Look! See! Not A War Related Post!

I just watched the Doctor Who 2008 Christmas special titled "The Next Doctor".

That means there will be spoilers! Beware!

It was... eh.

The villainess, Miss Ms. Mercy Hardigan, was boring and an Angry Woman who is Angry! At Men!
Lots of Men.
Has most brilliant mind there ever was!
Mwahahahahahahahahahaha!
Defeated by massive guilt trip.
Not so brilliant.

The Cybermen were uninteresting, like they usually are when there aren't any Daleks around.

Seriously, the Cyberman-Dalek exchange in "Doomsday" series two finale was one of the best ever! So hilarious.

( For your enjoyment: the entire brilliant scene of Dalek and Cyberman Extermination and Deletion! )

Aaaaaaanyway!

The Doctor - Tennant - was cute and dashing as always.
The "Next" Doctor - Morrisey - should... really keep to singing as he's truly a horrendous actor.
Rosita - yes, that was the name *gag* - was the pretty, cockney, token woman of colour... she of course had to rescued from danger and from prostitution... I'm feeling the forward sci-fi thinking here.

Oh Russel T. Davies why do you wound me thus!

Aargh!

As I was watching the episode on Ursula-the-laptop, my mother asked me why I was looking so glum and why was I cringing.

Dude.
It could have been so-so-soooooooooooooo much better!

The next Doctor Who special is called "Planet of the Dead".
It's either Zombies or Vampires.
Either of those options has to be better than this special.
I really hope Auntie Beeb doesn't SNAFU Tennant's final year as the Doctor.
It would leave me with a really sour taste in my mouth... I don't know anything about this new guy... Matt Smith... except that Steven Moffat (he who will be replacing current Executive Producer and main writer Russel T. Davies) has a crush on his coiffure.

Man... I mean, compared to "A Christmas Invasion", "Voyage of the Damned" and "A Runaway Bride", "The Next Doctor" was just unoriginal, predictable and just plain... eh.
I'm tempted to say Pareveh - which means neither Milk nor Meat as related to Kosher laws and is colloquial in Israeli Hebrew as bland, boring and neither here nor there.
So yeah.
Pareveh.

Edited To Add: Via hemlock_sholes and violachic.
The Alternative Doctor Who Christmas Special:
( Trek Through Time )

And now: Back to our regular Anti-War Blogging

The tone of this blog entry is light hearted and slightly sarcastic, nothing new I know, since my style has that quality most of the time.
I'd just like to reiterate the seriousness of this situation and explain that if I don't outlet my thoughts and feelings like this I'd be writing bad poetry and crying all the time... much like circa 2006 and 2007 after the 2nd Lebanon War and my (non-combative or field) participation in it.

Here are a few News articles.
For your... err... enjoyment.

Venezuela and Bolivia have cut diplomatic ties with Israel over "Cast Lead".
Damn, there go my chances at visiting Caracas and La-Paz!
Seriously though, I'm not surprised. As the two front runners for re-establishing Socialism in Latin America(1) and two of the United States' harshest critics, it doesn't surprise that they are making this kind of stand.
Israel has the highest profile of any other US ally and is perceived as an extension of US policy in the Middle East - not entirely true, but we sure like those US taxes and weapons, nom nom.

I'm not sure how much the Israeli higher echelon is giving a damn about what they probably consider two coo-coo heads of state, but I have a feeling that at some point in the near future it will bite us back in the ass.

For more pertinent issues:
It is reported that "Hamas accepts Egyptian cease-fire proposal":

Israel is asking for a number of guarantees from the Americans:

b A U.S. declaration calling on the international community to deal with the smuggling of arms from Iran to terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip.

b Intelligence cooperation between Israel and the U.S. for identifying the sources of weapons, with focus on the network linking Iran, the Persian Gulf and Sudan.

b An international maritime effort along the smuggling routes to find ships carrying weapons to the Gaza Strip, possibly with the involvement of NATO.

b An American and European commitment for the transfer of technologies to Egypt that will help it uncover tunnels.

b Plans for the economic development of Rafah, with particular emphasis on the Bedouin to undercut the financial motivation for building and operating tunnels.

Regardless?
I want to say... Yay?
A total cease-fire is something I've been hoping for since before day one.
Thing is... both sides are not very good at accepting agreements which don't hold their best interests at heart.
Israel isn't going to get everything it wants.
Hamas and the Palestinians definitely won't:

The war in Gaza isn't over yet. The final days of the Second Lebanon War show that it's best to be wary of agreements that come too early. But the way things looked on Wednesday, Hamas seems to be willing to accept the Egyptian initiative, which is almost a kind of surrender agreement for it.
The Egyptian proposal is mostly bad for Hamas. It doesn't let the organization bring the Palestinian public any political achievement that would justify the blood that has been spilled, and even forces on it the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza, in the form of its renewed presence at the Rafah crossing (as a condition for its reopening).

Today is a day of waiting.
I hope that by this evening there will be something concrete to report about an end to the fighting and the bloodshed.

That's all for a News update.
Stay tuned for more general War impressions from blogs and my own brain.

Notes:
(1) Is that the correct term?

More Anti-War (meta) Blogging

As promised... meta-blogging!

Over at Feministe, David Schraub of The Debate Link is guest blogging on the Gaza War:"Cast Lead".
He has written a brilliant (and long) post titled: “We Cannot Live Without Our Lives” Either: Jews, Privilege, and Anti-Subordination.
Now I don't agree with everything he's saying, but the way he breaks down the conflation of Antisemitian and anti-Zionism and how Antisemitism really still a reality for Jews world wide and Jewish history of course.
In any event, it's long and the comments on Feministe are always great to read as they are generally well written and well thought out.
Here's a taste of the entry:

But since I have the microphone at Feministe, particularly, I want to talk about some broader-level issues that tend to come to a fore when I participate in discussions in this community, and other progressive environments like it. The folks on this blog (both writers and commenters) are, by and large, wonderful people. But – here and elsewhere – there is very little recognition and very much resistance to a true, critical engagement with anti-Semitism and Jewish experiences writ large. Indeed, the moment we start talking about anti-Semitism, we’re shouted down with accusations that we’re “playing the anti-Semitism card”. No charge infuriates me more, because no charge is more reviled by progressives then specious claims of card-playing. We’ve all heard how conservatives will short-circuit any discussion of racism by saying “oh, you’re just playing the race card”, and we all have learned the hard way that “the race card”, whatever its benefits, is easily trumped by “‘the race card’ card”. And yet, for some reason, I’m expected to take seriously sanctimonious statements which claim to deplore anti-Semitism but then proceed to assert that “accusations of anti-Semitism are often used to silence legitimate criticism of Israel’s activities”.

Is that statement true? While I guess some people sometimes do cry anti-Semitism merely to shutdown discussion, that is rarely the true purpose. Rather, we’re actually trying to point out a couple of things.

I found this very interesting article at the Alternative Information Center.
During times of war it is easy and convenient to forget that Israel is probably one of the most culturally split countries in the world.
Palestinians and Palestinians with Israeli Citizenship (colloquially known as Arab-Israelis) are not the only "Other" in Israeli society.
The majority of people living out in the peripheral "Development Towns" which in the Negev (Southern Israel and Qassam fodder) are Mizrahi Jews who immigrated here in the 1950's and have remained in low socio-economic statues because... well... Development Towns exist in order to keep the Centre from overcrowding by new immigrants - many from the former Soviet Union who immigrated to Israel in the early 90's also settled in these towns (and secular Settlements in the West Bank).
The article I linked posits that:

The war of 1956, and the nationalist wave it aroused in Israel, created a space in which to ideologically include the immigrants. All Israelis, immigrants or not, shared the hardship of war and social discontent was relegated. Similarly, eleven years later, the 1967 war and the nationalist wave it unleashed following Israel’s victory served as a tool to discipline the independent trade union movement that had begun to develop.

Wars did not unify the diverse communities in Israel, but served to establish discipline within a fractured society. The wars, and particularly the military victory of 1967, served to establish the ethnic fundamentalism that characterizes the hegemonic discourse in Israel. This allowed the ruling classes to overcome the social rifts and thus suggest a Jewish national identity.

For this reason, the discourse of peace, which does not propose solutions to the social upheavals of Israeli society, subverts the promises of ethnic fundamentalism. With peace disappears the common danger that holds together the unemployed in Sderot and the systems engineer in Tel Aviv. At the same time, peace makes evident the social and ethnic rifts of Israel breaking its current façade of social stability.

Interesting stuff.
Jewish monolith?
Not so much.

Laila El-Hadded the blogger behind Raising Yousuf and Noor: diary of a Palestinian mother, writes a very evocative post - The inebriates of Israel's war -about what the Israeli Powers That Be want and how they try and get it:

I said something about how I don't know that the Israeli government has thought that through; that they are so drunk with self-conviction, absolute power and military might, racism and nationalism and perceived "success" all while a media blackout, a well-planned hasbara campaign and a public hungry for "action" fuel the war-terror machine with their blessings and support, that they will blaze ahead, losing sight of why-ever the hell they think they started this and whatever the hell it was supposed to achieve (the latest line is "increasing their deterrent force").

The herd mentality at its best.

I finish this lengthy quotes entry with the unbeatable Amira Hass:

History did not begin with the Qassams.
[...]Ever since the Palestinian Authority was established, the Israeli public relations machinery has exaggerated the danger of the military threat that the Palestinians pose to us. When they moved from stones to rifles and from Molotov cocktails to suicide bombings, from roadside bombs to Qassams and from Qassams to Grads, and from the PLO to Hamas, we said with a whoop of victory, "We told you. They're anti-Semites." And therefore, we have the right to go on a rampage.
What enabled Israel's military rampage - the proper words to describe it cannot be found in my dictionary - was the step-by-step isolation of the Gaza Strip.