I am trying my best to start a new project on Monday with a clean desk. So I made another Speclenium release.
This release does not have much new, the big changes are in pyia, the Python MSAA library, I added the option for unlocalized role names and states. This fixes some bugs when testing on localized desktops.
Pyia is really nice, if you have any use for MSAA in Windows, and you could use Python, use pyia.
I have been tagged with multiple memes lately, a I have rudely ignored all of them. No more! What better birthday gift to myself than a blog post. I will now answer these memes with my own. I was tagged by Marco and Steve with the “7 things” thing, and by a couple of Facebook buddies with the “25 things” one. So I decided to reply with a “16 things” post, which I believe is the average of 7 and 25. I liked Vince‘s idea of using the top tracks in itunes shuffle mode, so I will be doing that. I will also not tag anybody, since this terrible pyramid scheme needs to die.
Before I begin, if you want to read up on antisemitism on the left, this week The Guardian had some wonderful columns written by lefty U.K. Jews on that topic. One column was followed by a rebuttal, but in my opinion both columns complement each other beautifully.
- Miner’s Song – Woody Guthrie
- How’s Chances – Ella Fitzgerald
- Theme From Rawhide – The Blues Brothers
- Pannonica – Thelonious Monk
- Girl From The North Country – Bob Dylan And Johny Cash
- Hypnotize – The White Stripes
- People Ain’t No Good – Nick Cave
- Sao Paulo – Morcheeba
- Land of 1000 Dances – Wilson Pickett
- Pulled Up – Talking Heads
- Walk Like an Egyptian – Bangles
- עמיר לב – לפעמים אני מאושר
- For The Damaged – Blond Redhead
- In My Bed – Amy Winehouse
- History Of Lovers – Iron And Wine/Calexico
- Breathless – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
The killing, for the most part, has stopped. But the nightmare is not over. This catastrophe is about to be induced into Israel’s hall of fame, right next to other prides such as Operation Entebbe and Tal Brody. The collective Israeli memory is going to remember the bloodshed of the last few weeks as a happy period, when we “let the IDF win”. It does not matter how many rockets fall on Sderot from now on, operation “Cast Lead” will always be remembered as a success, a testimony to our elan. Or at least a step in the right direction. The only dispute now is whether we should have continued the killing.
This has been a bitter lesson for me. Since 2006, I have been in dispute with this country regarding the war in Lebanon. I was outraged when it started, both at the government and the gullible public. During those summer weeks there was nobody I knew in Israel who was thinking sensibly and not repeating the hasbara ex-general pundits were feeding everyone over the tube. The entire venture was a failure. A commission was formed, politicians were forced to quit public life, and the army practically purged it’s entire senior command.
I was not expecting Israel to apologize, to knock on my door and say “we were wrong, you were right”. I was pessimistic on one hand, Israel’s military was going to look for the first chance to redeem it’s lost esteem, but optimistic in on the other, the public will not eat this kind of bullshit again. I was hoping that the 2006 experience would cultivate some healthy scepticism that would not allow generals to get away with anything.
I was wrong. The war in 2006 was a failure, and everybody took it upon themselves to make it “work” this time, not just the army and government, but the public too. I naively believed that the disproportionate destruction and civilian death in Lebanon tickled the public, just a bit, but it didn’t. Lebanon turned into an unpopular war because of the shoddy intelligence, the rusting equipment and the hesitant commanders. The national disgrace was not the carnage, but the amateurish way in which it was carried out.
By those standards, this last episode was an outstanding success. The intelligence was good, the raids were potent and demoralized the enemy, the reservists recieved modern and lubricated equipment, and the expectations were low. The dying and suffering civilians in Gaza did not play a role in the metrics of this operation’s success. The disfigured children in overcrowded hospitals were a setback only in the sense that the world was watching, and it was getting awkward. The public here did not blink.
Do you want your children to learn that narritive in history class? It is a mark of Cain, not a victory. We can’t let it go down as one.
I hope this does not turn in to a wartime tradition. After the last Lebanon war, I posted a rough translation from a song that was featured in Shampoo Queen (or Queen of The Bath), Hanoch Levin‘s provocative satire about the Israeli consensus surrounding militarism and national schovinism, specifically following the 1967 victory.
A lot of these themes remain relevant today. Because of the illegal nature of our actions in Gaza, I thought I would share the following song. Please excuse my rough translation:
The Ten Commandments
On a sunny and pleasant spring morning
We all rose as one man
Strong and invigorated people
Of good stature and brave
We rose and we climbed mount Sinai
Where we received the word of The Lord
We climbed proud with song and poem
The word of The Lord to return.
First conclusion, for security needs
We tossed to the sky the first commandment
After that we also tossed the second commandment
It too, because of the security situation
After the second, the third came next
An understood act of a state under siege,
And this naturally includes
In the same package the fourth commandment
The fourth commandment, and the fifth with it
Because ‘If he come to slay thee, forestall by slaying him’
And with a similar cause of the struggle for existence
Will throw the sixth away with urgency
It was necessary and so justified
That the seven commandment was tossed too.
After it the eighth and the ninth with it
Both for reason of battlefield morale
And to finish with an even number
The tenth commandment was sent with the others.
On a sunny and pleasant spring morning
We all returned as one man
Strong and invigorated people
Of good stature and brave
Our heads held high
Our shoulders light
Filling our lungs with air.
I found on the internets a video about the Shampoo Queen scandal. It features the song above. If I had all the time in the world, I would have translated it. My favorite quote there comes after a high-school student asks the IDF’s chief of staff, Bar-Lev, if “The Queen of The Bath” has hurt the army’s morale. Bar-Lev replies “A week ago I went to an IDF outpost in Sinai and asked the soldiers ‘what is your opinion regarding The Queen of The Bath?’ they answered ‘Bring the queen, we will give her a bath over here!’”. I love that quote because it plays so well into Levin’s critique of a militarized society.