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
CAN MINE BE CHOCOLATE?: Getcher implant chips here.
Human chip implants stir up a debate.
Favorite part:
The chip has drawn attention from several religious groups.
Theologian and author Terry Cook said he worries the identification chip could be the “mark of the beast,” an identifying mark that all people will be forced to wear just before the end times, according to the Bible.
Applied Digital has consulted theologians and appeared on the religious television program the ”700 Club” to assure viewers the chip didn’t fit the biblical description of the mark because it is under the skin and hidden from view.
GEORGE LUCAS WON'T APPROVE: There's a new Physics Engine for computer gaming, allowing standardized Real Physics. I approve.
On a parallel front, NASA has developed a virtual space object simulator, which they slightly grandiosely say is a precursor to a holodeck. The Virtual Iron Bird is pretty cool, anyhow.
SPEARS THROWN AT DUKE: There's been a bit of a silly fuss over the Duke of Edinburgh's "spears" query, as the press loves to find "gaffes" from the fellow, but after quoting a bit about that, I'll get to the part I've not seen anyone pick up on.
THE Duke of Edinburgh enlivened the Queen’s Golden Jubilee tour of Queensland yesterday by asking the founder of an Aboriginal cultural centre if Australia’s indigenous people still threw spears at each other.
Ever the lemon juice in the Windsor cream, the Duke’s talent for pricking the pomposity of royal occasions with sharply jocular asides remains undimmed, despite the approach of his 81st birthday. He could count himself fortunate yesterday that no one took offence.
He and the Queen had been visiting a tropical rainforest site at Kuranda in northern Queensland, in a temperature of 36C and the humidity of a Turkish bath, when they arrived to watch a dance performance at the Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park, a kind of upmarket Disneyland of the didgeridoo.
The Duke addressed his question to William Brim, 42, the bearded, suited and rather cultured creator of the park. “No, we don’t do that any more,” Mr Brim told him, fortunately taking as a joke a remark that could so easily have plunged into the abyss of severe political incorrectness.
Here's my favorite bit, though:
Then Mr Clements made a brief speech saying that the cultural centre represented a new spirit of freedom for indigenous people.
He added that Aboriginals were “not a curiosity but a relevant and integral part of 21st-century Australia”. To prove the point the near- naked body-painted dance group suddenly produced microphones to a shout of “karaoke” and proceeded to sing to a disco beat a song entitled Proud to be an Aborigine. The Duke looked thoroughly bemused.
The Congress of the International Association for the Protection of the Garden Gnome is horrified that a woman has entered the ornaments’ ranks.
[...]
Threatening their ceramic testosterone world is a plump woman gnome with a red hat like those sported by her macho rivals in the shrubbery. Gräfin Rode — the Countess of Rode because she is manufactured in the city of Gräfenroda — is not welcome among the ranks of serious gnome collectors.
“It is unthinkable, completely unthinkable, to mix in female gnomes with the male gnomes,” said Fritz Friedmann, president of the association, which has its headquarters in Basel, Switzerland. “Isn’t it enough that the male gnomes have got along without females for more than 100 years? Why break with tradition like this?”
[...]
Germans spend £20 million on them every year.
[...]
Grudgingly, the association passed a motion yesterday temporarily accepting the situation, but by no means condoning it. The “honour, reputation and meaning” of what gnomes stood for was at stake.
Man, wait until the transgendered gnomes come to town. If Switzerland does join the EU, will the European Court of Human Rights weigh in? I'm sure that gnome courts-martial will be disallowed.
SCIENTOLOGISTS WORKING GOOGLE: Very interesting page on how the scammers are manipulating Google's linking so that their pages come up with higher ranks than opponents' pages, allegations that the Open Directory Project won't allow anyone to edit an opponents' section, and various other details and links, plus Big Charts 'O Links. Good reasons for you to link to this page. (Via Boing Boing.)
3/02/2002 09:19:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
Other blogs commenting on this post
0 comments
You may have thought Disneyland and Stalin-era mass deportations had nothing in common. But thanks to enterprising Lithuanian Viliumas Malinauskas, they do now.
The 60-year-old canned mushroom mogul recently opened an odd-ball, park that mimics a Soviet prison camp. The facility—part amusement park, part open air museum—is circled by barbed wire and guard towers, and dotted with some 65 bronze and granite statues of former Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin, and communist VIPs.
Organizers say it’s the first and only Soviet theme park in the world.
GENE WOLFE is interviewed by Science Fiction Weekly, but that link will change when the interview is archived.
I get a lot of people complaining about my ambiguity, often in cases in which there is nothing ambiguous at all. As far as I can see, people read it when they were half stoned and listening to the TV. Then they come back and say gee, it's impossible to figure out what's going on in a story.
1. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2. Secular Humanism (97%)
3. Liberal Protestant (88%)
4. Liberal Quaker (86%)
5. Theravada Buddhism (75%)
6. Atheism and Agnosticism (73%)
7. Neo-Paganism (67%)
8. Latter-day Saint (Mormon) (63%)
9. Bahá'í (55%)
10. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (51%)
11. Reform Judaism (48%)
12. New Age (47%)
13. Conservative Protestant (44%)
14. Taoism (42%)
15. Jehovah's Witness (38%)
16. New Thought (38%)
17. Mahayana Buddhism (36%)
18. Orthodox Quaker (32%)
19. Sikhism (32%)
20. Scientology (31%)
21. Eastern Orthodox (21%)
22. Islam (21%)
23. Jainism (21%)
24. Orthodox Judaism (21%)
25. Roman Catholic (21%)
26. Seventh Day Adventist (20%)
27. Hinduism (16%)
7-10 seem rather dubious to me, though I must note that my knowledge of Bahá'í is extremely sketchy. I shudder that 20 shows up at all. I have no idea, offhand, what 16 is. Otherwise, my friends will find no surprises, I think. Well, okay, we should all be surprised if I'm actually more of a Protestant than an atheist or a Reform Jew. These tests aren't gospel, you know.
3/02/2002 11:10:00 AM |permanent link| | Main Page |
Other blogs commenting on this post
0 comments
THE HATRED THAT WOULDN'T DIE, another contribution from The Guardian on that topic I, for some peculiar reason, frequently return to.
Why isn't the left protesting against the growth of anti-semitism?
HELPFUL HINTS FOR NEW BLOGGERS: When you blog an article you've picked up from another blog, the polite thing to do is to note that with a "Via example.blogsource.com" link. Admittedly, most of us will forget from time to time; but it's the proper blogger etiquette, and it pays back in return.
3/02/2002 10:17:00 AM |permanent link| | Main Page |
Other blogs commenting on this post
0 comments
BILLY GRAHAM APOLOGIZES FOR ANTI-JEWISH REMARKS. Anything else would have been surprising, of course, given the power of the Jewish media and banks being exerted against him. How could he resist, and speak the truth as he once did in private? Only Dick Nixon could give him sufficient strength!
At a later point in the conversation, when Nixon raises the subject of Jewish influence in Hollywood and the media, Graham says, "A lot of Jews are great friends of mine."
"They swarm around me and are friendly to me. Because they know that I am friendly to Israel and so forth. But they don't know how I really feel about what they're doing to this country, and I have no power and no way to handle them," Graham says.
BRUCE STERLING holds forth on blogging and much else, in typical fashion here.
The good folks of SXSW Interactive have a whole lotta blogging in the schedule. You may have never heard of "weblogging," because it never yet made anyone rich, but blogging is a way cool deal, man. [list of bloggers snipped] ...and a very Mongol host of other bloggers. If this recital means nothing to you, you are probably old and near death now.
Unlike those stellar bloggers, I was way too lazy to build any software, but I myself have a blog these days. This is a sure symptom of a major social contagion. It's much like my teenage daughter's AOL Instant Message mania. Her Mom and I, we were kinda worried about her 90% digital social life, until we realized that we don't have to buy her a car or any gasoline.
Net types like to catfight about whether blogging is the Way Forward or utter self-indulgence. Since it is almost certainly both at once, blogging is quite the hot topic. So there will be some bloggery debate, with scowling, and finger-wagging, and pepper-gassing. Yes, blogging has its limitations. There isn't much in the way of original content, for instance. Weblogging consists mostly of logging one's websurfing activities, then making sardonic comments about whatever you see. An activity one's admirers find hilarious. Yet admirers rarely pay for this. Except in their admiration.
On the other paw, some of us bloviate at length in response to some of our links. Sometimes this is hilarious, and sometimes that is even intentional.
I've, incidentally, been meaning to say this for weeks, and always forgetting until now: Chu Mei Feng, Chu Mei Feng, Chu Mei Feng, video, sex, pictures.
I doubt that will increase my hits (in case you were wondering, "breasts" didn't do a thing), but after all, the web is an experimental medium, is it not? And I strive to expand humankind's knowledge through experimentation and falsification of hypotheses via the scientific method. It is, you know, my duty.
CONTRARIAN: I am second to few in adoration of the deeply wonderful James Lileks. And I enjoyed his demolition of Matthew Engels' Olive Garden piece as much as most, though clearly not to the point some did, as I thought that on the scale of Guardian -- I remain fond of the old sf fan word "fuggheadery"-- fuggheadery, it was only about a "7," with "10" being a maximum of fuckwitedness.
But a vast number of bloggers have picked this particular paragraph out to praise, and so I'm finally moved to pipe up.
Engels: Europeans are inclined to think that the Americans, having been late for the last two world wars, are determined to be early for the next one.
Lileks: Damned witty, Wilde. Damned witty! Deuce it all! Look: we were “late” for the last world wars like a policeman is usually late for a murder. One could easily say that Europeans are determined to be late for the next world war because they’re still feeling guilty about the last time some nutcases wanted to slaughter all the Jews. Except, of course, they’re not guilty at all. That was all Hitler’s fault. He had that big shiny hypnotism coin from the novelty catalog, and everyone just fell in his power.
That last bit was a typically excellent bit of Lileks wit.
But I disagree with his prior serious premise, and everyone who agrees with it. The US was late to WWII, and WWI, for that matter. There were domestic political reasons that made this inevitable and history would have had to have had some distinctly different prior events for it to have worked out differently.
But for the Brits, or anyone else, to make this complaint and observation is utterly legitimate. It won't do to say that we joined moral wars with just causes, but that somehow, they weren't moral and just two years earlier. It won't do to say that finally declaring war on the Axis powers only became right and proper once we ourselves were attacked. It just won't do at all.
If WWII was a murder, it began with the murder of Czechoslovakia and Poland. And if we were the policeman, we were two years late to show up. That's too late.
Britain didn't have to go to war over Poland. It was utterly optional. Almost as optional as it was for us, both in 1939, and in 1941. They went to war because they felt they had to honor their treaties, and because what Germany was doing was wrong, as well as that it threatened Britain's interest. That was the much-castigated Neville Chamberlain's decision, it is sometimes forgotten.
And when France fell, most of the most powerful voices in British politics spoke up for a negotiated peace with Germany. It was the smart thing to do. It appeared to most to be the only thing to do. Lord Halifax was expected by many to be selected as the new PM by the King, and negotiating peace is exactly what Halifax would have done, and exactly what Halifax continued to press without hesitation for as a member of Churchill's Cabinet.
And so did most of Churchill's Cabinet press for that peace. Churchill himself in his subsequent accounts and History essentially lied about this, to cover over the dissension. But if there's one thing that makes the cult of Churchill not just a romantic cult, but based in something utterly substantial and real that changed the history of the world, it was that lunatic decision of his to press on with the war, when it looked as if all they could do was throw bottles at the Germans expected on the British beaches not long after Dunkirk.
And Franklin Roosevelt did what he could to help, but also did his best to maximize what the US would get out of it, as in long-term leases on crucial Atlantic military bases in return for fifty lousy old destroyers (important and helpful though they were to the British).
Who is to blame here? The guilty ones were the American people of the time. Yes, the Republican leadership, largely, were isolationist and foolish and small-minded, but they merely reflected their constituents. Nor were other Democrats universally in favor of joining the War on the side of Right -- and there is no question it was the side of right, the side of Good versus Evil, despite all the, yes, perfectly valid grievances Germany had, which needed to be "understood."
It was the American people of the time who were small-minded, and selfish, and isolationist, and wrong, and America was wrong to not join in the war in 1939.
Lastly, let us not give in to any temptation to delude ourselves that the war was in any way about saving the Jews of Europe or feeling guilt about the fate of the Jews of Europe, as it was, of course, certainly not, and we need not digress into discussion of that.
If the British, or anyone else, wishs to complain that the USA was late to WWII, and late to WWI -- again, it cannot have been suddenly right to wish to defeat the Kaiser and his allies in 1917, but not in 1914, if we are talking morals, rather than expedience and most-immediate self-interest -- then I say they are correct, and justified, and those who disagree, or are defensive about this, are, I'm afraid, wrong.
IT'S WATER , I TELL YOU!: In the first six hours of the Mars Odyssey mission, massive ice fields have been reported found on Mars!
Results from planetary missions often take months, if not years, to be collected, analyzed and released to the public. The new results are unusual because they come so early in the mission, "from the first few days, in some cases the first few hours, of exploration," Saunders said.
The normally cautious scientists were able to make strong conclusions so quickly because "we really have a whopping large signal," said William Boynton, a planetary scientist from the University of Arizona who directs the instrument that detected the ice. "It really just blew us away when we looked at it." Boynton's team used a gamma ray spectrometer to probe the chemistry of the Martian surface. The instrument can detect the chemical constituents on the surface, including the hydrogen atoms contained in water molecules, by analyzing the unique gamma ray signatures emitted by each element.
The instrument has been called a "virtual shovel" because it can read signals from underground, in the shallow surface layers of Mars.
"The signal we're getting is loud and clear. There's lots of ice on Mars," Boynton said. "We're not just looking at surface frost. It's a fair amount of ice."
WHAT'S IT A BOUT?: I've been meaning to mention that the Los Angeles Times seems to be doing one of the better jobs following the VictorBoutstory. If other bloggers have been covering this, they've not yet crossed my attention. Bout has been a wonderfully shadowy figure who just keeps turning up as a connector to everything from African blood diamond smuggling to transfering money to al Queda; he's quite the networker.
3/01/2002 11:43:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
Other blogs commenting on this post
0 comments
HOAXES IN: Glenn Reynolds says with a straight font:
OKAY, I'M NOT CONVINCED THAT THIS IS GENUINE -- but apparently Monica Lewinsky has a blog.
WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?: The amusing and wide-ranging "Max Power" asks:
Okay, that's not fair; Torricelli's idea is just as bad as the others. If you're going to hijack the airwaves to require cheap political advertising, why stop with television? Why not newspapers, and billboards, and printing presses, and sides of buildings, and Internet banner ads? Of course, I doubt that the Congress had anything so noble as property rights in mind when they voted against the Torricelli amendment -- you just know they were worried about offending their broadcaster constituency.
The difference, of course, is that a radio frequency is not "private property." The public airwaves are just that, owned jointly by the people, administered by the government, and leased in return for considerations which include public service. They are entirely different in this regard from the other cases in this simple manner.
3/01/2002 08:42:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
Other blogs commenting on this post
0 comments
NEW DONATION-STIMULATING TECHNIQUE: Those of you who don't keep up with the bulletin board accessible by hitting the "discuss" link at the end of each entry may not be aware that Adam Curry saw my cranky picking on him, and informed me that he'd tried to donate, but the link was broken. I promptly fixed that, let him know, and I must report that Mr. Curry has a gracious sense of humor, since he lived up to his word with a standard donation, thus doubling my entire income from the tip button, so far.
(Though his reading skills do still need work, since he didn't grasp that "editied" was his typo, and which I repeated as part of making mock of him. Now, as I alluded in e-mail, Adam, if you'd paid over the suggested amount, I wouldn't have included this line. Ahahaha.)
So, obviously, the solution for my increasing donations is to launch evil sniping attacks on other bloggers, and then wait for them to prove that they are gentleladies/men and scholars by making a donation. Bwahahahaha. You are all gracious and good-humored, right? And generous? Why didn't I stumble on this idea before? Character blackmail, it's so fiendishly simplsme, to use my favorite Vedrinism.
IRAQ AND THE HARD PLACE: The previous entry brings me to the thoughtful Thomas Nephew, and his most recent thoughts on Iraq. He makes many points, all of them worth considering. I won't in one shot respond to all.
It's a good idea for the United States to promote, not tear down, the notion that starting wars isn't right unless the world (that is, the U.N. Security Council), agrees it's in self-defense.
Up to a point, I agree. But it barely needs worth pointing out that the Security Council remains an immensely flawed body; in the end, each country on it -- such as, for instance, current member Syria -- acts, and must act, in its own self-interest and in the interest of what it thinks best. Until we decide it's best to grant the SC world rule -- and we'd best not, until the world is far more democratic and freer place -- this is the way it's got to be, for better, for worse.
That's why, unlike Matt Welch, I support sanctions against Iraq: the alternative is a war that could destroy the international frameworks built since World War II.
I don't believe that. The frameworks exist, frankly, because of power enforcing them. On a smaller scale, libertarians object to that as immoral -- a trump always played is the jackbooted-thug-with-a-gun card, as if we are supposed to be shocked, shocked at this revelation of where power flows from (libertarian analysis revealed to be Maoist! Film at 11!).
Yes, states enforce laws on their citizens with guns, and "international frameworks" that are not backed up, in the end, by power, are also meaningless. It's a flawed world.
But so long as the major power of the world is directed to, overall, supporting those frameworks, and they're in the interest of the majority of states, they'll go on existing and being enforced as piecemeal as they are today, I believe.
Unless you see Saddam's regime as some kind of immutable force of nature incapable of choice, the Iraqi government bears responsibility for everything that's happened to Iraqis for the last 20 years.
Yes, that's right. And that's a terrible thing.
But we lived with that with the Soviet Union for 50 years. Why not try containing a far smaller country? We just might be able to pull it off, our track record isn't half bad.
This is precisely where I was eleven years ago, before Desert Shield became Desert Storm. I bought the idea that there would be many coalition casualties fighting "the fourth largest army in the world." As a student of 20th century history, and particularly of the Soviet Union, communism, anti-communism, and the later Cold War, I applied my George Kennan, and said "why don't we just contain Iraq?"
I was utterly wrong.
I was wrong about the length of time it would take to defeat Iraq, and wrong about the coalition casualties.
But most of all, the subsequent years proved without doubt that I was wrong that "sanctions" would have any meaningfully helpful effect in the slightest.
As we now know, sanctions only give Hussein an excuse to hurt his own people. They destablize the regime in no significant way. They bear not the slightest hope of causing change for the better in Iraq. Not now, not in another ten years, not in a century. They only cause suffering.
That's an immoral policy.
So the choices are: do we simply shut our eyes, and hope everything will eventually work out okay? Or do we do the hard thing, and take the moral responsibility of hurting people, and causing death and destruction, with the hope that we will be saving far more lives and, in the end, causing far less death and despair, than if we do nothing?
Reasonable people may disagree. I may be terribly wrong. I may be making the common error of learning the wrong lesson from the last war. Thomas Nephew may be right.
But right now, I tend to think not. I think it unlikely waiting for Saddam Hussein to die -- and that's what the alternative to intervention is -- is unlikely to turn out well. His two sons are possibly even more monstrous than he is. A power-struggle among generals to keep them out of power after Saddam's death might lead to a better regime, but I think it highly unlikely that the system will produce generals apt to bring that about.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi people are helpless under dictatorship. They cannot rise up on their own. They cannot protest or bring about change on their own. The least sign of an attempt to organize or resist, and they are arrested, questioned, and killed, their families, killed.
The only way to help this from continuing indefinitely is intervention. What's the best way to intervene? There are various scenarios, and I won't pretend to know which, or which combination, may work best. You read the proposals and scenarios and options in the media, I'm sure.
But in lots of ways I am a liberal, and I see the liberal idea here is to support and work for the liberty of the Iraqi people, and to ultimately protect as many of their, and our, lives in the long run. And I think the liberal answer, as well as the conservative answer, and the libertarian answer, is to plan the best possible intervention.
It's not, of course, an easy solution. It just may be the least worst.
DUMB: Gregg Easterbrook has an easy solution for Iraq. Like most easy solutions, it's wrong.
The current Iraq debate basically pits the timid--who want U.N. resolutions, scolding, and bluster--against the interventionists, including this magazine, who believe that the Iraqi National Congress can become the next Northern Alliance.
Excluded middle(s).
All concerned favor "toppling Saddam," as though that involved pushing a button.
Instead, he wants to push other buttons.
But short of invasion, there is no sure way of lifting the darkness that covers Iraq. There is, however, an option that is straightforward, simple, and fast: a determined aerial attack--not against Iraq generally, but against its facilities for weapons of mass destruction. No national infrastructure would be harmed, so as not to worsen the suffering of the oppressed Iraqi people. Weapons sites alone would be targeted, in a campaign that continued as long as necessary until Iraq's weapons manufacturing facilities were windblown rubble.
He goes on, but that's the summary point. He completely neglects to notice that Iraq has a history of putting national security sites under hospitals, schools, civilian shelters, and other targets that necessitate causing large civilian casualties to hit. His entire "we have smart weapons now, we can do it cleanly" premise is false. Period, end of story.
The only solution is regime change.
The only likely way to see regime change in Iraq with a true minimum of casualties would be a coup; whether CIA can arrange that, we shall see, but I'm surely not going to count on it. Further, that a coup would lead to a significantly better regime, let alone a more democratic and freer one, is likely to be unclear.
The most likely outcome for regime change in Iraq is going to, I'm afraid, involve some blood and horror of war. The only reason I'm open to it is the idea that liberation will ultimately make for less suffering and death in Iraq from the continued depredations of the Hussein/Ba'ath regime.
IT'S NOT ALL ENTHUSIASM: Round-up of Arab newspaper reactions to the Saudi Arabian proposal here. The Riyadh Daily explains what happened at the UN:
The paper hastened to assure its readers that "Saudi Arabia is in no way trying to placate the Israelis," citing a the "severe tongue-lashing" that the Kingdom's U.N. ambassador gave to Israel in Security Council debate earlier this week.
They needed cover in the Arab world, so as to not look as "soft" as some painted them anyway. Meanwhile,
But Abd-al-Bari Atwan, chief editor of Al-Quds al-Arabi, the Saudi-owned, London-based Arab nationalist paper that is critical of the Saudi royal family and the United States, stressed the "pitfalls" of the Saudi overture. Atwan worried that the peace overture might lead, among other things, to Jewish tourists in Saudi Arabia.
STILYAGI AND THE NON-MANUFACTURANCE OF COOLNESS: Avedon Carol aleady pointed out this wonderful article by Charles Paul Freund. Although long, and slightly dry, it's worth reading in its entirety, both for its fascinating educational bits about the stilyagi phenom in Russia of the Fifties, and other control examples of people manufacturing their own pop culture, and for its logic and conclusions that sneering at pop culture for being "manufactured by big corporations/big money" is pretty much wrong. Good protein for the brain here.
3/01/2002 05:46:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
Other blogs commenting on this post
0 comments
From there, the talk quickly shifted to what Nixon, "without getting into any anti-Semitism," described as the inordinate influence of "a terrible liberal Jewish clique." Connally said there was too much of it in government as well.
"Oh! Oh, God!" Nixon said with a sigh. "It erodes our confidence, our strength. They're untrustworthy. . . . Look at the Justice Department, it's full of Jews."
"Any place of power," Connally agreed. "SEC used to be -- all of them, those lawyers."
"Listen, the lawyers in government are damn Jews," Nixon said.
Both men agreed that Nixon should try to reduce the Jewish influence in a second term. Nixon told Connally on May 15 that he wanted no more than 2 percent of the government's political appointees to be Jewish, in proportion to the population. He later said 10 percent would be acceptable, "but certainly not 30 or 40 percent."
Nixon kept such views closely held. In a meeting with Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur Burns on June 21, 1972, the president listened quietly as Burns told him of "a profound change" in Jewish attitudes toward Nixon.
"I'm talking about the Wall Street Jews," Burns said. "They're going to vote Republican and they're going to contribute substantial sums. They already have."
Burns, who was Jewish, said he was comfortable about that. "In all the years that I have known you," he told Nixon, "I have never heard of what even remotely resembles what could be interpreted as a touch of anti-Semitism or anti-Catholicism."
No, not a touch.
I hope someday all these tapes are made available online.
HE SHOULD HAVE STAYED IN FLORIDA: We learn this from the Bangor News of Maine:
A convicted sex offender wanted in Florida who fled into the Maine woods from police is complaining that he got frostbite and lost a few toes because he wasn’t arrested fast enough.
Harvey Taylor, 48, who spent at least three nights in the woods in Mattawamkeag after running from a Penobscot County Sheriff’s detective a few weeks ago, is threatening to sue the detective for not arresting him promptly.
“If the detective had done his job, I wouldn’t be in here now,” Taylor said Tuesday during a telephone interview from his hospital room.
“I’m trying to find an attorney to bring a lawsuit against this detective,” said Taylor, who is a patient in police custody at St. Joseph Hospital. “If he had done his job properly I wouldn’t be in the condition that I’m in right now. I would have been in jail that very same day.”
[...]
Ross said Taylor is wanted for three outstanding warrants by authorities in Brevard County, Fla., who have issued a warrant for his extradition to Florida.
...appeared in well over 200 feature films. Mr. Lee is unsure of the exact figure, though he says he remembers something about each of them.
"In England, they brought out a book called `Christopher Lee: The Authorized Screen History' by a man named Jonathan Rigby," Mr. Lee said in his room at the Carlyle Hotel. "And I think the poor man — I really sympathize with him — had to look at nearly every film I've been in, which is a ghastly thought."
O.K., how about Babes in Bagdad, a film he made in Spain in 1952? "Oh, God," Mr. Lee sighed, "heavens above! Paulette Goddard, Richard Ney, Gypsy Rose Lee and John Boles, who in fact played the doctor's younger brother in the 1931 Frankenstein. I played some sort of awful slave trader in a black silk dress, or that's what it looked like.
[...]
by my own estimation I don't think I appeared in more than 15 films that could be called horror movies. But everyone gets labeled."
Colombia's national army has a new weapon in its war against the rebels - a large inflatable soldier. The grinning figure, dressed in army camouflage uniform, is part of a campaign to encourage locals to provide information on rebel activities in their area.
[...]
The inflatable soldier, which is three metres (10 feet) tall and has a real person inside, spent the visit waddling around on the roadside, waving and hugging people indiscriminately.
It was accompanied by a more regular member of the armed forces, Sergeant Diaz, who handed out leaflets with the number of a 24-hour phone line that people could ring with details of rebel insurgencies.
"Remember your army loves you," said Sergeant Diaz. "This is to make you join in by denouncing these bandits who are killing this country."
His inflatable companion just carried on smiling. The army hopes their mascot will appeal to the local people.
GEORGE BUSH, CHASTENED, APOLOGIZES: That's George Bush 41, that is, or as Arafat would say, "the father." Marin County was upset.
Former President George Bush has apologized to northern California residents for describing American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh as "some misguided Marin County hot-tubber."
Bush's apology appeared Wednesday in The Marin Independent Journal newspaper, which had earlier invited readers to tell Bush about their home. Many of the writers used the opportunity to scold him.
"Call off the dogs please," Bush wrote in his humorous response. "I apologize. I am chastened and will never use 'hot tub' and 'Marin County' in the same sentence again."
Bush said he was so offended by Lindh that he hurt other's feelings.
"Now your readers have attacked me on my granddaughters, on my residence, on abortion, on Enron, on my being a Texan and on my pronunciation of Marin. You name it, a lot of angst has surfaced, and it's all my fault."
Bush said that although he received only 23 percent Marin's vote in 1992, "I was your president and I should have known better."
"I will now soak in my own hot tub and try to be more sensitive to the feelings of others - not John Walker Lindh, though," he added.
NORTH KOREA SLOW TO GRASP "TOURISM" CONCEPT: This is to laugh.
North Korea Touts Fun and Games to Lure Japanese Tourists
It is a national specialty, after all.
In a rare opening to outsiders by the Stalinist state, North Korea hopes that thousands of foreign visitors will come to watch mass sports and arts spectacles that start in late April in honor of the state's late founder and his son, its current leader.
Who would want to miss that?
Apparently hoping to make the karaoke-loving Japanese feel right at home, the head of the North Korean tourist delegation burst into song in the middle of a packed news conference here--and didn't stop for more than 10 minutes as he ran through several regional versions of the Arirang theme song. The performance prompted a quick look of amused surprise from one of his North Korean colleagues, a show of emotion soon replaced by the stony pose maintained throughout the rest of the two-hour gathering.
The North Koreans also treated the 70 or so assembled reporters and travel agents to a propaganda video showing children running toward flowers in slow motion, North Korea's relatively empty roads and skyscrapers, and Caucasian visitors eating noodles and dancing as other visitors play golf.
"The video was only five minutes," said Jun Miyagawa, a part-time Japan representative for the festival, whose day job is selling socialist books. "If you want, we can see it again."
Oh, can we? Please?
His opening was met with deafening silence, prompting him to return to description of the wonders of the wondrous mass spectacles.
The director of promotion then proceeded to promote by refusing to answer any questions.
"Even if you keep asking me the same question, you're not going to get any further information," said Hwang Pong Hyok, director of promotion for North Korea's National Tourist Administration.
THE HAGUE, Feb. 28 — NATO troops mounting their first major operation to arrest Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader indicted for war crimes, failed today to find him in a remote Bosnian village that they raided around dawn.
[...]
This was the first time NATO has ever even acknowledged an attempt to arrest Dr. Karadzic. Details were scant, but the operation appeared to have been significant: At least two helicopters swooped into the village of Celebici, some 45 miles southeast of Sarajevo near the border of Montenegro, the Yugoslav republic where Dr. Karadzic was born. Residents reported armored vehicles in the area, and outages in electricity and telephone service.
Bosnian Serb television reported gunfire and explosions, and villagers later said dozens of soldiers in camouflage uniforms had barged into about 40 buildings, including a church, school and houses. Officials said the operation had involved soldiers from countries including the United States, France, Germany and Britain in a zone commanded by French soldiers.
Gotta wonder if this is another case of a leak, like one of the several past leaks to Serbs by sympathetic French officers (sorry, Matt, I'm not French-bashing, just mentioning a past fact). But here's the really interesting part, with wide implications:
Yet many were heartened by the lack of turmoil over the transfer of Slobodan Milosevic to The Hague for his war crimes trial. This, coupled with the realization that peacekeepers might be forced to stay indefinitely unless the men are captured, has helped forge a new resolve.
In addition, experts point out, it seemed contradictory for Americans not to act against Dr. Karadzic and General Mladic in the face the overwhelming force used against Afghanistan. "The willingness was there before the 11th of September," said Mark Wheeler, the Bosnia director for the International Crisis Group, "but events since then have convinced people in Washington of the feasibility of this."
The recognition of, and throwing off of, this contradiction is deeply meaningful. US policy has been handcuffed and ankle-chained ever since Vietnam by reluctance to use force in the cause of good, and even after the Gulf War, the Powell Doctrine combined with the incredible fear of any US casualties being tolerable led to the horrific debacles in Lebanon, Somalia, and elsewhere.
Which is precisely what convinced Usama bin Laden and buddies in their belief that the US was far softer than the Soviet Union, which they felt they had defeated and collapsed, and that the US was thus defeatable. And thus our own cowardice and unwillingness to see a mission through -- particularly in both Lebanon and Somalia, but also in not even engaging in a military effort to stop the genocide in Rwanda and environs, which may have caused as many as a million dead, giving a sick and nauseating tinge the phrase "never again" being uttered in sincerity -- lead directly to our own massive civilian dead, and to a new war.
The ripping away of this scab of reluctance, of fear to suffer military casualties (though this has yet to be seriously tested), of fear to believe in our own rightness is an utter, and crucial, turn-around. If oxygen is finally in our blood, flowing to our muscles, we can hope that more people's lives can be saved, more people set free, more tyrannies overthrown, and all of us will be safer and better protected, in the end, with greater freedom and justice throughout the world.
If we don't let too much such blood rush to our head, and make us giddy and over-reaching in our newfound confidence and consistency. Determining where the proper center of balance is will be the key.
Secretary Powell also said, in an interview, that President Bush's description of Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an "axis of evil" had been diplomatically useful and "tended to clear the sinuses of various people around the world."
Well, this quote made me snort Pepsi through my nose.
In a fresh indication of how seriously the administration is taking a recent Mideast peace overture by Saudi Arabia, a State Department official said tonight that the assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs, William J. Burns Jr., was on his way to Saudi Arabia for consultations with the de facto Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, on that and other issues.
Disagreeing with most warbloggers' dismissals, I say this is absolutely the right thing to do.
The secretary likened the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, to a kidney stone, "which passes in due course...."
BONE-HEADED ISRAELI MOVE: Trying Amzi Bishara, longtime Arab member of the Knesset, for his speech, is incredibly stupid, and it helps him make his own case.
Is it treasonous to call for a different form of state in Israel, and to resist the present state? No, it's speech. If you don't like it, argue with him, or don't listen to him. If his speech is falling on receptive ears, examine why. So long as he is only engaged in speech, not in plotting violence, it's wrong to try him for his speech, it will, indeed, backfire.
Arguments will also be heard about "why an Arab member of Parliament is being tried for what he says, and whether we can be Israeli patriots at all, and whether I am loyal to the rights of my Palestinian people to self-determination.
IRAQ: WAR CRIMES AND WAR: Roundup on the US gathering evidence of Iraqi war crimes for use against Saddam Hussein in a possible trial, and the pre-war situation in general. I predict that, unlike Milosevic, Saddam Hussein will never live to see the inside of a courtroom. One of his own people will put a bullet in his head as part of a revolt/coup, I will bet.
The newspaper, The Observer, also said the government was planning to publish evidence detailing Iraq’s nuclear capabilities as a pre-emptive strike against critics of any action.
I think that's wise, given how many people haven't been paying attention, and are unaware, despite the information being entirely publically available. Similarly the history of Hussein's regime, and its use of nerve gas and mustard gas should be further publicized.
Meanwhile, in Washington, 200 former Iraqi officers said that they would meet under Pentagon auspices at a U.S. military facility in March to plan Saddam’s overthrow, U.S. and Iraqi opposition officials said Wednesday.
Will this turn out to be significant in regime change? I venture no guess at this time, but will watch attentively.
CAN'T YOU GUYS SPOT A HOAX IN FRONT OF YOUR NOSE? Bill Quick's post reminds me that I thought it was obvious from word one that "Stephanie DuPont" at Ain't no bad dude was an hilarious hoax. What amazes me is the endless number of bloggers apparently taking "her" seriously. Either I'm overly cynical, or there are one heck of a bunch of astonishly naive bloggers. (I diplomatically name no names, but the list is nearly legion.) (Broken link now fixed.)
3/01/2002 01:54:00 AM |permanent link| | Main Page |
Other blogs commenting on this post
THE TIP JAR AND THE BUREAUCRACY: Got a tipjar on your website? You might want to read this story. Even if you're not unemployed, you may wish to contemplate other possible collisions with other bureacracies.
Prominently displayed on the site is the cyberspace version of that Starbucks fixture, the tip jar. Click on it and you can e- mail Mr. Rosenberg a dollar (through PayPal or Amazon.com). He also has a post office box for nonvirtual donations. The suggested contribution: one dollar.
To his amazement, dollars have come streaming in. Real dollars. Virtual dollars. Nine thousand dollars.
This sounds like a good thing. And until Valentine's Day, it was.
After all, Mr. Rosenberg had been unemployed since June...
... and the Department of Labor, which called Mr. Rosenberg into its offices on Feb. 14. His benefits had run out in December, and he didn't take the meeting too seriously, he said, until he found himself in "an interrogation room, totally `NYPD Blue.' "
While the investigator was very nice, Mr. Rosenberg said, he did make it plain that you are not supposed to earn money and collect unemployment at the same time. The Labor Department never comments on individual unemployment insurance cases, a spokeswoman said, but added that the unemployed are generally allowed to accept donations.
The other problem, however, is that unemployed people are supposed to be actively looking for work, not spending all of their time answering e-mail, drawing cartoons and getting interviewed on television about being unemployed. So there is a good chance, Mr. Rosenberg said, that he will be asked to repay the last seven weeks of his unemployment benefits — close to $3,000.
He doesn't have the money; the tip jar has been paying his rent. "I really am unemployed," he said. "I really am broke."
Eleventh-graders at the elite Islamic Saudi Academy in Northern Virginia study energy and matter in physics, write out differential equations in precalculus and read stories about slavery and the Puritans in English.
Then they file into their Islamic studies class, where the textbooks tell them the Day of Judgment can't come until Jesus Christ returns to Earth, breaks the cross and converts everyone to Islam, and until Muslims start attacking Jews.
[...]
Maps of the Middle East hang on classroom walls, but Israel is missing.
CAN I BE THE MATT WELCH OF IRAN?: This piece by Michael Lewis is great. Must-read. NITV, National Iranian Television, is being run for nickels and dimes in LA, by a former Iranian rock star, and beamed around the world by satellite, including into Iran.
Buried in the hundreds of thousands of Iranians living in Los Angeles there was a neglected trove of aging Persian entertainers unwelcome in their home country. The Dan Rather of Iran now lived in Encino. The Frank Sinatra of Iran lived in Sherman Oaks.
[...]
It was during Meybodi's show in September 2000 that this story really begins. As always, calls were coming in from across the United States and Western Europe. And then a call came that didn't sound like the others; it clicked weirdly, like an Iranian phone line. The caller said he was in Isfahan, a city in central Iran, and that he was picking up NITV's satellite signal. Meybodi didn't believe him.
''Who am I?'' Meybodi asked.
''I don't know,'' said the caller. ''But I see you on my TV.''
Meybodi still didn't believe him; nobody did. He asked for the caller's phone number and said he would call him back. Still on the air, Meybodi phoned Isfahan, and sure enough the caller picked up. But Meybodi still didn't believe his story.
Meybodi held up an apple on TV.
''What am I holding?'' he asked the caller. Atabay and a few others drifted into the studio.
''An apple,'' the caller said. Now everyone who worked at NITV was in the studio. They were all Iranians; most of them were middle-aged men; most of them had not been home in more than 20 years; most of them assumed that they would never go home. They were not just physically but also imaginatively cut off from their pasts.
Meybodi picked up a pen. ''What am I holding now?'' he asked.
''A pen,'' the caller said.
''When he said it was a pen,'' Atabay says, ''that's when we began to weep.'' Men with faces that looked as if they had been carved from stone broke down and cried, oblivious of the fact that they were on live television.
All of a sudden -- just like that -- there was a new connection between Iranians in exile and the home country. The effect was electric, but unsettling, as if someone had plugged a 120-volt appliance into a 240-volt socket. Atabay says it took six hours before the whole of Iran knew there was something new on TV and another six before they all tried to send him faxes. ''These people wrote to say that everybody start like crazy to buy satellite dishes,'' Atabay recalls. ''They sell their carpets. They sell cars. We had one story from someone who sold a kidney.''
[...]
Atabay is also irritable. He is the only man I have ever seen suck on a sugar cube with an expression suggesting that the sugar cube has wronged him.
NO WHINING ABOUT WINING: This has gotten some attention:
...six investment bankers lapped up £44,000 ($62,700) in fine wines, and now they are suffering from a huge hangover.
Their employer, Barclays Capital, has fired all but one of the bankers since the dinner last July....
...after they tried to sneak much of their share of the bill onto their expense accounts. Dinner at Pétrus sounds lovely.
Gourmets willing to spend £50 for three courses can tuck into the cooking of Marcus Wareing, including sautéed medallion of stuffed confit pig trotter or roast breast of Anjou pigeon on a parsnip galette.
There's just no way he makes pig trotter as good as my mom makes pig trotter!
But the food was very much a sideshow to this particular dinner, which also included a third Château Pétrus, this one a 1946 vintage for £9,400. Then there was a 1984 Montrachet for £1,400, two bottles of Kronenbourg beer at £3.50 each, six glasses of Champagne for £9.50 each, one juice at £3, 10 bottles of water totaling £35, a pack of cigarettes for £5 and, to wash it all down, a bottle of 100-year-old Château d'Yquem dessert wine for £9,200.
Hey! Which doofus had the beer? Good thing the water is so cheap, though.
The proprietor was so impressed that he did not charge for the food, and the restaurant has kept the bill ever since as a sort of memento.
VOTE FOR THE ORC: Fair piece of analysis of where Joe Lieberman stands vis a vis Gore and other candidates for the Democratic nomination. Yes, now that we're only two and a half years out, the race for the Presidency is heating up.
But more than any other potential 2004 candidate--even Gore--Lieberman has embraced the policy themes associated with Clinton and the DLC's "New Democrat" movement; he's even named his political group ROCPAC after the Clintonian trilogy of "responsibility, opportunity and community." (Actually, Clinton more often ordered the three as opportunity, responsibility and community, but that would have left Lieberman with ORCPAC, which sounds like something from "The Lord of The Rings.")
SYMBIONESE LUNATIC ARMY: Typically superb Tod Gitlin piece on the upcoming trial, and a retrospective.
But it's a safe bet that many will mislabel the case and tell us that a generation of activists is going on trial.
A few on the left will agree with some on the right that the prosecution of the SLA "soldiers" for the murder of Myrna Opsahl, who was counting church dues in the Crocker National Bank, is really a prosecution of the left as a whole. These sentimentalists will halfheartedly acknowledge that the SLA's tactics were extreme, but contend that its members' hearts were more or less in the right place, that they thus deserve the sympathy of those who peopled the radical movements of the 1960s and '70s. This quarter-truth matches the right's attempt to turn the SLA into poster monsters for left-wing politics of every stripe. But tenderness must be tempered by recognition of the sheer senselessness--and worse--of the SLA, whose obscurantism ("Symbionese"), vagueness ("liberation") and chutzpah ("army") were of a piece with the vileness of their tactics.
[...]
Accordingly, the SLA members were stupefyingly incoherent. With no detectable grasp of political ideas, they spoke in self-parodying claptrap ("Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people"). This is the way people talk when they have no real following or any serious intention of organizing one.
It was only the SLA's actions that made its words worthy of notice. Its soldiers embraced a lunatic theory: They could make their actions mean whatever they said by simply declaring they had big ideas and daring anyone to disagree with them. Not for them the moral requirement of making a reasonable case that their means might conceivably lead to desirable ends.
[...] In its farcical, nightmarish way, the SLA helped inter the dreams of a decade. Whatever our political persuasion, it is worth remembering for two reasons: to remind us that murder, however adorned, is murder, and to remind us that whoever professes politics is also required to make sense.
DEEPER TRUTHS AND IMAGINARY SATISFACTIONS: Perceptive review of Blake Eskin's A LIFE IN PIECES: The Making and Unmaking of Binjamin Wilkomirski.
"Wilkomirski's" memoir of being a childhood Holocaust survivor won him awards, sales, and plaudits when it was published in 1997, and even after he was revealed to be a brilliant fantasist.
But A Life in Pieces is much more than expose. It is a telling account of our culture's love affair with the victim. Even after his story started to unravel, there were psychologists, survivor-group leaders, Holocaust museum curators who not only stood by ''Binjamin Wilkomirski'' but were willing to suggest that to question his veracity was somehow to attack the memory of the Holocaust itself. Or that it was to attack the memories of all survivors. There came a point where extensive documentary evidence showed that the book was a fake; on the other side there was only the author's claim that the evidence itself must be fake -- the result of a vast conspiracy to deny him his Jewish identity. The claim was made solely on the basis of his purported recovered memories. So-called experts rushed to his defense. A therapist who publishes on the subject said that to question his authenticity was to put him through a ''second Holocaust.'' A member of a religious studies department suggested that to question his memory was ''to commit another murder.''
Astonishingly, the museum archivist who videotaped an interview with him later said, ''I'd rather his story not be discredited'': ''Even if his story is a total construction, he says something about the perception of children that I don't know that anyone else has said. How does a child take in language they didn't understand? I don't remember anyone writing about it so constructively. It's given me another insight into the Holocaust.''
No it hasn't. At most it gives a fantasy of insight, a fantasy that the archivist enjoyed so much that she left it in the museum for others to enjoy. And there are psychologists who will continue to insist that Fragments is clinically important even if the specific facts are not accurate -- as though it reveals a deeper truth about child survivors. Here laid bare are ''experts'' in the grips of their own fantasies.
Fragments is revealing, but not about the Holocaust. [...] What A Life in Pieces shows in bold relief is how the culture was ready to fall in love with this myth. The person called Binjamin ignored the facts, but then so did almost everybody else.
[...]
powerful longings are easily, if temporarily, drawn into imaginary satisfactions.
IF YOU'RE A NEW VISITOR, perhaps from Instapundit, or DailyPundit, or Little Green Footballs, or Off The Kuff, or USS Clueless, or BlogWatch II, or Newsrack, or Midwest Conservative Journal or wherever (see links list to left), and you enjoy a reasonable amount of what you read, remember, if you don't donate (button in upper left corner), the terrorists will have won. Help Gary get up to having made a grand total of ten dollars.
And feel free to browse the brilliant archives. If Blogspot chooses to let them appear while you're here.
You'd pay $1-$5 for a 60,000 word good book, wouldn't you? And, besides, I'm an orphan, and a cripple, I have a terminal disease, and, yes, my hump has always been on the left side. It happened in the war. I'm a credit to my people. I have big sad eyes. Don't let the terrorists win!
If you donate generously, I'll let you in on this deal I have going in Nigeria. Break a record, and I'll see that you're made an official, complete with diplomatic passport, of the Dominion of Melchizedek! Now, has any other blogger told you about Melchizedek? I rest my case.
ARGES-LÈS-GONESSE, France — Shalom Temim, who lives in this modern, soulless-looking suburb of Paris where the government has built row upon row of subsidized high-rises, knows that he is the only Jew in his housing block on the Rue Delorme.
So, he does not doubt that the graffiti spray-painted in his stairwell — "Vive Hezbollah" and "Dirty Jew" — are directed at him. Nor is it the only sign of the hostility that surrounds him in this predominately Arab neighborhood. Six months ago a rock came crashing through his living-room window, and after it a smoky firecracker.
On a recent morning, fresh spit was visible on his front door.
There's quite a bit of detail in this story, and no ambiguity. Please read it.
"People are scared."
The Jewish leaders see a political component in the lack of outcry over the new wave of violence against Jews. More than five million Muslims — many of them from Algeria or other former French colonies in north Africa — live in France today, but only 600,000 Jews.
"It is clear that the Muslim community is more taken into account," the chief rabbi of France, Joseph Sitruk, said in a recent interview.
But some Muslim leaders suggest that the extent of the problem may be exaggerated, and they worry that too much publicity about it will only incite more trouble.
"I hear all this talk," said Said Kamli, the director of the mosque in Amiens, a town north of Paris with large Arab and Jewish populations. "But I do not feel this all around me.
Yes, typically members of a minority are more aware of how they are treated than others are, as you should know.
If there are really big numbers, then of course we must sound the bell of alarm. But my fear is that the problem will grow bigger if there is too much talk about it. The kids will start hearing that kids in another town are doing these things and they'll start doing it too."
Then perhaps you should teach them not to.
This is extraordinary reasoning. Was or is the answer to, say, white anti-black racism in America for the majority population to keep as quiet as possible about it, and not discuss it, for fear of inspiring children to be racist? Or was and is it to stand up and discuss racism and point the finger at it and label it and denounce it?
Are these kids not capable of being taught not to be anti-semitic? What a despicable point of view. I can only speculate on the reasoning behind this, but I feel that examining it would be precisely turning over a rock to see the squirming fetidness beneath.
[...] One government report says acts of violence against Jews have increased from one in 1998 to nine in 1999 to 116 in 2000, the most recent figure available. Other anti-Semitic incidents, ranging from threats to arson, went from 74 in 1998 and 60 in 1999 to 603 in 2000.
[...]
What seems indisputable is that news that a synagogue has been firebombed or that stones have been thrown at Jewish schools has become commonplace.
In Garges-lès-Gonesse the distinctive blue schoolbus that takes children to a Jewish school in nearby Aubervilliers has been attacked three times in the last 14 months, when there were dozens of young children aboard.
The first time, a knife was thrown through an open window, the bus driver said. The second time, three men used their car to block the bus from moving. Then one man smashed a window with a tire iron while another menaced the driver with a gun, telling him he was not in Tel Aviv. Recently rocks were hurled at the windows, smashing one of them.
"I keep trying to tell the kids it's nothing," said the bus driver, Saadoun Hanoufa. "But of course they are scared. No one wants to live like this."
Beaumont was right. No rising tide of anti-semitism in Europe "yet." And, besides, it's Muslims, and they're not real Europeans, you know -- a subtext I didn't emphasize in my previous response to him, and I damn well should have.
Besides, attacking children on buses is just legitimate criticism of Israeli policy. And I'm only saying this, of course, to deflect criticism of Ariel Sharon. Because, I now reveal, the funder who took away my Blogspot ad was Mossad!
THE RIGHT TO BE AN ASSHOLE: it's at the heart of the First Amendment, or at least in its lungs. This schlub has the right to be wrong, and Beatrice Hall and I wouldn't have it any other way. Excellent free speech piece by Steve Chapman.
"A function of free speech is to invite dispute," wrote Justice William O. Douglas then. "That is why freedom of speech, though not absolute, is nevertheless protected against censorship or punishment, unless shown likely to produce a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance or unrest."
BENNY MORRIS TURNS ROUND and speaks up. Benny Morris is, as the Guardian says:
the radical Israeli historian who forced his country to confront its role in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Later he was jailed for refusing to do military service in the West Bank. But now he has changed his tune.
Wowie! You are Redensek! You are techy yet cute, and pretty much all around cool. Everyone loves you! You're fun, popular, and can mold yourself to fit right in to any situation.
You're T'Pol. You are very analytical and logical, as any good Vulcan is, but this makes you stick out like a sore thumb. You're cold and calculated, but there's a softer side to you that you tend to keep under wraps.
In early March, a hand-held language translator developed by a former Navy Seal will be issued to more than 500 American soldiers in Afghanistan. The device, called the Phraselator, is encased in rugged weatherproof rubber, powered by a rechargeable lithium-polymer battery (or four AA alkaline batteries) and can translate more than 1,000 spoken English phrases with the press of a button.
Designed by John Sarich, a 20-year armed forces veteran who served as a Navy Seal in the Vietnam War, the device can instantly translate phrases like "I am here to help you" and "show me your identification" into Pashto, Urdu, Arabic or Dari. Users can also choose from a text menu of common phrases. [...] Unlike some consumer translation devices, the Phraselator translates words very quickly. Fast enough, Mr. Sarich said, to blurt out, "Stop, or I'll shoot" in time for it to make a difference.
THANKS go to hero of the revolution Kevin Maroney for having provided the exact solution to my stupid template screw-up, which I've deleted mention of, and to Steve Glover for having provided a suggestion that would have gotten to the same solution. (And someday I'll figure out how to get the Paypal and Extreme Counter buttons into some other column without screwing them up.)
2/25/2002 02:53:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
Other blogs commenting on this post
0 comments
Yesterday when reading the 'blah, blah, blah and blog' Wired article, something Evan said struck me right between the eyes; "[...] If you write everyday, your writing improves, your thinking improves."
Right on! The magic of blogging revealed at last.
Its brain-training.
And he continues in this vein for a multitude of paragraphs. Endlessly he tells us of the evils of tv, and the virtues of writing, and how blogging will teach you to write well.
And in each usage, he reveals that he has no clue when to put an apostrophe in "it's," and when not to. Amongst other bits of illiteracy.
Rather undermines his case, I'm afraid, when he shows he can't tell possessive from plural. He also consistently has no clue where to put a comma. He further seems to believe that ellipses are any random set of dots used in whatever fashion one is in the mood to use.
Weblogging is changing our view of the world. Mainly because we are now writing about our own views. Instead of watching the editied for tv version we are taking the time to collect, rearrange, codify and publish our own version of what we see. We are exercizing our brains, making them stronger, linking them with others who are also emerging from the hypnotic depths of mass-media.
Uh, yeah. Some of us actually have watched plenty of tv, and yet still know how to spell without using a spell-checker. Perhaps while he's exercizing, he should work on doing a better job of having editied his writing.
Here's a blog I don't plan to look at again until someone gives me a very good reason to.
Pakistani military and intelligence officials with knowledge of the events disclosed that a Pakistani intelligence officer played a key role in nurturing the Army of Muhammad after its formation in 2000 and also helped facilitate Mr. Sheikh's frequent travels between Afghanistan and Pakistan, his ancestral home.
That intelligence officer, Brigadier Abdullah, who uses one name, was among those who were pushed aside late last year as President Musharraf began his shake-up of the country's powerful and secretive spy service, known as Inter-Services Intelligence, or I.S.I.
[...]
The intelligence agency's past actions indicate that its interests — or, at a minimum, those of former agency officials — have often dovetailed with the interests of Mr. Pearl's kidnappers, as reflected in their original demands. New disclosures of links between Mr. Sheikh and two recently dismissed agency officials only intensify suspicions about the its role in this case.
BLACK STUDIES: The estimable Steven den Beste wrote some stuff I agree with and some I disagree with, or question, in this post:
Maybe it's because I'm a cranky reactionary middle-aged white guy, but I've never understood just what it was that a "Black Studies" program actually did. I know I'm a grubby utilitarian, but I've always thought that going to college was supposed to prepare you for a career. I studied computer science and went into software engineering. Someone else studies chemistry and ends up working in the petrochemical industry. Even someone who studies Lit can get a job teaching somewhere. But if you walk out of a university with a degree in Black Studies, what are you supposed to do next? Evidently the answer is that you get a job teaching Black Studies at some other university, which would seem to make it the worst kind of make-work.
How does it differ from any Humanities degree? Is studying literature or history "the worst kind of make-work," as a rule? If not, why single out "black" literature and history? A good friend of mine is a professor of Jewish Studies. Also "the worst kind of make-work"?
This strikes me as foolish generalization. College is not vocational training. Studies of humanties and other academic subjects is utterly as valid as study of a subject that per se gives you credentials for a career in private industry.
Fields of literature and history such as "Black Studies" or "Jewish Studies" or "French Studies" or "Middle Eastern Studies" or "Southern Studies" are nothing more than, in theory, fields of specialization, such as almost all academics in literature or history, among other fields, engage in. Where I may not disagree with Steven den Beste is on questions of specific validity of specific endeavors or individuals, but these are not fields I possess credentials in, either.
Later, though, speaking of a specific controversy over a Trustee of the State University of New York, he writes:
That lack of "solid scholarship" is a pretty serious claim. Silly me, I assumed that the response to this would be to cite a long list of important scholarship they had accomplished so as to refute that charge. Huh-uh.
That would be an appropriate response, I agree.
[...] Indeed! As a private citizen, she has the right to criticize the Black Studies program; as a trustee I think she has an obligation to do so if she thinks it is not serving the needs of the students, not to mention the taxpayers of the State of New York, who are paying the bills.
And on that issue, as a generalization, I have no disagreement.
Just incidentally, den Beste refers to de Russy, the Trustee in question, with:
...she previously got in a brouhaha about a rather seedy conference about women's sexuality which was held at one SUNY campus.
I recall the kerfuffle. The Post story reminds us:
She and other critics described the conference, called "Revolting Behavior: The Challenges of Women's Sexual Freedom," as a how-to recruiting session for homosexuals, featuring simulated sex acts and sex toys.
Now, really, are college students going to be dismayed, shocked, or harmed by exposure to sex toys? I don't recall that student attendance was mandatory. And is someone who asserts that there is even such a thing as "how-to recruiting sessions(s) for homosexuals" a credible critic? Is that something worth worrying about?
de Russey said:
...black studies programs should be folded into a school's history department or some other department and not be allowed to continue as separate entities.
The story makes clear she was not taking issue with a specific professor, or specific issues of the specific department at a specific college (SUNY has more than thirty); she was going after all "black studies" programs, everywhere, as a generalization. This strikes me as not a genuine attempt at academic reform and concern, but as a political agenda, and I'd like to know if, say, she's also going to go after Jewish Studies, and Southern Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies, and other specific areas, besides "black studies."
2/25/2002 07:31:00 AM |permanent link| | Main Page |
Other blogs commenting on this post
0 comments
BOB'S YOUR UNCLE!: Patrick had linked to this story, but I decided I'd be duplicative, since I love it. The link he had didn't work for me, though; try this (though we've both quoted nearly the entirety, so, actually, don't bother).
The legislature has decided to drop the search for a new name for the territory -- the second time it has chosen not to replace the current one. The plug was pulled on the first such effort in 1999 when a public opinion poll suggested that the most popular name was Northwest Territories and the second most popular was Bob.
BERNARD LEWIS, who is deservedly so in now, I'm expecting posters of him for teens to put on their walls, anyday -- well, maybe not, but there should be (have I mentioned that my very very first job in publishing was at Teen Beat magazine, when I was fifteen?) -- did a long interview with C-Span, and the transcript is here.
Imagine that some such group as the Ku Klux Klan or the Aryan Nation or one of th--one of those were suddenly to come into the possession of unlimited wealth and use that money to set up schools and colleges all over the world, promoting their particular version of Christianity. Then you get an idea of what has happened to Islam as a result of the enormous wealth that oil has brought to some people in Saudi Arabia. It has enabled them to set up schools and colleges all over the Muslim world, teaching their brand of Islam, this kind of fanatical, extremist version of Islam which has thus acquired a--a scope, an expanse--an expansion which it could never otherwise have had. Without oil money, this kind of Islam would have remained a fringe group in a marginal country.
[...]
on the whole, I should say that oil has been a curse to the Arab world.
LAMB: Why?
Prof. LEWIS: Precisely this reason. You know, there's this old American dictum: no taxation without representation. What is sometimes overlooked is that the converse is also true: no representation without taxation. And with our revenues, they didn't need taxes; therefore, they didn't need assemblies to levy taxes. And they were made independent of public opinion in their own countries with this untold wealth accruing from oil revenues. This greatly strengthened the power of autocratic governments, far greater than it had ever been in the past.
[...]
the last sentence is, `We're either going to have to get tough or get out.'
Prof. LEWIS: Yes.
LAMB: Explain that.
Prof. LEWIS: Well, the kind of wishy-washy policies that have been followed in the past and just won't work and the question which people have been asking all the time is I think the wrong question. The question people are asking is why do they hate us? That's the wrong question. They've been hating us for a long time. In a sense, they've been hating us for centuries, and it's very natural that they should. You have this millennial rivalry between two world religions, and now, from their point of view, the wrong one seems to be winning. And more generally, I mean, you can't be rich, strong, successful and loved, particularly by those who are not rich, not strong and not successful. So the hatred is something almost axiomatic. The question which we should be asking is why do they neither fear nor respect us?
[...]
Prof. LEWIS: Well, by get tough, I mean continue the good work that was started in Afghanistan and deal with some of the other countries or groups, terrorists--terrorist groups and countries that help them. The alternative, get out, is find a substitute for oil so that the Middle East no longer matters. Leave them to their own devices.
These are not, of course, contradictory strategies, though there are clearly limits to how far "get out" can go. But if immense social opprobrium were directed at unnecessarily or excessively using byproducts of oil, we'd be making a far better start at cutting the legs out from under terrorism and Islamism than by, say, attacking drug use.
2/25/2002 02:10:00 AM |permanent link| | Main Page |
Other blogs commenting on this post
0 comments
ANDREW SULLIVANexplains blogging. (Registration required, but you can, of course, make up all your responses, as I did.)
$27,000 in tipjar income in 2001! Um, I've made $5 so far. Please consider hitting the "donate" button in the upper left, if you enjoy reading me (modify the amount to whatever you wish to; it's a good clean libertarian act); you wouldn't believe how dire my financial situation is if I told you. If you don't donate, the terrorists will have won.
V.S. NAIPAUL SPEAKS UP: The Times of Londonreports:
Nayantara Sehgal, an author and niece of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had just opened a panel discussion yesterday on colonialism and oppression when Naipaul, who is 69, blurted out: “My life is short. I can’t listen to banalities.”
He continued: “And this thing about colonialism, this thing about gender oppression, the very word oppression wearies me. I don’t know why. I think it is because banality irritates me.”
Vikram Seth, author of the best-selling A Suitable Boy, tried to calm Naipaul by patting him gently on the back, with disastrous effect. “What are you doing!” fumed Naipaul, throwing off his hand.
He added: “If writers just sit and talk about oppression, they’re not going to do much writing. My difference on that kind of attitude is that I have to make a living by writing.”
The novelist Amitav Ghosh, who was chairing the discussion, struggled to regain control as Ms Sehgal whispered in his ear that she would not say a word more.
Naipaul had already raised eyebrows at the opening ceremony on Monday when he suggested that the only good writing by Indians in English came from overseas.
PALESTINIAN TEXTBOOKS: a fascinating close examination of them, Jews, Israel and Peace in Palestinian School Textbooks. The executive summary confirms what I've been given to understand.
Palestine stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and is exclusively Arab.
Read at least this. I've only barely begun to peruse the whole thing as yet. (Also via Bjørn Stærk.)
Later: I've now read the whole thing, and it's as dire as one can imagine. Children indoctrinated like this are unlikely to ever grow up believing in peaceful coexistence with Israel.
Adults who believe it and in such indoctrination are equally unlikely to ever engage in an attempt at genuine peaceful coexistence. Read some of this material. The sections aren't actually at all long.
CHINA'S PRESIDENT REVEALED AS AUDIOANIMATRON!: (No, not in Florida.) I wish I had seen this press conference, in which Jiang Zemin apparently emitted smoke and sparks from his neck, as he repeatedly uttered the phrase "Illogical, illogical; Norman, please coordinate."
(I suppose I should stop with the Star Trek references, since Lileks is the only one who gets them.)
CHINA’S President yesterday gave a baffling performance in front of hundreds of journalists that made his often tongue-tied American counterpart look eloquent by comparison.
President Jiang Zemin stood in front of the assembled foreign and local journalists, whom he had formally invited to Beijing’s Great Hall of the People for a “joint meeting” with President George Bush, and refused to answer all their questions.
Seeking guidance from his press secretary, Mr Jiang simply pretended, live on national television, that he had not heard two separate questions about imprisoned Catholic bishops and religious freedom.
Great story.
[...]
Rather implausibly, he also claimed to have no influence over who is imprisoned in China and why.
Shortly before Mr Jiang finally addressed the question of religious freedom, the television lights in the Great Hall of the People dimmed.
Kremlinologists wondered whether the live transmission on Chinese state television had been cut, allowing Mr Jiang to answer the question without losing face in front of a domestic audience.
Last night, staff at China Central Television insisted the transmission had not been cut. Asked when they would next have the chance to show a Jiang press conference live, they refused to answer. Just like their President.
Gosh, Ari Fleisher is soooo envious. (Via Bjørn Stærk.)
The Chinese government responded to President Bush's call for religious tolerance Friday by promptly editing out his remarks on freedom and faith in its transcript of a speech that Bush delivered on live national television.
[...]
Almost half the speech--large chunks extolling American liberty and urging China to relax its political and religious restrictions--was simply hacked out in the transcript released by the official New China News Agency. The heavy censorship prompted indignant complaints on the Internet from people who demanded that the full text be restored.
[...]
The excised portions of Bush's speech contained praise for America's civic spirit and its status as "a beacon of hope" for people around the world. Bush's criticism of some Chinese textbooks' portrayal of U.S. society also was dropped. So were his comments on his personal faith, his call for an end to religious persecution here, his description of the Statue of Liberty and his declaration that freedom need not mean chaos.
Even his praise for the courage of the firefighters and police officers who died trying to save victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. got the ax.
One thing that remained was a brief civics lesson on the separation of powers in U.S. government and the fact that political authority derives from a "free vote of the people." But Bush's wish that the Chinese might one day choose their own national leaders was expunged.
KGB AND THE KILLING OF THE US AMBASSADOR. Steve Coll also has a separate piece, based on Mitrokhin, on the killing of Adolph Dubs. It's long been believed that the KGB had a hand in it, albeit in screwing up, rather than intentionally trying to murder Dubs. Some damning details:
The kidnappers were armed with only three pistols among them. Two died in the attack, one was taken into custody, and one escaped -- it isn't clear how. "In order to frustrate requests from the Americans to question the detained terrorist and hunt down the one who escaped, it was decided to shoot the one who had been detained and to shoot another prisoner, pretending that he was the fourth terrorist," Mitrokhin writes. The two killings were carried out on the night of the kidnapping. The escaped terrorist apparently was never caught.
[...]
After Dubs's death, the KGB planted stories in the foreign press claiming that the kidnappers were members of a radical Islamic Shiite organization. The KGB also put out misleading and confused accounts about how the abduction unfolded. Its disinformation campaign lasted more than a year, involved forged documents concocted by KGB handwriting experts, and sought to direct blame for the botched rescue attempt on Hafizullah Amin, an Afghan communist leader then in disfavor with the Soviets.
KGB IN AFGHANISTAN Long Outlookpiece on KGB history in that land, using the 178 page (PDF) article by Vasiliy Mitrokhin released last month by the invaluable Cold War History Project.
Mitrokhin, as you know, is the KGB archivist who spent years transcribing documents onto scrap of paper, walking out of the Directorate's HQ with them in his shoes, painstakingly retranscribing them, and then buying this trove in his backyard, until it and he were smuggled out to the West in 1992 (a triumph for British Intelligence over US, by the way).
Somehow, of course, leftists concerned, rightfully and wrongfully, with CIA activities over the years, will be unlikely to be writing aha! pieces full of glee at discovering, again, proof of KGB manipulations, assassinations, and atrocities.
An unknown, perhaps significant, number of the clashes among mujaheddin groups during the 1980s -- which set the stage for the catastrophic civil war in the 1990s -- apparently were carried out deliberately by paid KGB agents.
FAS AND GOOGLE are cooperating in limited access to security data, is an interesting bit buried in the 22nd and 23rd 'graphs of this piece on the tension between "right to know" and data that's useful in planning terrorist attacks.
I don't think there are clear and simple rules to follow on this issue, and anyone who sees it as black and white is being foolish. I'd like to preserve as much information in publically available sites as possible, but not to the point of causing serious risk.
I think it's responsible of FAS (Federation of American Scientists), for example, to remove those satellite photos of nuclear plants; they were interesting, but I'd just as soon not have someone, including me, know where to blow up the spent-waste pools.
THE IRAQI TIMETABLE: Andrew Sullivan wondered a few days ago why things were moving so slowly, and others have asked the same. This bespeaks, among other things, ignorance of how long it takes to militarily gear up for a major fight utilizing conventional forces, and including a massive air campaign, neither of which were done in Afghanistan, and yet which also took months to work up to.
This Washington Postpiece by the immensely experienced and well-sourced Walter Pincus, whose work I've followed since he was the lead writer on Iran-Contra, and Karen DeYoung has useful detail on what's necessary to accomplish before military action can be taken.
Pentagon planners say it will take six months to produce enough Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), the precision systems that guided 1,000-pound bombs to Taliban and al Qaeda targets, to contemplate an attack on Saddam Hussein's Iraq. [...] But the military reality is that it could take up to a year before the United States is ready to launch a coordinated assault likely to achieve the administration's goals of destroying Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability and replacing Hussein's regime.
ARAFAT'S GHOSTS: I wondered, after Arafat's Op-Ed appeared in the Times recently, who was writing his stuff. Here's an answer:
European Union special Middle East envoy Miguel Moratinos and US Consul General in Jerusalem Ronald Schlicher aided Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat in drafting a letter last week to US Secretary of State Colin Powell regarding the Karine A arms ship, EU sources confirmed yesterday.
A source in the Prime Minister's Office said the help given to Arafat was part of an international effort to help him improve his image.
Arafat has received additional public relations help in the US from a lobbying firm headed by former US consul general in Jerusalem Edward Abingdon, who reportedly authored his New York Times column on February 3.
"There is a desperate lobby trying to save Arafat, but they cannot save him from himself," the source said. "They can write a clear, articulate letter in good English, but even the best letter cannot hide the true Arafat, the one who calls for a million martyrs to converge on Jerusalem."
THE GUARDIAN/OBSERVER publishes a range of letters responding to Peter Beaumont's piece on European anti-semitism last week. I have a few comments.
If it is not possible to be absolutely opposed to the current handling of the Palestinian intifada by the government of Israel without being accused of being anti-Semitic then I plead guilty. Of course I am not anti-Semitic but I am anti the shooting of children by soldiers and anti the illegal occupation of another people's land. David Johnson Romsey, Hants
Whereas, of course, to be Zionist is to support shooting children, and occupying "another people's land." Without respect to specific pieces of land or claims, the idea that a specific piece of land unquestionably and eternally belongs to some theoretically homogenous and unchanging "people" is self-evidently nonsensical, whether it applies to Jews, "Palestinians" (a concept not even conceived of until after the Versailles conference, and of which no attempt to organize into reality happened until the late 1950s, which makes them now no less real than any other "people"), Americans, Scots, Bosnians, or Grand Fenwickians. Claims framed in such manner, if applied universally, collapse the geopolitics of everywhere save, perhaps, Antarctica.
Peter Beaumont says 'the fear of being declared an anti-Semite' is 'Europe's last great taboo'. The last taboo is surely honest criticism of Zionism which has depended on anti-Semitism for its existence from the time of Herzl through the Nazi era to the present? [...] Israel needs more Jews to maintain its character, and it could be argued Sharon's policies provoke anti-Semitism so Jews in Europe migrate to the relative safety of the Zionist State.
Stifling discussion of such issues by the threat of the 'anti-Semite' label is just one way that Zionists have sought to manipulate the media for their own ends, hijacking the faith of Judaism in the process.
I'm not sure what circles Ibrahim Hewitt, Leicester, moves in, but I've not run into this "taboo." However, I'm glad he can explain and stand up for "the faith of Judaism" while not at all engaging in anti-semitism whilst discussing the Jewish manipulation of the media for their own ends. He definitively demonstrates that anti-semitism in Europe, or Britain, is not at all a valid concern. Yup.
2/24/2002 07:10:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
Other blogs commenting on this post
0 comments
HOW TO DEAL WITH THE AMERICAN GOLIATH by Andrew Rawnsley. Some nonsense, but on the scale of Guardian/Observer opinion pieces, not so bad. Calls Bush an idiot, but says he's mostly right, anyway, and Blair is correct to put Britain behind him, while the rest of Europe whinges.
Just over 10 years ago, a tremendously distinguished professor of history at Yale University shocked the rest of the inhabitants of the most powerful nation on the planet. He warned that the American Empire was destined to follow the same trajectory as the imperiums of Rome, Persia, Charlemagne, Spain, Britain and every other empire on which the sun eventually set.
Although Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers sold well, and inspired the usual discussion amongst the intelligensia, the number of people who even heard of it is unlikely to have risen about 2-3% of the nation, much less "the rest of the inhabitants."
The largest naval armada assembled since 1945 currently cruises the Arabian Gulf.
I'm not going to bother to look up the specifics this moment, but this is surely wrong; I seem to recall we had four carrier battlegroups there in 1991, which we certainly don't today, and the navy is approximately two-thirds the size. This strikes me as wrong-on-the-face in the same way I didn't have to look up specifics when my eyes popped at reading so many recent references to "the 80,000 ton Crusader artillery cannon." Who could read that, and not know it's insane? An awful lot of people, apparently.
Colin Powell, the one American whom Europeans thought they could count on as an agent of caution in Washington, recently rang Jack Straw. The Foreign Secretary sought guidance about how the mind of the White House was developing. Powell replied with words to the effect that he had phoned because 'they are more likely to tell you guys than me'.
I'm a bit skeptical of this, after it has been run through a British game of "telephone." However,
The intelligence material that the Prime Minister sees makes him genuinely disturbed - it would not being going too far to say petrified - about Saddam Hussein's potential ability to use weapons of mass destruction.
Facts are facts, and it's to Blair's credit that he's not closing his eyes and trying to wish them away. Rawnsley has further redeeming things to say, but I'll conclude with
Europe asks to be treated as America's partner, but behaves like a dinner companion who always complains about the menu and will never pay its share of the bill.
BRITS SAY APRIL SUMMIT will finalize details on military action to topple the Iraqui government. I expect that, as usual, this story is rather ahead of reality. For one thing, while it stresses an inevitable military attack, it also makes clear that Hussein will be given an ultimatum to let inspectors in.
The problem unmentioned in this story is what if Hussein is bright enough to let in inspectors? He's almost surely able to bamboozle the UN into accepting enough conditions that the inspections will be weak enough to be largely meaningless.
And even if not, threatening to go to war over refusal to be admitted to a few palaces is a much harder sell. Frankly, Hussein would be an idiot not to go that route, and all the signs I see are that he will. Does the administration have a plan for dealing with this? I hope so.
DAVID IRVING IS IN DENIAL ABOUT DENIAL: Excellent lengthy catch-up piece on the Hitler-adoring Holocaust denier, with details on how he is not paying any of the judgments rendered against him, and thus is still intimidating publishers with threats of legal action they will have to pay for, but he will not. Includes an account of his typically bizarre reaction to the news that Traudl Junge, the last of Hitler's private secretaries, had died, and his previous visit with another such secretary, who gave him one of Hiter's drawings, which he treasured.
2/24/2002 05:56:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
Other blogs commenting on this post
0 comments
On how booksellers should recommend his books to children: "I'd say: "You are forbidden to read these books. They're too old for you, and they're full of things you shouldn't experience yet, like sex and violence and dangerous ideas about religion. I'm putting them up here, on this shelf, and I'm going out for an hour or so. You're not to touch them."
THE UNH! PROJECT is here. "A collection of guttural moans from comics."
Once upon a time, I had a desire to assemble panels from comic books which contained word balloons expressing discomfort. My friend David Mason described this as a "plap" (a "personal life artistic project") - often conceived, but rarely finished.
But finish he did, and turn it into a zine, and now a marvelous set of web pages. Here we learn:
On the Warren Ellis comics discussion forum, Kurt Busiek identified himself as the writer of the above panel, describing the context as "Runaway brat / wannabe sidekick Suzie is assaulting one of the henchwomen of subatomic dictator Atomia."
During the discussion, Michael Dietsch had asked, "Under what circumstances would you write the direction, 'Girl hits woman's ass with book'?"
Kurt Busiek's reply was "While I wouldn't rule out ever writing that, I expect that was simply how the artist chose to interpret a description of the girl in question rushing in and attacking the evil queen -from- behind, not specifically -on- the behind."
CELEBRITIES IN SPACE has The Independent all afflutter, including a quote from the man they identify as
The concept left science-fiction novelist J G Ballard "breathless with admiration". Manned space flight has been struggling to recapture the popular and political imagination ever since the Challenger disaster in 1986, he said.
"This is the marriage of two of the greatest chimeras of our age: space flight and celebrity," he said. "Celebrity is the key to everything. Unless a celebrity is involved, we're not interested. This may well bring the space age alive again."
The money for research on the ISS has already been cut back to next to nothing. I suggest they just give in, and stage game shows on it. Done right, the profits can then be used to put in the necessary infrastructure for research. Survivor will be ever so much more exciting when you get voted off the station. Without a suit.
2/24/2002 07:10:00 AM |permanent link| | Main Page |
Other blogs commenting on this post
0 comments
Asked if he felt he truly understood the change in the American psyche after Sept. 11, Mr. Patten paused, then said, "Even those of us who've subsequently been to New York and know America well and have vast sympathy for New York and for America after what's happened, I don't think quite get it."
"I don't think we fully comprehend the impact of a grand innocence and a sense of magnificent self-confidence and invulnerability being shattered in that appalling way," he added." I think that's a perfectly legitimate criticism to make of us."
There's also the amount of blood. Europeans keep reminding us that they've been dealing with terrorism for decades, which, of course, any well-read American needs no reminding of. Usually the reminder comes with a condescending little pat on the head -- oh, you poor dear innocent Americans, you're so cute in your silly innocence, but we grownups have dealt with this for ages. Welcome to the real world.
But scale matters. When was the last time Europe was rocked by an incident of 3000 dead? A huge chunk of a city blown to ash? Not since WWII, of course. Have they had even 300 dead at once? No, of course not. Omagh was the most recent "large incident," and that staggered Britain and Ireland. It was 29 people killed. The only truly large scale incident in modern times was Pan Am 103, and that's part of the same international war we're fighting now, not a product of intra-European native terrorism.
In over thirty years since the Troubles, the number of dead just barely exceeds that of what happened in a single day on September 11th. And very few of those deaths are remotely attributable to "terrorism," but rather to gangsterism, sectarianism, rioting, police action, and a range of other awfulness.
Similarly, the Baader-Meinhoff fraction, the Basque ETA, and the various other little gangs the Europeans point to as the source of their experienced wisdom on dealing with terrorism, consisted or consist of handfuls of people killing or kidnapping handfuls of other people; all of them put together may have killed maybe a tenth the number who died on September 11th, if you stretched the figures.
Largely, European terrism has consisted of a handful of assasinations and car bomb threats, and maybe 11 dead a year or so. The shocks to the system aren't at all comparable, and far and away more importantly, the obvious danger isn't comparable.
The Irish Troubles have been a matter of civil disorder and strife; as terrible as they are, as terrible as the history has been, they are not an outside attack on a nation intended to destroy that nation and kill as many of its citizens as possible.
Neither have any of the past or present European terror groups ever remotely threatened the lives of most of its citizens, or even of many at a time. Comparing the two threats is like comparing that of a bb to that of a dum-dum bullet.
But it's comforting for many Europeans to find One More Reason to smile condescendingly and assure themselves that, as ever, they know more, and are wiser, more experienced, and more sophisticated, in their reactions and knowledge, than those juvenile, over-reacting, blundering Americans. And that's what's most important, isn't it?
FRANK RICH rather prematurely, I think, declares the cultural wars over, in a mildly lengthy NY Times Magazinepiece based around his read of an advance copy of David Brock's Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, declaring Brock to be "the archetypal figure of 90's Washington." Naturally, folks on the right won't want to read this piece, save to find something to argue with. Others might enjoy it, however, since Rich is a good writer, even if this is not one of his stronger pieces.
He also notes that Brock discusses at some length the considerable percentage of closeted homosexuals in the conservative circles Brock used to move in.
The numerous gays in ''the seniormost ranks of the Reagan administration called themselves the 'laissez fairies,''' writes Brock.
I was told this was not the true feeling here. I was told the hijackers were actually educated in America. I was told they were sent by Mossad or the C.I.A. I was told in one session that the Jews control the U.S. government and that was the real problem, a statement that prompted me to walk out. I was told the hijackers were responding to Arab anger over blind U.S. support for Israel's brutality to Palestinians. If that was the case, I asked, why did Osama bin Laden say that what motivated him was a desire to drive the U.S. out of Arabia and topple the corrupt Saudi ruling family? I got no good answers.
MICHAEL MOORE's revisionism in now claiming, falsely, that he was telling people in Florida and swing states that "their job was to stop Bush" is busted by the able Jay Zilber here. It becomes more and more awkward over time when your fantasies don't become reality, so retroactive memory-rewrite is a useful option.
2/24/2002 02:04:00 AM |permanent link| | Main Page |
Other blogs commenting on this post
0 comments
Here is the NY Times 
has 
As the BBC 
The army hopes their mascot will appeal to the local people. 
