Moderator: Arcadia
Iran has finished work on nuclear site, IAEA says
http://www.tampabay.com/incoming/iran-h ... ys/1262063
Counterlives
By DANIEL SCHIFRIN
. . .
Imagine for a moment that Jewish history—how Jews have seen themselves, and how others have seen the Jews—is a series of interconnected fantasies. A small desert tribe imagines that God chooses them to bring truth to humanity; God abandons them in the worst way, dispersing them throughout the world, inducing a fantasy of a messianic redeemer; a group of impatient Jewish rebels produce this messiah (later imagined to be killed by Jews from “the other shul”); Christians begin to see Jews as maniacally powerful; Jews vacillate for millennia between agreeing with them—Look at our brains! Look at our accomplishments!—; Nazis imagine Jews to be vermin; Israel is born and initially viewed as David fighting Goliath; the Palestinian political entity is born and convinces the world that David is actually Goliath.
The ordinariness of contemporary American Jewish life, however, implies the possibility of a counter-history in which grounded reality, not fantasy, determines the future of Judaism.
Many Jews believe, along with the protagonist in Phillip Roth’s The Counterlife, Henry Zuckerman, that it is possible to be “a Jew without Jews, without Judaism, without Zionism, without Jewishness, without a temple or an army or even a pistol, a Jew clearly without a home, just the object itself, like a glass or an apple.” But recent events in Israel suggest that such an unselfconscious Judaism is still impossible, in part because the fantasies we, and others, have about Israel are still too strong.
http://www.jbooks.com/interviews/index/ ... n_Roth.htm
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. I still like the whole album, in fact! 
Is there a link to the unrest in Syria?
Last June, a peace agreement was concluded in Geneva by the major powers. This was immediately sabotaged by a US faction, which organised leaks to the Press concerning Western implication in the events, thus forçing the resignation of mediator Kofi Annan. This same faction then twice attempted to end the situation militarily, by organising two massive attacks on Damascus, on the 18th July and the 26th September. When these attacks failed, the Obama administration returned to the initial agreement and resolved to implement it after the Presidential elections and the change of Cabinet.
The agreement calls for the deployment of a United Nations Peace Force, mainly composed of contingents from the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (SCTO). This force would be tasked with separating the belligerents and arresting the foreign jihadists present in Syria. By allowing Russia to re-enter the Middle East, Washington hopes to relieve itself of the burden of Israel’s security. Russia would protect the Zionist state from attack, and would also prevent it from attacking anyone else. The US military retreat from the Middle East would then be able to continue, and Washington would once again enjoy the freedom of action it has lost due to its permanent privileged relationship with Tel-Aviv.
From this perspective, the partisans of Israeli expansionism have to act in Gaza, and perhaps also in Jordan, before the Russian deployment.
Preparing the ground for the big Iranian operation
Many people have been tempted to link the Gaza operation and the upcoming election. Even though war is sometimes a way to avoid dealing with domestic problems, the smoke that reached the Gaza sky this week wasn't connected to the Israeli election. Instead, one could view the attack on Gaza as part of a new plan, a master plan that turns its eyes east to Iran's nuclear program.
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/preparin ... m-1.479128
it made me dizzy, I have to re-read it. I´m not in the mood now
I mean if I am curious enough or interested enough in what the full article has to say, I just do a copy of the title and do a google search for the article, sometimes if I am lucky I can find the article on a mirror site for free. The New York Times has one of those pay wall things too, I guess they are trying to recoup some revenues. What really kills me is the articles I want to read on those university journals, Johns Hopkins university got a journal called Project Muse that I wish I could afford.
, there are other newspapers on the net! I was only doing some mimic! 
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