[NON BLOG] Note on E-mail

I've decided to start using the Outlook Express software that came packaged with my computer, and to abandon hopes of using my venerable Eudora Light as anything more than an archive for my pre-June 2004 E-mails. Not only do I lack the expertise necessary, it seems that I also lack the time. I definitely lack the patience.

(And no, please do not suggest that I try to install a third piece of E-mail software, since I'm uninterested in further software proliferation.)

So. This E-mail address is my active home E-mail. For whatever reason, my Outlook Express seems to automatically strip attachments from incoming mail, send all Chinese icebreaking software to this address, also listed on my Livejournal user info page.

That is all.

[BRIEF NOTE] More on the Calipari Affair

Continuing yesterday's post, the Christian Science Monitor has a brief overview of the ongoing reaction to the killing of Italian agent Nicola Calipari by American troops in Iraq. It seems fairly likely that what happened was a simple consequence of jittery American troops shooting at something that came unexpectedly. Also, that Italy's involvement in Iraq might be abruptly abbreviated.

[BRIEF NOTE] Israel and Apartheid, Take 2

From The Guardian, Amy Teibel's AP article "Settler Leaders Contradict Israel Claims":

Zvi Hendel, a settler leader, said Tuesday that various government ministries and agencies have cooperated over the years in setting up outposts.

He told Israel Radio that the Israeli military administration in the West Bank provided the lands, the Housing Ministry bought mobile homes, Defense Ministry officials gave permits for trailers to be moved from place to place, and the army provided security for the setters.

``You know well when a state doesn't want something to happen it doesn't happen- and certainly when the land is in control of the military and when a state allows for things to happen, then they happen,'' Hendel said.

Hendel, a legislator, said the support for the outposts extended to the highest levels of government. Outposts began springing up in 1993, as a protest against an interim peace deal with the Palestinians.

``All the defense ministers ... were part of the secret,'' he said. ``You can't do it without the defense minister, you can't move mobile homes, you can't move a nail in the West Bank without the army's agreement. So let's not fool ourselves. This is what the State of Israel wanted. We carried out its mission.''

Former Housing Minister Yitzhak Levy, another settler leader, said not a single penny went where it wasn't meant to go. ``The person who got the mobile homes had permits, and infrastructure, and electricity, and water,'' Levy told Israel Radio. ``Do you think that something like this can happen behind the scenes?''

``It's possible there were flagrant violations that began with the prime minister, with the prime ministers, with the chiefs of staffs, the ministers, the attorney general,'' Levy said. ``If all of these people are in violation, then that tells you it is government policy.''

This, I fear, makes last month's contention that Israel's a de facto apartheid state that much stronger. This isn't good.

Neither Israelis nor Palestinians, it seems, are capable of bargaining in good faith. Israelis actively continue the settlement of the West Bank and Gaza Strip even under governments which claim to be committed to peace; Palestinians actively continue to attack Israeli civilians under under governments which claim to be committed to peace. Wonderful.

[BRIEF NOTE] Lebanon and Hizbullah

Over at the Head Heeb, Jonathan has a post up discussing the import of the recent massive Hizbullah demonstration in Lebanon, ostensibly favouring a continued Syrian presence. I hope his optimistic reading is right.

[BRIEF NOTE] On Communities and Consent

I'll be writing a reply to the various comments to my post on consociationalism shortly. First, a brief reply to a point raised by Ikram:

You know this issue too well for this sort of misrepresentation. For those Ontario Muslims that choose to follow self-proclaimed leaders who tell them to engage in binding arbitration, then yes, binding arbitration is practically inescapable -- by choice. Those too wimpy to reject social or familial pressure will follow social and familial pressure. That's hardly Khomeneiism.

There is no better way to challenge traditional prejudices than to take them head on, true. Practitioners of Falun Gong in China should go to the closest office of the Public Public Security Bureau to announce their religious affiliations. Every abused woman should tell her husband that until he's shapes up, he'll be living the life of a character from Lysistrata. Every teenage boy who realizes that he's gay or bisexual should tell his family promptly, even if it's at Sunday dinner with the preacher mere hours after the family's weekly session with the First Primitive Baptist Church. African-Americans in Deep South in the 1950s should have made a point of using whites-only water foundation and (if they were male) whistling at comely young white women.

Ikram's right. Wimps don't become martyrs. Wimps don't risk everything in their life up to and including the lives themselves to make a point.

I'm not sure, though, why we should go out of our way to force people to become martyrs. It's funny how many people claiming to defend religious freedom aren't defending the right of an individual to a private conscience so much as they're trying to create a right--hopefully inadvertantly--to dominate the consciences of others.

I'm neutral to positive on consociationalism as it relates to matters of territory, or matters of language, or other comparable fields, inasmuch as territory and language are relatively neutral subjects. Certainly, these subjects lead to questions with answers which both reflect and determine specific values: how should the territory be developed? how should the status of the language be defended?) It's quite possible to speak Basque as your first language and to not favour the destruction of all Indo-European languages in Euskadi, or to live in Ontario north of the French River and favour limiting mining activities without supporting the depopulation of the territory, or to believe that Québec is a distinct society and not favour the elimination or assimilation of everyone not pure laine. Language, territory, even various forms of national identity--all can be permeable to any individual, at relatively little cost.

Insofar as consociationalism relates to matters of personal conscience--in particular, to idealized expectations of personal conscience--I'm hostile to it. For me, it comes down to Rawls' veil of ignorance, I suppose. If I would feel outraged if, for instance, David Weale were made the sole guardian of Prince Edward Island identity though I as an Islander am critical of his anti-modern ideology, or if the most homophobic segments of the United Church of Canada were given any kind of authority over me though I'm a lapsed member at best, or if the fact of my substantially Scottish ancestry was used to command me to behave in conformity to some sort of synthetic "Scottish" identity in all of its dimensions--and I would, in all three circumstances--why shouldn't I be upset if other people were to be forced into similar situations? If the history of the 20th century has proved nothing else, it's that taking ideal definitions of ethnicity, religion, and genealogy and having them inspire state policies is a bad idea.

[NON BLOG] Happy birthday, talktooloose!

What I said above.

[REVIEW] Braudel's The Mediterranean: An Appreciation

I don't know why the PEI public library system only has the first volume of the two-volume edition of Fernand Braudel's The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. Perhaps it was some sort of cost-saving measure; perhaps it was a conscious effort to tantalize Braudel's fans. Whatever the reason, before I'd left Prince Edward Island I only had the chance to read the first volume. I consider myself lucky to have found, while browsing the shelves at the Yorkville branch of Toronto's public library system, the second volume.

I'm fond of the Annales school of history. The Annalistes--Bloch, Febvre, of course Braudel--strike me as authors with a very strong attachment to narrative. I remember, when I read the first volume of The Mediterranean, how Braudel's painstakingly assembled his setting, starting with the description of the geography of the Mediterranean basin and the basin's hinterand, and continuing on through to a description the assembly, through painstaking research, of details which build up a broader picture. Braudel's specific approach examined three time scales: the longue durée, the physical structure preconditioning human affairs; temps conjonctururelle, examining the human framework, the dynamics of culture; finally, the scale of the specific historical event.

Braudel does a glorious job trisecting the history of the Mediterranean. When I'd first read The Mediterranean's first volume, I was unfamiliar with his arguments. The idea that towards the end of the 15th century, the flexible and wealth mercantile city-states which once predominated in the region were giving way to much larger territorial monarchies and empires, hadn't come to me. I was aware that many Orthodox Christians preferred Turkish rule to domination by the Latin West, but I wasn't aware of the extent of active Christian support for the Ottoman Empire. His underlying theme of a grand contest between the sprawling Spanish and Turkish empires, ending after Lepanto and only after Spain and Turkey turned towards their extra-Mediterranean hinterlands, has a certain sweep to it.

And then, there are the little things. The examination of the plight of the Moriscos in 16th century Spain and the reasons for their expulsion by the Catholic Kings, so akin to that of the Acadiens in 18th century Atlantic Canada, is stirring. Braudel takes care to describe the personalities, the available technologies, the wider important of the many pirates, whether Christian, Muslim, or convert, whether operating fleets which boldly sacked harbours or small boats kidnapping fishermen-- I find Braudel's description of the massive flow of population from the Christian world to the Muslim--not only Jewish and Muslim refugees, but ambitious Christians seeking to make their way in the sophsiticated Ottoman Empire and the prosperous Maghreb--timely and funny in the like of current concerns.

I'd proclaim The Mediterranean a work of real history but for the fact that I know that there are plenty of other modes of historical research which are just as entertaining, each in their own ways. For the reasons I've mentioned, though, and likely others I've not managed to enunciate, it has a particular heft that I'm fond of. It's a classic.

[BRIEF NOTE] I like this

While Googling idly for evidence in support of a SHWI posting, I came across this fascinating book by Robert Pichette, Napoléon III L'Acadie et le Canada français (Word for Windows format). I'd read the title only briefly and never had the money to afford a purchase. Now it's in its entirety on the web.