“The world’s most famous living scientists turns 70 today. Professor Stephen Hawking has defied medical expectations, since being diagnosed with a form of motor neurone disease at the age of 21 and given only a few years to live, to become one of the most accomplished physicists in the fields of black holes and the study of the early universe”.

Part of the birthday celebrations apparently involve a three-day scientific seminar in Cambridge, on The State of the Universe at which Hawkins will speak on the final day, Sunday [today].

UPDATE: The Washington Post later reported that Hawking was not well enough, following a recent hospitalization, to attend the celebration in person, but he did deliver an address via videotape on Sunday, and “…in a recorded message played to attendees he repeated his call for humans to colonize other worlds. University of Cambridge Vice Chancellor Leszek Borysiewicz told the conference that Hawking, who is almost completely paralyzed because of Lou Gehrig’s disease, had only recently been discharged from the hospital for an unspecified ailment … In his recorded speech, Hawking pleaded for interplanetary travel, arguing that humans faced a grim future unless they spread out from their terrestrial home. ‘I don’t think we will survive another thousand years without escaping beyond our fragile planet’, he said…”

The WPost article continued: ” Hawking’s speech — delivered in his distinctive, robotic monotone — charmed the audience of scientists, students and journalists gathered at Cambridge’s Lady Mitchell Hall … A black hole expert, Hawking is one of the leading lights in theoretical astrophysics. His achievements are all the more remarkable because of his Lou Gehrig’s disease, an incurable degenerative disorder with which he was diagnosed as a 21-year-old. Most people die within a few years of the diagnosis, but Hawking has defied the odds and spent half a century carrying out pioneering research. He owes much of his fame to his best-selling series of works popularizing the latest developments in theoretical astrophysics. ‘A Brief History of Time’, published in 1988, has alone has sold millions of copies. A host of other books, including ‘A Briefer History of Time’, have followed. Nevertheless the condition — known as motor neurone disease in the U.K — has made life difficult. Since catching pneumonia in 1985, he has needed around-the-clock care. Hawking relies on a computerized wheelchair to move around and a voice synthesizer to speak”.

The Guardian’s piece also reported that

“Kitty Ferguson, author of Stephen Hawking: His life and Work, said that the physicist is celebrated by his colleagues for always running ahead of the pack … [and] the way Hawking had dealt with his disability was one of the most compelling facets of his personality and willpower. ‘The fact that he is able to live with his disability and it’s just the most astounding, good-humoured, dismissal of it. It’s not as though he’s triumphing over it, it’s just as though it’s not there’.”

The Guardian also notes that:

“Professor Kip Thorne, formerly of the California Institute of Technology and a longtime collaborator of Hawking … paid tribute to Hawking’s ability to work with cosmology in a novel way: ‘When Stephen lost the use of his hands and could no longer manipulate equations on paper, he compensated by training himself to manipulate complex shapes and topologies in his mind at great speed. That ability has enabled him to see the solutions to deep physics problems that nobody else could solve, and that he probably would not have been able to solve, himself, without his newfound skill’.”

This report is posted here.

According to a late-night report from the Silwan Information Center (Silwanic), posted on their website here, “Silwanic has been informed that the illegal settlement of Beit Yonatan in the Baten al-Hawa neighborhood of Silwan will be evicted at 9am either tomorrow [16 January] or [Monday] 17 January. Beit Yonatan is not the only illegally-built settlement in the area, it has stood at the heart of the settlement issue in Silwan, its continued existence a telling example of the double standards of the Jerusalem Municipality, who have issued hundreds of demolition orders to date to Palestinian homes on the strength of questionable licensing issues”.

We have previously reported on this matter on this blog, including here.

Late last week, Israel’s Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein — who has previously pressed Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat to execute court orders requiring the eviction of several settler families from Beit Yonathan, and the sealing of the building which does not comply with Jerusalem municpal building codes — again called on Mayor Barkat to carry out the evacuation order.

YNet reported, here, that Weinstein hinted that the Mayor could be charged with violation of the law if he failed to act to enforce the court order. Weinstein reportedly stated that “the implementation of the order was ‘an obligation set by the court’.”

At the beginning of the new year (2011), Barkat linked the eviction and evacuation of Beit Yonathan with the the fate of the Abu Nab family, whose 60 members have been living for decades in a compound they built that includes a structure that formally served as a synagogue for Yeminite Jews in Silwan before the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 (when all Jews were evacuated from the area).

Barkat, who continues to want to implement an earlier plan he has proposed for the Silwan neighborhood that would reduce the number of pending Palestinian home demolitions [from something like 88 to something around 20] in exchange for retroactive “legalization” of all other structures there (including Beit Yonathan), did manage to temporarily persuaded the Aterit Cohanim settler organization to withdraw a civil suit they had filed to compel the eviction of the Abu Nab family.

YNet reported last week that “Despite a compromise proposed by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat the State insists on implementing the sealing order imposed on Beit Yonatan in east Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood. Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein sent a letter to Barkat Thursday stating that a date in the near future must be set for the implementation of the order”.

But, the Attorney General has apparently accepted the logic of the Mayor’s linkage of the fate of the two neighboring structures — one inhabited by East Jerusalem Palestinians, and the other one housing Israeli Jewish settler familes and their private (though state-salaried) security guards.

YNet reported that Weinstein added: ” ‘I have asked the enforcement elements to try and have the implementation of the order be performed at the same time another order is being carried out‘ … He was referring to the evacuation of Arab residents from the Abu Nab house which is adjacent to Beit Yonatan. He stressed that the sealing order must be implemented ‘without the intervention of unauthorized elements’ and noted that he has informed the political rank of this decision. Weinstein even hinted to Barkat that he should be careful for his actions over the Beit Yehonatan issue could come to criminal proceedings. He referred the Mayor to the Attorney General’s directive which stated that “an elected representative’s attempts to intervene in favor of one defendant or another in criminal proceedings carried out by the criminal prosecution has no place and is inappropriate. ‘These actions harm the independence of Israel’s criminal prosecution system and could harm the parity of the criminal process, coloring it with political opinions, if in essence, if outwardly and in certain cases, the actions themselves could become a felony. Last month Barkat prevented the evacuation of Beit Yonatan at the last minute after the Ateret Cohanim foundation lifted its demand to evacuate the residents of Abu Nab house which previously served as a synagogue. Barkat declared that should the foundation not agree to temporarily withdraw their demand he will evacuate both sites on the same day”.

Silwan organizer Adnan Gheith, who is also a Fatah activist, withdrew his appeal at the end of December — apparently with the support of the Fatah movement — to an Israeli military order banning him, or deporting him, for a period of four months from his home and from all of the “Greater Jerusalem Municipality”, and arrived in Ramallah this week.

Here is a great message: “Every war has two losers“.   It was originally written by William Stafford.

“Every War Has Two Losers” is also the title of a 32-minute documentary film about the views of poet + conscientious objector William Stafford (1914-1993), who refused to fight, even in World War Two …

The documentary is based on a book of the same title, “Every War Has Two Losers“, a compilation of William Stafford “journal entries that his son put together about his thoughts on war and reconciliation”, said one reviewer, here.

In the documentary, and in its trailer, posted on Youtube, W.S. Merwin, 82 years old, just named by the U.S. Congress as America’s poet laureate, says: “When its an ‘enemy’ it’s not a person anymore, it’s a target”.

The trailer, via Avner Cohen on Facebook (to whom I send thanks), is posted on Youtube:

Here’s another video — done two-and-a-half years agom apparently by a volunteer with the World Council of Church’s Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) — showing the same thing, before the technology got even more “perfected”:

It made me think of someone whose birthday is today (not Leonard Cohen – his birthday is 21 September, as we already reported here . )

According to The Guardian, it is “an edited transcript of an interview conducted for the Canadian broadcaster CBC”.

It seems so cold. Maybe he was just nervous, there was no chemistry with the interviewer (I would not have liked being asked some of these questions), or he was tired, or … feeling (or made to feel) old?

Here are some excerpts

On how his world tour is going:

“…there’s a component that you really don’t command”.

Q: What component is that?

LC:” Some sort of grace, some sort of luck. It’s hard to put your finger on it – you don’t really want to put your finger on it. But there is that mysterious component that makes for a memorable evening. You never really know whether you’re going to be able to be the person you want to be or that the audience is going to be hospitable to the person that they perceive. So there’s so many unknowns and so many mysteries connected – even when you’ve brought the show to a certain degree of excellence”.
…
LC: “I always had a notion that I had a tiny garden to cultivate. I never thought I was really one of the big guys. And so the work that was in front of me was just to cultivate this tiny corner of the field that I thought I knew something about, which was something to do with self-investigation without self-indulgence. Just pure confession I never felt was really interesting. But confession filtered through a tradition of skill and hard work is interesting to me. So that was my tiny corner, and I just started writing about the things that I thought I knew about or wanted to find out about. That was how it began”.
…

Q:Have the women in your life been a source of your strength or weakness?

LC: “Good question. It’s not a level playing ground for either of us, for either the man or the woman. This is the most challenging activity that humans get into, which is love. You know, where we have the sense that we can’t live without love. That life has very little meaning without love. So we’re invited into this arena which is a very dangerous arena, where the possibilities of humiliation and failure are ample. So there’s no fixed lesson that one can learn, because the heart is always opening and closing, it’s always softening and hardening. We’re always experiencing joy or sadness. But there are lots of people who’ve closed down. And there are times in one’s life when one has to close down just to regroup”.

Q: Are there times when you’ve lamented the power that women have had over you?

LC: “I never looked at it that way. There’s times when I’ve lamented, there’s times when I’ve rejoiced, there’s times when I’ve been deeply indifferent. You run through the whole gamut of experience. And most people have a woman in their heart, most men have a woman in their heart and most women have a man in their heart. There are people that don’t. But most of us cherish some sort of dream of surrender. But these are dreams and sometimes they’re defeated and sometimes they’re manifested”.

Q: Do you think love is empowering?

LC: “It’s a ferocious activity, where you experience defeat and you experience acceptance and you experience exultation. And the affixed idea about it will definitely cause you a great deal of suffering. If you have the feeling that it’s going to be an easy ride, you’re going to be disappointed. If you have a feeling that it’s going to be hell all the way, you may be surprised”.

Q: Do you regret not having a lifelong partner?

LC: “Non, je ne regrette rien. I’m blessed with a certain amount of amnesia and I really don’t remember what went down. I don’t review my life that way”.

Q: Even in the face of a very successful record that you made in 1992, The Future, do you think dealing with depression was an important part of your creative process?

LC: “Well, it was a part of every process. The central activity of my days and nights was dealing with a prevailing sense of anxiety, anguish, distress. A background of anguish that prevailed”.

Q: How important was writing to your survival?

LC: “It had a number of benefits. One was economic. It was not a luxury for me to write – it was a necessity. These times are very difficult to write in because the slogans are really jamming the airwaves – it’s something that goes beyond what has been called political correctness. It’s a kind of tyranny of posture. Those ideas are swarming through the air like locusts. And it’s difficult for the writer to determine what he really thinks about things. So in my own case I have to write the verse, and then see if it’s a slogan or not and then toss it. But I can’t toss it until I’ve worked on it and seen what it really is”.

Q: What do you consider your darkest hour?

LC: “Well I wouldn’t tell you about it if I knew. Even to talk about oneself in a time like this is a kind of unwholesome luxury. I don’t think I’ve had a darkest hour compared to the dark hours that so many people are involved in right now. Large numbers of people are dodging bombs, having their nails pulled out in dungeons, facing starvation, disease. I mean large numbers of people. So I think that we’ve really got to be circumspect about how seriously we take our own anxieties today … nobody knows what’s going to happen in the next moment.

Q: Are you fearful of death?

LC: “Everyone has to have a certain amount of anxiety about the conditions of one’s death. The actual circumstances, the pain involved, the affect on your heirs. But there’s so little that you can do about it. It’s best to relegate those concerns to the appropriate compartments of the mind and not let them inform all your activities. We’ve got to live our lives as if they’re not going to end immediately. So we have to live under those – some people might call them illusions” …

This edited version of an original interview was published by The Guardian here .

ON LOVE

Now, here are some other thoughts on love, one attributed to Leonard Cohen himself, in a less guarded moment, and others more classical:

“If you do have love it’s a kind of wound, and if you don’t have it it’s worse.” – Leonard Cohen, July 1988

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Sonnet XLIII by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, – I love thee with the breath;
Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning- Sonnet XLIII

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Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931)

Then Almitra spoke again and said, “And what of Marriage, master?” And he answered saying: You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore. You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days. Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God. But let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) – On Marriage

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I Corinthians 13 it: “Love is patient and kind, love is not jealous or boastful, it is not arrogant or rude, Love does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice in the wrong, but rejoices in the right, Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things”.

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Governor Sanford in an email to his Argentinian mistress: “…despite the best efforts of my head my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body, the touch of your lips, the touch of your finger tips and an even deeper connection to your soul. I love you”

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Comment — there were actually comments published by McClatchy newspaper group on Governor Sanford’s exchange of emails with his mistress, and one said:

“In case some of you have forgotten, or some never experienced, this is that intense, lightning-bolt kind of passionate love that is all consuming. Sometimes it only happens once in a lifetime, and you know it is forever, regardless of the circumstances. (Sometimes it happens more than once…)”

That time, my tires were probably deliberately punctured in the war being waged by my neighbors over parking spaces.

Hair-raising as that was, it was nothing compared to suddenly having a flat tire at Qalandia checkpoint last Sunday afternoon, in the peak heat of the day, as traffic trying to get out of Ramallah began to get out of control, and a collective electric road rage took over. Nobody was in a mood to help, needless to say. And the traffic pressure was increasing, and the heat was unbearable, and then the wilder drivers began driving on the other side of the road, and on the space on the side of the other side of the road, where I had pulled over to get out of the way and to try to think what to do next. They kicked up more dust, the hot wind was blowing, and they drove directly toward me in a stupid game of chicken, trying to bully me to get out of their way (they were really not where they were supposed to be, but that didn’t matter at all to them). They didn’t even think that I might have been there because I had a totally collapsed tire. No, for them, I was there just to be annoying and to bother them by getting in their way. It was, to be perfectly honest, scary. And hot.

The traffic gets out of control at Qalandia for one simple reason — too much traffic is funneled through a too-narrow space, and there is no traffic control allowed by the Israeli military near the checkpoint. So, it becomes a laboratory of the law of the jungle, where the strongest rule. And a multi-hour gridlock ensues.

I was trying to think what to do next. Then, I called Ibrahim, who I had just seen at his worksite, and who had big responsibilities. But he said without hesitation: “I am coming”, and he came right away, with his assistant, and they saved me, really saved me, an act of kindness and sympathetic solidarity for which I am extremely grateful. And all the time, as Ibrahim and his assistant were changing my tire, they were being greeted and exchanging greetings with friends slowly passing by in the gridlocked traffic, in the hot sun as the wind blew up gusts of sand, just outside Qalandia checkpoint. Then got back into their car and drove back to ar-Ram, merging easily back into the slow flow, headed back to the soccer/football stadium that is really just on the other side of The Wall from where I live, but so far away. Yet, coming back around from Jerusalem I can see the bright lights of the stadium lighting up the skyline. And, sitting here at my computer, I can hear the cheers and shouting and singing, whenever there is a soccer match on the other side of The Wall.

Israel has said that it will not re-open the border crossings into Gaza until Gilad Shalit is returned home safely, while Hamas has been involved in on-and-off-again negotiations which would involve the release of large numbers — over one thousand — of the 11,000 Palestinians currently being detained by Israel.  Noam Shalit just wants his son back, and has urged the Israeli government to do whatever is necessary.

The call is supported by Amnesty International, and comes at a time when a UN Board of Inquiry is expected to report to the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, on its initial findings regarding attacks on UN facilities and personnel in the region.

The letter calls for the establishment of a United Nations commission of inquiry into the Gaza conflict that: (1) Has a mandate to carry out a prompt, thorough, independent and impartial investigation of all allegations of serious violations of international humanitarian law committed by all parties to the conflict; (2) Acts in accordance with the strictest international standards governing such investigations; and (3) Can provide recommendations as to the appropriate prosecution of those responsible for gross violations of the law by the relevant authorities.

The letter stresses the need for an investigation into “all serious violations of international humanitarian law committed by all parties to the conflict”.

It — and the just-revealed report of what Israeli soldiers said about their “permissive rules of engagement ” in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead — put into context this outrageous statement, below, from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Despite our criticism and complaints, it is still posted on the MFA’s website: “To Israel’s great sorrow, innocent civilians in Gaza have been harmed. However, the figures of civilian casualties have been greatly exaggerated. Most of these figures come from Hamas sources, amplifying the number of civilians killed by including as ‘children’ teenage Hamas fighters and as ‘women’, female terrorists. According to an Israeli investigation, of the 1,100-1,200 reported casualties, 250 were civilians. The rest are believed to be terrorists or have yet to be identified, but given that most of them are young men in their 20s, it is not unreasonable to assume that they are also members of Hamas or other terrorist organizations“. This disgraceful piece of propaganda can be read in full here.

The signatories state that “Relief and reconstruction are desperately needed but, for the real wounds to heal, we must also establish the truth about crimes perpetuated against civilians on both sides.”

They say they “have seen at first hand the importance of investigating the truth and delivering justice for the victims of conflict and believe it is a precondition to move forward and achieve peace in the Middle East”.

The signatories – who have led investigations of crimes committed in former Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Darfur, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, East Timor, Lebanon and Peru – say that they have been “shocked to the core” by events in Gaza.

The letter’s signatories include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mary Robinson, Justice Richard Goldstone (Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda and Chairman of the UN Inquiry on Kosovo), and Antonio Cassese (First President and Judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Head of the UN Inquiry on Darfur).

One of the signatories, Professor William Schabas, former member of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, said: “The international community must apply the same standard to Gaza as it does to other conflicts and investigate all abuses of the laws of war and human rights. The current UN inquiry is no substitute for a full investigation. It is not only the UN personnel that deserve truth and justice, but Palestinians and Israelis themselves.”

According to its report, “CPJ found that 45 percent of all media workers jailed worldwide are bloggers, Web-based reporters, or online editors. Online journalists represent the largest professional category for the first time in CPJ’s prison census … The number of imprisoned online journalists has steadily increased since CPJ recorded the first jailed Internet writer in its 1997 census. Print reporters, editors, and photographers make up the next largest professional category, with 53 cases in 2008. Television and radio journalists and documentary filmmakers constitute the rest”.

The total number of jailed journalists is down slightly — two fewer than in 2007 — and down from a peak high of 139 imprisoned in 2002.

The CPJ notes that its research “shows that imprisonments rose significantly in 2001, after governments imposed sweeping national security laws in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Imprisonments stood at 81 in 2000 but have since averaged 128 in CPJ’s annual surveys”.

The annual census also reveals that “Forty-five of the journalists on CPJ’s census are freelancers; most of them work online. These freelancers are not employees of media companies and often do not have the legal resources or political connections that might help them gain their freedom. The number of imprisoned freelancers has risen more than 40 percent in the last two years, according to CPJ research”.

And the CPJ reports that “The number of imprisoned online journalists has steadily increased since CPJ recorded the first jailed Internet writer in its 1997 census. Print reporters, editors, and photographers make up the next largest professional category, with 53 cases in 2008. Television and radio journalists and documentary filmmakers constitute the rest”.

The CPJ says that it “does not apply a rigid definition of online journalism, but it carefully evaluates the work of bloggers and online writers to determine whether the content is journalistic in nature. In general, CPJ looks to see whether the content is reportorial or fact-based commentary. In a repressive society where the traditional media is restricted, CPJ takes an inclusive approach to work that is produced online.

According to CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon, ” ‘Online journalism has changed the media landscape and the way we communicate with each other … But the power and influence of this new generation of online journalists has captured the attention of repressive governments around the world, and they have accelerated their counterattack … The image of the solitary blogger working at home in pajamas may be appealing, but when the knock comes on the door they are alone and vulnerable … All of us must stand up for their rights–from Internet companies to journalists and press freedom groups. The future of journalism is online and we are now in a battle with the enemies of press freedom who are using imprisonment to define the limits of public discourse.”

And, the CPJ annual survey reveals that “About 13 percent of jailed journalists face no formal charge at all. The tactic is used by countries as diverse as Eritrea, Israel, Iran, the United States, and Uzbekistan, where journalists are being held in open-ended detentions without due process. At least 16 journalists worldwide are being held in secret locations. The CPJ reports that “U.S. military authorities have jailed dozens of journalists in Iraq–some for days, others for months at a time–without charge or due process. No charges have ever been substantiated in these cases”.

This information is published in full here.

Elsewhere on its website, the CPJ reports that 713 journalists (of whom over 11% were freelance) have been killed world-wide from 1 January 1992 through 11 October 2008 — and it says that 28.8% were threatened before being killed. and 18.7% were taken captive before being killed:

Type of death:
* Murder: 72.1%
* Crossfire/Combat related: 17.5%
* During other dangerous assignment: 10.2%
* Undetermined: 0.2%

Type of weapon used:
* Small arms (includes handguns, rifles): 53%
* Heavy arms (includes artillery, air strikes): 14.3%
* Explosives: 10.5%
* Knives: 6.6%
* Hands (includes beating, strangling): 5%

Suspected perpetrators in murder cases:
* Political groups: 31.2%
* Government officials: 18.5%
* Criminal group: 11.1%
* Paramilitaries: 7.2%
* Military: 5.8%
* Local residents: 2.1%
* Mob: 1.2%
* Unknown: 22%

Impunity in [these] murder cases:
* Complete impunity: 88.5%
* Partial justice: 6.4%
* Full justice: 5.1%

The CPJ also says on its website that “We do not include journalists who are killed in accidents—such as car or plane crashes—unless the crash was caused by hostile action (for example, if a plane were shot down or a car crashed trying to avoid gunfire)”.

This information can be studied in full here.