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
5:50 CST CNN Has just announced that the President will be going to Camp David for the weekend.
Just wondering....
No. I'd be disturbed by the idea that Bush was planning to stay at the White House to personally direct which division should go where, a la Herr Hitler, or even at the lesser level of direct direction of military forces that Winston Churchill was fond of.
It seems faintly odd to me that someone who has such a negative opinion of Bush as Avedon has is simultaneously, seemingly, disturbed at the idea that this incompetent man is going to Camp David -- which has communications facilities comparable to the White House, in any case (Bush is reputedly very fond of the video-conferencing technology, which is certainly an area ripe for a parodist, should one wish to go there) -- and not being more hands on with his incompetence.
This strikes me as the political equivalent of the old joke in the East Coast US Jewish community about the two old ladies at a Catskills resort (such resorts famous for the huge heaping servings of food in their dining rooms): "The food here is terrible!" "Yes, and such small portions!"
Public Notice - If you seriously maintain that "neoconservative" is a code word for "Jewish," you are an ass. The only question is whether you're an ignorant ass, one who somehow missed a thirty-year-plus intellectual tradition and yet feels unaccountably qualified to comment on political matters, or a dishonest ass.
I have great respect with Jim, no matter that, of course, we have some political differences -- I have some political differences with nearly everyone, after all, and don't, to earn my respect, require others to adhere to my opinions, but rather merely to display some general ability to reason thoughtfully -- but this is a bit over-strong, perhaps?
Jim makes the error of using "is," and producing a general rule, rather than discussing specific usages.
It's neither correct or accurate to universally say that "'neo-conservative" is a code word for 'Jewish,'" nor to say that "'neo-conservative is never a code word for 'Jewish,'" because, like most such statements, either one may be true. In some cases one is true, in other cases the other is true.
Each one is capable of being either a true or false statement, depending on what statement from who is being described.
"Neo-conservative," instead, can be a code word for "Jews," but need not be.
Generally speaking, in the majority of political discussions, "neo-conservative" is not going to be a code-word for "Jews." In other circumstances, such as when, say, Pat Buchanan is writing, "neo-conservative" definitely is at least largely a code word for "Jews." In yet other circumstances, there may only be a tinge of code-wording. And, of course, in many circumstances, it's not just unclear, but impossible to tell without, at the very least, considerable knowledge of and experience with the speaker, if not outright being a mind-reader. As a default, of course, under neutral circumstances, one should assume the best. (If you're not a pessimist, anyway.)
On the other hand, circumstances are not always neutral in a world where anti-semitism is not non-existent. Our world.
So all in all, I'd have no disagreement if Jim had merely stated his emphatic opinion that "neo-conservative" is an entirely legitimate word to use to describe a certain political "movement"/flavor and in most cases in which he encounters it, it in no way has any tinge whatsoever of code-wordism. That's fine and true. Unfortunately, Jim -- in a bit of heat, if my Tone Detector isn't completely off -- stumbled into going unnecessarily further, to the point of -- my reading, anyway -- at least implying an absolute statement that "neo-conservative" can never, and is never, a code word for "Jews," which has the misfortune of not being so. I do expect that it's pretty rarely, likely to the point of never, so used by the sort of people Jim reads and engages with, thus accounting for his degree of emphasis.
I do hope, however, that Jim doesn't think I'm an "ass" if I observe that not everyone is as sensible as Jim, and that Patrick Buchanan just happens to be an example of an anti-semitic writer and thinker who does, in fact, considerably mean "Jews" when he attacks "neo-conservatives." Or mean "Jew-lovers."
Sorry: "amen corner."
And Pat Buchanan is not unique and alone in this. Especially of late.
Jim responds. Kinda. I confess I'm not following what he's saying as clearly as I'd like to.
AM I MISSING SOMETHING or is it not showboating idiocy for the CBS reporter (I missed her name, though I'll probably catch it later) in Kuwait City to be giving a live report to Dan Rather in a gas mask simply because, earlier in the day, a couple of missiles were lobbed at Kuwait (three guesses as to who launched them), and there is an "alert"?
3/21/2003 01:31:00 AM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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Thursday, March 20, 2003
SIGHTS: Ted Koppel live right now, with the Third Infantry Division, as an unending stream of Bradley APCs and M1-A1 Abrams tanks and fuel carriers streams past, into Iraq, behind him.
This "live from the war" thing is weird; there's never been anything like it before. Imagine seeing Patton, live, swiveling his tanks to charge into the Ardenne.
Somehow it's particularly eerie hearing the tank treads grinding away -- probably because, as a civilian, I'm most familiar with the sound from movies. But this is no movie.
As a separate thought, I don't believe I ever before heard anyone say what I heard a local newscaster say last night, as they swung from a brief weather report (much in the Denver area was still closed today and will be closed tomorrow, despite the fact that the storm ended by this morning -- many schools, government offices, schools, and the like, are still closed, and the snow drifts are still high), and the newscaster said "and now, back to the war."
THE OFFICIAL MEMBERSHIP LIST of the coalition. 45 countries, technically, though some are a tad, shall we say, small. The, um, South Pacific seems to be strongly on our side, which is terribly reassuring. The might of Micronesia is with us!
No sign yet of Grand Fenwick, but I'm sure they'll come to our aid should be we truly be at need. (Via Angua.)
ADDENDUM: I just took a glance at what Fox is saying -- they're the only other "network" doing all news tonight -- but then, they're pretty much a sponsor of this war, so that makes sense -- and the newsreader/anchor just said with a straight face that this fact that it is "45 nations" makes this "the second largest war mobilization in history."
I realize that, like the aforementioned tanks, unending streams of bullshit pour from the mouths of Fox commentators and newscasters, but it's still striking to hear it. (Remember, I'm, extremely uneasily, a supporter of this war -- but that doesn't mean my brain has melted.)
KANAN MAKIYA'Swar diary. Makiya is one of the most prominent and interesting Iraqi exile dissidents.
When I heard President George Bush deliver his ultimatum to Saddam Hussein on Monday, I could not help but puzzle over one crucial omission: the word "democracy." Why, I kept on asking myself, did he choose not to use it? Now only hours remain before the U.S. military rips apart Saddam Hussein's despotism. I seem to have spent the last 25 years of my life working toward this moment. The effort has been marked by cycles of frustration and elation, painfully elusive opportunities and betrayed promises. Since the end of the Gulf war, every piece of good fortune for the Iraqi opposition has been interwoven with disappointment and bitterness. Over the years we in the opposition have carefully parsed every word, cadence, and image of every public American pronunciation about Iraq. I heard the president say that Iraqi "liberation" was close at hand. But why did he not utter the one word that would ensure that what he was about to do in Iraq would enter the annals of history as one of its great moments?
In spite of his omission, I am more confident than I was ten days ago, when I returned to America from Kurdistan. During these last few days, over the course of many visits, I have met with Vice President Dick Cheney, twice with Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, and twice with Jay Garner, the director of the new Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. I came away from these meetings with the fears that I had developed inside northern Iraq--fears shared by all my colleagues in the Iraqi opposition--assuaged, at least in part. I came away filled with new hope for an American-Iraqi partnership, which is the only way democracy can come to this benighted land. I came away reassured of this administration's commitment to the vital and difficult work that lays before us in building a new kind of order in Iraq long after the war has come to an end.
TRACES OF RICINfound on Paris Metro, in two flasks.
The French Interior Ministry said on Thursday that traces of the highly toxic poison ricin have been found in the Gare de Lyon railway station in Paris.
A spokesman told Reuters that two small flasks containing traces of the poison were discovered in a left luggage depot at the mainline railway station which serves the south of France.
FAINTLY DISTURBING, and I don't know if it should be more or less. That's what this resignation is.
The top National Security Council official in the war on terror resigned this week for what a NSC spokesman said were personal reasons, but intelligence sources say the move reflects concern that the looming war with Iraq is hurting the fight against terrorism.
Rand Beers would not comment for this article, but he and several sources close to him are emphatic that the resignation was not a protest against an invasion of Iraq. But the same sources, and other current and former intelligence officials, described a broad consensus in the anti-terrorism and intelligence community that an invasion of Iraq would divert critical resources from the war on terror.
Beers has served as the NSC's senior director for counter-terrorism only since August. The White House said Wednesday that he officially remains on the job and has yet to set a departure date.
"Hardly a surprise," said one former intelligence official. "We have sacrificed a war on terror for a war with Iraq. I don't blame Randy at all. This just reflects the widespread thought that the war on terror is being set aside for the war with Iraq at the expense of our military and intel resources and the relationships with our allies."
A Senate Intelligence Committee staffer familiar with the resignation agreed that it was not a protest against the war against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein but confirmed that frustration is widespread in the anti-terror establishment and played a part in Beers' decision.
"Randy said that he was 'just tired' and did not have an interest in adding the stress that would come with a war with Iraq," the source said.
The source said that the concern by the administration about low morale in the intelligence community led national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to ask Beers twice during an exit interview whether the resignation was a protest against the war with Iraq. The source said that although Beers insisted it was not, the tone of the interview concerned Rice enough that she felt she had to ask the question twice.
"This is a very intriguing decision (by Beers)," said author and intelligence expert James Bamford. "There is a predominant belief in the intelligence community that an invasion of Iraq will cause more terrorism than it will prevent. There is also a tremendous amount of embarrassment by intelligence professionals that there have been so many lies out of the administration -- by the president, (Vice President Dick) Cheney and (Secretary of State Colin) Powell -- over Iraq."
Maybe there's a lot of significance looming behind this, maybe a little. I don't know. I know the arguments, but I don't have enough inside sources to fairly judge just now. So I put it out there. One good point of Bamford's, an excellent author/reporter/researcher:
"It is absurd that the president of the United States mentioned in a speech before the world information from phony documents and no one got fired," Bamford said. "That alone has offended intelligence professionals throughout the services."
It is, alas, unsurprising in its consistency. We've yet to hear about anyone being fired over September 11th, or any other modern day intelligence failure. On the one hand, it's good that people aren't being scapegoated; that causes fear and unwillingness to stick one's head out in a bureaucracy; on the other hand, genuine responsibility exists, and responsibility for unwarranted failure can, surely, on occasion, be fairly isolated?
Read The Rest Scale: 2 out of 5 for a bit more detail.
Scientists have developed a new data transfer protocol for the Internet fast enough to download a full-length DVD movie in less than five seconds, the California Institute of Technology said today.
The protocol is called FAST, standing for Fast Active queue management Scalable Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).
The researchers achieved a speed of 8,609 megabits per second (Mbps) by using 10 simultaneous flows of data over routed paths, the largest aggregate throughput ever accomplished in such a configuration, Caltech said in a news release. "That is 153,000 times that of today's modem and close to 6,000 times that of the common standard for ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) connections."
NEAT TRICK: Somehow or other, some element of the US took over Iraqi state radio to announce "today is the day you've been waiting for!" and other such incitement. ABC has reported this on the air; here's the breaking website mention:
ABCNEWS reported that the U.S. military was broadcasting messages in Arabic over Iraqi state radio airwaves.
AIR RAID SIRENS in Baghdad. The networks are all live. Bush to address nation at 10:15 p.m. EST, a bit less than half an hour from now.
ADDENDUM: CBS's David Martin at the Pentagon now reports that this was a special "target of opportunity" strike via cruise missile that Bush specially authorized this afternoon to hit some "element" of the "Iraqi leadership" they thought they had a temporary fix on; the main cruise missile attack is yet to come.
ADDENDUM II: ABC says it was F-117s and Tomahawks. III: As expected, Bush is saying we're in the early stages. IV: ABC (I'm flipping around, and they seem to be breaking faster than anyone else at the moment) says it was about 40 Tomahawks and some 2000-lb-ers from F-117s. V: CNN says "two dozen" Tomahawks. But who's counting?
PALEOS AND NEOS: David Frum usefully analyzes what is, in fact, new about the "paleo"-conservatives, and what is false and hateful in their claims, and their attacks on "neoconservatives."
Fact I Did Not Know:
Justin Raimondo, an Internet journalist who delivered Pat Buchanan's nominating speech at the Reform party convention in 2000....
That fits wonderfully with the rest of Raimondo's maunderings about Israel being implicated in September 11th and general (not universal, of course) kookiness.
Good line by Frum:
Frustrated ambition is not a propitious foundation for an intellectual movement.
Many excellent quotes illuminating the history of "paleoconservatism." Samuel Francis:
Francis advocated a politics of uninhibited racial nationalism -- a politics devoted to the protection of the interests of what he called the "Euro-American cultural core" of the American nation. He argued that the time had come for conservatives to jettison their old commitment to limited government: A "nationalist ethic," he wrote in 1991, "may often require government action."
So, Chronicles advocated protectionism for American industry and restrictions on nonwhite immigration. It defended minimum-wage laws and attacked corporations that moved operations off-shore. And it championed the Southern Confederacy of the 1860s and the anti-civil rights resistance of the 1960s.
[...]
Francis in particular scolded NATIONAL REVIEW's conservatives for their isolation from America's "grassroots." He chose an interesting means of illustrating his point: "Of the twenty-five conservative intellectuals whose photographs appeared on the dust jacket of George H. Nash's The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, published in 1976, four are Roman Catholic, seven are Jewish, another seven (including three Jews) are foreign-born, two are southern or western in origin, and only five are in any respect representative of the historically dominant Anglo-Saxon (or at least Anglo-Celtic) Protestant strain in American history and culture (three of the five later converted to Roman Catholicism)."
Now Francis had the helm of an ideological movement of his own. "[A] new American Right," he wrote in 1991, "must recognize that its values and goals lie outside and against the establishment and that its natural allies are not in Manhattan, Yale, and Washington but in the increasingly alienated and threatened strata of Middle America. . . . A new Right, positioning itself in opposition to the elite and the elite's underclass ally, can assert its leadership of Middle Americans and mobilize them in radical opposition to the regime."
Remarkably, Patrick Buchanan and the other "paleos" who railed against American involvement in the "faraway" Mideast and the rest of the world ("America First!") found a cause, though:
Human beings yearn to identify with something bigger than themselves. That's why patriotism sways the heart. When patriotism falters, something else takes its place. For a good many of the paleoconservatives, that something was, for a spell, Serbian nationalism.
The Yugoslav civil wars divided conservatives. Some -- William F. Buckley Jr., Richard Perle, John O'Sullivan, and Republican political leaders like Bob Dole -- advocated an early and decisive intervention against Slobodan Milosevic. Others -- Charles Krauthammer, Henry Kissinger, and (to drop a few rungs down the ladder) I -- argued against.
Pat Buchanan, one can say, permitted a dual loyalty to influence him. Although he had denied any vital American interest in either Kuwait's oilfields or Iraq's oilfields or its aggression, in l991 he urged that the Sixth Fleet be sent to Dubrovnik to shield the Catholics of Croatia from Serbian attack. "Croatia is not some faraway desert emirate," he explained. "It is a 'piece of the continent, a part of the main,' a Western republic that belonged to the Habsburg empire and was for centuries the first line of defense of Christian Europe. For their ceaseless resistance to the Ottoman Turks, Croatia was proclaimed by Pope Leo X to be the 'Antemurale Christianitatis,' the bulwark of Christianity."
Chronicles, though, along with most of its writers, followed Thomas Fleming into a passionate defense of the Serbian cause. Even if all the war crimes alleged against the Serbs proved true, Fleming argued in 1997, "they are trivial in comparison with anything done not just by the Germans, but by Americans in recent years." When the U.S. and NATO finally went to war against Serbia, Fleming identified himself with the enemy side: "[W]e have to be as faithful as the Serbs in preserving our heritage," he said in a June 1999 speech, "as brave as the Serbs in fighting our enemies."
It speaks for itself. Here's another edifying quote:
"The civilization that we as whites created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people." -- SAMUEL FRANCIS, SPEECH AT THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE CONFERENCE, MAY 1994.
Frum points out, and further discusses:
Of all the limits against which the paleoconservatives chafed, the single most irksome was the limit placed by civilized opinion upon overtly racialist speech.
What's up with Francis lately?
Francis's speech at the 1994 conference of the white-supremacist American Renaissance organization, for example, ultimately cost him his job as a staff columnist at the Washington Times. Today he earns his living as editor-in-chief of the Citizens' Informer, the newspaper of the Council of Conservative Citizens, the successor group to the White Citizens' Councils of the segregated South; he moonlights as an editor of The Occidental Quarterly, a pseudo-scholarly "journal of Western thought and opinion."
Big surprise, eh? Frum rightfully hammers the point:
For the paleos, however, race and ethnicity were from the start essential and defining issues -- and so they remain to this day.
These people are not fascists. Possibly it may not even be fair to call them "proto-fascists."
But they are surely proto-proto-fascists.
But wait. What is another critical part of their ideology?
Racial passions run strong among the paleos. And yet, having read many hundreds of thousands of their words in print and on the screen, I come away with a strong impression that while their anti-black and anti-Hispanic feelings are indeed intense, another antipathy is far more intellectually important to them.
I think you know what that antipathy is.
After the defeat of his friend Buchanan's second presidential campaign, Sobran wrote: "The full story is impossible to tell as long as it's taboo to discuss Jewish interests as freely as we discuss those of the Christian Right. Talking about American politics without mentioning the Jews is a little like talking about the NBA without mentioning the Chicago Bulls." Sobran was following MacDonald's advice: "It is time to be frank about Jews."
And thus we'll be "frank" about "neoconservatism."
At a June 2002 conference sponsored by the Institute for Historical Review, the leading Holocaust-denial group, Joe Sobran defined "neoconservatism" as "kosher conservatism."
Are we all clear?
Read The Rest Scale: 5 out of 5. Know your enemy. Know my enemy. And if you find yourself on the left making common cause with these people: stop and wonder why.
RIGHT MAKES MIGHT: Good thinking people come together for sodomy.
I'll rephrase. No, I'll just quote:
The constitutional challenge to the Texas "homosexual conduct" law that the Supreme Court will take up next week has galvanized not only traditional gay rights and civil rights organizations, but also libertarian groups that see the case as a chance to deliver their own message to the justices.
The message is one of freedom from government control over private choices, economic as well as sexual. "Libertarians argue that the government has no business in the bedroom or in the boardroom," Roger Pilon, vice president for legal affairs at the Cato Institute, said today, describing the motivation for the institute, a leading libertarian research organization here, to file a brief on behalf of two gay men who are challenging the Texas law.
Dana Berliner, a lawyer for the Institute for Justice, another prominent libertarian group here that also filed a brief, said, "Most people may see this as a case purely about homosexuality, but we don't look at it that way at all."
[...]
In 1986, when the court decided Bowers v. Hardwick, half the states had criminal sodomy laws on their books. Now just 13 do. Texas is one of four, along with Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri, with laws that apply only to sexual activity between people of the same sex. The sodomy laws of the other nine states -- Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia -- do not make that distinction. The Georgia law that the Supreme Court upheld was later invalidated by the Georgia Supreme Court.
Will Bowers v. Hardwick be overturned? I'm not holding my breath -- I'm pretty doubtful, actually -- but one can hope. One can hope.
Read The Rest Scale: if you're interested in personal freedom in America, 5 out of 5.
The South Korean government hesitantly indicated today that it might support the United States in Iraq with noncombat troops.
In other late-breaking news, the Israeli government is prepared to send troops to the DMZ, where they are expected to confuse the heck out of North Korea.
Read The Rest Scale: 3 out of 5 for a bit more detail on the why and wherefore.
WHO'S LISTENING?: Someone has bugged a European Union HQ building.
The European Union has uncovered a bugging operation aimed at 5 of its 15 member countries, the organization said today.
Listening devices were found late last month in a headquarters building that houses the offices of the French, German, British, Austrian and Spanish delegations, officials said.
Since one of the offices was that of Britain, it seems a bit unlikely that this was an American operation. Not that it's 100% out of the question. I'm sure we'll see more on this.
Read The Rest Scale: 4 out of 5 for rather more detail.
MY HERITAGE: I received an unexpected, somewhat surprising, e-mail, that I imagine many other bloggers have now received.
Gary,
You've been discovered! Tim Rutten's Media column in today's edition of The Los
Angeles Times is the latest example of the traditional media's newfound appreciation of the growing influence of bloggers on America's public policy debates.
Our job at The Heritage Foundation is to provide useful resources - objective data and conservative analysis and commentary - to journalists, analysts and commentators of all stripes. But we aren't quite sure how to do this with the blogger community.
So this email is an invitation for you to participate in an experiment. For the next month, we will periodically email to you short notices about significant Heritage studies, publications and events. At the end of the month, let us know if these notices were helpful. If not, tell us at any time, and you won't get any more. If you find you only want those notices regarding specific issue areas - foreign policy, welfare reform, etc. - we'll limit our future emails to you thusly. If you want to continue receiving all of the notices, let us know that, too.
Regardless of your perspective on the issues of the day, we are confident you will find Heritage materials useful in your effort to provide the kind of incisive, immediate and thoughtful commentary and analysis made possible by blogging.
We look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Sincerely,
Laura Bodwell Marketing Manager
Mark Tapscott Director, Media Services
This is close enough to spam to faintly irritate me, but I'm certainly gratified to know of this new Heritage propaga--, er, public education outreach program. It is clueful of them to expand into blogging. I'll be interested to see what bulls--, er, information they choose to send out, and note where it shows up from which bloggers and whether any won't acknowledge it.
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HEY! REMEMBER THE 80'S? REMEMBER EL SALVADOR?: It used to be all the rage. The country just plumb went out of fashion long before the turn of the millenium, along with Nicaragua.
But, little noticed, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, won a lot of elections on Sunday.
The party of El Salvador's former leftist guerrillas claimed victory in more than 100 of 262 mayorships at stake in elections, and its leader said the results showed Salvadorans were hungry for change.
The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, also claimed to have increased its number of seats in congress in Sunday's vote, drawing even with their former conservative adversaries in the country's 1980-1992 civil war -- the ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance, ARENA. Salvadorans voted for 262 mayorships and 84 congressional seats.
The important post of Mayor of San Salvador has gone to the FMLN after the former two-term FMLN Mayor bolted the party, ran on the ticket of a smaller party, and lost.
According to unofficial projections, ARENA could end up with 29 seats in congress -- the same number it currently holds -- while the FMLN could boost its seats from 25 to 31. Both parties would have to look for alliances with the smaller parties to gain a congressional majority.
Best of all, the election was peaceful. And, hey, only five people were reported killed in campaigning, which isn't bad for El Salvador.
In other news of the Eighties, John Travolta stars in a new motion picture.
Read The Rest Scale: 2 out of 5 for a bit more detail. (Via Geitner Simmons.)
Austrian far-right politician Joerg Haider has described Saddam Hussein as a cultivated and pleasant man.
I'm sure Saddam speaks equally well of you, Joerg.
In a new book he says Saddam is open to the views of others and he condemned the US push for war.
The former leader of the right wing Freedom Party, described two controversial meetings with Saddam as "interesting and philosophical."
He said: "I didn't have the feeling of sitting across from an uncultured villain of history,"
Saddam Hussein is a cultured villain of history; he's the author of two novels, remember?
Published as "Saddam's Guest: In the 'Empire of Evil" the 200-page book has not been translated into any other language.
Haider said that during one meeting, Saddam spoke for two hours about the philosophical aspects of Arab culture and politics and "the danger of Israel toward the Palestinians," Haider said.
Quite the common interest there.
"I had the impression that he is well-educated, he knows a lot about the history of his country and the region.
"He's open to accept different arguments and to accept another standpoint (including) the view of a representative of the Western countries."
Any neo-Nazi representative is welcome to drop by to visit Saddam any time. Well, okay, he's a little busy right now. But you're welcome to stay in the waiting room.
An article in Arts & Ideas on Saturday about works of art inspired by science misstated the title of a Thomas Pynchon novel. It is "The Crying of Lot 49," not "The Crying of Lot 69."
I'm glad we cleared that up; it just sucks to make that kind of error.
WHO'S WHERE?: Kinda like "where's Waldo?," but in reverse.
Reporters for American news organizations are streaming out of Baghdad. That raises the possibility that relatively few American journalists would remain to cover a battle for the city.
ABC News, NBC News, Newsweek and The New York Times, among major organizations, have told their staff members to leave the city, where the most important fighting is widely expected to occur. Time magazine and the Fox News Channel said they had reversed plans to send correspondents there, even though the reporters had visas.
The BBC, Reuters and other services based in Europe have promised to stay despite the risks. So has Peter Arnett, who, as a correspondent with CNN became the face of the gulf war in 1991. He is now reporting from Baghdad for National Geographic Explorer and MSNBC. He is also contributing to NBC News, which owns MSNBC along with Microsoft.
[...]
Like other newspapers without correspondents in Baghdad, The Times would rely on reports from news services, Ms. Mathis said. News organizations with reporters in northern Iraq, including The Times, planned to send them back to the city as soon as the situation seemed safe.
Google News remains our (sometimes confused) friend.
Read The Rest Scale: 2 out of 5 for a bit more detail, particularly on hassles leaving Baghdad.
THESE BOOTS ARE MADE FOR WALKING. Those wacky Russians.
Walking boots fitted with tiny combustion engines are set for production in Russia.
Inventor Viktor Gordejev, from Ufa in the Ural Mountains, says the boots cut the energy of walking by about 70%.
As soon as the wearer steps forward with one foot, the engines propel the other one forward.
Mr Gordejev says inspiration came 30 years ago when he was serving in the Soviet army.
He explained: "I always wished my boots had engines as we had to walk miles every day. That's how I came up with the idea."
The boots will retail for about £600 a pair when they go on sale in Russia later this year.
Call me a killjoy, but I suspect boots that can jerk your feet out from under you are recipes for broken legs and arms. On the other hand, maybe they'll be no more dangerous that skateboards.
OH, HELL: This won't mean anything to 99% of my readers, but Harry Warner, Jr., one of the most famous, longest-lived, longest-active, science fiction fans in the world, the most famous "letter hack" in the field since the 1930's, the premier historian of science fiction fandom, has died.
It barely seems possible.
I've visited Harry, a famous hermit, at his house, twice in decades pass. I received my first letter from him when I was 12 years old. I'll miss him, there will never be another like him, and this news makes me very sad. (Via Avedon Carol.)
FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY: Everyone loves a good game.
A new Italian board game lets players take on the role of immigrant prostitutes enslaved by the mafia.
It has been launched by an organisation which works for the civil rights of prostitutes.
Puttanopoly players must dodge police raids, avoid turf wars and escape serial killers just to earn a living.
The Committee for Prostitutes' Civil Rights hopes it will raise awareness of the growing problem of sex slavery, reports The Guardian.
Each "prostitute" starts the game penniless with a "slavery contract" forcing them to pay up to 90% of their earnings to their pimps.
If the dice roll their way, they land a week's earnings in one go, win a trip to work in Amsterdam or are rescued by a client.
Its inventor, Daniela Mannu, said: "Everything in the game is true. The idea is to give people an idea of what prostitutes are up against in this country."
GOOD NEWS FROM EGYPT: One hardly ever gets to write that line. But Saad Eddin Ibrahim has been "acquitted."
An Egyptian court today acquitted Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a U.S.-Egyptian rights activist, after his second retrial in a contentious case that had strained ties between Cairo and Washington.
[...]
Charges against Ibrahim included defaming Egypt and illegally accepting and misusing European Commission funds. He was arrested June 30, 2000, and sentenced last July to seven years in prison following his first retrial. He was freed in December pending a new hearing before the country's highest court.
[...]
"We here have a case where the most prominent libertarian in Egypt and the most important sociologist in the Arab region has spent three years of his life being dragged through courts," Kassem said. The appeals court, he said, was not subject to political pressure.
The United States had protested Ibrahim's conviction by saying it would oppose extra aid to Egypt on top of the $2 billion in U.S. funds Egypt receives each year. The U.S. Embassy welcomed the court's decision.
Samantha Morton has revealed she turned down a $1 million film deal because she was asked to wear a skirt.
The actress, who famously wore a Sex Pistols T-shirt to the Oscars, and a pair of flip-flops to meet the Queen, starred in Minority Report last year.
But she says she turned down another Hollywood film in a row over what to wear to dinner with producers.
Morton makes the confession in a BBC3 documentary, in which she discusses her idea of beauty.
She says: "I was offered a film, quite a high-profile film, I think that it was the first time that I had been offered $1 million, and they said I'd got the job.
"I'd screen tested opposite the guy - I'm not going to say any names - and I had got the job. I was invited to dinner with the producers and stuff.
"There was an instruction to my manager to wear a skirt. I just said 'f*** off '. I didn't say no, I said f*** off. I was like 'How dare you say that?' - I probably would have worn a skirt that night but, because I was told to, I was like 'go f*** yourself.' "
Morton adds she dismisses conventional images of beauty in favour of spending the day dancing and drinking tea at a pensioners' tea party in north London.
She says: "I grew up in a culture - maybe it's a working-class thing - where people make a concerted effort to live. I think that is really attractive."
I hate spunk.
Naw, just kidding. I like this. Never mind the bollocks. Read The Rest Scale: 0 out of 5.
ZOG: In case you hadn't noticed it, Saddam Hussein's come-and-get-me-coppers announcement specifically:
...added a warning to the "American, English and Zionist invading aggressors" that they faced defeat.
[...]
"Let these discredited people know that Iraq does not set its course on orders from a foreigner, or choose its leadership in accordance with instructions coming from Washington, London and Tel Aviv, but solely in accord with the wishes of the people of Iraq," an official Iraqi News Agency summary said.
[...]
To the generals, he described war with the United States as "the decisive battle between the army of faith, right and justice, and the forces of tyranny and American-Zionist savagery on the other."
Surely an oversight that he didn't remember to say "American, English and neo-conservative invading aggressors." I guess he didn't get the memo.
Read The Rest Scale: 2 out of 5 for no real news out of Baghdad.
WEATHER NOTE: It's been snowing non-stop for days in the Front Range/Denver area. Some areas have reported 65 inches of snow.
Denver has had several collapses of industrial roofs; one of DIA's terminals has ripped open. That last has never happened before.
Everything is closed today: schools, government offices at every level, businesses, buses, US Post Office (so much for "neither sleet nor snow, yadda yadda"), Denver International Airport, most highways (I-70 included), everything. Including my new place of work. Yay!
Forecast: snow, blowing snow. Thank god we're not (yet) in one of the areas where power has gone down. Alfred Packer remains a well-remembered figure around here.
ADDENDUM: Naturally, shortly after I posted this, our power went out. Fortunately, it was only for a couple of hours. I hadn't read the Denver Post yet when I posted, or I'd have known that some areas, in fact, reported eight feet of drifts, and that this is only the second time in history that Denver International has closed.
Natalie Maines' comments about President Bush cost the Dixie Chicks the top spot on the Billboard country singles chart this week. Airplay for Travelin' Soldier, which had hit No. 1 the previous week, dropped 15% last week. Nearly all the decline came late in the week after reports that Maines told a London concert audience, "We're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."
Okay. But wait!
A pop remix of Soldier by Sheryl Crow was sent to adult-contemporary stations this week by Columbia Records.
Presumably this from Sheryl "No War!" Crow should go over better. After all, she's got Michael Moore to shoot her video.
Read The Rest Scale: 1 out of 5 on all of it unless you're fascinated.
Apple Computer Inc.'s original iMac -- the multicolored, gumdrop-shaped desktop computer that many credit with saving the company -- is history.
Apple stopped selling the old iMac in its main online store yesterday. A company representative confirmed that the original iMac line, unveiled in 1998, is being discontinued, but didn't comment further.
[...]
"Computers have become fashion, and that was last year's style," said Paul Saffo, director of the Menlo Park, Calif.-based think tank Institute for the Future. "It's like selling last year's pattern of shoes."
On the streets of Doha yesterday, many locals were unaware of who Mr Howard was and did not associate Australia with the attack on Iraq, instead appearing more interested in kangaroos and cricket.
Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee may believe God ordered them to kidnap Elizabeth Smart, but legal experts say divine revelation will be little help to them in the courtroom.
Darn. You'd think God would at least be able to qualify as an expert witness. My impression is that He's had a lot of personal experience with nutbars.
LONDON -- A niece of Osama bin Laden is launching a career as a pop singer after rejecting her Muslim background and throwing herself into the London party scene.
Waffa bin Laden, whose father Yeslam is a brother of the world's most wanted man, hopes to release a single by the end of the year after being told that she has the looks and voice to become a star.
She has been working on a demo tape and reportedly has been advised on her musical ambitions by acclaimed rap artist Wyclef Jean.
Where are some more of those bin Laden brothers? I see the Osmonds! The Jackson Five! The bin Laden 42! Can you dig it?
ROGER EBERT ON POLITICS IN MOVIE REVIEWS, AND MARK STEYN:
But you raise a larger question: Do political opinions belong in movie reviews? When they are relevant to the movie, of course they do. Where did so many Americans get the notion that there is something offensive or transgressive about expressing political opinions? Movies are often about politics, sometimes when they least seem to be, and the critic must be honest enough to reveal his own beliefs in reviewing them, instead of hiding behind a mask of false objectivity.
When I read other critics on tricky movies, I seek those who disagree with me. For example, Mark Steyn, the conservative political columnist, doubles as the film critic for the Spectator, a conservative British weekly that has been my favorite magazine for more than 25 years. I read his reviews faithfully. Presumably they are informed by his conservatism, but since he is such an intelligent and engaging writer, I would rather be informed I am wrong by Steyn than correct by a liberal drone. If you disagree with something I write, tell me so, argue with me, correct me--but don't tell me to shut up. That's not the American way.
Telling people to shut up seems pretty American, actually. Just not right. Not everything popular in America is right. Which Roger would agree with me. And he's otherwise right.
Read The Rest Scale: 0 out of 5 on this topic; you can read the rest of his "Answer Man" column if you like, though. Among other topics it mentions the bizarre fact that TNT has, apparently, been removing the word "terrorist" from "Back To The Future" (as in "who shoot Doc Brown"). I gues they're a bunch of armed Arab car critics, now. How curious.
CRINGING FOR MARTIN SCORSESE is what Frank DiGiacomo does in the pages of the New York Observer.
Cringing at the idiotic talk show host questions Scorsese must endure on his Oscar campaign tour, cringing at the necessity of such a tour to potentially win an Oscar these days, cringing at what a tour involves these days.
Read The Rest Scale: 3.5 out of 5 if you love movies and find Scorsese interesting. Otherwise don't worry about it.
HAVING YOUR INTERROGATION CAKE AND EATING IT, TOO is more or less the theme of this TNR Onlinepiece which cheerfully asserts that harsh torture is neither necessary nor helpful to getting useful information out of terrorism suspects, such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
Good news, wiping out, if not any possible moral angst attached to contemplating whether torture is ever called for, any need for such contemplation, if taken at face value.
While there is some value in applying physical force to terror suspects--as one former CIA counter-terrorism case officer told me, "Anyone who tells you that torture is completely ineffective, I think, is historically naïve"--and therefore some reason to worry about it, physical force is at best one small element of a successful interrogation. Far more important is a carefully calibrated battery of questioning techniques--"the ability and personal characteristics [of the interrogator] ... of outsmarting the detainees," as University of St. Andrews terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp puts it. Critics are right that American intelligence officials may not be especially concerned about Mohammed's human rights. But even if they're not, they're unlikely to rely primarily or even heavily on physical force when questioning him--because there are simply much more effective ways to extract information.
[...]
But one of the surprising aspects of the ongoing interrogations of Al Qaeda detainees is that the more senior captives--like Abu Zubaydah, or Mohammed's associate Ramzi Binalshibh--have been remarkably willing to talk. Rather, the problem when it comes to these high-ranking terrorists is what they divulge--typically, an intricate lattice of fact and fiction. In the words of a former FBI official, they "mak[e] up stories that are credible enough" to sow doubt and uncertainty into any investigation.
As a result, questioning techniques designed to sort out truth from lies tend to be far more important than physical techniques designed simply to get people talking (as are verification procedures, like cross-referencing confessions with phone intercepts and computer files). And the key to good questioning, intelligence experts say, is to exploit specific aspects of a suspect's personality.
There's more detail here, outlining how. But I have to question this chipper outlook, that so easily sets aside any moral question simply by sweepingly declaring that it won't, in fact, come up, when this conclusion is based on a bunch of quotes form "University of St. Andrews terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp" and the assertion of Spencer Ackerman, assistant editor at TNR.
Perhaps they are entirely correct. I'd like to think so. But I have to note that we're still turning suspects over to countries such as Syria and Kuwait, at present. And they don't seem to have gotten this chipper news of the Better Way, so far as I've heard.
Nor am I willing to take the word of Mssrs. Ranstorp and Ackerman, simply because they say so. I'd like to see a good deal more cross-referenced support to believe that this is, in fact, so.
STRAYS are supposedly straight guys pretending to be gay to get laid. I rather suspect this is more of a magazine story (British Cosmopolitan, to be specfic) than a real phenomenon, but it's an amusing story.
GOOGLE THE OBSESSIVE: There are endless articles on Google and so I blog only those rare ones with something new to say.
Such as thisFast Company piece with interesting information both on how Google the company works, and on how the Google search engine is tweaked.
They also pursue a seemingly gratuitous quest for speed: Four years ago, the average search took approximately 3 seconds. Now it's down to about 0.2 seconds. And since 0.2 is more than zero, it's not quite fast enough.
[...]
When someone enters a query on Google for "spiritual enlightenment," it's not clear what he's seeking. The concept of spiritual enlightenment means something different from what the two words mean individually. Google has to navigate varying levels of literality to guess at what the user really wants.
This is where Googlers live, amid semantic, visual, and technical esoterica.
[...]
By some estimates, Google accounts for three-quarters of all Web searches.
[...]
That's why Google must correctly interpret searches by Turks and Finns, whose queries resemble complete sentences, and in Japanese, where words run together without spaces. It has to understand not only the meanings of individual words but also the relationships of those words to other words and the characteristics of those words as objects on a Web page. ( A page that displays a search word in boldface or in the upper-right-hand corner, for example, will likely rank higher than a page with the same words displayed less prominently. )
It's why the difference between 0.3 seconds and 0.2 seconds is pretty profound. Most searches on Google actually take less than 0.2 seconds. That extra tenth of a second is all about the outliers: queries crammed with unrelated words or with words that are close in meaning. The outliers can take half a second to resolve -- and Google believes that users' productivity begins to wane after 0.2 seconds.
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And it's why, most of the time, the Google home page contains exactly 37 words.
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In fact, 10 full-time employees do nothing but read emails from users, distributing them to the appropriate colleagues or responding to them themselves.
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It says that it gets 1,500 resumes a day from wanna-be Googlers. Between screening, interviewing, and assessing, it invested 87 Google people-hours in each of the 300 or so people that it hired in 2002.
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When Rosing started at Google in 2001, "we had management in engineering. And the structure was tending to tell people, No, you can't do that." So Google got rid of the managers. Now most engineers work in teams of three, with project leadership rotating among team members. If something isn't right, even if it's in a product that has already gone public, teams fix it without asking anyone.
CHEESE-EATING SURRENDER MONKEY writes thoughtfully on French/American perceptions.
But couldn't I be both French and pro-war? Or more to the point, couldn't I simply hold a more nuanced position, estimating that the costs of a war probably outweigh the benefits, while also believing that French president Jacques Chirac's hardball diplomacy is as harmful as George W. Bush's?
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Beyond the obvious historical simplification, two false premises shocked me: the idea that France was ungrateful, and the assumption that French gratitude was owed to a specific Bush administration policy rather than to the American heroes of an earlier era.
Indeed, this latter assumption seemed to trivialise the sacrifices of America's greatest generation by reducing them to a cynical bid to secure unquestioning obedience and acquiescence to all American policies. Like every Frenchman, I am certainly grateful to America for the liberation of France. I am certainly grateful that General Patton and the US Third Army (and not the Russians) liberated my grandfather, a resistance fighter working for British intelligence, from the Nazi death camp at Buchenwald. But do I ask Americans to support Chirac's policy in Africa to thank France for its help during the American Revolution?
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This observation saddened me. I already knew it was part of my transatlantic identity to defend America in Paris and Europe here, and never to feel politically at home in either place. But suddenly this wave of cliches and reduction to nationality seemed overwhelming. There was not much I could do if people wanted to see Frenchmen only as appeasers or as peace heroes. Objectivity and nuance seemed lost. This saddened me not really as a French citizen, but rather as a someone who loves America.
THE PRIME MINISTER OF IRAQI KURDISTAN APPEALS TO THE LEFT via the Observer:
Watching the debate on Iraq, I am often perplexed, sometimes frustrated. As a Kurd, I know war is a devastating undertaking and should be questioned. But in the end a fundamental moral argument needs to be made for a war of liberation to save a people from tyranny. Many on the Left ignore the daily reign of terror the Baathist regime inflicts on Iraqis, yet the human rights of Iraqis should also be their cause.
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But some principled people, mainly left-wing, understood our plight. While others funded Saddam, our allies pointed out the inconsistency of calling for democracy in eastern Europe while supporting a murderous dictator in the Middle East.
Where are these friends now? Regrettably, many are denouncing a war that would liberate Iraq. Like those who shunned us in the Eighties, some of our former friends find the martyrdom of the Iraqi people to be an irritant. They avert their eyes from the grisly truth of our suffering, while claiming concern at the human cost of war.
The cost to Iraqis of sparing the Baathist dictatorship is rarely calculated. Iraqis are overlooked by an anti-Americanism that does not understand why we need military action to break our shackles. Some call for civil disobedience to impede the bid to free Iraq. In Iraq, civil disobedience is a death sentence.
CLASSIC. Pack journalism is a cliche, and it's well known that editors daily read the other major papers looking for a story they missed, and that the paper most so read is the NY Times. (And British newspapers are amazingly guilty, in their US coverage, of commonly merely copying American newspaper stories and putting their own spin on them.)
But this stands out as an example of as close to plagiarism as a paper can get without quite being laid open to the charge.
Read The Rest Scale: only if you want to compare and judge.
