Sanely free of McCarthyite calling anyone a "traitor" since 2001!
Commenting Rules: Only comments that are courteous and respectful of other commenters will be allowed. Period. You must either open a Google/Blogger.com/Gmail Account, or sign into comments at the bottom of any post with OpenID, or LJ or Typepad or Wordpress or AIM account to comment.
Posting a spam-type URL will be grounds for deletion. Comments on posts over 21 days old are now moderated, and it may take me a while to notice and allow them.
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.
If you like my blog, and would like to help me continue to afford food and prescriptions, or simply enjoy my blogging and writing, and would like to support it --
you are welcome to do so via the PayPal buttons. In return: free blog! Thank you muchly muchly. Only you can help! (I'll just handle preventing forest fires while you're busy for a moment.)
Show your support by subscribing for $5/mo.! Free koala bear included! They're so cute!
Additional options! $25/month Supporter subscription!
$50/month Patron subscription!
"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
A while ago he told us about alltägsgeschichte: the history of everyday life. What he doesn't answer is the question why does German always sound like a sneeze?
OF ALL THE BLOG-WATCHERS, clearly this one is the most important, the most elegantly conceived, the most perceptive in its choice of blogs, the most delicious in its expression. Have I mentioned that QuasiPundit is excellent, and Punditwatch indispensible, and From Left Field a superb view?
Never, of course, would I engage in blogrolling. Heaven forfend.
BACK AND FORTH keeps going talk about the idea of returning to the '67 borders in return for full peace. There are huge problems on both sides, including the fact that "peace" can change in a week. On the other hand, the notion that that these are indefensible borders simply because they can be reached by artillery is nonsense in the missile age, not to mention the hybrid artillery-missile age. The biggest problem is credibility. Salami tactics, or willingness to stop savaging each other, and make a genuine settlement? You decide, but, then, most folks already have.
Me, I think it depends upon whom you talk to, and who winds up in control, here and there. Or, rather, there and there and there and there.
"Twenty-two acknowledged concubines and a library of 62,000 volumes attested the variety of his inclinations, and from the productions which he left behind him, it appears that the former as well as the latter were designed for use rather than ostentation."
I first read Gibbon when I was eight, and fell in love, and every few years return to him. I'm terribly fond, in general, of the rolling cadences of writers of the 19th and 18th centuries. Pray try the Gibbon-O-Matic!
"Another damned, thick, square, book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon?" (William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, upon receiving the second volume from the author, 1781)
ULP: Eyes wide. Here's a page -- an actual offical page of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice -- a shame they don't have several other categories, isn't it? -- that, well, makes you think only in Texas. It's the page listing the requested final meals of those who left Death Row. (A thoughtful footnote mentions "The final meal requested may not reflect the actual final meal served.")
Not only can one pick up tasty treat tips, it never occurred to me I'd ever find a page that has a link Return to Death Row Page.
These people favor cholesterol. Don't they know that's bad for their health?
There are all sorts of odd notes. One inmate's request was for "Justice, Equality, World Peace." Hard to swallow that. Another asked for "God's saving grace, love, truth, peace and freedom." Also a bit indigestible. Several asked for a smoke, and it is noted that "(cigarettes prohibited by policy)." Which creeps me out. They're legal, still, right? Y'know, call me a liberal, but I think it's okay if a murderer gets a last smoke before he's offed.
I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that.
One of my guidelines in life is
You probably got it all figured out, Corey. If you start out depressed everything's kind of a pleasant surprise.
COLLEAGUES HONORDanny Pearl. I'm not going to collect the set; there will be so many, and rightfully so. I just bow my head. He had, in his pictures, a lovely smile. And he died in service to his nation, and in service of seeking the truth, which is a service to our nation, as much as any of our brave soldiers' mission, and I honor that, and his volunteering.
2/22/2002 05:10:00 AM |permanent link| | Main Page |
Other blogs commenting on this post
0 comments
MY IDEA: We haul them up three thousand feet, douse them in jet fuel, light them, drop them, drop endless tons of steel and other material on them as they incinerate, and that's too kind for the profiteers.
ANNALS OF TASTE: EBay Is Asked to Remove Trade Center Items
The Bloomberg administration demanded yesterday...
Note switch from headline.
...that eBay, the Internet auction company, remove World Trade Center memorabilia from its Web site, calling some of the items for sale "blatant attempts to profit from mass murder" and "nauseating."
Hey, anyone want to buy these chunks of hair, and gold teeth from Auschwitz? Great memorabilia! Conversation pieces!
I'm reminded of the article before I was blogging which carried an account of a fellow encountering someone else near the WTC area during the day after, noting the latter guy carrying some stuff. When first guy asked what second guy was doing, and was told that second guy was carrying off some souvenirs to sell, he testified, and I paraphrase from memory, "I'm afraid I became so upset, I punched him in the nose."
I have this terribly unorthodox notion that there are other values than profit uber alles. No, I don't want a law passed to enforce my prejudices here. I'm just noting that there are other values than profit.
Tangentially, I'd like to see extreme social opproprium directed at anyone using red, white, and blue, and particularly imagery modeled on the American flag, for commercial use. I particularly direct this at tv networks using such in their logos, but also at any advertiser doing this. It's not patriotism. It's attempting to gain viewers and buyers, and profit from pseudo-patriotism, to attempt to suggest that "if you're really patriotic, you'll watch/buy us," and I think it's nauseating.
Patriotism isn't demonstrated through displaying a set of colors, nor can one claim it for one's self through waving a banner, seeking to be appreciated. That's the opposite of the idea of self-sacrifice in the cause of freedom. It makes me want to vomit. And then do the 3000 feet routine.
ANTERIOR CINGULATE is another alternative possible name for this blog.
Brain imaging experiments are beginning to show that when a person gets an unexpected reward — the equivalent of a huge shot of delicious apple juice — more dopamine reaches the anterior cingulate. When a person expects a reward and does not get it, less dopamine reaches the region. And when a person expects a reward and gets it, the anterior cingulate is silent.
SUPERMAN FOR IRANIAN SUPREME LEADER: Joe Klein has a LETTER FROM TEHRAN at The New Yorker's website that probably won't be up much longer. Here's a bit from the beginning, starting with a quote from one of the participants in the sympathy demonstration on September 11th, speaking three months later:
"Do you want to know what I was really worried about?" she said, pausing for ironic effect. "Woody Allen. I didn't want him to die. I wanted to know that he was all right. I love his films."
But wasn't she pleased by President Khatami's statement? "Khatami! I don't believe in Khatami. I believe in Superman." She shrugged and raised her eyebrows. "At least in the world of Superman there is a certain logic. There are rules. There is no logic in the world of Khatami. He's just part of an irrational system. At the top of the system is the Supreme Leader." This is actually a constitutional office, occupied by the chief religious figure in the country. Its first, and most memorable, occupant was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini; since Khomeini's death, in 1989, the office has been held, less notably, by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "But nobody believes in the Supreme Leader," she went on. "Everybody believes in Khatami. Everybody votes for Khatami, who has none of the power. Nobody votes for the conservatives, but they have all of the power. So I like the fantasy of Superman better than the fantasy of Khatami."
There's Red Khatami, see, and Blue Khamenei. I'm not sure where the Legion of Super-Pets fits in, though. Perhaps Col. Khadfy is Beppo the Super-monkey.
A more serious quote:
"Iran is a kaleidoscope," says Kenneth Pollack, who is the deputy director of national-security studies for the Council on Foreign Relations and who was a director for Persian Gulf affairs at the National Security Council during the Clinton Administration. "There are fourteen dozen different positions on each issue, and it is very difficult to say with any certainty which of the insiders support which position. [...] It's not impossible that some of them were sending a message to Khatami as well as to us with the Karine A."
After the success of The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Caroline Kennedy is editing two more books, a sign the Kennedy name is even more popular in publishing than in politics. Profiles in Courage for Our Time [and] The Patriot's Handbook: Poems, Songs and Speeches Every American Should Know.
SHEDDING LIGHT: I have a dreadful tendency to assume that anyone who reads me is reading Patrick Nielsen Hayden's extraordinarily fine Electrolite blog, because Patrick and I go back with each other to when we were newts, and tend to be about 90% in agreement with each other on almost everything, and for me he's simply there.
An unfortunate result of that, I've realized, is that I almost never link to specific items in his blog, and it occurs to me that this is unfair and silly, since my presumption is surely not wholly true. Not to mention that he is brilliant, insightful, one of the smartest people I've ever known, an extraordinary editor, and can write rings, curlicues, and Art Deco designs around me, and most of the planet.
So let me note his sagecomments about the Indiana students' objection to the Thomas Hart Benton mural which includes, intending to depict a horrible thing educationally, members of the KKK burning a cross.
As well, his comments and link about contemporary slavery in Mauritania. Below, his comments about zero-tolerance in schools.
Then just keep reading down to the bottom, and as you have time, read all his archives. You won't regret it.
IRANIAN VISIONS: Bruce Sterling also linked to this, and it's a fascinating, well-written, glimpse into the point-of-view of a sophisticated Iranian woman of 28, who has lived in America, on a visit back to Tehran, at a party, enjoying and disenjoying the treats, the flirting, the opium, and the culture. Very immersive. Go read it.
The entire publication, The Iranian, is interesting.
FEAR OF THE FUTURE: Bruce Sterling thinks this essay by Judith Berman, from the New York Review of Science Fiction is one of the most important pieces of sf criticism of the past decade. It's a valid-sounding point, and I don't think I have a sweeping enough view of the field at present to strongly agree or disagree with how valid it is or isn't. The critique boils down to this point:
We have a field that is increasingly fearful of the present, looking ever more wistfully toward the past.
Perhaps so. I'd observe that the field has some other ongoing problems, perhaps largest of which is the way what once was science fiction has become part of normal cultural life; I'm not simply referring to technology, but to a cultural change in which the entire sf outlook of neophilia and being technology-positive, formerly a small ghetto, has been subsumed into a vastly larger geek culture, itself part of the majority culture, in which sf tropes and outlook are diluted and subsumed, absorbed into advertising, and every-day news of cloning, nanotechnology, and endless more koolness, while simultaneously, the larger world has come to identify "science fiction" not with the cutting edge work, but with mass-media action/adventure tv/movie "sci-fi," so that where people who might once have identified themselves specifically as "science fiction people" now largely view themselves as part of geekdom, nerdom, the online world.
Why look to the world of science fiction for what people used to, when the world around us is now that world? But this is merely a continuation of a trend I was writing about over twenty years ago, and which many others have written about, so I'm not really saying anything new.
And this is not to say there aren't tons of great sf presently and recently coming out, mind.
Berman also says that
The phenomenon of sf nostalgia is particularly odd in comparison with, say, the social sciences. [...]Too much nostalgia poisons vitality and creativity in any field. But sf should be especially allergic to nostalgia.
True enough. However, this also fights against the only partially true observation of Peter Graham's that "the Golden Age of science fiction is twelve." It speaks nothing against the maturity, grace, and brilliance of the upper crust of contemporary sf that few of its practioners did not first fall in love with the field near that age.
2/21/2002 07:24:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
Other blogs commenting on this post
0 comments
HEAVY BREATHING IN KANDAHAR: From Japan Today we learn about the new craze sweeping the town: satellite tv porn!
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — In a darkened room at the back of a teashop in dusty downtown Kandahar, 23-year-old Latif stands mouth agape, giggling nervously, staring at the first pair of breasts he can remember seeing.
CAN YOU BE MORE SPECIFIC? A futurologist's timeline predictions of what technology will bring us, in multiple categories, over the next 40 years, in PDF form. Rather silly, really, particularly as the predictions come in three or four word phrases, leaving them, as a rule, more than a little vague. For instance, "orgasm by e-mail" in 2010. I imagine there are some having those right now. Similarly "multimedia patient records" for the same year. Etc. Still, amusing, and you have to admire the impudence. I rather prefer Terry Bisson's "Today In History" though.
2/21/2002 05:40:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
Other blogs commenting on this post
0 comments
ISRAEL'S SUPREME COURT has ruled that those who undergo Reform or Conservative conversions are Jews. For the first time.
This is of huge importance to Jews in various ways. Most Jews in Israel are, of course, secular and non-religious. But those who are religious are divided amongst the mildly religious, with a bow towards Orthodox tradition, and then the modern Orthodox, and the stricter, and then we start dividing into various sectarian groups, most of whom are usually called by the others, the "ultra-Orthodox," though they are not fond of the label. The latter, though a distinct minority, do have political power out of proportion with their numbers, due to their tendency to vote as blocs in several political parties, of which the Israeli Knesset is divided into many.
In any case, the number of Jews following Reform and Conservative practices in Israel is small, but in the rest of the world, they are the overwhelming majority of Jews, particularly in America. The ultra-Orthodox response to this decision, naturally, is that it is heresy, and the Supreme Court has no authority in such matters. Given that Israel is a parliamentry democracy, not a theocracy, my own response is that they are entitled to whatever view of "who is a Jew" they like, as am I, and as are the secular authorities of the Israeli state, including the Supreme Court.
"Israel is the state of the Jewish people," Judge Barak wrote. "There are different streams in Judaism active in Israel and abroad.
"Every stream acts according to its own views. Every Jew in Israel — like every person who is not Jewish — is entitled to freedom of religion, conscience and organization. Our basic concepts grant every individual the freedom to decide whether he will belong to one stream or another."
SURVIVOR STORIES: The Guardian/Observer has stories from people who survived the WTC. First-person accounts, worth reading, if you can take it.
(I've been trying to figure out makes the difference between people who react so strongly to what happened, and those who don't, because it isn't just proximity to what happened; anyone with opinions, I'd like to hear them.)
A GREYER LOOK: this is an interesting graphic alternative view of the voting in the 2000 election, when states are not colored on a winner-take-each-state basis, but on a percentage-within-state basis. It's, I think, a far more useful visual metaphor than the simplistic "red-state/blue-state" rhetoric we've so wearily become used to.
2/21/2002 04:09:00 AM |permanent link| | Main Page |
Other blogs commenting on this post
0 comments
I WAS SO POOR... Remember Senator Byrd and SecTreasury O'Neill going at each other a couple of weeks ago on this theme? Colbert King provides some better lines, and some thoughts. I'll quote some lines:
We were so poor, burglars used to break into our house and leave money.
We were so poor that our front door and back door were on the same hinge.
I was so poor that in my neighborhood, the rainbow was black and white.
I was so poor, when I was born, Momma and Daddy bought me a stroller. I made the last three payments myself.
I was so poor, my family received CARE packages from the Third World.
I was so poor growing up, my favorite food was ice.
I was so poor that once my arithmetic teacher in grade school asked, "If I had $2 in one pocket and $3 in another pocket, what would I have?" I told her, "Someone else's pants!"
I was so poor that:
"One Christmas I got a battery with a note saying 'toy not included'.
"I once went to McDonald's and put a milkshake on layaway.
"We used to wave around a Popsicle stick and call it air-conditioning.
"Our family ate cereal with a fork to save milk.
"I had to join the Army to get a haircut.
"When somebody came in our house and lit a cigarette, my daddy shouted 'Clap your hands, stomp your feet, praise the Lord, we have heat.'"
King went on to point out that Byrd's claim that
"When you're talking about those 'ordinary people,' you're talking about senators."
"Civilized people -- Muslims, Christians and Jews -- all understand that the source of freedom and human dignity is the Creator," Ashcroft said in prepared remarks released by the Justice Department. "Civilized people of all religious faiths are called to the defense of His creation. We are a nation called to defend freedom -- a freedom that is not the grant of any government or document, but is our endowment from God."
This will help our relations with India simply no end.
Hindus, civilized? Nah. There's 786 million uncivilized people. Buddhists, civilized? Nah, 362 million uncivilized people. 211 million uncivilized atheists. 188 million practioners of Chinese folk religion. 16 million Sikhs. Millions more followers of Confucianism, Baha'i, and Jainism. All misled uncivilized folk. And Shintoism? Well, who cares about those uncivilized Japanese?
And no one but one of the "people of the Book" can find, understand, or practice, freedom or dignity, save, perhaps, by converting (and guess which of those three religions Ashcroft believes is the only one that allows you to not burn in hell?). Of course, this is a fellow so badly read in history that he believes people such as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and all the other Founding Fathers were Christians.
Justice Department spokeswoman Susan Dryden said yesterday's speech was intended as a multifaith appeal for unity in the war on terrorism.
"The attorney general will generally make comments that are appropriate to his audience," Dryden said. "The message is that we all need to get along in order to fight a common enemy."
All of us, except, of course, much of the world, and a significant portion of the citizenry of the United States of America.
Here is the text of his prepared remarks. (This was not linked to by the Washington Post; I dug it out from the DOJ myself, as this is Amygdala, the blog that does original research.)
Ashcroft did not go off-text in identifying "Civilized people -- Muslims, Christians and Jews." He then further goes on to distinguish the crucial distinction between "those who embrace a biblical understanding of creation" and those who do not. Later, he specifies again:
For people of all faiths -- be they Christians, Jews or Muslims...
Those other faiths and non-faiths just don't exist in John Ashcroft's universe. Now, I recognize that his intent here was to reach out from beyond his Pentecostal sect, and even beyond Christianity.
But it just won't do to declare that the only civilized people in the world are religious followers of these three religions. Were he making such statements as a private citizen, that is eminently his right; but to speak this way as the Attorney General of the United States of America, making an official address, to declare that a considerable portion of the citizenry of our nation is not civilized is, well, the word is "disgraceful."
IGNORANT MCCARTHYISM. Sheryl McCarthy wonders in Newsday:
Why is Washington so obsessed with Hussein? Is he truly the personification of evil, the sponsor of terrorism, the potential wielder of mass destruction that Washington makes him out to be? Or is this obsession really about something else?
No, he's not the "personification of evil," of course, though he's as evil as... well, ask any of his own people when they're free to speak, or a Kuwaiti, to tell you. Or an Israeli who held her terrified child in a shelter as missiles rained down from Iraq. Or an American or coalition soldier who fought against his forces. Ask, even, an Iranian whose children or brothers are dead, thanks to Hussein.
Is he a sponsor of terrorism? Yes, grandly at times, though he's been low-key of late.
The answer, of course, to anyone who has read Iraqi history, is c) "potential wielder of mass destruction," as well as "invader of neighbors." Perhaps McCarthy didn't notice a little mass slaughter known as the Iran-Iraq War? The Gulf War? The nuke plant at Osirak, in one of the greatest oil powers in the world, whose sole purpose was construction of nuclear weapons? Not to mention being a totalitarian mass murderer of his own people, whose oppression of Arab people is one hundred thousand times greater than anything the most militant Israeli has ever dreamed?
In Hussein's case, it means poison gas of the type used in World War I, and biological weapons - or germs - for which there is no delivery system in existence to spread them to large populations or to an enemy far away.
Here's where I leapt to my section title. I mean, how does one respond to idiocy of this level? The "delivery system" for biological weapons, you complete moron, is anything from a contaminated piece of clothing, to an animal, to a bottle of ostensible hair-spray, to an infected human. The potential number of delivery systems are literally infinite, even setting aside whether we are considering airborne pathogens, degrees of human-vector contagiousness, and other factors. What sort of "delivery system" does she think bubonic plague needed in the 14th century? Or the Influenza of 1918 that killed more people than all those killed in World War I? Or for smallpox? Etc.
And of course Hussein has vast stores of chemical weapons, as the procedures are the same as making insecticide; it's basic chemistry, a high school student can do it with some money to scale up to industrial size. This is stupider than declaring that rockets can't work because they have nothing to push against in a vacuum.
Further, this twit McCarthy apparently is totally clueless as to Hussein's history of using chemical weapons! For god's sake, how many other countries used mustard gas in the last half of the twentieth century? Who has been the only country in history to use nerve gas in warfare? (A bit beyond "of the type used in World War I," as if that were somehow safely primitive, anyway.) To make major use of nerve gas? Who else has used tabun and sarin? Has some other country killed over twenty thousand people in war using chemical weapons lately? Has some other country attacked over 80,000 people of their own citizens with nerve and mustard gas? McCarthy hasn't got a clue! Has she read a single book on Iraq? A single book on the Iran-Iraq war? More than two paragraphs? What makes people think they are qualified to write about subjects they obviously know nothing about?
Hussein has allegedly tried in the past to develop nuclear weapons.
Allegedly? Unbelievable! Sheer ignorance. Try two minutes of research, lady.
But that's difficult in a country that doesn't even own a nuclear reactor or warheads capable of delivering atomic bombs.
Uh, right. What's the point of responding to gibberish like this? To someone who doesn't even know what a "warhead" is? Or an actual "delivery system"? Or who thinks you need a nuclear reactor to obtain radiological material, or fissionable material? I've known less ignorant fourth-graders. Christ, how many tens of millions of people have even just read, say, a Tom Clancy novel, and know more?
And the myth that Iraq is stealing or importing plutonium from former Soviet Bloc countries to make a bomb is just that - a myth.
Golly, I'm glad her personal intelligence service can inform her of this. How much is she paying Miss Cleo?
Pakistan and India are further along the nuclear weapons road than Iraq.
Yes, I think we can safely say that their each having EXPLODED OVER SIX OF THEM might let us agree that they are "along... the...road."
So why is Hussein the bad guy?
Here's a wild guess: because he INVADES OTHER COUNTRIES, and LAUNCHES MISSILE ATTACKS ON OTHER COUNTRIES?
The main reason for Washington's obsession, however, is that he's a strong leader who refuses to be controlled by the United States in a region where we have strategic interests - oil and Israel.
Right. That's why he's up there with the Sultan of Quatar, the princes of Saudi Arabia, the emirs of the United Arab Emirates, and Col. Quaddfi, all our pliant puppets. We just hate strong leaders who aren't our puppets. That's it. It's not because of any actual threats or past actions or plans for future action on Iraq's part. It's just US willfulness. Blame America.
Americans still believe that George Bush Sr.'s failure to finish off Hussein is the reason he wasn't re-elected.
They do? On my planet, they believe it's because the economy went into the tank, and George Bush 41 looked out of touch with the American public, and uninterested and complacent about domestic policy. But on her planet, Clinton won by compaigning on "It's the failure to topple Hussein, stupid," not "it's the economy, stupid." That she's from a parallel dimension, in which Dick Cheney wears a goatee, explains much.
[...] For the moment, he is George W. Bush's version of the evil empire. And just as the Cold War was used as the pretext for doing things the government wanted to do anyway...
But the Soviet Union was an evil empire, and the overwhelming majority of former citizens of that entity will tell you so at great length. Not to mention that there's a tad of documentation (somehow I suspect she's not read, say, Robert Conquest).
And the Cold War, well, explain your theory to someone from Eastern Europe. It was all a US provacation. Uh-huh. No actual oppressed people involved.
Mirror universe. It's the kindest explanation. (Item via The Sideshow who thought McCarthy had a "good question." )
ANDREW SULLIVAN IN FORM. Having disagreed with Sullivan at times, and had an occasional unkind remark for him, I must note how I agree with the overwhelming majority of opinions on his front page at the moment. Running downwards (backwards), he:
a) points out a remark of the typically insane sort Michael Moore has moved onto these days, identifying the true evil not as al Queda or terrorism, but, of course, George Bush.
b) notes a Michael Kinsley/Maureen Dowd lovefest, quotes Dowd quoting a lovely remark by Kinsley:
“Calling Ari Fleischer ‘a great evasive bore,’ Michael Kinsley wrote: ‘Fleischer speaks a sort of imperial court English, in which any question, no matter how specific, is parried with general assurances that the emperor is keenly aware and deeply concerned and firmly resolved and infallibly right and the people are fully supportive and further information should be sought elsewhere.’"
c) congratulates Rosie O'Donnell for coming out, but chides her for not doing so earlier.
d) rightfully chides Maureen Dowd for ignorance of both secrecy in warfare and the uses of untruth in same.
e) slashes at the right wing of California Republicans for continuing to self-destructively assert the primacy of losing ideological extremism over winning moderation.
f) attacks Hugo Young'sGuardian proposal for a British-Russian alliance to oppose the US.
h) is astounded at the hypocrisy of the American right on Justice Scalia's remarkable assertion that Catholic judges should all resign, noting the volcanos that would be exploding if this opinion came from the left.
i) and, well, just goes on and on with lots more largely extremely on-target observations, even, notably, being supportive of questions Nicholas Kristoff has been asking in the New York Times about the Phillipine campaign.
Sullivan is on a roll, a particularly admirable one for toeing no party line but his own.
MEANWHILE, ON THE BRITISH LEFT, in the Guardian, of course, Will Hutton agrees with Parris's doubts about America, ranting from opposite, yet strangely aligned, perspective.
America's lap-dog... stark choice... increasingly... intolerant US... damned... US... fantastic military superiority... 'absolutist and simplistic' approach to the rest of the world that is ultimately self-defeating. It is also intellectually and morally wrong. [...] will upset the fabric of law on which international relations rests, as well as destabilising the Middle East.
Yes, how grateful we are that the Middle East is so comfortingly stable at present; all good men and women wish it to remain as it is!
Tony Blair is reported to have said privately that 'if we can get rid of Baghdad, we should', a devastatingly naive remark which so far stands uncorrected. This is the traditional British view that insists we stick close to the US.
Andrew Sullivan's response to this:
Actually, it's the traditional British view that it's probably sensible to protect yourself from a dirty nuclear bomb.
Hutton continues:
But it's not the same good America. The postwar US that reconstructed Europe and led an international liberal economic and social order has disappeared completely.
I believe he's lamenting the defeat of Adlai Stevenson.
Its former leaders would no more volunteer the scale of defence spending now contemplated in the US - a 12 per cent, $48 billion increase on an already stunning military budget....
Yet somehow is actually unfamiliar with the Truman Administration, the one that promised to contain Soviet Communism, that changed the American military structure with the 1947 National Security Act in far more revolutionary fashion than anything since, that poured money into defense in "peacetime" in utterly more unprecedented fashion than the current bump which doesn't even quite bring us back to the Reagan levels, I believe.
... US unilateralism is uncompromisingly absolutist because it is ideological, which is what it makes so dangerous. [...] The emergence of the largely reactionary south and west of the US...
Has anyone informed the people of California, Oregon, and Washington State, not to mention Hawaii, that they are reactionary in having Democractic Governors, state leadership, and having given their electoral votes to Albert Gore? Perhaps this blitheringly ignorant flibbertigibet Hutton should inform them.
Hutton works towards conclusion:
...no longer being US conservatism's lapdog. We cannot, for example, be part of the US national missile defence system if its purpose is to destroy the fabric of international law or join America's war against Iraq.
Hutton has done what I thought impossible; given me a reason to say something disagreeing with someone opposing immediate attempts to implement NMD. But I'm agog at the idea that he thinks it would "join America's war against Iraq" -- i.e. work (else how could it join, you nitwit?) in time for war with Iraq. The further necessary corallary is that rather than see it work, better to see Iraq successfully launch a missile with a weapon of mass destruction at the US. Golly, that's an argument I and other Americans are sure to be sympathetic with.
[...] Labour will break over too-slavish fealty to this US. This is the new political drama. Watch out.
MATTHEW PARRIS, British Conservative writer, is distinctly out of tune with the American Right:
It is quite possibly true that modern English Conservatives are now discovering in themselves a snooty motivation for rather admiring the American upper classes. Across the Atlantic the privileged have held on to their class values and self-respect rather better than their English counterparts, and it has in fact been true for the better part of a century that a real American gent or a true American lady could make what passes for the British upper crust look pretty provincial. A smart New England dinner party has always outclassed its Home Counties equivalent; and for style, money, education, culture, sophistication and sheer good manners, Park Avenue leaves Belgravia standing.
[...]
But Edward will not be surprised that, just as I would never have thought that snobbishness was a good reason for recoiling from an Anglo-American political alliance, so I cannot now accept that, because a certain sort of Spectator reader (or writer) feels flattered by the patronage of classy Americans and would like to go deer-shooting with the men of a good New England family, serious British Conservatives should imagine that the war aims of the Republican party should become an object of reverence here.
And there is a graver reason not to crave too keenly the patronage of well-born Wasps. Well-born Wasps are not the future of the United States. The Eastern Seaboard is not the future of the United States. The future of the United States will be guided by individuals and ideas of a coarser sort. Texas and California, not Vermont and Massachusetts, are the template. Be clear, Atlantic-leaning Tories, which America you are going to have to learn to love and respect.
Matthew hasn't gotten with the populist mantra the American right finds so useful: America is a classless society. We are all self-made people. Anyone can be President and a millionaire. Birth means nothing. Asserting there are any sorts of classes is to engage in class warfare, which is un-American. There is no privilege. Being "of the people" isn't "coarse," but populist and good, as is one student of Andover and Yale, scion of a multi-millionaire dynasty, the guy, oh, yeah, Parris is disagreeing with. You-known-who.
Bad Parris. He's attacking the policy substance and the mythology.
NEWISH GOOGLE LANGUAGES: Latest additions include Belarusian, Javanese, Occitan, Thai, Urdu, and Klingon. That's on top of "bork, bork, bork!," Elmer Fudd, Hacker, Interlingua, Pig Latin, and that really weird one, Welsh.
Or you could always pornolize a site, juvenile and excessive as that might be.
CHEERY: Want some botulinum? Ebola? Bubonic plague?
Former Army scientist Richard Crosland kept scrupulous notes about the frozen crystals he kept in his lab, and for good reason: The crystals contained botulinum toxin, a biological poison so deadly a single gram could kill a million people.
For 11 years, Crosland carefully logged each shipment of toxin he received and accounted for every molecule, thinking somebody would want to know. But no one asked -- not once during his career as an Army biodefense researcher, and not when he left the job in 1997, hauling away boxes of personal effects that no one checked.
"No one asked questions," Crosland said of his time at U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), the Pentagon's top biodefense research center at Fort Detrick, Md. "You could literally walk out with anything."
RALPH REED'S MEMO helpfully explained what he could do for Enron, and what matters.
"In public policy," he wrote, "it matters less who has the best arguments and more who gets heard -- and by whom."
Also, how it works.
"There are certain people -- a friend or family member, key party person, civic or business leader, or major donor -- whose correspondence must be presented to the [elected] official for his personal reading and response," Reed wrote.
Such prominent figures could act as surrogates for Enron while pressing lawmakers to rewrite statutes, Reed said.
"We have the capacity to generate dozens of high-touch letters from an elected official's strongest supporters and the most influential opinion leaders in his district," he wrote.
All you have to do is pay enough. He thoughtfully offered options at $170,000, $25,000, $79,500, and $30,000; all non-exclusive, mind, just parts of the package, including telemarketing, putting puppets, er, guests, on talk radio shows, letters from "prominent figures" sent to major media, and then "fax-blasted," "facilitating letters to members of Congress," and so on.
"I have long-term friendships with many members of Congress."
Reed proposed sending 20 "facilitating letters" to each of 17 members of the congressional commerce committees that handle deregulation. Under the proposal, Enron would pay Reed's firm $170,000 for generating the letters, each signed by a third party.
Whois results for: NIPR-DOM@whois.nic.mil (NIPR-DOM) DOD Network Information Center (NIPR-DOM) 7990 Science Applications Court MS CV-50 Vienna, VA 22183-7000
BATTLEGROUND GOD; I was amused, but I usually like passing tests.
Battleground Analysis Congratulations! You have been awarded the TPM medal of honour! This is our highest award for outstanding service on the intellectual battleground.
The fact that you progressed through this activity neither being hit nor biting a bullet suggests that your beliefs about God are internally consistent and very well thought out.
A direct hit would have occurred had you answered in a way that implied a logical contradiction. You would have bitten bullets had you responded in ways that required that you held views that most people would have found strange, incredible or unpalatable. However, you avoided both these fates - and in doing so qualify for our highest award. A fine achievement!
[...]
7.73% of the people who have completed this activity, like you, emerged unscathed with the TPM Medal of Honour.
BUCHANAN AND NADER, the morning after the last attempt at a national election, via Matt Welch's eyewitness account.
Postscript
After two hours of sleep, I woke up the next morning and vomited bile.
Nader was holding a morning–after press conference at the National Press Club, and I was a little short on taxi money, so I staggered down 15th Street, trying not to smell the car fumes or think unproductive thoughts. For reasons beyond my control, my mind kept replaying a scene from the Green Party party the night before (though it felt like it might have been years ago), in which one middle–aged Nader supporter said to a friend, without a hint of a smile: "I wouldn't vote for Al Gore if we was running against Adolf Hitler."
As if on cue, the first person I saw up at the Press Club was none other than Pat Buchanan. The dozens of reporters there to cross–examine The Spoiler largely ignored the Reform Party candidate, leaving him to stand awkwardly in the lobby until a couple of wide–eyed young buzzcuts shyly asked if they could take a picture with him.
The tall crazy Green from the night before then strode in, took one look at Buchanan's leathery red face, and boomed out: "Shoulder–to–shoulder on trade! Shoulder–to–shoulder on trade!" Pat laughed that weird laugh of his.
I leaned my own shoulder against the staircase, trying to get through a sudden head rush and gag reflex. There were more reporters than at any Nader press conference I had been to, and I wondered if now wouldn't be a bad time to head straight for the Western Union near the crackhouses on 13th Street, and leave this depressing post–mortem exercise to the professional Beltway cynics.
Then Nader walked in. The man whose supporters had been so anxious the night before about Gore losing –– to the point of creating, even before the first polls closed, a bogus mathematical "formula" to "prove" Nader didn't tip the election to Bush –– had the biggest grin I'd ever seen on his face before noon.
READY TO BE STRATEGICALLY INFLUENCED? Theoretically you don't have to worry if you're an American, since efforts will only be addressed towards other countries. And, of course, there is no international intermix and flow of news. So Americans are utterly shielded from these efforts. Absolutely. You betchum.
Myself, I think it might be more than prudent to separate white (open) progaganda from black (covert) propaganda efforts, but what do I know? Credibility problems, what, me worry? (From the leaks in this article, obviously some Pentagon johnnies and janies have said worries.)
SCOTUS WILL HEAR ON COPYRIGHT LENGTH. Stories on Eldred v. Ashcroft, 01-618 will be all over.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to intervene in a fight over copyrights, deciding whether Congress has sided too heavily with writers and other inventors.
The outcome will determine when hundreds of thousands of books, songs and movies will be freely available on the Internet or in digital libraries.
Groups challenging copyright law argued that justices should protect the public's right to material.
The Bush administration urged the court to reject the groups' appeal.
[...]
In 1790, copyrights lasted 14 years. Now it's 70 years after the death of the inventor, if the person is known.
Lawrence Lessig, attorney for the challengers, said the latest 20-year extension approved by Congress in 1998 is ill-timed and unconstitutional.
I'm not sure it's clearly unconstitutional, and I think it mostly likely that the Supreme Court of the Us will uphold Ashcroft, but I do think Congress should not have made all of the 11 extensions of copyright term, particularly the last 20 year one in 1998, no matter that it brought US law into alignment with European Union law (woo-hoo). It's way over-balanced; thirty or fifty years after being made public, flat, should be plenty for creators and heirs to benefit under all but extremely rare circumstances.
One place to read the appeals court decision is here.
One of the things I don't like is the blog where someone says something like, 'Today I had a cheese sandwich.' That's the kind of thing you see in most of these blogs. You know, fascinating. I don't give a flying ... whatever what you ate. Don't tell me you have a flat tire.
In The Ancient Days, when I was in the sf fanzine milieu, decades ago, we'd call that the part of the zine where people succumbed to explaining at tremendous length Why This Issue Is Late because of mimeo ink gun breakdown, yadda yadda, or describe every detail of what happened on their drive to the convention. Some folks just never grasp the difference between the telling detail and telling every detail, or that less can be more.
I'd not known about the dead blog oh, 'tis piteous, the site. And Ted Sturgeon's 90% observation was invoked. How thrilled he'd be to see himself described as a "sci-fi writer," though I did years ago face the fact that that was a battle lost. I just still whine now and again, whilst I also argue with other old fogy sf fans to convince them that We Lost The War, Please Come Out Of The Bunker.
Jennifer Bleyer of NewsForChange, published Sept. 27, 2000:
NewsForChange: What do you say to the question that’s on a lot of people’s minds, is a vote for Nader a vote for Bush?
Michael Moore: Number one, Bush is not going to win. I truly believe that, because the people of this country are not that stupid. He’s behind 52 to 38 (percent) right now and every week he goes lower and lower. He’s going to continue to sink like a stone.
Yes, I believe that Bush stole the election. But it never would have been possible without all the keen Nader fans who knew that there's no important difference between Bush and Gore, nor would it have been possible without the election otherwise being so unbelievably close. I wish Michael Moore had stuck with making fun of big corporations; the Peter Principle seems to have applied to him even without the benefit of his being in a large organization.
2/19/2002 02:30:00 AM |permanent link| | Main Page |
Other blogs commenting on this post
0 comments
ANTI-SEMITISM IN EUROPE: I've largely stayed away from the charges and counter-charges going back on this, increasingly in the past year, pretty much because I thought enough, wise and stupid, was being said by others, whether in various of the newspapers and magazines involved, or in other blogs. And I don't address more than a fraction of what I read and what interests me, until I happen to be moved to speak.
This latest Guardianpronunciamento by Peter Beaumont moved me. He says
the problem with all this talk of a 'new anti-Semitism' is that those who argue hardest for its inexorable rise are dangerously conflating two connected but critically separate phenomena. The monster that they have conjured from these parts is not only something that does not yet exist - and I say 'yet' with caution - but whose purported existence is being cynically manipulated by some in the Israeli government to try to silence debate about the policies of the Sharon government.
There are several obvious reasons for many in the Israeli government -- not a famously monolitic bloc, I might note, as is obvious to anyone who has read memoirs of Israeli officials, and I'm speaking strictly of officials, not Knesset members -- to highlight news of and accusations of anti-Semitism in Europe; many are good reasons, and they're in the majority over cynical attempts to cover Sharon or Israel with a Blanket of Critical Invulnerability, though that doubtless goes on from time to time.
But I'm less than reassured by Beaumont's flat assertion that an increase in European anti-Semitism is "something that does not yet exist." This reminds me of that airport manager in Dubai I cited in recent weeks, who asserted equally flatly that there was no smuggling whatsoever at Sharjah airport.
It's the sort of assertion that is inherently doubtful, as it is non-provable, is based on no objective citations whatsoever, and thus causes one to doubt the surety of the speaker, and thus more about the speaker, such as where this surety comes from, and what is behind it. Anti-Semitism? No, it's perfectly explainable as sheer idiocy, played at warding off what may or may not be a valid charge.
So what are the facts about anti-Semitism in Europe?
It is a fact, my Jewish friends tell me, that they feel more exposed to criticism and misunderstanding than at any time they can remember by those who sloppily confuse the fact of their Jewishness with the controversial policies being enacted by Sharon - something, they tell me, has reminded them how they are viewed as 'other'.
It appears to have escaped Beaumont that this is an extremely mild, even perhaps close to innocuous, form of anti-Semitism, itself. Close to, but not the same as, innocuous. Even if it is true that
...these are subjective rather than objective judgments.
He included in this
It is a fact too that Jewish communities feel more in danger than ever before following the events of 11 September and the explicit anti-Semitic threat posed....
And notes that
Objectively too it is undeniable that there has indeed been a rise in anti-Semitic attacks across Europe.
and goes on to attribute it all to
largely disaffected Islamic youths, a group itself that is the victim of some of the worst race hate and discrimination in Europe.
Who is to blame?
For it is Israel's handling of the al-Aqsa intifada that has supplied the second strand in the equation....
Yeah, it's those damned Jews' fault.
What they are talking about is the criticism in the media and political classes of Europe of the policies of Sharon.
Well, no, mostly not. I've never been a lover of Ariel Sharon, and in fact have spent a great deal of time in the past as a member of organizations opposing his policies. And so I don't confuse critiques -- knowledgeable critiques -- of his or other Likud policies with anti-Semitism. And while some do, I think most Jews are equally capable of making the distinction, whether they are in Israel, where you'll hear more virulent criticism of Sharon than anywhere else, though mostly of the comparatively sane variety, or outside Israel.
Israel's brutal response to the often equally reprehensible anti-Israeli Palestinian violence of the intifada has produced one of the most vigorous media critiques of Israel's policies in the European media in a generation.
And some of it is sensible and reasonable, and much of it is ignorant, foolish, and bigoted. Ya have to go piece by piece, often line by line.
The reply to this criticism, say those most vocal in reporting the existence of the new anti-Semitism, particularly in the Israeli press, is devastating in its simplicity: criticise Israel, and you are an anti-Semite just as surely as if you were throwing paint at a synagogue in Paris.
And I cordially say bullshit. Are there hysterics? Always. Do some Jews equate criticism of Israeli governmental policy with anti-Semitism? Surely. Do most? Surely not.
Having read many of the articles Beaumont is referring to, I do not agree that "those most vocal" in asserting this alleged rise in European anti-Semitism are all such simple-minded fanatics. Indeed, most of the articles are more in the nature of asking questions, and expressing concern and worry, than they are assertions, and where they are, they are tend to discuss other incidents and issues than simple discussion of the wisdom of Israeli policy.
Beaumont goes on to beat on his theme, that
charges of the broad scope of the new anti-Semitism should be rejected for what they are: an attempt to deflect criticism from the actions of an Israeli government by declaring criticism of Israel out of bounds.
Valid criticism of Israeli policy or acts should not be so deflected. Of course. But let's go back to a line I previously quoted:
Israel's brutal response to the often equally reprehensible anti-Israeli Palestinian violence of the intifada.
Think about that. Has Israel made brutal responses? Undeniably. Are all justified? I think surely not. But.
often equally reprehensible anti-Israeli Palestinian violence
My.
He just slides that right in. It's an obvious truth, isn't it? Trying to stop wanton, indiscriminate intentional mass slaughter of civilians, old men and women, young children, just whomever the hell is passing by, is not just brutal, but those slaughters are almost often equally reprehensible as the attempts to stop them.
Do I have lots to criticize about the Israeli occupation? Yes. Endlessly so. Do I think Israel has committed crimes against Palestinians? Yes, of large, and, indeed, often brutal nature. Do I see moral equivalency with said acts and policies to deliberate mass slaughter of civilians? No.
No.
No.
Is casually, consistently, endlessly, repeating such equivalency "anti-Semitism"? Not necessarily, no. It's just terribly, terribly, conveniently coincidental how it works out as a difference that makes no difference.
GENERAL DOSTUM IS A BIG SOFTY says Ann Marlowe in NROnline. Is she right? I have no idea; I'm not there, I just know what I read. Isn't he the fellow supposed to be famous for having people torn apart under tank treads? But I always like to hear alternative sides, and this is an interesting one, and some of her charges certainly seem to bear investigation.
2/18/2002 08:55:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
Other blogs commenting on this post
0 comments
NOT EVEN RIGHT ON THIS: I'd just like to note that, so far as I know, Robert Fisk gets even this wrong:
When a crime has been committed – even the most banal domestic killing – the first thing the cops do is look for a motive.
Not according to anything I've ever read about real criminal investigation, as opposed to fiction. My understanding is that most detectives will tell you that, in fact, motivation is often never figured out for many crimes, and it is often not worthwhile to spend much time worrying about it. I believe any criminal investigation manual will suggest that the first thing you look for is physical evidence. Motivation is maybe number fifty on the list. But what do I know compared to a journalist of Robert Fisk's decades of experience?
Meanwhile, this guy, Phil Reeves, apparently only started reading Israeli newspapers last week, and has no clue that Sharon has hardly been universally beloved and acclaimed by Israelis, and only won so decisively over Barak because Barak so comprehensively discredited himself by not delivering on any of his promise. Here's a particularly genius-like insight:
The voices come from the left and the far right. And now, significantly, they have now also been joined by elements from the centre – the natural habitat of the majority of Israeli voters in less violent times.
HOW TO GET KIDS TO EAT MORE FRIES: Make 'em chocolate. Yes, chocolate French fries (chips, for you Brits). And that's not all the evil Heinz corporation, the same blasphemers who created green and purple ketchup, are unleashing on an unsuspecting world:
The new products include French fries flavored with sour cream and chives, or cinnamon and sugar, and a new product called Crunchy Rings - basically Tater Tots with a hole in the middle.
Then there's Kool Blue - a sky blue seasoned French fry, and Cocoa Crispers -- a brown chocolate fry designed "for kids with a sweet tooth."
"We asked the kids what would make them want to eat more French fries," said John Carroll, managing director of North American potatoes and snacks for Heinz' frozen food division.
I'll bet you did. And soon, for adults, Scotch, and tequila, French fries?
I can't wait for Close Encounters of the Third Kind to come out in ultra-revised version.
A FUTURE FOR "COMPUTORS"?: a 1954 piece from The Economistwondering about these new-fangled devices.
OPINION is for the moment divided on the place of electronic calculating methods in ordinary business. A year or so ago, a suggestion that one of those thinking robots, the electronic brains, should be put to tasks so mundane as the counting of pounds, shillings and pennies for a weekly wage packet would have been greeted with general scepticism.
[...]
Is this the first step in an accounting revolution or merely an interesting and expensive experiment? There are those who do not believe in the desirability of introducing anything as esoteric as electronics into business routine at all.
CHINESE BIG MAMA: Substantive piece on Chinese Internet censorship and prosecutions, and American commerical colloboration with same, a subject I've been loosely following for a long time. Calls for significant financial aid for Triangle Boy, among other useful responses it points out that the US should engage in.
2/18/2002 04:14:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
Other blogs commenting on this post
0 comments
AL QUEDA MONEY: Worthwhile story on aQ and the Taliban's use of gold, diamonds, tanzanite, and so on, largely transfered via hawala, and how money was moved out of Afghanistan in the last months of the year, largely through Dubai and elsewhere in the United Arab Emirates. Although it's been written about before, it's interesting to see the stress on how bin Laden personally created much of the financial infrastructure to support the mujaheddin against the Russians, and how it was modeled on Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), which scandal watchers remember so well.
A senior U.S. investigator said U.S. agencies were looking into these ties because "they just make so much sense, and so few people from BCCI ever went to jail. BCCI was the mother and father of terrorist financing operations."
TOM FRIEDMAN CHANGES HISTORY. Well, we'll see. But his column today is extraordinary, as he gives some details of his dinner with Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, ruler of Saudi Arabia, and reveals that the Crown Prince backs the plan of
a total withdrawal by Israel to the June 4, 1967, lines, and the establishment of a Palestinian state, the 22 members of the Arab League would offer Israel full diplomatic relations, normalized trade and security guarantees. Full withdrawal, in accord with U.N. Resolution 242, for full peace between Israel and the entire Arab world.
