Interview with founders of Skype and Wikipedia

This is an example from earlier this week of what I am doing at the Post now.

Raw Video of Friday’s Riots in Jerusalem

This reel of exclusive footage of Friday’s riots in Jerusalem was a joint production of myself and the Post’s seasoned Jerusalem video reporter, my guide and mentor, Ben Speir.

Dysentery

Captions:  #1 That is me on the left, that is Saudi Arabia in the background. #2 Self portrait. 3# Mountains of Sinai.

South on the Sinai Peninsual in the Red Sea town called Dahab I was lounging in the white-hot Egyptian sun, reading desert books,  and windsurfing to prepare myself for ocean sport in Tel Aviv, where I plan to settle when I return to Israel Sunday.

This morning my pleasant, but lonely, schedule was interrupted by some unsanitory chicken ingested the night before that had settled in my guts.

I passed the day shivering and wreching in my own hot sweat. The ceiling fan turned slowly above to no avail. It seemed to  mocking my misery along with the single flickering bulb that I didnt have the strength to extinguish. Sometimes I read and sometimes I dreamed for hourse in this liminal  state.

Midday I refreshed myself in the aquatine waters of the  sea, swimming among  the rainbow colors of  the waterlife below before I stumbled back to my room barely able to carry my own weakened weight.

The sun now has slipped behind the red-rock wilderness, the same place where the Israelites once wandered for forty years.  In the cool of the evening winds I girded my ragged loins and mustered the strength to rise to find an internet cafe where I can share the adventure.

And if I hear the song “Never Going to Dance Again” by George Michael whic is currenty on repeat in this cafe I am going to stroll with purpose back to the offending resturant that sold me the rancid meet and recquest a triple portion.

Rocket City

Myself and the Jp*st video man hopped a bus from Jerusalem to Ashkelon to Sderot this morning.

This is the city where rockets fell,by the thousands during Operation Cast lead-against Hamas controlled Gaza strip earlier this year.

Two rockets  fell two days ago and were answered with the fear & force of the Israeli airforce.  As we were on the edge, peering past no man’s land into the strip yet another mortar was fired in our direction.

Smoke billowed. Tanks tore up clowds of desert dust. The military surveillance blimp shifted with the breeze

The adreniline, the connectionto life itself coursed through or vains– we raced back towards cover. 25000 people live daily under this threat…

Lion’s Legacy- Sen. Ted Kennedy RIP

The new generation of press and political operatives who swept into Washington with Obama’s administration last year, may only remember the ‘Lion of the Senate’ as the lone, bent figure shuffling the Capitol’s marble halls. Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy’s(D-Mass.) astounding political achievements, however, and his baritone Massachusetts inflections will continue to weigh heavily into the raging health care debate and countless other domestic issues for years to come…

This  Kennedy obit for the JP*st may not be my best composition but was written with litte time and mixed feeling on the deceased.

Mystical Grave

Mitch was puling rocks out of the hillside one day about six months his own bed & breakfast in Tzipori Galilee when he uncoverd a flat vertical surface made of stones.He kept digging and soon found a stone lintel and door hewn of rock.  Above the entrance ‘clear as a newspaper’ was an Aramaic inscription with the name of his village, and the name of an ancient mystical rabbi, who lived 1700 years ago and, according to some traditions, never died.

The door was ajar, and so he peaked in. Besides brown mud and rockshe could see on the left side of the space a sarcophagus that was sealed.Ancient mystical Jewish traditions say the Angel of Death cannottake a person who is studying Torah(or the Bible.) Rabbi Yoshua ben Levi, as his name is carved in rock, never stopped studying Torah according to tradition. Some Jews believe he never could have been taken.

In September, a branch of the Israeli government, the Israeli Antiquities Authority, will begin excavating the site against Mitch’s will. It lies on his ground, next to his swimming pool. Mitch is a religious man, who believes the dead should be left undisturbed. The bed and breakfast has prospered his family is well. Why open the grave? The government disagrees and has acted with strength to defend their right to his land.

Decide for yourself…

My JPost Story

To visit the B & B:

Mitch in Tsipori

If you would like an example of imprecise  journalism on the same subject, please click here:

crappy journalism

‘Lion of the Senate’s” influence in Washington will continue, despite death

By JOSIAH RYAN

054 990 7935

The new generation of press and political operatives who swept into Washington with Obama’s administration last year, may only remember the ‘Lion of the Senate’ as the lone, bent figure shuffling the Capitol’s marble halls. Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy’s(D-Mass.) astounding political achievements, however, and his baritone Massachusetts inflections will continue to weigh heavily into the raging health care debate and countless other domestic issues for years to come.

Though absent from the Senate in body in recent months, that voice was still present in private conversations with lawmaker’s until days before until Kennedy, 77, succumbed to a malignant brain tumor Tuesday night at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. American’s can expect the phrase “I promised Teddy” to ring from the lips of their leaders as the future of Health Care and issues other issues are determined later this year.

Perhaps the Senate’s greatest champion of left wing-causes, Kennedy’s larger than life image, cultivated by the limelight of Camelot, and his proclivity toward vice made him a natural target for Republican politicians and fundraisers. But in reality, frontline workers of tumultuous congressional politics will remember Kennedy first as as a tireless broker of bipartisan compromise.

Kennedy became the youngest member of the Senate at just 30 years of age when he won an election to fill the vacated seat of his older brother John F. Kennedy Jr. who was elected president.

Kennedy chose a quieter path than either of his brothers, John and Robert, choosing instead to work to become a master tactician of the minute mechanisms of the Senate. Sen. Joseph Biden(D-Del.) remarked in 1968 that Kennedy was “no bullshit…the best strategist in the Senate.”

Just three years after his election Kennedy led the Immigration and National Act through the Senate and also lent his weight to legislation that created the National Teachers Corps.

After his son, Edward, had a leg amputated due to bone cancer in 1973, Kennedy dedicated himself to the cause of Health Care reform and began to lay that groundwork that remains essential to the debate today.

In pushing the Civil Rights Act of 1991, an act that expanded employee rights against employer discrimination, Kennedy reached so far into the Republican side of the aisle he was harshly criticized by members of his own party.

Following the Republican Revolution of 1994, Kennedy defined his role as a champion for liberal causes by rallying his colleagues to fight the “Contract with America.” Only parts of the legislation were passed by the Congress, due, in part, to Kennedy’s leadership among Democrats.

Despite lingering bitterness of President Bush’s controversial electoral victory in 2000, Kennedy became a key ally of Bush, helping him pass the no Child Left behind Act in 2002, and forcing higher standards on teachers despite the protest of unions.

In 2001 Kennedy supported President Bush’s invasion into Taliban occupied-Afghanistan but on October 2002 he was one of 23 Democrats who voted in opposition to the Iraq War resolutions.

Senator Kennedy’s career was remarkable its length of 47 years which was only exceeded by Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.V.), whose health is also failing, and former Sen. Strom Thurmond(R-S.C.)

Despite the magic of Camelot and life in the Senate, known as the world’s most exclusive club, Kennedys’ life was haunted by tragedy and moral shortcomings.

His brothers died unnaturally. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. was killed in 1944 on a World War II bombing mission, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated while campaigning for president in1968.

On June 19, 1964, after casting votes on a civil rights bill, Kennedy was aboard a plane that crashed killing an aide and cracking three of his vertebrae. Kennedy walked with a cane for the rest of his life.

Kennedy’s lifestyle at times also cast a shadow over his political career. He was expelled for Harvard for cheating on Spanish exam, and his nephew was accused of raping a girl outside a party he had arranged.

His famed playboy lifestyle came to a head in 1969 when Kennedy left a party and drove his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island drowning the woman in the seat next to him.

His failure to inform the police until hours later, after he had already consulted lawyers and political operatives, as well as speculation that alcohol was involved, was a major part of his defeat in the 1980 Democratic presidential primaries, and also contributed to the loss of his Senate leadership post in 1971

Even today more than one Capitol Hill watering hole have photos of the Senator on their walls as testament to his ability to party. “Let the good times roll” reads the inscription below one such photo.

The shock of Kennedy’s diagnoses of a malignant brain tumor swept through the Capitol on May 20, 2008, and usual Senate proceedings ground to halt as Senators from both parties emerged from prayer meetings with tear-stained faces for the man they dubbed the ‘patriarch’ of their institution.

Kennedy did not return to the chamber until June 9, 2008, when he arrived to break a filibuster on legislation that reversed a 10.6 percent pay-cut for doctors who treat Medicare patients. He was ushered to the chamber by his son, Rep. Patrick Kennedy(D-Mass.), and greeted by then-Sen. Barack Obama(D-Ill.) Upon his appearance, cheers emanated from the gallery, a practice usually forbidden within the chamber.

Kennedy’s seemed to pass his family’s political legacy onto Obama in the winter of 2008 when he announced to an enthusiastic crowd his support for Obama and a “new generation of leadership.”

It was that endorsement in part that boosted the young Sen. Obama towards wins across the nation in the Super Tuesday primaries.

After the election Kennedy remained close to the Obama family despite his illness, and gave the Obama daughters “Bo,” a Portuguese water dog earlier this year. Obama was vacationing at Martha’s Vineyard, near the Kennedy’s home, when Kennedy passed late Tuesday night.

Meanwhile, members of the press and congressional staff who remain in Washington’s oppressive summer heat for the annual congressional August break say that grief is palpable.

Two oval canvases on the wall of the ornate Senate reception room, next to the chamber, remain blank, reserved for the portraits of late-great Senators.

Staffer and a Senate historian said on Wednesday they believe one of those may soon be filled by the visage of the great Massachusetts‘Lion of the Senate.’

hanged himself.

After Dudu Topaz, who was something like the Israeli equivalent of Michael Jackson, hanged himself in prison Thursday, his lawyer declared in public that ‘the media had killed Dudu.’ The slogan caught on and our reception at the funeral, Friday morning, was less than cordial.

The angry crowd pressed in and took a principled approach to excluding the media from the proceedings. When one innovative cameraman exerted himself by shimmying an exposed pipe to the buildings spacious and unoccupied roof, he was rewarded with a spectacular view of the chaos below. Naturally, we followed. Slippery in sweat from the white heat of another Mediterranean day, and heavily burdened by equipment, taking our news operation vertical was no easy feat.

In consensus disenfranchised mourners seemed to disapprove of our ascension. “You in your tower of Babel, you killed him,” screamed one. Others simply booed in Hebrew and shook their fingers telling us to leave.

But the funeral went on, the body was buried, and despite heat exhaustion and some sore feelings suffered from an hour of verbal barrage, we got our shots, ran the story, and I guess most of our most vocal critics searched for their own faces among the pages and videos of the weekend edition.

You Killed Dudu

The Procession

on assignment

Passed this evening studying Arabic in Palestinian nargilla café half a mile below me in the Old City Jerusalem. A winding walks through tunneling street towards the Damascus Gate.
After a hard run Ill spin through the cool Jerusalem evening to the West city to transfer most of my belongings to my new apartment in the neighborhood of Nachlaot.
Later I’ll spend my final night at the Petra Hostel. Though I am fond of the ancient Arab hotel that has served as a base in the beginning of both my journeys to the Holy Land, I have come to understand through experience that the crumbling building has slipped in standards of cleanliness & and friendliness.
The entire structure may be flea-ridden… and certainly the mattresses. I’ve grown tired of itching while interviewing dignitaries and I am certainly weary of the white heat that tears through gaping doors inviting malodorous odors from the stinking streets below.
The bathrooms are abysmal and for fear of losing my small audience I hesitate to delve into a profane but precise description of their horrors.
In the morning I am taking a bus to a city by Tel Aviv to write a story about the funeral of Israeli television star Dudu Topaz. I will spend the night strolling the beaches soaking in Mediterranean moon and urbane Hebrew.
Sunday morning is a workday in a Jewish country so I will take a bus to Nazareth from Tel Aviv to write a story about a Wakf that is apparently brokering peace deals with neighboring rival sects and religions and generally bringing out the best of the town’s residents.
From then I will travel to tzipori, a small village where the grave of a long dead kabala rabbi whose body was uncovered this week. The story is complicated and to tell properly and I must seek out the proper religious and legal authorities who are preparing to battle in court Monday on whether the tomb, which has religious significance, ought to be revealed.
I am told thousands of restless Haredi in Jerusalem wait to hear the story of the tale of the tomb upon which the integrity of the Kabala rests.
Ill return Sunday night or Monday morning to join a documentary filmmaker on a sortie into the capitol city of the (relatively) moderate Fatah party.
Monday night I will log video for JP*ST.com.

a touch of grace.

By the Jerusalem poet Amichai Yehuda

At times Jerusalem is a city of knives,
And even the hopes for peace are sharp enough to slice into
The harsh reality and they become dulled or broken.
The church bells try so hard to ring out calm, round tones,
But they become heavy like a pestle pounding on a mortar,
Heavy, muffled, downtrodding voices. And the cantor
And the muezzin try to sing sweetly
But in the end the sharp wail bursts forth:
O Lord, God of us all, The Lord is One
One, one, one, one.

Petra Life

My current home in The Petra Hostel is reportedly the oldest continually-operating hotel in Jerusalem. The hostel itself was built in the 1800s by the Russian Orthodox Church and first served to house military guards or officers. The building itself is lodged behind the massive walls that enshroud Jerusalem’s Old City and it dominates one side of the plaza in front of the Citadel.

Past guests included heroes Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, Lawrence of Arabia, and Herman Melville.

Until I begin writing for the Jerusalem P*st on Sunday I am spending my days in the Petra’s shaded hallways and balconies studying Arabic & Hebrew, taking cold showers, and drinking hot tea with mint to stay cool.