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
BREASTS FREED IN AUSTIN. I didn't even know they had a Mardi Gras there. Everyone wants to get in on the act.
"I had no idea that (breasts) were such a big deal to America," Estes said. "All you have to do is mention the word 'breasts' and the whole world goes crazy."
There's a taxi driver in Stockholm known by the Web alias of Taxi31 who spends all his time between passengers shooting people. In Copenhagen, ferocious street battles flare daily between dozens of young men.
OXFORD, Tuesday: A number of concerned British Harry Potter fans have spoken out against the Bible, claiming that the holy text of the Christian Church can cause serious damage to children. “Reading the Bible teaches children to believe in the supernatural,” said one English Literature academic from Oxford University, Lewis Williams. “The tales of Jesus turning water into wine are fairly harmless, but there is a serious risk of children drowning if they try to walk on water,” he said. “And the chance of serious bodily harm isn’t exactly minimised by that whole ‘resurrection-from-the-dead’ story either.”
ROGER MILLIKEN, PUPPET MASTER. I missed this Ryan Lizza TNRpiece the first time round, New Year's 2000, and I thank and apologize to the blooger who called it to my attention; apologies because I quickly saved it yesterday when I had to log out, and I neglected to note whom I got it from.
What's the problem? Something that has been whispered about on the left for some time now: the suspicion that Roger Milliken--billionaire textile magnate from South Carolina, founding member of the conservative movement, and patron of right-wing causes for almost 50 years--has been quietly financing the anti-globalization efforts of Public Citizen and related organizations. "This is the dirty little secret in the anti-free-trade crowd," says one prominent left-of-center activist. If it's true, then a man who once banned Xerox copiers from his offices because the company sponsored a documentary about civil rights played a key role in filling the streets of Seattle with protesters in December.
Read about the man who brought Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader together, and who is a major backer of each, supported by both of them.
Never heard of Roger Milliken? You're not alone. His name is unfamiliar even to most political junkies. But, to historians of conservatism, Milliken is synonymous with the rise of the American right. From Barry Goldwater to Ronald Reagan to Newt Gingrich, from the John Birch Society to National Review to the Heritage Foundation, Milliken has been a key financial backer at every juncture.
GLOBALIZATION DONE RIGHT? Dani Rodrik has some ideas.
Because of political pressures in the developed countries, the Doha agenda is silent on the issue of labor mobility. That is a mistake, he argued. The next free trade agreement should include rules that allow people from poor countries to work for three to five years in rich countries, he said, sending home part of their pay and eventually going home themselves to use their newly acquired skills to help spur economic growth and lift incomes.
"That would yield gains for poor countries that would surpass all the gains in income that are likely to be achieved from the proposals that are on the agenda," Mr. Rodrik said.
He and his colleagues stress that for them, too, globalization — that is, integrating economies across the globe — is the correct final goal. Getting there is the trick.
THOSE COLORS: Every day, I get an email saying that someone can't read the site clearly because of a) the purple links and b) the white-on-blue type. As to a), we're working on a quick fix. As to b), you'll see a little button at the top of the Dish that says "Black and White." Click on it and you'll get a more traditional-looking website. You can also get the same effect on other pages by clicking the print button. Thanks for keeping us on our toes.
Of course, that "little button" is in... you guessed it. That purple the people who need to find the button can't read.
Kudos, however, to Mr. Sullivan, or whoever handles his site, for having Figured Out The Complicated HTML to do permanent links. It's almost as hard as changing a color.
Number of privately owned tigers in the United States: 10,000. Number of tigers kept by zoos: 200. Number in the wild in Siberia and Asia: 4,000 to 7,000.
Madame Tussaud's wax museum, one of London's most popular attractions, has deemed Britain's Conservative Party leader, Iain Duncan Smith, too dull to be made a dummy, newspapers reported today.
"We want figures who will inspire strong emotions and provoke strong reactions," The Times of London quoted a Tussaud's spokeswoman as saying. "In our view Mr. Duncan Smith, whom most people have never heard of, is unlikely to achieve either of those feats. Ever." The roughly $56,000 such a dummy would cost could be better spent, she said.
THE TROUBLE WITH SELF-ESTEEM: a fascinating, thought-provoking piece that deserves more commentary and excerpting than I have energy to do at the moment. But I highly recommend it: lots of stuff that runs against conventional American wisdom.
''There is absolutely no evidence that low self-esteem is particularly harmful,'' Emler says. ''It's not at all a cause of poor academic performance; people with low self-esteem seem to do just as well in life as people with high self-esteem. In fact, they may do better, because they often try harder.''
President Bush reversed himself yesterday and declared that captured combatants who fought for Afghanistan's Taliban regime will be formally covered by the Geneva Conventions. But the president refused to confer that status on detainees who are members of the al Qaeda terrorist network.
TREASURY SEC AND PREZ PRO TEMPORE OF SENATE AT EACH OTHER. Paul O'Neill and Sen. Robert Byrd went at each other yesterday, while O'Neill was testifying before Congress:
"Mr. O'Neill paused before responding in a heavy, trembling voice. 'There was an inference in your remarks that somehow I was born on home plate and thought I hit a home run,' he said. 'Senator, I started my life in a house without water or electricity, so I don't cede to you the moral high ground of what life is like in a ditch,' said Mr. O'Neill, who went on to earn tens of millions of dollars as chief executive of Pittsburgh aluminum producer Alcoa Inc. He then smacked his pen down on the wooden witness table and glared at Mr. Byrd.
"'Well, Mr. Secretary, I lived in a house without electricity, too. No running water, no telephone, a little wooden outhouse,' Mr. Byrd retorted.
"'I had the same,' Mr. O'Neill broke in."
And they liked it. Cripes, until fairly recently, I was working on a Mac SE, and I'm still only working on a Pentium I, 110 mhz, with 32 megs of ram. So there! And I have to power them by static electricity.
And everyone is so excited by Gene Simmons and Terry Gross going at each other. Amygdalaexclusive: I expect I likely will be the only blog in the blogoverse to mention that Simmons' born name is "Gene Klein," from Queens, and that he used to be active in "monster" fandom back in the early Sixties (remember Forry Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland?); I have one of the dittoed fanzines he did when he was twelve buried in storage.
HILARIOUS MATT WELCH PIECE from 1999 on attending Warren Beatty's will-he-or-won't-he? speech (remember that?). But I still thought Bulworth was a great film, Matt, as is Reds, as well, even if I'm totally with you on the reality of the Soviet Union.
However, the idealists of the 1910's, such as Reed, can hardly be blamed, I think, for not yet realizing where Lenin was going, and Beatty well-portrayed Reed's growing disillusionment, as well as that of Emma Goldman, in the film.
Also, a nifty piece from Details magazine in 1992 on what it was like to be ~24, American, and working on prognosis magazine in Prague, which is to say you drank a lot of wine, met everyone from counts to anarchists, and had a blast. But, maybe I'm just blind or, Matt, does this article as posted credit the author somewhere?
11-YEAR OLD GIRL HANGED?: A friend of mine from Malaysia sent me an article he received via mailing list, with a feature article attributed to the Malaysia New Straits Times on 6 February 2002 entitled Midweek: Of three Muslims and a Jew on the road, by Rehman Rashid.
Rashid is, I gather, a well-known columnist and writer in Malaysia.
Althought I couldn't find the article via their website search, I expect it was there on the 6th and in the paper. It was a piece about the author traveling around to various US colleges with Etgar Keret, 34, an Israeli novelist and film-maker, Ghassan Zaqtan, 47, a Palestinian poet, and Arab Israeli feminist playwright Aida Nasralla, as they did a kind of moving panel discussion at various colleges.
A little Googling let me confirm the basic facts of this. There were a few seemingly odd bits in the story, such as the rapturous agreement between Keret and Zaqtan:
"Israel is like a colony without a mother country," mused Keret. "It's created in a European image, which identifies Israel with Western domination of the Middle East." Zaqtan emphatically agreed. "Israel belongs to the Middle East more than Europe," he said. "Before 1948, Palestinian Arabs and Jews were part and parcel of each other's culture. It was one culture, one history. Since 1948, no."
Which, like most things said on this planet, has some truth to it, but is also largely a sort of dreamy wish that doesn't particularly jibe with history as I'm familiar with it, in which there was plenty of sporadic violence between Jew and Arab prior to 1948 (hello, Hebron, hey, Heycraft Commission). Nor were they particularly of "one culture, one history," unless we're going back to the time of Abraham hisself.
[...] "Israel is a state based on ideology," Keret said. "The people have nothing else in common."
First off, I'm unconvinced this is a bad thing, though obviously what the ideology is is a critical choice. But that states should be based around, say, ethnicity, seems a non-unassailable goodnes, as well. What, in fact, states should be based upon, is a question the world has been wrestling with since the invention of nationalism, and it seems an entirely unsettled question, save for those states where the actual physical battle is over.
I'll manfully resist the urge to digress into a discussion of the problems of Woodrow Wilson's concepts of "self-determination" for a people -- which have colored American foreign policy and popular feeling for it ever since his day, and the ancestry of such notions goes back to the days of the Colonies -- having never had anything clear to say about how granular defining a "people" should be, and thus left us with quite a muddled concept of who, precisely, should be self-determining, save the obvious notion that sheer viability of a conceivable state has a role to play here.
But that would be digressing, and I never do that.
Next, if you consider self-identifying, and being recognized as being one of the Jewish people, an "ideology," I suppose Keret's statement might be correct, but it's not how I'd use the term, myself. I might equally say that my belief in this is an "ideology" and that Keret's assertion is an "ideology" and so is the idea that ice cream is inherently superior to pastry, and so are a million other ideas, and we're not then left with much usefulness from the term "ideology," it has become so generalized and jelloized, but never mind.
To recapitulate:
Keret and Zaqtan, however, quickly mapped out their common ground.
Jews and Arabs were united by a common cultural history, which was ancient.
They bandied between them the names of generations of Middle Eastern writers, poets, artists, musicians and singers known and loved by Jew and Muslim, Israeli and Palestinian alike. This litany greatly revived Nasralla, who burst into song in both Arabic and Hebrew.
By contrast, the modern sufferings of their homeland were political and recent, rooted in the post-imperial disposition of Palestine. "It all ended in 1948," said Zaqtan.
As I said, not history as most of us know it, but, what the heck, it's a nice thought. Until the obvious implications are considered. But, again, never mind. This is not my point. My point, which is mine, is from this:
But Zaqtan was cool, even blase, about it all. That might have seemed surprising for someone who'd written a poem for an 11-year-old girl hanged by Israeli settlers. ("How many stars must have fallen/ to gleam in the curls of your Arab hair?")
I paused, blinking, here. An 11-year-old girl hanged by Israeli settlers? Has this happened? Wouldn't I and the world have heard about it? It's not as if the world press is shy about reporting atrocities by either Israelis or Palestinians, overall.
So I started a bit of research.
I was able to track down the poem in question. It's entitled The Death of Kheimas Nimr and the title is footnoted:
An 11 year old Palestinian child who was hanged by Zionist settlers in El Quods on March 10, 1988.
"El Quods" being a variant spelling for the Arabic for "Jerusalem," of course.
To put myself on the record, although the settlements issue has far more complications than are commonly discussed -- and I don't intend to go into them now, not intending to write a 20,000 word essay -- I do believe, with some footnotes, that the vast majority are a political mistake, should never have been constructed in the first place, and should be unilaterally abandoned forthwith, although there's a small argument to be made for the tactical benefit of waiting to negotiate them away as a trade-off.
And, of course, while a lot of settler-on-Palestinian violence is impossible to know the truth of without being a witness, or privy to a detailed investigation which has often not taken place, or been made well public, clearly while some of it is in self-defence, at other times there have been, at best, irresponsibly trigger-happy settlers, and an Israeli government not highly motivated to investigate and prosecute them.
So, yes, there have been Israeli murders of Palestinians. But I'm left wondering about this 11-year-old girl, allegedly hanged in 1988. Could it be?
Having Googled quite a bit, the only entry Google has for "Kheimas Nimr" is that poem. And the shitload of Palestinian history and propaganda on the Web is possibly secondly only to the shitload of Israeli history and propaganda on the web. Nobody with a point of view, an argument, or an account, has neglected to put their version, usually quite impassioned, on the web.
Nor was I able to turn up even any accusation of such an event anywhere on the web. But while I'm well-known in some circles for web-searching skills, I've neither spent days on this, nor do I care to, nor am I infallible. So I'm asking -- and this is my point -- has anyone else ever heard of this thing? I'd like to know. If such a terrible thing happened, I'd like to know, and add it into the balance. If it's a lie, I'd like to know.
The point that really bothers me is that the author in Malaysia apparently considered the accusation such a normal, mild, and unremarkable thing -- oh, yes, of course Israeli settlers hang 11-year-old-girls -- that he never even commented on it, let alone questioned it. Now, Malaysia is a country notoriously, uh, unsympathetic to Israel, and Dr. Matahir is given to anti-semitic spouting from time to time, so I'm not overwhelmed with surprise.
But it still seems worth remarking upon. Anyone with more information, please let me know.
"ANJUNA BEACH, India — Hebrew-language banners flutter improbably in the sea breeze here while a poster of Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, the Lubavitcher sage from Brooklyn, keeps a watchful eye on the youngsters on their way to the next full-moon trance party on the beach.
Goa, a onetime Portuguese colony on this sliver of India's west coast, is now a shrine on the Israeli ravers' pilgrimage through India — the birthplace of the mind-numbing electronic dance music called Goa trance."
[...]
"word of mouth on the young Israeli travel circuit and the range of services that cater to their needs, from falafel at the restaurants to rooms for as low as $4 a night, makes Goa a frequent stop. for many.
So for the last several years they have flocked to these beaches, most of them fresh from the frazzle of military service, lured by the notion that the sea and the mysteries of India and fat chillum pipes stuffed with hashish will offer answers to life's big questions."
"In an interview, the Cuban foreign minister, Felipe Pérez Roque, cited the example of the century-old United States base at Guantanamo, which he said had been transformed in recent years from hostile territory to a symbol of détente.
'We hope that one day the relations on all official matters can be handled with the respect and collaboration that is happening at Guantánamo,' Mr. Pérez said."
[...]
"Mr. Pérez, who served for several years as President Castro's personal aide, insisted, 'We have taken a clear position of collaboration with the United States.'"
BARNEY FRANK ON ENRON/ARTHUR ANDERSON on Capital Gang via Punditwatch:
"What did we hear from Harvey Pitt? He came in and said well, he was going to bring a kinder and gentler approach to regulating accounting.
I think a kinder and gentler approach to regulating accounting than what we've had would violate the sodomy laws of most states."
Also pointed out, the extreme oddity:
"CG showed a film clip of a North Korean newsman commenting on Bush's speech and Bob Novak followed up:
UNIDENTIFIED NORTH KOREAN: This is, in fact, little short of declaring war against North Korea. This statement made by Bush is stupid and it is improper for the president of a superpower to issue a judgment on the conduct of a state through sheer imagination.
BOB NOVAK: I hate to echo that unnamed Communist anchorman from Pyongyang, but that's what it sounded like."
BOB HERBERT ON JUDGE PICKERING whom you'll recall is nominated to U.S. Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit. On top of voting appropriations money for the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission in 1972 and 1973,
"Mr. Pickering had a significant effect on his home state's racist past as early as 1959 when he was a student at the University of Mississippi Law School. He felt it was important to bolster Mississippi's anti-miscegenation law. A marriage between a black person and a white person was a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. But Mr. Pickering recognized there was a loophole in the law that could allow some interracial couples to fall in love and marry without being arrested and sent off to prison. He wrote an article in The Mississippi Law Journal explaining how the law could be fixed.
The state legislature took his advice, amending the law the very next year."
FAILING TO UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF 'FAILURE': George Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence (which makes him in charge of coordinating all US intelligence, not just in charge of running the CIA), said yesterday before Congress:
"when people use the word `failure,' `failure' means no focus, no attention, no discipline, and those were not present in what either we or the F.B.I. did here and around the world."
That in response to Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the intelligence panel, who said:
"'The fear of another Pearl Harbor provided the impetus for our establishment of a national-level intelligence bureaucracy,' he continued. 'This system was created so that America would never have to face another devastating surprise attack. That second devastating surprise attack came on September the 11th.'
He added, 'All of us, I think, owe the American people an explanation as to why our intelligence community failed to provide adequate warning of such a terrorist attack on our soil.'"
RUSH LIMBAUGH TAKING HIT FROM PARANOIA BONG is how the folks at Boing Boing put this bit of anti-TiVo kookery from the ditto master. You do all read Boing Boing, right?
""THE WEEKLY WORLD NEWS WEBSITE IS TEMPORARILY CLOSED FOR THE FOLLOWING REASON: WE WOULD LIKE YOU TO BUY THE PAPER AT LEAST ONE STINKING WEEK OUT OF THE YEAR."
MANY THANKS TO S**** G***** for being the first reader to hit the "donate" button in the upper left corner. I'll be delighted with anyone else who does so; I can really use the money. I am also available, by the way, to be an online researcher, and for other forms of online work, such as writing, editing, or bug-testing. I do have some professional credentials and references, available upon request.
2/07/2002 09:21:00 AM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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"The Saudis spend a lot of time obsessing over how to handle apostates: people who renounce Islam. This article at the Arab News expresses the moderate view; the author argues that the punishment for this unforgivable crime—having your head hacked off with a sword—should be left to the state, instead of simply lynching the offender. How reasonable!
Now, as ignorant infidel Westerners, we might assume that this means there is no freedom of belief in Saudi Arabia. Not so!
'Prescribing a discretionary punishment for apostasy does not contravene the constitutional and legal principles that guarantee freedom of belief. These principles ensure that such freedom is established within the framework of public order and moral values. Such public order in an Islamic state does not approve that protection is given for public renunciation of Islam. To do so, the state would lose its status as an Islamic state.'
So you have complete freedom of belief, as long as you believe in Wahhabist Islam. What’s the problem?"
There's more from the article and Charles, saving me doing the job. Some people get worked up by fundamentalist Christians -- me, I only object when they try to turn their views into law -- others by extremely Orthodox Jews -- me, I'm fine with them so long as they're not telling me what to do -- but neither of these groups advocate hacking people's heads off, let alone have states do it, along with stoning people, etc., last I looked.
Charles neglects to mention that this is all consistent with the freedoms guaranteed by the Saudi Arabian Constitution. It's interesting reading, if you've not done so. Here's their stirring rendition of the 1st Amendment, for instance:
"Article 39 [Expression]
Information, publication, and all other media shall employ courteous language and the state's regulations, and they shall contribute to the education of the nation and the bolstering of its unity. All acts that foster sedition or division or harm the state's security and its public relations or detract from man's dignity and rights shall be prohibited. The statutes shall define all that."
EUROPE DOESN'T GET IT, PT.II: On Sunday, the Post had a story on the Munich conference. No, not that, the one this past Saturday.
"A parade of European security officials expressed alarm today about what they considered an aggressive, go-it-alone stance staked out by President Bush in his State of the Union address last week, especially his warning that the United States was prepared to take preemptive action against Iraq or other countries that provide terrorists with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons."
Which wasn't about domestic politics, but about the US being prepared to take pre-emptive action.
"The U.S. delegation to an international security conference here responded to their concerns with bipartisan unity. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) and a host of other foreign policy heavyweights urged the Europeans to get with the American program and faulted them for a lack of urgency in combating terrorism. [...] McCain, who delivered a fiery speech attacking Iraq and called on countries to decide whether they stood with the United States. 'A day of reckoning is approaching,' said McCain, a former presidential candidate. 'Not simply for Saddam Hussein, but for all members of the Atlantic community [NATO].'"
John McCain and George Bush despise each other, of course.
"Lieberman, who was his party's most recent nominee for vice president, promptly stood to endorse 'everything my colleague and friend has said.' [...] The biggest surprise of the first session of the 38th annual Munich conference [...] may have been the clear disconnect between the two sides about the urgency of the situation. [...] After listening to a dozen European officials vaguely discuss how plans should be made to eventually increase their military budgets, William S. Cohen, the Clinton administration's last defense secretary, lectured the audience on the need for quicker action. 'This in fact poses a threat to civilization as we know it,' he said."
Bill Clinton's Defense Secretary. When we hear this sort of talk -- and continue (note continue) to see military action, and not just peacekeeping -- from Europe, we'll know they've gotten it. Instead:
"'There is a danger that the Europeans and the Americans in pursuing terrorism may diverge in their points of view,' said Karl Lamers, the foreign policy spokesman for Germany's conservative opposition Christian Democratic Party."
True.
"'We want to participate, which is why I would ask our American friends to bring us along in the formation of strategy, instead of you doing it and asking us to trot along behind.'"
Well, the strategy is that if there's evidence of the building of weapons of mass destruction, whatever it takes to stop that will be done. The lesson of Osirak. Other thoughts on strategy you wish to contribute?
"Some officials said they feared the United States had become so technologically advanced and militarily adept that it no longer believes it must heed the views of its European allies."
That happens when you believe that the way to keep peace is to spend as little as possible on the military.
"Trying to come to terms with a United States altered by the terrorist attacks, Europeans expressed surprise at the size of the Bush administration's proposed $48 billion increase to the defense budget, the swiftness of the apparent U.S. victory in Afghanistan and the willingness of the United States to go it alone if necessary."
The US has to be prepared to go it alone because you guys don't seem real interested in coming along. Also, the Gulf War and the Kosovo War both showed how strongly decision-making can become delayed and screwed up the more decision-making power is spread around. Lastly, Wolfowitz pointed out
"Unlike the war of 10 years ago . . . the events of September 11 have made this a case of national self-defense."
BIN LADEN'S CHEF?: the guy may just be a talented liar, but he spins a nice story.
"In three separate interviews here in Ghazni, Haji Mohamad Akram, a waif of a man suffering from the results of regular torture sessions by his captors, provided detailed accounts of the battle at Tora Bora, of Mr. bin Laden's movements in November and December last year - and of his favorite dishes."
[...]
"For the interviews, Hazara leader Ali Akbar Qasmi escorted Mr. Akram out of a back room of his house into his small, dark living room. Sitting in shackles near a pot-belly stove, his bloodied nostrils plugged with cotton, he begged to be handed over to US investigators - even sent 'to Cuba' if necessary - and promised to disclose important information to US officials.
In fact, Mr. Qasmi had placed a call to the US Embassy in Kabul earlier this week. He says a US official there told him that they were terribly busy and it would help if he could hold them a 'week or two.'"
[...]
"'Osama's favorite meal is fowl - anything with wings,' says the Saudi national. 'He likes quails, and if he can't get his hands on one, he will settle for a chicken. Most of the quails he ate, we hunted. Others were brought in by road from Iran. Osama often made special requests for the mutton and yogurt Mogul dish that I do best.'
Now we know what to bait the trap with.
[...] "The Saudi chef says he believes that bin Laden planned to go through Iran and then eventually end up in Azerbaijan or possibly Chechnya."
[...]
""I may be a criminal, but I'm also a human being, and I have rights," he says, waving his hands and moving closer to an interpreter so he could whisper. 'I say kill me or cut my legs off, but don't tie me up every night and beat me. I'm ready to go to Cuba, or wherever.'"
[...]
""I have visited a lot of countries, including Egypt," Akram says. "I wanted to study there.... But when I got to school, some bad types misled me and said go for the jihad.'"
There's something I just love about this part. He really should have gone for door number one. Or the gusto. Anything but the jihad. And kids, always avoid those bad types, and their power to cloud men's minds.
There's more odd detail in this story, including about how the Hazara who took this guy was paid two pick-up trucks by the US for the last al Queda captives he turned over.
FELIX ROHYATN, WILD-EYED SOCIALIST: Interesting piece noting that
"Alan Greenspan's belief in the effectiveness of responsibly regulated market forces clearly was not being matched by reality."
Tom Friedman has frequently written about the strength of our capitalism coming from our "software" -- the US's institutions of capitalism and justice that regulate it so it is reasonably reliable and honest -- and the problem of Russia, to some extent still China, and most of the Third World, being the inability to, as yet, get this software right, in which case simply pouring in either private investment or foreign aid is, at best, a temporary palliative -- though sometimes an entirely necessary one if one cares about such mere details as people not starving while they get their institutions right.
It seems to me Virginia Postrel's touched on this need for proper institutions of capitalism, rather than simply a naked free market, of late, and one might tie in the notions of Hernando de Soto's The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. It seems as if a bit of fixing our code to address some bugs in our capitalism may be in order, starting in the financial markets. (On the other side of the spectrum, I'd like a negative income tax, but that's a whole 'nother issue.)
SIMON SCHAMA IS ON CHURCHILL in a typically meaty New York Review of Bookspiece reviewing Roy Jenkin's recent Churchill bug-killer, which I look forward to reading as the umpty-hundredth book on Churchill I've read (that Churchill, that is). A few selected quotes:
"The last thing George Orwell published was a May 1949 review of Volume Two of Winston Churchill's memoirs of the Second World War, Their Finest Hour. You might expect him to have been allergic to its chest-thumping patriotism, its flights of empurpled rhetoric; but not a bit of it. Churchill's writings, Orwell observed, bestowing the most meaningful accolade he could manage, were 'more like those of a human being than of a public figure.' Though in 1939 Orwell had been suspicious of Churchill's belligerent rhetoric and ominous potential for a personality cult of his own, by the time he came to write 1984, it was not Big Brother who would be baptized Winston but the doomed renegade, 'the last man.'"
[...]
"Orwell also recycled the story that Churchill followed up 'we will fight on the beaches' with 'we'll throw bottles at the b——s, it's about all we've got left,' but that the candid addition was buzzed out by the quick hand of the BBC censor just in time. The story was apocryphal, but the point was that such Churchilliana existed at all."
[...]
"(Who, these days, writes his own speeches, much less has the guts to begin one: 'The news...is very bad'?)"
[...]
"(As a Liberal colleague of Lloyd George's attack on the veto power of the House of Lords, Churchill was hot to press for its abolition as an absurd anachronism.)"
[...]
"'If somebody asked me what exactly Winston did to win the war,' Clement Attlee wrote, 'I would say, 'Talk about it.''"
[...]
"(His friend F.E. Smith joked that Winston spent the best part of his life preparing impromptu speeches.) As a writer he could be either flatfooted or twinkle-toed, but when he was on song he was unbeatable. Who else would have described the collapse of the old monarchies in 1918 as a 'drizzle of empires falling through the air'?"
[...]
"During the 1930s, when it was the political norm among the appeasers to hold their noses and turn a blind eye to what the Nazis were doing to the Jews, commenting, in effect, that doubtless it was all very deplorable, but what did one expect in a world which also boasted Mussolini and Stalin, Churchill understood the incommensurability of Nazi bestiality and unhesitatingly said so, over and over again. After Kristallnacht he was unembarrassed to shed tears while describing the torments in a culture which looked on such demonstrations of emotion as dreadfully bad form."
Possibly for the sake of parallelism of some sort, the same issue also has a long piece by Gordon Craig on various recent Hitler biographies, with attention in the first section paid to examining and dismissing the theory of Lothar Machtan that Hitler was homosexual, and attention in the second section to Robert Gellately's study of coercion and consent in the Third Reich and his
"conclusion that Germans of all classes found reasons for supporting the system 'and were less regimented, cajoled or forced than we often assume.'"
[...]
"It was, however a two-sided relationship, and Reinhard Heydrich once said that the people had to offer themselves as helpers. How they did so, Gellately shows in some interesting excerpts from police case files. These demonstrate that the police and the Gestapo would have found it impossible to enforce some of their regulations (against fraternization with Jews and foreign workers, for example, and against listening to foreign broadcasts) if it had not been for the information provided by denunciations from ordinary citizens."
[...]
"Dachau, which was established in 1933. In view of the not infrequent reports of inmates shot by guards 'in self-defense,' it certainly existed but was less obtrusive than it became later. The press, which paid a good deal of attention to the camps, generally described them as temporary in nature and as model establishments, whose main function was social education. The people incarcerated were supposed, for the most part, to be Communists. The local population was apt initially to welcome their establishment, as was the case in Dachau, because of the supposed political and economic advantages that they would bring.
The war brought a tremendous expansion of the concentration camp system within Germany, as the principal camps established sub-camps and the camp population came to include prisoners of war and foreign workers in addition to political prisoners and allegedly 'asocial' elements, such as homosexuals.
The camps now began to invade the public space to a degree unknown in the regime's first years, and townspeople and villagers alike were confronted with what Gellately calls the cruelest side of the dictatorship, columns of thinly clad, ill-nourished prisoners being herded to their work or back to their places of confinement. This was a sight that might have been expected to arouse unease or even complaint, but Gellately writes:
'Although we hear from survivors of help and comfort they received, the overwhelming impression is that Germans were at best indifferent and fearful, and at worst they shared the guards' scorn, hostility, and hatred.'
"This was true also in the very last days of the war, when the concentration camps were closed down and their inmates forced on to the roads and made to endure pointless marches under armed guard that often ended in death. Thousands of ordinary Germans witnessed these cruel exercises, but very few offered food to the starving marchers, and some added to their torments by beating or shooting stragglers."
NIELS BOHR ARCHIVE drops bombshell. Letters and documents were released and posted yesterday, finally, to the Niels Bohr website, with attestations that
"Heisenberg did not travel to Copenhagen for the 1941 meeting to express moral qualms about building an atomic weapon in wartime or to suggest that physicists on both sides of the conflict should refuse to do so, according to a passage in a letter Bohr wrote to Heisenberg, but never sent."
[...]
"Did Heisenberg hope to save the world from the horrors of the bomb, or was he really trying to pry loose information on the parallel effort by the Allies, which Bohr later joined?
The mystery is the center of an award-winning play, Copenhagen, by the British playwright Michael Frayn. The play was inspired by a 1993 book by the journalist Thomas Powers, Heisenberg's War, which argues that Heisenberg destroyed the German project from within.
The revelation made public yesterday 'pretty much knocks that out of the water,' said Dr. David C. Cassidy, a historian of science at Hofstra University who is the author of Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg. 'Heisenberg was working full blast on getting as far as he could on nuclear fission, including a bomb.'"
"The proposed 2003 budget for NASA was announced on Monday and would direct $125 million to a new program in nuclear powered space exploration, while cutting funds for human spaceflight and axing missions to Pluto and Jupiter's moon Europa."
THOMAS NEPHEW'S NEWSRACK BLOG is one of my absolute favorite political blogs. Thomas is thoughtful, and delves into issues calmly and deeply. And, of course, we seem to largely agree about almost everything, thus giving proof that he is brilliant and sensible.
As a result, he has more entries at his site than it's practical for me to comment on and point to. Picking out just a couple: his words on the "axis of evil" and the need for a doctrine to be clearly elaborated upon over bumper-sticker sloganeering; his excerpts from and comments on Deborah Sontag's New York Times Magazinepiece on her conversations with Palestinians. Go read.
BOGGLE: Charles Dodgson's Through The Looking Glass is a good blog, which I permalinked to some time ago, and I read his thoughts with respect and interest. But this made me pause and blink:
"But it seems Mr. Dean may be another conservative (or so I gather from his service to Nixon)... This is where Dean goes overboard. In fact, this very administration has been more open and arrogant [than Nixon's] about defying Congressional authority."
Which makes me wonder how much Charles knows about the Nixon administration, and John Dean.
"what it sounded like Gary was saying: that it's no longer acceptable to expect Americans to mean what they say about freedom and democracy, no longer reasonable to want America to take diplomacy seriously, and ridiculous to want 'the leader of the free world' to rise above exploiting and manipulating the American people's grief and horror over September 11th for his own partisan purposes, because that event 'changed everything.'"
"Robots are being let loose in a colony of machines in an attempt to find out whether they can learn from their experiences. The scientists behind this unusual experiment describe it as an evolutionary arms race for robots, with the machines struggling to collect energy."
"An antisemitic Nazi forgery targeting American Jews was reproduced recently by an Egyptian government weekly. An article by Salah Al-Din Hilmi, titled 'The Jews are Bloodsuckers and Will Yet Conquer America,' appeared in the Egyptian government weekly Akher Sa'a. [....]"
"A much harsher response came from Abd Al-Bari 'Atwan, editor of the London Arabic-language daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, who compared President Bush to Hitler. In an article titled 'A Rash and Vulgar President,' 'Atwan wrote:
'The American president George Bush, whom all agree is reckless and inexperienced, presented himself in his 'State of the Union address'- as a leader thirsty for bloodshed and for declaring war on half the world to satisfy a sense of vengeance and in submission to the sick Israeli incitement that stems from the interests of the Hebrew state - even if [satisfying] these interests comes at the expense of the destruction of the entire world.'
[...]
'President Bush's fiery address reminds us of the speeches of the Nazi, Adolph Hitler. His threatening of Iran and Iraq remind us of Hitler's threatening of Poland and Czechoslovakia. For this reason, the entire world must act to stop him and to put an end to his recklessness, before he drowns in destructive wars that will make the first and second world wars seem modest.'
[...]
'President Bush is making threats in order to hide this reality, to cover up the political losses and loss of life in Afghanistan that have not been made public...'
'I admit to feeling pain and disappointment when I saw the representatives of the American people [Congress] applauding President Bush and supporting his threats, which will certainly lead to great losses to the interests of their electorate, and will lead their country to bankruptcy and perhaps even collapse. The axis of evil in the world is not Iran, Iraq, and North Korea; it is America and Israel...'"
ANDREW SULLIVAN ON THE SOTU: This will further alarm Avedon, but that's the breaks. I have innumerable differences and disagreements with Sullivan (his anti-Krugman obsession, for one, and a general eagerness to prostitute his opinions in favor of his anti-left biases), but I think he got it right in the Sunday Times of London, vs. the Guardian, on the basic point, though I part with him on gushing over the Administration:
"What September 11 showed Americans and the rest of the civilized world something much more basic and much more terrifying: we are already far more vulnerable to forces of evil and destruction than we dare believe.
Think of what we already know. Barely two score men trained in Afghanistan's camps executed the murder of over 3,000 people in a matter of minutes in the heart of New York City. Tens of thousands more terrorists have already been trained to perform similar tasks - in London, Washington, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Moscow, anywhere. They are not free-lance agents and they are not alone. Alongside them, and often in collusion with them, is what the president called an 'axis of evil,' a collection of despotic, terrorist states that includes Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Put those states or those terrorists within reach of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons - and the West is in mortal threat of literal destruction. What happened on September 11 could seem like a minor tragedy compared to what could come next.
That's what 9/11 really meant and means. It exposed our extreme and continuing vulnerability. It would be far more pleasurable to think otherwise, to get back to domestic scandals like Enron, or to partisan squabbles over hospitals or taxes. But the sky is dark already, and it is darkening daily."
Once more, this doesn't mean I give a pass to Bush or the Republicans on anything. I'm happy Daschle has put a stake through the "stimulus," I mean the "economic security" pork-barrel, overall. But the war isn't a ploy, a fake, a made-up dream, a thing of pure jingoism, a scare tactic, a hoax, or an excuse.
It's a real and necessary thing. There are people who want to kill us.
They. Want. To. Kill. Us.
They've already killed thousands of us.
They've been working to that end for years, and will go on working for years, and they are very dangerous, far more dangerous than George Bush, or even Tom DeLay, and they need to be stopped. First order of business.
How much sense did it make in WWII for the extreme right-wingers to continue waxing on, as their over-riding priority, about that man in the White House, and his socialism, and his getting us into this war (often accompanied, of course, by mutterings or outright rantings about it being on behalf of the Jews, which has rather a familiar ring to it, doesn't it?)? Fine, domestic politics didn't stop, and shouldn't, then or now, but there are also some more important things on the table. Like not getting killed.
LIKE HE USUALLY DOES, Tom Friedman talks sense. Jerusalem would still have to be fudged with some form of joint or shared or split sovereignty, though.
ADDENDUM: It belatedly occurs to me that I was saying a similar thing here when I wrote about the need to point out to the Arab world that UN resolutions 242 and 338 apply to both sides, and their need to genuinely commit to them, not just give lip service to them.
Meanwhile, Arafat keeps calling for the need to "make peace." Great. Just do it. Stop shooting and blowing people up. Take away the reason Israel has for responding in violent ways that repress Palestinians. You Can Win: it's in your hands.
DAVID FRUM OUTED as the author of "axis of evil." His wife, Danielle Crittenden, was nitwit enough to send out a mass e-mail about it to friends and family, and expect it not to fall into the hands of the press.
"Dear all,
I realize this is very 'Washington' of me to mention but my husband is responsible for the 'Axis of Evil' segment of Tuesday's State of the Union address. It's not often a phrase one writes gains national notice—unless you're in advertising of course ('The Pause that refreshes')—so I'll hope you'll indulge my wifely pride in seeing this one repeated in headlines everywhere!"
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH has staked out a fairly moderate position on the detainees at Gitmo: al Queda members are probably not entitled to POW status, Taliban fighters may be, but that
"The Geneva Conventions presume that a captured combatant is a prisoner of war, unless a competent tribunal determines otherwise on a case by case basis."
Further,
"while POWs are not required to answer questions beyond name, rank, serial number and date of birth, the Geneva Conventions do not prevent interrogators from asking questions on other matters [...] the Geneva Conventions do not preclude the trial, conviction and sentencing of POWs. POWs can be charged and tried for war crimes, crimes against humanity or other acts that would be crimes if committed by U.S. soldiers. POW status would only provide protection for the act of taking up arms against opposing military forces. If convicted, POWs would serve their sentences confined under U.S. jurisdiction and would not be entitled to repatriation absent U.S. consent."
ALISTAIR COOKEpointed out that Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama featured Northern Italy being destroyed by meteorite on September 11th. (2007, so the Italians shouldn't worry quite yet.) He also gave a potted history of the Geneva Conventions here. (This also set off a debate between Mr. Ralston and Mr. den Beste about the merits of Cooke's comments on the US Civil War, but I'm Not Getting Into That.)
2/05/2002 08:15:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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FISK, FISK, FISK: Why even bother pointing out all the outrageous absurdities in this piece? Fiskalism is always a school of fish in a barrel. Just to pluck two at random:
"The argument that national resistance should not be confused with 'terrorism' was never heard – because the journalists who should have reported it were either locked up or running away."
I wonder if Fisk took the Palestinian poll, and also answered that terrorism against Israel and the West isn't terrorism? Now we have clarification: it's national resistance. Of the detainees at Gitmo
"I wrote here earlier that these men were being treated much as the Beirut hostages were treated...."
AMERICAN VS. EUROPEAN SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL: Bill Quick has an impassioned piece kinda committing America to the defense of Israel:
"America supports Israel because we must, because we would not be America if we didn't [...] We will not permit the destruction of Israel, nor will our support of her waver"
and criticizing Europe for "acknowledg[ing] no debt to an Israel built on those enormous stacks of helpless, innocent corpses." Bill is very eloquent, but this is rather ahistoric. France supplied much of Israel's weaponry for long years when US policy was militarily "hand's off" to Israel, and Germany supplied considerable amounts of cash, and diplomatic, support to Israel in decades past. Germany has, overall, displayed quite a sense of debt in the past (well, West Germany, that is).
Who was on Israel's side, and who wasn't, in 1956, when the Suez Canal could have been retaken from Nasser's nationalizion? Which country prevented that, by outright threat? Who were Israel's allies? Times change, but I don't think a very solid case can be made for the steadfastness of US support for Israel, over its fifty-four years of history, versus that of Europe's, really, and thus I'm less convinced than Bill is, apparently, that this is not equally subject to change in the future.
DANIEL PEARL UPDATE: Reuters reports that Karachi police claim to have detained two people they suspect of sending the e-mails with pictures of Pearl. The Pakistani Foreign Minister had the nerve to, in essence, blame Pearl for allowing himself to be kidnapped.
"Pakistan Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar said his government believed Pearl was still alive but criticized the missing reporter for failing to let anyone know where he was going.
'He wasn't kidnapped, he went into the lair of this group. Unfortunately he did not take prudent precautions,' he told a news conference in Paris. 'Hopefully he can be rescued.'"
"Colin L. Powell said today that President Bush's linkage of Iraq, Iran and North Korea into an 'axis of evil,' was 'not a rhetorical flourish — he meant it,' and he said that Iraq's overture to the United Nations to resume talks should amount to 'a very short discussion,' because weapons inspectors should immediately be allowed back in that country without conditions.
And there's a mission overtly reported on in Northern Iraq. It looks as if they are going to, slowly, push this forward to a war threat, regardless of whether Europe comes along, though stress here is on the slow. Here's a piece from the Guardian giving some indication of Iraqi nervousness and bending a bit -- it's quite likely they'll bend enough to keep the Russians and Europeans strung along, without doing anything terribly meaningful (such as short-term "inspections").
2/05/2002 05:37:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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A GRUBBY LITTLE PIECE in, big surprise, the Guardian, by Charlotte Raven:
"'What's the difference between a Jew and a canoe? A canoe always tips.' I wish I'd been there when the second most famous black man on earth delivered this joke at a charity banquet last year. History doesn't record how the audience reacted but I can well imagine their rapt, expectant faces - all flushed in the presence of greatness - turning a shade of puce as the champ struck another blow in defence of his right to say whatever he liked, however offensive."
This is the start of a deeply admiring piece all about Ali's wonderfulness and radicalness (identical qualities, of course). Ah, yes, how brave and impudent to make anti-semitic jokes. Charlotte Raven also confides:
"Like many other lefties, I worried a lot when I heard about his contract with Coca-Cola to be their international representative. I was also none too happy with the news that he was making a five-minute film, to be broadcast on al-Jazeera, about how great the US was for the 'genuine' Muslims who had no part in the events of September 11. Then I realised, with a rush of affection, that Ali was continuing to fulfil his brief as a genuine radical by not giving a jot what I thought. [...] One might also presume, quite reasonably, that this newly anointed symbol of global peace would not besmirch his image by appearing in grubby little propaganda broadcasts."
Yes, she's got her head screwed on straight. How dreadful to besmirch one's image by saying something positive about the US, or even, oh, no, directly state that the US is one of the best places in the world to be a Muslim. Grubby progaganda, that. Anti-semitic jokes: that proves your fearless independence, and is to be much admired. Got it.
And here I had just been thinking that Hillel Halkin was being a little over the top in his piece on the return of anti-semitism in Europe, by not allowing that it is perfectly possible, of course, to criticize specific Israeli policies without such disagreement meaning one is simply and wholly "anti-Israel." But having hedged that utterly crucial hedge, I would agree with many of his more specific points, particularly on how, for instance,
"Who at London dinner parties makes nasty remarks about Hindus because India has militarily occupied Muslim Kashmir for half a century? What French diplomat calls China a 'big, sh---y country' because of its occupation of Tibet?"
and pointing out that
"anti-Semitism has grown in direct proportion to Palestinian violence against Israel...."
"Mere mention of the singer is certain to excite Conservative strategists, desperate for the political endorsement of pop's must successful female artist.
Some even claim to have spotted signs that she is, in Lady Thatcher's phraseology, 'one of us.'
Her song, Material Girl, was, said one, 'true Thatcherism' and a hymn to capitalism and prudence. Another suggested the precise meaning of her 1986 hit Papa Don't Preach was an 'attack on the Nanny state. She must hate Tony Blair's preachiness.'"
RHODESIANS UPSET JEWS in winning conspiracy to dominate the world's press, points out Christopher Johnson. Quoting the Telegraph:
"Prof Moyo accused the press of allying with white farmers and 'unreconstructed Rhodesians' to topple Mr Mugabe's regime.
Prof Moyo outlined a vast conspiracy theory and claimed that 'white Rhodesians' dominated the world's media.
Even the national broadcaster in South Africa is dominated by Rhodesian journalists, while a good number of those in charge in Britain and Australia are either Rhodesian, or sympathetic."
Johnson adds:
"Rhodesians the world over were ecstatic. 'It hasn't sunk in yet,' one of them told the Editor in the victorious Rhodesian locker room while spraying champagne in all directions. 'But we did it! Nobody thought we could knock off the Jews but we did! We're number one! We're number one! Now I can't wait until we get our championship rings!'
This unbelievable upset shocked the worldwide Jewish conspiracy. 'You've got to hand it to the Rhodesians,' a Jew told the Editor from the devastated Jewish locker room. 'We were cocky, we were arrogant, and we got comfortable. The Rhodesians played their hearts out and I guess they just wanted control of the world's news media more than we did. Congratulations to them. They're number one now and I hope they enjoy it. But we'll be back.'"
MUST-READmemoir by former CIA officer Robert Baer, including how he almost arranged the assasination of Imad Mughniyah. Part 2 is here. Thanks to Avedon Carol for the tip.
Avedon also was nagged at all day by my response to the Guardian's leader the other day. It's good to know one's writing is being thought about.
I note that while Avedon and I do have some genuine political differences these days, it seems, some of our differences are merely a matter of emphasis. She quoted me noting that there is some truth to what the Guardian said, and that where I see the Bush administration inappropriately or deceitfully trying to use the banner of September 11th or national security to cover domestic policy where it has no place, I will go on pointing this out and decrying it. But although Avedon quoted this, it appears I did not emphasize it strongly enough for her.
She and I share incredulity at the idea that the tax-cuts are a good idea. I'm similarly unconvinced that missile defense is something it's remotely sensible to move beyond the experimental stage for quite some years to come. There are plenty of other issues she and I are in agreement on.
Whether this is or isn't partisan, I really don't care about, one way or another. This is where Avedon and I take, I think, a different view. It's not that I have anything against being partisan; it's utterly appropriate to be partisan where it is appropriate, to be tautological. I continue to have, as I've said many times, many differences of opinion with the administration, and with congressional Republicans, some of whom I find quite loony.
It's simply not my top, or high, priority to go looking for battles to fight on a partisan basis. I'm content to take them as they come along, which they certainly do. I'm a little more concerned for now with those people who are more directly and overtly looking to kill me and mine, and they're higher on my priority list to watch out for. I don't think this makes me a dupe of the administration, or blind, or acquiescent in the ruination of America by Bush and company, but I could, of course, be wrong. Meanwhile, I'm happy to have Avedon on my left flank.
"He suggested that antioxidant supplements like vitamins E and C might 'improve cognitive function and reduce age-associated cognitive decline' in people as well as in pets, since dogs, as they grow older, develop the same pathological changes in the brain as aged people. [...] As for people, she said, 'we all should be doing this — eating at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day to forestall or even improve the effects of aging.'"
I'm still waiting for them to find that we should eat as much barbequed ribs, shrimp, and sushi, as possible, to maintain our health. Then I require that the price of sushi, and macadamia nuts, has to drastically drop due to worldwide glut.
"Mr. Rector, the lead rescuer of the Dolphin Freedom Foundation in Fort Lauderdale, and other dolphin lovers have accused some of the rescue agencies of responding too slowly to dolphins in distress and of providing improper care. One agency drawing the ire of Mr. Rector and others says its rescuers have been harassed and intimidated.
'Volunteers are called names on the phone and told that they have killed dolphins,' said Becky Arnold, director of rehabilitation for the agency, the Florida Keys Marine Mammal Rescue Team. 'We've had volunteers who've bought caller ID just to identify callers from the other group. It's childish.'"
"...Intel (news/quote), the world's dominant manufacturer of microprocessors, will present a paper detailing a portion of a microprocessor chip that has performed at up to 10 gigahertz at room temperature. [...] The dimension is called physical gate length, and it refers to the infinitesimal space between two key components in a solid-state transistor. [...] Today, in the most advanced chip designs, the space has shrunk to just 90 nanometers — equivalent to about 360 atoms laid end to end.
The previous International Technology Roadmap, released two years ago, forecast the industry would be able to reach no smaller scaling than 140 nanometers in the crucial gate length by now."
PALESTINIANS SHOOTING PALESTINIANS WHO SHOOT PALESTINIANS: See if you can follow this.
Palestinian Mob Kills 3 in West Bank Courthouse By REUTERS
"JENIN, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinian gunmen entered a Palestinian courthouse posing as police Tuesday and shot dead three men who had just been found guilty of killing a security officer, witnesses said."
[...]
"The three men who were killed had been convicted in a military court of killing Osama Kmeil, a Palestinian security officer involved in years past in the killing of Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel."
"The killing of Kmeil and Tuesday's courthouse shooting appeared to be part of a cycle of revenge killings carried out by relatives of the dead."
"Blogs did not come out of a vacuum. Many writers like myself have been debating, arguing and posting for two decades. That's a lot of practice. We're not people who sat down one day and said 'Oh, I think I'll start writing about current affairs.' Some of us have been writing for every bit as long as the 'mainstream' journalists. Our editors were not our bosses but our peers; they gave us the harsh critique of people who knew the facts and were unafraid to let you know it. You also learned to withstand attacks that could be harsh and personal."
"For me it is like walking through some exhilarating global weather system, an interactive one at that. I see some article that does not particularly interest me and it is like a raindrop against my skin or a passing breeze: I am aware of it but in a moment it is gone and forgotten."
"And then I see something that interests me, like light from some distant sun touching my face through the shifting clouds of data. Or then suddenly I stumble upon something that angers or startles me, like a lightning bolt hurtled up into the sky from New York or Wellington or Belgrade or Delhi or London, only to strike the ground near me, illuminating everything for a moment and shocking me with its force."
"The Internet makes me feel like I am some luminous being working a magic device that transports me up from my little corner of the Balkans until I can not only look down over the sound and fury of the whole world, but like some pagan goddess with my shimmering wings powered by Blogger.com, fling my own thunderbolts back down at it, watching them strike in London and Warsaw and Calgary and Athens and Pretoria."
"The Internet is so much more than the slow moving dead text of yesterday, something remote from yourself held at arms length figuratively and literally. It is the seething, howling, singing, snarling voice of the global gestalt that surges through you and carries the sound of your own voice away with it to unseen ears on the other side of the world. It is utterly intoxicating."
"It is difficult for anyone familiar with GAO's history, which has long included investigations of both Republican and Democratic administrations, to look upon Cheney's challenge as anything but a stalling tactic. Given the fact the President has not also invoked executive privilege, I cannot but wonder if the stall strategy is this: First, the Administration will fight the lawsuit over GAO's authority; second, when the Administration loses that suit (as it likely will), the Administration will mount another fight over executive privilege. That should get them past the 2004 presidential election.
Much of the Watergate cover-up actually involved stalling - delaying everything until the last minute, and then looking for a way to delay further. The goal was to push the potential problems past the elections, which we did. Everyone who is familiar with the ways of Washington scandals will understand the stalling strategy. Among its other virtues, delay creates an opportunity for an intervening event to change the dynamic of an unfolding scandal."
THE ENRON-JEDI CONNECTION is something I noticed a bit ago, but hadn't gotten around to writing about, which is just as well, since James Lileks did it better than I would have. We both noticed that one of Enron's partnerships was named "Chewco" after, yes, Chewbacca, and
"The Enron lads proposed letting Chewco buy, for $383 million, another Enron limited partnership named . . . Joint Energy Development Investments.
JEDI. As in Knights, as in "Return of," as in Obi-Wan, as in Star Wars again. I did some research on the Net and found that Enron not only underwrote the "Star Wars" museum show in Houston, it had some other curiously named financial satellites, such as Kenobe, and OBI-1 Holdings. Get it? Obi-ONE? How did these guys keep a straight face when the accountants came in with some questions?
Gentlemen, it seems as if Energy Work Operations Council -- what? What's so funny? If I might continue, EWOC is shifting some assets to Skywalker Ltd., with insurance matters handled by the firm of Jabba Thehutt and Associates -- look, I fail to see what's so amusing here.
I wish I were kidding, but the implications are grim. Either these guys were just Star Wars geeks, or, more likely, Enron was building a Death Star and lost all its money when a cocky kid from a sandy planet blew the thing up. So, as a public service, here are some signs that your 401(k) should be diversified outside of company stock:
1. In staff meetings, black-helmeted branch managers choke employees to death by pointing at them.
2. Top female employee of a recently acquired firm is chained in boss' office wearing a metal bikini."
JOHN DOWER'SEmbracing Defeat has been published in Japan, and since it punctures the Big Lies Japan tells about itself -- that Japan was a victim in WWII, and that the Emperor had no responsibility for the war or atrocities -- it's an eye-opener for most Japanese, and, happily, a best-seller.
"It is rare that a foreign-written book becomes critical in explaining another country's history to its own people. But Embracing Defeat, John W. Dower's 2000 Pulitzer prize- winning history, published here in two volumes that have together sold about 122,000 copies in a few months, is well on its way to becoming just that kind of rare work."
[...]
"Furthermore, strong taboos on critical examination of the emperor's role, or indeed of the imperial system itself, are enforced by thuggish nationalists. Even today they have free run of Tokyo's streets and use high-decibel sound trucks to intimidate perceived opponents."
"Here, this is your freedom, said a man who called himself Abdul, briefly shining a flashlight in a darkened taxi to show his broken lower teeth. They were smashed with a rifle butt by Khan's men when Abdul was arrested for talking about politics, he said."
[...]
"'We have tried many governments in Afghanistan. The Taliban were the worst,' said a taxi driver. 'But in Herat, Ismail Khan is not much better.'"
"There is a nightly curfew, strictly enforced by men with automatic weapons. By day, recruits to Khan's private army march in the streets. Men with guns and uncertain loyalties are everywhere. Occasional unexplained shooting and explosions feed the rumor mill."
SALMAN RUSHDIE IS SOMETIMES AS SMART AS HE'S REPUTED TO BE:
"Around the world, the lessons of the American action in Afghanistan are being learned. Jihad is no longer quite as cool an idea as it was last fall. [...] Even Britain, a state which has been more tolerant of Islamist fanaticism than most, is beginning to distinguish between resisting 'Islamophobia' and providing a safe haven for some of the worst people in the world.
America did, in Afghanistan, what had to be done, and did it well. The bad news, however, is that these successes have not won new friends for the United States outside Afghanistan. In fact, the effectiveness of the American campaign may have made some parts of the world hate America more than they did before. Critics of the Afghan campaign in the West are enraged because they have been shown to be wrong at every step: no, American forces weren't humiliated the way the Russians had been; and yes, the air strikes did work; and no, the Northern Alliance didn't massacre people in Kabul; and yes, the Taliban did crumble away like the hated tyrants they were, even in their southern strongholds; and no, it wasn't that difficult to get the militants out of their cave fortresses; and yes, the various factions succeeded in putting together a new government that seems to have broad support among the people."
[...]
"Western anti-Americanism is an altogether more petulant phenomenon than its Islamic counterpart and far more personalized. Muslim countries don't like America's power, its 'arrogance,' its success; but in the non-American West, the main objection seems to be to American people. Night after night, I have found myself listening to Londoners' diatribes against the sheer weirdness of the American citizenry. The attacks on America are routinely discounted. ('Americans only care about their own dead.') American patriotism, obesity, emotionality, self-centeredness: these are the crucial issues."
PEARL KIDNAPPING at this point is simply being met with expressions of public confusion. Reports provide no evidence of his death, which Felicity Barringer blames on e-mail.
"Reporting on the kidnapping of Mr. Pearl has been prone to inaccuracies, in part because so much information has come via e-mail — a medium in which people can shift identities and addresses and disguise their electronic whereabouts with a few keystrokes."
DARPA IS BEING DARPA: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, that is, which you may recall more or less created the Internet, with some help from Al Gore. (The editorial staff at Amydgala was being sent print-outs of the SF-LOVERS mailing list off DARPA circa 1978.) Unsurprisingly, they're sponsoring a conference on Special Ops, with an eye to getting some of the increased money rightfully flowing to Special Operations.
"But Michael O'Hanlon, a defense expert at the Brookings Institution, said he hoped more money is put into Special Forces. 'It's such a small $3 billion base to start with that whatever gets put in will pay off,' he said."
MATTHEW PARRIS RESURRECTS TORY HOSITILITY TO THE US:
"What has happened to Conservative England’s distrust of America? When and how did it become smart on the British political Right to associate our country’s interests with those of the United States? Why is a craven attitude to Washington not seen among Tories as unpatriotic, in the way that craven attitudes to Brussels would be?
Anybody born after the 1960s could be forgiven for thinking that this was always so, and attributing it perhaps to the kinship of our language and culture and our rescue from Germany by the Americans in the second world war. But Spectator readers who remember the quarter-century which followed that war will remember a very different attitude among Tories, now almost vanished.
To many Britons of a conservative disposition then, America stood for much that was unwelcome in the modern world. America meant loose morals, divorce, sex, drugs and rock-and-roll. America meant ignorant people with loud voices and preposterous clothes. America meant noise. It meant the vulgar flaunting of wealth, an impatience with courtesy and a brutish disregard for the rights and sensibilities of older and more civilised peoples. America meant the intrusion into our language of ghastly new words and grammatical howlers: jargon, psychobabble and a mindless deference to fads and fashions of thought and speech. ‘What,’ inquired one language-fogy at the time, ‘is this dreadful new American word “commuter” appearing in our newspapers? What is wrong with a good old English expression like “people who travel some distance to and from their place of work every day”?"
I am, myself, rushing immediately to file an apology with the English Word Police for having used the dreadful American word "commuter," as well as "computer," which means "machine which calculates on binary numbers and enables me to do my work in endless forms of coding and which thinks Matthew Parris is a git herein."
2/04/2002 01:22:00 AM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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FASCINATING INTERVIEW with a ground level resigned junior CIA officer talking about what US intelligence is doing wrong in the Mid, Near, and Far, East. We know why we didn't have people reporting from the mosques, but he hammers home that we, of course, should have had them. Obviously, we still should, and that would just be a beginning.
2/04/2002 12:45:00 AM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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ARAFAT SPEAKS, or at least, someone drafts stuff into English, in his name.
Some of this is terribly nice, if words bore any resemblance to reality.
"They are terrorist organizations, and I am determined to put an end to their activities."
And, what, his vast comitment to democracy and civil rights has stopped him? The big fudge factor in his statement is:
"In addition, we seek a fair and just solution to the plight of Palestinian refugees who for 54 years have not been permitted to return to their homes."
Well, hey, me, too. But mostly you're talking about their descendents, and since obviously plunking everyone down into Israel is just another way of winning the war of extinction against Israel, that dog, as they say, doesn't hunt. But if you're willing to take all this nice money for resettlement, we've got a deal, buddy. Heck, I'm so nice, I'll split Jerusalem with you! Let's roll!
2/03/2002 12:01:00 AM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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