I'm underemployed, recurringly housebound with insanely painful now-sporadic (when I have meds) gout, an enlarged heart, and other health problems, particularly including lifelong recurring severe clinical depression. See here for a major crisis. I'm also sometimes available to some degree as a paid writer or researcher. This is a previous update on my situation & this -- and this from December 19th, 2005 update.
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"The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include With ease, and you beside"
-- Emily Dickinson
"We will pursue peace as if there is no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there is no peace."
-- Yitzhak Rabin
"I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be."
-- Alexander Hamilton
"The stakes are too high for government to be a spectator sport."
-- Barbara Jordan
"Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to
trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule --
and both commonly succeed, and are right."
-- H. L. Mencken
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
"The only completely consistent people are the dead."
-- Aldous Huxley
"I have had my solutions for a long time; but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them."
-- Karl F. Gauss
"Whatever evils either reason or declamation have imputed to extensive empire,
the power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind;
and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices, diffused likewise
the improvements of social life."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his
expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were
respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom."
-- Edward Gibbon
"There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify
the evils, of the present times."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Our youth now loves luxuries. They have bad manners, contempt for authority.
They show disrespect for elders and they
love to chatter instead of exercise.
Children are now tyrants, not the servants, of their households. They
no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
chatter before company, gobble up their food, and tyrannize
their teachers."
-- Socrates
"Before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments."
-- Sidney Hook
"Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness."
-- Sidney Hook
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect
disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest
and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
"Faced with the choice of all the land without a Jewish state or a Jewish state without all the
land, we chose a Jewish state without all the land."
-- David Ben-Gurion
"...the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him
an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this
or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages
to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also
to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing,
with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess
and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminals who do not withstand such
temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the
opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction;
that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion
and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their
ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty,
because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of
judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square
with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil
government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts
against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if
left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has
nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her
natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is
permitted freely to contradict them.
-- Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson
"We don't live just by ideas. Ideas are part of the mixture of customs and practices,
intuitions and instincts that make human life a conscious activity susceptible to
improvement or debasement. A radical idea may be healthy as a provocation;
a temperate idea may be stultifying. It depends on the circumstances. One of the most
tiresome arguments against ideas is that their "tendency" is to some dire condition --
to totalitarianism, or to moral relativism, or to a war of all against all."
-- Louis Menand
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis."
-- Dante Alighieri
"He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers."
-- Henry B. Adams
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the
poor to beg in the streets, steal bread, or sleep under a bridge."
-- Anatole France
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
-- Edmund Burke
"Education does not mean that we have become certified experts in business or mining or botany or journalism or epistemology;
it means that through the absorption of the moral, intellectual, and esthetic inheritance of the race we have come to
understand and control ourselves as well as the external world; that we have chosen the best as our associates both in spirit
and the flesh; that we have learned to add courtesy to culture, wisdom to knowledge, and forgiveness to understanding."
-- Will Durant
"Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is
but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest
winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?"
-- Herman Melville
"The most important political office is that of the private citizen."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"It is an error to suppose that books have no influence; it is a slow influence, like flowing water carving out a canyon,
but it tells more and more with every year; and no one can pass an hour a day in the society of sages and heroes without
being lifted up a notch or two by the company he has kept."
-- Will Durant
"When you write, you’re trying to transpose what you’re thinking into something that is less like an annoying drone and more like a piece of music."
-- Louis Menand
"Sex is a continuum."
-- Gore Vidal
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802.
"The sum of our religion is peace and unanimity, but these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible,
and in many things leave one free to follow his own judgment, because there is great obscurity in many matters, and
man suffers from this almost congenital disease that he will not give in when once a controversy is started, and
after he is heated he regards as absolutely true that which he began to sponsor quite casually...."
-- Desiderius Erasmus
"Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read, and what we must disbelieve?"
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to N. G. Dufief, Philadelphia bookseller, 1814
"We are told that it is only people's objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort,
are 'objectively' aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once. The same argument is applied to Trotskyism. Trotskyists are often credited, at any rate by Communists, with being active and conscious agents of Hitler; but when you point out the many and obvious reasons why this is unlikely to be true,
the 'objectively' line of talk is brought forward again. To criticize the Soviet Union helps Hitler: therefore 'Trotskyism is Fascism'. And when this has been established, the accusation of conscious treachery is usually repeated.
This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people's motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions."
-- George Orwell, "As I Please," Tribune, 8 December 1944
"Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If 'needy' were a turn-on?"
-- "Aaron Altman," Broadcast News
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
-- Lewis Thomas
"To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times?"
-- Cicero
"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."
-- Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign
"Remember, Robin: evil is a pretty bad thing."
-- Batman
"Being evil is not a full-time job."
-- James Lileks
Gary Farber is now a licensed Double Super-Secret Master Pundit.
He does not always refer to himself in the third person.
Did he mention he was presently single?
The lutefisk is dead. Donate via the donation button on the top left
or I'll shoot this gefilte fish.
No, really, I seriously need the help at present. And I hate asking.
Current Total # of Donations Since Blog Began: 587
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And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
Farber's First Fundamental of Blogging:
If your idea of making an insightful point is to make fun of people's
names, or refer to them by rilly clever labels such as "The Big Me" or "The Shrub,"
chances are high that I'm not reading your blog. The same applies if you refer
to a group of people by disparaging terms such as "the Donks" or "the pals." (Note: I have to say I don't give that much of a damn any more.)
Farber's Second Fundamental of Blogging:
The more interested you are in scoring a "point" for a political "team," a "side," than in exploring the validity or value of an idea, the less interested I am in what you're saying.
(Note: Partially suspended for the Duration.)
Farber's Third Fundamental of Blogging:
If you see a link on another blog, and use it, credit the blog.
Some places I go:
[weblogs, sites, and columns]
People I've known and still miss include Isaac Asimov, rich brown, Charles Burbee, F. M. "Buzz" Busby, Terry Carr, A. Vincent Clarke, George Alec Effinger,
Bill & Sherry Fesselmeyer, George Flynn, John Milo "Mike" Ford. John Foyster, Jay Haldeman, Chuch Harris, Mike Hinge, Lee Hoffman, Terry Hughes, Damon Knight, Ross Pavlac, Bruce Pelz, Elmer Perdue, Tom Perry,
Larry Propp, Bill Rotsler, Art Saha, Bob Shaw, Martin Smith, Harry Stubbs, Bob Tucker, Reed Waller, Harry Warner, Jr., Jack Williamson, Walter A. Willis, Susan Wood, Kate Worley, and Roger Zelazny.
It's just a start.
And She of whom I must write someday.
You Like Me, You Really Like Me
...Darn: I saw that Gary had commented on this thread, and thought: oh. my. god. Perfect storm. Unstoppable cannonball, immovable object.
-- Hilzoy
Guessing that Gary is ignorant of anything that has ever been written down is, in my experience, unwise.
Just saying.
-- Hilzoy
Where would the blogosphere be without the Guardian? Guardian fish-barreling is now a venerable tradition. Yet even within this tradition, I don't believe there has ever been a more extensive and thorough essay than this one, from Gary Farber's fine blog. Gary appears to have examined every single thing that Guardian/Observer columnist Mary Ridell has ever written. He ties it all together, reaches inevitable conclusion. An archive can be a weapon.
-- Dr. Frank
Isn't Gary a cracking blogger, apropos of nothing in particular?
-- Alison Scott
I usually read you and Patrick several times a day, and I always get something from them. You've got great links, intellectually honest commentary, and a sense of humor. What's not to like?
-- Ted Barlow
...writer[s] I find myself checking out repeatedly when I'm in the mood to play follow-the-links. They're not all people I agree with all the time, or even most of the time, but I've found them all to be thoughtful writers, and that's the important thing, or should be.
-- Tom Tomorrow
Amygdala - So much stuff it reminds Unqualified Offerings that UO sometimes thinks of Gary Farber as "the liberal Instapundit." -- Jim Henley
I look at it almost every day. I can't follow all the links, but I read most of your pieces. The blog format really seems to suit you. It also suits me; I am not a news junkie, so having smart people like you ferret out the interesting stuff and leave it where I can find it is wonderful.
-- Lydia Nickerson
Gary is certainly a non-idiotarian 'liberal'...
-- Perry deHaviland
...the thoughtful and highly intelligent Gary Farber... My first reaction was that I definitely need to appease Gary Farber of Amygdala, one of the geniuses of our age.
-- Brad deLong
My friend Gary Farber at Amygdala is the sort of liberal for whom I happily give three cheers. [...] Damned incisive blogging....
-- Midwest Conservative Journal
If I ever start a paper, Clueless writes the foreign affairs column, Layne handles the city beat, Welch has the roving-reporter job, Tom Tomorrow runs the comic section (which carries Treacher, of course). MediaMinded runs the slots - that's the type of editor I want as the last line of defense. InstantMan runs the edit page - and you can forget about your Ivins and Wills and Friedmans and Teepens on the edit page - it's all Blair, VodkaP, C. Johnson, Aspara, Farber, Galt, and a dozen other worthies, with Justin 'I am smoking in such a provocative fashion' Raimondo tossed in for balance and comic relief.
Who wouldn't buy that paper? Who wouldn't want to read it? Who wouldn't climb over their mother to be in it?
-- James Lileks
Gary is a perceptive, intelligent, nice guy. Some of the stuff he comes up with is insightful, witty, and stimulating. And sometimes he manages to make me groan.
-- Charlie Stross
One of my issues with many poli-blogs is the dickhead tone so many bloggers affect to express their sense of righteous indignation. Gary Farber's thoughtful leftie takes on the world stand in sharp contrast with the usual rhetorical bullying. Plus, he likes "Pogo," which clearly attests to his unassaultable good taste.
-- oakhaus.com
Gary Farber is a principled liberal....
-- Bill Quick, The Daily Pundit
I read Amygdala...with regularity, as do all sensible websurfers.
-- Jim Henley, Unqualified Offerings
Okay, he is annoying, but he still posts a lot of good stuff.
-- Avedon Carol, The Sideshow
The only trouble with reading Amygdala is that it makes me feel like such a slacker. That Man Farber's a linking, posting, commenting machine, I tell you!
-- John Robinson, Sore Eyes
Jaysus. I saw him do something like this before, on a thread about Israel. It was pretty brutal. It's like watching one of those old WWF wrestlers grab an opponent's
face and grind away until the guy starts crying. I mean that in a nice & admiring way, you know.
-- Fontana Labs, Unfogged
We read you Gary Farber! We read you all the time! Its just that we are lazy with our blogroll. We are so very very lazy. We are always the last ones to the party but we always have snazzy bow ties.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber you are a genius of mad scientist proportions. I will bet there are like huge brains growin in jars all over your house.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber is the hardest working man in show blog business. He's like a young Gene Hackman blogging with his hair on fire, or something.
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
I bow before the shrillitudinousness of Gary Farber, who has been blogging like a fiend.
-- Ted Barlow, Crooked Timber
Gary Farber only has two blogging modes: not at all, and 20 billion interesting posts a day [...] someone on the interweb whose opinions I can trust....
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
Gary Farber! Jeez, the guy is practically a blogging legend, and I'm always surprised at the breadth of what he writes about.
-- PZ Meyers, Pharyngula
Gary Farber takes me to task, in a way befitting the gentleman he is.
-- Stephen Green, Vodkapundit
POST-FEMINIST ROMANCE: Harlequin explores new territory with its chick-lit imprint, Red Dress Ink.
"The Red Dress editors, as well as many young women in their target audience, want to reintegrate romance into post-feminist life in a way that departs from the traditional marriage prescription with all its patriarchal shackles but that still satisfies the emotional need for companionship."
"...on Page 209 [...] a chart of the top 100 public intellectuals [...] I'm [...] at No. 85, whereas Richard A. Posner [...] is at No. 70. It's true that on paper I should be able to satisfy reader demand better than those poor saps who are mired in the 90's (Noam Chomsky, James Q. Wilson, David Frum, William Butler Yeats and Lani Guinier). But there's just no way I'm going to be able to offer the kind of intellectual firepower you would get from, say, the big brains at rankings 72 through 76 (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Lillian Hellman, Ann Coulter, David Horowitz and Albert Camus).
Is that a lineup for Politically Incorrect, or what?
"[Posner] noticed something: We stink. Our logic is flawed. Our use of evidence is shoddy. Our ratiocination is crude. Not content simply to accept a world in which others are not as intelligent as he is, he set out to explain this surprising incompetence
[...]
"watching Posner try to apply economic laws to public debate is a bit like watching a Martian trying to use statistics to explain a senior prom. He is able to detect a few crude patterns, but he's missing the fraught complexity of the thing. Just consider the serial posturings of your average panel discussion -- the sycophantic introductions, the flattering references by the panelists to one another's work, the showtime vehemence of the professional radical, the slow-talking gravity of the emeritus thumb-sucker, the pompous pose of cogitation that symposiasts adopt as they pretend to listen to the other speakers. None of this is reducible to supply and demand. Cornel West cannot be captured in a chart.
[...]
"He is like an omnidirectional Gatling gun, spraying shrapnel in all directions. He spends a few pages dismissing Robert Putnam here, a few paragraphs discarding David Riesman there, then a few pages exposing Richard Rorty somewhere else. Judge Posner is truly a hanging judge, because every public intellectual who comes into his sights is found wanting. Stephen Jay Gould is in error. Allan Bloom is wrong. Paul Krugman is ignorant. Sean Wilentz is full of it. Gertrude Himmelfarb, Christopher Lasch and Edward Luttwak are incorrect. The dozens of public thinkers Posner takes down are accused of everything from insufficient knowledge of British warplanes to ignorance of the anthropological literature on genital mutilation.
[...]
"When Posner is at his most disjointed, one is reminded of the cruel barb that a French critic once hurled at Jacques Attali: He's not prolific, he's incontinent."
BATTLE AT QALA-I-JANGI. Quite the vivid and detailed account. Some assert this was a "massacre." They say that like it's a bad thing.
Seriously, if I'm faced with hundreds of people out to kill me, I think calling in air strikes is a good thing, and I'm not impressed with the argument that it Isn't A Fair Fight. Myself, if I were military, I would always do all I can to avoid Fair Fights.
"A U.S. soldier ran back to greet an SAS comrade who had felt the full force of Monday's air strike. 'How's your hearing today?' he bellowed. Pause. 'I said, 'How's your hearing?''"
"In the Oval Office on Thursday, Mr. Bush said that Mr. Lay 'was a supporter of Ann Richards in my run in 1994' for governor of Texas and that he first got to know Mr. Lay after that race.
"But Mr. Lay appears to have been a bigger supporter of Mr. Bush in that race, as he and his wife, Linda, contributed $37,500 to the Bush gubernatorial campaign — three times the amount, according to a database maintained by The Dallas Morning News, that they donated to Ms. Richards. Mr. Lay has also told interviewers that prior to that election he had become 'very close' to Mr. Bush."
Count on seeing this again:
"On Thursday, after the disclosure that the Justice Department had created a task force to pursue a criminal investigation of Enron, Mr. Bush told reporters he 'first got to know' Mr. Lay after being elected governor in 1994."
"Appearing this morning on the Don Imus radio program, Ms. Matalin said critics 'act like there's some billing records or some cattle scam or some fired travel aides or some blue dress.'"
"'I was unscathed, sport, which means they didn't scathe me,' said Crowe in a recent interview. 'They want to see scathing, I'll scathe them, you'll see.'"
A GENERALLY BIG MOUTH: "If we go to war, jolly good!" Gen. S. Padmanabhan exclaimed.
"Asked how India would respond if attacked with a nuclear weapon, he assured a packed news conference that 'the perpetrator of that particular outrage shall be punished so severely that their continuation thereafter in any form of fray will be doubtful.'
[...]
A senior Western diplomat [...] groaned in dismay when they [sic] heard about the Indian general's comments.
[...]
General Padmanabhan, who earned a reputation as a tough, aggressive commander in Kashmir, zestfully answered a barrage of questions. 'Any number of questions, I am ready,' he said. 'I am quite enjoying it.'"
WHY THE LAND OF PINEAPPLES AND CIGARS for al Queda/Taliban prisoners? Because [keeping the prisoners in the US]
"would rob the Bush administration of an aim should it try some of the prisoners in military tribunals: denying them the chance of appeal. In 1950, the Supreme Court ruled unequivocally that nonresident enemy aliens have 'no access to our courts in wartime.' The Supreme Court reserves the right to hear an appeal of any verdict handed down on U.S. soil, and has reviewed military tribunals in the past."
IN STAN, THE MAN to keep an eye on is Juma Namangani. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan rumbles around Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and the neighborhood.
"Namangani's stature among Muslims in Central Asia is rather like that of Che Guevara after he disappeared into South America for his last revolutionary adventure. People say that the advance guards of the I.M.U. are beautiful female snipers armed with the latest scopes and night-vision goggles, and that the guerrillas' knapsacks are filled with dollar bills that they distribute to the farmers who feed them. I.M.U. guerrillas have been blessed by Muslim holy men to make their bodies impervious to wounds or, conversely, to keep their bodies sweet-smelling after death.
The I.M.U. is believed to have been funded by Saudis, Pakistanis, Turks, Iranians, and Osama bin Laden. Namangani was one of the most important 'foreign Taliban' commanders in northern Afghanistan during the recent fighting there. He led a pan-Islamic force of Uzbeks, Tajiks, Pakistanis, Chechens, and Uighurs from Xinjiang province in China. They fought on the side of the Taliban in Afghanistan, but their long-range goal was to establish an Islamic state throughout Central Asia."
ALL ENRON, ALL THE TIME, is what we have from now on, if you want it, boys and girls. Plenty to play with. Though we here at Amygdala expect only to glance at the doings of Kenny-boy & George now and again; business scandal isn't really our beat, though our heart is gladdened, and we are filled with joy to see this pus-ridden mass explode in the Administration's face. Check all the usual sources, including the Times and Washington Post. Today's story is full of juice. Enjoy the timeline. Play the home game! Don't forget to make use of the entirely wonderful Center For Responsive Politics.
1/11/2002 06:28:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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SIGN UP FOR the futuristic weirdness and the snappy prognostications and the enthralling visions of vast possibility.
"A real problem with traditional art movements is that they acquire their enemies at random. Mostly their enemies emerge from within their own ranks. Any avant-garde that lacks a designated hate and contempt figure immediately breaks up into warring schisms. Successful groups tend to define themselves by the people they can't stand.
My art movement comes presupplied with powerful, malignant, threatening enemies, the Global Climate Coalition . They are perfect villains. They have huge industrial backing, massive P.R. budgets, and a headquarters in Washington, things that we don't have, and will never have, and that we deeply envy.
[...]
This makes the GCC perfect punching-bags for us. It helps a lot that we resemble them so much. You can't get a good acrid bitterness going unless your enemy shares a lot of your own characteristics. You see, we're both global climate coalitions. And we're both very 21st century organizations: we are a net-based, autonomous, research-and-design collective, while they are Washington infowar spooks supplying black spin for megacorporations. We share a lot of physical characteristics, kind of like the noble electric eel and the vile, bloodsucking leech.
We intend to find out all about the people of the GCC. We intend to make public fun of their moms and the way they dress.
[...]
If it doesn't pass muster over at the Skeptical Inquirer magazine, we don't want to know about it. It's not that we're going to pick big public fights with spiritually motivated Greens and other illuminated hippie types. This is useless and a waste of time, like beating up Quakers and the Amish.
[...]
Feature Number Seven. Our movement has no street credibility . We are not hip, underground, bohemian or alternative in any way.
[...]
We're not particularly interested in young people, or in recruiting young people to our cause. We think that young people have suffered enough, and will probably suffer a great deal more for things that they never did. They should not be required to be trendy any more, the overhead there is just too cruel. Young people should be left to enjoy their pirated MP3 music and their baggy cast-off clothing, and everyone over 30 should get the hell off their backs.
[...]
Feature Number Eleven. All art movements tend to have favorite drugs. We're also interested in drugs. Our pet drug is Viagra . This is the first legal, recreational dope that has swept the entire population in ages. We're interested in biomedicine and life-extension drugs. Mostly we're interested in these drugs because they are the only mind-altering drugs that are well-designed. Because believe me, when you live longer, your mind gets permanently altered."
Singapore Details Terrorists' Plans. Thoughtfully, one of the accused reportedly made a videotape with accompanying narration on the topic of suitable targets. Cutting to the chase, the US Embassy said "Singapore remains a safe place to live or do business." One notes that one of the alleged leaders was allegedly a member of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, who continue swimming upward towards the surface of the average American consciousness. Taking a cue from Tim McVeigh,
"The cell had four tons of the explosive chemical ammonium nitrate in Malaysia, the news release said. Mike and Sammy had told their cohorts to procure 17 more to make truck bombs..."
One notes that not only does the US quietly keep military planes at Paya Lebar Airbase, but "last year, Singapore opened a new naval facility specially designed to accommodate U.S. aircraft carriers." Meanwhile,
"In Malaysia, newspapers Friday quoted Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad as saying that about 50 Malaysians were involved in al-Qaida. Malaysian police have arrested about 13 people in December and January who they allege are members of a local Islamic militant group with links to similar groups in Indonesia and the Philippines."
And speaking of Indonesia, a jolly nice front that will be, too, if you like jungles and islands. Particularly, say, in the Molucca Islands, and on Sulawesi. But, really, we have nothing to worry about from those Laskar Jihad training camps, because
"A Laskar spokesman said the group has not trained non-Indonesian fighters, but he acknowledged that some 'foreign volunteers have helped with humanitarian work.'"
"American weakness encouraged the forces of disorder. If you doubt that, just read the collected works of Osama bin Laden, which return again and again to the theme that America can be defeated -- not because it is un-Islamic but because it is weak and cowardly."
Ignatius appears to have read bin Laden correctly. He also picks up from the famous Pew Center survey everyone in creation has quoted that
"Some of the standard bugaboos that supposedly produce anti-Americanism were surprisingly unimportant to the foreign opinion leaders. Only 29 percent said that America's support for Israel was a major reason for disliking the United States, only 36 percent blamed 'the power of multinational corporations' and a mere 15 percent blamed 'the spread of American culture through movies, television and pop music.'"
