Window farms

kickstarter.com: windowfarms (via John Robb of Global Guerillas.)

Grief Porn

update below

If I assume the overwhelming majority of people watching football on television this weekend aren't doing so because they're coping with 9.11, but just because that's what they like to do on Sunday afternoons in September, I suppose I must be hating somebody, somewhere, for their freedom. Did the government and the news people make this kind of a fuss on December 7th, 1951? I'm not old enough to remember, and of course Yahoo! wasn't around in '51 to drape a black banner across their masthead, but my guess is no.

Even Saint Reagan, whom I am old enough to remember, didn't cry to the heavens in 1985 about the 10 year mark of our exit out of Vietnam, recalling those last helicopters which we threw into the ocean. I do, however, remember the fuss made in some quarters about his visiting the Bitburg cemetery on the 40th anniversary of the end of WWII, because of the SS troops buried there. Certainly it would have been more sensitive to visit a cemetery of Nazi conscripts.

I somewhat surprise myself by offering this, but in partial defense of Ronnie, maybe the general principle is correct and you are supposed to commemorate the dead of both sides in a terrible conflict. It's the decent and yes, Christian thing to do. Of course if this is true, I wonder when an American president will lay a wreath down at Hiroshima or Nagasaki, or Wounded Knee.



Many people have been posting this video on Facebook today:




The comments[link] are something else.

to everyone that can see this isnt just a BEER COMMERCIAL and that its a tribute to all the victoms on the plane, police officers, firemen and countless voluteers who lost their lives and thier family's God bless you to the rest of you fuckin unpatrioticheartless basterds you SUCK, im a firefighter and i wasnt even old enough to understand the impact of this when it happend but it still hurts to think about all the fellow brothers i lost if your smat enough to understand that then FUCKIN LEAVE
ecfpd3965

Cornygirl2008, please let me know when you want to leave. I will personally buy you a one way ticket out of America with the provision that you will never return. In no way shape or form am I joking.
Christa573

Two others:

They spent 100,000's of thousands of dollars to show this only once. Not for profit or company gain, but to express the sorrow they felt. As for the subhuman monsters that think 9/11 is some kind of joke, well I can't use those words here. The loss for all the faimilys of those who died that day is more than our hearts can stand. Condolences, from me and mine, to all of you. My God be with you aways.
1947gambler

Not only once anymore, they're showing it several times today during NFL games. They spent 100,000's of dollars because its a can't miss commercial that exploits a national tragedy to sell their product.
MrG0dbar

The general trend of the comments crystallizes what I find so creepy about the commodification of 9.11 grief. It's as if scores of people are perversely jealous that they didn't lose anybody and want the voyeuristic pleasure, to enjoy feeling like they're a part of a larger experience other people are having, and want to have "a good cry." And the government and media are all too happy to encourage this impulse for their own ends, as if they're concerned that we're not emotionally stunted enough. (I also wonder if some people who actually did lose loved ones on September 11th might prefer less of this carrying on by others, that may needlessly refresh old wounds.)

Being susceptible to this manipulation doesn't make you a bad person, but that's like saying having deficient critical reasoning skills doesn't make you a bad person. Of course neither negates the value of critical thinking. It's tempting to think that we're collectively stupider than we were 50 or 100 years ago, but this is unlikely. P.T. Barnum made a nice living off of people like this, back in the day.

But, duh, you knew that, because you're cool. Of course some people are just sentimental and easily misled, and even smart people can be suckered by the culture-media message reinforcing machine that alternately tells you to remember some things and forget others. The barrage on your sensibility is endless. How do you resist the simulacrum? Reality and pre-corporate values are a glass of tepid water, and the drink they're offering is sweet and sexy and will make your breath minty fresh, lower your taxes and help you score with chicks.

I realize that the internet and social media have had a huge impact on our conceptions of privacy. Still, wanting to 'get in on the grief' so you can demonstrate how patriotic you are and prove your capacity for depth of feeling, whether to yourself or others, strikes me as sad in an altogether different way than intended.

see also

Gonzalo Lira,"They Didn't Win, We Lost"

James S. Henry, Forbes, "The other September 11"

Doug Mataconis,"December 7, 1951 v. September 11, 2011" [via TPR]

Where's your warrant, flatfoot?

Jack Crow, KFO, this one's for you: "Make Mine Freedom", from 1948.

I found this fascinating. Yes, they gloss over a lot. Ironically some of the things that "-ism" brought to these characters like the union busting, is here today, and not because the commies took over.

Also, they'd probably have to leave the bit out about protection against cruel punishment today.(Or maybe not, the power of projection and compartmentalization being what it is.)

Unintentionally ominous, or so one would hope

I saw this ad on Yahoo's home page yesterday. What exactly is Prudential going to do to me if I outlive my money? Should I hide? Somebody got paid money to come up with this ridiculous ad, and I'm blogging for free. It just ain't right.

And today in a peculiar thematic coincidence, I saw this link at the bottom of a story over at Slate.com:



"Identification Cards Required to Leave the State"(eHow)

(This item originally appeared in October 2010.) Maybe author Jennifer Sandberg or somebody else at eHow thought the title would encourage people to read it.

Gil Scott-Heron

As you may already know, Gil Scott-Heron passed away yesterday. The virtually obligatory video link for bloggers is of course "The revolution will not be televised". Listening to it today it seems by turns both relevant and quaint. Maybe it's the implicit assumption that black Americans can't or wont be co-opted. But it still has power.

Scott-Heron composed and released it at a comparatively young age, and I can't help but wonder if he was ever frustrated that the casual music fan only knew him for "revolution", if they even did. I also wonder if he saw the parallels between Nixon's suppression of dissent and Obama's.

The BBC notes that the album he released last year was his first in 16 years; its existence may be bittersweet to many. Possibly this was in part due to various record companies deciding he was no longer commercially viable, in addition to his health difficulties. Maybe sales of his last album from 2010 will enjoy at least a brief uptick. The revolution will be monetized.

16 years. That doesn't necessarily mean his artistic production lay fallow all that time-- for one thing he kept performing, and the concept that a musician or composer has to put out an album to be deemed to be "creating" is a relatively new one, borne of technology, while people have been making music in some fashion or another for thousands of years, without recording it in the modern sense.

A postscript: No, he was not a stand up comic, but I found this brief riff(below) interesting.

The slow(er) boat to hell

[video, above] Tenebroust, The "left" sets up the "right" for takeover, Feb 15, 2010 (1st posted at DH here, "Fascism USA...")

Ian Welsh: "A blast from the past and a reminder about the future", April 24, 2011

Obama is not turning things around, what he is doing is negotiating with Republicans how fast the decline will be, and how much and how fast it is necessary to fuck ordinary Americans in order to keep the rich rich. If Obama wins another term, he will continue to negotiate the decline, then, odds are very high, a Republican will get in, and slam his foot on the accelerator of collapse.

Chris Hedges, "The corporate state wins again", April 25, 2011

The rhetoric of the Democratic Party and the neoliberals sustains the illusion of participatory democracy. The Democrats and their liberal apologists offer minor palliatives and a feel-your-pain language to mask the cruelty and goals of the corporate state. The reconfiguration of American society into a form of neofeudalism will be cemented into place whether it is delivered by Democrats, who are pushing us there at 60 miles an hour, or Republicans, who are barreling toward it at 100 miles an hour.

Xymphora: "Hell or heaven", April 29, 2011

I'm getting sick and tired of these elections fought by the left on the basis of promising to take you on the road to hell, but a little slower than the other guys. This is killing the Liberals in the current campaign, as they have nothing positive to offer but that they are not the utter hopelessness of Harper.

First of all, no, I am not saying that Hedges and Xymphora are just filching from Ian Welsh, nor am I saying that Ian is filching from Tenebroust. (It's highly unlikely the other three have even heard of Tenebroust, who is not, er, conventionally articulate. (although I suspect he could be if he wanted to be, but just doesn't feel like it.))The same idea can spring up roughly simultaneously in many places.(incidentally, I gather that Tenebroust and Welsh are both cautiously pro-nuclear power, while Hedges and Xymphora are both steadfastly anti-nuke.)

At any rate, to me it seems that one of the reasons an idea spontaneously springs forth in divers minds may be because it is increasingly valid. (I was tempted to say 'increasingly resonant' but I'm getting tired about hearing about how ideas and spin 'resonate', and didn't want to contribute to the din.)

If you can recall other instances of having seen this line of argument please email me, or better yet tell me in the comments.

Our happy slave future

Keiser Report: Bin Laden Bounce (E144)

This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, report on talking up Greek debt fears, the short-lived Bin Laden bounce and buying gold if your government is trying to kill you. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Dr. Kiriakos Tobras about his lawsuit against investment banks and derivatives dealers for their crimes against Greece.

our happy slave future, pt 1:

Marketwatch.com, "You're Richer Than You May Realize" (also here)
by Andrea Coombes
Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Count your 'human capital' as an asset; watch your net worth skyrocket

You may be a lot wealthier than you think. Most people look at their 401(k) or other retirement plan, add in the value of other assets — their home, other investments, savings, etc. — then subtract their debt to get their net worth. After the housing-market bust and the bear-market rout of recent years, that number may look painfully small.

Human capital "is anything that's going to generate a cash flow that isn't your investments," says Moshe Milevsky, a professor of finance at York University in Toronto. "It's your ability to work, your ability to get a bonus, to get overtime. It's a gold mine and an oil well, but you're producing the gold and the oil," he says.

Doesn't that sound cheery? Don't forget to count your 'human capital' sounds like an argument made on behalf of the ownership class, telling us to keep working hard, and not complain about never being able to retire. Next I suppose I may need to sell a kidney to pay the light bill. Hey, it's an asset!

our happy slave future, pt 2:
Camp: Tax Plan Aims for 25% Cap

Republican Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee:"America needs a tax code that promotes, not prevents, job creation," he said. "Today's code is simply too complex, too costly and too burdensome for families and employers of all sizes to comply with.…We need to set ambitious goals and work toward those, because if we don't try that will be the biggest failure of all."

Mr. Camp's tax overhaul isn't designed to specifically cut the U.S. budget deficit. Overall tax revenues would remain at recent average levels, or about 18% to 19% of gross domestic product, committee aides said..
[...]
Many Democrats also have voiced support for lowering tax rates, particularly for corporations. In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama expressed support for lowering corporate tax rates while closing loopholes and other special breaks. The president also talked about the need to simplify the individual code. Mr. Obama's budget proposes raising taxes on high-income earners after 2012, however."

There are of course, many other examples.

Toni Morrison could do that thing with her mouth if she wanted to, but she doesn't feel like it

Don't the fools at Time magazine know Barry is a socialist? What's wrong with them?

But hey, he won the Nobel Peace prize and revolutionized healthcare in America, and he really, really hates having to bomb Libyans just so the nasty conservatives will get off his back, etc. Some day I will have to write a post, without being the least bit snarky or sarcastic, explaining to kneejerk Obamalovers and Teapartiers why they are the perfect complement to each other, like Frank Gorshin and the other guy on that episode of Star Trek, the black and white guy and the white and black guy, at each others throats, etc.

But today, I'm sorry, I don't have the energy to shoot fish in a barrel. It should be shooting fish in a barrel. That it's difficult is a triumph of modern culture, destroying everything in its wake, or at least a triumph of public relations.

"Germany's radioactive wild boars a legacy of Chernobyl"(also here)

The night Julian Assange owned the dance floor in Reykjavik

And, two via Avedon:

"Uterus" Now Officially a Dirty Word in Florida

FBI spied on little kids for days at a time, documents reveal

The tragedy of a ridiculous people

Apparently Time had a poll for their 'person of the year' award in which Julian Assange was overwhelmingly the first choice, but they chose Mark Zuckerberg because presumably that choice will ruffle fewer feathers and won't get any reactionary readers or advertisers angry. In another age Hitler was once Time's man of the year, when Time gave its readers more credit for not being simpletons who require happy news. I'm reminded of the selection of "you" as their person of the year a few years ago, when there was speculation that it might have been Hugo Chavez.

Somewhat coincidentally I watched the NBC Nightly News tonight and while they discussed John Kyl and other senators objecting to having to work so close to Christmastime they made no mention of the Reuters article [also here] about the possible downgrade of the US's bond status because of the meretricious tax deal. They also mentioned an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that said that 59% of Americans approve of the tax deal, including 54 % of Democrats. Maybe this is true, and maybe it reflects actual enthusiasm for the tax deal, or maybe the belief that nothing better is possible.

I want to love my country and believe in our future but it's awfully discouraging sometimes. I would like, for example, to believe that we're not as stupid as the media tells us we are. I know other people must feel this way. The one somewhat encouraging bit of news I got recently was from a Zogby poll about Wikileaks and cablegate. Respondents were asked if news organizations were wrong to publish Wikileaks info, and if Wikileaks should be classified as a terrorist organization. Overall 63% said that the news organizations were wrong to publish the info, and 52% said that Wikileaks should be classified as a terrorist organization.

Among voters age 65 and older, 73% agree news organizations should not publish WikiLeaks and 65% agree the government should consider WikiLeaks a terrorist organization. But among the respondents under age 30, the percentages agreeing with those statements are just 35% and 30% respectively.



Ian Welsh, "The Kabuki Congress and Presidency"

By David Weigel, Slate "Crisis Junkies: After the tax deal vote, get ready for another fiscal apocalypse"

Jay and Alex and Rocky and Bullwinkle

The video embed above is of the 1st episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle, from 1959.

from Wikipedia:

When first shown on NBC, the cartoons were introduced by a Bullwinkle puppet, voiced by Bill Scott, who would often lampoon celebrities, current events, and especially Walt Disney, whose program Wonderful World of Color was the next show on the schedule. On one occasion, "Bullwinkle" encouraged children to pull the tuning knobs off the TV set. "In that way," explained Bullwinkle, "we'll be sure to be with you next week!" The network received complaints from parents of an estimated 20,000 child viewers who apparently followed Bullwinkle's suggestion. Bullwinkle told the children the following week to put the knobs back on with glue "and make it stick!". The puppet sequence was dropped altogether.

I'm sorry, but that's inspired. Alex Anderson died over the weekend, aged 90. Apparently he created the characters of Rocky and Bullwinkle, along with the basic format of the show. All these years I hadn't heard of Anderson, assuming, as I suspect most Rocky n' Bullwinkle fans did, that Jay Ward was the creator. Richard Corliss discusses the relationship between Ward and Anderson in a nice appreciation of Anderson in Time.

Richard Corliss, "Unsung Creator of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Alex Anderson Dies"

Bust a move

When I heard about Dallas pastor Robert Jefress's recent comments on local TV denouncing Islam as an evil religion, I felt compelled to do some googling. I was disappointed to find out that Dallas's mayor attends Jefress's First Dallas Baptist Church, although I'll admit I was never a big fan of Tom Leppert anyway.


Monika Diaz, WFAA: "Controversial comments about Islam from Baptist leader"


see also, Emily Pothast, "God, Gays, and the Gilded Age: First Baptist Church of Dallas and the New Satanism"

(via Fort Worth Weekly.)



"Virginia's Stalin Problem,"

Matt Welch, Reason, June 9, 2010:

The city of Gori in the formerly Soviet Republic of Georgia is not the only place in the world with controversial commemorations to mustachioed mass murderer Josef Stalin. Take, for example, um, Bedford, Virginia?

The small town of Bedford, Va., is home to 21 men who sacrificed their lives on D-Day, June 6, 1944. It is now also the home of one of the world's few public memorial busts of communist dictator Josef Stalin.
Local citizens and organizations have expressed their outrage over the installation of the bust at the National D-Day Memorial, which honored the 66th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy over the weekend.

Spencer Ackerman, Wired: "Colonel Kicked Out of Afghanistan for Anti-PowerPoint Rant
"

Consider it a new version of death by PowerPoint. The NATO command in Afghanistan has fired a staff officer who publicly criticized its interminable briefings, its over-reliance on Microsoft’s slide-show program, and what he considered its crushing bureaucracy. Army Col. Lawrence Sellin, a 61-year old reservist from New Jersey who served in Afghanistan and Iraq prior to this deployment, got the sack.

Dean Baker, Counterpunch, "A Pointless Waste of Money: Pierce the Housing Bubble"

27 August: blind lib

Digby has a silly post up in which she suggests, based on a Washington Post story, that anti-Islamic prejudice didn't exist in the US before people started stirring it up recently.

She writes:

The only time anybody ever looked at a Muslim (or Arab looking person) askance was on airplanes. I live in Los Angeles and there are millions of Muslims here and they have been mingling and working and living like any other American since the day of the terrorist attacks. Aside from some brief apprehension in the very early days when the authorities were looking closely at Muslim organizations, things have been remarkably and quite inspirationally normal here in the US especially since we have been involved in two wars with Muslim countries during that time.

So, tell me, what the hell has happened recently that made everyone suspicious of Muslims all of a sudden? We haven't been attacked. There has been no public debate.

The only thing that's happened is that we elected a black president to whom his political enemies conveniently attached the Muslim label. And thus they have extended the hatred for him to hatred of Muslims in general. It's not that these people hate American Muslims. It's that they hate Barack Obama and everything he stands for.

This is ridiculous. First, it sounds like she's saying that only manifestations of prejudice that she's aware of could possibly exist or matter. It's as if racism only exists when it serves Digby's purpose and allows her to score rhetorical points for Team Democratic Party and all the swell people who support it. There are good people and bad people, and the good people luv their Obama. In my comment at Ethan's 6th or 7th I wrote:

Ethan, the WaPo article that Digby quotes minimizes intolerance towards Muslims because it taps into one strain of the Arab-American experience: Assimilation. Arab-Americans (and other Muslims) who can pass for WASP generally try to do so, because it's understood you should do this, and not wear your ethnicity on your sleeve.

In a sense there are two US Muslim communities; one that tries its best to "pass for white" as it were, to reduce the impact of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice, and another which is alienated by the US and has a harder time fitting in. (The former generally comes from a more well-heeled background, so there is also a class frisson operating here.)

But if the WaPo writers just went to the campuses of GWU and Georgetown and the like, they are less likely to see the second group.

Anyway, Digby is less likely to see the 2nd group herself, so that fits.

I hadn't yet read all of the WaPo article when I wrote that, but as it turned out I was partly right, in that the students they talked to were at George Mason U. in tony Fairfax, students at American U. in D.C., as well as the Muslim chaplain of Georgetown. The kids are young people who've presumably lived sheltered lives, even if they may have done some volunteering here and there, so I think they deserve a pass. Digby however, is at least around my age, in her mid-40s or older, so her myopia is harder to excuse. So too, the WaPo writers, who apparently couldn't be bothered to talk to students at a grubby junior college. Don't they have any in D.C.?

Prejudice towards Arabs and Muslims has always been there. Although I don't think my experiences are more relevant than hard data or the news accounts that corroborate my view and that Digby doesn't mention, I note that a man called me a sand nigger to my face in 1995, not so long ago but years before most of us had heard of Bin Laden.

Maybe things are better to some degree in Digby's LA than they are here in the South; I wouldn't know. But I don't believe it has suddenly appeared recently, there or here. One of the problems with people like Glenn Beck and Pam Geller beating racist drums is they make millions of people out there feel as if their otherwise unexpressed darker impulses are legitimate and deserve expression. They enable, even if you can't hold these shit-stirrers liable, and I mean meaningfully liable, in a courtroom. If you could, even someone as wealthy as Rush Limbaugh would suddenly find he couldn't afford the insurance. I'm not saying it should be that way, or that all people are that prejudiced. But the Digbys (Digbies?) of the world speak as if they haven't got a clue, whether this is a result of sincere blindness, or because they think they can will the world to conform to their expectations, or something else.

Today Friday the 27th, is Lyndon Johnson's 102nd birthday. In the 1990s when I worked for the state of Texas, we used to get 8 hours comp time for every 8/27. (we also got 8 hours comp for Robert E. Lee's birthday in January and for Texas Independence Day in March.) I wanted to write something about how complicated LBJ seems to me in comparison with BHO, how he tried to do good at home while he killed thousands of people in Southeast Asia. Obama, by contrast, seems like somebody who would never try to push through a Great Society program, not just because it would hurt his party but also his own future speaking fees. (I don't count so-called healthcare reform as anything more than an oily, budget-busting debacle that will make ever getting to single payer that much harder.)

Back to August 2010- I was glad when Obama spoke out in favor of the Cordoba Center, however briefly he took this stance. Of course if he really wants to support Muslims he could support not killing them. I want to write more about BHO and the Great Society, and the Cordoba Center. I will, soon.

Halloween 2009

some headlines, 31 October 2009:

• Cheney told FBI he had no idea who leaked Plame ID
• Geithner: Recovery could be 'a little choppy'
• Clinton calls Israeli concessions 'unprecedented'

Crystal Lee Sutton and Norman Borlaug

Crystal Lee Sutton died on September 11th of cancer at 68. Norman Borlaug died the next day, also of cancer, aged 95. I'll admit I'd never heard of either. Crystal Lee Sutton, the real life inspiration for Martin Ritt's Carter-era film Norma Rae-- I just assumed she was fictional, but she was real, and apparently the most famous scene from the film really happened:

She received threats and was finally fired from her job. But before she left, she took one final stand, filmed verbatim in the 1979 film Norma Rae. “I took a piece of cardboard and wrote the word UNION on it in big letters, got up on my work table, and slowly turned it around. The workers started cutting their machines off and giving me the victory sign. All of a sudden the plant was very quiet…” Sutton was physically removed from the plant by police, but the result of her actions was staggering. The Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union won the right to represent the workers at the plant on August 28, 1974.

-from her website, www.crystalleesutton.com

I don't know if you can film something verbatim per se, but that's a trifling objection. According to the Institute for Southern Studies

Several years ago, Sutton was diagnosed with meningioma, a type of cancer of the nervous system. While such cancers are typically slow-growing, Sutton's was not -- and she went two months without potentially life-saving medication because her insurance wouldn't cover it initially. Sutton told the Burlington (N.C.) Times-News last year that the insurer's behavior was an example of abuse of the working poor:

"How in the world can it take so long to find out [whether they would cover the medicine or not] when it could be a matter of life or death," she said. "It is almost like, in a way, committing murder."


Though Sutton eventually received the medication, the cancer had already taken hold. She passed away on Friday, Sept. 11 in a Burlington, N.C. hospice.

Norman Borlaug was also an incredible person, albeit of a very different cast. After receiving his PhD at the age of 28 he went to work for the US military in WWII, first developing a saltwater-resistant adhesive that allowed US forces to jettison watertight boxes of canned food to troops stranded on Guadalcanal island. In the years after the war he was instrumental in developing disease-resistant high yield crops that helped India be able to produce enough food to feed all her people.

He won the Nobel Peace prize in 1970, and consequently his passing made a lot more news than Sutton's. I don't mean that as sarcasm-- he certainly helped a lot more people. But also it occurs to me that although they were both humanitarians, his story, broadly speaking, has a certain uncomplicated quality, at least from the point of view of corporate news outlets. American scientist helps feed world, is justifiably celebrated, dies after a long rewarding life. Sutton's story is less rewarding for the corporate media to tell, because it is less sunny, underscoring the hostile legal climate that unions inhabit in the US, as well as our vanishing industrial base.(She worked in a clothes factory in North Carolina, and today most domestic clothes production has been exported out from under us.) Even the end, with her conflict regarding her insurance, is a story the corporate media isn't so eager to relate to us. Katie Couric didn't mention that last bit on the CBS news, but at least she mentioned her.

You can find less sunny aspects to Bourlag's story if you are really determined; he was an early proponent of DDT*, for example,but so were a lot of people. Nevertheless he was always trying to help people, and there's no question on balance he did, tremendously. Yes, Borlaug was a booster of genetically-modified foods. But at least until we can figure out how to feed everybody, stop raping the planet, and substantially shrink the world population(through as-yet undiscovered, ethically and socially doable means), I'd say his way is the right way for much of the third world, handily trumping lefty-doctrinaire objections.

I'm not keen on some of the particulars of corporate farming, like counterproductive US subsidies of ethanol or patenting seeds and telling third-world farmers they're intellectual property, but screwy consequences like that were not Bourlag's doing.

I don't have a penetrating, overarching point in discussing Sutton and Bourlag-- my blogging is often simply a record of efforts at my self-education, and I wanted to take note of their passing.


"*Food Security and Agriculture" by Devinder Sharma

Consumer culture as a balm against reality, now in Hebrew

According to Noam at the Promised Land blog , the tagline of this Cellcom ad is “What do we all want? Some fun, that’s all”.

as Anya Achtenberg wrote in the comments there:

I wanted to find a shred of hope in this absurd commercial — the possibility of a communal game, Palestinians and Israeli Jews. Absurd. What is on the other side of the wall is meant to be hidden. Some sort of animals the IDF must keep in line. Playful at the moment. But still animals to be hidden, disappeared, kept behind a wall. A wall? A concrete monstrosity.

via Helena Cobban, who notes one commenter's view that the ad

"was most likely conceived and designed by high-ups in the advertising company-- and that they would have designed it to appeal to the broadest possible zeitgeist in (Jewish) Israeli society".

In other words, it wasn't calculated to shock Israelis, the presumption being most are OK with the wall. She also has a piece at the Boston Review on the decline of the Israeli peace movement, which she also discusses in her blog, in which she argues that in the past 10-15 years a lot of moderate to dovish Israelis have simply left Israel. She doesn't explicitly spell out the demographic consequence, nor does she see it as a principal cause(it was left out of the BR piece by the editors), but the meaning is clear.


Cobban:

How far has the peace movement fallen? One benchmark for comparison is the war that Sharon and former Prime Minister Menachem Begin launched against the PLO in Lebanon in 1982. In September of that year, Lebanese Falangists, operating (as Ari Folman’s brilliant film Waltz with Bashir reminds us) with extensive support from the Israeli military, undertook a two-day massacre in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis—as much as 20 percent of the population at the time—took to the streets in outrage, forcing the government to establish the Kahan Commission, which recommended serious sanctions for Sharon.
By contrast, pollsters found that 94 percent of Jewish Israelis supported the recent war in Gaza. Veteran peace activist Daphna Golan, who teaches human rights law at Hebrew University, recalled the anguish and isolation she felt during the Gaza war, especially in the face of widespread pro-war activism among Hebrew University students. Golan said university authorities did not respond to her complaints about posters she described as “extremely racist” hung at the entrance of the Givat Ram campus.

N.B. For some reason I had difficulty accessing the BR article directly through the linked URL, as it seemed their server was rejecting the hyperlink. So I had to go to their homepage, where the article, "Peace Out" is currently listed, although you can probably use their in-site search window if need be. Anyway it's worth reading, and if you have difficulty like I did the URL is here:

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR34.4/cobban.php

http://www.bostonreview.net/