politics


Ypsi Mayor 8

The 2006 Ypsilanti Mayoral election is now effectively over. Since there is no Republican candidate, the winner of the Democratic primary is effectively the new mayor. I have a few suggestions for the candidates.

To Mr. Schrieber:

Please don’t wait until November to get you 2020 committee going. Do it now! Ypsilanti can’t wait. Even though you think it is pointless don’t ignore the idea of regional cooperation. The city and the township need each other, now more than ever. Pursue the idea please. Bring in Mrs. Richardson and Mr. Pierce and ask them to work with you to help solve the problems. Encourage them to be involved in solving the city’s problems. Maybe even include them in your 2020 committee. They are both committed to helping the city. Take advantage of the opportunity to create unity in the city. Also it is time for you to disavow the actions of some your supporters during the preceding campaign. Finally, cutting into food lines at fund raisers is rude. Don’t do it anymore.

To Mr. Pierce:

Please continue your work to make Ypsilanti a better place. Please stay involved, particularly in the Google effort. I know you are committed to the city, and if Mr. Schrieber does ask you to participate in the revival I hope you will take up the opportunity.

To Mrs Richardson:

I hope you will also stay involved in the city revival efforts. I hope you will continue to push for some good retail in Water Street particularly a grocery store. If Mr. Schrieber asks you participate in his efforts please step up to the plate. And don’t forget the chickens.

The campaign was hard fought and now it is time for all the people of the area to work together to solve the problems.


Arab Jews? 7

Last night Jules asked me a very interesting question. She had gone out to breakfast yesterday with a friend and the question came up of “Is there such a thing as Arab Jews?” There is not a clear cut answer to this question. I am not by any stretch an authority but based on my heritage and readings I will attempt to provide some insight to the question. Keep in mind that my answers are not to be considered definitive and if you’re interested I would suggest reading more about the history of the region. The answer depends on the direction you approach the question from. From the racial perspective, all the people of the middle east region are considered semitic peoples. Within that however, in various there are various sub-groups. In the geographic region that comprises Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Israel/Palestine (and to some degree northern Egypt) most of the people are actually descendants of the semitic people who have lived in the region for several millenia, and also the Greeks and Romans who conquered and occupied the region in the centuries after Alexander the Great. Further to the south in the Arabian Peninsula most of the people are more “purely” native. Over the centuries many of the people migrated to Europe and became what are considered European Jews but they are still largely descended from those people. Strictly speaking from a racial viewpoint there is no real distinction between “Arabs” and “Jews”.

The people that today are known as Arabs and Jews are historically the same people. The differences such as they are today more cultural and ethnic, than genetic. The idea of an Arab-Jew is somewhat analogous to a French-German or a Greek-Italian. They are people who live adjacent to each other but are separated by cultural, linguistic and religious differences. The people who are considered Arabs live in countries that speak Arabic. Beyond that there are many groups in the Arab world that have as many differences as commonalities. There are “Arab” countries stretching from Iraq and Lebanon in the east and north to Morocco and Algeria in the west. Within these countries probably the majority would count themselves as Muslims. To varying degrees in the different countries a large proportion of those would be considered secular in that they may not go to the mosque all the time and pray 5 times a day. There are also branches of Islam, most notably Sunni and Shiite and to lesser degrees other groups. In certain areas, particularly to the east in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq there are substantial numbers of Christians as well. And of course there are also groups of Jews in each of these countries. Clearly the populations of Arabic speaking nations are not a homogeneous group either in terms of religion, or culture.

Those who are typically thought of as Jews typically speak Hebrew, and believe in Judaism in some form. However, as with the Arabs, the Jews are a very diverse group. Because many of the Jews left Palestine in the first couple of centuries CE following the Roman suppression of the rebellions, there was a fairly large Jewish diaspora. As a result, when many of their descendants returned to Israel in the latter half of the twentieth century, they brought many cultures, languages and sects of Judaism with them. There are Jews from Russia, Europe, America, and Africa who all have differences. In Israel today there is a very diverse population including Israeli Arabs. Israeli Arabs are people who lived in Palestine and there descendants who stayed after 1948. They were granted Israeli citizenship but culturally they are Arabs.

Israel is a Jewish state but not all it’s citizens are Jews. Similarly, there are Jews in Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and other countries. Israeli-Arabs often speak Hebrew (as well as Arabic) as a necessity of life in the society. Jews in the Arab countries also typically would speak Arabic as well as Hebrew and would citizens of Jordan, Syria, etc. So what you would have is Jordanian-Jews, Lebanese-Jews etc. So I guess the answer to the question is that there aren’t Arab-Jews but there are Jews living in Arab countries, just as there are Arabs living the Jewish country. Altogether a long-winded and possibly not entirely satisfying answer to a complex question. Hopefully though, it can provide a little bit insight into the people and culture of the region.


Pierce sign stolen 4

Someone stole our Steve Pierce sign the other day. That really sucks. You may not agree with others politically, but stealing or vandalizing signs always sucks. There are many people with whom I disagree, but I will always defend their right to believe what they want. This sort of thing seems to happen regularly in elections and always sucks. I doubt if any of my readers did this, but if you did I ask you to stop and not do this in the future.


More wasted security money

The US government has decreed that starting later this year all new passports issued shall be equipped with an RFID chip. The premise is that the information in the passport would be electronically stored on the RFID chip, thus making it more difficult to create bogus passports. There is some major flaws with this idea. An RFID chip can be read without actually making contact with it. That’s becasue the RF stands for radio frequency. Most of these chips are passive so they don’t require power, so they aren’t transmitting. But a reader with enough power can detect the data on the chip from a distance. So someone sitting in an airport with a reader could sniff the data from the passport of every traveler walking past them and they would never know it. This might not be such a problem if the data on the chips was at least encrypted. However, the standard for passport RFID chips doesn’t require encryption. That means everything stored on the chip is in plain text.

This week at the Black Hat computer security conference a German security consultant Lukas Grunwald, is demonstrating how an RFID passport can be cloned in a matter of minutes. He will show how an RFID passport can be read, the data extracted and copied to a new blank passport with relatively little effort or cost. The data can also be copied to a smart card like that used by many companies for security. So not only is the RFID passport not helpful it may actually be counter-productive to security. How much do you want to bet a friend of Shrub has a big investment in the RFID business? I would say it is a safe bet that friends of Bush will profit handsomely from this whole e-passport fiasco, while the taxpayers will pay handsomely.


A Democrat for mayor of Ypsilanti 4

So far I haven’t written about the candidates running for mayor of Ypsilanti. However, after reading what people have been saying over the last couple of days I think it is time for me to jump in here. First let me say I have been a liberal all my life. I grew up in Canada as the son of a steelworker who live through 3 strikes including 2 protracted ones. I was a supporter of the NDP (the New Democratic Party) I believe that government should work for the improvement of the community and the common good. Serving the common good does not necessarily preclude and in fact I think demands some fiscal responsibility. There are times when a government needs to spend more than it takes in, but even this needs to be done with care. The reality of the situation today in Ypsilanti is that they have limited revenues and opportunities for short-term revenue growth. They also don’t have the resources to run any kind of deficit. This means that whoever the next mayor of the city is must find a way to minimize costs while maintaining the services that are needed by the people of the city. The new mayor must also find a way promote growth and improve the revenue basis of the city.

Based on what I have heard from the candidates, I would have to say that Steve Pierce is the best of of the choice for mayor. I have heard criticism of Steve, accusing him of being a Democrat in name only. He is being accused of being a Republican running in a Democratic town under the only banner with which he could be elected here. To this I say Bullshit! Steve Pierce has demonstrated repeatedly his commitment to this community. He has demonstrated a belief in civil rights. My friend Cam Getto uncovered to documentation about what really happened with the DDA (of which Steve Pierce was a member) during the campaign to amend the city charter to protect the civil rights of all members the Ypsilanti community so I will not reiterate the whole story here. Steve Pierce has some good ideas about how to improve the fiscal stability of the city in both the short term and the longer term. Consolidating administrative services with the surrounding region makes sense for the city and the region. The health of the city has an effect on the health of the region. Neither exists in isolation from the other. It is vital that the city, the townships and the county find ways to cooperate and make the best use of the resources that each possesses.

Steve has also been accused of being too “eloquent”. This is also ridiculous. Being eloquent is no sin and is certainly not antithetical to being a democrat. There are many “Democrats” who claim the title but clearly don’t walk the walk (witness Joe Lieberman, Barbara Boxer and Hillary Clinton). I don’t think that Steve Pierce is one of them. No doubt he is not perfect. If I were him I would not drag out that shirt I saw him wearing on the 4th of July and Memorial Day quite so often. I don’t know the man personally and my knowledge of him is limited, but from what I have seen he is definitely the best candidate for the job. I think with Steve Pierce as mayor, the city stands a fighting chance. I think the voters of the city should give Steve Pierce a chance.


Audio of the Ypsi Mayoral Debate 4

I have posted the audio of the Ypsilanti Mayoral Debate held tonight at the McKenny Union at EMU. If you are bandwidth challenged I will be posting another lower bit-rate version tomorrow. This first version is about 36MB The lower quality version should be quite a bit smaller. I will also do a multi-part version that can be burned to audio cds for anyone who who doesn;t have a portable mp3 player and doesn’t want to listen on the computer.

BTW Congratulations to Mark Maynard and all the other organizers. The ballroom was packed with probably over 300 people and there were excellent questions. It was a great event and demonstrated that the people of of this community do care about its future.