As usual, I have no useful update. Sharon is far better than me at uploading photos so you should go read her post.

http://dearanxiety.livejournal.com/870241.html

Actually you should just add her lj if you haven't yet.

We are in Munich, heading to Berlin, then Morocco, then Spain. I am debugging nasty C++ code wishing that the gdb reversible support was ready.

Oh yeah, there's a coffee shop chain called the San Francisco Coffee Company that exists in at least Germany and Hungary. Definitely not in San Francisco, though their coffee is American-style burned to a crisp roast. Their wifi is not free, but using the magic of cat5 we are sharing a single day-pass to their wifi.

We're in Austria and Sharon made an update:
http://dearanxiety.livejournal.com/869318.html

It looks pretty accurate to me. I'll write an update when I actually get around uploading some of my photos. I'm over a month behind.

So we're in Europe now. We've spent the past week or so in Saleve spending time with family, reading, playing Sudoku, walking, etc. Dan is arriving tomorrow and we're off to visit more of Switzerland and more family on Friday. We fly to London on the 4th. Generally all good and fun!

More updates to come when I have more time, have uploaded more photos and am off the qwertz kezboard.

We made a draft itinerary for the Europe portion of our trip and I suddenly realized that that we tentatively scheduled a visit to Scotland during Edinburgh Festival season. Should we go? How should we go? Where would we stay? Any advice?

Somehow I came across a New York Times article about the reporting of the murder of Robert Wone. It was kind of meta, an article about the online vs paper reporting of the investigation of a grisly murder. I found the actual articles more interesting. It's a kind of fascinating case where it's entirely unclear if the DC police are trying to pin a crime on three men in an unconventional relationship or if a nice guy was killed in a fucked up creepy rape. Oh, there's a blog too.

From Robert Fisk today.

The footage of a brutal police force assaulting the political opposition on the streets of the capital has shocked the world. Rightly so, although no one has made comparison with police forces who batter demonstrators on the streets of Western Europe, who beat women with night-sticks, who have kicked over an innocent middle-aged man who immediately suffered a fatal heart attack, who have shot down an innocent passenger on the London Tube... There are special codes of morality to be applied to Middle East countries which definitely must not apply to us.

As far as I know Fisk is the only western journalist reporting out of Iran right now. If you're after reporting and informed commentary as instead of rumor-mill buckshot 140 characters at a time, please read what he's had to say.

So we've been on the road almost a week. Had a great visit in San Diego with Roz and CJ. Spent the past 5 days in campgrounds (plus one night at a motel-6). Sharon put some photos up here and I'll have more when I find a more reliable internet connection and uploader here.

The best thing I've learned: KOA campgrounds are awesome.

Apparently I haven't really mentioned this on my LiveJournal, but dearanxiety and I are quitting our jobs and traveling for a little over a year, starting in a little over a week.

We're hoping to meet up with plenty of people along the way. Our itinerary looks kind of like this:
May: drive across the South of the US
June: hang out in Ohio, go to Bonnaroo, Sharon's sister's wedding
half of July: relax by the beach in New Jersey, minor east-coast visiting
mid July - mid November: visit friends, family and random places in Europe
last half of November: Sharon's brother's wedding, relax by the beach in Florida, thanksgiving
December - January: Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Jordan
February: Ghana
March: Kenya / Uganda / Rwanda (including a gorilla safari)
April - June: Australia including Aaron and Nicola's wedding, Perth, Margaret River, WA road trip, Melbourne, Sydney
half of July: New Zealand

and then home, poor, skinny, unemployed.

So the Obama administration has decided to boycott the UN racism forum and a bunch of other "western" countries have decided to follow suit. Their objection seems to be that a past conference described Zionism as racist. Duh. Of course it's racist. It's an ideology about defining a national identity around racial (or ethnic or religious or whatever) criteria. That doesn't mean that it's bad. Affirmative action / positive discrimination is also racist, but many people (including me) would argue that it's justified.

It's important to talk about these questions in open, inclusive forums. My gut reaction when people don't feel comfortable talking about this is that they don't believe in the morality of the policies, otherwise what's to fear?

So as part of our upcoming road trip through the south I was looking into what the whole Alamo thing was all about. Not growing up through the American education system my knowledge was limited. I'd learned the Davy Crocket song in French as a kid in Canada (Davy, Davy Crocket, l'homme qui n'a jamais eu peur) and I had the general sense that it was the story of American civilians trying to seize land from Mexico and getting roundly defeated.

There was of course a lot more to it. I read up a bunch about the Texas Revolution and the Battle of the Alamo on Wikipedia last night and there were a few things that stuck out.

First of all, the American settlers had been there for quite a while. They'd set up ranches and considered themselves to be native. After Mexico gained its independence from Spain there were a couple of changes that they made. First, they banned slavery in 1829, then they tried to centralize control from what had been a bunch of Spanish colonies into a single state. Neither of these sat well well with the Texians. The Alamo should fit nicely into the rest of our civil rights themed tour of the South.

Secondly the treatment of Americans who had come to fight on the side of the revolutionaries was harsh. They were considered under Mexican law as pirates. When captured they were treated as criminals not as prisoners of war. Today we would have called them illegal enemy combatants.

Remember the Alamo?

From what I read in Newsweek: http://www.newsweek.com/id/192472

Apparently states whose Medicaid don't pay for male genital mutilation at birth have a 24% lower rate than those that do. Doctors say that more and more parents don't want to pay the $300 to have their children's genitals sliced up now that it's not covered by the state. I can't imagine wanting to have that done to any children, regardless of price, but I guess we'll take all the progress we can get.

Hopefully eventually this will become a human rights or a health issue, not an economic one.

Today's coverage of the protests, counter-protests and police response in Umm al-Fahm reminded me of a question that's been popping up in my head for the past couple of years. All of the articles I've seen refer to one set of protesters as "Israeli Jews" and the other set of protesters as "Israeli Arabs". On one side we have a religious grouping on the other side a language grouping.

When we were in Israel we met an Israeli who is Jewish but also Arabic - his family is from Iraq, he speaks fluent Arabic and it's the language of his ancestors. Like Israelis of all religions he also speaks Hebrew fluently. But he's not one of the "Israeli Arabs" who were being protested in Umm al-Fahm this week. He's one of the 3.5 million Sephardim and Mizrahim who are linguistically and often culturally Arabic.

The real divide here is not language or culture or ethnicity it's religion. Why aren't we calling a spade a spade? Why don't the news stories talk about Israeli Christians and Israeli Muslims?

Last night we went to see Handmade Nation, a documentary about American indie craft fairs and small businesses, at Mezzanine. The movie interviewed a ton of people in the industry from boutique owners to distributors to the crafters themselves. The subjects were mostly interesting and talented, but occasionally boring. What bugged me wasn't what the movie presented, it was that it didn't ask any interesting questions about this community that's taken off over the past few years.

Perhaps it was the comment by someone early in the film that this was an alternative to consumer culture that got to me or perhaps it was the "do it yourself" refrain throughout. There seemed to be no recognition that handcrafted goods are as much a luxury item as a BMW or a big screen TV. There seemed to be no self-awareness that when you buy something that has been made by someone else, it's not do-it-yourself. There were really no tough questions asked, or any questions at all. It was just a bunch of people in an interesting industry talking about how great they are. The audience loved it.

So, as part of getting ready to leave I'm getting rid of some technical books that I don't want to keep. Generally these have been useful in the past but I don't care enough about them to pay to store them.

( list-o-books )

So I listed prices that are about half of the Amazon used price but if you really want a book and want to pay less, then just say so - I want these books read. Oh, and you'll have to pay for shipping from San Francisco if you're not here.

I felt the award winners were well selected, but that wasn't what I enjoyed about watching the Oscars. It was a really great show. I don't like awards ceremonies and the Oscars are often the worst. Boring, barely funny presenters, dull speeches, predicable presentation. This year they brought together a new team to produce the ceremony and it was amazing. Instead of mediocre stand up comedy they build the show around musical theatre. Many people don't know about Hugh Jackman's career on stage, but that's how he got started and he's continued to perform in between films, he even won a Tony in 2004. As the Oscars host he spent more time leading the singing and dancing than making stupid jokes. And it was great.

So I was listening to a documentary about the My Lai massacre this evening. It was fascinating because they included now declassified audio from the suppressed military investigation into the event. I hadn't realized the scale of the killing and rape (including child rape) and I'm feeling nauseated now.

But, apart from that it started me thinking about the term conventional warfare. It's used these days to mean a war between two strong well equipped armies using heavy artillery, tanks, ground troops, fighter and bomber planes, etc. World War Two, basically. Looking at the history of warfare that model didn't actually exist for very long.

From the Renaissance to the First World War warfare consisted of cavalry and infantry. Initially the weapons were human powered like arrows, lances and swords, and then they were powered by gunpowder - rifles, muskets, cannons. Over the 19th and early 20th century trench warfare evolved, but it basically came to an end at the end of the First World War as high tech weaponry took over. The Second World War was fought with planes, tanks, boats and missiles. There were still infantry battles but technology was advancing to separate the people doing the killing from the actual killing. Think of the V2 rocket or Hiroshima. The Korean war was fought on similar technology.

I don't think we've seen wars like that since then. The wars of colonial independence that followed WW2 were largely guerrilla wars. The Vietnam War and the Soviet engagement in Afghanistan were guerrilla wars. The wars in central and southern America were basically all guerrilla wars. The wars as Yugoslavia broke apart were guerrilla wars (or at least wars fought by civilians). Now the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are guerrilla wars. Can't we just call that conventional warfare and refer to the wars that we spend billions of dollars a year arming ourselves for mid twentieth century wars?

So, since we're going to be in that part of the country anyway we're going to Bonnaroo this year. Here's the lineup right now - I've bolded the ones I'm going to try to make it to. I'd love any suggestions for other bands I'm not into yet but that I should see anyway:

• Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
• Phish (2 Shows)
• Beastie Boys
• Nine Inch Nails
• David Byrne
• Wilco
• Al Green
• Snoop Dogg
• Elvis Costello Solo
• Erykah Badu
• Paul Oakenfold
• Ben Harper and Relentless7
• The Mars Volta
• TV on the Radio
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs
• Gov’t Mule
• Andrew Bird
• Band Of Horses
• Merle Haggard
• MGMT
• moe.
• The Decemberists
• Girl Talk
• Bon Iver
• Béla Fleck & Toumani Diabate
• Rodrigo y Gabriela
• Galactic
• The Del McCoury Band
• of Montreal
• Allen Toussaint
• Coheed and Cambria
• Booker T & the DBTs
• David Grisman Quintet
• Lucinda Williams
• Animal Collective
• Gomez
• Neko Case
• Down
• Jenny Lewis
• Santogold
• Robert Earl Keen
• Citizen Cope
• Femi Kuti and the Positive Force
• The Ting Tings
• Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3
• Grace Potter and the Nocturnals
• Kaki King
• Grizzly Bear
• King Sunny Adé
• Okkervil River
• St. Vincent
• Zac Brown Band
• Raphael Saadiq
• Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
• Crystal Castles
• Tift Merritt
• Brett Dennen
• Mike Farris and the Roseland Rhythm Revue
• Toubab Krewe
• People Under the Stairs
• Alejandro Escovedo
• Vieux Farka Touré
• Elvis Perkins In Dearland
• Cherryholmes
• Yeasayer
• Todd Snider
• Chairlift
• Portugal. The Man.
• The SteelDrivers
• Midnite
• The Knux
• The Low Anthem
• Delta Spirit
• A.A. Bondy
• The Lovell Sisters
• Alberta Cross

What you say?

(reposted from a comment I made)
I speak enough French to be able to follow along in movies most of the time. I find it frustrating when the English subtitles fail to convey subtlety in the language or even skip whole parts of sentences for space or time reasons. I'm sure the same thing occurs when translating political leaders' speeches, and when you consider so much of political speech is finding exactly the right words I feel pretty confident that we're not going to be getting the impression of what foreign leaders are saying in their native tongues, and I'm sure the reverse is also true.

For example, Ahmadinejad's "holocaust denial" is generally considered by Farsi speakers and scholars as a questioning of the mythologizing of the holocaust into a universal excuse for Israeli aggression, not as a denial of the event. (see: http://lrc.reviewcanada.ca/index.php?page=the-explanation-we-never-heard)

Similarly, Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai’s use of the word "shoah" when threatening Gaza last spring caused outrage because the Hebrew word is used to refer to the Holocaust in Israel, but it's literally translated as "catastrophe" or "disaster", and it's used to mean that in Israeli Hebrew. Many on the left took Vilnai's words as a threat of genocide, but that wasn't what he meant, and ultimately, that's not actually what he said.

BBC News:

It follows a decision by Israel on Friday to lift a ban on UN and foreign aid workers entering the Gaza Strip.

This is not how we play the game.



PS: why am I reading the web when I'm out drinking?