Aleppo Causes Me Cognitive Dissonance

I'm having a hard time reconciling what I remember about Aleppo and what I have been reading about the city recently; an article in The Week called "Life Under the Caliphate" describes the some of the things happening in the region, which is mainly under control of ISIS:

1) unIslamic activities-- smoking, listening to music, wearing hair gel-- are punished by flogging, execution, and amputation;

2) there is video footage of gay men being thrown off tall buildings to their deaths;

3) Jews and Christians are given the choice to convert or die;

4) public executions and floggings happen nearly every day;

5) an ISIS pamphlet from Aleppo lists some crimes and punishments . . . drinking alcohol is 80 lashes, as is slander, spying for infidels and renouncing Islam both result in death;

6) women may marry at age 9 and should be married by age 16, and they must wear two heavy robes to conceal their figure . . .

and so I went back to the email updates that I sent from when I lived in Syria (200-2003) and looked at some of my recollections from our various trips to the city and surrounding regions;

1) we wandered through the Dead Cities, abandoned Byzantine olive-oil towns in the hills just outside of the city;

2) we watched Embassy folk collect ancient pottery shards at various tells and middens;

3) we stayed at the Baron Hotel-- the spooky but notable spot where Agathie Christie wrote "Murder on the Orient Express"-- drinking beer at the bar is right out of The Shining (but apparently, the place is closed down now):

4) our Syrian friend Yara told us tales of covered women in Aleppo that openly took lesbian lovers and I wrote a treatment for an erotic Syrian film:

the taciturn husband warns his wife not to leave the house for any reason, and then goes to play backgammon with his friends . . . a woman covered in black from head to toe shows up at the door, and the lady of the house invites her in for  tea . . . she lifts her veil and gives her host a long concupiscent look . . . soon enough she’s shedding her robe, and there’s nothing underneath . . .

5) we ate-- notably at the Beit Sissi-- drank, wandered the city and the region, were mobbed by Syrian children who treated us like rock stars, took tours with our favorite guide in the Middle East-- Jihad-- and generally felt like we were on vacation . . . Aleppo always seemed a little less oppressive and a little more Western than Damascus, a little more like Turkey . . . but apparently those days are gone, and I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this (I also read that ISIS beheaded the antiquities expert for Palmyra-- the spectacular Roman city in the Syrian desert-- because he refused to reveal where valuable artifacts were hidden . . . ISIS considers preserving ancient artifacts "akin to idol worship and punishable by death" and when they say that, apparently they aren't kidding . . . if you've got a strong stomach, you can watch ISIS sponsored beheadings all day on the internet, even some done by children . . . this really diminishes my concern over my basement beer fridge, which has lost it's ability to chill beer-- though the freezer is still fully operational-- at first I thought it was a crisis, but then I read about this stuff, and now it doesn't seem all that significant).

Dave Loves the Gas Tax (and So Do Economists)

Planet Money Episode 387: The No-Brainer Economic Platform may be four years old, but it's more relevant today than ever-- the show presents a "six plank" platform on which economists from across the political spectrum agree, but the problem is that no presidential candidate will ever espouse these things, as they are political poison; here they are, no particular (or political) order, and I've paraphrased the arguments from Planet Money and added some of my own:

1) get rid of the mortgage interest deduction . . . readers of this blog, who I am guessing are mainly educated, middle class homeowners, will NOT want to hear this one at all, but it's true-- the interest deduction distorts housing prices, it subsidizes mansions and second homes, it encourages people to take risky loans, it doesn't help renters (who are vital when there is a recession because they can move and adjust to changing job markets) and it's generally unfair in its distribution of wealth;

2) reform the tax code . . . eliminate all the loopholes and deductions and, like Thoreau said, simplify, simplify, simplify . . .  this  would put all the accounting firms out of business, but allow the government to do a much better and more equitable job of collecting taxes;

3) eliminate taxes on corporations  . . . progressives hate this one, but it behooves the country to allow corporations to reinvest tax free income into things such as hiring more employees, improving product lines and R&D, instead of hiding it overseas or distributing it as dividends to rich people;

4) decriminalize drugs . . . it's extremely expensive to fight the war on drugs, and it's even more expensive to let underground criminal syndicates collect all the drug revenues . . . plus, it's costly on many levels to keep people in jail for nonviolent drug offenses;

5) stop subsidizing health care . . . health care is not taxed as income for the user, nor is the provider taxed . . . so people who are given health care by their job are incentivized to use as much of it as possible (I have NOT been taking advantage of this, stupidly-- I should be getting acupuncture, going to the podiatrist, getting check-ups and physicals, and generally spending this money that is part of my salary) when there should be various plans, some more expensive, some less expensive, some with higher co-pays;

6) we should stop taxing good things and start taxing things we want to discourage . . . so end the payroll tax and income tax-- because creating jobs and working is good-- and increase taxes on cigarettes and pollution and carbon emissions . . . which is why I'm totally in favor of New Jersey's gas tax increase-- cheers!-- because it might discourage driving, and should help with infrastructure;

sadly, the only candidate who supports several of these measures is Gary Johnson, but he's not into taxing carbon emissions and he doesn't know what's going on in Aleppo . . . and I have an inordinate fondness for Aleppo . . . so I'm not voting for him; anyway, listen to the episode, it's fantastic, especially the fake presidential speeches introducing all these wonderful new reforms, and remember: no one actually wants to fix anything, they just want to act sanctimonious when their candidate trounces the opposition.

Syrian Memory #7

To show his devotion to God, St. Simeon the Stylite lived atop a fifty foot stone column for forty years . . . and if you visit this holy site, which is near the city of Aleppo, you can buy a St. Simeon Frisbee to celebrate his accomplishment.

First World Problem #23,444

I've taken a perfectly good first world car (a 2008 Toyota Sienna minivan) and turned it into a vehicle that would look appropriate driving the streets of war-torn Aleppo . . . several parts of the car are taped together, it's missing a hubcap, the car possesses a multitude of dents and scratches, and now-- finally- the electric motor on the back door latch has finally gone kaput (it's been sketchy for a while) and this happened yesterday afternoon while I was starting to pack the car for our trip to Sea Isle City, which is a very involved packing job-- but I figured out how to get the back hatch open and closed, I opened a panel on the inside of the back hatch and got access to the (broken) motor, and there's a little lever you can pull in there to manually open the latch and I lassoed the lever with a shoelace, pulled the slipknot tight, and hung the lace from the ceiling of the car and now if you crawl into the back and pull up on the shoelace, it releases the latch and you can open the hatch . . . so that's how we'll roll for this vacation and then I can hopefully get that motor replaced and have a power latch again.

Only In America

My friend Connell brought a special guest to the pub Thursday night-- a geo-political science professor on sabbatical from Israel for a year-- he's here on some sort of "visiting scholar" program and he's an interesting and friendly guy . . . it was especially fun for me to talk with him, because he's very interested in Syrian politics and his family is originally for Aleppo and lived there for many many generations before his parents left and went to Israel . . . and he's never been to Syria because the border is closed with Israel so he was very interested in all my traveling tales through the country and my take on Syrian politics-- it made me feel very worldly . . . I was a veritable font of information, but I wish I was as knowledgeably about American politics (or something financially useful, like fantasy football) but the most interesting thing about our conversation was how he perceived Highland Park-- he was surprised how rigidly orthodox and rule-abiding the Jewish folk in our town are, especially about the Sabbath . . . he said that's rarely the case in Israel and he was shocked that American Jews are so much more observant than Israeli Jews, but I guess if you're Jewish and live in Israel than that's enough to feel like you're part of the culture, but in America you've got to do a bit more (or a bit less, if it's the Sabbath).