Sanely free of McCarthyite calling anyone a "traitor" since 2001!
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I've a long record in editorial work in book and magazine publishing, starting in 1974, as well as a variety of other work experience, but have been, in recent years, recurringly housebound with insanely painful now-sporadic (when I have meds) gout, an enlarged heart, and other health problems, particularly including lifelong recurring major clinical depression and bipolar disorder. I'm also sometimes available to some degree as a paid writer or researcher. I'm available as a fill-in Guest Blogger at mid-to-high-traffic blogs that fit my knowledge set.
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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
"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."
-- Samuel Johnson, Life Of Johnson
"Very well, what did my critics say in attacking my character? I must read out their affidavit, so to speak, as though they were my legal accusers: Socrates is guilty of criminal meddling, in that he inquires into things below the earth and in the sky, and makes the weaker argument defeat the stronger, and teaches others to follow his example."
-- Socrates, via Plato, The Republic
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"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.
Current Total # of Donations Since Blog Began: 618
Subscribers to date at $5/month: 30 sign-ups; 24 cancellations; Total= 6
Supporter subscribers to date at $25/month: 7 sign-ups; 3 cancellation; Total= 4
Patron subscribers to date at $50/month: 10 sign-ups; 6 cancellations; Total= 4
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. Later note: forget I ever said this.)
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, Abi Frost,
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, 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
I do appreciate your role and the role of Amygdala as a pioneering effort in the integration of fanwriters with social conscience into the larger blogosphere of social conscience.
-- Lenny Bailes
OH, SYRIA, OH, SYRIA: Jonathan Rauch points out that
"On January 1, five newly appointed countries began their two-year terms on the U.N. Security Council. The lucky winners: Bulgaria, Cameroon, Guinea, Mexico, and Syria. Those five joined the council's five permanent members and its five other rotating members in the United Nations' most prestigious job, which includes enforcing Security Council Resolution 1373. That resolution, as you may recall, was adopted shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington. It calls upon all U.N. members to 'refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts.' It also—
"I think you have to deal with martyrdom. If you were to examine Islamic history you would find emirs and sultans and shahs much preferring to deal with a dead martyr than a live enemy."
[...]
"I think the only way you're going to defuse Islamic radicalism is the way Islamic radicalism has traditionally been defused, and that is on the battlefield. I don't think you're really going to wage a tit for tat propaganda campaign or any type of covert action. I think that won't work and will look fairly silly. The key here is you have to quell the virulent anti-Americanism that has grown up in the last decade and that you see expressed not only by al Qaeda, but also everywhere throughout the Middle East, particularly in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, who are nominally American allies. The primary jet-fuel for that anti-Americanism has been the impression, more or less justified, that the United States has been on the run."
[on whether the CIA had been "leashed"] "Well, would that U.S. intelligence ever met terrorists, let alone worried about hurting them or compromising our own morality recruiting them. So I think it's a bit premature to start getting terribly excited about whether the United States is going to start taking the gloves off. First they have to find the guys. [...] But realistically, I think this is a diversion from discussing the real issues of intelligence reform. It's camouflage. Some in the Agency love to talk about this, because it moves the conversation away from the real issues of whether the hundreds of officers they've got are really doing anything substantive, or whether they're just on the dole. That's the real conversation, not whether you need to employ dirty tactics. There is perhaps a time and place for some of these tactics, though not often. But it's really a tertiary issue when you've got this level of incompetence. It's like talking to a man who's got brain cancer about his head cold."
"Middle aged men can have sex as many times as they like without increasing their risk of having a stroke, according to research.
Scientists also discovered that frequent sexual intercourse can actually reduce the risk of suffering a fatal heart attack."
I'm reminded that in 1981, after being diagnosed with prostatitis, I was solemnly advised by my doctor that, to lessen symptoms of urinary frequency, I should have sex as frequently as possible.
"Please, it's just for medicinal purposes, really."
THOSE FLYING CHINESE BUGS: Considerably more detail in the Washington Post's version, including this insight into how the Chinese military are still doing business:
"After the listening devices were discovered, Western sources said, 20 Chinese air force officers and two officials from China Air Supply Import & Export Corp., which was involved in negotiations for the jet, were detained. Chinese sources said they were being investigated for negligence and for corruption – the American firms were paid about $10 million for the refitting job but China doled out $30 million."
[also the plane was supposed to be nicer than Air Force One and could]
"accommodate about 100 people in beige leather chairs that could be converted into beds. Larger, one-hour oxygen canisters replaced the 20-minute type used on most aircraft. And the new presidential suite consisted of a bedroom, sitting room and a bath with a shower. The firms also added a 48-inch television set, satellite communications and advanced avionics."
IS THIS THING ON?: Some e-mails to let me know that you read this page on occasion would be encouraging just now. Failing that, perhaps you'd like to e-mail me to tell me what a wretched site this is, how the colors hurt your eyes, I obviously know nothing about HTML, my opinions are banal, ill-chosen, and puerile, my expression juvenile, my choice of links inane and chaotic, I add no insight into anything, and the whole thing is redundant given the fifty-thousand other blogs now out there, and that, in fact, blogging is just so so 1998, and why have I leapt onto something whose edge bled out back in the twentieth century ?
"A Jewish friend of mine recently told me the joke of the Jewish guy on a desert island. After several years, he was discovered. He was proud of his survival and showed his liberators around the island. They were perplexed to see that he had actually built two temples to worship in. So they asked him why. 'Oh, that one I worship in,' he replied. 'That other one I won’t set foot in.' I couldn’t help thinking of that joke reading the New York Times this morning. This story was laugh-out-loud hilarious."
EXPATRIATES: Matt Welch has a nice little essay on what can happen to the analyses of expatriates, and others in an "isolated feedback-loop of a community":
"Living out in the world is an experience I can never recommend highly enough. But inevitably, as months turn into years, most expatriates end up defining themselves in opposition to the last frightful thing they remember about living in the mother country. Stumble around a beatiful downtown square swigging an open bottle of delicious wine, and you tend to reflect how your hometown is architecturally bland and legally puritanical. If you left at a time of recession, or during a period of particularly nasty politics, that image tends to become frozen in time, as if the U.S. was as static as, well, Europe."
[...]
"keep in mind that intellectual conformity within like-minded groups is a distinctly non-partisan phenomenon. The same people [...] could just as easily get it dead wrong next time, if they choose to gloat and preen instead of rigorously challenging their own assumptions."
[...]
"the kind of closed systems you'll find there almost always end up blocking out new ideas. If there are any positive outcomes from this season of enclave-bashing, surely one of them must be that the feedback loops on the Left have been forever infiltrated by thousands of new thinkers who aren't easily dismissed as water-carriers for the Empire. Another, hopefully, will be the rejection of bullshit ideas that have for too long received a political bye from progressives who know better. All in all, it's a grand opportunity for healthier debate to win out over wound-licking alienation."
"LONDON (Reuters) - China has said its intelligence officers found more than 20 spying devices in a Boeing 767 meant to become President Jiang Zemin's official plane after it was delivered from the U.S., the Financial Times said on Saturday. Citing Chinese officials, the newspaper said it was unclear when the aircraft was fitted with the bugs, said to be tiny and operated by satellite.
The devices were detected after the plane emitted a strange static whine during test flights in China in September, shortly after it was delivered. One device was found in a lavatory and another in the headboard of the presidential bed.
The discovery came ahead of a planned summit between President Bush and Jiang in Beijing next month. The Chinese president was said to be furious about the find, the FT said."
MEMORANDUM OF TELEPHONE CONVERSATION WITH THE PRESIDENT IN NEWPORT
The President telephoned with regard to giving the mileage figure in our reply to the Soviet note. The President said he didn't know how we can avoid this. The President said what it must be is that Defense and CIA must think they have tracking radar station the Soviets know nothing about.
The Secretary said most of it is carried on by another Government. The Secretary said it seemed to him if we make the flat assertion that the plane was not over their territorial land we will be asked the same question as if we say it never got within 30 miles, and the Secretary said it weakened our note considerably not to specify.
The President said that is the way he feels, but said the only thing is if the station is there--but the President said we wouldn't have to say anything else.
The Secretary said it seemed to him we can always say it came from direct communication with the plane and the Soviets can't prove or disprove it one way or the other.
The President asked if we didn't have direct communication.
The Secretary said no; the plane was under orders to communicate if they were in danger but did not do so.
The President said it must have been hit by a sidewinder type of thing. The President said he personally did not see the percentage in saying the plane did not go over Soviet territorial waters and not being able to say it never went within roughly 30 miles.
The Secretary said it weakens our case if we don't do this.
The President asked what their argument against this was.
The Secretary said they just say it might compromise us, but if we make a flat assertion it didn't go over territory, he couldn't see the difference.
The President said if we say that and they say they had a tracking station and sent fighters to check up, will we have to say how we know they didn't go closer than 30 miles if you have somebody like the World Court involved would you have to say how you knew this.
The Secretary said only up to a certain point.
The President said here is what he thinks--there is a weakness in the argument of the Air Force and Intelligence. The President said they say we never got out of international waters and never went over Soviet territory and how can you say that if you don't know where the plane was. The President said it seemed to him their argument is silly.
The Secretary said that is just what we have been arguing with them.
The President asked the Secretary to pass along his view to Defense and CIA.
"In explaining why Soviet Union did not intend war and believed world would eventually go Communist and our grandchildren live under Communism, he said this was because Soviet system was better and when this was demonstrated even we would adopt it. He then launched into long harangue, much of which along usual Communist lines. He referred to fact that our steel mills were producing at only half capacity and said this could never happen in Soviet Union and was fatal handicap to US."
[...]
"He was utterly convinced Soviets would exceed our production per capita by 1970. He mentioned unemployment in US and referred to his conversation with American labor leaders in San Francisco.(3) He contemptuously referred to them as having sold out to capitalism. He realized I would not agree with such appraisal but that was his view."
I REMINDED MYSELF that the Avalon Project is a treasure trove of historic documents. F'rinstance, from Ambassador Llewyllen Thompson's telegram from the US Moscow Embassy to Secretary of State Christian Herter, marked Eyes only Secretary -- the part Krushchev asked him not to report -- regarding part of his discussion with Krushchev of the RB-47 incident (you remember, where the Soviets shot down the US surveillance plane, and took two of the crew prisoner? No, after the U-2 thing):
"He referred to dissensions within US and in West and boasted theirs was monolithic system. (He did not mention China.) He said he had heard of discussions in West about dissensions within Soviet regime but said they were united not only in party but also in government, and pointed out he was head of both party and government. He said reports of his disputes with Suslov(7) and others were completely untrue and there was full agreement not only with him but with Mikoyan and Kozlov and others. He said even with Molotov there had not been basic disagreement over his policies,(8) particularly coexistence, but said Molotov carried burden of his age and background in his thinking. He said coexistence was Leninist policy and even Stalin had agreed with it."
"In an experiment that could lead to mass production of strong, lightweight silk, scientists at a Canadian biotechnology company and a United States Army research center have spliced spider genes into cells from cows and hamsters and induced the cells to churn out silk."
[...]
"The researchers, from Nexia and the United States Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command in Natick, Mass., describe their work in today's issue of the journal Science. They said they had inserted genes derived from two species of spiders into kidney cells from baby hamsters and udder cells from cows. The genes caused the cells to produce silk proteins, which were collected and squeezed out a syringe into fibers.
The military is interested in silk for medical sutures and bulletproof vests."
"BEIJING -- As soon as the two planes hit the World Trade Center, Chinese Internet users logged into online chat rooms to discuss the terror attacks.
'Just one word: cool!' says the first of 6,000 comments on the attacks in a chat room on Sina.com, a leading Chinese-language portal. 'Now the day has come for the American dogs.'
'Why not the White House?' asks another a moment later. The gleeful declarations continue in a rush:
'Excellent!!!!!!!! But the hijacked planes didn't carry a nuclear bomb.'
'Just great. Really fantastic. Serves 'em right.'
'So cool to see America bombed. Guys, let's use the Internet to wage war on 'em as well. This is the perfect moment for it.'
I'm waiting for the third plane, the fourth plane, the fifth plane, the sixth plane. Ha, ha!'"
[...]
"Yet what I found heartbreaking is that this new openness and political maturity in China is accompanied by a dangerous sign of political immaturity: this booming, aggrieved, chip-on-the-shoulder nationalism among many ordinary people, much more so than even a decade ago.
Why is this a risk? Think of Japan, where nationalism combined with an economic boom to help lead to the Asian half of World War II. Or of Germany, where a similar combination helped cause World War I."
"Senior Saudi rulers believe the United States has 'overstayed its welcome' and that other forms of less conspicuous military cooperation should be devised "
[...]
"One big problem for Abdullah, said several past and present officials, is anti-American sentiment in Saudi society. 'For the first time since 1973, we actually have a situation in which the United States is so unpopular among the [Saudi] public that the royal family now thinks its security is best served by publicly distancing itself from the United States,' remarked Chas. W. Freeman Jr. a former U.S. ambassador to Riyadh and frequent visitor to the kingdom.
[...]
"Nawaf Obeid, a Saudi oil and security analyst [said] 'From his and a logical Saudi national security perspective, it is clear that the American military presence in Saudi Arabia is no longer a viable option.' "
YOUR LEFT, OR YOUR OTHER LEFT?: Andy Beckett isn't the only person confused as to where he stands, and where he is supposed to stand, and, more comfortingly, his handedness is supposed to stand, on the other hand. Darn reality for not fitting into those nicely comforting pre-existing categories, like they did, er, back, then. Then, you know. In that day when you didn't wonder what hand your politics fit like a glove around.
"Tariq Ali sits at his kitchen table in Highgate in north London as a cold drizzle spatters the windows. He has been opposing America and international capital since the Vietnam war. He says a little wearily: 'September 11 and its aftermath have shown that the whole world is the United States empire. The Americans just do what they want. The intelligentsia all over Europe are pro-American now. They see the US as the only emancipatory project in town.'"
It's bad. Very bad. Damn that USA! It's just evil! Next thing you know, people will be reading that awful Federalist Papers thing!
"Not completely convincingly, he argues that the 'naked power' of America's response to September 11, and its openly self-interested behaviour over Star Wars and environmental questions in recent years, 'is easier to deal with.' He sips his tea. 'American imperialism has always been an imperialism that doesn't dare to speak its name. Now all that crap is gone.'"
Oh, the pain, the pain, the pain of it all.
[...]
"'Most people have taken to this anti-war position like a duck to water,' he says, with a satisfied activist's grin.
If you look at the websites, magazines and flyers for events that the modern left uses, it is easy to see why. Apologias for Bin Laden and international terrorism are conspicuous by their absence.
Plenty of radical activities - Stop Esso Day, candlelit vigils for asylum seekers, the Anarchist Walking Group ('exercise, discussions, trespassing') - continue as normal, without reference to September 11. And where the events of that day and their consequences are mentioned, they have been neatly slotted into existing ways of thinking:"
This is just best not to comment upon, right?.
"...the 'war on terrorism' is 'the military face of globalisation', or 'old imperial power and nothing new'; America's current ability to win seemingly any war is the problem, not the solution; poor countries continue to be pushed around by rich ones.
There is evidence, moreover, that such analyses meet with public approval. Readers of the Big Issue recently chose Paul Marsden, the Labour MP who defected to the Liberal Democrats over his opposition to the war, as their 'Hero of the Year' for 2001.
Talking now to the editor of Red Pepper, Hilary Wainwright, you get a sense of someone recovering their ideological poise."
HOW NOT TO COMMUNICATE: There are times Phil Agre, a bright guy, annoys me. Has anyone ever told him that the following is not the best way to lay out an informative set of links?:
"They explained that a certain type of woman would never date a neo-con: the bohemian model-actress-whatever types common in artsy neighbourhoods like Toronto's Queen Street. If cool hipster women thought about politics at all, the conservatives noted from sad experience, it was usually in a vaguely left-wing way. Were some poor right-wing Wally to slide up to one of them at a party, she would take one look at the copy of the collected works of Friedrich Hayek under his arm and bolt across the room to where the guy in sandals doing a graduate degree in development studies was holding forth on his interesting plan to subsidize graffiti artists."
[...]
"The liberal students turn out to be just as unpredictable. One, whom I end up sitting beside when the seminar gets underway, is a funny Jewish Columbia student who reminds me of a young Woody Allen. He turns out to be a repository of strangely detailed information about the British (and Canadian) Crown and, when pressed, describes his own politics as 'crypto-monarchist.' ('Conservatives are better dressed, they enjoy life more and they are always vindicated by history,' he says pessimistically at one point, by way of explaining he is 'a terrible liberal.') On my right is a quiet Asian Yale student who ferociously takes notes the entire time."
[...]
"Every political movement has a crazed relative hidden away in the attic, dementedly pounding away on a piano while muttering strange remarks only they understand; the aunt or uncle so embarrassing they need to be kept away from outsiders. On the left, this role has been filled at different times by hard-core Maoists, weird art-school radicals, and a really irritating German guy named Theodor Adorno. On the right, it will always be Ayn Rand. I am reminded of this on Day Two by a young woman who loves Rand (but is, somehow, an ardent proponent of rent control)."
"'There are certain [brain] patterns that can be generated experimentally that will generate the sense, presence and the feeling of God-like experiences,' says professor of Neuroscience Michael Persinger of Ontario's Laurentia University. 'The patterns we use are complex but they imitate what the brain does normally.'"
[...]
"Persinger was asked if his work leads him to conclude that 'God,' or the experience of God, is solely the creation of brain-wave activity.
'My point of view is, 'Let's measure it.' Let's keep an open mind and realize maybe there is no God; maybe there might be,' says Persinger. 'We're not going to answer it by arguments — we're going to answer it by measurement and understanding the areas of the brain that generate the experience and the patterns that experimentally produce it in the laboratory.'"
CLEARLY A STUNNINGLY ACCURATE TEST: It tells me YOU ARE...BRODIE FROM MALLRATS!!
"You have a genius intellect and an awesome sense of humor. You can sarcastically put someone in their place without batting an eye. Your only problems seem to be that you have trouble acknowledging your true feelings and you may use your humor as a defense to hide what you are really feeling. But, your godliness overpowers any insignificant flaws you may have. Even if you tend to pass gas during very inconvenient moments."
MORE ERRORS THAN WORDS: What an appalling piece of alleged journalism by Alex Cox.
"In October 1993, 18 US soldiers died during a botched mission in Mogadishu. The incident is the subject of a new film, Black Hawk Down. But, asks Alex Cox, why have the deaths of the Somali civilians been forgotten?"
Apparently Cox hasn't bothered to actually read the book.
[Cox explains how it's all a plot to benefit Conoco and the oil companies]
"For the United States to spearhead a United Nations mission to Somalia was, from a humanitarian viewpoint, capricious. But, citing famine in Mogadishu and in the southern part of the country, and an urgent need to restore order, President Bush I sent in the Marines."
Naturally, the US couldn't actually have any genuine humanitarian motives, and the vast political pressure generated by ordinary Americans at the sight in tv stories of starving Somali children never existed. The US only acts to commit and support corporate evil. The fact that the US sometimes does this becomes the factoid that it only does this.
[...]
"The marines – along with their United Nations 'partners' – settled down to their tasks of guarding American oil men and disarming the unruly populace."
UNITAF was the United Nations task force; the political head was US Admiral Jonathan Howe, directly appointed by and reporting to the UN Secretary General, Boutros Boutros Ghali. The US Marines had left by May 4th, and on June 5th, 24 Pakistani members of UNITAF were killed by Somalis. But, what they hell, they were third world wog troops: no need to be concerned about their deaths.
"It didn't go well. On 7 May 1993, the Canadian press reported that elite Airborne Regiment Commandos in Somalia had tortured and murdered a civilian teenager, Shidane Arone. Other reports of murder by Canadian peacekeepers followed."
Those damned murderous Americans! Their perfidy knows no bounds, I tell you! Why--, oh, er, ah. Well, the Canucks are just tools of the damnable Americans, and it was the Americans who must have told them to commit these crimes.
[...]
"On 3 October 1993, a team of so-called 'elite troops' – Delta Force Rangers –"
A non-existent group, but why let facts into this?
"tried to capture Aideed again, in central Mogadishu."
No, they didn't, but why let facts into this?
"Aideed wasn't there, but the American troops became confused."
Since the American troops weren't looking for Aidid there, they certainly would have been confused to find him. As it was, they caught who they were looking for, two of Aidid's top men, and weren't confused at all.
[...]
"In the massacre that followed, between 500 and 1,000 Somalis, many of them women, children, and old people, were killed. Eighteen Americans also died."
The arrogance of those eighteen Americans, surrounding a thousand Somalis, just to massacre them, because Americans like to do that, you know, in between doing the bidding of corporations looting countries, and telling Canadians to torture and murder. "Let's go do some crimes" is the motto of the US military.
[...]
"In the aftermath of 3 October 1993, various articles appeared about the shootout/massacre, including internet postings by Mark Bowden and pieces in the Philadelphia Inquirer. In 1999, Bowden's book Black Hawk Down appeared."
This is actually true.
"It's interesting to observe how the story was re-told over that time. An article by the former Independent correspondent Richard Dowden the previous year makes the clear point that US troops killed unarmed men, women and children from the outset of their mission: 'In one incident, Rangers took a family hostage. When one of the women started screaming at the Americans, she was shot dead. In another incident, a Somali prisoner was allegedly shot dead when he refused to stop praying outside. Another was clubbed into silence. The killer is not identified.'"
Quick, who reported this, and where? And, of course, while on a mission intended to be in and out in under thirty minutes, what the troops wanted to do "from the outset" was to take hostages and kill them, shoot them for praying (he was outside, but he was a prisoner, get it?), and club them. Why not clubbed to death, in Cox's view, I can't explain.
"Dowden's original articles contain these horror stories. But his book does not."
Whose book?
" Instead, Black Hawk Down gives us lashings of extraordinary heroism in the face of blah, blah, blah. Rolf Harris singing 'Two Little Boys.' Sanitized and deodorized Death From Above."
I don't know what book Cox read, but it wasn't Mark Bowden's. And who the hell is Rolf Harris?
"The author of Black Hawk Down is aware of the problem with these 'elite, superior, special forces': they are all white. But he doesn't deal with what that elite whiteness means, or where it leads.
Thankfully, Alex Cox will explain.
"The American elite forces couldn't perform their central role in Somalia – to protect the oil business – because they were white racists, untrained and unable to relate to a humanitarian mission in Africa, even when corporate money was involved."
Oh, thanks, that makes sense-- er, wait, no, it doesn't. Cox then talks more about racism in the US armed forces. Eventually he gets to
"The Somalia mission ended in disarray. The Americans and the 'United Nations' allies left. In the aftermath of the massacre, Canada, Italy and Belgium all held enquiries into the excesses of their troops. Canada put several 'elite' white soldiers, who had tortured and killed Somalis, on trial."
It's not clear to me whether Cox puts "United Nations" into scare quotes because he doesn't believe the organization exists, or he is referring to that well-known fact that the organization is Simply A Tool Of America, which is why America spent so many years withholding dues, and having its way in the General Assembly. Meanwhile, Cox doesn't mention that the major force in rescuing the American Quick Reaction Force were Malaysian and Pakistani, possibly because it's slightly harder to praise their military's human rights sensitivity.
[...]
"And I look forward to the sensitive handling of Ewan McGregor's character: elite, white GI John "Stebby" Stebbins, renamed as Company Clerk John Grimes in the film, who is now serving a 30-year sentence in Fort Leavenworth military prison for raping a 12-year-old girl. Massacres and rapes are horrible things. No one would stoop to glorify, or justify them, would they?"
No more than they would stoop to smearing by association, or outright lie by implication. I've not yet seen the movie of Black Hawk Down, but I'm going to go out on a limb and suspect it doesn't glorify or justify massacres and rapes. I could, of course, be wrong.
Cox then concludes with a rant on the evils of the US military, and why Britain should have nothing to do with their dastardly plans. I wonder if he's met Oliver Stone?
"...a software sidekick that operates from the car dashboard.
Nicknamed the Artificial Passenger, the system, for which I.B.M. was awarded a patent this year, is designed to initiate conversations, tell corny jokes, play word games, change the radio station and otherwise entertain the driver. The software learns the driver's preferences and keeps track of typical speech cadences so that any slurring that may indicate fatigue can prompt, among other tactics, a suggestion that the driver stop at the nearest motel."
[...]
"The driver's response is picked up by microphones that might be inserted in the seat belt, sun visor or rear- view mirror. Speech-recognition software decodes the driver's responses, possibly with the aid of a small on-board camera that tracks lip movement. The camera could also be used to detect signs of drowsiness like an eyelid closing, which could trigger emergency measures like automatically opening a window or even squirting a jet of water at the driver.
'We don't actually expect to use water," Dr. Zadrozny said. 'I don't believe anyone wants to be sprayed. Probably the best action here is a loud sound.'
Researchers at I.B.M. are devising samples of the kinds of amusements that Artificial Passenger could have in its repertory, he said, for instance, a game to hone the driver's ear for musical pitch. 'Give me a C,' this game asks on a demonstration tape. After the driver responds, it says in a friendly voice, 'Pretty good, just half a tone too low.' A name-that-tune game is also in the works.
Of one prior study
"Dr. Grace said that the woman's voice had introduced the issue of who wielded power. 'We think the drivers didn't like to be in the position where their trucks were scolding them.'"
PRESIDENTIAL COUNCIL ON BIOETHICS names have been released:
–Elizabeth Blackburn, a cell biologist at the University California San Francisco and former president of the American Society for Cell Biology.
–Stephen Carter, professor at Yale Law School, who focuses on constitutional law and law and religion.
–Rebecca Dresser, professor at Washington University School of Law, who has written on bioethical issues.
–Dr. Daniel Foster, chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine at University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, an expert on intermediary metabolism.
–Francis Fukuyama, professor of international political economy at the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University, who will soon publish a book on biotechnology.
–Michael Gazzaniga, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth College.
–Robert P. George, a lawyer and professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University.
–Alfonso Gomez-Lobo, philosophy professor at Georgetown University.
–Mary Ann Glendon, professor at Harvard University Law School, who studies international human rights, comparative law and constitutional law issues.
–Dr. William B. Hurlbut, professor of human biology at Stanford University, who focuses on ethical issues associated with advancing biotechnology and neuroscience, and the integration of philosophy of biology with theology.
–Dr. Charles Krauthammer, columnist for The Washington Post.
–William F. May, retired ethics professor at Southern Methodist University, a medical ethicist.
And, of course,
–The commission is chaired by Leon Kass, a University of Chicago bioethicist outspokenly opposed to human cloning and euthanasia. He also opposed IVF technology early in its development and still questions aspects of the procedure used by thousands of infertile couples.
"a former aide to House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.), is a self-described Christian 'proclaimer' who favors a greater religious presence in the schools and who once smashed a roommate's pornographic videocassette with his bare hands"
[...]
"Until Bush named him to chair the council, Kass was a leading figure in the Bioethics Project, a think tank chaired by William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, who this week said he would devote most of his political energy to getting the Senate to pass a total ban on cloning. Kass has already made clear that he sees the creation of human embryo clones as a threat to 'humanity's humanity.'"
[...]
"The group's executive director, Dean Clancy, is a 'proclaimer' for the Separation of School and State Alliance, which favors home schooling over compulsory public education in order to 'integrate God and education.'"
So it's really meaningful that
"Kass pledged to surprise the public with the breadth of opinion and creative approaches he intends to bring to bear...."
UNCONTENT BEING A NAZI APOLOGIST, famous loon Pat Buchanan has moved on to be an apologist for the Japanese imperialists. One is tempted to point out each historical and moral fallacy in this piece, but that would be a fishbarrelling experience, and so I leave it to you, competent reader. Here we will be content with
"And so Japan attacked. And so she was crushed and forced out of Vietnam, out of China, out of Manchuria. And so they fell to Stalin, Mao and Ho Chi Minh. And so it was that American boys, not Japanese boys, would die fighting Koreans, Chinese and Vietnamese to try to block the aggressions of a barbaric Asian communism."
Japanese Imperial rule would have been so much better for those foreign Asians the US had no business caring about. It was so very enlightened and pleasant for all. .And it wasn't communist, after all.
"But why is the counter-culture of the 1960s succeeding in its overthrow of our traditional Christian-based culture, when all our great religions and all our sacred books from the Torah to the New Testament to the Koran teach that homosexuality is unnatural, immoral, and ruinous to body, soul and society alike?"
[...]
"Why are so few willing to fight when the awful consequences of the homosexual lifestyle are before our eyes every day? Not only are all-male couplings inherently barren, male sodomy has been the principal means of the transmission of the virus that causes AIDS...."
I'm waiting for Pat to come out "in defense of marriage" by calling for the passage of laws forbidding the marriage of infertile heterosexuals.
"How can a practice that, if universally indulged, would lead to the extinction of the species be normal and moral and good...?"
I'm shocked, shocked, to hear that Pat opposes the requirement that Roman Catholic clerics be chaste.
I do hope Pat's wall-padding is at least six inches deep. That's shallower than the foam content of this column.
THE FULL BIN LADEN TREATMENT is being given to Imad Mugniyah. Someone is leaking CIA documents, as more and more stories appear in the press about Mugniyah.
"Mr. Mugniyah was behind the bombings of the United States Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. A car bomb at the embassy in April that year killed 63 people, including 17 Americans, while a truck bomb in October at the Marine compound killed 241 American troops. Neither case has been solved.
He was behind the torture and murder of William Buckley, the C.I.A. station chief in Beirut, in 1984; the kidnapping and murder of Lt. Col. William Richard Higgins of the Marines, who was on peacekeeping duty in Lebanon in 1988; and, through the Islamic Jihad Organization, the seizure of Western hostages in Beirut during the 1980's.
His organization may have played a role in the bombing of the Khobar Towers military residence in Saudi Arabia in 1996, in which 17 Americans were killed. The United States has charged that a group known as Saudi Hezbollah, with backing from Iranian officials, was behind the truck bomb. But one American intelligence report says that Talal Hamiyah, a senior lieutenant under Mr. Mugniyah, was involved in the Saudi Hezbollah group during the 1990's.
In May 1996, the lieutenant to Mr. Mugniyah told a colleague that the Islamic Jihad Organization, an offshoot of Hezbollah controlled by Mr. Mugniyah, was prepared to carry out terrorist operations before that year's election in Israel, but had been directed not to do so by Iran.
Mr. Mugniyah is also wanted for the hijacking in June 1985 of a T.W.A. flight during which an American was killed and 39 Americans were held hostage for 17 days. It is the only terrorist action for which he has been indicted in the United States."
Now, these allegations have been known for umpty years to anyone who follows the subject, but it's notable, though unsurprising, how very frequently stories are now appearing in the press. Of course, it's also serving the agenda of pointing out the radical acts and connections of the Iranian intelligence services, an agenda clearly also being pushed by elements in the US political-intelligence community.
"The officials — current and former — who have knowledge of the Mugniyah case complained that the Bush administration, like the Clinton administration, has been generally reluctant to hold Iran accountable for its support for terrorism."
[...]
"In an illustration of how thoroughly Hezbollah was penetrated by Iran, one intelligence reports [sic] says that on Feb. 29, 1992, a representative from Iran's intelligence service was allowed to sit on the Hezbollah Council in Beirut.
Another said that at about the same time, two Iranians were members of Hezbollah's military committee, including a deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards. Still another report said the Revolutionary Guards administered Hezbollah's intelligence planning section until 1989, after which a Lebanese officer was named to run the unit."
CATFISH GOT YOUR TONGUE?: As we know, globalization is evil, and must be fought, preferably in the streets. It is huge corporations using their unholy power to run rampant over the oppressed workers of the world in their greedy unending lust for profit. Delta Farmers Want Copyright on Catfish:
"To [the American catfish farmer], the issue is simple. Vietnam should stop labeling imported basa fish as catfish and thereby end what he calls its unfair piggybacking on an industry built from scratch by farmers here and in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.
'We're not protectionists,' said Mr. Lowery, 38, who carved out 55 ponds on a farm he inherited from his father. 'I've never been against the Vietnamese selling their fish in this country — I just want them to label them properly and call a spade a spade.'
To Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and celebrated prisoner of war in Vietnam, the issue is equally clear. Just when the United States finally reached a trade agreement with its old and bitter enemy, a clutch of Mississippi Delta farmers got Congress to erect an 'offensive trade barrier.'
'No doubt,' Mr. McCain said, 'on behalf of several large, wealthy U.S. agribusinesses that will handsomely profit by killing competition from Vietnamese catfish imports.'"
[...]
"On the one side are industrial nations that use farm policy not only to promote their agribusinesses overseas but to protect their markets and farmers at home. European countries have also used their agricultural subsidies to defend the pastoral countryside from the onslaught of urbanization. Working against them are developing countries like Vietnam that are trying to raise their standard of living by breaking into those markets with less expensive products like catfish.
By translating the name of its 'tra' fish as 'catfish' rather than 'basa,' the common English name of that species, the Vietnamese have captured 20 percent of the American catfish market. Tra looks like catfish; tra tastes like catfish.
Since Americans consume 120 million pounds of catfish fillets, that is a lucrative niche."
So to "protect" this billion-dollar-plus industry, Congress last fall banned use, in America, of the word "catfish" being applied to the Vietnamese fish. A noble blow against globalization, and its corrupt power. Hurrah!
Of course, the
"Food and Drug Administration, which sets rules for naming various foods, sought expert help on the catfish question. It consulted Dr. Carl J. Ferraris Jr., an adjunct curator of ichthyology at the California Academy of Sciences who specializes in the world's catfish species. He sided with the Vietnamese.
'The F.D.A. wanted some indication of whether there was any justification for limiting the term catfish to North American catfish,' Dr. Ferraris said, 'and the answer was there's no justification, historically or scientifically, for such a statement.'"
MORE UNDERDOG: The upper management here at Amygdala feel you need to know this, and as I am but a humble employee, I am forced to serve their whim. Here are the lyrics for Underdog:
"There's no need to fear! Underdog is here!
When criminals in this world appear And break the laws that they should fear And frighten all who see or hear The cry goes up both far and near For Underdog! Underdog! Underdog! Underdog!
Speed of lightning, roar of thunder Fighting all who rob or plunder Underdog. Underdog!
D. J. Clawson, the creator of the website I swiped this from, attempts to answer numerous scholarly Underdog questions:
"How come no one realized Shoe Shine Boy was Underdog?
For the same reason no one ever figured out Superman was Clark Kent. See 'glasses.'"
[...]
"Whenever Shoeshine boy hears a cry for help, he rushes into a phone booth. Now, how does he transform into Underdog when he gets into a phone booth?
Please, it's a friggin' cartoon. Next question."
[...]
"Whenever he becomes Underdog, where does he put his Shoeshine boy clothes or his kit?
Uhm, it's a cartoon. Next question."
But one senses a certain desperate quality in his attempts to answer the questions of the world in what appears to be the only dedicated Underdog web page.
"Do you have any images that are not currently featured on this page?
No. No I don't. Stop emailing me! I am no longer answering emails that request pictures of Underdog or anyone else on the show."
[...]
"How can I get Underdog stuff? Like videos?
I don't know. I am not a retailer. Please stop emailing me this question!"
Not to mention near the top where we find:
"Because I have this website, people think I'm some sort of Underdog guru. I'm really not, but the emails keep coming, and many of them are the same questions. So I am going to archive them all on this page. I have sorted them into categories. If your'e thinking of emailing me a question that is already answered in some form on this page, don't do it. I will not have a new answer for you, and I will be annoyed and not respond. If I get any more 'Do you know where I can find underdog videos' questions I am taking down this page!"
I'm thinking of starting a "Help D. J. Clawson web page," based purely on experiencing the desperation I detect in his own page. For the love of God, someone start another Underdog page, and take some of the load from this obviously noble man. (Just don't look at the scary part, the Underdog fan fiction.)
1/16/2002 07:11:00 AM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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"Invoking security concerns, President Bush has issued an executive order barring union representation at United States attorneys' offices and at four other agencies in the Justice Department.
Although federal law bans strikes by federal employees, White House officials said Mr. Bush had issued his order out of concern that union contracts could restrict the ability of workers in the Justice Department to protect Americans and national security."
How's that? Mind, the lawyers and executive types aren't unionized. Who is it that's being tossed out of being represented?
"The order bars representation for more than 500 workers at the United States attorneys' offices, the criminal division, the National Drug Intelligence Center, the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review and the National Central Bureau of Interpol."
Ooh, important work, right? Sure it is. But, wait, again, who is it we're talking about, exactly? Unsurprisingly,
"The associate director for collective bargaining at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Steven Kreisberg, said unionization in no way threatened national security.
'We're outraged by this,' said Mr. Kreisberg, whose union represents more than 300 employees in the Justice Department, including secretaries, file clerks and messengers."
That's right, it's the *secretaries*, the file clerks, and the messengers. And their belonging to AFSCME threatens national security *how*, exactly? They're going to want terrorists to go free in exchange for striking for another fifty cents an hour, or what?
"'A lot of these Justice Department workers have been members of unions for 20 years,' he said, 'and there's never been an allegation of a problem. It's a very cynical use of the Sept. 11 tragedy by an antiunion administration.'"
"Human rights groups have expressed horror at reports that the prisoners taken to Cuba were hooded, manacled, shackled and, in some cases, sedated, and that they are being locked up in outdoor wire fence cells.
[...]
"Amnesty International called their treatment 'cruel, degrading and inhumane' and said, 'Degrading treatment of prisoners is a flagrant violation of international law which cannot be justified under any circumstances.' Human Rights Watch stated, 'The proposed cages are a scandal. The United States should not be transporting detainees to Cuba until it can provide decent shelter.'"
"At least four more Britons are to be sent to the US military prison on Cuba to join three other British citizens accused of fighting with the Taliban and the al-Qa'ida network in Afghanistan."
and quotes Home Secretary Jack Straw saying
"Whether or not technically they have rights under the Geneva Convention, they have rights in customary international law, and all of us who are either involved as their representatives as their governments or those holding them have obligations."
David Greenbaum, at Plastic Words explains his reasoning that "Taliban and Al-Qaeda prisoners do not merit protection as POW's under the Third Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War." He makes a good case, citing the relevant provisions of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War
"The grammars of all languages, [Noam Chomsky] said, can be described by a set of universal rules or principles, and the differences among those grammars are due to a finite set of options that are also innate.
[...]
"But in a new book, Dr. Mark C. Baker [...] says he has discerned the parameters for a remarkably diverse set of languages, especially American-Indian and African tongues.
[...]
"His most spectacular discovery is that the grammars of English and Mohawk, which appear radically different, are distinguished by just a single powerful parameter whose position at the top of the hierarchy creates an enormous effect.
[...]
"Dr. Baker says the polysynthesis parameter is the most fundamental difference that languages can have, and it cleaves off Mohawk and a few other languages — for example, Mayali, spoken in northern Australia — from all others. That two such far- flung languages operate in the same way is more evidence for the idea that languages do not simply evolve in a gradual or unconstrained fashion, Dr. Baker says.
At the next junction in the hierarchy, two parameters are at work: "optional polysynthesis" (in which polysynthetic prefixes are possible, but not required) and "head directionality," which dictates whether modifiers and other new words are added before or after existing phrases.
[...]
"In all, Dr. Baker and others have identified about 14 parameters, and he believes that there may be 16 more."
GRAUNIAD AS RELIABLE AS EVER: Right at the top of a long think piece on Peter Mandelson's past year (Can Mandelson still hit the high notes?), the Guardian's Observer identifies "James Rubin, former chief foreign policy adviser to Bill Clinton," which doubtless pleases, though it may come as a shock to, the former State Department press secretary (also well-known for being the husband of CNN's Christine Amapour).
1/13/2002 07:26:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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A HANDFUL OF science fiction trufen will remember when Joe Kennedy used to edit Vampire. Here he is on Edna St. Vincent Millay's doubly burning candles as X. J. Kennedy. Gee, I wish we could ask Redd Boggs what he thinks of this article. Myself, I found it a most interesting review of What Lips My Lips Have Kissed: The Loves and Love Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay, by Daniel Mark Epstein; Henry Holt, 288 pages, $26. and Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, by Nancy Milford; Random House, 553 pages, $29.95. with considerable biographical detail and insight itself. Much though I was dismayed to learn of the loss to the history of poetry when sister Norma destroyed Edna's ivory dildo before donating her trove of Millayania to the Library of Congress.
1/13/2002 06:09:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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SYKES-PICOT AND ALL THAT: an interesting review of In the Anglo-Arab Labyrinth: The McMahon-Husayn Correspondence and Its Interpretations, 1914–1939.
"Displaying an enviable command of the sources, Kedourie shows how a succession of junior officials, acting from a mixture of guilt, anti-Semitism, and sheer ineptitude were able to create and perpetuate the legend that Britain had betrayed the cause of its wartime Arab allies."
"But in the wake of September 11 there erupted something more primal and reflexive than criticism: a kind of left-wing fundamentalism, a negative faith in America the ugly.
In this cartoon view of the world, there is nothing worse than American power—not the woman-enslaving Taliban, not an unrepentant Al Qaeda committed to killing civilians as they please—and America is nothing but a self-seeking bully. It does not face genuine dilemmas. It never has legitimate reason to do what it does. When its rulers' views command popularity, this can only be because the entire population has been brainwashed, or rendered moronic, or shares in its leaders' monstrous values.
[...]
"But myopia in the name of the weak is no more defensible than myopia in the name of the strong. Like jingoists who consider any effort to understand terrorists immoral, on the grounds that to understand is to endorse, these hard-liners disdain complexity. They see no American motives except oil-soaked power lust, but look on the bright side of societies that cultivate fundamentalist ignorance. They point out that the actions of various mass murderers (the Khmer Rouge, bin Laden) must be 'contextualized,' yet refuse to consider any context or reason for the actions of Americans.
If we are to understand Islamic fundamentalism, must we not also trouble ourselves to understand America, this freedom-loving, brutal, tolerant, shortsighted, selfish, generous, trigger-happy, dumb, glorious, fat-headed powerhouse?
[...]
"it should not be hard to understand that the American flag sprouted in the days after September 11, for many of us, as a badge of belonging, not a call to shed innocent blood.
[...]
"Yet some who instantly, and rightly, understand that Palestinians may burn to avenge their compatriots killed by American weapons assume that Americans have only interests (at least the elites do) and gullibilities (which are the best the masses are capable of).
[...]
"In this purist insistence on reducing America and Americans to a wicked stereotype, we encounter a soft anti-Americanism that, whatever takes place in the world, wheels automatically to blame America first. Soft anti-Americans, by contrast, sincerely want U.S. policies to change—though by their lights, such turnabouts are well-nigh unimaginable—but they commit the grave moral error of viewing the mass murderer (if not the mass murder) as nothing more than an outgrowth of U.S. policy. They not only note but gloat that the United States built up Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan as a counterfoil to the Russians. In this thinking, Al Qaeda is an effect, not a cause; a symptom, not a disease. The initiative, the power to cause, is always American.
But here moral reasoning runs off the rails. Who can hold a symptom accountable? To the left-wing fundamentalist, the only interesting or important brutality is at least indirectly the United States' doing. Thus, sanctions against Iraq are denounced, but the cynical mass murderer Saddam Hussein, who permits his people to die, remains an afterthought. Were America to vanish, so, presumably, would the miseries of Iraq and Egypt.
[...]
"Generals, it's said, are always planning to fight the last war. But they're not alone in suffering from sentimentality, blindness, and mental laziness disguised as resolve. The one-eyed left helps no one when it mires itself in its own mirror-image myths. Breaking habits is desperately hard, but those who evade the difficulties in their purist positions and refuse to face all the mess and danger of reality only guarantee their bitter inconsequence."
"Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani denied Sunday that Iran has any security ties with Palestinians and said that Israel had staged the Karine A weapons ship affair to damage his country's image.
'The racist regime in Israel staged the affair to hurt Iran's image,' the minister was quoted as saying by the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). The minister also denied having any security ties with the Palestinian Authority.
'No Iranian organization was involved in the transport of weapons to Palestinian territories,' Shamkhani reiterated, and added that such claims were meant to influence the decisions of U.S. officials.
'The Islamic Republic of Iran has had no military relations with Yasser Arafat and no steps have been taken by any Iranian organization for the shipment of arms to the mentioned lands,' Shamkhani was quoted as saying.
They wouldn't let him say it if it weren't all true, would they?
"'In its actions, Israel is endangering American interests, peace and stability in the region,' he added."
