Sanely free of McCarthyite calling anyone a "traitor" since 2001!
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I've a long record in editorial work in book and magazine publishing, starting in 1974, as well as a variety of other work experience, but have been, in recent years, recurringly housebound with insanely painful now-sporadic (when I have meds) gout, an enlarged heart, and other health problems, particularly including lifelong recurring major clinical depression and bipolar disorder. I'm also sometimes available to some degree as a paid writer or researcher. I'm available as a fill-in Guest Blogger at mid-to-high-traffic blogs that fit my knowledge set.
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"The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include With ease, and you beside"
-- Emily Dickinson
"We will pursue peace as if there is no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there is no peace."
-- Yitzhak Rabin
"I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be."
-- Alexander Hamilton
"The stakes are too high for government to be a spectator sport."
-- Barbara Jordan
"Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to
trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule --
and both commonly succeed, and are right."
-- H. L. Mencken
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
"The only completely consistent people are the dead."
-- Aldous Huxley
"I have had my solutions for a long time; but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them."
-- Karl F. Gauss
"Whatever evils either reason or declamation have imputed to extensive empire,
the power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind;
and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices, diffused likewise
the improvements of social life."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his
expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were
respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom."
-- Edward Gibbon
"There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify
the evils, of the present times."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Our youth now loves luxuries. They have bad manners, contempt for authority.
They show disrespect for elders and they
love to chatter instead of exercise.
Children are now tyrants, not the servants, of their households. They
no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
chatter before company, gobble up their food, and tyrannize
their teachers."
-- Socrates
"Before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments."
-- Sidney Hook
"Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness."
-- Sidney Hook
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect
disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest
and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
"Faced with the choice of all the land without a Jewish state or a Jewish state without all the
land, we chose a Jewish state without all the land."
-- David Ben-Gurion
"...the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him
an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this
or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages
to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also
to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing,
with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess
and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminals who do not withstand such
temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the
opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction;
that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion
and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their
ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty,
because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of
judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square
with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil
government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts
against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if
left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has
nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her
natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is
permitted freely to contradict them.
-- Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson
"We don't live just by ideas. Ideas are part of the mixture of customs and practices,
intuitions and instincts that make human life a conscious activity susceptible to
improvement or debasement. A radical idea may be healthy as a provocation;
a temperate idea may be stultifying. It depends on the circumstances. One of the most
tiresome arguments against ideas is that their 'tendency' is to some dire condition --
to totalitarianism, or to moral relativism, or to a war of all against all."
-- Louis Menand
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis."
-- Dante Alighieri
"He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers."
-- Henry B. Adams
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the
poor to beg in the streets, steal bread, or sleep under a bridge."
-- Anatole France
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
-- Edmund Burke
"Education does not mean that we have become certified experts in business or mining or botany or journalism or epistemology;
it means that through the absorption of the moral, intellectual, and esthetic inheritance of the race we have come to
understand and control ourselves as well as the external world; that we have chosen the best as our associates both in spirit
and the flesh; that we have learned to add courtesy to culture, wisdom to knowledge, and forgiveness to understanding."
-- Will Durant
"Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is
but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest
winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?"
-- Herman Melville
"The most important political office is that of the private citizen."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"It is an error to suppose that books have no influence; it is a slow influence, like flowing water carving out a canyon,
but it tells more and more with every year; and no one can pass an hour a day in the society of sages and heroes without
being lifted up a notch or two by the company he has kept."
-- Will Durant
"When you write, you’re trying to transpose what you’re thinking into something that is less like an annoying drone and more like a piece of music."
-- Louis Menand
"Sex is a continuum."
-- Gore Vidal
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802.
"The sum of our religion is peace and unanimity, but these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible,
and in many things leave one free to follow his own judgment, because there is great obscurity in many matters, and
man suffers from this almost congenital disease that he will not give in when once a controversy is started, and
after he is heated he regards as absolutely true that which he began to sponsor quite casually...."
-- Desiderius Erasmus
"Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read, and what we must disbelieve?"
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to N. G. Dufief, Philadelphia bookseller, 1814
"We are told that it is only people's objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort,
are 'objectively' aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once. The same argument is applied to Trotskyism. Trotskyists are often credited, at any rate by Communists, with being active and conscious agents of Hitler; but when you point out the many and obvious reasons why this is unlikely to be true,
the 'objectively' line of talk is brought forward again. To criticize the Soviet Union helps Hitler: therefore 'Trotskyism is Fascism'. And when this has been established, the accusation of conscious treachery is usually repeated.
This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people's motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions."
-- George Orwell, "As I Please," Tribune, 8 December 1944
"Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If 'needy' were a turn-on?"
-- "Aaron Altman," Broadcast News
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
-- Lewis Thomas
"To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times?"
-- Cicero
"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."
-- Samuel Johnson, Life Of Johnson
"Very well, what did my critics say in attacking my character? I must read out their affidavit, so to speak, as though they were my legal accusers: Socrates is guilty of criminal meddling, in that he inquires into things below the earth and in the sky, and makes the weaker argument defeat the stronger, and teaches others to follow his example."
-- Socrates, via Plato, The Republic
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."
-- Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign
"Remember, Robin: evil is a pretty bad thing."
-- Batman
"Being evil is not a full-time job."
-- James Lileks
Gary Farber is now a licensed Double Super-Secret Master Pundit.
He does not always refer to himself in the third person.
Did he mention he was presently single?
The lutefisk is dead. Donate via the donation button on the top left
or I'll shoot this gefilte fish.
Current Total # of Donations Since Blog Began: 618
Subscribers to date at $5/month: 30 sign-ups; 24 cancellations; Total= 6
Supporter subscribers to date at $25/month: 7 sign-ups; 3 cancellation; Total= 4
Patron subscribers to date at $50/month: 10 sign-ups; 6 cancellations; Total= 4
And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
Farber's First Fundamental of Blogging:
If your idea of making an insightful point is to make fun of people's
names, or refer to them by rilly clever labels such as "The Big Me" or "The Shrub,"
chances are high that I'm not reading your blog. The same applies if you refer
to a group of people by disparaging terms such as "the Donks" or "the pals." (Note: I have to say I don't give that much of a damn any more.)
Farber's Second Fundamental of Blogging:
The more interested you are in scoring a "point" for a political "team," a "side," than in exploring the validity or value of an idea, the less interested I am in what you're saying.
(Note: Partially suspended for the Duration. Later note: forget I ever said this.)
Farber's Third Fundamental of Blogging:
If you see a link on another blog, and use it, credit the blog.
Some places I go:
[weblogs, sites, and columns]
People I've known and still miss include Isaac Asimov, rich brown, Charles Burbee, F. M. "Buzz" Busby, Terry Carr, A. Vincent Clarke, George Alec Effinger, Abi Frost,
Bill & Sherry Fesselmeyer, George Flynn, John Milo "Mike" Ford. John Foyster, Jay Haldeman, Chuch Harris, Mike Hinge, Lee Hoffman, Terry Hughes, Damon Knight, Ross Pavlac, Bruce Pelz, Elmer Perdue, Tom Perry,
Larry Propp, Bill Rotsler, Art Saha, Bob Shaw, Martin Smith, Harry Stubbs, Bob Tucker, Harry Warner, Jr., Jack Williamson, Walter A. Willis, Susan Wood, Kate Worley, and Roger Zelazny.
It's just a start.
And She of whom I must write someday.
You Like Me, You Really Like Me
...Darn: I saw that Gary had commented on this thread, and thought: oh. my. god. Perfect storm. Unstoppable cannonball, immovable object.
-- Hilzoy
Guessing that Gary is ignorant of anything that has ever been written down is, in my experience, unwise.
Just saying.
-- Hilzoy
Where would the blogosphere be without the Guardian? Guardian fish-barreling is now a venerable tradition. Yet even within this tradition, I don't believe there has ever been a more extensive and thorough essay than this one, from Gary Farber's fine blog. Gary appears to have examined every single thing that Guardian/Observer columnist Mary Ridell has ever written. He ties it all together, reaches inevitable conclusion. An archive can be a weapon.
-- Dr. Frank
Isn't Gary a cracking blogger, apropos of nothing in particular?
-- Alison Scott
I usually read you and Patrick several times a day, and I always get something from them. You've got great links, intellectually honest commentary, and a sense of humor. What's not to like?
-- Ted Barlow
...writer[s] I find myself checking out repeatedly when I'm in the mood to play follow-the-links. They're not all people I agree with all the time, or even most of the time, but I've found them all to be thoughtful writers, and that's the important thing, or should be.
-- Tom Tomorrow
Amygdala - So much stuff it reminds Unqualified Offerings that UO sometimes thinks of Gary Farber as "the liberal Instapundit." -- Jim Henley
I look at it almost every day. I can't follow all the links, but I read most of your pieces. The blog format really seems to suit you. It also suits me; I am not a news junkie, so having smart people like you ferret out the interesting stuff and leave it where I can find it is wonderful.
-- Lydia Nickerson
Gary is certainly a non-idiotarian 'liberal'...
-- Perry deHaviland
...the thoughtful and highly intelligent Gary Farber... My first reaction was that I definitely need to appease Gary Farber of Amygdala, one of the geniuses of our age.
-- Brad deLong
My friend Gary Farber at Amygdala is the sort of liberal for whom I happily give three cheers. [...] Damned incisive blogging....
-- Midwest Conservative Journal
If I ever start a paper, Clueless writes the foreign affairs column, Layne handles the city beat, Welch has the roving-reporter job, Tom Tomorrow runs the comic section (which carries Treacher, of course). MediaMinded runs the slots - that's the type of editor I want as the last line of defense. InstantMan runs the edit page - and you can forget about your Ivins and Wills and Friedmans and Teepens on the edit page - it's all Blair, VodkaP, C. Johnson, Aspara, Farber, Galt, and a dozen other worthies, with Justin 'I am smoking in such a provocative fashion' Raimondo tossed in for balance and comic relief.
Who wouldn't buy that paper? Who wouldn't want to read it? Who wouldn't climb over their mother to be in it?
-- James Lileks
Gary is a perceptive, intelligent, nice guy. Some of the stuff he comes up with is insightful, witty, and stimulating. And sometimes he manages to make me groan.
-- Charlie Stross
One of my issues with many poli-blogs is the dickhead tone so many bloggers affect to express their sense of righteous indignation. Gary Farber's thoughtful leftie takes on the world stand in sharp contrast with the usual rhetorical bullying. Plus, he likes "Pogo," which clearly attests to his unassaultable good taste.
-- oakhaus.com
Gary Farber is a principled liberal....
-- Bill Quick, The Daily Pundit
I read Amygdala...with regularity, as do all sensible websurfers.
-- Jim Henley, Unqualified Offerings
Okay, he is annoying, but he still posts a lot of good stuff.
-- Avedon Carol, The Sideshow
The only trouble with reading Amygdala is that it makes me feel like such a slacker. That Man Farber's a linking, posting, commenting machine, I tell you!
-- John Robinson, Sore Eyes
Jaysus. I saw him do something like this before, on a thread about Israel. It was pretty brutal. It's like watching one of those old WWF wrestlers grab an opponent's
face and grind away until the guy starts crying. I mean that in a nice & admiring way, you know.
-- Fontana Labs, Unfogged
We read you Gary Farber! We read you all the time! Its just that we are lazy with our blogroll. We are so very very lazy. We are always the last ones to the party but we always have snazzy bow ties.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber you are a genius of mad scientist proportions. I will bet there are like huge brains growin in jars all over your house.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber is the hardest working man in show blog business. He's like a young Gene Hackman blogging with his hair on fire, or something.
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
I bow before the shrillitudinousness of Gary Farber, who has been blogging like a fiend.
-- Ted Barlow, Crooked Timber
Gary Farber only has two blogging modes: not at all, and 20 billion interesting posts a day [...] someone on the interweb whose opinions I can trust....
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
Gary Farber! Jeez, the guy is practically a blogging legend, and I'm always surprised at the breadth of what he writes about.
-- PZ Meyers, Pharyngula
Gary Farber takes me to task, in a way befitting the gentleman he is.
-- Stephen Green, Vodkapundit
I do appreciate your role and the role of Amygdala as a pioneering effort in the integration of fanwriters with social conscience into the larger blogosphere of social conscience.
-- Lenny Bailes
IN CASE IT'S NOT CLEAR, this is the canonical example of how not to criticize "neo-conservatives" without being anti-semitic.
The title page subtitles the piece:
Israel's "amen corner" has plans for America to fight many wars in the Middle East.
Of course they do. Bwahahahahaha.
Subheading on the actual article page:
A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interest.
Buchanan doesn't waste any time. By the second paragraph he's on to his point, dropping his code:
Suddenly, the Israeli connection is on the table, and the War Party is not amused.
I need not refute or respond to the rest of this. It's by Patrick Buchanan.
What's distressing is how much of this platform some of the anti-war left has adopted. Some of it more or less word for word. For that reason, Read The Rest Scale: 5 out of 5.
I'M NOT SURE HOW TO REACT TO THIS, and perhaps it's unfair of me to react to what I perceive as its tone. But people do that sometimes.
Nick Denton:
Meanwhile, Jonah Goldberg says Jews are no more likely to support the war than anyone else. Which is obfuscation by statistics. Jewish-Americans are generally liberal, they support the war more than most liberals. Goldberg says Jewish conservatives are no different than any other conservatives, which misses the point. There would hardly be any Jewish conservatives if it wasn't for Israel and the Middle East. Update: Jonah Goldberg, writing in the National Review's weblog, says that Jewish conservatives predate the Bush administration, and its support for the Likudnik agenda. Again, he's blurring the issue. In a poll last year, 81% of Jewish respondents said they saw Bush as a strong supporter of Israel, and 46% said they were more likely to vote for him because of the 'war on terrorism.' In 2000, only 18% of Jewish-Americans voted for Bush. Another poll showed that, if an election were replayed, Bush would now get 42% of the Jewish vote. Goldberg pretends that political affiliation is the only factor in determining support for the war. That's preposterous. Jewish liberals are much more hawkish, and much more supportive of the administration's Middle East policy, than non-Jewish liberals. They are a crucial component of the pro-war coalition.
Well. And how do you plead to the indictment, Jews?
This follows on Nick's previous entry:
Pat Buchanan
His latest column in American Conservative is, for most of its length, interesting. Buchanan, a one-time Republican candidate for the presidency, draws the connection between support for Israel and support for the war on Saddam, which is a fair observation. He lists the American Jews in government and the media who are pursuing a Likudnik policy in the Midde East. Fair enough. And he says that the charge of anti-semitism is "designed to nullify public discourse" -- and I can't argue with that. But he ruins his own contribution to the public discourse with the following extraordinary outburst.
Oh. Darn. Patrick Buchanan ruins his "interesting" "observation" about Jews and anti-semitism.
How unexpected. And he's such a thoughtful commentator on the subject, usually.
Oh, this is ridiculous. James Moran, the Virginia congressman, has apologized after suggesting that the strong support of the Jewish community had pushed the US into war with Iraq. To which the right response is, not outrage, but hmmm, and so? Of course Jewish-Americans, attached to the notion of a Jewish homeland, want to remove one of Israel's most dangerous enemies.
No matter minor facts such as that American Jews support the war at a lower percentage than America in general, and oppose it by a higher percentage. No matter. I wonder why a higher percentage of non-Jewish Americans want to remove Saddam than American Jews do?
A Dana Carvey punchline springs to mind. Perhaps a variant.
Could it be that... most American Jews are traitors to Israel? That must be it! What else could explain it? It appears they're traitors to something in Nick Denton's mind:
However, enough Jewish writers and influencers have gone over to the hawks, or the angsty undecideds, to leave America's anti-war movement intellectually depleted. The American Left, without Jews, is reduced to a bunch of lumpen Stalinists, and posturing students who say no to war as foreplay before their demo sex.
Nick sounds betrayed here. Fortunately, he has advice:
So the massed ranks of the rabbis, the professional Jews and the politically correct -- all piling on Moran -- should cool it. They're paranoid about any discussion of Jewish power in America, reflexive in their response, and too ready to call any opponent an anti-semite. Don't debase the term.
I'm glad we have Nick Denton to stand by with helpful advice, learned in the history of anti-semitism as I gather he is.
Nick, what is your point in all this maundering about "Jews"?
ADDENDUM: Judith Weiss has substantive must-read comments. Max Sawicky comments at length on Jews and neoconservativism and how to analyze it all. Not addressing Nick Denton, but on the allied front of James Moran and this excellent WashPoeditorial I commended in e-mail to "John Smith" of the Lincoln Plawg, Mr. "Smith" has a lengthy reply in which he thoroughly doesn't get it, alas. William Leon has more on Congressman Moran's former statements. Need I say that all these links are very much worth reading? ADDENDUM II: Amptoons responds at length on the Kevin Drum questions. ADDENDUM III: Nick Denton responds. Judith Weiss replies to Nick's response. Meryl Yourish also has words.
FREEDOM TOAST & WHATNOT: Terrific (of course) post by Matt Welch on why it's, in both minor and major ways, disturbing to see such petty-ass nonsense (my words) as the French renaming thing and the unnecessarily exaggerated hostility towards "old" Europe.
...doing things like snubbing Schroeder after the elections, or renaming cafeteria food, gives the impression of a petty and over-sensitive power, ready to punish friends for disagreeing. Quickly, this practice will discourage the free exchange of ideas (like, but not nearly as bad as, the way Chirac wants the post-commie kids to shut up about their pro-America stance). It will obstruct the flow of good information, and probably has (countries like Portugal and Bulgaria are incentivized to support us blindly at a time like now ... which is not to say at all that that's what they're *doing*, but to say the built-in incentive is there, and we will suffer if it grows).
[...]
...I think it's incumbent upon the most powerful country in the world to develop thick skin, and respond to childish bullshit by rising above it, rather than sinking down to its level.
POLITICIZING LITERATURE: Michael J. Totten writes:
Sen. John Kerry tells Vogue magazine that Pablo Neruda is his favorite poet. And so Ramesh Ponnuru at National Reviewsays
It figures that his favorite poet would be a Commie.
It figures, eh? The old gutter swipe never gets old, does it? Never miss an opportunity for low-rent back-alley red-baiting.
Of course John Kerry likes Communist poetry. Inside every doe-eyed liberal is a bloodthirsty Stalinist just trying to get out, like the chest-exploding creature in Alien. Right?
Come off it.
I love Pablo Neruda's work. So what if he joined the Chilean Communist Party. I also admire the work of Jorge Luis Borges, the extreme rightist literary grandmaster from Argentina. Does that say anything about me personally? Sure. I like Latin American literature. (Shrug.) So? Am I unfit for office now?
Neruda is dead. Borges is dead. Their politics, though obnoxious, are irrelevant to most of the work they left behind.
The great crime of totalitarianism is that it politicizes everything. There are places politics should never go. Literature is one of them. Most of Neruda's and Borges' work is apolitical. Especially that which is read and admired today.
To place an ideological litmus test on poets, to shame a writer's admirers because of the dead man's politics, is to politicize literature as totalitarians do.
Mr. Ponnuru, Pablo Neruda wrote love poems. He wrote odes to this, and odes to that, even an ode to salt. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature. So he's John Kerry's favorite poet. What does that say about Kerry? It says he has good taste.
Conservatives wonder why the left says they act like Joseph McCarthy. Well, there you go. We're called socialists and communists for every little thing. Pick up a book of love poems and the next thing you know you're mugged and libeled by the GOP.
Neruda was a communist and Borges was some kind of fascist. But they were also men, they were also artists. I cherish them both.
Neruda is dead. Borges is dead. Their politics are dead. The work they left behind is alive.
WILL IT FIRE DUMB-DUMBS?: These South African guys claim they'll soon be starting production of the ever-rumored smart gun. I'll believe it when I see it.
In conjunction with the biometric sensor, the electronic chip located in the gun’s pistol grip will be encoded with a range of additional information regarding the user’s personal details, including fingerprints, identity number, and licence status (that is, whether the firearm is for personal protection, hunting, police or military use).
The device is designed to empower a country's authorities with absolute control over the gun's life history, says Van Zyl.
Oh, that'll be popular in the US.
Read The Rest if you're interested; lots of details.
US TO TURKEY: STAY OUT OF KURDISH IRAQ. Good. If only we hold to this, enforce it, and don't screw the Kurds (again).
After weeks of frustrating delays, the Bush administration has all but given up on persuading Turkey to let U.S. forces use its territory to invade Iraq. Instead, it is now focusing on "discouraging and deterring" the Turkish government from sending troops across the border, a senior U.S. official said today.
[...]
As a result, the U.S. diplomatic effort in Ankara has shifted to ensuring that Turkey keeps its troops out of Iraq. A diplomatic team led by Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special envoy to northern Iraq, warned Turkey that any incursion would have a "very negative effect" on relations with the United States and pose dangers of fighting between Turkish troops and Kurdish and U.S. forces, the senior U.S. official said.
[...]
But Khalilzad told the Turkish government that the agreement was void because Turkey had not approved the U.S. deployment.
"The situation now is that it's all off," the official said. "We don't have an agreement, and we don't want them to go in unilaterally. The mission now is to discourage and deter them from going in, and to reach an understanding with them on legitimate issues of concern."
I have no confidence we'll stand by the Kurds, but we should. I fear it will go badly for them, as it already is beginning to.
IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID: It's deja vu all over again.
A Gallup poll this month showed a decline in Americans' confidence to a seven-year low, with 36 percent satisfied with the country's direction and 61 percent dissatisfied. It is a decline that began in December 2001. The ABC News-Money magazine's gauge of consumer confidence released this week showed that 23 percent of Americans thought the economy was in good shape, the fewest in more than nine years.
"The number one concern is the impact [Iraq] is having on the economy and the harness it's putting around certain sectors and causing negative growth," GOP strategist Scott Reed said. "It's reaching into all nooks and corners, and causing great concern in both corporate boardrooms and small businesses and their bankers."
If consumer confidence and employment are not growing substantially by early next year, Bush's reelection could be jeopardized. "The conventional wisdom is: People need to sense that the economy is growing in a way that's benefiting average people's lives anywhere from four to eight months in advance of an election, so that optimism has truly sunk in," said Gene Sperling, who was President Bill Clinton's economic adviser.
KURDISH COMEDY: It turns out Saddam Hussein doesn't have a sense of humor about himself.
Wait, he ordered the comedians killed! That's so funny!
After the film came out, Faili spent the next four years in hiding, surviving six assassination attempts. I tracked him down to a muddy housing estate in northern Iraq where he lives in retirement. He said that he got into Saddam impersonating after his parodies of the dictator went down well with friends. "There are not many people who can imitate Saddam's Tikrit accent," he said. "I used to watch videos of him. You notice that he moves very slowly."
I was wrong. Saddam is such a funny guy, he had one of his own doubles shot! Is that hilarious, or what?
SPYING AT THE UN: A belated pickup of this accurate LA Timesstory following up on the Observer's UN spying story (the one they keep repeating that, uh, differently justified "dirty tricks" label about).
Bulgaria's ambassador, Stefan Tavrov, said that having the U.S. eavesdrop on their missions was almost a mark of prestige for smaller countries. "It's almost an offense if they don't listen," he said. "It's integrated in your thinking and your work."
A U.S. government official with experience at the world body confirmed that American administrations long have relied on spying at the U.N., and not just during times of crisis.
"We've always done it," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It's routine."
In addition to secretly intercepting telephone calls, e-mail, faxes and other private communications of foreign delegations at the Security Council and General Assembly, the official said, the NSA has targeted U.N. peacekeeping operation offices and other potentially sensitive parts of the U.N. bureaucracy.
"It's not dirty tricks," said Jeffrey Richelson, a senior fellow at the National Security Archive, a private research group on intelligence issues in Washington. "It's at worst standard intelligence collection. I'm sure we monitor communications of lots of U.N. delegations."
Of course, if there were something remarkable about this, the National Security Archive would be the first people -- okay, second, after British newspapers -- to be screaming about this. (The difference is that the NSA -- no, not that NSA -- people know what they're talking about.)
I've neglected to previously mention here that the memo was essentially confirmed by this arrest. I'll note that I stood in the face of numerous posters, some considered by some to have "expert knowledge" who were "expertly" explaining the memo was a fake, on this comment thread to say that:
I'm actually inclined to give the memo's possible authenticity the benefit of the doubt, and I suggest comparing -- so far -- the debunking of it to the similar "proof" of Laurie Garrett's Davos memo being a fake (professionals would never misuse jargon or make errors!; that proves it's a fake!).
Advantage Amygdala, blah, blah, blah.
Read The Rest Scale on the LA Times piece: 5 out of 5.
I DIDN'T WANT TO KNOW THAT: Robert Reich, former Clinton Secretary of Labor and later bete noire, failed candidate for Massachusetts governor, somewhat truth-challenged guy, has posted nude.
View The Rest Scale: danger, Will Robinson! (Hey, wait, I'm a short furry guy; oops.)
CAN YOU AFFORD NOODLES?: This is one of the biggest stories in the world, and I suspect most bloggers will pass right over it, as I've not noted many Sinologists, amateur or otherwise, out there. I may, of course, be All Wrong.
But it's huge that, as feared by some, Jiang Zemin is hanging on as head of the Military Commission, retaining formal ultimate power, after all.
Wen Jiabao spent Chinese New Year's Eve in a coal mine sharing dumplings with miners. Hu Jintao spent the night shivering with herders in Inner Mongolia.
There was a dual message: We care, and we're different from Jiang Zemin, the departing Chinese leader.
Hu became China's president today, appointed by the rubber-stamp legislature. Wen will become premier on Sunday in the smoothest transfer of power in Communist China's 54-year history. But their crowning glory will be overshadowed by China's current president, Jiang, who today held onto his post as head of the army, guaranteeing him continued influence in Beijing.
[...]
As Hu and Wen seek to carve out an identity separate from Jiang, analysts say, there is concern among Chinese officials that a power struggle could paralyze the country. In theory, Hu will reign supreme as general secretary of the Communist Party and Wen will run the government, but Jiang outranks them both in the party hierarchy.
"Two centers strung together equals trouble," two military delegates to the Congress told Jiang and Hu, according to the Web site of the People's Liberation Army Daily. "Multi-center means no center and no center means nothing is accomplished," the Web site quoted the delegates as saying.
[...]
In two days, Wen passed through three counties and five villages, visiting the homes of 10 farmers and low-income city folk.
He peppered them with questions, all reported by China's state-run press. "Can you afford noodles?" "During the holidays, can you eat meat?" "Do you have enough firewood in the winter?" He admonished city officials to ensure that a poor widow had decent medical care and pretended to look for work at a job center. Only street sweeping and window washing were available.
Meanwhile, the government shut down another newspaper:
Li Rui, 85, the personal secretary to the founder of Communist China, criticized Mao for creating a cult of personality and subsequent leader Deng Xiaoping for failing to carry out political reforms. The interview was published March 3 in 21st Century World Herald, a weekly newspaper.
In addition, Li, for the first time in any major Chinese newspaper, praised Hu Yaobang, a former Communist Party general secretary. His death in April 1989 touched off a wave of student protests that ended with the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
The newspaper opened last year, and its circulation had risen to more than 200,000. Sources close to the paper said the order to halt publication came from the Guangdong province propaganda department.
VERY LARGE AND MIDDLE CLASS is the peace movement. And now begins the expected peaceful direct action.
Warren Langley knew where to go to get arrested. As the former president of the Pacific Stock Exchange, he knew that the pillared entrance to the exchange was the busiest, and that at 7 a.m., brokers would be spilling from the doors for their first morning coffee break.
So, shortly after 6:30 a.m., Langley, a silver-haired man in a navy blue suit and red striped power tie, marched through the financial district with about 200 other antiwar protesters -- Buddhist monks, Catholic priests, nuns, war veterans, students, families of 9/11 victims and average citizens -- and planted himself at the stock exchange's doors. Then he and dozens of others sat down at the busiest intersections of the financial district, tying up traffic for hours.
For Langley, 60, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, as well as many of the other 70 protesters who were put in plastic handcuffs and arrested this morning, this was the first act of civil disobedience in a lifetime of abiding by the rules.
I'm not with them, but I respect people following their conscience.
THOSE WACKY HASIDS: Chaim Potok never told me about this:
And so it came to pass that a talking carp, shouting in Hebrew, shattered the calm of the New Square Fish Market and created what many here are calling a miracle.
[...]
Whatever one calls it, the tale of the talking fish has spread in recent weeks throughout this tight-knit Rockland County community, populated by about 7,000 members of the Skver sect of Hasidim, and throughout the Hasidic world, inspiring heated debate, Talmudic discussions and derisive jokes.
The story goes that a 20-pound carp about to be slaughtered and made into gefilte fish for Sabbath dinner began speaking in Hebrew, shouting apocalyptic warnings and claiming to be the troubled soul of a revered community elder who recently died.
[...]
"Ah, enough already about the fish," Mr. Rosen said today at the shop, as he skinned a large carp. "I wish I never said anything about it. I'm getting so many calls every day, I've stopped answering. Israel, London, Miami, Brooklyn. They all want to hear about the talking fish."
[...]
Mr. Nivelo, who is not Jewish, lifted a live carp out of a box of iced-down fish and was about to club it in the head.
But the fish began speaking in Hebrew, according to the two men. Mr. Nivelo does not understand Hebrew, but the shock of a fish speaking any language, he said, forced him against the wall and down to the slimy wooden packing crates that cover the floor.
He looked around to see if the voice had come from the slop sink, the other room or the shop's cat. Then he ran into the front of the store screaming, "The fish is talking!" and pulled Mr. Rosen away from the phone.
[...]
The fish commanded Mr. Rosen to pray and to study the Torah and identified itself as the soul of a local Hasidic man who died last year, childless. The man often bought carp at the shop for the Sabbath meals of poorer village residents.
Mr. Rosen panicked and tried to kill the fish with a machete-size knife. But the fish bucked so wildly that Mr. Rosen wound up cutting his own thumb and was taken to the hospital by ambulance. The fish flopped off the counter and back into the carp box and was butchered by Mr. Nivelo and sold.
Oops. So much for that childless soul. But the story made it to Jewish radio.
"The station had an advertiser, a gefilte fish manufacturer, who considered changing his slogan to `Our fish speaks for itself,' but decided people would be offended," he said.
Mitchell was described by his stepson, Derrick Thompson, as a "weird" man who had talked to God in the desert after taking 10 hits of LSD. "They said they weren't on drugs," Thompson told the Deseret News of his stepfather and his mother, adding:
"But we think that was a lie. We think that's how they communicated with God, that and listen(ing) to the Steve Miller band.":
Has anyone checked on how Senator Kerry feels about the Steve Miller Band?
Riffing at a campaign fund-raiser at Cipriani 42nd Street on Tuesday, the candidate said, "I've learned a lot in the last three weeks. But nothing beats watching C-SPAN on drugs.
[...]
"For those of you wondering whether or not a man can be President of the United States without a prostate," the Democrat continued, "we've had a number of Republican Presidents who were without a heart."
SUBVIRAL MARKETING: I should have whispered about it to you earlier.
Another apparent subviral currently invading inboxes is a rude parody of Mastercard's "priceless" campaign, which sources claim was produced in cahoots with Mastercard's US agency. The clip features a boy walking his girlfriend to her door after a drunken night out and asking her for a blowjob. The voiceover interrupts his plea with Mastercard-parodying quips like, "Getting the nerve to ask such a question: $12 bottle of wine," several times before the girl's sister appears with a message from dad. "Go ahead and give him a blowjob - but for God's sake tell him to take his hand off the intercom." If Mastercard was behind it (several sources say it is) then it's the highest-profile subviral yet.
They've killed the NYC subway token. Well, put it out of its misery.
The New York City subway token, tool and talisman of city life since Vincent R. Impellitteri was mayor, is dead at age 50, transit officials said yesterday.
The causes of death were technology and economics.
Tokens will be sold for the last time on Saturday, April 12, said Lawrence G. Reuter, president of New York City Transit. After 12:01 a.m. on Sunday, May 4 -- the moment at which fares will rise, with the price of a single trip jumping to $2 from $1.50 -- any token plinked into a turnstile will be spit back out. Bus fareboxes will still accept the token -- along with 50 cents cash, thank you -- through the end of the year.
[...]
The agency will not say what will become of the remains, 60 million of them, except that it has no plans for disposing of them.
I remember each of these, he said mournfully:
In fact, there have been five tokens over the half-century, not counting commemorative ones issued in 1979, to mark the 75th anniversary of the subway system, and 1988, for the opening of a set of new stations in Queens. The original, a small disc with the letters "NYC" in the middle and the "Y" cut out, lasted the longest, 17 years, through multiple fare increases. A larger "Y" cutout token followed in 1970, and it was retired in 1980 in favor of the solid brass token. The "bulls-eye" token, with a lighter-colored center, was introduced in 1986, and finally, in 1995, came the last incarnation, with a pentagonal cutout in the center.
In a final obituary note:
The token is survived by the turnstile and the farebox, as well as Fun Pass and other members of the MetroCard family.
COBBLER: I belatedly notice via Chris Lawrence that Congressman Howard Coble last week had the grace to pick up the phone and call blogger and law professor Eric Muller, who has been closest on the Congressman's case for his asinine claims that the Japanese were interned during WWII in America for their own protection. A bit of Muller's account:
Mr. Coble did make very clear that he thinks that from our vantage point today, the decision to intern Japanese Americans was wrong. That was good to hear, especially coming from the man who chairs the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security. There's also no question that Mr. Coble understands that he really hit a nerve with his comments about the internment. He acknowledged that he suspects he's become "a household name" out on the West Coast. I definitely got the sense (as many of my students who are his constituents have told me) that Mr. Coble is a very decent man who is trying his best to deal responsibly with the reactions to his comments.
It was also clear to me, though, that Mr. Coble does not yet appreciate that he was mistaken when he said that Japanese Americans were placed in camps for their own protection. He explained during our discussion that he'd heard from people, including Japanese Americans alive at the time of Pearl Harbor, who reported to him that Japanese Americans felt unsafe on the streets. From this information he's received, he concludes (and I jotted these words down) that "in some instances, Japanese Americans were beneficiaries of the internment." "There were some," he reiterated, "who became beneficiaries by being in the camps."
BRAD DELONG IS ON TO ME: Note to self: remember to note clearly when e-mail is Do Not Quote/Do Not Print (DNQ/DNP). Remember to do this when whoring for links.
Brad (that's Professor Brad to you, young man! -- ed):
LINK SLUTTAGE IS THE TOOL TO SMASH THE LINK-CHAINS THAT ARE THE OPPRESSIVE DOMINATION OF THE INTERNET HIERARCHY!!!
Hey, my ASCII conveys better drug effects than I realized. Read Professor deLong's erudite explanation of the sorta-economics of link structure, and why I am:
... the thoughtful and highly intelligent Gary Farber... one of the geniuses of our age... Promiscuous link sluttage is the answer.
Your check is in the mail, Brad. And I promise I won't c--, never mind.
WHERE JEWS ACTUALLY STAND, SIT, AND MARCH ON THE WAR: There have been some remarkably foolish assumptions about this:
...there is strong evidence that American Jews are as divided as the rest of the nation.
"The only consensus we could come to was that there is no consensus," said Hannah Rosenthal, executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, describing a gathering two weeks ago in Baltimore of 700 Jewish leaders active with her group, which includes Jews from all four branches -- Reconstructionist; Reform; Conservative; and Orthodox.
"The general sense," said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, "is of profound ambivalence. There is no wild enthusiasm for military action in the Jewish community, and certainly not in my movement."
At a meeting this week of the union's executive board -- which represents synagogues in the Reform movement, American Judaism's largest -- members decided not even to attempt to take a position on the war because it was unlikely they could reach agreement in a day, Rabbi Yoffie said.
Several polls have found that Jews are less likely than the public at large to support military action against Iraq. An aggregate of surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center from August 2002 to February 2003 found 52 percent of Jews in favor of military action, 32 percent opposed and 16 percent uncertain; among all Americans, the polling found 62 percent in favor, 28 percent opposed and 10 percent uncertain.
Paging Congressman James Moran to the white courtesy phone....
Read The Rest Scale: 3.5 out of 5 for more detail; 5 out of 5 if you think Jews (or "Jewish neo-conservatives") are pushing this war.
DUST TO DUST, ASHCROFT TO ASHCROFT: Long profile assessing the changes Our Attorney General has brought to the Justice Dept, though there's little any follower of the news doesn't already know. One heartening bit:
Paul Weyrich, a conservative activist who was a senior adviser to Mr. Ashcroft's short-lived bid for the presidency in 1998, said he "rejoiced" when Mr. Ashcroft was nominated as attorney general. But he said many conservatives have become disillusioned by Mr. Ashcroft's disregard for privacy interests and civil liberties intrusions on the lives of ordinary Americans.
"I don't think he has assessed the long-term constitutional implications of all of this, and that's a disappointment," Mr. Weyrich said. He noted there has been speculation that Mr. Ashcroft might be a candidate for vice president if Dick Cheney bowed out, but he said: "I think there would be some significant objection from conservatives if that were to be raised at this point."
I'll take my good news where I can find it -- and there's little to be had in this article.
Read The Rest Scale: if you've been on a desert island, 5 out of 5, otherwise 3.5 out of 5.
PERLES BEFORE SWINE: Jack Schafer of Slate"double-dares" Richard Perle to sue Seymour Hersh -- which seems perhaps something that might be better left to Hersh, but never mind -- and calls Perle a "grandstanding pantywaist."
Howard Kurtz covers the story and quotes New Yorker editor David Remnick as calling Perle's remarks "disgusting."
David Frum in National Review Online says Hersh's story is not a story. Hersh says:
"If Richard Perle having a private lunch in Marseilles with Adnan Khashoggi about a business deal -- or about politics -- isn't a story, I've been in the wrong business for 40 years. It's a story, period. That's what I do for a living. I write stories."
Read The Rest Scale: 3 out of 5 if you want to see how the story is being covered.
THE YOU-KNOW-WHOS: NEO-CONS OR JEWS OR WHOSE?: Kevin Drum, the CalPundit, has a number of questions. He wonders what is the "right way" to address the "issue" of "neo-cons" and "anti-semitism" and "the best way to clearly distinguish legitimate criticism of neocons from mere anti-semitism." Kevin says:
As near as I can tell, here are the (highly condensed) relevant facts:
Lots of neocons are Jewish.
Neocons are rabidly pro-Israel.
It is reasonable to infer that they are pro-Israel largely because they are Jewish.
They have a strong influence in the current administration.
Lots of people have a strong distaste for the whole neocon agenda of remaking the Middle East in America's image.
[...]
What I'd like to see are some reasonable guidelines for discourse, guidelines that suggest which lines of attack on neoconservatism are reasonable and which ones aren't, and what kinds of criticism of Israel are legitimate and which ones aren't. If there were any consensus on this, it would make both criticism and defense of neocon theology a lot easier and a lot less polemical. It would make it a lot easier for me, anyway.
First up, some relevant facts Kevin neglected to list:
Lots of liberals are Jewish.
"Pro-Israel" is an undefined term lacking any meaning without specific definition.
Jews -- big surprise here -- have wildly different opinions about Israeli policies.
Many neo-cons are not Jewish.
Many people are "pro-Israel" without being Jewish.
These are not nit-picky points. Absent paying attention to them, trying to reply to Kevin would be like speaking in mud.
What does "pro-Israel" mean? Different things to different people, just as "pro-American" or "anti-American" or "pro-Irish" or "pro-Kevin Drum" can.
Using these words without defining terms will result in hopeless confusion and misunderstanding.
Among uses of "pro-Israel":
Support of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state with secure (not-specified) borders.
Support of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state with the 1949 border lines.
Support of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state with the 1967 border lines.
Support of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state everywhere that was once historically ruled by Jews.
Support of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state wherever the speaker believes borders must be to be secure.
Support of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, including expelling some or all Arabs and Palestinians.
And so on. Note that Jews differ widely as to which definition they use.
If Kevin, or anyone, were to use "pro-Israel" to mean, say, "supportive of the transfer of Arabs out of the West Bank and full Israeli annexation of all the West Bank," he would find that most Jews and Israelis are "anti-Israel."
This would not, of course, make them "anti-semitic."
There really shouldn't be room for much confusion here. Generally speaking "pro-Israel," like "pro-American," can be used in three broad senses: 1) I generally have a favorable view of this nation, but also am often critical of many policies of its government; 2) I will hear no evil, speak no evil, and see no evil, of this nation; 3) something in between 1 and 2.
Anti-semitism is a) singling out the Jewishness of something or someone inappropriately; b) being hostile towards someone or something for its Jewish nature; c) treating someone or something Jewish in a different fashion that you treat someone or something non-Jewish in similar or identical circumstances.
So, Kevin's questions: 1) "which lines of attack on neoconservatism are reasonable and which ones aren't?" Answer: any attack on neoconservatism that doesn't connect it, implicitly or explicitly, to Jews, Judaism, or Jewishness is not in any way anti-semitic. Certainly there can be subtly implicit connections that should be looked for.
2) "what kinds of criticism of Israel are legitimate and which ones aren't?" Answer: Any criticism that does not treat Israel by a different standard from other nations or governments in similar circumstances is legitimate.
See: not a hopeless topic at all, Kevin. Has this been of any use or help?
ADDENDUM: Judith Weiss of Kesher Talkresponds. Howard Owens comments. Max Sawicky touches lightly. Dr. Frank -- who along with Matt Welch is one of the two bloggers I tend to most often agree with and find great political reading from -- comments at considerable, and typically thoughtful, length. "Ogged" of the promising Unfogged.comreacts. Kevin Drum responds with what is 90% what he said in e-mail to me, slightly tweaked. Newbie blogger Angua has many words. Joel Rosenberg added some.
THE DEFENSE POLICY BOARD. It seems curiously difficult to find an official source for a listing of members.
This source says this is the membership: Dr. Kenneth Adelman; Hon. Richard Allen; Dr. Martin Anderson; Dr. Gary Becker; Dr. Barry Blechman; former Defense Secretary Dr. Harold Brown; Dr. Eliot Cohen; Ms. Devon Cross; Gen. (Ret.) Ronald Fogleman; former Speaker Hon. Thomas Foley; Hon. Tille Fowler; former Speaker Hon. Newt Gingrich; Mr. Gerald Hillman; Dr. Kim Holmes; Gen. (Ret.) Chuck Horner; Dr. Fred Ikle; Adm. (Ret.) David Jeremiah; former Secretary of State Dr. Henry A. Kissinger; Mr. Phillip Merrill; Adm. (Ret.) Bill Owens; Dr. Richard Perle; former Vice President Dan Quayle; Dr. Henry Rowen; former Defense Secretary Dr. James Schlesinger; Gen. (Ret.) Jack Sheehan; Dr. Kiron Skinner; Dr. Hal Sonnenfeldt; Mr. Chris Williams; Hon. Pete Wilson; and former CIA Director James Woolsey.
But the "Washington Report on Middle East Affairs" is not the most reliable source in the world.
There's another list in a Larouchite publication, but since it also claims that Richard Perle is the publisher of the Jerusalem Post, London Daily Telegraph and otherwise seems to believe he has a secret identity as Conrad Black, this seems not worth repeating, althought it does largely double the above list -- other than listing "Helmut Sonnenfeldt" (the name of the former Chancellor of Germany) instead of "Dr. Hal Sonnenfeldt." Typical Larouchie accuracy.
Gerald Hillman seems a remarkably obscure figure. He spoke -- or was to speak -- at a Puget Sound college in February, and that seems one of the only instances, beyond the New Yorker piece and off-shoots thereof, of his existence on the internet. Trieme Management Group has also never been mentioned on the internet, nor has "Hillman Capital Corp," which the college press release said Hillman is the "managing director of."
All one can find on FirstGov about the Defense Policy Board is their charter. No conclusions here. Just thought I'd mention how little I could find via Google. Readers are invited to make a case for which of the four above might have talked to Seymour Hersh, and who might have given him his quote. I'd put Woolsey, Brown, Schlesinger, and Foley up as possibilities, but really it's just as likely to be less prominent members.
A BELATED NOTE OF GRATITUDE that on March 7th, a three judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals again struck down the foolish censorship Child Online Protection Act.
A three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that the Child Online Protection Act restricted free speech by barring Web page operators from posting information inappropriate for minors unless they limited the site to adults. The ruling upheld an injunction blocking the government from enforcing the law.
The court said that in practice, the law made it too difficult for adults to view material protected by the First Amendment, including many non-pornographic sites.
The law, signed by President Clinton and endorsed by President Bush, has never been enforced. It is one of several relating to Internet decency that courts have struck down.
[...]
Previously, the 3rd Circuit had ruled the law unconstitutional on grounds that it allowed the legality of Internet content to be judged by "contemporary community standards."
On appeal, the Supreme Court said that evaluation standard alone did not make the law unconstitutional, and sent the case back for further evaluation.
In Thursday's opinion, the court said that in seeking to define material harmful to minors, the law made no distinction between things inappropriate for a 5-year-old and things harmful to someone in their early teens.
The judges said that while the law sought to get around free-speech arguments by making the restrictions apply only to Web operators who posted material for "commercial purposes," it didn't address what level of profitability was required.
The court also said screening methods suggested by the government, including requiring Web-page viewers to give a credit card number, would unfairly require adults to identify themselves before viewing constitutionally protected material such as medical sites offering sex advice.
Another example, of course, of why who is appointed a judge, particularly a federal appellate judge, is so important.
Read The Rest Scale: 2 out of 5; I've given most of the detail in this article, though one could go read the decision via Findlaw.
THE INSTITUTE FOR CREATIVE TECHNOLOGY: Heard of it?
So it happens that inside a drab, '70s-style office building here, one of Hollywood's hottest screenwriters, a production designer from "Alien" and "Back to the Future," the co-writer of "Apocalypse Now" and the director of "Grease" have gotten together with some of the U.S. Army's leading academics and computer scientists to brainstorm about the next generation of weaponry and equipment.
[...]
"Entertainment people think in a totally different way from conventional business and scientific thinking," explains Richard Lindheim, executive director for the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), the Marina Del Rey think tank where the Army and Tinseltown collaborate.
[...]
"We don't do 'story.' We don't know how to do story. And how do people learn? From storytellers," says Mike Andrews, the scientist who oversees the Army's entire research program. "These people have creative talents that we have to tap into to move into the future."
[...]
"The Army is a lot more open-minded than Hollywood tends to portray us," says Michael Macedonia, chief scientist for the Army's simulation program. "The reality is we're very serious about being the best army in the world. We'll do anything. If that means trying to learn from Hollywood and the gaming industry, then I think that's the way to go."
It's particularly interesting to see former "underground" cartoonist Ron Cobb so deeply involved in this -- obviously from the details given -- deeply serious project.
"I'm not a Bush supporter," Cobb says. "But the plight of the Army, and its use in humanitarian roles, in Kosovo or Afghanistan, the rising desire to use nonlethal weaponry . . . that is worth supporting."
[...]
Says Lindheim: "We thought something would happen in five years. But within a year, things began to cook."
Then came another project, focused on the problems soldiers face fighting in cities. For this exercise, the ICT rented a ballroom in a Marina del Rey hotel to refight the battle of Hue in Vietnam, using a model of that city. The Army commander who actually fought and won the engagement (in 1968) attended.
Says Korris: "We found that the off-the-shelf technology available to future guerrillas would probably be so good that they would be formidable opponents."
A project that followed soon after involved dreaming up stories regarding future conflicts. They came back with plots such as: Four children wander into a minefield in an area where American soldiers are on a peacekeeping mission. How should they respond? Another contributor suggested a scenario in which Muslim fundamentalists in Jerusalem mine the sacred sites in the ancient city. Another suggested: China invades Taiwan. How does the U.S. Army react?
The killer weapon of the imagination: story.
Read The Rest Scale: 4 out of 5 for darned interesting detail. Although the fact that one project used the "rented uniforms once used in 'Starship Troopers'" is frightening. Well, just so long as they don't use the tactics.
RID ME OF THIS CANCER: Tim Judah has an interesting long report from Amman, Jordan, on what Iraqi exiles there think of the pros and cons of war. It's entirely consistent with every other report from Jordan and of what most Iraqi exiles think that I've read.
Mohammed's view of the possible coming war was this: "Imagine I have cancer in my hand. I want to eliminate it. Whether the doctor is American, English, or Jewish, all I wish is for the doctor to carry out the operation and rid me of this cancer. After I am cured this surgeon wants to be paid, and I will happily pay him and we will remain friends. But if his fee for curing me is [for me] to give another part of my body, then no way." Although he was talking in metaphors, Mohammed's explanation seemed consistent with what the others in the group thought. In the view of most of them, the Americans would be welcome to free Iraq from Saddam. They could make deals over oil, but any attempt to take more permanent control of the country or its oil would quickly turn Iraqis against their liberators.
[...]
Ahmed's view was that the Americans were "a necessary evil," but, like the others, he warned that they should not overstay their welcome.
Though not a universal view -- of course -- this appears to be the majority opinion. What seems all too great a danger -- also, of course -- is that America will largely win the initial peace and then blow it with heavy-handed moves and by staying too long.
I AM SPARTACUS!: Howard Fast, the occasionally great writer, has died at the age of 88.
He wrote a book about his political experiences, "The Naked God" (1957). "I was part of a generation that believed in socialism and finally found that belief corroded and destroyed," he said in an interview in 1981. "That is not renouncing Communism or socialism. It's reaching a certain degree of enlightenment about what the Soviet Union practices. To be dogmatic about a cause you believe in at the age of 20 or 30 is not unusual. But to be dogmatic at age 55 or 60 shows a lack of any learning capacity."
Fast wrote a few very good books, including Spartacus, Citizen Tom Paine and Freedom Road. He also wrote some pot-boilers and quite forgettable works. I, unsurprisingly, remember that his first story was bought by Amazing Stories.
Read The Rest Scale: he's worth a minute of your time, yeah. ADDENDUM: The Guardian's obit is better.
Read The Rest Scale: A surprising 4 out of 5 for a hilarious account of how to run for President -- sort of -- without, you know, the inconvenience of any actual annoying positions or policies or answers to any questions at all.
"General Clark. . . . Okay, I'm all set. Go ahead."
Anything changed?
"No, I'm still traveling around, engaged in a strategic dialogue."
Just let's be clear: he may be descended from a long line of rabbis.
NATALIE MERCHANT GOESindependent. Another crack in the edifice of the recording industry as it continues to crumble.
"I understand that the larger labels are just interested in the projects that can generate the most capital for their quarter," she continued. "But I didn't want to subject the music to that kind of corporate boardroom and radio censorship. Why subject myself and the work that I do to that kind of environment when it really doesn't matter any more?"
The general is himself regarded as a reformer but differed from his boss on crucial military issues, such as the planned Crusader tank, which Mr Rumsfeld scrapped behind his back.
Tank, artillery system: what's the diff? Maybe the Crusader was actually an Air Force tanker. Or an aircraft carrier. Or a bayonet. Or a tug boat.
All the same thing, really, innit?
Read The Rest Scale: Nah; 1 out of 5 for a boring rehash of a pretense of a profile of Rumsfeld.
Faced with limits on how much wining and dining they can do in Washington, interest groups are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to take lawmakers and aides on out-of-town excursions to deliver their pitches on legislation.
These trips, which frequently include dinner at elegant restaurants and visits to tourist sites, have become an integral part of lobbying for many organizations. Some watchdog groups question why lawmakers and staffers are allowed to accept what the House ethics committee describes as "among the most attractive and alluring gifts" they can receive.
[...]
On supposedly educational outings, however, there are no such limits on food, lodging and transportation. That's why "educational trips" in attractive locales are popular with the recording industry, pharmaceutical firms and many other groups eager for face time with legislators and their top aides.
[...]
Last April, for example, the National Association of Broadcasters arranged for Rep. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) to fly first-class to Las Vegas and stay in the Bellagio Hotel during its annual convention. The association covered his poolside drinks and a massage, although the congressman later reimbursed the group for his spa stay.
It was a highly "educational" massage, I'm sure. This is, of course, just more legal corruption.
I try very hard to hold on to my considerable respect, in general, for the art of politics and people who practice it honorably, of whom I believe there are, in fact, many. But crap like this makes it hard to not give in to cynicism. This form of corruption doesn't just corrupt politicians; knowledge of it corrupts me and thee, in our generalized view of politicians.
Read The Rest Scale: 4 out of 5 for more ludicrous and obvious examples.
I GOTTA VISIT LEADVILLE SOMETIME 'cause I like to get high.
Driving up the mountain, Karen Hirsheimer knows she's nearly home when the potato chip bags explode.
"They go off like a bomb," she said. "Suddenly there are chips all over the car."
Exploding chip bags, cigarettes that snuff themselves in ashtrays, woozy mosquitoes and tepid boiling water are part of life in Leadville, America's highest city.
At 10,200 feet, Leadville is twice as high as Denver.
[...]
Bread doesn't rise, golf balls fly farther and the high school track team, bursting with extra red blood cells, dominates cross-country running whenever it competes below.
At the local Safeway, ice cream pushes out of containers and vacuum-packed snacks sit like fat balloons on the shelves. Mosquitoes, should one arrive, are so groggy that locals admit feeling pity before swatting them.
"They are so slow you can see them coming," said Andy Locke, a surveyor in town. "It's almost sad."
[...]
The elevation means dry air, so residents drink lots of water and urge visitors to forgo alcohol or at least compensate with just as much water.
At the Silver Dollar Saloon, Steve Grabowski, 45, knocked back a shot of tequila and ordered a beer.
"You gotta have a glass of water for every beer," he counseled.
Asked if he followed this regimen, Grabowski, who pans for gold in local streams, looked perplexed.
"I have another beer for every beer I drink," he said.
BRAIN? WHAT IS BRAIN?: The Cheap Joke Potentiometer is nearly going off the dial on this:
The world's first brain prosthesis - an artificial hippocampus - is about to be tested in California. Unlike devices like cochlear implants, which merely stimulate brain activity, this silicon chip implant will perform the same processes as the damaged part of the brain it is replacing.
The prosthesis will first be tested on tissue from rats' brains, and then on live animals. If all goes well, it will then be tested as a way to help people who have suffered brain damage due to stroke, epilepsy or Alzheimer's disease.
[...]
The inventors of the prosthesis had to overcome three major hurdles. They had to devise a mathematical model of how the hippocampus performs under all possible conditions, build that model into a silicon chip, and then interface the chip with the brain.
And here's a nice skiffy bit:
While trials on monkeys will tell us a lot about the prosthesis's performance, there are some questions that will not be answered. For example, it is unclear whether we have any control over what we remember. If we do, would brain implants of the future force some people to remember things they would rather forget?
And who doesn't want nice chiipppsss in the brain? Does anyone say "keeps your nasty chippss!"? I think not! And we can call them "Freedom Chips."
Read The Rest Scale: 3.5 out of 5 if you, you know, can remember how.
(Okay, that's two posts in a row that Blogger has now eaten; fortunately I learned from the first time and saved it first as a separate file; you'll probably never see the other one on Ron Silver, pro-war activist; fricking Blogger has been unavailable almost all night; if you don't see many posts from me today, blame Blogger, not me. Grump, grump.)
GERTRUDE BELL'S DIARIES AND LETTERS: Many here. Great stuff:
29/11/1913 Sat 29. [29 November 1913] Went to Bassam's where I met Muhammad al Marawi and engaged him - a piece of luck. Also 'Ali the Sa'i. Found M. al Na'man in the café near the hotel and sat with him in the sun. He swore he loved me more than his own[?] children, by the Prophet and the Prophet 'Isa and conjured me to take M. al Marawi with me. The wakil of Abd al Rahman joined us and we talked of our journey in the snow - sennet al thalj. Slept after lunch and left a card on Mrs Devey. We have bought 12 camels.
You do know that Gertrude Bell was one of the creators of Iraq, right?
29/09/1919 [...] Cheetham, who is in charge for Allenby, has Arabia under him - this having been under Clayton but now taken away from the P.O. He says the work in the Interior is terrific. He interviews visitors all the morning. Egypt should be an object lesson to us of how not to do things. I said I thought India was a still more striking one (e.g. Mr Sifton's remark that the real difficulty under the new scheme will be how to deal with a British officer who rightly comes up against a native minister; if he is to be broken, as would seem inevitable, he should at least be allowed to retire on his full pension - this is a fine example of the extreme difficulty of relinquishing hold once we have taken hold too tight.) Gen. Clayton agreed but said that the fact that Egypt is all of one piece increases the formidableness of the problem. If India were not so much divided, Hindus against Islam, native princes against Nationalists, it would be a much graver matter, indeed if India had the homogeneous population of Egypt, we could not hold on at all. So to bed, after arranging to go with him tomorrow to Alexandria to see Sir Milne Cheetham and the Arab Bureau.
29/09/1919 [...] If however we refuse to take very bold liberal measures we shall create in Egypt an Oriental Ireland. As far as his knowledge goes, he would advise us in Mesopotamia to begin as we intend to go on, so as to avoid the position which has arisen in Egypt. However poor our material, he would create independent Arab ministries with departmental advisers to the High Commissioner. The ministers could form an [sic] Council with an Arab President without portfolio who would partly be occupied by social duties and who might easily be developed into a permanent head of the state. Meantime the sovereignty of the state would be vested in the Council.
CATCHING UP WITH SALEM PAX IN BAGHDAD, he reminds us that:
It is the 10th of Muharam, or Ashura (3ashura2) for Shia Muslims. A pivotal date in the history of Shia. Today is the day Imam Hussein was killed in Karbala/Iraq.
And tells us how this used to play out in Karbala until the commemorations were banned.
Perhaps most interestingly, an earlier reaction to a BBC reporter:
A BBC reporter walking thru the Mutanabi Friday book market (again) ends his report with : "It looks like Iraqis are putting on an air of normality." Look, what are you supposed to do then? Run around in the streets wailing? War is at the door eeeeeeeeeeeee! Besides, this "normality" doesn't go very deep. Almost everything is more expensive than it was a couple of months ago, people are digging wells in their gardens, on the radio yesterday after playing a million songs from the time of the war with Iran (these are like cartoon theme songs for people my age, we know them all by heart) they read out instructions on how to make a trench and prepare for war, that is after president saddam advised Iraqis to make these trenches in their gardens. But in order not to disappoint the BBC; me, Raed and G. put on our "normal" faces and went to buy CDs from Arassat Street in a demonstration of normality.
Read The Rest to find out what that constitutes. It's good to know that:
Finished taping all the windows in the house, actually a very relaxing exercise if you forget why you are doing it in the first place.
HOW THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT ISsmart-mobbing. Mel Gibson's kooky cult of 16th Century ultra-Catholicism. The Fourth Appellate Circuit is something you need to know more about.
All great stuff in March 9th's NY Times Magazine. Read The Rest Scale: 4 out of 5 for each of these.
YOU'VE ALWAYS SECRETLY WANTED TO TAKEthe NYC Boiler Tour! You can't fool Amygdala. We know.
There's nothing like a grand obsessive.
"I miss having buildings," Henry, who is now forty-two, said the other day, as his tour was about to kick off. "But I would have gotten tired of it by now, and I would have missed all the fun I've had with boilers."
[...]
"I mean, you can just sense the love that this guy has for boilers," Baker said.
Here are the chilling words:
The three-day tour started early....
Cue the theme to Gilligan's Island. But wait! There's more!
There was a quick stop at a building on Avenue C, to watch a boiler-related film, "Carmelita Tropicana: Your Kunst is Your Waffen," starring Carmelita Tropicana, a superintendent/performance artist.
I've said that so many times.
All told, the boiler tour went on for seven days....
HIT OR MISS?: Record companies, finding that using pig entrails was no longer succeeding, are now using a computer program to analyze how likely it is that a song will be a hit.
It analyzes the melody, beat, harmony, pitch, octave, timbre and other patterns in songs, and plots them on a chart that Ms. Reed said looked something like the Milky Way. Songs with similar elements tended to group together in clusters, she said.
[...]
When the company discovered this, it decided to offer record labels the chance to compare unreleased songs to recent hit singles to determine their commercial viability.
I want to see the same principles applied to books. The Next Step!
My cynical, depressing, suspicion is that this could viably be done for much blogging. The principles of how to achieve popularity by throwing red meat to a particular political grouping seem all too clear.
"the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist."
I have no brief for Perle, whose many decades' history of mixing his government defense work with financial dealings in companies whose sole business is either military or security related makes absurd the claim his various friends in these articles make that he is "above money." Samples: partner Gerald Hillman:
Perle, he insisted in February, "is not a financial creature. He doesn't have any desire for financial gain."
A former deputy undersecretary of defense who worked with Mr. Perle, Stephen Bryen, defended Mr. Perle as well.
"It's pretty outrageous for a leftwing columnist to make accusations like this with no factual basis. Most of the many hours he works each day are pro bono to help the administration with its policy on Iraq. He should get is a medal of honor," Mr. Bryen said.
Back on planet Earth, laying aside the risible fantasy of Richard Perle, Noble Philanthropist, what strikes me as what is going on here is, among other things, that Richard Perle was suckered into a Saudi Arabian financial honey pot ploy to get back at Perle for his political involvement in acts of hostility to the Saudi regime, such as the notorious invitation to ex-Larouchite Laurent Murawiec to brief the Defense Policy Board on why the Saudi regime is an enemy to the interests of the United States.
What other explanation is there for Khashoggi and other Saudis to give the quotes they give Hersh?
"It was normal for us to see Perle," Khashoggi told me. "We in the Middle East are accustomed to politicians who use their offices for whatever business they want...."
[...]
Khashoggi professes to be amused by the activities of Perle and Hillman as members of the policy board. As Khashoggi saw it, Trireme's business potential depended on a war in Iraq taking place. "If there is no war," he told me, "why is there a need for security? If there is a war, of course, billions of dollars will have to be spent." He commented, "You Americans blind yourself with your high integrity and your democratic morality against peddling influence, but they were peddling influence."
Khashoggi speaks truth here, of course, but these are not the words of a friend or business partner of Richard Perle, nor of -- cough, choke -- a political innocent. These words are a knife in Perle's back. I don't shed a single tear for Perle, who more or less asked for a nice shiny gold knife to be presented to him as a gift and is surprised to find it sticking out of his back (hey, gold is soft -- I didn't know it could hurt) -- but it's worthwhile to pay attention to the rest of what is going on behind the scenes here. Cui bono? Saudi Arabia.
Look, also, at the quotes from Prince Bandar:
"There is a split personality to Perle," Bandar said. "Here he is, on the one hand, trying to make a hundred-million-dollar deal, and, on the other hand, there were elements of the appearance of blackmail -- 'If we get in business, he'll back off on Saudi Arabia' -- as I have been informed by participants in the meeting."
As for Perle's meeting with Khashoggi and Zuhair, and the assertion that its purpose was to discuss politics, Bandar said, "There has to be deniability, and a cover story -- a possible peace initiative in Iraq -- is needed. I believe the Iraqi events are irrelevant. A business meeting took place."
Good old disinterested Prince Bandar, who, of course, doesn't have any place in Saudi government.
Trace, also, how the story's sources orginate in Saudi-owned newspapers.
Hillman's proposals, meanwhile, took on an unlikely life of their own. A month after the lunch, the proposals made their way to Al Hayat, a Saudi-owned newspaper published in London. If Perle had ever intended to dissociate himself from them, he did not succeed. The newspaper, in a dispatch headlined "WASHINGTON OFFERS TO AVERT WAR IN RETURN FOR AN INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENT TO EXILE SADDAM," characterized Hillman's memorandums as "American" documents and said that the new proposals bore Perle's imprimatur.
[...]
A few days later, the Beirut daily Al Safir published Arabic translations of the memorandums themselves, attributing them to Richard Perle. The proposals were said to have been submitted by Perle, and to "outline Washington's future visions of Iraq." Perle's lunch with two Saudi businessmen was now elevated by Al Safir to a series of "recent American-Saudi negotiations" in which "the American side was represented by Richard Perle." The newspaper added, "Publishing these documents is important because they shed light on the story of how war could have been avoided." The documents, of course, did nothing of the kind.
The Hillman memos did not leak to Saudi papers from nowhere. They did not leak because of the keen investigatory journalism that Saudi papers are renowned for in digging into Saudi affairs. They did not leak to Saudi papers by accident.
The Saudis aren't stupid; they observed Richard Perle's greed; they set their trap; he obligingly acted predictably, and walked into it. He should go down for it, and on general principles of his long history of such behavior. But it shouldn't be ignored that this didn't take place in a vacuum.
God bless our good Saudi friends, who don't violate religious freedom, according to the very nice Bush State Department.
(It's also gratifying to know to know that thanks to Perle we have Gerald Hillman, an apparent idiot, who has his daughter work on his memos for him, on the Defense Policy Board.)
Read The Rest Scale: 5 out of 5 for the New Yorker piece.
There are approximately 50,000 people are working as police in Afghanistan according to Amnesty International. Very few have any training; most are responsible only to warlords or themselves; there is little infrastructure. The result is, inevitably, heavy use of torture, leg-irons, and extortion.
The German government has helped reopen the police academy in Kabul, which is training 1,500 cadets; the United States State Department's Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement also plans to train 7,000 police in Kabul.
The world, including the US, could and should do more and better. Self-interest calls for it.
TESTING THE PLUMBING: Want a euphemism for female masturbation? Who doesn't? Then this is the site for you!
Samplings:
Checking for squirrels Churning butter Dialing the rotary phone Nulling the void Panning for gold Strumming the banjo Teasing the kitty Tiptoe through the twolips Watering the grass
QUESTIONABLE ASSERTIONS: I have tremendous qualms about the launching of this war.
I have tremendous qualms about the ability of this Administration, and America, and anyone else, to successfully put in the effort required to build a democratic, peaceful, Iraq.
I have many criticisms, and condemnations, as to much of the behavior of the Administration in how it has gone about its international relations and -- it is difficult to write the following phrase without either eye-rolling, laughing, or moaning -- how it has gone about trying to "build support" for the war.
But this seems remarkably unhelpful, dubious, and wrongheaded, in turn:
In another call for the Bush administration to slow its march toward war, the foreign relations head of the European Union warned today that Europe might withhold money for the reconstruction of Iraq if the United States waged war without the approval of the Security Council.
Apparently, to punish the arrogance of George Bush, and in the name of protecting the Iraqi people from an unjust, unnecessary war -- it is said -- the Iraqi people must be made to suffer. Further.
That'll teach the Bush Administration!
Say what?
"In the past I have sometimes been accused of issuing a threat of E.U. noncooperation if the United States chooses to proceed with U.N. backing," he said. "That is not my point," he said.
Actually, it seems to be his (Chris Patten's) point.
"I am making, rather, a simple observation of fact: that if it comes to war, it will be very much easier" to make a case for generosity "if there is no dispute about the legitimacy of the military action that has taken place."
If any government, or people, wish to disagree with the US coalition going to war, that is their right and prerogative, and history will speak as to whether they are more right or more wrong. But, regardless of that vital question, should war come, no one disagrees there will be humanitarian need in Iraq that only outside power can supply for some time.
It is right and proper that the US should supply much of that.
But is it right and proper for third parties, wherever they stand on the wisdom and justice of this war, to decide that because the US had proceeded against their agreement, therefore morality and human suffering should be put aside and a blind eye turned to it, in light of the far greater need to declare that the US was wrong, wrong, wrong?
Is this truly a good way to demonstrate that the allieviation of the suffering of the Iraqi people is first and foremost in anyone's mind?
On a second point of illogic made in the same European Parliament debate:
The Liberal group leader, Graeme Watson, said: "It is claimed in London, Washington and Madrid that war could be short, swift and successful. With U.N. support this could indeed be the case. But without it, in a conflict which divides the international community, we could be on the brink of another Hundred Years' War which could bring down regimes well beyond Iraq."
Perhaps I need to read the full peroration to follow this reasoning. It is, of course, unfair to judge an argument from a single out of context quote.
But, again: say what? What is the case here? That absent Security Council majority, or with a veto from one of the single Big Five, other countries will be moved to war against the US? Or be moved to militarily support Iraq? Or be moved to support terrorist groups which will bring down other regimes? (That last seems the only remotely likely possibility, but it's a thin reed indeed.)
With no Big Five veto, and a Security Council majority, war would be short, swift, successful. Yay, Security Council. With a single Big Five veto, or with only eight out of 15 in favor, rather than nine: One Hundred Years War.
I'm glad no one is making excessively exaggerated claims of melodramatic duality. Because, if not: paradise on earth, dogs and cats and hippos in tutus living together, and there will always be new, wonderful Buffy The Vampire Slayer episodes, after all. If so: hell freezes over, fascism reigns forever over the US as George Bush puts most people in concentration death camps after he is made President-for-Life, and all movies will star Adam Sandler, ever after.
SOMETIMES YOU JUST NEED TO TAKE A BREATHER; especially when the news seems as if it's all-almost-war-all-the-time-but-not-quite-just-almost- but-any-time-really-I-tell-ya.
My perception is that everyone who pays attention feels somewhat like that; either they don't want it, or they want it, but most of all they want it over with. Or at least started. Does it seem like that to you?
You're at least closer to the end once you've started. Aren't you? Not always. But I'll cue Churchill, since that's always better than Stanley Baldwin: this is not the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
Anyway, more regular blogging should resume over the next day or so. At least until next week, when I start a new job that will keep me on limited blogging hours again. Due tune in again, prithee.
(Notice how you never have to identify which Churchill? Unless you're saying "you're drunk again, Randolph!"; which is still better than "oh, god, it's the syphilis talking again!"; that last one is usually a conversation stopper in most situations, and when it isn't, I'd rather not know.)
