flooding--> city destroyed

CNN Reports:

Nagin said both the city's airports were under water, the Southern Yacht Club had burned to the ground, an oil tanker had run aground and was leaking, there were gas leaks throughout the city and Interstate 10's twin spans heading east over the lake were "completely destroyed."

I'm sorry, and this is really not funny, but isn't that reminiscent of old school Sim City 2000?

I will investigate any ways to help besides sending money etc. to Red Cross and post them here to compensate for my lack of sensitivity towards the subject. Please don't send me for sensitivity training.

oh my gawd, i'm kvelling!

so i've been reading jewschool for months, maybe years, now but nothing has topped both this insanely hilarious article
and this call for submissions that is WAY after my own heart and ideas and something i imagine i could get very passionate about/involved with in the future. i'm only sorry i never responded to the initial call for submissions for Mazel Tov Cocktail because you're damn straight i could write a friggin epic whatever about how amazing Barbara Myheroff is or the conversation that would occur if she had dinner with Emma Goldman.

mayors

so apparently mayor bloomberg thinks that noise is a big problem issue in new york? something on which time should be spent above other issues?

wtf

after reading/reading about last night's mayoral debate, i really like freddy ferrer. but then, i liked him 4 yrs ago too. also, i can't vote in nyc. damnit. although solicitors (not british lawyers) constantly come up to me and i have to turn them down bc it's utterly irrelevant for them to waste their time on me.

shoutout to phil kim, my fellow CIW '03.

how to blogroll, anyone?

engaging the disengagement

honestly, i don't know what to think. for months i agreed with the likes of Naomi Chazan, who I heard speak in October '04, and other members of the faltering israeli left, who have warned against the disengagement, both for its unilateral nature and for fear that leaders would view it as a substitute for rather than precursor to bilateral talks with the palestinians. however, honestly, this seems to be a huge step. i haven't been reading much of what the left opposition to the disengagement is saying, besides stressing that it not be the end-game solution. maybe they're saying it's all a big publicity stunt and that the palestinians aren't actually getting much.

i suppose we'll see what happens when it's over. as i write, haaretz is reporting that 16 of 21 gaza settlements have already been evacuated and it's only day 4. will there be civil war? will missiles be launched over the green line now as the right insinuates, proving that gaza alone might not even be sufficient as a first step? i don't know.

what i do know is that this is really going to continue wreaking havoc on israel internally. i wish i was taking the class i took on israeli society (with tamir sorek) right now. when i took that class, it was just a dead-end depressing time, in the middle of the second intifada (2003), when more people were being killed by the day and it seemed clear that the geneva initiative wasn't taking hold beyond the fringe. but now it would be really interestign to discuss these issues, because a main focus of the course was on the internal splits between religious and secular and between elite and poverty-stricken, and the intrsection of those divides.

even though it came from ariel sharon, for whom i would never have expected to have anything but fightin words, it seems like it might be the spark to light the internal struggle which was going to have to happen sooner or later. clearly, such a struggle would not be pleasant for anyone involved, but what i could never understand about the people who kept saying, well, we can't give land back, because they don't deserve it right now, or we can't do this, or we can't do that: did they honestly see the current situation as sustainable, as somethign that could continue the way it's been for the past 5 yrs (or the past 38 years) for much longer?

Yair Sheleg writes in Haaretz:

In recent years, there was an unofficial status quo between the religious right and the liberal left: On the one hand, the liberal left railed against the settlements, but never dared to evacuate them (including in the context of the Oslo agreements) out of an understanding that this was the apple of the right's eye, and out of a sense of what the consequences could be. On the other hand, the religious right railed against the control the liberals have over the legal system, the media, academia - in fact all the systems that create public opinion - but in actual fact did not wage an all-out war to change the situation, both because it was preoccupied with struggles over the territories as well as out of an understanding that these institutions were the apple of the liberals' eye.

He writes of a "deal that fell through," and seems to imply that the religious right will no longer hold up its end of the "deal," now that it has been betrayed. I agree with Sheleg's assessment of the way in which the disengagement represents a huge twist in Israeli politics and a huge departure from the corrupt and undemocratic status quo deals of the coalitions. But I'm not quite sure if the religious will be able to force their agenda in other matters as revenge, as Sheleg claims. And who's to say this might not lead to more honest brokering between the factions; more of a recognition of who actually represents the will of the majority and who doesn't...
TO BE CONTINUED (maybe)

8.19 update:

wow. it gets better and better.

Condoleeza Rice is actually towing the line of the Israeli left, "empathizing with Israel," while reminding her that the Gaza pullout is not enough, urging withdrawal from more of the West Bank and decreased travel restrictions on Palestinians.

wal-mart

another story about wal-mart, amidst all the talk of their hopeful (hopeful for them, i mean, clearly)expansion to places like queens, ny that have thus far been succesful at keeping out their poor labor etc. practices:

so they are complaining that their profits have been lower for the past two quarters, which they think is a result of the continuously rising gas prices and they foresee this to continue to cut into their profits. oh poor babies.

but maybe the other culprit is unions at work? have any of the wal-marts successfully unionized yet? i don't even know.

Wal-Mart is also struggling with keeping its expenses down, Scott said.

"We did not meet our goals as our expenses in the quarter grew faster than our sales," Scott said.

oh, poor babies again- their expenses are rising. well, clearly we know who will be hit if they are trying to lower their expenses.

(actually, i don't even know if increased wages/benefits/etc. would even increase their expenses by that much, given how big they are.)
thoughts anyone? or have i already expended too many characters and too much energy on the terrible titan?

maybe i should have been in "ordinary people"

i always thought they were a cool troup, albeit a bit too campy and amateurish for the subjects they were dealing with. well, apparently, although the NCAA finally got the hint about one of their major issues, the ridiculous appropriation, mocking and god knows what else of Native American tribes in sports teams, Jeb Bush can't possibly deal with Florida State University not mocking Native Americans, and actually claims that they like it!

some of these things are so out there one can hardly believe that they are true stories.

i also think that if i done more of that sort of creative arts before i graduated, whether it was non-chai notes music, drama acting, or writing- journalistically or whatever, i might have gone in that direction in the first place, and not be struggling to shove it into my life now. hopefully, once i look for, get, and move into an apt., i can allocate more time to these things.

i've really been realizing lately that i need to have a career that directly involves more politics (not just by explaining, well, these people are neglected by the mainstream healthcare system, and so by helping them i'm decreasing the disparities, leveling the playing field and subverting the system...) and definitely more writing. so i'm hoping that even though i don't have particular training/skills/much-knowledge in things like agricultural trade policy, or immigration law, which really interest me, if i try to begin reading and writing more on those topics and trying to freelance a bit, that will hopefully get mre more into the writing field, and show that i have some experience in those topics. (so it wouldn't really help me to freelance on any human development or non-political topics, like, say....colon cancer...lol)

8.10.05 edit: i tried to link to some reference website for ordinary people, but it seems that they no longer have an rso page or anything. i hope they didn't disband!

the news sucks

preface: there are a number of very annoying cliche/expressions in this post, for some reason, which bothers me immensely, but in order to post from work at all, i don't have time to work on the writing to try to say exactly what i mean, and must rely on this molest-some banter. ha! i made up a word!

i don't understand how this could have barely made the news, covered up by all this stupid detalia about the shuttle and whether the size of each astronaut's farts will affect the return to earth. literally, the mother of some astronaut from queens has been getting air time every single night to spew the same idiotic quote every single night, about how she completely trusts nasa and she believes her son is safe because they said so. dude, it's fucking outer space.....i'm sure anyone really know what they're talking about.

but anyway, back to reality, so all this time as bush was ducking away under semantic differences over who in his administration he was going to fire and who he was just going to slap on the wrist, regarding valerie plame-gate, it turns out john bolton had testified in the grand jury and then lied about it?

i love sen. joe biden (D-DE) who investigated and figured out this whole coverup and said:

It seems unusual that Mr. Bolton would not remember his involvement in such a serious matter...In my mind, this raises more questions that need to be answered. I hope President Bush will not make the mistake of recess appointing Mr. Bolton.

but no, bush has gone ahead and appointed him as a recess appointment, despite the hard work of senator biden, proving all of his (sadly) weak opponents correct again. so the horrible reasons the u.s. is going down to hell in a handbasket both domestically and internationally are just piling on now, and nobody seems to care! it's all still about the poor little spring break party girl lost in aruba, and angelina and brad's cute little african baby (clearly, not being orientalized or exoticized....clearly...) and who knows what else. in place of the fact that now both the american people and all the constituent nations of the u.n. (the whole world basically) are being screwed with their pants on.

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in other news, my stint as the sole resident of my house has ended, as my parents came home from their vacation last night. it was a little sad saying goodbye to the car that had become mine last night, but shortlived things are nice sometimes too. any you know, i don't really want to get too comfortable in the white picket fence, leather-seated car lifestyle anyway.

the grinch who stole my...something

the following post was written on 7.26. i was hoping to add more that day and i've had various other things to write since then, but if i don't write them down right away, which the schedule doesn't really allow, i tend to forget them, so...closure/structure is lacking. read away at your own risk:

i feel like i am falling down the chute. or more accurately, falling up the chute. like there's some kind of suction chute that brings you away from your goals, your ideals and your interests; once you start living in one place, making money and associating with boring, normal, apolitical people, the kind of people i've seen specifically identified by a friend of mine in the past few weeks and also by the main character in the AMAZING book "extremely loud and incredibly close."

anyway, these people, and this lfestyle brought me way up the chute yesterday. to the point where i had no idea till thei morning when it was too late, that cafta was up for a vote in the house yesterday.

[there was supposed to be more written in here about why i was very upset that cafta was approved by the house. basically, it passed by two votes, two of which were democratic representatives from brooklyn and queens. so i kinda feel like if i had done something more, even though i don't actually live in brooklyn or queens, but close enough, then maybe i could have changed the course of history. but probably not.]

of course, very dissapointed am i. ringing repeatedly through my ears is josh lyman's cry, "i lose this vote...i'm resigning," from the guns not butter episode of the west wing.

yesterday, was a really long, busy day, as i am coming to understand all of my wednesdays will be at this job, because i have to trek around harlem collecting data and dealing with disorganized clinics.