The Jews and The Palestinians – Both Were Set Up

Consider if you will the map on the following link. It is a map of the UN Partition Plan of 1947:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_UN_Partition_Plan

As you can see, the plan called for two mutually trisecting countries.

It would be impossible for any two countries to live within borders like that, even if they were on the best of terms. Even countries as similar as Spain and Portugal could not pull it off.

To expect the Jews and the Arabs to live in peace thus is an absolute absurdity.

The UN created the situation in order to foment war in this country in order to:

1) Keep the Jews and Arabs alike busy with war so that they would not be able to actualize their respective potentials or collaborate in order to build up the area (the Jews and the Arabs have a history of collaborating beautifully and Europe was terrified of this occurring again).

2) To keep arms production and sales going.

3) To keep the drug traffic in this area at full blast. War causes misery and poverty. Misery and poverty keep the drug business going.

For an in-depth treatment of the entire matter, see my essay "An Anarchist Explains Why Israel Is Not An Imperialist State", which can be found on the following URL:

http://www.geocities.com/dordot2001/IsraelIsNotAnImperialistState.htm

In my essay "An Anarchist Explains Why Israel Is Not An Imperialist State" I explain the role that England played in funneling more Arabs into the area before the State of Israel was declared and before they left in order to upset the demographic balance that existed. They put pressure on France to go along with this. And yes, the British armed and trained the Arabs in the area. It is most true that the British trained Arab guerillas.

During the War of Independence, when Israel was under attack by five Arab nations on all fronts that were being supported by yet more Arab nations, the US State Department refused to supply arms to Israel. It wasn't the first time the US let us down, as I discuss in my essay. Arms were bought from Czechoslovakia and from American Jewish gangsters, most prominently "Bugsy" Siegel.

After the War of Independence was won the USSR courted the first PM of the State of Israel, David Ben Gurion, to bring Israel into its sphere of influence. Ben Gurion decided to turn to the US and become its puppet instead. Knowing that the USSR wanted Israel as part of its satellite, the US accepted the request.

There is another reason, I believe, that the State of Israel was created. It seem to serve as a social experimentation field.

After the arrival of the Jews of Yemen many of their babies and children disappeared. They were told that they had died, but the graves were later proven to be empty.

I have often wondered why the Yemenite Jews were singled out for kidnapping of their children. They have a very distinctive "look" and would not be children that would "blend in" on the black adoption market with other ethnic groups. So, that can't be the reason the children and babies were abducted.

The only answer that makes sense to me is that they were one of the most isolated Jewish communities and they are among the most genetically "pure" Jews.

I cannot prove this, it is only speculation, but I think that human experimentation was carried out on some of them.

It was just around 1950 when the Yemenites arrived in Israel - a scant 5 years after WWII ended.

We know that America brought top Nazi scientists to the US and integrated them into think tanks and universities, scientists who had carried out human experimentation both physical and psychological.

I believe they continued some of the experiments on the Yemenite children, most of whom were never found and their "graves" were found to either be empty or contain animal bones.

Additionally, Israel still serves as a field school for social experimentation. We are subjected to various stressors, mostly economic and social, that are clearly not natural or matters of everyday life. Our reactions to them, I believe, are being studied.

The Israeli market also serves as a "back up" for drugs that are taken off the market by the American, Canadian and European governments for being unsafe. We are one of the countries that the drugs that may still be in stock are sold to after they can no longer be sold in the West. This is not a matter of speculation. I have seen those drugs being sold by the "health" clinics here years after they were off the American market.

Noam Chomsky writes about the social experiments that were carried out by social scientists in Viet Nam - mostly aimed at population control under wartime conditions. I believe that some of that is going on here in Israel.

I don't think that most people begin to know that far from being America's "darling"; Israel is America's, and Europe's, victim. In fact, part of the victimization is making us out to be America's ally in order to set us up for world hatred.

We find ourselves in the position of:

1) Having to be conscripted into the army and fighting an ongoing cold war with the Palestinians, which, if you have noticed, always comes just to the brink of all-out war, but never goes over.

2) Absorbing terrorist attacks from the Palestinians.

3) Being considered America's ally in the area the aggressors in this situation.

How can we possibly be an ally of the US? Some degree of parity must exist between or among allies. There is no parity between the US and Israel. When we're not America's compliant flunkies we get kicked in the teeth every time.

Jonathan Pollard is a perfect example. Although he did not divulge American state secrets, he mere passed information about the fact that Iran was building a nuclear facility to Israel, information that had America been a friend and ally it would have given us; he has been sentenced to the most severe punishment ever meted out to a "spy". Real spies, spies who have passed truly damaging information to other countries about the US never received sentences like has Pollard. The information that Pollard gave us did not harm the US in any way. It merely helped Israel to know the area was in danger of Iran becoming immanently nuclear-capable. Does that sound like the behavior of a country that is a friend and ally?

There is one solution to the problems in this area: The recognition on both Israel's and Palestine's part that we have been set up and cooperation between us to get our real enemies out of here: The US, EU and the countries that support them.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Socialist and Anarchist Women

It occurred to me that of all of the intellectual endeavors undertaken by Humankind, the Leftist, particularly the Socialist and Anarchist, movements can boast the largest representation of female geniuses.

It would seem as though Socialism and Anarchism provide unique outlet for particularly feminine genius.

The outstanding women figures in Leftist movements that come most immediately to mind are:

Lucy Parsons

Louise Michel

Emma Goldman

Helen Keller

Marie Louise Berneri

Voltairine DeCleyre

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

Dora Marsden

Federica Montseny

Margaret Sanger

Rosa Luxembourg

Elizabeth Jane Cochran (aka Nellie Bly)

Rose Pesotta

Angela Davis

I am hard-pressed to think of any other intellectual-activist field so graced.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

My Reply to a Post Entitled: "Why Anti-Zionism = Anti-Semitism = Racism"

Both the original post and my response can be found on the following URL:

http://tinyurl.com/g4mtn

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

ANARCHY ARCHIVES

A FREE Online Research Center on the History and Theory of Anarchism

Many of the books that you might spend a fortune buying can be found on a site called Anarchy Archives on the net as free downloads.

When you click on the name of the Anarchists who appear on the site (don't overlook the "Lesser But Bright Lights Link"! Many of them are in no wise lesser light, IMO.) you'll see a link that says "Collected Works" on their page.

That link will take you to entire books, articles, essays, etc. Most are in English, but some are in other languages as well.

http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/index.html

Bon Appetit!

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel

DoreenDotan@gmail.com

An Eye for an Eye, A Tooth for a Tooth

One of the most common Gentile misunderstandings of Torah: "The Bible says: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth".

That is one of the horrendous distortions in the translations.

In the one and only correct Bible, the Hebrew Torah, that sentence comes directly after a discussion of the laws of slavery. What it means is that if a slave master harms his slave and puts out his eye he must not only set him free, but pay him the difference of what he would be worth on the market with and without an eye.

The same goes for a tooth. Even so much as knocking out a tooth of a slave was reason enough to have to set him or her free plus paying the difference in compensation.

The Talmud goes further still. In the Talmud we learn that it is forbidden to sleep in a better bed than one's slave or to eat better food than one's slave.

Those laws are intended to lead people in the direction of doing away with slavery all together by instilling in people the understanding that slaves are no less human than their masters and deserving of no less physical conditions. And it worked. Jews were one of the first Peoples to do away with slavery.

Now if only we can get wage slave owners to do the same...

The Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek originally only because the Greek authorities threatened a massacre if the Rabbis did not do the translation.

There is a reason why the Rabbis said that that was the darkest day in all history.

The Gentiles were neither spiritually nor morally prepared to be able to understand what the Bible was about - and their languages reflect that. This is true to this very day. I have never met a Gentile, no matter how evolved, who really could grasp Torah. I can only shake my head in despair when they quote it, thinking they have understood. All of their "interpretations" begin with basic misunderstanding and just get worse from there.

Let's not even get into the total misunderstanding of what the coming of the Messiah means. I could write an encyclopedia about that one.

Why can't the White man find a religion of his own instead of arrogating the religions of others than he is not at all spiritually tuned to and has no hope of ever understanding properly???

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Book Review: PROPAGANDA by Edward Bernays

(See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays)

No matter what political position you take, or do not take, PROPAGANDA is a must-read.

Edward Bernays (1891-1995), the world's pre-eminent and most influential propagandist, was a nephew of Sigmund Freud, to whom he refers in his book PROPAGANDA a couple of times. Bernays considered the dissemination of propaganda, that is the shaping and manipulating of public opinion, not only respectable, but absolutely necessary in modern society. He considered it a science, most certainly based on psychology, and appeals to the authority of the eminent uncle in order to convince business people and especially politicians that the "engineering of consent" can, and must, be carried out coldly and systematically – and all this for the benefit of society.

In addition to his uncle Sigmund Freud, Bernays was influenced by and worked with Walter Lippmann who coined the blood chilling phrase "the manufacture of consent". He was also influenced by the research of Ivan Pavlov (!).

Bernays' clientele was most impressive and achievements were formidable. It is not for naught that he was called the "father of public relations". Counted among his clients were President Calvin Coolidge, Proctor & Gamble, CBS, the American Tobacco Company, John D. Rockefeller and General Electric. His propaganda campaign for the United Fruit Company is said to have led to the CIA's overthrow of the government of Guatemala.

The candor with which Bernays speaks about propaganda is remarkable. Actually, it is his most brash, and one assumes he thought most effective, propagandistic technique. He is so very sure of the absolute sway that propaganda has over the public imagination that he has no qualms whatsoever about informing society of what he is doing. He is quite certain that knowing that they are being propagandized will in no wise protect the public against it. Quite the contrary, in informing the public about the power and persuasiveness of "scientific" propaganda being administered by expert hands it is his intention to have the public surrender to it as inevitable, omnipresent and irresistible. Evidently, he succeeded.

Bernays informs us that the modern "science" of propaganda, used to control and "regiment" public thinking, as he puts it, is a direct outgrowth of the propaganda that was used in order to demonize the Germans in the eyes of the US public during WWI. In fact, he apprises us of the fact that the very self-same people who engaged in wartime propaganda are now the propagandists "regimenting public opinion" in peacetime. He and Lippmann were among those people. During WWI they worked together on the U.S. Committee on Public Information (CPI), those who "sold" the idea of the war to the U.S. public by inventing the phrase "make the world safe for democracy".

Bernays refers to crackerjack propagandists as "invisible governors". Propagandists, while employed by big business people and politicians, are not their servants and not acting at their behest. It is the propagandists who are the invisible pullers of the politicians' and business people's strings. The propagandists, Bernays informs us in no uncertain terms and wholly devoid of inhibition, control every level of society from large numbers of former proletarians who were recently (as of 1928) allowed to go upscale socio-economically and attain parity with the lower rung of the petit bourgeoisie in order to stave off revolution all the way up to the level of big business and politicians. He goes on to apprise us of the fact that "propaganda is here to stay". That is not so much a statement of fact as a command to become resigned to the fact, like it or not.

In 1928 there were still enough Americans who were socially aware and Left-oriented that propagandists had a bad name. Bernays attempts in his book PROPAGANDA to give propagandists a better name, to make them appear more society-friendly, but he lets the public know that their acceptance of propaganda or not will not be the determining factor in whether or not it is influential and certainly not whether or not it continues to exist and exert tremendous influence.

In his book PROPAGANDA Bernays devotes a chapter to a brief overview of how propaganda can be made to affect and can, in turn, be put into effect by:

Business
Political Leadership
Women
Education
Social Service
Arts and Science

Those that are "scientifically" and "well" propagandized become, in turn, agents for the dissemination of propaganda.

The edition of PROPAGANDA presently available is published by Ig Publishing (See: www.igpub.com) is riddled with typographical errors, the most amusing of which is: "Czechoslovakia officially became a free state on Monday, October 28, 1918, instead of Sunday, October 17, 1918 [sic] because Professor Masaryk realized that the people of the world would receive more information and would be more receptive to the announcement of the republic's freedom on a Monday morning than on a Sunday, because the press would have more space to devote to it on Monday morning."

The most entertaining aspect of reading Edward Bernay's PROPAGANDA, of course, is finding as many propagandistic techniques in it as one can.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

ENOUGH WITH THE ON-LINE HIQ INTERNATIONAL WHINE AND CHEESE PARTY ALREADY!

The net is full of whine and cheesy posts and I'm getting nauseous from it already.

Many of you post a lot of "Isn't fascism getting ridiculous?" posts. Obviously you're disturbed by what's going down around you - so you brandish your keyboard and post a link. When you really go ballistic, you get sarcastic or sardonic. The ubiquitous injustice hurts you - but not quite enough.

What are you going to DO about where your country is going besides being a total limp dick and posting outrage after outrage on the net? How about a bit of uprising? (Nice pun, Doreen)

How about organizing demonstrations of the HIQ community? How's about organizing to brainstorm about what can be DONE to ameliorate the conditions for Joe Citizen?

The internet was invented:
1) the better to disseminate State-sanctioned modes of thinking, values, fnords and clichés
2) to provide the masses with the illusion that they are doing something when they post
3) to monitor what people are thinking when they go for the bait described in point (2)

By doing nothing and merely posting you are playing right into their hands. You are providing them with the information they want from YOU and effecting NOTHING.

The mega-message that you're sending is: I don't like what I see, but I'm a wuss who can't do anything about it but write. Governments LOVE emasculated intellectuals.

By calling Bush "Shrub" in message after message on the net you do nothing to diminish his power. You diminish yours. You do nothing but create the illusion of having diminished him in your mind. In fact, all you have done is sound peurile, and worse, impotent.

Observe Bakunin. Observe Louise Michel. Observe Emma Goldman (it is said that she never went to a speaking engagement without bringing a book so that when she was hauled off to jail she had something to read). Observe Margaret Sanger. Observe Gustav Landauer. They were intellectuals, surely of stature not less than yours. They wrote, to be sure, and if they were alive today they would, no doubt, avail themselves of the internet. But they principally took ACTION. They were people of action first and foremost. They put not only their brains at the disposal of the masses but also put their asses on the line for the sake of others. They didn't bellyache. When they wrote it was to enlighten the masses and galvanize them into a formidable force, not in order to alleviate their conscience and not in order to express themselves in such a way as to keep themselves safe. They acted. They took personal risks. They were, in a word, REAL intellectuals.

Now excuse me. I have to go back to working on the program for revision of Israel's electoral system that I've been batting my head against a wall for months working out with other intellectuals in a number of countries who are, like me, dedicating their lives to the real bettering of conditions of the citizens of their respective countries.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Are Women Today Free?

Someone on another (open) board asked:

"I know what you’re all thinking. “Of course women are free how could you even question it?” or somewhere along the lines of that. Certainly women are now freer since the feminist movement in the 60’s-70’s era. They can now take on jobs while taking care of the kids. More women are now entering male dominated employment. Women can express their opinions and beliefs without getting punished for it—unlike some third world countries where it is condemned. I know very well there are lot more things to add (I know someone will indeed list more things than I have done here) but I also want to state the other side of the argument. As I was reading the newspaper the other day I noticed a lot of things that will contradict that women aren’t all that free after all. There is a constant pressure that women always have to look good, act like your stereotypical woman. You all know what that is. Increasingly, now, more aging women are considering the wonders of Botox. They are also spending a huge amount of money on plastic surgery, breast implants, ‘tummy tucks” etc. I know men do the same, but not in the same quantity. In Australia, women have been getting confused messages from the government and medical officials about HRT (hormone replacement therapy), the fight for paid maternity leave, health care and fertility. The government is blaming them because apparently women should have known better before putting pills in their mouth-- that a trusting doctor prescribed for them Not just in Australia but also in other Western countries, women are being harshly blamed for following their ambitions and heading for a full-time career. Then when they hit their 30’s they find out that it’s harder for conception. But I guess it’s their own fault huh? So the question: “Are women really free or do they still have some things to overcome?”

Quote:
To be successful, a woman has to be much better at her job than a man." -Golda Meir

Quote:
The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says: 'It's a girl. -Shirley Chisholm"

I responded:

The freedoms are there. Her freedom depends upon how each individual woman designs her life. Priority one for me was always learning. Keeping that priority ever in mind, I designed my life to allow the maximum amount of learning. I married a man who dedicated his talents to developing mine. I had only two children. I never worked more than part-time. I do not spend money on luxury vacations, fancy housing, furnishings, clothes, hair-dos, make-up and certainly not surgery or frivolities. I do not allow Wall Street to determine what the essentials in my life are. My extra money goes into books, disks and other learning materials. I do not waste my time exercising or doing other meaningless activities. I come to the boards only after I'm too tired to do productive work. I am extremely free and I live just as I wish to. If I bought into the beauty and materialistic culture I would be a slave. My advice to any woman, or man, who wants to be maximally free is: 1) Prioritorize and keep your sights on your main priorities. 2) Simplify your life to the maximum.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

"It Must Suck to be You, Doreen."

Someone on an open board wrote: "It must suck to be you, Doreen. You're always bored."

I take the accusations that are leveled at me seriously unless there are good reasons not to. I thought about why though it doesn't suck to be me, it is true that I am bored a good deal of the time.

I'm bored a good deal of the time, outside the rarified realm of Laputa Manque, because the world that people in the average IQ range have created for themselves looks like the kiddy section of an amusement park to me.

In the course of doing research for a proposal for electoral reform in Israel that I am working on, I reconsidered Kenneth Arrow's paradox.

Kenneth Arrow's paradox, or impossibility theorem, is defined as a *non-trivial game*. He was searching for a *social welfare function* that will allow the will of the electorate to be maximally expressed in the make-up of the government. He relied on game theory, of course, to try to come up with such a function.

Game theory, per se, would bore me if it was in no wise applicable to social welfare. It would be no more interesting than playing poker, which I haven't played since I was a kid, except one time when the other D2 and I started dating and he said I don't play games because I can't. I proved him wrong and put playing card games behind me, probably forever. But game theory has always been intimately tied to fair distribution when absolutely fair distribution seems impossible, and so I find it interesting.

Game theory doesn't bore me - precisely because it is applied toward social welfare. Mathematicians who do game theory get their Nobel Prizes in Economics.

When I look at myself and the world I see around me honestly, I come to the sad conclusion that precious few provisions have been made to provide Human beings with entertainments that are at once enjoyable and which effect positive changes, or attempt to. Most entertainments are frivolities and fritter time away. They leave neither society nor the entertained edified or bettered in any way. Usually the inverse is true.

In a world in which there are so few challenges presented in everyday life to play games that are also searchings for solutions to Human problems I'll remain bored a good deal of the time in ordinary society.

It is their world that sucks. Not me.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Discomforting Thought of the Day

Who would want to have sex with someone with silicone implants?

I mean, who in their right mind would want to play with a couple of inflatable bags?

Probably someone who wasn't sure of the person's sexual skills and was afraid of getting into an accident.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

"Brilliant!" "Awesome!" "Amazing!" "Genius!"

That was how the man in the video on the URL below was described in four separate posts on the thread where the URL was posted.

http://tinyurl.com/jn8e4

I am not saying that he is not talented. I am certainly not saying that being a juggler and entertaining people is not a worthy profession. I think that those who make people happy contribute a great deal to society.

But is this genius? Should this be what inspires people's awe? Can this man's ability in his field be compared to that of Hypatia, Mozart, van Gogh, Dostoevsky, Pierre and Marie Curie and Gustav Landauer in theirs?

Why is it that people of ordinary intelligence become downright rapturous upon seeing a demonstration like the one in the video, while intellectual brilliance leaves them coldly indifferent at best, belligerent at worst?

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

The Doppelganger Effect

Whizzing, whirring and beeping happily down the street on a mid-day brightly lit by the moons, D2 suddenly heard whizzing, whirring and beeping approaching, growing ever louder.

She looked to one of her right sides and saw herself, then R1, superimposed. Smiling she asked him: "Aren't you either too old or too young to be up at an hour like this?", feeling oddly as though she had asked that question before. He responded: "How did you know I was up? I might have seen myself walking down the street once, but if I did I didn't stop to say hello", and she heard his whiz, whir and beeps merge into one indistinct and ever-fading yyyyaaaawwwwwww.... as he passed.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Comforting thought of the day:

There is an infinite number of women with my mind and Carmen Electra's looks who do not have to clean for Pesach in infinite parallel universes – some perhaps as close as 10^10^497 meters away, give or take.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Now There's Hope - Bibliophilia Recovery Program

OK, let's dispense with the 40 questions for self-diagnosis. You know who you are – and so does everybody else. Think your family hasn't noticed that you spend four hours on the toilet seat – every time you go? Or the cleaning lady hasn't seen the stacks of books under your bed? Get real.

We're here to offer you help – serious help for an otherwise intractable illness that is progressive and ultimately fatal.

The Bibliophilia Recovery is a simple program based loosely upon, but in no way associated with, 12 Step programs.

The Bibliophilia Recovery Program is a 12! Step program.

That's right. You read correctly. It's a 12 Factorial Step Program and you must do all the steps, in order, or it won't work. Half-baked measures will avail you nothing. Just surrender your will and judgment and do exactly what we tell you to. Shut up and let us love you until you can love yourself.

The Step One is admitting that you're totally insane. From there you can proceed reasonably toward taking responsibility for yourself. The Step Two is writing down exact nature of your ideation. Step Three is sending a formally notarized copy of what you have written while doing Step Two to all of the people you have harmed. Step Four is following up Step Three with cutesy e-mail: "Oops, I didn't mean it. I'm really sorry." cards. If those you have harmed do not respond with an acceptance of your apology, continue to send them the e-card repeatedly each day. Take each step slowly and go on to the next only when you feel you have mastered the one you've been working on.

Feeling a bit intimidated? Doubtful? Yeah, we know it's a rigorous program. But, hey, you've got a serious problem and it's doing exercises right now out in the parking lot even as you read this.

If you undertake to follow this program faithfully, we promise you the freedom from addiction that has heretofore eluded you. You will be the person you have always wanted to be. Hundreds of thousands of people in hundreds of thousands of countries have recovered successfully using this simple program. Believe us. It can help even a hopeless wretch like you. Hey, it helped us and we were really skid row. You'll be able to get through a day, then a week, then a month, then a year, eventually the rest of your life without reading another book. That's a guarantee.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

QUEEN DOREEN OF THE LAPUTANS MANQUE

I neglected to mention that I'm the Queen of the Laputans Manque - of course, as Queen of the Laputans Manque I neglect to do just about everything.

I so wanted to be Queen Doreen of Southern Ireland. It seemed quite fitting, until I realized that I can't so much as afford a flat in a decent neighborhood in Dublin and a Queen, after all, is expected to live in a decent flat in most countries.

I realized that even the Irish on their drunkest and foggiest days would expect me to make some reasoned decisions and adhere to a predictable code of behavior - an expectation I could not live up to, especially when I go into one of my blue funks.

Crestfallen, I had to admit that I wasn't right for the job.

Then, as randomness would have it, I met Richard May on line. He introduced himself as the Founder of the Laputans Manque. It sounded absolutely ideal!

I could be a schlemeil and not feel mylife was being squandered. In fact, I could reign as Schlemeil Supreme. It was so Me.

I entreated and pleaded and generally nudged him to let me be the Queen of the Laputans Manque.

I explained to him that I am eminently suited for the job being as for all my ruminations, I can't so much as remember what it was I go to the grocery store for.

He asked me to promise that I wouldn't impose anarchy on Laputa. That would be entirely too orderly.

I swore solemnly.

And so, I was coronated Queen Doreen of the Laputans Manque, and nary a more fitting Queen they could hope to find.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Continuation of No, I Won't Vote! (see entry directly below)


The record low voter turnout at the polls yesterday, 57%, which broke the record set in the last elections, when 63% of eligible voters cast their ballot has been interpreted by some commentators that the voters don't care what the future of Israel is.

The public was adjured to vote by organizations whose stated purpose is to uphold democracy. They were told in repeated broadcasts: "Get out and vote. It is more than a right. It is a duty. Don't give up your rights to someone else."

Oh, please! The reason why so few Israeli voters didn't bother is because after having been betrayed by Ariel Sharon we learned that the "democratic process" is an utter farce and it doesn't matter how we cast our votes.

More important, vastly more important, is the fact that they do not understand that our inaction does not bespeak indifference or an abrogation of our power.

We are whittling away at the ersatz democratic state and we intend to supplant it with a truly democratic, that is, anarchic, state.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
March 29, 2006

No, I Will Not Vote

My husband just got back from the polls.

He won't tell me who he voted for because he doesn't want to influence my vote in any way.

Fat chance of that happening.

I don't intend to vote anyway.

I'm not taking part in this charade anymore.

I didn't vote for him, but I certainly believed that Arik Sharon meant what he said and had this country's best interests at heart.

I would never have believed that he, of all PMs, would be the one to run Jews out of the homes utilizing the army, the police, the riot squad and UN soldiers, throw them out into the streets and scatter them helpless throughout the country so that they could not regroup.

Those who voted Sharon in did so because they feared that a Labor PM might do such things. No one believed it would be Sharon.

He destroyed our faith in any politician.

He crossed the line into making Israel a fascist state that turns the armed forces on its own citizens for political purposes.

There are still some families from Shomron who do not have homes. There are still some children who are not in school.

Young adolescents, I mean boys and girls as young as thirteen, were put into adult prisons for demonstrating. Their parents were not allowed to bring them school supplies. A judge ruled that: "being in jail is not a luxury".

The wife of the lawyer who was giving counsel to the Jews in Shomron was arrested and taken to prison, though she did nothing. She was nursing at the time. They hauled the baby off with her.

If Sharon, the supposedly most staunch defender of Israel did all that, who would not? The next stage of evacuation of Jews is already in the works. Minister of Defense, the former Chief of Staff, Sha'ul Mofaz has said he supports the plan.

Dan thinks that it's important that I vote.

For what? A grotesque? A farce - that is anything but funny?

It is clear that whoever is dictating Israeli policy is outside Israel and will continue to do so no matter who the PM is and no matter what the breakdown of the seats in Knesset will be.

No. I, for one, will not play their game. I will not take an action that will signal to them that I'm still buying into the lie that this is even a quasi- or ersatz democratic state.

By not voting I cast my vote. It is a vote for anarchy.

Evidently, I'm not the only one picketing the bogus election:

http://tinyurl.com/fqa8p


Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

DEPLETED URANIUM - A HIDDEN LOOMING WORLDWIDE CALAMITY - by Stephen Lendman

http://tinyurl.com/q65fg

My response to this is:

We should be absolutely incensed about this!
This is arrogance, dominance and disdain in their very worst manifestation.
Why do the world's unwashed masses have to put up with this???
There should be unwashed mass demonstrations - all over the world.
We are as entitled to enriched uranium as the rich are!
On second thought, the world's unwashed masses have a part in their being treated with contempt.
Their complacency is an open invitation to being treated shabbily.
The unwashed masses must learn to be more critical if they wish to get their fair share of exposure to enriched uranium as well!

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

PESACH CLEANING

If Purim is my very favorite holiday, then Pesach is my very least favorite. I hate it.
Why should I clean? Why should anyone? Is there any work more Sisyphean than dusting? Dust is cosmic. Dust is the stuff of the formation of galaxies. Dust is more sublime than we can fathom. From dust we are and to dust we shall return. Anyone who thinks that they can rid their miniscule homes of dust doesn't have the first notion of the greatness and vastness of creation.
Dust, if you ponder the subject with the depth it deserves, is as Pesachdik as it gets. What is the desert, after all, if not a huge dust heap? Isn't that what we are supposed to be celebrating - our liberation from Egypt into 40 years of wandering aimlessly in the desert? Dust is very near and dear to me. Ever since that incarnation during which I wandered through the desert for forty years, I simply cannot but be surrounded by it. It was amidst the dust that I received the Torah. I am deeply sentimental about it.
Besides, I find the accumulation of dust on my shelves very convenient. F'rinstance, when someone phones (as is wont to happen once a month or so on the average), I can jot the person's name and number down right there on a handy, nearby shelf. No need to say: "Just a minute. I'll find a piece of paper and a pen" and then make the poor schmo wait 1/4 hour 'til I find them buried under the dust.
Dust makes me feel good. I never miss an opportunity to ROFL.
I always thought that Pigpen was the true star of the cartoon and found that nauseatingly sweet and insipid Charlie Brownnose nothing but annoying.
I also dearly want a cat, but because I have guinea pigs I have to wait until they die. In the meantime, the dust balls that are forming in my house are my ersatz cats. They look just like those pricey Rag Doll cats. How would you feel if someone swept your cat away and dumped him?
The mites are my companions and in the depths of depressive despair it is to them that I turn for comfort and solace. They advise me wisely and well.
To our Xian brethren I say: Console yourself that all you have to worry about is going into hock to the tune of your yearly income for Xmas. At least your dusty world is not shaken and uprooted.
In our next episode: Doreen laments having to eat matzah and horseradish.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Don't Misunderestimate Him

I serendipitously came across the following blog:

http://tinyurl.com/n6y33

I present it not merely for your entertainment. It's really not at all funny.

I have suspected for some time that a program has been implemented in the US to divest people of the ability to think incisively and discern by systematically dulling their linguistic tools.

I don't believe for a single moment that Bush's malapropisms are the expressions of mere semi-literacy. He does not speak impromptu. He is, after all, the President of the United States. His speeches are painstakingly crafted by professional writers whose job it is to imbed subliminal messages.

I think that Bush speaks as he does in order to set the tone for unclear and imprecise speech so that the thought of the American populace, and by extension entire English-speaking world, will become increasingly unclear. Our powers of discernment are being whittled away systematically.

I don't know who this semi-literate, soi-disant editor Peggy is, but I suspect that her blog is not simply a compendium of egregious and laughable errors. I'm quite sure that many young people are not laughing along with us.

I think that "Peggy", and many more like her, are employed to disseminate fuzzy language and encourage fuzzy thinking.

Imagine if we were youngsters today. Would we be able to speak, read and write English as we do? I think not.

Soon we will be gone and with us the ability to discern between and among fine points and think analytically will go. There will be no one to correct the young people's spelling, grammar and syntax. There will be no one to lead them out of the haze. There will be no one to provide young people with the exacting mathematical and linguistic tools they need to clarify nebulous ideas to themselves and then articulate them to others - and someone is very interested in bringing about that state of affairs.

I recently came across the following: http://www.devilducky.com/media/23894/

I think it lends substantial endorsement to the observations and concerns I expressed above.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

The Reasons Why People Do Not Accept Alphanumerics

Message 2391 on the Yahoo Group Acephalic Swine & Stupid Parrots

The system of Hebrew alphanumerics treats these matters and answers these questions incomparably more satisfactorily than classical math could ever hope to.

There are a number of problems that stand in the way of people accepting it generally.

1) People think that the laws of classical math exist a priori. Why anyone would assume this has been a wonder to me since the first time I was ordered to accept an arithmetical law as true just because an old harridan in orthopedic shoes, elastic stockings and a severe bun said so.

2) Hebrew alphanumerics requires the study of Hebrew, which is the math and the math is the language. They are inextricably bound. They are, in fact, one and the same and should never be entertained separately, lest one is reduced to what is called 'mochin katnut' in Aramaic (restricted consciousness, or the consciousness most of us think of as normal and all there is).

3)The math doesn't artificially do away with "mess" and provide an illusory this-and-not-that reality. It produces a reality that is a *conjunction*, not a disjunction. That is: this *and* that - concomitantly. It allow for a vastly more complex and elastic universe.

4) There is an emotional component to not accepting alphanumerics. People are reluctant to take responsibility for the reality they are living in and to accept that it is being generated out of our minds hearts and *moral level*.

4) The teachings have been made a travesty of by the "Lurianic" school of Kabbalah, which deals in superstition and mind bending. Lurianic Kabbalah is big business with all the accoutrement. I am not from the Lurianic school and have spent many years as a pariah because I came out against it strongly. My work is an extension of that of Rabbi Avraham Abulafia, whose work was hidden away for 800 by the Church and Orthodoxy alike and for exactly the same reasons - his work sets the mind free. Yet, his work was not without taint and he was most certainly subject to human errors and failings. Rabbi Abulafia did not elucidate an absolute revolution of Hebrew alphanumerics and neither did I. All I did was see a few steps further than he did because I climbed up to that giant's shoulder.

It is the work of Humanity to unfold it gradually. No one Human being, no one People, no one generation can conceive it all. It is what we are. It is the substrate of all actual and potential being.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

This Time I Say: YES!

I do not take a simplistic, unilateral, across the board position on the death sentence that allows me an illusory peace of having a mind made up and always knowing just what should be or should not be done.

I think that each individual case has to be considered based on the very specific circumstances.

There are cases in which I believe the death sentence is dead wrong. See my article "Some Thoughts on Revision of the Death Penalty in Light of the Case of Stanley (Tookie) Williams" on the following URL:

http://www.geocities.com/dordot2001/TOOKIEWILLIAMS.htm

There are cases in which I feel it is absolutely right and I do not feel the slightest hesitation or compunction. Cases in which adults rape, torture and kill children are just such cases.

I would, if I was legally enjoined to, carry out the death sentence myself in those cases.

This is one of those cases: http://tinyurl.com/zrb5r

He himself says he wanted to die just before he raped and murdered that 11-year-old girl.

Let's support him in getting out of his misery, her and his families', and society's.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel

When The Irresistible Force Meets the Unmovable Object

Robertson Finds Radical Muslims 'Satanic'

http://tinyurl.com/nu3q6

The confluence we are sharing is a spectacular one - filled with danger and supersaturated with opportunity.

The Christian world is reaping the whirlwind of the winds it sowed in the Crusades. Its own megalomaniacal aspirations of spiritual world conquest are coming back to haunt it and challenge it for a final showdown. They do not recognize their own image being reflected back to them. They imagine that, having laid down the weapons of the Middle Ages and desisted from armed evangelism, they have been forgiven and their actions have been forgotten. They do not know that the perturbations and disruptions they caused in the universe when they swung their maces and engaged their catapults are still reverberating and are returning to them.

The discovery of the Coelacanth changed the way we think about "extinction" forever. Scientists, wholly baffled, ask: "How could Coelacanths disappear for over 80 million years and then turn up alive and well in the twentieth century?" They use the terms as though they have some vague idea of what they mean.

The Okapi and other animals, most recently a "rat squirrel", thought to be long extinct have been discovered alive.

The genetic mutation that causes some of the siblings that belong to a family in Turkey to behave in a quasi-apelike/humanoid manner has caused scientists to ask if they are witnessing a case of human devolution. They note, however, that the family are characterized by singular love, warmth and acceptance - far in advance of that evinced by most human families. Scientists are entertaining the possibility that this is a case of devolution based upon what appears to be findings of devolution in other species.

The universe is showing us that our conception of time is wholly inadequate. We are amazed by the above-mentioned discoveries because we cling to a hopelessly inadequate conception of time. Time is certainly not a vector; that illusion is an artifact our consciousness. The common understanding of reincarnation is based on this illusion.

Space-time is the creation of our emotions, most particularly our inability or unwillingness to encounter objects, persons, situations, etc. We create space-time in order to distance ourselves, to put someone or something off.

The Irresistible Force that compels us to learn, encounter and accept is coming up against the Unmovable Object of our unwillingness to be divested of our ways of conceiving and cognizing. Our collective consciousness, and thus our universe, is imploding. But, never mind. The next universe we create will be bigger and better, as was the last universe we created, as is this one...

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Someone asked: "Do you believe in Soulmates?"

Someone else answered: "I believe that some people have shared a past together and when they find each other in our current incarnation, they know and can share a deeper relationship than most of us. But I also think that searching for one's soulmate can lead to misery if you're not careful. Always trying to find that one special bond that may not be available in our current lifetime. "

I responded:

There is one problem with the belief in reincarnation. It presupposes that time is a vector. There is no reason to assume that this is the case. It appears to us that this is so because of the way that our thought is structured.

I believe that there are soulmates. I believe that they are together eternally, but I also understand that space-time is a creation of our emotions. When we do not wish to be in immediate contact with a person, situation, object, etc., we create space-time to create a distance.

When we want with all of our being to be with our Soulmate we are there - spontaneously and instantaneously.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Obscene Contraband

Returning from a sensual vacation in Miami, after having dropped into their favorite sex shop, Mary and Joseph Jones were just crossing the state line into their home state of Abalamala when Joe Jones saw the blue strobe light of a police car in his rear-view mirror. "Oh. Oh. Mary, I think they're on to us."

Sho' nuff, they heard the feigned polite, authoritarian voice of a policeman coming through a bullhorn. "Pull your car over to the side of the road, please."

Joe Jones pulled over, rolled his window down and said: "Good evening, officers. What's the problem? I don't believe I was driving over the speed limit."

"No, sir, you weren't. We have been tipped off that you and your wife are attempting to enter the holy land of the state of Abalamala with obscene contraband."

Joe Jones gasped as if horrified and said: "Us? Mary and Joseph Jones? Obscene contraband? Why, we have been members in good standing of the White and Decent Evangelical Church for two decades. We'll be attending the AEGA World Conference once again this year. Us? Wherever did you get the idea that we would bring contraband into the holy land of the state of Abalamala?"

"We've received information, and we must investigate. Now, please cooperate and tell us where the contraband is."

"There is none. We don't know what you're talking about."

"Please get out of the car." Mary and Joe Jones got out of their car and the two policemen proceeded to check every inch of their car. "There's nothing in the trunk."

"There isn't anything in the glove compartment or under the hood either."

"Check under the seats and under the carpeting. Check under the dashboard. It must be here somewhere. Think, Murphy, where the hell would somebody stash a butt plug and a vibrating egg?"

"Dunno, sir. Sir?"

"Yeah, Murphy. What is it?"

"What came first? The vibrating chicken or the vibrating egg?"

The senior officer looked levelly at the more junior officer. He was clearly not amused. The two officers found nothing. Not just a bit frustrated and embarrassed the policemen told Mary and Joe that they could go, got back in their car and drove away. "My cop's nose tells me they've got it somewhere, Murphy, but if we can't get our hands on it we can't bust 'em."

Mary and Joe got back in their car looked at one another and smiled. As they drove away the faintest buzzing could be heard...

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Expunge Humanity from Textbooks

Reference: 'Mom,' 'dad' to be axed from school textbooks? Zelda's revenge: Gender-neutralizing billcould also jeopardize prom kings, queens

http://tinyurl.com/mdfz4

I think humanity should be expunged from all books used in schools. This will solve a number of problems. First, there will no longer be a need for revisionist history. Second, the problem of gender vis-à-vis sex will be obviated. And last, but certainly not least, as all schoolchildren know, humanity provides an atrocious role model.

"Expunge 'em", Doreen says with a dismissive, imperious fluttering of the wrist.

Think how much more interesting English and American literature will be without people ruining perfectly good story lines.

Think of "The Raven". It's the raven that carries the poem. Who gives a fuck about Lenore?

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Two Hard Lessons I Learned In My Life

One of the hardest lessons I learned in my life is that we can't love someone more than they are willing to be loved or in a way that they don't want to be loved or intervene before they are ready to be "saved". We can't decide when it's time for someone to recover from alcohol addiction, food addiction, drug addiction or from violence and addiction to primitivism.

Another one of the hardest lessons that I learned is that those who are willingly enslaved and allow evil to occur because they will not organize themselves into an effective force against evil are more reprehensible, and responsible, for their unhappy condition than are those who enslave them.

All we can do is be there for the ones who come of their own free volition and according to their own time table.

Humankind has not yet evolved to the point where we know how to form alliances based on purely altruistic and other-serving principles. Evil people are better at organizing based on selfishness, brutish competition and hierarchies, than are the good folks - and creation favors organization.

So long as the peace-lovers who will not organize are atomized and dispersed we remain powerless and it remains wholly indeterminable whether we would, if we organized, constitute the critical mass necessary to change things - we deserve every kick in the butt we get because it need not be this way.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Spike Tells Condi: "Quit Smoking That Crack!"

http://tinyurl.com/mfzcd

Hot damn, dat Domstella brown dwarf do look smokin' in dem Spike-heeled, patent leather boots and dat suita dark matta. Yas, indeedy.

I don't know if she's darkening, but she sho' is ultrakewel.

Vintage Prawn

The discovery of old "bones" from the JurAssic period that belonged to a "beaver", which ate fish and baby dinosaurs and, in turn, was eaten by fish and dinosaurs, has proven conclusively that the development of transsexualism, cunnilingus, arse play and paedolphelia had all evolved by at least 1.64 E8 years ago.

Article: http://tinyurl.com/lua3g

Hope for Humans to Regain Ability to Cooperate

A gene that apparently sets human evolution back about a million years holds out hope that humans can be devolved to the point where they regain the ability to cooperate strategically for the good of all concerned, which we evidently lost somewhere in the mists of time. Scientist are hopeful that the genes we evolved that cause modern humans to refuse to cooperate, despite the deleterious results to all concerned, can be mapped on the human genome and chemically neutralized, thus returning us to the cooperation level of chimpanzees.

Articles: http://tinyurl.com/z6dxb and http://tinyurl.com/lhhru

Palestinians – Encroachers, Invaders and Squatters
By Their Own Admission and Self-Definition

The etymology of the ancient Semitic radical p-l-sh or p-l-s is:

In Aramaic-Syraic: to break through, to dig

In Akkadian: to dig through

In Arabic: to cleave, to split

In Ethiopian: to invade, to emigrate

In Hebrew: to open, to dig through, to make a passage, to invade, to squat (on land, not to hunker), to encroach, to be invasive

Reasonably now, would any people who knew what they were talking about take on this name?

Could it possibly be the name of an indigenous people?

Do people call themselves: "Those Who Invade"? "Those Who Squat"? "Those Who Encroach"?

Could it possibly be the original name of this geographic area?

In their ignorance of the Bible and all of the Semitic meanings of the radical p-l-sh or p-l-s, the “Palestinians” took on a name that they thought would give them historical support to their claim to this land. If you will examine both the Bible and history, you will find that the P’lishtim of the Bible have nothing to do with the present day people who call themselves squatters and invaders. The P’lishtim of the Bible were associated with another invading people from Crete. If you can read Hebrew and some Latin, please consult the entry הכרי/הכריתי (Criti = from Crete), who, you will see are identical with the people called Philistaei in Latin (see Veteris Testamenti CONCORDANTÍAE Hebraica Atque Chaldaicae by Solomon Mendeldern.

Herodutus (and after him Ptolemy and Pliny) used the phrase Syrie e palaistine (=Palestinian Syria) to denote Judea and Palestine as well as the interior of the and down to the Arabian Desert. Later the phrase ‘Palestinian Syria’ was shortened to ‘Palestine’, the name used by Josephus and Philo as well. Since the time of Vespesian the country was called officially ‘Palestine’. In 1948 the name was changed to Yisra’el. The land was not renamed Judea, as that name is based on the name on only one tribe, Yehudah, while the name Israel is comprehensive, including all of the children of Yisra’el (Ya’akov – Jacob). As it is our desire to gather in all of the exiles of all of the tribes, thus we took the comprehensive name Yisra’el as the name of our State.

The people who call themselves "Palestinians" are the descendants of indigents who came from surrounding lands to find work in the reborn Israeli settlement. They are so undesirable their countries of origin refuse to take them back. In 1972 the Bedouin King of Jordan Hussein killed 10,000 “Palestinians".

Doreen Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

THE REAL TARGETS: CIVILIZATION, CULTURE AND MEMORY

You have probably heard of Shinar. That's because you're especially well-read and struggled for your intellectual independence in a culture hostile to free-thinking. If you haven't heard of Shinar, that is probably because you are a victim of the US programme of wiping out historical memory. In America only scholars with particular areas of expertise or those with very particular areas of interest know what Shinar is, although it should be a name much more generally known. Long before there was Baghdad there was Shinar, that is Babylon, in the Fertile Crescent - the cradle of civilization. It was there that civilization, as we know it in the Middle East and in the West, began. Despite the fact that many priceless archaeological artifacts were destroyed in the last Gulf War - many still remain. Physical archaeological artifacts provide the basis and sometimes the proof of how the history of Humankind looked. Without these priceless artifacts all historical and linguistic theories remain just that - theories. Every statement made about whom our ancestors were and how they lived must end with "IMHO", if we do not have artifacts that bear out our claims. Artifacts not only serve support theories and lend proof to beliefs; they can make short shrift of the longest-standing, most cherished beliefs as well. The discovery of the 'The Dead Sea Scrolls' is a perfect example of an archaeological discovery which is revolutionizing the way we think about the Second Temple period. The 'The Rosetta Stone' also served as the key that opened many doors of knowledge that were bolted and sealed before its discovery. The examples are many and dear to our hearts. Artifacts are priceless, then - by far dearer than gold, oil, drugs - or any other commodity that nations may go to war over. Those who control what knowledge of archaeology is available to the public control what the public is privy to knowing about where they came from, where they are and where they are going to. Whatever one's status in American society: long-time citizen, new immigrant, descendent of slaves or conquered Natives, one is stripped of their historical framework and linguistic background (unless, of course, they come from an English-speaking country, but even in this case they will be required to adopt the American ‘take’ on English, and thus be forced to adopt American thought patterns). America demands that one forget whom they were, where they came from and blend into the "melting pot". Nowadays, with the advent of means of mass communications, the process of assimilation into the American ‘melting pot’ is usually complete in one generation. Among those who retain their culture most tenaciously the process takes two generations. Paradoxically, those whose racial type is not mainstream in America have a much better chance of retaining their identity than those who ‘look white’ with few cosmetic applications. It is said, and it is true, that if one does not know where s/he is coming from, s/he cannot know where they are going to. This is the goal of those who determine American sociological policy - the creation of a mass of citizens none of whom have clear knowledge either of their own roots, and thus have a very nebulous sense of self, or a sense of the historical context of others. Dignity, honor, sense-of-self and an appreciation of the greatness of others are the most immediate casualties in the war against free thought. Public opinion is quite easily manipulated in a non-culture in which the citizens have no sense of rooted-ness, knowledge of their original languages (or the etymologies thereof) or clear sense of historicity. For example: It is the lack of knowledge of history and etymology of languages that allows the present propaganda concerning who the ‘Palestinian People’ to be believed by well meaning, but ignorant and gullible people. The less we know about history and languages the more our consciousness can be manipulated as we make a hodge-podge of the images that are fed into our brains in words whose etymological roots we have no knowledge of. I urge the readers of this post to read the material contained on the two links provided below carefully. We will see that both those who operate Bush and those who operate Sadaam Hussein are interested in revision of history. On the one hand the Western world would have the wealth of artifacts in Iraq, which could serve as plastic proof of our past destroyed so that historicity is obliterated. On the other hand the powers that be in Iraq would have the artifacts preserved in order to be used to manipulate history and create a false sense of pride and continuity from the glory of Sumer in the present-day citizens of Iraq - thus returning them to being the slaves of a leader who has declared himself a deity. This war is about YOU - who your ancestors were, who you are and who your descendants will be - rootless, mindless, unknowing and manipulated in the West or utterly helpless slaves who work in unquestioning devotion for a leader they believe to be god. There is no "good guy" and "bad guy" in this war. Control of knowledge for the sake of mass enslavement of Humanity is evil - no matter what continent it is attempted on, no matter whether the people doing it wear three-piece tailored suits or jalabias. This writer must be honest and say that the destruction of archaeological artifacts is far worse than the manipulation of their meaning, because so long as they exist there is a chance they may be understood properly. The destruction of the remains of civilization is the attempt to blot out the basis for civilization and rooted-ness - irrevocably. We will be returned to pre-Sumerian levels of civilization if this occurs, regardless of what our level of technological development is. The prospect of being pre-historic even while we are nuclear capable is beyond nightmarish. The booty in this war is control of CIVILIZATION itself. Did anyone seriously entertain the notion that the instigation of war with Iraq on the part of the US, UK and the U.S.'s lesser allies was principally about oil? Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Yisra'el

April 13, 2003

__________________________________________________________
BAGHDAD, June 20, 2005 (AFP) - Archaeological sites in southern Iraq have been systematically looted for over two years, but experts say the dig will have to go much deeper to find out where thousands of lost artifacts have ended up. "The complete lack of knowledge is devastating," says archaeologist Elizabeth Stone, who spent years excavating the Old Babylonian city of Mashkan Shapir. "One article said that a billion Iraqi dinars worth of artifacts had been smuggled to Syria, but that's absurd. We just don't know what's gone," she says. The mystery has emerged as new site protection forces finally begin to make a dent in thefts from the cradle of civilisation, rampant since the US-led invasion of March 2003, but experts say it may be years before the riddle is solved. Meanwhile, artifacts are surprisingly absent from the ever-hungry illegal market. "Artifacts aren't turning up yet," says Seth Richardson of Chicago's Oriental Institute. "The market's too hot. People don't want to trade them, for good reasons and bad." "We'll probably have to wait four or five years for this stuff to turn up. And it could be anywhere -- London, New York, Geneva, Tokyo." What is known is the shocking breadth of looting, with satellite images showing ancient sites turned into chessboards of square-shaped holes. "There's been more dirt moved after the (2003) war by looters than there ever was by archaeologists and looters combined before the war," says Stone. On the ground, archaeologist Abdal Amir Hamdani, in charge of antiquities for Dhi Qar province, home to some of Iraq's most famous archaeological sites, says his focus has shifted from looters to smugglers. "I'm not an archaeologist. I'm a policeman," he says. Hamdani uses what he calls a "hunting dog" -- a former looter turned paid informant -- who follows up on rumours and goes out with a digital camera and global positioning system (GPS) equipment to locate and mark smugglers' houses. Italian carabinieri forces disguised as Bedouin then go with Hamdani to carry out often fruitful raids. "This is the war within the war, the forgotten war," he says of his dangerous job. Last October, eight Iraqi customs officers were found dead and their recently seized cargo of antiquities disappeared on the road to Baghdad. Al-Fajir, 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Hamdani's base in Nassiriyah, is rife with smugglers and dealers, he says, and 60 suspect homes in the small town of 10,000 have already been identified. Hamdani shows photos of seized artifacts: Parthian glasswork, Sumerian statues and erotic images on temple tablets, hundreds of coins, gold jewellery and bowls inscribed in ancient Aramaic, some clumsily glued together, damaged forever. "I don't know how much they're worth to a dealer," says Hamdani. "To me, they're priceless." He laments what he says are lax sentences of two or three years handed down to smugglers. "It's not enough. They should be getting 10 years or more. I would like to kill them, but then what happens to human rights in this country?" Stone says that families in the area have been selling artifacts for generations, but the lawlessness of recent years combined with increased demand from the West, Japan and Israel has made them more daring. "You can see the purposefulness of it. People are very well-organised. They come with food and water and guns. That's different from what Iraq has always had, farmers and villagers coming to take something to sell at the local souk." "The assumption is that they won't have to hold onto it for 100 years. But some families have been doing it for generations and might think their grandchildren will sell it. There must be warehouses bursting with the stuff," she says. "It will start coming onto the market when people decide authorities can't be bothered to prosecute anymore." While the director of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, Donny George, says that an object sold by a farmer in Baghdad for 50 dollars can fetch "200,000 to 300,000 dollars in New York," the financial loss pales in comparison to the cultural one. "The frightening thing is objects going to private collectors, where they are hidden, just for investment, like hoarding gold," says George. He says ill-informed buyers in the West, such as the man who paid 80,000 dollars for a non-descript cylinder seal, are also inflating prices and inspiring more thieves. "They've been taking out at least 3,000 tablets a week, by the truckload. That's got to be 400-500 dissertations," says Richardson, adding that some looters die when the tunnels they use collapse, becoming artifacts themselves. Iraq currently has 12,000 registered archaeological sites, but once the whole country has been surveyed, that number will jump to 100,000, says George. Hamdani says there are 800 sites around Nassiriyah alone, with 200 site protection forces to patrol them in just seven vehicles. As a result, no amount of policing is going to suffice and the museum is placing its hopes in changing people's mindsets. "Ninety percent of schoolbooks used to be dedicated to Saddam and the Baath party. If we can dedicate five percent of books to antiquities, children can learn a lot -- and they can teach their parents." Meanwhile, generous foreign aid is well-intended, but not always useful. In the corner of George's office is a box of 40 satellite phones donated for site protection forces by UNESCO. "We've had them for three months, but they didn't give us SIM cards," says George. "Now we have extra funding so we can buy the cards and use them." I told you so.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Am I Real?

Not having been in the States for almost 24 years and not owning a television, I cannot always determine the status of that which is presented to me taped and sometimes experience feelings of unreality as a result. Actually, I am not at all sure that I would be any less confused about the reality of what I might be viewing if I was back in NY or Miami Beach and "plugged in". I suspect that quite the opposite might be the case, though I would probably be less aware that I was having difficulty separating fact from fiction or being able to mentally and emotionally assimilate semi-biographical movies; mini-series loosely based on fact; a John Nash not only endowed with preternatural mathematical genius, but also the looks of Russell Crowe who is too preoccupied with, and engrossed in, his paranoid ideation to make love to Jennifer Connolly or a Suzanne Hinn.

In the case of "The Fruitcake Lady" it was entirely clear to me that it is a show, even before knowing that the links were from a Jay Leno site. OK. No questions there.

Sometimes matters are not that straightforward, though. Not having been in the states and witnessing the development of the "entertainment" industry, and finding that Western society blows my mind and seems unreal all too often (especially when it transpires that it is all too real); I get confused about whether something implausible that has been videotaped is real or a put-on if I am not prompted beforehand as to what exactly what I'm going to be viewing.

The oxymorons in the entertainment industry confound me. They are myriad, so I find myself feeling confounded more often than I should expect to. E.g., what the hell is a "reality show"? Since when do stiff upper lipped British MPs, who were formerly renowned for their dignified reserve, get down on all fours and act like cats and cavort in red leotards with someone, one breast exposed, whose gender is indeterminate? (Since when is gender entirely independent of sex? But I digress.) Now that I think about it, why have so many ex-actors made the transition to being politicians so easily? I thought that then actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was acting in the film "The Terminator". Now, as Governor of the State of California, he refuses to stay the execution of the third convict on death row in a matter of a couple of months, this time despite the doubts of a judge that the evidence against him is credible. I am left wondering if he was acting in the movie or not.

Do you remember the film Mondo Cane? The 1962 movie was considered "shock cinema". Today, images far more shocking, perverse and utterly revolting are not supposed to shock people at all, but rather serve as light-headed and light-hearted entertainment, and one is considered peculiar if they do feel that those images assault his or her sensibilities. TV is filled with images that make Mondo Cane look tame. If one protests that they are sickened by those images and suggestions, the person is considered overly sensitive, overly religious, or just plain over the hill.

Sites like scopes.com and the search that someone on an e-list conducted in order to determine the status of the film clip bespeak the fact that I am hardly alone in this confusion. It's not at all clear even to people who have been steeped in Western culture all their lives if what they are viewing or reading on the net is real, some weird chimera of reality and staging, urban legend, a put-on...Note how often the scopes.com site will label a given story partially true, or something to that effect. Those are the buggers. Give me the truth or a damn lie anytime, but when they create pernicious, predatory species of mental picture-inducing and emotion-stirring images and suggestions by splicing and concatenating the plausible and the implausible ostensibly willy-nilly (but I'll bet dollars to donuts it's painstakingly crafted to be conflating and emotionally overexciting, thus numbing) into some indeterminate filmed production, evolution has not provided me with a mechanism for defending myself against that. There are no such images in nature and I am at a loss. I feel like the child who, emerging from a wax museum, asks: "Am I real?", only there's a far more sinister air to it all.

There is a description on the psychiatry books for that state: borderline experience. When a person has been assaulted by the unthinkable and by that which the brain is not equipped to process more times than the brain can recover from, i.e., has had more borderline experiences than the psyche can heal from, a syndrome results - Borderline Personality Syndrome. The prognosis for BPS is far more pessimistic than for Schizophrenia. The mass media are inducing Borderline Personality Disorder in the masses and I don't believe for a moment that it is unintentional or not serving someone's purpose.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy

As background to the following discussion, please see: http://tinyurl.com/k75vy

I am saddened, profoundly saddened, that Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP) has been "discredited" because of the cases of medical practitioners who allegedly misused the diagnosis.

I do not know why Sir Roy Meadow has been discredited personally and instead of being called the discoverer of this syndrome is being slurred as "the inventor of this label/diagnosis". I think he should be hailed for having given a name to a phenomenon that, without being named, is very difficult to recognize as a syndrome of child abuse.

Almost 25 years ago I befriended a woman who had one daughter at the time, or rather, she befriended me - desperately. She was a needy and dependent personality, but I was new in Israel and her obvious admiration of me and the open house she provided me with was pleasant and convenient in lieu of a real family. She seemed to need to be needed and didn't seem to care if a good deal of being used was involved.

Her daughter, whom I loved, was a "sickly" child and she was always attentively attending to the girl's various, rather obscure and oddly symptomless, illnesses. At first I thought this woman a very dedicated and concerned mother. After a while I began to see that something was amiss, but I did not know how to define what exactly. I began to joke with her that she a hypochondriac for her daughter. Her husband did not smile when I made these jokes.

After a few years she has a boy, then another child...five in all.
All of her children were "sickly". Their obviously imaginary illnesses ran the gamut from the mild cold to chronic illnesses and emergency medical conditions that required immediate attention. She was constantly running with them from one health clinic to another (perhaps as they caught on to her she moved on?) and calling ambulances in the middle of the night. There was no name for what she was doing to her children in those days and all I ever heard of was plain old vanilla hypochondria. Evidently, that was also the case with the child welfare workers too. Israel has excellent child welfare mechanisms in place for rescuing children at risk, but no one had a name for this type of personality disorder and child abuse at the time.

The last time I saw her she invited me over to her place. We were living in different cities at the time. When I got there no one was at home. I spotted a pharmacy across the street. I walked over to the pharmacy and, not at all surprisingly, there she was with the kids. "How did you know where to find me?", she laughed knowing the answer. She was always plying the kids with OTCs and getting them prescription drugs from unsuspecting doctors and administering those as well. This time she was buying Flagyl. I knew Flagyl was dangerous so I opened my mouth and said: "Flagyl is dangerous (I don't recall that we knew it is carcinogenic at the time, but we did know that it is risky to take). Why are you giving the kids Flagyl?" The little one said: "Mom says I have worms" and rolled his eyes signaling that he knew he didn't. I choked back the tears.

I never went back there. I couldn't. It hurt too much to see what the kids were going through in that house. She called me to invite me to the wedding of her oldest, my favorite of her children. I couldn't attend. Too many memories of her having been hurt as a child would have flooded my memory. My friend said something unclear about a social worker helping the family and about the little ones being in boarding schools. I understood that child welfare had intervened. I heaved a very deep sigh of relief.

My conscience bothers me to this day. Had I known the words Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, I would have reported her to the authorities. I would have demanded that they look into the case if they ignored it for lack of knowing how to handle it. If they didn't know what MSBP is, I would have sent them information. I didn't know what MSBP was and those kids suffered terribly until someone learned about the syndrome and acted on it.

I am filled with sorrow that MSBP had been "discredited". How typical of the West to throw out the baby with the bathwater on the lark of a trend. MSBP was probably the "darling" of the psychological world at one time. Now it's the ugly stepdaughter. How typical. Dammit!

I am certain that more children will suffer because of real MSBP than due to medical malpractice using MSBP as a cover.


Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Come As You Are - Verdeutschte und Verbessert

The afflatus for the following rewrite comes, oddly, from
Shakespeare –the Yiddish rendition of Shakespeare to be accurate.

The frontispiece of the book reads: Shakespeare auf Yiddish – Verdeutschte und Verbessert

In that spirit, here you have The Vaselines – if not uebersetzt,
then surely verbessert:

First, the original, mediocre, not-quite-grungy-enough lyrics:

Come as you are, as you were,
As I want you to be
As a friend, as a friend, as an old enemy
Take your time, hurry up
The choice is yours, don't be late
Take a rest as a friend as an old memoria
Come dowsed in mud, soaked in bleach
As I want you to be
As a trend, as a friend, as an old memoria
And I swear that I don't have a gun
No I don't have a gun

A few nips and tucks and it'll be the true grunge it was meant to be:

Cum as you are, as you were,
As in my fantasy
As a friend, as two friends, as an old enemia
Take your time, hurry up,
Don't cum before me. Don't be late.
Take a breast from a friend, here's an old mammary
Cum dowsed in mud, soaked in bleach
As I want you to be
As a trend, as a friend, as an old mammary
And I swear that I don't have a gun
No, I don't have a gun
But I do have a dungeon

TITS & TATS

On another message board I was called judgemental and narrow-minded by a woman in her mid-50s (that's her age, and perhaps her IQ) who starting talking about how cool tats are.

She waxed ecstatic as she described the "body suit" of the tattoo artist who did her and her husband's tats.

I once saw a young man who had a continuous spider's web tattooed on his whole body that could be seen (he was wearing shorts, no shirt) and was sickened with sadness. I wondered what will happen to him if he ever regrets what he did.

IMO, tats, particularly extensive tats are an act of aggression against one's own flesh and a sign that one harbors abysmal self-anger, if not self-hatred.

I think that anyone who has extensive tats needs psychiatric care, as would anyone who did anything to mutilate himself or herself.

I would say the same for "Prince Alberts" and ampalang.

I don't get driving a rod through one's tongue, nipples and clitoris either.

Have I become a narrow-minded aging lady? Or am I one of a minority of people who still has what used to be called common sense?

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Lighten Up for Chrissakes!

On another list someone wrote: "The Islamics of the world like the Christians and the Jews need to be subjected to humor and critique."

That prompted me to respond:

If they could only learn to laugh at themselves, they would not need to be critiqued.

They take their religion so damn seriously is what their problem is. There is no levity in their worship at all, no fun.

One of the teachings that Judaism instills is worshipping God in joy, because only in a state of joy does one's consciousness expand to the point of being able to understand the teaching correctly. We are taught that the presence of God does not rest on someone who is not in a state of joy.

As one of my Rabbis once taught me: You've got to take it all with a great sense of humor. The Ramba"m goes so far as to say that one returning from a business trip should not engage in the study of Torah until he relaxes from it. Why? Because he is in too serious a business frame of mind to learn Torah.

There are those who say that organized religion is the problem and they call for individual "spirituality".

I say that religion without humor, particularly the ability to know that God is playing with us and to play with God in return, is the problem.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Some of my lighter-hearted stuff is to be found on a site I've called

Miscellaneous Meanderings:

http://www.geocities.com/dordot2001/MiscellaneousMeanderings.html