a tripod (if you know what they're called, please email me) that is used to calculate the distance (using a lazer) between it and a given subject. They're also used to figure out the slope from where that tripod is, and where another one is, within the same line of site - if you live in NYC, I'm sure you've seen these devices.
Anyway, so he used a can of spray paint to make a circle around each leg of the tripod, and then measured (with a tape measure - not using a plumb-bob) the distance from a marker on the side of the device, to the floor. You can imagine that the tape measure wasn't straight, and as such, wasn't very accurate. Furthermore, this guy is relying on his vision, and ability to accurately describe the distance between the 1/16th of an inch and 1/8th. For those of you who think I'm nuts, one of the uses of these devices is also to calculate how much the ground has settled, and if beams are moving, etc... (general structural integrity). If something's moved 1/8th of an inch, that could be significant. To top it all off, he pulled out a note pad from his back pocket, took out a pencil, and wrote down the measurement. All I could think to my self at this point is that not only did he take a remarkably long amount of time to do this, and not only did he take inaccurate measurements, but now he's Hand Writing the measurements onto PAPER!
So what do I foresee happening next? The information is input by someone else into a computer... but this person (if they're like the data-input people at HBO) doesn't input the correct numbers - either because they can't read this guys hand writing, or because they're just stupid. End result - in a few weeks or months, when someone else goes back to survey, they get incorrect data from the first survey, and they either start over, or just ignore the whole thing all together.
So as I boarded the subway driven by people - which also drove me nuts - although I do find a modecum of solace in the fact that we finally have a computer dictating what stop we're at, and which one is coming - in the clearest way possible (something I've been pondering for the past 12 years (I'm 23 years old)... I couldn't stop thinking about an idea that my friend Lon mentioned to me a few days earlier.
He came up with this idea that in the future, everything will be free - primarily because we will find some way to make energy for free, and the machines that are powered by the free energy will do much of the jobs that unionites hold today (like build entire buildings, etc...) so labor will be free, and these same machines will also deliver the goods to us, so delivery will be free, and we will genetically engineer everything so that tomatoes will have a shelf life of a year, and won't get damaged when hit. Furthermore, we will also develop better recycling techniques, as well as make materials that are indestructible... etc... you get the point. Anyway, it got me stuck on this surveyer in the Subway. I couldn't get past thinking that a machine could replace this guy for a tiny fraction of the cost, and do an infinitely better job than this guy could ever aspire to do - on a basic level, because of his physical limitations, on a higher level, because there's nothing a machine won't eventually be able to do - this guy is very limited.
This then got me on another track - someone mentioned the other day that they thought that the middle class is a creation of mutinational corporations. That these companies, like mine, keep many people employed, and in the middle class, not because they need them, but because having the middle class helps to avoid class warfare. The lower class have something to look up to that's not too far away from where they are, and the middle class have something to aspire to as well. Personally I don't agree. I think that the middle class has been generated by the opportunities afforded to people in America, that aren't available anywhere else. No other country in the world has a middle class like ours... To be completed later
This entry was posted
on May 21, 2003 at 5/21/2003 01:12:00 AM.
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"Once the game is over, the King and the Pawn go back in the same box."
Italian Proverb
Its quotes like these that make me think, boy people don't get it.
Yes, its true, no matter how we live, when we die, we all turn to dirt. Does that mean that nothing we do while we're alive matters?
Personally, no matter where I end up, I'd rather be a King while I'm here. That's just the point. Once I'm dead, it doesn't matter where I go.
This entry was posted
on May 1, 2003 at 5/01/2003 10:44:00 AM.
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JKali65: in your blog you fail to bring up the economic price that Israel paid for giving them peace
JKali65: i mean giving peace a chance
skalifowitz: I didn't want to deal with it
JKali65: ah
JKali65: ok
skalifowitz: that's a whole nother blog
JKali65: then you should erase the section on Israel being a strong economy back then
skalifowitz: my simple point is that while some may claim that "uprising" is an appropriate phrase
skalifowitz: I don't agree- they had nothing to rise up from
skalifowitz: Israel was doing really well
skalifowitz: and rather than leave the palestinians behind
skalifowitz: they gave them the opportunity to ride the wave
skalifowitz: and they were riding the wave - the palestinians went from literally having nothing, to having a sovereign radio stations, tv stations, an airport, even a casino! (which, by the way, Israelis spent a lot of money at)
skalifowitz: but after 7 years, the pals' realized they weren't getting all of Israel, and that the Israelis were going to stay around in the end,
skalifowitz: so they said fuck it
skalifowitz: we're going to war again
skalifowitz: bottom line: in 1948, the Palestinians thought they could fight a war and get rid of the Jews, because they belived the UN cut them a bad deal by offering to give even one square meter of land to the Jews. They lost.
skalifowitz: in the '80's the Palestinians once again tried to get rid of the Jews (this time they tried to do it on their own, b/c the other Arab nations had been humiliated enough in 4 prior wars).
skalifowitz: in 1993, Israel pacified the Palestinians by offering them a state, and sovreignty - in exchange for one thing - peace.
skalifowitz: If I had to guess, I'd assume that the Palestinians thought that finally, there was a plan in place that would give them a state... but that their state would be all of what Israel is today. After 7 years they realized that they were going to be given less land than what they were offered in 1948, they realized that they had been conned, and decided to go to war once again. And here we are.
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on at 5/01/2003 12:38:00 AM.
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I decided today that I can no longer refer to what is commonly called the "Intifada" as such. I will only refer to it as the "Palestinian Suicidal War of Aggression."
I feel that referring to the Palestinian war as the Palestinian Suicidal War of Aggression is much more accurate, especially when referring to their latest suicidal war of aggression that they chose to wage almost 31 months ago. No one forced Israel to acknowledge the PLO, or to make a one-sided peace with the Palestinians. In 1993, when Israel signed the Oslo Agreements, Israel's economy was one of the strongest in the Middle East, and had the greatest potential for growth. Not one company that made it really big in the Tech Boom, didn't have an office in Israel at that time. Israel could have chosen to continue to keep the Palestinian desire to cleanse the Middle East of the Jews at bay. But Israel decided to make peace, and help bring their worst enemies along for the ride. That wasn't good enough for the Palestinians. And 7 years later, after getting more than anyone ever expected Israel to give to their enemies (and more than any group has ever received from its mutual enemy), the Palestinians decided to wage a second Suicidal War of Aggression. Maybe if the media could properly refer to the Palestinian War, it wouldn't be so easy to depict Israel as the aggressor.
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on at 5/01/2003 12:20:00 AM.
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