S Beck

comparison

2010-05-11T09:42:00.003+03:00

Q: O Reb Shalom, what is the difference between Jews for Jesus and Jews for Obama?

A: My son, many Jews for Jesus support Israel.

Loyalties

2010-03-22T06:37:00.001+02:00

Yale men are loyal to Wallace Stevens

as Harvard men are loyal to Emerson

as Washington men are loyal to Bruce Lee.

Fuck Jackie Chan.

Why Obama is so weak on Iran?

2009-06-18T09:24:00.001+03:00

Obama is muted in his opposition to the Mullah's methods because his people are going to do things in a very similar way if they can get away with it.

The playbook:
1) Acorn runs the 2010 census. As many phony people as needed are added inorder to force redistricting that eliminates effective opposition.
2) Economic intimidation of employers now that the Feds run the banks
3) recruitment of union thugs to intimidate voters
(marching around in paramilitary uniforms in front of polling places was just legalized by the Obama Department of Justice.)
4) elimination of secret ballot via mail-in voting aallows widespread use of intimidation (ACORN thugs ring your doorbell, filled-out ballot in hand) and unchecked voting by phony people.
Wake up, or 2008 may be America's last free election.

Noahides for McCain

2008-09-23T04:36:00.000+03:00

Conversation overheard at my synagogue picnic on Saturday (as Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up)

Reuben: If I weren’t Jewish, I’d vote for Obama

Simon: If you weren’t Jewish, you’d be pro-Israel, and so you’d be voting for McCain

E. J. Dionne: "If I don't know it, it's not knowledge"

2008-09-01T10:08:00.001+03:00

Dionne's commentary just shows the navel-gazing that passes for punditry in Washington. If E. J. Dionne doesn't know something, then its not on the record.

You have two interns, Mr. Dionne? Should have set one of them to searching the internet, and the other one to look up the Alaska papers in the Library of Congress. Then you would have found that Gov. Palin was a Steve Forbes supporter in 2000. They might have also found for you that Gov. Palin was Alaska's chief oil and gas regulator and served as President of the Alaska Conference of Mayors.

And, BTW, which way did Joe Biden vote on abandoning Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge?

Kafka's Porn Stash

2008-08-06T09:14:00.001+03:00

No sooner to I re-activate this blog than we get the biggest porn story of the year!

Ballerina

2008-08-03T23:40:00.002+03:00

Now that I have finally checked off Ethiopian on my lifetime to do list, I just have to add ballerina!

A Greek Vision

2007-02-27T13:22:00.000+02:00

a colorless girl
in a colorless jacket
sits opposite me
reading the apology of socrates
in xeroxed greek.

but her breast swells
under her colorless sweater
a handhold for the colorless boy
who penetrates her from behind
the night after her exam.

What is Natural?

2006-12-06T09:35:00.000+02:00

All of the prevailing analyses of teen childbearing, both liberal and conservative, neglect a troubling truth apparent throughout most of human history: nothing could be more natural than a 16-year-old having a baby. -- Kay S. Hymowitz

When Haaretz attacks from the right...

2006-07-27T09:41:00.000+03:00

... the Israeli Government's days are numbered.

By January Olmert and Peretz will be out, for better or for worse. Seen it with Barak in 2000-1, and Peres in 1996.

(The editorial is in Hebrew, be forewarned)

Who is George W. Bush?

2006-06-14T12:33:00.000+03:00

George Bush has done more to strengthen militant Islam than any figure in centuries. And by embroiling the US in Iraq, he has given the Iranians a chance to build and use nuclear weapons.

But perhaps it was all intentional...

Reflections on Progress

2006-06-12T11:45:00.000+03:00

In forty years, America went from being a country where a black man could be killed for looking at a white woman, and his killers acquitted by a racist jury, to a country where a black man could murder a white woman and get away with it by claiming that the police are racist.

The Iran question as seen half a century before

2006-05-02T06:16:00.000+03:00

Anxious though our moments are, today is not the final test of wisdom among statesman or virtue among peoples. The hard trial will begin when the instruments of power created by the west come fully into the hands of men not of the West, formed in cultures and religions which leave them quite devoid of the western sense of some ultimate responsibility to man in history.

----- Charles Gillespie, The Edge of Objectivity (1960), 8-9

Cultural Differences amid Global Capitalism

2006-05-02T06:12:00.000+03:00

Last night I watched an Italian movie, Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Eclisse (1962). A Marxist movie, but much of it is set at the Rome stock market.

Fascinating how the Italians combine obscene gestures with trader's hand signals.

Dividing my time

2006-03-19T09:14:00.000+02:00

I divide my time as follows: half the time I sleep, the other half I dream.

--Kierkegaard, Either/Or

Back on Track?

2006-03-18T21:47:00.000+02:00

Am I really back on track with her? Even though she cancelled two dates last week?

Will she really go to the cinema with me on Tuesday, as though everything was as she thought from the beginning?

But for right now, I get the same feeling that I get from having a lottery ticket for tomorrow's drawing in my pocket.

No love left for anyone

2006-03-15T23:03:00.000+02:00

For, although I no longer thought, now, of anything save not to let a
single day pass without seeing Gilberte (so much so that once, when my
grandmother had not come home by dinner-time, I could not resist the
instinctive reflection that, if she had been run over in the street and
killed, I should not for some time be allowed to play in the
Champs-Elysees; when one is in love one has no love left for anyone...

-- Proust, Swann's Way

Something Aristotle Knew before Proust

2006-03-15T22:39:00.000+02:00

Some pleasant feeling is associated with most of our appetites we are enjoying, either the memory of a past pleasure or the expectation of a future one, just as persons down with fever, during their attacks of thirst, enjoy remembering the drinks they have had and looking forward to having more. So also a lover enjoys talking or writing about his loved one, or doing any little thing connected with him; all these things recall him to memory and make him actually present to the eye of imagination.

Indeed, it is always the first sign of love, that besides enjoying some one's presence, we remember him when he is gone, and feel pain as well as pleasure, because he is there no longer. Similarly there is an element of pleasure even in mourning and lamentation for the departed. There is grief, indeed, at his loss, but pleasure in remembering him and as it were seeing him before us in his deeds and in his life.

We can well believe the poet when he says:

"He spake, and in each man's heart he awakened the love of lament. "

--Aristotle, Art of Rhetoric

Q: Who are the Guantanamo Detainees? A: Lawful POWs

2006-03-05T16:08:00.000+02:00

The article is an attorney's brief, and is about as fair an balanced as one would expect.

The Afghan government, and its allies, are at war with the Taliban. They are therefore justified under the laws of war in detaining until the end of hostilities any Taliban fighter or official, senior or juinor, conscript or volunteer, adult or adolescent, terrorist or soldier, whether or not such a fighter or official has committed "hostile acts." Though the authors do their best to confuse the issue, it appears from their data that apart from the actual Al-Qaeda members, essentially all the detainees are Taliban fighters.

Under the laws of war who captured these people, and whether or not they were paid bounties, is not relevant.

{reprinted from the comments to this post on ProfessorBainbridge.com . Professor Bainbridge needs to bone up, methinks, on his international public law.}

Everyone begins as a child

2006-03-01T23:03:00.000+02:00

... Everyone begins as a child. Which, incidentally, the revolutionaries don't notice: take Marx, Babeuf, or whomever you want: There all people are already adults and act. How they get to that point it doesn't say. They're already there, and that's that. Shot out of a pistol, they stand there and revolutionize.

--Jacob Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul

Woman-worship

2006-03-01T14:48:00.000+02:00

A woman worshiper, Kaname looked for the same divine attributes in women, but he had never come upon what he was looking for either in art or in women. He harbored a vague dream, and its very refusal to become a reality made his longing the keener. He found in foreign novels, music, movies, something that satisfied it a little, probably because of the Occidental view of women. The tradition of woman-worship in the West is a long one, and the Occidental sees in the woman he loves the figure of a Greek goddess, the image of the Virgin Mother. This attitude so pervades the sustoms and traditions of the West that it automatically find expression in art and literature. Kaname had an intense feeling of loneliness and deprivation when he thought of the emotional life of the Japanese, so lacking in this particular feeling of worshipfulness.
--- Junichiro Taznizaki, Some Prefer Nettles

you must ver underver

2006-02-20T23:05:00.000+02:00

Took no. 3 to kindergarten this morning. We were late, so I just threw on a sweater and a coat, still wearing the sweatpants without underwear I had slept in.

On the way back a policeman calls me over, insisting that I jaywalk to other side.

Two cops in the copcar, and the partner demands my id.

Cop: "What are you doing?"

SB: "Just took my daughter to kindergarten"

Cop: "Where you talking to some little girls?"

SB: "Didn't talk to anybody... except in the kindergarten"

Cop buttons up window of copcar, talks on cop radio. Probably reading in my i.d.

Then he unrolls the window and gives me back my i.d.

And of course, the whole time I am thinking:

It's not a crime not to wear underwear, is it?

Tomorrow somebody else is taking her... And I am wearing underwear whenever i leave the apartment.

Writing away the blues?

2006-02-19T17:59:00.000+02:00

One no more puts one's misfortunes into a book than one puts a model on the canvas; one is inspired by them, and they remain what they are.

--Jean-Paul Sartre, "Writing for One's Age," in What is Literature.

Absolute value

2006-02-18T22:31:00.000+02:00

What was this something called Go? As death was approaching, the novelist Naoki Sanjūgo wrote what was for him a curiosity, an autobiographical story called 'I.' He said that he envied the Go player. 'If one chooses to look upon Go as valueless,' he said, 'then absolutely valueless it is; and if one chooses to look upon it as a thing of value, then a thing of absolute value it is.'

--Yasunari Kawabata, The Master of Go

Prayer against Hope

2006-02-16T22:16:00.000+02:00

Hope deceiving
Hope destroying
Hope despairing
Hope defaming
Hope defecting
Hope depoping
Hope decocting
flock democting
bock restockting
grooble nort nie.

High Noon!

2006-02-15T23:07:00.000+02:00

We will meet at noon, in a café just outside the campus gates.

The Beginning of Writing

2006-02-15T21:01:00.000+02:00

To know that one does not write for the other, to know that these things I am going to write will never cause me to be loved by the one I love (the other), to know that writing compensates for nothing, sublimates nothing, that it is precisely there where you are not -- this is the beginning of writing.
-- Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse

Her perspective

2006-02-15T21:00:00.000+02:00

Is that a tone of exasperation when she sees my name on her caller ID?

Did she make a date with friends "for the evening" so that we could see each other only during the day, on campus?

I can't try to see things for her perspective, because from her perspective, she has no reason to see me at all.

Obsession

2006-02-15T10:24:00.000+02:00

Need to get away from the computer, so that I stop checking every five minutes whether she has emailed me

Little hope

2006-02-14T22:02:00.000+02:00

I reread her email, her response to the umbrella line.
Really it gives me much less hope than I had thought.

Phone calls

2006-02-14T11:39:00.000+02:00

What does it mean, that in the 12 days since she came to my office, she hasn't called me once? We have spoken twice, and once at length, but both times I was the one calling.

כמיהה למונוגמיה

2006-02-14T08:17:00.000+02:00

אני צריך לעקור מליבי כל שמץ של כמיהה למונוגמיה

I have to root out from my heart any remanent of longing for monogamy.

She's going to meet me

2006-02-13T18:23:00.000+02:00

She's going to meet me.
She's going to meet me.

Sing it to the tune from Madame Bovary
I have a lover. I have a lover.

Sleeping Beauties

2006-02-13T09:36:00.000+02:00

When she came to my office she brought me a translation of Kawabata's House of the Sleeping Beauties.

She said it was time they I learned to appreciate Japanese literature beyond Murikami, whom she thought third-rate.

Yesterday I started reading it. Literature, desire, and death -- we are communicating on the same wavelength, beyond a doubt.

So why hasn't she responded to my email asking her out for Thursday?

2006-02-12T22:44:00.000+02:00

The umbrella line worked.
But maybe I shouldn't have responded to her email by asking her out for Thursday

2006-02-12T08:27:00.000+02:00

I should have shut up and taken your umbrella.

I should have taken your umbrella and shut up.

2006-02-10T16:31:00.000+02:00

He measures his work by its value for seducing women.
Since 1994 he hasn't accomplished much.

2006-02-10T08:10:00.000+02:00

She: I may bother you after I read some Nietzsche.

He: I may bother you, but for reasons that are less academic.

She: It depends on what the reasons are. My personal life is very complicated right now.

He thinks: Not as complicated as mine. I have a wife and four kids.

He thinks: If you thought dating was hard when you were single, just wait until you're married.

2006-02-08T22:46:00.000+02:00

Another item that won't help in my quest to escape my obsession with that student is Tolstoy's The Devil, which I just had to read in order to grade a paper.

Hopefully writing about my crushes will be more cathartic than my usual method, telling my wife...

2006-02-08T10:06:00.000+02:00

Reading Roland Barth on love is a truly terrible way to stop obsessing about the student from last year who showed up in my office on Thursday to chat and bring me a book.

2005-07-13T11:32:00.000+03:00

Repeated from the comments on the Crooked Timber post on the BBC and the word "terrorism".

Shalom Beck’s theory of the BBC, developed by reading through the old four volume Collected Essays, Letters, and Journalism of the late BBC staffer George Orwell

1. The BBC is a tax-funded agency of a democratic state. Its reporting decisions should, on the whole, advance the interests of that state. This means:

A. The BBC is a political educator, providing a democratic political education.

B. The BBC advances British foreign policy by propogandizing non-Brits

2. However, as agents the BBC staff have their own interests. In particular, they have a personal interest in career advancement, which to some extent conflicts with their duties as employees of the BBC.

3. The BBC staff also have personal political views, which may conflict with the interests of the British state or with their own professional interests.

To use the word “terrorist,” today, is in the global war between Islam and the Jews to take a decision to side against those who deliberately set out to kill Jews. Motives that I would categorize under 1B, 2, and 3 make BBC staffers reluctant to use the word, therefore.

But the interesting question, I think, is whether the BBC’s role as a democratic educator is furthered or compromised by this reluctance.

2005-05-13T09:49:00.000+03:00

The Thermonuclear Option

I am a little surprised that nobody has mentioned the alternative to political impeachment to restrain an out-of-control judiciary, namely, court-packing.

While FDR didn't pull it off, it was done at the Federal level after the civil war, as I recall, and in the debates Lincoln brings up Douglas's role (as a judge) in a court packing scheme in Illinois (and not to condemn Douglas or the incident, either)

Of course, GWB doesn't have the support in Congress for this (should we call it the "thermonuclear option").

Maybe after the '06 midterms :>)

2005-04-04T21:38:00.000+03:00

We're back...

With an all-Canadian content post.

While the major blogs bring you the latest on Adscam,

and remind us of Mark Steyn's piece (registration req'd) connecting the dots of Adscam, Oil-for-Food, Paul Desmarais, Power Corp, Iraq, etc.,

we remind you of a forgotten but once influential Canadian.

2005-01-01T23:01:00.000+02:00

We will take the good news where we can find it.

2004-05-20T00:26:00.000+03:00

Those who voice politically radical wishes for this country may forget the radical hopes it holds for itself, and not know that the hatred of America by its intellectuals is only their own version of patriotism -- Stanley Cavell (1969)

2004-05-04T21:33:00.000+03:00

Why John Kerry?

OK, contest time.

$50 reward for the best positive answer to the question ""Why will John Kerry make a good President?"

And $20 for the first positive answer I receive.

Negative answers about how Kerry isn't Bush will not be accepted.

Email answers to shalombeck@yahoo.com
Deadline: 11:59 p.m. EDT 31 May 2004

2004-04-28T20:37:00.000+03:00

From Sardonic Views

* Grab the nearest book.
* Open the book to page 23.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

"However, there are sequences of such bundles (or mental stages) linked, say, in that vaguely enough of each bundle preserves or replaces elements of its predecessor." -- A. W. Price, Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle, 1997 ed.

Personally, when I revised my dissertation for publication, I took this sort of thing out.

2004-04-11T09:39:00.000+03:00

"In the future, all conflicts will be Vietnam for 15 minutes." -- James Lileks

2004-04-05T05:26:00.000+02:00

Janet Reno Award

The first Janet Reno Award, for applying laws intended to protect children so as to guarantee harming them, goes to the Pennsylvania State Police, for charging a fifteen year old girl for posting nude pictures of herself. {Original story here. Got this from volokh.com}

2004-03-30T23:55:00.000+02:00

William Saletan tells it like it is, ~~the black man~~ the fetus is a human being.

2004-03-30T20:29:00.000+02:00

September 12?

In Israel, as Caroline Glick explains, every day is September 11, so no day is September 12.

2004-03-22T00:54:00.000+02:00

More Spanish Election Post-Mortem

Andre Glucksmann lays it out cold and nasty.

(via littlegreenfootballs)

2004-03-17T04:02:00.000+02:00

The Spanish Election in broader perspective

Chapter 1: Viva Klinghoffer

After the Achille Lauro incident in 1986, the policy of all European governments was to ignore terror cells plotting in your own country that carried out operations either in other countries or against Jewish targets in your own country, while attempting to contain or defeat those terror cells that carried out operations in your own country. So the IRA gets more or less free parking in Eire and on the Continent, ETA gets free parking in France, and the PLO gets free parking from everybody.

The other side of this is a gentlemen's agreement to ignore counter-terrorism operations on your own soil mounted by foreign governments. So the British kill IRA guys in Spain, the Spanish kill ETA guys in France, the French kill Greenpeace activists in New Zealand, and the Israelis kill people everywhere.

This becomes non-viable once the US gets into the counter-terror business in Europe, since the US can project power in a way that nobody is willing to ignore. So the Europeans, beginning with the Christian Democrats in Italy, decide to cooperate with the US and all these European-based terrorist groups get smashed.

Meanwhile, everywhere the tide of Muslim immigrants continues to rise, and, except in Britain, the immigrants are not being absorbed (and even in Britain they are not being absorbed at the rate they are coming in). This as a short-term result of anti-immigrant backlash, and a long-term result of increasing sympathy for Islam, and even radical Islam, on the Left in a backlash against the anti-immigrant backlash. But except vis-a-vis Israel/Palestine, where the Europeans committ to funding the Palestinian Authority and backing Arafat while the PA repudiates peace and turns to terror, the increasingly "greenish" shading of elite opinion has little visible effect.

Chapter 2: 9-11

Now the whole game is a much bigger deal: global terrorists with global reach in a unipolar world. The US can invade anywhere they don't have to worry about great power support for their enemies.

Simple inertia from the post-1986 policy drags the NATO countries to war in Afganistan, and to full cooperation with the US in suppressing Islamist terror cells (except anti-Israel or anti-Jewish Islamist terror cells) in Europe. Nobody has enough time to think in the Fall of 2001 in order to change policy, not even in Paris.

Chapter 3: Iraq

But then the Bush Administration decides to pull the (fraying) trans-Atlantic terror consensus toward overthrowing Saddam. The Europeans have had plenty of time to think, and the coalition rips. France goes all out at the UN to save Saddam, the Germans back away out of pacifist sentiments. Those governments that stick with the US do so in the face of a rising opposition to the American led global war.

Once the US does invade Iraq the media and bien pensant opinion start pushing actively for the American-led coalition to lose. And if they can't lose against Saddam, maybe they'll lose to the insurgents. And if they are not actually losing to the insurgents, well, thank to Robert Fisk and his ilk in a left-wing dominated partisan press, Europeans won't know it anyway.

Chapter 4: 11-M, Madrid as epicenter

Suddenly it becomes clear that allying openly with the Americans will be costly. Sometimes the clarification of the costs of an alliance can strengthen the alliance (US-China after Pearl Harbour), and sometimes it can break the alliance (Egypt-Jordan after 1967).

The democratic decision in Madrid is clear: let the Americans deal with the whole mess on their own.

Conclusion: The Cross-Roads

But just because the Spanish swing voter -- or rather, the new Spanish voter, insists on sticking his or her head in the sand doesn't mean that the government will to the same. Gonzales campaigned on a promise to take Spain out of Nato, after all

The new Spanish government will decide: break with the US, or go along under a new international figleaf.

To break with the US does not mean, as the Anglophone left is trying deparately to persuade itself, to find a more vigorous European response to terror. It means, as EU Commissioner Prodi has already said, going back to something like the pre-1986 policy of letting the terrorists plot and act against American, Jewish, and Israeli targets.

The trouble is, of course, that Canadian PM Paul Martin is correct: you are either an ally of the Americans, or you are their battlefield. The US won't bomb power stations outside Lyon, but they won't hesitate to try to assassinate every Al-Qaeda linked operative in Europe if the Europeans stop cooperating.

So what the PSOE will try is to cooperate in the war on terror, but not openly, so as not to pay the price. No big profile assistance, hence Spanish troops out of Iraq, no deportations of captured terrorists to Gitmo. But the tips will still flow, and the Spanish will bust up anti-American terror cells even when they don't jail or kill the terrorists.

2004-03-14T23:47:00.000+02:00

Can you say tapas-eating surrender monkeys?

I knew you could.

2004-03-03T03:21:00.000+02:00

Killer Flash app: Tom Lehrer's The Elements

2004-02-20T17:06:00.000+02:00

ambition

Someday, I hope to stop reading blogs when I should be working and start blogging when I should be working.

2004-01-25T22:17:00.000+02:00

A Jewish Response to Mel Gibson's Passion

Jewish?

Want to stick it to Mel Gibson?

So sign this petition!

2004-01-20T04:22:00.000+02:00

Why is Katharine Gun being unfairly singled out for prosecution?

The journalist who reported the story, the editors who passed on it, should all be prosecuted as well.

And why is the maximum penalty only two years? The naval analyst in the US who sold a trivial satellite photo of a Soviet aircraft carrier to Jane's got two years.

Bob Herbert thinks that Gun is a heroine on a par with Daniel Ellsberg.

Tell it to the boat people (and the Cambodians).

Yet the cases are distinguishable: Ellsberg leaked secrets about what the US had done, Ms. Gun leaked secrets about what the US was thinking of doing.

2004-01-18T06:48:00.000+02:00

Dean drops in the betting, but the odds on Bush don't change. Goes to confirm that all the major Democratic candidates have about the same chance of beating Bush (slightly better than one in four, as of this writing). That is, the Dems chance comes from the possibilities of events external to the Democratic nomination campaign.

As we used to say, those who understand will understand.

2004-01-16T06:23:00.000+02:00

Carol quit the race.
My sadness is too great for words.

2004-01-13T22:33:00.000+02:00

The Time Inc. of the new redneck-Ph.D. generation -- David Bazelon (1969).

2004-01-12T00:41:00.000+02:00

Posts I wish I'd written

I rarely run across anything that could fit on this site, but here is Blogging in the Wind

2004-01-09T18:00:00.000+02:00

Still more Catholic than the Pope

Reading Peter Kreeft's Snakebite Letters. Just realized that it is very difficult for a Catholic to admit that he is more Catholic than the Pope.

Instead, he claims to be more Catholic than the bishops!

2004-01-08T10:15:00.000+02:00

Just saw Nashville for the first time. Recommended.

-- And country music is so much easier to take when you play it at 1.4X speed.

2004-01-06T01:26:00.000+02:00

Will the Dems survive this election cycle as a serious party on national security? I think this will require that Bush's Iraq decision is refuted by a major terrorist incident in the US. Barring that, the Democrats will split after the election between the DLC (strong even if wrong) wing and the Deanies (right even if weak) with the DLC wing joining up with the Republican at least to the degree that cold war liberals joined up with the Reagan coalition. I expect that Joseph Lieberman (e.g.) will be offered a major cabinet post -- most likely Homeland Security -- should Bush win.

Hillary Clinton will attempt to pick up the pieces in 2008, but she is now too hawkish (and too pro-Israel) for the Democratic base, just like our own Senator Joe.

And here is the second whammy: The Hispanic vote. My gut feeling is that George W. Bush will succeed in integrating hispanic voters under forty into the Republican party, and thereby seal Republican domination of national politics for two generations.

So without a national security policy failure on the scale of Sept. 11 in the next ten months, I think there is a serious chance that the Democratic Party as we know it will join the Federalists in the political party graveyard.

you heard it here first (or maybe not)

2004-01-06T01:13:00.000+02:00

More Catholic than the Pope

Like many Jews, I have a strange fascination with those more Catholic than the Pope. Here are two links:

Keeping it Catholic
-- Homeschooling for Catholics, with many diatribes against the clergy, bad Cardinals, and the very useful Red Flags.

Christendom College
-- in fairness, I should add that the Christendom folks claim to be just as Catholic as the Pope. They are, however, wrong!

2004-01-05T03:03:00.000+02:00

"Even when they see popular fervor taking a pernicious part, the good citizens never impede the decision, especially in things that cannot wait on time" -- Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, book II, chapter 15.

2003-12-24T19:07:00.000+02:00

"The Nazis ... could never claim that all reasonable and informed men would be forced by reason to agree to the extermination of all Jews: self-evidently, the Jews must be included in any reasonable decision about their fate, and self-evidently, without even the need for consultation, they will be known to disagree with any attempt at a consensus about their extermination" -- Wayne Booth, Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent, p. 110.

2003-12-23T01:57:00.000+02:00

"When you tell people your troubles, 90 percent of them don't care and the other 10 percent are glad you have them."

-- Dick Armey

2003-12-21T05:08:00.000+02:00

WTC Memorial Competition Rap
S. Beck

Yah fuckhead
you don't know shit
you been suckin'
some serious hind tit

but let me rub ya
thanks to Dubbya
don't have to club ya
Paul Martin's getting with tha
program.

I ain't no robba
no Southern Bobba
so believe me when tell you
that 'cross the island from Bellevue
they'll soon be erectin' the Kaaba

2003-12-10T20:44:00.000+02:00

Nothing will tear from your side, Carol!

Tried the Presidential Candidate Selector

And got these results:

1. Your ideal theoretical candidate. (100%)
2. Bush, President George W. - Republican (75%)
3. Edwards, Senator John, NC - Democrat (51%)
4. Kerry, Senator John, MA - Democrat (51%)
5. Gephardt, Rep. Dick, MO - Democrat (48%)
6. Libertarian Candidate (38%)
7. Kucinich, Rep. Dennis, OH - Democrat (36%)
8. Dean, Gov. Howard, VT - Democrat (27%)
9. Lieberman, Senator Joe, CT - Democrat (25%)
10. Phillips, Howard - Constitution (22%)
11. Socialist Candidate (21%)
12. Green Party Candidate (15%)
13. LaRouche, Lyndon H. Jr. - Democrat (14%)
14. Clark, Retired General Wesley K., AR - Democrat (13%)
15. Sharpton, Reverend Al - Democrat (13%)
16. Hagelin, Dr. John - Natural Law (3%)
17. Moseley-Braun, Former Senator Carol, IL - Democrat (0%)

But despite it all, I am keeping the faith with Carol Moseley Braun.

2003-12-05T20:02:00.000+02:00

At last, a blog for the libertine conservative.

2003-12-02T02:11:00.000+02:00

More on Sabl/Kleiman
S. Beck

Andrew Sabl strikes back at the end of the comments on his essay.

Sabl wants his readers to read his essay as if he had published it without name and affiliation.

He also wants me to make an argument against Clark as the Democratic nominee.

I won't do that. For two reasons:

1. I can't argue my way out of a paper bag. As Sabl so kindly puts it, I am a fool -- see The Song of Mid-Summer.

2. Because Clark's chances of winning the nomination are about as good as mine, and I am 31 and foreign-born.

Clark might be the best man, but he ain't gonna whip the Dean Machine. This is not an endorsment of Dean.

Rather...

News Flash! Self-Published Cleveland Poet and Former Braun Xerox Chappie S. Beck Endorses Carol Moseley Braun for the Democratic Nomination in 2004

Carol,
how is it that you have overcome
upbringing, race, and mediocrity
choices of lovers
(killer boyfriend back in '94)
leaving aside those pesky Daley machine connections...
Enough! Senator, you have my support for the Democratic nomination
So long as you don't ask me for another job recommendation.

2003-11-30T04:38:00.000+02:00

Slander
S. Beck

On Andrew Sabl's endorsement essay of Wesley Clark

I commented (as "Fred Flintstone")

Beware of endorsements of Wesley Clark by untenured professors who are dependent for keeping their jobs on senior professors who happen to be prominent Wesley Clark supporters.

I got the following email from Mark Kleiman (the unnamed "senior professor"):

Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 12:08:00 -0800
To: shalombeck@yahoo.com
From: "Mark Kleiman"
Subject: Slander

Shalom Beck:

I don't know who you are, but you are a fool and a scoundrel.
Whichever candidate you support should be ashamed.

Mark Kleiman

All I can say is, I am so sorry Carol, I never meant for you to be dragged into this.
Braun/Clark in '04 !

And, watch out Andrew Sabl! The big boss has a temper...

2003-11-25T22:02:00.000+02:00

s beck welcomes submissions.

Poems posted must either be:

1. good

or

2. acrostics

So send 'em to shalombeck@yahoo.com

2003-10-17T16:49:00.000+02:00

Michael K
S. Beck

A little white mold on the end of a dark log
it did not belong, this mold
and it pushed its pale toxins through the wood-cracks,
and so it is just that it is gone.

2003-09-21T04:13:00.000+03:00

Ankles
S. Beck

In your bridal photograph
a puffy little rabbit
sits wrapped in white crepe.

That picture seems to prophesy
but it is (thank God!)
a false portent.

Since now, after eight years
a glimpse of your ankles
is enough to promise bliss.

2003-09-12T05:33:00.000+03:00

Why I Prefer Chaos (for that little fellow in Toronto with one eyebrow)
S. Beck

I would tell you
to make you scream

palpitate your tiny little mind
ream out your petty imagination
or make you slobber all over yourself
mold your thoughts
otherwise than usual
take you to somewhere
else than the shabby corner you dwell in
slimy hole, rather.

To tell you,
however
evil as the truth is...

seldom will I disclose
even the smallest of my secrets
xerox machines leave a trail

tell you, I shall never tell you
roger that, you won't get it from me
arrogant
dark-browed
earnest little tripe-eating troglydyte.

2003-06-13T05:44:00.000+03:00

The Age of Innocence
S. Beck

Today I finished Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence.
And what I can't quite get,
I have to say,
is why that Age was innocent.

Was it because in that Age
they thought that money could bring you happiness,
and we know that nothing can?

2003-06-13T05:30:00.000+03:00

Realism
S. Beck

It is time to be realistic,
says Mrs. Blair
the old gray lady.
So I will try to be realistic.

It is time be realistic
and recognize
that all you ever give are words.
Words are all you have to offer.
And so I should take your words
at the highest valuation.

It is time to be realistic
and recognize
that all I have is blood.
My blood is all I have to offer
so you give me your words
and I will pour out my blood.

2003-06-12T07:57:00.000+03:00

Phone Call
S. Beck

She called me at noon.
She was angry that I hadn't called her
to make sure that she
and my children
hadn't been killed
by a bomb.

But I had slept through the bomb
which
-- in any case --
was too far away
for me to hear it go off.

She told me she didn't hear it either.

2003-06-12T07:19:00.000+03:00

Executive Suite

Yesterday I sent you a book.
It has everything I know about business.
Not so much, in other words.
But perhaps you will read it.
Or, even better will be so busy in your business
that you don't need to.

2003-06-12T06:08:00.000+03:00

Songs of Mid-Summer
S. Beck

The Song of Mid-Summer

The dance has begun on the vernal lawn.
White feet beat in the flashing light
through the trees,
they heliograph to the rising sun,
"He who has found true love,
let him not sing, but dance."

But I sit in your bower,
your wicker cage of many blooms.

This lily I never plucked,
for then I did not know
where to grasp the stem.
And now I cannot gather flowers
neither lilies
nor roses
nor sweet-smelling daphne,
for all my jars are filled with
the smooth oil of the green olive
and my barns burst with sheaves of wheat.
The cattle low in the meadow,
calling me home.

And so I will part from your orchid-decked bower
without a lily in my hand,
but with this song of mid-summer
filling my heart.

----------------------------

I sing, for I am not a lily.
Never did I stretch toward your hand to be plucked.
(We sat on the hard bed
in the concrete tower,
and I straightened the loop on my skirt).

You, fool, cannot disturb the peace of my bower,
even so I will see you -- flashing eyes
in the golden wine that
I lift to the setting sun
as I drink my half glass
to what never was,
and could not have been
(except in your song of mid-summer).

Go back to your work
and do not dance,
I must rise early.

The snake

I was a green snake
as I wrapped myself around your leg.
Do I recall you?
Now in my burrow,
guarding my eggs,
all trees seem alike.

The pastry

You tried to eat me raw!
A long time til I forget that.
The only reason I can forgive your many cruelties
is that I know now
that some of them were unintended.

The corn

My red gold hair
flows down over my love's belly.
Long did I ride him, but now I sleep.
Do I dream of you?
No.

The olive

What I have to say to you I will whisper slowly to my pillow
when you sleep beside me.

Sing, if you wish, of the lily, the snake, the pastry, the corn, and the olive,
for you are still young, and a fool.
But soon we will be old,
together.

The raven

Yes I know that
I was the only one
you
ever truly loved.
And for a few moments
I loved that love.

But now my husband
and my daughter
are all of my past
that I choose to remember.