04.iI.1430
cube cubus κύβος (dice) cubit كعب مكعب
and obviously الكعبة . ... Read more
31 January 2009
30 January 2009
Pulling all the stops
04.Ii.1430
I guess this is where that phrase "pull all the stops" comes from.
The stops of an organ come in the form of pullable knobs or switch tabs. Their function is to determine the timbre or waveform of the sound by opening and closing some of the pipes (the rank) that sound the different overtones (harmonic series components) of each note.
But this, the brontosaurus of instruments, epitomized the aspiration and expression of fine control of sound. I guess it represented the state of the art in sound synthesis until the electric synthesis (starting with for example the electric Hammonds since 1930s).
a Hammond organ tone wheel and an electromagnetic pickup
Aside from all its wonders it was also emblematic of an excess of self-indulgence resource and labor abuse. The organ pictured above, with 500 stops, is a good example. it is not even the organ of a renowned church that was played by famous concert players. it is the organ in some marine academy in terroristan. I can imagine a cadet's rousing polyphonies in which he pulls all the stops for his class mates just before they take off to sow with brimstone and fire further unsustainable expressions of power and pomp on far away lands.
And yet there are much much larger behemoths. In fact the largest and most complex organs ever built - as if to highlight the inescapable element of excess - were built , as i guessed, in terroristan.
the console of the largest organ "ever built"
which is in ,
The largest still-functioning organ in the world today, is , also
They have to make one wonder why all the complexity of hundreds of and hundreds of stops to change timbral character of the sounds? Particularly that the most enthusiastic builders were hardly brimming with musical pedigree; unless we dismiss these instances as symptoms of american (terroristani) exceptionalism that at some point people used to call Americana.
Who the hell dedicates so much labour (organ makers of the new world apparently) for such complex fine'd control and how much do they command in price from their boisterous buyers hailing from churches with worshippers' donations, or other self-important institutions of more secular nature.
David Yearsley writes of the trials of the destitute wind billowers that powered the creative crusades of J-S Bach and countless other composers and organists of high pretensions, and who received atrociously low wages for their trouble. (Incidentally Yearsley has been endeavouring to relate in a series of online essays interesting twists in the turbulent history of classical music, and a bit of jazz).
Phew, thank God for the electronics revolution, though with truly continuous and infinitesimal control, people stopped thinking like Bach , or Handel , or even like Miles Davis or the narratives of modern pop. Instead , the musicians gave us electronica. Yep thank God for electronics.
While Hammond seems to have addressed a need for cheaper organs by exploiting electromagnetism, in the climate of downturn of the Great Depression, today's modern synthing evolutionary steps have been about 20-30 years in time for another wide economic downturn. Another round of reigning in the excesses of the - hopefully - passing age.
29 January 2009
isn't the debt fictitious?
03.II.1430
According to some like paul craig roberts, the amount of debt associated with the infamous "troubled assets" may be in the tens of trillions (t-hens of trrreeeellions). How could that be?
Could it be that the debt exceeds "all the money in the world?" If so then how come? Why is that debt so large? After the stupid terroristanian real estate market was NOT that big ! So Where does all this debt come from?
This reminds of the absurdity of the cold war reality that stockpiles were sufficient to destroy the earth several times over.
In reality the debt must come from the combined projected earnings coming from / in the form of INTEREST on the original "bad" loans.
All this debt, like most of the money that circulated the world due to the monstrosity of fractional reserve lending by banks, for hundreds of years, is fiction.
It is the price of money. Something that is set arbitrarily at the pleasure of the lenders.
The accumulation of debt must have been growing for a while with the rate approaching exponential growth. Shouldn't this in theory lead to an eventual insurmountable and huge shortage of redeemed value in a sort of catastrophic "final run"? I'm not really sure, but if i understand correctly it's part of central banks' jobs to prevent this from happening - but this is another story.
For this case, the case of the bad debts, the packaging as "investment" of so much "value" that was to come from INTEREST payments on bad debts is actually fictitous as investment as a debt.
This huge amount of "troubled assets" in the tens of trillions which is actually calculated interest should to be fair be null.
And the investment (a sickening euphemism for generation of value out of charging interest on debt) is thereby equally fictious and null and void.
So why don't governments wise up and declare all those obviously fictitious "assets" null and void once and for all?
As an indication of just how fictitious these "assets", these interests, are , imagine instead of us declaring them null and void they just suddenly disappear?
Is anything going to go missing from the world? Nothing would be amiss. Because all that "value" those assets are nothing but thin air. Hot air, chewing of mouths, and dishonest ink on paper.
Not even the debts themselves would disappear.
For erasing those unlawful and fictitious interests need not address the original real estate loans at all.
Roberts in his article cited earlier enumerates a few of the insanities in terroristani behavior today. But they pale when compared to the insanity of continuing to pretend that those interests hold any intinsic value. Sure the interests are legal, in that they are codified into common law, but this does not mean those laws are sound.
It is past time to wipe those, wipe interest, wipe fractional reserve lending , wipe the fictional fiat credit standard of money; it is past time to wipe the whole slate of centuries of fraud clean.
. ... Read more
28 January 2009
etymo note: @ الربع
02.Ii.1430
The @ symbol comes via portuguese "arroba," from the arabic word "Al-rub`" pronounced Ar-rub` (=quarter,one fourth). The glyph has been used in iberian practice since the 18th cent. to denote the much older spanish unit of measure (11th cent.).
Known in English as the @ sign, it is called in French "L'arobase "
and equivalently: arrobase, arrobe, arobas, arrobas or "a commercial"
According to http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/@ The name originates from the Portuguese unit of weight and capacity measure.
Just to save time I quote:
"Ce terme vient de l'arabe الربع (ar-rubʿ, « le quart », un quart de quintal, soit 25 livres, poids équivalent à 11,502 kg – 12,5 kg en Aragon)."
... Read more
object graph update
02.iI.1430
cramming more stuff in.
excludes properties and morphisms nodes.
if iamge is badley resized try this link ... Read more
note on theorem graphs
02.iI.1430
note on theorem graphs. relating toprevious ones
* As a possible ideal: theorem graph at the deepest zoom level should include the complete set of cross references in the body of science (ie scientific literature) - though this is also a property of historical math graphs.
* thus providing on demand sequence/chain paths of book/paper citations, as well as paths of sequences of theorems
* apologetics:
* is this not already available in existing literature/existing forms, such as journal indices, encyclopedias, and books?
* yes but the graph differs in a few things
* we strip all the descriptive text and other extraneous text and information
* the whole is presented graphically (and strucurally for machines and report designs)
* the connections are made explicit and more inclusive and wide ranging than in texts enabling quick cross topic navigation by eye rather than by following links or flipping pages
* though a counteragrument is that one would still have to pan and zoom to move among paths of the graph
... Read more
social fields?
02.II.1430
* we imagine a human society where each individual is a generating a field, or is the gauge particle of a field.
* we imagine a human society where each individual is a generating a field, or is the gauge particle of a field
* or that every individ is endowed with different kinds of charges.
* or rather that every individ is both a gauge particle generating a field, and endowed with different charges , "observables that interact with other particles field
* conjecture: the individuals are each unique , unlike the particles families in the physical metaphor or source of the analog we're trying to construct
* counterconjecture: not unlike physical particles, individs represent instances of different classes / families of particles (having nothing to do necessarilty with biological kinship)
* each individual generates a field of influence in its neighborhood
* others are either outside the field or inside, or the field could be infinite tapring off to infinitesimality in the case of people who do not know the individual and who might subissent a residual influence that is negligible not , felt.
* those that are closer to the indvid who generates his field, have a larger charge wrt to the charge field generated by the individ than others.
* this determines their proximity or distance to him in his field - which socially translates to the group of people interacting directly with the individ.
* what kind of topological space would correspond to the set of individuals in a society?
* how connected, compact, and separable is that topological space?
* what kind as in how is it to be classified? t0, t1, t2, t2.5, t3, t3.5 , t4, t5, t6,
* hausdorff, normal, regular, tychonoff, etc.
* we note that the intersections of neighborhoods are not empty, as one clue to the type of topology of the social spc
* we let state be the open/closed / clopen sets that constitute the (local) neighborhood of each individ in the social set or space
* there may be a prblm w/ that def
* we image that transformations are changes of state for a given subset S of the spc
* if the change of state is generated from S (self-generated) ,
* the xform is an automorphism?
* equiv to action by the subset?
* if the change is generated by another subset R , it is a xform R->S or is it?
* it is not
* we cannot change a subset R to subset S , we cannot transorm people into other people
* the changes are from state(t1) to state(t2),
* thus it seems the change is from a subset to a subset hence always an automorphism
* on the other hand individs may move from one subset to another in the course of / due to a xformat ,thus
* was the xform applied to single subset ending up affecting more than just that subst or
* was the xformat applied to all the subsets that got affected?
* thus there may be two prblms w/ xformats
* in defining what is a state
* in defining what is a transformation (of what, what changes what remains the same, from what to what,automorph or not)
* motivation for social xforms:
* ideally that would be to look at em in terms of groups, the study of which properties are useful to descriptions (and verifiable sims) of the system
* but since a) i know neither what it means to organize xforms into groups , nor what the props o groups and their representations, their lie algs and their lie algebras' reps say about the system or the xformats; and b) i am in the effort to understand and know those things
* this is what the construct of the social field analogy and identifying xformats their groups vis a vis the props / observables and the system.
* wrk symmetry into that: those xforms that leaves certain props unchanged.
... Read more
24 January 2009
set the controls to the heart of sustainability
27.I.1430
Egyptian economic sector composition of agriculture (13.8%), industry (38.1%), services (48%) (2007 est.) should be tweaked to increase agro to increase local demand coverage , and to increase industry both at the expense of services.
This provides a more solid basis for the economy and should be geared to generate local demand when foreign demand recedes.
What is the problem with rectifying our situation where we're consuming twice as much as we produce (our trade deficit is nearly equal to our export volume)? Quality. We have tended to make and acquiess to shoddy products of poor quality and utility. It would reduce qlty of life even further unless oversight and enforcement are observed. But good luck. the point is not to have obscene states of the art in consumer products but to strike a balance that neither of poor standard nor wasteful.
... Read more
23 January 2009
vitamin C and chirality
26.I.1430
A couple of notes relating to nutrition and a pattern in life.
The daily recommended intake of vitamin C for adults between 20 and 60 is about 110 mg. For those such as smokers with higher exposure to oxidants, the dose should be at least 200 mg.
While an orange will have about 60 mg of vitamin C per 100 g(which is L-asorbic acid, and we'll come to the L- later), a lemon 65. Honey has the lowest amount only 0.5 mg.
It turns out that guyava has a much higher store of vitamin C, about 245 mg per 100 g.
Great economizing (unless oranges are much cheaper than guyava). Instead of having to take four oranges per day, or chewing on 2/10th of a kilo of dill leaves, a single guyava would cover more than my need of vitamin C. Joy.
Now concering the L-part, there is something very peculiar about life.
Many molecules are chiral (better yet see wp:Chirality_(chemistry)).
So is vitamine C which can be left-handed or right-handed. Other biomolecules that are chiral include amino-acids such as alanine (shown from wp) and sugars such as glucide.
The interesting thing is that living organisms select only one of the chiral orientation (L or left-handed) and not the other (D or right-handed). This is true for amino-acids sugars and other alimentary acids like vitamin C.
That is, the (D-Ascorbic acid) if administered to our body will not be assimilated into the body. Only L-Ascorbic acid enantiomer of vitamin C is accepted by the body.
Moreover there is an asymmetry in the quantity of L- vs. D- biological molecules, which some ascribe to meteor impacts that predate the appearance of life.
Whereas when made synthetically in laboratory conditions (read symmetric) the L- to D- ratio is 50/50, called a racemic mixture.
... Read more
handedness
26.I.1430
Drawing what they wrote on chirality and helicity.
"a standard clock, tossed with its face directed forwards, has Left-handed helicity." (wp>Chirality_(physics))
This is only a reaction note, without benefit of a fuller image yet.
The discussion of chirality and helicity ought to cover the notion of handedness and particularly parity. More importantly and as with other properties of matter (observables) it should also cover the group structure of these properties - understanding which is alas in progress.
An object has chirality if it is not identical to its mirror image. Chirality coming from the greek Chir for hand thus literally means handedness.
A chiral object will not superimpose with its mirror image. The term mirror image misleads a bit. For when I thought about this I visualized placing my left palm over a mirror which superimposed perfectly with its mirror image. Instead, what is meant is rather better described as a reflection about a basis axis.
More precisely a chiral object is not identical to itself when reflected about one axis or the other.
This reflection, an isometry transformation corresponds to a reversal of orientation.
Mathematically this is expressed by applying an orthogonal matrix to the particle's vector. The determinant of such a matrix is either 1 for a chiral object or -1 for an achiral object.
It thus that the left hand (or foot or glove or coffee mug with handle on the left) is the reflection of the right counterpart.
The electric field of a charged particle is achiral, invariant under reflection. But the magnetic field of a moving charge is revered under the reflection.
As an aside, This transformation is called an isometry because it preserves the norm (or metric) of the vector. Such reflections that either preserve or reverse orientation keep the coordinate origin fixed (it is only a reflection about a given axis). Such transformations are thus also considered Lorentz transformations, a subset of linear transformations.
The symmetry or asymmetry properties of chirality and helicity are studied through the representations of Poincare groups and their subgroup the Lorentz group, and their decomposition into further group representations. But detail on this hopefully comes later.
In the case of a Dirac-fermion that has mass such as a quark or an electron , Helicity is the projection of the spin vector S onto the momentum vector p. i.e., a dot product
h = S.p .
In the "massive" case, whereas helicity deals with whether the object transforms in an right-handed or left-handed way, chirality is the property that an object is not identical to its mirror image. Switching between an object and its mirror image is called leaves some properties unchanged such as mass. This transformation is thus a symmetry on mass (among other things) called parity.
But if there is no mass, there is also parity of spin. Ie the spin appears to be in the same direction as its axis of motion regardless of perspective (direct or mirror image). I could be wrong on this however.
When there is no mass, (and consequently no momentum) Helicity is the product of the chirality operator (which takes values -1 or 1) multiplied by
Consequently helicity has one of two values
and 
.So if we imagine that the two clocks shown above as (massless?) fermions or particles with half-spin ,
the clock on the left is
a lefthanded clock with
chirality =-1
helicity h=
the clock on the right is
a righthanded clock with
chirality =1
helicity h=
Nonetheless another page at wp (wp:Chirality_(physics)) makes an apparently contradictory statement: for a massless fermion (with spin 1/2) such as gluons, photons and gravitons, chirality is said to be the same as helicity.
Because helicity depends as it were on the state of motion of the body (massless or not), viz. the direction of its axis of motion , then it appears it is not an intrinsic property of a particle.
On the other hand, chirality which is a simple yes/no case, seems to be an intrinsic property - indpendent of the quantity or direction of motion , and likewise independent of the point of view of observer (or coordinate transformation).
- more -
acknowledgement: the image of the clock itself comes originally from a google image search thumbnail of the clock image at www-math.cudenver.edu. The thumb has been sheared vertically by 15 degrees and reflected horizontally.
... Read more
what is pneumatics?
25.I.1430
Pneumatics is a certain outlook on knowledge that will take it seriously when it is told things like God blows a life giving breath into living things , and other things which to a "pure reason" scientist are fantastical.
It is a believer's "science" or rather epistemology. For its aim or pretension, it seeks to integrate religious beliefs and scientific knowledge, putting either in the context of the other.
Effectively, pneumatics replaces the a priori assumption of atheism or materialism - alias "pure reason" to some - with the a priori assumption/choice of theism and axioms of religious belief.
Returning to the example pneumatics would accept the notions of a spirit in living organisms and even try to account for it in as empirical or analytical a way as possible.
Thus it will note much like scientists - or indeed elementary school pupils - the things that set "life" apart from inanimate things even though both classes are constituted of the same matter. Namely that they are endowed with complexes of autonomous self-regulating mechanisms. It would note this is the most-physical description possible yet of a soul, a sort of ordering or organizing principle endowed by the Divine.
Unlike modern "science", instead of saying spirit cannot be seen therefore it does not exist until proven otherwise, pneumatology (or pneumatics) having accepted its existence as a given , would say that the closest we've come to seeing "soul" is in that it is closely associated with those homeostatic processes unique to life.
In a further sweep we could even say the "fast" homeostatic mechanisms of life - which must be the result of spirit, also belong to a spectrum or processes that also includes those subitted by inanimate matter - paving the way to rationalising another religious belief - that inanimate matter is not so inanimate after all and that it too is endowed with such things as consciousness comfort and discomfort and so on.
We can recall the italicized greek word "biota" indicates a duality perhaps precisely that of the presence of matter and of something else, the soul in living organisms.
In other words, pneumatics is much ado about how and what religion-believing scientists really think, in the privacy of their thoughts, or the security of their home countries' campuses - not in international symposia or western academic campuses.
It would thus have to admit that it is not "science" in the modern academic sense of the word of hard or natural science. Nor it is necessary to call it "pseudoscience". It simply is a paradigm of knowledge , or better, an epistemology (ie, a set of knowledge-defining and knowledge-ordering principles).
Attempting to express religious beliefs and scientific knowledge in terms of each other, and reconcile both in a coherent body of knowledge also leads to such endeavours as reasoned apologetics, eg for ritual and other things, much like the ancient practice of "kalam", but hopefully i ways that are a lot more careful, and knowledgeable.
... Read more
13 January 2009
control theory not good for social theory
12.I.1430
Elements of control theory are often tempting as metaphors in the context of social organization. But treating such analogies as readily mappable to the social subject is a mistake.
As an example , here's an ostensible pearl of wisdom that : "A first-order control mechanism is any mechanism that is controlled by direct motion in a single direction. Similarly, in social theory, a single direct action producing a social change is a first-order control system." (wikipedia) .
This example in itself is innocuous enough. But just a question why would such a taxonomy be useful to social scientists? Why try to be social engineers? Haven't they all watched Adam Curtis' movies? By this question I mean, haven't they learned the disasterous effects of treating society as a machine (it's not) and making atrocious assumptions about human motivation?
tirade segment: haven't the bolsheviks miscalculated human motivation? didn't Hitler miscalculate the anglosaxons' motivations? Weren't both the cold war and the economic restructuring of the post-revolutionary quarter century a result of a very paranoid and a most cynical interpretation of history and economics?
I cite the Adam Curtis movies because they readily convey how a lot of the international politics (eg, the cold war) of the past half-century have evolved out of attempts at mathematical modeling stemming from game theorists who played games called "fuck you buddy", that sought to highlight the utility of betrayal and mistrust. I was left with the impression that such theory encoded the personal paranoia of its authors - particularly after watching John Nash and other supporters admitting as much !
Likewise it seems economic theory is at best based on stupid assumptions. But it's useless to debate them because they are discredited by the practitioners of those theories. For instance, they seem to take natural self-regulation as a guiding principle for the market and "the invisible hand". Yet in practice, the choir and agressive imposers of the theory's policy implications have been practicing selective protectionism (selecting that which protects their voters' interests), anti-labor violence, tying aid to "freer" markets, and interest rate manipulation all along. This is to say nothing of chronic and endemic cheating on the balance sheets by all the biggest players - as the past nine years have repeatedly shown us.
So we could criticize the notion of self-regulation, that it is not so instantaneous. Self-regulation is a long winded process, taking much longer in nature than the flashing intervals of market cycles. But it would be useless.
Another fact that undermines economic theory is its acceptance of the banking model of monetary supply as a given. Nonetheless, it should not be a given. it is a swindle. and should be thoroughly replaced with someone reflecting true value, and given the sovereignty of the state not the investor.
So when I see the terminology of control theory being applied so cavalierly and needlessly in social science, I worry. Because this translates into blind and ruthless policies under which millions get crushed figuratively or literally.
P.S.
Disclaimer: i've written before about social organization as well as information transfer, not in engineering terms, but in a formal framework. This was within the computational context of artificial multi-agent systems.
The idea was to apply the obvious social analogies for the sake of designing interesting schemes of social organization for artificial agents, in the vein of bio-mimetics. Not the other way around.
The study of information transfer has for its intent only the study of human communication, and not the control or tailoring of communication.
... Read more
09 January 2009
quotations dept: surplus value
12.I.1430
"Every day I watched how a bare metal frame, rolling down the line, would come off the other end, a spanking brand new car [Lincoln-Mercury automobile factory, Detroit]. What a great idea! Maybe, I could do the same thing with my music." -- Berry Gordy Jr. Motown founder. ... Read more
03 January 2009
candles in the dark شموع فى الظلام
In the course of the past week while a terrorist bloodbath (human political and cultural) unfolded next door a few events gleamed in the gloom.
Now to sample a few without further ado:
1- Greece - a longtime supporter of justice for Palestine - sends aid. This is despite its recent civil woes. This was a Greek government action in perfect consonance with the will of the Greek people, even though the two have been at loggerheads and youth demonstrating against them. It was a moment where all Greece, Ellas, spontaneously came into unison to sound a harmonious note ; aid to Gaza. Gia'sou. (btw, did Egypt let it through?)
2- people across the near east and as far as the sind, the EU and the transatlantic protest in large numbers.
Except in our "near east", the protestors are not overly opressed (fallout of the financial meltdown which is a Madoff-like swindle but multiplied a hundred-fold?)
Also indicative of this laissez-faire is the notable absence of agents provocateurs. This, despite the agitations in Ellas anfd Fce coupled with the associated whirled bank head's warning of civil unrest all of which could have been played up here.
But there was apparently no will to do so.
Everybody, even the PDs' agents-provocateurs are impoverished , clipped by practically the same financiers of the psychotic mayhem in Gaza. Perhaps the police's agents provocateurs stood in the demos and remained peaceful this time in order not to undermine their own cause.
3- Louder voices have come also from the very nation that injected the zionism into our oriental and arab midst. justice'n'peace fixtures Ken Livingston, George Galloway the Respect MP; from the novel quarter of the brit-music universe, music past master Annie Lennox and UN activist Bianca Jagger called on Obama the PE to cut the chicken-dove and "but he'th thtill the prethiden'" weasel act s and say or do something.
Reference: (in arabic) Brit activists call on Obama to break his silence.
4- Also from the brit-music universe, electronic/ambient music guru Brian Eno wrote a piece on Gaza.
OK. These statements, in the persons of Eno and Lennox make up a bit for when McCartney took that whiz in the Jordan. Macca are you listening to them? Do you regret your misplaced whiz?
5- This quote by Jonathan Cook: "In a country such as Israel, with a citizen army, the public has become positively phobic of a war in which large numbers of its sons will be placed in the firing line. That fear is only heightened by reports in the Israeli media that Hamas is praying for the chance to engage Israel’s army in serious combat. The decision to sacrifice many soldiers in Gaza is not one ... the Labor Party will take lightly with an election in six weeks."
6- The very candid report by UN special rapporteur Richard Falk in which he detailed the humanitarian catastrophes visited upon Palestinians in Gaza by the zionists, in spite of his being both jewish and American. In his words there was none of the serpentine zigzagging and fudging of crucial context and detail we are accustomed from the so-called "zionist doves" like Avnery, the oh-so-Gushing shalom and the other fakes.
His uncompromising reports can be read here and here.
7- In contrast to the Mr-Obama-chicken-dove-goes-to-washington roadshow, Cynthia McKinney and a group of remarkable human beings (including Mr. Sami al-Haj)
Mr. Sami al-Haj, wrongfully detained at Guantanamera guajira guantanamera camp for seven years and recently released.
have risked their own lives (yet again) boarding a relief boat that headed for Gaza from Cyprus despite the air bombing campaign. The civilian boat, Dignity, was rammed in its larboard (port, ie left side) bow , a clear proof of intent, and a crime of international maritime law. The Dignity was rammed two more times by Israeli patrol boats.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution , the newspaper of record for the bible belt state of Georgia , actually used this misleading headline "McKinney relief ship, Israeli vessel collide ". OneNewsNow's headline went for the jugular: "McKinney seeks publicity, endangers crew in Gaza."
Photograph: Ali Hashisho/Reuters
The damaged ship which had set out from and with blessings of the Cypriots, as one of their parliamentarians Dr. Elena Theoharous was also among those on board, putt-putted to safe harbor to Soor in Lebanon, licking its wounds from the gaping hole on its larboard. It was thus that Cynthia thankfully lived to tell the tale.
8- from the churchillian and often antagonistic Fisk:
of all people, he managed to sound a consonnant note for once in a blue moon in his article, "The rotten state of Egypt is too powerless and corrupt to act" , Thursday, 1 January 2009. In it he managed to take up issues that go to the heart of Egypt's struggle under its valetudinarian government. Though he did not spare the easy target his usual robust denigrations and race-tinged sneers. He faintly echoed the thoughtful arab op-ed وجهات نظر - مصر.. العدو في الداخل by `Atef Mu`tamad (Atef Mutamad) (as did I echo him, in previous posts ("resign already") and future ones ("on egypt and lebanon part 1 - egypt") ).
9- Throughout all this was the near omnipresence of aljazeera. i am not and would not intentionally plug it. This is simply an empirical observation. It was always there: in Gaza, on the boat the Dignity, at Rafah, in London, at the worldwide demonstrations, reprinting and commenting on Fisk and on Egypt and so on. Unlike most the rest of the world's news media.
Cependant, Egypt's antidandruff shampoo appear to act, rather conspicuously, the way turncoats feigning indignation do. Whether it is an act of egyptian cryptography is anybody's guess. Then there are Lebanese (and likely israeli agents provocateurs posing as lebanese) lobbing shame grenades not just at Egypt's head and shoulders, but at the entire population - which for the latter is a rather tenuous proposition. Qatar patronizes the cause , though its aid did get turned back , rerouted to the incommunicado israeli gates instead. Qatar , if only through aljazeera, plays up the complacency of Egyptians as if they thesmelves haven't been hosting US terrorist forces as well as the ooze-spurting conference of the WTO. Abu Mazen vowed to kick back in NYC until the security council forces a cease-fire (it might as well be until Sharon levitates 100 feet in the air and glides gleefully past high-rise windows) or realistically until the us and israel decide it's time to stop. This while "our man in Ankara" Mubarak kicks back and takes in some of that lingering whiff of High-Porte gravitas from Mr. Erdoğan.
The 9 items above were like candles. But the vaudeville numbers in the preceding paragraph remain a part of the gloom.
(An unabridged unproofed vulgar version is at the alter-blog)
- 30 -
P.S.
The doubt lingers whether I am not falling for elaborate strategems of opinion forming. As though one is supposed to think Israel is bad, the PA is a bad, hamas is bad , iran bad, al jazeera good, egypt bad, or hamas good, all arab leaders bad ; bad bad good ; good good bad. bad good bad. good bad good.
Such guessing at the actual hands of cards that state and media players are clutching is pointless, miring one in mirrored irrealities.
Only the spontaneous reactions of people around the world provide a concrete indication of reality.
... Read more
