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Halloween, A Holiday in Tasmania and a Tetun Dictionary
All Hallows Eve was spent with the delightful Severina242, where I tested my skills with Polish cuisine. The feast was complimented with a lovely drink called Krupnik. It's the vodka version of mulled wine. It's dangerous, because it doesn't taste like vodka anymore, although the fumes can be pretty overwhelming. I can't wait to introduce Brendan to this one.
The following morning caseopaya and I were aboard the Spirit of Tasmania, for a brief (six day) holiday through an island of extraordinary beauty (unusual fauna, alpine rainforest) and history (aboriginal, convicts, mining, hydroelectrics). The combination of the two makes it no wonder that this is where the Greens are so strong.
Description of the journey is quite long, so they'll appear as comments...
A draft of the Cliff Morris' Tetun-English dictionary which I've transcribed is now available online. This is currently the single largest collection of Tetun words available online. It also has an excellent essay by Cliff Morris on the history and culture of East Timor. I hope my introduction can do it all justice.
I'm concerned that I'm losing my interest in music, or at the very least, live music. People like reddragdiva will affirm that I've been a bit of an afficiando for many years, with a wide-ranging (and possibly lenient) tastes. Recently Neil Young, The Human League, Lou Reed, Echo and the Bunnymen, Public Enemy, Carl Cox, The Killing Joke and even David Bowie have or about to visit Melbourne. My disinterest of their presence is disconcerting.
Fiction writers never get this strange. Did Mossad know about 9-11? Is that just too weird?
A Melbourne dining recommendation. Recently dined with severina242 at the Tandoori Times on Gertrude Street, Fitzroy. An excellent Indian restaurant with dishes to please all taste buds. If you are like me however and occassionally like a curry that makes you sweat all over, go flush red and enter a psychedlic fugue state where your ears ring, your vision is blurred and you suffer ekstasis, then this place has a lamb curry to go for. First timers will be given a rating of 1 to 10 in terms of spicieness. I found the 10 to be a modest introduction of what else is available. No, I didn't reach anywhere near my desired state - but apparently it is available as high as 25.
Yesterday went to see the entrants for the Archibald Prize with severina242, the annual award for the best Australian potrait piece of Australians "distinguished in Art, Letters, Science or Politics" that has been running for 80 years. The judges gave it to Geoffrey Dyer's potrait of Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan. With a fiery orange background, the bald Flanagan in a tight black t-shirt and jeans and bold blue eyes was certainly impressive - even threatening. For the "People's Choice" I voted for Ian Smith's "Ray Hughes having predinner drinks with Ambriose Vollad and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler". It was in a cubist style, but with spatial-temporal distortions that are best described as "drunken".
I do like fine art ;-)
The following morning caseopaya and I were aboard the Spirit of Tasmania, for a brief (six day) holiday through an island of extraordinary beauty (unusual fauna, alpine rainforest) and history (aboriginal, convicts, mining, hydroelectrics). The combination of the two makes it no wonder that this is where the Greens are so strong.
Description of the journey is quite long, so they'll appear as comments...
A draft of the Cliff Morris' Tetun-English dictionary which I've transcribed is now available online. This is currently the single largest collection of Tetun words available online. It also has an excellent essay by Cliff Morris on the history and culture of East Timor. I hope my introduction can do it all justice.
I'm concerned that I'm losing my interest in music, or at the very least, live music. People like reddragdiva will affirm that I've been a bit of an afficiando for many years, with a wide-ranging (and possibly lenient) tastes. Recently Neil Young, The Human League, Lou Reed, Echo and the Bunnymen, Public Enemy, Carl Cox, The Killing Joke and even David Bowie have or about to visit Melbourne. My disinterest of their presence is disconcerting.
Fiction writers never get this strange. Did Mossad know about 9-11? Is that just too weird?
A Melbourne dining recommendation. Recently dined with severina242 at the Tandoori Times on Gertrude Street, Fitzroy. An excellent Indian restaurant with dishes to please all taste buds. If you are like me however and occassionally like a curry that makes you sweat all over, go flush red and enter a psychedlic fugue state where your ears ring, your vision is blurred and you suffer ekstasis, then this place has a lamb curry to go for. First timers will be given a rating of 1 to 10 in terms of spicieness. I found the 10 to be a modest introduction of what else is available. No, I didn't reach anywhere near my desired state - but apparently it is available as high as 25.
Yesterday went to see the entrants for the Archibald Prize with severina242, the annual award for the best Australian potrait piece of Australians "distinguished in Art, Letters, Science or Politics" that has been running for 80 years. The judges gave it to Geoffrey Dyer's potrait of Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan. With a fiery orange background, the bald Flanagan in a tight black t-shirt and jeans and bold blue eyes was certainly impressive - even threatening. For the "People's Choice" I voted for Ian Smith's "Ray Hughes having predinner drinks with Ambriose Vollad and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler". It was in a cubist style, but with spatial-temporal distortions that are best described as "drunken".
I do like fine art ;-)
no subject
Is the actual Ha'aretz article available on the Web?
The Scottish Sunday Times I may add, is not a crazy fringe journal.
The article you've linked to is in the Sunday Herald. I'm not familiar with either of these papers - are they the same thing?
Reputable paper or not, I'm far from impressed by leaps of logic like this:
"Back in Israel, several of the men discussed what happened on an Israeli talk show. One of them made this remarkable comment: 'The fact of the matter is we are coming from a country that experiences terror daily. Our purpose was to document the event.' But how can you document an event unless you know it is going to happen?"
And yet, somehow several TV networks and thousands of individual New Yorkers (presumably not all forewarned of the attacks) did manage to document the fire and collapse of the towers.
That Mackay is unable to see that an interpretation other than "document the first impact" is possible here speaks poorly for his ability to analyse evidence.
Similar versions of the story is found on:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/DailyNews/2020_whitevan_020621.html
According to which:
"Sources also said that even if the men were spies, there is no evidence to conclude they had advance knowledge of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. The investigation, at the end of the day, after all the polygraphs*, all of the field work, all the cross-checking, the intelligence work, concluded that they probably did not have advance knowledge of 9/11," Cannistraro noted.
"As to what they were doing on the van, they say they read about the attack on the Internet, couldn't see it from their offices and went to the parking lot for a better view. But no one has been able to find a good explanation for why they may have been smiling with the towers of the World Trade Center burning in the background. Both the lawyers for the young men and the Israeli Embassy chalk it up to immature conduct."
[From personal experience I will note here that if there is a tasteless way to react to a tragedy, people will find it.]
Whereas the Sunday Herald said "Put together, the facts do appear to indicate that Israel knew that 9/11, or at least a large-scale terror attack, was about to take place on American soil".
Although they concur on some of the facts, I'd hardly call that a "similar version". Indeed, their conclusions are quite contradictory.
*For the record, I think polygraphs are one of the most pernicious forms of 'junk science' in the modern world. IMHO the FBI's continued reliance on them epitomises many of the failings of US intelligence-gathering.
no subject
I don't know. Ha'aretz is published in Hebrew and I can't read that lingo... Now if it was in Yiddish I'd have half a chance of finding it...
I'm not familiar with either of these papers - are they the same thing?
Sorry, my mistake. I meant the Herald. The Scottish Herald is generally regarded as pretty good.
Indeed, their conclusions are quite contradictory.
Not really - the common conclusion is that neither paper has one.
One paper says "they probably did not have advance knowledge of 9/11" whereas the other says "do appear to indicate that Israel knew that 9/11". Both are hedging their bets.
To be sure, this is a very tricky question. I wouldn't put it beyond a nation-state, even a nominal ally, to not give the US foreknowledge if it was in their interests to do so.
After all, Australia did it to the UN (and the US, it must be added) over the militia violence in East Timor. Australia knew what was going to happen - and they told noone about it.
no subject
Nor would I. (Especially if, for instance, they knew an attack was planned but didn't realise just how serious it actually was.) As a question of scruples, I think Mossad could well be capable of withholding such information from the US. I just don't think this story offers serious evidence that they actually did.
For one thing, Mossad have a reputation as one of the most professional and hard-nosed intelligence agencies in the world. It seems a little odd that they'd waste manpower by sending five operatives to do a job that one could have done perfectly well, and stranger that those operatives would be so unprofessional as to attract attention to themselves.