Around 1pm today I emerged from the Mikvah, completing my conversion process to Judaism.

The starting point to the journey...
אֵלָיו אֲנִי-אֵל שַׁדַּי--הִתְהַלֵּךְ לְפָנַי, וֶהְיֵה תָמִים
-Genesis 17:1

My Hebrew name:

כברוש רענן אליהו בן אברהם

"What more have I to do with idols? When I respond and look to HaShem, I become like a verdant cypress (כברוש רענן)"
-Hosea 14:9 (my Hebrew name, first part)

אליהו
is Eliyahu - "G-d is my G-d"

בן אברהם
ben Abraham - son of Abraham (standard designation for converts in Judaism)

-Ezekiel 36:24-28 was read after the ritual immersion in the mikvah, and seems to be completely appropriate.

The Bald Bear!

Two major leaks occurred this weekend over the Iran matter.

In the first, The New York Times published an article reporting that staff at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear oversight group, had produced an unreleased report saying that Iran was much more advanced in its nuclear program than the IAEA had thought previously. According to the report, Iran now has all the data needed to design a nuclear weapon. The New York Times article added that U.S. intelligence was re-examining the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 2007, which had stated that Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.

The second leak occurred in the British paper The Sunday Times, which reported that the purpose of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s highly publicized secret visit to Moscow on Sept. 7 was to provide the Russians with a list of Russian scientists and engineers working on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

The second revelation was directly tied to the first. There were many who felt that Iran did not have the non-nuclear disciplines needed for rapid progress toward a nuclear device. Putting the two pieces together, the presence of Russian personnel in Iran would mean that the Iranians had obtained the needed expertise from the Russians. It would also mean that the Russians were not merely a factor in whether there would be effective sanctions but also in whether and when the Iranians would obtain a nuclear weapon.

We would guess that the leak to The New York Times came from U.S. government sources, because that seems to be a prime vector of leaks from the Obama administration and because the article contained information on the NIE review. Given that National Security Adviser James Jones tended to dismiss the report on Sunday television, we would guess the report leaked from elsewhere in the administration. The Sunday Times leak could have come from multiple sources, but we have noted a tendency of the Israelis to leak through the British daily on national security issues. (The article contained substantial details on the visit and appeared written from the Israeli point of view.) Neither leak can be taken at face value, of course. But it is clear that these were deliberate leaks — people rarely risk felony charges leaking such highly classified material — and even if they were not coordinated, they delivered the same message, true or not.

The Iranian Time Frame and the Russian Role:

The message was twofold. First, previous assumptions on time frames on Iran are no longer valid, and worst-case assumptions must now be assumed. The Iranians are in fact moving rapidly toward a weapon; have been extremely effective at deceiving U.S. intelligence (read, they deceived the Bush administration, but the Obama administration has figured it out); and therefore, we are moving toward a decisive moment with Iran. Second, this situation is the direct responsibility of Russian nuclear expertise. Whether this expertise came from former employees of the Russian nuclear establishment now looking for work, Russian officials assigned to Iran or unemployed scientists sent to Iran by the Russians is immaterial. The Israelis — and the Obama administration — must hold the Russians responsible for the current state of Iran’s weapons program, and by extension, Moscow bears responsibility for any actions that Israel or the United States might take to solve the problem.

We would suspect that the leaks were coordinated. From the Israeli point of view, having said publicly that they are prepared to follow the American lead and allow this phase of diplomacy to play out, there clearly had to be more going on than just last week’s Geneva talks. From the American point of view, while the Russians have indicated that participating in sanctions on gasoline imports by Iran is not out of the question, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev did not clearly state that Russia would cooperate, nor has anything been heard from Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on the subject. The Russian leadership appears to be playing “good cop, bad cop” on the matter, and the credibility of anything they say on Iran has little weight in Washington.

It would seem to us that the United States and Israel decided to up the ante fairly dramatically in the wake of the Oct. 1 meeting with Iran in Geneva. As IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei visits Iran, massive new urgency has now been added to the issue. But we must remember that Iran knows whether it has had help from Russian scientists; that is something that can’t be bluffed. Given that this specific charge has been made — and as of Monday not challenged by Iran or Russia — indicates to us more is going on than an attempt to bluff the Iranians into concessions. Unless the two leaks together are completely bogus, and we doubt that, the United States and Israel are leaking information already well known to the Iranians. They are telling Tehran that its deception campaign has been penetrated, and by extension are telling it that it faces military action — particularly if massive sanctions are impractical because of more Russian obstruction.

If Netanyahu went to Moscow to deliver this intelligence to the Russians, the only surprise would have been the degree to which the Israelis had penetrated the program, not that the Russians were there. The Russian intelligence services are superbly competent, and keep track of stray nuclear scientists carefully. They would not be surprised by the charge, only by Israel’s knowledge of it.

This, of course leaves open an enormous question. Certainly, the Russians appear to have worked with the Iranians on some security issues and have played with the idea of providing the Iranians more substantial military equipment. But deliberately aiding Iran in building a nuclear device seems beyond Russia’s interests in two ways. First, while Russia wants to goad the United States, it does not itself really want a nuclear Iran. Second, in goading the United States, the Russians know not to go too far; helping Iran build a nuclear weapon would clearly cross a redline, triggering reactions.

A number of possible explanations present themselves. The leak to The Sunday Times might be wrong. But The Sunday Times is not a careless newspaper: It accepts leaks only from certified sources. The Russian scientists might be private citizens accepting Iranian employment. But while this is possible, Moscow is very careful about what Russian nuclear engineers do with their time. Or the Russians might be providing enough help to goad the United States but not enough to ever complete the job. Whatever the explanation, the leaks paint the Russians as more reckless than they have appeared, assuming the leaks are true.

And whatever their veracity, the leaks — the content of which clearly was discussed in detail among the P-5+1 prior to and during the Geneva meetings, regardless of how long they have been known by Western intelligence — were made for two reasons. The first was to tell the Iranians that the nuclear situation is now about to get out of hand, and that attempting to manage the negotiations through endless delays will fail because the United Nations is aware of just how far Tehran has come with its weapons program. The second was to tell Moscow that the issue is no longer whether the Russians will cooperate on sanctions, but the consequence to Russia’s relations with the United States and at least the United Kingdom, France and, most important, possibly Germany. If these leaks are true, they are game changers.

We have focused on the Iranian situation not because it is significant in itself, but because it touches on a great number of other crucial international issues. It is now entangled in the Iraqi, Afghan, Israeli, Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese issues, all of them high-stakes matters. It is entangled in Russian relations with Europe and the United States. It is entangled in U.S.-European relationships and with relationships within Europe. It touches on the U.S.-Chinese relationship. It even touches on U.S. relations with Venezuela and some other Latin American countries. It is becoming the Gordian knot of international relations.

Intelligence first focused on the Russian connection with Iran in the wake of the Iranian elections and resulting unrest, when a crowd of Rafsanjani supporters began chanting “Death to Russia,” not one of the top-10 chants in Iran. That caused us to focus on the cooperation between Russia and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on security matters. We were aware of some degree of technical cooperation on military hardware, and of course on Russian involvement in Iran’s civilian nuclear program. We were also of the view that the Iranians were unlikely to progress quickly with their nuclear program. We were not aware that Russian scientists were directly involved in Iran’s military nuclear project, which is not surprising, given that such involvement would be Iran’s single-most important state secret — and Russia’s, too.

A Question of Timing:

But there is a mystery here as well. To have any impact, the Russian involvement must have been under way for years. The United States has tried to track rogue nuclear scientists and engineers — anyone who could contribute to nuclear proliferation — since the 1990s. The Israelis must have had their own program on this, too. Both countries, as well as European intelligence services, were focused on Iran’s program and the whereabouts of Russian scientists. It is hard to believe that they only just now found out. If we were to guess, we would say Russian involvement has been under way since just after the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, when the Russians decided that the United States was a direct threat to its national security.

Therefore, the decision suddenly to confront the Russians, and suddenly to leak U.N. reports — much more valuable than U.S. reports, which are easier for the Europeans to ignore — cannot simply be because the United States and Israel just obtained this information. The IAEA, hostile to the United States since the invasion of Iraq and very much under the influence of the Europeans, must have decided to shift its evaluation of Iran. But far more significant is the willingness of the Israelis first to confront the Russians and then leak about Russian involvement, something that obviously compromises Israeli sources and methods. And that means the Israelis no longer consider the preservation of their intelligence operation in Iran (or wherever it was carried out) as of the essence.

Two conclusions can be drawn. First, the Israelis no longer need to add to their knowledge of Russian involvement; they know what they need to know. And second, the Israelis do not expect Iranian development to continue much longer; otherwise, maintaining the intelligence capability would take precedence over anything else.

It follows from this that the use of this intelligence in diplomatic confrontations with Russians and in a British newspaper serves a greater purpose than the integrity of the source system. And that means that the Israelis expect a resolution in the very near future — the only reason they would have blown their penetration of the Russian-Iranian system.

Possible Outcomes:

There are two possible outcomes here. The first is that having revealed the extent of the Iranian program and having revealed the Russian role in a credible British newspaper, the Israelis and the Americans (whose own leak in The New York Times underlined the growing urgency of action) are hoping that the Iranians realize that they are facing war and that the Russians realize that they are facing a massive crisis in their relations with the West. If that happens, then the Russians might pull their scientists and engineers, join in the sanctions and force the Iranians to abandon their program.

The second possibility is that the Russians will continue to play the spoiler on sanctions and will insist that they are not giving support to the Iranians. This leaves the military option, which would mean broad-based action, primarily by the United States, against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Any military operation would involve keeping the Strait of Hormuz clear, meaning naval action, and we now know that there are more nuclear facilities than previously discussed. So while the war for the most part would be confined to the air and sea, it would be extensive nonetheless.

Sanctions or war remain the two options, and which one is chosen depends on Moscow’s actions. The leaks this weekend have made clear that the United States and Israel have positioned themselves such that not much time remains. We have now moved from a view of Iran as a long-term threat to Iran as a much more immediate threat thanks to the Russians.

The least that can be said about this is that the Obama administration and Israel are trying to reshape the negotiations with the Iranians and Russians. The most that can be said is that the Americans and Israelis are preparing the public for war. Polls now indicate that more than 60 percent of the U.S. public now favors military action against Iran. From a political point of view, it has become easier for U.S. President Barack Obama to act than to not act. This, too, is being transmitted to the Iranians and Russians.

It is not clear to us that the Russians or Iranians are getting the message yet. They have convinced themselves that Obama is unlikely to act because he is weak at home and already has too many issues to juggle. This is a case where a reputation for being conciliatory actually increases the chances for war. But the leaks this weekend have strikingly limited the options and timelines of the United States and Israel. They also have put the spotlight on Obama at a time when he already is struggling with health care and Afghanistan. History is rarely considerate of presidential plans, and in this case, the leaks have started to force Obama’s hand.

Journey mix to take you through the High Holidays into Sukkot.

http://www.rhizome.info/DaysofAwe.mp3

1-866-279-7529


Custom cut to Victoria - fee involved.

BC - $5000 address, $3000 streetfiles

---

Greater Victoria -

$2000 - Victoria and Vancouver Island - address and streetfiles

1 desktop user -

There is always that space there
just before they get to us
that space
that fine relaxer
the breather
while say
flopping on a bed

thinking of nothing
or say
pouring a glass of water from the
spigot
while entranced by
nothing

that
gentle pure
space

it's worth

centuries of
existence

say

just to scratch your neck
while looking out the window at
a bare branch

that space
there
before they get to us
ensures
that
when they do
they won't
get it all

ever.

Charles Bukowski

Although I suspect Aristotelian Rationalism and the Scientific Worldview are as much a belief system as any given theology, this piece is useful nonetheless...

I dig this guy's media perspective... the Oasis / Brit Pop bit is hilarious, and then he gets deep when he talks about listening as an active process, not a passive one... you have to listen to how you listen to things...

My rabbi just returned from Jerusalem, and although he didn't participate in tonight's Tisha B'Av observances, he sent this along to be read aloud...

Kinah
Aryeh Cohen

I
The day after Yitzhak Rabin was killed
Moshe was remonstrating with G-d
This is truly Torah. Is this its reward?!
and again he felt faint sitting
in the back of Akiva’s study hall
looking over nine empty rows
bereft of students whose
master was martyred whose
flesh was parcelled
out in the market.
and G-d said they are forcing
my hand they are running toward
an end that I didn’t intend to write
the benches are filled with those
whose texts are filled with dirt and
rocks. and Moshe, faint with the
hunger of unfulfilled desire
asks: is this the love of
Solomon, the holy of holies?
and Elishah saw the angel sitting
and Elishah saw the son dying
and Elishah turned on Rabbi Meir
“go find your Akiva now…”

II
The day after Rabin was killed
a young girl with innocent
hatred stared from behind
the fence around Daheishe
and I shuddered at her innocence
and at her hatred
and when the Temple burnt the
letters flew up to heaven
the stones fell and lodged in the earth
and now
we roll in the dirt and worship the stones
and so moshe sputters amazed and angry
“Is this torah?” and “This is its reward.”

III
The day after Rabin was killed
three men gathered in a clearing
with a fresh parchment
prepared and scored
dipped a quill
in ancient ink
made of ash
and dirt
and wrote woe and mourning
sensing the dread that was
approaching
G-d sat on the side
in sackloth and smile
wondering what had changed
and in the central square in Gaza
messiah, unnoticed, changed his
bandages one
at a time
so that he would not miss the call.

IV
On the day after Yitzhak Rabin was killed
I stood in the cool dark Lebanese night
shouting names of children,
A harried officer with tattered
forms and a memory
that would probably
give him no rest
responded
as best he could
“Alive!”
“Dead!”
“Missing!”
we woke with no memory
just the mark on our forehead
from the man in the flaxen robe
whose hired quill was in the
service of G-d.

V
The day after Rabin was killed,
purified by the mikvah I walked
the sandy smooth steps
of the Moslem Quarter
turning left then sharply right. I, pure
entered the Temple Mount through the gate
of the Chain. Turning right again
I, pure, paced off the area of the
Holy of Holies.
the perfect Temple of the holy
books now forced upon the cold
stones of the Herodian plaza
as the Dome of the Rock faded into
invisibility I, pure, donned the vestments and
prepared the sacrifice to GodManofWar
slaughtering the ram catching the blood
sprinkling it on the altar as if without
intent, skinning the ram son of Isaac
removing the innards and the legs
bringing it near on to the altar
burning it so that the pleasant smell
might satiate the One of this Place
and then removing the vestments
and gathering the sins I rode off
on a goat to die on the rocky cliffs of Azazel.
On the day after Yitzhak Rabin was killed.

Source: http://jewschool.com/2009/07/24/17084/for-tisha-bav/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8131478.stm

The interviews themselves...

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB279/index.htm

There's also the film made by his daughter....

http://it.truveo.com/-Saddam-Tribe-This-Film-95-Minutes-By-Raghad/id/3586927173

http://www.protonradio.com/

Tune in live!

I love clueless marketing! It just shows how much they actually care.

This guy combines stand up comedy with mad beat box skill and on the fly electro-acoustic production (similar to Matthew Herbert):

As a result of generations of selective adaptation the level of melanin foudn in the skins of the indigenous population of the northwesterly corner of the Euro/Afro/Asian landmass IS significantly lower than the mean for homo sapiens as a whole. Moreover this genetic deficiency can be relatively straightforwardly explained as an adaptive response to limited UV exposure experienced during generations of residence in a cool, cloudy, and relatively northerly territory by a population with a largely vegetarian diet containing low levels of vitamin D (Loomis, 1967). Yet although populaiton genetics does at least partially affirm the notion of European distinctiveness, what it most emphatically does not confirm is the popular assumption that Europeans can be unhesitatingly identified as a clearly demarcated population in biological terms... for a human geneticist it comes as no surprise that the skin colour differential between populations living on either side of the straits of Gibraltar or the Dardanelles is virtually nonexistent. In other words population genetics offers no explanation for the conventional location of Europe's boundaries, or indeed for the erection of any other categorical (and hence "racial") boundaries within the species homo sapiens (Cavalli-Sforza, 1995).

From "Islam and the Construction of Europe" by Roger Ballard (1996). In Muslims in the Margin: Political Responses to the Presence of Islam in Western Europe. Edited by W. Shadid and P. van Koningsveld. Kampen, The Netherlands: Kok Pharos Publishing.

I remember getting this lowdown in both Anthropology and Sociology, but found this passage quite succinct. It's quite lame that this isn't given to students prior to University... or it least not in my school district. The author of this article lambasts the silence over this issue in mainstream educational circles, mainly because school boards don't want to get embroiled in discussions over race from the genetic point of view in classrooms; a legacy of the Shoah (prior to WW2 genetics, although not this benign variety, were taught to school kids).

http://www.cityofsound.com/blog/2008/09/the-adaptive-ci.html 

http://www.informationageprayer.com/index.html

What will they think of next?