Sanely free of McCarthyite calling anyone a "traitor" since 2001!
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I'm underemployed (historically particularly as an editor in book and magazine publishing), recurringly housebound with insanely painful now-sporadic (when I have meds) gout, an enlarged heart, and other health problems, particularly including lifelong recurring severe clinical depression. See here for a major crisis. I'm also sometimes available to some degree as a paid writer or researcher. This is a previous update on my situation & this -- and this from December 19th, 2005 update.
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"The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include With ease, and you beside"
-- Emily Dickinson
"We will pursue peace as if there is no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there is no peace."
-- Yitzhak Rabin
"I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be."
-- Alexander Hamilton
"The stakes are too high for government to be a spectator sport."
-- Barbara Jordan
"Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to
trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule --
and both commonly succeed, and are right."
-- H. L. Mencken
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
"The only completely consistent people are the dead."
-- Aldous Huxley
"I have had my solutions for a long time; but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them."
-- Karl F. Gauss
"Whatever evils either reason or declamation have imputed to extensive empire,
the power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind;
and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices, diffused likewise
the improvements of social life."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his
expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were
respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom."
-- Edward Gibbon
"There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify
the evils, of the present times."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Our youth now loves luxuries. They have bad manners, contempt for authority.
They show disrespect for elders and they
love to chatter instead of exercise.
Children are now tyrants, not the servants, of their households. They
no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
chatter before company, gobble up their food, and tyrannize
their teachers."
-- Socrates
"Before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments."
-- Sidney Hook
"Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness."
-- Sidney Hook
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect
disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest
and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
"Faced with the choice of all the land without a Jewish state or a Jewish state without all the
land, we chose a Jewish state without all the land."
-- David Ben-Gurion
"...the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him
an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this
or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages
to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also
to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing,
with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess
and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminals who do not withstand such
temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the
opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction;
that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion
and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their
ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty,
because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of
judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square
with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil
government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts
against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if
left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has
nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her
natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is
permitted freely to contradict them.
-- Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson
"We don't live just by ideas. Ideas are part of the mixture of customs and practices,
intuitions and instincts that make human life a conscious activity susceptible to
improvement or debasement. A radical idea may be healthy as a provocation;
a temperate idea may be stultifying. It depends on the circumstances. One of the most
tiresome arguments against ideas is that their "tendency" is to some dire condition --
to totalitarianism, or to moral relativism, or to a war of all against all."
-- Louis Menand
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis."
-- Dante Alighieri
"He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers."
-- Henry B. Adams
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the
poor to beg in the streets, steal bread, or sleep under a bridge."
-- Anatole France
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
-- Edmund Burke
"Education does not mean that we have become certified experts in business or mining or botany or journalism or epistemology;
it means that through the absorption of the moral, intellectual, and esthetic inheritance of the race we have come to
understand and control ourselves as well as the external world; that we have chosen the best as our associates both in spirit
and the flesh; that we have learned to add courtesy to culture, wisdom to knowledge, and forgiveness to understanding."
-- Will Durant
"Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is
but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest
winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?"
-- Herman Melville
"The most important political office is that of the private citizen."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"It is an error to suppose that books have no influence; it is a slow influence, like flowing water carving out a canyon,
but it tells more and more with every year; and no one can pass an hour a day in the society of sages and heroes without
being lifted up a notch or two by the company he has kept."
-- Will Durant
"When you write, you’re trying to transpose what you’re thinking into something that is less like an annoying drone and more like a piece of music."
-- Louis Menand
"Sex is a continuum."
-- Gore Vidal
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802.
"The sum of our religion is peace and unanimity, but these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible,
and in many things leave one free to follow his own judgment, because there is great obscurity in many matters, and
man suffers from this almost congenital disease that he will not give in when once a controversy is started, and
after he is heated he regards as absolutely true that which he began to sponsor quite casually...."
-- Desiderius Erasmus
"Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read, and what we must disbelieve?"
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to N. G. Dufief, Philadelphia bookseller, 1814
"We are told that it is only people's objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort,
are 'objectively' aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once. The same argument is applied to Trotskyism. Trotskyists are often credited, at any rate by Communists, with being active and conscious agents of Hitler; but when you point out the many and obvious reasons why this is unlikely to be true,
the 'objectively' line of talk is brought forward again. To criticize the Soviet Union helps Hitler: therefore 'Trotskyism is Fascism'. And when this has been established, the accusation of conscious treachery is usually repeated.
This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people's motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions."
-- George Orwell, "As I Please," Tribune, 8 December 1944
"Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If 'needy' were a turn-on?"
-- "Aaron Altman," Broadcast News
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
-- Lewis Thomas
"To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times?"
-- Cicero
"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."
-- Samuel Johnson, Life Of Johnson
"Very well, what did my critics say in attacking my character? I must read out their affidavit, so to speak, as though they were my legal accusers: Socrates is guilty of criminal meddling, in that he inquires into things below the earth and in the sky, and makes the weaker argument defeat the stronger, and teaches others to follow his example."
-- Socrates, via Plato, The Republic
"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."
-- Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign
"Remember, Robin: evil is a pretty bad thing."
-- Batman
"Being evil is not a full-time job."
-- James Lileks
Gary Farber is now a licensed Double Super-Secret Master Pundit.
He does not always refer to himself in the third person.
Did he mention he was presently single?
The lutefisk is dead. Donate via the donation button on the top left
or I'll shoot this gefilte fish.
No, really, I seriously need the help at present. And I hate asking.
Current Total # of Donations Since Blog Began: 606
Subscribers to date at $5/month: 30 sign-ups; 24 cancellations; Total= 6
Supporter subscribers to date at $25/month: 7 sign-ups; 3 cancellation; Total= 4
Patron subscribers to date at $50/month: 10 sign-ups; 6 cancellations; Total= 4
And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
Farber's First Fundamental of Blogging:
If your idea of making an insightful point is to make fun of people's
names, or refer to them by rilly clever labels such as "The Big Me" or "The Shrub,"
chances are high that I'm not reading your blog. The same applies if you refer
to a group of people by disparaging terms such as "the Donks" or "the pals." (Note: I have to say I don't give that much of a damn any more.)
Farber's Second Fundamental of Blogging:
The more interested you are in scoring a "point" for a political "team," a "side," than in exploring the validity or value of an idea, the less interested I am in what you're saying.
(Note: Partially suspended for the Duration. Later note: forget I ever said this.)
Farber's Third Fundamental of Blogging:
If you see a link on another blog, and use it, credit the blog.
Some places I go:
[weblogs, sites, and columns]
People I've known and still miss include Isaac Asimov, rich brown, Charles Burbee, F. M. "Buzz" Busby, Terry Carr, A. Vincent Clarke, George Alec Effinger,
Bill & Sherry Fesselmeyer, George Flynn, John Milo "Mike" Ford. John Foyster, Jay Haldeman, Chuch Harris, Mike Hinge, Lee Hoffman, Terry Hughes, Damon Knight, Ross Pavlac, Bruce Pelz, Elmer Perdue, Tom Perry,
Larry Propp, Bill Rotsler, Art Saha, Bob Shaw, Martin Smith, Harry Stubbs, Bob Tucker, Harry Warner, Jr., Jack Williamson, Walter A. Willis, Susan Wood, Kate Worley, and Roger Zelazny.
It's just a start.
And She of whom I must write someday.
You Like Me, You Really Like Me
...Darn: I saw that Gary had commented on this thread, and thought: oh. my. god. Perfect storm. Unstoppable cannonball, immovable object.
-- Hilzoy
Guessing that Gary is ignorant of anything that has ever been written down is, in my experience, unwise.
Just saying.
-- Hilzoy
Where would the blogosphere be without the Guardian? Guardian fish-barreling is now a venerable tradition. Yet even within this tradition, I don't believe there has ever been a more extensive and thorough essay than this one, from Gary Farber's fine blog. Gary appears to have examined every single thing that Guardian/Observer columnist Mary Ridell has ever written. He ties it all together, reaches inevitable conclusion. An archive can be a weapon.
-- Dr. Frank
Isn't Gary a cracking blogger, apropos of nothing in particular?
-- Alison Scott
I usually read you and Patrick several times a day, and I always get something from them. You've got great links, intellectually honest commentary, and a sense of humor. What's not to like?
-- Ted Barlow
...writer[s] I find myself checking out repeatedly when I'm in the mood to play follow-the-links. They're not all people I agree with all the time, or even most of the time, but I've found them all to be thoughtful writers, and that's the important thing, or should be.
-- Tom Tomorrow
Amygdala - So much stuff it reminds Unqualified Offerings that UO sometimes thinks of Gary Farber as "the liberal Instapundit." -- Jim Henley
I look at it almost every day. I can't follow all the links, but I read most of your pieces. The blog format really seems to suit you. It also suits me; I am not a news junkie, so having smart people like you ferret out the interesting stuff and leave it where I can find it is wonderful.
-- Lydia Nickerson
Gary is certainly a non-idiotarian 'liberal'...
-- Perry deHaviland
...the thoughtful and highly intelligent Gary Farber... My first reaction was that I definitely need to appease Gary Farber of Amygdala, one of the geniuses of our age.
-- Brad deLong
My friend Gary Farber at Amygdala is the sort of liberal for whom I happily give three cheers. [...] Damned incisive blogging....
-- Midwest Conservative Journal
If I ever start a paper, Clueless writes the foreign affairs column, Layne handles the city beat, Welch has the roving-reporter job, Tom Tomorrow runs the comic section (which carries Treacher, of course). MediaMinded runs the slots - that's the type of editor I want as the last line of defense. InstantMan runs the edit page - and you can forget about your Ivins and Wills and Friedmans and Teepens on the edit page - it's all Blair, VodkaP, C. Johnson, Aspara, Farber, Galt, and a dozen other worthies, with Justin 'I am smoking in such a provocative fashion' Raimondo tossed in for balance and comic relief.
Who wouldn't buy that paper? Who wouldn't want to read it? Who wouldn't climb over their mother to be in it?
-- James Lileks
Gary is a perceptive, intelligent, nice guy. Some of the stuff he comes up with is insightful, witty, and stimulating. And sometimes he manages to make me groan.
-- Charlie Stross
One of my issues with many poli-blogs is the dickhead tone so many bloggers affect to express their sense of righteous indignation. Gary Farber's thoughtful leftie takes on the world stand in sharp contrast with the usual rhetorical bullying. Plus, he likes "Pogo," which clearly attests to his unassaultable good taste.
-- oakhaus.com
Gary Farber is a principled liberal....
-- Bill Quick, The Daily Pundit
I read Amygdala...with regularity, as do all sensible websurfers.
-- Jim Henley, Unqualified Offerings
Okay, he is annoying, but he still posts a lot of good stuff.
-- Avedon Carol, The Sideshow
The only trouble with reading Amygdala is that it makes me feel like such a slacker. That Man Farber's a linking, posting, commenting machine, I tell you!
-- John Robinson, Sore Eyes
Jaysus. I saw him do something like this before, on a thread about Israel. It was pretty brutal. It's like watching one of those old WWF wrestlers grab an opponent's
face and grind away until the guy starts crying. I mean that in a nice & admiring way, you know.
-- Fontana Labs, Unfogged
We read you Gary Farber! We read you all the time! Its just that we are lazy with our blogroll. We are so very very lazy. We are always the last ones to the party but we always have snazzy bow ties.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber you are a genius of mad scientist proportions. I will bet there are like huge brains growin in jars all over your house.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber is the hardest working man in show blog business. He's like a young Gene Hackman blogging with his hair on fire, or something.
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
I bow before the shrillitudinousness of Gary Farber, who has been blogging like a fiend.
-- Ted Barlow, Crooked Timber
Gary Farber only has two blogging modes: not at all, and 20 billion interesting posts a day [...] someone on the interweb whose opinions I can trust....
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
Gary Farber! Jeez, the guy is practically a blogging legend, and I'm always surprised at the breadth of what he writes about.
-- PZ Meyers, Pharyngula
Gary Farber takes me to task, in a way befitting the gentleman he is.
-- Stephen Green, Vodkapundit
BUNIA: Death toll impossible to tell, but slaughter ongoing.
The crash of mortars and crackling gunfire ripped through central Bunia yesterday as a vicious tribal war for the town re-ignited just one day after the arrival of 100 French special force troops, deployed in advance of a joint European peacekeeping force to pacify the Democratic Republic Congo's war-ravaged north eastern capital.
In a virtual re-run of the battle for Bunia last month - when 700 UN peacekeepers stood by as hundreds of civilians were massacred, and 25,000 fled - the French troops remained at their airport barracks, without orders or capacity to intervene.
Thousands of Bunia's terrified residents poured back to the main UN compound they had only recently vacated, lugging their groaning wounded and hundreds of terrified, wailing children with them. But as the storm of bullets and grenades swept across the compound from all sides, this was a fragile refuge. Sprawling on the concrete floors, over 50 Western journalists cowered as bullets thudded into the walls and mortars exploded outside. Having flocked to Bunia in the expectation of seeing a triumphant French intervention, they found themselves depending on Bunia's humiliated Uruguayan UN peacekeepers, who fired not a round in return yesterday.
Anyone who applauded the trivial UN movement can now count the slaughter of these people on their conscience. Anyone else knew this was what would happen.
Write your politicians. Call for a major UN force, with major US support.
Stop the slaughter. Stop the self-satisfaction. Do something that counts.
Stop it. Call for stopping it. Spend time calling for stopping it. Do it now. Stop blogging and reading and act.
MUGABE CONTINUES TOcrush dissent, violently and ruthlessly, in Zimbabwe.
Once again, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has been arrested and charged with treason. (He's already in the middle of a [bogus] trial for treason!)
THE FIRST FRENCH TROOPS have arrived in Bunia, Congo.
All told, roughly 100 French troops were seen arriving this morning. Their commander declined to divulge their number, saying only that their first responsibilities would be to prepare for the deployment of the total force, secure the airport and coordinate with the United Nations peacekeepers already on the ground.
[...]
Also outstanding is the question of whether the new force will do anything to stanch the fighting that goes on across the province, outside Bunia. Even this week there were reports of a fresh massacre just southeast of here; United Nations peacekeepers said they did not have the means to investigate what happened, let alone stop it.
Already, the commander of the United Nations peacekeeping force here, Col. Daniel Vollot, has said the force has not come with disarmament as a goal. The commander of the Hema militia has happily echoed that sentiment.
1400 troops might be able to secure this one town; even that is doubtful. The rest of Congo, apparently, can go die.
ON GROWING UP A NAVY BRATby "Sgt. Stryker." Great, very personal, stuff.
I always resented my father for being gone all the time. For a few years, I felt more than resentful. I felt betrayed. I felt he cared more about his job then he did about us. Trying to explain to a 10 year old the reason why his father was always gone must've been tough, as all the adults preferred to resort to bullshit rather than the truth. But the adults always lived in a bullshit world.
I HAVE ONLY ONE RULE: not more than one Starship-Troopers-are-coming post per month. Here's this month's.
Which is an excuse to link to Jim MacDonald's classic Red Mikereview of ST.
Things are bad and getting worse, as a mob of Mobile Infantry types mill about, getting in each others' lines of fire, screaming things like "Run for your life!" or words to that effect. It isn't until later in the film that you discover that milling about is the only formation they practice regularly, and aimless running is their chief tactical mode.
Police are determined to deal with an alarming trend towards children becoming addicted to a violent internet game.
An internet cafe has banned two 13-year-old "junkies", who, it was claimed, had broken into 40 taxis over six weeks to pay for habits which culminated in a four-day gaming binge.
The 24-hour Wellington cafe, E-Joy, told police the boys had occasionally slept there after falling asleep playing Counter-Strike, one of the world's most popular online tactical war games.
[...]
The pair were not typical criminal teens and had loving two-parent families, friends and schools that cared about them, he said.
Yet one had not been seen by his parents since Monday when he disappeared wearing his school uniform and was picked up, filthy, exhausted and bedraggled by Mr Callander on Thursday night.
Both would need treatment for their addictions, he said.
[...]
Though the problem is new to police, internet sites devoted to Counter-Strike reveal that gamers have been concerned about addiction for some time.
The Counter-Strike New Zealand website is full of messages and articles from gamers claiming to be addicted, including teenagers who say they have skipped school to play.
You, of course, are addicted to reading blogs, you filthy junkie, you. It's so, because I just said so, which makes it so.
Read The Rest Scale: 3 out of 5 to experience your eyeballs rolling so much they'll fall out of your head.
Since doing wireless internet is the main point of the new chip, the inability to do secure Virtual Private Networks is a flaw the size of the Grand Canyon in the freaking things.
Read The Rest Scale: depending on your interest in this.
No, not another dog story; it's the British/Euro Mars probe, which took off successfully, going where no dog has ever gone before. May it successfully pee on Mars, via Mars Express.
(Will there eventually be a joint on Mars serving alcoholic beverages and shaped like a large, brown, rectangle, called "Mars Bar"? And, is there also a "Mars Local"?)
Read The Rest Scale: 2.5 out of 5 for feel-good news.
WHATCHA' LOOKIN' AT?: Dogs developed the ability to watch our faces for clues as to what to do during the domestication process of the species, over fifteen thousand years, a study of their comparative behavior with human-raised wolves shows.
The study didn't address the known fact that this process works in reverse.
"What's that, Lassie?"
"Woof!"
"You say Timmy fell down a well by the old Simpson place?"
"Wroof!"
"Good girl! Let's go get him!"
Read The Rest Scale: 2.5 out of 5 for a non-shaggy dog story.
THE AMAZING GECKO-MAN. How did Stan Lee and Steve Ditko get it so wrong?
A new material covered with nanoscopic hairs that mimic those found on geckos' feet could allow people to walk up to sheer surfaces and across ceilings, say researchers.
Andre Geim and colleagues at the UK's Manchester University say covering a person's hand with the material would be enough to let them stick to the ceiling. The tape could be detached from the surface by simply peeling it slowly away from one side.
[...]
Geckos can climb even the most slippery surface with ease and hang from glass using a single toe. The secret behind this extraordinary climbing skill lies with millions of tiny keratin hairs - called setae - on the surface of each foot. An intermolecular phenomenon known as van der Waals force is exerted by each of these hairs. Although the force is individually miniscule, the millions of hairs collectively produce a powerful adhesive effect.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University recently announced that they had made synthetic setae that exert a similar force. But Geim's team has now gone further by demonstrating a material made of millions of such artificial hairs.
A sticky issue.
Read The Rest Scale: 2.5 out of 5 for more detail.
In the first mathematical analysis of Bill O'Reilly ever done, the Review has incontrovertibly proved what was previously believed only anecdotally: O'Reilly is a bully and a jerk. The study examined O'Reilly's interview [sic] with Jacob Sullum who has written an important new book on drugs, "Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use." Using the advanced technology of Microsoft's Word Count, the Review determined that Sullum only got in 35 more words than the interviewer, O'Reilly. O'Reilly got in the longest statements - 89 and 104 words - while Sullum in 35 exchanges only managed to say more than 50 words (a little less than a half minute) on three occasions. In 42.85% of the exchanges Sullum only managed to get in five words or less.
Ironically, the longest statement of the interview - by O'Reilly - began this way:
"We got -- hey, Mr. Sullum, this is a discussion, all right. You let me get my points in. I'll let you get yours in, all right. Let's get that straight up. . . "
Up to that point, the interviewee had only managed to get in five more words than the host.
The study also found that while Sullum interrupted O'Reilly seven times, the host interrupted the guest 12 times, providing such useful additions as:
O'REILLY: Pinheads like you are encouraging intoxication...
At the end, O'Reilly - as he often does - graciously told Sullum;
O'REILLY: Look, you irresponsible libertines cause so much damage to this society, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. I'll give you the last word.
In fact, not only did O'Reilly managed to get in four more last thoughts but they added up to 33 more words than Sullum was able to squeeze in.
Contrary to his image as some kind of conservative ideologue, O'Reilly is just a long-winded cab driver with a TV show and no real interest in policy, ideas, or facts. (At one point he declared that the government statistics everyone in the drug policy world relies on, regardless of their policy preferences, are "just your opinion.)
CONSISTENTLY WIDE-EYED AND CREDULOUS is how Christopher Hitchens finds Bob Woodward in his review of Bush At War. And that's one of the nicest things he has to say about Woodward. Lovely.
Oscillating between that zenith and that nadir, the doyen of capital insiders has usually settled for a hybrid of investigation, damage control, stenography, and the megaphone.
[...]
It has long been possible, even in the outermost circles of the journalistic trade, to guess who talked to Woodward. One looks for the passages of sycophancy and works backward from there. Thus we can tell that George Tenet was helpful as soon as he is described as the "hefty, outgoing son of Greek immigrants" -- even before we read that he always grasped the root of the matter.
[...]
Another way to be certain that a senior source cooperated is to read Woodward ventriloquizing his or her profoundest inner thoughts. Thus we can be sure that Colin Powell is on board as soon as we learn that he got on a plane in Peru shortly after the aggressors struck on September 11 and "started to scribble notes to himself."
[...]
Richard Armitage must have talked freely to Woodward, because he turns out to be "an outspoken, muscular, barrel-chested man who deplored fancy-pants, pin-striped diplomatic talk." Furthermore, "Even before they took over the State Department, Powell and Armitage talked several times each day. 'I would trust him with my life, my children, my reputation, everything I have,' Powell said of Armitage." In theory, this husky male bonding should have been qualified just a little bit by Powell's dogmatic insistence on fancy-pants, pin-striped diplomatic talk. But since precisely such verbiage is the stuff of moral and political heroism in the remainder of the narrative, this thought, too, is prevented from emerging.
I think we may be sure that Condoleezza Rice was a willing accomplice in Woodward's enterprise, and not just because she is depicted at Camp David on the first traumatic September weekend, leading the team after dinner "in a sing-along of American standards including 'Old Man River,' 'Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen' and 'America The Beautiful.'" Wish I'd been there to see it. (Who guessed that so many Republicans knew the words to the first two?)
Literal rendition may be the price that journalism pays for access, and every reporter in Washington knows that some massaging of sources is necessary from time to time. It's not just the abjectness of Woodward, however, that causes the gorge to rise.
[...]
But these flimsy paragraphs call attention to a rather peculiar fact. Apparently nobody senior at the Department of Defense was willing to talk much to Woodward. Surely this is something of a shortcoming in a book titled Bush at War.
[...]
So it's not just that Bush at War fails to prepare its readers even for a simple analysis of what has already happened, or that it occludes one side of a critical argument. The book does not try to be objective. It contains shifty untruths from those who collude, and represses basic factual material, gleanable from aides or from the public record, from the side of those who do not. It despises history and, as a partially ironic consequence, is outpaced by the present. It purports to be hard-headed, but is consistently wide-eyed and credulous. Pseudo-objectivity in the nation's capital is now overripe for regime change.
Hitchens is as sharp, and undogmatic, as ever. Read The Rest Scale: 4.5 out of 5 for more, including a nice parenthetical swipe at Henry Kissinger (of course), dicing and slicing of Colin Powell, jabs at Donald Rumsfeld, and some interesting observations about Paul Wolfowitz, among other bits and pieces.
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WHOA. Keanu Reeves is reportedly giving fifty million of the seventy million pounds he will earn from Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions to the special effects team and costumers.
And it's not the first time the Beirut-born star has shown his jaw-dropping benevolence. While shooting the films in Australia he amazed the team of stuntmen by giving them each a £6,000 Harley Davidson motorcycle. And the actor, whose sister has leukaemia, has also channelled millions into cancer research.
His gift to the Matrix series' 29 behind-the-scenes whiz-kids will see each of them receiving £1.75 million.
SENSE FROM CANADA. LUNACY FROM THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT.
Last week, Canada's governing Liberal Party introduced a bill that would decriminalize the possession of up to 15 grams of marijuana. "Cannabis consumption is first and foremost a health matter," Justice Minister Martin Couchon declared. "It should not result in criminal penalties." Under the new plan, a minor pot offense would be punished with a citation and a fine, much like a speeding ticket.
The bill is strongly opposed by the Bush administration, which has threatened to step up drug searches at the border, creating traffic jams and delaying Canadian exports. "It is my job to protect Americans from dangerous threats," John P. Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, warned last year, "and right now, Canada is a dangerous staging area for some of the most dangerous marijuana."
Fortunately, we instead produce completely undangerous tobacco and alcohol.
[...]
Meanwhile, the United States has escalated its war on pot. The number of marijuana arrests now approaches three-quarters of a million annually, largely for simple possession. More people are in prison for marijuana crimes today than ever before. Dozens, if not hundreds, are serving life sentences for nonviolent pot offenses.
We're all ever so much safer. And our society is made truly more just.
Small historic note:
Oddly enough, the first American law about marijuana, passed by the Virginia Assembly in 1619, required every household to grow it. Hemp was considered a valuable commodity.
[...] Moral condemnations of pot smokers and long prison sentences were revived by President Ronald Reagan, as a part of that era's culture wars. Mr. Reagan's first drug czar, Carlton E. Turner, felt that marijuana use was linked to anti-authority behavior and insisted pot could turn young men into homosexuals.
(Note for the reader: I've not touched the stuff, myself, in many years.)
IF a Brooklyn man stumbled while walking on Fulton Street in the morning, so the old saying went, he could read about it that evening in The Eagle. Now, more than 100 years later, everyone else can read about it, too. They can also read about every grisly murder, every women's suffrage rally and every new corset style to grace the pages of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the borough's leading newspaper in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
[...]
Founded in 1841, the Eagle had become, by the Civil War, the most widely read afternoon newspaper in America, according to "The Eagle and Brooklyn," a 1974 book by Raymond A. Schroth. The paper won four Pulitzer Prizes -Nelson Harding was honored two years in a row, 1927 and 1928, for editorial cartooning - and was noted for its opposition to the borough's 1898 consolidation with New York City.
JAPANESE MILITARISM: Endless articles like this have been appearing for years, and continue to appear.
The former empire of the sun is re-arming and shedding some of its self-imposed anti-war legislation, to the benefit of the US and its allies, writes Jonathan Watts.
[...]
After half a century of waging peace, Japan will be able to start preparing for war later this month when parliament is expected to pass the nation's first law countenancing the possibility of an enemy attack.
Japan famously has one of the best equipped but least useful armies in the world. This is because its military power is deliberately entangled in a constitutional net designed to avoid any repeat of the adventurism that led to the invasion of China in 1937 and the assault on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
But those legal restraints - put in place after the second world war - have been steadily unravelling since the start of the 1990s and they will slip further within the next two weeks with the expected passage of three war contingency laws.
People keep applauding this, utterly oblivious to Japan's many centuries' history of virulent militarism, and continued engrained racism and sense of racial superiority.
Fools.
Japanese pacifism was forced upon them by foreign occupation, and never even pushed militant radical nationalism anything approaching entirely underground. Japan continues to refuse to acknowledge its war crimes in Asia.
It might be safe to allow for increased expression of Japanese military power after another century of reformation; allowing it now is, in the long term, dangerous.
To call for it is irresponsible and ahistoric. Japanese nationalists are not on the side of the US, Europe, or the West. They are only on their own side.
DEVIL WORSHIPPERS are being turned up throughout the Mideast. How do you know who they are? They listen to heavy metal music.
In Morocco last March, 14 supposed "devil worshippers" received jail sentences ranging from three months to one year for "undermining the Muslim faith" and "possessing objects contrary to good morals".
Nine of the men, who were aged between 21 and 36, belonged to local heavy metal bands - Nekros, Infected Brain and Reborn - and the rest were fans. Among the objects exhibited in court as being contrary to good morals was a black T-shirt with heavy metal symbols on it. This prompted the judge to comment that "normal people go to concerts in a suit and tie".
[...]
In Beirut a few weeks ago, plainclothes police raided the Acid nightclub looking for "devil worshippers".
Lebanese devil worshippers are easily recognised. According to one security official, they are young men with long hair and beards who "listen to hard rock music, drink mind-altering alcoholic cocktails and take off their black shirts, dancing bare-chested".
A report in the Lebanese newspaper the Daily Star said the raid - in which about 10 people were arrested - was personally supervised by the interior minister, Elias Murr.
At least 100 people died over the weekend in a Congolese fishing village as rival ethnic militias continued their battles in the country's troubled north-eastern region, a militia spokesman and a Ugandan military commander said today.
Brigadier Kale Kaihura, who commanded some 6,000 Ugandan troops in Congo until their withdrawal early last month, put the death toll at about 100. He said that Lendu tribal fighters armed with machetes and rifles had attacked Chomia village in north-east Congo, on the Congo-Uganda border, on Saturday.
He said the dead were members of the Hema tribe, including women and children. He said dozens of others were wounded, and some were ferried across the lake for treatment in Ugandan hospitals.
Kisembo Bitamara - a spokesman for Pusic, a faction of the Hema fighters based in Chomia - told the Reuters news agency that 352 Hema men, women and children had been killed by Lendu fighters backed by Congolese government troops.
[...]
Mr Bitamara said that the hundreds of Lendu attackers were armed with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades as well as the more traditional machetes and rifles. He said this indicated weapons had been supplied by the Congolese army, which has begun to send troops into the Ituri region that is nominally controlled by rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda.
I repeat: 1200 French and South African troops can do nothing against this. The slaughter continues, and the world watches.
Other UN officials said Major Sarwat Oran of Jordan and Captain Siddon Davis Banda of Malawi were captured and tortured before being shot in the head. Their genitals were cut off, the officials said.
Fortunately:
Mr Mounoubai said a report on the incident would be sent to UN headquarters in New York.
Thank goodness for the UN!
And the US does nothing.
Additionally:
Mr Mounoubai said the evidence of cannibalism in the fighting for Bunia included "photographs and information" collected by investigators which would be released "in due time".
The United States, the United Kingdom, and the United Nations also have to share the blame for the severity of the crisis in Ituri. The Bush Administration's refusal to support MONUC's request for extra troops last year delayed deployments in Ituri for months. When Washington finally did give approval for an extra 3,000 MONUC soldiers back in December, it insisted that the deployment be split into two and conditioned to additional reports from the Secretary General - ensuring it takes far too long for any boots to hit the ground where they are most urgently needed.
The Hema. The Lendu. Cambodia. Rwanda. Bosnia. The Jews. The world watches. The world does nothing. The leaders of the richest eight nations meet at Evian, and do nothing.
There is no excuse.
Read The Rest Scale: 6 out of 5.
ADDENDUM: Last week, the usually brilliant and perspicuous Brad deLong wrote:
Gary Farber says I'm a bad person for not paying sufficient attention to the atrocity that is the Congo.
Of course, I said nothing of the kind.
FURTHER ADDENDUM: In comments below, Brad flagellates himself. Brad deLong is a bad person for doing this. (Amygdala is always willing to help out bloggers with clear self-esteem issues.) (No, wait. Amygdala is actually rarely willing to offer such help. We will merely do so when it tickles our fancy. We have a very ticklish fancy, however.)
EVERYONE LOVES BUFFY. I've passed on blogging on a zillion Buffy memorials, primarily because they largely seemed too repetitive and individually not outstanding.
But I'm sufficiently bemused by the online editor of The Weekly Standarddeclaring:
"BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER" is the best show in the history of television.
...to mention it. He explains why, and gives his Ten Best Episodes List.
CLUSTER BOMB MUNITIONS in Iraq. The Observer has a PDF map.
The map, dated 13 May, was produced by the Humanitarian Operations Centre based in Kuwait, which is staffed by military personnel from the US, Britain and Kuwait and is based on the latest intelligence assessment of the danger of unexploded bombs.
It was given to selected Non-Governmental Organisations tasked with providing humanitarian aid to the country. The map depicts a mass of green circles, diamonds and rectangles, each showing an individual site of what is described as an 'explosive location'.
In early May, I agreed to hand over a fantastic interpreter I had been working with to a colleague who could offer him long-term employment, as I would be leaving the country at the end of the month. I needed a new interpreter to fill the gap for two weeks or so, and the colleague mentioned that he had just met a smart and friendly guy named Salam. I quickly traced Salam to the Sheraton Hotel. Salam -- this is his real first name -- was sitting in a chair in the lobby, reading Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle. I knew, at that moment, that I would hire him.
ZIMBABWE: Thomas Nephew asks us to contact the govenment of Zimbabwe to ask them to respect human rights, particularly during the upcoming planned protests; he supplies e-mail, phone, and fax, contact information.
I frankly expect this to do no good at all, but one never knows, and it's probably not likely to hurt, so take a few moments to do so.
Thomas also points out Doris Lessing's excellent March piece on Mugabe in the NY Review of Books, which I somehow missed the first time around, and I join in urging reading this scathing, passionate, accurate, indictment of Mugabe's petty, incompetent, dictorial, rule, which has near-destroyed the country that was once "the jewel of Africa."
One particularly wrenching note:
The villagers joked about their oppressors, and continued to dream about better times, which they were only too ready to help bring into being by their own efforts. In the early years, promised free primary and secondary and university education, they were helping to build schools, unpaid, though soon free education or, in some places, any education at all would be a memory. For education, they did much better under the whites.
Denied a decent education, or any, they hungered for books. At least two surveys said that what they wanted was novels, particularly classics, science fiction, poetry, historical fiction, fairy stories, and while at the beginning these were books that were supplied, soon rocketing inflation made it impossible to buy anything but the cheapest and locally published instruction books. How to Run a Shop. How to Keep Poultry. Car Repairs. That kind of thing. A box of even elementary books may transform a village. A box of books, sent by a humanitarian organization, may be, often is, greeted with tears. One man complained, "They taught us how to read, but now there are no books." Three years ago a Penguin classic cost more than a month's wage.
But even with books that were so far from what was originally dreamed of, in no time study classes began, liter-acy classes, math lessons, citizenship classes. The appearance of a box of books released (will release again?) astonishing energies. A village sunk in apathy will come to life overnight. This is not a people who wait for handouts: a little encouragement, help, sets them off on all kinds of projects. In January I heard from a member of a book team with which I'm associated that distributes books in villages, "I was out this week. I was talking about books to people who haven't eaten for three days."
BROWNER BUNNY: I reported earlier on the reaction at Cannes to Brown Bunny, which was met with historically unprecedented rejection. Now creator Vincent Gallo is fighting back.
Gallo says Screen International made up his quotes.
"I never apologized for anything in my life," Gallo tells the New York Post. "I like the movie. I had 100 percent creative and financial control of it and if I didn't like it, I would have changed it."
With an added dose of vitriol, Gallo went on to attack Ebert, saying, "The only thing I'm sorry about is putting a curse on Roger Ebert's colon. If a fat pig like Roger Ebert doesn't like my movie, then I'm sorry for him."
In an added touch of gracefulness:
"I'm sorry I'm not gay or Jewish, so I don't have a special interest group of journalists that support me," Gallo says. "I'm sorry for a lot of things, but I'm not sorry for making this movie."
Critics also remain unrepentant.
Read The Rest Scale: 1 out of 5.
ADDENDUM: Here is an account sympathetic to Gallo.
As expected, the F.C.C. said a single company can now own television stations that reach 45 percent of American households, up from 35 percent.
[...]
The commission also largely ended a bad on joint ownership of a newspaper and a television station in the same city. The provision lifts all cross-ownership restrictions in markets with nine or more television stations.
[...]
The rule changes also make it easier for a company to own two television stations in more markets, and three stations in the biggest cities, like New York and Los Angeles.
As a blogger, of course, I shall benefit immensely as I am "competition" to tv stations, providing much needed balance of views. Hurrah for me.
POWELL-STRAW TRANSCRIPTS reveal doubts about intelligence.
Jack Straw and his US counterpart, Colin Powell, privately expressed serious doubts about the quality of intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons programme at the very time they were publicly trumpeting it to get UN support for a war on Iraq, the Guardian has learned.
Their deep concerns about the intelligence - and about claims being made by their political bosses, Tony Blair and George Bush - emerged at a private meeting between the two men shortly before a crucial UN security council session on February 5.
Ya Allah have mercy on our souls. The old state owned Internet center in Adil district has been taken over by anarchists and they are offering internet access for FREE. You just need to dial up a number, no password, no special settings. Whoever heard of anyone doing that?
[...]
Yesterday they put up a piece of paper that said: "we are happy to announce that you can get free internet access by dialing up this number". A small little paper on the notice board. The telephone network is not fully operational, certain districts don't have phones at all, but as I wrote earlier many of the exchanges that have not been destroyed or looted have been linked together. You will need to keep dialing for an hour to get thru but it works, I tried it.
Not a million bad things could have wiped the grin off my face when I read that little note.
[...]
Let me make a suggestion. Do not assume, not even for a second, that because you read the blog you know who I am or who my parents are. And you are definitely not entitled to be disrespectful. Not everything that goes on in this house ends up on the blog, so please go play Agatha Christy somewhere else.
My mother, a sociologist who was very happy in pursuing her career at the ministry of education decided to give up that career when she had to choose between becoming Ba’ath party member and quitting her job, she became a housewife. My father, a very well accomplished economist made the same decision and decided to become a farmer instead.
You are being disrespectful to the people who have put the first copy of George Orwell’s 1984 in my hands, a heavy read for a 14 year old with bad English. But that banned book started a process and gave me the impulse to look at the world I live in a different way.
[G]o fling the rubbish at someone else.
Have I told you that my father agreed to act as the mediator in the surrendering process between a number of Iraqi government officials and the American administration here? He is a man with sound moral judgment and people listen to his advice. People at the American administration and many of the new political parties had asked him for consultation.
Did I tell you about the time when one of Bremer's aides asked him what the difference between a tribal sheikh and a mosque sheikh is? They send them thousands of miles to govern us here and then ask such questions.
Did I tell you about his unending optimism in what the Americans can achieve here if they were given time? He is so much less of a skeptic than I am, we had our shouty arguments a number of times since the appearance of the Americans on our theatre of events.
You see, there is a lot that I have not told you about, and I don't see an obligation to do so. You all hide behind your blog names and keep certain bits of your life private.
I think the things that were said in the email above and on other sites were out of line.
There is more[.]
[...]
There is no way to “minimize” the contribution of the USA in removing saddam. The USA waged a friggin' war, how could you "minimize" a war. I have said this before: if it weren't for the intervention of the US, Iraq would have seen saddam followed by his sons until the end of time. But excuse me if I didn’t go out and throw flowers at the incoming missiles. As for the second point, I don't think anyone has the right to throw cluster bombs in civilian areas.
THE HORROR. THE HORROR. The online game Shadowbane was hacked.
The horror, as horror so often does, began slowly … almost imperceptibly.
Late Tuesday evening, little things suddenly started to go very wrong in the virtual world of Shadowbane, a popular online multiplayer game.
Some players noticed that their money and weapons had suddenly vanished. A few whispered that tonight the monsters somehow seemed slightly bigger and meaner.
And then all hell broke loose.
Shadowbane had been hacked by several of its players. But unlike standard game hacks, where players gift themselves with super strength, health or wealth, these hackers managed to completely alter the rules of Shadowbane -- turning a suddenly wrathful game loose on its players.
"At first, players started speculating that there was a really bad bug in the game code," player Tim Wheating said. "Then we realized that somehow an insane god had taken control of our world and was out to kill us all."
[...]
he population of an entire Shadowbane town was forcibly moved to the bottom of the sea, where they drowned. City guards turned feral and attacked town residents. Mobs of never-before-seen superpowerful creatures, seemingly spontaneously spawned from the ether, began to prowl the streets unchecked, killing characters in the most painful way possible.
[...]
Mike Gontelli, a late arrival to the game that evening, said that when he arrived in Shadowbane "there were hundreds of tombstones. New players were being beaten and tortured. Newbie blood was flowing like a river. I knew it wasn't real, but it was oddly terrifying."
He added, "I've been playing online games for a few years. There are always some hackers hanging around who have figured out how to give themselves special powers. But I have never, ever seen or heard of a game going this deeply berserk."
Hilarious. And a taste of the potential for the future when online games have evolved further, with richer graphics, until we get to something like a holodeck, or, indeed, direct brain-jacking.
Read The Rest Scale: 2.5 out of 5 for more detail.
Dr. Ilya Prigogine, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977 for insights into how life could arise in apparent defiance of the classical laws of physics, died on Wednesday in Brussels. He was 86.
The second law of thermodynamics states that in any isolated physical system, order inevitably dissolves into decay. But Dr. Prigogine showed that in a system powered by an energy source -- the Earth bathed in light and heat from the Sun, for example — structures can evolve and become more complex.
"It showed a mechanism by which life could exist in the physical world," said Dr. Linda E. Reichl, director of the research center at the University of Texas at Austin that is named after Dr. Prigogine.
[...]
Dr. Prigogine's mathematical models could also be applied to problems as disparate as the growth of cities and the dynamics of traffic jams, laying down the foundation for a field now known as complexity.
In an interview in 1977 after the announcement of his Nobel Prize, Dr. Prigogine explained his research in terms of an analogy with two towns, one walled off from the outside world, the other a nexus of commerce. The first town, he said, represents the closed system of classical physics and chemistry, which must decay according to the second law of thermodynamics. The second town is able to grow and become more complex because of its interactions with the surrounding environment.
Here is a nice autobiographical sketch he once wrote.
More than 100 Israeli Arabs toured the Auschwitz death camp alongside Israeli Jews on Tuesday, in a visit aimed at deepening Arab understanding of Jewish suffering during the Holocaust.
Seated by the ruins of the main Auschwitz crematorium, the group of 120 Arabs and 130 Jews from Israel listened to the testimony of survivor Shlomo Venezia, 79, now living in Rome, whose mother, sister, uncles and aunts perished at Auschwitz, the Nazis' largest death camp.
"It's such a powerful experience to be here that I cannot speak," said Nujeidat Shafi, a 46-year-old Arab from Israel's Galilee region.
[...]
The group of Israeli Arabs included intellectuals, professionals and businessmen, most in their 40s. About 200 young Jews and Arabs from France are accompanying the group on the visit, which continues Wednesday.
"We came here in order to know what happened exactly in order to express our sympathy and solidarity with the Jewish people," said Awwad Nawaf, 57, a teacher who lives in Nazareth. "We hope this will help us and the Jews to live in good neighborhood, and to understand each other. We hope it can help stop the bloodshed and the cruelty."
Needless to say, this is a Very Good Thing, despite being, of course, but a small step.
Read The Rest Scale: 3 out of 5 for a bit more. (Via Eve Tushnet.)
Dr. Frank remains one of the sanest political voices I know, and so I endorse the movement. Since I recommend daily checking of Dr. Frank. And listening to his songs is also a fine enhancement of your life.
You'll recall that she is the opposition leader who has spent most of the past decade under house arrest, after winning elections in 1990, after which the ruling junta of Myanmar (Burma) refused to turn over power, and arrested her, releasing her only less than a year ago.
International expressions of concern have followed the the arrest of Burma's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and closure of her pro-democracy party headquarters in Rangoon.
Burma's ruling military junta said she was taken into "protective custody" after clashes overnight between her supporters and pro-government protesters.
More than a dozen members of her entourage were also being held, officials said.
Four people died and 50 were injured in the violence, according to the military.
