I still have three large salmon heads in the freezer (pic) from my Friday's booty. I lost 27 kg in three months including a three-week break-fast (Rasputin was vacationing in Moscow). Yesterday I swam 20 pool-lengths = 500 meters. I feel light and tired. It is very hot here and I am working little. Little means in my case only 8 - 10 hours a day. Yesterday I took the second exam (Moed Beth) and I tried to help the panicked infelices. The students were absolutely paralized by fear. I never saw such a thing. It is only a bloody exam! I felt very uncomfortable. Now I want to take time to finish the article on probabilistic design of water infrastructure/plumbing. In dealing with the bureaucracy it is vital to have a good professional name, so they are less afraid to sign the permits, and my collegues are mostly retired or brain dead (or just dead), and there is a new generation שלא ידע את יוסף - that is from the Bible, a generation that knew not Joseph. The goal is to refresh my professional authority.
7 comments:
So did you know Joseph - personally?
The Pharaoh did.
The old Pharaoh, not the new one (that Moses had to deal with). My father used to quote this in his Ashkenazi Hebrew ("es yuseff"). A new king, not a new generation. Meaning that a change in regime is not to be wished for lightly - what comes next is often worse than the previous ruler (see Hitler, Lenin, etc.)
K
Add Khomeini to that list. I still remember the Iranian Communists who used to demonstrate weekly against the Shah at my university in the '70s . They had a guy wearing something that looked like an old fashioned diving helmet which was somehow supposed to be a Savak torture device. I often wonder how many of these guys went back for the revolution and how many were executed by the Revolutionary Guards? Of those that went back, probably all of them.
K
The phrase makes reference to a change of regime, or a new generation.
It is interesting that you associate it with the Shah. His terrible Savack was rather mild in comparison with what followed. I do remember the order given by President Jimmy Carter to the Shah to go on exile. Carter's liberal, missionery evangelism resulted in so much evil...
I was looking at the Wikipedia article about Savak - they estimate the # executed by it over a course of 40 years in the hundreds. Later, Khomeini would have that many killed in one day or even in one minute of a human wave attack against the Iraqis. "Terrible" is a relative term. The thing to remember is that things can always get even worse. The Marxist's "You have nothing to lose but your chains" was always lie - #1 they had no intention of throwing away the chains and #2 you can lose your life.
K
K
The SHah's opposition was rather mild and it was not armed, so the SAVAK was also mild. They did cultivate the image of a terrible, ferocious, cruel, pityless police organizations, but they were not like that. Because also their "clients" were not really ferocious but idealistic democrats a la Jimmy Carter.
The older I get and collect more experience, more I am astonished by the contrast between my former imaginations of reality and reality. Government organizations, and police is one of them, cultivate an image of superhuman efficiency and purposefulness. In my experience they are small imbecile people, utterly confused by what is happening around them, absolutely out of a sense of control and always hoping for the best. Afterwards it will look like they had total control and followed satanically clever plans.
Post a Comment