My Next Book Review

Since my review of Joe Haldeman's The Accidental Time Machine ruffled a few feathers in the forums at LXer.com, I thought my next review should be on a book that wouldn't bring up issues of "political correctness". I was at my local public library and happened to run across a copy of Bill Tancer's Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters and thought it looked interesting. The reviews on Amazon are mixed, but generally favorable. It's on a topic that is both professionally and personally interesting and, at only a little more than 200 pages long, seems like a quick read. I should probably say that I have nothing against the fine folks at LXer.com (pronounced "elixir"). They've published links to many of my book reviews over the past few years, including reviews that, strictly speaking, had little to do with FOSS. The "discussion" of the religious interpretations found in the Haldeman novel were, after all, extremely predictable.

Let's Be Realistic

Barack Obama: "I want to be realistic here...Not everything that we talked about during the campaign are we going to be able to do on the pace that we had hoped". Is this where I get to say, "No, you think?" To be fair, I don't believe any person who is running for President of the United States has access to all of the necessary information to actually make promises they'll be able to keep. I can almost see the moment when Obama finally won. Then, some people in dark suits pulled him aside and said, "Excuse me Sir, but we need to talk. This is why you aren't going to be able to keep all those promises you made". Obama listens, first attentively, then solemnly, and finally with a look that says, "Oh my G-d! I had no idea!" Shortly thereafter, President-Elect Obama starts saying to the news media, "I want to be realistic here..." Speaking of the news media, the source of the quote is at CNN.com.

All Things to All People?

President Elect Barack Obama has taken a fair amount of heat for selecting Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at Obama's inauguration on January 20th. Unless you've been hiding in a cave, you know the issue centers around Warren's support of Proposition 8 in California, which won and effectively bars same-sex couples from becoming legally married (they can still retain most or all of the rights of a married couple under the domestic partners laws, and there are any number of churches that will perform same-sex religious weddings). The Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender community has taken it personally and don't believe that the choice of Warren for this plum position at the inauguration, represents Obama's stance on inclusion of all American peoples in political process. Obama seems to recently have taken steps to correct this oversight. According to this Yahoo! News story, Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, will "offer a prayer at the Lincoln Memorial at an inaugural event." While Robinson himself denies that this decision was made to appease the Gay community after the outrage of including Warren, it can't help but be noticed as Obama's olive branch to the Gay community that all "minorities" (and equating sexual orientation with race in terms of "minorities" is still a rather thorny issue) are welcomed as Americans. This raises a couple of issues, though. The first is the issue of "fairness". Obama, in the context of these decisions, can be seen as trying to be fair to the widest set of groups possible, by showing in a tangible way, that each group has a representative at the inauguration. While the Gay community can most likely see that including Robinson is fair, does the door swing both ways? That is, can the Gay community also see that it's "fair" to include Warren to represent conservative and traditionally Christian Americans? Often, in the liberal world view, something is "fair" only if it includes representatives of the liberal view point and deliberately excludes opposing perspectives (such as Warren's). The other issue has to do with splitting hairs. While there are quite a number of different Christian denominations that present their version of Biblical interpretation, do all versions represent God as God sees Himself? Assuming that Obama actually has a personal understanding of the Bible and thus, what God stands for and expects from humanity, can Obama reasonably "play politics" with his faith and "dance on the head of a pin" like so many proverbial angels? All Presidents since the ol' cherry tree chopper himself, have stated that they have a Christian faith, but all Presidents have tended to lead the country first as a politician and somewhere down the line (I won't say "second" because that might put their faith too high on the list), as a Christian. Recently, even "Dubya" has gone public and said that he doesn't believe that many of the events depicted in the Bible are literally true. Politics not only makes for strange bedfellows but also for strange "pew warmers". In being so inclusive, does Obama risk appearing as if he has no personal convictions on faith at all? Having both Warren and Robinson in attendance may present Obama as "inclusive" but what message does it send about what he believes, in terms of his core faith? I certainly don't expect to find Obama sharing the same faith view as the very conservative Rick Warren (a likely heir apparent for such old guard Christian icons as Dr. James Dobson), but with Robinson, Warren, and other religious luminaries present, just what can we conclude about Obama's faith? Based on the observation of the events leading to the inauguration to date, I haven't the faintest idea.

Ending Sunday night with something light

...though apparently not for Data.

Are the civilians being hurt and killed in Gaza innocent?

According to Steven Plaut on the Israel Forum blog, "there ain't no such animal" as an innocent civilian in Gaza. More accurately, Plaut says, "Let us bear in mind that the years of rocket savagery by the Hamas were a direct result of the vast majority of the residents of the Gaza Strip voting for the Hamas in the elections,such as they were, that were held there". Do I really buy this? I don't live in Israel, so I can successfully be accused of lacking a certain perspective on this matter. While I generally believe that Israel has the right to defend itself against the rocket attacks by Hamas from Gaza, I don't believe that every man, woman, and child in Gaza is worthy of extermination just because some or most of the adults foolishly voted Hamas into power. That would be like saying the children of people who voted George W. Bush into power deserve to have shoes thrown at them by an Arab journalist. Ironically, Hamas is doing more to put Gaza civilians into danger than the IDF, by setting up their operations in civilian quarters, hospitals, and schools. Perhaps Golda Meir's most famous quote, "We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us" applies here. If Israel backs out of Gaza now, without definitively stopping the threat posed by Hamas as this CNN story suggests, then they will have spared children in Gaza injury and death at the expense of their own. Yet, it is Hamas who puts children and adult civilians at risk, first by hiding their operations behind the innocents and secondly, by continuing to attack Israel from Gaza, provoking Israeli response. Are their innocent civilians in Gaza? Yes. You can say that voting a dictatorship into power means you are responsible for the results, but how many people have agreed, voluntarily or otherwise, to a particular ruler, without being able to see the future consequences of their actions? Many Germans whose votes allowed Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party control of that country lived (or died) to regret their decision. During the cold war, Americans generally thought all citizens of the Soviet Union were corrupt and "evil", only to find out decades later that those citizens didn't want to be controlled in a dictatorship. Once under the totalitarian thumb however, they couldn't easily escape. What does this say about the citizens of Iraq who are now no longer under the Hussein regime? What does this say of the citizens of Gaza under Hamas? Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident and current Jewish Israeli citizen, dedicated his book A Case for Democracy to the belief that almost no citizen of a totalitarian state voluntarily wants to be there. Although the liberal media machine and those who believe their every word, may consider me at least insensitive and at most a monster for agreeing that Israel has a right to defend itself from Hamas rockets; I don't actually celebrate the deaths in Gaza. Children are the same the world over; they're not responsible for the decisions of their parents or the adults around them, and they shouldn't have to be maimed and killed because of those decisions. Unfortunately, history teaches that innocent people are always victimized by war. Even when the cause is just, innocent civilians died in the firebombing of Berlin and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Even when the cause is just, innocent civilians are dying in Gaza, and their blood will be on all our hands, especially when we fail to do justice and call terrorism "fighting for freedom". Stop Hamas, and the innocent won't die in Gaza from anyone's bomb. Stop supporting Hamas with "world opinion" and we stop supporting terrorism. Challenge the one-sided perceptions of the news media and U.N. who can't see that allowing Hamas to operate unchecked and preventing Israel from defending itself, won't stop the deaths but instead, will accelerate them. Of course, if you only care about children in Gaza dying and don't concern yourself with children in Ashqelon and Ashdod, I guess it doesn't matter.