Sanely free of McCarthyite calling anyone a "traitor" since 2001!
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I'm underemployed (historically particularly as an editor in book and magazine publishing), recurringly housebound with insanely painful now-sporadic (when I have meds) gout, an enlarged heart, and other health problems, particularly including lifelong recurring severe clinical depression. See here for a major crisis. I'm also sometimes available to some degree as a paid writer or researcher. This is a previous update on my situation & this -- and this from December 19th, 2005 update.
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"The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include With ease, and you beside"
-- Emily Dickinson
"We will pursue peace as if there is no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there is no peace."
-- Yitzhak Rabin
"I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be."
-- Alexander Hamilton
"The stakes are too high for government to be a spectator sport."
-- Barbara Jordan
"Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to
trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule --
and both commonly succeed, and are right."
-- H. L. Mencken
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
"The only completely consistent people are the dead."
-- Aldous Huxley
"I have had my solutions for a long time; but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them."
-- Karl F. Gauss
"Whatever evils either reason or declamation have imputed to extensive empire,
the power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind;
and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices, diffused likewise
the improvements of social life."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his
expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were
respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom."
-- Edward Gibbon
"There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify
the evils, of the present times."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Our youth now loves luxuries. They have bad manners, contempt for authority.
They show disrespect for elders and they
love to chatter instead of exercise.
Children are now tyrants, not the servants, of their households. They
no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
chatter before company, gobble up their food, and tyrannize
their teachers."
-- Socrates
"Before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments."
-- Sidney Hook
"Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness."
-- Sidney Hook
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect
disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest
and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
"Faced with the choice of all the land without a Jewish state or a Jewish state without all the
land, we chose a Jewish state without all the land."
-- David Ben-Gurion
"...the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him
an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this
or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages
to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also
to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing,
with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess
and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminals who do not withstand such
temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the
opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction;
that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion
and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their
ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty,
because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of
judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square
with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil
government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts
against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if
left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has
nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her
natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is
permitted freely to contradict them.
-- Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson
"We don't live just by ideas. Ideas are part of the mixture of customs and practices,
intuitions and instincts that make human life a conscious activity susceptible to
improvement or debasement. A radical idea may be healthy as a provocation;
a temperate idea may be stultifying. It depends on the circumstances. One of the most
tiresome arguments against ideas is that their "tendency" is to some dire condition --
to totalitarianism, or to moral relativism, or to a war of all against all."
-- Louis Menand
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis."
-- Dante Alighieri
"He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers."
-- Henry B. Adams
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the
poor to beg in the streets, steal bread, or sleep under a bridge."
-- Anatole France
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
-- Edmund Burke
"Education does not mean that we have become certified experts in business or mining or botany or journalism or epistemology;
it means that through the absorption of the moral, intellectual, and esthetic inheritance of the race we have come to
understand and control ourselves as well as the external world; that we have chosen the best as our associates both in spirit
and the flesh; that we have learned to add courtesy to culture, wisdom to knowledge, and forgiveness to understanding."
-- Will Durant
"Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is
but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest
winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?"
-- Herman Melville
"The most important political office is that of the private citizen."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"It is an error to suppose that books have no influence; it is a slow influence, like flowing water carving out a canyon,
but it tells more and more with every year; and no one can pass an hour a day in the society of sages and heroes without
being lifted up a notch or two by the company he has kept."
-- Will Durant
"When you write, you’re trying to transpose what you’re thinking into something that is less like an annoying drone and more like a piece of music."
-- Louis Menand
"Sex is a continuum."
-- Gore Vidal
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802.
"The sum of our religion is peace and unanimity, but these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible,
and in many things leave one free to follow his own judgment, because there is great obscurity in many matters, and
man suffers from this almost congenital disease that he will not give in when once a controversy is started, and
after he is heated he regards as absolutely true that which he began to sponsor quite casually...."
-- Desiderius Erasmus
"Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read, and what we must disbelieve?"
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to N. G. Dufief, Philadelphia bookseller, 1814
"We are told that it is only people's objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort,
are 'objectively' aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once. The same argument is applied to Trotskyism. Trotskyists are often credited, at any rate by Communists, with being active and conscious agents of Hitler; but when you point out the many and obvious reasons why this is unlikely to be true,
the 'objectively' line of talk is brought forward again. To criticize the Soviet Union helps Hitler: therefore 'Trotskyism is Fascism'. And when this has been established, the accusation of conscious treachery is usually repeated.
This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people's motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions."
-- George Orwell, "As I Please," Tribune, 8 December 1944
"Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If 'needy' were a turn-on?"
-- "Aaron Altman," Broadcast News
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
-- Lewis Thomas
"To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times?"
-- Cicero
"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
"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."
-- Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign
"Remember, Robin: evil is a pretty bad thing."
-- Batman
"Being evil is not a full-time job."
-- James Lileks
Gary Farber is now a licensed Double Super-Secret Master Pundit.
He does not always refer to himself in the third person.
Did he mention he was presently single?
The lutefisk is dead. Donate via the donation button on the top left
or I'll shoot this gefilte fish.
No, really, I seriously need the help at present. And I hate asking.
Current Total # of Donations Since Blog Began: 606
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
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And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
Farber's First Fundamental of Blogging:
If your idea of making an insightful point is to make fun of people's
names, or refer to them by rilly clever labels such as "The Big Me" or "The Shrub,"
chances are high that I'm not reading your blog. The same applies if you refer
to a group of people by disparaging terms such as "the Donks" or "the pals." (Note: I have to say I don't give that much of a damn any more.)
Farber's Second Fundamental of Blogging:
The more interested you are in scoring a "point" for a political "team," a "side," than in exploring the validity or value of an idea, the less interested I am in what you're saying.
(Note: Partially suspended for the Duration. 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,
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
THIS IS NOT AN ARGUMENT. I respect William Saletan. Just not here.
Byrd, a little white-haired man, struts around his desk like a rooster....
I actually admired some of Byrd's rhetoric against a war. It's just me. As well as is my being lack of impressed with "little" being a disparagement (I'm short, let's go for it), and "white-haired" (I can see it coming). By all means, let's debate war on the basis of hair color and height of debators. This is an argument?
Addendum:It would have been terribly nice if Byrd had actually noticed that this is the 21st century, not the 20th. I realize that he's... somethng, but I'd hope he'd pay attention to those minor century passings.
RAISE SHIELDS: The US and British military have developed a force field to largely shield against the destructive effects of rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). No shit. (This is a late August story I've only just noticed.)
Fitted on light armored vehicles such as personnel carriers, the force field uses a series of charged metal plates to dissipate the effects of rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), a weapon found by the thousands from Mogadishu to Kabul to Baghdad.
RPGs and other "shape charge" munitions derive their destructive power from cones of copper embedded in their noses. When the warhead explodes, it crushes the cone, shooting out a jet of hot copper at 5,000 mph -- instantly destroying anything short of a tank.
The electrical armor system, powered by the vehicle's regular supply of electricity, stops the jets by zapping them with tens of thousands of amps of current. This vaporizes some of the deadly copper jets and reduces the rest to a relatively harmless mixture of melted and pulverized debris that disperses around the vehicle.
In recent proof-of-concept tests by the British military, RPG attacks on an electric-armor-equipped personnel carrier left only dents and scratches.
Let me count: we've got communicators, what are essentially tri-corders, particle weapons, lasers, force fields, medical scanners, we're making anti-matter, and there are theories about possibly making a warp drive. All that's left is the most unlikely: the transporter. Get busy on those Heisenberg compensators, boys and girls!
10/04/2002 12:16:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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For now, the Moose bids adieu to his Mooseketeers.
It's been a good run. The Moose has tremendously enjoyed musing, observing and holding forth on the issues of the day. But for the time being, the Moose will not be seen in cyberspace.
[...]
The Moose may re-emerge at any moment in the same or in a new venue. The fight is far from over.
Iran showed its divided face yesterday when an unprecedented public-opinion poll revealed a strong vein of pro-American sentiment, so strong that the pollster was arrested.
The poll, which had been ordered by Iran's parliament, queried 1,500 people across the country about their opinions on the United States. The results found 74 per cent of respondents over the age of 15 in favour of opening political talks with Washington; 46 per cent said they think U.S. policies on Iran are "to some extent correct."
Dissatisfied with that result, Iran's conservative judiciary took strong action against the National Institute for Research Studies and Opinion Polls, a government-run think tank. It ordered the organization's doors sealed on Monday, and arrested director Behrouz Geranpayeh yesterday, ordering him to appear in court today on charges of "publishing lies to excite public opinion."
LAWRENCE SUMMERS, former Secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton, and now President of Harvard University, is quoted in full on anti-Semitism, by Brad deLong. Brad, one of Summers' former Assistant Secretaries of the Treasury, says:
Larry Summers worries about anti-semitism. Now he's gotten me worried: this is not an issue on which I'd expect Larry to be needlessly alarmist or excessively sensitive.
THOSE SCIENCE FICTION THRASH MUSIC GUYS are interviewed.
Professor J. B. "Jake" Stratton: We were always a metal band. We wrote those songs and I just thought of every fact I could think about those guys. . . . Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tolkien, and Moorcock.
McNulty: A. E. Van Vogt, who was my favorite writer at the time.
Stratton: We just wrote those off the top of our heads with the basic knowledge I got from reading the books and the little biographies -- and it wasn't until we started doing the band that we went back and studied up--
McNulty: And my mom gave me a couple books about it, like "here's a big book about these sci-fi authors." Thanks, Mom!
Stratton: So our early songs didn't have nearly enough details about the guys. They were just funny little songs.
SH: Who were the first songs about?
Stratton: Van Vogt, Burroughs, Moorcock, Philip K. Dick, Kenneth Robeson, J. R. R. Tolkien--
McNulty: Joanna Russ
Stratton: Well, Joanna Russ was second era.
[...]
McNulty: A lot of rockers don't think we're serious.
Stratton: They get there, and the first song is about Joanna Russ, the author of this and this, and everybody laughs. Some people laugh cause they know about Joanna Russ, and they know about the joke I'm telling, but most people laugh because they think the next song is about Satan and pussy. So they're like, okay, that song was about an author, but by the time the fifth song comes they're like, "oh shit, these guys are serious." And as soon as they start getting hit with books it's like, "oh, these guys really are serious."
Orgel: It's gotten Jake in trouble a couple times.
Stratton: I talked my way out of both of those fights.
McNulty: Either that or I have to actually fight.
I was Joanna's houseboy once when she was laid up after an operation. But that's another story. (Via Boing Boing.)
Decent interview with Maureen McHugh here, by the way.
BUSH'S USE OF LANGUAGEanalyzed and here's a classic Fleisherism:
Those who recall that Bush came to office promising to "change the tone" of politics to bipartisan brotherhood might have been surprised to hear the White House standard for bipartisanship. Turns out the support of only one Democrat -- maverick Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia -- can make legislation "bipartisan," as it did when Miller joined with Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) a couple of weeks ago in offering a compromise to break the impasse on homeland security legislation.
Bush, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said in a morning briefing, "is now supporting a bipartisan compromise on homeland security."
Keith Koffler, White House reporter for Congress Daily, was puzzled. "How many Democrats support this bipartisan bill?" he asked. "I'm not aware of any more than one Democrat."
"Well," Fleischer replied, "that certainly does make it bipartisan."
"So that's the new definition of bipartisan?" Koffler inquired.
"I think, frankly, that's the old definition of bipartisan," Fleischer rejoined. "I'd be shocked if all of a sudden the definition of bipartisan changed."
ARTHUR MILLER ON LIVING IN THE CHELSEA HOTEL in Granta:
Allen Ginsberg was hawking his new Fuck You magazine in the lobby sometimes, Warhol was shooting film in one of the suites, and a young woman with eyes so crazy that one remembered them as being above one another, would show up in the lobby now and then, distributing a ream of mimeographed curses on male people whom she accused of destroying her life and everything good, and threatening to shoot a man one of these days. I had a serious talk, or what I took to be one, with Mr Bard and his son Stanley who was gradually taking over, but they pooh-poohed the idea of her doing anything rash. As I slowly learned, they were simply not interested in bad news of any kind. Of course she shot Warhol two days later as he was entering the lobby from 23rd Street, aiming for his balls. But this only momentarily disturbed the even tenor of the Chelsea day, what with everything else going on.
Anyway, it was certainly more gemuetlich than living in a real hotel. In the early Sixties truckers still took rooms without baths on the second floor and parked their immense rigs out front overnight, and the Automat was still on the corner of 7th. There I often had breakfast with Arthur C. Clarke, who in his dry Unitarian-minister manner tried to explain to me why whole new populations would soon be living in space. Feigning interest in this absurdity I wondered what the point of living in space would be. 'What was the point of Columbus wanting to cross the ocean?' I supposed he was right, but not really.
MILOSEVIC'S WARDEN KEPT A DIARY, and Granta'sCelebrity issue has it. This is the prison in Belgrade, before Milosevic was moved to Den Hague.
Milosevic woke up at eleven a.m. He ate his breakfast: two hard-boiled eggs, some jam, bread and tea. Soon afterwards, his lunch came too: a potato stew and a hot loaf. Each prisoner receives one loaf a day.
[...]
Later that night, the ex-president complained his cell had 'surplus inventory' and was badly lit. We removed some furniture and brought him a reading light. He was very pleased—but had one other request. 'Could my wife please come over and make my bed for me?' I couldn't allow this.
[...]
There was polenta for supper tonight. Milosevic didn't like it. 'For the first time in my life,' he said bitterly, 'I'm eating without a knife and fork. I'm eating with my fingers.'
April 4 Mira comes every day at noon. The Milosevices usually talk for about an hour. Mira constantly checks her Sixties hairstyle in a make-up compact.
[...]
Milosevic was delighted to see his daughter. 'Where have you been?' he bellowed. 'My little terrorist!'
Marija was upset to see her father in such reduced circumstances: 'When you leave prison I will never allow you to go into politics again. This country doesn't deserve you. You are too clever.'
During his walk, Milosevic asked for some stale bread to feed the pigeons.
In the evening, Milosevic confided that he 'really loved' the bean soup today. 'Good enough for any restaurant. I could eat it all the time.'
[...]
May 5 Milosevic reads a great deal both in English and in Serbian. He reads thrillers mainly, as well as mysteries and spy novels. Among the books he has read are: Wilbur Smith, The Seventh Scroll, Robert Ludlum, The Corsican Story, Ivo Andric, The Bridge on the Drina, Petar Petrovic Njegos, The Mountain Wreath, Joseph Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind , John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, C. S. Forester, Captain Hornblower, RN and Lieutenant Hornblowerand Admiral Hornblower.
May 7 Milosevic has been demanding a haircut for several days now. He wanted his personal barber who has cut his hair for over twenty years. But I told him we had a very experienced barber in the jail. When the prison barber finished, Milosevic said: 'Sorry, Boss, but I don't have a tip to offer you.'
[...]
He thought for a while and then said bitterly: 'Those motherfuckers. They really are about to send me to The Hague, aren't they?'
'Tell me,' I asked, 'why didn't you quit while you were ahead, while you were still popular? You could be lying on a beach somewhere now.'
After a half-hearted attempt to justify his clinging to power out of concern for the nation, Milosevic paused. 'Yes. You're right,' he said. 'I did make a mistake.'
I had the impression that he was tired of politics.
SALMAN RUSHDIE COMMENTS ON MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ, and notes what it's like to become a generic noun here:
I have been trying not to write about Michel Houellebecq, if only because, these days, just about every writer who comes into conflict with the thin-skinned guardians of Islamic sanctities is forced to wear the "new Rushdie" cap, which is doubly depressing, firstly for me, because I detest having my name sloganised, as if I had become some sort of bad-mouthing literary category, and secondly for the writers in question - the "Bangladeshi Rushdie", the "Chinese Rushdie", and no doubt, shortly, the "first Rushdie in space" - who quite rightly resent having the darkest chapter of my story superimposed upon their own difficulties.
CHINA YANKS YANG: North Korea did an extraordinary thing a week or so ago, which I verged on blogging, but didn't, out of fear of Blogging Too Much. But it was a fascinating story, how they plan to set up a special economic zone on the border with China,
...the Sinuiju Special Administrative Region, a 50-square-mile patch of land along the border with China opposite the Chinese city of Dandong....
which would only be worthy of minor note in and of itself, but was added to by the fact that they plan to ship nearly all North Koreans out of it, and seal it off with a wall, and import foreigners to make the money for them.
They appointed a foreign subject as governor with more or less dictorial powers, according to reports. That person was Yang Bin, second richest man in China. Now China has arrested Yang, and is suppressing all news about him.
A Chinese source said the move did not mean China opposed North Korea's fledgling efforts to reform its economy. China, he said, was simply against the choice of Yang Bin, named in 2001 by Forbes magazine as the second-richest man in China, to head that effort.
[...]
Some Chinese economists and officials have privately criticized North Korea's choice of Yang, saying he is emblematic of a type of Chinese businessman who amasses fortunes making use of connections and legal loopholes.
One gets the impression, reading between the lines, that the Chinese authorities are calling Yang an extremely dubious character, linked to gambling and bribery, not merely capitalism, but it's hard to say for sure what is going on. I am, of course, shocked, shocked, at the notion that Kim Jong Il might pick a dubious character who might possibly more or less bribe him to buy his own mini-country.
Who says free enterprise isn't possible in North Korea?
THE SHARON POLICY analyzed, in the context of his Russian visit here.
A survey recently commissioned by National Religious Party chairman Effi Eitam, whose results were presented to the members of his party's faction this week, endeavored to discover the secret of the prime minister's charm - given that, under his tenure, there is neither peace nor security, but plenty of terror attacks and unemployment. It turns out that the secret lies in what one prominent leader of the Russian Jewish community in Israel refers to as "the muzhik's trick" (in Russian folklore, the muzhik is a wise and cunning old man): Sharon's trick is to give everything a try. The survey's findings show that there are two things that can cause an Israeli leader to fall from grace: questions about his personal character with respect to his temperament, relations with his staff and his credibility; and being perceived as a leader who does not seek new ways to resolve deep-rooted, existing problems. Somehow, despite his numerous zigzags, the prime minister is not perceived as having any negative character issues. And despite the fact that he hasn't managed to solve barely a single important problem that has landed on his desk, he is perceived as having tried nearly everything to solve every problem that lands on his desk.
For instance, when the idea of unilateral separation was proposed, he opposed it, but just so no one should say he didn't try, he agreed to the construction of a separation fence. And just so people should say that he isn't trying to advance diplomatic negotiations, he continues to send Shimon Peres abroad and to let him at least appear to try to patch together the rifts with the PA leaders. So that the right shouldn't say he's being too soft on the Palestinians, he pulverizes the Muqata and diligently lets it leak from his office that the army is not being sufficiently aggressive in its operations against the Palestinians. He understands that if the public knew there was an alternative that he hadn't tried - he'd be in trouble.
Sharon's method is to come out shooting in all directions. In Moscow, for example, he recycled the statement about how a Palestinian state will be established one day. So what do people want from him? He's really trying - everything.
A GERMAN MARXIST LEFTIST LOOKS AT IRAQ and reports on the horrors he found in his stays there.
A journalist, human rights activist and intellectual, Thomas von der Osten-Sacken is considered one of Germany's leading authorities on human rights in Iraq. He began traveling to Iraq in 1991, when he spent eight months doing humanitarian work in the southern part of the country just after Saddam Hussein crushed the Shi'ite uprising there.
[...]
The fear in Iraq, a BBC reporter said recently, is so palpable you can eat it. It's really indescribable. Syria is a dictatorship, but the fear and control in Iraq reaches into your living room. If there is no picture of Saddam Hussein in your living room, you might be arrested. There is no privacy. The Iraqi government considers everything political. In Syria, as long as you are not a member of the opposition, you can relax. You know you will not be harmed. But in Iraq, if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, you may be arrested, tortured, killed."
[...]
You have said that estimates are that Saddam has killed approximately one million of his own citizens since 1979.
"Yes, that would include Kurds, Shi'ites, Christians and Sunnis. There were two huge massacres. There was the so-called Anfal campaign against the Kurds at the end of the 1980s when 4,000 villages were destroyed, and about 100,000 to 150,000 persons were killed, some with poison gas. Up to a million people were sent into internal exile. The other big massacre was in the south in the 1990s, where the regime has killed about 300,000 Shi'ites in the last 10 years. In addition, there have been enormous massacres against communists over the past two decades.
"The estimate of one million killed only includes civilians. A million Iraqi soldiers were killed in the Iran-Iraq war. A half-million Iraqis died of hunger or disease because of sanctions on Iraq, and more were killed in the Gulf War. Some 1.5 to two million people have been internally displaced, and 4.5 million Iraqi refugees are scattered across the globe. Ten percent of the Iraqi population has been killed or deported during the rule of Saddam Hussein. That is the essence of his regime. It is not an accident. It is systematic."
He also characterizes German policy:
"Anti-American and anti-Israeli-anti-Semitic. At the moment, you can hardly distinguish between the very far right wing and the very far left wing. The far right openly supports Saddam Hussein, saying that he is fighting the Jews and the Americans and thus supporting the German battle. And certain left-wingers from an orthodox left-wing tradition think that Saddam Hussein is anti-imperialist, anti-globalization, that he is fighting for the rights of the Arabs to self-determination. Others on the left say that Saddam may be horrible, but another American war will not solve any problems. The war will just help Israel's interest, so we should oppose it. This is also the governmental policy at the moment."
He's against any war to install another general, but if a war is for Iraqi democracy, he's for it, and thinks it can succeed. There's more here I'd like to quote than I want to spend space on, but I particularly commend his comments on his experience of the Iraqi regime towards the top, and his Marxist analysis, which might surprise some, towards the bottom.
10/04/2002 12:35:00 AM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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THE IRANIAN DETERRENT against Israel, they hope, is the Shibab-2 missile.
Iran's Shihab 2 long-range missiles are designed to retaliate against an Israeli attack, according to Ahmed Wahid, head of the Iranian missile development program in an interview with Al Hayyat yesterday, denying that Iran has any plans to target beyond Israel.
[...]
Wahid said Iran decided to develop the Shihab, which has a range of some 1,300 kilometers, in response to Israel's Jericho rocket.
He said that Iran is now working on plans to launch a satellite on a Shihab 2 as part of its efforts to install a spy satellite in orbit.
[...]
He said the Shihab test last May "had proved Iran's ability to develop long-range missiles beyond 1,300 kilometers and with great accuracy."
He added that Iran will "develop the missile to a range up to 1,500 kilometers, because out primary goal in its development is to reach Israeli targets in case Iran is attacked by Israeli missiles."
IS IT JUST ME or does John Lukacs make no cites whatsoever for his beliefs, impressions, and assertions, in this article wherein he deduces the Death Of The American Intellectual? To make an intellectual argument, he simply seems to pull it all out of his ass.
In earlier days, it was pleasant and entertaining and occasionally even inspiring to read something in (indeed, to "get something from") an article by Mencken or Macdonald that reminded one of something that one had already felt and known, although not quite as clearly as those writers expressed it.
This no longer happens, in Lukacs' universe.
Yes, the production, the technology, and the very use of computers and VCR's and DVD's and movies is much more complicated than the handling and the reading of books -- yet young people are soon adept at the former and not at the latter. Now the reading and the enjoyment of books seem to come later in life, with something like a growth and maturity. (College students, too, seem to graduate from television to movies, rather than to books.)
No cites. We just "know" this, apparently.
For the life of me, I see no sign of logical argument in this piece; Lukacs sets out to demonstrate that the Intellectual is obsolete, and contributes by using solely the Argument By Assertion. This demonstration may not have been his intended methodology.
Meanwhile, Avraham Burg, Speaker of the Knesset, is supporting Haim Ramon for Labour leadership, despite Ramon's refusal to do the reverse last time around.
I HATE THESE CRAZY LEFT-WINGERS: Or, as Robert Novak writes:
Sen. Robert Byrd, a master at hectoring executive branch witnesses, asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a provocative question last week: Did the United States help Saddam Hussein produce weapons of biological warfare? Rumsfeld brushed off the Senate's 84-year-old president pro tem like a Pentagon reporter. But a paper trail indicates Rumsfeld should have answered yes.
TELL IT TO THE JUDGE: Yakima, Washington courts will accept e-mailed excuses as to why you don't deserve that traffic ticket. Here's a possible response:
REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP
First, I must solicit your confidence in this transaction. This is by virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential and top secret.I got your contact in my private search for a reliable person to handle this transaction. We shall base this transaction on mutual respect and honesty.
We are top officials of the Federal Government Contract Review Panel who are interested in importation of goods into our country with funds which are presently trapped in Iraq. It was during the course of arranging for payment of the sum of US$26,400,000.00 (Twenty Six Million, Four Hundred Thousand US. Dollars) in return for 33 lbs (Pounds) of richy-rich Uranium that I received my parking ticket.
As you are a trust-worthy individual, being a Judge, I will transfer one-quarter (1/4) of this sum to your personal account, in return for the remission of this Ticket. Adequate logistics and strategies had been worked out to ensure a successful transfer with your maximum co-operation. Hence we are writing you this letter. Please respond as soon as your Excellency is managable via e-mail. We are looking forward to doing business with you and solicit your confidentiality in this transaction. I will bring you into the complete picture of this project when I have heard from you.
Yours Faithfully,
Dr. Edward Amukpe
P.S: If you know where I might purchase some klytrons, please let me know most pronto-est. The essence of our transactionalism is speed.
HEY, WHERE IS THAT THING GOING? New technology to redirect military missiles going astray.
The new system, confusingly known as automatic target acquisition (ATA), allows a human to intervene if the missile appears to be going astray. It is already being fitted to the US Navy's SLAMER missiles, which in many respects work like a smaller version of a cruise missile.
[...]
ATA-equipped SLAMERs carry an infrared video camera that sends pictures back to the plane that launched the missile. The pilot will see if the missile is heading for the wrong target and redirect it.
But the missiles do not always need the pilot: they can select their own targets if communication with the aircraft is lost. By comparing the images from an onboard infrared camera with images provided by mission planners they can locate small targets in a cluttered environment.
INCINERATING HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE: not what I want to put in my appointment book for Thursday, but Eugene Volokh points out that the option of using deterrence on a nuclear-armed Hussein might require either actually having to follow through on the inherent threat, or surrendering the use of deterrence. As an amateur student of Cold War history and nuclear strategy, I find his logic impeccable, I'm afraid. Arguing for deterrence may not be arguing the option of "peace."
9/30/2002 08:43:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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THE PERNICIOUSNESS OF THE CURRENT ISRAELI SETTLEMENT POLICY is demonstrated in the numbers here.
While the settlement movement claims there has been a steady flow of new settlers into the territories, Central Bureau of Statistics figures indicate that nearly the same number of people are leaving, and most increases in the settlements come from natural growth.
Indeed, the settlement movement's policy nowadays is to prefer to increase its land holdings over increasing the population - hence the emphasis on establishing outposts, each populated by a few people, to prevent Palestinians occupying the land.
During 2000 and 2001, says the CBS data released yesterday, 29,700 people moved into the settlements, but 20,000 moved out. The increase of some 24,400 people was mostly natural growth
[...]
The only data showing a rise in the settlements is the number of outposts. Since the Sharon government was established, 56 new outposts have been pitched in the territories, according to Peace Now and Civil Administration data.
Each outpost has a handful of settlers, with the idea behind the outposts being to capture as much land as possible to prevent construction by the Palestinians. Early outposts, like Amana and Hersha, have already become small settlements.
As part of the policy to capture as much land as possible, the main focus of the settlement movement in recent years has been the construction of industrial zones, gas stations, landscaped parks, motels, and water towers, especially along roads. Most of the outposts and other construction was coordinated with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and top officers in the IDF.
KILO IS SUCH A FUZZY TERM, DON'T YOU THINK?: This helps explain why this has not been reported on in major US news outlets, which I'd been wondering about.
The refined uranium caught by Turkish police Saturday weighed far less than originally thought, an official source in southwestern Turkey said Sunday.
It was originally believed that the Turkish paramilitary police had seized over 15 kg of weapons-grade uranium in the operation that also resulted in the detention of two men accused of smuggling the substance. The actual weight of the uranium turned out to be hundreds of grams, a fraction of the initial estimate.
As Mike Brooder pulls into the student parking lot outside West Hills High School, wireless cameras record his face and license plate--doing the same to every car that follows.
The cameras then track the 17-year-old senior as he walks up a concrete path, studies his schedule, scratches his chin, waves to friends and then wanders to class.
Nearly every move Brooder makes--and every move of his 2,300 classmates--is captured and stored in the campus' database.
Following last September's terrorist attacks and years of school shootings, West Hills High sits on the cutting edge of the emerging surveillance society.
Each bathroom door is monitored. Sensors that detect the smoke of a single match send alerts to campus security.
By Christmas, four more cameras will be installed, and hall monitors will carry wireless computers that can pull up a student's school picture, class schedule and attendance record.
School officials are considering whether to expand the SkyWitness surveillance system by adding facial recognition software that will allow a computer to filter out who should--and who should not--be on campus.
[...]
Schools are among the first to embrace new technology, often because companies view campuses as perfect testing grounds before rolling products out to corporate America.
[...]
Companies like the fact that students enjoy fewer constitutional protections than adults and have lower expectations of privacy than their parents.
[...]
The technology at West Hills relies on advanced hardware, but basic, off-the-shelf technology is already used by both parents and educators to watch kids.
Software programs can take snapshots of every Web page they visit and every e-mail they send.
Devices such as AutoWatch can be popped into an automobile and programmed to record a car's speed, as well as times, dates and the lengths of time it is driven. Cell-phone bills list the calls a student makes and receives.
"You might call it control," said Joe Schramm, head of security at West Hills. "We call it keeping the kids safe."
[...]
The project at West Hills also provided the technology companies with a test lab in which to develop and try out a security system that the firms will ultimately market to corporate America and government agencies.
[...]
"If you want to stress-test a technology, particularly a security system, a school is a good place," said Trump of National School Safety and Security Services. "Most often, the biggest obstacle a company must overcome is the issue of cost. If [the technology] is free, many schools will be open to it."
Aiding the decision is the fact that minors have fewer rights than adults, said John Pescatore, research director for security at the industry-consulting firm Gartner.
I'VE ADDED an addendum to my chem/bio weapons piece responding to Bruce Rolston.
ADDENDUM TO THIS: Passing note: at the moment I write this, Blogdex says this is the 26th most-linked post.
Thomas Nephew writes a post paralleling mine. Jim Henley responded to both of us. Bruce Rolston responded to my response. Eugene Volokh posted on the topic and added a link to my piece with a couple of observations on it. Joe Katzman wrote this at Winds of Change. I neglected to mention that Matthew Yglesias quite promptly posted:
After reading Gary Farber's reply to WMD naysayers I think I'm convinced that biowarfare is massively destructive enough to be worried about. [....]
On a warm evening last month, a young international crowd dressed in T-shirts, tank tops and cargo pants gathered in a storefront at 21 Avenue B, just below Third Street. In the artificial glow of Japanese cartoons on flat screens and blue-tinted fluorescent lights, they drank cold green tea and Kirin beer.
It was a cool hunter's version of a Tupperware party.
By the end of the evening, more than a dozen new products had made their New York debut, including the ScribblePDA, a key-chain accessory that recharges cellphones, and the HSS System, a gleaming metal speaker that can project sound like a ventriloquist into whatever cranny it faces. These directional speakers, made possible by the conversion of sound to ultrasonic signals, free users from moving (or blasting) their equipment to hear music in a different room.
For the digital fast set, it was a perfect night out. "These events are like a magnet, or a catalyst, for an intricate network of people in New York," said Masamichi Udagawa, an industrial designer and a principal in Antenna Design, which created the MetroCard vending machines. The party was held at TKNY, a store and lounge that acts as a clubhouse for a circle of young expatriates, most from Tokyo, working in design and computer technology.
In addition to its products, TKNY imports the Japanese sense of technology as fashion. "Japanese are eager to try and consume new things," said Takehiko Nagakura, associate professor at the M.I.T. School of Architecture and Planning. "Even if they don't have apparent purpose or ultimately don't work or last, in Japan, they might at least have a fashion moment." For the compact/impact crowd, technology is not hardware and software so much as an attitude and lifestyle — a techno-chic version of Andy Warhol's Pop. Think of it as the technology geek's obsession with gadgetry crossed with a post-dot-com-crash emphasis on the practical and playful.
Good news for Muscovites! "There are practically no cases of radioactive watermelons this year," says Andrei A. Buyanov.
All right. Maybe that is practically good news. Then again, it could be worse. Some of the lingonberries here all but glow in the dark.
It is radioactive-produce season in Moscow, and it's a bad one.
[...]
If anyone wonders why Moscow needs a corps of atomic food inspectors, the answer is simple: the city lies a bare 415 miles from Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear-power station, which belched a Hiroshima bomb's worth of isotopes into the air when one of its reactors blew apart in April 1986.
If anyone wonders why this task falls to the veterinary service, that answer is simple, too: besides lingonberries and mushrooms, the inspectors are on constant lookout for hot sirloin and pork chops.
Lest this sound alarmist, it should be said that grocery shopping in Moscow is a completely roentgen-free experience (with one exception, noted later), thanks to the vigilance of the atomic food inspectors.
[...]
Radioactive-produce season runs roughly from June through October. First come the blueberries and lingonberries, which ripen earlier in Belarus and Ukraine than in Russia. About now come the forest mushrooms. In October it will be glowing-cranberry time.
NANCY REAGAN, HERO OF SCIENCE: Yeah, that's one you didn't see coming, eh?
Mr. Bush did not cite Mrs. Reagan's current and far more divisive cause -- federal financing for embryonic stem cell research, which anti-abortion groups oppose. Last year Mr. Bush sharply limited such research. At 81, the former first lady is obliquely but persistently campaigning -- through friends, advisers, lawmakers and her own well-placed calls and letters -- to reverse the president's decision.
[...]
A Republican legislator recently told Michael Deaver, a Reagan adviser and confidant, that some conservatives contend that Ronald Reagan would never have approved of embryonic stem cell research. Mr. Deaver said he retorted, "Ronald Reagan didn't have to take care of Ronald Reagan for the last 10 years."
But last month the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy began distributing a guide supporting drug testing in schools.
"Testing has been shown to be extremely effective at reducing drug use in schools and businesses," the government guide said. "As a deterrent, few methods work better or deliver cleaner results."
Want, say, a 
