12 thoughts on “Tikun Olam Insulted, Badly – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. Hello, Richard –

    “br” is the country code for Brazil, so Carlita’s native language is probably Portuguese.

  2. Richard, I really think you ought to reason more carefully, make fewer unwarranted assumptions, and resist jumping to conclusions.

    For one thing, the provenance of an email address is not an infallible indicator of location or origin. My own yahoo address has a .ca provenance. You are welcome to believe what you like, but I assure you you’ll have a hard time tracking me down in Canada. For another, a name is not a good indicator of sex or ethnicity, and I again draw your attention to mine as evidence of this. Finally, even if ‘Carlita Morales’ is using his or her real name and was really born and raised in Brazil, where he or she still lives, why would you assume he or she is a native Portuguese speaker, rather than someone whose mother tongue is on of the other 187 languages thought to be spoken there. For all you know Carlita’s an Apurinã speaker and English is his or her eleventh language. How elegantly do you write in your eleventh language, Richard, that you can afford to ridicule Carlita’s command of English? How well would you have done reading a comment in Apurinã?

  3. Ernie: That’s really not the point as far as I’m concerned. First, I wouldn’t try to insult anyone in Apurina or my 11th language. If I couldn’t insult someone properly in their native language I’d either insult them in my own or not at all. Second, the point is that she was trying to trash me & did an execrable job of doing it. She left herself open to ridicule. Sorry, but I’m not Jesus-like when it comes to trolls & abusers. If someone wants to argue w. me properly about my views or theirs, that’s fine & I’ll do so properly. But when someone merely wants to come here to trash me as a “best” well, then all bets are off.

  4. Richard, i feel that if you are going to discount carlitas arguments it ought to be done against the points she tries to make, dont discount her because she cant navigate an email system or because she doesnt have proper punctuation or uses poor english. These christian zionist are americas visible defenders of israel, aipac and the other elephants in the room operate under cover as much as possible, the press is complicit in keeping their ways unknown to the american people. this is the crop the right wing likudniks and assorted other israel firsters have cultivated for the purposes of coming to the defense of israel, even if it means attacking other jewish americans who try to defend the rights of the oppressed palestinians and try to bring attention to the injustices commited against them in the name of zionism. In any case, i expect to see these rabbid christian defenders of israels criminial zionist state to be the visible fifth column here in the good ole u.s.a., only time will tell, and when it does, i expect to see a great division here in america, the attention that the jewish community will attract will not be in their interest. The middle east isnt going away any time soon, the intentions of the u.s and israel are clear.

    If you note, carlita has been educated to believe that there were no arabs living in the land (palestinians dont exist ), when the european jews started their crusade. The revisionism of palestinian history has achieved its purpose and now the crop of believers is ripe and ready for gleaning. This is the frankenstein monster that zionist revisionism has created, and now it has a life of it’s own.

  5. Richard, Certainly that was not the point of what Carlita sent to you. But you made it the point in your post, which doesn’t intersect with the substance of Carlita’s email at all, as Samuel correctly points out. I recollect a similar thing came up in our last exchange, when you went off at some idiot becaus ethey had used the word ‘Nazi’ and then castigated me for taking it out of context! I don’t recommend you make a habit of it. It’s not a good look. Furthermore, I strongly disagree with you. Carlita was brave and considerate to make an attempt to communicate with you in your language and the language of this blog.

    Now far be it from me to defend the kind of views that Carlita is trying to express, but I read a lot of bad English and I don’t think Samuel is reading them right. The point is probably not that Palestine was uninhabited, but that what was known as Palestine under the LoN Mandate from 1923 to 1948 is historically part of Greater Syria and that Palestinians therefore did not exist as a separate national identity. Anyway, that’s how I read it. It’s still bullshit, but not quite the bullshit Samuel seems to have taken it for. And as he says, the important thing is to intersect with what they actually say.

  6. Ernie: We’re just going to have to agree to disagree on this one. People who come here to insult me are owed no deference. People who call me a “beast” or “stupid” or claim I’m an Arab dupe (as she did) will receive no quarter from me.

    The “substance” of her e mail was so full of ignorance and ultra-Zionist propaganda, and so many other commenters have written virtually the same thing here that I simply don’t have the patience to rebut her as I have so many others.

    Carlita was brave and considerate…

    Surely you jest. I’m all in favor of people learning foreign languages as I’ve done so myself and helped others learn my own native language and Hebrew. But trashing someone in a language in which you’re barely proficient is “brave & considerate??” I guess we just use those terms differently.

    As someone who speaks Hebrew as my second language, I have made my share of serious bonehead linguistic errors which have either embarrassed me or landed me in hot water. That’s why I would be far more careful than this woman was in what she was attempting to do. Humility can be a very good thing in learning a foreign language.

  7. Look at what you’re saying Richard: What it amounts to is that nobody should attempt to express themselves in a foreign language unless they are absolutely confident they can do so clearly and elegantly, and not only that, their confidence must be well founded. Since everybody learns languages by making mistakes and many who have to use a foreign language as their principle medium of communication never really gain native speaker proficiency, the consequences are that nobody should learn a foreign language, even though you admit you’ve done so yourself, and even made mistakes in the process. Or is it just that they shouldn’t make mistakes when trying to criticise you? Bear in mind that the whole point of the post was to ridicule Carlita’s command of English, as far as I can tell.

  8. Ernie: Not at all. I’m all in favor of taking chances when speaking or learning a foreign language. I’m all in favor of making mistakes & not being made to pay a price. But one lesson I learned long ago was that if you attempt to go beyond yr proficiency you can get yourself in very hot water easily.

    I was meeting with my graduate advisor & trying to get him to approve a TAship for me. The director of the TAship program was putting what I felt at the time were major hoops in my path that I had to pass through before I could get a position. At one point I used the Hebrew word atumah to describe the director’s attitude. I remember looking up the word in the dictionary before the meeting & feeling proud to use such an unusual word in conversation. But as soon as I used the word I realized I’d made a major mistake. I’d intended the word to mean “opaque,” but it can also mean “obdurate” or “stubborn” w. quite negative connotations. I realized immediately that I’d made the comment much more personal than I’d intended. Needless to say, I never got a TAship & eventually left the program. It taught me a certain level of humility & carefulness in my future use of the language.

    So what I’m saying is that sometimes when you take a chance & make a mistake you pay a price. That’s why I’m in favor of being careful in these situations. Recklessness, which is what Carlita showed, is not a virtue in speaking or writing a foregin language. And if you are reckless, you may pay a price.

  9. Richard, greetings from a brazilian! The name Carlita Morales is spanish, not portuguese. Her equivalent brazilian name would be Carlinha Moraes, a diminutive form of Carla Moraes. On the other hand Genival da Costa Neves is indeed a brazilian name (possibly a friend or an in-law). Why would Carlita be so upset about your writtings I cannot guess, but doesn’t “your stupidity and lethargy is appalilng” sounds pretty much what a poor immigrant to America would hear every day before going to her small spanish-speaking pro-israelite evangelical congregation?

    I see you reacted badly to her letter, but it makes such a fun reading! Had she written that in spanish it wouldn’t be so hilarious.

  10. what a poor immigrant to America would hear every day before going to her small spanish-speaking pro-israelite evangelical congregation?

    I hadn’t thought of the fact that she might indeed be one of the rising tide of Brazilian evangelical Christians which would fully explain, as you note, her fervent pro-Israel stance. That puts it into an interesting context.

  11. Indeed there are evangelical Christian organizations here in Brazil which use David’s Star as it’s symbols. But my point is Carlita is not a brazilian and you are right in thinking her native language is spanish.

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