Dispatches from the Creation Wars

Wait, is this some kind of reverse Godwin? I think I need to lay down until my brain stops hurting.

Posted by: FastLane | December 11, 2009 9:13 AM

I note that, despite the vast majority of Jews who maintain some level of reasonable sensibility about the Holocaust, there remains a small group of Jews who take it WAY THE FUCK TOO FAR.

I'm almost inclined to think Kaufman may have some Zionist leanings.

Posted by: Katharine | December 11, 2009 9:18 AM

despite the vast majority of Jews who maintain some level of reasonable sensibility about the Holocaust, there remains a small group of Jews who take it WAY THE FUCK TOO FAR.

of course there are. judaism does not confer any immunity to lunacy, after all.

Posted by: Nomen Nescio | December 11, 2009 9:36 AM

Re katharine

I don't think that Mr. Brayton would appreciate my hijacking this thread to discuss the issue of the Holocaust as it pertains to the views of people living in the State of Israel. However, there is a considerable difference between the views of Jews living safely in the US and Jews living not nearly so safely in Israel. Israels' neighbors have, over the years, issued threats to annihilate that nation and its inhabitants so it is not surprising that those inhabitants might be rather more sensitive to issues involving the Holocaust then their coreligionists in the US. Having said that, I would agree that Mr. Kaufman is a whackjob but I don't think that possible Zionist tendencies have anything to do with his nuttiness.

Posted by: SLC | December 11, 2009 10:05 AM

Katharine, I am inclined to think that Kaufman is a goddamned kook.

Posted by: Valhar2000 | December 11, 2009 10:17 AM

...and the mainstream liberal notion that the Jews should hand over Israel to the Arabs...

Name one "mainstream liberal" who advocates such a policy, and show us the exact quote, or admit you're full of shit.

Posted by: Raging Bee | December 11, 2009 10:24 AM

Raging Bee:

The one-state solution.

Posted by: Pat Donohue | December 11, 2009 10:29 AM

Pat: the article you cite says NOTHING about abolishing Israel, and NOTHING about "mainstream liberals" in America. Again: back up your lazy assertion or admit you're full of shit.

Posted by: Raging bee | December 11, 2009 10:33 AM

It should be noted that Mr. Donohue @ #10 is not entirely wrong. There is a view held by many on the left side of the spectrum that Palestinians living in refugee camps should be resettled in Israel. That, of course, is equivalent to the Government of Israel agreeing to go out of business.

There is also considerable hostility towards the State of Israel on the left (e.g. see commentors on Matthew Yglesias' blog and the counterpunch web site), which is mostly confined to the far left in the US but is rather more mainstream in Europe, particularly the Scandinavian countries and Great Britain. In Great Britain, the Israel bashers are egged on by the BBC and the Guardian, both considered moderately left of center and both of which are strongly negative about the State of Israel.

Posted by: SLC | December 11, 2009 11:26 AM

There is a view held by many on the left side of the spectrum that Palestinians living in refugee camps should be resettled in Israel.

Yes, but Pat's ascribing this opinion to "mainstream liberals" (whom he still has yet to name) means that yes, he is "entirely wrong."

Posted by: Raging Bee | December 11, 2009 11:58 AM

Pat Donahue,

Raging Bee asked you to show some mainstream liberals who supported the one-state solution. All you showed was a link to an article explaining the one-state solution. That's not what he asked for. He wasn't disputing the existence of the idea--he was disputing whether any mainstream liberals support it. So either show him a main-stream liberal who supports it, or admit you don't know of any.

Consider this article, in which Obama opposes the idea, but conservative Huckabee supports it. That link undermines (but does not disprove) your claim. Show us one like it that shows mainstream liberals supporting the one-state solution, or fuck off.

Posted by: James Hanley | December 11, 2009 12:07 PM

My head is still spinning trying to figure out what an "Outlaw Poet" is after reading his original screeds.

Posted by: LtStorm | December 11, 2009 12:49 PM

Funny, I was under the impression that Zionism meant more than simply letting the state of Israel exist. Which is by itself not a problem.

I was under the impression that it meant pissing on the Palestinians, too.

Posted by: Katharine | December 11, 2009 1:59 PM

Katharine, #25:

My understanding is that "Zionism" means the belief that there should be a Jewish nation to which any Jew in the world may immigrate. How that Jewish nation treats non-Jews within its borders or whether the Jewish nation should annex the West Bank outright are questions about which a Zionist may come to her own conclusions.

Posted by: Chiroptera | December 11, 2009 2:30 PM

Re Katharine

Actually, Arabs in Israel are better off then Arabs in Arab countries for the most part. That should not be taken in any way, shape, form, or regard as a complement for the State of Israel. It should be taken as a sad commentary on the state of human rights in virtually all Arab countries.

Posted by: SLC | December 11, 2009 3:52 PM

Joe, #30:

A majority of Israelis and a majority of Palestinians are both against a one-state solution.

Posted by: Chiroptera | December 11, 2009 4:43 PM

Just to give you a inkling of what the Palestinians might feel*, imagine this:
Imagine the American colonists rose up against the their English overlords. The French (say) agreed to help with money and men, and promised that the Americans would have possession of the newly freed territories.
The Americans win. Then the French Foreign Minister unilaterally announces, contrary to earlier promises, that the 'New England' area will be a 'homeland' for the local Algonquin speaking natives. The international community decides that North America in to be a French Mandated Territory. Areas are parcelled out to various important appointees (both Amerindian and American), without consulting the population as a whole. {Those American leaders who fail to fall into line have a mysterious tendency to get killed).
Later, when the American Colonists expand west and dispossess other native tribes, the French step in to prevent this. Then Russia (say) and France declare that the 'New England' area, is to be an Amerindian state and that non-Amerindians have got to sell-up at whatever price the buyers want, and move out in a month. The non-Amerindians are graciously allowed to live in two tiny areas, totally devoid of any kind of infrastructure or means of support. How do you think the Americans would feel about this new state? Do you think they would resist? If so how?
Suppose the new Amerindian state expanded by attacking their neighbouring American states and won (due to the superior technology, resources and money provided by French citizens and (more clandestinely) the French State itself), suppose they gained control of Philadelphia (the American capital) and excluded their neighbours from entering the city (without lengthy and humiliating 'security' checks). Whilst pushing their neighbours into smaller and smaller areas.
Suppose this state called their American neighbours terrorists, and prevented food, medicine (and arms) getting to them. Suppose they walled them off behind a 'security' wall, that separated the American from their fields, families, amenities (such as hospitals, schools etc.) and allowed the Amerindians to expand their villages even if it were directly contrary International Law.
Suppose that the Amerindian state, citing that some Americans continue to resist with the weapons they can make or smuggle in, attacked schools, clearly marked hospitals and UN buildings with the banned white phosphorus (say), then stood up in the international spotlight and cried "No, No. We did nothing wrong. we've had an internal review judged by our military that clearly shows our military did nothing wrong, and besides: 'Trail of Tears!' anyone who disagrees with us is anti-Amerindian", knowing full well that the French will veto any action against their actions no matter how much it violates International Law. How do you imagine the Americans would feel?* - DJ
--------------
* Yes the analogy is not a perfect one by any stretch of the imagination, but I think it represents how the Palestinians (another Semitic group BTW) might feel about recent history (or at least it's how I would feel in similar circumstances). Sometimes it is instructive to see how the other side sees the conflict.

Posted by: DingoJack | December 12, 2009 3:00 AM

http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2010/jul/kaufman072409.html

From Publishers Weekly
Review of Alan Kaufman's MATCHES, a novel (Little, Brown)
The title is an Israeli army term for a soldier, or one who "strikes, burns, and dies." Nathan Falk, an American-born Jew and the son of a Holocaust survivor, arrives in Israel seeking "for once, to be generally human, immersed in a kinky-haired majority"—and to do the three years of regular military service and subsequent one-month-a-year reserve duty required of every Israeli male. The narrative falls into 13 Israel Defense Forces patrol vignettes, centered by one novella-size chapter that follows Falk's affair with his best friend's alcoholic girlfriend, along with the honor killing of a 17-year-old Bedouin girl by a man in Falk's (very multi-culti) unit. Throughout, Kaufman (author of Jew Boy, a memoir), an American Jew who did multiple IDF tours and now lives in San Francisco, sketches the fault lines of Israeli society as heightened by the highly charged, often violent patrols in the West Bank and Gaza: Sephardic vs. Ashkenazi; native vs. emigré; Arab vs. Jew. The political turmoil, ruined relationships, coiled anger and psychological damage the patrols leave in their wake is made vivid—and personal—at every turn, as are IDF procedures and moments of unexpected cooperation across borders. As a novel, it's baggy, but the result gives readers a fascinating look at the story behind the numbing newspaper tallies. (Oct. 24)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist:
Review of Alan Kaufman's MATCHES, a novel ILittle, Brown)
Nathan Falk is an American expatriate serving in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). His unit is repeatedly called up to serve in the West Bank and Gaza. The soldiers search for terrorists in squalid refugee camps and villages, then return to their camp to chain-smoke, drink muddy coffee, and play high-stakes games of Risk. When on leave, Nathan carries on a passionate affair with his best friend's wife. The author, who has served in the IDF, beautifully captures the absurdity of the war and the political situation in the Middle East. His vivid portrayal of nighttime patrols, conversations with fellow soldiers, and relationships with Bedouin trackers gives readers a taste of life on the edge. It also shows how war damages a man's soul. This is Catch-22 without the comic relief, a stunning tale of betrayal, guilt, love, and war. Barbara Bibel
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Posted by: Alan Kaufman | December 21, 2009 2:02 AM

From Evergreen Review
No.120

The Electronic Book Burning
by Alan Kaufman

In the past few years I have witnessed in San Francisco a sudden epidemic of bookstore closings that has turned my city into a bookstore graveyard.

Staceys, on Market Street, a once iconic, tasteful and sumptuous 85-year old book emporium rises like a reproach, vacant, unrented, a ghostly shell.

Other bookstores that have closed doors in the Bay Area include both branches of Codys, all branches of Black Oak Books, as well as Ninth Avenue Books, Chelsea Books, Valencia Street Books, ReJoyce Books, Acorn Books... a long and tragic list. According to reports coming in from other parts of the country, the awful scene is reoccuring everywhere: venerable, much beloved bookstores closing and that portion of the populace who cherish books—an ever-shrinking minority—left baffled and bereft; a silent corporate Krystallnacht decimating the world of literacy.

Accompanying this plague is a feel-good propaganda campaign that enjoys the collusion of the major media outlets, including such true hi-tech believers as the NY Times and NPR—print and broadcast venues that are themselves cheerily being rendered obsolete by the hi-tech rampage—and that in subtle ways positions the destruction of book culture like so: “books” in and of themselves are nothing, only another technology, like the Walkman or the laptop. What is sacred are the texts and those are being transferred to the Internet where they will attain a new kind of high-tech-assured immortality. Like dead souls leaving their earthly bodies the books are, in effect, going to a better place: the Kindle, the e-book, the web; hi-tech's version of Paradise.

This massive deportation of literary texts to a new home in electronic heaven has about it an air of inevitability that makes its consummation seem all but certain, a veritable act of God.

Google, the internet server, has taken upon itself to dare the entirety of world literature and those of its authors living, to prevent this inevitability. Thus, the choice is set before authors: consent or oppose. However, you cannot simply abstain. The subtle subtext underscoring these legal maneuvers is that one way or another, you must decide where you stand in all this; the internet appropriation of all the world's books is a given, so either get aboard or be left behind and forgotten.

Some have chosen to oppose in the form of a mysterious lawsuit that one somehow belongs to if one is any sort of author, agent or publisher. Rumors abound as to the outcome of this lawsuit. Some claim that Google and the world's authors, living and dead, have reached a “settlement” but what it is no one seems to know for sure. Google has, apparently, the power to commune with authors in our dreams or even to contact and negotiate with deceased writers in the afterlife.

The reports given over NPR or in the Times as to the lawsuit's outcome appear to conflict. The truth is, few have any idea what the suit is about or how they got involved in the first place. It is a lawsuit reminiscent of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce in Charles Dicken's 'Bleak House'—a boundless ever-extending spiderweb engulfing everything and everyone in its fine legalistic filigree.

In tandem with this giant transfer operation is the astonishing shift in the complexion and fortunes of book culture and publishing itself—a development that indicates not only a rapid demise of the book as a cultural artifact and marketplace commodity but a concerted effort to promote its devaluation, even degradation, even by the chieftains of book publishing.

For instance, in a recent article, Barnaull Nourrey, CEO of Hachette Livre, the French book publishing conglomerate that owns a big piece of American book publishing, including Time Warner Books (Random House and its affiliates is owned by Bertelsmann, the German publishing giant—Europeans now control most of American publishing) warned that unless E-Book reverses their recent decision to set the ceiling price for book downloads at $9.99, then hardcovers, which are the premise for much book publishing and even bookstores, will be dealt a death blow. In effect, it will precipitate the end of the book.

One wonders why Nourrey cannot simply advise E- Book to go fuck itself and produce high-quality reasonably priced books, even if in smaller numbers. But the truth is, Nourrey, like Bertelsmann, like most American book publishers, are linked to twenty first century, late-stage hypercapitalist imperatives predicated entirely upon ceaseless expansion, the inherent belief in Darwinian obsolescence and succession as the lifeblood of successful economics and societal advance.

Thus, publishers, like the technologists who slit their throats, are producers not of books but money, while books have become simply another vehicle, along with the Washing Machine and the iPod, for generating capital.

Like any product, the book must run harder and faster in the marketplace or else fall and die. And the books are falling. Only the fittest now survive. While mid-list authors drop in the snow, blockbuster thrillers and middlebrow memoirs and diet books huff their way forward. Soon, though, they too will drop. The idea is for no one to be left standing. All physical books must go up the chimney stack. Such was the methodology of the SS who forced their prisoners to run naked races round and round the barracks yard in the Polish winter, a race that no one was meant to win.

The book is fast becoming the despised Jew of our culture. Der Jude is now Der Book. Hi-tech propogandists tell us that the book is a tree-murdering, space-devouring, inferior form of technology; that society would simply be better-off altogether if we euthanized it even as we begin to carry around, like good little Aryans, whole libraries in our pockets, downloaded on the Uber-Kindle.

Further, we are told that to assign to books a particular value above and beyond their clearly inferior utility as a medium for language is to mark oneself as an irrelevant social throwback. And then, goes the narrative, think of the extraordinary sleekness, efficiency and amplitude of a Kindle, where thousands of texts lie at your fingertips. Which teen or twenty something in their right mind is going to opt for paper over electronic texts? No one of course. That's just the way of evolution, goes the narrative. Publishers and readers, writers and agents, are well-advised to get with this truth or perish. As to the bookstore, it is like the synagogue under Hitler: the house of a doomed religion. And the paper book is its Torah and gravestone: a thing to burn, or use to pave the road to internet heaven.

I know many writers who do not see anything wrong in any of this, who can without too much trouble foresee a career spent entirely in electronic media, who simply regard this development as the future and are not particularly disconcerted by the prospect of a world without books. To them, my sentiments and opinions may seem exaggerated, even silly, perhaps crazy.

Maybe they are right. Perhaps I am crazy. Perhaps this is only a private complaint. For writing does not come easily to me. My books have been hardwon. What made it all seem worthwhile was the book, the physical item, a kind of sacred and appropriate temple for the text contained within. Had I been told from youth that my literary destination would be some 7 inch plastic gizmo containing my texts shuffling alongside thousands of other “texts” I would have spit in the face of such a profession and become instead a hit man or a rabbi.

To me, the book is one of life's most sacred objects, a torah, a testament, something not only worth living for but as shown in Ray Bradbury's ‘Fahrenheit 451’, something that is even worth dying for. And yet, though I have been willing to sacrifice everything for the books I have written, compiled or just read, though I have given the days of my life, my years, my youth and adulthood to the book, as both sacred object and text, I am now witness to the culture turning away en masse from the book. The world is moving to embrace the electronic media as its principle mode of expression. The human has opted for the machine, and its ghosts, over the haptic companionship and didactic embodiment of the physical book. And though this development seems inevitable yet I cannot and will not accept it.

I will fight it. I will resist. For not only is this effort at consolidation of the world's literature into the hands of a single central repository a demoralizing cultural prospect but it is a move towards a new form of hi-tech totalitarianism. In a recent incident reported in the NY Times, when a publisher decided to withdraw two of its books from circulation as an electronic download, Kindle unilaterally eliminated the two volumes from the Kindles of every single user in the United States who had purchased the downloads. The implication couldn't have been more clear: the hi-techers can decide as they wish who gets to read what, and who dosen’t. Appropriately, the two Kindle-deleted texts were George Orwell's ‘1984’ and ‘Animal Farm’.

Not since the advent of Christianity has the world witnessed so sweeping a change in the very fabric of human existence. Behind the hi-tech revolution is an idea of Progress that in many regards resembles the premises of Christianity itself. The superseding of the new way over the old, of the New Testament over the Old Testament, the discrediting of the traditional as inferior or even evil, a sense of powerful excitement about the revolutionary, and of course, most importantly, the promise of heavenly immortality over the temporal limitations of the wasting physical body—the accursed haptic book versus the blessed Holy Ghostly Internet—all these earmark the hi-tech pogrom against the book.

Heinrich Heine, the early 19th century German Jewish poet, wrote: “"Where they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people." The advent of electronic media to first position in the modern chain of Being—a place once occupied by God—and later, after the Enlightenment, by humans—is no mere 9/11 upon our cultural assumptions. It is a catastrophe of holocaustal proportions. And its endgame is the disappearance of not just books but of all things human.

Posted by: Alan Kaufman | December 21, 2009 2:11 AM

Wow. This Kaufman guy is really full of shit.

Posted by: jws | December 21, 2009 8:22 AM

MORE GOOD NEWS FROM THE HI-TECH NUREMBURG RALLIES:

An E-Book Buyer's Guide to Privacy
Commentary by Ed Bayley
Electronic Frontier Foundation

As we count down to end of 2009, the emerging star of this year's holiday shopping season is shaping up to be the electronic book reader (or e-reader). From Amazon's Kindle to Barnes and Noble's forthcoming Nook, e-readers are starting to transform how we buy and read books in the same way mp3s changed how we buy and listen to music.

Unfortunately, e-reader technology also presents significant new threats to reader privacy. E-readers possess the ability to report back substantial information about their users' reading habits and locations to the corporations that sell them. And yet none of the major e-reader manufacturers have explained to consumers in clear unequivocal language what data is being collected about them and why.

As a first step towards addressing these problems, EFF has created a first draft of our Buyer's Guide to E-Book Privacy. We've examined the privacy policies for the major e-readers on the market to determine what information they reserve the right to collect and share.

*Based on the proposed Google Books Privacy Policy. The policy is subject to change prior to final acceptance of the Google Books Settlement.
**The Nook will not ship until January 2010 and as yet has no publicly available product-specific Terms of Use or Privacy Policy. Results based on the general Barnes and Noble Privacy Policy.

For example, Google's new Google Book Search Project has the ability to track reading habits at an unprecedented level of granularity. In particular, according to the proposed Google Books Privacy Policy, web servers will automatically "log" each book and page you searched for and read, how long you viewed it for, and what book or page you continued onto next:

When you use Google Books, we receive log information similar to what we receive in Web Search. This includes: the query term or page request (which may include specific pages within a book you are browsing), Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser.

In addition, because users must have a Google Account in order to purchase and view books, Google maintains a dossier, via its Web History service, of all books purchased unless the user gives up the right to view a book he or she already "bought."

Physical e-reader devices pose similar threats to reader privacy. For example, the Kindle does not sell, but rather licenses, the books, magazines, and other materials offered for wireless download through its Kindle Store, which can only be used on a particular device. This implicitly requires Amazon to know what reading material a user has licensed at any given time.

Even more disturbing, however, is the broad latitude Amazon gives itself to keep track of how customers are using their device. From the Kindle License Agreement and Terms of Use:

Information Received. The Device Software will provide Amazon with data about your Device and its interaction with the Service [i.e. the wireless connection, purchases through the Kindle Store, etc.] (such as available memory, up-time, log files and signal strength) and information related to the content on your Device and your use of it (such as automatic bookmarking of the last page read and content deletions from the Device). Annotations, bookmarks, notes, highlights, or similar markings you make in your Device are backed up through the Service. Information we receive is subject to the Amazon.com Privacy Notice.

In other words, your Kindle will periodically send information about you to Amazon. But exactly what information is sent? Amazon's wording — "information related to the content on your Device and your use of it" — reads so broadly that it appears to allow Amazon to track all content that users put on the device, regardless of whether that content is purchased from Amazon. Some security researchers have indicated that the Kindle may even be tracking its users' GPS locations. Is this the future of reading?

Thankfully, there are some e-reader options that do not connect wirelessly, nor include any privacy or "terms of use" provisions that allow monitoring of what you put on the device or how you use it. Sony's Reader, for example, may collect information about what books you buy from its own eBook Store, yet the Reader also works with books purchased from other sources as well. Even safer still, popular e-reader software programs, such as open-source FBReader, allow users to download content from a number of sources onto a multitude of devices, including one's computer or mobile, without handing over all information about their reading habits to one source, or anyone for that matter.

Still, there are no perfect options this holiday season for the many shoppers who consider Internet-connectivity to be a must-have feature for their e-readers. Let's hope that by this time next year, e-reader manufacturers have stepped up to the challenge of taking their users' privacy seriously.

Posted by: Alan Kaufman | December 22, 2009 5:28 PM