alex chiang: web 6.0

Help me to understand the Arab-Israeli conflict.

It’s a decent article. One of his more interesting assertions is that the only reason America wants to keep Israel around is so that exiled Jews go there instead of the US.

Good background information, but read other literature and history before accepting his word as gospel. I suggest The War for Palestine which is a collection of scholarly essays written after Israel opened up its historical records of the 1948 war. It attempts to describe the war from the viewpoints of each of the participating parties (Iraq, Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the Palestineans, and the Jews).

I admit it. I’m a Clinton junkie. I’m fascinated by his mega-charisma. I wonder how a man so smart could let something so stupid blemish his presidency. Anyhow, I just finished reading Primary Colors and thought it was great. If you’re at all interested in learning how a presidential campaign is run, you should read this book.

• character map
• typical column wondering who the author was
• transcript of a TV show where Anonymous’ identity is debated
• Joe Klein admits he is the author
• Salon blasts him for lying
• Joe presents his side of the story in an interview with the Ethics and Public Policy Center
• another Klein interview
• Decent book review
• Ebert’s film review
• George Stephanopoulos biography (he is the inspiration for Henry Burton)
• George S. presents an inside view of politics, the presidency, and the press
• Stacy Edwards shrine — she is the actress that portrays Jennifer, the Winona lookalike that turns out to be a lesbian

Tim Robbins has sacked up and spoke out defending the right to free speech. Whether you’re pro or anti war, you should appreciate that at least some people believe in the principles upon which this country was founded.

“To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we
are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
–Theodore Roosevelt, 1918

They sure don’t make Republicans like him any more. Read more about him.

I’m not so naive as to believe that the only reason the US went to war against Iraq is oil; there are other reasons out there as well. However, to deny the importance of Iraqi oil is equally ignorant. The BBC has a nice summary article about the main issues surrounding oil that can provide a nice starting point for your own personal research into the reasons behind the war.

Also, The Liberty Doctrine is some interesting reading. The author attempts to reframe US foreign policy in terms of liberty and tyranny. His claim is that the best policy for national security is the exportation of liberty. It’s somewhat long, but well-reasoned and coherent.

Clearly Ron Jr. is not a politician, else he wouldn’t have spoken so honestly. Notable sound bites:

• “[...] George W. Bush is simply unqualified for the job… What’s his accomplishment? That he’s no longer an obnoxious drunk?”

• “my father crapped bigger ones than George Bush.”
• “Many of the Republican leaders opposing this research [stem cell research] know better, people like [Senate Majority Leader] Bill Frist, who’s a doctor, for God’s sake. People like him are blocking it to pander to the 20 percent of their base who are mouth-breathers.”

Read the entire Salon article here.

I added some links to rock climbing in Peru today. You can find the information here.

Eh. Afghanistan is old news. We don’t want to clean up our mess, because that’s boring. We want to change a *new* regime cuz that’s a lot more fun, what with all the cool weapons we’ve got and all.

Salon article on what we’ve done (or haven’t) since rousting the Taliban.

Washington Post article just to prove that I’m not completely biased. :)

I posted this to rec.climbing in response to someone who planned on boycotting the “symbolic” American products. This is also a response to this campaign.

I wish the boycotters luck.

Effecting change in American foreign policy by boycotting American products seems futile to me, for a myriad of reasons. The number of boycotters would have to be rather significant across a wide spectrum of American companies to impact their collective bottom line enough to unleash their lobbyists upon
Washington.

MCD and KO (using stock tickers is the proper Kapitalist way to refer to our beloved corporations, btw) alone aren’t going to influence American foreign policy.

On the other hand, sending some sort of symbolic message seems a much more realistic goal. Unfortunately, symbolism is a funny thing. In my world view, the message ought to be coherent. What kind of message do you project if you merely boycott some American products but not all?

If you’re boycotting Big Macs and Cherry Coke, you ought to be boycotting computers as well, since they are the result of massive amounts of American intellectual property and effort (even if they’re mostly manufactured in Asia now).

“We reject your culture, but we’ll keep your other stuff because it’s so darn useful.”

*Yawn* What kind of superior moral ground do you stand on if you only reject the things you don’t need?

Take a lesson from the Montgomery, AL bus boycott, sparked by Rosa Parks, and major landmark in the US history of civil rights. Those boycotters had the moral superiority in the sense I’m talking about here, in that they gave up something they needed and actually made a real sacrifice to further their cause.

In contrast, the choice between eating a Big Mac or spotted dick or whatever doesn’t really resonate with me. Sorry.

On the third hand (a clever rhetorical device I’m deploying for this diatribe), you can boycott specific American products because it makes you feel good that you’re doing something to fight the evil American hegemony that threatens the rest of the world. Hey — that’s great.

If you do it often enough, you could power your car that runs off your own sense of self-satisfaction (cf. Ed Begley Jr. in The Simpsons).

Cheers!

/Alex, slow day at work