IN PRAISE OF LOVELESS AND WHAT A MY BLOODY VALENTINE REUNION MIGHT LEAD TO

Recently, I wrote about band reunions….Here’s one that is quite intriguing….

The recent reunion of My Bloody Valentine for the benefit of playing concerts has also stoked hopes for a reunion in the recording studio as well….MBV’s last CD LOVELESS is considered by many (including myself) to be a stand alone seminal piece of music that is completely original and magnificently inscrutable….It exists on a different level from most music….It is music not the way indie pop guitar rock is music but the way Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is music….The wash of sound comes in movements not what one would normally classify as a song.

It sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard although there have been many imitators (The Smashing Pumpkins owe their whole flimsy career to MBV and LOVELESS)….The hum of guitars and all the sounds they make well, actually just the sheer number of them overdubbed (50 alone on TO HERE KNOWS WHEN I recall reading) creates a symphonic power that is otherworldly, powerful, hallucinatory….Very few cd’s clear a room of unsuspecting guests better than LOVELESS.

However, LOVELESS is also a beautiful record and there are melodies that appear out of nowhere and grab you by the throat….The below the mix vocals deadpan and very indie in a European way are perfect for the arrangements….Bob Mould, himself no stranger to the guitar as a wall of sound, once compared LOVELESS to PET SOUNDS and I can kind of see that….The studio creates a complete environment wallpapering over every inch of space with sound.
Since LOVELESS came out in 1991, there has been a long wait for new material as well as a lawsuit brought by their record company, abortive recording sessions, and rumors of MBV leader Kevin Shields having some sort of mental breakdown which if true one could imagine hearing evidence of in the music.

LOVELESS is clearly one of the greatest pieces of music of any genre I have ever heard….Could their current tour be a precursor for lightning striking twice?

WHY JANET NAPOLITANO IS RIGHT PLUS TEAPARTY NONSENSE

In 1995, Timothy MacVeigh and Terry Nichols, two veterans of the first gulf war, motivated by the idea that the US government had become too repressive in the wake of the Ruby Ridge fiasco and the Branch Davidian mess as well as their belief in a New World Order that would squash US sovereignty and provoked by the violent rhetoric of the Republican takeover of both houses of congress the year before, committed the worst act of terrorism in the United States prior to 09/11-The Oklahoma City Bombing.

The new Director of Homeland Security, Former Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, became a target for criticism recently when a report was leaked from her department that showed that the potential for new MacVeigh and Nichol types was on the rise….The contributing factors? A large number of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan with skills with weapons, demolitions etc., high unemployment and an economic recession, racism/anti-immigration mania and the increasingly desperate rhetoric of a Republican party spinning into the abyss in the face of one of the most polished and well managed Democratic presidencies ever.

The last part is important….During the last eight years, we were continuously told that criticizing George Bush’s lack of intelligence or knowledge about how the world really worked was un-American and how dare we voice concern over his policies during a time of so-called war….However, those same people now have no problem stating that President Obama is a Muslim and a plant guaranteed to undermine America….Even more wacky is the continuing nutty quest of a gradually decreasing cadre of right-wing loonies to prove that Obama was not born in the USA and his birth certificate is somehow fake or forged despite truckloads of evidence to the opposite.

I think Janet Napolitano is exactly right….Since the end of the 1960’s, the American airwaves have been swamped by right wing talk radio often deliberately preaching untruths about race, economics, history, foreign policy, immigration etc. to an America not educated enough to know the truth….OKC was the chickens coming home to roost of a violent right-wing extremism tacitly encouraged by the Republican party….The conditions are right for it to happen again if we are not vigilant.

I am however encouraged by the fact that most people see through the whole tea party nonsense…. Watching these well-financed groups composed of multi-millionaires, wealthy business owners and other people with much larger incomes than you and I try to equate Obama attempting to make the tax structure of the US more fair and pay down a massive debt left behind by the previous Republican administration to the fight for independence in colonial America and taxation without representation is like watching Dick “The Slug” Cheney deny drowning people is torture.

The fact that the majority of Americans don’t seem to have much interest in this right-wing circus act (especially in swing states) indicates that Americans do both understand the situation they are in economically and have grown increasingly sophisticated about conservative media tricks (and it really is a conservative media now although one could argue that the labeling of the liberal media was always a right wing tactic).

A PICTURE'S WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS....WHY WE SUPPORTED OBAMA IN THE FIRST PLACE

I wrote this some time ago….

http://rgdinmalaysia.xanga.com/674304193/why-i-admire-hugo-chavez-and-evo-morales/

The photographs today were amazing and truly indicate the different tone in America….Now I am reminded why I supported Obama in the first place.

THE TROUBLE WITH BUZZWORDS

Buzzwords are the language of exclusion….Rather than opening up a theory for public consumption, they instead force someone to learn one person’s view of something like business management, education, etc.

I think a theory (unless of course it is scientific or technical and there is no other way to express this jargon) is best expressed in plain language for public consumption.

I recently thumbed through FLIRTING WITH DISASTER by Marc Gerstein that posits the theory that most “accidents” that occur be it the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown or Hurricane Katrina or Arthur Anderson’s Enron accounting fiasco were preventable.…The book’s sub-heading is “Why accidents are rarely accidental”.

It’s a well-researched book but Gerstein can’t resist the lure of the buzzword….He coins a term “Organizational Bystanders” which is someone who knows something is going wrong and will end in a catastrophe but does nothing….It’s a bit like in The Three Stooges where Moe is sure of his own infallibility, Curly is too crazy/stupid, but Larry knows what is going on….However, due to his own inherent meekness, refuses to act….Or it’s like those people who are unfortunately very common in Malaysia who see another person being robbed or mugged but refuse to get involved.

I’ve come up with my own buzzword which is “Non-Authoritative Responsibility”….This is when companies assign tasks to employees that will involve them in a situation where they are leading other employees that they don’t actually supervise either their equals or people whose position is above there’s on the corporate ladder….This is a terrible way to get anything done….It only creates a lot of hatred and resentment and also further makes the workplace a Darwinian shark pool where instead of only the fittest surviving, the biggest two-faced weasels are the ones who slither to success.

I feel a company with clearly delineated roles and responsibilities and corporate hierarchy is the most successful in the long run….In the short run, companies with very dynamic non-formal systems of hierarchy may generate new ideas but they will also have large employee turnover due to the corporate rat system and unpleasant working environment they create.

Anyway, Buzzwords are a cover for not having much substance or a protection mechanism if you do not have self-confidence in your own ideas….Speak clearly and “chunk” your information….People that use too many buzzwords look like pretentious idiots.

A FEW THOUGHTS ON BAND REUNIONS....

Recently, I heard The Verve’s reunion album which came out last year….It is pleasant and well-produced but sounds more like a Richard Ashcroft solo album than the combination of incendiary explosive semi-psychedelic guitar freak-outs and deeply moving no BS heartfelt ballads that made up the first three Verve albums especially their landmark URBAN HYMNS.

Most bands who re-unite do not produce anything that remotely matches their original time together….I understand why bands re-unite to tour as touring is the most lucrative part of the recording business especially if you are not a musical act that sells millions of copies of records but lightning very rarely strikes twice….Echo and the Bunnymen, The Go Betweens, The Byrds, The Small Faces, and Television are examples of very good bands the first time around whose reunion work proved to be sub-standard.

The Beatles and The Clash are examples of bands who successfully resisted the call to reunite and therefore did not besmirch their musical legacy….The Jam and The Smiths are bands that have so far resisted this call and I believe will continue to resist so good for Paul Weller and Morrissey.

Have there ever been any successful reunions? Well, I like everything Squeeze did when they reunited after breaking up for a few years in the mid 80’s but the truth is they hadn’t been broken up for very long when they got back together and that band has always been a vehicle for Chris Difford and Glen Tilbrook….Roxy Music did make one great album AVALON when they got back together but again they weren’t separated for that long and were largely the vehicle for Bryan Ferry at that point ….The Buzzcocks and The Posies, two bands with very simple deliveries and also dominating main personalities, did make some decent music when they reunited.

But overall the result is not as good as the first time around and often quite pathetic as older people stagger around the stage and the recording studio trying to repeat past glory (Pete Townsend, hello?).

TORTURE IS EVIL (HOW THE US LOST THE MORAL HIGH GROUND IN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST TERRORISM)

This week, President Obama released several documents that indicate the widespread use of torture in the so-called “War on Terror” as well as a further description of the tortures used….In addition to waterboarding, we have sticking people in a box with insects, nudity used as a tool of humiliation, sleep deprivation and “walling” in which prisoners are thrown against a fake wall that makes a big noise that makes them think that in fact they have hit the wall a lot harder than they have.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jE5iJQobx6q1nypm9I4woOiNOlZwD97KGGB00
Of course, there are still those in the prior US administration that insist that this was not torture but torture by any other name is still torture….What’s disappointing about this is that the President exempts those that committed these crimes against humanity from any prosecution….I would be especially interested in prosecuting those who ordered acts of torture starting with former VP Dick “Himmler” Cheney.

It is also hard to believe that once the US was doing this it wasn’t doing other things even more graphic and damaging….The USA has history of this type of behavior during the cold war.

We live in a world where reality is often warped by television and other media and a population of Americans who are too stupid to recognize the difference….The fascistic TV show “24”, itself the creation of a dedicated neo-conservative, has presented us with the scenario of torture used several times to extract information from terrorists in life or death situations such as the whereabouts of a nuclear weapon that is going to be detonated….Has this type of situation ever happened? Most of the people tortured by the US since 09/11 were foot soldier level muhajeedin types picked up in Afghanistan predominantly who had little or no knowledge of world events….There have also been a number of innocent people tortured at Guanatanamo Bay and later released who wrote about their experiences.

Torture produces whatever you want people to say and this is often ridiculous and fantastic information which is readily jumped on by the torturers….Consider the many orange levels in post 09/11 USA false alarms that largely came about through torture.

Then there is this story….

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/65608.html

The USA lost the moral high ground in fighting terrorism once it started employing torture….The difference that should be clear to the world between a strain of primitive backwards religious intolerance versus modern democracy ceased to be clear and became muddy and obtuse….For me, this struggle has lost all clarity and I refuse to even take sides anymore.

I can’t support the US’s actions but I’ve long been disgusted in America’s actions abroad….I no longer pay taxes but I think it might also be time to start looking into canceling my US citizenship.

BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN BY WALLACE STEGNER

BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN contains one of the best constructed character studies I have ever read….I am not saying this is necessarily one of the best characters in literature but in chronicling Harry “Bo” Mason from younger years to death, Wallace Stegner has so filled in the spaces of humanity with the real-life contradictions and quirks of a person of Bo’s energy, period of time, mindset, and childhood created personality that he has in effect given birth to a complete human being.

BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN is more than the study of Bo Mason though….Based on Stegner’s own family life growing up, it’s about the origins of rootlessness in American life, It’s about the idea of the get rich quick scheme rather than hunkering down and working a steady job, it’s about individual selfishness versus having a family, it’s about the transformation of America from a land of pioneers and over the next hill awaits opportunity to a land of towns and communities where people put down roots.

This is a beautifully written book….In particular, I like how Stegner starts each chapter in the middle of a certain period of time and them moves backwards and forwards to show what has happened to the characters since the last chapter and where they are going in the next chapter….It’s a great literary device I may steal for one of my own books one day.

This is a book with so many different themes but with characters that are complicated and difficult and not conventionally heroic be it Bo or his wife Elsa or their two sons Chet and Bruce…Despite the meticulous, almost poetic prose this is not an easy or conventional read which maybe accounts for why this book is not more well known.

Wallace Stegner was considered “The Dean of Western Writers”….That appellation was to differentiate between the wave of writers who appeared from places like Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado etc. as well as Southern Canada following Stegner’s success….While he won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1971 novel ANGLE OF REPOSE, I consider this his greatest work.

I think this quote from BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN sums it all up….

“People, he said, were always being looked at as points, and they ought to be looked at as lines. There weren’t any points, it was false to assume that a person ever was anything. He was always becoming something, always changing, always continuous and moving, like the wiggly lines on a machine used to measure earthquake shocks. He was always what he was in the beginning, but never quite exactly what he was; he moved along a line dictated by his heritage and his environment but he was subject to every sort of variation within the narrow limits of his capabilities.”

GUATEMALA AS A TEMPLATE FOR AMERICAN IMPERILIASM AND AMERICAN SPONSORED GENOCIDE

If one was looking for a template for discussing/describing post WWII Cold War US imperialism, Guatemala would be the perfect example.

After years of oppression and exploitation, Guatemala enjoyed a period of reform (known as “The Ten Year Spring”) between the years 1944 to 1954 in which two different democratically elected governments following one another instituted key reforms modeled on FDR’s New Deal which brought America out of the Great Depression….Some examples of these reforms were free expression, a multi-party political system, the creation of unions to safeguard worker’s rights, and land reform.

The last part was very important because Guatemala was/is a country with gross economic inequality….The descendants of the Mayan Indians are the majority but are for the most part very poor and treated like second class citizens whereas the lighter skinned descendants of Spanish colonialists are the ones who own everything including land which they got for next to nothing….A plan was put into effect whereas the largest plantations were required to sell small portions of their land back to the government which in turn sold it at reduced cost to poorer citizens….The amount paid for the land was equal to the value listed on the plantations’ tax returns which was funny because they had been undervaluing the amount of their property from their inception in order to get out of paying taxes.

Unfortunately, the United Fruit Company was also a very large landowner in Guatemala and also greatly undervalued its holdings to the Guatemalan government to get out of paying taxes….The UFC executives scurried to Washington and screamed “communism” which resulted in the creation of a CIA trained and backed military force which overthrew the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz and installed a military dictatorship which massacred thousands….Many fled the country including an Argentinean doctor who was so disgusted by what he saw that he became permanently radicalized by the experience….His name was Che Guevera.

Fast forward to the 1970’s….Demands for reform were growing in an unfair system that enslaved the majority….small rag tag groups of guerillas began opposing government policies….Mayan Indians launched a peaceful protest in the Spanish Embassy….The government’s response?....Burn the embassy to the ground killing all the employees and the protestors.

This, Guatemala’s version of Kristellnacht, was the beginning of what has been called “The Silent Holocaust”….Up until 1986, under the pretense of fighting communism, the Guatemalan military launched a genocidal campaign against the Mayan Indians killing more than 200,000 people and eradicating 440 Mayan villages from the maps….Basically, they employed mass murder and rape filling up mass graves with bodies and burning every down every town they came to….Torture was also common place.

In 1999, a United Nations truth commission agreed that genocide had been committed against the Mayans by the Guatemalan military and that up to 97% of war crimes during this period had been committed by the Guatemalan military….Unfortunately, a law passed in Guatemala makes it very hard to go after perpetrators as they have been granted a form of amnesty against prosecution for crimes against humanity….The only people prosecuted so far in the Silent Holocaust are relatively low level soldiers.

So what was the United States involvement in all of this?

Well quite a lot it seems….In addition to the original coup that eliminated democracy in Guatemala, America had trained many Guatemalan military leaders in the fine art of torture and mass murder at that wonderful institution the School of the Americas….Millions of dollars were pumped to the Guatemalan military especially during the Reagan years to help with oppression….The newest armaments were also shipped there to be used against women and children and the overall slaughter of large groups of civilians….But worst of all, there have been a number of reports that US forces(of a CIA covert type) were on the ground during the Silent Holocaust and contributed to the mass murder in some occasions.

This cannot be excused by the argument that there was a global war against Communism….Most of the people killed in Guatemala were civilians….Considering that land theft of the poor Mayans was also part of the deal, I think this was actually a war of capitalist oppression.

Why talk about this now?....Because in this day and age of over simplification (good vs. evil for examples) it’s time to obliterate America’s patriotic marketing b*llsh*t….America is NOT the overriding force for good in the world….America relies on the exploitation of poorer countries in order for its citizens to enjoy their lifestyle.

IMO there’s no good and evil in the world as it applies to the behavior of Western nations….There’s only evil and more evil….America lies somewhere between the two.

RACISM/XENOPHOBIA IN AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOLS-MY STORY PLUS NO REASON TO CELEBRATE SMALL TOWN AMERICA

Reading this recent news story brings to mind some events from my past….

http://www.rgj.com/article/20090409/NEWS/904090327/1321

First off, I think this lawsuit and its outcome were absolutely correct….It is a school’s responsibility to provide a safe environment in which to learn and apparently this school did not.
I feel this way because I had a similar experience when I was in junior high school…For the duration of seventh grade, I had lived abroad in Karachi, Pakistan due to my stepfather working for the United Nations….When I returned to the rural community in Northern California where my stepfather owned a home to start eighth grade, it happened to coincide with the revolution in Iran and more specifically the resulting hostage crisis….I am half-Indian and so while not dark skinned look I look almost Arabic as my mother’s white features cancel out some of my father’s Indian ones….Long story short, the mostly redneck population began to single me out for verbal abuse (although not so much physical)….They basically branded me as an Iranian and it became a constant source of taunting….One of the favorite things that was said why don’t you go back to your own country?....This was very funny since I am native speaker of English and even in those days English was my best subject….I was also born in the United States.

What I have in common with the Egyptian girl in the lawsuit is the lack of response from the administration of the school to what was going on….In my case, I even had a teacher tell me one time I should go back to my country basically mirroring what the students said.

I never thought about suing though….I guess the statute of limitations have long since expired but I do respect this Egyptian girl for following through….I imagine it is even worse if you are a real foreigner in small town America’s schools.

My junior high school had one black student and he was also the subject of much abuse particularly by the PE teacher who seemed to not like black people at all….Small town America is still very racist but even more importantly in these days of the first non-white president, it’s also deeply xenophobic….They are ignorant of other cultures so they hate and fear other cultures….That’s the American redneck way!....in the 1800’s, they hated Irish and Italians until they became part of America then it was Jews then Chinese and other Asians….Every race goes through the whipping boy period because America, at its heart, is extremely insular and intolerant even more so in small towns.

The truth is I’ve never agreed with nor indentified with America’s mythologizing small town life….Small towns that were isolated by distance and/or geography from larger urban areas in my experience are places where you find people who are less educated, less rational, more animalistic, more racist (and one could also say more homophobic)….In short, small towns are where you find people who are less civilized….Norman Rockwell paintings aside, small town morality is a dubious fiction inspired equally by a twisted view of morality as well as a distrust of anything educated or modern or scientific.

My views are perfectly summed up by an interview with Christopher Guest about his year at Saturday Night Live and a sketch he did that got censored by the network….The sketch was a parody of a show that was popular at the time that featured newsman Charles Kuralt traveling around the USA in a RV chatting up small town folks and chortling at their homespun wisdom….In the sketch, the people he met didn’t like blacks or jews or gays or any foreigners at all and were a bit like the two encountered in the movie DELIVERANCE (Squeal like a wild piggy boyyyyyyyy)….Guest said that SNL felt it was too controversial to run a sketch that portrayed small town people in this light (despite the fact they run sketches mocking Arabs and other groups all the time).

The bottom line is despite what happened in voting booths last November, small town America at its heart is still a scary place for a foreigner or non-Anglo Saxon American or anyone remotely different….This is nothing to celebrate but rather something to vilify or even more productive satirize and ridicule….Three cheers for the plaintiff in this case!

CRYPTOZOOLOGY - AMERICAN MONSTERS.COM

Since starting this new blog, I haven't blogged at all about Cryptozoology(unlike my old blog).....It's still an interest of mine so here’s a great new website I’ve found www.americanmonsters.com about the sightings of Cryptids in the US.

Also the second season of Monster Quest was awesome….The Freshwater Sharks and the Giant Spider episodes in particular.

FOUR REASONS (AND MORE) WHY U2 SUCK

I can’t stand U2….This started off as a dislike for their music as a teenager but has grown into a greater overall disgust as they became globally popular….Their success are a perfect symbol of the vapid, shallow times we live in….With a new album out, I thought I would list once more the reasons why they suck.

1.) THE RHYTHM SECTION….Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen play like they are wearing mittens….Their one two chord style and tinny sound have to be the worst of any major band I’ve ever heard.

2.) THE EDGE….While The Edge stole a lot from contemporaries like Andy Gill of the Gang of Four or Will Sergeant of Echo and the Bunnymen, he reminds me more and more in execution of Eddie Van Halen….That is to say he plays the same solo over and over again and at different speeds and never does anything remotely new or original.

3.) THEY ARE THE MASTER OF THE HOLLOW STATEMENT….All the talk about peace and freedom and justice aside, U2’s songs are really not about anything other than sky high imagery that is very general in its worldview and non-specific and generic accompanied by bloated anthemic choruses….You have to read an interview with them to know they are talking about Martin Luther King Jr. or British violence against Irish people.

4.) YES HE’S WELL MEANING BUT THE TRUTH IS BONO = A***OLE….Bono’s kind of like Oprah yeah you respect what he does in some ways but in other ways he just seems a like a pompous twit….He often reminds me of Jane Fonda in the 1960’s or Barbra Streisand, in that you know they might be on the right side of an issue but you just wish they would shut up as they only bring disrepute on the issue they champion.

There’s really nothing original or interesting about U2 or their music….They were just fortunate to be at the right place at the right time in the late 70's early 80's English post-punk scene just like Nirvana and grunge in the 90’s and similarly many other better more challenging bands didn’t get as much attention.I resent rock stars who attempt to sell themselves as anything more than people who make music and when your music has never really outgrown unoriginal teenage garage sensibility despite all the Brian Eno production adornments I despise them even more.

DISAPPOINTMENT IN OBAMA REGARDING THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE PLUS BERNARD LEWIS'S LAUGHABLE ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS A HISTORIAN

It now appears clear that The Genocide committed against the Armenians by the Turks during World War I and immediately afterwards has the dubious distinction of being the template that other genocidal nations or groups who came after followed….Using cattlecars to transport human beings, using small paramilitary groups to commit mass killings at first, the government and media collaborating to vilify a whole group of people, the forcible moving of peoples away from big cities to remote areas where liquidation would be easier….There was even reports of poison gas used.

Adolph Hitler once said when discussing his own plans “Who after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

For a very good historical overview of the events of the Armenian Genocide, I would recommend THE BURNING TIGRIS by Peter Balakian http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060558709/ref=s9_sdps_c1_s2_p14_i4?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_r=0X5XBT0JENC9VQ1Q5XF1&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938131&pf_rd_i=507846
What makes President Obama’s recent refusal to label the Armenian Genocide as such while he was busy kissing Turkey’s ass especially disappointing is he had during his time in the senate and as a candidate for president berated the past administration for the same type of behavior.

Personally, I’m sick of the amount of bending over backwards that America and other countries do to Turkey….Despite their being basically a parliamentary democracy, there is still a thuggish element in Turkey and they don’t really have freedom of the press….Scratch the surface of Turkey and you’ll find fascists….The story of Hrant Dink is a good example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hrant_Dink

In my opinion, Turkey DOES NOT belong in the European Union.

One thing that Turkey does know is the power of money to influence historical record….Academics who deny the Armenian Genocide are often richly rewarded by Turkey both financially in the forms of grants and the like but also in terms of access to historical documents.

First and foremost of these is Bernard Lewis.

Now, I’ve always had a lot of problems with Bernard Lewis and his view of the history of the Middle East which is that the fact that the Arab world has not developed at the same pace as the rest of the world and the resulting anger of the Arabs towards the West is not the result of colonialization, Israel ,and their own US backed dictatorships but rather a failure of their own society(“Cultural Arrogance” is one term he has thrown out over the years)….It’s sort of like blaming slaves for slavery.

But what do you expect from a guy who in addition to discounting the Armenian Genocide (for which he was fined the symbolic amount of one franc by a French court) also supported the Iraq War and the ludicrous fairy tale that if one Middle Eastern dictatorship was turned into a democracy, magically others would follow like dominos.

Many of the misguided, prejudicial ideas we still have about the Arab world today, that they are nothing but death obsessed primitives who only respect the use of force, have indirectly come from the early work of Bernard Lewis….While he has taken some pains to separate Islam from this, what he seems to been saying all these years instead is that Arabs are naturally bad.

To me, the problem with Lewis is very clear, you can put all the alphabets of accomplishment after his name (PhD) but he is still a Zionist, not just Jewish per say but a Zionist, an avid believer in stealing someone else’s land and a supremism of one group over another….I believe this clouds any impartial reading of history….It’s bit like having Adolph Hitler chronicling the history of the Jewish people.

My last two thoughts about Bernard Lewis and his spurious academic contributions….1.)The late great Palestinian intellectual Edward Said really cleaned his clock in ORIENTALISM….Those who basically see nothing historically wrong with colonialism should not be historians! 2.) Bernard Lewis once noted, as an example of anti-Semitism, the anger people felt towards the Sabra and Shatila massacre committed by the Lebanese phalange but orchestrated and allowed by Israel as disproportionate to the anger felt about a similar massacre in Hama by Syrian forces against Palestinians.

Well my answer to that has always been my tax dollars don’t go towards giving Syria the most up to date armaments so they can brutally murder innocent civilians…. It’s a silly argument really but one of many from an old colonialist with a racist ideology seeking to further dehumanize a people….That’s Bernard Lewis in a nutshell!

RANDOM TERM BREAK COMMENTS - IN PRAISE OF NEW IMMIGRATION POLICIES, MR. SHOW, AND POSITIVE THINKING

Random racket from the one week between term break….

1.) In the process of getting my work permit renewed and for once have something positive to say about a Malaysian government policy….The new policy basically creates one all purpose permit that covers the foreigner married to a Malaysian whether or not he is working….When I am working, I must get a stamp showing my employed status which is relatively easy….Apparently, I do not have to go in and out of the country anymore when I leave a job….I merely switch back to the original permit….Sounds great and we’ll see how it works in months ahead.

2.) As I am in my brother in law’s house for the week holiday returning to Ipoh tomorrow, I now have Internet without going to a cyber café or a wireless hot spot….I’ve been enjoying one of my favorite shows courtesy of YouTube….Mr. Show, which ran on HBO for three years in the late 1990’s, was largely the brainchild of David Cross and Bob Odenkirk but also featured many contributions from the future voice of Spongebob Squarepants Tom Kenny.

I would describe Mr. Show as the American equivalent of Monty Python’s Flying Circus….Sketches ran into one another and were often completely absurd….They didn’t rely on repeated characters or phrases the way so many tired, flaccid, predictable sketch comedy shows do….Are you listening, Saturday Night Live?(a gaseous dinosaur that should have gone extinct many years ago)

Here are some of my favorite Mr. Show sketches….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOKv0qaA-nw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxlvKA6ipvs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne0RrK5qJ-k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP4yX2rkpBc

3.) Over the last year, my wife has got me into reading the LAWS OF ATTRACTION and other books that stress a positive mindset as the number one priority in creating your own reality of success….While I find the spiritual side of this to be silly (in keeping with my own agnostic/atheistic beliefs), I do strongly believe in the power of positive thinking and these books do give good tips on how to create this mindset….In fact, I’ve been trying it a lot this last term and I must say this has been the most stress free term at my school so far….There are a few people at my school who really irritate me (and I am NOT talking about students) but I find through utilizing this approach I was able to minimize their idiocy as well as to keep my temper in check….I am planning a couple of Audio/Visual Lessons this term (always a hassle at our school since we receive no help in the setting up of these lessons) so let’s see how that taxes my new found peace of mind.