Gaza is part of Iran’s empire? Wha?

This is just lunatic:

Israel has just embarked on a land invasion of the Gaza Strip after a week of aerial bombing. Gaza is bordered by Egypt, and was under Egyptian military control from 1949 through 1967. And yet in a startling rebuke to geography and recent history—and in testimony to the sheer power of audacity and of ideas—the mullahs in Teheran hold more sway in Gaza today than does the tired, Brezhnevite regime of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Gaza constitutes the western edge of Iran’s veritable new empire, cartographically akin to the ancient Persian one, that now stretches all the way to western Afghanistan, where Kabul holds no sway and which is under Iranian economic domination.

But it gels quite nicely with the virtual consensus among the political class that the biggest threat to stability in the Middle East is not Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land but rather…Iran.

One year Iraq is the big issue that needs to be dealt with immediately. The next year it’s Iran. Or some Iran-Syria nexus. Anywhere, anywhere, but Palestine.

job

I’ve been at my job for a full year as of today. Pathetically, this is the longest I’ve ever been at a job. And, unsurprisingly, I’m casting around for a new gig.

Resomolutions

Why the hell not? These were things I was starting to do/thinking of doing already but New Year’s gives me an excuse to share them with you, kind readers.

1. Substitute tea for coffee. It’s not like coffee is bad for you, but for some reason I wish I weren’t addicted to caffeine. Plus, antioxidants, blah blah blah.

2. Use more film. I had hardly used my film cameras for years, but traveling this year gave me a reason to dust off the Rollei. A couple of weeks ago I bought a whole mess of film from Freestyle Photographic supplies including a lot of 35mm for my two workhorse Pentax cameras, which I haven’t used in years. I plan to join the New York Camera Club in a couple of months, once I’m not so busy…

3. …studying to pass the UN’s competitive translators’ exam. Apparently some people take it over and over again and keep failing because it’s really hard, so I don’t expect to pass. But at least it gives me something to work toward, and unless I’m working toward something — anything — I get really depressed. I got the e-mail this week informing me that I’m writing it in one month, and I still have a lot of French to learn, which is why I’m at home on a Friday night. Well, actually, I’m home on a Friday night because I’m lame. But at least my lameness has always contributed to my excellence as a student.

4. Cook more. To this end, I bought mixing bowls today.

5. Save more money. It’s hard to save a lot when your hobby is the darkroom, and I’m pretty darn frugal as it is. But when you only have to do laundry once a month, that’s a sign that you have too many clothes and don’t need any more.

6. Finding a new job by the end of the year would be nice, and I’m already starting to look. But honestly, there’s probably virtually no other job that would pay me as much and have benefits that are quite as good, so if I’m still here at the beginning of 2010 it won’t be the end of the world.

[Added at 9:48 PM: stop overusing commas.]

Tony Karon gets it completely right yet again.

This is the best analysis of the current situation in Gaza that I’ve read yet. Just about everything in the mainstream press is blather.