Positive Reinforcement?

Many Palestinians believe that violent resistance is the best way to get concessions from Israel. Many Palestinians believe that Israel cannot be trusted to hold up her end of any peace accord. Many Palestinians are open to extreme or moderate ideologies.

Right now, Palestine is split: recalcitrant Hamas rules the Gaza Strip, while the generally nonviolent Fatah governs the West Bank. Hamas has been actively Israel, but the West Bank has been almost completely out of the news, despite their greater access to Israel and Israeli settlers.

So how does Israel reward Fatah's good behavior? By allowing the settlements to expand, of course. More land is seized from Palestinian olive-growers and goatherds by Israeli suburbanites. The Israeli military continues to protect the settlers and wink at most of the new construction, even though much of it lacks permits. Agreements to close down illegal settlements and cease construction in specific places have been ignored, by Sharon's government, by Olmert's government, and now by Netanyahu's government.

This isn't to say that the Palestinians don't tolerate and even promote a lot of violence and extremism on their side. But when an easing of Palestinian resistance is rewarded with more land seizures and settlement, who can blame a rational Palestinian for joining the violent resistance?

Fish Piracy

Jerry Okungu tells the important other side of the Somali pirate boom: Somali fishing waters have been violated by Asian and European fishing trawlers during that country's long, ongoing civil war.

Fortunately, this is an easy problem to resolve. Monitoring of the waters by international naval forces seems the obvious way to deal with the small-time pirates, and also the easiest way to detect illegal fishing. The last ingredient is an agreement by governments to stop the 'fish piracy' by their own opportunistic fisherman. Since an international force can withhold protection from the merchant marine of any non-compliant nation, this shouldn't be too difficult to implement.

Looking for peace of mind?

I'd never thought of looking here, but it makes perfect sense now.

Hancock Street in Quincy, huh?

Superstition

Liberal critic Stanley Fish approvingly reviews a new book by Terry Eagleton, a Brit who "is angry, [Fish thinks], at having to expend so much mental and emotional energy refuting the shallow arguments of school-yard atheists like Hitchens and Dawkins." In Fish's telling, Eagleton ties the utilitarian approach of the current breed of atheists to the nauseating materialist listlessness that sharp minds like Hitchens' surely despise:

Progress, liberalism and enlightenment — these are the watchwords of those, like Hitchens, who believe that in a modern world, religion has nothing to offer us. Don’t we discover cures for diseases every day? Doesn’t technology continually extend our powers and offer the promise of mastering nature? Who needs an outmoded, left-over medieval superstition?

Eagleton punctures the complacency of these questions when he turns the tables and applies the label of “superstition” to the idea of progress. It is a superstition — an idol or “a belief not logically related to a course of events” (American Heritage Dictionary) — because it is blind to what is now done in its name: “The language of enlightenment has been hijacked in the name of corporate greed, the police state, a politically compromised science, and a permanent war economy,” all in the service, Eagleton contends, of an empty suburbanism that produces ever more things without any care as to whether or not the things produced have true value.

Smallness of mind and spirit has been tied to religion at least since Nietzche. Now Eagleton joins Lewis, Chesterton and others in tying it to the superstitions of science.

Truly: any system of belief, reduced to a patina of self-justification, enables men and women to lead small lives. Thus Eagleton and Lewis and Nietzche agree in positing "the last man" as a small, self-serving cretin who uses the cheap sorcery of materialism to abolish the discomfort of the grand uncertainties.

Hitchens may not know it but he teaches the last man.

A Sporting Try

The Patriots have signed a rookie who has never played a down of organized football. Good luck to you, Jermail Porter!

Chile Review

Some highlights and lowlights from my first visit to a South American country. Everything´s listed worst to best.

Seafood

• Empanada Mariscos: this mess of seafood lacks distinct flavor in 2 tries.
• Machas (Razor Clams) in butter sauce: unspectacular.
• Fried whitefish: cheapest fish, but still tasty. The batter was soggy, though.
• Grilled Reineta: Light flavor, not fishy, and substantial.
• Shrimp with cheese in butter sauce: a winner, if a bit over the top.
• Reineta Ceviche: delicious in its onion and lemon marinade; not `fishy´ at all.
• Fried conger eel: the batter crust pairs perfectly with tender and boneless flesh.

Wine

• Urmeneta Carmenere: has a serious kick; was drinkable with spicy food.
• Santa Emiliana Chardonnay: a bit of a sour taste develops late.
• Ocho Tierra Cabernet Sauvignon: well-balanced table wine.
• Montes Malbec: sophisticated and dry, but not bold enough to really impress.
• Santa Emiliana Carmenere: bold and smoky, this wins compliments at $3.

Cultural Curios

• Creepy hustlers dressed as clowns and mimes.
• Walk on the right. Or the left. Or the middle.
• The lack of brewed coffee; Nescafe is a Spanish portmanteau for no es cafe.
• Nightlife ends at 7pm... and then restarts around midnight. Where do they all go?
• National pastime: making out in the park.
• El pueblo of Colo-Colo: it´s like a class-conscious Red Sox Nation.
• Fresh salsa at the table as a condiment.
• Friendly dogs have the run of the city.

Another highlight I'll brag about until I die: while hiking in the foothills of the Andes, we got buzzed by a condor. It was huge: 7 to 9 foot wingspan, and flew past just 10 meters overhead.

Jeans

George F. Will is sending the commentariat into a sustained collective conniption with his preposterously huffy raking of American denim culture. It is worth a read, whether you love or hate jeans, if only for this quote:

This is not complicated. For men, sartorial good taste can be reduced to one rule: If Fred Astaire would not have worn it, don't wear it. For women, substitute Grace Kelly.

One assumes Will scathes in good fun, and one appreciates the humor.