The Eleanorian

Shipping Jobs to India?

I had dinner with a former Computer Consultant who is now an Acupuncture Therapist because, she claims, the Computer Jobs are being outsourced to India.

"IBM is the biggest outsourcer of computer jobs to India," she said, "companies want to make as much money as possible. And computer geeks--we're not a very protesty sort." Now she's an acupuncturist and gets a few computer consultant gigs here and there to tide her over.

I'm luckier. I had a freelance gig where the idiots tried to ship editorial jobs to India; luckily, they totally fucked everything up and we had to redo their work. So for now, some things, like American grammar nuance and shit like that, can't be outsourced.

Corporations are doing better than ever. We're not. Write to your Congressmen/women and Senators. Tell them not to outsource your jobs. Keep it American guys/goils.

Last night...

Last night this degenerate dude said to me and my friend Brian, as we strolled on 13th Street, "Are you a married couple?" My response, "No, he's a gay man and I'm a lesbian." Well, right in the midst of 13th Street, where all the faygelahs and dykelahs live, this man was appalled. How dare you not be hetero? Look, I love heteros, and I love queers, and what I like more, and what I've always said, is: I like individuals. Why do people have to be thrown into a ghetto based on their sexuality? There are many married men, for example, who dress like women. I actually find that pretty sexy. In addition, I read in the New England Journal of Medicine this week, that a good percentage of Chinese married men (in China) engage in man-to-man relations. So let us transcend these ghettos. Let us also not assume that everyone is like the Waltons, and even there, they had lots of dysfunction. And you know: dysfunction is underrated--it is more exciting, in my humble opinion, than predictable stereotypes. Please note: the above 13th Street is in Center City, Philadelphia, and the above Brian, like the above Eleanor, lives in Philly. New York is not the only hemisphere where culture and stupidity collide...

The War in Lebanon

It's not my favorite topic. Especially when the BBC likes to declare, with great enthusiasm, casualties caused by the State of Israel. BBC, which I listen to nightly, is more hush hush about Hezbollah, which is an evil entity that is funded by Iran and Syria and should be jolted from the earth. However, the fact remains that there are numerous civilians getting bombed, being made homeless, and caught in a quagmire that's not their own.

I blame the Syrian and Iranian governments who have lambasted the fledgling Lebanese government with this insidious terrorist group. Hezbollah, per the UN, was supposed to be disarmed. It has more sophisticated missiles than ever before.

As for the Gaza Strip, I do not trust Hamas; still, the tax money Israel collects monthly should be given to the Palestinians. It's rightfully theirs and not Israel's. They, after all, elected the stupid Hamas assholes, which means that they should get their tax income, which pays for numerous government jobs of ordinary people like me and you. It'd be like if Mexico decided not to pay your Dad for teaching Social Studies in Jersey City High. Thousands, if not millions, of Palestinians should not have to suffer because the Israeli government considers Hamas a terrorist organization. If Israel collects millions of dollars for the Palestinian people per month, then it rightfully belongs to the Palestinian people. And these incursions into Gaza are like sending missiles to stick figures who are fighting with feather bombs.

This war of aggression is destroying people's homes and their lives. Haifa is not any better because these Iranian and Syrian-bought missiles are wrecking buildings, and people are spending more time in concrete bomb shelters.

I have long been repulsed by Hezbollah's militaristic and religious and psychotic means of murdering people. I am certain that the original authors of the Koran did not inscribe suicide bombing as a means to an end.

Some people believe this recent Mideast event precludes the Second Coming. Shit, whatever it takes, I hope there's a peaceful solution soon.

I agree with an Arab man interviewed by the BBC who declared that this was not a people's war but a politician's war.

Hotel Rwanda and the Rape of Nanking

The black and white photo shows Japanese soliders using Chinese from Nanking in bayonet practice in 1937. 300,000 people died during this Holocaust of World War II. Japanese soldiers slaughtered thousands of innocent Chinese men, women and children who were also raped as corpses lined the roads of Nanking. There was blood flowing from Nanking's river. There was a safety zone, however, in Nanking, in which European (one or two Nazis, actually) and American citizens (missionaries, surgeons, academics) saved 300,000 Nanking residents. If you haven't read The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang--I highly recommend it.

Similarly, Hotel Rwanda is a disturbing film about human suffering--a massacre of humans who were treated far worse than cockroaches on the New York subway tracks along 42nd Street. More than 1 million innocent Rwandans were butchered. One man created a safety zone (at Hotel Rwanda) for his fellow Rwandans who were, like the people of Nanking, being raped and decimated.

Of course all suffering is relative and in America ours is frequently depression (unless you're living in the projects or homeless or severely handicapped), which is why humor is such an important medium.

I killed flies today and felt relief from the heat and depressive flow of my thoughts, actually, caused by the disturbing above-mentioned book and film. And if you don't want to read the book or see the movie, will it all just go away--like a meandering fly being chased by a psychotic jack russell? I swatted thousands of flies. The jack russell chased hundreds of them. I didn't have a fly swatter so I used that plastic thing that one uses to flip hamburgers.

Okay, take that on a human level: see me as a human fly swatter in Rwanda and Nanking--that's what genocide is. When assholes see people as meaningless as flies. I'm not a Jain, as portrayed in Philip Roth's Pulitzer Prize Winning book, American Pastoral; Jains (from India) believe that all life (even flies and microorganisms) should be cherished.

For me there is much relief in killing flies. I see flies as meaningless entities, and I'm not sure I agree with the Jains who worship such creatures. I also don't believe that flies are the reincarnation of my now dead Montreal and Newark family members who have become part of the dirt. But at least these Newarkites and Montrealers had decent burials.

But then if you include my relatives and ancestors who perished during the Nazi Holocaust, well, that was another Rwanda and Nanking. More flies for the Himmler swatters and their SS exterminators.

But thank God there are humans out there who create safe zones for their fellow species--Hotel Rwanda, Nanking Safety Zone, and Schindler (who was, by the way, a Nazi).

Donald Trump: The Emperor In Borrowed Clothes

Donald Trump's business is on the verge of bankruptcy.

He can and does fire people, but atop a faulty structure.

I enjoy his powerful "You're fired" statement because it's happened to me and although most people like to say "I've been laid off", "I quit my job", most of you have been "fired." That's why it's exciting to sit with Trump when he fires people (albeit atop a wooden empire filled with termites).

Seeing "The Apprentice" makes me feel a bit weird. You have a mostly obnoxious, egocentric and glamourous-looking group of men and women. It's great to see these Horatio Alger myths and misters get clunked on the head, but ironically, it is clunking by a man whose realilty is that he might soon get fired. They're only keeping him aboard because he's an awesome marketing dude. I imagine it is this television show and its numerous ads that are supplementing his collapsing empire.

Please see below article in New York Times today for bankruptcy verification that the toupee is really falling off his head:
----------------
Trump Hotels Said to Avoid Bankruptcy in Deal
By TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN and ERIC DASH

Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts Inc., the struggling holding company that controls Donald J. Trump's casinos, has reached a preliminary agreement with its investors to restructure $1.8 billion in debt, fending off a possible bankruptcy filing and leaving Mr. Trump as the company's chairman and chief executive.

The restructuring - coming less than two weeks before the due date of a hefty bond payment that many analysts suspected the company might have had difficulty making - is the latest step in the dizzying round of financial deal making that the company has engaged in this year.

According to two people directly involved in the restructuring, which is expected to be announced publicly as early as today, Mr. Trump's stake in the company will be reduced from 56 percent of the shares to about 27 percent. Bondholders will be swapping about $575 million in debt in return for an equity stake that will leave them in control of about 63 percent to 65 percent of the company's shares.

The restructuring is expected to be completed no later than February. One person involved in the deal said that Mr. Trump would invest $55 million of his own cash and exchange $16.4 million in Trump Hotels debt that he controls to maintain an equity stake in the company. This person also said it was possible that Mr. Trump might resign as chief executive in coming months, but that for now the company's investors valued his marketing prowess and wished to keep him aboard.

The Fall of an American Hero

He fell off a horse. He became crippled. He became a hero for the crippled people of America. He did not become a proponent for horses' rights. But then again, neither is George Bush. Only Christie Todd Whitless, former governess of New Jersey, is known to be a horse woman. I have a transgendered friend who rides horses. I rode a horse once at the Dupont estate in Morristown, NJ. My born again cousin who beat his wife was the overseer of the estate. Horses therefore symbolize brutality and contradiction for me. I love Mr. Ed more than Wilbur. Where am I going with this? We will miss Mr. Reeve, who I think I saw smoking a joint along Christopher Street once. I always enjoyed his supermen movies. But his real accomplishment was his work to help crippled individuals. We'll miss you Mr. Reeve.

The Bastards Strike Again

One of my friends, who's an Israeli, said it is quixotic of me to think in terms of peace in the Middle East, especially if my idealism puts his family at risk. You can't be idealistic if your enemy blows up tourists. Imagine being on the beach or in your hotel and these low life suicide bombers strike. Blood in the middle of a martini.

I'm less and less idealistic about a peaceful solution while these Neandrethals murder. Plus, one-third of the money for PLO terrorism comes from Arafat's people. Who do you negotiate with? You give back land, you visit it as tourists, and then in attempting to achieve peace, you get blown up. On a visceral level, it's difficult to be idealistic. Even intellectually, when you examine the numbers killed in Israel and abroad, you're not so compromising.

What happens when you give back the Gaza--do their missiles become more accurate and deadly?

See below from today's Haaretz:

Last Update: 08/10/2004 16:48
Many Israelis feared dead in Hilton Taba attack
By Amos Harel, Yoav Stern and Revital Levy-Stein, Haaretz Correspondents, Haartetz Service and

At least 30 people, including many Israelis, were killed and 122 wounded Thursday night in three attacks on two Red Sea holiday resorts packed with Israeli tourists, Israel Defense Forces Home Front commander Yair Naveh confirmed Friday morning.

Earlier, Egyptian officials said up to 35 people had been killed in the attacks on the Sinai Peninsula.
Rescue services said 29 bodies have been pulled from the rubble of the Hilton hotel in Taba, and Magen David Adom said it had collected the bodies of two Israelis who were killed in an attack on Ras Satan, some 50 kilometers south of the border crossing.

So far, five of the fatalities of the two attacks have been positively identified as Israelis.
Thirty-eight Israelis were also reported missing on Friday morning.

Who Won Last Night's Debate?

The Real Debate: Who is Prettier?

Justice is Served in Yemen?

Yemen sentenced 2 men to be shot in a firing squad for their participation in the 2000 suicide bombing of the warship the USS Cole. This sentencing happened, most likely, because the Yemen leaders are concerned about their economic relationship with America.They want to keep Big Brother happy and not depend on other hostile nations with shitty economies. So is justice served in Yemen?

Look at Cuba or other countries that have been isolated by the US--perhaps if they had kissed ass better their economies would be better. It's like having a boss--you need to be a bit sycophantic rather than hostile.

In this part of the world, exclamations of "God is Great" for bombing American ships are virulently stated; perhaps then God is great for sentencing assassins to death sentences. It's either God or Alan Greenspan.

The New York Times reports that "Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi-born associate of Mr. bin Laden and Jamal al-Badawi, a 35-year-old Yemeni, were sentenced to death for planning the attack that killed 17 American sailors on board the destroyer."

The Times also reported that "Cries of "God is Great!" erupted from the defendants when Judge Najib al-Qaderi read the sentences and relatives in the packed courtroom yelled that the sentences were unjust."

Let Al Qaeda realize there are no safe havens (except for those borderline Pakistan/Afghanistan areas, which are booming with massive anarchy and insurgency against the General--but even Pakistan is bowing to the American pressures to capture these terrorists).

The defendents claimed they were tortured into giving their confessions. So they will appeal it to the Yemeni Supreme Court. Let's hope God continues to be great in convicting whoever is guilty of these heinous crimes.