Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Some of you may know that the English newspaper, The Guardian, is expanding its coverage of the U.S. It’s website has a global reach and now has a significant portion of its readers here in this country. As part of this expansion, Comment is Free, the Guardian’s daily blog about politics and international affairs will be adding a U.S. section come June.

The Washington DC editor asked me if I would contribute a weekly column to CiF. This is really a dream come true for me. When you first start blogging as I did in 2003, you sometimes feel like you’re shouting down a dark hole and all you hear in reply is your own echo. It’s gratifying when the mainstream media validates the value of your work.

In addition, there is still a significant percentage of people who look down their noses at political blogs as a reliable research source of information or opinion. Usually those people are the ones who disagree with your views to begin with and their dismissiveness tends to confirm their opinions in a loop of circular reasoning. I appreciate the Guardian granting its imprimatur to my work. It goes some ways toward combating this prejudice.

A perfect example of this is Wikipedia, the world’s largest source of online research. It has a deeply confusing attitude toward blogs as sources for Wikipedia articles. Generally, they are frowned upon as unreliable since they are self-published sources, a definite no-no in the Wikipedia world. However, if you are a genuine expert in the field you write about, then blogs can be accepted as sources:

Self-published material may…be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications

But it seems up to the blogger and Wikipedia members to sort out whether you are an expert or not. If you consider yourself an expert, and even if your blog presents original research on a topic, if another member disagrees they can remove your links at will and quote you irrelevant chapter and verse to “justify” their actions.

In my case, there are several members who have campaigned to remove references to my blog (read my Talk page) in Wikipedia articles arguing that by linking to my blog I’ve created a conflict of interest. Given that the conflict of interest rules were created mainly to prevent commercial entities from either promoting themselves or tearing down their rivals, they aren’t relevant to my situation. They also argue that despite my background in the field about which I write, since I am not a professional journalist, author, or academic, my contributions are not trustworthy and not disinterested. Considering that Wikipedia exists online and exploits all the opportunities that the web offers to disseminate knowledge, I find it ironic that it’s standards are so conventional. Either you write a book, newspaper or magazine article, or academic journal article if you wish to be an acceptable source. Write a blog and you’re chopped liver.

A senior Wikipedia editor I respect recently wrote to me about a phenomenon called “wikilawyering,” a tendency, as the online encyclopedia grows ever larger and more complicated, to parse the rules to an incredibly fine degree. In Talmudic interpretation it’s known as pilpul or in English ‘casuistry.’ He examined the work of my opponents and told me that it was such an example. I’m hoping to be working with him and other sympathetic Wikipedia members to figure out how serious political blogs can be treated with more respect within the Wikipedia universe.

And should anyone reading this edit Wikipedia articles, I’d welcome my work being referenced and linked there.

Though the pay at CiF isn’t much, at least I am getting paid. I remember a hilarious story Calvin Trillin wrote I believe in the New Yorker about a nice lunch The Nation’s editor treated him to over a discussion of his becoming a contributing writer. Trillin relates jocularly that the fee for his pieces was to be “in the low three figures.” But three figures is better than no figures.

My English friend, Michael Furmanovsky wrote to me saying: “You should be proud to be contributing to the best newspaper in the world.” As a dyed in the wool NY Times reader I find it difficult to transfer that title to The Guardian. But the truth is that the Times has nowhere near the diversity of political opinion in its pages that The Guardian does. This is proven by the fact that it is The Guardian and not the Times which has developed Comment is Free, a terrific means of integrating the best of the blog world into mainstream media.

The Guardian truly lets a thousand flowers bloom. The Times seems to specialize in a limited and carefully selected number of hot-house flowers. It’s a different journalistic philosophy and while I value both–as a writer I’m especially grateful for The Guardian’s approach.

I want to continue encouraging readers to provide story ideas to me along with links and any other background information that is necessary to write it.

tags blogs as research sources, calvin trillin, comment-is-free, the-guardian, wikipedia

If I had a nickel for every wingnut who’s ever written something stupid or sleazy about me I’d be a rich man. The infinite variety of the abuse, lies and invective is a remarkable testament to the inventiveness of the human race. It’s also a testament to the human ability to waste its time and energy in copious amounts.

The latest example of this is someone who calls himself ‘John Rohan’ and blogs at Shield of Achilles (no, I’m not going to do anything to boost this shmendrik’s site traffic by providing a link). After an endless stream of logorrheic comments here and being called by him a self-hating Jew (Rohan isn’t Jewish of course, which certainly makes him the best judge on matters like this), “fraud,” and other choice epithets, I banned ‘Rohan’ (or whatever his name is).

What’s interesting about this fellow if he tells the truth on his blog (which with wingnuts is, of course, always in doubt) is that his blog claims he is a military intelligence officer serving in Wiesbaden, Germany. If he does serve in the U.S. armed forces it means that your and my tax dollars are supporting military wingnuts in smearing their fellow citizens online. Don’t know about you–but I find this disturbing. Not to mention that the vitriol he spouts puts him at odds with U.S. military and foreign policy. In comments at my blog and private e-mails, he attacks erstwhile U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia by name and denounces Palestinians as a people as little short of terrorist murderers. I’d have thought that the military would want to protect itself from being associated with wingnut rage like this.

If this guy is genuine is it any wonder that our military effort in Iraq has failed so miserably (where he claims to have served training the Iraqi police, God help us–and them)? Is it any wonder that our armed forces and government as a whole have absolutely no idea how to relate to the Arab world when this is the best our military can come up with?

Just in case there’s any truth to his claims about his occupation, I’ve written to the base commander at Wiesbaden to report on “Rohan’s” activity. If I don’t receive any reply my next step will be contacing my Congressional representative.

If Rohan is lying and he is not a military intelligence officer then we’ll have yet one more example of wingnuts posing as macho wannabe gung ho types. He’ll be little more than a poor, raging fool seeking to create a life for himself based on fantasy. Given that Rohan has publicly attacked me on his own blog I’d guess he’s either a fraud claiming to be a military intelligence officer or a supremely self-confident soldier-fool who thinks he can get away with just about anything. And if he’s fake, I’d think the army would not look kindly on bloggers falsely assuming the identity of military personnel.

I have a reader who serves in the Israeli army and often disagrees with my views and tells me so. But unlike Rohan, the former won’t blog publicly about his political views or comment at my blog both because the army doesn’t want him to and because he doesn’t want his own views to reflect in any way on the army. I can respect that. “Rohan” has no such humility or modesty.

After I banned Rohan, he began sending me unsolicited e-mails. When I told him to stop writing, all of a sudden I started getting e mails making virtually the same false claims about me from someone named ‘Michael Villano.’ I don’t know whether the e-mails are from Rohan or a wingnut co-conspirator (their IP addresses appear to be different). I don’t even know if their author really is named Michael Villano–michaelvillano@att.net.

Rohan has taken the despicable step of publishing my e mail address at his blog, thereby allowing spammers to harvest it. Since one egregious violation of personal privacy deserves another, I’ll feature his here and let the spammers have at him as well: johnrohan@hotmail.com.

tags john rohan fake, michael villano, military intelligence, shield of achilles, wiesbaden

I’m an inveterate blog booster and proselytizer. Whenver I read something I admire about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or any other subject that interests me a great deal, I always encourage the author to start blogging if they don’t already. My thinking is the more good blogs there are, the more readers will be drawn to our work, and the more seriously blogs in general and our blogs in particular will be taken. Though this is a subject for a longer conversation, I believe that blogs are generally (with a few exceptions) disrespected by the media and even by online resources like Wikipedia, which frowns upon blogs as legitimate sources.

I urged Gershom Gorenberg, whose work I first discovered when Israel Policy Forum hosted a talk by him here in Seattle this past year, to start blogging. I don’t want to take any credit for Gershom’s new blog since I probably had nothing to do with his decision. But I’m delighted that he and Haim Watzman have begun South Jerusalem described as “A Progressive, Skeptical Blog on Israel, Judaism, Culture, Politics, and Literature.” Another reason this particular blog is important is that most English-language Israeli blogs are right-wing. I’ve been on the receiving end of criticism from a good number of them. It is truly a breath of fresh air to read an Israeli blog written from a tolerant, open-handed perspective.

Gershom hasn’t explained to me his choice of title for his blog, but I think it’s interesting that the political heat generated about Jerusalem revolves around the east-west axis. West Jerusalem is generally Jewish and East Jerusalem generally (though less so as time progresses) Palestinian. I wonder whether their decision to name the blog South Jerusalem is a contrarian statement that the authors wish to probe a Jerusalem, THEIR Jerusalem, that is off the beaten track and not wracked by bloody ethnic rivalry.

Gorenberg is the author of a seminal history of the settler movement, The Accidental Empire. Watzman, whose work I’m less familiar with than Gorenberg’s wrote the highly regarded, Company C.

tags gershom-gorenberg, haim-watzman, south-jerusalem

Today, Judge John Reid of Los Angeles Superior Court issued a tentative ruling requiring Rachel Neuwirth to pay my attorneys $7,000 for the legal work they did defending the libel case she brought against me. One of the provisions of the SLAPP (Selective Lawsuit Against Public Participation) law which we used as our defense is that those who bring frivolous lawsuits can be penalized by having to pay the defendant’s attorney’s fees. Hence our award. She will also have to pay Joel Beinin’s attorney fees.

tags judge-john-reid-los-angeles-superior-court, neuwirth-to-pay-$7000-in-legal-fees-in-libel-case

Rachel Neuwirth has filed an appeal with the California Court of Appeals regarding the Los Angeles Superior Court’s decision to dismiss her libel suit against Joel Beinin and myself. So it’s back to court we go. If we win, the precedent of our previous victory protecting freedom of speech on the internet becomes that much stronger and if we lose…well, let’s not even go there.

tags california-court-of-appeals, internet-free-speech, joel-beinin, los-angeles-superior-court, neuwirth-v.-silverstein

Several readers have asked to read this original, expanded version of the article Haaretz published yesterday under the title, In Praise of the Jewish Blogosphere: I began my blog, Tikun Olam, in February, 2003 precisely one month before the Iraq war began. But even more than my budding opposition to the upcoming war, what motivated me to begin blogging was my passion to speak out on behalf of Israeli-Palestinian peace. I spent all my adult life dedicated to this cause, but until blogging developed I had no regular, public means of expressing my views. As someone who has always loved writing but not been a professional writer, it was important to have a public means of ...

I wanted to thank Haaretz for publishing in its English edition my first piece in that newspaper, In Praise of Jewish Blogging. It's a radically edited version of a piece I submitted which was way over their word limit. I've tried numerous times to elicit interest on the part of Haaretz editors in my work. But thanks to Ira Moskowitz, who suggested I contact the new managing editor, Charlotte Halle, it's finally happened. I've proposed writing precisely this article to numerous Jewish publications, none of whom were interested. It deals with what it's been like personally to write a Jewish political blog about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the past five years. And how, to my ...

AT&T: Your world--filtered...for MPAA and RIAA The New York Times reports that AT&T, Microsoft and other tech companies seeking to protect copyrighted online media materials proposed that ISPs become internet traffic cops: For the last 15 years, Internet service providers have acted...as wide-open information super-highways, letting data flow uninterrupted and unimpeded between users and the Internet. But I.S.P.’s may be about to embrace a new metaphor: traffic cop. At a small panel discussion about digital piracy at...the Consumer Electronics Show...representatives from NBC, Microsoft, several digital filtering companies and the telecom giant AT&T said the time was right to start filtering for copyrighted content at the network level. ...Network-level filtering means your Internet service provider...could ...

We've all heard about that vaunted Google Algorithm, something like McDonald's secret sauce. Well, the algorithm sometimes fails as it did in this instance in which Google Adsense generated this ad in my sidebar. Somehow, I don't think many of my readers are seeking careers in anti-terrorism.

You'd think after a profit warning pounded its stock today (losing 12%), that Intel would be looking for ways to get some good press. Not so. Not unless sticking it to the world's poor children is considered good press. MIT's Nicholas Negroponte has created the One Laptop Per Child initiative which seeks to put an inexpensive computer into the hands of some of the world's poorest children. The initiative hasn't been without controversy. A competing project claimed One Laptop was TOO technologically sophisticated for its purpose, and that the former provided a better alternative by having a battery that could be recharged by manual labor. One Laptop has ...