Finally a boycott I can believe in...

Together let's work to end the evil empire:

http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_whyusa_boycott.html

Education and Inequality...

So there is new data out to the press confirming something I know painfully and personally. Education is not a an equalizer stronger than racism, rather a source of inequality. An example is an article that ran in the Washington Post. 

The mainstream press just keeps skying away from stating that last bit. But I'm here as an example to say that financially a great education can make you far worst off than your local 8th grade drop out. What I find most appalling is the response from academia. Not only have they trotted out myths about the invaluable assets an education gives one...they have trotted out individual achievers. This is the classic myth of capitalism itself. All this supposed emphasis on critical thinking, and these people can't even get past a tired old myth of the rugged American individual who works his way up alone through effort? Really! Horatio Alger? Johny Appleseed? It's all that packaged as a black woman successful...and it's ridiculous.

I happened to watch a lecture given at the University of California given partly by diversity deans and such...and someone self made and really rich woman came out and talked about how generational wealth was a new things for blacks and we lack mentors. Of all the problems of the black community, I must admit this one never crossed my mind...perhaps I was too worried we were all going to die from violence, horrible health care rationed out by racists and poverty to think that far ahead..
The myths of the brilliant individual have a dangerous flip side. Because one black woman can make it, then apparently they all can, right? So something must be defective with 99% of blacks...Well, this is the myth of capitalism anyways. That somehow the success of one will lead others to follow. But how many people can be in the elite when the elite is by definition the few?

I knew all about this stuff in the 9th grade thanks to my local public library, but apparently today's college kids are so miseducated that Universities can actually pull the wool over their eyes...which makes sense. As to the invaluable assets a college education brings, mental enrichment probably is not one of them. Few things are as damaging to minds as the kind of education dispensed in many places. Killing all interest in anything by presenting bone dry boring lectures and shutting down the natural curiosity of students seem to be the real area of exceptional excellence for some professors I had. I actually loved subjects like Organic Chemistry and Calculus even as I sat watching as many decent and intelligent people in my class had their dreams of going into medicine evaporate like some of our lab experiments. Instead of addressing what a farce instruction has become from all I hear today instruction has become even worse. Now adjuncts read from Power points for about 9$ an hour with predictable results. In science by the nature of the subject we have to try to discover reality in the laboratory...people in other areas only have to discover where to copy and paste essays from...plagiarism is apparently the shortcut that keeps college kids able to work enough hours to eat. I was incredibly lucky to be able to find science related jobs, but if you study literature I suppose foaming coffee drinks may be a good prelude to your future anyways. Sadly, without analytical- quantitative skills, you will be quite slow to figure out what is going on around you. If universities really wanted to promote an educated populace they would force everyone to take a course in mathematical logic and statistics. Clearly just the student loan debacle they have cooked us into could provide endless subject matter.

I do think getting an education is especially worth it if you are a black American mainly for one reason...it makes it easier to leave for a socialist Western country. If you have a technical education as an engineer, medical doctor, or high level scientist there is the possibility to leave.  That's right, I, a card carrying Hadash (Israeli communist party) member, am going to ironically suggest a very capitalistic and individualistic solution to this problem for those who can afford it. Screw society. Don't bother trying to improve it, heroes often get shot. And if you are a woman, you only have so much time on your hands to form a family. Taking a leadership role in a revolution might leave you very alone and childless, a price your male counterparts will not pay. Of course, someone has to lead the revolution....but start looking critically at how leftist organizations are run. Typically these groups have some older people who already have homes and children around. If they truly cared about you they would put themselves front and center in terms of martyrdom. Instead most of these groups include some wealthier old white men too eager to turn young vulnerable students into cannon fodder for causes that not so coincidentally increase their celebrity and power, albeit the imaginary power most leftists hold. Younger men are often too stupid to understand the issue with this. I'll never forget when I met Luke Rudkowski, and we happened to discuss how annoyed I was when I came very close to going to being imprisoned in a detention center due to helping refugees. I wasn't exactly part of a radical movement, rather just doling out medical care to children who for bureaucratic reasons had no country. These kids were the ultimate refugees. And most were not the relatively glamarous Syrian refugees in which case I might have been able to get the press on my side...but poor black African refugees who no one seemed to care about. Rudkowski seemed puzzled. "The more governments persecute you the more you will become a folk hero!" Someone needs to tell younger men like him that life is not a video game we are playing for coolness points...and some of us want everything such a young white guy would take for their birthright. We also deserve the right to live withing the framework of a society that helps us nurture families if we choose. It's amazing how many "leftists" particularly if they are Americans never think this through. These people will make all kinds of political noise about your right to kill your unborn children, but when it comes to you having a right to what they are born into...not so much....

Clearly, in reality, American society does not care about us . Do not forget that you can pack your bags, and go somewhere where people make sense. If you haven't joined the 11 black billionaires and are therefore part of the other 99.99% of black people...you might want to go somewhere where things like maternity leave, education or health care are rights not unaffordable goods on a market that always seems to be priced to exclude us. The truth is that if you leave the USA, you will suddenly realize that the democratic party- the electable left- is actually run by people who would be considered extreme right wingers almost anywhere else.  Democracy is dead in the USA, and you have been made into collateral damage. I do not write this as a hypocrite. I dealt with immigration issues for years while I was completely broke to be able to get out of the USA.

If leaving America sounds crazy consider the following: Many African Americans risked their lives for the dream of getting to Canada...you might only to have to fill out some paperwork.

Police Riots Are Back!

The world seems to be cracking open with violence and unrest not just in places like Syria. Swell spots like Cape Town  and Seattle are explosive. But there seems to be an unfortunate pattern behind all of this few will speak openly about. It appears in many cases police are instigating riots undercover. There does seem to be a pattern.
I suspect that this is not actually a global conspiracy in the way people might imagine, rather similar circumstances playing out around the globe. Financialization and the crises of capitalism have eaten from almost all public budgets, except military and security budgets. Not every cop is a moron, or unaware that their buddies in the firefighters, public hospitals, and so forth are looking at shrinking budgets. Sadly the "proof" that security forces are necessary may often be a pre-planned riot made at the expense of peaceful protesters.
This violence against people masquerading as violence from within people is yet another part of the despicable upside down post-modern world we live in like the new paradigm of the boss who pretends to be your friend; but inverted and armed.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=356343461181561


I suspect not only are the security forces instigating violence, they are making sure they are the only ones doing it. I have been involved in many leftists protests, and annoyed at how ridiculously unanimously pacifist they are. When the state is violent and dishonest, it's surely not a coincidence that leaders continuously preach nonviolence. Granted, I would never act violently due to the personal moral convictions I hold...but I wonder if this is always the right tactic. Nonviolence would seem appropriate when you can garner lots of media attention and sympathy. On the other hand, when your story is decidedly a non-story in the eyes of everyone, like the homeless families in America being increasinly harassed by the police...maybe strategic limited violence is called for a la francaise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY6NlGGe6GI

And now for real equality....

I'm getting kind of annoyed by all the rainbow flags on facebook. My 'yeah' for marriage equality is cynical and sarcastic..because I know full well gay marriage isn't really about equality at all. Of course I believe any two individuals should be able to marry. I also believe any three or four individuals should be able to marry. But let's be clear, gay marriage or plural marriage are about giving rights to people who are different from normative couples.

If we ever want equality, it's incredibly obvious if politically avaunt guard, that we actually need to start taking rights away from people. It may not sound kind or even democratic, but it is the only way towards a true equality for all Americans, married or not. In a world where everyone is respected equally, everyone could define their own relations as they see fit. If people see fit to sign up for sacred rights thousands of years old no one should stop them. Nor should anyone stop me from noticing that many wedding contracts are essentially the sale of a woman or in an even grimmer twist some families pay to get women off their hands. But giving extra rights to people for having some sort of religious and/or legal contract seems strange. No one even denies it is discriminatory, although few use the language of discrimination. Instead proponents trot out all kind of nonsense words like sacred, consecrate and so on which lack specificity not to mention reality. What marriage really does, as gay activists have spent over a decade pointing out, is give couples rights they would not get otherwise. These rights span from banal financial issues like taxation and retirement rights, to family issues like rights to visiting ones children when a partnership splits to just as important fuzzy rights like social respect. Over the course of a couple's lifetime this fuzzy issue of social respect has all kinds of implications on them and the children they produce. To this day it is not uncommon for people to refer to children conceived outside of marriage as illegitimate, or to discourage unmarried women from having children. The social stigma of singleness has a profound real negative effect on the lives of single people, although at it's base marriage is a legal agreement. As far as an actual argument for marriage, the most important one would seem that without it everyone would have to hire lawyers to negotiate the terms of their relationships...and hiring lawyers is almost never a good thing. Theoretically marriage harnesses traditions so old they won't go away, and bundles them with a bunch of benefits thereby encouraging marriage. If marriage is assumed to make people happy, then this is supposed to help everyone. Except it doesn't work that way. By bundling all these things together marriage is actually being discouraged in a larger and larger part of the population.

As society becomes more unequal, the real marriage equality issue is rapidly becoming who can afford to get married at all. While anyone can go to city hall and sign paperwork, the poor have some pretty strong disincentives from marriage. Just ask a recent university graduate. Women, in particular, have found that student loans, the price of education for almost anyone below the upper middle class function as an anti-dowry. But if those below the upper middle class fail to get a college degree or specific vocational training many of them are looking at a lifetime of precarious low paid work. Historically poverty has been almost defined by miserable working conditions: low level agricultural peonage leading the typical occupations of the poor. Now a growing number of the poor in the Western world do not actually work at all. As the sexual revolutions has slowly led many  to equate marriage with family formation; the poor face an increasing issue. If their wages are so low and so insecure they could never afford a family, why marry at all? And in fact, many do not. So many do not that in American women in their twenties most babies are born to unmarried women. As one enlightened trophy wife told me "Marriage is about money and property and inheritance and if you don't have any money, well..." Marriage has become a tool through which upper middle class people cement their status in society and pass advantages on to their children. Marriage has also become a tool of certain kinds of women who want to duck out of actually pulling their own weight in society. Who in their right mind, if they actually belong to the progressive left, can stand for this? It doesn't take a sociologist to look around and realize how unfair this is. But then again, I'm probably overestimating the ability of observation among average people. A well educated man I know, a PhD in Physics no less, recently remarked to me "How do they do it?!" When I described a religious Israeli woman I knew with five children and no job. "No." I replied "The question isn't how they can do it, the question is how I the working single taxpayer can do it, because in some sense it's my job to support these kids because chances are, neither of their parents work." Seriously, how do we hard working single women drudge between our tiny apartments and long hours in usually rather joyless lives while not resenting married women, much more socially approved, who play with Popsicle sticks all day. The answer lies in the illusion of choice. But increasingly marriage is not a choice available to everyone. For the truly poor marriage is often an unfortunate  choice to pin yourself to someone who might tip you over the edge financially. For truly poor men, even that might be a luxury. I am unfamiliar with the statistics, but if I had to guess, a truly impoverished man is probably many times more likely to end up in jail in the USA than a stable marriage.

People who really believe in social equality need to realize which fight is winnable. One potential fight would be creating a society in which people have anywhere nearly equal very good chances of marriage - a near impossibility considering some people are disabled in certain ways that make marriage unlikely. The winnable fight, is just taking the rights around marriage away. Everyone will have to grow up, fin for themselves, and come to personalized agreements over their property and life. Does that sound so awful? Why hasn't anyone encouraged this before?

UN Schmoon...

When I first read that the Saudis were heading a UN body on human rights, I thought I was reading a parody. Saudi Arabia, isn't it the country where women can't even drive, and are just now being granted the right to vote in 2015? Saudi Arabia where people don't even bother registering female births so they can more easily kill them later if they get out of line? Saudi Arabia where they execute people by beheadings even for nonviolent crimes? Where they have a brand of Islam so extremists they gave us 9/11? Yes...
So it turns out all the Jewish conspiracy theorists are right? The UN is basically a big corrupt body bizarrely biased towards the Arab world...
I actually just feel sorry for anyone who had any faith in this sorry body of nonsense anymore. They can't handle refugees. They can't stop miserable wars. They can't fight for human rights...and they just sit around hating Israel all day long. Oh, but how could I forget 'him for her' a supposedly feminist campaign spearheaded by an actress and underwear model. Excuse me while I vomit.
Can someone please come up with an alternative body to help the world? This is a rather sad mess.

What to think of luck

In a world this sad

Does art even have a place

But in a world this sad

Is art the only hope?

In a world this sad

Does any thought matter anyways?

Slavery, murder, oppression

2015 brought back 1014

Child brides

Poverty

ISIS

American Capitalism

State sponsored murder

The failure of everything

But insanity and smiling

Smiling a little, ignoring the reality

Are we cruel? Are we crazy?

Are we colonists

Us in the candy box

Us in the white frothy crest of the world

We fought our way in, we think

Until something reminds us

It was all luck of birth

The Jerusalem Paradox

I'm a bit sad that the recent surge in refugees has been seen as a monumental and exceptional crisis. Africa and Asia have had more refugees for far longer; yet this was never a "crisis." Once again the world media and governing bodies are showing us that something only counts as a real problem if it affects white people. One truly aware of history would not be surprised. The savagery of the Western world has been on full display for centuries. Should anyone be surprised that the people who brought the world global colonialism are indifferent to the plight of supposedly lesser people?

The problems of the world seem eternally stuck. Equality, of the type dreamed of in the Haitian revolution or the French revolution, seems to be some pipe dream only a few pot smokers will cling to. The real question is how would equality even be enacted between very unequal populations. Are we, the non-Western, inherently savage, as savage as those who stomp on us? Has our lack of education and resources made us so idiotic that a psuedo-colonial rule is inevitable, if only to maintain some level of decency? Forgetting how we got into this situation, in which those above us are almost completely to blame, we should ask if we are better off running ourselves as a matter of practical survival.

Several of my acquintances are whimsically hopeful for the day the British will march back into the Levant and take over Israel again. For them as Israel born Jews, decades of liberation and self-rule have been somewhat disappointing. Yet they are sure there is one possibility even worse. They are deeply racist against Arabs...

From the Palestinian Arab perspective the original Zionists were a new sort of colonialist, even if in fact they were throwing off a type of colonialist opression themselves. And yet paradoxically, the more the supposedly colonial entity controls, the better the situation on the ground for many people. Haifa, a city of relative peace and near equality, is under full civil control of Israel. The polar opposite would be Gaza, where due to a combination of the Oslo accords and withdrawal, there is a fair amount of autonomy. There is also now a near total vacuum of human rights and dignity. Forgetting the question of blame- which lies with several parties including Israel- there is a more important question of how the madness will stop, how things can get better.

Paradoxically every "correct" move towards the autonomy and freedom of the people there seems to result in less freedom and autonomy. I am sure that if tomorrow Israel were to withdraw all interference from Gaza and grant it autonomy, we would welcome the world's 23rd or 24th Islamic dictatorship, with the requisite total death of hope for human rights, within less than two weeks.  What moves towards democracy and autonomy did, most notably the Oslo accords, was unfortunately to increase the misery of those supposedly being liberated. No one seemed to notice that in a practical sense the Oslo accords cut millions of people of from getting decent education and health care because of their ethnicity. A few decades later, a radical turn for the worst, towards fundamentalist, shouldn't surprise anyone.

The question of the future of Jerusalem is in some sense a miniature question of the issues in the entire world right now. As radicalized religious militants are allowed to turn the area into a religious conflict zone, sadly few will remember that underlying this mess were cold political calculations about populations. Such calculations happened for the population of Jerusalem, and they happened in terms of entire national populations in the middle East. Not all variables were taken into account by anyone.

In 2015 some cynicism about the future is required in any calculation. Gone are the days when the world could look upon brave new ideologies for salvation. Every revolutionary who did not become a tyrant became sad. Simon Bolivar said he had plowed into the sea. Emma Goldman admitted she was just plain wrong. All that is left for it's great trial and subsequent failure is anarchism. And yet inherent in mass rule, is us the savage masses...and the question of whether we are capable of anything good. The stage for the trial of anarchism will probably not be Jerusalem. Under the eyes of the UN, the international media, the PA, the Israeli government, the global interest, and so on, Jerusalem will be anything but a throwing off of rules. The first failures of anarchy will happen unnoticed on the very edge of empire in places like Kurdistan...but the failure will probably come larger for those at the very center of civilization. Yet slowly the failures may bring a certain limited kind of progress in some cases. Hope, like savagery and injustice, springs eternal.

Parallel Time

Was actually a pretty awesome play. I just saw it with Hebrew translation. So glad I did. The play really made me think about the brutality of certain regimes, and prisoners in general.

The Wisdom the Klu Klux Klansmen

Sometimes, even people you hate say something remarkably true. I was recently watching a video of some white nationalists in the USA. Some sort of amalgamation of klansmen and neo-nazis that listen to metal rock music with fascist lyrics. They argued that while they seem fringe, lots of people agree with them. Well on that, I couldn't agree more. The young facists nailed it: lots of people are racists.

America is at a moment where it will have to face reality. We are a country that elected Obama; but we are also a country where whites in Louisiana voted for an avowed Klansmen by a sizeable majority less than two decades before.

As I sat in a government office in Israel, a news banner ran on the bottom of the screen. It mentioned burnings of black churches. It took over a day for major US newspapers to run headlines on the issue. What was really sad was to see news outlets like FOX news try to twist the recent church burnings into some biblical religious nonsense i.e. the people are persecuting Christians...when everyone knows exactly what is going on, because the same thing has been going on for about 500 years. When Juan Ponce de Leon hit what is now Florida it took only a few years for a slave society to follow and take root. In 1522 the first massive slave revolt in the new hemisphere took place, and the man has been trying to keep us down while living in constant fear of revolting blacks ever since. Liberal Massachusets was the first colony (later to be a state) to officialize and legalize slavery...which only illustrates a point entirely lost on so many people: that the only "North" and "South" that truly deeply matters in terms of racism is being south of Canada and north of Mexico.

Racism is many troubling things. The worst side of racism is how it shortens lives. How average lifespans for persecuted groups inevitably average lower due to everything from state sponsored killing to medical neglect. But racism is also a media that fails to bring insight into domestic terrorism. That fails to state the obvious about burning black churches. That can't connect the dots for younger generations unaware of the connection between black churches and civil rights. Racism is also a media that has decided our stories do not matter.

Gay Marraige and Inequality

    So now we have gay marriage. Yeah for all those people who can get married. Except let's be honest: I'm not sure this won't increase inequality. Already the press has asked the question of whether civil partner benefits will remain. If they don't, we are headed towards increasing inequality. What upper middle class white people rarely realize, unless they work in a social profession, is that marriage is increasingly a class marker...a class marker not everyone can afford.
   If marriage were simply a luxury vehicle, there wouldn't be much of a problem. The real problem is that marriage is an institution tied up with money and social capital. It takes capital to get into it, and it returns capital both social and financial. So much so that on average kids raised by a single parent or cohabitating parents are statistically on average very different than kids raised by married parents. But does anyone really have a choice about which lifestyle they are choosing? Yes, of course, the people with enough capital to make the choice. On the other side of the problem are millions of people sunk in student loans or other usurious arrangements that make them much less capable of marriage. In the case of student loan holders there is a statistical gender split. Men with student loans are statistically marriageable; women are on average much less so. I doubt this surprises anyone. It confirms the unfortunate reality based stereotype that men are commitment-phobic selfish bums who have the upper hand in the dating market. This doesn't even stop in marriage. Anyone who works in medicine who sees the realities of organ donation can tell you there is a very real statistical difference between wifes willing to throw their husbands a kidney, and the reverse. As a culture we seem to be producing a bunch of selfish men. In this regards gay marriage seems on the surface like a perfect solution...now women can just marry each other and bypass gender inequality right?
 Wrong, by the numbers, marriage, gay or straight, by the numbers seems to be exacerbating economic  inequality in our society. In fact it won't surprise me if when it's all said and done lesbian households fall towards the bottom of the economic ladder just above single women households. We are usually talking about two WOMEN and their "chick jobs," right? For every lesbian couple I know where one is a high earning chemist, I know a pair where both have taken socially responsible but poorly paid employment like social work, education or activism. If anyone is going to undo the conservative plot for gay marriage (and I think there was such a thing if you look at it in a certain way) where these newlyweds all move to suburbia and start complaining about their taxes just like rich straight people- it's probably going to be these women.
  I don't think anyone is delusional enough to think we can just throw out a tradition this deeply entrenched into our cultures. As many people are too poor to involve themselves in marriage- or at least marriage in their reproductive years, apparently, by the numbers; the real question is what institutions can they use to even the game, especially when raising children.

Al Jazeera's Muslims

So apparently Al Jazeera can't cover the middle east of all places. The paper claims the Druze are Muslims. To be precise this article calls them an "Islamic sect." Even Israelis like myself know the Druze are not Muslims, the Muslims are not Druze. In Israel all Druze and most Muslims here are Arabs...according to most but not all Druze. Some even don't want to be called Arabs. So where does a major paper like Al Jazeera get off not fact checking anything? Are there people stupid enough to believe that residence in me middle east makes you Muslim? Am I Muslim? Is everyone Muslim?

Well actually, if you listen to the latest in news from the region, the real issue is that ISIS is a very Jewish organization....which just goes to show, the media is full of lies.

The Druze have their own holy book and customs entirely different from Muslims. Some scholars posit they began as a sext of Shia about 1000 years ago.  But Christianity began as a sects of Judaism. These things happen. Further it isn't entirely clear that the Druze were Shia; some Druze think they originally came from India. Whatever the case, they don't marry foreigners- meaning anyone not Druze including Muslims. Even the most cursory fact checking could have pulled up this stuff.

The real question is if Al-Jazeera can't cover the middle east, what can it cover?

Male Delusion/Capitalist Delusion: An archtypical case

 A female friend who works as a sex worker tells me clients have often asked her questions like "What part of the experience do you love the most?" to which she honestly answers "getting paid." What seems fairly obvious to me, is apparently not to men. They apparently actually believe sex workers are not stuck in their miserable jobs, but rather LOVE the work....Maybe it's true for like 0.01% of sex workers, but I would guess most people would rather just spent time working on something a bit more meaningful whether it is raising their children or volunteering for a better world or writing a novel.
This particular male delusion is really several delusions. The broader one is that everyone in this capitalist system is in some kind of romantic relationship with their job. I was sold this nonsense for years by the education system- which was supposed to empower me to do work that I loved. Yes, I love some aspects of being a doctor, but let's be real. If I fill in any more paperwork I'm going to just start calling myself a secretary. If I had stayed in the US, I could call myself transport and nursing as well, as hospitals have discovered doctors can make cheap labor given that their salary doesn't necessarily have to change based on the amount you work them...A job is a job, and calling it a career or profession is sometimes a way to sell you on the idea that you need to work harder for less money. I've never met a research professional in the health sciences who makes overtime. Not once. This supposedly blue collar benefit might help with what are pressing issues for people like childcare- or would be if such high end professions actually used a workforce no made up of rich people and desperate immigrants willing to put up with nonsense.
Another side of believing sex workers love their work is an oversimplification and really distortion of the complex relation of women and sex. Or anyone and sex for that matter...no one can admit that we live in a world where survival sex is probably at least as common as romantic sex; and a lot of what people think of as romantic sex actually is not. I was reminded of that when I watched the miserable movie "Shes Pamim" recently. I have no idea why the movie won so many awards. After I saw it I was worried that as a secular Israeli I'm going to be raising a child in a culture almost as destructively misogynistic  as ISIS. The main character of the movie is an insecure teenage girl who walks around dressed like a hooker, and acting like she has lost her mind. She fucks anything male, or rather, let's it fuck her. Endless sex scenes involve absolutely no pleasure for her, rather her manipulation, humiliation and degradation. I felt like I might as well have been on a trip either backwards in time to the 14th century, or northward in space above the Golan heights to a place where women were ultimately only some kind of currency because they were there to be used as a sexual outlet. The main character claims she likes it; but she never has an orgasm, and looks absolutely miserable in the sex scenes. I wonder if the film was made to scare the hell out of people like me...scare us until we sign our daughters up for religious school- because frankly even 16th century Jewish values start to look feminist next to this nonsense....and they also look feminist next to secular "modern" men asking my sex worker friend what she "loves" about her job.  
But maybe that is the delusion that keeps men visiting prostitutes. Maybe if they understood that this is just backbreaking, annoying degrading work; less different than say being an exploited migrant laborer, they might rethink how they spend on sex.

The Story They Won't Cover: Al-Midan

     I google-searched to see who has covered the new controversy over the Al Midan theatre outside of the Levant...and predictably it only appears in papers focused on Jewry like The Time of Israel. I can't say I'm surprised. Although it does make a nice story about how the state of Israel is evil, which leftists can never get enough of, it also makes exactly the opposite story. The fact that it exists flies in the face of the crude uninformed narratives of Western Leftists, not unlike it's and my home Haifa. Haifa has been an "Arab-Jewish" coexistance city since for over a hundred years, although really calling it a Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Druze co-existance city would be more accurate. Even during the 1948 war a lot of the LOCAL Jewish population tried to convince their Muslim and Christian neighbors to just stay put in contrast with national leadership of either Arabs or Jews. I was surprised recently to see even a Palestinian author, the grandchild of a family that fled in spite of the neighbor's advice, writing about this phenomenon.
    Haifa almost never features in ANY story about Israel in spite of being the third largest city in the country. I suspect it is never on the news outside of Israel because it breaks open and contradicts just about every single narrative anyone on the political right or left wants to spin about Israel. Haifa did finally start making the news recently over the Ethiopian protests....a story I definitely think has more edge in the center of the country. In the center of the country is frankly where all the action on this happened. Parts of the center of the country are also the whitest places I've ever been in Israel. I actually find it quite creepy having lived most of my Israeli life in Haifa. One train, plus one bus, and boom- where did all the Arabs go? Why is everyone Ashkenazi? I don't see many Russians....these people look like they have lots of money. I think I want to go back to Haifa. I feel like a dirty peasant because everyone around me is wearing new clothes, and seems, well, rich. This feeling highlights another reality no one wants to talk about in regards to Haifa. In spite of being home to Tech giants and one of the world's greatest universities, it is somehow resolutely blue collar. And actually a blue collar co-existance is even more of an accomplishment than a white collar one or one of the destitute in my opinion.
  So I expect few in the Anglo media to cover the Al-Midan Theatre Culture War. The attempt by a right wing government to crush Arab theatre because it puts on shows not to the liking of the regime. I'll try and cover events as I support them. I have the day off, and I'll be meeting with who I can at Al-Midan. I have taken a job in a hospital outside of Haifa; but I won't give up on my city. Al Midan is an important institution not just for Haifa, but for all of Israel and the whole Levant. Haifa is the shining example, and hope for all of us, that some kind of fragile, if imperfect coexistance is possible.

Live updates on Al Midan: I'm just back from part of the meeting. I ran into a friend of mine who is a Palestinian/Israeli Arab film-maker. He warned me the whole meeting would be in Arabic. No more simultaneous translation headphone like at the communist party meeting. Bummer. If it isn't about pain, disease or dizziness, I can't really follow... what a shame. This is something I feel is important...but language has locked me out of understanding the whole story. But what the excuse for news outlets is, where they should have Arabic speakers, I don't know. I saw Ynetnews...but what can one expect from them in terms of coverage? More stories on the inexplicably important issue of fatty bourekas, as recently graced their cover? I have no hope of good media coverage...oh well.

Rachel Dolezal and the Delusions of White Academics

  "Race is just a social construction..." white academic types opine; as if it would matter if it was. Race is not only a social construction. I can not wipe the blackness off my face as Dolezal presumably could tissue off her dark make-up. Even when I wear my hair straightened, and have been stuck inside long enough to look racially ambiguous, in the USA, most people will identify me as black, or at least not white. This is a double edged sword in medicine, precisely because race IS very real.
   Race is about genetics. Genetics matter immensely in medicine. Race matters not only in terms of exotic diseases like familial Mediterranean fever which effect only certain ethnic groups. Race matters not only in terms of very common diseases like breast cancer, where the genetics of certain groups can predict whether they will get the disease, but only within that group due to very specific genetic mutations (here in Israel breast cancer is caused by different mutations in Iraqui Jews versus Ashkenzi Jews). To be very real about it, race matters every time you want to even analyze basic labs. AST/ ALT? The Chem 7 panel? Yes, that basic...and I should know being black in Israel. Years ago, on checking, my liver enzyme values were so far off the population norms I looked like an raging alcoholic...but thankfully in Israel, most of the social construct around race - the one which would decree me an ignorant idiot- doesn't exist in my very specific case. I was able to explain to my doctor that the lab values were done by population norms, and I'm outside the population norms. Soon I'll be off to a nephrologist over a new abnormal lab value I have based on my creatinine levels. No one wants to talk about this, but African Americans really have a triple-whammy when it comes to kidney issues. Genetically blacks seem to have on average fewer nephrons than whites to begin with. Add to that in the case of African-Americans some very un-natural selection in terms of the conditions of slavery which I would guess began right on the slave ships when some people died of dehydration...and top it all of with blood pressure raising stress.
   What stress? I'll give an example. About a year ago, I noticed my pule was high and I was sweating. I felt accelerated. Being a doctor, I saw the symptoms of thyroid disease. I knew given my particular personal medical background the chances I had such a disease were much higher than any general population. I feared a thyroid storm, and headed to the one emergency department in New York City where I knew no one. They subsequently began testing me for drugs in spite of my patient explanations. Their assessment of me as a younger black women with elevated blood pressure and pulse, was that I must be on drugs. When the tests came back negative, they decided I had anxiety and called psychiatry. I do have anxiety- especially when I'm fighting for my health in a racist system that seems designed to cause my early death. I believe the anxiety is appropriate.
    What happened to me when I was treated, or more accurately not treated, for what was later diagnosed as thyroid disease (exactly what I told the personnel I suspected) is an example of race as social construction. The social construction is the idea of my inherent supposed stupidity, and imaginary status as a drug fiend. The results were of course very real, in that my diagnosis was delayed for days putting my life at risk. Yet, I would never want doctors to not know that I am black, and African-American in particular...genetics matter.
   On both counts, the reality of race, and the social constructions around it, white academic types, reveal a sort of tragic cluelessness....and I can't say I am surprised. Academia is a place of so much in terms of time and resources dedicated to learning, but so little about reality is learned outside of the sciences. Most people in academia come from immense privledge..so for many of them perhaps race is just an issue of identity and social construction. Their opinions show just how far apart they have drifted not only from some of the populations they are opining on, but from reality itself...

Is the NYTimes taking bribes?

One more article on how student loans are not a crisis, and I may start a campaign of terror against the New York Times. I'm not violent- so it would have to be a campaign of symbolic terror, but still.
What passes for journalism today is laughable. The latest report is mind boggling in it's stupidity. Pulling on numbers from 2003 (before the financial crisis and a over a decade's worth of growth in tuition which outpaced inflation) the author makes an argument irrelevant to anyone today.

Had this been an isolated incident I would have just assumed that Susan Dynarski was a low level crack addict in rehab financing her dalliances by writing articles for the NYTimes...but the trend goes beyond this author. I have watched this issue be continually distorted by the NYtimes for quite a while. Respectable reporters opine to the public that there is no real issue. All of them draw on selective outdated data. Whatever parts of the public are convinced clearly suffered from the lack of education enhanced by this pyramid scheme funding deal we call the current American educational system. If one peruses the talk-backs one will notice however that no one really seems to fall for this nonsense. Everyone knows that we are being ripped off by institutions who have gone out of control. Administrators who earn millions while sinking students into ever deeper debt before they enter a workforce they are poorly trained for...but perhaps well trained for in the sense that if nothing else they will understand that a powerful elite will make their lives miserable, and if they won't conform, even more miserable than that. One only need peruse current statistics about labor to realize that many new grads are headed into well, hell. I would like to see one of these pretentious reporters try to raise a family on the wages available to a low level hospital worker or any of the other jobs with any nuance of stability in our new economy while paying off student loans. Given the new arrangements around labor, in which so many formerly decent jobs are slowly being turned into independent contractor positions, perhaps being suckered and abused is good training.

The only real question left is how precisely such distorted views continually make the pages of the NYTimes. Does the editorial board have a number of people with financial interests in Navient? Do financial lobbies continually pay off the editorial board? Are the writers on the staff of banks as consultants? If this sounds outlandish, consider that I recently ghostwrote a "news" article for a mid-sized paper, which was directly funded by a couple private companies. That what I wrote will never be understood as the marketing copy it was is outrageous; but not quite as outrageous as the student loans I am servicing.....

The Left Lies: now it's Africa

I suppose I should feel relieved. Here I was thinking all the left lies about in terms of journalism is Israel. That they sort of accidentally often participated in a new form of antisemitism because they couldn't be bothered with fact checking...

But then a while back Russian Times ran an editorial about how hunkey dorey Eritrea was, and now The Real News has done the same. I have worked with Eritrean refugees.  The idea that Eritrea is an African Cuba is laughable: try North Korea...

Because I myself treated refugees from Eritrea as a doctor, and their characterization as deliberately mislabeled beneficiaries of US foreign policy who are really draft dodgers is so gratingly offensive I am moved to write... whatever the US has deemed these people it hasn't helped them much. I found myself giving patients tips on how to avoid indefinite detention in Israel- a fate which happens to many such people- so it's hardly like whatever the US said has made these people in VIPs, OK? 

I consider myself a reluctant leftist. I'm affiliated with Hadash, the Israeli communist party (one of the few Israeli parties in which Arabs and Jews have made a real attempt at equality withing the party), because I truly believe in the goal of equality. Obviously, given my political affiliation, even more than I believe in being logical, or conformist, I believe in striving for equality everywhere. But I could write books on the delusions of most leftists...and the press isn't helping shake these delusions. It's creating them.

Really distorting reality: the Real News

I'm giving up writing commentary on TRNN's coverage of Israel. To continually point out how they distort reality is tiring. I'm for human rights and for the rights of the Palestinians; and yet, the more I read and watch, the more I get tired of the delusions of the left.

If you were to pay attention to the leftist press you would believe that the one and only cause of Palestinian misery is Israel...and 100% of Israelis are actively oppressing Palestinians (never mind that 20% of the population IS Palestinian Arab...why let reality get in the way of fashionable political stances?). In reality the list of those screwing up the lives of Palestinians is very long it includes the PA and Hamas to the governments of Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Syria to even the US regime...doesn't it seem odd that 100% of the attention and blame for this travesty is focused on one state when so many are playing a part? Honestly if we were to try to weight who has caused the most misery for the Palestinians, I'm not sure their own leadership class wouldn't come out as number one; although this in no way justifies anyone else's cruelty and bad policies.

But let's examine some of these policies...let's compare some details of Lebanon and Israel's treatment of Palestinian '48 refugees and their descendants. In Lebanon these refugees usually do not get citizenship (unless they were upper middle class Christians and/or married locals generally), don't even get work permits (although there seem to be plenty of work permits around for foreign workers from Africa and Asia) and are legally barred from prestigious professions. They can not register property they may own. And in a most disgusting affront to human rights, they can be barred from Hospitals...don't take my word for it...go read the Palestinian and Arab press. Palestinians who fled to Lebanon have been subject to everything from day to day discrimination to out and out bombing. So much for Arab solidarity. The world turns a blind eye to these problems not just in Lebanon but all over the Levant, except for one single country. All over the Levant the '1948 displaced Arabs have suffered; and continue to suffer. Ironically Israel is one of the few countries some of such people can receive medical treatment in or from...if they can pay off the correct bribes to the Hamas or PA officials holding them hostage that is. There are UNRWA and Hamas and PA supported medical facilities, but when it comes to tertiary level care or specific care for certain diseases, Israel is probably the best hope some of these people have...but together with a budget large enough to put a doctor in every village UNRWA, the PA and Hamas have taken on a sometimes conflicted but often symbiotic corruption scheme gauranteed to fail the healthcare needs of actual normal people- but enhance the conflict causing some of those very needs. 

A question I often ask pro-Palestinian activists from the US, is why Israel ONLY? If you want to target the biggest cause of armed conflict- target the USA. Most weapons in the world roll right out of or are at least sold by the USA. If you want to stop injustice, why not start at home? And if you really cared about the human rights of Palestinian people wouldn't the first target be Hamas? It's a much more defensible position to say we must fight injustice everywhere than we must fight injustice only if it's related to Jewish nationalism, and everyone everywhere else gets a pass. That attitude is precisely why plenty of otherwise reasonable Jews have just decided the world hates us, and let's just not bother explaining our side of the story. A quite reasonable line of thinking might go: If it's unjust that Palestians were displaced from The Galil or Jaffa, then how is it less unjust that Jews were displaced from Baghdad or Cairo? Why does one side get all the love of leftists?

Having known some Iraqui Jewish families, I've noticed their stories vary just like those of the Palestinians. Some may have moved somewhat "willfully"- but how much does will play a part in a time of war and chaos?  One of my good female friend's families only fled after her grandfather was shot in the head. That kind of violence blurs the line between willful and forced relocation. The deeper you go into the actual personal accounts the of history of the Levant from any side, the more confusing the issue becomes in some ways. Not every story conforms to any simple narrative.

But simple narratives are precisely what the news seems to think people want. Therefore stories from co-existence cities like Haifa, which defy well worked out narratives, will never air in the Anglo world. If we sit back we will be brainwashed into the same tired narratives: ones which conveniently remove all responsibility from most people for the misery of anyone. Viewers can happily say 'I'm just an American or Brit--- I didn't do anything..it's all because of Israel, or Jews, or whoever the scapegoat is today' ( but in most cases the age-old scapegoats will do just fine. )

Ironically, almost no one seems focused on the most salient question of all: what can we do to make things better right now? How can we alleviate the unjust suffering and misery? What programs have actually been successful; why and how? One thing is for certain the world's program- mostly the sum total of UNRWA + governments in the Levant + US and UK actions- of keeping Palestinians mired in misery perhaps with the hope that the deeper this misery, the more likely it will cause a dramatic solution, has failed. Misery has only led to more misery, and some misery on top of that...so let's all try and think about how we can realistically fix this now...

I for one, in solidarity with all people like myself living under the threat of rockets (it's been only two days since Israel was last bombed...and the rate never seems to hit zero); am for boycotting the USA. At very least the world's biggest arms exporter should not be sitting on the UN security council...and anyone who can't see that is probably not living in reality...or living in a reality where they and their relatives have nothing to fear but a fall in their asset portfolios presumably well lined with arms manufacturers.  

The Real News, Really Wrong

Well, the Real News is getting it all wrong all over again... How they manage to interview Jewish Israelis and still get the Israeli stories screwed up is beyond me. Just in case anyone is interested in the truth, and few people are, not a small part of the truth is the facts.

I'm not going to try to pretend Israel isn't a racist society. I have worked hard against this racism...but it bothers me to see so many realities dishonestly represented. Let's be frank, the USA is a very racist society and does a lot more damage to the middle east than any country in the world. Yet bizarrely American and European leftists put Israel under the strangest of magnifying glasses: ones that distorts and creates illusions.

Shir Hever asserts you can see the so called Israeli apartheid five seconds after you land, not because it's predominantly Arab and Ethiopian workers cleaning the airport mind you...because foreign travelers are taken aside and interrogated. As Hever points out they are the highest risk group for political activism. Activism usually perpetrated by young Western Europeans who take up activites like standing on hills and screaming "1,2,3,4; Israel no more!" Not exactly charming behavior for a people who ran a genocide against Jews less than 100 years ago. At times activism-tourist behavior hints they are planning more than obnoxious incitement; and in such cases it's probably better for everyone, Israelis, Palestinians and tourists if they are found sooner as opposed to later. Bombs have a way of not discriminating by ethnicity when they blow up. And I should know having lived through some bombings myself...But let's make something clear, taken to its logical end Hever is asserting that Israel, at least in airports, is practicing apartheid against foreigners who are by the numbers mostly Europeans....

But then Hever goes on to assert that it's those of us with darker skin who are being targeted by apartheid. He goes on to assert it's a racial problem. He therefore perpetrated one of the biggest lies repeated by misinformed anti-Israel activists. There is a myth of Jewish-Israel as a homogenous white society oppressing dark skin native peoples...Perhaps due to hundreds of years of Western history that ran on exactly that model there are few other models of nation building in large tracts of the world. But people like Hever seem to conveniently forget that Israel was born out of a national liberation movement largely against Western oppression, not a classic Western colonialist enterprise. Ironically Jews sometimes displaced Palestinians because they wanted to do the work classically relegated to native classes- i.e. low level agricultural work. But there are many different stories of how the land and peoples came to be where they are; and reducing it to any one narrative is misleading. Calling the past and present a racial problem is however more than misleading, it is simply non-factual.

 I'd like to see Shir Hever stand in Haifa or Jerusalem and pick out who is a secular Arab versus a secular Jew. He can't and no one can, for several reasons. Most Jews here are Mizrachi Jews- Middle Eastern Jews who look phenotypically like the Middle Eastern societies they come from. On top of that by all accounts whether mythological, linguistic or even genetic we came from the same people. Many Jews call Arabs our cousins, and that is linguistically, culturally and even genetically true. To put it bluntly, to the extent you can call Jewish a "race" we share it with the local Arab populations...but of course we aren't a race, now are we?...which makes the whole racism argument absurd. 

After spending some time in Jerusalem recently, I've come to see how much more conflicted the Israel/Palestine divide is IN JERUSALEM than I imagined. Poltics and cultural differences in this particular area can make one feel like Arabs and Jews are not just different races, but different species. The slightest gestures are politically charged. When I bought vegetables on the old conflict line by the old city, how I was treated by the local Arab vendors changed dramatically when I spoke in Arabic (even broken bad Arabic) as opposed to Hebrew. These guys clearly had an allergy to even listening to Hebrew...they had a linguistic protest going on they were going to make me aware of...and I respect the fact that they want to hold on to their identity. But at the same time, economic advancement of West Bank Arabs may mean eventual changes against Palestinian nationalism. I personally think the fastest solution to alleviating the dire misery of some of the West bank might be to simply spread citizenship with complete equal rights over the whole West bank...and Israelis who say this would create a demographic problem are probably a little bit racist at least (remember the political situation in the West bank is very different from Gaza, a subtlety lost on Western leftists more concerned with stories than reality)

I would never defend segregated buses. Such a policy is absurd. And I'm part of the Israeli public that IS outraged...EVERY SINGLE DAY. Not just that this policy was on the table...but at so many policies it would take years of blogging to cover...but I'm outraged about real things, not imaginary ones like a supposed racial difference between Arabs and Jews. 

And just FYI, I've been taking my dark skinned self right by those security guards in the Jerusalem bus station and they have yet to stop me...no different than anyone who looks like Shir Hever. For comparison, I've had trouble at times even entering a cynagogue in swanky New York neighborhoods because I supposedly look "suspicious" to American police who took the opportunity to harass me.

On not updating

I wish I could claim I forgot to update my post on Ethiopian Jewish protests for ideological reasons...but actually I was just too busy. I never finished editing video I shot....and I don't think I will anytime soon.

I'm tired from many things--and I guess in part because of the free information society I'm perpetrating. Social critics have already discussed the issue that everything on the internet comes with the expectation that it's 'free.' I appreciate the free information, the free misinformation less...

But I don't think the internet created this problem at all. Recently I've gotten very bitter that many people around me expect free medical advice, and I'm not talking about the refugee populations I volunteer with. I mean people with perfectly good insurance and access to decent medical care. The thought process seems to be that I must enjoy medicine so much I'm willing to do them a favor because really they are doing me a favor...the favor of getting to work for free.

Of course no one would expect me to do a surgery for free- but those little unimportant things like thinking about, diagnosing, and advising on illness- that apparently has no value I'm not willing to part with, and requires no thanks.

I'm all for sharing- but dear general public , please keep in mind if you can walk up to me on the street and explain your health complaints, you can probably just as easily walk to another doctor's actual office. Offices and hospitals have equipment so that if something is really wrong, they can help you. I refuse to carry around things like an otoscope in my purse, OK? Further, thinking is hard work...so the least you can do is be appreciative. The ultimate insult is when someone asks for an opinion, then explains to me why they know better. If you don't believe in drugs, and will only use herbal 'natural' medicines, then why on earth would you even ask my opinion?

With annoyance,
One disgruntled doc...

Live from Tel Aviv: The New Generation

Chants from the anti-racism/ Ethiopian Israeli protest on Rehov Allenby; Tel Aviv, Israel eve of5/18/2015

Tzhu, ngmar anachnu dor hadash!זהו נגמר, אנחנו דור חדש

Di l' gizanut! די ל גזענות

Am ehad, lev ehad! עם אחד לב אחד

Kolanu achim!כולנו אחים

Ha am doresh tzedek chevrati! האם דורש זדק חברתי

Shoter alim, tzarick l'hiot mifnim! שותר אלים צריק להיות מפנים

The crowd grew...and after I walked around the periphery I had counted hundreds of police...but as of yet (8:25pm Israel time) no violence.

UPDATE: (next day) will update with videos of interviews and footage later after I get off work today.

Media Lies: The real news network on my population

   Lately it seems every day I read the media, I find something factually incorrect. I'm finally moved to write after I saw TRNN's (The Real News Network's) reporting on Ethiopian Jewish protests in Israel. The video had two main factual errors. As a black Israeli and a doctor, I want to respond:

   There are many black populations in Israel. One of the first black populations of Israel was the Afro-Palestinians. They came before the rise of the state, and they are still around both in the old city of Jerusalem (their historic home is the close to the Temple Mount) and throughout the country. During my first Ramadan season in Haifa, I was very happy to eat with such a family in my neighborhood in Haifa. In the south of the country there are black Bedoiuns who were slaves from Sudan many generations ago. The second major group of blacks are the Black Hebrew Israelites, African Americans who migrated to the country in the 1960s. Although many identify as Jews, some do not, as they are adherents to a very particular non-halachically Jewish tradition which includes a vegan diet and afro-centrism. The third major group of black Jews in Israel is the Ethiopian Jews. The next group would be other Africana Jewry. The obvious example would be the lovely family from Ashdod who ended up in the supreme court over their right to stay in the country as conservative movement Jews. Although the family was Jewish, it seems their skin color aroused lots of suspicion. Also in the group of Africana Jews fall groups like the Lemba.
   Identity is often mostly imaginary, so drawing a line around who is black in Israel is hard. Some Morrocan of even Yemenite Jews will tell you they are black. The black panthers of Israel represented Mizrachi Jews, and to this day Mizrachi popular culture draws on African diaspora culture.
   TRNN went beyond overlooking many populations to distorting reality. Ethiopian women were mistreated when it came to contraception; however they were given depo- not sterilized. Depo is reversible contraception. Sterilization is what happened to many black and hispanic women in the United States through the 1970s. Poor black women in the USA would have their tubes tied so they would never be able to conceive again. Interestingly, I am black, and I had to fight to get on birth control when I was in Israel. One of the main important differences, in my opinion, was language. I spoke in languages the doctors understood. There are not enough Amharic translators in the hospital system. I'm acutely aware of this as a doctor. And as a doctor, I'm often subject to many special 'privledges', including my colleagues questioning whether I should get birth control given that I'm part of the "positive population" as one put it. These words positive population highlight the real essence of the problem. Becuase of the way Ehtiopian Jews were integrated into the Israeli society, they suffer high amounts of poverty and live other poor populations except the Haredim they have been incredibly marginalized. But TRNN further marginalizes blacks by getting our story wrong, and prescribing how we should protest.
   Lia Tarachansky reports that there were good and bad elements of the recent protests. She speaks about how supposedly bad it was for Ethiopian Jews to wrap themselves in the flag. Like all Jews Ethiopian Jews are a people of many different opinions and identities: leftist and right wing, gay and straight, femenist and familist, and so on...together Ethiopian Jews are fighting for their rights. I think it is important that the full rainbow of identity is on display; and further those who utilize Zionist symbols point out the obvious. This is supposedly our state too. I see no problems waving an Israeli flag. I'm not trying to be politically avante gaurde...I'm trying to help my community advance.

The Redeeming Moment for Drones: Lost?

F.U. Washington. and Europe, and anyone else with a drone! Finally, the one moment when we need drones in the world...the one moment when they can serve humanity to help administer an emergency response...this horrible moment in Nepal. NOTHING.

If ever there was one redeeming human application of drones it was their application to medical emergencies...and to date I don't think one drone is going over Nepal. The Nepal that now has been brought to it's knees, and cut off from transportation in or out of many areas. Rubble has made many areas in the mountainous countryside inaccessible. People will die waiting for help...and we are too busy to use drones all the sudden? What do we need the drones waiting for? Another botched kill operation? Perhaps bombing some wedding parties?

If we can't use drones for search and rescue, I think we should just scratch the whole thing altogether...turn them into postmodern sculptural installations....give me a new place to plant my vegetables...whatever... not that what I think matters...

Photography (updating http://makedapics.wix.com/pics)

Adoption Paradox

Wading through all the bureaucracy around adoption for the THIRD time....( Hoping the third time is the charm.)...it occurs to me that international adoption has created a paradoxical situation. We have only increased child trafficking by trying to prevent it.

The supposed intentions of those who have increased regulations on adoption to the point where it takes $40,000 just to have a chance was to cut down on trafficking. More and more roadblocks were put into place. Something had to stop the international parade of third world exploitation. Adoptions used to be a moving cycle. Western parents to be heard of a place where it was easily possible, and all ran there creating  lots of demand. The demand then pushed up the supply of children as middlemen did everything including stealing children to sell them to orphanages. Poor people in various third world countries had discovered roles along the cycle like running an orphanage could be highly profitable. Eventually things got completely out of hand, and a country would have to be shut down to international adoption.

The idea that more bureaucrats checking every step of the process would cure this mess was naive. What I feel it has actually created is institutionalized corruption as well as entirely new levels of straight up corruption. I'm sick of a system I feel was built only to shake me down...where the safety of children is not even a primary concern....

My Israel, My Israelis

After quite a process (OK, let's be honest a never ending vikuach...) I am going for an interview with a Zionist organization tomorrow for the purposes of my Aliya (Jewish immigration to Israel).

I am quite aware of all the politics around Israel, but all I can think of is my friends. How much I miss them. The Israel I love is not a totally individualistic society like the USA. We are a collective society to some extent. If you live this every day it's hard to see, but we bring a new meaning to the word nation. I miss my friends so much...Argoye, Dani, Michelle, Eyal, Miki, Yoni, Sandra, Leem, Adele, Tamir and even you angry Ori and many more... for me you are Israel. And I hope soon my paperwork gets the final stamps, and I will be finally officially Israel too.

It's hard for Americans to imagine the togetherness of Israelis. Even Americans in Israel question me about why I don't just want to make more $$ in the US. I was actually offered a nice position in a hospital here...but I turned it down. There is always the question with any decision of what you are giving up. I would never give up you, haverim Israelim. It's also hard for Israelis to understand the level of love I feel for Israel from the green and blue of the Galilee/Ha Galil to the skyscrapers of Tel Aviv to the deserts  to the Hot beaches of Eilat. Paradoxically sometimes for people not born in Israel our nation and land are even more important to us. It sounds crazy, but I think I'm going to be one of those olim who drops and kisses the ground. But even more important to me than the land are my friends. I can't wait to see all of you. I may email my flight info....I'm not sure I'll be going on a typical Aliya flight or what. I sort of imagine myself getting off the plane either coming in a group being surrounded by all that flag waving and being weirded out or if I come alone feeling isolated. But one thing is for sure, I want to see you soon!

If anyone happens to have the time to meet me....Yalla! Give me 5 seconds to kiss the ground, and then we can dance because I'm coming home!

Race Together

Starbucks tried to start a campaign called Race Together or #RaceTogether. I'm a highly critical and cynical person, but I actually think their corporate heart was in the right place. If ever there has been a time to discuss race and racism everywhere it is now. After decades of progress, we suddenly seem to be backsliding. After the fall of Apartheid in South Africa, it seemed the world had finally kissed a race discrimination based system goodbye. Hundreds of years of struggle including people as famous as Sojourner Truth to people as as inconsequential as myself was coming to an end. Or so we thought...but consider what has happened in just the last few months all over the "civilized" world.

In the USA: Ferguson, MO in 2015 has become metanymic of  the American legal system that devalues black bodies while simultaneously using them for profit through endless fines over pointless minor infractions

In France: the targeting of Jews for terrorist attacks

In Israel: Race baiting used by Bibi Netanyahu against Arab-Israeli citizens for of all things VOTING

Racism is a given phenomenon in many places in the world, but in our modern world we have not succeeded in erasing it. Indeed we have in some cases amplified even the most violent and dehumanizing consequences of racism due to our tremendous efficiency and technological capabilities.

Perhaps it is a bit racist of me to say this, but I don't think most white Americans realize the extent to which racism colors the lives of nonwhites. Most live in a bubble where issues of race are pure abstractions. If statistics are to be believed most white people in the USA don't even have a nonwhite friend...in a country where nonwhites make up about 40% of the total population...it doesn't take a sociologist to look at those numbers and realize we have some race issues. It might take a sociologist or historian to explain the totality of racism's meaning for certain groups like Native Americans or African Americans...Nonetheless, I think any effort, no matter how simplistic and naive, to move us forward must be applauded. Because what are really the alternative in the US? Moving closer and closer to an all out race war? Staying stuck in a system most of us know is deeply unjust if we are presented with the facts about it? Very few of us want that...I hope.

Feminist Fantasy World: Abortion Rights

I am extremely uncomfortable with the ever increasing enshrinement into the law in otherwise progressive countries, European ones, of abortion as a right. Perhaps abortion should be a right in some moral schemas...but the logic around such an idea is questionable.

We, women already have a legal right to say no to sex even to our husbands. I believe this right to say no is essential to our well being. But in my mind saying we have a right to abortion in all cases on someone else's bill is sort of like saying we have a right to liposuction but worse. Just like when you eat ice cream with every meal you risk getting fat, if you have full on penis in the the vagina sex you risk getting pregnant. And it isn't as if this kind of sex just unexpectedly happens so quickly you don't know what hit you. Unless you live in a nudist camp, you have to at least decide to get your clothes off which takes a few seconds. When you decide to use contraception you know full well that there is a risk of contraception failure...

The only real argument I see made for this supposed right to abortion is gender equality...but gender equality is some abstract goal no one would understand anyways. We are born biologically different. Men don't have a right to breastfeed or easily experience multiple orgasms...

There are at least a few ideologically dangerous ideas that come with the 'right to an abortion.' One is that it is normal for a woman to be so weak and unempowered in her relations to men that she can't say no to sex...so she needs abortions to manage her life. If this is the case for women, we need a revolution, not just abortion clinics. Another idea tied up in abortions is that a woman can schedule the pregnancies in her life with ease, which is leading to more and more abuse of women in the workplace...for further commentary check out the soon to be published book White Coats, Black Lies.

Everyone is an editor...NOT!

I never edit this blog....it's just my personal rambling...

I have worked as an academic editor, and it usually takes me about an hour to finish three pages. I am meticulous when I am getting paid. I also add additional references and ideas. I have two degrees, and I use them...

As I have been dealing with different editors for my book, I am reminded of the time years ago I paid good money to have my resume translated to Hebrew. I got the resume back, and found errors in it. I confronted the translator, and she admitted I was right about the errors. She changed them immediately. She had taken over a week to produce something I could have made myself with Google translate. I was angry, extremely angry.

As I deal with editors I am finding they don't know basics, and can't follow instructions. I'm talking BASICS, like italicize or put quotations around a book title...put a page of a book all in the same font and size....These people often claim to have degrees, but I couldn't have passed high school if I edited my own writing this badly. OK, OK...so I went to one of the top high schools in the country, but still...WTF! Money seems to be no good barometer of quality...because everyone I have paid, regardless of the amount, totally sucks.

I found out about one good editor from a friend...but she is too busy to do any work this month...what I really want to know is whether these bad editors know they are scammers. Do they actually think they are worth anything. Is this how Americans all operate, imagining that they are brilliant when they can't even fix spelling mistakes?

For the sake of anyone looking for an editor I want to include some reviews of lousy editors I have dealt with...but I can't even do that without fear of getting into a lawsuit. I feel that every last thing in America besides expensive yogurt and lettuce is a scam in one form or another. I'm going to go into a cave and edit my own work...

Angry at the World's Science Reporters

For not understanding evidence based medicine.

I recently got into an online debate with some anti-vaxxers. What makes me so angry is not which side of the argument people take, but their total noncomprehension of biostatistics. People have no idea what it means to prove something scientifically. I'm going to put in an excerpt from Chapter 3 of my book. May a science journalist please read it and stop publishing nonsense....

A touch of statistical thinking is all you need to know to see through the nonsense of many articles that incorrectly misuse statistics and research. A real statistician might find my hints about statistics criminal in oversimplification. But the truth is plenty of doctors can barely do statistics. If you train at a top tier medical school there will be a heavy emphasis on research. Lower tier medical schools tend to work as if they were going to create clinicians only. I think this pattern is wrong on many levels. I do not think a medical doctor should have to add research to their career beyond training; however you really only learn to understand by doing in many cases. When I left Penn I went to Technion because of its emphasis on research. The amount of new material in medicine grows exponentially. There are now always over a hundred new studies in any given field coming out. Any good doctor who stays good past medical school has a few specific characteristics. One is the ability to comprehend and weigh new research. In the American system new research cannot change the way you practice medicine. In the US every doctor dreads being hauled into court. At that point you are going to prey whatever you did was in line with the guidelines for your specialty. But what about those of us who want to do more, to give our patients the very, very best medicine has to offer. When you have exhausted everything within the guidelines, the treatments that might work are experimental. But knowing what works and what is oh so much pharm company deception is a matter or understanding statistics.

  Let’s start with the big picture. What is science? Science is the best method humanity has developed to understand reality. Science is a process, not a group of static facts. Science as a field is a sort of competition to see who can get the truth about any given reality. The referee in the competition is always statistics. Statistical analysis is central to the process of all sciences. The process of science can be distilled to a sequence. Here it is: the science six step:

1. Observe stuff
2. Make some ideas about why things work the way they do
3. Refine these ideas into stuff you can actually test (hypotheses)
4. Examine the existing evidence for your hypotheses
5. If there is not enough evidence to draw firm conclusions, do some experiments
6. Evaluate the data already existing and possibly data from your experiments 

 So there you have it. It doesn’t really matter that much whether we are talking about something as esoteric as quantum mechanics or something as banal as biology. Science is the same. The process is universal. Ultimately it’s hard to know what reality is, but you can very easily figure out what it isn’t. If you understand the mistakes people make in the statistical analyses of studies, you can see through a lot of nonsense. People, and even a lot of scientists, usually trip on step number six in my schema of science. To evaluate data you need statistical analysis. But a really good scientist is using statistical knowledge from at least step four forward.

Not everyone needs to or should work as a scientist. The world could probably get along without us easier than it could get along without farmers. Our lives are enhanced by the millions of people who are not scientists. Artists, cake bakers, well diggers and so on are all contributing a lot to society. The problem is that all these people, and even their leadership frequently misunderstand science. Those we have trusted to interpret science for them, often journalists with limited training in science, often misrepresent it and its results. I think none of this is going to stop anytime soon due to the poor state of education in the USA. Fortunately with a little training even a well digger can see through the nonsense that flies into print. Many science articles are full of mistakes.  

The three most useful to understand mistakes in scientific studies in my opinion are selection bias, recall bias and what I call underpowering. If you can understand these three concepts, the next time someone points out something to like the fact that her grandmother and mother both conceived past forty as proof that you have nothing to worry about at 35, you will be able to cut them down to size and tell them about reality.

A recent example of bad research I saw was an article a friend posted to Facebook. The article claimed proof that nonvaccinated children were healthier than vaccinated ones. All participants were children of parents in a parenting group dedicated to not vaccinating their children. If you have training in statistics at all you can see what a scientific train wreck the article was already, and you may want to skip the explanation in the next paragraph.

The article is a perfect example of a lot of problems. Selection bias: is a group of parents in an anti-vaccine group representative of the general population? What is half of them got thereafter kid number one got an illness they linked in their mind to vaccination? Recall bias: In recording disease and health people don’t recall things exactly the way they were. The classic example is the mothers of deformed babies. They remember themselves as having taken medicines during pregnancy, and wonder if they made the wrong choice. The truth is most women take some medicine during pregnancy. Most women who get normal kids tend to forget they took something. The woman with the formed baby will sit there and guilt trip herself out over every time she even looked at acetaminophen. We see what we want to see, or sometimes don’t want to see, when we look back. The parents in the study my friend posted to facebook recorded their children’s diseases. If they had a preconceived notion that their unvaccinated kid was always healthy, they may have forgotten a few illnesses. Finally the article was weak because it was not powered to prove anything to begin with. Power, in terms of a study, could be thought of as the ability to proclaim the conclusions of the study scientifically true. Power is, to be precise, the probability that the study will correctly lead to the rejection of the false null hypothesis. The null hypothesis is that the conclusion asserted was not true. A study gets more power based on the sample size. The size of an effect also effects power, but for a study like this one on vaccines the main power issue was sample size. The next time someone tells you about one case of something happening as proof, think of it as a study of one single subject. How much power does a study of one single subject have? Very, very little; essentially none. The next time someone makes a scientific assertion about a whole population to you based on one single case rest assured that it proves not much except that whoever told it to you doesn’t understand science.

I am passionate about science. But we don’t need scientific studies to tell us everything. Many things are obvious. For example , we don’t need a scientific study to tell us that women between 60 and 70 don’t get pregnant naturally. It’s obvious. Nonetheless many bad scientists try to sneak claims nearly as outrageous into the literature.  I feel we would all be better off if we all learned biostatistics; but realistically it won’t happen. To help dispel any future myths produced in the future by bad scientists and uninformed science writers I am including a checklist to evaluate supposedly scientific claims on fertility.

1.       What are the author’s scientific credentials? Circle one: an MD or DO; a PhD; an MPH or MS in biostatistics; this author has no known scientific credentials

Anyone can write something that is correct, but if the author is not trained in biostatistics it is highly likely he or she might unknowingly misrepresent the situation. On the other hand plenty of PhDs make science mistakes. Just having a degree behind your name does not prove much.

2.       Is the author’s claim in line with what we see in reality?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The more outlandish a claim is the more proof it should require. If someone claims most women can give birth after menopause if they simply take vitamins, you would want to see the highest levels of scientific proof for such a claim. In this case the highest level of proof would be several studies including a blinded randomized controlled trial on many subjects.

3.       If there is a study cited, does the study have enough subjects?

Single case reports, or case series prove very little. Any one person can be an anomalie. Generally speaking reliable trials include hundreds of subjects. If someone tells you about a study with 5 people, it could be interesting; but it couldn’t be powered to prove much almost by definition.

4.       Was the study published in a reputable journal?

There are plenty of nonsense journals which will publish anything. And with the advent of the internet anything is publishable. The peer review process is not perfect, but like democracy, it’s basically the best system we have come up with until this point. If the study was published in a very disreputable journal, beware!

5.       Are the studies author’s funded in such a way that they have a financial interest in proving a certain point?

It is possible that an author does a great study and just happens to prove whatever point the pharm company paying him wants proven because it is true. On the other hand it happens too often to be a chance occurance. Dr. Ben Goldacre has written about such phenomenon extensively. For lots of good highly readable information about the pitfalls of bad science he can’t be beat.

 And there...please read me all you idiot science writers who write articles like "Study of Three Infants PROVES vaccines cause measles"!