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; 22 cancellations; Total= 8
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,
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
SENATOR PATTY MURRAY MADE SOME REMARKS that are largely simply factually incontrovertible -- that Osama bin Laden is popular in much of the Islamic third world, and that that is partially because he has supported charitable works -- and since they overlapped the timespan of Trent Lott's melt-down, there was a lot of fingerpointing at her with absurd claims that somehow she was being too positive about bin Laden, or that it was "treasonous" to say anything positive about him, no matter that it might actually simply be an objectively factual observation (can anyone support the claim that bin Laden isn't popular with many in the Islamic third world, and that he hasn't spent some money on Islamic charity and good works, and been known for it?).
Tony Adragna addresses this very well, and, as others have, points out that one George W. Bush said pretty much the same thing on said on March 14, 2002, the treasonous bastard.
AVEDON AT HER BEST is better than I can describe. This is one of her best. It might help if you've ever heard of TerryCarr, but it also might not be necessary.
I remember this one, too. But, then, I'm in it, and I know all the other people in it, so I have a head start. So it goes.
CAPTCHA is here. CAPTCHA is a program that can generate and grade tests that: most humans can pass; current computer programs can't pass. Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart.
Here's a story on how Yahoo is using it to prevent computer sign-ups.
Upon finishing Bush at War, I picked up a recent edition of The Amazing Spiderman, in which author J. Michael Straczynski, together with artists John Romita Jr. and Scott Hanna, attempted to bring the tragedy of 9-11 alive through the characters of Peter Parker and company. I can't say I "believed" that comic. But I did find in it a voice filled with integrity and empathy that is entirely absent from the oh-so-serious comic-book version of Bush and company to which Bob Woodward has willingly lent his name.
WHAT WENT WRONG?asks and answers Amos Elon, of the Israelis and Palestinians, running through some of the history.
David Ben-Gurion was the only leading figure in the political elite who broke the general euphoria by suggesting that Israel withdraw immediately, if need be unilaterally, from all occupied territories. As he had in 1948, Ben-Gurion flatly opposed any attempts to permanently occupy the West Bank. But Ben-Gurion was old and retired and politically isolated. He had bitterly quarreled with the ruling Labor Party. Yigal Allon, the same young general who in 1948 had urged him to complete, as he put it, the "liberation" of the rest of the country, was now a prominent cabinet minister competing for the premiership with Moshe Dayan, another former general. Allon, though he spoke vaguely of the need to allow the Palestinians a state of their own, drew up a plan of settlements and annexations on the West Bank that would have left the Palestinians little more than two enclaves in the Samarian and Judean mountains, surrounded by Israeli military bases and proposed settlements. They would have no political foothold in Jerusalem. The so-called Allon Plan grew incrementally over the years as the political deadlock continued; it embraced more and more territory to be settled and annexed by Israel.
[...]
Peace was a distinct possibility—with the Palestinians as early as the summer of 1967, with Jordan and Egypt in 1971 and 1972. Soon after the 1967 war, two senior Israeli intelligence officers—one was David Kimche, who later served as deputy director of Mossad and director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry —interviewed prominent Palestinian civic and political leaders throughout the West Bank, including intellectuals, notables, mayors, and religious leaders. He reported that most of them said they were ready to establish a demilitarized Palestinian state on the West Bank that would sign a separate peace with Israel. The PLO at the time was still a fairly marginal group.
Kimche's report, as far as we know, was shelved by Dayan. It was never submitted to the cabinet. In the hubris of the first few months following the war, even a tentative effort to explore this possibility would likely have been rejected by the cabinet. Dayan believed that as long as the natives were treated kindly and decently—at first they were—it would be possible to maintain the status quo on the West Bank and in Gaza for generations. The Palestinians were still remarkably docile; they had allowed the West Bank to be conquered in a few hours without firing a single shot. Dayan—and nearly the entire political and military establishment—were convinced that not only the Palestinians but also Egypt and Syria would be unable to present a military threat for decades. Dayan's opinion of the Arab armies was reflected during a visit to Vietnam. Asked by General Westmoreland how to win in war, Dayan is said to have responded: "First of all, you pick the Arabs as your enemy." He told me a few weeks after the war: "What is it really, this entire West Bank? It's only a couple of small townships."
SALMAN RUSHDIE LIKES THE TWO TOWERS and Tolkien, more than not. But here's a line with an untrue clause, save through his own prism of perspective:
(I am a big fan of the book version of "The Lord of the Rings," but nobody ever read Tolkien for the writing.)
That would be news to a lot of people who aren't Rushdie.
Oh, yeah, this piece uses TTT, and Gangs of New York to comment upon the present looming war on Iraq, the alleged public mood to fight black and white evil, and other broad topics, but it's not one of Rushdie's clearer or more insightful pieces, alas.
AN ENDORSEMENT FOR GARY HART FOR PRESIDENT from... OxBlog. Well, it's a start.
Read The Rest Scale: 3 out of 5, if you're open-minded about heart, though there's nothing particularly new here. The idea that Hart "thinks outside the box" is attributed to his long years out of office, which seems unlikely, since it was the primary thing Hart was lauded for in office, and the foundation of his last two Presidential campaigns.
The government, which seized the farms without compensation, still lacks title to most of the land. Many prospective black farmers are reluctant to occupy farms without title deeds because it is nearly impossible to get loans without them.
Meanwhile, thousands of impoverished, resettled farmers are struggling to survive without seed, fertilizer, irrigation and plowing assistance, basic services that the government has promised. The United Nations says that more than half of the government's tractor fleet — which was meant to plow fields for the poor — is out of service because of shortages of spare parts and fuel.
Officials are so short of seed and fertilizer that many small farmers are sitting idle on plots of land they cannot plant. In Manicaland Province, only about 10 percent of resettled farmers have seed and 17 percent have fertilizer. When seeds are available, the government often provides unsuitable varieties.
"In most cases, the maize seed supplied is not suitable for the areas in which they have been distributed," the United Nations said in a recent report. Some newly resettled farmers are also going hungry as the country's food shortages worsen. Aid agencies report that farmers in the district of Gwanda have gone without food assistance from the government for three months. Zimbabwe, once one of Africa's most prosperous nations, is now a country of hungry people.
[...]
"We took it for granted that the supplies would be adequate," Mr. Mugabe said this month in an interview with the state-controlled newspaper, The Herald. "It then proved that we were mistaken," he said. "Seed is short, fertilizer is short and tillage is inadequate. We are working on that."
There's no doubt that a horrific injustice was visited upon the then native people of Zimbabwe when white people came and stole all their best land and then established a brutal racist rule over them. But this "land reform" has not exactly been a just and competent response. Read The Rest Scale: 2 out of 5 if interested.
12/25/2002 09:40:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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DID YOU KNOW ABOUT GRAY FOX? I knew a little about ISA, the Army's Intelligence Support Activity, but hadn't run across the "Gray Fox" name until I ran across it in Seymour Hersh's latest in The New Yorker, where he referred to:
...the United States government's secret undercover team, known as Gray Fox.
Here's an odd quote from Hersh:
A senior Administration official acknowledged that Rumsfeld's plans for Special Operations run "counter to conventional military doctrine." He may succeed, nevertheless, the official said, because the senior military leadership suffers from a lack of will. The official noted that Rumsfeld was able to get what he wanted in large measure because he made it a personal issue. "He's the strangest guy I've ever run into," the official said. "He doesn't delegate."
Here's the troubling thing about military killings in the war on terror:
Other military officials I spoke with had similar concerns. "You might be able to pull it off for five or six months," a Pentagon consultant said. "We've created a culture in the Special Forces -- twenty- and twenty-one-year-olds who need adult leadership. They're assuming you've got legal authority, and they'll do it"-- eagerly eliminate any target assigned to them. Eventually, the intelligence will be bad, he said, and innocent people will be killed. "And then they'll get hung." As for Rumsfeld and his deputies, he said, "These guys will overextend themselves, and they'll self-destruct."
That sounds all too plausible. An interesting place to keep an eye on is:
Feith also oversees the vaguely named Office of Special Plans, which is directed by William J. Luti, and is the center of some of the most aggressive strategizing taking place in the Pentagon today.
Later in Hersh's piece:
Internal Pentagon memorandums include scathing commentary on the intelligence community. In one, the Secretary was urged to keep the Gray Fox unit "out of the hands" of the intelligence community. The paper noted, "Alone, of all organizations within DoD, Gray Fox has the potential, if nurtured, to fight the kind of war the Secretary envisions fighting. . . . Let the intel people get their hooks into Gray Fox and intel will then control what operations can and cannot do."
William H. Arkin, noted writer on the military, says:
Rumsfeld's influential Defense Science Board 2002 Summer Study on Special Operations and Joint Forces in Support of Countering Terrorism says in its classified "outbrief" -- a briefing drafted to guide other Pentagon agencies -- that the global war on terrorism "requires new strategies, postures and organization."
The board recommends creation of a super-Intelligence Support Activity, an organization it dubs the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group, (P2OG), to bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception.
Among other things, this body would launch secret operations aimed at "stimulating reactions" among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction -- that is, for instance, prodding terrorist cells into action and exposing themselves to "quick-response" attacks by U.S. forces.
Such tactics would hold "states/sub-state actors accountable" and "signal to harboring states that their sovereignty will be at risk," the briefing paper declares.
IS THERE SOME HIDDEN MESSAGE in the fact that Turner Classic Movies fare for tonight is Fiddler On The Roof and Yentl? Or that TBS has chosen to have a John Wayne festival all day, while TNN is running a James Bond marathon all week? And FX is doing all Tom Hanks pictures? What's it all mean, Mr. Natural?
12/25/2002 07:53:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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ANNIVERSARIES: Amygdala is unable to check its archive, due to their being hosed, but it was somewhere in mid-December of 2001 that we opened our editorial offices.
Sometime today, we passed 100,000 visits, as measured by Site Meter, present measure being 100,298, and 138,825 page views.
A tiny number for a year compared to some sites, a large number compared to some others.
Amygdala would like to thank any reader who returns, particularly given our tendency to be unable to post for days and weeks at a time, at times, and we particularly thank those who regularly check back, in the face of strange password requests appearing, slow load times, bad HTML, and other obstacles we are all thrilled to find.
May all of you who celebrate Christmas continue to have a lovely one, and best wishes for, according to our most common calendar, a happy new year.
Did I ever mention I was cast as Tiny Tim, since I was the shortest kid in the class, in 4th grade, complete with crutch and cardboard-and-aluminum-foil leg brace? God bless us all, everyone!
CHINA AS THE WORLD'S CLONING SUPERPWER is what Wiredconsiders. We'll see, but they do seem to have vast potential. Of course, China always does seem so. Of course, that's still probably right, even if, as recently publicized, many of their economic numbers are probably as phony as Soviet figures were. Meanwhile, my favorite 'graf:
The university will help Deng commercialize his discoveries, potentially making him a rich man. "The administrators here are very supportive," he tells me in fluent English. "They just bought me a $380,000 cell-sorting machine. And they're making us a real building" - a multistory facility now under construction at the edge of the campus. "I couldn't turn down the opportunity to have my own laboratory," he says. "Besides, I don't know if you've noticed, but this city is full of really good Chinese food."
Second favorite:
Tacked to the front door, a handwritten sign claims the lab is a storehouse for samples of the AIDS virus. "Keeps away random visitors," explains Deng Hongkui, co-director of the facility.
NO, I DON'T KNOW WHY my blog is now putting forth a password request for Io.com, which can be escaped via escape key, or clicking "cancel." I thought at first it was a byproduct of the referrers list you see towards the bottom left sidebar, but apparently it isn't. I now have No Clue Whatever why this is happening. If anyone can offer a Clue, or better, a Cure, I'd be eternally grateful. I'm still in need of help restoring archives, too. Restoring an archive template Didn't Help, save in creating, apparently, an archive for the past week only. Sigh.
12/25/2002 07:21:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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All along the lutefisk zone -- a vast swath of the United States stretching from Chicago to Seattle -- it is again the season to rejoice in and quarrel over a food that stinks up hundreds of Lutheran church basements and injects menu-planning torment into hundreds of thousands of mixed marriages.
As a former resident of Seattle, home of Ballard, where lutefisk is quite the thing, I've long been aware of it. I didn't know about this, though:
There is also the lutefisk TV dinner, a marketing ploy by Mike Field of Mike's Fish in Glenwood, Minn., and imitated by Olsen Fish.
Believing that there are a substantial number of Norwegians who would eat lutefisk year-round, Mr. Dorff made a sizable wager on TV dinners four years ago.
Olsen Fish bought 1,500 cases of microwave-safe plastic packs, each containing 12 segmented dinner plates. His employees filled a few hundred of them with mashed potatoes, peas and six ounces of lutefisk. The frozen vacuum-sealed dinners were distributed to selected supermarkets in Minnesota, where, for the most part, they did not sell.
"Each year, it has gone down, down, down," Mr. Dorff said, speaking of the TV dinner sales.
Can't imagine why. Who doesn't love dried gelatinous fish soaked in lye?
That would be most of us. Read The Rest Scale: if you like Weird Food.
Mr. Reber was an engineering student in 1931 when Karl Jansky of Bell Telephone Laboratories, using a large antenna system, made his famous discovery of cosmic radio waves emanating from beyond the solar system.
Mr. Jansky's results received little attention from other scientists at the time, but Mr. Reber, who was also a ham radio operator, set out to determine whether the waves were coming only from the galaxy or from other celestial objects.
In 1937, using about a half-year's worth of salary he had saved from jobs at various radio manufacturers, Mr. Reber erected his telescope.
But much like Mr. Jansky's accomplishment, Mr. Reber's invention went relatively unnoticed, garnering the attention only of his puzzled neighbors.
"Jansky's discovery that the galaxy was giving off radio waves was considered such a strange finding at the time that no one appreciated it or followed up on it, except for Reber," said Dr. Woodruff Sullivan, an astronomer and a historian of science at the University of Washington.
THE SETTLEMENT AT QUMRAN may not be the source of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In fact, we don't know what the hell these people were doing.
As of now, many archaeologists say, there is no unequivocal evidence of who the people living at Qumran were, or what they were doing there. These are the core questions driving renewed excavations, which started in the 1990's.
Several conference speakers, notably Dr. Hirschfeld, reported findings suggesting that this was an agricultural community. The people there may have cultivated dates and other fruit. There was some reason to think the people grew balsam for perfume or indigo to dye linen.
Women were buried there, which requires some slight explanation if it were a monastic site, though I can think of several. By the way:
"One pound of linen required approximately 50 pounds of dye, which in cost would be equal to 4,000 chickens," she said.
That's a lot of chicken. As for the Scrolls:
Instead, Dr. Golb argued that the scrolls were written by a variety of Jewish religious thinkers and were hurriedly moved from Jerusalem libraries when the city fell to the Roman army in A.D. 70. Refugees hid them in the caves near Qumran for safekeeping.
Then again, maybe not. Maybe we'll figure this out someday. Or not.
But Dr. Golb was not invited to the conference. "Others don't want to acknowledge that mine is the best hypothesis," he said in a telephone interview.
So contentious is the entire subject of Qumran, Dr. Galor said, that some scholars who were invited agreed to attend only if some others of opposing schools of thought were excluded.
My theory is best! Mine! Mine! I think they were a laundromat! With Chinese food takeout on the side! Which served lots of chicken!
Read The Rest Scale: 4 out of 5 for those interested, otherwise not.
THE MARKET IN VIRTUAL GAME GOODS is huge, as you've probably read.
Troy Stolle's account was definitely an opportunity. Kiblinger sized it up at about $1,500 worth of stuff, possibly $2,000. He fired off an email asking Stolle how much money he wanted to close the deal and hand over the account. Stolle emailed back: $500. Minutes later, Kiblinger was on the phone to Indiana, making arrangements to finalize the transaction. Before he hung up, the two men chitchatted a bit: Stolle got to talking about the unfortunate reasons he'd sold the account - about how he'd been out of work since 9/11 and the bills were piling up. Kiblinger could hear an infant crying in the background, and he hoped the carpenter would never find out just how much stood to be made on the deal.
But business is business. Kiblinger knew that to keep his income up to speed he needed at least three or four fat, high-margin trades like this each week, and they weren't getting any easier to come by. Once upon a time, back when Ultima was young and most players still hadn't gotten wind of the auction markets, his percentage on a deal often hit quadruple digits. Players sold him thousand-dollar accounts for a hundred, and Kiblinger just kept his mouth shut, knowing full well that in their eyes he was the crazy one. Not long before, he might even have agreed with them.
[...]
Kiblinger's caginess is par for the course. There are dozens of people out there making a real living selling virtual goods, and none are particularly eager to disclose their profits. A few will talk off the record, and none of those claim to be netting less than six-figure incomes or 15 percent margins. But those are fragile numbers, threatened on all sides.
[...]
Houses are invariably the most valuable items, and the easiest to judge. But almost as much money can lie hidden in a far subtler class of objects known as rares - curiosities whose value consists entirely, as the name suggests, in their scarcity. The original rares were accidents, pieces of scenery that the game designers misprogrammed or otherwise forgot to lock down - rocks, piles of horse dung, patches of waterfall, even portable error messages. By the time Kiblinger got into the market, these freaks of virtual nature were hundred-dollar collectibles, and for a long time they were his bread and butter. Eventually, the designers caught on to their popularity and introduced semi-rares: decorative fruit baskets and other knickknacks that pop into existence every month or so in some remote backwater of the land. This took a lot of the economic steam out of the rares scene, and Kiblinger shifted his focus to the tight housing market.
But the true rares remain big-ticket items, and so he is obliged to keep in mind, as he sorts through a new account, that an innocuous-looking piece of horse crap still sells for as much as $400. Such arcana make the job of sweeping out a typical account a two- or three-hour affair.
JOHN "HERB" VARLEY REWRITES a famous Christmas movie. Some people think this is fiction.
Read The Rest Scale: if you've ever read Varley, and even if you haven't: 5 out of 5.
(Infinite Matrix can still use your support; I'm still baffled at how one blogger I mentioned this to looked at the site, with stories and nonfiction from Ursula Le Guin, Bruce Sterling, Michael Swanwick, Richard Kadrey, Eileen Gunn, Neil Barrett, Jr., and Maureen F. McHugh, and declared that they "didn't like hard science fiction, and didn't want to support a large corporation"; meanwhile, Eileen Gunn has paid for three months of costs out of her pocket, and the rest has come from donors; be one; check out what you can get.)
Dongguan makes everything -- shoes, shirts, office furniture, wristwatches -- more cheaply and efficiently than anywhere else on earth. Last year the city exported $19 billion worth of goods, more than the entire country of Chile. Many of these goods are electronic. Dongguan produces pretty much everything that goes into or hooks up to a personal computer: the circuit boards that run it, the fans that cool it, and the plastic box that houses it.
All this business functions in the absence of what we consider the bedrock rules of a modern economy. No reliable legal system enforces contracts. Theft of intellectual property is routine. Business disputes are often settled by hired thugs; on occasion, those thugs are the local police. But though it can feel like Dodge City, Dongguan works more like 19th-century Manchester, as perhaps the world's most extensive and systematic exploitation of transient labor by mobile capital. And the people who oversee this system -- and profit handsomely from it -- are the officials of the world's largest Communist Party.
[...]
Think of Dongguan as the ungainly spawn of a shotgun marriage between feudalism and industry. It's an agglomeration of 32 townships, each centered around an old village, that are ruled by local party secretaries who answer, loosely, to city officials. In the early 1980s, industry exploded in Shenzhen under the banner of Deng Xiaoping's reformist slogan: "To get rich is glorious." Dongguan's party barons began to smell opportunity. Unlike Shenzhen, which requires residence permits, they could offer free access to migrant labor. So they competed to lure factories from abroad with tax breaks and land deals.
The firms that came from Taiwan were often called suitcase companies, because they were founded by entrepreneurs who showed up with a bag of cash and little else. They worked on the sly, since until 1990 Taiwan forbade companies from investing directly in the Communist mainland. When the law changed, thousands of Taiwanese businesspeople flooded into Dongguan, attracted by land and labor costs as much as 90 percent lower than what they faced at home.
One such economic prospector was Hayes Lou, the rangy man who talked about blowing off steam at the karaoke club. Today he's wearing brown suede shoes, chinos, and a sport shirt; he has a cowboy's gait, which he might have picked up during the two years he spent outside Missoula, Montana. There, with an American partner, he ran his first business, a bicycle helmet factory. Now he is secretary-general of the Taiwan Businessmen Association of Dongguan, and his duties include bailing out any of the city's 70,000 Taiwanese managers who might get arrested in nightclub brawls, and bringing food to the ones in jail. When a Taiwanese dies -- most deaths are from natural causes, but street crime and business disputes sometimes lead to murder -- Lou sends the body home. He is the expat Lone Ranger; appropriately enough, he drives a silver Jetta. "Everyone says Dongguan is a terrible, horrible place," he says with a broad smile. "But I love it. Every day there's something new."
[...]
The association serves as a quasi embassy, since Taiwan, officially a "renegade province," has no diplomatic relations with China. "We're better than an embassy," says Lou. "They have to go according to the law. Whereas, if you get into trouble here, we know how to solve the problem -- whether it's over or under the table." Just as an embassy official would, Lou spends quite a bit of time schmoozing local brass, whom he privately regards with contempt. One evening, Lou attends the monthly dinner given by one of the TBA's township branches. ("I could eat out every night like this," he says, glumly eyeing a mountain of crab, "but I'd get sick.") Midway through the meal, the oily man who chairs the township party office staggers to the microphone and bellows, "Together we and our Taiwanese brothers and sisters will make this town even more wealthy!" It's an odd sentiment for the party of the proletariat, but a common one nonetheless. As the man stumbles back to another round of toasts, Lou quietly exclaims in disgust: "Communists!"
[...]
Taiwanese-owned firms now produce three-quarters of the world's motherboards and mouses, 70 percent of its keyboards, and 60 percent of its LCD monitors.
[...]
"Anything you can make for $100, we can make for $40," Chen says, summing up his commercial philosophy. "This is a very special kind of opium war."
An as-yet unnamed dinosaur will begin roaming through a designated area of either California Adventure or Disneyland this spring, said Marty Sklar, vice chairman of Imagineering. This will be the first test of untethered Audio-Animatronics and the next phase in Imagineering's quest to increase interaction with visitors.
[...]
The character doesn't talk, but can respond with movements. Some of its potential antics are eating popcorn, "stealing" a guest's hat and sneezing.
JOHN MCCAIN IS GOING TO BE A HELLUVALOT BETTER THAN ERNST HOLLINGS, Senator-Disney, as Senate Commerce Committee chair, I believe. Of course, this is a classic "damning with faint praise," to the point where the praise needs smelling salts after the faint.
Read The Rest Scale: 5 out of 5 if you want to know why. (I don't have the same faith in Orrin Hatch replacing Patrick Leahy as chair of Judiciary.)
ELLEN FEISS, OF APPLE SWITCH AD FAME, did an interview with the Brown U. newspaper (no, she doesn't go to Brown; don't ask). She's a 15-year-year-old high school sophmore.
I'm not actually sure how much I got paid because it was in installments, and the whole contract was dealt with by my parents, so I'm not actually sure. Oh, and I got an iPod. It's like the coolest thing ever.
[...]
So do you have any interest in doing Leno or Letterman?
I was offered to, but I decided not to because I thought it wouldn't be so much "Who are you, Ellen Feiss?" It would be more like, "Are you a stoner?" blah blah blah. I did get other offers besides that that I'm getting into. MTV wants to talk to me. They're doing a pilot on me. The guy's going to come to my house in two weeks and interview me, and then show it to the CEO of MTV. I got a lot of crazy offers. I thought if I went on Letterman, it would be like I go on Letterman, and then I go on "Regis and Kelly," and then I go on Channel 5 News, and then it would kind of fizzle out pathetically. MTV's a little cooler.
[...]
Since I didn't have an agent at that point ... well it's a kind of confusing story, but anyway, they wanted me to be in one of their movies, but since they found out how old I was they don't think I can be in one. Supposedly, though, my agent is "floating my image," quote unquote. I don't know what the hell that means.
[...]
I do admit to looking pretty out of it in that commercial -- I think I look horrible. It was after school, but I was the last person to make the commercial, so by the time I made it it was like 10, so I was really tired. The funny thing was, I was on drugs! I was on Benedryl, my allergy medication, so I was really out of it anyway. That's why my eyes were all red, because I have seasonal allergies. But no one believes me.
KIM JONG IL, BON VIVANT. When I last lived in Boston, I caught the early morning tv news anchors, one morning, cheerily informing us of the latest news of "Kim Jong the Second." This book is, significantly, a first hand, more clueful, account.
But to Konstantin Pulikovsky, a rare foreigner who has spent time with North Korea's secretive leader, Kim Jong Il is a fun-loving guy.
Drinking wines imported from France, nibbling on gourmet meals with silver chopsticks, and joining in rousing choruses of old Soviet songs with "beautiful lady conductors," North Korea's remote "Dear Leader" emerges in flesh and blood from the pages of a new memoir by Pulikovsky, the representative of President Vladimir Putin in Russia's Far East.
Called "Orient Express" and published this autumn in Moscow, the 200-page snapshot-laden book prompted a diplomatic protest from North Korea and teeth gnashing in Russia's Foreign Ministry. It draws heavily on a confidential report prepared by a Russian Foreign Ministry note-taker on board during Kim's leisurely one-month train ride across Russia in the summer of 2001. (Kim made a second, shorter train trip into Russia this past summer, also accompanied by Pulikovsky.)
"Pulikovsky published what he was not supposed to publish," said Alexandre Mansourov, once a Soviet diplomat in North Korea who now teaches at the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu.
"He violated a personal trust, not just of Kim Jong Il, but of the people who put the report together. More copies of this book have probably been bought by foreign governments and intelligence agencies than by Russians themselves."
[...]
"I am the object of criticism around the world," Pulikovsky quotes Kim as saying in one meeting on the long train ride. "But I think that since I am being discussed, then I am on the right track."
Insert [GODWIN] reference here.
"It was possible to order any dish of Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and French cuisine," he wrote of the specially outfitted train that carried Kim.
The North Koreans made sure that live lobsters were shipped to the train to provide Kim with fresh delicacies during the tedium of crossing Siberia. Cases of Bordeaux and Burgundy red wines were flown from Paris. Even Putin's private train "did not have the comfort of Kim Jong Il's train," Pulikovsky wrote.
Impressed with the brown bread at a Khabarovsk restaurant, North Korea's leader had an aide fly 20 loaves to Pyongyang so that it would be fresh on his arrival. On a stop at Omsk, the North Korean rejected a plate of barrel-salted pickles, dismissing the offer as shoddily marinated cucumbers from Bulgaria, not prepared in the authentic Russian style.
"Then they served tiny pelmeni, kopeck-size, in a small frying pan baked under cheese and mayonnaise," Pulikovsky wrote, recalling crestfallen faces on the Siberian hosts as the Russian meat dumplings arrived. "Kim Jong Il picked at them with a fork and said: 'What kind of pelmeni are these? They should be big, boiled and in broth.'"
With meals on the train stretching sometimes for four hours or more, entertainment often took the form of singing Russian and Korean songs. The North Korean leader, who had left his wife back in Pyongyang, particularly enjoyed the charms of four young singers, who were introduced as "lady conductors," Pulikovsky wrote.
When his government ministers came into his office, "they bent deferentially in a deep bow and remained like this until there was a hardly visible sign from their commander that they could straighten their backs," he wrote.
Taking a skeptical attitude about the AIDS epidemic in Africa, Kim, whose government is skilled at extracting foreign aid, once commented to Pulikovsky, "Many countries just exaggerate their disasters to get more aid from the international community."
And now they threaten nuclear war, more or less, if Kim doesn't get what he wants. I have to say that I am strongly tempted to lean towards the idea that if the South Koreans, most of them young, want us so badly to remove our military from South Korea, that we should follow their wishes. Heck, not too long after, our allies, the Japanese, might get a significant boost to their stagnant economy out of it, having had such an enterprising commercial competitor removed.
Samit wouldn't reveal how much his company is earning from ring tones but said they are projected to account for 10 percent of the recording industry's earnings in coming years. Last year the industry reported $33 billion in earnings worldwide, meaning ring tones might eventually be worth more than $3.3 billion.
Iain Sinclair's London Orbital (Granta) is an instant classic: part social history of the unsung lands that lie beside the M25, and part cultural analysis of this endless terrain of science parks, golf courses, hypermarkets and speculative housing that makes up the New Britain of 2002. A feast for admirers of Sinclair's rich and quirky style.
This sounds like such a book Ballard would be fascinated by.
John Gray's Straw Dogs (Granta) is the most challenging book I have read since Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene (Oxford Paperbacks), and defies all our assumptions about what it is to be human. Tough-minded and unsentimental, this is the best guide yet to the new millennium.
Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate(Penguin) is another provocative look at our make-up as social beings. At birth, are we a blank slate on which experience describes our essential nature, or do we arrive in the world with our characters already determined? As always, Pinker is lucid and persuasive.
Other writer picks are also on that page, including those of Jeffrey Archer, Beryl Bainbridge, Julian Barnes, William Boyd, Melvyn Bragg, Alain de Botton, AS Byatt, Margaret Drabble, Michel Faber, Michael Foot, Michael Holroyd, Nick Hornby, Elmore Leonard, Ian McEwan, Tony Parsons,. Annie Proulx, Peter Porter, Carol Shields, William Trevor, and John Updike.
12/25/2002 03:49:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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THE RAELIANS ARE CLAIMING A SUCCESSFUL CLONE of a human, that is. Of course, they're nutbars, but they're also techy nutbars. We'll see.
Read The Rest Scale: a fair amount of details, so go for it if the question intrigues you. (Also via Daze Reader.)
GOOD FOR CANADA: Here's a Canadian Supreme Court decision the liberal libertarian in me approves of:
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Friday that a British Columbia school board should not have banned books at the kindergarten and Grade 1 level that depicted same-sex parents.
In a 7-2 ruling, the top court said the school board in Surrey went against provincial legislation that says the public school system is secular and non-sectarian.
[...]
The books depicted same-sex parents in a favourable light, triggering complaints from parents who took objection on religious grounds.
[...]
The Supreme Court ruling focused on the religious objections, rather than the larger issue of gay and lesbian constitutional rights.
The Surrey board said it ordered the ban because the books were not suitable for five- and six-year olds. The board also said many parents objected to the books because they regard homosexuality as a sin.
But the court said the moral objections of some parents are not a basis for a ban. The court also concluded "tolerance is always age-appropriate," said John Fisher of the group Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere.
Yes, I'm just for pushing that Homosexual (anti-discrimination) Agenda. On to item 43b! (Via Daze Reader.)
YOU JUST CAN'T TRUST THEM WITH THE ECONOMY: These darn irresponsible Republicans, always increasing deficits, and running up more federal debt.
The Bush administration asked Congress today to approve another increase in the limit on national debt, saying it will run out of the authority to borrow money by late February.
The deputy Treasury secretary, Kenneth W. Dam, in a letter to the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, cited the cost of combating terrorism and the economic slowdown for the government's growing indebtedness.
Anyone got any figures on where the deficit would be without the Bush Tax Cut For Rich People? (Can't wait for the final version of the New Tax Cut we'll hear about in the State of the Union.)
POWER AND SUPERPOWER: Back from his semi-hiatus, Gary Farber notified a bunch of fellow bloggers. Both Glenn Reynolds and Atrios posted links within a few minutes of each other. Gary tracks the results.
Referring to my "THIS IS A TEST; THIS HAS ONLY BEEN A TEST" entry (archives still hosed, but linked in hopes of future repair). Of course, now my referrer log reads like so:
228 hits so far today, pretty much all from The Dynamist (though a nice little flurry from Natalie Solent last night).
But it's probably a particularly good day for the Jewish, Moslem, and other non-Christian posters to be posting. :-)
Virginia is also asking that a) writers stop using the lazy "yes, Virginia" trope, particularly near Christmas -- I can't imagine why this would bother her -- and b) to let her know which you think would be the best cover photo for her next book.
THAT "ROUND-UP" THING: I can't count how many times I saw the "INS round-up" denounced on blogs, each and every time accompanied by the use of the words "Japanese internment."
Well, what a bunch of nonsense.
What was horrific, and terrible, about the internment of the Nisei was that they were American citizens.
Innocent American citizens.
Innocent American citizens with no probable cause for arrest.
Innocent American citizens with no probable cause for arrest, who were imprisoned, without trial, for years.
Innocent American citizens with no probable cause for arrest, who were imprisoned, without trial, for years, on the basis of their perceived ethnicity, or as it was then called, "race."
That's what was criminal, and horrible, and what made these camps and events a stain on American history. In this case, we're talking about the detainment, for under two days, of foreign nationals (of hundreds of different ethnicities, by the way) who broke the law.
These two events seem to have little in common. The analogy doesn't seem to work, at all. Which hasn't stopped it from being endlessly used, in what I can only characterize as an hysterical, over-the-top, distortion of facts.
And here we learn that how many people were "imprisoned" as of Friday?
23.
About 400 people had been detained in Southern California, said Jorge Martinez, a U.S. Justice Department spokesman. Southern California is home to very large communities of Iranian-Americans and Iraqi-Americans. A minimal number were detained elsewhere in the United States.
Only 23 remained in custody Friday. Their names came up in law enforcement data bases in connection with various crimes, Martinez said.
Which clause, or amendment, of the constitution, was violated here, I've not seen anyone Viewing With Alarm cite, precisely. 14th Amendment? I don't think so.
This is not, of course, to say that I don't approve of examining government actions such as this with the most skeptical and cautious eye. I do approve, most emphatically. I agree completely that we must keep eternal vigilance in defense of our freedoms, and, yea, even those of foreign citizens who are guests in the US, and yea, even those of anyone, anywhere, in the world.
I'm all for carefully examining any apparently threatening government act, policy, or statement.
And, of course, I'm saying nothing about whether or not this was a stupid, or wise, policy. That's a separate topic, and I'm not speaking up in defense of this as a defense of wisdom of the policy.
All I'm saying is that perpetual crying wolf... well, there's a story about how that turns out. Read The Rest Scale: 1 out of 5.
Addendum: I subsequently see that Eugene Volokh posted to make some of the same, and similar, points I did. Matthew Yglesias does, as well.
I'd like to emphasize, once again, that my point was solely that to compare this INS action to the internment camps of WWII, and to call it a constitutional violation, is over the top. It was, and is, not to in any other way defend or justify this INS policy and acts. From what I've read, it was apparently, indeed, an extremely badly handled execution of what is probably a very stupid policy. Obviously, asking people to, by implication, express their faith in the good will of the US authorities by voluntarily coming forward, and then arresting them and treating them like common criminals (which is to say, awfully), removes the faith in such theoretical good will of a great many more people than those so treated. This would, overall, seem to likely outweigh whatever good might come from suddenly strictly enforcing what many have pointed out are arbitrary, confusing, and inconsistently applied, INS rules.
All in all, the affair seems to have been a cock-up, and a Bad Thing. I regret that I apparently didn't sufficiently emphasize that in my first statement.
CHICAGO ISN'T JUST A MUSICAL: A holy crapstory from the Chicago Sun-Times on gang involvement in "getting out the vote" on election day.
In at least 10 of Chicago's 50 wards, a Sun-Times investigation has found, gang members are expected to work in next February's elections as political foot soldiers, a practice loaded with dangerous ethical conflicts for the candidates.
Best Quote:
"I try to use them in every election," said Ald. Shirley Coleman (16th), who estimated a fourth of her workers in the November election were gang members. She paid 40 to 50 gang members $25 each to get out the vote, she said, and plans to recruit gang members for the Feb. 25 aldermanic election.
Since it's Chicago, we're talking mostly Democrats, but the Grand Old Party doesn't want to be left out.
Calvin "Omar" Johnson says he's one of those who went straight, after honing his political skills in his gang days.
Once he was a leader of the Conservative Vice Lords. Now he's GOP committeeman in the 24th Ward and boasts about delivering some programs and jobs to the West Side ward, a Democratic stronghold.
His WorkShip Coalition is known for shutting down the Stevenson Expy. to press for more minority contractors.
The ex-dope dealer proudly pointed to photos in his map-filled "war room," showing him posing with Gov. Ryan; House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert; even former President Bush. A 2002 White House Christmas card lay on a table.
A TRAGIC, TERRIBLE INCIDENT is described in this story of how American Embassy officials whisked away an injured State Department official in Kenya, in 2001, not realizing, not bothering to check to find out, that the occupants of the other car, one a 17-year-old left to die, were black Americans. Not, of course, that it would have been an iota better had they been Kenyans.
The diplomat was at fault. Read The Rest Scale: 5 out of 5.
SOUTHERN PARTISAN, SOUTH CAROLINA, AND 2000: Patrick Nielsen Hayden notes Sam Coopersmith's blogging on McCain's campaign hiring of Richard Quinn, the editor of Southern Partisan, the magazine notorious for defense of slavery, the Confederacy, and the Southern Cause, for the South Carolina presidential primary.
I blogged earlier -- skip down to "REPUBLICAN NEO-CONFEDERATES," since my archives, and therefore permalinks, are hosed at present -- about the Bush Campaign then hiring of Richard Hines, then managing editor of Southern Partisan.
I may have missed it, but since I've not seen anyone put these two facts together, I will, and wonder what the heck it says about the South Carolina Republican primary in 2000 that both major Republican Presidential campaigns felt compelled (color me off-base, but I don't think it was whimsy that led to this result) to hire the major powers of Southern Partisan as advisors.
Would any of my Republican readers like to explain how this relates to the color-blind (other than Trent Lott) Southern Republican Party? Is it "race-baiting" and unfair of me to bring this up, and ask this question?
ARCHIVES: I've blogged about my archives being screwed, and my being unable to fix them. I see that a number of Blogger-using bloogers still have intact archives. Could those of you who see this please e-mail me what the text of your Archive Template is, at gfarber-at-savvy.com, please? Many thanks. Any other tips on getting Blogger archives working again appreciated.
12/23/2002 06:18:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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FANTASY AT 10 DOWNING ST.: David Langford's December Ansible noted:
CORRIDORS OF POWER. Hordes of children's writers attended a 10 Downing Street reception on 2 December. Various Blair offspring were glimpsed, and Tony B. himself assured the massed literati that they did valuable work and that this was a great responsibility, at which a voice behind Diana Wynne Jones growled `Yes, we know.' Diana's sightings included Peter Dickinson, Philippa Pearce and the inescapable Terry Pratchett. Her usual attendant disasters were the failure of No.10's electronic door-opener (`The polite policeman said, "I think you'll have to knock at the door, madam."'), a canapé accident (`I took a rice thing from one of the small ladies and it came open and rice went all up my sleeve, like gummy little beetles.') and momentary panic when the knob fell off the bolt in the ladies' loo. Only Ansible brings you the facts. [Full account in Diana's bulletin dated 3/12/2002 at www.dianawynnejones.com.]
PALENQUE, Mexico, Dec. 22 -- Time ends here 10 years from now.
The Long Count, the 5,200-year cycle of creation and destruction calculated by the Maya, the great astronomers and timekeepers who built this city 1,600 years ago, comes to a close on the winter solstice in 2012.
It is probably not the end of the world. But it might be, says Jose Arguelles, president of the Foundation for the Law of Time.
[...]
If we harmonize time, "the effect on the human mind and nature will be of unimaginable consequence," Mr. Argüelles said in an e-mail message from his aerie on the slopes of Mount Hood in Oregon. If we do not, Western civilization is "programmed for apocalypse" at the end of the Long Count -- Dec. 22 (or 23), 2012. Circle your calendars.
On the other paw:
[...]
The grand old man of Palenque, Moises Morales, isn't buying any of it. Mr. Morales, 78, is a Mayanist, host of the Palenque Round Table, a gathering of scholars, and grand panjandrum of Panchan, an ethereal forest of cabanas and restaurants favored by world travelers. He once jammed a padlock at Pakal's tomb to keep Mr. von Däniken out.
The meaning of the end of the Long Count?
"It's nothing," Mr. Morales said. After all, the Maya say there were four Long Counts before.
"It means nothing for the Chinese," he said. "Nothing for the Jews. Two thousand-twelve is nothing but the completion of a cycle."
Logitech's pen, which can hold up to 40 pages of written material in its memory, syncs to a computer in a cradle. Like other Anoto pens, it must be used on special paper imprinted with dots. The pen's built-in camera creates coordinates from the dots for the squiggles it senses.
DELUDED: I think this is the first time I've quoted Bob Herbert here.
Having thrown Trent Lott overboard, Republican leaders seem to think they are now absolved of any further responsibility for the racism and ethnic insensitivity that have tainted their party. The problem is now supposed to go away.
They are deluded.
[...]
Now that Senator Frist is ascending to the majority leader's post, it's interesting to note the Republicans' choice to succeed him as chairman of the senatorial committee. It's none other than Senator George Allen of Virginia, a Neanderthal on matters of race who, like Trent Lott, all but worships at the altar of the Confederacy.
A few years ago, when he was governor of Virginia, Mr. Allen issued a proclamation declaring April "Confederate History and Heritage Month." From Mr. Allen's pro-Confederate perspective, the Civil War was a struggle for "independence and sovereign rights." Independence, in this case, does not refer to the independence of black slaves.
I'd like to know if Senator Allen feels we'd all have been better off if the South had won the Civil War. It's a fair enough question. Mr. Allen loved the old Confederacy so much he displayed the Confederate flag in his living room. He was a little touchy about it, though. When someone accused him of flying the flag in his living room, he took umbrage. "It was never flying," he said. "It was nailed to a wall."
Gee, I wonder why there are so few blacks in the Republican Party.
I don't know. Haven't they noticed that so many members are race-blind? Isn't that enough?
They said that Mr. Bush's forceful denunciation and undercutting of Mr. Lott seemed directed more at white swing voters than at blacks, and said the proof of the president's sincerity would rest on whether he now begins a national conversation about race in earnest or seeks merely to put the whole subject to rest.
Last May I had a rare audience with Saudi Prince Al-Walid bin Talal.
[...]
"DON'T YOU believe the Jewish lobby has a big role in what's going on?” he said. The "Jews"and the "Zionists" had "infiltrated" every part of the U.S. government. "Mr. [Paul] Wolfowitz is the boss of what's going on," he said, referring to the deputy secretary of Defense. What infuriated him most was the "Jewish lobby's" power over the media. As he went on, I noticed behind his desk the emblems of the many U.S. corporations that the prince owns chunks of: AOL Time Warner (his stake: $900 million), News Corp. ($1 billion) and Disney Corp. ($50 million). To be sure, his investments in the media giants wasn't enough to give him editorial control. Nor were they as much as his $10 billion stake in Citigroup, the banking giant. But still... Surely, prince, given your holdings, you've got a little influence with the American media yourself, I suggested. Oh, yes, he told me; he talks to the top executives of these firms all the time. "I try to tell them not to be biased," he said.
Mr. Frist and Mr. Bush share an important financial link, too. Richard Rainwater, the Fort Worth billionaire investor, played a role in the multimillion-dollar fortunes of each man, Mr. Bush through the Texas Rangers and Mr. Frist through HCA, the hospital chain.
HICKORY - U.S. Rep. Cass Ballenger, anticipating fallout from a newspaper interview in which he said he had "segregationist feelings" after conflicts with a black colleague, decided to have his yard's black lawn jockey painted white Friday.
"It was painted with the knowledge that he was attacked in the past for it, and it was likely to come up again," said Dan Gurley, Ballenger's chief of staff.
The 3 1/2-foot tall cast iron statue has been in Ballenger's family since the 1920s. It has stood on the Northwest Hickory property since the 1950s when Ballenger built a house there.
The lawn jockey issue comes up every election, Gurley said.
Some leaders in Catawba County's black community have complained for years that the statue reminds them of an offensive history.
So it's not as if he's unaware of the issue, even if he was brain-dead enough to need other people to tell him why it's offensive.
Gurley provided a 1994 letter in which a longtime Ballenger friend explained that the stable jockey has sentimental meaning because it was one of the few items the family salvaged after the early death of Ballenger's father and the sale of the family home.
It was placed beside the driveway as a reminder of the happier days of Ballenger's youth, his friend said.
The congressman calls the statue "Rochester," after the black valet in the old Jack Benny show.
Rochester! That's so funny! Ah, yes, those happy happy days of youth, when most folks knew their place, and didn't dare dream of being so uppity as to whine about such trivia.
[...] No message is intended by the lawn jockey, he said, and it's simply an antique.
"Perhaps for those that can't get past that, it would be less offensive by painting it white," Gurley said.
Perhaps not. Upshot: what an asshole. Read The Rest Scale: 0. (Via All About George.)
OH, VLADY!: The San Francisco Chronicle has a good piece on the Vladimir Putin personality cult.
Antonina Trofimova's question just about summed it up.
"Tell us, please, what should we do? How should we live?" the retired schoolteacher from the Siberian village of Ovsyanka asked Russian President Vladimir Putin.
This was, perhaps, a strange question to ask a national leader. But not Putin.
After an unscripted live, 2-hour and 40-minute broadcast on Thursday, it was clearer than ever before that Putin is the man on whom Russians call for just about anything -- and he is ready to play the role.
As he took questions from ordinary people across Russia's nine time zones, Putin gave his advice on issues such as how to prevent hate crimes, whether to tolerate Islam and what to do about sex and violent scenes on television. Like an all-powerful game show host, he also promised to solve callers' personal problems, ranging from unpaid salaries to unheated apartments.
And when 11-year-old Natasha Bugaryova from the far eastern city of Birobidzhan called to complain that local authorities had put up a synthetic Christmas tree instead of a real one in the city square, Putin promised to take care of that, too.
"Your governor should make his people a present and replace the synthetic Christmas tree with a real one," Putin said, leaving little doubt that the governor in question, Nikolai Volkov, would quickly spring into obedient action.
By the end of the nationwide Q&A, more than 1.5 million Russians called to ask their president for help or advice. Putin responded to 51 questions.
The personal nature of most of the questions reflects the almost religious faith with which many Russians view their leader -- a conviction that he would interfere and solve the problems indifferent and often corrupt bureaucrats at lower levels of power do not want to tackle or cannot solve, sociologists say.
"People here traditionally treat those in power as somewhat godly," said Boris Kagarlitsky, director of the Institute of Globalization Studies in Moscow.
Alexander Tarasov, another Moscow sociologist, agreed: "For these people, calling on Putin for help is somewhat like praying."
[...]
Putin's fan club has been far from moderate. Books, T-shirts and calendars bearing his image flood Russia's stores. Putin's autobiography, which hit the stands shortly before he became president in 2000, is a must have in many a household. In Volgograd, a Putin Bar appeared; in Chelyabinsk, scientist Nikolai Yegorov is working on a strain of frost-resistant Vova Putin tomatoes (Vova is the diminutive form of Vladimir).
And a new song, "I Want Someone Like Putin," has made him into a pop idol.
The upbeat pop tune, now blasting from cars across the nation, tells of a girl who has dumped her ne'er-do-well boyfriend and now wants someone like Putin:
"Someone like Putin, full of strength. Someone like Putin, who doesn't drink. Someone like Putin, who doesn't hurt me. Someone like Putin, who won't leave me," the ditty goes.
[...]
The Putin cult went through the roof in October, when the president turned 50. Television channels showed children in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg reciting his biography, and local authorities constructed an electronic message board to flash 45,000 birthday greetings to their leader. Residents of Nizhny Novgorod, in central Russia, celebrated with prayers in the city's cathedral, and by laying wreaths at the local war memorial.
In the Siberian city of Omsk, Andrei Volokhov marked the birthday by changing his own name to Andrei Putin. Putin is "the angel who raised me, who educated me spiritually," Putin, nee Volokhov, explained on Russian television.
[...]
"Our president is smart, brave, sexy and reliable," said Yuri Lyapin, a taxi driver in St. Petersburg, Putin's hometown.
"I Want Someone Like Putin" was blasting on Lyapin's car radio, and he tapped his fingers on the steering wheel to the rhythm of the song. "He's our Russian Superman."
And don't forget: he's sexy.
Look on the bright side: for all the complaints about George W., we don't have "I Want Someone Like Bush" blasting on our radios. Read The Rest Scale: 2 out of 5.
Revelations of the brutal torture and murder of a teenager in eastern Germany blamed on neo-Nazis has sent shock-waves through the country.
Marius Schoeberl, who was 16, was killed apparently because he looked like a Jew.
His severely mutilated body was discovered in a farm silage pit in the remote village of Potzlow this summer.
[...]
They called him 'un-German', 'a pest' and 'a Jew'. They dragged him to a deserted farmhouse, tortured and killed him - and then they went home to sleep.
Read The Rest Scale: oh, why bother? It was just another Jew-killing (even though he wasn't).
THIS IS A TEST; THIS HAS ONLY BEEN A TEST: Jim Henley and others have dubbed Atrios "the liberal Instapundit." Fair enough, especially given the recent recognition of Atios everywhere from the NY Times to, well, practically everywhere.
But survey says he/she/it's got a ways to go in hit power compared to the original Insta. Here are the terms: both blogs posted an almost identically worded "Gary Farber is back from semi-hiatus" post within minutes of each other. Here are my most recent referrer logs ("http://64.247.33.250/" is another variant of Instapundit):
And so on. Basically, out of every 20 hits, 18 from Instapundit, 1 from someone else, and 1 from Atrios. Something about 240 so far in the last two hours, altogether, after having only had 40-odd hits in the entirety of the previous 20 hours, and after averaging about 140 a day, total, in recent months, of which most are Google searches.
So many thanks to both Atrios and Glenn, and I'm amused, and pleased, and thankful, to get referrals from each.
OMRI SHARON, Arik's son, and one of his closest advisors and envoys, frequently making secret trips to meet with Arafat and foreign leaders, may be involved in the current Likud position-buying-on-the-Likud-Knesset-List corruption scandal, hints Labor Knesset leader Avraham Burg.
You may not have been following it, but this is a big Israeli scandal, bigger than the personal corruption scandal that forced Binyamin Netanyahu to resign as Prime Minister a few years ago. What apparently happened is that people paid to get a high listing on the Likud election list, and thus, a Knesset seat; one result was a waitress with no political experience winding up higher on the list than senior Likud leaders of many years standing.
Burg also said that recent reports suggest that the person who "started the corruption process which led to the entry of organized crime to the Likud is among those closest to the prime minister."
Sharon: Police probe into Likud primary scandal is sufficient
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said earlier Sunday in a meeting of Likud ministers that the police investigation into allegations of corruption in the primary elections was sufficient and that another external or internal probe would only interfere with the work of the police.
Sharon repeated his threat to expel Likud members found to have been involved in corruption during the primary. "Whoever is proven to have been elected in an improper manner and by unfit means will not be a Likud member," he said.
The prime minister and Likud chairman said that he personally would present to party bodies a complaint against such persons in order to remove them from the party in a legal manner. Sharon emphasized that if such a person is elected to the Knesset, he will not take into account that person's seat when forming the government. He also called for considering making a change in the party constitution that will make it easier to suspend Knesset members, when charges are filed against them.
Police: At least one Knesset member involved in Likud bribery scandal
One week after they began investigating accusations of bribery during the internal elections for the Likud list of candidates for the Knesset, police sources said Sunday that there had been significant progress in the probe. The sources also claimed that they have evidence that at least one currently serving Knesset member was involved in the scandal, Israel Radio reported.
Senior Likud officials are expected to undergo questioning in the coming days. Thus far, 10 people, all of them described as vote contractors, have been questioned under warning.
Police are expected to arrest more vote contractors Sunday, or at least to detain them for further questioning. Among those expected to be held are the Likud central committee member who allegedly demanded that MK Nehama Ronen pay NIS 1,000 for each vote he secured her.
Israeli politics is more fun than even Louisiana politics!
OUR ARTY GOV: The U.S. Department of State's Office of International Information Programs published a book of American writers writing about American writing. (The whole thing readable from that URL, despite the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which forbids the "domestic dissemination" of U.S. propaganda, as Ian Buruma points out.)
The page starts out with a quote from Whitman's Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, and notes that:
This book originated as an intriguing suggestion by Mark Jacobs, a U.S. foreign service officer with our State Department staff who also happens to be a working novelist. If we were to ask a contemporary group of American poets, novelists, critics, and historians what it means to be an American writer, Jacobs proposed, the results could illuminate in an interesting way certain America values -- freedom, diversity, democracy -- that may not be well understood in all parts of the world.
I nearly worship Ian Buruma, but I disagree with him here; American cultural values can be political values, and while I respect his caution and doubts about this project, I, in the end, seeing nothing whatever wrong, from either the point of view of the writer, or the US, with the US sponsoring thoughtful, intelligent, American literature and thinking, and disseminating it to the world. You?
Read The Rest Scale: Only way to make intelligible sense of what I'm saying.
RICHARD WRIGHT AND CLARENCE THOMAS is the subject of this absolutely fascinating article from Reason in 1992 by Edith Efron that Virginia Postrel pointed to. It starts with a basic truth so many "white" folk Just Don't Get:
One of the major reasons for the persistent problem is that millions of white adult Americans define "racism" as its most pathological manifestations: wearing white gowns and hoods, burning crosses, tarring and feathering blacks, hunting them down with dogs. Because those same millions of white Americans would not dream of committing such atrocities; because they vote for political representatives who pass civil-rights bills; because they applauded Martin Luther King and Thurgood Marshall; because they respect the changing nomenclature by which certain blacks wish to be addressed, they imagine themselves to be free of racism.
What they have never learned is that racism is an idea, a very old and intransigent idea. That idea exists on an unbroken continuum -- all the way from a form that is fully conscious to a form that is unconscious. Its manifestations can range from the most grossly offensive and scornful invective to a compulsive noblesse oblige that cannot permit itself to make any criticisms at all. But whatever the degree or kind of racism, it invariably contains a double standard: The racist simply does not treat black individuals the same way he treats whites.
The effect of stereotypes on blacks is a sense of being unseen, as in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. The effect on whites is the corollary: They do not perceive blacks as real or make the same fine discriminations among blacks that they habitually make among whites. In the last analysis, they do not perceive black individuals; they perceive black skins. And this remains true at every step of the continuum.
And only gets more and more interesting, listing stereotypes Thomas was painted with at his Senate hearings, and the parallels he experienced with Native Son. Mind, I surely don't agree with everything Efron says, particularly not that sexual harassment,
Once an objective description of the use of male employers’ power to subjugate and exploit female subordinates, this new and ever-expanding legal offense, first defined in 1986, had turned into pure feminist dementia.
Nor does my finding some of this article interesting reading constitute my signing up to agree with all of Thomas's opinions; in case you were wondering. But the above point can't be made enough.
PASCAGOULA, Mississippi (AP) -- Sen. Trent Lott, in his first public remarks since resigning as Senate Republican leader, said Sunday that he had fallen into a "trap" set by his political enemies and had "only myself to blame."
[...]
"I don't think there's any use in trying to say I'm disappointed in anybody or anything. An inappropriate remark brought this down on my head."
However, he said there were those who had been gunning for his resignation.
"There are some people in Washington who have been trying to nail me for a long time," Lott said. "When you're from Mississippi and you're a conservative and you're a Christian, there are a lot of people that don't like that. I fell into their trap and so I have only myself to blame."
He wouldn't say who those political enemies were.
Whine, whine, whine. But, hey, we'll have Trent to kick around for years to come!
DEPT OF BRILLIANT INSIGHTS: Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum on CBS's "Face the Nation":
"I think what we've learned is that there's still a simmering problem in America when it comes to race, and that the solutions that we've had to try to deal with the problem in the past have really not solved that problem."
Goshwow. I sure am glad he learned that this week.
SAVE THE GIANT SEA SPARROWS: Virginia also mentions thisNY Times correction:
An article on Nov. 10 about animal rights referred erroneously to an island in the Indian Ocean and to events there involving goats and endangered giant sea sparrows that could possibly lead to the killing of goats by environmental groups. Wrightson Island does not exist; both the island and the events are hypothetical figments from a book (also mentioned in the article), "Beginning Again," by David Ehrenfeld. No giant sea sparrow is known to be endangered by the eating habits of goats.
HERE'S THE LIST OF SENATORS WHO SUPPORTED LOTT, for the record:
Among Lott allies who have publicly indicated that they would support him are Sens. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo.; Mike Crapo, R-Idaho; Larry Craig, R-Idaho; Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, John Ensign,R-Nev.; Orrin Hatch, R-Utah; Richard Lugar, R-Ind.; Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; Rick Santorum, R-Pa., Ted Stevens, R-Alaska; George Voinovich, R-Ohio, and Specter. Another three senators are inclined to back Lott, but did not want to say so publicly.
The United States is holding dozens of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay who have no meaningful connection to Al Qaeda or the Taliban, and were sent to the maximum-security facility over the objections of intelligence officers in Afghanistan who had recommended them for release, according to military sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
At least 59 detainees -- nearly 10% of the prison population at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- were deemed to be of no intelligence value after repeated interrogations in Afghanistan. All were placed on "recommended for repatriation" lists well before they were transferred to Guantanamo Bay, a facility intended to hold the most hardened terrorists and Taliban suspects.
Dozens of the detainees are Afghan and Pakistani nationals described in classified intelligence reports as farmers, taxi drivers, cobblers and laborers. Some were low-level fighters conscripted by the Taliban in the weeks before the collapse of the ruling Afghan regime.
None of the 59 met U.S. screening criteria for determining which prisoners should be sent to Guantanamo Bay, military sources said. But all were transferred anyway, sources said, for reasons that continue to baffle and frustrate intelligence officers nearly a year after the first group of detainees arrived at the facility.
"There are a lot of guilty [people] in there," said one officer, "but there's a lot of farmers in there too."
PAKISTAN HAS KHALID SHAIKH MOHAMMED's, the man believed to be operational commander behind 9/11, two sons, aged 7 and 9, in custody, and has since September. Long, thorough, excellent, profile, with great detail on his background, family, college life in the States, and so on here.
Read The Rest Scale: know your enemy al Queda: 6 out of 5
One of the things that has fascinated me about The Wall Street Journal editorial page is its occasional capacity to rise above the routine moral callousness of hack conservative punditry and attain a level of exquisite depravity normally reserved for villains in James Bond movies. To wit, a recent lead editorial titled "THE NON-TAXPAYING CLASS."
[...]
When I try to visualize the editorial meeting that produced this bit of diabolical inspiration, I imagine one of the more rational staffers--maybe Dorothy Rabinowitz--tentatively raising her hand and asking, "Isn't that idea a bit, you know, immoral?" Then Robert Bartley or Paul Gigot would emit a deep, sinister laugh and press a hidden button, depositing the unfortunate staffer into a tank of piranhas. Come to think of it, I haven't seen Rabinowitz's byline in a couple of weeks.
SENATOR JEFF SESSIONS OF ALABAMA: Dear old Jeff was the first judicial candidate nominated by Ronald Reagan that the Senate rejected, you'll recall:
Sessions was U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama. The year before his nomination to federal court, he had unsuccessfully prosecuted three civil rights workers--including Albert Turner, a former aide to Martin Luther King Jr.--on a tenuous case of voter fraud. The three had been working in the "Black Belt" counties of Alabama, which, after years of voting white, had begun to swing toward black candidates as voter registration drives brought in more black voters. Sessions's focus on these counties to the exclusion of others caused an uproar among civil rights leaders, especially after hours of interrogating black absentee voters produced only 14 allegedly tampered ballots out of more than 1.7 million cast in the state in the 1984 election. The activists, known as the Marion Three, were acquitted in four hours and became a cause célèbre. Civil rights groups charged that Sessions had been looking for voter fraud in the black community and overlooking the same violations among whites, at least partly to help reelect his friend Senator Denton.
On its own, the case might not have been enough to stain Sessions with the taint of racism, but there was more. Senate Democrats tracked down a career Justice Department employee named J. Gerald Hebert, who testified, albeit reluctantly, that in a conversation between the two men Sessions had labeled the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) "un-American" and "Communist-inspired." Hebert said Sessions had claimed these groups "forced civil rights down the throats of people." In his confirmation hearings, Sessions sealed his own fate by saying such groups could be construed as "un-American" when "they involve themselves in promoting un-American positions" in foreign policy. Hebert testified that the young lawyer tended to "pop off" on such topics regularly, noting that Sessions had called a white civil rights lawyer a "disgrace to his race" for litigating voting rights cases. Sessions acknowledged making many of the statements attributed to him but claimed that most of the time he had been joking, saying he was sometimes "loose with [his] tongue." He further admitted to calling the Voting Rights Act of 1965 a "piece of intrusive legislation," a phrase he stood behind even in his confirmation hearings.
It got worse. Another damaging witness--a black former assistant U.S. Attorney in Alabama named Thomas Figures--testified that, during a 1981 murder investigation involving the Ku Klux Klan, Sessions was heard by several colleagues commenting that he "used to think they [the Klan] were OK" until he found out some of them were "pot smokers." Sessions claimed the comment was clearly said in jest. Figures didn't see it that way. Sessions, he said, had called him "boy" and, after overhearing him chastise a secretary, warned him to "be careful what you say to white folks." Figures echoed Hebert's claims, saying he too had heard Sessions call various civil rights organizations, including the National Council of Churches and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, "un-American." Sessions denied the accusations but again admitted to frequently joking in an off-color sort of way. In his defense, he said he was not a racist, pointing out that his children went to integrated schools and that he had shared a hotel room with a black attorney several times.
During his nomination hearings, Sessions was opposed by the NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, People for the American Way, and other civil rights groups. Senator Denton clung peevishly to his favored nominee until the bitter end, calling Sessions a "victim of a political conspiracy." The Republican-controlled Judiciary Committee finally voted ten to eight against sending Sessions to the Senate floor. The decisive vote was cast by the other senator from Alabama, Democrat Howard Heflin, a former Alabama Supreme Court justice, who said, "[M]y duty to the justice system is greater than any duty to any one individual."
BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW that the polls in Israel presently show that Green Leaf, the pro--marijuana-legalization party, looks likely to win two seats in the upcoming Knesset elections - and it could be as high as eight
The straw polls, unscientific as they may be, that the tabloids are conducting in malls, markets and plazas around the country are breathing life into Ale Yarok, Green Leaf, the pro-legalization party. Those polls - though far from scientific - are showing impressive returns for the party, which sometimes seems to rate as the fourth largest party after Likud, Labor and Shinui. In fact, say party spokesmen, the straw polls on average, give Green Leaf eight seats in the parliament.
The fact that the professional polls are also showing the party reaching, and in some cases, breaking through the voting threshold to win two seats in the Knesset is less relevant for Boaz Wachtel, the founding chairman of the party.
The rest of this article lays out the extremely thoughtful and coherent general platform for Green Leaf, which covers every serious aspect of Israeli politics, not just the relatively trivial matter of pot legalization. If I were Israeli, I might very well vote for these folks. Read The Rest Scale: really, 4 out of 5.
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SHELBY STEELE on the problem of blacks and conservatives:
The great anxiety for minorities of color is that those in the majority cannot or will not achieve full human identification with them, and therefore will not bond with them as equals. When Sen. Lott traffics with Bob Jones University, meets with the Council of Conservative Citizens, and makes bad jokes that seem to pine for segregation, he seems to be a man who has never imagined himself in the place of blacks. Without this imaginative effort he is only white and bereft of the common humanity that would connect him to blacks as true equals. Conservatives in the civil rights era failed to see themselves in the Negro, failed to imagine themselves into his plight. Had they imagined themselves there, they would have made themselves the measure of the rights blacks should receive. But conservative principles, entrepreneurial in so many ways, lost this opportunity to a lack of imagination.
In consultations last week between Mofaz and senior U.S. officials, the Americans outlined the "window" of dates between which they believe the Iraq operation is to be conducted. This is a period stretching between the end of January and the end of February.
Israeli security officials hope to receive an additional, more concrete, warning a few days before the start of a U.S. attack. Such advance warning will apparently be given three, or fewer, days before the start of the U.S. operation.
The IDF's Home Front Command, air force and other branches have been given to the middle of January to finish preparations and raise levels of preparedness for a possible Iraqi attack.
Most people are figuring on the new moon at the end of January/beginning of February. I don't expect exact coincidence, but sometime in that time frame is highly plausible. Oh, by the way:
U.S. officials believe that the operation in Iraq will last about two months, and will be completed before the start of the summer. Israel is skeptical about this forecast; security officials believe that the American offensive is liable to last longer than a few months.
That would be good news for the anti-war movement, but only if there are significant US casualties that escalate. Need I add that I surely hope this doesn't happen?
Read The Rest Scale: 3 out of 5, if you want to know a bit more about how the war will affect Israel, and how they're preparing.
STUPIDITY ALL ROUND, SAVE AT THE CENTER: Sari Nusseibeh, sane and sensible Palestinian leader, has been deposed as Jerusalem representative of the PA by Arafat. And Israel has arrested one of his prime aides.
Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat has taken over responsibility for the Jerusalem portfolio by deposing prominent Palestinian peace activist Prof. Sari Nusseibeh
Nussibeh, president of Al Quds University, hammered out a peace plan with former Shin Bet chief Maj. Gen. (res.) Ami Ayalon earlier this year.
Sources in Nusseibeh's office last night said Arafat proposed that the official serve as one of nine people on an executive council that would handle the daily management of East Jerusalem. Arafat named himself as head of that committee as well as chairman of a broader committee of more than 30 members that will serve as a quasi-city council
Nusseibeh has yet to decide whether he will accept Arafat's offer. His aides said he is considering leaving politics altogether.
A senior Palestinian official who asked to remain unnamed said that Nusseibeh's removal and the establishment of the two committees appear to be part of a pattern of eccentric behavior exhibited by Arafat. The official mentioned, for example, Arafat's announcement that East Jerusalem publisher Hanna Siniora would be the PA's ambassador in Washington, but when the prospective envoy arrived in the U.S. capital, Arafat backed down from the appointment.
Recent visitors to Arafat's office in the Muqata said his behavior has become strange. They said he was not focused, spoke in a confused manner, and his lips are shaking again. His doctors attribute the shaking lips to neurological damage that followed an airplane crash in the Libyan desert that Arafat survived.
Nusseibeh was appointed the PLO's representative in East Jerusalem more than a year ago after the sudden death of Faisal Husseini. In the past year, Nusseibeh has played a high-profile role as a leading Palestinian moderate, participating in countless meetings with Israeli peace activists. He openly called for an end to the attacks on Israeli civilians, and was showered with condemnations by Fatah leaders and the PA as well as by Public Security Minister Uzi Landau, who ordered his offices closed at the university alleging they served as PA offices.
During the past year, Nusseibeh and Ayalon worked out a draft peace plan based on the 1967 borders without a right of return for Palestinian refugees. The paper was presented publicly a few months ago at a modest ceremony in Athens attended by former U.S. president Bill Clinton and the Greek foreign minister.
Yesterday, however, Nusseibeh issued a statement saying that in protest of the arrest of Musa Balawneh, a former militant-turned-peace activist in Nusseibeh's "People's Peace Campaign," which hopes to get one million signatures on the Nusseibeh-Ayalon plan, Nusseibeh is ceasing his peace activist work in the Palestinian community, his dialogue with Israel, and his efforts to transform the armed intifada into a non-violent civil disobedience campaign - until Balawneh is released.
Balawneh was arrested Wednesday night at a checkpoint near Nablus while on his way to a meeting of peace activists in Ramallah. According to Nusseibeh, Balawneh has not been accused of anything nor informed of the reason for the arrest. Balawneh's travel permit, according to the Nusseibeh statement, was issued by Israel at Nusseibeh's request and with Israeli understanding that he would not be intercepted or arrested.
"Therefore, Nusseibeh declares the cessation of all his peace efforts in the Palestinian community and dialogue activities until this matter is resolved properly and without further delay," the statement said.
Nusseibeh remains "committed to his principles, but... the very credibility of the peace efforts is seriously undermined by such actions, which seem to reflect bad faith," according to the statement. Nusseibeh "holds the anti-peace lobby in the government of Israel responsible for such actions that undermine the efforts of peacemaking."
SADDAM HUSSEIN is taking lessons in sentence structure from the Bush family, as witness this recent, official Iraqi translation of part of his speech:
"Thus we are entering a new field: plain evil, and plain cowardice, by the parties who are supposed to present an opinion and make a stand, not in defense of Iraq, because Iraq doesn't need any party to defend it, as it relies on God Almighty, and whoever relies on God, who is the all-powerful, unmatched by any other power, will not, as I believe, diminish his faith or his ability, to the point where he would seek help from others, except when his faith fervor overtakes him, making him go searching for a field in which he could rekindle his spirit, his mind and conscious, to reassert himself by the ability of his faith, and his intimate ties to the nation."
WHO'S NEXT?: First we got the bomb, and that was good, 'Cause we love peace and motherhood. Then Russia got the bomb, but that's okay, 'Cause the balance of power's maintained that way. Who's next?
France got the bomb, but don't you grieve, 'Cause they're on our side (I believe). China got the bomb, but have no fears, They can't wipe us out for at least five years. Who's next?
Then Indonesia claimed that they Were gonna get one any day. South Africa wants two, that's right: One for the black and one for the white. Who's next?
Egypt's gonna get one too, Just to use on you know who. So Israel's getting tense. Wants one in self defense. "The Lord's our shepherd," says the psalm, But just in case, we better get a bomb. Who's next?
Luxembourg is next to go, And (who knows?) maybe Monaco. We'll try to stay serene and calm When Alabama gets the bomb. Who's next? Who's next? Who's next? Who's next?
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Sirens wailed throughout Saudi Arabia on Saturday in the kingdom's first test of its civil defense system since the 1991 Gulf War. The trial comes amid rising U.S.-Iraq war rhetoric, but Saudi authorities denied it was linked to the crisis.
Of course they do. It was just a strange coincidence.
BLACK REPUBLICANS: Oh, looky here. Sophia A. Nelson writes in the WashPo Sunday Outlook section:
Some people say Trent Lott was a problem waiting to happen. I see him as an opportunity just beginning to unfold. As a loyal and active Republican -- who also happens to be an African American woman -- I see a chance today for us to reach out to black Americans and return to our roots as a centrist party promising opportunity for all. But first we need to stop pretending that the party does not have a problem with the issue of race.
FRIST'S COUP: More of the coup details emerge. Senator (former Governor, former football coach) George Allen of Virginia played the role of belling the cat, being the first to overtly tell Lott he should think about going.
Aides said Frist stayed cagey about his intentions until Thursday morning. Then, he authorized Allen and roughly a half dozen other senators to begin calling Republicans to ask their opinions, with the real mission of promoting Frist as a replacement.
[...]
It was made to look like a draft.
[...]
But with Lott at his weakest and with Bush's inner circle subtly promoting him, Frist pounced.
[...]
A source said Frist consciously avoided contact with Rove.
With word of the calls racing through the Capitol on Thursday afternoon, Frist issued a statement saying he would consider challenging Lott. Lott gave up the next morning, after his friend Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who as the incoming whip will be second in the GOP leadership, told him the situation was hopeless. McConnell said in an interview that he suggested Lott "step down immediately."
Frist had such a head start on the race to succeed Lott that three possible challengers, including McConnell, folded within hours. Nickles endorsed Frist. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who will be third in the leadership, continued prospecting for several hours after Lott's announcement but then bowed out under pressure from McConnell and others who told him unity was essential.
Say what one might about Frist, this was smooooth politics. Lott had no shield against the knife sliding in, oh, so slickly. Frist's leadership of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee was crucial, as it led to eight sure votes from the freshman he fed money to to be elected.
This October 27, 2001 profile of Frist leads with the now infamous Island of Dr. Frist story:
As a Harvard Medical School student in the 1970s, Bill Frist briefly made a habit of adopting stray cats from local animal shelters -- then dissecting them. It was, he wrote later, a "heinous and dishonest thing to do."
It was also a good example of the single-minded zeal that propelled Frist into the top ranks of American medicine, then into the U.S. Senate and now into a prominent place at the center of the national anthrax scare.
The incident's also mentioned again here in a story speculating on the "Doctor As Dealmaker" and questioning whether he can be. Anyone who has followed Frist should not think this is a question.
Incidentally:
Frist has voted with Lott, for example, more than 90 percent of the time.
BLACK CONSERVATIVES remain sore about what Trent Lott did to their cause. What I don't get is how it took this little incident these past two weeks for them to notice that Lott has been Lott for decades now, just as Ashcroft has been Ashcroft, Helms Helms, Thurmond Thurmond, Delay Delay, Nickles Nickles, Burns Burns, and so on.
Meanwhile,
To be black and Republican can be a lonely existence. Among the nation's 9,040 black elected officials, the Joint Center for Political Studies counted only 50 from the GOP. There are more than 3,700 Democrats. The rest, said Liselle Yorke, the center's spokeswoman, were elected in nonpartisan races.
A Joint Center study conducted earlier this year showed that 71 percent of African Americans say they are Democrats while 10 percent identify themselves as Republicans.
Today, African Americans generally view the party of black abolitionist Frederick Douglass as acting against their interests in fields as diverse as criminal justice, education, welfare and employment.
In a Washington Post/ABC News poll completed Sunday, barely half of all minorities interviewed -- 52 percent -- said they thought the Republican Party was committed to equal opportunity for minorities, a view shared by only three in 10 black Americans. By contrast, three in four minorities and two-thirds of all blacks said the Democratic Party was committed to equal opportunity.
See also this review of J.C. Watts's book, What Color is a Conservative? Watts, of course, was the only "black" Republican in Congress. Think of it. 435 people. One "black" Republican. And then there were none. Do Republicans ask themselves why that is? What answer do they come up with?
Meanwhile, I'm reading a lot of conservative bloggers, who were horrified at Lott's comments, and who campaigned for him to step down as leader, who seem to think that All Is Now Well, that they've Demonstrated the Non-Racism of the current Republican Party, and who seem to believe that any moment now, therefore, dark-skinned people will come flooding into the Republican Party, given its generally wiser policies. I wish they'd consider just why it is that hasn't happened in the last twenty years, why it hasn't happened yet. Democratic mind-control rays from space?
Ta-Nehisi Coates's review of Watts' book has part of it:
To Watts, racism in the South never rose above the misguided tomfoolery of a few ignoramuses, a view that pretty much mirrors that of the GOP and highlights why conservatives have a hard time making inroads into the black community. Modern conservative ideology rests on an idyllic vision of the past, a time when men worked hard, women tended the home, and the whole family went to church.
The history of African Americans, more than any other minority group save Native Americans, severely complicates this picture. For in the past, white men didn't just work, they also exploited their sharecroppers and terrorized black businessmen. Families didn't just go to church on Sunday; they also went to lynchings with picnic baskets. But because conservatives venerate the past, race relations are necessarily simplified to paint the prettiest possible picture of America. So Jim Crow becomes a necessary evil, the Confederate flag has nothing to do with slavery, and lynch mobs were not formed by your fathers and sisters, but from misanthropes existing outside of society.
It is a reading of history that conflicts with everything African Americans know about themselves and about their tormentors. But for Watts, as a conservative politician, it is essential. If he really were to analyze race in his hometown, I suspect he would end up repudiating his own romantic vision of the South of yore, and consequently questioning his own party. But he does not allow himself this level of honesty, because at its core, Color is not a memoir but a defense of Watts's right to be black and Republican.
The tragedy for Watts and his conservative allies is that their own defensiveness is their worst enemy. Certainly one can hold conservative principles and question America's historic relationship with African Americans. Just look at Louis Farrakhan. But the GOP's rigidity, and ultimately, its tendency to airbrush the reality of racism, past and present, out of its vision of America, prevents the party from matching even the nuanced perspective of a man as dogmatic as Farrakhan, who recently has found a receptive audience among middle-class blacks with his lectures on personal responsibility and traditional family values. African Americans are acutely aware of this, and thus are acutely aware of the difference between being a conservative and being a Republican. While they don't advertise it, many blacks fall into the former category, but as things are, very few will ever fall into the latter. Which is why, when J.C. Watts leaves Congress, there won't be many people lining up to fill his shoes as that body's token black Republican.
The rest is the blindness of many Republicans and conservatives today, who feel that it is sufficient to have a pure heart and good intentions, and that since that consitutes not being racist, there's no reason for darker-skinned people to not eagerly rush to join the Republican Party, home of individual liberty and opportunity.
That Good Intentions, and a lack of any conscious desire to discriminate, and, more, a positive desire to not be racist, might not be sufficient, doesn't seem to be a major meme I see in many Republicans or conservatives.
That a major house-cleansing, far beyond Trent Lott -- who will continue to be a powerful Senator, and probably a powerful committee chair, and, at the least, a Senator -- might be necessary, isn't a thought I've yet seen voiced by any Republican or conservative.
That a major re-examination of the historic use of racism in the post-1948, post-1964 Republican Southern Strategy, is vital to becoming a truly non-racist, anti-racist, party, isn't a thought I've yet seen voiced by any Republican or conservative.
That a major re-examination of why it is the Republican Party can count its minority leaders on the head of a pin, and why it practices, um, affirmative action for the few they've had, might be called for, isn't a thought I've yet seen voiced by any Republican or conservative.
That racism remains a major problem in America, that most dark-skinned people still have an experience of feeling they've been treated differently than a lighter-skinned person, on a weekly basis, doesn't seem to be a wide-spread perception among Republicans or conservatives. (Instead, I frequently read them saying that discrimination is almost entirely a thing of the past, that it's been conquered, that it's Been Defeated; yet, strangely, most darker-skinned people, and plenty of lighter-skinned people, don't see that; who is blind?)
These thoughts: if Republicans want the Republican Party to truly, again, be a party of civil rights and anti-racism -- and that certainly would be a wonderful thing -- they might try these thoughts on for size.
Because it will take more than pure hearts and good intentions from supporters and leaders.
REPUBLICAN NEO-CONFEDERATES: The American Prospect has a piece by Sean Wilentz on some of them, in particular, Richard Hines, who was a major operative in Bush's South Carolina victory of John McCain, and also then managing editor of our favorite magazine, Southern Partisan.
Whose web site, interestingly, now says:
Due to administrative reasons, Southern-Partisan.com and its associated web addresses are currently unavailable. Please check back in the future.
