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The West Bank/Judea and Samaria Problem

Personal work section notes. I get headaches and am as slow as a wet week, in dragging up diffs, and even have a geezer's trouble in following these arguments all over several pages, so I can't really make an adequate case. So I'll have to make my contribution in the next few days, according to the fashion I normally work after, when I did work, in the real world. Reflecting from principles, through to the problem, the evidence and conclusions. Apologies to anyone reading this. It's written to help myself get some order into this chat, not to guide others.

• An editorial split between those in favour of using 'Judea & Samaria' to designate (a) parts of, or (b) all, or (c) all of the West Bank and parts of Israel, and those who oppose the usage, except on those specific pages devoted to (i) Samaria (ii) Judea (iii) the administrative territory known in Israel as 'Judea & Samaria'.

• The 'Judea and Samaria' school holds that (a) these are geographical and historical designations predating the West Bank (b) used in a variety of sources published in Israel and abroad to denote the territory, or parts of it, known as the West Bank (c) and that opposition to the employment of these words in wiki constitutes an 'ethnic-based discrimination' against both Israeli and Jewish people.(d) specifically, that MeteorMaker, Pedrito and myself have conducted a campaign to denigrate or deprecate Jewish terms in the I/P area, a kind of ethnic cleansing of nomenclature, in a way that lends substance to fears our position is motivated by, well let's call a spade a spade, anti-semitism.

• The 'West Bank' school asserts that (a) these terms have an intrinsic denotative vagueness because they refer to different geophysical, administrative and political terrains depending on historical period, and that to use the terms of the territorially bounded and defined area known internationally as the West Bank creates cognitive dissonance (b) that these terms, as documented, were used under the British Mandate, then dropped for 'West Bank', which has remained to this day the default term of neutral usage internationally and in international law and diplomacy (c) that, after the Israeli conquest of the West Bank, in 1967, the terms 'Judea & Samaria' were pushed onto the political agenda by an extremist settler group, Gush Emunim, then adopted by the Likud government in 1977, and imposed by government decree on the Israeli mass media, which suppressed the international term, West Bank (d) that, as documented, the terms 'Judea and Samaria' have a potent ideological charge as appropriative nomenclature, renaming Palestinian land presently occupied, annexed or expropriated illegally by Israel (ICJ judgement 2004), over which Israel has no sovereignty, where Israel is establishing illegal settlements at least half of which on land with private Palestinian title, and with its own Arabic toponyms, and erasing the traditional native nomenclature by creating a neo-biblical toponomy (d) that reliable secondary sources explicitly define the term as partisan, even in contemporary Hebrew and Israeli usage (e) that the evidence for usage overwhelmingly documents the prevalence of 'West Bank' (northern, southern) in neutral sources, whose neutrality is affirmed also by the very sources that otherwise employ the words 'Samaria and Judea' adduced by the former school, (f) that if explicitly attested partisan Israeli toponymy and administrative nomenclature is allowed on non-Israeli territory, then by WP:NPOV criteria, automatically this would mean the corresponding Palestinian toponymy and nomenclature, often covering the same areas, would have to be introduced (g)that in this whole debate, the West Bankers have not even represented the Palestinian side, which is absent, invisible, while the Israeli side is being treated as though its national naming were on terms of parity and neutrality with international usage (h) that wiki criteria, WP:NPOV, WP:Undue, WP:RS, WP:NCGN etc. require that neutral terminology, particularly as evidenced by the overwhelming majority of reliable sources, be employed. (i) If we are to allow Israeli terminology to be generally employed in denoting territory over which Israel exercises no sovereignty, but is simply, in law, an occupying belligerent, a very dangerous precedent, with widespread consequences for articles where ethnic conflicts exist, would be created.

(ii)Note on language, naming as an appropriative act of possession and dominion.

'According to the aboriginal theory, the ancestor first called out his own name; and this gave rise to the most sacred and secret couplet or couplets of his song. The he 'named' (tneuka) the place where he had originated, the trees or rocks growing near his home, the animals sporting about nearby, any strangers that came to visit him, and so forth. He gave names to all of these, and thereby gained the power of calling them by their names; this enabled him to control them and to bind them to his will.'

Wa’-yitser’ Yĕhôwāh’ (Adonai) ĕlôhīm’ min-hā'ădāmāh’ kol-‘ha’yath’ ha’-sādeh’ wĕ'ēth kol-ôph ha’-shāma’yim wa’-yāvē ‘ el-hā'ādām’ li-r'ôth mah-yiqrā-lô’ wĕ-kôl ăsher yiqrā-lô’ hā'-ādām‘ ne’pfesh ‘ha’yāh’ hû shĕmô. (20) Wa’- yiqrā’ hā'-ādām‘ shēmôth….

‘And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. 20. And Adam gave names.. .'

Wa-‘allama ādama l-asmā’a kullahā,

'And He taught Adam the names, all of them.’ Qu’ran 2:31.

In Thomas Pynchon's novel Mason & Dixon, the narrator Cherrycoke recounts, against the huge backdrop of seismic shifts in the political and scientific world of that time, the story of the eponymous figures who have undertaken to draw a scientific map of the wilderness and terrain between Pennsylvania and Maryland:

‘what we were doing out in that Country together was brave, scientifick beyond my understanding and ultimately meaningless, - we were putting a line straight through the heart of the Wilderness, eight yards wide and due west, in order to separate two Proprietorships, granted when the World was yet feudal and but eight years later to be nullified by the War for Independence.”

Late in the novel, the Chinaman of the piece remarks:

‘To rule forever, . .it is necessary only to create, among the people one would rule, what we call . . Bad History. Nothing will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than drawing a Line, in particular a Right Line, the very Shape of Contempt, through the midst of a People,- to create thus a Distinction betwixt’em. –’tis the first stroke.-All else will follow as if predestin’d, into War and Devastation.’

The dispute here in wiki, like the historical reality it refers to, has its ‘Bad History’. In the novel, the apparently empirical task of defining boundaries is found unwittingly implicated in the later travails of American history, with its exceptionalism, erasure of native peoples, of possible alternative worlds, of Frostian paths never taken. American innocence and pragmatic realism, in the innocuous work of two surveyors, is swept up in the torment of power: cartographic principles embody an Enlightenment’s reach into the unknown, while, applied, to the ends of order and control, they inadvertently engender violent confusion and disarray. What is the ‘right line’ to take on nomenclature, when history’s line demarcating Israel and the West Bank was drawn by war, then the West Bank was occupied in the aftermath of war, and the world of Israeli settlers begins to redraw the map? One thing that happens is that the complexities have drawn editors into a minor war, as Pynchonesque as it is Pythonesque. There is one difference: most the cartographers say one thing, and Israel, the controlling power, asserts a different terminology. So what’s in a name?

Before the world was tribalized and invested by the collateral damage or fall-out from the Tower of Babel, God assigned to the mythical forefather of all, ‘man’ or Adam, the faculty to name the world, though God himself had exercised this right in naming the light (or) day (yom) and the darkness (hôshek) night(layĕlāh) (Gen.1.5) There was only one name for each thing, and in later European thought the primordial language employed in this taxonomy was to be called ‘the Adamic vernacular’. The thesis was that the pristine jargon employed by Adam, being pre-Babelic, represented the true name for every object: every thing had a proper name intrinsic to its nature. The Greeks, as we see in Plato’s Cratylus, were much prepossessed by the philosophical crux of the correctness of names (ὀρθότης τῶν ὀνομάτων): did names have an intrinsic relation to, or represent, things, or was the link arbitrary.. The Confucian school’s doctrine of the Rectification of names (zhèngmíng: 正名). In the Bible itself the Hebrew text is full of the magic of words, of the power of words themselves to alter reality, a belief testified to in Isaiah:

'So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please.'

Modernity, especially after Ferdinand Saussure (1916), has opted, correctly, for the latter position, and disposed of the magical force of naming. But nationalism, another product of modernity, reintroduced it, via the backdoor, in a new sense. Naming was an act of assertive territorial control, of defining ethnic rights over land, especially as Anthony Smith argues, ethnie are defined also by attachment to a specific geophysical reality, the ‘homeland’ that defines in good part their identity ). Since national identities are a political construct, the inculcation of a uniform language, and the use of its lexicon to define or redefine the landscape, are crucial instruments in forging a national sense of common tradition. Nationalism demanded toponymic unison, and linguistic conformity.

John Gaddis, glossing James Scott’s recent book on North Dakota roads and maps, remarks on maps that they reflect

‘what states try to do to those portions of the earth’s surface they hope to control, and to the people who live upon them. For it’s only by making territories and societies legible – by which he means measurable and hence manipulable – that governments can impose and maintain their authority. “These state simplifications,” he writes, are “like abridged maps.” They don’t replicate what’s actually there, but “when allied with state power, (they) enable much of the reality they (depict) to be remade.”

The idea of a nation as a territorial unit speaking one language over that territory is a parlously modern ideology, one engineered by nation-builders into a plausible if specious semblance of commonsense. As Massimo d’Azeglio is said to have remarked at the dawn of the Italian Risorgimento, ‘we have made Italy: our task now is to make Italians’, 95% of whom could neither read, write and nor often even speak ‘Italian’.

Imperialism, venturing into terra incognita to appropriate foreign land and incorporate it into an empire, went side by side with nationalism, which was a form of internal colonization over, and homogenization of, the disparate cultures that made up an historically defined territory. For the natives, their indigenous naming is ‘essentially a process of asserting ownership and control of place and landscape’

Daphne Kutzner, in her analysis of the role of Empire in classic children’s fiction, looks at the question from the perspective of the intrusive Empire and its refraction of imperial renaming as reflected in popular books, notes that

‘Naming a place gives the namer power over it, or at least the illusion of power and control. Colonial powers literally transform a landscape once they rename it and begin reshaping it.’

Terra incognita is the foreigner’s name for an ostensibly empty landscape which, had they taken the trouble to learn the local languages, would have revealed itself to be replete from every rocky nook to crannied gulley with ancient toponyms. The tendency was one of erasure, and, as with introduced fauna and flora , the landscape was consistently remade as it was renamed to familiarize the alien by rendering it recognizable, a variation on the landscape settlers came from. The new mapping, as often as not, represent as much the settler’s mentality, as the queerly new features of the foreign landscape under toponymic domestication.

Australia is somewhat the extraordinary exception, and broke with the gusto for imperial nomenclature. There, following the pattern set by the earlier land surveyor Thomas Mitchell and his assistant Philip Elliott that “the natives can furnish you with names for every flat and almost every hill” (1828), native names were adopted in a standarized English form for both euphony and their characteristic relation to the landscape, and indeed a resolution was passed as early as 1884 which established the priority of native names in international usage.

Often imperialism and nationalism go hand in hand. Napoleon’s troops, in 1796, could hardly communicate with each other, such were the grammatical, semantic and syntactical rifts between the various provincial patois at the time. By 1814, Napoleon had formed a European empire, and millions of provincials spoke the one, uniform language of the French state’s army. When two nations, or ethnie, occupy the same territory, the historical victor’s toponymic choices, dictated by the victor’s native language, and as articulated in bureaucratic documents and maps, usually determines what names are to be used. However, the presence of two distinct ethnie on the same national soil creates fissiparous tensions in nomenclature. Speaking of French and British conflict in Canada over areas, Susan Drummond, remarks that, 'Symbolic appropriation of a territory is a critical index of control’, and notes that, as late as 1962, the Québec cartographer Brochu, invoked the political dimension of place names as important, in the conflict with the majoritarian English heritage of Canada over the naming of the northern Inuit lands.

Again, in another familiar example, Alfonso Pérez-Agote notes that Spain has its Basque Autonomous region, Euskadi. But the original force of that name covers an area beyond the administrative and territorial units of Spain, and Basque nationalists evoke its symbolic territory, comprising also the Basque area of Navarre in France. Euskadi has, on one level, within Spanish administrative discourse, a ‘territorial political objectification’, and on another level, in Basque nationalism, a ‘non-administratively objectified’ territory extending into a neighbouring country.. The analogy with Israeli and Palestinian nationalism is close. In Israeli discourse, Israel or Eretz Israel can denote Israel and its outriding West Bank, while Palestine, which is the favoured term of West Bank Arabs for the land they inhabit, also can refer to the whole neighbouring territory of Israel as well.

The anomaly, in comparative terms, is that history has settled the question, whatever local separatist nationalisms, revanchist or irredentist, may claim, except for such places as ‘Palestine’. For there, while Israel is a constituted state, it emerged the victor, manu militari in a conflict that gave it control over a contiguous land, but has no recognized legal right, since that land is defined as and ‘Occupied Palestinian Territory. Acts of unilateral annexation, the extension of administrative structures, settlements, toponymic remapping, and widescale expropriation of land in Palestinian title, is not only not recognized, but judged ‘illegal’ by the highest international bodies of law. All major encyclopedias (Encyclopædia Britannica, Encarta etc.,), except Wiki, maintain a strict neutrality, and, in recognition of the fraught difficulties, adopt the neutral toponymic convention of ‘(northern/southern) West Bank’ in order to avoid lending their prestige to the partisan politics of the parties in this regional conflict.

(iii)The specific instance of Palestine and the West Bank

When the British wrested control over Palestine from the Ottomans in the First World War, and established themselves there to administer the region, Selwyn Troen notes that, 'naming also became part of the contest for asserting control over Palestine'.. As early as 1920 two Zionists advising the British Mandatory authority on everything regarding the assignment of Hebrew names, fought hard for the restoration of Hebraic toponymy, and when, with such places as Nablus, or indeed 'Palestine' itself, were given non-Hebrew names, they protested at the designations as evidence of discrimination against Jews. The point is made by the Israeli historian and cartographer Meron Benvenisti:-

'When the Geographical Committee for Names, which operated under the aegis of the Royal Geographical Society (the only body authorized to assign names throughout the British Empire, decided to call the Mandatory geopolitical entity “Palestine” and the city whose biblical name was Shechem, “Nablus” these Jewish advisers saw this as an act of anti-Jewish discrimination, and a searing defeat for Zionism.'

One pauses to reflect. We are being accused here of 'anti-Jewish/Israeli discrimination' for refusing to insert Israeli toponyms into the West Bank. Nothing is said of the logic of this POV-pushing, i.e. that a Palestinian reader might well regard a Wiki endorsement of suc h foreign nomenclature as a 'searing defeat', and adduce it as proof of 'anti-Palestinian discrimination' both by Zionist editors, and Misplaced Pages itself.

Since Zionism took root, and especially since Israel was founded, the making of a people, living in a defined territorial unit and speaking one language, has followed the universal pattern of modernity. The landscape, full of Arabic words, had to be renamed, often according to Biblical terminology, but, more often, by the invention of Biblical-sounding names. To do this, a good part of the 10,000 odd Arabic toponyms collected by Herbert Kitchener, T. E. Lawrence and others in surveying that part of the Middle East had to be cancelled, and replaced with Israeli/Hebrew terms, to remake the landscape and its topographic songlines resonate with historical depth. Hebrew is a ‘sacred tongue’ (Leshon HaQodesh:לשון הקודש), the Bible describes the conquest of Eretz Yisrael, and the dispossession of its indigenous peoples, who were not part of the chosen: the pattern is repeated in modern times, down to the renaming. The revival of Hebrew, with its potent shibboleths, understandably exercises a powerful hold over the new culture of the country.

The problem is, as Steven Runciman pointed out in the mid-sixties, that the part assigned to Israel by the UN deliberation of 1947 was the western, non-Biblical part, whilst the part assigned to a future Palestinian state, what we now call the West Bank, is precisely the area most infused with Biblical associations cherished by the Jewish people, with sites and names redolent of the founding myths and realities of their ancient forefathers. Israelis, in their secular land, mostly dwell where the Philistines dwelt. The Palestinians dwell where the ancient Jewish tribes once settled. The tensions simmer between the secular Israel, which thrives in its new Mediterranean world, and the religiously-identified Israel that aspires to return to a geophysical space where origins and the present, the sacred nomenclature of the Bible and the modern world of Jewish life, might at least, once more overlap, in an ‘Adamic’ harmony congruent with the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

(iv)The Negev Precedent With the foundation of Israel, and in the aftermath of the 1948 war, the vast Negev and part of the Arava were captured, and Ben Gurion duly established a Negev Names Committee to ‘hebraize’ the landscape’s features, its mountains, valleys and springs. The area already had a rich Arab toponymy, and some on the committee thought these terms might be preserved as a ‘democratic gesture towards the Arab population of the new state.’ It was not to be. The nomadic Bedouin who dwelt throughout the area were rounded up and expelled by force. They had terms for everything, but with their uprooting and displacement, Benvenisti notes, ‘an entire world, as portrayed in their toponomastic traditions, died.' Ben Gurion wrote to the committee setting forth his view that:-

We are obliged to remove the Arabic names for reasons of state. Just as we do not recognize the Arabs’ political proprietorship of the land, so also we do not recognize their spiritual proprietorship and their names.

Political pressure and ‘the influence of patriotic arguments’ prevailed over those who, like S.Yeibin, thought the erasure of Arab names, many of which might preserve an archaic Hebrew origin. Yeibin thought this a disaster:-

‘With a clap of the hand they were wiping out an entire cultural heritage that must certainly conceal within it elements of the Israeli-Jewish heritage as well. The researchers did indeed endeavour to identify all those names that had a link to ancient Hebrew ones in an attempt “to redeem, as far as possible, names from the days of yore.” <

Any Arabic toponym in short only interested the topographers in so far as it might provide a clue to reconstructing the hypothetical Hebraic original that might lie behind it. This consideration, however, often created a mess of concocted pseudo-traditional names. The hebraization of such Arabic toponyms did not restore the historic past, but invented a mythical landscape, resonant with traditionalist associations, that had, however, no roots in Jewish tradition. The most striking geologic formation in the Negev, Wadi Rumman was rewritten as if that word disguised an ancient Hebrew Ram ('elevated'), whereas the Arabic term it was calqued from actually meant 'Pomegranate Arroyo', for example.

Reflecting on Benvenisti’s account in his larger study of language conflict in the Middle east, the Palestinian expatriate scholar Yasir Suleiman makes remarks that,

’By assigning Hebrew names anew to places on the map, the committee was therefore ‘redeeming’ these places from the corrupt and ‘alien’ Arabic names that they have acquired over the centuries’

and likens this process of linguistic erasure of Arabic and the reconstitution of Hebrew metaphorically to the nakba:-

‘The cartographic cleansing of the Negev map of Arabic place names and their replacement by Hebrew names is an enactment of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from their homeland’

The record is therefore one of a linguistic cleansing of Palestine of any trace of its long Arabic history, and, as we shall see, an attempt to remodel Arabic usage in the territories Israel conquered and controls, to conform with Hebrew. Toponyms can only retain some semblance of an Arabic form, if that form is suspected to camouflage, in turn, an original Hebraic name. Adapting the reborn Hebrew language to the alien realities of the Palestinian landscape, the obvious problem was that the nomenclature for much of the flora and fauna, not to speak of the landscape itself, was infused with the very language, Arabic, a revarnished Hebrew had to compete with. As early as 1910 Jacob Fichman, a member of the Language Council, stated that Hebrew:

‘will not digest the new names of plants, especially those which have been taken from the Arabic language’ and that these borrowed names ‘will always be like atrophied limbs’ for ‘despite the fact that the Arabic language is our sister language in the family of Semitic languages, it has no foundation in our |psyche ’

Hebrew was thus to be programmatically sealed off from Arabic, to prevent atrophisation, and cultivate purism by means of a fake Biblical antiquarianism. Theodor Adorno, writing in the melancholic aftermath of the Holocaust on the effects of cultural purism, once remarked on the purging of foreign words from German undertaken by nationalists intent restoring an ideal of cultural authenticity. He saw this as part of the pathology of nationalism in Germany. Foreign words were treated as if they were 'the Jews of language' (Fremdwörter sind die Juden der Sprache). In expunging the landscape and the human world of Palestine of its Arabic language, of landscape and culture, Zionism likewise treated Arabic as German or French linguistic purists treated loan-words in their own languages, or, later, actual Jews in their midst, as foreign bodies to be expelled, or expunged if a proper 'foundation for an authentically Jewish psyche' were to be successfully engineered. One would call this ironic, were it not so tragically melancholic in its unintended resonances.

(v)The West Bank. History and Naming The relationship between demographic displacement and the loss of one's landscape through the erasure of its traditional placenames in Palestine has been remarked on by Paul Diehl.

‘The exclusive attachment to territory is reflected in the naming and renaming of places and locations in accordance with the historic and religious sites associated with the dominant political group. Not only did the outflow of Palestinian refugees bring about a change in the Jewish-Arab demographic rations, it brought about the replacement of an Arab-Palestinian landscape with a Jewish-Israeli landscape. The names of abandoned villages disappeared from the map and were replaced with alternative Hebrew names . . Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank have taken on biblical names associated with the specific sites as a means of expressing the Jewish priority in these places and the exclusive nature of the territorial attachment. Modern Israeli and Palestinian maps of Israel/Palestine possess the same outer borders, but the semantic content of the name is completely different.. The means by which new landscapes are created to replace or obliterate former landscapes is a good example of the way in which metaphysical and symbolic attachment to territory is translated into concrete realities on the ground.’

In 1950, when King Abdullah, of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, unilaterally annexed the territory he had conquered in 1948, he changed the name of his country to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which incorporated the remaining fragment of Palestine as aḍ-Ḍiffä l-Ġarbīyä, or 'the West Bank' of that kingdom. The usage is still current in German (Westjordanland). Though only Britain recognized his annexation, the word itself found ready acceptance in, and was not, 'forced on', the international community, as Binyamin Netanyahu argued.

In 1967, Israel conquered what the world knew as ‘The West Bank’, the Biblical heartland, and a decree calling it ‘Judea and Samaria’ was issued by the Israeli military on December 17 that year with the explicit definition that it would be identical in meaning for all purposes to the West Bank region to replace the interim terms 'Occupied Territories' (ha-shetahim ha-kevushim), and ‘the Administered Territories’ (ha-shetahim ha-muhzakim) in use since the immediate aftermath of the June war. The term 'Judea and Samaria' however was rarely used until Likud took power. The Labour Government never enacted a settlement policy, though Gush Emunim, an extremist settler ground with a fundamentalist ideology, pressed settlement, and propagated the terminology ‘Judea and Samaria’. When the Likud party, the maximalist, expansionist party with strong ties to both religious and ultra-Zionist groups and traditions, was elected in 1977, it imposed Samaria and Judea as the vox propria in modern Hebrew on the mass media, expressly forbidding the use of the international term West Bank. Notably, the government's imposing of these terms on Israeli usage was seen as a prerequisite for an envisioned settlement policy, since accepting the terms would predispose the public to accepting the policy.

Gideon Aran describes the achievement:

‘The importance of changing names in the process of conquering territory is well known. Assimilation of the name “Judea and Samaria” in normal and official language, as well as in jargon, attests to G(ush)E(numin)’s political and cultural achievements.'

The Camp David Accords negotiations of and the final agreement, in 1979, only underline how great was the linguistic rift between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin's position and the American government intent on brokering an agreement.

‘Begin consistently proved to be the most extreme member of his delegation, insisting on seemingly innocent terms such as “autonomy” as opposed to “self rule,” on the labelling of the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria” in the Hebrew text, and on the use of the phrase “undivided Jerusalem.'

A huge amount of wrangling between the American negotiators and Begin revolved around this term.

‘for what must have been the tenth time, he (Begin) objected to the term West Bank, giving a lesson to the president on the geographic and historical appropriateness of the term and the importance of using the words Judea and Samaria.’

Begin refused to back down from his ‘rock-hard’ intransigence on using ‘Judea and Samaria’ and at the Camp David signing ceremony, (March 26,1979) several interpretive notes were required to be added as annexes to the basic documents, one specifically dealing with the West Bank, which President Carter annotated with his own hand with the words:

‘I have been informed that the expression ‘West Bank’ is understood by the Government of Israel to mean ‘Judea and Samaria’.

An ambitious programme of colonising settlement, toponomastic Hebraisation and cultural Judaization was undertaken, and indigenous Palestinians were shifted off their land, in a repetition of the Negev programme, which forms the precedent. The programme took wing especially after the unprovokedinvasion of Lebanon in 1982, whose key political objectives included ousting the refugee Palestinian resistance in the para-state on Israel’s northern flank from Lebanon, where the PLO projected a 'state in waiting' image that threatened Israel’s plans for long-term control over the West Bank. The war was, the head of the IDF said at the time, ‘part of the struggle over the Land of Israel. It aimed to further the isolation of Palestinians on the West Bank by depriving them of close support, halt the rise to political respectability of the PLO, which embodied Palestinian nationalist aspirations, and deprive that body of its claims to be a political partner in the peace process for Israel’s normalization of its relations with the outside world. One calculation, a minority view entertained by both Ariel Sharon and Raphael Eytan, however, was that, expelled from Lebanon, the PLO would be forced to return to Jordan, topple king Hussein, and establish a Palestinian state there to satisfy Palestinian national ambitions that Israel would thwart on the West Bank.

Changing the realities of occupied territory by the manipulation of language, Hebrew, Arabic, and in controllable sources like the global Misplaced Pages, became a programmatic goal. The settlers were in fact 'colonists' in the old sense, but Israeli English usage has here prevailed in the politics of the culture wars to determine how the international community perceives the dynamics of that area. The corresponding Hebrew usage is complex (see Israeli settlements), but continuity with the biblical setlement of Eretz Yisrael is evoked by referring to Jewish settlers as mitnahalim. The root *n-h-l directly evokes a passage in the Book of Numbers where each tribe is assigned its portion on entering Canaan, or the Land of Israel, particularly as ' in the pledge by the tribes of Gad and Reuben that they will fight on the west side of the Jordan river to help the other tribes take possession of their assigned portions' Settlers, qua, mitnahalim are not colonizing anybody's land, in this usage: they are simply taking up their 'assigned portions' as those were marked out by God to the Chosen People.

Rashid Khalidi has remarked how the Israeli authorities themselves try to engineer the way Palestinians think in Arabic by tampering with that language's natural idiom in the Arabic broadcasts they authorize. Over Israeli Arabic channels, one does not hear Jerusalem referred to, as it is customarily in Arabic, and by Palestinians, as Bayt al-Maqdis ('The House of Sanctity') or Al Quds al-Sharif ('The Noble Holy Place'). Arabic usage as sanctioned by Israel speaks rather of Urshalim ('Jerusalem') or Urshalim/al-Quds ('Jerusalem Al-Quds'). The purpose is to diffuse a variety of Arabic names for places that are calques on the Hebrew terms chosen for the area..

This goes right through the bureaucratic language, a form of linguistic colonization that reinforces the physical occupation of the west Bank by cultural re-engineering. A new travel permit was imposed on the colonized Palestinians in the West Bank in 2002, and required of any of them wishing to travel in that area. This was issued, printed and released by Israeli authorities who call it in Arabic Tasrih tanaqul khas fi al-hawajiz al-dakhiliyya fi mantaqat yahuda wa al-samara. ('Special Travel Permit for the Internal Checkpioints in the Area of Judea and Samaria.'). Here, Palestinians who must travel in the West Bank, for them 'Filastin', are required to obtain a document which requires that area to be referred to by the settler term, 'Judea and Samaria'. It is this form of Arabic which they are expected to use in negotiating their way with Israeli authorities through checkpoints. But West Bank Palestinians simply abbreviate it and refer to their tasrih dakhili (Checkpoint permit), , thereby eluding the settler term imposed on them.

Michael Sfard indeed has spoken of Hebrew being mobilized to lend itself to the national emergency of occupying Palestine, and denying the Palestinians the liberty to be themselves. They are passive subjects of an activist language that wraps them about in bureaucratic euphemisms.

'It has been tasked with providing a soothing, anesthetizing name for the entire project of suffocation, for the blanket system of theft we have imposed on those we occupy . . Thus extrajudicial executions have become “targeted assassinations”. Torture has been dubbed “moderate physical pressure”. Expulsion to Gaza has been renamed “assigning a place of residence”. The theft of privately owned land has become “declaring the land state-owned”. Collective punishment is “leveraging civilians”; and collective punishment by blockade is a “siege,” “closure” or “separation".'

A proposal is now being made to apply the principle of Hebraization, as of 2009, even to those places within Israel which the world designates by traditional toponyms, such as Jerusalem (Yerushalayim) Nazareth (Natzrat) and Jaffa (Yafo). According to Yossi Sarid, the process, illustrated further by Knesset proposals to eliminate Arabic as one of Israel's official languages, constitutes a form of ethnocide.

(vi) Analysis of Ynhockey's suggestions

‘Mapmaking was one of the specialized intellectual weapons by which power could be gained, administered, given legitimacy and codified’

'Mapmaking is not, however, solely an instrument of war; it is an activity of supreme political significance – a means of providing a basis for the mapmaker’s claims and for his social and symbolic values, while cloaking them in a guise of “scientific objectivity.” Maps are generally judged in terms of their “accuracy”, that is, the degree to which they succeed in reflecting and depicting the morphological landscape and its “man-made” covering But maps portray a fictitious reality that differs from other sorts of printed matter only in form.'

After 1967 ‘Cartographers . .had many options, which tended to reveal their political proclivities. Those who were sympathetic to Israel labelled the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and Sinai as “administered territories” and used the phrase “Judea and Samaria” for Jordan’s former West Bank. They also included all of Jerusalem within Israeli territory,. Mapmakers who were ideologically neutral generally referred to “occupied territory” and maintained the term “West Bank”. . . In the post-1993 period a Palestinian Authority has been established in the West Bank and Gaza, yet there is no actual independent state of Palestine. Most international maps have stayed with the terms “West Bank” and “Gaza” but maps published by the Palestinian Authority describe these areas as “Palestine.” Furthermore, Palestinian Authority maps usually leave out Israel and assign its territory to “Palestine,” with the added designation that it is “occupied territory.”Arthur Jay Klinghoffer, Harvey Sicherman, The power of projections: : how maps reflect global politics and history, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006 pp.37-8

We are dealing with a defined territory and its naming. User:Ynhockey would make tidy distinctions, define the bound geographical territory (CIA Factbook) as just a political reality, and use Judea and Samaria for all other contexts. In his own work on Wiki, much of it admirable, we find many maps. Examine the following map he authored and uploaded, and which is employed on the Battle of Karameh

The central colour, a washed acquamarine tint, allows one to highlight the field of movement in the battle, and blurs the neat territorial division between the West Bank, and Jordan. But note that, in a wholly unnecessary manner, Israel is stamped in large bold characters and made to overlay the West Bank, which is placed diminutively in parentheses. Willy-nilly, the impression is that the West Bank is some territorial hypothesis or province within Israel. Whether Ynhockey meant to give the reader this impression or not is immaterial. Maps, as one source already quoted noted, reflect the cognitive bias of the mapmaker as much as an interpretation of a landscape, and here the bias is that the West Bank is under Israel, behind Israeli lines, a subset of that state. It is a fine example of what many cartographers and historians of cartography argue: the making of maps, and toponymic nomenclature in them, serves several purposes, to clarify, as here, a battle landscape, for example, but also to impose or assert power, or claims, or blur facts. Objectively, User:Ynhockey has loaded wiki with a map that cogs our perceptions, tilting them to an annexationist assumption. Indeed, unlike the Israeli government so far, his map actually looks like it has the West Bank annexed.

1. T.G.H.Strehlow, Songs of Central Australia,Angus & Robertson, Sydney 1971 p.126; cited by Barry Hill, Broken Song: T.G.H.Strehlow and Aboriginal Possession, Knopf, 2002 pp.436f.
2. Genesis, ch.2, verses 19-20, with apologies for my transcription
3. For a fascinating study on both the figure of Adam in Islamic tradition, and on commentaries on this particular text specifically, see M.J.Kister, ‘Ādam: A Study of Some Legends in Tafsīr and Hadīt Literature,’ in Joel L. Kraemer (ed.) Israel Oriental Studies, Volume XIII, BRILL, 1993 pp.112-174, p.140
4. Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon, Jonathan Cape, London 1997, pp.8,615
5. George Steiner, After Babel, Oxford University Press 1975 p.58
6. Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms,, vol.1, tr.Ralph Manheim, Yale UP 1955 pp.119ff.,p.122
7. Isaiah 5:11. For this and other passages, see S.J.Tambiah ’s 1968 Malinowsky lecture, "The Magical Power of Words," (the ancient Egyptians, the Semites and Sumerians all believed that “the world and its objects were created by the word of God; and the Greek doctrine of logos postulated that the soul or essence of things resided in their names (pp.182-3). My attention was drawn to this particular essay by Tambiah by Brian Vickers, Occult and scientific mentalities in the Renaissance, Cambridge University Press, 1984 p.96
8. Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origin of Nations, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1986 passim
9. John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past, Oxford University Press US, 2004, p.131
10. Abbiamo fatto l'Italia. Ora si tratta di fare gli Italiani
11. Regis Stella, Imagining the Other: The Representation of the Papua New Guinean Subject, University Of Hawaiʻi Press, 2007 p.169 gives many Papuan examples. Compare his remark elsewhere in the same book, ‘In indigenous cultures . .(t)he most important means of taking control of the landscape is by naming, Naming provides the equivalent of a title deed, imbues power and identity to that which is named, gives the named place a presence, confers a reality, and allows it to be known.’ Ibid pp. 40-41
12. M. Daphne Kutzer, Empire's Children:Empire and Imperialism in Classic British Children's Books, Routledge, 2000 p.120
13. Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900, Cambridge University Press, 1986
14. ‘Maps are a kind of language, or social product which act as mediators between an inner mental world and an outer physical world. But they are, perhaps first and foremost, guides to the mind-set which produced them. They are, in this sense, less a representation of part of the earth’s surface than a representation of the system of cognitive mapping which produced them,’ N.Penn, “Mapping the Cape: John Barrow and the First British Occupation of the Colony, 1794-1803.” in Pretexts 4 (2) Summer 1993, pp.20-43 p.23
15. John Atchison, ‘Naming Outback Australia,’ in Actes du XVI Congrès international des sciences onomastiques, Québec, Université Laval, 16-22 August 1987, Presses Université Laval, 1987 : pp.151-162 p.154-5
16. Susan Gay Drummond, Incorporating the Familiar, McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP, 1997 p.32 .
17. Alfonso Pérez-Agote, The Social Roots of Basque Nationalism, University of Nevada Press, 2006 p.xx
18. Selwyn Ilan Troen, Imagining Zion: Dreams, Designs, and Realities in a Century of Jewish Settlement, Yale University Press, 2003 p.152
19. Meron Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape:The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948, tr. Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta, University of California Press, 2000 pp.12-13 cf.'Suffused with the sense that “it is impossible for a present-day Hebrew map not to identify by name the places of Hebrew settlement mentioned in the Bible and in post-biblical Hebrew literature,” they set about identifying these sites and putting them on “Hebrew maps,” which they placed opposite the official Mandatory maps.’
20. Cf.Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines, Jonathan Cape, London 1987
21. Benvenisti, ibid, p.19
22. Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape, op.cit.p.14. The Arabic names were also found ‘morose’ and ‘offensive’ . As one member put it: ‘Many of the names are offensive in their gloomy and morose meanings, which reflect the powerlessness of the nomads and their self-denigration in the face of the harshness of nature’ (ibid.p.17). On the committee see also his memoir, Meron Benvenisti, Son of the Cypresses: Memories, Reflections, and Regrets from a Political Life, tr. Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta, University of California Press, 2007 p.72.
23. Amar Dahamshe Off the linguistic map. Are Arab place names derived from Hebrew? in Haaretz 30.06.10
24. Benvenisti, ibid. p.17, p.18
25. ‘The name of the Ramon Crater, for example, perhaps the most dramatic geological formation in the Negev, “is derived from the Hebrew adjective ram (meaning elevated), “states an Israeli guidebook. The fact that its name in Arabic was Wadi Rumman (Pomegranate Arroyo), . . was not considered worthy of mention’ Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape, ibid. p.19
26. Yasir Suleiman, A War of Words: Language and Conflict in the Middle East, Cambridge University Press, 2004 p.161, p.162.
27. cf.Shalom Spiegel, Hebrew Reborn,, The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia 1930, Meridian Book reprint 1962. Shalom Spiegel was Sam Spiegel's more distinguished and erudite brother.
28. Yasir Suleiman, A War of Words, ibid p.140
29. Theodor Adorno, Minima moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben (1951), in Rolf Tiedemann (ed.) Gesammelte Schriften, Bd.4, Suhrkamp, 1980 p.123
30. Paul Francis Diehl, A Road Map to War, Vanderbilt University Press, 1999, pp.15-16.
31. 'The term West Bank was forced onto the international lexicon only after Jordan conquered the territory in 1948'. Binyamin Netanyahu, A Durable Peace: Israel and Its Place Among the Nations, Warner Books, (1993) 2000 p.20. Netanyahu's dislike of the term (and his faulty memory for dates), is mirrored by the Palestinian poet, Mourid Barghouti, evidence if ever of the neutrality of the term: cf.‘I did not realize what it meant to be a refugee until I became one myself. When the Israeli army occupied Deir Ghassanah and the whole eastern part of Palestine in 1967, the news bulletins began to speak of the occupation of the Israeli defense forces of the West Bank. The pollution of language is no more obvious than when concocting this term: West Bank. West of what? Bank of what? The reference here is to the west bank of the River Jordan, not to historical Palestine. If the reference were to Palestine they would have used the term eastern parts of Palestine. The west bank of the river is a geographical location, not a country, not a homeland. The battle for language becomes the battle for the land. The destruction of one leads to the destruction of the other. When Palestine disappears as a word, it disappears as a state, as a country and as a homeland. The name of Palestine itself had to vanish. . .The Israeli leaders, practicing their conviction that the whole land of Palestine belongs to them would concretize the myth and give my country yet another biblical name: Judea and Samaria, and give our villages and towns and cities Hebrew names. But call it the West Bank or call its Judea and Samaria, the fact remains that these territories are occupied. No problem! The Israeli governments, whether right or left or a combination of both, would simply drop the term occupied and say the Territories! Brilliant! I am a Palestinian, but my homeland is the Territories! What is happening here? By a single word they redefine an entire nation and delete history.’ Mourid Barghouti, 'The Servants of War and their Language', in International parliament of Writers, Autodafe, Seven Stories Press, 2003 pp.139-147 pp140-1
32. Emma Playfair, International Law and the Administration of Occupied Territories: Two Decades of Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Oxford University Press, 1992 p. 41.
33. Ran HaCohen, 'Influence of the Middle East Peace Process on the Hebrew Language' (1992), reprinted in Michael G. Clyne (ed.), Undoing and Redoing Corpus Planning, Walter de Gruyter, 1997, pp.385-414, p.397.
34. Shlomo Gazit, Trapped Fools: Thirty Years of Israeli Policy in the Territories, Routledge, 2003 p. 162
35. 'The terms “occupied territory” or “West Bank” were forbidden in news reports.'Ian S. Lustick, 'The Riddle of Nationalism: The Dialectic of Religion and Nationalism in the Middle East', Logos, Vol.1, No.3, Summer 2002 pp.18-44, p. 39
36. 'Begin was happy to castigate the media and the intelligentsia for their views, real and imaginary, and their use of politically incorrect language. Israeli television was now instructed to use “Judea and Samaria’ for the administered territories, annexation became ‘incorporation’ and the Green Line suddenly disappeared from maps of Israel and the West Bank'. Colin Shindler, A History of Modern Israel, Cambridge University Press, 2008 p.174
37. 'The successful gaining of the popular acceptance of these terms was a prelude to gaining popular acceptance of the government’s settlement policies'.Myron J. Aronoff, Israeli Visions and Divisions: Cultural Change and Political Conflict, Transaction Publishers, 1991. p. 10.
38. Gideon Aran, 'Jewish Zionist Fundamentalism: The Block of the Faithful in Israel (Gush Enumin),', in American Academy of Arts and Sciences, University of Chicago Press, 1994 pp.265-344, p.291, p.337
39. Zeev Maoz, Defending the Holy Land: a critical analysis of Israel's security & foreign policy, University of Michigan Press, 2006 p.441
40. William B. Quandt, Peace process: American diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1967, Brookings Institution Press, 2001, rev.ed.2001 p.130
41. William B.Quandt, Peace process, ibid. p.134. This was then accompanied by a formal note to Begin (September 22,1978), it which it was registered that ‘(A) In each paragraph of the Agreed Framework Document the expressions “Palestinians” or “Palestinian People” are being and will be construed and understood by you as “Palestinian Arabs”. (B)In each paragraph in which the expression “West Bank” appears, it is being, and will be, understood by the Government of Israel as Judea and Samaria.’ William B. Quandt, Camp David: peacemaking and politics, Brookings Institution Press, 1986 p.387
42. Howard Jones, Crucible of Power: A History of U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1897,Rowman & Littlefield, 2nd.ed. 2001 p.469
43. Rex Brynen, Sanctuary and Survival: The PLO in Lebanon, Westview Press, Boulder, 1990 p.2
44. James Ron, Frontiers and ghettos: state violence in Serbia and Israel, University of California Press, 2003 p.180. Decoded, the statement means, 'invading Lebanon secures the West Bank for Israel and thus achieves the Biblical borders set forth more or less in the Tanakh's account of the early kingdoms'
45. Eric J. Schmertz, Natalie Datlof, Alexej Ugrinsky, President Reagan and the world, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997 p.44.
46. See Uri Bar-Joseph, Israel's National Security Towards the 21st Century, Routledge, 2001 p.185
47. Numbers, 32:18
48. David C. Jacobson, Does David still play before you? Israeli poetry and the Bible, Wayne State University Press, 1997 p.50
49. Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The construction of modern national consciousness, Columbia University Press, 1998 p.14
50. Nigel Craig Parsons,The Politics of the Palestinian Authority: From Oslo to Al-Aqsa, Routledge, 2005 p.299
51. Michael Sfard, Occupation double-speak,' at Haaretz, 12 June 2012.
52. Jonathan Cook, Israeli Road Signs, Counterpunch 17-19, July 2009
53. Nir Hasson, Give Arab train stations Hebrew names, says Israeli linguist, Haaretz 28/12/2009
54. Yossi Sarid 'Israel is not killing the Palestinian people - it's killing their culture,' Haaretz 3 Octobr 2014
55. John Brian Harley, David Woodward, The History of Cartography: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, Humana Press, 1987 p.506, cited Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape, ibid.p.13
56. Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape, ibid. p.13

Further reading:-

• Mark Monmonier, No Dig, No Fly, No Go. How maps restrict and control, University of Chicago Press 2010

Things to be done/Notes to self (or what pieces are left of that hypothetical entity)

• Huldra trans Talk:Bardala‎
• Huldra trans Talk:Nisf Jubeil
• Sabah as per promise to Doug Weller
• Abu Iyad as per promise to Al Ameer
• The Ashkenazi Jews/Khazarian origins theory
• Werner Muensterberger
• 中里介山 and also his 大菩薩峠, which have no wiki article. ('to call him Dickensian would be utterly inadequate, to call Dickens "Kaizanian" would be to flatter him greatly' William E. Naff, The Kiso Road: The Life and Times of Shimazaki Tōson, University of Hawai'i Press, 2011 p.4.) Nishidani (talk) 21:00, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

(2)'To call Dickens "Kaizanian" would be an over-statement of his considerable gift for for creating memorable characters, while to call Kaizan "Dickensian" would be a seriously misleading understatement. This richness became all the more impressive when set against the national drive towards human standardization.' ibid. p.430

To be kept close to the bottom of this page because I forget the agenda as time scurries on Nishidani (talk) 21:00, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

• • e.g.<ref="Horowitz" /> Nishidani (talk) 17:20, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Note

Yonatan Mendel, Diary, London Review of Books, Vol. 37 No. 6 -19 March, 6 March 2015.

Red Dawn

I caught an incredibly bad film tonight, Red Dawn. Mutatis mutandis it could be a Palestinian fantasy of 1967 onwards, only the people defending their homeland are terrorists and the 'Koreans' the good guys. Hope all is well.Nishidani (talk) 22:11, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

All is well. Taking a very long break from WP. Will probably return sometime in the future, but not soon. Focusing on my professional work, as well as on reading books, and enjoying spending time with my two puppies, working on my yard, talking to friends and family, etc.

Every day I read at least the edit summaries of all your contributions, and the full text of your contributions to talk pages, noticeboards etc. Good job on motivating the community to improve that profoundly and vastly incorrect, indeed largely false and misleading, lead section of the WP article on Jews. Enjoyed reading your insightful, thoughtful, evidence-based contributions to these, as well as other, discussions. And good job on keeping your calm and composure in the face of the relentless onslaught of vitriol and ad-hominem attacks on your character and motivations, including the many sick, twisted, baseless innuendos, derogatory hints, implications or insinuations from the usual crowd of civil pov pushers and not-so-civil, serial, habitual, obsessive violators of NPOV, OR, V and RS.

Reading your comment above, I'm glad I missed catching Red Dawn. I've been enjoying watching many good movies recently, mostly foreign films, especially European, Asian, Israeli, Arab, etc (as well as many older Bananamerican films). For example, to our pleasant surprise, we've greatly enjoyed a relatively large number of good films from Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland. And China and Japan.

I have also been re-reading my copies of books by philosophers, thinkers and scientists such as Sheldon Wolin, who died last month. Especially his two most recent books on Inverted totalitarianism. I highly recommend the following conversation, where Wolin and Chris Hedges explain in great depth and breadth why capitalism and democracy cannot co-exist:

• Link to 8-part conversation (8 separate consecutive parts):

• Link to full version (all 8 parts combined):

You wrote on WP recently that you've made Quince jam and Pomegranate wine (or juice). Quince jam is my favorite, together with rose-petal jam. And I have a big Pomegranate tree bearing a large amount of fruit every year, I'm now inspired by you to make more productive use of the fruit. Do you use a special device or tool to extract the Pomegranate fruit-seeds? What do you recommend? (I've not yet researched this online, there's probably some tutorials/ info on YouTube ...)

By the way, the WP articles on Quince and Pomegranate are a pleasure to read, with many beautiful photos.

Keep up the good work. Hoping to hear from you soon. Love, Ijon. -- IjonTichy (talk) 00:31, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

I hadn't noticed Wolin's demise, (unlike that of the late lamented, and similar thinker, Gerald Cohen back in 2009), and I'm indebted for your links to the RN video interviews, which I will take in slowly when my house is less encumbered by noise. I'm glad to see you are well, and even more so that you are enjoying a long wikibreak.

I read in Newsweek in the late 70s, I think, an article on suburban trash archaeology in Houston, and it's held me in good stead as a 'tip' (sorrow for the pun: 'rubbish dump' in Australian usage!), as I've foraged through the 'news', which is mostly instantaneous rubbish with a decay rate superior to that of an Ununoctium isotope. One can find out as much about the world by sieving crap, arguably, as from reading Aristotle's Prior Analytics, though it's best to do the former, obviously, after having mastered the latter. I apply this also to trashy popular culture with films like Red Dawn (I made the wrong link to it, I was referring to the 2012 version - their narrative structures are, unknown to the entrepreneurs of patriotism who make them (perhaps Yoram Globus/Menahem Golan etc. etc.etc., were more canny in creating all those crap movies for a political purpose), and the force of analogy appears to be lost on the mass audience. Red Dawn is just a remake of Red Dawn, which had far better actors, and both go back to Invasion U.S.A, 1952. Among the fundamental books for my generation, Leslie Fiedler's Love and Death in the American Novel held a high place, it gave one a sense of profound recurrent patterns over the messy promiscuity of time's endless churning, in line with the vogue for archetypical analysis from Mircea Eliade (a closet fascist who wrote two good books however) to Northrop Frye. It's a lost world now, I guess, but the conceptual gridwork was sound, and helped one reduce, without loss of sensitivity to nuance, a dizzying plethora of novels and films to a manageable framework. I think it was Vladimir Propp who said, or cited either Grimm or Goethe as saying, that mankind has only 5 basic plots for the infinite sea of stories it generates. That's why news is never 'new'. Everything that happens in the I/P conflict, to cite the obvious example, happened 70-80 years ago, and even then, most of the content is in the Book of Joshua and a number of other chronicles.

The only tool used to extract pomegranate seeds is a swat to keep my nephews from getting near enough to plunder them. Just the fingers, to avoid squashing or wasting the juice which tends to squirt. You soak them in pure alcohol for 20 odd days, filter the juice, while separately you make with 2 cups of water and one cup of sugar, and peels of lemon, a concoction, and when it is all dissolved, you leave it to cool, and then mix it in with the pomegranate juice, and after a few hours, bottle it. More or less. I'm glad you have a garden to work, it's a source of infinite pleasure,-especially in these times, if one goes to it alert to the message of A. D. Hope's poem Standardisation murmuring on one's mental lips and one can get a lot of good clean food from one with little labour. If you have a lemon tree, use it as a toilet, to pee on. Does wonders and saves water wastage by flushing. Best as always Nishidani (talk) 15:01, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Without wishing to disturb either your intelligent withdrawal from this rathouse or leisure, I came across, in a very very good deconstructive article on how many postwar myths identifying Arab and also Palestinian national aspirations with Nazism were fabricated, the following remark:-

The specter of a “Nazi Palestine” in the hypothetical event of Axis victory in the war has been shaped for an American readership. The Perish-Judea literature remains steadfastly silent on the depth and prevalence of prewar and wartime American judeophobia as well as the immovable public resistance to providing haven or temporary refuge for European Jews beyond the restricted quotas established in 1924... The major primary source for American anti-Jewish hate production is the four-volume The International Jew that was sponsored by Henry Ford and put together by a team of writers and investigators working for Ford’s Dearborn Independent newspaper. It influenced Hitler and other future leaders of the Nazi party and contributed to the racist and anti-Semitic backlash on immigration that would last throughout the Nazi period. For the judeophobic and pro-Nazi sentiments in America, see Lee 1980, Dinnerstein 1994, Warren 1996, and Baldwin 2001. For the political or administrative defeat of numerous proposals to offer Jews refuge or temporary asylum in the mainland United States, Alaska, the Virgin Islands, or other U.S. territories, including the Wagner-Rodgers bill that would have accepted 20,000, mostly Jewish children, see Wyman 1968; Morse 1968; and Rosen 2006.

This is precisely the historical structure of inversion and failure to make the implicit analogy I noted in ther 2012 Red Dawn film. Huge volumes of junk are written about Amin al-Husseini's complicity in Nazism, and therefore the Palestinians, yet the record for having systematically denied to Jews a refuge in America (the same goes for Great Britain) during the 30s is infinitely denser than anything you can tease out of the record re Palestinians. Yet the whole onus of blame falls on them, as amnesia surges and the politics of disremembrance and blame-throwing emerge to dominate the discursive landscape. Wiki articles glaringly lack any attention to this informational lacunae across articles on the U.S. for the decisive period, because POV pushers have a sacred alliance, I guess, to sustain. Enough! Nishidani (talk) 16:59, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi Nish, thanks for your responses. I am not yet familiar with the scholars you alluded to above, I will read their WP biographies and check-out their books from the local library. Also your other comments (e.g on the timelessness of human conflict) are thought-provoking and insightful. In my view all human conflict is basically between brothers and sisters.

Yes, I agree peeing at the base of lemon trees is good practice, I've been doing this.

Some recent analysis you may find helpful to your continuing efforts to improve/ develop WP articles:

• Interview with Max Blumenthal -- an in-depth analysis of the steady, systematic, relentless, on-going process of Nazification of Israeli society. -- (By the way Sheldon Wolin in his last book on Inverted totalitarianism explicitly discusses the Nazification of US society.)

• The Distortion & Death Behind Israel/ Palestine Coverage -- an entry-level, basic introduction to the topic, including about Hasbara propaganda. Among other things, shows an Israeli figure saying something about efforts to edit Misplaced Pages to add 'a Zionist perspective.'

• On the right-hand-side column of that page you'll also see links to other recent, informative video essays, for example: one on the savagery, brutality and viciousness of the House of Saud; another video on the root causes of the global refugee crisis; an interview with Noam Chomsky; and more.

Warm regards, IjonTichy (talk) 21:36, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Anti-Syrian Muslim Refugee Rhetoric Mirrors Calls to Reject Jewish Refugees During Nazi Era. "Opponents of Jewish immigration during World War II used arguments that are being echoed today by opponents of Muslim immigration." -- IjonTichy (talk) 05:28, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

These ironies are everywhere. The most egregious example was the huge hasbara effort to circulate the 'tunnel terrorism' meme during Israel's recent conflicts with Hamas. It flew, outrageously, in the face of Jewish historical memory, but who cares? The otiose somnolence of the moralizing punditocracy gets away with murder, and it is splashed all over numerous wiki articles by loyal editors because few sources make the obvious connection:

The Jews did not distinguish fighters from civilians. The villagers took an active part in the fighting. They prepared themselves for the war for years, and in their villages they built underground networks of caves, storehouses, shelters and hiding places- all of which Cassius relates. Jews visiting these areas in Israel today (for example, near Kefar Amaziah in the Lachish Region) still experience proud excitement, for these sites serves as proof of the nation’s enterprise, of the power of its inventiveness, and also as a mark of the people’s mobilization for war. The Jewish farmers emerged from their caves to stage surprise attacks on the Romans,. However, as soon as the Romans came to know these caves and how they were being used, they probably developed countermeasures, for example, sealing off the entrances and exits, throwing combustible material into them to force out those inside, and setting ambushes at the cave entrances. Thus, unfortunately, many caves turned out to be death traps for those who hid in them Yehoshafat Harkabi, The Bar Kokhba Syndrome: Risk and Realism in International Politics, Rossel Books 1983 pp.32-33

The allusion is to Dio Cassius, 69:12, a text that sounds like the template for so many official Israeli handouts on what Hamas or Hezbollah do.

The Zionist myth of an expulsion after the Destruction of the Second Temple is showcased everywhere as an irrefutable claim to the justice of return, whereas the same doesn't apply to the nakba ethnic cleansing visited on Palestinians in 1948. The analogies are everywhere, and it attests to the strength of propaganda that even intelligent commentators miss them. That is what the blinkering ideology of nationalism does, argue that 'we' are permitted to weep for X, or do Y, while if X or Y relates to the adversary's experience or behaviour, even through our own vindictiveness, it is to be dismissed or condemned as 'outrageous' and a different paradigm ('terrorism') applies. It's hypocrisy on a massive scale. Nishidani (talk) 09:18, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I agree, there is massive hypocrisy.

By the way, brave Jewish fighters also used tunnels extensively while resisting Nazi occupation during WWII. For example, the use of sewer tunnels by armed Jews during the Warsaw ghetto uprising, or by armed Jewish partisans in France, and in fact by armed Jews in almost every country in Western and Eastern Europe occupied by the Nazis or by the Nazis' fascist allies.

Jewish resistance under Nazi rule is an informative, interesting, powerful article.

And Jews also used tunnels while resisting the British Mandate forces in Palestine in the 1940's.   IjonTichy (talk) 03:21, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Yep. I've documented several times on various article pages the use of synagogues to store arms in the Defense of Jerusalem and earlier during the British Mandate period. And there is an excellent Israeli study published some years back on the use of kibbutz kindergartens and health clinics to cover secret underground armouries. Everything Hamas is accused of with moralistic outrage was part and parcel of Israel, and indeed, normal military strategy in conflicts the world over. The only amazing thing is, why the commentariat never laughs this shit off the page when it's plashed there. I mean, the hasbara organizations don't believe it either: they just know it works on the public imagination abroad, and therefore has a function.Nishidani (talk) 08:42, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Interesting discussion with Eyal Weizman in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Among other important issues, he appears to support the sources you cited recently, sources which said the various colonialists (Israel, Britain, Italy, USA, France, many more) were using false reasoning when the colonialists claimed they were justified in stealing the land and other resources of Muslims because the Muslims "deliberately abandoned or neglected the land or otherwise did not take care of the land, resources or economic infrastructure out of deliberate, premeditated negligence." In other words the colonialists are using Orwellian language for falsely, mendaciously claiming that "Muslims are, well, primitive desert-dwelling savages who are naturally inherently incompetent and un-deserving of the resources and thus we are justified in stealing the resources." IjonTichy (talk) 16:47, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Like everything else, this all goes back to one of the foundational documents of our civilization. The Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites (all of whom were constitutive of the future Israelite amphictyonic league's populations) had an eretz zavat halav u'dvash, and that's what attracted the nomadic outsiders in the neighbourhood. The Babylonian novelist(s) who wrote Exodus then had the old storm god tell them, during the transit at Sinai, that they must not covet their neighbours' goods, having earlier promised them that they could covet the land he promised them. It's an early example of what Gregory Bateson called the Double bind, take-but-don’t-take/be-moral-but-break-the-rules. A huge amount of discursive waffle is required to paper over the schizoid contradiction in the dual message. In modern times, when Zionism dusted off the books of Exodus and Joshua and gave the archaic remit a secular cast, one needed a justification somewhat less visibly internally inconsistent, and so the Land of Milk and Honey was what the Zionists promised they would create from the empty desert that they imagined was Palestine. In short, Zionism reversed the Biblical image, while retaining its colonizing narrative. This time, ‘we’ would not be a nomadic people out of the infertile Transjordan and Sinai teeming into the rich pastures and agricultural lands of the Canaanites. ‘’We’’ would be an advanced urban people (as the Pharaoh's Egyptians were) teeming into the barren, empty landscape of a desertified Palestine to turn it back to what it was when the Canaanites had it, and the local inhabitants, if recognized, were dismissed as vagrant poverty-stricken nomads. They turned the Bible on its head in modernizing the archetype. Religious Zionism now looks like, at last, reverting to type by reversing the secular heresy of early Zionism in a way that will make it more compatible with the original novel’s scenario, now that the Palestinians are finished. My best wishes for a serene productive New Year.Nishidani (talk) 18:28, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Nish happy new year. What is your own personal philosophy of technology, especially what are your views on the impact of technology on humanity?   An interesting article from a couple of days ago by Paul Kingsnorth (30 December 2015): The keyboard and the spade, in New Statesman. -- IjonTichy (talk) 00:43, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

I liked Kingsnorth's prose, when he talks about what he does working the land. All the rest of it, about Kelly and co and googleboys - well, that kind of hypnotic utopian vision of the future has come out regularly over the last century, and the terms change, but it bores me. Perhaps they're right, but the vision is distinctly dull to me. They sound like combination of spokesmen from the new people who destroy the intuitive people in William Golding's The Inheritors, with the folks you meet in Yevgeny Zamyatin's We. If what he quotes is a sign of the caliber of Kelly's mind, then Kelly is a bore, and not too bright, who will of course produce a new species of überbores. In high school, my class had 6 kids with a genius+ IQ. All nice kids, all conformists, and devoid of interesting conversation. When Lobsang Rampa's The Third Eye came out one of them buttonholed me,a precocious skeptic it was thought, and brought it out as proof of miracles. I tried to tell him what my father told me, that it was just proof some plumbers had an imagination that went beyong fixing shithouses. Couldn't convince him, and didn't care to. The technium androbots will be like him, only kill more things.Nishidani (talk) 18:23, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

I have been fascinated by technology since I was a child and I now work professionally in the high-technology sector as an engineer and startup founder, but I dislike most aspects of the blind, overly-simplistic, brain-dead belief in Technological utopianism.

Well! There I go putting my foot into it, and inadvertently insulting you! I once mocked the style of architecture best illustrated by Philip Johnson et al., to a Palestinian interlocutor. He heard me out politely, and his wife added, after my tirade (I was raised on architectural talk at home), that her husband was an architect. The major objection, apart from human rights, to Zionism, is that its Swiss style exurbs and landscaping are an unbelievably painful sight to eyes drenched in the elegant stonework of traditional villages, or what remains of them after bulldozing and bombing. Rawabi for the moment shows the way this development should have been done. I can't get beyond the parameters set by that wonderful man Ian McHarg. Engineers of the pre-high tech era, in cahoots with architects won over to the béton brut style, thought they could force their will, architects called it their 'vision' on a landscape, rather than understanding it, and the aesthetic economies of intelligent human planning. High tech (I'm a fan of William Gibson's novels)'s another world. My humble apologies to your profession.Nishidani (talk) 12:05, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

A couple of articles I think you may find interesting (although I suspect you have probably already read them): Human enhancement,   and   Existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence. -- IjonTichy (talk) 21:16, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

ISIS in Gaza, by Sarah Helm, in the New York Review of Books. Your thoughts? Best, IjonTichy (talk) 21:49, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

More on the continuing, on-going process of Nazification of Israeli society: Netanyahu, Bennett and Shaked Stoking the Fire of Fascism in Israel. -- IjonTichy (talk) 20:33, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it Nazification. In problematical areas, the first lesson is to steer clear of any kind of jargon that is simplistic and reductive. When, as happens daily, I read of arrests of children, beatings, seizures of land, hot halakhic airbags wheezing over the theology of snuffing out semisouled goys etc., dozens of societies come to mind. The way the IDF and border police work over the border is more similar to Stasi, and the KGB, but also to South Africa's police under Apartheid. I have the same objection to bundling up Fascism, Phalangism, and Nazism, as to reducing all Arab tinpot dictatorships to the same theoretical template. It is the vice of the contemporary right to dissolve our intellectual care in marking boundaries, distinguishing things easily confused, and when the 'left' follows, it makes a fatal error. In none of these states was it possible to understand, analyse, and publish openly details of what was going on, as it is in Israel. That itself makes a huge difference.

Must be off to my Rome haunts. You're lucky your persimmons stayed fresh. My crops last dozen look like imploding, just too many to get through, and they languish outside in quiet decay.Nishidani (talk) 20:59, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Comparisons with Nazi Germany in the article on criticism of the Israeli government gubmint.   I use the comparison as a reminder to myself, a mnemonic to help me remember more easily the massive hypocrisy at the root of the structurally corrupt policies of the Israeli gov't, which cynically manipulates the real horrors the Jews have suffered in the holocaust in the hands of the fascist Nazi regime, in order to position Israel as the victim in Israel's own fascist policies towards the Palestinian people.   I hope you are enjoying your stay in Rome. I stayed there when I traveled in Europe decades ago and enjoyed the city and especially its people very much. Will you be able to go see art such as the Sistine Chapel and other attractions? IjonTichy (talk) 19:39, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

And a serene and productive NY to you. Briefly, I like technology, it's proof that the species is sane, which is rather a contrafactual statement. I read New Scientist every week just to assure myself that what I read in the press about the world generally is not representative of anything other than the fact we are primitive animals biologically. My generation will be fossilized shortly, as technological evolution takes over the development of the species. The problem is not science, but the economic system it is embedded in, which assumes that rationality is best determined by a zero-sum game and a quick return on capital. That means ethics, and indeed choice based on long term complex system analysis, is counter-"productive". I look on, bemused, happy to have experienced much of the best the past has given us, but indifferent to the future which will look back on man as he was much as folks at the Smithsonian stare at the dead artifacts. It's late here but I will look at your links tomorrow, for which many thanks. Best regards Nishidani (talk) 22:20, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

What I'm about to say is an over-simplification, due to limitations of time and space. Over the last 8-10 years I've come to develop a very similar philosophy to yours. In my view, humanity is clinically insane - many key aspects of the global human society have been Psychopathologically crazy for many millennia, even thousands of years prior to the advent of the ancient Greek and Roman empires. At the same time, some key aspects of the global human society have always been sane and remain sane to this day. This is a paradox, which is not surprising, since life itself (from "before" the big bang to date) defies logic and is basically a paradox. Several smart people (including e.g Einstein) have said that in their view our technology/ science have progressed far beyond our humanity. In many important aspects our global socio-economic system (capitalism/ private property/ ownership/ money/ power/ hierarchy/ a system based almost entirely on exchange value rather than use value/ a system that commodifies everything, including human lives and more generally almost all life) is obsolete, is enormously detrimental, and is severely slowing down human progress. Any possible transition to a more sane, humane, rational global socio-economic-cultural system would be enormously complicated by the fact that 'capitalism' is extremely deeply, profoundly embedded in the fabric of human society.

Another aspect of the paradox is that, despite the massive global human psychosis, there are still many key aspects of humanity, and more generally life and the natural world, that are rational, kind, beautiful, pleasurable and enjoyable. Cheers, IjonTichy (talk) 20:33, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

A long, detailed investigative report: Technologies of Oppression: The Celebration of the Israeli Security Industries in Brazil. Among many other things, explains one of the main reasons why the Israel government has not been, is not now, and is not likely to be in the future, interested in ending the conflict with the Palestinians. IjonTichy (talk) 01:41, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Well that's been evident from the beginning, and I think a lot of critics within the PLO and in the diaspora noted that the 1993 Accords effectively turned the PLO into an indigenous proxy of the occupiers, even if it was justified by citing the schedules for a 'finalization' of the conflict's issues. There's nothing unique about Israel's sale abroad of the technologies of control developed to keep Palestinians down. The only diff is that in Israel these technologies reinforce a colonial project against another ethnicity, whereas the foreign customers use it to control and repress their internal proletariats in the ghettoes and favelas. The middle class, hag-ridden by financial insecurities, if it notices at all, tends to endorse more policing of the underclass, failing to note that the trend is extending upward, and will soon apply to them as well. If the economist Michael Hudson whose work I've followed for several years, is correct (I note the Reaganite economist Paul Craig Roberts is now praising him to the skies and providing a thumbnail synthesis of his theories), then the rough-ride of the post 2008 decade is structural, and will only worsen, with global ramifications for the whilom middle class. So you have Russia's Chechen solution spilling over into Syria, China's Uyghur panic extending to tensions with Turkey, India's internal Hindutva ideology re Muslims altering its traditional Third-Worldist sympathies, all feed into a first-world 'summitry concern' with coping with 'terror'. There is therefore nothing peculiarly Israeli about this dirty-linen. It's all sold as the protection of the hard-won values of the middle estate, when what is happening in the deeper structural shifts is an hyper-capitalist onslaught on any residual form of social investment of the kind that built our 19-20th century modern societies. The Trumps, Cruzes, Netanyahoos, etc of the world are playing draughts, when the board has morphed into a different game, as intricate as Go. I.e. four opening moves compared to around 360. If you look at the other end of the equation, the logic of computerized financialization, those who draw mathematicians away from science to become quants brainy enough to formulate elegant algorithms that can cope with cosmically massive variables, the result is no better.' Given the volume of trading under HFT, the system can now collapse over the space of a few milliseconds, before human traders or regulators have the opportunity to act. Nincompoops and wizards rule the world.Nishidani (talk) 11:10, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Over the last 10 years I have spent many hours every day extensively studying all the issues you alluded to above (including, among many others, Michael Hudson's and Paul Craig Roberts' work), and I fully agree with everything in your comment.

I recently re-watched the insightful interviews with Sheldon Wolin (links above) in which he shows why capitalism and democracy cannot truly co-exist.

I've now just started reading the book Nerds on Wall Street: Math, Machines and Wired Markets. Which books have you been reading recently? Which ones do you recommend?

I just finished reading Apprentice to Genius: The Making of a Scientific Dynasty. I very highly recommend it. Best, IjonTichy (talk) 17:45, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

They sound like compelling reads, but, unfortunately, like much don't turn up on Italian bookstore shelves. Aside from a score of novels since January, I've been rereading the Aeneid in Latin over the last few weeks, while reading up on the history of Hamas and the works of Hazlitt for some wikiwork. I've just read Manuel Musallam's book in Italian,A Parish priest in hell, describing his 14 years in Gaza City (1995-2009) which a local store ordered for me. I've also started rereading Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History, in the 12 volume paperback copy I bought when it first came out in the early 60s. Hazlitt had a penetrating mind and wrote with superb trenchancy. Toynbee wrote with an elegant Graeco-Latinate prose on the global structures of history. I read such things for their intrinsic interest and as a relief from the endless wash of verbal noise one has to sift just to keep informed about the world. I don't recommend them to you, esp. since your reading list is just as enviable! Nishidani (talk) 18:33, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

No, that won't do. I thoroughly recommend Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks 2015. It is a superb study of what the erosion of dialects and language does to see nature, as it was seen and conceptualized in wonderful words of great descriptive precision. Best regards (I must comment eventually on Wolin, it's just I've been a bit pressed for time lately). Nishidani (talk) 19:48, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

I will definitely read Landmarks very soon.

Regarding Wolin, it is best to first read his great book 'Democracy Incorporated,' published in 2008, then view the 8 interviews conducted in 2014. I suspect he is not gonna add significantly to your already extensive body of knowledge, although you will enjoy his specific, unique approach/ angle/ method of analysis/ discernment/ voice/ method of attack, and his enormous depth and breadth of knowledge.

Recommended: This video shows what ancient Rome actually looked like

Recommended: SmartHistory - art, history, conversation (YouTube channel)

IjonTichy (talk) 19:30, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay, I'm caught up in heavy duty early spring mowing, pruning etc. I did manage to listen into first interview, all very lucid. Getting books like that, where I live, is difficult, but it's on my future reading list. I did work out a long note stimulated by all this, on the concept of Nature (biology) and 'nature' (economics), why they are antithetical, beginning, 'It has been calculated that 100,000 distinct operations are required in order to manufacture a pin' but I've forgotten it for the moment (perhaps that's better to stop boredom setting in on this page). When I can I hope to pick up the thread.Nishidani (talk) 17:15, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Sti1ll haven't got round to the review of all 8 but will (too much Toynbee, apart from the daily work here). 2 items in the meantime might interest you.

• Philip Adams, in conversation with Emad Burnat on his recent film
• Katie Miranda, Understanding the fundamental roots of conflict and suffering: An interview with Rich Forer Mondoweiss 11 March, 2016 (much of this is what I have long thought as pretty obvious on the psychological plane, but it's nice to see it coming out from an ex-AIPAC member.). Cheers Nishidani (talk) 14:11, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
• (ps) By serendipity just now I note that Forer's analysis of his own awakening is underlined by what happened to this trained hasbara activist. Gabriel Goldstein 'I Was the Pro-Israel Poster Boy at Brandeis — Here’s Why I Quit,' The Forward 4 March, 2016

Yes, I totally sympathize with Rich Forer and Gabriel Goldstein. The transformation of mind-set and core beliefs that they underwent is very similar to my own.

Watched the film All the King's Men (1949 film) last night. I highly recommend it, the story is timeless and powerful. The film is based on the book All the King's Men which received the Pulitzer in 1947.

If you liked the old film, which I saw in the 50s, then I strongly recommend that you read the novel itself. I chanced on a worn pb copy some two decades ago, read it in a couple of sittings and was astonished at the quality of Robert Penn Warren's writing. I'd always just vaguely thought of him as Eleanor Clark's husband, and a minor critic.46-48 was a wonderful period for American fiction, from Gore Vidal to Mailer's masterpiece. Will reply to the rest tomorrow.Nishidani (talk) 20:42, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Very interesting interview with Mr. Fish (Dwayne Booth), the political cartoonist of TruthDig (where Chris Hedges writes his weekly columns). I have been reading Booth's cartoons for the last 5 years, they are very powerful and highly creative. The interview shows some of his cartoons. Among many other things, Booth and Hedges discuss some cartoons where Booth compared the Palestinian victims of the Israeli vicious assaults on Gaza to the Jewish victims of the Nazi brutal assaults on the Warsaw ghetto, and they briefly discuss Marek Edelman, one of the leaders of the brave Jewish uprising in the ghetto, who, beginning in the 1960's until his death in 2009, favorably compared the Palestinian's struggle against their Israeli oppressors to the Jews struggle against their Nazi oppressors in Warsaw.

Nish you are doing great work on improving WP. Keep up the good work.

By the way the Lilac and Cherry blossom in my yard smell wonderful this week. How does your yard smell like nowadays? Did you get a chance to work on your garden(s) recently?

Best, IjonTichy (talk) 18:45, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

You're enjoying a normal spring then. Here it has been touch and go for two months, as winter refused to behave in a winterly manner, while spring, lacking genes of opportunism, fails to take up the slack in the otherwise mild weather. One can see it from the robins who come down from the hills to feed on the richer if nonetheless meager yields of lower hibernal altitudes. The leader always signals that their bags are packed, and they're ready to fly back up the mountains for summer, by perching on the stringy bark sprouts of pruned mock-orange and chirping farewell as we come and go for a few days in keeping with that curious gift of theirs of befriending and keeping company with tillers of soil. It's the only bird I know that looks you up and down, and in the eye, before deciding whether to scram or not, or cultivate a comradely work relationship (you turn the sods, and he will pick into the mulchy ground as you move on a step or two). I usually predict real spring is on the way by spotting porcupines waddling up the corridor to the door of a mid-evening to filch the leftovers of cat food. So far, none. As for aromas, the only plant that has flowered is a forsynthia (if you ignore the borage that is finally flaunting its broad leafage and dangling a head or two of timid blue blossoms), and they have yet to glove their Chinese bells with an aura of scent. I am held in suspense over the large cherry tree, which I, against advice, heavy sawed back two years ago. It yielded a good crop of fruit last year, but looks stolid even as the mild airs entice it to flourish. We'll see. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 11:12, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Enjoyed reading about your garden. Your description is detailed and vivid, making it easier for me to visualize your lovely garden and the sweet, gentle animals and birds that visit your yard. I hope your cherry tree blossoms, and that your gardens will bear a lot of delicious fruit and veggies this spring and summer.

I found the following on the website of Jewish Voice for Peace:

Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are not the same thing. Saying that they are is offensive, anti-intellectual, and just plain wrong.

Take Action

Tell the University of California Regents: anti-Zionism is a political belief, not a form of prejudice.

Dear Friend,

This is important.

On Wednesday, the University of California Regents (the governing body of the UC system) will be meeting, and debating whether to adopt proposed “Principles of Intolerance.” On the face of it, these principles are a good idea: they’re designed to help colleges in the UC system stamp out racism and other forms of bigotry.

But there’s one huge problem with them: they define anti-Zionism as a form of prejudice. But anti-Zionism is a political belief, not a form of hatred like anti-Semitism or Islamophobia. The University Regents have no business saying which kinds of political speech are acceptable on our campuses.

They’re meeting on Wednesday, but if we want to make our voices heard, we need to flood them with messages by the end of the day on Monday

Click here to email the UC Regents, and make it clear that Jews and allies throughout California -- and across the U.S. -- won’t let our movement be silenced.

This issue affects me personally. I’m JVP’s Academic Advisory Council Coordinator, which means that I work to help strengthen our movement for peace and justice on campuses across the U.S. But I’m also an academic and university lecturer myself, and I depend on academic freedom to do my research, and have open debate and discussion with my students.

But if this policy is adopted, students and teachers alike could be prevented from speaking freely in classes. Imagine Palestinian students, scared to share their personal experiences. Jewish students, prevented from challenging the orthodoxies of our community. And faculty, always having to look over their shoulder, in case their research and writing dares to oppose Israeli policies.

Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are not the same thing. Saying that they are is offensive, anti-intellectual, and just plain wrong.

Email the UC Regents today, and tell them that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism.

Supporters of Israel’s human rights abuses have tried this before at the University of California. Last year, UC President Janet Napolitano announced her support for including criticism of Israel in their official definition of anti-Semitism -- but we mobilized and fought back. Over 2,000 of us sent letters to the UC Regents, urging them not to muzzle us, and the definition they were proposing then was dropped.

But now it’s back -- and this time it might even be worse. That’s why the LA Times said that the Regents’ new plan “goes dangerously astray.” The LA Times is no particular supporter of our movement for peace and justice, but as they acknowledge, you don’t have to be an anti-Zionist to know that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are not the same thing.

We cannot be silenced. We will not be silenced. Email the UC Regents right now, and make your voice heard.

Thank you for speaking up for academic freedom,

Dr. Tallie Ben Daniel, PhD, Academic Advisory Council Coordinator

Jewish Voice for Peace is a national membership organization inspired by Jewish tradition to work for the freedom, equality, and dignity of all the people of Israel and Palestine.

www.Jewishvoiceforpeace.org

1611 Telegraph Ave. Suite 1020 Oakland, CA 94612

(510) 465 1777

You piqued my curiosity on Arnold J Toynbee, and motivated me to read his quotes on WikiQuote. He appears to be a highly perceptive, deeply insightful thinker. I will go to the local library and check out his books. Best, IjonTichy (talk) 19:02, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Now I'm feeling guilty for overburdening you. Rereading it is slowing down my own work rate. If you do go ahead, then just look at vol.12 (1961) pp.477-517, which is an historical critique of Zionism synthesizing many remarks made in the earlier volumes. Uri Avnery and Toynbee had an interesting exchange of views back in 1955 by the way regarding the Zionist-Crusader analogy:(David Ohana, The Origins of Israeli Mythology: Neither Canaanites Nor Crusaders, Cambridge University Press, 2012 pp.142f.). Looks like I inadvertently Lopakhined the cherry tree, alas. As for that UCLA violation of free speech, I trust those kids and the authority of wise men like Brant Rosen et al., will show those dumb goyim the monstrosity hidden in their 'politically correct' proposal.Nishidani (talk) 09:06, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

A History of Silencing Israeli Army Whistleblowers: From 1948 Until Today (24 March 2016). - IjonTichy (talk) 16:31, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

A bit thin, and he makes at least one mistake at a quick glance, namely attributing to Yitzhak Sadeh the origin of that obscene notion of purity of arms. It's more associated with Berl Katznelson, I think, who of course died some years before the 48 war and its 60 odd massacres. I'm not so sure he's got it right saying the Al-Dawayima massacre was done by men under Sadeh's command. As phrased it looks like Cook is cooking the books to make the argument that Sadeh led the massacre and then spoke of purity of arms. At least, from memory of my review of that page and additions after reading up on it, recently, I can't recall Sadeh being in command. Worth looking into. But I'm glad you directed me to this. I note that the article on purity of arms doesn't say when it was coined or by who, a serious oversight. Will look into it. Cheers (sounds rather nasty my making this point and ignoring the important content. It's just that critics really have to hold themselves to a very high bar of precision, even if it is somewhat fragile in the face of the tsunami of disinformatzia they try to counter). Cheers Nishidani (talk) 17:14, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

In Syria, militias armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA (27 March, 2016), The Los Angeles Times -- and an insightful discussion of the L.A. Times piece by Larry Wilkerson. I've seen this issue (of U.S.-funded factions fighting each other) covered previously in the alternative media (for example, Lawrence Wilkerson and Vijay Prashad discussed this on The Real News Network several times over the last 2-3 years), but this is perhaps the first time I've seen it covered in the mainstream media. Your thoughts? Best, IjonTichy (talk) 02:39, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Nothing, except reading science reports on nature, surprises me there. I once gave an intricate jargon-flush paper on some obscure vein of ideology being bruited out, and a wise old head nudged me with the question? 'Who finances this crap?' It woke me up. His point was, 'follow the money trail' rather than the thinking up front, and you'll figure out what's really going on. Last night I had a few cerebral haemorrhoids trying to bear up as Matteo Salvini, a nasty and dangerous separatist in Italy, talked about the threat from Islam. A europarliamentarian aligned with all sorts of pan-fascist movements, he was improving his credentials by visiting Jerusalem, as most Italian ex-fascists have done recently. I sat through the nonsense, waiting for some attentive journalist to drop the obvious question: 'Salvini, you have for 2 decades bitterly denounced the Muslim invasion of Europe as a threat to the ethnic integrity of Europe's autochthones. So, while you're in Jerusalem, what is your take on the Balfour Declaration's decision to flood a 90% Muslim country with European immigrants?' Of course, no one made the glaringly obvious analogy, and its inexpugnable contradiction. Nishidani (talk) 20:29, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes, the level of hypocrisy is enormous.

• Ex-Abu Ghraib Interrogator: Israelis Trained U.S. to Use "Palestinian Chair" Torture Device
• Israel Lobby's Growing Assault on Free Speech, a discussion by Max Blumenthal -- great analysis and insights by MB into the growing attack by the Israeli lobby, and their corrupt allies and servile hacks in western governments, on free speech rights in the US, Europe, UK, Canada, and other countries.

IjonTichy (talk) 21:07, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. No doubt some way down the track, someone will write a thorough monograph on the influence on Western policing tactics of Israel's technologies and strategies of 'crowd' control, interrogation methods, blackmail, etc. developed to handle Palestinians and secure the landgrab. It is exactly as if Verwoerd's South Africa had managed to get round things like the Academic boycott of South Africa and the Sporting boycott of South Africa during the apartheid era by exporting its Bantustan divide-and-conquer methods back to the West, and convincing the world that its own use of these instruments was dictated by the need to combat a threat as much external (Communism) as internal. That Judaism is twisted to assume the complex burdens of secular colonial statehood, and the nationalization of what was a cosmopolitan identity of modernity, poses a dramatic threat to both that SA never had, however. There is a certain uncanny confluence of distinct historical vectors here (the logic of Western modernity as financialization,i.e., the return of the feudal estate in which a minority rule masses,+ the trend to ethnonational redemption in which a minority becomes a majority by transforming the majority into a minority).

Enjoy your wikibreak, a sensible thing, as spring breezes in. I'll close this thread tomorrow. If you'd like to interleave your long due leisure with a blip or two in here, just open up a Red Dawn2 section in duke horse. Cheer Nishidani (talk) 11:50, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Palestinian population statistics Pro memoria

here,

Hazlitt article

Things were drifting far afield, what with "gallimaufry" and so on, and this no longer pertains to Paul and the Million Award, so I'll start this new section.

Thanks, Nish, for that fine beginning. I think most of your edits are good, and glad to have 'em. Just fixed one typo. But I will have to go through it all again. Some of what you improved was just material predating my beginnings with the article, which I tended to leave alone. But you have also improved some of my wording, and thanks. Of course any contributions by Xover and Johnuniq would be helpful, even in providing more pairs of eyes not necessarily belonging to anyone who knows much in particular about Hazlitt. But another Wikipedian who is also especially interested in Hazlitt is Celuici, who wrote most of two worthy articles on Hazlitt's father and brother, and with whom I have fruitfully collaborated in the past. I'll drop a note on his talk page.

Oh, and as for ramping this up to GA status, I never tried for that before mainly because I had long intended to beef up at least one or two later sections, mostly "Posthumous Reputation", first. The latter is not just inadequate, it's plain wrong at times, but it would take some bit of work to set it straight, and I kept putting that off (while working on plenty of other Hazlitt-related material here).

To be oontinued ... --Alan W (talk) 19:15, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

My idea was just to run once through the article, for some simple suggestions, to get my feel for it organized. Please be tough here if I overstep anywhere. Though I read two works by Hazlitt donkeys' ages ago, as you can see from some of the book sources I cite, I have better collections on Coleridge in particular, for that period (I think Hazlitt's analysis beginning 'the subtlety of his tact . . .' one of the most prescient and trenchant observations ever made on STC). Let's think of this as an, at least, three month work stretch, so that no one feels there's a rush to tinker everywhere. I hate deadlines. Tom and I gave the SAQ preliminary draft a good 6 months' workover, before we angled around for FA help. If we can get more numbers from the start, it should be a more fluent process, particularly if the experts on GA/FA tell us what needs to be done. Perhaps Xover could drop some indications on the talk page?, where we can shift perhaps this conversation in duke horse.Nishidani (talk) 19:59, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Ah, Hazlitt's review of The Statesman's Manual, etc., in the Edinburgh Review. Haven't read that one in a while. But his summary review of Coleridge's career in The Spirit of the Age, eight years later, I highly recommend that one if you haven't read it (if you have, you'll understand what I'm saying). A perfect balance of rhapsodic admiration and razor-sharp, unrelenting critical scrutiny. There was someone who didn't have to be reminded to "be tough"; yet, as Lamb, who knew Hazlitt better than anyone, and knew Coleridge well too, remarked about a similar instance of Hazlitt's "tough love" of Coleridge, there's a "respect shines through the disrespect".

Anyway, I'm with you about deadlines. I work slowly, deliberately; but I'm stubborn, too, and I do finish eventually. I see you have added the first comment in years on the article's talk page. I'll take a look at that now. --Alan W (talk) 22:55, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

A bit more time right now than I had expected, so I'll mention this. I see you have been citing the Wu bio of Hazlitt, and perhaps you have been reading it at length. It's good in some ways, and Wu can be a sound scholar. But he does let his imagination run wild at times, and he stages certain scenes that no one possibly could be sure ever happened exactly as presented. He should have been more explicit in such cases and pointed out that a given scene was his re-creation of what likely or possibly happened, and nothing at all verifiable now. I think the man (still very much alive, and I offer the disclaimer that this is just my own opinion, etc.) is a frustrated novelist. Just a caveat. --Alan W (talk) 19:45, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

You're calling the shots, pal. I didn't know that, but, in any case, I'm editing only with provisory suggestions, and you should jump at anything that doesn't square with the scholarship you've mastered. I did however think that the 'mishap' of him putting the hard word on the wrong woman should be contextualized. I have to really make an effort to find some Pom of distinction who didn't screw in the Stews, the Mews, or have a quickie knee-trembler against the walls of the Mall or St. Paul's, and it's only fair to state that Hazlitt's burying the bishop in those quarters wasn't exceptional. What was exceptional, hence his 'modernism' was his readiness to come clean on the dirty side of everyman's life. Chop anything I do as you will, no worries. Nishidani (talk) 19:56, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Nothing to chop at this point. As I said, I think what you added about prostitution in that period and Hazlitt's propensity to "come clean" is all very good, and it is supported, in a general way, by other biographers and historians. I was just issuing the caveat for any possible future use of Wu. I recall one passage where Hazlitt, dissatisfied with things he is writing, is depicted as crumpling the pages and tossing them one by one in the fire. I really don't think there is any evidence such a thing ever happened, though of course it could have. Just an example of a place where I think Wu really crossed some invisible line that true scholars should not cross (and there was no specific warning that this was just a "dramatization" or anything like that, unless I'm forgetting now).

Before I read what you just wrote above, I was composing the following addition: Second thoughts about "run in" vs. "run on". Looked at it again, and it was not "run on the family" but "run on his mother's side of the family". I must have been thinking of "on this side" vs. "on that side". I'll let it remain as is ("run in" now) for a while and see if it still looks OK. Might well be all right as is.

Also, after reading that about the quickie knee-trembler, I think you should be the one writing a novel based on Hazlitt's life. Good one. It'd be hilarious, anyway.--Alan W (talk) 20:11, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Sorry to see you're now laid up with the flu. Ugh. I'm a bit under the weather myself. While you're recovering, I made a few tweaks of my own, including tweaks of your tweaks. Feel better! --Alan W (talk) 23:42, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Good, you must be recovering. At least you've retained enough of your mental acuity to have made some good edits. I did rework some of them, though. If you'll pardon my saying so, I think your diction was getting just a wee bit stilted at times (trying to be as impartial as I can, I will also say that you also smoothed out some of my awkwardnesses and made some excellent improvements).

Oh, also, glad to see you found this recent book by Burley. I was unaware of that one and will want to read it one of these days. While I'm thinking of it, I will mention also that I thought it advisable to remove the direct Web links. The regular citations are enough. Books on Google Books that are in copyright are usually just "previews", with only selected pages, and what those pages are could change at random, so there is never a guarantee that someone who clicks the link will see the intended contents. When I tried the last one, I got some notice (in Italian!) that the page was not available, but I was not at all surprised. Continue to feel better. --Alan W (talk) 00:47, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Quite(w)ri(gh)(t)e)! Once you dropped that ironical contrafactual bit about your writing costively, -talking about throwing down the gauntlet! - I couldn't withstand the temptation to show you what constipated style can be!! I link to what I edit in on google books fully aware that this is not necessary for the final article, but direct evidence to you of the source page so you can check and review it. They are meant to be excised once that supervision is done. As to google books, if the page doesn't come up, you can make it do so often by replacing 'it' in the url with 'de' (German ) or 'fr'(French etc. The Web links are as useless as tits on a bull (though in these postmodernist times, that's beginning to sound archly out of whack with the tenor of the times or Zeitgeist)!Nishidani (talk) 10:14, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Appreciate the implied compliment, but in my case I meant that the right words just don't come as I need them. You never seem to have that problem. A flood of the right words, wrong words, any words you want seem to come at your bidding. I'm a bit comforted though when I see that even Hazlitt couldn't immediately call up the best words. In that he disagreed with Cobbett, who contended that the first word that comes is always the best. In my own case, I suppose I should just be content with what skills I have and put them to best use. I know (I confess immodestly) that I'm pretty good at some things, so I just do those things. And if at times some felicitous phrasing comes to mind also, so much the better.

As for the Google Books links, yes, I figured out something like what you said, and I was able to view the cited material. Always good to double-check where possible. Anyway, just as I thought, your perspective has proved very helpful, and we're moving along nicely. And as for "tits on a bull", well, yes, nowadays you never know what would-be transsexual bulls you might have offended. (Note to the Wiki-police/censors: just some private jesting on a talk page; I would never put anything like this into article space.) Hope you're recovering well from your bout of the flu, and, again, to be continued (not the flu, hopefully, but our co-editing of course). --Alan W (talk) 22:53, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

No worries. I have a foolproof fool's technique for whipping flu'. I just smoke the bastards out! Nishidani (talk) 09:09, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Interesting, Alan, to see a mention of Fives, as if it required a gloss, and as though Hazlitt's 'play(ing) it with savage intensity, dashing around the court like a madman,' were peculiar. It was called, simply, 'handball', a fixture of our intensive sports curriculum at the public school I went to as a child, which was furnished with 4 courts. One great advantage of proficiency gained by intense play on the courts was that it rendered one's fingers and palms tough enough to withstand the 'best of six' thrashings with a cane or a 'gat' (a piece of flexible wire in a tube embedded in rubber lining and then sewn up on four sides with strips of leather. One could dispense with the standard prophylactic of chalking the palms before 'copping a hiding' (caning). The usual inventiveness of boys transformed this standard punishment into a competition: a £5 prize was ponied up, a stake being won by the boy who managed to top the list as the most 'gatted' kid every term. My cousin always won, not least because he was a fine handball player.Nishidani (talk) 14:58, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Regarding GA nomination… The GA process has a few steps, but most of them are usually done by a bot. So a brief description of it would be as follows:

1. Whoever wants to act as nominator adds {{subst:GAN|subtopic=Language and literature}} to the top of the article's talk page
2. The bot picks up the edit and adds it to the list of nominated articles at WP:GAN
3. Someone decides to review the article and creates a review subpage (will be at Talk:William_Hazlitt/GA1)
4. The reviewer goes through the article evaluating it against the GA criteria and leaves pass/fail status as well as other review comments
5. The nominator then has (typically) 7 days to address the issues identified by the reviewer (but the reviewer has significant latitude to exceed the 7 days suggested timeframe)
6. Once all issues have been addressed (in the reviewer's opinion), the article is passed and listed as a GA

The two big pain points of the GA process are that waiting for someone to review the article can take several months, and since anyone can, and often do, review GA nominees your odds of getting a decent review are not optimal (and while you can renominate immediately, you then face a new months-long wait for a review). And the big downside to the GA process is that the criteria are very lax such that even a good review that sticks to just the criteria will not give you a lot of useful feedback. For example, I'd guesstimate that William Hazlitt would be passed essentially as is by something like 3 of every 4 reviewers, with only token review comments.

What I was suggesting, then, was that, since it's sort of expected that an article pass through GA and PR before being nominated as a FA, one of you could nominate it for GA and I could step in to do the review (thus avoiding the waiting) and make it a thorough review (thus avoiding the minimal review problem) that would hopefully be of some use in improving the article. Since I haven't edited the article I should be free of any conflict of interest that would otherwise have prevented me from doing the review. Once I'd done the review I'd probably have to be considered too involved to be considered uninvolved at FA, and so once the GA nom was completed I'd be free to help out directly. A sort of "two birds with one stone" approach on the road to FA, in other words. --Xover (talk) 18:33, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for that clarification, Xover. We're still in the early stages of working it over, which should take some time, mainly. Regards Nishidani (talk) 21:24, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, thanks, Xover, and for the offer of help when we get to the GA stage. This'll take a while, though.

Nish: once again you have dug up more books that I'll want to read eventually. Good to see that one of our contemporaries appreciates Hazlitt's critique of Malthus, which seems to me to have been way ahead of its time. Once again, in The Spirit of the Age, Hazlitt presents a more balanced view, allowing that Malthus performed a useful service in noting, contrary to the prevailing earlier view, that population increase was not always an unmitigated blessing; but he still sees right through Malthus's "sycophancy", and regrets that Malthus did not address the problem more fairly. Also, I see that now it's not only we two who are going over this article but now Carbon Caryatid has joined in. Hazlitt certainly deserves the attention.

Oh, and that about Hazlitt's handball playing, it appears that he mostly played a variant where racquets were used. But he was for a time an avid follower of fives and wrote (in Grayling's words) an "affectionate obituary" of the celebrated player John Cavanagh for The Examiner, later added to his essay "The Indian Jugglers". Also amusing to hear your recollections of your education and recreation of those days, including the sadistic recreation of the schoolmasters at the boys' expense. It was also just "handball" in this country in my own early years, presumably descended from the earlier "fives". --Alan W (talk)

The schoolmasters weren't sadistic, save for 2, a headmaster, and one who was a stamp thief. The others were just trying to rein in the wild spirits of tough kids, who got maids pregnant, stole wine reserved for saying mass, tried to hang an umpire who'd made a wrong call in a football match, etc.etc. No one I recall of hundreds, ever held the beatings against them: most of them were for known infringements of the rules. The college was dominated by a sense of fair play, and the poor and rich mingled as equals: snobbery or ethnic and class discrimination unknown. Now it is a high-price college for the sons of doctors and lawyers, who would sue or litigate at the slightest complaint from their offspring. In sport we were unbeatable: the modern record is mediocre. A different culture, and I feel lucky to have gone there.Nishidani (talk) 09:10, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying—and for shining a spotlight on a vanished era, in a country and culture remote from my own (but not so remote that I can't feel some connection or appreciate what you've recounted). I too feel, though there were many differences, that I am old enough to have been far better educated than most of the young folk growing up today, except maybe some of those with unlimited reserves of family money to pay the outrageous sums that a good education costs these days. --Alan W (talk) 02:34, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Your latest round of edits is fine, though at times a bit challenging. My major quibble is that you, via Barker, misread Hazlitt's reading of Wordsworth's poetry with respect to the poet's "egotism". Egotism was a good thing when it clothed the landscape, etc., with the poet's thoughts and feelings. This actually enabled Wordsworth to create a new kind of poetry, in Hazlitt's view. It was when the egotism led to smug moralizing, preaching, and so on that Hazlitt drew the line. Here again, Bromwich's account of Hazlitt on The Excursion is splendid, more than 26 pages on this topic alone.

Again, you remind me of the Hazlitt material I have not yet read. Metaphysical Hazlitt sits on my shelves, as yet unread, but I'll get to it one of these days. Regards, Alan W (talk) 17:43, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Noted! I'm a relative neophyte there, Alan, and I only hope my amateurish forays are not creating more problems than are inevitable when I barge around that page. Actually, Barker is quite evenhanded, and also cites the positive evaluation by Hazlitt of W's 'depth of feeling' which gives to every object an almost preternatural and preterhuman interest'. I edit always wary of word counts in a long article like that, so I didn't gloss everything, esp. since she is a Wordsworthian, not a Hazlitt specialist like the scholars who form the basic sourcing. If I was over-selective in representing her, mea maxima culpa. Hack away at any deadwood I might inadvertently offload, and by all means do so without feeling obliged to drop me an explanation when or if it seems a sheer misreading. Cheers.Nishidani (talk) 18:18, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

It's not that I feel I have to explain all my edits, I have benefited from the dialogs that have resulted. As I just did now. So you were quoting Barker out of context in a way that was misleading. And now my overhasty negative view of Barker has been revised, and there is yet another book I would like to read eventually. My feelings about Wordsworth are very much in line with Hazlitt's, and whatever of Wordsworth's poems he loved, I tend to love, plus The Prelude, which of course he couldn't have known. A shame you acquired one of those "forced on me in school" dislikes at an early age. Regards, Alan W (talk) 22:20, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

One reads to overcome a prejudice (enlarging one's sphere of empathies), and for pleasure. I originally thought everything in the canon had to be read, which contradicted the principle of pleasure, while advancing the demolition of adventitious biases. Eventually, I decided pleasure must dictate the terms of taste: thus, though with a guilty conscience, I suspended the dutiful reading of masterpieces in the canon like Moby Dick and Don Quixote(till I was in my forties) because I couldn't get past the first few pages or chapters. Then, the right moment hit for each, and I read them both with astonishment. I hated Latin, but learnt it. It took 3 decades for my prejudice against the imperial tongue to wilt and allow me to reread it with joy. Taking instinctively to Hopkins in early adolescence, I dithered pugnaciously over Tennyson, until I realized he was to be read by ear, and pounced at his works. I have yet to experience this quite with Shelley, but I can read Wordsworth in large patches with enjoyment. John Ashberry seems to me 99% fraud, the 1% being Daffy Duck In Hollywood, idem Jorie Graham. No amount of explication de texte by Helen Vendler can budge my boredom there, and in so many other writers hailed as indispensable. So, to politely undermine your compliment elsewhere, I'm not well read. But if I do read, I try to read minutely to jemmy the ark and set forth the arcana whose hidden magic gives me the frisson that, in many acclaimed masterpieces, I can't feel. (These lacunae don't embarrass me!) Nishidani (talk) 11:49, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

You are too self-deprecating! To me it's clear that you are far better read than most. That doesn't mean you have to like all you have read. So much does come down to personal taste. Without commenting on every writer you mention, I'll just say now that, although I never looked at Ashberry the way you do, still, whatever I did read by him (and I hardly remember now) left me cold, and I don't recall anything about it, so I never went back to him. In my case, it was Don Quixote and Moby-Dick that opened magical doors for me in my adolescence. Individual differences. Part of what makes life interesting, I suppose. Regards, Alan W (talk) 07:53, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Transferred the following from the Hazlitt talk page: Thank you for digging up all those recent sources of which I was unaware. I hope to read all or most of them sooner or later. Quite a bit of work done on Hazlitt lately. Heartening, but also frustrating that none of my local libraries (at least those to which I have access to for withdrawing books for home reading) have at all kept up with this flood. I suspect it's better in the U.K., but even then maybe only in some academic libraries. I used to have access to some of the best local academic libraries, but since I abandoned my (brief) academic career (yes, another distinct career), those privileges ended some time ago. I might just want to purchase some of those that look the best to me. Burley, Gilmartin, Ley, Whelan, Dart—I had no idea! All highly intriguing to me. Good night (wee hours of the morning, actually, over here). --Alan W (talk) 08:04, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't think we should be hampered by lack of complete access to all the recent critical literature, or feel doomed to bide our time until we have thoroughly devoured their contents. Publish or perish is the sword of Damocles hanging over those who make a professional career in literature. And it gets out of hand: I remember noting to myself that the secondary literature on Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, whose works I was reading in sequence at the time, was 'enriched' yearly by several or a baker's dozen of sizable tomes, each in turn referring to 'new research' as specialists took up hints and, in Hamlet's words, giving the impression of 'thinking too precisely on th' event' so that each quartered thought, though contained some minor lustre of wisdom, often was lost in the finicky dross of feckless equivocation, simply to expand a note or afterthought into an essay for inclusion into a book. A simple calculation told me that simply to keep up with the billowing tide of commentary (50-100 books/articles per decades) one would have to renounce primary source reading, a bit like throwing up the opportunity to spend an evening at the Globe where Shakespeare's latest was being played in order to listen to the tavern gossip about him on the other side of town. Notes & Queries handled this better in the 19th century. You have a command of the opera omnia and the secondary literature of lasting importance, and that should be the beacon that guides us over the wash of googled tidbits. And now to Sunday lunch!Nishidani (talk) 11:10, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more about the state of academic publication in general. I was just referring to my own interest in reading some of the better material recently published on Hazlitt. I do not, certainly, intend to postpone working on Misplaced Pages articles until I've digested all the secondary sources there are on a given topic. I agree, they multiply faster than they can be read. It's a hopeless task when approached that way. I hope you enjoyed your lunch. --Alan W (talk) 16:27, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

I was wondering if you'd go back and notice that Austin/Austen slip, and you did. What you didn't realize is that you wrote "synthetic" for "syncretic" in that quote from Armitage, although as it turned out I cut out some of that passage anyway. You can always use it in the Liber Amoris article if you think it's worth it. Though, in my view, I'm not even sure I know what Armitage is talking about. Hazlitt "intuitive" rather than "syncretic"? What the hell is that supposed to mean, anyway? To me, it's words, words, words. Or, to change the metaphor and play, sound and fury, signifying nothing. --Alan W (talk) 22:58, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Meant to look into this before out of curiosity, but, although I haven't read a note or query therein in many years, I'm pleased to see that Notes & Queries is still around. Civilization is not dead yet. --Alan W (talk) 05:57, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

For the record

Apropos Sir Joseph commenting on the indefinite block on User:Bad Dryer.

I expect this will be removed, but since you also, the third person here, keep asserting falsehoods in my regard I would note, as a European, that you are wrong in asserting:

There is no such thing as consensual sex with a 15 year old

repeating the claim that at 15 you can have consensual sex with an adult is ludicrous.

See to the contrary Ages of consent in Europe

Personally, I think sex before 18 is deeply misguided (which makes me wildly out of touch with contemporary attitudes), and that adults who sleep with anyone under that age are indulging in an exploitation of a power advantage that is profoundly detrimental to the teenager, totally unacceptable and worthy of sanction. You won't believe this, of course.Nishidani (talk) 10:28, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

• Can I just say that I think it's foolish to get sucked into some kind of content or "what he said" discussion on the talk page of a blocked editor? Drmies (talk) 20:52, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

I wrote when that matter was under appeal, and 3 editors were and one still is, repeating an injurious slur about what they take/took to be my personal beliefs. But you are quite right. I'll archive this manually ASAP. Thanks for the advice.Nishidani (talk) 21:04, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

About numbers in the Israeli-Palestinian list

Please see WP:NUMERAL. In general, 1-9 should be spelled one-nine, numbers up to nine can be spelled both ways (17 or seventeen). Thanks.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 20:35, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Western Wall

My revert was about the "boycott" by Jews about prayer at the wall. He already has that in there in another section. He just wants to put that in there again. I don't think my revert caught anything about transgender prayer. Sir Joseph 18:28, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Nish, it seems this is a case of Kay Long vs. Yeshayahu Leibowitz. Chesdovi (talk) 19:33, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Sir Joe. It takes some time to work up material for an edit. No time to erase it from the page. I can see some things I would question in Chesdovi's edit, but I think that, once done, the right thing is to discuss this on the talk page. or trim or offer suggestions. It is laziness to peremptorily eject material with nothing more than a vague edit summary. I respect content contributors, which is what C is. Chesdovi and I have disagreed very frequently, by the way, but we manage to get on quite well, because, I think, we try to look at each other's work on its merits and not personally. Nishidani (talk) 20:05, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

BTW, I'm not sure if you saw my thing on DH, but why would that not be a RS? If half of CD's edits are RS, certainly DH should be a RS. It is sourced to R' Eli Mansour, a respected rabbi in Brooklyn, NY. Regardless, the edit I linked to from DH was sourced ultimately to R' Moshe Feinstein the greatest posek in the late 20th century America who all Jews respected, you should read his obit in the NY Times if you have the chance, and the DH also quoted Maimonides as well. Regardless if the sources say the Wall is sanctity or not, the fact that the Wall is a synagogue means that the wall is now a sanctified. So it is indeed POV to say the Wall is not a sanctified place.Sir Joseph 17:26, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Kamm again, after all these years

Kamm's was one of the first articles I ever edited on Misplaced Pages. Since then, I've largely heeded Nableezy's advice (not to me personally - and sorry I can't find the diff) that it is better not to edit articles on people whom one despises. Much more uplifting, and better for your health. Plus it's the articles on good people that usually need the work. Thankfully, Kamm retreated behind a Murdoch paywall, but he recently popped out again, and got what he deserved here, especially in the comments. It seems that Kamm can't stop lying:

"Ex-Hedge Fund manager, now Murdoch leader writer Oliver Kamm published a disgusting and blatant lie and smear about me ... Usually it is best to ignore the lies of far right Murdoch employee Oliver Kamm, but ..."

--NSH001 (talk) 14:36, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Well, I don't 'despise' Kamm. I don't really read that kind of 'stuff', and bundle journalists and POV warriors in the commentariat (Steven Plaut, Pamela Geller, or many of the mechanical ranters at CounterPunch, etc. come to mind) who don't appear to visit archives and libraries, or hold off till they have thoroughly grasped the history of the subjects they deal with. I do read a good deal of material from writers and journalists whose POV I find distasteful, or whose POV I generally share (several at Counterpunch), who do teach me something because they happen to either know things I missed, or articulate lucidly an important interpretation. Rather than disgust, that kind of publicist for causes just bores the living daylights out of me if I persist past the first para. As to health, I'm sufficiently old not to care about petty things like extending one's mortality:) (That last remark was inspired by hearing Umberto Eco died just as Cameron sealed a victory for his bid for GB to be granted an exceptional status, thus sealing the fate of the EU by setting into gear the eventual nullification of the postwar EU social compact, in favour of predatory finance (vs. long-term infrastructural investment finance). A polymath expires as his profound reading of European culture is rendered obsolete by failing to give the speculative return that markets appreciate. Nishidani (talk) 14:59, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Did Prospect magazine, as Craig Murray claims on his blog, print on the Oliver Kamm page attacking him, the correction of what Kamm misreported? So far I have only Murray's words for it, on his blog. But if indeed there is independent proof that Kamm's remarks were officially corrected then this would be appropriate to his article. I can't see it because I am at my readers' limit for free access to that magazine.Nishidani (talk) 21:32, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Well I've just signed up for the 7 "free" articles a month. The article does now quote Murray correctly, but I can't see any formal acknowledgement that the article was corrected, let alone at Murray's request. I'll see if I can find an archive/cache version with the previous wording. --NSH002 (talk) 22:57, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Nah, no luck, but not a great surprise, I suspect they disallow external archiving for copyright reasons. Probably wouldn't be useful as an RS anyway, but it would be nice to have verification. --NSH002 (talk) 23:29, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Now that I've finally had a chance to look at Kamm's Prospect article, I'm appalled at what a pile of trash it is, and surprised that Prospect (which I've always regarded as a fairly decent publication) should print such a shoddy piece of work. But kudos to Murray for getting Prospect to correct it, as it now makes Kamm look as though he's telling the truth. --NSH001 (talk) 12:45, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Umberto Eco's funeral at Castello Sforzesco, on state television, has just ended ended. While watching I thought of all the insipid leaders written by the innumerable heads in the punditocracy, the incapacity to twig the obvious, the tedious recitation of ideas that have an instrumental end (persuasion of an 'ignorant readership')rather than any analytic cogency, and of how Eco, could hold a young class spellbound on the intricacies of palaeography or the philosophy of semiotics, delight a middle brow public that ran to dozens of millions worldwide with racy novels that melded endless allusion to erudite theories while telling a straightforward story, or talk commonsense about high problems with wit and depth comfortably combined, or exchange an infinite number of Yiddish jokes with Moni Ovadia, appraise the profound learning of a comic of the stature of Roberto Benigni, or be the first editor to introduce Woody Allen to the Italian public, or write middle brow weekly comments on virtually every topic to make a bridge between the universities of knowledge and commonsense, and of what he said off-the-cuff, with prescience because he never allowed political blowhards' rhetorical games (easily seen through by a master of the classical works on oratorical tropes) to get the better of the obvious. All of this while dutifully taking classes of students for decades, correcting exam papers, and, after many a class beaming at a bar at a day's work well done. So I looked at what he said about the invasion of Iraq, as it unfolded. Spot on. Dead right. Not original, except for the historical allusion and the inference about the foibles of losing the 'good of our natural reason' when the hounds of war are unleashed and generate Manichaean mentalities. I translated it and lost it when the computer failed to put it up. It's here. 'Si può vincere avendo torto.' L'Espresso 30 April 2003.

Eco deeply admired Misplaced Pages's project, Kamm jeers at it from the sidelines, with a contempt for (the) hoi polloi. Everything that the former wrote will stay on, which is not a proposition one would bet on for lead writers for the Times.Nishidani (talk) 16:38, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Plot Spoiler spoiling Seaman article

Hi Nishidani. I never cared much about studying WP diplomacy and its zillions of guidelines in detail, but I did grasp the spirit quite well, I think. You seem to be well-versed in this parallel universe, maybe you can help. I'm not concerned in the least that I'm doing anything wrong regarding the Seaman article, but I know that smb. stubborn, and Plot Spoiler shows all the signs of being such, can cost me a lost of (uselessly wasted) time. Do you know how to call up some "higher authority" to arbiter in this issue? I won't let go, that's for sure, but I'd rather keep the procedures as short as WP allows. Many thanks. Arminden

PS: I see you've introduced into the article the most academically written chapter it now contains, which adds a lot to its quality. However, it takes a very well-versed reader to read between the lines and notice the issues created by a high-ranking public information official with such opinions, as long as they are presented in such a smart and articulate manner. For my part, I am convinced that the far more blunt Seaman statements Plot Spoiler wants to "nineteen-eighty-four" out of existence are very much needed in a fast medium like WP. Cheers, ArmindenArminden (talk) 18:09, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

To be brief. I wouldn't worry about making an outline of your views on the arbitration page. Only respond there when admins direct a question to you, or make a remark in regard to your edits. Admins like focusxed evidence, not endless arguments, rightly so.Nishidani (talk) 11:03, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

I see it has been brought up at the appropriate admin page. When I saw the problem, I looked at the WP:COATRACK elision, and realized that, as usual, rather than studying the page and the subject, PS simply erased on, what to me appears to be, WP:IDONTLIKEITgrounds. In general, we ought to fix pages by building them constructively. Once you elide the controversies, that page just seems as wiki outlet for Seaman's official curriculum vitae, and therefore promotional hype wholly out of keeping with what we do here. I had a similar problem a few days back with the Oliver Kamm page. Blanking material is bone-lazy, a characteristic of the editor in question's drive-by cancellations, and almost invariably is a sign of an attempt to manipulate a text to the advantage of one POV. I think it is vandalistic to do this, but some experienced editors might well challenge that as an excuse to get round the 1R restriction. That is why I just restored the material once, and then spent a half an hour building onto the page: with the documentation I added, the putative coatrack material, thus contextualized, looks like an illustration of the overview. The extraordinary thing about drive-by blankers who nag away, is that they never do the obvious: do a few minutes research to see what sources, beyond those used, say. usually, they are far richer than what the contested page contains. This is the best way to handle such conflicts: it shows that the editor is challenging a blanking does so in a constructive manner.

Given Seaman's highly controversial behavior, and esp. given that he is on record as using hasbara somewhat cynically to tilt discourse on the conflict one way (he actually appears to have banned BBC journalists from covering the Al Aqsa intifada in 2003), any editor should exercise great care in not arbitrarily blanking any negative material if only to avoid giving the impression of being a meatpuppet for Seaman's own known approach to either his own or his nation's image. In any case, when things are borderline, one should exercise patience. The altae moenia Romae weren't built in a day, and neither is Misplaced Pages. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 10:12, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Nishidani, many thanks for taking so much time with this issue. The arbiter did indeed ask me to give a statement, and I did so, unfortunately (?) before reading your kind advice. Anyhow, je ne regrette rien, I have no sympathy for state-sponsored bullies, as I suppose Mr. PS might well be. Had my share of Securitate characters, and "fight them while they're small" is the one principle I came out with of that experience. Once they're fully-grown Putins or Netanyahus, it's too late.
Anyhow, you might not remember, but it's me who tried to escape the WP habit a while ago and gave the same unrequested advice to that brave young pupil of yours & Simon's (and yes, I do indulge a bit in playing with words here) - it's time to apologise for not considering the possible repercussions on others than herself. As you can see, neither her nor me did stay away from WP and WP trouble. Did you ever manage to have her pack up and travel for a while? Travelling is my middle name and professional focus, I might be of some use if she does take your advice. But that is in no way connected to today's topic. Thank you and good night, ArmindenArminden (talk) 18:27, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Don't worry about this. It's trifling. Down to a few years ago, I was hauled to arbitration every other month, by an assortment of louts and dickheads, and got banned for 2 years, and spent several spells in the wiki porridge or clink. Didn't hurt me. There's lots to do in 'gaol' - as I told lawyers twice when I was facing things like a 5 year gaol sentence, or a few days in the cooler for refusing to be intimidated by a cop, cross-interrogating him and behaving, as he complained, as if I were his equal (actually we became friends after I stood my ground, and he made a few background inquiries). Nothing like what you've faced from that hint. CheersNishidani (talk) 20:07, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Arbitration Enforcement word limits

Hi, Nishidani,
In the big pink box at the top of the page, you can see Enforcement requests and statements in response to them may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Your statement and responses comes in at over 1300 words. In the past, this word limit was not strictly enforced but it was highlighted to admins in mid-February and we are now trying to live by the rules. In general, it is better for the author to edit their words rather than have an arbitration clerk or admin do so so I hope you can get your statement (and responses) down below 600 words in the next day or so. Thank you. Liz 22:03, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

On second thought, EdJohnston requested that the complaint be closed so if this happens in the next 24 hours, don't worry about it. It's a little late to be giving you a warning. Liz 22:05, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Jeezus. I didn't know that. Apologies to all round. It just confirms my conviction I shouldn't comment in those places.Nishidani (talk) 07:34, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

WP:BLP

I note that the Editorial Board of the New York Times called Donald Trump a 'shady bombastic liar' the other day. Obviously, we as editors aren't allowed to violate BLP.Nishidani (talk) 20:25, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Notice of Neutral point of view noticeboard discussion

Hello, Nishidani. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.84.1.2 (talk) 22:14, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Notice of Admin noticeboard discussion

This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.84.1.2 (talk)

Disastrous GAR close by a new user with less than 500 edits to his/her name

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:20, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Oh, you mean this?

Misplaced Pages:ARBPIA3 <--- tell me, where is the Islamofacism article mentioned on this page? Is the Islamofacism article under sanctions? And "You are not permitted to edit here perr ARBPIA3." - Sorry, but you don't get to tell people where they can and cannot edit.--109.149.136.103 (talk) 11:28, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

By an oversight it was missing from the talk page (since fixed). Pages where Israel, Palestine the Middle East are referred or alluded to are included ('broadly construed').Nishidani (talk) 13:10, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

In any case, The New Oxford American Dictionary defines Islamofascism as “a controversial term "(Avner Falk, Islamic Terror: Conscious and Unconscious Motives,ABC-CLIO, 2008 p.122). You are contradicting a reputable dictionary definition.Nishidani (talk) 13:15, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

There is a certain 19th-century author...

Well, Nish, you seem to be involved as usual in many different things, but I have not forgotten the Hazlitt article, and I hope that you haven't either and expect to be able to find time to get back to it before too long. I haven't said anything in a while, as I was busy working up material for an addition to another Hazlitt-related article. (What else?) I have finally polished that to my satisfaction and posted it, and I would have a bit of time now to get back to working with you on those Hazlitt improvements (and so much of what you added and changed has indeed improved the article). Hope you are well. Regards, Alan W (talk) 06:00, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Dear Alan. That's been playing (dreadfully) on my conscience these last few weeks. I stopped rewriting the Hamas article because it detained me, idem anti-Zionism etc.etc. Mea culpa, me a cowboy, me a Mexican cowboy, as the phrase used to be distorted during mass by us children when dragged into the morning ritual of what we also called 'mess'. I'll get back to it as soon as I've cleaned up some final ends in the latter article, in a few days. It'll be refreshing, literature instead of fixing obvious conceptual and historical reconstructive caricatures, and there one works, at last, collegially! Cheers, pal, and my apologies for seeming to fall short on my undertaking (I hope my undertaker does a better job).Nishidani (talk) 08:37, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

I hope your undertaker finds plenty of other things to undertake for a long, long time while you are left here to continue all your earthly undertakings. I appreciate hearing back from you, and whenever you are comfortable, or perhaps I should say sufficiently uncomfortable in your uncollegial collaborations, or perhaps I should say antilaborations, and are ready for some collegiality again, I hope to be around, supposing my own undertaker leaves me alone for a while. Regards, Alan W (talk) 02:34, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

I actually have an excellent rapport with the man. He's done several of our burials, and actually asked me to help him prepare two of our deceased on separate occasions, since he couldn't rouse up his sidekick at 4 am. So, when I met him in the streets I would, on going my way, bid him:'See you later.' The phrase was greeted with horror by several bystanders, who touched their genitals to ward off the evil spirits conjured up by this normal bidding goodbye in that context, and one informed me that one never says 'ci vediamo/ci sentiamo' to a 'funeral director', because it implies one is invoking one's own premature death. Well, interesting as a piece of anthropological lore, but the word and its apotropaic superstition only strengthened my determination to treat him with the same civil rule governing all encounters - I'm a pagan and bristle at the idea of any group or profession being consigned to an outcast category- and he appreciates it. There's a wonderful poem in Roman dialect dealing with the lament of undertakers that a cholera epidemic has stopped, meaning business will be tough!Nishidani (talk) 10:53, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

You lead an interesting life over there, Nish. Never know what I will hear about next. You might remind your superstitious neighbors that "later" is a relative term. Regards, Alan W (talk) 04:18, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

You've done it again! Another interesting-looking recent book on Hazlitt and some of his contemporaries, I see, of which I had no idea. Now Milnes is another on my to-be-read list. The comparison with Kant is especially interesting in that Hazlitt is generally believed not to have rightly understood Kant, probably because he had to read him in a deficient translation. Yet their thinking intersects in fascinating ways. This is also additional justification for taking Hazlitt seriously as a philosopher. Maybe not as great as Kant, but considering all of Hazlitt's other accomplishments, well, that's not too shabby. Regards, Alan W (talk) 05:33, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

I don't think the wayback machine of memory can quite fix it but I distinctly recall René Wellek, whose erudite panache dazzled my youth, having a go at Hazlitt's views on Kant. I can't find his multi-volume work at the moment, but will look into this.Nishidani (talk) 13:47, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Found it. René Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism, 1750-1950, Vol.2 (1955) Cambridge University Press pp.195-212. Can you access that, or would you like me to make a précis? Nishidani (talk) 16:09, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Nish, but I am already somewhat acquainted with Wellek on Hazlitt, as I took copious notes on that book a few years ago, and then used some of that in Characters of Shakespear's Plays. I'm thinking that Milnes is probably enough, regarding Hazlitt and Kant compared. Remember, this is the general article on Hazlitt, not specifically on Hazlitt as philosopher. Also, I have mixed feelings about Wellek on Hazlitt. Though he was one of the first to recognize that "there is more theory in Hazlitt than is generally realized", in many ways he dismisses him too readily as an "impressionistic" critic. Only in the next couple of decades did critics really start to grasp what Hazlitt's criticism and philosophy were all about. Once again, though, in a way you probably did not realize, you helped me by bringing up Wellek. After some five years, I just now realized that, although I even quoted Wellek in what I wrote about critical responses to the Characters, I neglected to add the book to the list of References, which I just did only now. Thank you! Regards, Alan W (talk) 00:11, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

I've had some second thoughts, while relaxing over a later dinner. We might still have a use for Wellek later on, in that expansion of the "Posthumous Reputation" section I've mentioned as something I've wanted to do for some time. Wellek on Hazlitt certainly represents a notable advance in critical assessment of Hazlitt in the mid-twentieth century. Hold those thoughts! --Alan W (talk) 01:18, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Actually your first response is how I see Wellek's piece as well. I read it as indicative of a certain irritated hauter by a great critic still prey to the Roman Jakobson-propelled idea that reading literature could be reduced to a science, tinged with a certain fastidious envy for an intuitive bright spark whose work defied systemization. The essay is a curious one - starting with a vigorous professorial prosecution of the case for frivolous subjectivity and then suddenly doing a volte-face to own up that, the case for the prosecution, though sound, doesn't quite convince its drafter, who then goes on to plead for the accused he himself has somewhat hastily indicted. It read like a semi-autobiographical short story of the critic broad enough in his sympathy, and sensitive enough to the odour of prejudice, to realize that he was throwing the babe out with the barfwater he'd just got off his erudite chest.:)Nishidani (talk) 15:20, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Well, and amusingly, put. I agree, and I'm certainly not abandoning my first response. I will add that, yes, Hazlitt was "impressionistic" in a way, but that way has to be understood as Hazlitt himself explained it, with one's impressions being balanced by careful and thoughtful reading and application of judgment. "Frivolous subjectivity" is absolutely not what Hazlitt's "intuitive" approach was about, though, yes, that seems to be the way Wellek took it. Wellek, as "scientific" critic, didn't seem to understand how Hazlitt was not being unscientific, he rather believed in the value of bringing one's whole person to bear on the reading of a literary work. Not that you said so, but my second and first thoughts are not contradictory. One could write a whole article just on critical attitudes toward Hazlitt, and something might be said about some key figures who were wrong-headed about Hazlitt over the years. I think many have been uncomfortable because he did not answer to their idea of a professional critic, who should be stuffy, pedantic, and dictatorial, and maybe arrogantly dismissive, like T.S. Eliot, who asserted that Hazlitt did not have a very interesting mind. Can you believe that? It was certainly as interesting a mind in its way as Eliot's own. Regards, Alan W (talk) 03:46, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. Eliot did not have an interesting mind: he had a very complex nature, what the ancients called 'soul', and for a few brief and intense periods, wrote the few great poems we all have by heart out of that travailed state. His decision to be a 'great critic' sealed his poetry, since the former required a polished set of dogmatic prejudices that were inimical to the creative chaos that inspired his poetry. He needed Pound because P's wildness was what he had forsaken, but, for poetry P had that ability to rein in to cogent form the demons Eliot came out with. Both ended up victims of their own worse traits - Eliot with his masque of dyed-in-the-wool dessicated 'traditionalism' and Pound with his passions run to seed in ranting fascism.Nishidani (talk) 10:31, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Spot-on, and beautifully expressed, as usual. Whew, ridiculously late over here, so good night! --Alan W (talk) 07:23, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Accusation of bad faith

Please WP:AGF and do not accuse other editors of lying, as here: I realized today that I was still smarting from this unwarranted attack . E.M.Gregory (talk) 18:20, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

That's not an accusation of lying. It is an observation that you repeatedly said an article could be improved by sourcing. I happen to know it can't but invited you to live up to your belief and prove by editing that it was capable of amelioration. You didn't follow through. That's not 'lying'. It's just not following through on an assertion that, in lieu of evidence, struck, and still strikes, me as hollow. The observation was warranted and a challenge to improve an article is not an attack.Nishidani (talk) 18:27, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Lydda and Ramle

Kindly restore the longstanding version to 1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, which you changed while discussion was ongoing (for all of 3 days). When there's an RfC we keep the longstanding version in the article until a clear consensus is reached. This has been tested at AE and people got topic banned for what you just did. If you do not restore the version that has been there for years, I will have to report you. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 17:00, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Well, 5 editors over some days by comment or reverts said that your objection to the revised edit didn't stand examination. Nothing you said there makes much sense policy wise, it is, in my view, sheer wikilawyering against what is obviously an WP:NPOV obligation to register the Palestinian term for this 'exodus' as attested by numerous sources.

Notwithstanding the talk page evidence that you were alone in objecting to the edit, you kept reverting (i.e. edit-warring against a 5 to 1 talk page/edit consensus), made a final revert simultaneously (04:12, 28 March 2016‎ ) as you set up an RfC (04:12, 28 March 2016‎ ). I gather what you were doing was ignoring the clear consensus of 5 editors against your own opinion to 'lock in' your preferred version, which looks to me like trying to game the system.

You make a technical issue here of this, blaming me. For three days this was thrashed out in a wall of text, and you gained zero support. Now I see you are meditating an AE ban for me as well. In sum (a) for 3 days you alone challenged what 5 editors saw as a reasonable edit; (b) you made one last revert and immediately tried to lock it in to the text you prefer by opening an RfCF and (c) you then threaten to take me to AE if I don't respect this gamesmanship. This all strikes me as looking at the rulebook's minutiae to get one's way, while stonewalling in an uncollegial fashion, and, the final gambit, once more to use some scrap of theory to get me, as you have often tried in the past, banned as bad for wikipedia. I go by consensus and what my betters, in administration, advise. And another thing. I actually don't sit round hairsplitting and opinionizing: I spend a lot of time actually gathering sources, only to have them dismissing by editors who do not appear to actually be interested in working constructively, as opposed to getting rid of stuff they dislike. Compare your lazy but pointy edit this morning, which removed long standing text, which anyone who knows the subjects will recognize as factual, to my fix after Debresser rightly restored it. I.e., at 1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle you are arguing long standing text can't be tampered with, and threaten AE action if anyone contradicts you. Simultaneously you remove longstanding text at Israelites. Go figure. Nishidani (talk) 17:50, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict)The discussion was open for all of 3 days, on a holiday weekend. It's true that I reverted once per BRD and one driveby revert by an editor that has still not participated in the discussion, which I will also bring up at the appropriate board if this comes to that. There is plenty of precedent that the longstanding version remains in the article, both per BRD and when an RfC is open. The only uncollegial thing here is you people abusing your numbers advantage to push something (stupidly, I must add, since if the discussion had gone on for a reasonable amount of time I would not have reverted something a new consensus would have formed around, but you guys just couldn't wait). Anyway, I don't understand your answer above. Are you saying "report me" or "I'm waiting for more opinions"? No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 17:55, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Israelites - WP:V - Any material that needs a source but does not have one may be removed. These two cases are not the same, as I'm fairly sure you know. Not to mention that what I removed was incorrect, which is probably why it wasn't sourced. Anyway, I'm not interested in chitchat and back and forth. Can you please tell me explicitly if you prefer to restore the longstanding version or if I should report you? No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 17:59, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

(A)Israelites - WP:V Any material that needs a source but does not have one may be removed

Yeah sure. Construed thus, out of best practice context (see below) this would mean operatively that 98% of sentences in Misplaced Pages can be removed at whim, if the deleter can't see a ref after the full stop. No serious editor construes it that way.

It didn't need a source. All removalism like that shows is either (a) dislike (b) dislike of making a minimal effort to ascertain the facts or (c) sheer otiose ignorance of the subject matter, because what was removed is one of the most widely know facts about the meaning of that Greek word which lies behind all Western language terms for the Jews. Don't tell me you have never read the article Jews where exactly the same statement is made:'in origin the term for a member of the tribe of Judah or the people of the kingdom of Judah.' Utterly uncontroversial, immediately verifiable for anyone who doesn't automatically hit the delete button for stuff (s)he dislikes on a page, by simply googling for 5 seconds "ioudaios+people of judah" =54,000 ghits. Why didn't you google? Why didn't you post a citation needed tag as advised? why didn't you notify the talk page? No need to answer.

This is the context whose options for the nescient you studiously ignored.

Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source. Whether and how quickly material should be initially removed for not having an inline citation to a reliable source depends on the material and the overall state of the article. In some cases, editors may object if you remove material without giving them time to provide references; consider adding a citation needed tag as an interim step. When tagging or removing material for lacking an inline citation, please state your concern that it may not be possible to find a published reliable source for the content, and therefore it may not be verifiable. If you think the material is verifiable, you are encouraged to provide an inline citation yourself before considering whether to remove or tag it.

(B)'you people abusing your numbers advantage to push something'. 'You guys'.

Compare this other page, where you and another editor who never edit there turn up to make a consensus against me. I didn't whine or get my knickers into a twist. I saw a consensus for removal, and dropped it in deference to that fact.

So, twice you are complaining about what you discern in others as a pattern of behavior you yourself could be said to avail yourself of. (a) One mustn't tamper with long-standing text (except when it suits you, and you can find a policy excuse); (b)'you guys have the numbers', it's unfair (except when you yourself find you have a numerical superiority). There is no cogency in your approach to editing.Nishidani (talk) 19:18, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Since you're now casting aspersions on my edits, I feel obliged to respond. I do edit that page, I just don't edit with as much quantity as you. In addition, I never said it can't be included, I just said wait until it happens before trying to put it in. And if you go through the archives, I have posted there before that property confiscation is not violent incidents, and IIRC, it was you who responded that it was, so clearly you know I edit on that page. You don't own the page, if I choose not to edit that does not mean I am never allowed to edit that page in the future. You don't WP:OWN the page. Sir Joseph 19:56, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

I don't cast aspersions. Yes, you tweaked the page 10 times in 3 months - my memory lapse. My point is that if a consensus exists, I don't bitch about it and murmur about some ganglike opposition- No one knows who has what on her watchlist, I actually do not mind being a minority of one - because it tells me that many editors who often agree with me on edits do not automatically show up and 'vote', a guarantee that people in here disdain groupthink. Nishidani (talk) 20:40, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Two people disagreeing with you is not groupthink. Sir Joseph 20:45, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Learn how to read, precisely and fairly.Nishidani (talk) 11:04, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Got it, sometimes my brain reads faster than my eyes. Sir Joseph 13:31, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Reference errors on 28 March

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

• On the William Hazlitt page, your edit caused a cite error (help). (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:30, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

I'll fix this, Nish. I see you added plenty to the Hazlitt article today. Of course it needs better integration, clean-up, the usual, which I'll take care of. You've dug up more great sources. In fact, you are modernizing Dr. Johnson's observation that "a man will turn over half a library to make one book": in the digital universe, you're turning over half the Internet to make one Misplaced Pages article! --Alan W (talk) 04:20, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Fixed, and the ghastly blood-red error message has now gone away. You may now delete the above notice if you wish. Good night! --Alan W (talk) 06:23, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, pal. I'm just throwing stuff in for you to pass through the sieve and winnow chaff from gleanable goods. Would have done more, but as usual, got the usual time wasting drivel thrown my way elsewhere. Will add more today. Cheers (and thanks for the Johnsonian remark: had read that somewhere and forgotten it.) Nishidani (talk) 11:01, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Buy the whey, Alan, re Isabella Bridgwater. Wasn't there some rumour that their marriage was undermined by a tension between her and Hazlitt's son? Hazlitt doted on the son, and in turn the young man resented his new wife, etc.?Nishidani (talk) 13:15, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

On reading 'Where he finds it applicable, Hazlitt brings his subjects together in pairs, setting off one against the other.' Lamb had noted that Hazlitt stands in the tradition of Plutarch, Montaigne et al., and this set me to wondering whether a secondary source links the pairing of portraits is grounded in Plutarch, whose Lives use precisely this same structure, pairing a Latin and a Greek figure. Can't find one yet.Nishidani (talk) 15:22, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Interesting observation, that about Plutarch. If I find such a source, I'll see if we can use it. But I wonder how far we can go that way. Hazlitt might have even thought that that kind of pairing as having come from Plutarch was obvious, since at that time, as you well know, anyone who had much of an eduction had a Classical education and would have known at least some Plutarch.

As for today's contributions, which I've looked through but haven't touched yet, I do think you've gone a bit too far into detail in some places. I did read Heller, and found reason to bring her into what I did in Characters of Shakespear's Plays. Even there, I didn't think all that much detail was necessary. As for that about Isabella Bridgwater Hazlitt, Stanley Jones did the definitive scholarly work there, which was later also used by Wu. Since I have both books handy, easy enough for me to straighten that out a bit, and, interesting fact, apart from confirmation of the £300 annuity, is that Isabella's first husband was Chief Justice of Grenada, having, yes, started out as a barrister, and he was also a planter. And yes, Wu confirms that about tensions between Isabella and Hazlitt's son, who resented her entrance into the family, which certainly seems to have contributed to the collapse of Hazlitt's second marriage. All that is in sources already in the References, and I don't think we need to add more sources to provide support for it. Now on to straightening all this out. --Alan W (talk) 03:38, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Looking at that about Hazlitt's attitude toward Shakespeare's plays as best experienced in the "closet", his attitude is more complex than that (his friend Lamb was the one who held the simpler view, and I suspect they debated about that frequently over the years). I think I already covered it well enough in what I wrote about Characters, which is Wikilinked. Hazlitt, after all, did think some of the plays eminently suitable for the stage, and he immensely admired some performers in Shakespearean roles, like Sarah Siddons and Edmund Kean. Best not to risk giving a one-sided view here. Let the reader click the link and see what is in the more detailed article devoted to that book. --Alan W (talk) 03:55, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

The Sampson quote is good. (Very well written, and I think I see the influence of Hazlitt's style on his, by the way.) In fact I think what you came up with is superior to what I put in from Wardle, and I do believe I will just substitute it. (We can't let this essay get too bloated, although I know I do not exactly tend toward brevity myself, so here I am the pot calling the kettle black.) --Alan W (talk) 03:59, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

That's fine Alan. As I said, I'm just reading and throwing in suggestions, and fully expect that you will know what to use, if any, and what to chuck out. I don't even check your adjustments, by reading the diff history, since I trust your judgement to make the right call. Have a funeral today, unfortunately not my own, but will try to do more on this, and start pushing through to the end of my top-to-bottom review, from tomorrow onwards. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 08:04, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

You really have absorbed Hazlitt thoroughly, Nish. Talk about the "disinterestedness of the human mind"! You are as concerned about providing work for your undertaker friend as you are about your own survival. Then again, you speak as if you would simply attend your funeral, then report back. I'd be interested to hear how that turned out. For my part, I am frankly glad to have a breather, as there are some non-Wiki things I want to attend to now. Regards, Alan W (talk) 03:52, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Hazlitt, like Nietzsche, is a very difficult thinker to synthesize. I was looking at the French section of the European tour, and thinking of the contradictory things he made re the French. Nietzsche admired Emerson as intensely as he despised John Stuart Mill. I don't know how deeply Emerson was read in Hazlitt, but they share great similarities in background and style, and reading of Hazlitt's remarks on the French one is reminded on Emerson. I am thinking in particular of E's apophthegm:'We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them.' Hazlitt at times attacks precisely the perceived superficiality of the French, for what he considers their reductive domestication, along with all the tidy household sweeping out of useless clutter, of philosophy to witty conversation. He upbraids this as leading to a 'euthanasia of thought'. But then his deep attachment to Rousseau speaks the obverse of this, for in Rousseau he loved the twinning of philosophical critic and imaginative writer, for the simple reason that by nature he was drawn to both speculative thinking and literature. He recognized that philosophy risked losing itself in abstraction as the art of witty conversation among the habitués of the French salons dwindled its cogency by flitting too thickly into details and contexts. Like the German romantic thinkers he strove to find some synthesis or common ground, an interface between pure thinking and practical experience of the world. His criticisms of the French therefore reflect the Anglo-Scottish enlightenment's emphasis on the empirical, while his appreciation of them, in other contexts, betrays an admiration for that quickness of analytic sensibility that, on one level, could cut to the quick of the real forces underlying society, to the logic of power. In this sense his ambivalence in his at times contradictory reflections on 'French character' mediates his own struggle within the tradition of English letters, and in a sense his stylistic verve is the product of an empiricist's amendment of continental 'wit' in order to better argue against the rationalizing detachment of his own country's politically conservative ethos. This is WP:OR of course, but if you can come up with something that bears on this from your deep familiarity with the primary and secondary literature, it might held the introduction of a sentence or two that clarifies what is an evident tension in Hazlitt.Nishidani (talk) 14:00, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

See the chapter on 'Hazlitt and the French: A Jacobin Profile' in Seamus Deane, The French Revolution and Enlightenment in England, 1789-1832, Harvard University Press, 1988 pp.130-157,

Funerals mean churches, which are not bad places to lose oneself in the kind of speculation above, if only to relieve the tedium of ritual chants that invariably have me thinking I must adopt a proper respect for some tribal world's arcane proprieties which I have stumbled upon as a bystander. The dear fellow, laid out, looked more alive, paradoxically, than ill-health allowed him in these last years. It was however nicely done, given circumstances. The bereaved are as poor as church mice, and most of the time was spent in quiet whip-arounds and discreet negotiations to pony up funds for the family to tide them over the next few months. A coronet of orange gerbera was the only symbol - by common accord, all monies were better used to provide for the living, rather than garland with an evanescent flash of colour the dark soil of the deceased's bare plot, provided by the municipality in a cemetery corner for the destitute. A simply cross, of makeshift pine boards, with a photo pinned at the intersection, was more eloquent than the pompous mausolea that dot this country. Nishidani (talk) 14:00, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Very interesting musings on Hazlitt, Emerson, Nietzsche, et al. I think you've caught nicely Hazlitt's ambivalence about the "French character". I'll think about adding more there. The way he keeps his mind open to new impressions not only of French but of Italian culture as expressed in his Notes of a Journey Through France and Italy (1826) is fascinating, given how narrowly focused he seems at times in what might amount to a one-sided rant. And that, by the way, is, in my opinion, one of his most unfairly neglected books. Nice to see someone reprinted it in paper just a few years ago, as I just noticed, available on Amazon.com (though digital copies are fortunately obtainable free from the usual on-line places). And speaking of books by and about Hazlitt, you no longer need to insert the URL for the Google selections from Gilmartin, as I now own a copy, thanks to your tipping me off indirectly the other day. Looking forward to reading it, along with many of the other books that have appeared recently, unnoticed by me as I have been laboring to absorb the essence of what looked like the most important studies published up until about a dozen years ago.

Good account of that funeral and related matters, conveying a picture of a world I never saw. Though I grew up among many of Italian descent, I have never set foot in Italy itself. Whew, once again getting very late in these parts. Good night! --Alan W (talk) 06:02, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Well, after I almost electrocuted myself, and the ageing, dithery cat smashed a piece of elegant heirloom porcelain, I thought I'd better hurry to the end today, because bad things come in threes, and the next in the series must be just round the corner. Sorry to be tardy, footdragging and the usual time-consuming edits, not to speak of spring gardening 'chores'. I'll get round to doing another top-to-bottom reviewa, in duke horse, and once we sort out where we go from here, will return to it with renewed concentration. Cheers Alan.Nishidani (talk) 14:42, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Along with you, to judge from much you've said, and your dithery cat, I am aging myself, getting farther along than I like to be reminded; yet I am still working full-time (by choice, as I actually like what I do, the latest of several careers). I mention this here because things have been hectic to the point of near-frenzy for me, and I have been glad to have a break from the Hazlitt article for a few days. So to me the slow pace here has been welcome. Sorry to hear of your near electrocution. But, perhaps unlike your undertaker friend, I am glad to have you still among us. Misplaced Pages, not just for the Hazlitt article, needs you too much to give you up so easily. I just took a preliminary gander at your latest changes. A few cases, in my opinion, are just differing preferences of word choice. "Crotchetiness", "grumpiness", either would probably do just fine. I have no objection to leaving "grumpiness", as I see things now. And there are other similar cases. Here and there, I think I need to restore a bit of this and that. Overall, the changes you made are fine, in one or two places condensing well what it took me too many words to say. Yes, this is good for a first pass, and we can review the whole afterward. Regards, Alan W (talk) 04:51, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Done. Good to read that fine tribute by Grayling, which I believe I read a number of years ago. A bit slapdash in its handling of details (e.g., Grayling speaks of The New Monthly Magazine as if Hazlitt had just started writing for it and as if it were some obscure publication; in fact, the New Monthly, a major periodical of the day, had been the publisher of a huge quantity of his finest writing starting nine years earlier; but never mind...), Grayling's piece is overall beautifully written and just in its assessment.

Still a lot of work left on both the lead and "Posthumous Reputation", in my opinion. As I've said before, the latter section is not only too sketchy, it is not even accurate. Hazlitt's reputation did not fall into "a small decline" and then start to reverse itself only in the late 1990s. It had had major swings upward and downward and then back upward (in restricted ways, however, not like at present) over the course of a century and a half. Some really major appreciations of Hazlitt started to appear in the Sixties and Seventies, then the momentum increased in the Eighties (Bromwich's study has yet to be surpassed, in my opinion, and that appeared in 1983). And so on. But as I write these words here, material for filling in the gaps is, as you can see, already coalescing in my mind. So we'll get there. Thanks for some great research and editing, and, well, ever onward. Once again, I have gotten a bit carried away with all this, and it is extremely late over here, so good night! --Alan W (talk) 06:49, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Antisemitism

So should that be tagged? And wasn't it me saying I was up early? Commenting on the ABBPIA bit? KB needs to be careful about his religious edits, although his userpages suggest he's an equal opportunity editor. Doug Weller talk 16:24, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

You're sleep-hungover and I'm so absent minded I left water running in my pond for 4 hours while distracted by that article, and almost killed the goldfish - poor little buggers all hunched at the bottom, close to asphyxiation, I gather, since a radical water change alters the oxygen supply.

Do you mean:'does the anti-Zionism article need an anti-Semitic tag or link at the bottom (?). If so, I have no objection, though I personally think anti-Semitism has had, for the first century of Zionism, little to do with criticism of Zionism. In the last 2 decades, there has been a parasitical use by anti-Semites of everything traditional anti-Zionists have written, and at the same time, many have followed Robert Wistrich in trying to conflate the two, with disastrous results conceptually and arguably politically (if criticism of a government's policies is intrinsically racist/anti-Semitic, then that is an open remit for that government not to fix anything, since they have a bullet-proof alibi to ignore everyone). In any case, I don't pay much attention to the cats here: the problem with these articles is the lack of comprehensive historical and synthetic construction of the topic's main themes. As to KB, he needs a strong reminder that there's no place here for bull-in-a-china-shop editing. But a lot of policy-canny editors get away with irresponsible reverts. Must check the fish.Nishidani (talk) 16:43, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Duck here almost ready to eat. I meant Antisemitism, sorry. The article on it. Doug Weller talk 17:03, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Yes, probably if only because it has a section on the Palestinian territories, though I could equally argue the other case. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Few things distract me, but if my negligence puts any animal at risk, I can't concentrate closely on anything else for a day or two. (No critical innuendo re your diet intended. I'm an omnivore, except for eating sparrows and owls in China, or whale meat in Japan). Nishidani (talk) 17:10, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Good luck with your fish. My duck was tasty. Did you have a gander at Kb's user Pages? Doug Weller talk 20:45, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

To be fair to China...

Unless you took that Fitzherbert quotation on your user page out of context (I'm not accusing you of this), then he was kind of missing the Chinese government's point. I'd bet that probably 99% of Americans and Europeans who criticize China's involvement in Tibet are totally ignorant of the historical questions, and actively claim that Tibet is and always was a separate "country" from China, which was "invaded" in 1950s. They don't actually care about human rights abuses in Tibet or the rest of China (if they did they wouldn't hone in on the "China invaded Tibet" point), and in my experience (growing up in north Dublin in the 1990s and 2000s) a lot of them are just racists looking for an excuse to bash the Chinese (or "Asians" in general, presumably including ethnic Tibetans -- I once heard of a Japanese 語学留学生 friend of mine getting rocks thrown at her by protesters shouting "Free Tibet!"). We know that European imperialists were making this claim back in the 19th century to justify cutting China up and dividing it between themselves. I sympathize with the plight of the Tibetans, but I can also kind of see why constantly being told by westerners that "China is an imperialist power that invaded Tibet" is ridiculously offensive to the majority of Chinese, given the history.

I'm Irish and was a supporter of the Greens until their leader went out of his way to invite the Chinese ambassador to a Green Party conference solely to insult him and his country by talking about shit he doesn't understand, because almost no Irish people understand it, because they don't teach it in the schools.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:08, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

And yes, I am aware of the irony of accusing someone else of missing the point when I honed in on the content of your quotation and ignored the fact that the rest of your user page is about I-P issues, and the heading you gave that quote indicates that that is why that was there as well. I basically agree with most of what you and your sources say about the I-P problem, though, so there'd be no point arguing. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:20, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

I don't care for being 'fair' to any political entity (China, Russia, America etc.). It's not a priority of governments in international affairs certainly to be fair. 99.999% of Chinese know nothing of Tibet for that matter, (the same could be said of the diaspora re Palestine.) It's quite simple: Tibet was a distinct country from 'China' culturally, linguistically, and socially. It constituted a major civilization, with a distinctive ecology, material life, social system, cultural patrimony, and distinct languages (the book titles in Tibetan literature run to, so far, 480,000 items). China, under a man who was to prove to be as genocidal socio-/psychopath, overran it. They believed that Mao's Little Red Book contained more wisdom that the Buddhist canon preserved better in Tibetan than in any other Asian language. I still haven't got over the anger I felt at the Red Guards swarming like a biblical insect plague into ancient monasteries of that of Jokhang in 1966 and the sight of ancient bronzes of Avalokiteśvara thrown off the top stories and lying smashed in the streets, or piles of medieval texts on bonfires. The invasions that secured modern Chinese suzerainty were barbaric; the administrations that followed bureaucratic nightmares; the Red Guards were illiterate thugs, and the Chinese government has pursued its Han racist nationalism there ever since, promoting ethnic cleansing of the landscape, and resource extraction. If the cost of this is ethnocide, they'll do it.Nishidani (talk) 08:31, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

You know, I agree with just about everything you just said. I just don't like it when people are deliberately antagonistic. And in that same let's change the subject -- any housekeeping you need help with? I'm looking for stuff to contribute to at the moment, and if it'll take my mind of the diacritic and coma wars (I hate ANI...) I'll even happily wade into an Israel-Palestine sitshtorm. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:20, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Nishidani

Palestine is many things. All I want to know, do you agree that Palestine is a "De-Jure State"?--Bolter21 (talk to me) 20:38, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Palestine is a state of mind, which almost no one minds about.Nishidani (talk) 17:29, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Children

• New report: Palestinian children in Israeli military detention experience violence, coerced confessions (14 April 2016), Middle East Monitor.

• Ex-Abu Ghraib Interrogator: Israelis Trained U.S. to Use "Palestinian Chair" Torture Device

Ijon Tichy (talk) 16:12, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

I.e.Brad Parker et al.,'No Way To Treat a Child: Palestinian Children in the Israeli Military Detention System,' Defense for Children International April 2016. This is evidently an anti-Semitic smear. Firstly Israel has a unique conviction rate, 99% of the indicted, which shows it only detains the guilty. (b) The guilty are a chronic plague in that area, they swarm everywhere, which is why the system has had to convict 700,000 Palestinians. That's over 10% of the population, which means you have an exceptionally high incidence of criminality among those folks. (c) Thirdly, these are not children. Of this spurious report's so-called evidence only one child in 429 cited as witnesses, was detained in an Israeli prison from 2012-2015. The rest were 12 or over, i.e., adults. 1 in 429 is statistically meaningless. It's just one slip-up in Anat Berko's proposed law. 'Shit happens', and this was a minor skidmark.(d) This is war, not a matter, therefore, of prissy human rights fussing. But even in war, civilized nations, meaning those where a lot of English is spoken, there are rules, and these things fall strictly within the remit of Military Order 1651 (e) Brad Parker is an 'Advocacy Officer, and advocacy for a cause means he's biased, and his work probably indictable as incitement. (f) all parents need do is have the mukhtar conduct a whip-around, preferably by getting the muezzin to hand over his prayer broadcast system (and give the landscape some peace:we've had to close down 59 calls to prayer at Hebron this last month to allow the settlers at Kiryat Arba an uninterrupted clear audio reception of Arutz Sheva) and pony up the US$2,580 fine for stone-throwing, which is what most of this juvenile criminal element that survives rubber-coated steel bullets and toxic inhalation of suffocation gases is caught for. From a more general philosophic perspective informed by a deeper knowledge of the region's history, these folks should thank their neighbours that they are (for the moment) still alive. As Edward Luttwak, a distinguished historian, put it in an erudite letter to the Times Literary Supplement (19 February 2016 p.6) while expressing admiration for the restraint Israel had exercised in its so called assault on Gaza, in killing just 551 children,and permanently disabling only 1,000 of the 3,374 wounded kids,'if a Palestinian state had been established in 1947 or any other time, by now it would have machine-gunned many more Palestinians than the Israelis have every killed.' They're getting kid-glove treatment compared to what history would have dealt out to them had they ruled themselves, and should be grateful for the restraint. An Amora like Simeon bar Yochai must be writhing in his grave at our restraint in these unfortunate circumstances (Talmud Sofrim 15:10). Come to think of it, in this earthquake-prone zone, something ought to be done to calm things down. Nishidani (talk) 17:17, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Great analysis Nish, very insightful. Captures the brutality, viciousness, criminality, insanity and massive hypocrisy of the colonialists.

Does WP have an article along the lines of Imprisonment and torture in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? If not, it may be a good idea to start such an article, using, among many other sources, the two sources I included above, and the sources in your comment above, and the insights/ analysis in your comment.

Ijon Tichy (talk) 13:50, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. The problem in the I/P area is not making more new articles, but improving the existing ones, which cover most things, more extensively (and of course my own views and analysis would have no place there). What really worries me is the amount of known facts and material generally existing, that never even gets into reliable secondary sources, or at least in those I examine to see if the topic is handled. In any case, we're into spring, and I intend to enjoy it. Apart from a few remaining duties, I'm thinking of taking a leaf out of your commonsensical book, and mucking about more in the non-wiki world. This was impressed on me the other day when I noted the kaleidoscopic imbrication at one focal point of my gaze of a colour mosaic of a thrush, a bee and an admiral butterfly all crossing the same point more or less simultaneously from different directions, only at different depths within the garden. See those things often enough, and reading ought to take a back seat. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 14:08, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Enjoyed reading your description of the bird, bee and butterfly. I have been enjoying the wildlife around here. And some of the cherry trees around here are already bearing delicious fruit.

You have been doing great work on WP. Keep up the good work.

• If Not Now, When? Young Jews Refuse to Stay Silent on the Occupation This Passover

• A quick tour of water and the Arab-Israeli conflict. From 2003, but appears to still be relevant today. Written by Franklin C. Spinney

Ijon Tichy (talk) 04:21, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

I've followed Frank Spinney's articles for several years, since he retired (if only because he did a sensible think and played Ulysses round the Mediterrean in a small yacht, a very sane thing to do). A lot of ex-CIA folks say interesting things afterwards! Thanks also for the other. I'll offer in exchange these all too brief remarks by a fine writer Michael Chabon, recorded at Hebron, where he had the same reaction more or less as did Mario Vargas Llosa (see Tel Rumeida page)- Naomi Zeveloff Q&A 'Michael Chabon Talks Occupation, Injustice and Literature After Visit to West Bank,' The Forward April 24, 2016. Best Nishidani (talk) 20:03, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Administrators' noticeboard

There is currently a discussion at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.

I tend to yawn in the mornings. Today, I have a technical reason to do so.Nishidani (talk) 08:31, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Talk:Korean influence on Japanese culture

Hi Nishidani. I realize there are particular considerations about source quality in these articles on influences between countries. Without weighing in on the content dispute on the above page about the Kang source, I want you to reconsider how you're interacting with TH1980 on the talk page here, because your responses are needlessly aggressive. You've patronized them by saying they should have realized something was stupid (in a topic area that is somewhat complicated and nuanced), and told them they know nothing about the topic-- that's the sort of stuff that drives people away from articles and from this project, and not just this editor but other folks who come across this talk page and subsequently want nothing to do with it. If you're concerned with the sources or edits that are being made, that's fine, but you can say so without commenting on anybody's comprehension or making other personal remarks. I, JethroBT 12:57, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

True, but how much of my editing time has to be spent in charitable wiping up of incompetent crap placed into articles by people who know nothing of the subjects they edit, but only have one big idea, which is repeated in endless variations, I.e. here, that everything Japanese is Korean? Scholarship is about hermeneutic diversity, not monomania. I've spent, if you examine the talk pages, an inordinate amount of time explaining why the said editor and the person he tagteams with, simply repeatedly screw up on these articles. And I've mostly been polite. But there's a fucking limit. He shouldn't be editing there, and I wouldn't either, except for the fact that several editors call me in when things are at an impasse to resolve disagreements, and it invariably means hours looking up sources these disruptive editors fail to consult (I assume because they deal broadly with the specifics of a topic issue, and do not beat an ideological nationalist line).Nishidani (talk) 15:01, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

I appreciate that you engage in the hard work of resolving disagreements here; it can be really draining, speaking from experience. And I did notice you've been more polite before (like in this discussion), but there isn't a limit. And by that, I don't mean you need to be saccharine-sweet to everyone, and I don't mean you shouldn't be frustrated. But it's not appropriate to engage with people that way (just as it's not appropriate to tagteam / repeatedly ignore policy-related concerns about sources, if that is what is going on). There are other ways of dealing with it. Stick to talking about the problems with the sources and policy, and not about them. If you feel like they shouldn't be editing there, that sort of thing needs to go to ANI, not to be fought over on an article talk page. I understand you might be loath to go there, but condescension and personalizing comments are not helping either of you, even if they are made in an effort to improve the article. I, JethroBT 21:27, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

You're dead right, I get pissed off at times and shouldn't. I refuse as a rule to have recourse to AE/AI except in very exceptional circumstances. My beef with editors like User:TH1980, apart from the tagteaming lurk, is that they persist in not learning from what other editors have told them. He never formats his links properly -often neglects to provide a page no., and a link to it, and hunts monocularly for one theme, a Korean presence in Japanese culture. Now I think the peninsular impact of 'Korea' on the formation of the Japanese polity and civilization was profound: but it wasn't, at that germinal time in the dawn of Japanese history ethnonational 'Korean', and it was part also of sinifying effects and influences on that region. I know very well, that Japanese scholarship particularly down to the 70s, and the attitude is still there, felt hostile to this, and tried to spin the 'debt' out of view. But while this is still alive, scholarship tends not to inflect its research with the ballyhoo of Japanese-Korean cultural point-scoring. That's playing the cultural one-upmanship game, and TH1980 is thoroughly caught up in it. When he read that extraordinary claim that modern Japanese publishing was indebted to a technology from Korea, he should have done what any sensible person does with extraordinary claims. Cast about to study the point. Had he done so, he would have realized what people who are familiar with Edo know, - and it's very basic knowledge -that its print culture was basically woodblock, not movable metal type, and having absorbed that, reconsidered his source as a possible POV drumbeat. Still, point taken. Best. Nishidani (talk) 12:43, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

I still think this is a pattern of problematic editing. It is obligatory for editors to observe WP:NPOV, and not merely push a particular POV while carelessly ignoring alternative sources that may contradict what you believe. User:TH1980 has been told several times not to indulge in this, and he persists, notwithstanding the fact his source was mediocre, and it misrepresented known complexities and facts. E.g.

• his latest edit

Again this witting POV pushing required other editors to step in and add the background he refuses to examine, wasting their time (I lost 20 minutes of my time better spent on sandpapering and painting my rusted railings, just to rectify this latest careless nonsense (confusing two distinct processes, paper production, which was certainly earlier, and mill technology for its manufacture.

• here.Nishidani (talk) 11:37, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

• Oh, is TH1980 working in bad faith again? No, I must be imagining it again. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 02:06, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Khazars

Greetings, Nishidani. A sentence in the Khazars article appears to have a missing piece. Not certain whether it was a part that you developed, but I thought I would run it by you before tagging or removing it. The sentence is in the first paragraph of this section, and reads (emphasis added):

Ibn al-Athir's mention of a 'raid of Faḍlūn the Kurd against the Khazars' in 1030, in which 10,000 of his men were vanquished by the latter, has been taken (by ) as a reference to such a Khazar remnant, but Barthold identified this Faḍlūn as Faḍl ibn Muḥammad and the 'Khazars' as either Georgians or Abkhazians.

It appears the "(by )" was supposed to be filled in but forgotten(?). Or an incorrectly coded 'by whom' tag(?). Thanks, Laszlo Panaflex (talk) 22:22, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Fixed. The 'by' shouldn't be there, and I've checked Dan Shapira's article. What we have is what he wrote. Thanks indeed for your very close attention to these minutiae. Coincidentally, I see that that mischievous genius Eran Elhaik has just put out, with Ranajit Das, Paul Wexler and Mehdi Pirooznia a new paper, 'Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to primeval villages in the ancient Iranian lands of Ashkenaz,' Genome Biology and Evolution 3 March 2016. Several months down the road, it may end up in the Khazar or related article, though so far, it's been met with a deafening silence in secondary sources, I guess not only because it's just out (compare the reaction to his earlier paper). I don't know how to evaluate it,-I'm skeptical on all of this by nature- except to say that that whole field is driven by a self-fulfilling prophetic methodology that, to an historian's eye, looks very odd, so anything that challenges the reigning paradigm is intrinsically interesting. The linguistic mystery at its core has always fascinated me, and for that alone it is worth reading. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 15:26, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

3RR

Thanks for defending me, but I had no idea I broke 3RR. Where did I? --Monochrome_Monitor 19:31, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

You didn't. I stuffed up, the fuck-up incidence of geriatric editors tends towards the exponential as one races against time. It's nice to know you'll be editing Misplaced Pages 70 years after I've tossed in the towel (with some relief! and no small benefit to this place) Nishidani (talk) 19:51, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Nishidani, I would like to be able to trust MM in the way you do. It would make for a better editing environment between us. Can you tell me where your trust comes from? Mine was damaged after the SPI incident last year. But I can reopen my mind.

For what it's worth I wouldn't have reported MM if it hadn't been for the removal of the TfD template so soon after the warning when the same was done twice on the CfD template. That crossed a line in my book. For what it's worth, MM definitely broke 1RR - the article falls under ARBPIA because (a) MM referred to it as an Arab-Israeli battleground, and (b) Wexler believes that his theory has met with hostility "in part because of the pressure of Zionist ideological needs" (as removed here )

Oncenawhile (talk) 21:38, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Nishidani's trust comes from understanding MM. He gets I believe the fact that MM is authentic and a distinct, individual personality and voice. The reality that she is feisty, self-admittedly flawed, impatient, deeply honest and self-aware, outspoken but quick to recant, and fundamentally decent and of vast potential probably comes into Nish's summing up. I would heartily agree. I suggest that you stop thinking of the relationship in the context of blocs of editors who have have opposing POV's, and start dealing with other editors whom you deem worthy as unique individuals. You may start by visiting her talk page to actually praise an edit, or explore subject interests that you might actually have in common. Mentoring MM was the best thing I have done for the project, although MM is her own person. She is a huge benefit to the pedia and has enormous although still visceral, intellectual potential. Her self-discipline is improving markedly. I will not be commenting on the present 3RR report, although I have been watching it closely. It's my feeling that you are promoting a perhaps undue source, and that MM is making some valid points, in her own way. Suggest a graceful withdrawal and a serious debate with MM on this. You would like a better editing environment, so this is a good opportunity for a 1-on-1 debate. This could be an opportunity to create a positive working relationship. You can use my T/P as venue. Talk is better than boards. Regards, Irondome (talk) 23:15, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

In addition to Simon's points, I should add a personal bias. I could never stand anime, having been raised on Walt Disney (who employed briefly my uncle in the early years). But my 2 and a half old niece, who's as bright as a button and will cause MM some grief if she ever becomes a wiki editress, converted me to being a great fan of the genial Russian cartoon series, Masha and the Bear. So I've fessed up: MM is Masha, reduplicated, and I see myself as the old ursine virtual uncle, a sidekick to MM's paternal Simon. The great plague on conflict-ridden sectors of wiki is the IP revert warrior or lazy mugwumps who kibitz and censor according to their profound knowledge of the deeper recesses of every editor who doesn't share their illuminated insight into the truth of a question, and human behavior. MM is not like that - she works with a passion, even if I think she suffers from youth's intellectual over-confidence at times - she chucked out a man of profound and recognized erudition from dislike and POV considerations (Wexler) and did so without mastery of the field - precocity must learn that the loyal handmaiden of deeper knowledge in les sciences humaines is humility before the empirical, rather than meta-reading of an intuited POV in others. But MM is learning that, proved amenable to advice even from such disreputable people like myself, and when she slips, and I note it, I recite the talismanic words of Pushkin:'youth's fervor is its own excuse, for ravings that it may induce' (Thus Babette Deutsch in a deplored translation of a novel in verse that is headed by a citation from Prince Vyazemsky:'И жить торопится и чувствовать спешит', namely 'flurrying to live, and scrambling to feel'. When we see that in the young, we should admire the eager energy, and smile tolerantly on the rash temerity it will occasion, esp. if a benign word or two can bridle in the galloper at the precipice.(So much for what standing in line at a supermarket check-out counter can engender as I stevedored my mindship's hold with a cargo of thoughts, (as the Icelanders say) to while away the waiting).Nishidani (talk) 10:25, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

I should add, before this joint shuts down, that I concur with Oncenawhile's last para above. He is a very acute and precise editor, and has caught me out on several occasions, thank goodness. I suggest that she admit that, and that Oncenawhile take that as sufficient, and inform the AE board that the complaint, being resolved, is withdrawn.)Nishidani (talk) 10:25, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Help

Hi Nishidani, can you please give your opinion on the censorship issue on Talk:Yisrael Katz (politician born 1955)? 2A02:C7D:3FDE:D400:34AC:583A:B24A:5AF3 (talk) 15:13, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Genetics for ethnic groups RfC

In case you're interested in voicing an opinion, there's an RfC being held here. Cheers!

P.S. I hope your health is holding up. Youth is wasted on the young. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 01:07, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

What health? That's something you never think about when you have it, and do best not thinking about when you edge towards the life/death tipping point! I don't think 'youth' is a viable concept anymore, since it's all wasted these days on tablets/Iphones etc. I was shocked to see throughout Rome the other day dozens of young couples, walking hand in hand, with one of them invariably staring into a cellphone screen. They were not looking at each other, and walked through all the galleries in the Vatican Museums full of Exekias amphorae, Caravaggio-Guido Reni, Raffaele,etc.etc.etc., with selfie-sticks making mugs out of themselves with mug shots. They think Caravaggio becomes significant if an inferior 'dial' with a dopey grin is plunked in the foreground and caught digitally for the virtual fame of family memory. Youth to me is a sense of tremulous wonder and curiosity about the world: they don't have it.(I've replied to your query on the page).Nishidani (talk) 11:02, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Ah, yes, I only have to look at the neighbours across the road in the morning to see them taking selfies of themselves pretending to finish off some alcohol from the night before to upload to cyberspace in order to prove that they have 'a life'. They're so busy recording their existence thousands of times a day that one can only understand that they don't believe that they exist unless they can see themselves on instagram, see their tweet, recorded their pimple for posterity, and take their mandatory pic of yet another brunch they'll never look at again. Memory has become too cheap to associate with the concept of living. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:36, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Khazar theory of Ashkenazi ancestry

Dear user, You are continuously removing sources and details without using the talk page. Can you please use the talk page to explain your edits? The talk page: Ferakp (talk) 16:32, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

This is pure prevarication, if not indeed an outright lie. All it shows is that you jumped into this article without reading the talk page, where the reason why that piece of crap violated WP:NPOV was outlined, and which therefore justified my revert, which you insist now was unmotivated.

here

here

As to Galassi, he has a long record of reverting in favour of anyone who shares his POV, and carelessness about details. See

here.

Effectively you are the edit-warrior.Nishidani (talk) 16:44, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Read up on WP:OWN. And cease and desist.--Galassi (talk) 12:51, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

I get it. The pleonasm you love, 'cease and desist' is a personal code for 'get stuffed' designed to measure up to WP:AGF for immunity purposes, while aspiring to provoke patient editors to respond by a fairly justifiable 'get fucked'. Well, I will desist from telling you to do that, but provide you with a more useful imperative: Do some reading. You evidently don't, so far, on any topic I have seen you despoil by lazy reverting.Nishidani (talk) 13:15, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

I was told by someone to "fuck off" by them referring me to the reply in Arkell v. Pressdram. People will seek any way to get around telling someone to actually FO without actually telling them to FO. Sir Joseph 18:04, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Quite true, Sir Joe. I don't mind being told to 'fuck off' - I often tell myself to do so, when looking at errors in my own edits, and I deplore the idea of reporting anyone for turpiloquy. I've seen a lot of polite behavior sheaving a knife-like enmity, which is one reason I have an allergy to political correctness. Give me Steptoe to Iago any day.Nishidani (talk) 18:50, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

BTW, I hope you don't mind that I sometimes "stalk" you. I oftentimes use you as a free version of curiosity.com Sir Joseph 19:29, 3 May 2016 (UTC)