Monthly Archives: May 2018

Little Wars

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As most of you will no doubt know, there are two occasions in life when one throws away lots of old junk. The first is when, for one reason or other, one moves out of one’s house for a considerable time. The other, when one returns after a prolonged absence and must put everything together again.

Over the last few days my wife and I have been busy with the second kind. Five months after having moved out to make room for a major renovation, we have moved back in. Only to be confronted by the usual mess: splotches of paint, any quantity of dust (this is not your typical American house; it is built of reinforced concrete, so that demolishing walls is a major enterprise), furniture that must be put back in its place, boxes, boxes everywhere, a garden that has been sadly neglected and needs attention, etc. Enfin, as the French say, you know the score.

Among the thing we decided had to go were the thirty volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. This was the 1992-93 edition—the last one to see the light of print. I got it after they asked me to do an article on the historical evolution of tactics. Either we’ll pay you $ 1,500 or you get a set, worth $ 3,000 for free, they said. I did not hesitate for a moment. Since then the Britannica has graced my shelves. Nice to look at, even though the rise of the Net and especially Wikipedia made it decreasingly useful.

And why am I telling you this story? As I was going up and down the stairs, each time with so and so many heavy volumes in my arms, I could not stop thinking of Herbert G. Wells. “H.G, Wells,” as he is usually known, was born in 1866 to a poor family in England (his father ran an unsuccessful little shop, his mother was a handmaid). Somehow having managed to overcome his humble background and acquire an education, he became a writer who specialized in social criticism (e.g A Modern Utopia, 1905) and what would nowadays be called science fiction (e.g The Time Machine, 1895, and The War in the Air, 1908). During what was then considered a long life—he died in 1946—he published dozens of books, many of them highly successful. Combining the various strands of his thought, putting in a good measure of humor, and giving free rein to an extraordinarily fertile imagination, he probably has the right to be called the greatest writer of science fiction ever.

Genetic Situations Various genetic concerns may cheapest viagra for sale account to mount the menace of impotence. Now that we have more adequate knowledge, it’s a high call to cut back on things that interfere good service generic viagra online with emotional and sexual side. cialis 5mg generika Things such as having friends, goals, and a life story are shown to increase ones satisfaction. It is often consumed to enhance sexual viagra order uk performance and pleasure. Specifically, I was thinking of one of his less known books, Little Wars. Published in 1913, when the author was forty-nine years old, its full title was Little Wars: A Game for Boys from Twelve Years of Age to One Hundred and Fifty and for That More Intelligent Sort of Girl Who Likes Boys’ Games and Books. Wells got the idea when a friend of his, Jerome K. Jerome (the famous author of the comic travelogue Three Men in a Boat, a true classic) started using a spring-operated toy gun to shoot at toy soldiers after dinner. Soon enough the two men turned the idea into a hobby, devising increasingly complicated rules for various kinds of battles and campaigns to be simulated as accurately as possible. They also built model battlefields—battlefields in which the already venerable volumes of the Britannica were initially used as fortifications.

As so often with H.G Wells, an element of social criticism was not lacking. In particular, he used the book to take a jab at the Kaiser “this prancing monarch” as Wells calls him. As well as the then well-known German school of Weltpolitik (world-politics) and the professors who wrote learned treatises about it. Not to put too fine a point on it, he hated their guts. He saw them, no doubt with good reason, as pompous, chauvinist, warmongering jerks. Tongue in cheek, he suggested that the little games he and his friends had invented might perhaps be used as substitutes for the real thing. Thus enabling the professors and anyone else who wanted to do so to play at war while leaving the rest of us alone.

Go to the devil, you confounded mass murderer, Bashir Assad. Go to the devil, you religious fanatic, Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei. Go to the devil, you cold-blooded bum, Vladimir Putin. Go to the devil, you uncouth “moron” Donald Trump. Go to the devil, you tinpot dictator, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Go to the devil, you Holocaust-denying Mahmoud Abu Mazen. Go to the devil, you blood-lusty Khaled Mashal who, even as these lines are being written, is firing his mortars and rockets at Israel. Go to the devil, you pathological liar and suspected briber-taker, Benjamin Netanyahu. Go fight your little wars among yourself in some kind of mental asylum.

And kill each other, for all I care. But leave the rest of us alone.

Why American Kids Keep Killing

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(I first posted this article in July 2014. Do I need to explain why I am re-posting it now?)

American kids keep killing each other, their teachers, and any other adults who happen to be present when they go berserk. Since December 2012 alone there have been some 74 school shootings, more than two a month on the average. Each time something of the kind happens the media go even more berserk than the children themselves. So far neither metal detectors at the gates nor armed guards in the corridors seem to have made much of a difference. Proposals for dealing with the problem have ranged from providing teachers with handguns to covering students with bullet-proof blankets.

As a foreigner who has spent some years in the U.S while his children went to school there, and who has written a book (in Russian) about the U.S, I may be in a better position than many others to shed some light on this question. Here, then, are my observations.

* Owing to the way the healthcare system is constructed, American infants are more likely than some others to die during their early months or years. For many years now, even the States that do best in this respect tend to lag behind many other developed countries, including some that are much poorer. Though America’s fertility rate may be the highest among developed countries, its kids are skimped on before they are born as well as immediately after birth. Arguably the fact that the problem affects lower-class socio-economic families much more than it does those above them only makes things worse.

* Compared to many other developed countries, America spends relatively little of its public wealth on raising its children. Family payments, measured in absolute numbers, are lower than in Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the U.K. They are also much lower than the OECD average. Relative to the earned incomes of employed single mothers, the overall value of cash transfers per family is low and declining. As a result, the percentage of children who live in poverty is higher than in most other developed countries.

* As if to make up for these shortcomings, American parents, and society in general, are extremely demanding on their children. At school they are supposed to get straight A’s. At home they are supposed to perform “chores,” meaning unpleasant tasks adults do not want to do. In addition they have to excel at sports—the reason being that, doing so, they may be able to get through college with the aid of scholarships and thus save their parents tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. I personally knew some perfectly nice middle-class parents who more or less compelled their teenage daughter have an operation on her knees, which were hurting, so she could to go on playing basketball. If all this were not enough, during their vacations they are expected to hold a job—the kind of job, needless to say, that pays so little that nobody else would want it—so as to cover at least part of their expenses.

The outcome is that many teenagers are busier, and enjoy less leisure, than in any of the many other countries I have visited or in which I have lived. Talking to some of them, I never understood how they managed it. Inevitably, some fail to do so. All this is done in the name of teaching children how to cope with “life”—yet judging by the results, it is often counter-productive.
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* Even as they encourage their children to grow up in a competitive world, American parents and society in general put them under any number of restrictions. If American adults are greedy for an endless supply of high-quality goods and services, then the American Psychological Association will commission a study on the effect of advertising on children with the goal of making them less so. If many Americans swear, then an American seven year old will be punished by his school principal for telling a classmate that his mother was gay, as indeed she was. If Americans supposedly smoke too much, then American youths up to age 21 are forbidden to smoke and may, indeed, be sent to jail for buying a pack of cigarettes. If not enough Americans join the Armed Forces so they can be sent to get killed in useless wars on the other side of the world, then any school that receives federal money must admit Pentagon recruiters and must provide those recruiters with students’ contact addresses even without their knowledge, or that of their parents. Ironically this requirement, which was enacted in 2001, was part of a law known as “no child left behind.”

If American adults like to drink while riding in stretch limousines, then out of fear that kids may do the same they are prohibited from using those limousines for their coming-out parties and must content themselves by being bused instead. If over sixty percent of American adults are overweight, then one can be certain that their children, far fewer of whom are, will be made to pay the price by having sweets, snacks, candy and various soft drinks banned from their schools’ vending machines. The list is endless.

Thus children are caught in a vise. From the moment of birth on, they are taught they must grow up so as to make their way in society. But that very society also puts them under endless prohibitions and, claiming that they “cannot handle it” (whatever “it” may be) infantilizes them. As one American told me, that explains why American children are so keen on sport. It is the only adult activity on which they are allowed to engage.

* Finally, American parents, and society in general, have never learnt how to spare the rod. I well remember how, on first visiting the home of a prominent and extremely well educated lawyer, I was told that his two sons had been “grounded” for quarrelling and would not be allowed to leave their room for a couple of days. I well remember how my son, then thirteen years old and following his first day at an American school, came home with a fifty-page booklet listing all the things he was prohibited from doing and the punishments attached to each; and yet, as he said between tears, he had done nothing wrong yet! Worse still, with computers around no offense committed by a child, however trivial, is ever left unregistered or forgotten. It is as if the term “forgiveness” did not exist.

Some parents go so far as to send their rebellions children to a kind of boot camp where they are supposed to learn what is what. Others even allow those children to be kidnapped by personnel who work for the firms that operate the camps and take them there by force. Others still consult doctors who then prescribe Prozac, Ritalin and other chemical compounds to keep the children quiet. Wherever one goes one hears the advice, “talk to your children.” But how can American parents, especially busy career mothers who often work as hard as fathers and are always desperately trying to juggle career and housework, ever find the time and energy to do so the way it should be done? Instead, all they seem to do is nag their offspring about homework.

As the Roman philosopher Seneca used to say, repeated punishment crushes the spirit of some of those subject to it. At the same time it stirs up hatred among all the rest. Is it any wonder that some children, caught in an impossible world, take up a gun and kill everybody they meet?

An Annotated Edition

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No, this is not a female sumo wrestler trying to out-scowl her opponent. She is an Israeli singer, Netta Barzilai. She has just won the Eurovision, the international singing contest held every year in front of fans numbering (it is said) in the hundreds of millions. A paper as respectable as the British Guardian celebrated it as a triumph of feminism and the age of “me too.” Good! Or else I might have thought it had originated in the brain of a mentally disturbed five-year old.

For those of you who, like me, found themselves unable to understand a word of her cackle, here is an annotated edition.

Toy

Look at me, I’m a beautiful creature[1]
I don’t care about your “modern-time preachers”[2]
Welcome boys, too much noise,[3] I will teach you
Pam pam pa hoo, Turram pam pa hoo[4]

Hey, I think you forgot how to play
My teddy bear’s running away[5]
The Barbie got something to say:[6] Hey! Hey! Hey!
Hey! My “Simon says”[7] leave me alone
I’m taking my Pikachu home[8]
You’re stupid just like your smart phone[9]

Wonder woman,[10] don’t you ever forget
You’re divine[11] and he’s about to regret
His baka-bakum, bak-bak bakumbai…[12]

I’m not your toy[13]
You stupid boy[14]
I’ll take you down
I’ll make you watch me
Dancing with my dolls
On the MadaBaka Beat
Not your toy!

A-A-A-Ani Lo buba!
Don’t you go and play with me boy![15]
A-A-A-Ani Lo buba!
Don’t you go and play… Shake!
Kulului,[16] Kulului, Ah, wedding bells ringing
Kulului, Kulului, Ah, money man bling-bling
I don’t care about your ‘stefa’, baby[17]
Pam pam pa hoo, Turram pam pa hoo[18]

Wonder woman, don’t you ever forget
You’re divine and he’s about to regret
His baka-bakum…bak-bak bakumbai…

I’m not your toy
You stupid boy
I’ll take you down
Natural Aspirin or White Whillow from Calivita has viagra generika a calming pain effect and lowers fever. This leads a viagra soft pills couple to get sexually frustrated and further leads to separation. Kamagra is much affordable that its branded version sildenafil generico viagra . There are various ways though to come out of such situations of male potential impotency as several medicines are available online that offers almost instant solution to ED problem. buy levitra is one such vital factor. I’ll make you watch me
Dancing with my dolls[19]
On the MadaBaka Beat
Not your toy!

[1] Poor old Michelangelo. He should have taken Netta, not David, as his model. Imagine how many more people would visit Florence! Anyhow, self-praise stinks.

[2] Does anyone know who the modern preachers are? I sure don’t.

[3] Who is making too much noise? The boys? If so, why are they welcome? Or perhaps they are not? Never mind: nonsense is nonsense, and la donna e mobile.

[4] Stop insulting chicken by trying to imitate them, Netta. Any chicken sounds way more intelligent than this.

[5] What Teddy bear? What on earth is Netta squeaking about? If you know, please send me an email.

[6] The only thing Barbie ever said to Ken was “you pay the bill, or else I won’t even consider sleeping with you.”

[7] Who on earth is this Simon? What does he have to do with anything else in the song?

[8] Does she sleep with it? And, if so, is it the male version or the female one?

[9] Sorry, Netta. You may not have heard, but today’s smartphones can play chess, or Go, or trivia, much better than you can.

[10] A TV series fit for nine-year olds, in case you didn’t know.

[11] Modest, isn’t she?

[12] Most of the time it is women not men, who talk like that. In German it is called, Kaffeeklatsch (coffee-house chattering).

[13] Poor Netta. Four times she says she doesn’t want to be some boy’s toy. Apparently that is how he sees herself.

[14] Imagine the s—tstorm if I had written “you stupid girl.” But women are allowed to say anything these days, aren’t they? Until, one day, they won’t be.

[15] What else can one do with Netta? Discuss Plato, perhaps? Or relativity?

[16] Is that supposed to be the sound of a rooster?

[17] See No. 4.

[18] See No. 4.

[19] I do not understand. Netta is twenty-five years old. And still dancing with dolls, hoping that boys will watch her???

 

 

Ouch, Jerusalem

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On 13 May 2018 Israel will be celebrating Jerusalem Day. The idea was raised for the first time in June 1967, just a few days after Israeli troops had occupied the eastern half of the city as part of the so-called Six Days’ War of that month. Various rabbis were consulted, pros and cons weighed. Pressing hard in favor of the idea was the religious Right. Up to the outbreak of the war MAFDAL, as the party was known, had been a bourgeois, middle of the road, fairly moderate party. Apart from emphasizing the need for kashrut and opposing summer time (so that practicing people could pray in the morning), it made few waves. Now it was transformed; in particular, its younger members felt themselves filled by a divine command to stick to every inch of occupied territory and settling it as soon as possible with as many Jews as possible.

The details do not really matter. Suffice it to say that the police, the mayor of Jerusalem, and the Government of Israel all opposed the idea of celebrating “united Jerusalem, the City that has been joined together, Israel’s eternal capital,” as the phraseology went and still goes. Partly they did so because they feared unrest among the Palestinians. And partly because they worried about the negative international reaction that might follow. A court battle had to be fought before the authorities allowed the first ceremonies, prayers, marches, dances, etc. to be organized. Even so they were private, not official. This private character they retained until 1998 when the Knesset finally adopted the Day.

I myself lived in Jerusalem for twenty-one years (1964-85). Having decided to leave, I chose, as my new place of residence, Mevasseret (Herald, in Hebrew), Zion, a bedroom community just five miles or so to the west. I did, however continue to work in Jerusalem where the Hebrew University is located. I can therefore fairly say that Jerusalem has helped shape my life. Preparing for Jerusalem Day, and with a mind to those of my readers who, not being Israelis, may be misled by the Niagara of hype by which the city is surrounded, I want to point out a few elementary facts.

First, Jerusalem is the poorest of Israel’s major cities. Located in the hills, about 2,000 feet above sea level, during most of its history it was pretty isolated. So much so that, when Mark Twain visited in 1869, a road capable of carrying wheeled traffic to and from it did not yet exist. Even during my own early years as a student (1964-67) they used to say that the best thing about Jerusalem was the road to Tel Aviv. All this was part cause, part consequence, of the fact that the city never became a major commercial center. Another reason why it is poor is because over two thirds of the population are either Palestinians or Jewish-orthodox. The former are less educated and discriminated against in numerous ways. As a result, their standard of living tends to be very low. Among the latter, a great many prefer praying and begging to doing any kind of work. Between them they drive out the secular Jews. Precisely the highly educated, relatively tolerant, and productive part of the population any modern city needs most if it is to prosper.

Second, the quality of life is low. Housing prices are sky-high, but municipal taxes rates per square foot of building are the highest in the country. Many streets are dirty (the more so because, to protest against every kind of insult, real or imagined, some Jewish orthodox men have made it their specialty to overturn garbage bins and empty their contents into them) and in a poor shape. Traffic is a nightmare; getting from where I live to town, or the other way around, can easily take an hour. For twenty years now a modern railway to link Jerusalem with Tel Aviv, just forty or so miles away has been under construction; however, the day on which it will be completed keeps being postponed. A single-line modern tram system exists, but it does not work on the Shabbat and on (Jewish) religious feast days. Terrorism in the form of bombings, deliberately engineered road accidents, and stabbings is not rare; but for the heavy presence, of police and guards, not only in the streets but at every entrance to every public building, surely there would be more of it.

There is SRT (Sex Reassignment Therapy) which is also called gender viagra sales in india devensec.com reassignment. Impotency can be levitra properien cured if help is sought. If a woman is not sexually active, menopause cause thinning of hair follicles that may ultimately lead to total baldness devensec.com cialis side effects in men. Also, they were associated with other intimate problems such as low sexual drive, poor erection, early http://www.devensec.com/sustain/eidis-updates/IndustrialSymbiosisupdateApril_June2011.pdf viagra online from india ejaculation, low sexual drive or stress. Third, to live in Jerusalem means to be an expert on comparative fanaticism (as the Israeli writer Amos Oz once put it). The three major religions apart, there are dozens upon dozens of sub-religions and sects. Each day at noon, standing on Mount Scopus and listening to the various bells being rung is quite an experience. Again though, don’t be misled. Many members of many religions and sects hate each other’s guts. Nowhere is this fact more in evidence than at the Holy Sepulcher; there, every inch is divided between the four major Christian denominations (Greek-Orthodox, Catholic, Armenians and Copts) and jealously guarded, sometimes with edged weapon in hand. Countless people are utterly convinced that his (or, let’s not forget, her) God is the only true one and that the rest are, in reality, little better than devils. Each feels that he personally is one of God’s soldiers specially appointed to carry out His will. All this makes Jerusalem a rather unpleasant place to live in. For example, occupants of vehicles who enter some Jewish orthodox neighborhoods, even by mistake, risk being bombarded with rocks.

Fourth, contrary to Israeli propaganda the city has never been united. During the half century since 1967 the population has trebled, more or less, increasing from about 300,000 to almost a million. Many new neighborhoods have been built, and the Old City has been surrounded by new ones populated exclusively by Jews. In addition, quite some Arab villages which were never part of Jerusalem have been annexed to it without anyone consulting the population. They pay taxes but hardly get any municipal services at all. Wherever one goes, it is the Palestinians who occupy the lowest positions. As in construction, schlepping products in the marketplace, cleaning buildings, and so on. To be sure, the residents of East Jerusalem have the right to vote in the municipal elections. However, it is one which very few of them, worried that participation would be interpreted as consent and might be dangerous to boot, have ever exercised. Briefly, social interaction among equals is minimal.

No wonder that the percentage of residents who are happy with their city is among the lowest in the country. And no wonder proportionally more of them leave. I do not want to be misunderstood: parts of Jerusalem are very beautiful indeed. The view of the City from Mount Scopus is breathtaking. The streets bustle with people, both residents and tourists, representing every culture on earth. The number of holy places, packed closely together and surrounded by fascinating Biblical and historical legends, is overwhelming. So much so, in fact, that some tourists are seized by “Jerusalem Syndrome.” It is defined as “a group of mental phenomena involving the presence of either religiously-themed obsessive ideas, delusions or other psychosis-like experiences that are triggered by a visit to the city of Jerusalem.” Many modern facilities—with the Israel Museum at its head—neighborhoods and buildings are also of interest.

On the whole, however, so bad are the problems, ethnic, religious, legal, economic, social, and technical, that I sometimes think it would be best for Jerusalem if all the holy places were demolished, blown up, wiped off the face of the earth. Unfortunately that won’t work either. The one thing one achieves by destroying a holy place is to make it holier still.

As for me, I stay away as much as I can.

Nostalgia

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Dirk Bogarde, Great Meadow

The name Dirk Bogarde is unlikely to mean much to many people today. Nor did I myself know anything about him until a couple of weeks ago when I happened to come across his book, Great Meadow (1992). I found it, of all places, in on a shelf in my father’s small flat in the old people’s home where he lives. He is 99 years old, a widower, and nearly blind. He had taken it from the library. When he did so, and whether he ever read it, I have no idea.

Bogarde, for those of you who (like me) didn’t know, was born in 1921 to a middle class family in England. Having studied acting, during World War II he served in the British military both in the European and in the Far Eastern theaters. Landing in Normandy with the Allied invasion, he was just preparing to shoot a comrade who had been critically wounded and was begging for the coup de grace when someone else did the job for him. He also visited a Normandy village that he, as a target selector for the Royal Air Force, had helped demolish. There he came across what looked “a whole row” of footballs, only to realize that they were actually the severed heads of dead children. As the war ended he witnessed the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and its inmates, many of who were so undernourished that he died soon after. Enough said. Briefly, the war spared him nothing.

During the 1950s and 1960s Bogarde acted in dozens of movies, becoming the sort of star appreciated mainly by middle-aged ladies during their matinées. In the late 1970s he embarked on a second career, producing no fewer than fifteen memoirs, novels, essays, reviews, poetry and collected journalism. Most of them became best sellers. Great Meadow is an account of vacations spent in a rented cottage from 1927 to 1934. Always with his younger sister Elisabeth. And always with their nanny, Lally, who tended to be on the bossy side and did not hesitate to box their ears when necessary. Sometimes with their parents, but sometimes without them as the adults went elsewhere.

Written in first person, the book’s great strength is its ability to evoke times long past. And do so, what is more, through the eyes of a child. Which the author, writing at the age of seventy, was certainly not. A drive, in a bus with an “orange and brown zig-zaggy” carpet on the floor, from London’s Victoria Station to the Sussex Downs close to the sea, where the cottage was located. The cottage which, though without running water, electricity, or heating (except that provided by burning logs), was the most marvelous place on earth. An oasis of peace it was. And of love, which comes through from every word in the book. Never mind that, absent a telephone, Father was always going to the village to make calls (he was a journalist working for The Times). Never mind that, absent drains, people used chamber pots whose contents had to be emptied into a hole in the ground specially dug for the purpose and replaced every few days.

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As I wrote in Clio and Me, at an early age I fell in love with English. Perhaps that is why one of the things I most enjoyed about the book was the language as spoken by people at the time. “Boring” meant annoying. “Rotten” stood for “most unpleasant,” “drat” for “damn.” Country folk in this part of the world said “fathar” when they meant father, “gorn,” when they meant gone. Perhaps most nostalgic of all, the names of products then familiar to practically everyone but gone for so long that few people even remember they once existed. Such as “Essence of Devon Violets.” It was contained in a “titchy little bottle, green glass and quite flat, like a pocket watch. It had an old-fashioned lady with a basket on it. It cost sixpence or a bit more,” and was “just the trick for the sick room, refreshing and dainty.”

Ordinary moments, as when men resting from their work in the fields tied string around their trouser legs so as to prevent the escaping mice and rats from running up their legs. Funny moments, as when Lally mistook the camels of a visiting circus for terrifying monsters and got the fright of her life. “Rotten” ones, as when Dirk’s cat Minnehaha disappeared and the two pet mice he kept, Sat and Sun, died. Also when both Elisabeth and Lally caught scarlet fever, a dangerous disease that, in those pre-antibiotics days, could sometimes be deadly. Or when Father, answering young Dirk’s question as to how far Germany—from where the first Jewish refugees were already beginning to arrive at the time—simply said, “not far enough.”

A few pages before the end of the book, the news arrives that the cottage and the meadow on which it was built are going to be sold. The owner, a Miss (not yet Ms) Aleford, is moving to Vancouver where she has relatives and where there are “lots of opportunities.” For some of the locals it meant disaster and the loss of their livelihood; for the Bogarde family, that there would be no more stays. As young Dirk remarks, all good things come to an end.

But so, to quote my then ten-year old son Eldad, do the bad ones.