Dove's Eye View

Wwwnoknokjoksdotcom

How does a kindergartener who just learned to read find knock-knock jokes online?

wwwnoknokjoksdotcom

I am so proud!

I had just used Google to find a list of the jokes & read them aloud, to the delight of kindergartener and his younger brother. (Younger brother asked: Mommy, what's Google?) Then kindergartener got bumped to an unconnected computer so I could do something else, probably blog. So he went into his MS Word software and typed the above. He asked me how to spell "com", but the rest was his idea.

He figured out this WWW stuff himself from watching PBS, I think, and from looking over my shoulder.

I'll have to explain to him about browser software next.

Rabbi Lerner on Gaza

I'm quoting Tikkun's Rabbi Lerner and Jewish Voice for Peace because many American readers don't trust it if it comes from an Arab. They say we're "biased" "angry" or "too emotional."

Rabbi Michael Lerner just sent an email regarding Gaza. Excerpts follow (I have cut text and added paragraph breaks):

Israel is the military power occupying the West Bank and surrounding Gaza. By all international standards it has no right to do either, but if it does so it has an absolute obligation to treat the civilian population with certain respect and basic human rights. Israel continually fails to do this and has become one (not the worst, but one) of the world’s major human rights violators.

Supreme Court: Obey International Law

For those who might sneer at my previous post insisting that Israel, and everyone else, must obey international law, please see the Supreme Court ruling today. Even under the threat of terrorism, the United States government is required to obey its own and international laws.

The Supreme Court rebuked President Bush and his anti-terror policies Thursday, ruling that his plan to try Guantanamo Bay detainees in military tribunals violates U.S. and international law.

See analysis here and here.

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, you can read the opinion in its entirety here.

So if our president must obey international law, "even in time of war," why not Israel?

Meanwhile, in the USA, this ruling at least gives the Dove some reason to post a sign of hope for the day. Thank you.

What to do about Gaza

Jewish Voice for Peace just sent these suggestions:

Jewish Voice for Peace As the news from Gaza grows worse by the hour, we urge you to take action now to help bring international pressure to bear to stop the situation. While we all hope for the safe return of Corporal Gilad Shalit, his kidnapping can never justify Israel's massive destruction of Gaza's civilian infrastructure.

Please take a few minutes to take one of our suggested actions below. Your voice truly matters.

1. Get the facts and spread the word
Register for a special 1-hour briefing with JVP's Director of Education and Policy, Mitchell Plitnick, on Sunday, July 9 at 1 pm PST, 4 pm EST. Space is limited, so make your reservation now.

2. Write a letter to the editor
People in and around your home town need to hear from you. Israel has been demolishing the civilian infrastructure in Gaza. Targeting power plants and bridges cannot be construed as targeting combatants. Your neighbors are probably as appalled by this as you are, and they need to see your words in print so they know they are in step with their own community.

3. Write to the U.S. Congress

Tell Your Congressional representatives and the President that America cannot continue to stand idly by while the situation in Israel-Palestine continues to deteriorate. Demand that our leaders press for the release of Palestinian political prisoners as well as Cpl. Gilad Shalit. Tell them that we insist that diplomacy and negotiations, not violence, be employed to resolve these issues. Demand that Israel stop its invasion and shelling of Gaza and that Palestinians stop firing their largely ineffective rockets at Israeli towns.

You can enter your zip code and get their phone and fax numbers by clicking here.

Collective Punishment

I just heard a radio report on the destruction of the power plant in Gaza as part of the Israeli attempt to retrieve their lost soldier. Juan Cole says the following at Informed Comment:

destroying electricity generation capability interferes with water purification. Palestinian children will die because of this, from drinking unpurified water. And what crime did Palestinian toddlers commit, to be murdered in this way?

Destroying the power plant in late June in order to retaliate or to retrieve a soldier is collective punishment. It is unconscionable. It is illegal. It will also not achieve the goal the Israelis wish, the safe return of their soldier and the peaceful resolution of the crisis in Gaza.

Jewish Voice for Peace, based here in Oakland, says in an e-mail today:

There has been considerable international consternation over the case of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier recently taken hostage by Palestinian fighters. While it is hard not to feel sympathy for Shalit and his family during this time, it is perhaps appropriate to remember that Israel currently holds thousands of Palestinian prisoners in detention, 380 of them minors.

The hypocrisy is startling: the abduction of a single Israeli soldier from a military base is capturing international headlines, while the illegal detention of hundreds of children (often also taken in night-time raids) escapes notice. This fact has only and reluctantly come to international attention by the attempts of the Palestinian fighters to condition Shalit's release on that of the children, a condition Israel has rejected. Palestinian fighters alone are responsible for the kidnapping of Shalit. At the same time, it is a very bad situation (for the Palestinians as well as for Shalit) if this sort of violent act is the only way to alert the international community to the abusive treatment of hundreds of children.

Immigration: What Would Jesus Do?

My cousin Randy and I have an echo chamber going on the topic of illegal immigration: The Bayne of Blog's California Notes: I just don't get why people are so horrible about illegal immigrants..

Randy answers my question - what would Jesus do? with some apt quotes from Leviticus.

My disgust was fueled by a discussion on the usenet food group I like to read. Someone in Sacramento posted that they like buying tamales from a local Mexican market, and they wanted to know how to place a future order in Spanish. Some other curmudgeon huffed that she would never patronize a store where the clerks don't speak English. They should learn English, how offensive that they don't speak it, etc. etc.

I don't understand this ugly-American jingoism regarding language. My Georgia-born grandmother, who was Randy Bayne's great-aunt, spent four years in Cuba of the 1920s teaching English. When I was a child, she spoke Spanish to us and talked about her travels all over Latin America. Now that I'm trying to communicate with the babysitter (who is learning English) I remember grandma Edith and her careful, precise Spanish.

Frankly, I think some of the resentment is class based. I'm going to offend some people here. Upper and upper-middle class folks don't seem quite as exercised about Spanish being spoken - instead, they're sending their kids to bilingual schools or paying for Spanish lessons, taking them on trips to Costa Rica to look at the jungle.

My grandmother was not at all prosperous but she was educated and genteel. Speaking a foreign language was something she enjoyed (she also followed opera libretti with a bilingual score, one side English, the other side Italian, French or German, depending on the opera).

Spanish-speaking immigrants aren't taking away jobs from me - to the contrary, I employ quite a few of them to help me with the house, the kids, the yard, etc.

Whereas working class or just-rose-out-of-working-class-last-year folks have economic and social reasons why they feel more threatened by non-English speaking immigrants. There is a real factor of downward pressure on wages, for instance. Some of this is for economic reasons much larger than immigration. But people tend to resent the class just below themselves. I hate to say it but I think some of this vicious anti-immigrant prejudice is a function of class tensions.

I'm reading Faulkner. His Snopes characters are the ones who would be after Hispanics with the most fury. Whereas the Coldfields and Compsons can afford to be more gracious. My grandmother, whose class position resembles a Coldfield more than a Compson ("good" family, small principled shopkeeper father, no money), viewed Spanish first as a vehicle for reaching more souls, and later as a door to cultural and historical pursuits.

Talking about class is not considered polite in American culture, especially when you label your own class origins - only Marxist professors with working-class backgrounds tend to do this. But I can't help but see some ugly cross-class resentment fueling the immigration debate.

And of course the Republicans are using it to try to change the subject from Iraq, Katrina, corruption, and tax relief for billionaires...

Dovish Fun With Google

I look at my referral stats every so often, just for fun, and to see who is linking to me. Today somebody searched Google for "pictures of a dove on the beach." This site comes up second, with a post that links to an image from the SF Chronicle: a picture of The Dove on a beach.

Ya never know what Google will turn up.

Most of my referrals come from people looking for Lebanese food, however. Even the obscure "Figs in Geranium Syrup" gets at least a hit a day. Most of what little traffic I get seems to be searches on food, Arabic love poetry, and "Breasts not Bombs."

Our Founding Moonbat

Read this stirring diary from the great anonymous masses over at Daily Kos: Our Founding Moonbat by Buckeye Hamburger (really).

It has been said that his journalism is "unfair" and "vicious" and "takes a back seat to everyone, including Jayson Blair, in terms of ethics", that it "might well have been the best fiction written in the English language", that "every dip of his pen stung like a horned snake", and that he was "loose cannon" whose "ninety-proof prose" incited the "rabble". His lifelong political enemy called him "the great incendiary" and a "master of the puppets", deplored his "obstinacy and inflexible disposition", and also accused him of "defalcation" (a quaint expression for embezzlement). It's been said that "like most men contending solely for a principle he was distinctly a 'trouble-maker.'" And finally, the authorities declared that his "offenses are of too flagitious a nature to admit of any other consideration but that of condign punishment."

I know what you're thinking, these are probably more fulminations about a lefty blogger from some MSM pundits ...

Would you believe, Samuel Adams?

Read the linked diary for more. Reflects well on my fellow moonbat lefty bloggers. All I knew about Samuel Adams was the beer. Now I find he was the original founding firebrand.

First Time Out, Kuwaiti Women Become a Political Force

Hassan Fattah reports in the New York Times: First Time Out, Kuwaiti Women Become a Political Force.

Kuwait's women won their long fight for suffrage and to run for office last year, and they have quickly risen from political nonentities to the most sought-after constituency. Many political analysts expect the entry of women in the political process to redraw the political map and to hold significant sway over the 50-member Parliament in the years to come as they become an Arab version of the soccer mom. That new power will give women a lot more say on issues like corruption, economic development and family law.

Meanwhile, we find that voter turnout in California's June 6 election fell to an all-time low.

One press report (not linked) contrasted the American flags flying outside suburban California homes with the low turnout rate. People will wave the flag and cheer on a war to "defend our freedoms", but they won't vote.

Good for the Kuwaiti women, who join their already enfranchised sisters across the Arab world. My fellow Americans need to follow their example.

Lawrence Joseph Poem

My Helen Thomas posts here and at Daily Kos have attracted new readers and comments. One commenter, Barbara Jones, is a family friend of Miss Thomas. Barbara's brother is the distinguished poet and lawyer Lawrence Joseph, who wrote a poem about Helen Thomas' father. Since Barbara kindly posted it in comments, I'm upgrading it to its own entry here.

All Day By Lawrence Joseph

At four in the morning
already walking
up Orleans
to Eastern Market, two,
three miles away,
a burlap bag
over his shoulder,
the rows of wooden houses
asleep. Behind
him, low horns
on the river, a full moon
casting moist
blue light; ahead, the sounds
of cars and trucks
on Vernor Highway;
above, oak branches
turning in the high winds.

All day he drops the silver
into a cigar box;
the pennies he puts
in a jar. He gives
too much credit
and the markings on
small, torn pieces
of paper bag will be
forgotten. At dusk
he fills the bag again-
with eggplant, squash,
the last pieces of shank-
and goes
to the houses he knows
don’t have enough,
saying nothing
as he gives, shaking his head
if someone starts to speak.

When the bag is empty
he walks
through the black streets
past faces rocking
on the porches. The shouts
of the children in the alley
and he’s home, to Mary,
Katherine, Anne, Matry,
Isabelle, Sabe, Josephine,
Helen, Genevieve, Basily,
and Barbara. The screen door
slams behind him.
Unnoticed, he sits down
to unlace his shoes,
to rub his sore feet.
He leans back, his eyes
close, his head
begins to nod at the voices
in the kitchen; he sees,
a world away,
the salamander sliding
down a rock, stars
dropping behind mountains
into the sea.

Note the list of daughters in the middle of the poem includes Helen. That would be our own heroine of the White House press corps, as Barbara Jones reminds us.