The Desert Blooms

I remember the propaganda I believed years ago. In particular it was the idea that the modern state of Israel was causing the desert to bloom. This was supposedly a fulfillment of Bible prophecy. 

Isaiah 41:18-20

I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs. I will put in the desert the cedar and the acacia, the myrtle and the olive. I will set pines in the wasteland, the fir and the cypress together, so that people may see and know, may consider and understand, that the hand of the Lord has done this, that the Holy One of Israel has created it.

And this:

Isaiah 51:3

The Lord will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of springs.

Has Israel has caused the desert to bloom?  The statistics do not bear this out. 

But even if Israel has made the desert bloom, and I would say Israel, to some extent, has; there is an unasked question that bears on the story of the Pima Indian. 

Again I quote from Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About it. 

With the California gold rush, the relative paradise of the Pima came to an end and, with it, their affluence. Anglo-Americans and Mexicans began settling in large numbers in the region. These newcomers—“some of the vilest specimens of humanity that the white race has produced,” wrote Russell—hunted the local game near to extinction, and diverted the Gila River water to irrigate their own fields at the expense of the Pimas’.

The Jordan ValleyA portion of the success of Arizona agriculture was based on stolen water. The unasked question when we see a blooming desert in Israel is—Where did the Israeli farmer get the water? Where did the Israeli farmer get the land? 

When we see the abysmal conditions of a Palestinian settlement camp, remember the Pima Indians and ask the important question. Who "owns" the water? If you wonder why the Moslems and Jews cannot sit down and settle their differences “like good Christians”—one answer is the issue of who controls the water. 

A Simple Song Of Freedom

This is Bobby Darrin at his best. 

Available from amazon for those interested. 

Johnny Tremain

While this is in our Netflix Queue, should I tell Stacy about the evils of watching the movie instead of reading the book? You may remember the book, Johnny Tremain. I read it in the 4th grade, you probably did too. Stacy is reading it in the 3rd so it is a little hard for her. I decided to read it to her. Reading it reminded me how much I enjoyed it when I was Stacy's age. (Stacy is also reading Meet George Washington. She just read to me the story about Washington and the cherry tree I mentioned last week. At least the book said that it was a story and probably not true. This is an improvement over what I was taught.) 

Johnny was an apprentice who hurt his hand. This made his job very difficult. He became acquainted with the Sons of Liberty—the heart of New England's Revolution. He also participated in the Boston Tea Party. 

What is interesting is Ester Forbes’ description of the Sons. She makes it very clear that they were not interested in compromise. She described a scene where the Sons beat up a Tory shopkeeper. She also describes their private meetings where they planned their revolt. The Sons understand that the people must be manipulated to achieve the goal of revolution. This got me to thinking. It is always true that most people are manipulated to achieve the desired ends of a small elite. The question is, will you be manipulated?  

While Johnny Tremain is a novel, it contains a lot of what one needs to know about this period in terms of the actions and motivations of the Sons of Liberty. They worked the mob and public opinion to achieve their elitist goals. I worded this last sentence in order to shock you. Yes they were elitists. The fact that you might agree with their goals does not change that. 

Will you be played like the people of Boston who were conned into becoming a mob during the Boston Tea Party? Or will you look at all the facts and come to your own conclusions? This is a theme I have been developing in the series on war. Will you think for yourself, or will you let Faux News, or for that matter MSNBC con you? 

While I hope you will agree with me on everything I write, as I resemble what  my mother often said of my father, "He may not always be right, but he is never wrong," my purpose here is to remind us all to think. Maybe you will give different weight to the various facts and come to a different conclusion than I do. Fox News, or MSNBC for that matter, have their place. Unless we all look behind the rhetoric we will be conned.  

Libya & Journalism

I remember all the hype about the evils of Gaddafi. I have no real disagreement with Gaddafi being evil. However, I wondered at the time if what I was hearing about events in Libya was true. What makes this video interesting is that one NGO official (NonGovernment Official) says that there were mercenaries hired by Ghadafi, and then 5 months later she says that there were no mercenaries. 

You can not trust what you read or even see. You can be conned if you are not careful. To answer a question that was posed on Facebook, no you can't trust me either. I might have been conned as well. 

Surely this is not happening in Syria. 

Yes the video is obviously a pro-Syrian video. I heard another video on a podcast, where "Danny" admits that the video is fake. "Syria Danny," where do they get these names, in this other video says that everything he said was true, but the video was faked. This may be true. This happens all the time in televison. But think about what I just said, fake video is common in television-remember this. 

Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge, Say No More

I have long thought that an attack on Iran was inevitable. This despite the fact that there is no evidence that Iran has nuclear weapons, or even has a program to make them. The only question on my mind was who would attack and when the attack would take place. I have also wondered about the potential air base support of Israel's ally Georgia.

My first guess was that it would be this summer. It could not be too close to the election as that would be too obvious. My second guess was that Israel would do the deed, with modest protests from Obama. Obama has to be careful here to not seem too in favor or too against an attack. 

But the risk to Obama might be that he would lose too many votes from his own supporters if he supported, even clandestinely, an attack. So now the media is reporting this?

The US offered to give Israel advanced weaponry -- including bunker-busting bombs and refueling planes -- in exchange for Israel's agreement not to attack Iranian nuclear sites, Israeli newspaper Maariv reported Thursday.

President Obama reportedly made the offer during Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington this week.

Under the proposed deal, Israel would not attack Iran until 2013, after US elections in November this year. The newspaper cited unnamed Western diplomatic and intelligence sources.

Are You Smarter Than The Average Berra? This is brilliant on his part. He is letting everyone who pays attention know the attack will take place, but not loudly enough for his supporters to realize this. He has plausible deniability. This may get him the votes of the informed independents that support war but not cost him the votes of the uniformed Democrats who are against the war. 

We need to watch world news (For those unfamiliar with my religious tradition this is a joke as this was often said to confuse the lay people so they would not watch the machinations at denominational headquarters—classic “misdirection”) and at the same time ignore most of what the media is saying. As Yogi Berra said, "You can observe a lot by watching."  It is not clear what has been decided, or if anything has been decided. As Yogi also said, "It ain't over till it's over," and "the trouble with predicting the future is it hasn't happened yet.” Unfortunately we will see. As Yogi also said, and my final quote from Yogi for the day, “The future isn't what it used to be.”