ApsnyBlog— when the Akashic Records give you a busy signal...

You might be a blogger...

2006-09-02T02:50:00.000-07:00

Listen in on HTML Conversations!
Hear INTERNET FACTS!
Find Out if YOU are Pajamas Media Material!

Take the test!

You learned typing...
(a) Before World War II
(b) at home fooling with your siblings' notebook computer
(c) In seventh grade summer school
(d) typing up appeals to your felony morals conviction

You learned HTML coding...
(a) In a class
(b) on the job
(c) while in therapy
(d) from the aliens after the anal probe

Opinions arise in your brain...
(a) like mushrooms sprouting on a pile of manure
(b) like crocus blooms bursting through a late snow
(c) as rose petals falling gently from a cut bloom
(d) like poop from a backed up sewer

Spelling for you is...
(a) a constant challenge; you need a dictionary close by.
(b) an infrequent problem; you won a spelling bee as a kid.
(c) Thank God for splee chekcrs.
(d) who cairs? If there worried about spelling, read somthing else

When you try to write, grammar...
(a) should always be direct and uncomplicated.
(b) should define the most elegant expression.
(c) always is the servant of clear logic.
(d) gets you cookies and milk when you're sleepy.

People last chose you because of your ideas and opinions...
(a) when you ran for 7th grade class president
(b) when you pledged in college
(c) when you stood for city council
(d) when the other cell block prisoners needed a rep for hostage negotiations

The last time a Congressional representative quoted you...
(a) it was from your valedictory speech
(b) it was from your application for asylum
(c) it was from an editorial you wrote on pending legislation
(d) it was from the confession thrown out by the D.A.

The first time you critiqued the decisions of a judge...
(a) was in re: Plessy v. Ferguson
(b) was in 10th grade civics class
(c) was in your first year of law school
(d) the judge tacked an additional six months on your DUI sentence

When you offer your opinions in a public forum...
(a) you take pleasure in the ensuing conversation
(b) you are wary of debate and dispute
(c) authorities cite your ideas for sources, and run with them
(d) authorities cite you for contempt, and you run from them.

Your neighbors come to you...
(a) seeking wisdom and counsel
(b) seeking a good listener to sort out their own ideas
(c) seeking the power tools they loaned you last year
(d) seeking their farm animals you like to date

To set up a website...
(a) you paid a monthly fee to AOL
(b) you learned software and got a job with an ISP
(c) you drive around with a Wi-Fi seeker, and use other folks' internet access
(d) you funded your world-class internet porn network with drug money

The decline of traditional Mainstream Media...
(a) is long overdue, to your way of thinking
(b) underscores for you the urgency of evolving the blogosphere
(c) wouldn't remotely affect your alcohol consumption or bowling league
(d) will give you a free hand in the Balkans

When the local servers go down for more than a few hours...
(a) you notice a definite weight gain from compulsive noshing
(b) you have to work offline, but you can use "sneaker.net"
(c) your clients are on the phone constantly asking YOU to fix things
(d) you are able to emerge from your hidey hole without fear of detection by the "others" as long as you add an extra layer of foil to your beanie.

If you answered
Mostly A's - Good Reader, occasionally with a helpful comment to add
Mostly B's - Blogger Material but... well, keep your day job.
Mostly C's - PJM will probably already be having their lawyers draft an offer
Mostly D's - You are an escapee from Demokratischer Untergrund.

Maybe It's Not Too Late

2006-08-14T21:48:00.000-07:00

In case you've had the horrible feeling lately that Western culture is circling the drain, consider four different arrests in the news of the last week.

• In each case, young Islamic Males have been arrested and questioned with as few as 80 and as many as ONE THOUSAND “throw-away” cellular phones, which do not require identification for purchase or use. In one case, they also were carrying a laptop computer (of course that’s no crime, unless it wasn’t a Mac...), and in another case, the Young Islamic Males were found to have recorded a number of photos and video of sections of the five-mile long Mackinac Narrows Bridge.

• When stopped, the Young Islamic Males had been removing the phones from their sealed packages, removing the re-charge units, and separating the battery packs.

So here are four different groups of Young Islamic Males in widely separated parts of the U.S., each in possession of a substantial number of disposable cell phones of a type known to have provided chips used extensively as the remote triggering element for “Improvised” explosive devices – the IED’s that are killing hundreds of civilians and tens of U.S. soldiers every month in Iraq.

And for each of these groups of Young Islamic Males, the story being advanced is that the cell phone purchases were completely innocent, they were intended for private resale... just the American Dream of private enterprise and some sort of return on their investment.

What a crock of steaming bowel contents.

These cack-handed turdburglers are going to really make Jihadis look dumb.

Let’s see if I got this straight... They’ve broken the seal on all the packages, pulled out the phones, discarded most of the recharging units, and separated the battery packs from the phones...

... But they say they intend to sell the phones to other private buyers!

For actually more than they paid for ‘em????

I’m trying to imagine what sort of person is smart enough to be allowed out of the house to *AND* yet STUPID enough to want to buy a phone which has been ripped out of it’s blisterpak, no recharge unit, no battery pack, for more than the damn phone cost in the first place.

When ANYONE can buy the damn thing, no questions asked, over the counter, ANYWAY!!!!!

On the face of it, to suggest this is anything but a deliberate effort to acquire remote-trigger chips for IEDs, is a sneering insult to any reader’s intelligence.

There are two elements of this farce that provide at least a little tingle of encouragement that people are waking up. First, store managers, clerks, AND law enforcement officers have shed the Political Correctness shackles enough to act on their suspicions and go ahead and detain for questioning people who clearly are doing something that warrants a closer look. Secondly, the news reports even in the Mainstream Alleged News Media are going ahead and identifying the detained persons as Young Islamic Males, without having to wait two full weeks or more to release that important datum.

"Rescue Worker" My Butt...

2006-08-14T21:45:00.000-07:00

This is the text of a letter I sent to AP in protest...

Monday, 14 August 2006

Associated Press has a slideshow on various websites today, featuring Salam Daher, narrated by AP’s Lauren Frayer. Salam Daher is the infamous “Green Helmet Dude” whom I have watched directing camera operators, bystanders, and posing workers and corpses in a German newsreel. But Lauren Frayer insists on accepting at face value his claims that he is merely a civilian Lebanese civil defense worker who just happens to have arrived early at several particularly photogenic carnage sites because of his “civil defense job” placed him near the incoming phone call for assistance.

I’m sorry, but Ms. Frayer is too late to pass off this theatrical stage-manager as any sort of “rescue” worker. This man is nothing more than a ghoul, using corpses that in some instances even appear to have been trucked in from some other location to be used simply because they are more appropriate to the narrative he wishes to convey.

In footage he probably would prefer to suppress, he is seen CLEARLY moving a child’s body from one litter to another for no medical reason. The patient was DEAD! There is no benefit to the patient in being transferred from one litter to another, or in being pulled out of the ambulance, laid on the ground, placed on another litter, and having the blanket arranged and the head turned to face the camera. There is nothing of any “rescue” functionality in Salam Daher’s shoving litter bearers from between the corpse and the camera. There is no immediately obvious civil defense service or victim assistance rendered in Salam Daher’s approaching the camera, giving instructions to keep filming, zoom in for close up, or frame the shot just so...

This is exactly the sort of sloppy and irresponsible journalism (if it is not deliberately obscurantist) that is driving subscribers, readers and viewers away from mainstream news organizations. The footage that utterly contradicts and disproves the absurd claims of Ms. Frayer is circulating freely on the internet, in standard formats universally playable by viewers anywhere. Associated Press needs to (1) firmly disavow and retract this shabby apology for a Terrorist group's publicist, and (2) reassure us that steps are in place to prevent recurrences of conspicuously staged and manipulated sequences.

Time for a Walkabout

2006-08-14T21:40:00.000-07:00

This morning I walked around my neighborhood a little after dawn, savoring air that was cool and fragrant with honeysuckle, mimosa, pine, and gardenia. Each home seemed to offer a different perfume of the owner’s favorite plants, some whispering more to the eye with extravagant rouges and blues and zanthic yellows. Mourning doves called, to each other, I know. But they seemed softly to reproach me for letting myself be so preoccupied lately with darkness and trouble.

Crossing a creekbridge shaded by towering loblolly pines and pin oaks, I caught a whiff of mud flats and boggie critters, and was suddenly transported back to childhood days spent in intent study of the society of fiddler crabs on the banks of a nearby marsh. The placid surface of the tidewater creek reflected a sky pure and unblemished by any sound but morning birdcalls; by any movement but breeze-borne spider silk.

It was a kind of intoxication, or bewitchment, that I’ve been denying myself too long.

For a spell I aim to spend a lot more time savoring my little patch, and thinking about how much beauty there is, not just in nature, but in the people who tend their gardens, and clean up their public ways when they’re done with their own yards, and still have time and energy to volunteer for the rescue squad, or shelve books at the library, or serve church dinners. Playing my fiddle for folks in hospital, sometimes for people living out their final days or hours, has been challenging, but gives me some sense that I can ease other folks’ burdens with something that might otherwise be shabby self-indulgence.

I wish I had some other folks' expansive confidence that the worst is past. But what struck finally me this morning is that whatever happens in the short term, I do share the sense that things will work out. I love that phrase: “In the fullness of time...” It conveys to me a reminder that a jaundiced view puckers our squinty eyes like blinders, making us numb to the wide world and the titanic stretch of time behind and before. Once in a while, a little injection of cosmic perspective helps to settle the mind at how small the ripples in the stream really are.

My brother planted several pine seedlings in our backyard the year my folks moved into this house, now forty-one years ago. Those have matured to rival even the most ancient of the trees, and shelter trailing vines that house birds, snakes, squirrels, frogs, cicadas, bees, ladybugs and mantids. Just a few decades, and the scars of fire and ruin can be healed by lush growth and steady human labor. Nagasaki and Hiroshima have been rebuilt, along with Dresden and Hamburg and Coventry and a thousand other cities and towns once shattered by man and nature, and their inhabitants rush about their business and have to be reminded to take an occasional day to remember...

I want to thank all you other bloggers and commenters for the time and efforts and research you’ve done and shared; for the late nights and gritty eyes and sore wrists from typing and scrolling, keeping the conversations going. It has helped me sort things out. I hope the exchange going on among the blogs has reached a few others. The thoughts, challenges, responses, but most importantly, the fundamental decency and civility of the best blogs (Belmont Club, for instance) set a very high standard for constructive debate. I pray that somewhere in some quiet alcove in Teheran, or Beijing, or in a study carel in a Pakistani madrassah, maybe someone has surreptitiously been following the conversations here or some of the other blogs, and come away with a quickening hunger to join in.

Channeling Duckman

2006-08-14T21:38:00.000-07:00

There are so many people with much greater intelligence, experience, and understanding of terrorism, I hesitate to toss this out, it seems so elementary... but here goes:

Four pathetic loonies blowing themselves up inside the London tube system could reasonably be a conspiracy of just those four. I mean, they could have come up with the idea (albeit from one among them who actually had trained in a terrorist camp one summer) and done the deed without a lot of outside needling and assistance.

Twenty to fifty-odd martyr-minded folks, each coached, trained, indoctrinated, equipped and supplied with sophisticated bomb-making materials, all ready to proceed with a coordinated attack on a number of different commercial flights absolutely implies a professional, well-organized and financed bit of business. It would be interesting to see if ANY of these people were preparing to travel under their own names, with legitimate visas.

Let’s not waste ascii characters debating what sort of turd-for-brains would believe that the group of suiciders in the recent plot did their planning and scheming and preparations without substantial aid and direction from a foreign power.

The plot may have been ready to launch from British aerodromes — i.e., under British jurisdiction —but I seem to recall that there are treaties and decisions that assign jurisdiction for crimes on aircraft aloft over international waters to the nation under whose flag the hull is registered. Whether that would give the U.S. a direct jurisdictional voice in prosecuting these pusbags (it is a strictly legal term) I don’t know.

On the other hand... WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT LEGAL PROPRIETIES?!?!?!?!?!

Look, I did a little astral projection last night, and soul-traveled over to the Palace of the Mullahs in downtown Teheran. I watched them debate for hours.

It was all in Farsi.

Ya can’t figure ALL the angles...

But... They were watching a PowerPoint™ presentation, so I could figure out a lot from context. And the context PLAINLY screeched THE MULLAHS ARE GUILTY!!!!!!

The mouse in the skulligallee is that, Well, seriously, some of the reports are pointing accusative fingers at Pakistani badguys.

Obviously, because of our grovelling dependence on the cooperation of Pervez Mussharrif in many so many matters, GWOT-wise, we are constrained from any course of action that can be easily traceable.

Proxies.

Sounds like a really bad breakfast cereal.

Perspective

2006-08-11T02:03:00.000-07:00

Just a little perspective on what we might expect from Iran (and its current Islamic Supremacist regime) and other rabidly Jihadist organizations...

We’re not really talking about “the end of the world.” Although there are a number of Islamic regimes with substantial military forces, there is nowhere the mass of forces that would be needed to do to the U.S. the catastrophic damage that was done to Europe in two world wars.

Of course, that still leaves a hell of a lot of room for mischief.

Before the fall of the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the U.S. had for decades been supplying “The Peacock Throne” with modern weapons, most significantly, some 225 F-4 fighter jets in various versions, with weapons, and training for the pilots and ground crews. Anyone who has studied modern warfare even casually will realize that modern high-performance fighter jets require a vast industrial base for their maintenance. The pilots require years of intense training, with thousands of hours of flying to maintain their skills.

The Phantom series (we remember from the Vietnam era) required a huge amount of ground maintenance to keep it on the flight line. The Tomcat reduced the flightline maintenance to something like a mere 50 hours for each hour in flight, by focusing on modular systems, so glitches were repaired by replacing a plug-in box, rather than by locating and replacing a mis-behaving transistor or circuit-board.

In a conversation with an old friend who retired from the Navy after several decades in carrier aviation, I heard that the Hornet has reduced the ratio to something like half that needed for the Tomcat, or about 25 hours of maintenance per hour of flight.

I don’t mean this as any chauvinism, just a simple fact. There is no other nation besides the U.S. that for the near term has the industrial capacity for producing the spare parts, weapons systems, and training that would be necessary to maintain the military air capabilities of the U.S.

Any single U.S. “super carrier” has air power greater than the combined national air forces of most individual nations.

This is equally true of the “blue-water” Navy, the ships needed to project any substantial, sustained military force.

As I’ve mentioned before, Iran *is* known to have purchased some modern conventionally-powered (¿diesel/electric?) fast attack subs from Italy, as well as some older conventional surplus subs from Russia. This means any subs it has would be extremely vulnerable to U.S. Anti-sub warfare detect/destruction, because they lack the ability to cruise long distance without surfacing, much less lurk. They would have to be re-supplied from a specially equipped ocean-going supply vessel.

It is conceivable that a few subs could for a while pose some significant threat in the Persian Gulf, though, till they were located and eliminated.

But my central point is that the threat posed by Islamic Jihadi regimes is pretty much the same as that we face from individual Jihadi nutballs — terrorist acts against soft targets, targets of opportunity, using improvised schemes rather than military weapons systems.

Instead of a cataclismic saturation attack of nukes, we can expect a prolonged hemmorhage of puny-prong acts of sabotage, punctuated by an occasional mass casualty incident on a grand scale, which might include a low-efficiency nuclear device in a container, or truck, or small aircraft.

I’ve tried to remind folks that the delusional and ill-read LLL folk are out of their minds to think a few thousand combat deaths are an unsustainable cost. It seems almost insulting to point out that World War II battles frequently killed more combatants in a single day’s battle, or occasionally, by the sinking of a single troop ship. The Germans and the Russians fielded and lost entire armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands of men. And of course, even at this late date, our combat losses in Iraq have not equaled the 9-11 terrorists’ single day’s work.

We have to contemplate harsh options; we have to harden ourselves to a sustained series of painful and ugly lessons, because Islamic Jihadis have shown they are determined to bring their attack to us. We’ve all grown up in a country where we are accustomed to safety, and when that is interrupted, we take it for granted that the government will quickly come along to clear away the bodies. In other parts, when the combat moves along, the locals have to either step around the bodies, or clean up the debris themselves.

What I have predicted in the past I still believe: that a point will be reached where the Left in this country will finally feel personally threatened, realizing that Jihad will slaughter them regardless of how many times they voted against Bush; regardless of how many anti-war vigils they’ve attended; regardless of their disinvestment in Halliburton stock; regardless of their contributions to CAIR and the ACLU. The Jihadis will in time commit one atrocity too many, or one atrocity too enormous, and the former sympathizers and apologists will realize they have been meant for the chop all along, and they will turn.

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This is what I fear more than anything else. Those who are already convinced and enlisted tend toward a conventional, if vehement, military argument, with all the discipline and respect for chain of command that implies. When the Left turns — when those who are obstinately blind to the danger finally awaken in bowel-gushing fear — I believe we will see the reverse side of the Left’s long posturing for patience and indulgence. Their response (I am convinced from the historical excesses of past Leftist regimes) will be a tsunami that crests on far shores beyond anyone’s reckoning, because the convert is ever the most zealous.

Coca Cola and PepsiCo Problems in India

2006-08-10T11:08:00.000-07:00

Al-Jazeera’s English Language website has an article reporting that the Indian State of Kerala has (along with several others) banned the sale of Coca Cola and Pepsi products, claiming that they have been found to contain pesticide residues “24 times above the limits set by the Indian Government.” The article is time-stamped Wednesday 09 August 2006, 14:51 Makka Time, 11:51 GMT.

Interestingly, Wikipedia has an article indicating that the New Delhi-based NGO Centre for Sciend and Environment had convinced the government to take this action after well-publicized studies dating back to 2003. The Wiki-links for the Kerala ban are to articles from this week, but the Coca Cola response to which the article links via footnotes, indicates the controversy has been out in the open since August of 2003.

(Wikipedia article at :en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola)

Evidently, both PepsiCo and Coca Cola prepare the contents and bottle the drinks locally. These two companies probably apply the most stringent standards to their processes and products. Although lapses are possible it’s hard to imagine them consciously applying a different set of standards to their product from country to country. It is especially hard to swallow the idea that PepsiCo and Coca Cola would be using standards less stringent than those of other manufacturers operating within India.

Studies of other locally-produced Indian soft drinks suggest that the problem is pervasive in the region. Rediff.com, an Indian business-website, has an article on the cola controversy, and pointed out that “Mirinda Lemon [my italics] topped the chart among all the tested brand samples with a total pesticide concentration of 0.0352 mg/l.” and finished its article on the problem saying “...in India, these companies cannot be taken to court since the norms that regulate manufacturing of cold drinks here are a "meaningless maze."

Living in the U.S. I have always regarded Coca Cola and Pepsi as products whose manufacturing standards could always be trusted, without having to depend on Government regulations. (That’s distinct from the question of whether drinking gallons of carbonated caffeinated drinks is healthy...) It disturbs me to think that either of those companies would apply less stringent standards to their products in one region for any reason. From their own logic, to do so raises questions about their products everywhere.

Al-Jazeera’s two linked articles fail to mention that a number of other Indian-produced soft drinks were tested and found to have contaminant levels far higher than those in Coca Cola and Pepsi products.

Finally, it is a very sad thing to me to find that in comparison to the writings of U.S. reporters, the articles in Al-Jazeera seem to be mostly devoid of hysterical anti-U.S. ranting. I am perfectly aware that their point of view is at odds with the policies and culture of the United States. They seem to be observing a standard of dry factual reporting of events without coloring every paragraph with their sneering contempt for the U.S. its products, and its current administration, which seems to distinguish them from most Western news organizations. They have their biases, and my own bitty research reminds me that they will omit facts that are inconvenient to their "narrative" but a lot of American journalists fall short of the professional standards demonstrated by many of Al-Jazeera's posts.

MegaDeaths — Not a Sleazy Metal Band

2006-08-07T23:02:00.000-07:00

For umpteenth time in various comment streams, I have to remind some reluctant readers that the great disputes between conflicting ideologies have been resolved only by a bloody set of arguments that left millions of corpses as their proof. Here’s a little review of just the 20th Century, for those readers just emerging from an extended deep coma:

• The Great War (i.e., the periods up to the half-time break in the European Civil War) reduced the strength of participating nations by some fifteen and a half MILLION deaths, and about twenty-two and a half million wounded.

• The Japanese invasion of China in 1931 killed twelve and a half million Chinese and a little over one million of the Japanese invading military.

• WWII killed off about sixty-two and a half MILLIONS, including armed forces and civilians, combat, disease, and concentration camp deaths.

• In the “U.N.Police Action” on the Korean Peninsula, ending as it did in an extended “cease-fire” rather than a decisive conclusion that would have allowed for proper documentation, seems to have killed between just over one million, to three million six hundred and forty thousand deaths of military and civilians on all sides.

• Several generations of fighting in French IndoChine from the end of WWII until the general retirement of United States forces, produced at least three million military and civilian deaths FOR Independence/Unification and about an equal number Against.

I’m going to let you, dear readers, add up all those millions and millions of victims of tyranny and the repeated struggle to contain it.

But WAIT! There’s MORE!

When not otherwise occupied with defending his vast territories from various external intrigues, Stalin managed to while away the hours devising highly interesting ways of liquidating, executing, starving, and otherwise murdering his subjects in ton lots. The forced collectivization of agriculture in the Ukraine was unpopular with the Kulaks, and to encourage the process, Stalin sent in troops to confiscate all the food and livestock, killing and murdering tens of thousands immediately, then guarding the borders to ensure the people he meant to starve would damn well go ahead and starve like he meant’em to. By the time the Germans invaded, Stalin had killed off anywhere from five to ten million of his own citizens. “What the heck!” He mused, “That was so good, I’ll try it with the Red Army!” and he then went on to liquidate 30,000 of his army’s senior officers, with show trials, forced confessions, and creative executions. (Stalin went on to kill lots more victims, but, heck, you get the picture...)

Mao Zedong, literally the driving force behind the consolidation and success of the Communist the People’s Republic of China, spent the lives of his fellow Chinese like a Democrat spends tax revenues. After chasing Chiang Kai-Sheck from the mainland, Mao imposed communist collectivisation and soviet systems on the country with the same sort of enthusiasm as Stalin had in the USSR. The Hundred Flowers Campaign and The Anti-Rightest Movement are reckoned to have silenced with extreme prejudice the voices of insufficiently cooperative educated, intellectual, social, industrial, and academic leaders numbering in the millions.

The so-called “Great Leap Forward” launched in 1958 — a second grand Five-Year-Plan in the Soviet tradition of brutal central planning and extreme disincentives for non-compliance — so disrupted the Chinese agricultural system that the central government simply confiscated the food it could and left the peasants to starve in their gasping millions, distributing the food in the cities to prevent unrest there. External students of these events can only make rough estimates of the suffering. From statistics that have dribbled out, a picture has been constructed that indicates that at least several tens of MILLIONS of Chinese died of avoidable disease and starvation as a result of the misrule embodied in that “Great Leap.”

And, oh yeah, the ”Domino Theory” turned out to be absolutely right. For instance, after the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia, they imposed a radical “back-to-nature” rigidly doctrinaire communist regime, and forced about a third of their population into “re-education camps.” Within those camps, people were worked to death on starvation rations, and if they didn’t die fast enough to suit their masters, they were dispatched by bullets. The Khmer Rouge did an excellent job of documenting their work, and their photographs and written records of the torment of their countryfolk is now enshrined in various museums around the restored Cambodia.

(Try googling “Boat People.”)

I’m not sure Rwanda fits into this rant, except as a fine example of the utter uselessness of the United Nations, which meme is relevant, but not central. At least, it shows how the absence of an armed and determined force for civil ORDER allowed humans to chop almost a million other humans to bloody morsels using garden implements.

Hmmmm. Now we have the Khartoum Government dispatching hundreds of thousands of black African animists, pagans, and Christians in Darfur, with the gracious assistance of gas warfare specialists from Syria. Presumably, Syrian President Bashshar Assad does not perceive those folks as a strategic or existential threat to his bottom.

Yeah, Muslim fanatics seem to have taken up the challenge that Communism has in its defeat let slip. So far they’re just gathering momentum. A few score killed in London bombings, a few hundred Hindus in seven simultaneous train station bombings in Mumbai, a few more hundred Hindus killed by a handful of martyr-bombers earlier at a Hindu festival in New Delhi, a few score tourists and servicefolk at a Bali restaurant, a schoolbus here, a wedding party there, a couple of Indonesian school girls beheaded, a few thousand “little Eichmanns” in the WTC... Not much to brag about compared to the totals of Stalin and Hitler and Mao, but, Hey! Keep it up and after a while you’re talking about some real numbers!

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It is simply wishful thinking of the most dangerous sort to imagine that Islamic Jihadis and their complicit supporters can be dealt with rationally or gently. The lessons of history are if anything, pretty darn hard to misunderstand on this point. Evil doesn’t quietly put down its weapons. The fire-bombings of Dresden, Hamburg, Lubeck, and *67* Japanese cities were done primarily to persuade the GOVERNMENTS of Germany and Japan to quit the fight. The obvious difficulty is that those governments (like the Jihadis) had no concern whatsoever for the suffering of their own people and were un-moved by the loss.

Of course, the acquisition of nuclear devices, achieved by discipline or art, skews the calculus. Time to go back and review “The Three Conjectures.”

We’re told from census figures that there are about one Billion Muslims around the world. If only one percent of those are fanatical Jihadis, that’s TEN MILLION right there that are not likely to meekly lay down their violent agenda.

I’ve accepted the likelihood that the West will not respond decisively to Islamic Jihad until they kill a few million people at a stroke. It seems most likely that any lasting resolution of the great conflict of this era will be the occasion of a bloodletting on a scale comparable to earlier upheavals. Clearly, the sacrifice of just a few thousand in the attacks of September 11, 2001, didn’t resolve matters. The West hasn’t been intimidated into submission, nor has it been aroused enough to put paid to the Islamic fanatics. It has been done. It can be done again.

They aren’t going to leave gracefully...

2006-08-05T14:52:00.000-07:00

I wish for a world where T-P just meant a bathroom product.

My frequently-insightful brother made a statement today of unusual succinctness and clarity. I’ve taken the liberty of amplifying it a bit, and adding some further observations.

1) Europe in the middle ages was very much hobbled by its obstinate focus on the Bible. Medicine, literature, mathematics, astronomy, history... Every area of human concern was truncated and subordinated to Biblical-Spiritual-Christian doctrine.

2) The Islamic world is stuck in that mode now. Their society and religion are the legacy of many centuries in a harsh and demanding region of vast deserts, that rewarded maybe the raider more than the builder or gardener. They suddenly find themselves rich beyond the dreams of most countries, from oil wealth that they did not themselves have the technology or inclination to develop. They have not experienced and have no respect for the long discipline by which western countries gradually and painfully arrived at their current level of industrial sophistication.

3) Without a deep comprehension of how their wealth came into their hands, they do not value the attitudes, disciplines, and skills that are necessary to develop and maintain technology, and nor do they grasp the intellectual freedom which derives from Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian heritage that lead finally to the Renaissance.

Of course, it’s Culture not Biology.(Naturally, the Politically Correct Crowd will say that’s just as insulting.) In the Arab-Islamic world the word “sheik” is an honorific reserved for a male who has committed the text of the Qur’an to memory. Astricted by sacrosanct tradition to treat the rote memorization of its sacred text as the highest possible intellectual achievement, Islamic nations of the modern era reject as pointless or even subversive the diversion of their energy to the study of modern technologies and sciences.

Farouk El-Baz is a respected American scientist of Egyptian roots, who added his scientific and technological expertise for years to the Apollo Program. In the past he served as Anwar el-Sadat’s science advisor, and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and director of Boston U Center for Remote Sensing. He has written a few penetrating articles about the failures of the modern Islamic world, and the internal forces that have contributed.

A few excerpts from the website http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/710/feature.htm:

Although the Arab region is considered oil-rich and wealthy, all indications point to its knowledge deficit. This fact is clearly conveyed in the Arab Human Development Report: Building a Knowledge Society that was issued in 2003 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The report, which I helped to review prior to its publication, pointed out that the Arab region trails behind all other regions in knowledge indicators, except sub-Saharan Africa. These indicators included the number of books, newspapers, radio stations, television channels, telephone lines, personal computers and Internet access.
...

• The number of patents produced by Arabs is meager; during the past two decades, South Korea registered in the US over 44 times the number of patents from all Arab countries combined.
...

• ... the number of books translated in all 22 Arab countries is equal to one-fifth of those translated into Greek.
...

• Although Arabs constitute five per cent of the world population, they produce only 0.8 per cent of the literary and artistic literature.

Without attempting an encyclopedic defense of this statement, I would add this: Within the West, just as there is an intensifying co-dependency between the Elite Liberal-Socialist Leaders and their welfare-voting-block clients, there is at the higher level of transnational cultures, a similarly intensifying co-dependency between the Transnational Progressives (with all the baggage of Post-Modernist / Deconstructionist / Moral Relativist / Unresolved-White-Liberal-Guilt), and the radical Islamicist components of the Muslim world, cynically ready to accept support from even those they despise.

Self-styled Socialist-Liberal-Progressives reflexively blame any deficiencies in their designated victim groups as having been caused by Western excesses, colonial depradations, racism, bigotry, capitalist greed, Christian chauvinism, et cetera. They obstinately refuse to acknowledge that there could be any internal basis for the madness of Islamic fanaticism. They ignore 14 centuries of Islamic Jihad, the conquest of much of the world (that Charles Martel and the Franks stopped in France in 732, and the defenders of Vienna successfully resisted in the 1680’s); they ignore the text of the Qur’an and the Hadith, the less formally-sacred but still widely worshipped anecdotal verses on the Life of the Prophet.

Whit [the “nom-de-net” of one of the principals of the website observanda.blogspot.com] in his post today referred to a list of items with which it would be good for all Westerners to acquaint themselves:
...the history of Palestine from the start of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century
... the Balfour Declaration
... the Zionists buying (not stealing) barren lands and making them productive.
... Arab uprisings in the 1930's
... the history about the Grand Mufti [Mohammad Amin al-Husayni of Jerusalem] and his relationship with Hitler.
... the history of Israel since 1948.

That list makes a great start. I have also found descriptions that describe terrorism by fanatical jews during that period. Even if they can be shown to be exaggerated or apocryphal, it’s important to be aware of them, because the Arab Palestinians certainly cherish those as compelling justification for their persistent outrage. I would recommend also the “essential list” from Steven den Beste’s site http://denbeste.nu/Chizumatic/ USSClueless archives. (Be not dismayed by his quirky interest in Japanese animation... His political insights are nonetheless breathtaking.) Finally, as a Christian (however conflicted and confused!) I think it is vital to be fully informed about how Islamic regimes treat “infidels” among them.

It is vital to inform ourselves, to look at sources that challenge our assumptions, and to resist the acquiescence of the Transnational Progressives in the assault by Islamic Fascists on our civilization.

A Groin Surgeon Violence...

2006-08-02T12:56:00.000-07:00

Ooops.

I mean, “a growing surge in violence”

(This comment was cross-posted today at Wretchard's Belmont Club)

Let’s see...

• Denmark taking a stand against Islamic thugs...

• Sweden and Norway still paralyzed while hundreds of their young women are being raped by Islamic youths each month. (Well, their own politicos have been doing the same to the whole country...) Presumably they will tire of this in the fullness of time...

• France this year has gotten a dose of reality smashed in their collective face by unassimilated Islamic youth...

• Britain (as distinguished from the stiff-necked and inevitably contrarian Irish, and still-disgruntled Scots) is awakening to the danger of unassimilable Islamic fascists. Home-grown, yet.

• India is getting a belly-full of Islamic fascism, with an accelerating toll of Hindus blasted to bleeding pulp by Islamic bombs lately...

• Indonesian schoolgirls have had their heads removed from their shoulders by Islamic fanatics, to encourage conversions to their “religion of Peace.”

• The Philippines for decades have been suffering murders, kidnappings, and atrocities by Abu Sayyaf...

• It’s not been two full years since Islamic Terrorists took 1200 school children and teachers hostage and eventually murdered 344 of them in Beslan, the Russian community in North Ossetia. The terrorists had held the hostages for several days, stringing bombs rigged to “dead man-switches” and committing appalling atrocities, even by terrorist standards. Maybe you recall, the Chechen thugs videotaped themselves raping a number of teenaged girls, shot fleeing hostages indiscriminately when the assault began, and in at least one case, repeatedly stabbed an 18-month-old baby when ammunition ran out.

...

Anyone who’s been following the news for over the last few years knows I could continue this list at great length.

I’ll spare you.

The point is simply that Islamic fanatics have been treating their neighbors and their own co-religionists this way for fourteen centuries. For most of that time, there have been multiple buffers between the Infidel lands — Dar al Harb — and the lands where Islam rules — Dar al Islam — so most of us in the West have been able to occupy ourselves with our own affairs. Of course, all that’s changed is that modern technologies like transportation and communications now make it possible for us to grasp — if our minds can get ‘round it — the full scope of Islamic Jihad.

Denial is the problem.

One last thought. This current crisis (started when Hizb’allah spent months digging a tunnel so it could murder and kidnap a few Israeli soldiers, just to stir things up) became the occasion for a lot of American citizens to piss and moan about how slow our government was to respond to the “CRISIS” and evacuate its victim-citizens from harm’s way. THE FIRST DAY, there were people comparing the situation to Katrina. (Imagine the veins in my forehead exploding as I repress the urge to go into an extended harangue about the stupidity of people who know NOTHING about SAR, emergency preparedness, Posse Commitatus, but feel absolutely competent to criticize ANY DAMN THING THEY WANT!)

It’s interesting that no one seems to have raised that same question about American citizens and other foreign nationals visiting in Israel. Surely there are at any moment quite a few thousand tourists in Israel, even excluding Israelis with dual citizenship. How’s cum nobody thinks after weeks of hundreds of indiscriminate rocket attacks by Hizb’allah against Israel, that the U.S. should be mounting an evacuation of American citizens from there?

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Check this U.S. State Department website for a description of various well-established terrorist organizations:
http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/rpt/fto/index.cfm?docid=2801

I skimmed through and found that a lot of the names that show up in the news are aliases — i.e., there are a few groups that are the condensed coalesced version of ten or twelve contributory groups. For example, “HAMAS (Islamic Resistance Movement) a.k.a. Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya, Students of Ayyash, Students of the Engineer, Yahya Ayyash Units, Izz Al-Din Al-Qassim Brigades, Izz Al-Din Al-Qassim Forces, Izz Al-Din Al-Qassim Battalions, Izz al-Din Al Qassam Brigades, Izz al-Din Al Qassam Forces, Izz al-Din Al Qassam Battalions”

Another example: “Hizballah (Party of God) a.k.a. Islamic Jihad, Islamic Jihad Organization, Revolutionary Justice Organization, Organization of the Oppressed on Earth, Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine, Organization of Right Against Wrong, Ansar Allah, Followers of the Prophet Muhammed”

Lebanon, Hizb'ollah and Waco

2006-07-25T13:03:00.000-07:00

Let’s get one item straight from the beginning:

Hizb’ollah is first and foremost a pack of terrorist war criminals. Their religion is secondary to that, unless you accept the idea that terrorism is inextricably the foundation of Islam. If this were so, you must define ALL MUSLIMS as terrorists. They are not. Most muslims are law-abiding, civic-minded, responsible, patient, self-disciplined, considerate, compassionate people, trying to live within the bounds of a rational society.

You can argue that many terrorists become terrorists because of some injury that has been done to them, or at least because of perceived insult and injury. Well, even to the extent that it is true, they are nonetheless war criminals. If an American becomes a terrorist bomber, that American is not excused from responsibility for his crimes just because he has some list of grievances that drove him to make a bomb from fertilizer and kerosene. If an American soldier becomes so incensed at the roadside bombs killing and maiming his buddies that he goes off and rapes and kills an Islamic girl, he is a murderer. His righteous anger does not excuse him, nor does the righteous wroth of the Palestinians excuse their murder of civilians.

There are idiots who claim that terrorism is the only option for terrorists, who fight bravely against the massive high-tech impersonal war machines of the West.

Bull.

Shit.

Look at the military forces of the Islamic Arab countries. Most have the full range of modern weapons systems (albeit purchased from China, Russia, and the U.S.), lacking only intercontinental ballistic missiles and and nuclear-powered blue-water navies. Iran has purchased modern Italian fast attack submarines, as well as Russian submarines. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and a number of other Arab Islamic regimes have air forces with modern supersonic fighter jets, tanks, radar guided antiaircraft missile systems, et cetera. Many have standing armies with millions of men under arms. The idea that terrorism is the last resort of an aggrieved and oppressed minority bereft of any other means of self defense is simply insane, and perversely obstinately inverts the truth.

This column is not meant to excuse the many instances of savagery and retribution that have gone on both sides, since the time of the British Mandate. But the Palestinians have for decades had their lives purposely manipulated and exploited by the ARAB countries of the Middle East, and the terrorist option has been the one vigourously funded, encouraged, taught, and promoted, while others have been suppressed and ignored.

There is a vast moral blind spot among the sponge-brained left-leaning liberals of the world. How many times have we heard some idiot mouth the statement that “every time we bomb [insert Muslim-terror-group-of-the-day] we don’t do anything but create more terrorists” ?

Excuse me, but does it ever occur to these sorry rascals that each time the Muslim terrorists behead an Indonesian Schoolgirl, or blow up a trainload of Hindu office workers, or videotape their beheading of an Italian truck driver, or kidnap and murder a Red Cross administrator, or machine gun a schoolyard full of children, or bomb a Balinese nightclub, or spray with bullets a crowd of Western Tourists gazing upon Egyptian antiquities, or kidnap and slaughter American missionaries in the Philippines, they only anger and harden the hearts of Westerners?

What peculiar insanity completely blinds liberals to this simple calculus?

Well, at least they are consistent. The liberal left continues to insist there was never anything evil about Soviet Russia, that Stalin was a wonderful hero of Russia and that all those stories about Stalin and his secret police murdering tens of millions of citizens are just the hysterical propaganda of the fascist capitalists of the West.

Like FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, and JFK?

Now I gotta reply to a comment posted by another reader at Wretchard’s blog, comparing Israel’s current actions in southern Lebanon to the massive overkill response by Janet Reno which ended the BATF [Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms] siege of the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, where there had been allegations of federal firearms law violations and child abuse...

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Dear 2164th,

With extreme reluctance leap I into the breach and say anything that might somehow be taken as defense of noted moral leper Ms. Janet Reno and her sex-addict boss, but... here goes:

It was my understanding that the fire which incinerated all the huddled children and other noncombatant Branch Davidians resulted from fuels used by the suicidal end-of-the-world-minded minions of Mister David Koresh [fanatical leader of the Branch Davidians at Waco]. This might seem a little far-fetched to those of us who are not apocalyptically suicidal, possibly because we have pursued alternative pathways to personal validation other than the dream of having our violent deaths splashed all over the evening news.

And yet I mind another similar tragedy. Might shed some light to review.

Let’s talk about Philadelphia, the vicious cartoon “back-to-nature” group M.O.V.E., and the conflict with law enforcement under the administration of Mayor Wilson Goode. In 1978 a series of interviews and articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer described the appalling living conditions the group were imposing upon themselves and their children — human feces filling coffee cans; uncollected bags full of garbage; naked children eating uncooked chicken; the body of a dead infant kept in a shoe box.

Finally the authorities were goaded to the group fired from within their barricaded home and killed a police officer, after a prolonged siege. It was discovered afterward that the M.O.V.E. group to keep themselves supplied had dug a tunnel extending beyond the police perimeter. Those members who were not imprisoned for that episode relocated across town and built a new fortress in a row house on Osage Avenue.

They proceeded to harass their neighbors: They used the connected rooftops of the row houses for a jogging track and military-style physical training. They mounted loudspeakers to blare round-the-clock political harangues that would embarrass even a Berkeley resident. They refused to pay utilities charges, and allowed stinking garbage and human waste to collect and foul the air for blocks around their home. They fed their children raw chicken [ever hear of salmonella?] and kept them from the public schools and allopathic medicine, brandished firearms from within their compound, threatened county officials inquiring after the children’s well-being.

At last the city of Philadelphia had just about all it could take from the belligerent idiots of M.O.V.E-ment. A gun battle erupted when police attempted to serve warrants on several adult residents in the fortified home. A hastily-conceived plan to breach a hardened rooftop gun emplacement with an explosive charge instead ruptured a mess of fuel containers stored on the roof and started a conflagration. (The police commissioner and the Mayor were later criticized for dropping a “bomb” on an occupied residence, but it is arguable that they would have been subject to criminal negligence charges if they had not taken drastic action to suppress the prolonged criminal behavior of the residents. There had been threats of vigilante action against M.O.V.E. by their long-suffering neighbors.)

Firefighters were not allowed to immediately undertake operations against the blaze because the M.O.V.E. maniacs inside continued to fire high-powered rifle rounds toward the authorities, which was the whole reason for the decision to breach the roof in the first place. The fire spread inexorably to the row houses on either side. Despite some two hundred homes burning to the ground before the blaze could be contained, the voting public of Philadelphia handily reelected Mayor Wilson Goode (who had authorized the plan) to serve another term.

On a much vaster scale, Hizb’ollah in southern Lebanon has deliberately crafted a situation in which any effective response to their terrorist acts mortally imperils the noncombatants among whom they hide. For decades they have defied all international law and authority in their conduct of terrorist acts against civilians [they have slaughtered their co-religionists as enthusiastically as they have murdered jews]; emplacing their weapons and personnel within civilian homes, schools, hospitals, and such; dressing as civilians; setting off bombs in public restaurants and busses.

Hizb'ollah initiated this particular mess by violating an internationally-brokered agreement that Israel had reluctantly but undeniably honored for several years. A full military response *is* justified. Military planners are always faced with the dilemma that there is likely to be a cost in human lives whatever course of action is pursued. Failure to take action allows the terrorists to kill people; Any military response to the rockets is likely to harm the civilians among whom the rocket launchers have been hidden. In this case, Hizb’ollah is ultimately responsible for the carnage that results from the violent action needed to neutralize their threat. Just as a bank robber taking hostages is responsible for the death or injury to those hostages when the police use lethal force to subdue the robber.

Democrat Spoilers

2006-06-17T21:40:00.000-07:00

By the 1920's Harlem had become a magnet (I almost used the improper term of the Islamic pilgrimmage locus...) for talented, energetic, ambitious blacks from all over the U.S. as well as from other territories. It was a sprawling precinct buzzing with writers, painters, dancers, composers, publishers, doctors, teachers, schools, shops, businesses, and enterprises as varied as could be found in any city for any ethnic group. The term "Harlem Renaissance" is used by some people to capture the moment, but in fact, there were centers of black population in a great number of American cities before World War II, each fermenting with the full spectrum from poor, to middle-class, to rich, and from ignorant to academically celebrated.

This is not to deny that America had still not yet fully dealt with the legacies of slavery and racial discrimination. Just to point out that there were healthy communities that offered a wide range of experiences and opportunities.

But... One of the unintended and unforeseen effects of the integration drive from the 1950's onward was that the black professionals and much of the black middle class elected to decamp from the black urban ghettos. We use the word ghetto now in a completely different sense than it had been used before. The word used to refer simply to a neighborhood that was predominantly of one cultural or ethnic group. These days we mean it to refer to a blasted, impoverished, benighted neighborhood, whose residents are prisoners because of their lack of money, skills, or hope.

In the fullness of time, this will pass. There is no question that it's a shameful waste of potential to forcibly segregate and deny full participation to ethnic groups. But the social imperative to allow all individuals and groups to make their own choices inevitably creates temporary imbalances and distortions. Demogogues will inevitably exploit those dislocations.

National borders and trans-national migrations, though, can not be left to sort themselves out the same way. The great difference is that migrations within a country are all at least governed by or subject to the unifying principles and codes of the national will. Everyone agrees that we have no say over the laws Mexico imposes on itself. By the same token, Mexico has no right to tell America what laws to pass or how to enforce those laws. That there are American citizens who cannot accept such an elementary concept is really the underlying problem.

As with so many issues, there is a corrosive partisan aspect to the argument.

When William Jefferson Clinton held the office of President, he maintained a standing policy of intercepting Haitian refugees on the High Seas far from U.S. controlled waters, and forcibly repatriated them. To what end is not clear. The Left were strangely silent both about the interdiction, and the fate of those returned to the hands of the Ton-Ton Macoutes and the brutal factions contending for control of the country. No one questioned Clinton's authority to send those illegal immigrants back to their country of origin.

And just a few years later, the Left in America EMPHATICALLY denied the right of young Elian Gonzalez to stay in the U.S. after his mother had risked everything to cross the open ocean between Cuba and the U.S. to get her son to relatives here. Michael Moore wrote an impassioned (if utterly cynical and condescending) open letter to Elian that blasted the people trying to fight his return, and apologizing for the crappy culture of the U.S. Mr. Moore was so happy he was leaving. Again, the Left were completely supportive of Mr. Clinton's use of black-uniformed masked paramilitary INS agents armed with submachine guns, calling unexpectedly around 3 or 4 am to forcibly extricate Elian G. from his Florida- State-Court-appointed guardian.

That is the same Florida whose Democrat-dominated judiciary worked so hard to intervene a few years later in the presidential vote tally process to void the Republican victory.

So it seems over and over that the LEFT in America — and pretty much everywhere else — are ready to reverse themselves on any issue if it suits their momentary tactics. They are spoilers, without any goal beyond getting back into power. Their agenda is devoid of substance. While they claim to defend women's rights, immigrant rights, prisoner rights, children's rights, they will abandon in an instant any victim whose story does not help their pursuit of power.

The problem common all of these situations is NOT that the solutions are somehow hidden. The fundamental problem is that we have a huge population of contrary children who insist on having their way because they want to be in charge. If they can't have their way, they will make damn sure nobody else gets what they want, regardless of the cost.

I predict this will continue until the Jihadis make a demonstration that clarifies things for everyone.

Portrait of Ahmadinejad, Memories of Hostages

2006-06-04T17:25:00.000-07:00

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the current president of Iran, was among the small group of University students who planned the take-over of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979. He was deeply involved in the Revolutionary Guard during the 1980’s, which is thought to have organized and accomplished the murder of expatriate Iranians in many countries around the world during that period. He is not the slavering madman some would like to think, which does not mean he is no threat. In fact, he seems fully rational, according to the doctrine of his faith. It is the extreme views of his faith that make him seem irrational to us infidels.

Mark Bowden was a guest on C-span today for 3 hours, in a program that allowed him to spend a good deal of time reviewing his research for the book “Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam.” Amazon.com has two very informative reviews of the book, one by Philip Caputo, the other by Afshin Molavi, of the Washington Post organization.

Mr. Bowden relates that Ahmadinejad had argued for taking over the SOVIET embassy, and was voted down by his fellow conspirators. The group of students had conceived of the takeover as a way of reinvigorating the Islamist aspect of the movement that had dislodged the Shah. In this effort I judge they were materially aided by the sophomoronically moralistic assistance of Western Media. People who lived through that period should recall that President James Earl Carter decided to withdraw support from the Shah because of [Leftist Liberal Press] outrage over his authoritarian response to student unrest and crowds of Iranians demanding reforms. Thanks to the American Media, the U.S. public was reminded repeatedly that the Shah had (Gasp!) SECRET POLICE! The brute!

Let’s look at a little history for perspective.

James Earl Carter, who had famously spoken of leaving a candle burning in the window to signify America’s extreme annoyance at the 1979 Russian Invasion of Afghanistan had taken the even more aggressive and bold stance of withdrawing America’s athletes from the 1980 Olympic Games scheduled to be held in Moscow. The USSR had ham-handedly manipulated a series of increasingly bloody coups through the 1970’s, installing a series of murderous but malleable puppet regimes as a hedge against anticipated rising Islamic unrest.

Carter’s conspicuously impotent response to tens of thousands of civilian bodies blasted and burnt by Russian tanks, aircraft and 30,000 troops was at least consistent with his abandonment of the Shah. Even though Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi had for decades been trying to modernize and gentle Iranian civil law — allowing minorities of all faiths to participate in elections, extending suffrage, education, and employment access to women, and reforming land distribution to the lower classes — those were PRECISELY the changes that outraged the conservative Imams, who had traditionally held decisive power in Persian culture. Yes, the Shah’s secret police and military were in fact used to suppress violent protests by these conservative groups. Estimates range from fewer than a hundred victims to several thousands killed by the Shah in maintaining order after his expulsion of Khomeini and his followers in 1964, just for example.

For comparison, the Iranian Revolutionary Government has each year imprisoned and executed many tens of thousands of dissidents, homosexuals, adulterers, fornicators, Bahá’i, Communists, Marxists, insufficiently modest women, criminals, and other enemies of the Revolution. Thieves have the offending hand amputated. Adulterers and fornicators and homosexuals are commonly hung from conveniently mobile construction cranes. In the war with Iraq, the government sent many thousands of 12-year old unarmed boys to march through minefields in advance of the trained soldiers, using their “martyr brigades” to clear paths. A few celebrated authors in remote cities have been sentenced to death by “fatwa” for writings which are judged to be offensive to Islam, with all good Muslims encouraged to fulfill the sentence. These sorts of barbarisms illuminate the Shah’s need for secret police and harsh methods,

But Carter in his wisdom withdrew military and economic support from his regime, first pressuring him to make concessions to the “democratic groundswell” of the Iranian population. For months as various Iranian groups pressed for greater power and mobs destroyed theaters showing immoral western movies, luxury hotels, stores, resorts, and other symbols of non-islamic decadence, the Shah responded with deadly repression. Carter’s administration vacillated and equivocated, first threatening to withhold essential fighter aircraft parts and arms shipments, then promising to support him “to the hilt.” As US support wilted, his ministers began to turn against him, and army officers and troops reconsidered their loyalties.

In January 1979 the terminally-ill Shah fled the country. The government collapsed and the Ayutollah Khomeini returned triumphantly from France. Carter gutlessly fended off the Shah’s request for a visa to get treatment for his cancer, finally allowing him to enter a new York hospital in October ‘79. This simple humanitarian gesture to the dying Shah enraged the Iranian militant revolutionaries. The Ayutollah Khomeini exhorted his followers to demonstrate their displeasure with the U.S., Israel, and all enemies of Islam. It was in this frenzy that the takeover of the embassy was planned and done.

This brings us back to the opening, and Bowden’s descriptions of the scheming by Ahmadinejad and his fellow conspirators. They evidently conceived of the takeover as being similar to university sit-ins they had seen in the US newsreels — Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Yale... even Columbia in 1969, where the militant students had been brazenly armed with shotguns, bandoliers, and handguns. Almost all had been handled by the authorities with kid gloves, so that the protesters had successfully and BLOODLESSLY (well, mostly) managed to seize international attention for their protests. More to the point, they’d managed to extort concessions from administrations unaccustomed to keeping a change of underwear in reserve for student conferences.

In any case, however benign the plan may have been in conception, the problem was always the utter gutlessness of the Carter administration in its response. This was not a university dean’s office, being occupied by a bunch of spoiled middle-class turdlings looking to amplify their Stridex-scented fantasies. It was the sovereign territory of the United States of America, invaded by armed belligerents. This was a violation not just of American territory, but a breaking of diplomatic covenants held sacred among nations for many centuries, even in the carnage of World War. It should have prompted Carter to something more drastic than a flurry of protest notes and a belated and pathetically bungled rescue attempt.

That the Ayutollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Government encouraged and publicly acquiesced to this violation helped make Iran a pariah among nations, unable to establish official diplomatic ties and the standardized treaties necessary for normal economic trade, for the last three decades. Carter’s wavering, timid, and cowardly indecision begat mounting boldness in all of his foes, as they perceived that he was unable to bring himself to DO ANYTHING to oppose their adventures. Crisis begat crisis, begat escalating adventures, until only the most extreme and costly responses could have any hope for success.

A little more boldness in the moment might have made an enormous difference in the direction of events in the Middle East.

For this Film was Theo Van Gogh Executed

2006-05-31T19:56:00.001-07:00

( if the Title link doesn’t work try clicking here.)

The title above is linked to the iFilm website. Specifically it links to the page showing the first 3 minutes of the film made by Theo Van Gogh from a script by Ayan Hirsi Ali. Ali is the Somali-born immigrant who rose to become an elected member of the Dutch Parliament. Her film script depicts the brutality Islamic culture imposes on women in marriage, even in the supposedly civilized and placid Netherlands.

Because of this film, many fundamentalist Islamic immigrants were enraged. One of them approached Theo Van Gogh on an Amsterdam street and shot him dead, then stabbed a knife into his chest to pin a death threat against Ayan Hirsi Ali for her rebellion against Islam.

The Government of the Netherlands, which has otherwise begun to see it must resist Islamic militants and clerics, has caved in to pressure and evicted Ayan Hirsi Ali from her apartment building, and rescinded her passport for misrepresenting the facts of her original immigration request, which she had years earlier publicly detailed.

The problem of Islamic customs in the abuse of women may be inextricably linked to specific cultures which have given rise to Islam.

Islam has become the predominant faith for approximately a sixth or more of the world's population, including substantial communities in China, Indonesia, Pakistan and Bengladesh, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Iran (which is Persian not ARAB) and of course, all the Arab countries of the eastern Mediterranean Sea and North Africa. That is scores of very different populations, each with their own distinct histories and customs, which persist along with the overlay of Islamic Sharia law and traditions.

But throughout the Islamic world, more in some places than in others, brothers and fathers murder women of their own families who have been raped, whether the rape was by a total stranger or a family member. This is called an “Honor Killing.” The culture reckons any sexual activity whatsoever outside the narrow bounds allowed by Islamic law and custom have rendered the woman permanently and irretrievably soiled, defiled and ruined.

In many areas where Islamic fanatics rule, young men patrol the streets as enforcers, ready to thrash women with canes for allowing so much as an ankle or arm to show from their clothing, or throw acid in the face of any woman brazen enough to show it in public.

Since the Islamic Revolutionary Government has taken over management of Iran, many thousands of women have been hung from convenient construction cranes for the crimes of adultery, fornication, and insufficient modesty. Back in the early 1960’s the film “Zorba the Greek” was widely criticized for depicting an isolated Greek village stoning a widow after she had an affair with a visiting British tourist. Greek celebrities and diplomats of the day assured the rest of the world that such customs were a thing of the distant past. But they are alive and well in Islamic culture, just as slavery and amputation of the hand of a thief are still practiced in some Islamic countries.

So when someone tells you that Islam translates as “Peace” just remind yourself that’s not true.

Islam means “Submission.”

Think of that when you hear reports that Muslim clerics in Canada are demanding that the government give them authority to mediate any disputes between Islamic husbands and their wives.

Think of Theo Van Gogh and Ayan Hirsi Ali the next time some propagandist tries to feed you the lie that Islam means Peace.

On the day of the Great Rallies

2006-05-17T13:50:00.001-07:00

Cualquier persona — y cada inmigrante de Mexico o de los otros países del sur — debe ver si el gobernar de su hogar en su país de origen no se puede comparar con Los Estados Unidos. Su propia cultura no le sostendrá si su alcalde, consejo de ciudad, y policía son ladrones, gamberros, y asesinos. Como resultado de muchos factores - en especial la avaricia que motivó la conquista española original - el legado de la regla española entorpece grandemente la maduración del gobierno indígena. Por supuesto hay dificultades y problemas con la cultura norteamericana, pero el sistema de leyes protege las derechas de los ciudadanos bien. En otros lugares, la ley sucumbe al capricho humano y bandolerismo.

En otros partes del mundo, el soborno es la norma. Aquí es aberración, no la práctica común i obligatorio como el baksheesh de que hemos oído en el mundo árabe o el Imperio Otomano. La gran ironía de la discusión sobre la definición de la ciudadanía con respecto a inmigrantes es que nadie dondequiera desafía la derecha de cualquier otro país de proteger y de asegurar sus fronteras. Solamente Los Estados Unidos.

Si debemos ser justos a todos, ¿cómo es justo para requerir a un inmigrante filipino seguir las reglas que no serán aplicadas a un inmigrante de Tegucigalpa, o a un inmigrante de Ciudad Juarez? ¿Cómo puede cualquier persona demandar que un mexicano tiene una derecha de moverse sin la restricción en los Estados Unidos, pero que un ciudadano de ninguna otra nación no tiene la misma derecha?

Después, ¿cómo podemos entonces decir que un ciudadano de la Irán, o del Paquistán, o del Sudán no tiene la misma derecha de entrar en los Estados Unidos sin ninguna restricción? ¿Cuales derechas especiales tienen los residentes de México que los residentes de otras partes del mundo también no tienen? ¿Por qué debe cualquier país tener la derecha de restringir cualquier persona de entrar libremente?

Mientras que William Jefferson Clinton era Presidente, él decidió en repatriación forzada para los refugiados de Haití encontrado en el mar muy lejos de los Estados Unidos. En aquel tiempo nadie desafía que él tenía autoridad de hacer tantas acciónes. Ahora nos parece partidista y sesgado para decir que el presidente subsecuente no tiene idénticamente la misma autoridad para deportar alguien que se pase ilegalmente a través de nuestras fronteras. O quien intenta pasarse así.

Iran with Nukes?

2005-12-15T23:33:00.000-08:00

In considering the ramifications of an Iranian Nuclear capability, it is well to recall a much-used strategy from Iran’s 8-year war with Iraq.

During that war the Imams of the Revolutionary Council deemed it reasonable to send hundreds of unarmed 12-year-old boys ahead of their infantry to cross minefields for the single purpose of detonating the mines so the armed men would not be injured by those mines. The concentrated zealotry of a country that would embrace this strategem was one of the heavy factors that swayed the U.S. toward supporting Saddam as a regional counterpoise.

That was before he revealed territorial ambitions beyond the marshes of the Shat-al-Arab.

That zealotry may have seemed at times to soften, but there is still a deep core to that boil that wants lancing.

Journalists are not "citizens of the world.”

2005-11-28T10:34:00.000-08:00

Journalists are not "citizens of the world.”

To be a citizen implies there is some governmental structure with which you have a specific reciprocal relationship, where the behavior of each party is meant to support the other. There is no such world government. The United Nations is not by any stretch a governing body; it is a debate society of mostly hand-picked mouthpieces for brutal murdering thugs. The leaders of the great majority of member states have climbed mounds of corpses to claim dominion over a subjugated population of victims.

If the United Nations were a world government, citizenship mainly would consist of yielding up all rights and property, then shutting up and waiting patiently for your turn to be tortured, mutilated and thrown into a mass grave. This describes the circumstance of a substantial portion of the population governed by the member states of U.N. So it defies logic to assume a journalist’s press pass would provide any golden exemption.

Simply, there is no lofty, exalted, protected position for any journalist, from which they can view the events of the world with Olympian detachment, and convey their assessments to us mere mortals below.

Regardless of their posturing, journalists cannot be objective and detached from the events, processes, and people they observe and describe. Journalistic Objectivity were only possible if the observer had no interest in, or stake in, those things, and no vulnerability to the repercussions of the reports and descriptions that journalist publishes. The only substantial protection any journalist has is that provided by the strength of the national government that issued the journalist’s passport, aid and comfort from sympathetic individuals notwithstanding.

There is no trans-national body that guarantees the rights of its citizens. Look how the U.N. scurried away from Rwanda when ten U.N. peacekeeping soldiers were killed in the sectarian violence that went on to kill the better part of a million victims. Those soldiers were on loan from their own government, which may withdraw them at its discretion. This means that for better or worse, each of us is a citizen of some government more localized. You must make choices. It can be argued that the community of all human beings — or the greater imagined spiritual community — deserves some allegiance transcending the claims of any local government. But in the final reckoning we are left to work with what we have, not what we wish.

Journalists, like other humans, may see misbehavior by their own government that justifies defiance and resistance. There are many journalists that have risked and lost their lives courageously defying the monsters ruling their own countries. American journalists have enjoyed unusual immunity to threats and violence, thanks to the enduring strength and fundamentally unsordid nature of the U.S. government, despite its lapses and failures. Yet our American-based news services increasingly strive to present a public face of “neutrality” by which they disavow allegiance to or bias in favor of the government that is the ultimate guarantor of the freedoms they exercise.

This has been dramatically underscored by a number of developments and confessions by news organizations in the last few years.

• CNN's Eason Jordan admitted in a letter to the Editors of the New York Times following the U.S. deposing of Saddam Hussein, that for a number of years CNN had acquiesced to pressure from the Iraqi government to refrain from reporting atrocities known to be routinely committed against Iraqi citizens by Saddam's thugs. Jordan claimed that this was done to protect Iraqi employees of CNN who might be tortured or murdered by Saddam's agents. But even accepting this as a real threat, the unavoidable effect of that decision was that CNN presented SANITIZED portrait of life under the Ba’athist regime, which ideologues like Michael Moore used to delegitimize any opposition to Saddam.

I’m afraid it is even worse than Jordan admits. CNN, or any other news service, would have been blind and stupid not to see it was inevitable that there would soon be a military attack against Saddam. They were unwilling to risk losing the front-row view of the fireworks and high ratings that a Baghdad office guaranteed. That they would be safe from U.S. munitions was a given; the greatest danger would be from promiscuously sprayed Iraqi anti-aircraft rounds, which in fact accounted for most of the civilian casualties of the battle for Baghdad. Why the hell should we believe that Eason Jordan gave a crap about some hapless Iraqi assistant, when the reporting they actually broadcast could ONLY have the effect of legitimizing a regime that was daily murdering, torturing, raping, and brutalizing hundreds and thousands of Iraqis??

• Reuters admission that it has assured Palestinian terrorist groups it will not use the word "terrorist" to describe them, in return for which the Palestinian terrorist groups have grudgingly sort of promised to refrain from murdering the Reuters journalists. In an article published 20 September 2004, the New York Times reported that Reuters had requested its writers' names be removed from articles in CanWest Global Communications — Canada's most-widely distributed newspapers — when that publisher exercised its prerogative to insert the word “terrorist” to describe organizations that have routinely used terrorism against civilians. Reuter's global managing editor David A. Schlesinger stated that the practice could endanger Reuters' reporters. In various interviews, Schlesinger has made it clear that this policy is simply to avoid reprisals from actual terrorists who would be offended at being described so.

This is wonderful. I don't ask reporters to go out and risk their lives. I do ask them to tell whether their reports are fact or fiction. To sanitize reports and present them as accurate renderings of the events and people portrayed, utterly defeats the entire point of sending a reporter to describe events in the first place. We would be better served by a news agency telling us that it cannot responsibly describe the actual events witnessed without risking revenge killings by some of the participants being described.

Imagine checking the newspaper for local weather conditions before an afternoon outing, without the knowledge that the Mount St. Helens Daily Gazette has a policy against needless defamation of local volcanically-inclined mountains…

Hubby: "Say, dear, how would you like to pack a picnic lunch and drive up the slopes of Mount St. Helen's today?”

Wifey: “Sounds fun. Can you see what the weather report is for this afternoon...”

Hubby: "Mmmm. Okay, here it is. Looks like a slight chance of pyrotechnic flows, but it's expected to provide dramatic photo opportunities, then clear up quickly.”

Wifey: "Will I need a jacket? What's the temperature?”

Hubby: "Oh, the report just says it'll be unseasonably warm.”

Wifey: "Great! I'll bring some sunblock, and a windbreaker.”

Scale that up to decisions of national policy, on which the fate of many tens of thousands of lives may hinge.

of Brussels Sprouts and Barons...

2005-11-28T08:56:00.000-08:00

and Cabbages and Kings...
...and other once-gloried systems now falling by the path...

The description of the nation-state crystallized by the Treaty of Westphalia (hat tip to The Belmont Club for the reference) evidently can accommodate monarchies, dictatorships, confederations, theocracies, and republics even quirky as the United States.

The U.S. can be pretty flexible, toughening and relaxing its sinews according to the needs of the exercise of the moment.

Dire emergencies can be addressed by suspension of certain freedoms we otherwise take for granted. Habeas Corpus was suspended by Lincoln during the Civil War, and the country survived and restored that. Military draft and mobilization of the population can be a brief or sustained response. Some economists have pointed out that one big reason for the U.S. dominance in world trade is that we never really stepped down from the wartime economic stance we enthusiastically took in World War II — specifically, putting women to work in all spheres of the economy on a scale never before undertaken.

Now some folks argue that the diffuse nature of the Jihadi terrorists results from having no state-limited hierarchy. Their incendiary zealotry derives from a transnational, or pre-nation-state mindset, and so is pre-optimized for an internet-savvy, cellular-linked spontaneity that no hidebound Nation-State military apparatus can beat.

This may be a close contest, but I think the U.S. can be flexible enough to adjust its response to the Jihadists. It will be a long fight, because there are Billions of Muslims, and even though 99 percent may be tolerant, generous, and ready to live in peace with their neighbors, one percent of a Billion is still ten million surly rascals ready to kill anyone that refuses to surrender. The actual percentage of impatient ones is clearly greater than one percent. (What do you suppose was the percentage of the Aristocracy and Samurai class that managed to turn Japan from a feudal agronomy in the 1850’s to a world-class military power in just half a century?)

The greatest danger may be that which follows from raising several generations under the sorts of psychological and political conditions needed to prevail and survive the onslaught of suicidal zealots.

If that sounds like a United States terribly altered from its current state, consider the alternative of a country INCAPABLE of dealing with the extortion and intimidation of terrorism.

When Neville Chamberlain returned from his 1938 Munich meeting with Hitler, he shared a persistent delusion with today’s politicians trying to promote a “soft” solution to Jihadi Terrorism — the belief that bullies and tyrants will be somehow gentled by their victims’ acquiescence.

There were other lessons that can be teased out of that skein. Not the least is that faithless abandonment of people dependent upon you for their defense is as clear a sign of impotence as any aggressor could want.

As long as there has been life on the planet there have been predators that cull their sustenance from among the more placid grazers. But In modern human cultures we impose upon our spirits what used to be a species distinction. Predatory humans are differentiated from their victims by mindset, not physical features. But for them to be persistently successful in their predation requires also that their victims be mentally akin to prey animals.

The human prey-mindset might be described as the inability to accept that certain humans are ready to kill for what they want, and will resist all restraints.
Political and religious doctrines arise as people try to make sense of the world, and define patterns and guides for coping with recurring problems. In some conditions, even fundamental misunderstandings and errors within the belief system may be inconsequential. At other times, especially when new challenges arise, those fundamental misapprehensions of reality may determine who survives and who gets eaten by the wolves.

I believe we stand at a moment in history when a number of factors are converging that threaten at least vast upheaval, if not catastrophic destruction to civilization. The liberal hypothesis for decades has been shown wanting in its ability both to solve persistent problems within the Western nations, AND to respond to the external threat of Jihadi terrorism armed with modern technology. The intellectual bankruptcy of liberalism is hinted at in just the absurdity of the “neo-con” label used as a sneering dismissal of radically recast thinking of certain of their opponents. But new definitions, new hypotheses, and new solutions are consistently rejected, scorned, and derided by liberals who cling to a faith, a set of labels and arguments that are demonstrably useless for addressing the challenges we face.

Shielded by Constitutional Immunity

2005-11-26T08:48:00.000-08:00

Forty years ago, my high school civics class covered the constitution, because for some strange reason folks thought it was important for citizens to understand something of how government is supposed to work. Well, it’s still important, but schools aren’t requiring students to learn such demanding stuff any more. This makes it all the more vital that we take the time as adults to learn a few things, or we’re going to be fooled over and over.

Here’s one little example of a simple but important bit of information you need to be able to judge some of the things you hear:

From the Constitution of the United States:

Article One, Section 6

The Senators and Representatives shall receive a compensation for their services, to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the treasury of the United States. They shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place. [my italics]

This means that no senator or congressman can be sued for libel or slander, or for any damages someone might feel resulted from anything said by a member of the Senate or Congress, nor can they be forced to appear in court to discuss anything said in sessions of the House or the Senate.

In the long view it is a good thing that Senators and Representatives be immune from suits for libel or slander, or other claims of damage from anything they say in the course of their public debates and speeches in Congress. This privilege was included in the constitution to prevent partisan public action from hindering elected representatives’ open discussion of contentious, obnoxious and even poisonous ideas that arise in sorting through the issues that challenge the nation.

We citizens lacking such privilege need to keep this Congressional immunity uppermost in our minds when trying to make sense of the utter lying crap that spews out of the mouths of senators and congressmen when they speechify and pontificate from their constitutionally protected havens in the Congress of the United States.

They can say any damn thing they like.

It doesn’t have to be true, even remotely. They cannot be sued, prosecuted, served with summonses, or otherwise forced to account for their lies, except by voters with their ballots.

Remember this immunity clause when you hear a Senator or Representative making obnoxious and puffed up claims. Compare what they say before the Lidless Eye of C-Span, with what they say on the chat shows, or when they’re talking in front of a fund-raising dinner, and see how the language changes, depending on whether they’re standing on the protected hallowed grounds of Congress, or on a podium which grants them no such immunity.

Hope in A Defection Recollected

2005-11-24T12:39:00.000-08:00

Last night I had the dismal experience of encountering Michael Moore on the TV, evidently addressing attendees of the first annual Paul Wellstone Memorial Dinner. This time he was attempting to suggest some sinister Republican plot to explain the anonymity of most of the suicide-murder-bombers currently at work in Iraq. He pointed out that in the case of Palestinian bombers, their identities are well-publicized, and that somehow we knew the names even of the 9-11 hijackers within DAYS of the event. So, he asks, how’s cum we don’t know these current suicide killers? [Regarding the quick identification of the 9-11 terrorists, my brother has wisely pointed out that those individuals left a huge trail of data to be gleaned by the many hundreds of investigators likely to have poured over airport security tapes and computer records of all the flight bookings and ticket sales. Presumably, terrorists in Iraq are not required to have a major credit card to purchase C-4 or steal a vehicle.]

Does he think somehow Karl Rove is capable of suppressing the identities of these people we can’t keep from bombing and murdering? Does a Jihadi etiquette book he alone knows about explain the subtext implied in the detonation of high explosives and the resulting redistribution of human flesh, anonymous or otherwise? Does he expect us to believe that the bombings are somehow more authentically an expression of indegenous anti-occupational outrage because the bombers’ ID’s are not widely broadcast? Is he saying maybe the bombings are actually being done by Americans who just want us to think it’s the terrorists so we stupid peasants will hate Iraqis, just like the jets that crashed into the WTC maybe were actually remotely controlled by Americans in black helicopters hovering at high altitude just so we would hate all Arabs and Muslims and let BusHitler give all the oil to Halliburton?

Mr. Moore’s line of reasoning works only if every murderous Islamic Jihadist in every place round the world had been publicly identified in exactly the same celebratory way as some of the Palestinian Suicide-Murderers. That is, if every Islamic radical thought the same way, subscribed to precisely the same set of Rules of Engagement, and followed the same Imams, and arose from identically the same economic and social milieu.

This is absurd on the face of it. To address plainly an issue that needs to be retired, Michael Moore is a Moron. There are Shi’a suicide-murderers and Sunni suicide-murderers. There is Hamas, Al-Jihad, Palestine Islamic Jihad (Al-Jihad Al-Islami fi Filastin) with its Shaqaqi Faction and Shalla Faction AlQuds brigades, Group for the Preservation of the Holy Sites, International Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders, Tanzim Qa’idat al-Jihad Fi Bilad al-Rafidayn (a recent name given for the group captained by Abu Musab Zarqawi), Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Fundamentalist Brigades, Abu Nidal Organization, Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigade, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Unitarian Jihad, Hizb’ollah and the PLO and the PLA and al Qaeda (Jama'at at-Tawhid wa’l-Jihad) and Black September and Abu Sayyaf and Jaama Islamiyah and the Saddam Fedayeen and a hundred and more other splinter groups with differing agendas and internecine conflict. They murder each other as viciously and relentlessly as they murder innocent bystanders, Jews, Christians, and followers of Bahá’u’lláh. There have been plenty of terrorists who have managed to blow themselves up anonymously, and others whose identities were only revealed by police investigation.

It also depends on the tiny little item that many of the bombers may not have even KNOWN they were intended to die in the blast. There is no evidence that every single truck bomb that explodes was driven by someone who had willingly made the choice of suicide. It is likely that in many cases, drivers are duped, drugged, lied to, coerced, bullied, extorted, or have their families or children threatened, to persuade them to drive a truck to a certain location. Bombs can very easily be detonated remotely, by a person safe from harm, while the driver may even be unaware of the plan.

Exploding vests are a little more problematic that way, but I could imagine terrorists telling a person his children will be slaughtered unless he agrees to blow himself up. Terrorists slaughter children routinely, to accomplish all sorts of goals, but always to intimidate people to do things they don’t want to do, or refrain from doing something clearly in their own self interest.

But there goes Mister Moore, spewing his own absurd accusations, which the most elementary examination can refute. He cares not. It is equally disturbing to consider that he actually believes the half-digested bovine fodder he spews, as to think he’s only just cynically spouting lies he is certain his admirers will never test against reality.

I take some comfort in remembering that there are after all, a lot of people who can finally see through lies, and logically sort out what must be true, in spite of endless lies, repeated endlessly.

In September of 1976 Russian Mig-25 fighter pilot Viktor Belenko had grown sufficiently disenchanted of the communist dictatorship that he decided to decamp, and flew his high-performance fighter jet to Japanese civilian airport at Hakodate, Hokkaido. In a virtuoso performance resulting from his elite training, native intelligence, and desperation, he defeated Russian anti-aircraft home defense radar, missile batteries and pursuing fighters, as well as Japanese air defense jets, and landed with just seconds of fuel to spare after flying from a Russian airbase near Vladivastok and across the Sea of Japan.

U.S. aviation technology experts examining this first example of an operational Mach 3 fighter, expected to be humbled by new technology. Instead they found the jet was a sturdy workhorse, using vacuum tubes for the radar, cable and pulley mechanical links for the flight controls, and welded steel for the fuselage and wings rather than any exotic new metallurgical coup.

This speaks eloquently of two things, one long appreciated, the other kept quiet as long as possible by the Soviet Government. The first is the confirmation of Russia’s long tradition of brilliant military and aviation engineering, making the best use of available technologies, materials, and utilitarian principles. The second was the desperate economic and technological self-mutilation the soviet system imposed on itself. President Carter and all his henchmen seemingly missed this monolithic insight. His successor did not, and capitalized on it with supreme success.

What sticks with me, years after reading his life’s story (written with the assistance of author John Barron) is the insight he must have provided to American debriefers to the precipitous downhill slide in Soviet society. He described a number of horrifying details that gradually convinced him the Soviet government was systematically, daily, in all aspects of its business, lying to the people:

...Unmarked doorways off main thoroughfares, which served as private entries to the lavish and elegant department stores reserved exclusively for the elite “nomenklatura” — i.e., factory managers, favored artists, members of the ruling class, general officers of the military and some of their favored subordinates, etc. Meanwhile, most citizens only had access to drab “magazini” with limited selection even when fully stocked.

...Arriving at a new apartment building expecting to move in with his bride, only to find that the structure was literally being strapped round with steel bands to prevent it collapsing from poor workmanship.

... Learning to check the date of manufacture on all appliances, after finding from bitter experience that items produced in the last week of the month might have screws pounded in place with hammers by workers pressured to meet arbitrary quotas, while items produced in the first week of the month usually suffered from haphazard assembly resulting from vodka used to celebrate meeting last month’s quota.

...Riding a crowded bus, witnessing a teenage gang callously stab a female passenger and melt away at the stop, leaving her to bleed to death before the antiquated ambulance arrives.

...Sitting idle many days at the Russian air base, unable to fly jets disabled by ground crews that had used the flight-hydraulics alcohol for their recreational drinking.

But the most astounding item, the one that Belenko said finally convinced him his government had been lying, was the resignation of President Richard Nixon. He realized that after all his government had said about how the U.S. government enslaved its people, that in fact, the outrage of common citizens seemed to have forced the leader of the country to step down, without a bloody coup.

Sooner or later, the delusional leftists will be outdistanced by their audience’s personal growth. The lesson of the fall of the Soviet Union shows that lies cannot sustain an illusion forever. The people who applaud them, eventually will look around themselves and begin to notice the gulf between what they see and what Moore has told them.

Just a Quick Cheap Shot at France, Germany, and the EU

2005-11-23T07:54:00.000-08:00

European Union could be a thing either wonderful or horrifying, considering the performance over history of the component states. In the short term, their ability to coalesce seems mighty fragile. Germany’s Green Party has persuaded a substantial number of the Deutsches volk to their point of view, and managed to get one of their number elevated to the post of Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer. It’s unlikely such voters will forget that it was FRANCE that bombed the Greenpeace ship lying at dock a few years back, drowning two of its crew and preventing the ship from interfering with a French nuclear weapon test in Pacific waters near Tahiti. Germans simultaneously protest nuclear power, disposal or storage of hazardous nuclear waste AND the pollution occasioned by coal burning, currently [sorry] the only viable aternative fuel. But all the while they quietly purchase surplus electrical power from FRANCE, which generates only six percent of its power by coal, eighty percent by Nuclear fission.

I wonder if the Germans or French have ever translated the phrase “cognitive dissonance.”

Good luck to Angela Merkel in her coalition government. A period of stability in German politics would seem to be a gift for Germany, the EU, and, well, everyone.

Euro-Islamicist Rioting and the Abdication of the Press

2005-11-15T01:23:00.000-08:00

By two weeks ago (i.e., about the 4th of November) I had been reading about the riots for several days, but the nightly rampage of disaffected Muslims in France was well into its seventh day before I began to hear any mention of it on the nightly news. By the fifth day of Muslim rioting in Århus, Denmark, I only was aware of it by reports in blogs, translated from Danish news services. It’s certainly possible that I missed the reports that were broadcast, because I do not aggressively scan the television for news.

But why should I have to search the television stations for news of such profoundly important events going forward? The entire point of News Organizations used to be that they were meant to alert viewers to events about which they need to know, and give information that the viewers could not reasonably be expected to dig up for themselves except by vigorous research.

Have all the network news organizations concluded that the riots are so trivial they don’t need really to give them more than a few second’s comment? With all their resources, connections, analysts, experts in history, culture, law, technology, psychology, philosophy, religion, et cetera, have they concluded it is of no consequence that the rioters are tens of thousands of unassimilated North African Muslims? That it is insignificant that they’re discontentedly living in ghettos in which their grandparents were settled by the French Government? That they have burnt upwards of ten thousand vehicles now, torched several Christian churches, and wounded a few French Gendarmes? That the French government is being driven to apply curfews and civil disorder legislation originally created to control the bloody conflict that tore France and its North African Algerian Départment asunder sixty years ago?

Those data I only know from reading the news on the web, which allows me to connect to European news sources, and other people’s blogs. With the exception of C-span, the commercial and public stations give so little attention to the Islamicist Militants rampaging in Europe, that it might as well not be happening. If you ask people who do not check internet news sources, they shake their heads and act as though you’re some sort of kook to be asking.

Even as the riots persist into a third week, American news anchors attempting antiseptic neutrality still hold back from acknowledging that the violence is by Muslims. “Neutral” is a word which cannot be honestly applied to this sort of craven abdication of the responsibility a NEWS REPORTING organization. Better say “neutered” to be more accurate.

All this underscores to me the inescapable problem that the Mainstream Alleged News Media in America no longer can be trusted to deliver the service we need. In almost every country of the globe, Islamic zealots are relentlessly hacking, shooting, exploding, beheading, castrating, gassing, burning, stoning, and otherwise mistreating those whom they would dominate. More tolerant muslims are targeted for murder, to intimidate others into accepting the domination of the fanatics.

When european news teams taped Palestinians celebrating after the collapse of the World Trade Centers on 11 September 2001, members of the Palestinian Authority approached them and warned that they “could not guarantee their safety, if they were to continue.” Now, that has got to make you stop and think. Just like the London Executives of Burger King, when a smart-aleck Muslim objected that an abstract drawing of the swirls of an ice-cream sundae product label was offensive to Islam because it was too close to the Arabic script for “Allah.” They caved in. God knows, we don’t want to have Islamic terrorists blowing up Burger King stores.

Within days after the event of 9-11, you could not find images of the airplanes exploding as they crashed into the World Trade Center or the subsequent collapse of those towers anywhere on American broadcast stations. They blandly announced it had been decided to refrain from repeatedly broadcasting those scenes to avoid needlessly arousing feelings of outrage among Americans.

These are identically the same monsters who endlessly re-broadcast the fifteen seconds of the Rodney King beating by L.A. Police. Where was their sense of restraint then? Or when they repeatedly broadcast the photographs of arab men being humbled and shamed by an errant American female prison guard? With all their pontificating, they cannot get around the brutal fact that that such humiliation will never be morally equivalent to murders, beheadings of captives and indiscriminate bombings of bystanders, and the use of children as human shields in battle, all daily fare for Islamic fascist cowards.

Why is it important to try to avoid arousing Anti-Arab outrage among Americans at an undeniable atrocity done to their country, but it’s okay to make every effort to provoke anti-American outrage among Arabs by reports that frequently are no more than allegations?

That is sophistry, casuistry, or to speak plainer, lying. And the Mainstream Media do this twisting, torturous, inversion of logic every day.

After the collapse of Baghdad in 2003, CNN’s top news executive Eason Jordan admitted in a letter to the New York Times — shortly before the plain truth would have been revealed by unfolding events ANYWAY — that CNN had systematically been withholding reports of Saddam’s atrocities, murders, kidnappings, tortures, assassinations, and crimes against his subjects for years before the invasion. He mumbled some lame excuse for this, suggesting that they were trying to protect their Iraqi staff from retribution.

That is a crock of fecal matter.

They sanitized for American audiences the viciousness of the regime, at the same time standing by while they KNEW the regime was daily raping and slaughtering children and women in front of their fathers and husbands. The gutless cravens at CNN were silent, running stories that made Americans think “Say...Iraq doesn’t seem that different from, well, downtown Albuquerque,” while opponents of the regime were being fed into wood chippers, or pushed from sixth-floor roofs, or having their hands chopped off with machetes.

Sorry, Mr. Eason. That is not protecting Iraqis. That is ACQUIESCING to the torment of Iraq. You let Americans think Bush was demonizing Saddam, while you KNEW he really WAS A DEMON!

Sadly, what CNN was really doing — and you can be sure that so was each and every other news organization — was jockeying to guarantee themselves a front-row seat for the fireworks when Bush finally blew Saddam’s regime off the map, as they knew he eventually would.

The sick irony of that situation is that they also knew from the accuracy demonstrated in the U.S. “smart weapons” of a decade earlier that they would be safe in their suites in the designated JOURNALIST HOTELS, because of the pinpoint accuracy and obsessively reviewed targeting of United States munitions. Their biggest worry, and the greatest source of all civilian casualties, was the frantic promiscuous un-aimed firing of the Iraqi forces before they decamped, followed by the deliberate targeting of civilians by Islamic terrorists.

[The incident in which U.S. fire killed journalists was on 08 April 2003, when a US tank fired on what they believed to be an enemy “spotter” on the roof of a building, which turned out to be the Palestine Hotel, where many international journalists were quartered. Even a critical review by Reporters Without Borders acknowledges that Reuters Ukrainian camera operator Taras Protsyuk and Spanish Telecinco employee José Couso, were not intentionally targeted as journalists by the tank crew, who did not know they were firing on a hotel which housed reporters.]

Iranian Auto Manufacturer Iran Khodro announces Asbestos Car for French Market; 200K units initial order.

No, sorry, it’s just a stupid joke.

It would be wonderful to write about silly stuff, things that make us chortle and guffaw, snicker and giggle. A lot of people laugh if you just sneeringly say the name of the president and roll your eyes. Must make it awfully easy to be a comedian.

Sometimes it’s intriguing to consider how things will march when the Leftward crowd gets what it seems to be so earnestly striving to achieve. Imagine Jay Leno’s writers struggling to come up with a bunch of snappy one-liners about Michael Jackson once our country is part of the greater Caliphate of North America. They would have to scribble their humor very quickly; Jackson’s headless torso would probably be cooling to room temperature before broadcast time. Justice under Sharia is swift and harsh.

Viewers might want to record every episode they can of all the hooking up and hot-tub action in the OC and all the dating “reality” games, Playboy Channel, Jerry Springer, and “Girls Gone Wild” because the Imams and the Ayutollahs are unlikely to pickup the fall options for those properties. And set aside a very cleverly disguised hidey-hole for the tapes of those programs and any clandestine triple-X videos.

Or a C-Span discussion on the rise of Islamic Fascism.

Protections against unreasonable search and seizure might become a little tenuous under regimes which regard the American Constitution as an edict of the Great Satan. The Wise leaders of many Islamic fundamentalist governments have criminalized satellite dishes an other devices which might channel decadent western influences into the heart of pious Islamic domesticity.

Take a look at the banlieus of France — the Muslim ghettos currently engaged in guaranteeing the next several years of unprecedentedly brisk Peugot and Citroën sales. (Latest reports indicate the two-week-long “Car-B-Que” is tapering off, which may simply indicate a dwindling supply of unburnt vehicles.) Militant third and fourth generation Muslims in France, whose forebears immigrated from former FrancoColonial North Africa to find better paying jobs than could be had in their own lands, have obstinately resisted assimilation into a culture that has always shown little respect for outlanders. French planners who built the various communities of dubious charm in which to install the nominal French citizens from Algeria may have expected that the largesse of progressively expanding welfare benefits would win hearts.

But the dole queue ever fails to inspire the gratitude or loyalty of its intended beneficiaries.

One has to have a modicum of sympathy for the disaffected Muslims. Growing up in increasingly socialistic France, militant Muslim youths endure the double whammy of persistent French condescension and the enfeebling disincentives to self-worth imposed by any welfare state.

The Germans too thought to solve their labor shortage by encouraging wholesale movement of ethnic Turks into the burgeoning industrial economy of West Germany back in the days when Germany was partitioned. When the WALL fell, the formerly communist East Germany’s long idled population suddenly provided all the cheap workers a profit-minded industrial economy could want. This made the outlander Turkish workers suddenly redundant, forcing many of them onto the dole. As a result, Germany too, has a simmering population of under-employed and discontented Islamic immigrants, albeit without the legacy of having been their Colonial Master in living memory.

Holland, on a time having colonies in the Spice Islands, also had a substantial influx of Islamic immigrants, particularly from South Molucca. Some of those, uprooted from their own culture and unwilling or unable to cope with life in the Netherlands, staged a bloody train hijacking in the 1970’s. More recently, Muslim immigrants in Holland murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh for the sin of making a film critical of the harsh treatment of women in Islamic society. Holland is now in a general state of alarm; the ethnic europeans, officials and private citizens as well, are rightly concerned that just making public statements regarding the continuing outrages by the immigrant militants will expose them to terrorist retribution. And while Muslims have been rioting in France, other Muslim communities have been on a violent spree in Denmark.

We may be seeing the the initial cracks in a collapse of at least one failed European state; the initial assault in an undeclared attempt by Islamic expansionists to finish the conquest of Europe that was only temporarily delayed at Tours by Charles Martel in October of 732, and later by the Viennese resistance to the Ottoman Turks in 1638.

It must be reiterated over and over again that there are many wonderful people who are Muslims. I have been privileged to know a good number of them, mostly as a benefit of my undergraduate years at an Ivy League university with a large representation of non-US nations, and the years I’ve spent teaching and just hanging out at several universities. Those years introduced me to Muslims from Jakarta, Malaysia, India, Palestine, Israel, Philippines, Egypt, and other African regions.

The moderate Muslims, who honor the principles of tolerance and diversity, are in much more immediate danger from Islamic fanaticism than any other group. I can understand their reticence. To publicly advocate the equality of women, or tolerance of homosexuality, to allow that there might be further prophets after Muhammad, or to question whether Peace can exist before Sharia is imposed on all “Dar-Al-Harb” marks the speaker as a target for intimidation or murder by the zealots. This is why Islamoterrorists are blowing up their coreligionists even more relentlessly than they are murdering jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, followers of Bahu’a’ullah, Copts, animists, agnostics, Catholics, and Buddhists.

Some folks have suggested that moderate Muslims need to work for a “Reformation” of Islam, like that of the Catholic Church when it was in chaos from widespread corruption. In the absence of any clear pressure from within, support for reform from without has no way to link to and nurture Muslim reform efforts. But the murderous zealots are most likely to target those they consider “apostate” for especial wrath. So we are in a terribly critical stage, in which the fanatics are maneuvering to dominate or murder any of their own faith who oppose their agenda, then consolidate their power before advancing to new territories.

History has many lessons: If you look at the emergence of Japan from its own isolation, you see similar spasms and upheaval within Japanese culture. In the 1920’s— a generation AFTER Japan had astounded the world by smashing Imperial Russia’s proud fleet in the Tsushima Straight — Japanese fanatics assassinated scores of Industrialists, bureaucrats, leaders, educators, and publishers, attempting to purge hated “Western Influences” they saw making their culture unrecognizable.

Iran in the 1980’s after the fall of the Shah, saw an eerily similar parade of assassinations and xenophobic violence, attempting to salvage a comforting medieval Islamic identity from the wreckage of the Shah’s attempt at modernization. For all the American Left’s hatred of the CIA (which had helped the Shah return to power in the mid-50’s) and characterization of the Shah as repressive, he was hated more for his attempts at reform. For decades he had been treading on the once-unchallenged Imams, by decreeing the right of women to wear modern dress, receive schooling like that of males, to work at jobs; by taking over the distribution of land and farming allotments, that had been a primary source of the Imam’s power; and by Westernizing banking and financial institutions. For these he was doomed, not for operating his Savak secret police.

So there is hope. Japan has been pretty thoroughly integrated into the community of nations, although it was only after horrific blood and suffering.

But we now are at a point in the tides of history similar to the last years before Hitler swept across Europe and the Ukraine. A little vision and some backbone is wanted. What we now call "Political Correctness" is indistinguishable from what was then called "Appeasement." "Peace in Our Time" defines the gutless avoidance of confrontation with the bully, now as then.

Our own news media cannot bring themselves to speak the words identifying the perpetrators of the current outrages in almost every country of the world. They are actively choosing to be silent rather than report news which either will anger the Islamic Terrorists, or fails to support their world vision, in which the only evil is that of European White Culture against all third world cultures.

Our News Reporting and Information sources have largely abdicated their responsibility and loyalty to the people they are meant to be serving. We have to replace them, or accept blindness as a new dark age approaches.

“I will tell my completely TRUE STORY but only for ten thousand dollars a crack”

2005-11-14T14:18:00.000-08:00

Further considerations in the matter of Joseph Wilson.

Let’s see... Joe Wilson, who is busy promoting himself as a courageous whistleblower who revealed the naughty conspiracy of BusHitler to use a pack of lies to trick Americans into making war on Iraq, will tell you all about his insights, theories, and proofs.

But only if you book him through the for-profit TALENT agency that now has an exclusive contract with him. If you want to have the former ambassador and heroic destroyer of illusions share his wisdom with your civic group or garden club, just call Greater Talent Network, Inc. to negotiate a fee. Please have your checkbook or major credit card handy.

It is just one more pebble in the avalanche of evidence that the mainstream ALLEGED news media have abdicated reporting actual news, and instead committed themselves to advocating the party line of the insane LEFT, that this singularly important motive of Mr W gets no attention or comment. Anyone opposing Wilson’s version of things is characterized as “liar, thug, disinformation operative, tool of the administration” or such. No one on the left is the slightest bit interested in considering that there might be anything phony about Wilson’s claims, because they coincide with what they want to believe anyway.

Mind you, I have no objection to ANYONE taking full advantage of whatever celebrity comes their way, so long as that celebrity has been earned by legitimate means.

But Jos. Wilson has manufactured his celebrity by staging an utterly bogus situation, evidently with planning and assistance from CIA insiders whose aim is to embarrass and undermine the President with a pack of unsubstantiated allegations, meanwhile hiding behind the cloak of secrecy that the LEFT otherwise has made heroic efforts to shred. (Screech all you want to about Scooter Libby. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has specifically refused to indict him or anyone else for revealing that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA. This simply shows there never was a crime at issue in all the posturing and posing by people claiming the revelation was punishment for Wilson’s NYT Op-Ed piece.) Here is the chain of logic that leads with glacial inevitability to that conclusion:

(1) Wilson was never at any time qualified to assess the credibility of the British intelligence reports concerning Iraqi attempts to obtain Uranium Oxide in Niger. He is an ambassador, not an intelligence operative, not an intelligence analyst, not an investigative agent; not a forensic accountant; not a detective. An ambassadorship is typically a reward given to someone who provided financial or other material support to a winning presidential candidate, so it has NEVER been proof of ANY particular skill at diplomacy or statecraft. A wise president will look for people with some discretion and intelligence, but the ambassador is supposed to be the conduit of the administration’s views and messages. Not some second-rate James Bond.

(2) If the CIA had a legitimate concern about those intelligence reports, they should have sent someone with the sort of credentials and experience listed in item 1, AND the person sent should have filed a formal written report with an assessment for the eyes of the CIA and the government (Wilson has stated he only gave a verbal summary on his return) NOT an Opinion-Editorial letter in the New York Times.

(3) The issue of Saddam’s continuing attempts to pursue a nuclear weapons program has been supported by numerous statements from former technicians and scientists from the Ba’athist regime, by evidence found by U.N. inspectors during the decade before the invasion, and by discoveries of enriched Uranium in Iraq since the invasion. Unbroken seals on 500 tons of Iraqi yellowcake did NOT prove that Saddam had given up. As long as those seals remain unbroken, his uncritical supporters on the left could claim he wasn’t doing anything with the yellowcake he already had. Meanwhile, he has been attempting to surreptitiously acquire MORE yellowcake, and evidently been able to do so AND enrich it while the inspections were going forward, because of all the interference he imposed on the inspectors. Just this last month almost two TONS of enriched uranium have been discovered in Iraq. It is, after all, a big place with lots of room to hide things.

(4) It just doesn’t make sense for a professional intelligence agency concerned about secrecy and competence, to send a rank amateur sleuth like Joe Wilson to check the authenticity of such an important report, much less allow Wilson to publicly proclaim his opinions and the circumstances of the trip by which he arrived at those opinions. It is such a grotesque departure from any professional standard of the intelligence gathering and assessment functions of the CIA, it strongly suggests that certain discontented CIA career-bureaucrats have intentionally been forcing a confrontation with Bush, for purposes that have nothing to do with national security and everything to do with their job security.

(5) Finally, whether or not this single report of a single attempt to acquire yellowcake turns out to be true, the indisputable fact remains that Saddam had already successfully acquired Uranium by surreptitious means despite the years of sanctions by the massed nations opposed to his desires. It is simply absurd to make this single puny item the lynchpin of any justification for or against an invasion, because there were THOUSANDS of other outrages, provocations, threats, attacks, and confirmed reports of his violations of sanctions and various international laws. During his presidency, William Jefferson Clinton sent United States military forces to attack or threaten Iraq on at least TEN separate occasions, without requesting the authorization of Congress, or the United Nations. In effect, we have been at war with Iraq since 1991, and Saddam NEVER stopped violating the terms of the armistice to which he had agreed in order to stop hostilities at that time.

Please, if you detest what i’m saying, take just a minute to think about the logic of the situation. Just a few minutes of casual “googling” will bring up tens of thousands of references to speeches made during CLINTON’s presidency by members of his administration and many other Democratic Party Leaders proclaiming their firm belief that Saddam was pursuing these weapons programs despite the determined efforts of the United Nations, despite the inspections, and despite repeated military attacks against Iraq by U.S. military forces on Clinton’s orders. They certainly were not under the evil sway of George W. or Karl Rove or Dick Cheney then. No, they were looking at evidence gathered by U.S., French, German, Russian, Italian, British, and other United Nations intelligence organizations documenting Saddam’s activities.

Here’s a link to a CNN report of an address explaining his decision to send American armed forces to attack targets in Iraq in 1998. He stated:

First, we must be prepared to use force again if Saddam takes threatening actions, such as trying to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction or their delivery systems, threatening his neighbors, challenging allied aircraft over Iraq or moving against his own Kurdish citizens.
…
If Saddam defies the world and we fail to respond, we will face a far greater threat in the future. Saddam will strike again at his neighbors. He will make war on his own people.

And mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them, and he will use them.

Senator John Kerry, in 1998 long before George W. Bush was a factor in presidential politics, issued a statement calling for the use of United States ground troops to assault Iraq.

At the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, speaking in September of 2002, Massachussetts Senator Ted Kennedy said: “We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.”

California Democratic Congressional leader Nancy Pelosi, in 1998 issued a statement justifying a United States military attack on Iraq, including this:

“Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the develompment of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process. [...] I believe in negotiated solutions to international conflict. This is, unfortunately, not going to be the case in this situation where Saddam Hussein has been a repeat offender, ignoring the international community’s requirement that he come clean with his weapons program.”

Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s Secretary of State, speaking in 1999 included the following statement in a November address:

”If you remember in 1991, Saddam Hussein invaded another country, he plagued it, he set fire to it, and he decided that he could control the region. Before that, he had gassed his own people.

Saddam Hussein had been acquiring weapons of mass destruction. We carried out, with the help of an alliance, a war in which we put Saddam Hussein back into his box. The United Nations voted on a set of resolutions which demanded Saddam Hussein live up to his obligations and get rid of weapons of mass destruction.

The United Nations Security Council imposed a set of sanctions on Saddam Hussein until he did that. It also established an organization that is set up to monitor whether Hussein had gotten rid of his weapons of mass destruction.

There has never been an embargo against food and medicine. It's just that Hussein has just not chosen to spend his money on that. Instead, he has chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction, and palaces for his cronies.”

On October 10, 2002, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton gave a floor speech addressing S.J. Res. 45, A Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq, in which she said:

“Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who has tortured and killed his own people, even his own family members, to maintain his iron grip on power. He used chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds and on Iranians, killing over 20 thousand people. Unfortunately, during the 1980's, while he engaged in such horrific activity, he enjoyed the support of the American government, because he had oil and was seen as a counterweight to the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran.

In 1991, Saddam Hussein invaded and occupied Kuwait, losing the support of the United States. The first President Bush assembled a global coalition, including many Arab states, and threw Saddam out after forty-three days of bombing and a hundred hours of ground operations. The U.S.-led coalition then withdrew, leaving the Kurds and the Shiites, who had risen against Saddam Hussein at our urging, to Saddam's revenge.

As a condition for ending the conflict, the United Nations imposed a number of requirements on Iraq, among them disarmament of all weapons of mass destruction, stocks used to make such weapons, and laboratories necessary to do the work. Saddam Hussein agreed, and an inspection system was set up to ensure compliance. And though he repeatedly lied, delayed, and obstructed the inspections work, the inspectors found and destroyed far more weapons of mass destruction capability than were destroyed in the Gulf War, including thousands of chemical weapons, large volumes of chemical and biological stocks, a number of missiles and warheads, a major lab equipped to produce anthrax and other bio-weapons, as well as substantial nuclear facilities.

In 1998, Saddam Hussein pressured the United Nations to lift the sanctions by threatening to stop all cooperation with the inspectors. In an attempt to resolve the situation, the UN, unwisely in my view, agreed to put limits on inspections of designated "sovereign sites" including the so-called presidential palaces, which in reality were huge compounds well suited to hold weapons labs, stocks, and records which Saddam Hussein was required by UN resolution to turn over. When Saddam blocked the inspection process, the inspectors left. As a result, President Clinton, with the British and others, ordered an intensive four-day air assault, Operation Desert Fox, on known and suspected weapons of mass destruction sites and other military targets.

In 1998, the United States also changed its underlying policy toward Iraq from containment to regime change and began to examine options to effect such a change, including support for Iraqi opposition leaders within the country and abroad.

In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001.

It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security.”

Please, people, for the love of GOD, the lies have to stop. You cannot claim that Bush misrepresented the threat of Saddam Hussein without also implicating EVERY SINGLE LEADER OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES DURING ALL THE YEARS OF THE CLINTON PRESIDENCY.

We are all in this together, folks. The Islamic fanatics don’t care whether you voted for John Kerry, or give donations to stop drilling in the Alaskan Wilderness, or whether you support or oppose the Invasion of Iraq. They will saw your head off while singing praises to Allah the Merciful, just as Muslim zealots murdered three Christian teenaged schoolgirls in Indonesia last week, or 59 Hindu celebrants in New Delhi, or 59 Jordanian Muslims in Amman this week. Hating George Bush does not magically make the REAL demons disappear.

Rioting in Denmark and Paris— Is the MSM listening?

2005-11-02T23:33:00.000-08:00

As I finished composing the previous essay, news posting on several blogs describe the SEVENTH day of rioting by Muslim youths in a growing sprawl of Paris neighborhoods. The incident precipitating the riot was the deaths by accidental electrocution of two teenages who seemingly scaled a wall into an electrical power substation, presumably to escape police pursuing them. At this point there is at least one police station that has been under seige by the rioters, and some 40 vehicles set ablaze. One concern is a report that several surface-to-air missiles recently have been smuggled into Europe by Islamic zealots, and the neighborhoods currently in such disarray are distressingly close to the two airports, Le Bourget (Where Charles Lindbergh alit after his transatlantic flight) and Charles de Gaulle. A Reuters report leads off, interestingly with the promise of French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy to determine how a police tear gas cannister inadvertantly rebounded against a MOSQUE.

[note to Sarkozy: Could it possibly be that since Police fired a tear gas grenade in the direction of a crowd of Muslims busy trying to dismantle FRANCE, and because it was a Muslim neighborhood, a Mosque was more or less inevitably in the line of fire?]

During the time we in America have been so preoccupied with the indictment of Lewis Libby and the Left’s accusations of that Bush lied to fool the country into making war on a Religion of Peace, rioting Muslims have also spent four days trashing a commercial Mall in Århus, Denmark. This is, you may recall, the anniversary of the murder by a militant Muslim of Theo Van Gogh in Holland. (Check my previous article for a review of current murders and atrocities by fanatic Muslims around the world.) At this point, even after four days of rioting, the news is not showing up in a google search except for blogs. The Mainstream ALLEGED news organizations either are not paying attention, or they have chosen to ignore the Denmark riots. Two blogs have described the Århus rioting, Free Republic and Small Dead Animals, the Roadkill Diaries, which evidently received email translations or descriptions from Denmark’s domestic Danish-language press.

Looks like the appeasement of Villepin and Chirac don't count for much to some folks. They may have to abase themselves a lot more to calm the outraged ones.

I predict diminishing returns.

Wisdom—or at least, information— in the Daily Kos?

2005-11-02T23:17:00.000-08:00

Todd Johnston has posted a lucid and actually entertaining, if condescending, explanation at the Daily KOS of the stages and difficulties of refinement to get from the 500 metric tons of “yellowcake” known to be stored in Iraq since 1991, and some hypothetical nuclear bomb.

His hypothesis is that Iraq has never had the manufacturing infrastructure to refine sufficient weapons-grade U235 to be any danger, so the purchase of additional yellowcake from Niger would have been so inconsequential that it can not have been a casus belli.

There are a few dead mice in the skulligallee, though.

He claims that as of about the time of Bush’s 2002 state of the union address, visiting scientists determined to their satisfaction that Iraq’s manufacturing capacity was so wrecked that they could not possibly refine their existing yellowcake to a level of purity that would pose any danger.

This assumes three unverified premises: (a) that the self-appointed inspectors he cites have any credentials for analyzing any country’s manufacturing capacity, much less that of a murderous dictatorship; (b) that Saddam and his regime had no access to any other refining capabilities other than those viewed by the visiting scientists; and (c) that the yellowcake would pose no danger unless refined to weapons-grade purity.

Paul Volcker’s official Report reveals that the criminally corrupt mis-management of the sanctions under the Oil-for-Food program never seriously hampered Saddam in pursuing any of his programs and goals. Even Bill Clinton found that only by unambiguous application of military force was Saddam ever persuaded to refrain from violating the restrictions placed on him. At the same time, it’s clear that Saddam and his scientists and technicians were enjoying vigorous cooperation and support from various other rogue states eager to join the “nuclear weapons club.” Documents, testimony, and other evidence have come to light showing that North Korea, Syria, and Iran, Libya, Pakistan, China, and several of the former republics of the Soviet Union, have had brisk involvement with proscribed development, procurement, and exchange of nuclear technology. (They have not all knowingly shared all around, but they have all participated in surreptitious and clandestine exchanges with outlaw suppliers, in which cross-traffic is extremely difficult to monitor or control.)

Meanwhile Iraq was throughout the 90’s consistently resisting monitoring of its activities, to the extent of transporting U.N. inspectors to wrong locations, refusing on occasion to allow them into the country, and actually threatening and intimidating the teams. Finally, in the last months before the long-threatened invasion, photos show vast convoys of trucks loading and carrying away equipment and materials from suspected weapons facilities in Iraq, across the border into Syria. Later in 2004, Syrian troops were assisting the Muslim government of Khartoum to massacre black African civilians in Darfur by use of chemical weapons, presumably acquired from Iraq in the pre-war transfer.

In a situation where an acknowledged Mass Murderer, Tyrant, and Liar has demonstrated repeatedly a willingness to violate restrictions, resist constraints, and circumvent inspections, only a naive bumpkin would assume Saddam, or any assessment by inspectors under such conditions, could be trusted. Saddam had for more than a decade been violating the terms of the armistice that halted hostilities after his 1991 invasion. Many wars have been declared in response to far less provocation than — to mention just ONE outrageous item — the hundreds of missiles Iraq fired at aircraft enforcing the United Nations “no-fly” zone. The simple fact is that Saddam NEVER lived up to the terms of the Armistice. There should be no question as to the right of the original coalition to emphatically and with extreme prejudice, put an end to his regime.

So, Todd Johnston is right in one sense: 500 tons of yellowcake kept in sealed barrels is inoccuous. But the British intelligence that Saddam’s agents were attempting to procure MORE, in addition to the 500 tons presumably safely under IAEA seal, stands. It has not been disproven. The point is that the attempt to locate further supplies confirms the continuing surreptitious efforts to pursue the development of nuclear capacity.

But so what if the known 500 tons of yellowcake remained under seal? Saddam was happy to show THAT to the inspectors, since as long as the inspectors announced to the waiting journalists that the seals remained intact, the defenders of Saddam would say, “SEE!? We told you he’s entirely innocent!”

But you have to realize, you don’t need a critical mass of fissionable U235 to create a terror weapon. In the 1980’s two noteworthy incidents occurred in which scavengers broke open the business-end of an abandoned and un-guarded medical radiotherapy unit. In Brazil, this contaminated an entire neighborhood, requiring hospitalization for scores of victims, and the institution of long-term follow-up exams for hundreds of neighbors and playmates for decades to come. In Mexico, several of the scavengers and family members died of radiation poisoning, and dozens were affected. After watching the U.S. Senators and Congressional Representatives decamp when a single letter with anthrax spores was found in one mail delivery, try to imagine the chaos that would result in a major metropolitan area, if a dirty bomb were detonated. It wouldn’t matter that the radiation exposure were no more than a few chest X-rays; people would be extremely reluctant to return.

I reject the left’s definition that Bush led us into war on false premises. We have been continuously at war with Iraq since 1991. President Clinton sent U.S. military forces to attack Iraq, and near enough to threaten attack, on at least ten different occasions in his presidency to persuade Saddam to adhere to the conditions of the armistice. The Left wants me to believe that Saddam was never any threat to U.S. or international security. They also want me to forget that Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and his secretary of State Madeleine Albright, on many occasions each said the exact opposite — publicly advocating the removal of Saddam’s regime as a threat to American and international security, because of the WDM, his open support of terrorism, and unrepentant bellicosity.

The doctrinaire criticism of Bush for doing precisely the same things that drew their praise when done by Clinton is powerful evidence that the current frantic demonization of Scooter Libby and Karl Rove is nothing but a contrived partisan smear. And this from people who for decades have worked tirelessly to frustrate, demoralize, and enfeeble the CIA. I have to take the position that two years should be sufficient time to figure out whether the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 in fact applies to the case involving Valerie Plame. If it does apply— if the divulging of her status is a prosecutable crime — AND if it is known who revealed this, there should be an indictment on that charge.

If “outing” Valerie Plame does not qualify as a prosecutable crime, we need to know why was a special prosecutor established? Why was a Grand Jury empaneled? Why was anyone compelled to give testimony under oath for an act the prosecutor - after two full years of investigation - cannot show to have been a prosecutable offense?

I’m not saying this because I admire Bush and want bad things to happen to Valerie Plame. I have had to go through clearance interviews and background checks myself to get security clearance in the past, and I take the responsibility very seriously, certainly far more seriously than did Sandy Berger, whose outrageous crimes against this country have been so famously ignored in all this.

But in the wider context of protecting this country from the people who are determined to do us harm, I choose Bush, who is the only one in the pack of would-be-leaders who seems to have a clue about addressing both the immediate and the long-term problem of Islamic Terrorism.

I am sick to death of hearing people talk about how much Arabs dislike and hate us. The Arabs that hate us have been hating anyone outside their closed society for fourteen centuries. The ONLY way to make them like us is to either submit to their will or drop dead.

We in America suffer from a self-imposed delusion, or profound distortion of reality, that results from our long insulation and protection from the turmoils of the rest of the world, the incredible abundance of this continent, and the iconoclastic creativity of a population of people willing to decamp from the societies that were stifling them. This is obviously not any new insight. The continuing tragedy is that so many Americans fail to keep this in mind, and continue to evaluate the world without considering how profoundly alien our experiences are from theirs.

For instance, in the Great Patriotic War (WWII) Russians lost at least twenty MILLIONS of their civilians from fighting, disease, starvation, massacres, etc. American military personnel killed totalled only about half a million, only ONE FORTIETH of Soviet deaths. Wait! Stalin executed and starved more than six times that many Soviet civilians in the twenties and thirties just imposing agricultural collectivization on the Ukraine! Long before the “Cold War” Soviet leaders had seen that a few million deaths could be readily absorbed by a totalitarian regime, without derailing national goals or will. To Americans, figures like that convey a sense of the end of the world.

How many of us are content to spend our evenings sitting in air-conditioned comfort, munching on micro-waved treats as we watch mindless sit-coms? (Hey! I’m one!) When Gramma’s cancer becomes unbearably painful, we have become accustomed (growing hospice movement notwithstanding) to removing Gramma to die in hospital, so as not to upset the children. Ditto for the family pets. As more we persist in such antiseptic attitudes, so more estranged we become from the experiences of people in Third-World countries, where Gramma suffers, cries out and is cared for or ignored right in the midst of the one-room hovel shared by the extended family and the pigs, goats, dogs, and chickens.

This is similar to the lowered resistance to childhood diseases found in kids raised in households that over-use antibiotics and antiseptic cleansers. When some new pathogen comes along, bred in the septic conditions which third-world citizens endure daily, we are poorly-prepared to resist. When Islamic zealots come forth equally disposed to saw the necks of Al Franken and Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore and Charlton Heston, Jerry Fallwell and Hugh Hefner, we are paralyzed by our preoccupation with perfect procedure. While we’re arguing over which law to quote in the indictment, which court should have jurisdiction, and which researchers should be awarded grants to describe how Corporate Greed and Conservative bigotry are actually at fault, the victims heads have already been removed, and their spilt lifeblood feeds the flies.

We are too busy magnifying our differences to notice that a Demon has entered the room who doesn’t give a sh*t about whether you embrace diversity or oppose gay marriage.

The Demon wants to kill everybody it can’t enslave.

[Most Muslims living in America have chosen to immigrate rather than remain in the societies where they were born. Later generations of Muslims have chosen to stay in this country rather than return to the lands their parents fled. This suggests that their faith is tempered and moderated with a sense that individuals are accountable to GOD, not some fanatical Imam, and a confidence that a secular society like ours will protect them and guarantee the sanctity of their families and property more than Sharia did in the cultures they fled. In contrast, the tiny population of homicidally vicious Muslims to be found in America seem demonstrably to consist of militant converts recruited from prisons where they were serving sentence for violent crimes, or the Muslim fanatics engaged in that recruitment throughout the world.]

To get a handle on the conflict in which we are presently embroiled, you have to consider the history of Islam, particularly the militant zealotry that has been a part of it since its genesis.

Islamofascist terrorism is not truly a modern phenomenon. There are conflicts and hatreds that have erupted and continued with only lulls and breathers for thousands of years before Catholic Europe, Capitalism, or America appeared on the scene. Islamic zealots had been slaughtering their opponents for centuries before the British Isles were fully Christian. In the middle east where Christianity originated, Muslim armies moving into the territories we now call Egypt, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, et al, encountered communities composed primarily of Christians and Jews going about their business as they had for centuries. In almost every region in which Islam shares the territory with other religions, it seems to be in bloody conflict, as the militant factions attempt to impose Islam on those outside the faith. For all the protestations that it is a religion of peace, the evidence is is mixed.

The Prophet Mohammed during his life captained military assaults on villages and populations that opposed him, and approved the summary execution of captives and assassinations of critics and opponents. In the first decade after his death, the leadership of his new militant faith changed hands several times as one aspirant murdered his predecessor and took his place. In the first century after his death, Islam had been imposed on a vast swath of territory outward from the Arabian Peninsula, north, south, west and east, by ruthless military onslaught. Islam has been in bloody conflict with the people it encounters as it has expanded since the seventh century. (Some of my readers will point out that I’m repeating this history. Of course, I am. And I will continue to reiterate it. People need to be reminded of this.)

Islamic fanatics are currently engaged in blowing up, slaughtering and brutalizing Hindus in India, Bengladesh and Pakistan. This past week they beheaded adolescent Christian schoolgirls in Indonesia and truck-bombed international journalists in their Baghdad conclaves. They elsewhere continue to murder Buddhists and Christians in Malaya and the Philippines, Black African animists and Christians in Darfur, tourists and bystanders of all faiths in Bali, Egypt, and Turkey, hapless Londoners on their way to their jobs, Russian schoolchildren in Chechnya, progressive liberals in the Netherlands, and coreligionist Muslims in Africa, North America, Asia, the nations of the former Soviet Union, and, well, just about every country on the globe.

No, the murderous zealots are nothing new. What is a new thing under the sun is the self-loathing decadent psuedo-intellectual who accepts without critical examination the Marxist-Leninist indictment of Capitalism and Western Judeo-Christian civilization. Humans have exploited and tormented each other throughout history; Many of these turn to a “Trans-nationalist” or “One-World” solution, thinking that if only we had a unified government for the entire world, we could all just get along...

The nearest thing to a trans-national governing body is the United Nations. Okay, skim through the Final Volcker Report on the Oil-For-Food scandal, and picture those highly-cultured diplomats and bureaucrats of the United Nations administering YOUR life.

I recommend keeping a full bottle of single malt close at hand to steady your nerves.

Wilson-Plame Affair: The Indictment of Scooter Libby

2005-10-31T09:17:00.000-08:00

Sunday night’s broadcast of “60 Minutes” trotted out victim Joseph Wilson to once again repeat his absurd accusation. He claims that the administration recklessly revealed his wife’s CIA status for to punish him for his criticism of the War, and to serve as a warning that similar punishment would be meted out to the families of anyone else foolish enough to defy Bush’s policies. Vindictiveness, pure and simple, that’s what they’ve been telling us Republicans are about all along.

Wilson’s claim is an outrageous and patently insane analysis. It’s simply a more roundabout way of saying “BusHitler” or calling the president and anyone who supports his policies a bunch of Nazis. The left have been doing this a very long time, but now they think they have a CRIME that they can use as proof.

Well, I have to ask: If revealing Plame’s identity as a CIA employee were a prosecutable offense, and they can show that Libby is the source, WHY is he not being charged with that crime?

It’s been TWO FULL YEARS, Mr. Fitzgerald. At this late date it is inconceivable that the CIA and the Department of Justice can still be uncertain as to whether the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 would apply to Valerie Plame.

The 60 Minutes crew interviewed several people identified as former covert CIA operatives, who are now stepping into the limelight to give voice to their outrage at the revelation of Ms. Plame’s CIA status. One is struck by the contradiction here: if maintaining the veil of secrecy is meant to be a lifelong commitment among these agents, aren’t they further violating the trust of their fellows by coming forward? And how are we to assess the Bona Fides of these people expressing their outrage? Are we to simply take the word of the same crew of folks that so diligently assessed the memos showing Bush was drunk in Cancun for the Vietnam War? You might as well trust the people from “60 Minutes” to empty a bedpan. Even though they probably would get it right a good percentage of the time, their sloppy aim leaves a lot of messes to clean up.

As far as anyone has reported, Mr. Joseph Wilson has no credentials whatsoever as an intelligence GATHERER, ANALYST, OR OPERATIVE — covert or otherwise — much less as an expert in the area of nuclear materials clandestine acquisitions.

If Valerie Plame has spent her entire CIA career as an expert analyst investigating the gamut of Weapons of Mass Destruction, why was the task of visiting Niger to determine the validity of the challenged British intelligence reports assigned to her husband?

If the CIA had reason to suspect the British intelligence reports were faulty, WHY SEND A CONSPICUOUS AMATEUR SLEUTH?

If the CIA wished to confirm its priority as a professional and unimpeachable source of reliable data and analysis, WHY NOT SEND A credentialed intelligence agent to do the investigation?

How can I phrase this another way to underscore how utterly false and contrived this business seems? There’s something wrong here, and the authorities are all dancing around it like a crowd of stockbrokers trying not to step in a fresh cowpie on the sidewalk.

Scooter Libby’s experience is as a criminal defense lawyer and more recently an operative in DOMESTIC politics, without particular training in the arcana of clandestine international espionage. I can certainly imagine that someone like Libby might have decided to identify Plame without awareness of all the possible consequences. This is not remotely comparable to the calculating cynicism of Sandy Berger, Clinton’s former National Security Advisor, who had to be fully aware of the fabric of trust he violated in destroying the documents he stole from the National Archives to keep them from being disclosed to the 9-11 Commission.

But Berger copped a plea — I’m sorry… “negotiated a plea bargain” — and is serving no jail time for crimes against our country that would have put folks like you or me in a stone cell for a couple of decades.

Here’s a link to a Library of Congress summary of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, Public Law No: 97-200.

Take a look, but remember: to understand whether it applies to the Plame-Wilson affair, you still must have access to the CIA’s confidential employment history for Valerie Plame. Presumably, that information would have been the starting place for special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation.

So again I ask:

If revealing that Valerie Plame’s CIA connection is not a prosecutable offense, why was a special prosecution set up? Why impanel a Grand Jury? Why Coerce testimony from ANYONE, if “outing” Valerie Plame is not prosecutable?

The world outside our borders provides daily examples of Islamic Zealots’ relentless murder and bullying of people of all faiths. International Islamic outrages of just the last week: Three adolescent Christian girls beheaded in Indonesia; more than 59 Indians killed and 114 injured by at least three bombs placed in crowded markets and a bus in New Delhi, during a Hindu Festival of Lights; Truck bombs AIMED AT THE INTERNATIONAL PRESS CORPS IN THE HOTEL PALESTINE IN BAGHDAD. The pace of Islamic terrorism against the world is such that space simply does not allow a listing of the outrages dating back more than a few days.

But the Left acknowledges no evil but the American Right. This is most true of the American Left. Safe within the borders of their own country, protected by the government they casually describe as Nazis, the leaders of the Left describe events as though they’re seeing through a soda straw. According to them, all the evils of the world— despite Islam’s 14-century history of slaughtering its neighbors — can be attributed to the bungling or malevolence of Bush and his cronies. It’s as though there is no history before George W. Bush took office; the righteous rage that prompted the attacks of 9-11 was precipitated by George; the WMD issue was concocted by George; The terrorists of London are responding to the diplomatic blunders and warmongering lies of George; the ongoing Muslim massacre of black african animists and Christians in Darfur is somehow the fault of George; Even hurricanes and New Orleans corruption were spawned by George. The Left have learned the lesson that a lie repeated long and loudly enough will overwhelm the truth.

Such rampant hyperbole erodes reasoning ability as surely as a diet of ecstasy pills laced with Rohypnol. “Bush Lied; People Died” is a slogan that plainly alerts any with ears to hear, that the shouter is incapable of sorting out the complex logic needed to identify an exit from a toilet stall.

Praise for Wretchard

2005-09-28T00:29:00.000-07:00

It’s embarrassing to reveal that I am such a toadying bootlick. Honest, folks, my voracious reading really truly does include a few headlines or so every few weeks from someplace besides Belmont Club and Vodkapundit, and of course there are entirely other regiments and troops of excellent writers, wordsmiths, and essayists who think BIG THOUGHTS.

But Wretchard the Cat has a quiet understated deftness from which a reader almost always comes away richer for the reading. For example, today he’s posted an essay titled “The Wood Between the Worlds” prompted by a report of a member of a group styling itself “Fathers4Justice” evidently climbing on London’s Parliament house.

It’s really a short piece, not dealing with news of titanic EVENTS of the moment. Just a casual comment in response to a publicity stunt by a group wanting its grievance to get some attention. But like the veteran instructor in the LaMaze class, Wretchard manages to guide and place our finger on the pulse of a living beast aborning, which embodies for better or for worse, the doom of our time much more than the jihadists, the bureaucrats well-meant or otherwise, or the most rapacious of capitalists.

At one level, the particulars of the incident matter less than the fact that it is closer to raw experience than 99 percent of the reports we get from most news sources, which have been viewed, trimmed, compressed, and marinated at length in journalistic digestive juices by layers of editors before being allowed to impinge on our un-tutored retinas.

Just some guy with a grievance climbing a building to be noticed. And he is noticed, because it was a well-traveled public place, pretty quickly by the news-hungry professional photojournalists.

And by the amateurs, as well.

Everyone taking pictures of the event, of the individual, of the location, of each other taking pictures. With at least a few cameras that can feed instantly into the web. The new urban environment is being documented from all angles, seemingly every minute of the day. Everything all at once all the time forever.

I’m not entirely convinced that this signals the utter end of rascally government’s ability to suppress news; a truly repressive government can impose harsh penalties for owning or using cameras, just as it can confiscate weapons to ensure a subjugated populace. Like the astronauts conversing in Larry Niven’s book “Lucifer’s Hammer” when in a small epiphany one observes that seen from orbit, the Earth’s surface shows no borders between countries. A cynic replies that such observations should be kept to one’s self, lest the petty governments immediately paint ten-mile wide stripes in day-glow orange along every border, to ensure they CAN be seen from space...

Wretchard’s insight is deceptively mild, so all the more acute:

“If Moms4Justice had scaled Nelson's plinth and Kids4Justice had swarmed Buckingham palace at the same time, how would meme collision get arbitrated on the nervous system of a digitally wired society? Is there any way of assigning headers to memes such that they get where they should? Is there any way for memes to rearrange themselves in a logical order upon arrival at a destination to form an even more complex idea? What is to prevent the whole digital nervous sytem from suffering a breakdown from an overload? And encapsulating all these questions implicitly is the most important question of all: how does one make a buck out of it?”

This last year has provided a number of celebrated examples of how the internet and the people who monitor the flow of information can augment, correct, “fact-check” and even sometimes trump the Old Mainstream Media. But it is sometimes forgotten that the key to it all — the key to ANY of it working — is a fine, insightful, devastatingly logical mind with the ability to identify a crucial item, and like some kid with a Rubik’s Cube, sift through all the variations and extract the verities for us.

Most of us can recognize a snake displayed on a table top. Not so many can pick out a diamondback rattler sitting motionless in the leaf litter where we are about to step. Wretchard and a number of unsung folks like him are setting a high standard for peering into the thicket, and marking a path.

Growing Antii-war Movement?

2005-09-26T00:23:00.000-07:00

Right. The Anti-war movement has grown dramatically.

From TWELVE photographers jockeying for the ideal shot of Cindy "Who-cares-what-my-son-was-willing-to-risk-death-for" to twelve DOZEN photographers and videographers fistfighting each other for the best angle on Cindy “my-left-profile-is-more-convincingly-bereaved” as she kneels in her best Mother Theresa pose, with the knee-pads cleverly concealed behind some rosary beads and tear-soaked tissues.

Now, keep in mind that I come from the generation that LAUNCHED the Peace--LOVE--Make-Sex-Not-War Groovey “If It Moves have unprotected nooky with it” generation. I embrace otherness. I applaud the individuality of all individuals. Well, most individuals. I celebrate celebrities, and happily pay exorbitant ticket prices to see Hollywood actors speak highly-intelligent and emotionally-compelling lines with pots of cosmetics enhancing their unusually apposite facial anatomies.

But, honestly, we have to draw a line somewhere.

The pukes pretending to care about the issues in the so-called “anti-war” protests these days are truly pathetic excuses for crusaders. You used to have to have the discipline actually to *SPELL* the slogans, on accounta the signs mostly had to be hand-lettered. Now these molly-coddled little turds get fancy signs printed with soy-based inks on recycled-for-God’s-Sake-dolphin-safe paper, all spell-checked and formatted and copyright © 2005 by MoveOn.org and George Soros.

They probably have to sign’em out, and return them for recycling after the demonstration.

In *MY* day, we had to hitch-hike to protests, and believe me, there were a lot of people then that wouldn’t stop to pick up anyone with long hair, especially carrying a hand-made “Stop the War” sign.

And talk about liaison with the media as a problem~! When I was in the protest business, we didn’t have CELLULAR phones to rally everyone on short notice. It took planning and careful pre-arrangement, military-precision timing to get the camera crews and the protesters together at the right time... I mean, people, there were ONLY THREE NETWORKS!

And they had news programs only TWICE a DAY: six and eleven pee-em.

You couldn’t just show up at some street corner like you can now, and be guaranteed that there would be two hundred and fifty people with some sort of broadcast quality camera equipment just waiting for some damn thing to happen.

Oh, yeah, and in those ancient days, reporters were occasionally questioned by their editors, to determine that the sequences hadn’t been faked.

These protesters really have it so easy.

If a protest were called and they had to bring their own Evian water, could they pull it off?

Boy! If I were a flinty-eyed, calculating, Allah-fearing terrorist, eager enough to expell BusHitler’s armies of occupation from Iraq so it could be restored to a pure and holy state of subjugation, daily murder, rape, torture, brutalization, and denial of all the fundamental pleasures the evil Americans take for granted... Would I really want to have to depend on the likes of these cravens as allies to my holy cause?????? I don’t think so. You probably couldn’t send them to the corner armory for a kilo of C4, without having them get lost on the way back and forget their munitions on the seat of their parents’ car.

I can imagine a conversation taking place somewhere, wherever it is that freedom-fighting terrorists dream of their waiting virgins between anti-personell bomb assembly sessions:

Sayeed: “So, Yousef, is it your will this day to go forth and send shrapnel hurtling through the flesh of infidel women and children strolling on the public way, to glorify the blessed name of Allah the merciful?”

Yousef: “No, Sayeed. For it has come to my ears that the young of our enemies meaning to set themselves athwart the paths of the unrighteous, are gathering in the great cities in numbers beyond count. Perhaps they will accomplish our task for us, and smite our foemen a mighty blow. Let us pray to Allah.”

Sayeed: “Affendi, seat your self, and pray for strength. The pious youth who would have given aid to our cause, they have been scattered like the grains of sand before the desert wind. Our foe have distracted them from their holy duties with divers interactive video games, iPods, burgers, and free condoms. Only two-score and twelve protesters have managed to set themselves athwart the boulevards of our foe to frustrate their evil plans.”

Yousef: “Curses upon the heads of the unbelieving twits. Allah has pooped upon us, to saddle our camels with such baggage for allies. Better that we return to redouble our efforts with the Food-for-Oil scheme, which showered advantages upon our plans.”

Sayeed: “Grieve not overmuch, my friend. Now the hurricanes have subsided, we may expect any day now the baying of our allies in the U.S. media to take up again our noble and worthy cause...”

Baah. I’m disgusted with the sorry rascals. Well, I’ll show them. For decades, my critics have criticized me for being different, so from now on I'm going to be the same.

On the Emerging Avian Flu Problem

2005-09-25T00:50:00.000-07:00

On September 22, Rick Moran, aka “Superhawk” — administrator of Rightwing Nuthouse — posted a fine and timely article on the emerging threat of Avian Flu, which seems to be cropping up in a number of Asian locations.

• The BBC’s online news reported in an article dated 15 August that the so-called “Bird Flu” had spread westward as far as the area of Chelyabinsk, where the Ural Mountains form one of the last geographic speed bumps to the spread of the disease from Asia into Europe. The disease primarily affects wild aquatic birds and domestic poultry, and the Chelyabinsk region is blessed with thousands of lakes that migratory aquatic birds in huge numbers visit in passing. The virus has already required massive culling of market-raised poultry in some areas, and may be expected to devastate the local farms there as it has in several other Asian regions.

At the time of that article, Russian sources indicated no human cases in Chelyabinsk, even though a virus strain found in humans in nearby rural areas was identified as the type that had caused human fatalities elsewhere.

• In Jakarta last week, health authorities have confirmed that several workers at the city’s Ragunan Zoo have been infected with the strain of Avian Flu identified as the “H5N1” virus, after the virus was isolated from 19 birds that are part of the permanent zoo population. (“H_N_” is a code for the protein sequencing that effectively distinguishes various viruses, and in turn suggests anti-viral strategies to the researchers.) The same report indicates a handful of infections in people not connected to the Zoo, of whom one 37-year-old woman died.

It may seem like a lot of fuss over a handful of humans infected out of a population of billions. We hear of avian flu year after year, and it’s had enormous economic consequences in some areas, causing the outright deaths and preemptive destruction of hundreds of millions of poultry in the last few years.

But this time, things could be very different.

There are several factors that make it so. One is the virulence of the virus, even just considered in its effect on the birds. In some outbreaks, the virus killed almost every single chicken infected. That level of lethality is bad enough for its economic impact, but it is particularly sobering if it conveys along with communicability among different species.

And in fact, the H5N1 strain of Avian flu has learned to jump from birds to humans, and though it has not yet spread widely, the record demands attention. Considering how outraged people were last fall over the anticipated shortages of vaccine, you’d think there might be a little more interest. After all, this particular version of the flu gives every indication that it poses a very real and potent threat, not just an inconvenience.

I know it’s difficult to sort out truly urgent data amid the regular spasms of hysteria that the alleged Mainstream News Organizations seem to increasingly depend upon for capturing the attention of readers. The vaccine shortfall worries that surfaced during the presidential election of 2004 have added to the long list of real concerns that are too complex for most people to examine rigorously even when politics are not pumping adrenalin into every conversation. Recall now that despite the hysteria the flu season wound down with a surplus of several million doses. I’m not saying the worries were unjustified, but that the questions were never discussed rationally, because the issue was hijacked by those who saw it as just another weapon to use to unseat a hated incumbent.

There certainly needs to be further public conversation on issues of public health policy. Yet we seem to be happier pissing away our energy in shouting matches than in daring to address the relentless spread of HIV, antibiotic-resistance in diseases once thought mastered, and the emergence of new pathogens.

Example: Tuberculosis has re-emerged most conspicuously among urban homeless drug-abusers in the last decade in virulent strains that defy all but the most exotic and expensive antibiotics. The ACLU, abandoning reason for political correctness, fights to shield those homeless drug-users from involuntary confinement or any other coercion by the government meant to ensure they take the medications correctly. So the resistant Tuberculosis spreads and grows more robust. At some point people need to wake up and grasp that a plague won’t spare anyone for their politics. Set aside the brickbats and work with people whose views you find obnoxious, to address and solve the acute problems that threaten all.

One writer who has done a tremendous job of framing the challenge of infectious diseases in the last decade is Laurie Garrett.

You might recall her as NPR's eloquent science reporter for a decade, wrote an excellent book a few years back, “The Coming Plague.” Reading even just a few chapters of that book will give you a pretty good sense of the real problems involved in identifying and preparing for new infectious diseases, and the political and social hurdles in implementing policies and medical programs.

More recently she has written an excellent comprehensive article for Foreign Affairs, the online e-magazine published by the Council on Foreign Relations.

It's lengthy — some 5,000 words, or about 13 pages — but you can't read it and walk away with any lingering doubt that it's worth preparing against the threat posed by Avian Flu and its sibling strains. In the first paragraph, she points out that Avian flu has killed about 50 percent of documented patients infected since 1997. A few paragraphs later she relates that examination of U.S. records from the “Spanish Influenza Pandemic” of 1917 to 1918 indicate a mortality rate of about ONE PERCENT of all persons infected.

Ironically, where we have become accustomed to warnings that young children and the elderly are thought to be most vulnerable to flu outbreaks of the last few decades, the Spanish flu was most savagely fatal among young adults, possibly because the older populace had gained partial immunity from several nationwide flu outbreaks some decades earlier.

To sum up, Avian flu is on its way. With a bunch of unpleasant relatives simmering in the background. We need to pay attention, and support the folks who actually get things done, instead of just posing and pontificating. In many ways, Jonathan Swift’s book “Gulliver’s Travels” pinpointed the absurdity of political wrangling in all societies at all times. We’re like a bunch of oysters clamoring for a ban on chowder recipes.

If there is only chaff...

2005-09-19T14:46:00.000-07:00

Acknowledging priority to Little Green Footballs for the link, Mudville Gazette, and Wretchard at The Belmont Club provide a hook-up to a site (Second Draft) which offers footage shot by Palestinians last year, from which many Western News Media selected bits to present as "news" to include in their broadcast reporting of events. The website provides extensive raw footage, which it invites you to download and examine to determine to your own satisfaction whether the events were staged, fabricated, managed, or least generously, "faked" by Palestinians.

With a sense that the author probably spent a lot of effort pruning this introduction to the site, I'm including it verbatim, rather than attempting to paraphrase:

“Welcome to the home page of The Second Draft. This website is devoted to exploring some of the problems and issues that plague modern journalism. In this age of globalization, the media has unprecedented influence on the way we see the world. And yet, whether out of misplaced good intentions, unconscious agendas and predispositions, or unwarranted faith in false information, they can get the story dramatically wrong. Therefore, we want to revisit and ‘first draft of history’, and hopefully produce a more accurate second one. In our current investigations [link omitted] we present the story the way the mainstream media initially told it, introduce further evidence, and let you decide what you think really happened. We have designed an interactive site. We have talk-backs and a forum so that you have the option to engage in a larger web discussion as well as respond to specific pages or articles. We also welcome your submissions for future investigations. We encourage you to explore this site. Our hope is that, even if you do not agree with our conclusions, you will begin to think more critically and independently about the media in the future.”

Several hours later I'm still waiting for the download of the unedited footage to finish — I only have a dial-up connection. This powerfully underscores the problem most of us face in evaluating the news stories that are daily presented to us. How do we BEGIN the task of confirming ANY single news item, much less the totality of our news sources? I have a reasonably advanced computer, but I just can't justify a high-speed connection, which severely restricts the mass of data I can download, regardless of the computer's ability to process. This is true for most folks, even as dramatically as online technologies have changed.

Thousands of years ago, gold was already recognized for its unique resistance to corrosion. The ancients likewise had learned there are many alloys that only *look* like gold. How could they determine whether the goblet they wished to trade for their five ewes was real gold, or false? Well, from Lydia, the land we now know as Turkey, came the knowledge that a certain sort of velvety black stone would show a streak when stroked even lightly by a golden object, and the color of that mark was determined by the purity of the gold. The Lydian Stone has given us the term "touchstone."

There no longer seems to be any sort of touchstone or standard of purity for mainstream journalism.

The New York Times was regarded as a rock of rectitude in reporting when I was a kid. Administrations, heroes, celebrities, popes, kings, presidents, calamitous thugs, and princes could stride across the stage of history, and the NYT would step aside from human bias, cheap politics, and crass self-interest to report things as they happened, without adornment or distortion.

What a load of dingos’ kidneys.

For once, I won't drag out the boring details of my experience to klop you readers over the head with what an exciting and worthwhile life I've lead. I'll save that for many other posts. For now it's enough to say you don't have to be a genius of the age to witness an event, then the next morning read an unrecognizable description of that event in a highly-reputable rag like the New York Times, to grasp that you can NOT depend on journalists to accurately report what happens. I wonder how many people grow up without having that experience, though, because it seems to me that a lot of Americans still have the same unjustifiable reverence for journalists that the Chinese peasants at the time of the Boxer Rebellion were described as having for the printed word.

By accounts, they were indoctrinated to regard the words of posters, placards, and proclamations as magic, infallible, inarguable wisdom. Didn't seem to occur to them that some human being had been trained to dip a brush in paint and scrawl those ideographs onto the rice paper banners... Well, look at us ultra-sophisticated sheep of the early 21st century. How many times have you had to help someone behind a fast-food counter figure out correct change for your burger and fries ransom? If you take e-mail messages as any index of the state of American literacy, you know we are in the process of reverting to apes. You'll be more wretched if you actually allow yourself to pay attention to what currently passes for advertising, because you know that a pots of money have been spent on testing and retesting focus groups to be CERTAIN that the target audiences will respond favorably to the sewage being spewed at them from the telly.

You can hardly blame the alleged news media for concluding we consumers of their product have no regard for truth. Still, America has a kernel of decency yet unpopped despite all the flames. There are emptors who yet caveat, and the internet is helping them do so. The saddest thing about the Western News Media serving as willing accomplices to faked Palestinian stories, is that there is a deep well of sympathy for the misery of the Palestinians. Americans have no desire to see the Palestinian people living in squalor and desparation, and the horror of their lives is NOT solely the result of Israeli policies. Some of the neighboring Arab dictatorships have routinely have slaughtered their own citizens over the decades of the last century to keep them in line. Those neighbors bear much of the responsiblity for aggravating and extending the suffering of the Palestinian Arabs, because they persist in cynically exploiting them rather than offering solutions.

The staggering wealth that has flowed from the sale of oil into the coffers of the various Arab dictators and thugs, has created a wonderful legacy of palaces, titanic statues of heroically posed bronze portraits of those thugs, private brothels, hunting lodges, mansions, torture chambers, prisons, work-houses, estates and retreats to be enjoyed while bodyguards practice with high-tech weapons and vehicles. The Arab world is awash in lucre, but it is in the hands of the vicious thugs who rape and murder their own people to keep them subservient. Of the Muslim countries around the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, only a handful have governments which allow participation of the general populace. The rest are almost without exception harshly repressive authoritarian regimes, headed by tiny groups hoarding vast wealth and telling their people their suffering is the fault of Israel and the U.S.

Leftists of the world and the United States seem to have a very different sense of the function of journalism than do we in the unsophisticated hinterlands. If they actually gave a shit about the plight of the Palestinians, they could begin to alleviate the situation by simply showing conditions as they are, without embellishment. Instead, the left is obsessed with bringing Amerikkka low by any means, and the Palestinian cause is to them just one more brick to throw at our heads. Lies are much easier to manufacture than actual events. You can budget them, script them, go forth and get grants to produce them. No inconvenient wasted time waiting for an unreliable Israeli to come out and fire on a crowd of extras. And everybody in the crowd scenes gets a copy of the DVD for their relatives.

Americans can see through a great deal of politically-slanted narration to grasp in the fullness of time the underlying truth. (Look how many who blasted Bush for Katrina are reversing field and now grudgingly admitting that much good was done.) But their sympathy depends a great deal on having a trust that they are being given the chance to actually see something that is true, not staged, not fabricated, not faked. That trust is not inexhaustible. It is squandered by sneering, arrogant News Reader Celebrities attempting to fob off lies as truth.

Pray: Re: Ho’ Compassion?

2005-09-15T23:23:00.000-07:00

Garrison Keillor, who before he became a celebrity used to have a detectable sense of humor, has had his lawyers bully a Minneapolis blogger with a “Cease and Desist” letter, for selling t-shirts emblazoned with a parody of the name of “Prairie Home Companion” the weekly radio program that launched Keillor’s fame.

How pathetic! How supremely IRONIC —we want to smugly whine — that Keillor should be so unable to tolerate parody, even though it may be offensive to him.

For those two or three of you in the reading public that don’t know, Prairie Home Companion is the name of a radio show that was presented by Minnesota Public Radio starting back in the 1980’s. I believe Keillor may have developed the show through a production company he owns, but the show gained much of its audience from its distribution by public radio.

That’s “PUBLIC” radio, folks. Supported by our tax dollars.

So Garrison Keillor, boy genius, sun climbing over the eastern horizon, came up with the concept, wrote many of the scripts and jokes, and performed as the Master of Ceremonies. He had some pretty good material. If only he hadn’t insisted on singing with every musician that came onstage, just because he was the star... But it is important to realize that a good measure of the show's popularity resulted from its being just about the only regular nationally-broadcast hour-long variety / entertainment show going. For some reason, the format had been mostly abandoned by the commercial networks.

By the mid-90’s he had a fair amount of fame, and good press. People were very sympathetic to his abrupt return from Denmark when things didn’t work out despite an extended anticipation and planning of his retirement.

The key to the enormous volume of comments on the website of the blogger, is that sometime during the Clinton era, Keillor became a bitter, humorless mooncalf.

By that, I mean he changed from universal gentle humor celebrating the commonplace experiences that define a community, to a mean-spirited opportunistic insulting sneering humor based primarily on not much more than saying mean things about conservatives. Things that divide rather than unite. It must have been an easy slide down that slope. There have always been audiences that laugh at someone who says nothing more than “Boy, what about that REAGAN!?!?!” It just doesn’t require much effort to write that sort of monologue. Maybe he just got tired.

Now I come to think of it, if you’ve got an audience that responds that way, why fight it? Why write ANY joke that depends on wit, or clever manipulation of logic, with a surprise twist or revelation or sudden glimpse into a truth we hadn’t anticipated? If you have an audience that will laugh out of simple relief that they are among others who share their orientation, why risk offending them by attempting humor that does not conspicuously reinforce that sense?

Well, on reflection I realize I’m just taking shots at Keillor for acting like a typical liberal (i.e., utter hypocrite, intellectually sloppy, and WRONG WRONG WRONG.) I am nothing if not even-handed.

In fact, it is true of patents, trademarks, and copyrighted intellectual properties, that the owner has the responsibility of challenging new products — especially COMMERCIAL ones — that bear any resemblance to yours. Otherwise, if someone later comes along blatantly making pirate copies, you run the risk of the court telling you that, since you made no attempt to challenge previous possible infringements, you have forfeited any rights you might have had.

Evidently this does not depend on having gotten a judgment that the earlier instances were after all, infringements. Just that you’ve established a record of defending the patent/trademark/copyright.

What a world...
My brother and I fetched up against this kind of thing when we had a tiny bit of publicity over a comic book we were preparing for the State of Virginia as one element of a package (consisting otherwise of an animated TV spot, radio scripts, newspaper quizzes, etc.) promoting responsible drinking habits by teenagers. (Seem like a waste of time to you?) The comic book featured a character we named “Soberman” – actually a fairly nerdish teenager who, seeing friends drinking irresponsibly at a party, would slip into a back room, change into his costume, and re-emerge to quote statistics, platitudes and exhortations. Real knee-slapper. Well, actually, there were a few funny bits. He rescued one girl from her drunk date, dropped the guy off, then went parking with her.

His costume was pajamas with footies, a towel knotted at the throat for a cape, and a block-letter “S” in a circular patch on his chest.

Somehow, a reporter sent out from the local newspaper expecting to find yet another blatant mis-use of public monies, thought the campaign was droll, and wrote some nice things. Two weeks later, after the wire services had picked up her story, we were getting requests for reprints of the comic from as far away as Johannesburg, South Africa, before the project was even delivered.

This was just after the release of the first blockbuster “Superman” movie starring Christopher Reeve. We soon received a formal letter from the law firm representing the vast communications conglomerate owner of the Superman property, passed along to us from the State of Virginia. The letter said they felt our Soberman character was an infringement of their rights in the Superman character, and asked us to refrain from distributing the materials we were developing.

The State of Virginia bureaucrats instantly stopped the project, and told the lawyers they should be talking to us, the two penniless brothers still living at home with their aged parents trying desperately to salvage a few coppers of profit on a tiny little budget. (*sniff*)

We had a lawyer at the time (Mr. Al Teich, Jr.) who was one of those attorneys that have made me actually bite my tongue and not tell lawyer jokes, because he was so fundamentally and inexplicably generous, meticulous, cheerful and helpful. I had a brief phone talk with him, and following his advice called the complainant’s lawyers. The fellow at the other end, whose letterhead alone cost more than my education, told me they were more or less obliged to challenge any new character that was brought to their attention that might even remotely be perceived to infringe upon the Superman character.

That was it. He didn’t threaten, didn’t specify any deadline, no “or else.”

I cobbled together a reply, mostly for the benefit of the folks at the Virginia agency for whom we were working. The gist of it was that we felt our character Soberman was distinct in every detail from those of Superman; that after all the word “superman” had been in use in English for over a century, long before the appearance of the character; that no-one may copyright a single letter of the alphabet and restrict its use by others; that no-one can patent or copyright the concept of a cape, since it had been an item of clothing worn by tens of millions of people for centuries; in any case, our contract gave all rights for the character to the state; we were only being paid for the production work. The note ended with the statement that in light of these facts, we felt that their charge of infringement was damaging our relationship with the client and asked them to send a retraction letter to our client. Blah blah boilerplate blah.

After a few weeks, there was only silence from the complainant’s lawyers, so the State in the fullness of time decided they could proceed with distribution, and we could be paid for our work.

It was pointed out to me years later that the challenge was not something that would likely have been pursued. They weren’t really concerned that our puny little contract was siphoning cash from their coffers. It’s the principle that they are obliged to establish a record of their willingness to defend their copyright, against the possibility of real piracy that must be dealt with vigorously.

Two important LESSONS for me during that episode:

1) In the midst of the dreary exchange, I found myself asked to explain certain fundamental principles of statutory copyright and how they applied to the present situation, by the then-assistant attorney-general of the state. I had come to my understanding only by reading a book titled “This Business of Music.” Even then I grasped that this doesn’t mean I’m smart and he was dumb. It only means that intellectual property law generally, and copyright specifically, are not covered in many law school courses. It’s a specialty. I thought the guy was very gracious to admit that he was not familiar with some of the details, and discuss it calmly and rationally.

2) When the wolves came calling, the government bureaucrats INSTANTLY said, “There, go kill the contractors. They’re the ones you want.” There was no consultation with their own legal staff to see if the accusation had any merit. On the strength of a piece of fancy stationery and the cost of one first class stamp, they stopped the presses, cut the citizens loose, and went about their business.

So FINALLY, the worst thing about all this is that knowing what I know, I am obliged to give Garrison Keillor and his lawyers the benefit of the doubt and say they aren’t really behaving horribly horribly...

...Yet.

If they actually go ahead and take some action against the guy, I take it back. That would show they really are a bunch of dirty rats.

Dermal Abrasion on a Global Scale

2005-09-14T21:40:00.000-07:00

Joe Katzman at windsofchange.net, by way of USMC_Vet, directs our scrutiny to a news item that, if you still have a stomach that can turn, will turn your stomach. Seems that the enterpreneurial spirit of the People’s Republic of China has plumbed a new depth. The report indicates that they are harvesting the skin of freshly-executed prisoners, to extract collagen for sale to Western cosmetics manufacturers.

(Click on the title of my post to link to Winds of Change; Click HERE to link to USMC_Vet)

As early as the 1960’s sci-fi writer Larry Niven was speculating on the consequences to our culture depending on our decisions to pursue the medical expertise for organ transplant versus that of prosthetic organs & artificial tissues. (The stories featured an investigator “Gil the ARM” with certain unusual abilities, up against the “organ-leggers” as he worked for the law enforcement agency of a world-government. The guy was always running afoul of bureaucratic turf-warriors from the Belt and Luna.)

His stories started with the historical note that centuries earlier, when the Monarch of France ran short of oarsmen to propel his personal trireme along the Mediterranean waves, the solution was to draft a few new laws criminalizing some peasant behavior back in Paris, in order that more of them could be sentenced to serve a year at the oars.

Then he noted that once medical investigation had shown the significance of blood types, attention immediately turned to the notion of using the blood of condemned criminals to save the lives of others, and so perhaps mitigate the results of that criminal’s offenses...

In several stories he posited that our culture would eventually become so addicted to the extension of life by organ transplant that we would condemn folks to death for overdue library books, and unpaid parking tickets. (Of course, this would have the effect of making people mighty particular about returning their books and feeding the meters on time...)

I recall reading an article in 1961 or so in Life Magazine, which described how communities around the United States were then forming committees of citizens, including homemakers, firefighters, doctors, teachers, clergy, etc. to decide which candidates would receive the lifesaving new dialysis treatments to keep them alive after their kidneys had failed. For the first decade of that technology, it was so expensive that many communities could only afford one or two units, which could only serve a very small number of patients. The rest would inevitably die.

Such a community-based committee would not be allowed to exist today, I fear. Americans are paralyzed by moral ambiguity.

How far we have come in our attitudes may be shown by a listing of certain landmark lawsuits, notable regardless of the outcome:

• In the 1990’s A woman petitioned a California court to receive a judgment allowing her to be artificially inseminated with her father’s sperm so the fetus could be aborted to provide tissue that some tests had indicated might alleviate some symptoms of her father’s early stage alzheimer’s syndrome.

• The frozen microscopic embryos (fertilized in-vitro) of a wealthy American couple killed in an Australian plane crash, were the subject of lawsuits by the living children of that couple, who sought to have the embryos destroyed lest they be implanted, brought to term, and raised up to claim a share of the inheritance.

• In the 90’s information filtered out of the People’s Republic of China — which acknowledges that it executes some ten thousand prisoners per year — that it harvests organs from an unspecified number of those criminals, and makes them available for sale on the international market.

• Studies of abortion trends in urban populations of India in the mid-1980’s showed that more than 90 percent of all abortions performed following fetal sonograms, were to abort female fetuses. (In India, as in many cultures, females are regarded as a burden to a family, because of the dowry that must be paid to the prospective husband.)

I’ve been pondering some of those items for quite a few years. The item about abortion of female fetuses in India I encountered in a Spanish language newspaper circa 1989, and couldn’t find a peep about it any American publication. Last year I was able to find some references on the web, but it’s a factoid that gets NO attention whatsoever from U.S. liberals or feminists, whose views on the subject I would give worlds to know.

The silence of the left on this issue speaks eloquently of their habit of sidestepping pesky contradictions to their programs. On one hand, the selective abortion of exclusively female fetuses seems to be an outrage against the gender. But if a female fetus has a right to protection from killing, then so does a male fetus. And whether you oppose the practice or no, it is bound to have profound consequences on Indian society in the next generation or two, as females become progressively scarcer.

It is no surprise that we humans continue to treat each other so brutally. It is only surprising that so many people refuse to acknowledge the truth.

So, I salute you for your prescience Mr. Niven. You were only a few decades off in your calculation of precisely when our society would embrace the casual killing of people for the trade.

Commentaries of Alexander the Average

2005-09-11T20:11:00.001-07:00

(… just a note: Tonight as I listened to CNN, I was thunderstruck at the statistic of only 154 confirmed dead. The report didn’t clarify whether that was in reference to New Orleans only, or the entire region affected by Katrina. God be Praised! I know a lot of people have nonetheless suffered terribly, but it appears that reports of wholesale death of tens of thousands of victims may have been premature.)

-------------------------

Mr. Kris Alexander has posted a good and brief critique of the restructuring of FEMA under the rubric of the Department of Homeland Security (you may click on the title of this post to link to his blog.) His post includes an unusually objective analysis (i.e., devoid of conspicuous bashing of all things conservative) from NEWSWEEK magazine, as well as a brief excerpt from a National Emergency Management Association report, each linked to its original source.

Alexander’s web page indicates he’s a “humble gov’t employee and Army Reserve Officer […] OIF/OEF veteran. Posting on the military, intelligence, and gov’t stuff.” As a result of his experience and attitudes, his sources and his comments convey a sense of sober authority sadly lacking in many of the critiques lately being flung about by the poopheads of the alleged news media like so much simian waste.

Here’s a little excerpt:

“…I never thought placing FEMA under DHS made much sense, and I’ve thought that DHS’s priorities have been wrong-headed from the start.

FEMA understands disasters, and many of its programs have been in place and effective for years. Since its inception, DHS has been chasing its tail looking under every rock for the next 9/11 while ignoring the nuts and bolts issues that face our countries. Hurricane season comes every year. Long after you and I are dead, and 9/11 is a distant memory that our grandkids re-live on the history channel, Hurricane season will come. People are fleeting, Mother Nature endures.”

It’s a good piece to balance the hysteria of the last fortnight. He makes a good case that FEMA’s mission has been diluted or diverted dangerously from its original charge, and that a sort of paralyzing preoccupation with improbable terrorist scenarios has drained valuable resources and talent.

Those are charges that may need to be debated publicly over the next few years.

His criticisms seem valid, even if they don’t prove the specific cause of this particular screw-up. It has been almost twenty years since I produced a handful of animated programs for FEMA back in the early 80’s. At the time the FEMA experts advising me and my brother seemed to really know their stuff, and I was impressed with what I saw. But it's possible I was just a bumpkin from the hinterlands, unable to grasp the larger view of a hidebound and ineffectual bureaucracy. I bow to his greater knowledge of these matters, but I would pose a few comments and invite response.

1) Threats from "mother nature" are sufficiently documented to have a statistically-derived predictability. Because of that, planning for hurricanes, earthquakes, forest fires, etc., can be made based on centuries of experience, with alternatives based on observations of hundreds of documented studies of variations in magnitude, wind factors, temperature, humidity, and so on.

2) Because terrorists have the ability of invention, choosing tools from the full gamut of mundane as well as exotic technologies, the range of possible scenarios is intrinsically more difficult to define than for natural disasters.

3) The inventiveness and perversity of terrorists makes it extremely difficult to assess the probability or likelihood of a given scenario.

4) The cost of the effort involve in identifying hypothetical terrorist scenarios, then preparing a plan for response, is trivial compared to the cost of an actual attack and its aftermath. And the cost of preparing a plan for terrorist attack cannot be substantially greater than that required for natural disaster.

5) The costs in actual preparations may vary widely, according to whether response plans call for investments in vehicles, tools, personnel, training, research & development of new technologies, stocking of pre-deployed supplies, etc.

6) As we have seen, the cost of a single terrorist attack can be nontrivial compared to that of a natural disaster. I recall estimates made in the second year after 9-11 well over two billion dollars in losses resulting from that attack — including insurance benefits, loss of the businesses and buildings, aircraft, fire trucks, police, & rescue vehicles and equipment, interruption to the stock market, and impact on travel, hospitality, and tourism industries, in addition to the deaths of the victims. And that is for one day’s attack, involving only some twenty terrorist perpetrators, with say a year’s training and living expenses as their cost.

7) While I can understand the objection to redeployment of manpower and supplies based on wildly improbably scenarios, it’s more problematic to me to dismiss the need for planning and at least minimal preparation for terrorist contingencies.

In any case, while it may be early to pass judgment on Katrina and its aftermath, the problem in this case appears to have been the combination of New Orleans/Louisiana long-established governmental ineptitude along with the unprecedented and unpredictable strength of the storm.

Eventually, we will have a much clearer picture. I think that the comments and analyses of folks like Mr. Alexander will do much to help us see things in better focus.

Reply to a Reader's Comment

2005-09-09T08:53:00.000-07:00

One of my three readers left a comment some time back:

“…you really need to fix your url links. the url should show up as a number of underlined, hypertexed *words*, that, when clicked, reveal the underlying address of the site. If done like this, not only will the url itself not be revealed as text, but it will not run off the column, and the word itself, like here in click here, will be clickable as a link.

Furthermore, your links are showing up as text and not as hyperlinks, so they are not clickable. They are only usable if one copies and pastes into the address bar. Let me know if you want some help. Regarding the spellchecker, you can go back and re-edit any post at any time, so there is no need have spelling errors in a post.”

The issues raised are universal enough as to be worth sharing as a separate post. Here’s my reply, slightly extended and amplified (As always, I retain the right to return and edit my own writing later on, if I can find some improvement that makes me seem wittier and more saintly.):

Dear Robert Lindsay,

Thanks for your comment. I know it is possible to set things up so the web address is HYPERLINKED without actually showing. It’s not JUST because I’m too lazy and ignorant that I generally prefer NOT to do so.

For some insane reason, I happen to believe that making the address visible has value. Many URLs are distressingly arbitrary character strings, but insisting that they be invisible simply for the sake of convenience, or worse, for the appearance of sophistication, is to me an inversion of priorities.

I'm trying to find a balance in my posts (when I don't give in to the impulse to rant) between my personal opinions and at least occasional verifiable sources for the information on which I base certain opinions.

Quite often a web address (URL) will reveal just by itself, information that bears on the validity or coloring of the information to be found at that site. As a hypothetical instance, maybe you maintain a subscription to AOL and receive an e-mail purporting to be a notification from AOL of a problem with your account. It has a hyperlink, with the instruction to "click on the link." You click on the link and it takes you to a web page that seems to be part of the AOL member services area--- all the logos, colors, typefaces, etc. are familiar... The page has fields requesting you enter your member name and password. But the browser field at the top of your window shows a URL that clearly has no connection to AOL. IT IS A SCAM!

By now, a large population of folks exist that know enough to leave the site, and maybe report it as a scam to some authority. But the hyperlink in the text of the original scam e-mail, by hiding the URL, permitted the perpetrators of the fraud a semblance of propriety enough to lure you into actually linking to the site, where they at least will have collected a "cookie" from your computer, which may by itself give them useful information to put to some purpose you wouldn't approve.

The convenience of hyperlinks has a price.

Regarding “splee chekcers,” I use them frequently, but I often find them to be obnoxious, dull, and doctrinaire. When a hip injury kept me abed most of my eleventh year, my mom kept me occupied practicing for the spelling bee. The beautiful and superintelligent Carmeline Maggiapinto, who was my stand partner in the second fiddle section of the Ventura County Symphony, thrashed me and got to go to Washington, while I got a seven-language dictionary and a Zenith Hi-Fi Radio. But the experience got me to be a reasonably good speller, even getting into the habit of occasionally going to the dictionary. Still, typos occur, and there are slips of memory. Correct spelling has virtue, but I refuse to dismiss the validity of an essay with compelling logic simply because of sloppy spelling.

That's exalting form over substance.

Of course, doing that is one of the defining aspects of the present political dilemma, isn't it?

Sandy Berger in re: Katrina Flying Feces Fest

2005-09-09T00:04:00.000-07:00

It's almost tempting to say to The Honorable Senator Hillary "Yes, PLEASE go ahead with a Congressional Investigation."

"Please Don' Tho me in Dat BRAR PATCH!"

[Out of a sense that it would likely arouse distracting arguments about Political Correctness, I was tempted to delete this line. However one feels about the sin of racial stereotyping as possibly exemplified by the tales of Uncle Remus, there is nonetheless a store of wisdom to be shared by those stories. So poop on anybody that objects to the reference.]

A truly independent and rigorous investigation of the mess in New Orleans would be the WORST possible thing for Democratic party aspirations. Locally, regionally, nationally.

The.

Worst.

Do they really want the whole country to be shown the satellite pictures of the hundreds of New Orleans School busses, sitting unused in their depots before the levee broke, then afterward in the pond? Those photos are public knowledge already, but who bothers to look at 'em? They're only on the internet, being examined by the wretched "pajamahedeen" right-wing crazy bloggers.

Do they really want to have a detailed public airing of the New Orleans hurricane emergency preparations and response documents that were so carefully prepared, but never followed?

Do they really want to have the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans testify under oath as to the true timing of their requests for Federal intervention, or the reasons why the convention center and superdome were not allowed to be supplied by the Red Cross?

In a forum where lying has consequences to the liar?????????

These strongly suggest that any investigation will be torpedoed, manipulated, watered down, etc.

In this context, consider how we're finding out MONTHS AFTER the publication of the final report of the so-called "9-11 Commission" many crucial pieces of information showing Clinton's administration failed to act on intelligence reports and failed to pursue identified terrorists. Consider that the reasons for refraining from action were almost invariably POLITICAL CORRECTNESS rather than substantive questions of constitutionality or jurisdiction. Wouldn't it be an immeasurable service to the public for Clinton's national security adviser Sandy Berger to tell us what sort of information was in the documents he stole and destroyed when he was allowed access as a private citizen to secret documents in the National Archives from the Clinton administration?

As owner/operator of a small animation studio, I've been through fairly exhaustive security clearance interviews and training for my company to handle classified data. BELIEVE ME, the government people went to great lengths to impress upon me the seriousness of the responsibility, and the possible consequences of and penalties for any breach of procedures. (Yes, I know... I've mentioned this before.) I understand that journalists aren't normally concerned with security issues (except possibly in relation to protecting their information from competing news hounds) but for Mr. Berger to feign ignorance, forgetfulness, or carelessness in stuffing classified documents into his socks, shirt, and pants, is ludicrous.

As he finally acknowledged in court in April, pleading guilty to unauthorized removal and retention of classified material, he knew full well he was breaking the law. Magnificently timed to take advantage of the convenient media circus surrounding the dual expirations of Terry Schiavo and the Pope, his admission of guilt went largely unmarked by the alleged Mainstream News Media. He worked out a plea bargain by which he pays a $10,000.00 fine (at least an inconvenience for someone of his station) and agrees to "surrender his security clearance" for three years.

Swallowing THAT frog is a challenge. Since when is security clearance something to be "surrendered" by its possessor? That phrasing of the plea bargain suggests that the clearance is an entitlement, which must be restored automatically in the absence of compelling arguments contrariwise. Well, if stealing top secret memos about security preparations against terrorist attacks isn't sufficient argument against restoring one's security clearance, we may as well change our names to Hassan, and learn to shit in the desert. Only a certified idiot would consider re-instating a clearance for someone who has admitted to such a grotesque abuse of the privilege. The man simply should never again be trusted to enter the same room with a sensitive document except accompanied by a responsible adult. Preferably one armed with a truncheon, cattle-prod, or large-caliber side-arm.

But really, folks... S. Berger is only a bit player in this sordid business.

For him to have done the crime to which he has confessed suggests strongly that whatever information he shredded was damning to himself or to his CinC. Berger is either a loyal soldier or a coward, but in either case, he got off awfully easy for acts that would have put most of us in prison.

This may seem a little off topic in the context of natural disasters. But the point here is that the people trying most strenuously to lay the blame for the screw-up in New Orleans, are precisely the same people that enthusiastically defended Clinton's every act. The same people who are frantic to get a Democratic administration back into the Whitehouse, and willing to use any expedient method to do so. And the presumed candidate will be the wife of ex-president Clinton, he of the DNA-stain and the hapless-aspirin-factory janitor; that bold president whose defining gesture in the matter of terrorism was his Pardon granted to terrorists convicted years ago of murdering several people to advance the cause of Puerto Rican independence.

Mind you, that magnanimous gesture of reconciliation with the miniscule percentage of Puertoriqueños who actually support independence, was on the eve of the New York senatorial election in which Hillary Rodham Clinton was a candidate. Estimates showed that the vote of the Puerto Rican population in NYC could swing the election in Hillary's favor. (She won, you may have heard.)

Keep that in mind as you assess any hysterical accusations flying about in the aftermath of a natural disaster.

Outrage for Reuters Katrina Article

2005-09-05T21:26:00.000-07:00

Reading the article (which I've linked to the title of this post) I found the usual litany of accusations, without a single reference to any source for background information, and without any facts in the body of the article to support the allegations and blame so freely given. I was hot. Now my wrists are all sore from typing. I'm going sue Reuters for some incurable wrist disease or other. They'll be sorry. Thanks to "Gates of Vienna" for the heads up. Their blog is at http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/

-----------------------(text of my letter of extreme annoyance)---------------

To the editors of Reuters News Service,

This note is meant to alert you of the rage and disgust I feel at reading the opinions, insinuations, and biased modifiers gratuitously inserted in the article under the byline of your writer Mark Egan, among the occasional facts in his article “New Orleans collects dead as officials dodge blame” which I found at your website http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx.

In an article of approximately 1050 words, some 135 of them — 13 per cent, if statistics matter — are unsupported, un-answered assertions that the devastation and suffering are the fault of the Federal government generally, the incompetence of FEMA, or of President Bush himself.

The piece’s lack of professionalism — of the most basic objectivity called for by journalistic standards — is has not yet become fully the standard for reporting of events by Reuters and other previously respectable news organizations. But it is alarmingly characteristic. Still, this article is among the most egregious I've encountered. Without citing any background or support information whatsoever, it blames the Bush Administration and various federal officials and agencies for the vast human suffering in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.

This is intolerable, not because I admire Bush, but because I have some knowledge of disaster preparedness and response.

Egan, Wutkoski, P. Barbar, M. Babineck, E. Xeba, P. Simao, et al., [i.e., the contributing reporters] may have among them some facts in the situation, but the article does nothing to inform us of how they conclude suffering was caused or enhanced by any action or failure of the Federal Government.

It would be interesting to know if any of the reporters contributing to this pack of slander have ever had so much as a day’s training in first aid, emergency response, medical triage, disaster preparedness, disaster relief, or the laws and restrictions deriving from Section 1385 of Title 18, United States Code, known as the Posse Comitatus Act. [governing the use of federal military forces for domestic law enforcement duties.]

Could a single one of these gutless scribblers actually describe in any detail what is required to load, fuel, crew, and transport a convoy of relief supplies through two hundred kilometers of blasted landscape, removing trees and debris every few feet; providing food and shelter for the drivers along the way, and ensuring sufficient fuel and supplies so that once they arrive, they can sustain themselves for whatever period they may have to wait for their own re-supply or relief? Can any one of these alleged reporters describe for even a SINGLE type of helicopter, its rate of fuel consumption, fuel capacity, load capacity, crew requirements, and range? Ditto for Naval Vessels...

If not, these writers presume to pass judgment on a phenomenon far beyond their reckoning.

The citing of al-qaeda linked sources in this context is particularly repellent, indicating the writer’s sense that we readers must give credence to the suggestion from TERRORISTS that the suffering from Katrina flows from “the wrath of God.”

I am sickened by the continuing descent of journalism into an unrepentant spewing of allegations, conjecture, surmise, and feeling presented as fact. This is not reporting; it is sneering insult, partisan garbage slinging, designed to infuriate not inform.

This is conspicuously and precisely the reason readers like me are abandoning the MainStream Media in search of reportage with somewhat more reliable descriptions and footnotes.

In the Aftermath of Disaster

2005-09-05T10:02:00.000-07:00

(first, from ace of spades HQ http://ace.mu.nu/)

“As was observed by someone I'm too lazy to google, 10% of people are naturally and almost wholly good, and will do the right thing under any situation. 10% are naturally and almost wholly evil, and will do evil under any situation, even when it's really not even in their best interests.

80% have a situational morality, and will be good when civilization demands it, and enforces order, and will do evil when civlization permits it, or disintegrates due to chaos, whether natural or man-made.

Most rioters and looters fall into that 80%. They see the 10% who jump at the chance to destroy or steal, and notice that they suffer no consequences. So they too join in.

Order has to be restored quickly, and roughly if necessary, to bring such folks back into a state of orderliness.”

--------------------------------

If you have any desire to grasp what is actually required for a relief effort on the scale of that needed by Katrina, check Countercolumn: all your bias are belong to us! (http://www.iraqnow.blogspot.com/)

There are some excellent detailed descriptions of the logistical considerations of moving and deploying supplies and transport across hundreds of miles of blasted landscape where the roads are destroyed and blocked by debris, and fuel supplies FOR THE TRANSPORT VEHICLES must be carried in addition to the relief supplies.

Living in San Francisco Bay Area (Fremont) for a decade, I found myself dating a lady with a five-year-old son. It reminded me how much trouble *I* had gotten into as a little kid, and eventually got me thinking I needed to be much better prepared for disaster on all scales. I took a 12-week Red Cross course in Wilderness Emergency Response AND CERT training from the local fire department.

The first words of the firefighter giving the first lesson of the CERT training sobered me up. He told us: In the event of a Mag7 quake in the East Bay (between San Jose and Oakland), it was expected that some 20,000 or more people would sustain injuries requiring treatment to prevent bleeding to death and restore functionality IN THE FIRST TWO MINUTES of the quake. Meanwhile, at any moment for the same geographic area there are on duty only about 200 trained circulating responders — police officers, firefighters, ambulance crew, etc. Hospitals and their staff will instantly be overwhelmed by damage, injuries, and new patients presenting themselves. Streets will be clogged and impassable. You can expect a period on the order of two weeks MINIMUM before any organized relief is fully established, so during that time you will probably have to rely upon your own preparations and training.

That sort of information was available to anyone who bothered to take a few minutes to skim any of the earthquake preparedness pamphlets that are distibuted in ton lots around the bay area, but who bothers?

From the IDIOTIC statements and accusations of the media, I have to conclude those pathetickers have no more bothered to research the realities of disaster relief than they bother to educate themselves on any other issue. The reporters and commentators of the Mainstream News Media are among the most irresponsible rascals on salary. They refuse to take any responsibility for their own accuracy, research or preparedness.

I've already ranted in an earlier blog (“The Ossification of the Fourth Estate”) about the sorry state of journalism. But it's a situation that needs much remediation. We have an astounding system of distribution for news and information. The shame of it is that the alleged News Media have become the refuge of the incompetent and the delusional. There is certainly a critical value to a free society in having a press that is free to express contrarian, diverse, and even obnoxious views. It is after all a fundamental concept of information theory that data contrary to your expectations and assumptions are far more important than information that simply confirms them.

But hiding behind sacred principle of Freedom of the Press, mediocrity and sensational commercialism have long since driven out the last shreds of responsible

Reporters ask staggeringly stupid questions at White House, FEMA and Homeland Security press briefings, and make absurd complaints and critiques in their articles. This is nothing new. As long as there have been college diplomas, Degrees in Journalism have always included on the reverse, a fine-print warning: "Caution: The issuance of this diploma only certifies that the holder was recorded in attendance for the required class sessions, and is not intended to imply that the diplomate is capable of logical, rational, or responsible research, inquiry, composition, grammar, or conversation." I was always counseled by other students and even faculty advisors, that if I found myself unable to cope with the rigors of hard science, math, philosophy, history, geography, English, or Art... there was always the Journalism major as a last resort.

Seriously, only supreme arrogance or delusion can explain how anyone presumes to be smart enough extemporaneously to analyse and critique the work, performance, history, psychological profile, sociological ramifications, scientific under-pinnings, and political leanings of any person, subject, thought, statement, or "sound-byte" that wanders into range. It is *INSANE* to assert that any human is enough of a genius to be able to grasp the nuances of any field of study, any profession, any art, disaster, or political wrangle, then pass on to the rest of us a few nuggets of wisdom we can use to make sense of a bewildering world.

And yet news reporters routinely make sweeping pronouncements and judgments on whatever subject comes along, and expect never to be challenged.

The behavior of the mainstream news media (and the people that echo their braying) are just another demonstration of how utterly contemptible and irresponsible they have become. Sometimes it seems as though it is only by accident, or by assuming the opposite of any assertion they make, that you can any longer find any useful information there.

Blaming Bush for Katrina

2005-09-02T00:32:00.000-07:00

“The atmosphere is the prototypical chaotic nonlinear system. This was shown by the simplest atmospheric model, devised by [Edward] Lorenz over 20 years ago, the starting point for modern mathematical studies of such systems. Because the atmosphere is chaotic, atmospheric models are sensitive to small variations in initial conditions and possess an inherent growth of error. These properties impose a theoretical limit on the range of deterministic predictions of large-scale flow patterns of about two weeks.”

— National Academy of Sciences, Panel on Weather
Prediction Technologies, Research Briefings 1985

Even in the first 48 hours after Katrina first touched the Gulf Coast, a number of journalists have taken Bush and his administration to task for alleged failures in preparation and execution of relief efforts, as though the federal government should have done a head count and map of the people who decided to stay in New Orleans. As the summer progressed, climatologists predicted this season might generate unusually severe hurricanes. That has in turn prompted supporters of the dead Kyoto treaty to blame Bush for almost any bad thing that happens.

There is a chain of connected beliefs held by many folks who call themselves progressive liberals: that 1) Global Warming has been proven to exist as a climatic trend; 2) It results from human — and more specifically, Republican/Capitalist — modern industrial activity, not from naturally-occurring phenomena; 3) George Bush and his cronies are willfully allowing it to occur because they are greedy bastards; 4) the Kyoto accords would actually have accomplished anything to slow, halt, or reverse the trend.

Global Warming even if it has been demonstrated, cannot be shown to be a significant deviation from long-period climatic cycles found in the fossil/polar ice record. People, the sun is a variable star! The variation of its energy output is calculated to be as much as one tenth of a percent in just the 22-year sunspot cycle. This may seem small, but the sun’s irradiance of the earth is vast compared to any human activity. In addition, observations indicate a long-term increase in the sun’s output since the so-called “little Ice Age” between 1650 and 1700. Along with titanic volcanic eruptions, the vagaries of El Niño, and other natural events, this trend dwarfs the most appalling estimates of anthropogenic causes for warming, such as CO2 resulting from industrialization or the methane burps of half a billion cows.

So in that catechism, the case for Global Warming is equivocal at best. A slight increase in global temperature may be factual, but we haven’t had the observational capacity nor a baseline against which to compare, to know whether it is significant. It’s like the Ozone Hole: We didn’t even become aware of it until we had satellites and spacecraft orbiting above the atmosphere. How do we know it hasn’t been there all along? As recently as 1980 the Global Weather Experiment was one of the very first international attempts by over 100 participating nations to monitor the weather in sufficient detail to begin predicting global weather patterns. And it was only intended to test and explore means of data gathering. Modern satellite coverage notwithstanding, we still have only relatively sparse data-monitoring capability, with gaps as great as hundreds of kilometers between many permanent weather gauges. As of 2003— according to World Weather Watch ( http://www.wmo.ch/web/www/Status-Reports/21st/40Years.pdf) a system of commercial sea-going ships and aircraft voluntarily supplement the data transmissions of automatic drifting buoys and balloon-borne sensors, so that over a hundred thousand data points are available for weather calculations (and records) daily.

That’s a bunch, but it’s a big planet, with an immense un-studied climate history. We’re only just achieving a comprehensive survey ability now. With climatology just maturing, regional and local variations in patterns will continue to mask larger-scale trends for a very long time. Using the generally-accepted climate models, monitoring systems now in place suffice for general weather prediction out to half the theoretical limit of two weeks. In the absence of both a baseline and a sufficiently detailed monitoring capability we have only conjecture and theory and reckoning based on a lot of educated but unverifiable assumptions. Respected scientists slag each other off in the popular press, and disagree politely but firmly in their refereed academic journals.

In other words, all politics aside, the observations, science and logic so far available do not in any immediately useful way detail the mechanisms and magnitude of warming. They are not sufficiently developed to predict its persistence, or cure. It requires a faith bordering on the delusional to insist that we accept the rest of the articles of the logic chain I paraphrased at the beginning. The Kyoto accords were rejected not just by Bush. Ninety-five United States Senators, including Democratic icon Theodore Kennedy, voted against the proposed treaty before Vice-president Gore made the grand gesture of signing the thing. President Clinton did not even bother sending it to the Senate for a ratification vote.

None of this stops pissed-off liberals from claiming that because he continues to oppose the Kyoto accords, Bush caused: a) Katrina, b) Katrina’s unusual intensity, c) Katrina’s anomalous track, d) the poverty and lack of preparedness or simple self-preservation by a huge part of New Orleans’ population, e) inadequate response by all levels of government in the aftermath.

This is a clear example of either massive dumbness, or crass political opportunism.

Why am I surprised? I’ve sat through countless harangues against nuclear power by ignoramuses who couldn’t tell a proton from a crouton. I expect better from people pretending to defend our schools against the intrusion of theories like creationism and intelligent design. But it seems that as more frustrated they are at their own impotence, so more frenzied and irrational they become.

"Dreamers, AWAKE!"

2004-11-09T10:15:00.000-08:00

Many Democrats and Liberals have claimed that this election was lost essentially because of HOMOPHOBIA. Bush appealed to voters, so the argument goes, who are so rabidly, viciously, deeply filled with hatred for gay folks, that they voted for George Bush to make sure gay marriages won’t be allowed. Liberals making this phony charge simply refuse to admit any valid basis for maintaining or defending fundamental institutions that have served humans from pre-history.

James Lileks did a great job of articulating the position I share with many conservatives: “I’m a live & let-live sort of guy when it comes to this; I’m in favor of civil partnerships, legal protection in the workplace, hospital visitation rights, societal-wide acceptance of the utterly NO DUH notion that gay relationships have the same essential emotional qualities of straight relationships. I support gay adoption - unless there’s a M/F couple in line, in which they should get preference. That has nothing to do with sexual identity or heterosexual chauvinism. I think a kid does best growing up exposed on an elemental level to both male and female characteristics; does that make me a raging bigot? Can we not even talk about that?”
(source/link as of 09 Nov 2004: http://www.lileks.com/bleats/index.html)

There are some issues that deserve to be examined.

Our country presently has a number of statutes, common law traditions & precedents that give priority to BIOLOGICAL relatives' rights. Visitation, inheritance, access to estates of people living but incapacitated, guardianship of minors and medically-impaired persons, etc. For instance, if someone is severely injured in a highway crash or found on a public street in a diabetic coma, hospitals are bound by LAW to maintain life support for that person, even despite the wishes of next-of-kin, in the absence of a “living will” or other legally inassailable document previously signed by the patient.

They certainly won’t “pull the plug” on the say-so of non-relatives OF ANY SORT. Spouses, under law, have greater powers of decision than parents, children, cousins, etc. Casual acquaintances with no formal legal standing are out, regardless of anyone’s sexual orientation.

I have much sympathy with any person who’s been excluded from hospital by the relatives of a desperately ill patient, simply because that family couldn’t accept the sexual orientation of its own. But that is often a source of anguish in cases of heterosexual relationships where a family can’t abide their child’s (or sibling’s, or parent’s) choice of sexual partner. If any person wants to ensure the legal rights of the one they love there are already legal instruments available in almost every jurisdiction in the country.

Where there are impediments, there should be legislation NOT JUDICIAL FIAT to allow a person to declare a preferred partner to have visiting rights, or the right of veto/confirmation for DNR (‘Do Not Resuscitate”) orders. Legal instruments like Power of Attorney already exist which would allow this sort of declaration, without requiring enormous upheaval in social customs and laws.

But let’s keep in mind that the Democratic party has already made an emphatic choice on the side of maintaining and strengthening the priority of the traditional rights of parents and family in questions of custody, access, guardianship, and control.

The Clinton Adminstration's use of Paramilitary Officers armed with automatic weapons to wrest a child from relatives who wished to raise that child in America, was the most emphatic reiteration possible for the legal concept that the biological father has the pre-eminent right to custody of his child. Janet Reno’s black-clothed swat team enforced that right of the child’s father--- despite he was coerced by the murdering dictator Fidel Castro, and despite the fact that the mother had risked and lost her life in the attempt to bring the child to freedom in America.

At the time and since, liberals in America accepted WITHOUT CRITICISM the use of a military-style swat team, bashing in the front door of a private home with a battering ram in the dark of night, to confiscate a child from its COURT-APPOINTED LEGAL GUARDIAN at the point of a machine gun. At least, in this instance, the child and the relatives actually survived Janet Reno’s tactics, which is more than can be said for the children whose welfare she undertook to manage at Waco, Texas. (Remember: the immediate justification Reno gave for the assault was that there had been reports the children of the Branch Davidians were being abused.)

Folks, you have to recognize that you cannot support THOSE actions by a popular Democratic Party administration, AND AT THE SAME TIME claim that the rights of a non-blood-relative friend or lover must be given priority over those of immediate family. The two concepts are mutually exclusive. And the solution is not to find some activist judge who is willing to abuse the powers of the judiciary to overthrow the clear will of the VAST majority of the country. That option simply leads to dueling activist judges. If Liberals cannot accept that our republic is based on the rule of the majority, they’re advocating a dictatorship of an unelected elite, pure and simple.

The idea of gay marriage is not dead for all time; there are lots of people who voted for George Bush that are sympathetic to that notion. Liberals do nothing to advance the cause of gay rights, or any other cause, by insulting the 59 million people that saw Bush as a better choice than Kerry.

"All dressed up and no-where to go..."

2004-11-04T20:47:00.000-08:00

There’s a bit of wisdom people quote from time to time— I think from Matthew 6:34— that tells us not to fret overmuch about tomorrow’s troubles; today’s are enough to deal with.

I take it to mean there’s no profit in making yourself crazy over things you can’t change while you’re occupied with present emergencies.

This election is history. In the fullness of time people will digest events and gradually recognize that the universe is undeniably different from what they’ve been telling themselves.

Do we really want to waste the next month, week, day, or even two breaths worrying about what our recent opponents are saying to each other?

Priorities.

A lot of us on all sides have been held in thrall through this campaign, stunned by the atrocities of external enemies, and thunderstruck by the perversity of people we thought were allies. On one hand, I feel ready to get back to my life. On the other hand, I see my life can never again be exactly as it was, because the world is not as I thought it was.

There are people who plunge into tasks when called upon, and others who make promises they have no intention of fulfilling. Some of us learned in grade school that it drains far more energy wheedling and cajoling the latter to perform, than to go ahead and work with those who are willing.

Coalition of the Willing.

It isn’t really a heroic phrase, is it? But like Mark Twain said of Wagner’s music, “It’s a lot better than it sounds.” Would you rather have ten friends you can depend on or a hundred who have to be dragged along against their will? The answer helps figure how you spend your time and energy in your daily life, too. Good “touchstone.” I have some ideas for people to try regardless of your politics, some that have helped me from time to time.

Get out of the house. Out of the apartment. Out of your hovel. Quit assembling those explosive devices. Show up at the local office of your favorite political party, and volunteer to stuff envelopes, or lick stamps. Join a Mac User Group. Play music with an orchestra, or sing with a choir, or start learning to play banjo or harmonica at a local music shop. Serve meals at a homeless shelter. Rake the leaves one day for a neighbor who’s only got one lung. Volunteer at the Zoo, or the local animal shelter.

Go to the library and offer to shelve books. Visit the hospital and see if they need someone to read stories to kids. Visit a convalescent home and volunteer to play checkers or chat with the residents. Offer to teach a course (you must have SOME skill to share...) through your city recreation / parks department.

If you’re really brave, visit the jails, or the prisons, or cancer wards or intensive care unit at the hospital. Even if you’re not religious, you can connect with ministers and find a way to help distribute food, or paint houses, or babysit, or teach an adult to read, or just hold a dying person’s hand and provide a little companionship.

These are things you can do that transcend any petty bullshit bickering over politics. They will connect you to people you may learn to treasure, regardless of whether they agree with your politics. You may persuade and be persuaded. You will likely be changed, but likely in ways that satisfy. You don’t have to be a genius, or a scholar, or a magician, or a college graduate. You don’t have to have any special qualifications for a lot of activities that can make a big difference for other people.

BUT DON’T STOP BLOGGING!

Advice to Trolls

2004-10-29T13:07:00.000-07:00

There are always disagreements between people of goodwill. And then there are people whose only intent is to twist logic and substitute allegations for reasoned dispute.

If your desire or goal is to engage and possibly persuade someone to consider your point of view, you have a lot to learn about simple etiquette and civil converse.

If your purpose is, on the other hand to try to just aggravate people who disagree with you, you've accomplished that, but so freaking what? How does that make Kerry's task any easier? How does it make the governing of this country at all easier by going out of your way to insult people with whom you differ?

Whoever wins the election, we still are a nation besieged. The Hatred of Islamic zealots forunbelievers predates by six centuries the arrival of Christians and Jews on the shores of North America. However stupid George Bush may be, his dumbness or brilliance is a miniscule factor in the enduring belligerence between Islam and ALL its neighbors.

Look at any academic site (as opposed to those of organizations that are PROMOTIMG Islam) and read for yourself a concise history of Islam. You will find (forgive me, those of you who have seen this before) that the Prophet Mohammed himself commanded military assaults upon his enemies, and personally ordered beheadings and executions of unbelievers. In the first decade after his death, the leadership of Islam changed hands several times. In each instance, one aspirant murdered and replaced his predecessor. In the first century of its existence on the planet, Islam was imposed by its fanatical leaders use of military assault on successive neighbors spreading from the Arabian Peninsula eastward across north Africa and Northward up Palestine,Lebanon and Syria, through Turkey to Istanbul. In many parts of the Islamic world, slavery is still routinely practiced. Sharia--- civil law according to Islamic principles--- imposes beheadings, amputations, and hanging for acts and behaviors many in the Western democracies tolerate and even defend as fundamental rights--- sexual promiscuity, homosexuality, dissent, etc.

The European Union is experiencing its own difficulties assimilating huge Islamic immigrant populations. Anti-semitism has deep roots, and racial tensions and racist attitudes are very strong in Europe. For them to be lecturing the United States about our attitudes and attempts at resolving our problems is ludicrous.

For any person who intends to govern America, it is insane to expect Europe to provide answers to our problems. They can't defend, or govern, themselves. Joschka Fisher, the FOREIGN MINISTER of Germany, is a terrorist sympathizer--- He was photographed in an internationally reported incident in th3 1970's kicking and beating a German police officer at a dmonstration, with six other demontstrators assisting. He admitted in a widely reported trial of the Bader-Meinhoff gang (of terrorists) that his home was used as a safe house by known terrorists in the 1970s.

That such a man could be ELECTED by the german population, OR appointed to such a high office in the German government, speaks volumes about the fundamental INSANITY of the current European culture.

For John Kerry to announce that he regards the European attitudes as any sort of touchstone for his policies identifies him as someone who should never be entrusted with the reins of government.

I apologize for my typos. I'm writing this at the library, no splee chekcer.

"The Days of Swine and Roses..."

2004-10-18T23:52:00.000-07:00

It's been a generation since the "Swine Flu" mess, and people's ambivalence about vaccines, their value and dangers, has grown rather than subsided. Every chiropractor's office I've ever visited has publications ranging in tone from calmly reflective to almost hysterical, challenging the use, safety, and fundamental validity of vaccines as preventative of all the hideous diseases we try to fend off using them.

The Present Fuss about the flu vaccine is another occasion for headscratching about the utter perversity of the Public, The Media, and Politics. Several times in recent years, the flu vaccine question getting all the media attention has been that the vaccine MIGHT CAUSE MUCH GREATER HARM THAN THE FLU ITSELF; so many consumers were complaining about coming down with “flu-like” symptoms which they insisted were caused by the vaccines that they were foreswearing submitting to the darn vaccines ever again.

Here’s a little background information:
Each year, a number of influenza strains emerge in different parts of the world, and begin to spread outward from their points of origin, in a steady march that brings them to the United States a few months later.

Human flu viruses exploit pigs and other animals as “vectors” (when they can’t get humans) and sometimes even viral strains from ducks and other critturs intermingle and we get unprecedentedly... well, “VIRULENT” new strains to attack us. This works for the viruses because humans and pigs and fowl have long-standing intimate living arrangements in some places. Like rural China, for instance. That’s why many of the new strains emerge from that region of the world, and bear such evocative names as “Asian flu” or “Swine flu.”

Somebody --- actually, teams of somebodies--- have to be out in the field researching the new strains all year, and other somebodies have to make educated guesses as to just which ones will eventually spread to the U.S., in order to formulate and then manufacture and distribute a vaccine that will be reasonably effective against the flu strains that are expected to show up in the U.S. months later.

The public take this whole process of critically complex interactive steps for granted. They complain when it works, and complain when it doesn’t work.

A few decades back (1976) there was a huge stink, with people calling for Congressional investigations around the so-called “Swine Flu Epidemic,” because it appeared the vaccine CAUSED the paralyzing and even occasionally lethal “Guillain-Barre´ Syndrome.” It took a number of very careful studies to show that in fact, there did seem to be some causal relationship, but what that really demonstrated is that in fact, there is frequently some tiny possibility of individual bad reactions to vaccines, despite the overwhelmingly greater good they do.

Here is the first paragraph of a Harvard School of Public Health study copyright 1997 by Elissa A Laitin and Elise M. Pelletier about that, which gives you an idea of the complexity of the flu vaccine issue:

In February of 1976, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) investigated and confirmed that an influenza outbreak at Fort Dix had been caused by the swine-type influenza A virus. Subsequently, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, as well as numerous medical experts, became concerned that a major flu epidemic was imminent for the coming fall. Fear of influenza deaths in numbers similar to the 1918 flu epidemic led to a recommendation that the federal government vaccinate all Americans.

When insurance companies refused to provide coverage to the vaccine manufacturers, the government agreed to accept liability for claims of adverse events (Neustadt).[I separated out this paragraph for emphasis...dm]

This obstacle having been cleared, the National Influenza Immunization Program (NIIP) officially started in October of 1976. The number of vaccinations given each week increased rapidly from less than one million in early October to more than four million in the later weeks of the month, and reached a peak of more than six million doses a week by the middle of November 1976 (Marks). The NIIP was unique in the annals of epidemiology: an organized surveillance effort was in place from the very beginning, and over forty million people were vaccinated during the short time the NIIP was in effect. However, on December 16, 1976 the NIIP was suspended following reports from more than ten states of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) in vaccinees. By January of 1977, more than 500 cases of GBS had been reported, with 25 deaths (Langmuir, 1979). Millions of dollars in lawsuits and many years later, we present in this paper a summary of the epidemiologic evidence of the possible causal association between influenza A/New Jersey/76 vaccine and GBS.
(The full article is available at: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/Organizations/DDIL/swineflu.html)

Joel Warner authored another fairly daunting technical analysis of the 1976 epidemic, available at: http://www.haverford.edu/biology/edwards/disease/viral_essays/warnervirus.htm)

The best discussion of that event is in the book “The Coming Plague,” by Laurie Garrett, former NPR science correspondent. Despite the sensational sounding title, she gives you a very clear understanding of how public health issues have been approached in a number of problem areas--- Ebola, the new vicious strains of TB, HIV, and how everything is affected by promiscuous overuse of antibiotics. It’s pretty darn comprehensive--- something close to 500 pages, with indexes (okay, “indices”)--- but it’s very readable, and doesn’t assume or require the reader to have any specialized science education beyond maybe middle-school-level biology & chemistry.

My reason for this dense post is just to say that it is typically irresponsible disgusting mud-slinging for someone like John Kerry to be blaming the present vaccine shortage on BUSH. To quote from the Galen Institute: “This crisis is the result of a series of policy decisions dating back a decade. In 1994, First Lady Hillary Clinton led an effort to enact the Vaccines for Children program, and the government now purchases 60% of all pediatric vaccines. “

Don’t just take my word for it, because I’m a registered Clinton critic. Look up the “Vaccines for Children” 1994 proposals and resulting legislation, which are credited to Bill and Hillary Clinton, with inspiring introduction by then-Secretary of Health and Human Services, Donna Shilala:
http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/pre1995pres/931222.txt
A critical 1994 article in Reason Magazine:
http://reason.com/9411/col.pollock.shtml

"The Shiny Thing Hypothesis"

2004-10-18T23:50:00.000-07:00

Here I am, trying to stay employed and pay my bills, and pay enough attention to international issues to try to cast a vote for a President who will end up making the world a little better place. I started off believing that the Democratic Party meant the shiny things it dangled in front of idealistic voters. Gradually, I began to see that they dangled different shiny things in front of different sorts of voters hoping to enlist them. Later still, it became clear that the shiny things were just... well, SHINY things, and we were all like so many stupid trout, snapping reflexively, and ending up feeding some fat fisherman.

Picking Cherries...

2004-10-08T13:47:00.000-07:00

The full article excerpted below is available at:
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041008-122307-7095r.htm

Allies dismiss reports of Saddam payoffs

By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

NEW YORK — French, Russian and U.N. officials warned against making hasty judgments yesterday after the U.S. Iraq Survey Group reported that Saddam Hussein had used the U.N. oil-for-food program to buy influence at the United Nations.
The report accused key officials — including former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky and retired U.N. oil-for-food director Benon Sevan — of accepting oil vouchers, which could be exchanged secretly for cash.

[...]

The ISG, headed by former U.N. weapons inspector Charles A. Duelfer, on Wednesday issued a 1,000-page report detailing Iraq's quest for weapons of mass destruction, including the possibility that more than $10 billion had been wrung from oil sales authorized by the U.N. program.
The ISG found a pattern of gifts and bribes to officials of nations serving on the Security Council, in an apparent effort to hasten the crumbling of the already weak sanctions on the regime.
The regime was "using every tool possible, through its deception, front companies or sweetheart deals on oil and other things, to try to suborn the sanctions regime and try to acquire things it was not supposed to be buying under the sanctions regime," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday.
Mr. Duelfer told Congress in releasing the report on Wednesday, "It's pretty clear that the Iraqi strategy and tactics of dividing the Security Council were having a fair amount of success.
"I think that's clear in the report when you see that the amount of conventional military equipment that was being sold to Iraq, being transported into Iraq ... with the help of some Security Council members, there is, in my mind, little doubt that the ... constraints that the U.N. was able to put around Iraq were collapsing."
The report fueled impatience on Capitol Hill over the slow pace of the [former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul] Volcker investigation and the U.N. refusal to make documents available to Congress.

[...]

U.N. officials say privately that they hoped Mr. Volcker could work a little faster, at least to investigate the apparent complicity of their own personnel.
The first phase of the independent investigation, originally expected next month, is not expected to be ready until early 2005, according to a U.N. official.
"Obviously, the secretary-general is keen to get to the bottom of this, get it out in the open and over and done with," an official said. "But I do not think he can put any pressure on him [Mr. Volcker] to speed it up."

----------

It is interesting that the Kerry campaign look at a 1,000 page report and all they find worthy of note is the ONE fact that everyone ALREADY KNOWS---no stockpiles of WMDs.

All you need for a weapon of mass destruction is a few pounds of a nasty substance, and enough explosive to disperse it. It doesn't need to be even the size of a briefcase. There have already been found some several dozen artillery shells full of Sarin LIQUID, which becomes a GAS or cloud of tiny droplets on detonation.

Unfortunately, the pitiful state of American secondary education under DEMOCRATIC PARTY administration over the last half of the 20th century deteriorated to the extent that many high school graduates no longer are given the information they need to be able to assess certain types of data.

It used to be widely understood that manufacturing processes depend on mass-production assembly lines to be efficient or affordable. Consider the ball point pen: Because of the microscopic texture of the ball needed for optimal ink retention, and the critical tolerances between the ball and the conical tip needed to allow the ball to turn and the ink to flow, making a SINGLE ball point pen could cost thousands of dollars. But to set up a factory capable of manufacturing a million pens per 24 hours, ends up bringing the cost down to a few cents apiece.

The discovery of ten Artillery Shells filled with Sarin chemical poison, clearly shows that at some point SADDAM HUSSEIN in fact, had a factory producing such weapons of mass destruction.

Even if the factory were dismantled, and the shells shipped out of Iraq, He still had the industrial know-how, the technicians and scientists and workers, and a United Nations on the take, casting a blind eye on Saddam's flouting of the sanctions.

In the 1920's and 1930's, Germany was secretly building up its military capacity with the aid of sympathetic countries, which shared expertise and manufacturing capacity. Once Hitler came to power he accelerated these programs. By the time he revealed to the world Germany's new armaments, aircraft, ships, and tanks, England and France and the United States were a decade behind the times.

None were willing to actually use military force as allowed by the Treaty of Versailles to compel Hitler to comply with the restrictions imposed on Germany by its surrender at the end of World War I. It has been well established that the Treaty of Versailles imposed burdens on Germany that made her people justifiably resentful of the allies' harshness. However unreasonable the reparations burden were, the problems they caused were allowed to lead to war by the gutless leaders who were unwilling to confront Hitler's growing belligerance.

Similarly, it can be argued that the sanctions on Iraq caused hardships AS THEY WERE MANIPULATED BY SADDAM, which make many Iraqis blame the U.S. Still, it was SADDAM who was the decision maker, the one in charge, the person calling the shots.

Kerry repeatedly stated that Saddam was a threat, that we would be justified in using military force to disarm him. It is only now that he is trying to get elected by the deconstructionist postmodern marxist blow-dried manicured tofu-gnawing left, that he reverses these claims.

His slogan should be “Peace in Our Time!”

Continental Drift

2004-10-01T07:51:00.000-07:00

Europe is the First-born son in an old wealthy family, of which America is the later born. Europe stayed home, waiting patiently for Papa to age and eventually die, so as to inherit the family groves and fields and business interests. Biding its time, gritting its teeth, putting up with indignities and whippings and even the contempt of its elders, Europe opted to set aside pride and independence for the guarantee of eventual inheritance of the hoarded treasure of earlier generations. In doing so, Europe learned to shun risk-taking, to avoid the rigors of exploration, adventure, challenge, the examination of exotic options. Europe traded independence for security.

America packed its few bits of belongings in a kerchief and hiked off down the lane to seek its fortune elsewhere. It learned to think for itself, to assess and face difficulties and find its own solutions in the absence of guidance and advice. On its own, working out its own fate gradually made it more able to see the world as it is instead of how it wishes it were. But America's choice of freedom instead of the comfort of staying home also allowed it to dream; to imagine that its dreams could be realized.

Now, Europe has come into its inheritance, but for all its grudging tedious waiting, it has learned rather to sit on its hoard like some arthritic dragon, than to boldly flex and exercise its powerful sinews. With flinty eyes Europe views with alarm the confident stride of its younger sibling, at once jealous of the success gained by adventure, luck and daring, and fearful of an America that having proved its own fiber, cannot be cowed by Europe's bullying or tempted by its wealth.

Worse, Europe is shamed to see what it might have become had it not opted for the safe and comfortable way, instead of the challenge of freedom.

Admittedly, this is only a convenient metaphor.

But I think it captures the essence of the relationship between the European collective mind, and the attitude of America, particularly since 9-11-01. That attack is conceptually a continental divide. On one side of that event, logic and beliefs all were governed by a gravitic force pulling one way: toward insularity. timidity, conformity, passivity. On the other side of that discontinuity, perceptions, logic, and motives are pulled by an opposing force, drawing America toward awareness, purpose, will, sobriety, responsibility.

Stephen Green at Vodkapundit links to an article in the coming Weekly Standard:

"Islamic Europe?"
From the October 4, 2004 issue: When Bernard Lewis speaks . . .
by Christopher Caldwell
10/04/2004, Volume 010, Issue 04

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/685ozxcq.asp

The article is short. Quick, provocative read. It puts me in mind of a number of articles that have come out in the last year indicating that current birth rates among the European "native" populations yeild either zero or negative population growth, while the immigration and the birth rates among immigrants are leading to accelerating population growth among non-natives. Some predictions assert that in many European nations the natives will become minorities within the lifetimes of those living today.

Whether this is a good or a bad thing depends on your perspective. But at least it seems worth considering whether cultural dislocations and hostilities might result from a process that is too hurried.

For several centuries, Europe has been losing many of its most productive, vigorous, independent-minded folk to immigration or to its many conflicts. The remainder is then, is— inevitably— LEFT.

...

Of course, this is an entirely self-serving and smugly self-congratulatory analysis. But I think it has a little truth. At least it explains for me why certain folks in America, having come into wealth and comfortable living by marriage or inheritance rather than by their own industry, have attitudes that coincide so markedly with the worst of the European socialists.

"You don't HAVE to HATE the United Nations..."

2004-09-24T23:17:00.000-07:00

"...but you damn well better see it for the disaster it really is."

[Seems like everybody is talking about Dan Rather and CBS and Kerry's latest positional pirhouette. I thought it might be good to address an issue that is at the heart of a lot of problems faced by the U.S., which have facts and history that can at least be agreed upon by people of different politics, regardless of the different solutions they might prefer.]

To understand the contempt and antagonism felt by many Americans for the United Nations, it is essential to grasp the transformation of the U.N. from its origins to what it is today. In the sixty years since its opening, the world has endured a prolonged spasm of deconstruction.

"In 1945, 51 states had signed the Charter of the United Nations. Then, between 1954 and 1969, 53 newly independent states also became members of the United Nations. This reflected the triumph of nationalism and the end of the age of the European overseas empires." — The Encyclopedia of World History, Sixth edition. Peter N. Stearns, general editor. Copyright © 2001 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

That quote gives just a hint of how much has changed since the founding. The tension between the United States and the U.S.S.R. dominated by the post-war period, But the end of the Soviet Union fractured all the old alliances and added a bewildering list of newly independent countries lining up to join the United Nations. The NATO military excursion into Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina (comprising formerYugoslavia) may be the last coherent action by that group in a form recognizeable to its founders. The European Common Market of the 1960's has been supplanted by the European Union; The Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact have re-emerged as the Confederation of Independent States, and the Organization of American States is gradually being eclipsed by NAFTA, the World Bank, and World Trade Organization.

When the United Nations held its first sessions, its charter members numbered only 51, comprised mainly of those nations that had allied to defeat the menace of Fascism in World War II. This is precisely because the organization grew out of that effort, even to the extent of taking its name from proclamations issued during the war by Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin after their conferences. The United Nations started its business as an alliance of nations mostly sharing similar cultures, representative governments, and cultural legacies roughly centered on Western Europe.

In increasingly sharp contrast, many of the new members emerged from former colonies of European nations, or regions previously under Soviet Union, or regions that were too poor to have attracted the interest of the two former groups. There is understandable mistrust, hostility and resentment from those groups toward the nations that had been colonial powers, and nations perceived to be exploitive of the "third world." In the fifties and sixties, those resentments were primarily manifested in the aloofness and obstructionism of the so-called "non-aligned" nations. Their "non-alignment" tended to mean they cynically played both sides, trying to get the U.S. and Soviets to outbid each other to woo them.

In times of crisis, though, most nations recalled the United States had after all, claimed no new territories as prizes, and had actually helped prevent starvation and plague in countries that lay prostrate after the War. They remembered also that the U.S.S.R. had behaved very differently. And in the clinches, if they didn't side with the U.S., at least they did not interfere in its efforts.

But the idea of autonomy for self-selecting ethnic or cultural groups gathered momentum in the 1960's, and became a global imperative. There may have been a lot of events and trends that encouraged groups to suddenly fixate on nationhood. The result was a rash of small nations that are NOT viable economically, nor capable of maintaining democratic self-government against the predation of monsters.

In the last three decades of the 20th century along with everything else that's gone on, there have been scores of small wars of national liberation, followed by counter-revolutionary power grabs, followed by opportunistic territorial seizures by neighbors, followed by coups, followed by juntas, succeded by presidents and dictators-for-life. At the start of the new millenium the world has a crowd of countries ruled by a tiny ruthless elite, dominating by torture, murder, imprisonment, confiscation, and extra helpings of murder and torture. And each of these has applied for and received the blessings of membership in the United Nations.

There are many reasons why countries headed by bandits, rogues, thugs, dictators, or murdering bastards are not excluded from membership. But whatever reasons are applied, the result is ever more coziness between the United Nations staff, and the delegates whose votes they need to keep pay rises and benefits coming. Sound familiar?Can you say "House Banking Scandal?"

Just for instance, under the United Nation's DIRECT supervision, Saddam Hussein had since the first Gulf War been using his nation's oil to pay corrupt officials of various nations to protect himself from justice. That farcically mis-named “Oil for Food” program was personally administered by U.N. Secretary-General Koffi Annan, who appointed his son to conduct much of the business, and personally approved the various corrupt contracts that provided obscene profits to corrupt officials of his and Saddam’s choosing. Billions of dollars that should have been used to alleviate the suffering of the Iraqi population went instead to line the personal accounts of cynical, posturing politicians, who all the while loudly blamed America for the oppression of the Iraqi people.

All that, of course, only really came to light AFTER the fall of Saddam. But now we know why the U.N. and France, and Russia, and Syria were so energetic in opposing the war--- it shut down their private looting operation.

Because we're so well insulated from the harsh deprivations of other places, we Americans have difficulty grasping how commonplace it is for brutes, thieves, crooks, and murderers to end up as the head-of-state of a government. It used to be pretty much the standard career path, but we've become very civilized, and obvious brutality is not encouraged in the resumes of our leaders.

So, each of those emerging dictatorships sends a delegation to the United Nations, and those delegates enjoy the privileges and benefits afforded diplomats and ambassadors. In exchange for the international legitimacy this bestows upon the ruling thugs, those countries in turn cooperate with the United Nations bureaucrats in their ever-more self-serving and lucrative schemes. Just for starters, the dues assessed primarily upon the richest nations provide princely remuneration and perquisites for the bureaucrats and staffers of the U.N. itself.

The most successful of those bureaucrats is the present Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, by a long road. He is the FIRST S-G to have been elevated from the ranks of the U.N. bureaucracy itself, rather than from among the delegate-ambassadors sent from the various member states.

Think about that.

In a culture which penalizes failure, and constantly seeks scapegoats, what kind of person is elevated by the distilling process that rewards blandness, inoffensive vagueness, and amiable platitudes?

Kofi Annan emerged as the master of appearance of sincerety and concern and the master of elegantly rationalized restraint from actual commitment or action;

Just a couple of horrifying examples of U.N. actions that took place on Kofi Annan's watch:

In 1994 when Hutu in Rwanda began slaughtering Tutsi tribesmen by the tens of thousands week after week, Koffi Annan was at that time in a position to have ordered action to temper or halt that slaughter, and CHOSE NOT TO ACT. The United Nations withdrew its troops when ten soldiers were murdered. The United Nations pulled out and let the genocide proceed, let EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND victims to be slaughtered in three months. Many of them were killed with machetes and garden tools, when a few regiments with small arms might have protected them.

Just a few years later, AFTER Kofi Annan had been given the leadership of the U.N., when the United States lead a NATO coalition to stem the massacre of Muslims by Serbian Christians, the United Nations grudgingly agreed to send peacekeepers. In one instance, they declared the town of Sreberniça a "United Nations Safe Area," and left a batallion-strength guard of Dutch U.N. troops in close proximity. When Serb forces attacked, the Dutch commander requested air strikes.

After his fourth request, he was told that he had submitted the request on a form that is incorrect, and he must re-submit for it to be considered. Eventually, two Dutch F-16s bombed the Serbian positions, but it was far too late. Serb Generall Ratko Mladic and his troops had already taken the town and the surrounding area days earlier, and held 30 of the 350 Dutch troops along with some 20,000 Muslim men, women, and children.

The utter impotence and military bunglng of the United Nations (not any cowardice or lack of spirit by the Dutch troops) allowed Mladic and his murderers to slaughter an estimated 7,000 Muslim men in the four days from July 12 and July 16, 1995.

The Dutch troops were allowed to evacuate, but both the Head of the United Nations Mission to Bosnia, and the Dutch commander neglected to mention for the press or the watching world until long after, that a massacre was being conducted. The killing continued for weeks.
(The information about Srebreniça I'm citing here comes from URL: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/cryfromthegrave/massacre/time_line.html)

There is a very concise outline of the history, discussion, U.S. domestic political debate and agreement about the question of intervention with and without U.N. approval or participation at the URL: http://idl.stanford.edu/104/lectures/notes11.html

"Lucy, you got some 'splainin' to do!"

2004-09-21T20:38:00.000-07:00

From Allah is in the house:

" Burkett told USA Today it was Lucy Ramirez, not a "man with ANG experience", who called him after the Hardball show. "

A Deception, wrapped in a mis-direction, hidden within a dirty trick.

2004-09-20T16:27:00.000-07:00

Poor FrankJ.

Worlds crumble; heads roll; tears flow; lamentations and the gnashing of teeth echo in the halls of CBS and the DNC.

But FrankJ is so bereft of ideas that he polls his readers for inspiration.

Sad to see burn-out in a blogger so young.

Here's my post to his comment section (and you can probably come up with something even more witty with a minute's musing):

Dear FrankJ,
I am only signing in this way because your delusion has become so self-reinforcing that posting a message to your fake comment section is the only way I can remind you to take your meds. The nurse has placed them in a small paper cup next to your URINAL, so be careful which thingie you DRINK from...

Okay. Now let's get started on the therapy session, shall we?

I think it would be very helpful for you today to continue talking about just exactly what it is about writing all these comments with the different names is so... mmm... SATISFYING to you. I mean, you've been watching the TV a little this week, and I overheard you mumbling something about nice Mister RATHER and all the difficulties *HE's* gotten himself into with his little excursions into "Let's Pretend" land...
Or if you're not comfortable with that, what would YOU like to talk about?

------

He really does work hard to keep us entertained, even if we are only figments of his fevered imaginings.

"The End of the Beginning..."

2004-09-16T22:16:00.000-07:00

So CBS News and its celebrity newshounds are for the stocks... maybe. Bloggers may well congratulate each other for some fine work, not just questioning, but the slogging persistent research to track down people that have the expertise, experience, credentials, and nominal impartiality to provide definitive tests that CBS hadn't the balls to do.

Still, it might be premature to think the Old Media are dead and gone.

In 1985, Japan Air Lines flight 123 lost its rudder along with a great deal of its tail structures and all hydraulic control just 12 minutes after take-off. By heroic measures, the pilot and co-pilot were able to keep the plane flying for another half an hour, before crashing into a mountainside.

Similarly, there is enormous inertia contained in the aggregated institutions we are calling the Old Media. It's clear that they too have managed to continue flying long after their own loss of rudders and control. But in addition, there is understandable reluctance among even the harshest critics to toss them on the scrap heap. If only they could be modernized and restored so as to reflect NOT the conservative values of the current administration, but the reverence for honest reporting that on a time was the imperative of the journalistic calling.

Despite the livid accusations of liberal bloggers and supporters of Dan and Co., that reverence for honesty is what people on all sides want. Honest mis-judgments can be forgiven, even if the results are dire. Dishonesty and evasion need to be challenged even in minor affairs.

The indiscretions of youth are most crucial for whatever tempering they may confer on a person's later impulses. A blameless youth may reflect more on a person's lack of initiative than purity of heart. Many seeming heroes admit later that their actions were unconsidered in the moment. They confess admiration for those who feel great fear but manage to govern themselves through prolonged peril. And even the most extraordinary bravery in combat does not automatically confer upon the hero the judgment and wisdom needed for statecraft.

There are many explanations for the decline of Old Media, and I've tried to summarize some historical trends myself in my post "The Ossification of the Fourth Estate." One thing is certain: the "soviet" model of centralized control of a major news organization has lost its ability to compete with the de-centralized internet-work of online folks, who bring to the task an armamentarium of expertise far beyond the resources of any single corporation. If there is any consensus, it has to be a consensus defined by analysis, logic, and debate, not by selective suppression of data according to the preferences of a tiny elite.

The emerging commonalty, the so-called pajama-bloggers, comprise the entire political spectrum. For better or for worse, there will be mistakes made, and each person will likely discount data that he/she finds disagreeable. But if you survey blogsites, you find liberal sites with links to conservatives, and vice versa. People are taking pains to read each other's ideas and opinions, challenging, debating, trying to keep each other intellectually honest. The Old Media don't really allow for much feedback and converse. Some, but the threshold for it to even register is many magnitudes greater.

The pyjama brigades' uni-sex one-size-fits-all garment is a Paradigm Shift.

There Will Be an End to This Nonsense

2004-09-16T14:59:00.000-07:00

...and it will NOT be pretty. Nor will it be to the liking of Dan Rather, CBS News, and the people who have tried to fob off on the American public the sickening fraud of forged military records.

Take a few minutes to check the post at INDC Journal (http://www.indcjournal.com/archives/000927.php) and you will have to agree with Vodkapundit Stephen Green's judgment:

"Bill of INDC Journal is the hardest-working blogger in the business.
... he's become a one-man investigative news department, lawyer, and FBI agent."

Evidently, Bill has made sure that the Kinko's from which the fraudulent memos were faxed will not erase its internal surveillance videotapes, and has done a lot of research which seems to confirm that from any number of convergent lines of attack, the promulgation of these forgeries is a criminal violation of state and federal statutes. By many definitions it is classified as a felony.

There are much more important issues facing the nation, and they must be attended to. Kerry, for instance, needs to give some indication of what HE will actually do as president, instead of droning on about his three months in Vietnam 35 years ago. President Bush might serve the public better by giving us some further detail of what to expect from his domestic programs.

But the business of the forged memos should underscore that the most radicalized leftists in the Democratic Party are willing to destroy the Two-party system that has worked very well for this country since its founding. It is not written into the Constitution, nor is it confirmed or protected by any Legislation. We can have as many political parties as we want. But it has proven to be a workable system to have two main political parties that are required to work with each other, and from time to time switch places, each serving as the "loyal opposition" when edged out of the dominant role.

There are many discouraging examples of countries whose governments are just a continuing fistfight among dozens of parties contending, so there is no consensus or coherence. If we want to lower our government to the comic stature of, say, Italy, a sure method would be to allow one of the two major political parties to erode to the point that it disintegrates. That is what we can expect if the extremists of the left are allowed to continue their suicidal mutilation of the once functional Democratic Party.

A lot of people are using the metaphor of "drinking Kool-aid" to described the obstinate refusal of Rather and CBS to acknowledge their conspicuous lapse in judgment. Let's remember that is a reference to the Jonestown MASSACRE of 1978. Hundreds of members of The People's Temple, founded and lead by Jim Jones, having surrendered to his brutal leadership, were forced to drink poisoned FLAVOR-aid® at his command. Nine hundred died in minutes along with their babies and children, while Congressman Leo J. Ryan and several others who had come to investigate complaints of abuse, were murdered as they prepared to board their plane at a nearby airstrip.

It seems almost ludicrously appropriate that Jones and his followers had relocated to Guyana after leaving San Francisco. I guess the atmosphere there was just too conservative for them.

Is Syria Training for Chemical Attacks in Iraq?

2004-09-14T23:54:00.000-07:00

...
Folks, I think there is something important going on in Darfur, beyond even the genocidal extermination of Christians and Animists and other non-Muslims by the Sudanese central government.

In one of today's posts "WMD Stockpiles Found?" Vodkapundit Stephen Green has excerpted translations of a German article in Die Welt. The article (evidently the translation was posted on rantburg.com) indicates that western intelligence services are pretty sure that SYRIAN military special forces cooperating with the Sudanese central government, used chemical weapons to kill black Africans in Darfur.

Quote from the excerpted translation:
"at least five airplanes of the Syrian civil airline Syrian Arab Airlineswere flown from Damascus to Khartoum. Aboard were specialists of the Syrian University for Chemical Warfare including engineering equipment."

Link to this URL:http://www.vodkapundit.com/
(I tried to find the original article on Rantburg.com, but couldn't... Vodkapundit includes a link but it just goes to the main page, and I didn'tfind it there, and the search engine just kept chugging and seemed to be in a loop.)

Whether or not this explains the disposition of Saddam Hussein's WMDstocks, it is a very disturbing development. Maybe people are too preoccupied with local politics to devote much attention, but there are plenty of people alive who remember that Hitler loaned his military to the service of General Franco (i.e., the fascist republicans) during the Spanish civil war that started in the early 1930's. The NAZI military used that war to test tactics and weapons. They put the lessons to use in earnest just a few years later, after making adjustments and refinements indicated from assessments and after-action reports from the Spanish civil war.

Does the idea of Syrian special forces killing south Sudanese make any sense EXCEPT as a test exercise for their weapons and tactics? Has Syria ever made any contribution to the Sudanese Muslim government before, other than statements of solidarity? The fanaticism of the militant Islamic zealots may seem to be beyond our reckoning, but it's pretty darn unlikely that the government of Syria views the black africans or the Sudan People's Liberation Army as a threat. Simply, they are training to use their chemical weapons on targets closer to hand, say just across their own extended border with Iraq.

If you recall the 8-year war between Iran and Iraq, you may remember that after the war had dragged on for most of the decade, Iran was recruiting12-year old boys to serve in "Martyr Brigades." Their sole military function was to walk with nothing but the clothes on their skinny bodies, into minefields ahead of the soldiers, to step on and explode the mines, and so clear paths for the soldiers to use to attack the Iraqis.

I'm trying to find additional information about this, but it's reasonable to think our own government is probably ahead of me in this matter. I just think it's a slap in the face, reminding us of what we are up against. Mr. Rather and his dimbulb associates notwithstanding, there really are actual dangers out there besides the bogey-men that stalk their sweaty little nightmares. People need to be reminded of that. Or do we need further demonstrations from bin Laden & friends?

Rathergate

2004-09-11T19:03:00.000-07:00

This post is to add whatever little weight I may to the general condemnation of the Old Media for assuming the public to be such pathetic dunderheads that we will just take their word that they're just providing us with objective facts.

What a pack of sorry rascals they've become.

Considering the alleged Memos Mr. Rather brought forth to set against Bush, I have more than three decades of professional experience with print design. Even though I'm primarily an animation producer, I've had to design and deliver print projects using technology that has spanned the transition from typewriters and rub-on letters to desktop publishing. This gives me (along with the millions of other such folk) some basis for evaluating their authenticity, and the legitimacy of arguments for and against.

It's important to have a sense of where technology was in the very early 1970's, because so many people trying to judge this have grown up innocently unaware that there was a time when this country did not have tape cassettes, compact disk, laptop computers, cell phones, personal digital assistants, push-buttons on telephones, more than four channels on the television, home microwave ovens, and an ex-President who needs an agent to field offers from porn video producers.

So I'll start back a ways...

Working first with the old technology of letter press and offset lithographic printing, and later as desktop publishing emerged, word processing and DTP software, I've created delivered hundreds of print jobs ranging from business cards to newsletters to 20-page 4-color brochures. I started designing for print as a freshman in high school. I've continued intermittently for the last four decades.

In cobbling together a degree program in animation at Yale, I took several computer courses. (Hey! I was a public school graduate, on a generous scholarship.) In the first seminar, our instructor challenged us to learn enough Fortran to write a really crude tic-tac-toe program. This was NOT a computer science course, just a sort of informal introduction for architecture students to the wonderful world of computers...

There were a number of IBM Selectric typewriters around--- they were sufficiently expensive and exotic that one of their primary uses was as REMOTE TERMINALS around the campus, connected to the IBM 360 mainframe computer. I remember writing my FORTRAN programs first in pencil on a printed form, then taking that to a room full of clattering card-punch machines. Sitting at the table-size card machines, you pecked at a keyboard which sent an electrical (not DIGITAL) impulse to the mechanism to punch a hole in a "Hollerith" card. That's the old "do-not-fold-spindle-or-mutilate" cards that were developed around 1900 for tallying census statistics. Each line of FORTRAN code ended up on one of those cards, which had to be kept in order or the program was screwed.

You then hand-carried your little stack of punched cards to an entirely different building housing the main University Computing Center, and handed them through a sliding glass window to a technical priest in a white lab coat. Usually by the very next day, you could sit down at one of the remote terminal IBM Selectric typewriters and log into your account, and run your program to see if it worked.

Okay, you're asking yourself, SO WHAT? Why is this guy going on about his college days thirty years ago? The answer is that Dan Rather's memos were alleged to have been created some 30 years ago using the sort of office machines commonly in use. The fact is that the IBM Selectric was by NO MEANS a commonplace in those days, and the specialized IBM Selectric Composer was much more exotic, expensive, and rare.

When I see various websites showing that, well yes, there was the IBM Selectric Composer available for the same cost as a luxury automobile in 1972, but to print the superscript "th" as shown in the alleged memos, you would have had to stop typing, change the type ball, adjust the carriage, type the single character, then replace the original type ball and reposition the carriage to continue, THEN REPEAT ALL THOSE STEPS THE NEXT TIME THE SUPERSCRIPT HAD TO BE INSERTED, it is way too much of a stretch.

There are many additional items that confirm the alleged memos as forgeries amateurishly produced with current word-processing software. Millions of people who use Microsoft Word every single day, and certainly tens of thousands of professional graphic designers, print designers, artists, print-shop staff, and educators have the experience over DECADES of professional work to spot the obviously anachronistic typography of the alleged memos Mr. Rather presented. There are thousands and thousands of military personnel with the experience to recognize the shallow research that resulted in the memos' failure to conform to correct formats and standards for terminology, references, acronyms, and signature id. There are certainly thousands of experts in document forensics that could have spotted the amateurish errors. CBS must have SOMEWHERE on its payroll minimally competent researchers to cross reference dates and timelines for the events to see if there are any pesky internal contradictions.

Unfortunately, someone has made the decision to persist in claiming the emperor is fully clothed.

At the least, this means the whole business needs to be submitted to the scrutiny of universally acknowledged objectively scientific forensic experts. For Dan Rather to insist that he and his fellow demagogues at CBS will be the final arbiters of truth is bullshit.

I wouldn't trust those dung-eaters to guard a compost heap.

Memories of September 11, 2001

2004-09-10T14:30:00.000-07:00

Two days prior to September 11, 2001, I stood next to the woman I loved under a stand of 250-year-old Oak trees on her little ranch in the foothills of the Sierra. In a respite from an otherwise furnace-like end-of-summer heat wave, we enjoyed a mild day for celebrating our marriage in the company of our friends. Because we had met camping at a Medieval wedding a few years earlier, we had invited our friends from the historical recreation group to come in costume and bring their tents and pavilions to stay overnight and extend the party into the next day. As it turned out, even some of my wife’s friends from the fire department (she’s a professional firefighter) came in costume, ready for silliness.

The day was spent in happy conversations, dancing, music, games for the kids, tours to show the guests the new lambs and calf, and the rescued ponies. Some of the guests had driven hundreds of miles, and stayed overnight in tents and a couple of camper vans.

The next day, we all relaxed, enjoyed left-over tidbits, desserts, champagne and wine and soda pops. The last of the guests left that evening, except for my brother and sister, who were due to fly back to Virginia five days later. We dragged a couple of big tents to just outside the front door, with mattresses and coolers, and several of us stayed up very late, watching the brilliant stars wheel slowly overhead, punctuated by occasional meteors. My sister stayed outside to sleep that night.

In the morning, my wife and I awoke before my sister, and I went outside to wake her, while my wife and HER sister started clearing a space for us to have some coffee and breakfast. I had been sitting in the tent chatting with my sister for a while when my wife opened the front door and said, “You’d better come inside and look at the tv. There is some terrible shit going on.”

We all gathered in front of the set--- my wife’s father, sister, her two sons, my brother and sister--- held in thrall as the second jet’s fuel blossomed from the tower and rained death onto the streets and people below.

We watched for about an hour, switching among several networks. One thing that struck us all was the speed with which the mainstream networks imposed their branded dilution on the raw information, creating logos and montages of images. They may have been truthful in themselves, but seemed INSTANTLY to be intended to mask and filter the essential story, which was the atrocity by our enemies.

I remember that we discussed right then our sense that the networks were behaving true to their reflexive instincts, refusing to let us simply see the events without their interpretation, framing, and carefully selected musical soundtrack. It seemed the most blatant example of the networks straining to tell us how we should feel about things, AND reminding us that THEY were the source to turn to to FIND OUT how we should feel about unfolding events.

After some time passed a few of us got up and went outside for a breather.

As we stood outside, a sudden windstorm rose from the valley. For fifteen minutes, it sundered the placid remnants of the wedding party; it tumbled the sunshades and blew tables and chairs across the tarmac, and sent one empty dome tent bounding over the deer fence onto the neighbor’s meadow. We watched dumbstruck.

Then suddenly, the wind died and everything was calm again.

In my fifty years on this planet I’ve never seen a windstorm come up from a calm day, fling chaos all around, and then disappear like that. I’m sure it was a natural phenomenon, but the timing seemed a portent of things to come.

As wonderful as the response of many people has been--- the setting aside of differences finally understood as the trivialities they are--- there are still vast crowds of unconscious ones. It puts me in mind of the flock of Canada geese that wintered on the small lake which lay in the hollow of the bowl where my wife’s ranch nestled. Every morning several hundred geese would begin a discussion, rising gradually in volume until it was a honking cacophony that could be heard several miles away. Individuals would skid across the water in tussles and tiffs, in miniature territorial battles or macho displays of bluster, cheered on or derided by the onlookers.

And because of the civilized laws of our land, no hunter was allowed to approach them. They were safe, fat, devoid of concern.

Safe... because of the artifice of a civilization that wishes them well, and is willing to spend treasure to prevent their slaughter, and to punish any who violate their protection...

I don’t suppose those geese have ever stopped for an instant to consider the fragility of their situation.

A Few Shamelessly Partisan Limericks

2004-09-08T22:12:00.000-07:00

— David March

Political candidate Kerry
Peddles fibs to seduce the unwary.
He wriggles and squirms
And he never confirms
‘cause his own Senate record is scary.

Campaigning John Kerry is surly.
Trapped by his own lies he is surely
Caught in his own Jam
Where unlike Vietnam
Those three Purple Hearts got him out early.

John Forbes Kerry likes making believe.
Against terror he’s got up his sleeve
No bold plans, nor attacks
Militarily lax,
But in politics he’ll dodge and weave.

Here’s a film for a Michael Moore fan to see:
Cambodian Christmas trip fantasy.
But since it’s not true,
Some play-acting will do.
In which case John Kerry’s the mantasy.

Swift boat veterans seem to agree
the John Kerry they know shouldn’t be
elected top leader,
not that bottom feeder;
If he wins don’t expect to stay free.

In perusing the butterfly ballot
one party’s line stinks like a shallot
The Democrat lineup
just gets my darn spineup
Makes me want to hit things with a mallet.

John Kerry should try to keep quiet; he’s
More versions than Heinz has varieties.
When asked to recant
He gives a new slant
All the while dripping self-righteous pieties.

As leader John Kerry would waffle
And squirm and side step something awful
You cannot ignore
That he’s done it before.
His background is nearly unlawful.

Though most senatorial actions
Involve compromising with factions
John Kerry’s career
Hardly let him get near
Legislation for all his retractions.

The Kerry Syndrome’s epidemic.
The Media trash talk systemic
Spews out of TVs
Like some hideous disease,
Making all conversations polemic.

Since Victim Groups hijacked the Dems
Now their voting base suddenly slims.
They could maybe go National
If Kerry were Rational.
But with each speech he makes their hope dims.

(More to come...)

“In a Gaza Tailor’s Shop”

2004-09-07T06:26:00.000-07:00

by David March

Scene: a quiet and elegant shop similar to J.Press or Brooks Brothers. Racks of clothing along one wall, cubby holes for folded items along another. A clerk draped with a measuring tape stands facing the cubby holes, checking items on a list with a pencil stub. A wild-eyed fanatic in slightly frayed terrorist attire opens the door and the clerk turns to greet him.

Clerk: "Good morrow to you, sir. How may I serve you today?"

Fanatic, glancing about twitchily: "My associate Nabil tells me you're running a special on exploding apparel this week..."

Clerk: "Ah, yes. We just took delivery this morning on the latest styles from Acme and Warner. If you please, step just over here by the mirror..."
“If I may... direct your attention to some of the new features. See, they have paid special attention to the stitching here under the arms--- no binding, see?--- and here, these additional pockets for those extra ounces of product--- and NO unsightly bulges...Oh and here we have a business-card-sized titanium insert for a final message glorifying Allah the Merciful. The inscription is included with the purchase...”
“Finally, here, a special internal pouch for a discrete little booby trap, something extra for the post-event clean-up crew!”

Fanatic: “They DO think of everything. But, actually, this is a bit more presumptuous than I was looking for... I’m shopping for a friend... It just needs to be a little more casual.”

Clerk: “Ah, I think I see where you’re headed... Okay, Here’s something a bit less dramatic, but it still conveys a very strong message.”

Fanatic, thinking: “Mmmmm. No, that’s still not quite what I had in mind...”

Clerk: “Well, perhaps something RETRO... Here, Here, this might intrigue... Designed for either Cordite or Black Powder! Excellent for smaller INTIMATE gatherings.”

Fanatic: ‘Say, I’ve always liked that... You know, aroma of fireworks.”

Clerk: “Yes, distinctive and so... Piquant!”

Fanatic: “You got anything in a Napalm motif?”

Link to Belmont Club post "Crossroads"

2004-09-05T11:36:00.000-07:00

Belmont Club URL: http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/ has posted an article titled "Crossroads," a thoughtful comment on the constraints on different countries' options in responding to terrorist atrocities.

The Pentagon's New Map---T. Barnett

2004-09-05T10:57:00.000-07:00

Thomas Barnett's “Pentagon's New Map” is worth checking out, whether or not you agree with him. I caught the last ten minutes of Barnett's lecture on C-Span yesterday--- it's probable they will run it again soon. Apart from the cheesy sound effects he pasted into his slideshow, I would say it's worth watching. (Click on title to link to the website.)

The most telling point the guy makes is that many problems arise from the countries in the "Middle East" region he calls "The GAP," meaning the place where FOREIGN DIRECT (i.e., “private sector”) INVESTMENT is almost nil compared to the investment by the U.S. government in military security for those countries. His point is that the reason private sector investment is so low is primarily because foreign investors have little sense that the regimes will respect those investments, because of their countries’ religious/societal xenophobia and hostilities.

This in turn, has led to a feedback loop in which countries like Saudi Arabia which has enjoyed TRILLIONS of dollars of income from sales of their oil (raw material) have NO domestic manufacturing capacity to show for all that money. In just a few generations of selling their oil without encouraging foreign investment in their country, they have gone from having a very high per capita wealth to a level similar to some of the poorest African nations. And that was accomplished, let’s recall, by NATIONALIZING the oil wells, refineries, and port/loading facilities that had been built by foreign investors. How ya gonna keep’em interested in building up your country if every time they do that, the government confiscates the stuff they built? Sounds like a reasonably effective DISINCENTIVE to me.

Saudi Arabia now has a relatively enormous population of temporary foreign workers doing the shit jobs, because their own youth have been raised in families with government-guaranteed income, education, health care, etc. paid out of their astronomical oil revenues.

Still no domestic manufacturing capacity worth mentioning. Oh, yeah--- except for those endangered rhino horn dagger handle thingies...

Their own government officials have lamented that Saudi university students are electing to pursue Islamic studies than hard sciences or public health or medicine or civil engineering. The result of the religious 7th century-traditionalist mind-set of their society is the proliferation of extremist Wahabi schools, idle young Saudi men ripe for radical recruitment, and a population growth rate that will soon break the bank of their socialist setup.

And Saudi Arabia is pretty much the ideal model for the Middle East, except that few of those countries have the vast oil reserves to sustain that artificiality as long as they have.

Well, the policies of the past are clearly not working, as the Saudi government are learning with great pain. Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda band of perverts are targeting Saudi businesses and government facilities. I don’t have the wisdom to suggest precisely what our government’s response should be. But it doesn’t take a lot of brains to see that it’s time to stop simply supportng the status quo and blindly propping up authoritarian repressive and essentially ANTI-American regimes. There must be pressures that can be brought to bear on them that are more effective than the famously impotent U.N. sanctions. Remember how very little they accomplished with Rhodesia, South Africa, and Iraq.

Animator, 6 Feet, Shrinks from Discussion on TV Violence

2004-09-04T13:33:00.000-07:00

...

By summer of 1993 [name deleted on advice of legal counsel, but it rhymes with "safari"] Games, the folks that started the electronic games industry, had so slipped from the pinnacle of success that they invited me to their HQ in Milpitas, California to interview for a job. When the flight from O'Hare stopped on the San Jose tarmac and the hatch opened to let in the warm breeze redolent of eucalyptus, I sucked in a breath and said, "I am not going to play hard-to-get!"

The flight attendant for some reason avoided eye contact with me as I deplaned.

As it turned out, by cleverly glossing over the dings in my record--- the reprimands from academic committees, the kick-backs from those Libyan "entrepreneurs," and the business about the sheep--- I got the job. The head of the animation department did tell me, as he was packing his things to take a job in the grocery business a few weeks later, that the decision had been close, as I had been the only animator ever to have shown up for an interview wearing a 3-piece suit.

Just months earlier in 1992 I was living in Chicago and looking for a new animation job. I’d been given the boot after animating for a studio subcontracting a bunch of half-hour episodes of Tiny Toons and AniManiacs for Warner, and I hadn’t yet connected with [name deleted on advice of legal counsel, but it rhymes with "safari"] Games. Knowing I had a little free time, a lady friend who was a clinical psychologist invited me to participate in a panel discussion on children’s television, scheduled as part of the 1992 Convention of the Illinois Psychological Association.

I showed up early to be sure to get my ID card and wandered around a bit steeping in the heady atmosphere. I eavesdropped discretely on highly intelligent conversations. I puzzled over arcane placards announcing lectures. Therapeutic and diagnostic modalities blaah blaah this and dissociative relational blaah blaah that and transpersonal pre-cognitive blaah blaah some entirely other thing.

By the time I’d located the room for the panel discussion, I was reasonably certain I had about as much business sitting on the stage as a poodle in the cage with Seigfreid and Roy.

Still, I couldn’t shake a nagging worry that the highly professional psychologists were going to confirm all the worst stereotypes of academia, using psycho-babble even *I* could dispute, to defend the eroding of basic decency in the broadcast industry.

Much to my relief and surprise, it was nothing like that.

Many of these practicing clinicians and therapists had young children, and shared the same concerns as the the rest of us about the flood of violence, sex, and trashiness of television generally and children’s shows in particular

One item that got a large discussion was the emergence of entertainment shows featuring a load of characters that were mainly crime-fighting adventurers, quick to use violence to answer every challenge. Didn't take a PhD to note that such shows were nothing more than half-hour flogs for the line of action-figure toys and coordinated accessories, clothing, cereals and vitamins. And that the commercials for the action figures and accessories were flashier and better produced than the content of the shows.

As my friend had surmised, they were actually gratified to have a panel-participant that had even a little knowledge of the industry. By that time I’d spent 8 years as owner/operator of a small studio, some 5 years as a supervisor/animator for a couple of studios producing commercials and entertainment for national broadcast, and I’d spent several years teaching at University of Cincinnati and Xavier. I had also worked on a number of bits for Children’s TV Workshop (Sesame Street and The Electric Company) early on.

It was a fascinating discussion, showing that these issues touched them personally, not just as academic triflings. The most reassuring thing to me was not how warmly they treated me, despite my pontifications and pronouncements, nor the fact that no one felt I was a legitimate target for some vicious denunciation for making evil commercials designed to convert children to product-zombies. Especially after I pointed out that the commercials that sponsor many children’s shows have production budgets for their 30 second running times that match the budgets of the 27 minutes for the show.

What was truly encouraging was to hear so many of these professional psychologists reiterate that the single most important factor in mitigating the corrosive effects of the nastiness and crud, is the parents’ guidance. Repeatedly, different folks in the audience and on stage said that although children can not be shielded from the crudeness and violence of life, parents can provide context, interpretation, reassurance, and comfort.

I wonder how differently things might have gone if I talked to’em AFTER I worked on those bloody fighting games at [name deleted on advice of legal counsel, but it rhymes with "safari"]...

That would probably have involved a lot more recriminations and name-calling. In the first months of my time at [name deleted on advice of legal counsel, but it rhymes with "safari"], we animators frequently took breaks from the croissants and $50,000 twin-station espresso installation to read newspaper clippings chronicling the worldwide consternation over reports of video-game-induced seizures among Japanese children. We laughed and dismissed the concerns of the parents, psychologists, doctors, and attorneys.

"Ridiculous!" we scoffed between nibbles of the delicate French pastries and sips of the Ethopian Primo (guaranteed to have been grown on the Eastern slopes of hills above 5,000 feet.) "There is no way our extremely wholesome and intellectually challenging games of skill and quick thinking could possibly cause seizures or other harmful consequences to young children!" And we went back to our computers to create further sequences depicting beasts slashing, hacking, chomping, and frying each other.

I actually ran out of red pixels on several occasions, from the buckets o' blood that we had to animate in great rippling splashes for each character's attacks, when they connected. We had extended brainstorming sessions, to toss about and contemplate ever more frenzied moves and injuries the characters in our games could inflict on each other.

In the evolution of electronic arcade games fighting games had full hegemony. They ruled by rewarding the twitchy reflexes of young teenage boys, suddenly aflood with testosterone, and ready to sell their parents' golf clubs and china, to pay for the game tokens that would let them see their names as high scoring WINNERS!!!!!!!

After sneaking my name into the credits of one game that made the company a fair return, I took training at Wavefront in the latest 3D animaton software (the same as had been used, we were told, to animate the dinosaurs for "Jurassic Park!") A team was formed of us intrepid 3D whizzes, and we proceeded to work up a new fighting game featuring Buff Guys and Beautiful Women in Skimpy costumes, thrashing each other senseless.

The women's costumes were so skimpy that the lone female animator on the team called their thongs "butt-floss." Even us guys were a little skeptical, but Management, with the unflagging cheers of the marketing geniuses who had assisted in the company's scaling from 20,000 employees to 200 employees, forged ahead. The lady fighters' costumes were finally made more suitable for combat when a focus group of thirteen-year-old kids asked, "Why are these ladies dressed like 'ho's? They should be wearing armor or padding or something..."

We studied martial arts movies, and applied those moves to the 3D characters. Hundreds and hundreds of kicks, and shoves, and pushes, slashes with chainsaws, whips, and scalpels, and leaps, and crouches, and snakey, drunken, bird-like, shao-lin priestly, and Caribbean slave-dancing styles were animated, rendered, and plugged into the game.

We even were given a video of voluptuous women in bikinis firing automatic weapons, to inspire us. That gem was a real hoot. It came to us from a woman in management who had been hired away from her job as chair of the film department at a reasonably well-known state university. I'm really sorry I never got a chance to chat politics with her.

The software was tweaked. The hardware, created by our sister company, was NEVER documented for us by their engineers. The characters were redesigned, re-named, re-costumed, and re-choreographed six different times, while the engineers tried to get the hardware to display the graphics at anything better than a halting stutter.

Four months before our target release date, a British game company debuted a fighting game with a similar 2D sprites-from-3D-software approach, similar characters, weapons, and costumes, and did everything ours would do, except that it actually worked. It was an instant sensation.

I remember a meeting in which our producer came in and told us he'd just gotten word from upper management that we needed to make our game more insanely violent than any of the competition. "There is no other factor," he crowed with an insane grin, "that can give us an edge. Not better animation, or sound effects, or music, or snappy dialog. We need to do totally demented things, like have the winning character mutilate himself and fountain spurting blood all over the scenery. That'll get their attention!"

The next day I was on the phone to a children's educational CD-ROM company, accepting a recruitment offer they'd been dangling for several months.

No, that's a lie. It actually took me another six months to work myself up enough to leave the twin-station espresso machine, giving me time enough to sneak my name into the credits of a real-time 3D driving game that was actually pretty successful.

Then I quit and went off to corrupt the minds of even younger children...

In the meantime, several events had been going on in the alleged real world that bear on the electronic games industry.

Beavis and Butthead, of MTV fame, had spawned scores of lawsuits from parents whose idiot children had injured themselves copying the antics of the animated turdly twins. And growing crowds of parents were gathering pitchforks and torches. They were calling for an end to fighting games that were clearly causing open running sores on the souls of their teenage children. The violence of the arcade games was so vicious and widespread, it MUST be causing violent behavior by the kids playing the games

Well, I would LIKE to agree with that, but...

About that time, REAL ACTUAL slaughter was going on in the former Yugoslavia, where Serbian militia were busy with "ethnic cleansing" of muslims who had shared their communities for several centuries.

I'm reasonably certain that those Serbian murderers were not driven to their crimes by having spent their afternoons feeding tokens into games in an arcade in Sreberniça.

And if you go and scratch among the piles of femurs and ulnas and carpal bones mouldering in Rwanda, you will find garden implement handles, NOT shiny little integrated circuit chips from Game-boys.

Just a quick reality check is all that's wanted.

Violence in e-games, movies, television shows, cartoons, nor toy guns and arrows, nor boxing gloves, nor even the horrible images of carnage conveyed in the news---- those are not the cause of violence in our society. If anything, those are more catharsis than cause. You might as well claim the speedometer is responsible for car crashes.

Humans have been beating and murdering each other as long as we've been on this planet. To change that you'll have to dig a lot deeper. But I suspect we're talking about a process that will be measured in millenia.

Now I'm going back to animate some more exploding slacks.

Who's responsible for this mess, anyway?

2004-09-03T01:10:00.000-07:00

I am repeatedly stunned by the failure of people to keep clearly in their minds the cause and effect relation between the enormous COSTS of the attack of 9/11 and the continuing reverberations of those costs throughout the world economy.

Within days after the attack, I recall newscasters mentioning immediate costs estimated to surpass 50 BILLION dollars. This presumably included the planes, insurance costs for the lives lost, interruption to financial markets, several hundred businesses and their revenues, firetrucks, ambulances, buses, taxis, private vehicles, damages to neighboring buildings, medical costs for injured and survivors, et cetera. Loss of just the two towers with something approaching 13 MILLION square feet of prime business berthing represented a considerable fraction of the AAA office space available in Manhattan.

Since those first few days, we have seen the travel and recreation industries (airlines, travel agencies, hotels & resorts, cruise lines, etc.) suffer huge losses in revenues from canceled tours and individual travel plans because of people's nervousness about future terrorist attacks. And of course, all those hesitations and deferred purchases caused widening ripples to spread throughout the world economy. Unlike ripples on the surface of a pond, they do not diminish in power with the square of distance from the source.

More recently, a figure on the order of one TRILLION dollars is being mentioned as the total cost to the U.S. economy directly attributable to the WTC attacks. I take that to mean these are costs and expenses we would not have experienced if the 9/11 attacks had not occurred.

If that figure is close to within a margin of error of, say, plus or minus a third, then the blame for any current economic difficulty is clearly attributable to the TERRORISTS, not to any fumbling by the policies of George Bush. If any administration is to be blamed, it should be Clinton's, for the ineffectual and gutless policies that for 8 full years demonstrated to the terrorists that they could depend on suffering no consequences for continuing their terrorist attacks. The current Democratic candidate has vowed to continue and extend those discredited policies of indecision, wavering, and limp-wristed cringing.

We didn't really need Democrat Zell Miller to tell us that in two decades serving as a senator John Kerry consistently voted against funding weapons systems that now form the armamentarium of the United States. But it underscores the notoriously partisan stance taken by the Old Media that they simply refused to air Kerry's record for scrutiny by the public they claim to serve. That cynically calculated duplicity does much to erode what little goodwill remains for an institution that is seen to have long ago sold its soul to the Democrats.

The weapons systems and the American military personnel that have volunteered to serve are now engaged finding and subduing terrorists who continue to intimidate, abduct, and murder innocent people, including citizens of countries that criticized and condemned the U.S. for daring to fight terrorism; citizens, whose governments it should be noted, go on timidly acquiescing to demands of bastards who repudiate civilized standards. Such cravens are in profound denial.

In a way, the United States could be criticized for serving so long as an "enabler" (if you will indulge the use of the pop-psychology terms.) In the reconstruction period immediately following World War Two, it was clear that Germany and many of the countries the Nazis had ravaged, would not be able to survive without massive aid. This prompted the U.S. to launch the Marshall Plan, which pumped American treasure and expertise into Europe on an unprecedented scale. It effectively prevented the collapse of several tottering governments that would not have lasted through that harsh winter. Then, responding to growing predations by Russia and it's post-war puppet allies, the U.S. and a handful of western European countries formed NATO. The U.S. troops that were maintained in Germany between the end of the war and the fall of the Soviet Union, served as a "speed bump/trigger mechanism" to discourage adventurism by the Warsaw Pact nations. The cost of that deterrence was born mostly by the U.S. and continues to the present day.

Maybe we should have weaned those countries a little earlier, to let them begin practicing the responsible behavior reality requires of a self-sufficient (and self-respecting) nation.

To date, the cost of waging war on the Taliban and Saddam, both in terms of lost American lives and the direct expenses of the military expedition, according to even the newspapers that castigate Bush regularly, has not surpassed the losses incurred by that single day's attack on the U.S. Even if the cost has been substantially greater, it is clear that the expenses of challenging the terrorists are preferable to the costs of dumbly awaiting their un-challenged and un-hindered moves.

So, to return to the opening of this rant, if our economy is not performing up to desired levels of prosperity, please keep in mind that it is the attacks, and the cost of rooting out terrorism, and the costs of security measures at home, that burden our economy as it nonetheless recovers. Don't try to tell me it's George's fault.

--- David March

a few relevant URLs:

http://www.fdic.gov/bank/analytical/bank/bt0204.html

http://www.usfarmcredit.com/AboutUs/1st/CountrySpirit/Misc_Articles/Farm_Bill_2002.asp

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3080244/& ChatToday

Hey, John! No Purple Heart for Self-Inflicted Loss of a Presidential Campaign.

2004-08-30T02:27:00.000-07:00

Halloween and Lost Innocence

2004-08-29T01:54:00.000-07:00

A bunch of blogs lately have been expressing dismay at a website offering for sale some Halloween costumes styled "Pimps & 'Ho's."

Okay, open sexuality and modesty throughout the ages alternate as cultural norms, sometimes on a timescale of less than a decade. It would be pretty easy to dismiss the "pimp & ho" costumes using that sort of logic. But I think it's fair to consider them in light of the professed values we've been debating as a culture for the last few generations.

So yes, it's an appalling manifestation of capitalist laizzes-faire, a challenge to parental involvement, lowering of standards, blaah blaah blaah. I would LOVE to be able to blame it on the progressives and liberals who have been telling us for decades we have no right to JUDGE different lifestyles, and who REFUSED to challenge Clinton for saying "oral sex isn't sex." (or ANY of his many misdeeds...)

But I have to ponder...

Speaking as a someone who recognized long ago what a minefield sexuality can be to traverse with a shred of dignity and grace, I have to wonder... What about the magazines in every grocery store's checkouts????? What about the commercials spewing out of the television round the clock, crudely exploiting sex to sell everything???? What about a BILLION DOLLAR sex video industry that simply makes a mockery of any enforcement of prostitution (i.e., payment for sexual acts) laws????? What about the public school administrators for whom imposing a dress code on the pheromone firestorm in progress is way down the list of priorities after metal detectors, drug tests, assaults on teachers, assaults on other students, and kids who only know their dad as "the defendant?"

What about the Parents?

When I was in highschool in the late 60's, my friends and I convinced ourselves that the ONLY reason our parents didn't want us to have sex was that they didn't want us to have FUN! Hey, the PILL had been around for years! Why WORRY? Just a few years later attitudes had shifted from restricting pregnant girls to attend programs that isolated them from the mainstream, to allowing them to attend just as any other student. (I'm not sure this is the case everywhere, but there's been a huge change.) At the same time, out-of-wedlock births vastly increased, despite a similar increase in abortions. And the last few years, parents around the country have been discovering that their 12 and 13-year-old daughters are performing oral sex on serial partners just to be considered dateworthy.

When that makes me feel like things are going to hell in a handbasket, I recall that my grandmother in Texas back in about 1913 ran off and got married at age 13, by lying to the clerk about her age. My own sweet mother was married and had given birth to her daughter by age 17.

In one sense, the huge problem we have is that our high- technology- dependent world requires far more training than used to be necessary to prepare a person for self-sufficiency. Adolescence has been extended from age 15 to the mid-twenties for most people. At the same time, improved nutrition and general health seem to be advancing children to puberty and sexual maturity at ever-younger ages.

We now have an enormous population of children who are ready for sex, but not for the responsibilities and challenges that inevitably result.

For a number of years, there was a book club that offered as a come-on a very low-priced 2-volume set of the philosophical writings of Will and Ariel Durant. I can only recall one sentence I read (it was SEARED into my memory...) that goes roughly so: "Human sexuality is like a RIVER of FIRE, that has to be constantly banked lest it overflow the landscape." I believe they were writing in the mid-1920's, and the comment was prompted by the extravagant licentiousness and recurrent chaos it seemed to loose in Roman society.

Seems to me it still applies.

It's impossible to deny that the liberal agenda has contributed heavily to the sexualization of our culture. It doesn't necessarily follow that sexualization per se is wrong. But there is definitely a fundamental conflict between the progressives' insistence that WE MUST NOT JUDGE, and the unimpeachable evidence that babies born to unwed mothers, and raised without the presence of the biological father, are profoundly disadvantaged. It is an incredible mess, and the only way out is cooperation instead of the tragic polarization that continues between the major political parties.

I do believe the Republicans will do a better job for a few years. When the Republicans have been in effective control of both houses for, say, HALF the time the Dems had'em, then I would say maybe it's time to consider giving them another chance to screw things up. I do believe ANY one party in power too long gets to thinking it owns the place.

Truth or Lies... either can serve a Liar's need

2004-08-28T00:32:00.000-07:00

...
I just came across a blog (Steve Gilliard's News Blog) in which he describes a debate that occurred during Kerry's campaign versus Bill Weld for the Massachusetts senate seat he now occupies. Steve indicated that in the midst of a debate on the death penalty, which Kerry opposes but Weld endorses, Kerry turned to his opponent and said that having served in Vietnam "I know what it feels like to have a man die in your arms."

Steve G. indicated that this was a very effective ploy at silencing Weld, and winning the debate on compassion points.

It makes me wonder all the more about Kerry's combat experience, and whether that statement is true. How the heck could the truth of it be checked?

I would appreciate any comment or feedback from anyone.

It does at least seem clear that Kerry never misses an opportunity to use his service in Vietnam as a club with which to silence debate, end conversation, and challenge all present to DARE to question whether his assertions are anything less than received wisdom...

It is at least consistent with the way he leveraged his brief sojourn in Southeast Asia to get a very important few hours in the glare of the television lights telling the CERTIFIABLE GOD DAMN LIES he offered up to the Senate and the American public for reasons known only to him.

But anyhow, I've had the experience of several people dying in my arms, but it's never occurred to me to bring it up as a way of suggesting I have some deeper philosophical grasp of the issues of... well, abortion, or euthanasia, or the death penalty, or whether we should or shouldn't risk a military confrontation. And I don't think Mr. Kerry has any deeper respect for human life than do I.

Sorta reminds me of a conversation I had with a former friend. In the midst of mulling over (in a reasonably energetic way) the conflict between privacy and public safety posed by AIDS, she screamed at me that *SHE* had LOTS more gay friends than I did, so I had NO RIGHT to be making ANY judgment about how AIDS privacy issues should be handled.

Interesting. I didn't recall ever submitting a tally of all my gay friends for her inspection. And I didn't see that either way it had much bearing on the problem at issue.

Seriously, my point is that there are lots of people who simply cannot tolerate having to defend their own statements, and will use the biggest club they can wield to batter an opponent.

When that fails, they generally stomp away, screaming curses.

I know it's a sin to think thoughts like this, but I would give worlds to see it when Kerry finally blows a gasket.

Seems like his entire campaign is a slow-motion tantrum.

NO! WAIT! Remember the great old Jimmy Cagney film from the 1930's where he played a hardened, cynical gangster awaiting his date with "THE CHAIR?" Pat O'Brien played the priest that came into his death row cell and stirred his conscience, reminding him of all the street kids who admired his gangster toughness, and gangster ways, and who all wanted to grow up to be gangster killer murderer robbers just like Cagney's character.

The priest left the condemned tough guy with a final admonition to think about whether in his final moments, he could find some way to dissuade those kids from following in his footsteps, and ending up in the same fix.

In the final scene of the movie, Cagney walks the final walk to the electric chair, and after a pause, begins a cowardly display of panic that makes the reporters cringe in astonishment. The street kids are shown listening to the radio report of their former hero's craven last moments. Sobered, they turn away, abandoning the toy tommy guns and pistols, and picking up their baseball gloves.

But the priest knew that performance was the one selfless act of the man's life.

You don't think Kerry is humiliating himself day by day in any sort of similar act of contrition? Maybe? Possibly?

You never know what's REALLY going on, do you?

Catechism of the Delusional

2004-08-27T23:11:00.000-07:00

...

Back in the mists of time, when the host of "Death Valley Days" was better known for that role than for his service as president of the Screen Actors Guild, or his government service at the state and federal level, my brother and I attended public school in a small farm town up the coast from L.A. Like so many of our generation, we traded scary tales around the camp fires at cub scout campouts.

As the pheromone firestorm of puberty swept us into junior high school, surfer music, and beyond ("middle school" being in those days a foreign phrase used by exchange students) we whispered tales of a different sort, filled with adolescent thrills at illicit parking and fondling, and the many dangers of such adventures.

It was in this little Southern California farming community that my brother and I listened in earnest credulity to a story from a high school friend, about spending a few frenzied hours sparking with a girl in a car. They'd been parked in some remote place, hidden among the trees, letting the radio play as they dallied. When a news bulletin told of a maniac with one hand and a hook for the other arm, who had escaped from a local psychiatric hospital, they laughed and resumed their caresses, until they were startled by the sounds of scrabbling outside their car.

The young man instantly started the car and roared away. They were both relieved that whatever it was that was lurking, they'd gotten away without incident. But when he got out to walk his date to her front door, they were horrified to find dangling from his door handle, a prosthetic hook with the bloody stump of an arm still attached.

It had to be true.

It had happened to the guy who was telling the story. He still had the '61 Comet he'd been driving that night!!

A year later, our family moved 3,000 miles from California to a tiny rural town in Northern Virginia.

We enrolled in the local county high school, and started making new friends, playing in pickup ball games, dating, hanging out with the gang at the restaurant on highway 301.

Within weeks, we had heard the same story, almost word-for-word. This time it was told by a local, who swore up and down that it had happened to his cousin, who still drove the Ford Fairlane that he'd driven the night he found the hook on his door.

My brother and I realized halfway through the tale there was nothing to be gained from challenging the speaker. Twenty years before the phrase "urban myths" came into common use, we recognized that we were seeing a demonstration of an ancient human frailty. Although we lacked the language skills to describe it that way, we knew it was powerful stuff.

There seems to be some unmatchable satisfaction that comes from repeating and embellishing a story you know is too lurid, shocking, or undocumentable for any respectable forum, especially if it enhances *YOUR* status by the telling.

This is part of the inescapable experimentation of adolescence. In the fullness of time most adolescents mature to a point they can recognize bullshit, and give it its proper weight as they balance their assessments of events and people they must deal with.

Unfortunately, there are many people who never progress beyond the stage of mental toddlers. They are doomed to spend their lives in the thrall of whatever unfiltered rumors come in earshot. These miscreants have never acquired the critical skills for assessing the validity of a simple statement, for researching sources to verify or discredit data, or for synthesizing a valid conclusion from facts organized in a logical pattern.

Bereft of an adequate intellectual toolset, they are subject forever to the tyranny of their emotions in evaluating information.

It can happen to anyone, and certainly there are people who end up finding emotional appeals drawing them to all points of the political spectrum.

My rant today, though is about the long list of nutball myths that are the identifiable traffic of a specific group of credulous and uncritical folks; almost a trademark, or signature. I call that list the Catechism of the Delusional.

In order to forestall--- maybe even fivestall--- the quizzical face my friends display when I use that phrase, I will explain.

A catechism may be roughly defined as a commonly agreed upon set of assertions that are held as received wisdom — i.e., divinely transmitted knowledge — to be accepted without debate and committed to memory by the faithful.

Delusional means actually more than being unable to distinguish between imaginings and reality. It describes the state of being immersed within a self-reinforcing fantasy, in which any new fact or arising that might contradict the premise of the fantasy, is denied by arguments that use the construction of logic, but rely upon the invented elements of the fantasy itself.

I use the phrase to refer to the absurd myths that many who style themselves democrats, liberals, and progressives exchange almost as passwords to say "I'm with YOU!"

Here's a short list:

1) John F. Kennedy was the most brilliant and effective President since... well, EVER.

2) Democrats were the first party to make civil rights for Negroes (i.e., "African-Americans" except for Teresa Heinz-Kerry, who is African-American but not Black) an important goal. Republicans— and ONLY Republicans— have always opposed this goal, and are always trying to keep minorities in their place.

3) Republicans are only interested in making lots of money, regardless of how much damage it does to minorities, the economy, the environment, and education.

4) When Republicans are in business, it is only to make as much money for themselves as possible. They don't care about anything else, and will do bad things to increase their profits. When Democrats are in business, it is usually to do or make something that makes life better for everyone, and they share their profits with charities. Republicans don't give as much to charities as Democrats, because they're selfish and expect everyone else to pay their own way in life.

5) Democratic Party is always working to improve the lives of the little people, minorities, older Americans, immigrants, undocumented aliens, and people of good will everywhere. The Democratic Party wants to help people who need help.

6) Republicans are mean-spirited and WANT to hurt minorities and old people and anyone who disagrees with them. This is why they always vote in ways that the Democratic Party opposes, as long as it doesn't cost them money.

7) The Republicans control the country, because rich conservative people around the world have always conspired with each other to undermine the efforts of elected governments. This is because the elected government wants to impose limits on the conservatives and make them stop treating workers like slaves.

8) When Democrats raise taxes, it is always to do something good for people. When Republicans raise taxes, it is always to do something bad to people. When the Republicans LOWER taxes, it is always to give money to Rich people, by taking it away from Poor people.

8) When Democrats are accused of crimes, it is because Republicans are conspiring to be able to replace that person with a Republican so they will have more power. When Republicans are accused of crimes, it is because Republicans are always doing criminal things, and can't always hide them.

9) Bill Clinton never did anything that justified impeachment, or dis-barment from practicing law, or in any way wrong. Republicans were willing to destroy the government and the country, just to get more power for themselves. Independent Prosecutor Starr was a sick paranoid witch hunter, who made up evidence when he couldn't extort witnesses.

10) Republicans stole the presidential election in 2000. George Bush is a criminal for pretending to be president, so everything he does as a criminal president is a criminal act.

11) Ronald Reagan is the biggest criminal of all (except for Richard Nixon) because he sent George Bush Senior to meet with Ayatollah Khomeini to make a deal so that Khomeini would help Reagan get elected, and Reagan would get the hostages released, and Khomeini would get weapons or something.

12) G.H.W. Bush was a criminal for making war against Iraq in 1991. The war was only about American Blood for Oil.

13) Clinton used American armed forces only for noble purposes, like preventing the slaughter of Muslims by Christian fanatics in former Yugoslavia, and trying to distribute emergency supplies in Somalia.

14) Clinton and his surrogates never accepted money from Chinese lobbyists in return for dangerous concessions and missile technology and influence in the legislative and electoral process. That's just Republican Lies.

15) When Clinton pardoned the Puerto Rican terrorists who had been convicted of murdering a New York City Policeman and some innocent bystanders, it was simply a compassionate act meant to mend fences with Puerto Rican separatists. It had nothing whatsoever to do with trying to get New York Puerto Ricans to vote for Hillary Clinton in her senate campaign that week. Only a Republican would suggest such a thing.

16) Ditto for all the felons he pardoned and freed in the last hours of his presidency. Compassion. Not bribes.

17) Any woman who accused Clinton of exposing himself to her, demanding oral sex, fondling her, or otherwise sexually harassing her against her objections, is a liar, slut, and secretly funded by the Republicans who were out to get Clinton any way they could.

18) It was only about the sex.

19) Vince Foster committed Suicide. The removal and disappearance of scores of boxes of records from his office before the police arrived was entirely innocent. Also the removal and disappearance of similar scores of boxes of records of the Clinton's involvement with Whitewater financial crimes was entirely accidental and innocent. The subsequent reappearance of one single box of carefully-sanitized documents that showed nothing of any significance, was miraculous.

20) Ron Brown was accidentally killed in an accidental plane crash in a Yugoslavia trade mission that accidentally got rid of him just days before federal indictments were due to be announced about his corrupt exchange of trade concessions in Yugoslavia for bribes, and his connection to other alleged improprieties in the Clinton Administration. The disappearance of all the X-rays from his autopsy that showed injuries consistent with gunshot wounds--- that was accidental, too.

21) Fox News is really owned and operated by the Bush Administration, which explains why it distorts all news to favor Republicans and make Democrats look stupid or criminal.

22) Al Franken and Michael Moore are geniuses. The only reason anyone criticizes them is if they're Republicans, because everything they say is TRUE! Al Franken's radio show would be a big success, except for a behind-the-scenes conservative effort to torpedo it.

23) George Bush was a coward who got his rich powerful daddy to get him into the national guard to avoid going to Vietnam, and he was AWOL from his guard duty anyway. Any records that might show up tending to show otherwise are fakes, and anyone who testifies that they can remember seeing him attend is probably lying.

24) The handful of Vietnam veterans that support Kerry are selflessly telling the exact truth. The 265 Vietnam veterans that dispute Kerry's account of events are liars who have been bought by the Bush Campaign to discredit a real war hero, who came home and courageously told the country the truth about how cowardly and brutal American soldiers were.

25) Except for John Kerry.

26) For Democrats to call for the suppression of a book by 265 Vietnam veterans is not censorship or suppression of free speech.

27) Use of 527 groups by Democrats is perfectly legitimate; the conservatives have thousands of talk radio hosts and Fox News doing their propaganda. The Swiftboat Vets' use of a 527 organization to try to legitimize their attacks on Kerry is probably criminal.

Somebody stop me.

Whew. You can probably come up with another fifty without straining.

If you're at a party, and hear someone repeat any of these listed items, you can now be clear about what sort of person you're facing, and the likelihood that any breath you invest in honest debate will be utterly wasted.

On the other hand, it is still a good and noble thing to attempt. Someone with a brain might overhear and be persuaded.

Honey, Where's the FLY SWATTER?

2004-08-25T03:17:00.000-07:00

...
There's A Chomsky Clone in the Wings

University of Californiaat Berkeley publishes an online version of its magazine “UCBerkeley News,”in which it recently featured an interview article with one of the faculty, George Lakoff. I presume he holds at least one Ph.D, as the writer felt itwas important to identify him as the Richard & Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor in the College of Letters & Science. His special areas of interestare linguistics and cognitive science. He has recently been involved in startingand participating in the Rockridge Institute, a self-styled “progressive” think-tank which is intended to help advance liberal framing of issues andagendas as a counterpoise to recent conservative successes. (The article may be viewed at this URL: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml)

This post is now a consolidation of elements from several lettersI composed, including one sent to the Rockridge Institute, and my first publisheddraft of this. I hope that isn't intellectually dishonest. I figure if Congress routinely allows its members the right to extend and revise their remarksfor the Congressional Record, the rest of us should get a little break, too,eh?

I admit I am immediately on guard for doctrinaire idiocy when confronted with ANY alleged thought emerging from Berkeley, but I want to grit my teeth and consider what he’s saying. You should read his words, and visit the Rockridge Institute website yourselves.
http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/

If George Lakoff and I were to find ourselves seated side by side at a lunch counter or on a park bench, I expect he would be a reasonably gracious person, and we would likely have a spirited conversation. We would probably walk away each with a sense that the other fellow was someone with stimulating and challenging ideas, with whom further conversations could be expected to lead to widened perspectives and insights.

It is difficult to imagine that he goes about his daily business filled with bitter raging against a huge segment of the population of his own country, but reading some of his ideas makes that conclusion hard to avoid.

Here I include from the article the text that is presented as a direct transcription of his words: "I got tired of cursing the newspaper every morning. I got tired of seeing what was going wrong and not being able to do anything about it.
The background for Rockridge [Institute] is that conservatives, especially conservative think tanks, have framed virtually every issue from their perspective. They have put a huge amount of money into creating the language for their worldview and getting it out there."

Let me paraphrases this just in case it’s too subtle for us dimwits to grasp on a single hearing: The Democratic Party has been losing ground around the country in his view, because the REPUBLICANS have fooled us into believing them by dominating the language framing political discussion.

Okay. This is like the assertion that pharmaceutical companies fooled us into believing in headaches by dominating the language framing the aspirin discussion.

The dilemma one fetches up against instantly, like a boulder astride the pheromone trail followed by a toiling ant, is that his premise is utterly biased: i.e., that progressives and liberals have exclusive rights to TRUTH, and the evil sneaky REPUBLICANS are just cleverly using language to blind the unsuspecting and innocent public into accepting their LIES.

Examine this sentence, please, taken from the article: “The [Rockridge] institute offers its expertise and research ona nonpartisan basis to help progressives understand how best to get their messages across.”

Please note that while it asserts that the institute will be NON-partisan in its work, it will NON-partisanly assist PROGRESSIVES, not conservatives. I have to assume the writer is intelligent enough to discern the contradiction there, but blandly chooses to pretend it doesn’t exist.

Face it, this is pure propaganda. There are several other assertions he makes in the interview that, if they are accurate transcriptions of his words, suggest he is either delusional or grotesquely dishonest.

Answering the interviewers question of how conservatives have managed to accomplish this hijacking of the English language (“Why do conservatives appear to be so much better at framing?”) Professor Lakoff answers “Because they've put billions of dollars into it.”

He presents not a single reference to any financial data to support this assertion, or the writer of the article omitted any such source.

Then, just a bit further down, the article states, “And now, as the New York Times Magazine quoted Paul Weyrich, who started the Heritage Foundation, they have 1,500 conservative radio talkshow hosts.”

The idea that ANY number of allegedly conservative talkshow hosts are kept broadcasting through some conspiratorial control of the broadcast industry is ludicrous. The statement reveals at the least a pathetic ignorance of the most basic realities of commercial broadcasting.

Talkshow hosts, conservative or otherwise, are expected to draw in certifiable numbers of listeners; if people aren’t listening, the shows can not pay their way with advertising revenues. There is no monolithic block of 1500 conservative radio stations that have conspired to broadcast the propaganda of conservative hosts to fulfill some secret agenda. There is a much vaster network of thousands of mostly independent stations, which include among their for-profit programming, a number of controversial announcers.

They range from Howard Stern with his provocative live interviews of nude dancers, to other "shock jocks"making crude jokes about every bodily function apart from actual tooth brushing, to clergy discussing the Gospels, to re-broadcasts of 1930's classic comedies,to call-in talk shows that represent every conceivable political persuasion. Each of the shows broadcast by these commercial stations is expected to generate sufficient advertising revenues to pay its own costs and a little profit to the station. Shows that cannot demonstrate that people are voluntarily listening in sufficient numbers, are replaced with others that CAN do.

There are not enough billions of dollars in conservative coffers to persuade these small businesses to broadcast conservative talk show hosts in defiance ofthe brutal realities of the market. To suggest otherwise reveals a sadly childish grasp of the way the world works.

Later Professor Lakoff descends into mean-spirited caricature.

He glibly defines conservatives as brutal adherents of the “strict parent” approach to life, attributing to them the method of parenting “through painful discipline— physical punishment that by adulthood will become internal discipline, ”While by contrast, liberals and progressives are purported to use the so-called “nurturant parent” approach, which “has as its highest value helping individuals who need help.”

This grotesquely self-serving and circular characterization of conservatives as BAD, and progressives as “GOOD” makes mock of any pretense at academic objectivity the good professor might claim.

The really sad thing is that this simply confirms everything I’ve come to expect ofthe half-assed pseudo-academic crap that flows untreated from the intellectual cesspool of Berkeley, where I spent a great deal of my time while living in the Bay area. (Hey! Musically, it was a great place! As a fiddler, I played with a number of Berkeley musicians, participated in a writers' group, dated several Berkeley ladies, spent time with people in the Renaissance Faire and the SCA, et cetera. I probably spent more time in Berkeley than even in Fremont, where my apartment languished. So this is NOT just speculation, but observation from extended visits.)

Anyone entering or leaving Berkeley by city streets passes large aluminum traffic signs at the frontier posted by their city council, assuring travelers that Berkeley is a Nuclear-Free Zone. More or less identical signs are posted around the University town of Davis, California, which is the source for several other members of the Rockridge Institute.

I know, I know. The Faculty of UC Berkeley are not the city council. But the municipality is utterly dominated by the University. Its population largely comprises faculty, staff, and students,current and past. Those who are not directly employed by or enrolled in the University depend on it for their businesses— restuarants, music shops, bookstores, coffeehouses, medical clinics, clothing stores, etc.
However close their association to the University, most residents share a radical-leftist dogma born circa 1965, which seems to have frozen the place into a caricature of the self-obsessed rebellious adolescence of that moment. So it's instructive to consider those views as applied to practical realities.

The cost of these signs may be reasonably estimated to be as much as several hundred dollars apiece, installed. This is the product of "progressive" government in action. This is your taxes at work.

Of course, the real point of the signs and any supportive municipal ordinances is to prohibit the transport on the public ways of nuclear fuel or weapons. Do they also refuse to allow electrons generated by nuclear power stations to flow through their city grid?

I wonder if those pathetickers include nuclear medicine--- i.e., the use of diagnostic and therapeutic radioisotopes that are products of the nuclear industry--- in their ban. Or X-ray machines. They produce ionizing radiation. What about the radio-isotopes used in criminal DNA testing, which is frequently used to exonerate persons wrongly accused or convicted of crimes?

I wonder if the homeless, un-employed, un-insured, under-educated, impoverished downtrodden or otherwise oppressed citizens of Berkeley might have thought of a better way to spend the money those stupid bastards pissed away on those useless signs.

Thanks for indulging that seeming digression... It illuminates the arrogant mindset that prizes proclamation and posturing over actual service.

Professor Lakoff thinks the reason the country is abandoning the Democrats is that Republicans use language more effectively than Democrats. As a citizen of this country, Professor Lakoff has the right to his opinions. But for him to use his academic credentials and post to spread such poisonous depictions of people who hold differing beliefs, is deeply disturbing. He uses precisely those skills in which he has been most conspicuously awarded academic authority, to twist and pervert the logic and language of intellectual exchange he expects us to honor.

It is interesting to see the lengths to which Professor Lakoff stretches his own imagination to excuse the impotenceof Liberalism. The gulf between the Democratic Party’s claims of fairness and noble compassion, and the actual depravity and expedience of the Party’s celebrated leaders are too conspicuous to escape notice by even such benighted folk as we commoners. The simple reason people like me have decamped from the democratic party over the last few decades, is disgust and dis-illusion. NOT, thank you very much, because of clever words by shadowy Republican manipulators.

Professor Lakoff would have us believe someone convinced roosters to crow at dawn by dominating the language framing the sunrise discussion.

At least Professor Lakoff does us a small service: he confirms that one needs no advanced degrees in linguistics nor cognitive science to recognize propaganda. Perhaps as he and the other learned faculty of the institute undertake to educate the rest of us, they might consider how insulting it is for them to assume that we cannot spot bullshit without their guidance.

Update, 01 October: in mid-September the editor of the Berkeleyan, a University-sponsored publication for faculty and staff, sent me a very gracious e-mail note alerting me that they would be publishing a number of excerpted comments from the slew of letters they'd received responding to Doctor Lakoff's interview. He gave me an opportunity to decline, if I wished, to be quoted.

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/

When they published the next issue, they included a number of critical comments from conservative readers. Happily, the excerpted comments were thoughtful and civilized, not mean-spirited or crude.

Interestingly, the editors also set aside a rebuttal space for Doctor Lakoff to respond to selected comments. Maybe he didn't have a lot of lead time (I know my letter had been sent at least three weeks earlier, but that doesn't mean he had that long to consider it.) but his rebuttals seemed to be even weaker than the original lame hypotheses.

Poor guy! He must have been tuckered out from responding to neocons-on-steroids trained by the multi-billion dollar conservative think tanks.

Remember Gravitas?

2004-08-24T00:02:00.000-07:00

...
Do you remember the week the newsreaders added the word GRAVITAS to our lexicon?

I do, vaguely. Like the time I went camping for a few days and when I came back those annoying yellow happy faces had inexplicably commandeered every window, lapel, cash register, pay phone, and bus seat in the civilized world.

Before the election campaign of 2000 our lives were blissfully free of discussions of GRAVITAS. Then with the abruptness of a pimple erupting prom night, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and the rest were earnestly agreeing with each other that George Bush "lacked GRAVITAS."

Nickel-plated morons. I wonder who fed them that bit of Latin pomposity and told them to toss it around.

It was a snotty way of telling us peasants that we shouldn't vote for Bush because he really didn't have the appearance of dignity and seriousness expected of a head of state. Well, now there is a presidential candidate with gravitas. In spades.

Evidently, Mr. Kerry was fed gravitas instead of mother's milk as a baby.

He leaves gravitas-soaked footprints where he treads.

He has to have it scraped from his important suit when he sends it to the cleaners.

He excretes gravitas with his perspiration; leaves gravitas stains on the pillowcase.

So FREAKING what?

Where was his gravitas when he was sponsoring legislation, which is supposed to be the task of a legislator?

Can you remember the single piece of legislation sponsored by Kerry to actually be passed on favorably by his fellow senators?

His own official website does not identify it. It only shows a tally sheet year by year: bills sponsored, bills passed. Total for a decade of service in the Senate, 28 sponsored, ONE passed.

I guess I'll have to do some more darn research.

Why is there no discussion of Kerry's legislative leadership and accomplishments by ANY of the Mainstream Press nor Network News Anchors? Why are we NOT being reminded hourly by the newsreaders who so conspicuously endorse Kerry, about all the wonderful legislation he sponsored, or the bills he voted FOR and AGAINST?

Oh, yeah. He voted BOTH ways on the war against Iraq... THAT we've heard about plenty.

Well?????

No one is jamming their transmission. We are huddled around our receiver sets, hungry for information...

???

The silence of the media on Kerry's record since his four months in Vietnam speaks with devastating eloquence. They looked at his record and *HAD* to realize that it could only damage his chances for election to remind people of what he has said, and which bills he's supported and opposed.

But he sure does a good job of looking serious.

I bet when he orders a meal in a restaurant, that helps keep the wait staff on their toes.

Islamic fundamentalist America-hating terrorists, you'd better watch your ASSES! We have a candidate with GRAVITAS!

Surely, in some fourth-floor walk-up in Brooklyn, a conversation just like this might happen:

"Sayeed, is it your will to detonate this day some C-4 on the public way where walk many infidels which is a stink in the eye of the Almighty?"

"Afendi, most assuredly not, for by the Prophet's beard, the hated nation of our enemy has brought forth and set against us a person fairly sloppin' over with GRAVITAS!"

"Accursed be him that so hinders our blessed and compassionate plan to blow up all creation in the name of Merciful ALLAH! Would that we yet contended with only such as George, whom we deemed quite devoid of this Gravitas..."

-------

Look, I KNOW there are a lot of folks that are much smarter than I am. In my frustration, I call the news presenters of our major broadcast networks MORONS. But I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they are a lot more clever than I am. The evidence, come to think of it, is reasonably compelling: There they are with their multi-million dollar salaries, their entourages of sycophantic lap-dogs running errands and fetching their martinis and Botox syringes, their touring cars, their chartered flights, their personal fragrance counselors, their legal counselors... here *I* am with... with...

Well, with what I’ve got.

Seriously, what I’m getting at is that the President’s critics seem universally obliged to declare him a MORON, and they really are convinced that they have the ability to reckon his IQ from the way he pronounces the word “nuclear.”

When *I* call the Network Celebrity News Presenters morons, what *I* mean is that they regularly confuse their celebrity status with some God-like power to dictate reality for the rest of us. This is why I make it my habit to use the terms “news readers” and “news presenters”--- because they seem to have become puffed up and extravagantly impressed with themselves. Joseph Kraft used the term “Imperial Press.” Fits.

When editors and reporters meet to review continuing and breaking news, and figure out how best to allocate resources among the various stories... well, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, the people who get the assignments are not scientists, or economists, or pilots, or mining engineers, or pathologists. They are usually reasonably intelligent people, with--- we hope--- some instruction in journalistic standards and methods. They’re just reporters.

Yes, some journalists achieve enduring credibility because of their specialized experience or education in some field apart from journalism. But all too often, after interviewing all the people they’ve rounded up, and scanning so much background material, lesser reporters end up convinced they understand the issues as well as or even BETTER THAN the people they’ve interviewed. You see this at every level of operation: local papers and television, monthly magazines, etc.

Many journalists see themselves as authorities on any subject that arises, morally and ethically above the rest of us, constantly watching for some menace from which to save us, particularly if it is our own blindness or bad habits. It’s a circular, self-reinforcing, delusion, as I’ll explain.

They perceive themselves as distinct from the Democratic Party, but the roles they have arrogated for themselves coincide. Both democrats and many journalists share a kind of missionary zeal for preaching to their fellows, and trying to reform them from their wickedness. The Democratic Party has effectively defined itself over many decades as the defender of “the little guy,” and the group that will fight for minority rights, and AGAINST the rapacious business interests. If you are a good person--- so the logic goes--- you must be a democrat, and if you aren’t a democrat--- it follows with elegant inevitability--- YOU MUST BE A BAD PERSON!!!

The headwhacking monotony of their charges of Republican evil become more strident and irrationally ludicrous as Kerry’s fundamental lousiness unfolds for all to see. You could almost feel compassion for them, if they hadn’t acted like such sorry rascals for so many decades.

But for too long they have been insisting that their emperor was wearing a beautiful regal robe and crown, clearly visible to the GOOD people who want good things for minorities, who don’t raise pesky questions about when life begins, who agree that only by racial quotas enforced by affirmative action can we correct the inequities of past racism, and who reject the evil racist attack on Iraq, and there NEVER WERE ANY WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION OR YELLOWCAKE THE BASTARD LIED LIED LIED AND HE ONLY DID IT FOR THE OIL AND HE’S A SCUM SUCKING COWARD WHO’S DADDY HELPED HIM ESCAPE COMBAT IN VIETNAM AND AWOL SNORT SPIT CACK GARBLE DARBLE...

(Ahem.) And, of course, only BAD, Mean-spirited Republicans think the emperor’s nekkid.

Amazing. I never realized the stories we studied in kindergarten would provide lessons to last a lifetime.

Error Correction to previous post...

2004-08-22T19:42:00.000-07:00

One of my readers caught a dumb mistake I made in the previous post. Actually, it was my extremely well-read brother, who has an eye for detail, as demonstrated by his fiendishly rendered pen & ink wildlife drawings and oil landscapes. Anyhow, I had originally identified Dan Rather as the reporter to whom Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made a surprise announcement of his willingness to visit Israel to meet with Menachem Begin and make a start on a peaceful resolution of their long conflict. It was, of course, Walter Cronkite, NOT Dan Rather. I apologize for the error, which I have corrected in an updated post.

The Ossification of the Fourth Estate

2004-08-22T03:01:00.000-07:00

It is a well-known medical phenomenon that blood leaking into a joint, if not treated, tends to attract calcium-depositing bone cells. This in turn leads to markedly diminished functioning of the joint.

This might explain the conspicuous decline in the analytical skills of professional journalists in the last few decades. Many of those folks began their careers in the tumult of the civil rights movement, risking headthumps from police billy clubs to get out the TRUTH of political oppression of dissent. Later, there were the anti-war protests, where additional whacks were provided by highly idealistic LEFTISTS. It took some nerve to wade into the thick of things, regardless of which side was dealing out the bumps on the head.

A moment of silence, please, for all the brave American journalists assassinated, beaten, or “disappeared” by the fascists of the Right OR Left...

Hmmm. There was Alan Berg, a radio talk show host machine-gunned in Denver in 1984 by someone connected to the Aryan Nation movement. But the number of American reporters or editors killed in America (as opposed to being killed while on assignment in other countries) is essentially zero. (Check this URL: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_n20_v13/ai_19463156)

Okay, how about a moment of silence for the brave American News Organizations that closed their offices in Baghdad rather than submit to Saddam’s extortion and chose instead to reveal the full extent of the rapes, murders, tortures, kidnapping, and brutality he had loosed on his own people BEFORE THE INVASION.

Ooops. Can’t think of any.

Well, how about a moment of respectful silence for Eason Jordan for bravely confessing in a letter to the NYTimes that CNN acquiesced to that extortion for years and years? Well, it got them a front row seat to broadcast the fireworks when we finally had a President with the simple courage to do something about Saddam H... (Remarkably, Indymedia-Atlanta has a link at this URL:
http://atlanta.indymedia.org/otherpress/display/888/index.php
This seems to be the same article under Jeff Jacoby’s byline that appears in a number of other locations, but it’s pretty interesting reading.)

Thanks.

Well, even if they haven’t been risking their lives particularly since our abandonment of South Vietnam, they regularly risk dangerous blows to the head in their lunch-hour squash games with their mates. But lately, the predominant source of journalistic cranial injury is the desktops on which they bang their heads in frustration at the slow-motion trainwreck of the Kerry campaign.

In any case the net result is clear. A few years ago, journalists were unable to untangle Clinton’s definition of the word “is.” More recently they’ve had difficulty grasping the idea that an “ally” is a country that supports goals to which they have agreed, NOT one that obstructs. In the last weeks before the Republican National Convention, they are confused over whether the function of journalism is to report news or suppress it. At the current rate of regression, by election day journalists will have difficulty working out a use for their fingers beyond merely excavating their nostrils.

How in the world did they fall so far? A look back is instructive.

In the first decades of the Twentieth Century, in living memory of some who are alive today, many city newspapers were privately held--- i.e., owned and operated by the same families that had originally started them. Some cities had a number of newspapers operating in fierce contention among owners. They took every opportunity to criticize the opposition, and whenever possible, recruit each other’s most popular writers, cartoonists and readers.

Having that sort of local competition turned out to promote a healthy range of choices for the reading public. This meant alternatives in support for political candidates, editorial points of view, advocacy, entertainment, costs, and standards.

As newspaper ownership began to migrate from private holdings and consolidate into corporate hands, radio technology was maturing and spreading. In the Twenties and Thirties, some of the most progressive and idealistic journalistic enterpreneurs initiated news organizations for the new broadcast medium that were to be dedicated solely to the gathering and relaying of news. CBS, NBC, Powell Crosley’s WLW in Cincinnati, and a number of independent stations like KDKA of Philidelphia, and KQED of San Francisco, established their own independent departments for news. In addition several groups arose that were dedicated to nothing else but news--- UPI and AP, for instance.

In those first two decades, Radio was all new and special, with a romance hard to understand in these sophisticated days. Here’s a description from http://www.tvhandbook.com/History/History_radio.htm:

“Broadcasting of this era was more than just a business or a job. It was the profession of magic.
Radio had a distinctly formal air about it. Announcers and musicians dressed in tuxedos. Female performers were elegantly attired as well, even when there was no studio audience. Announcing was formal. Broadcasting was regarded as a grand production, almost theatrical in nature. Enunciation and vocal clarity were essential, partly due to limitations of the equipment, but also because of the tradition of the theater. This formality of attitude and style would remain a part of radio well into the 1940s.”

Because many of the organizations were launched by individuals, or closely-held private groups, it was possible for many of their owners to give a simple mandate to their news teams: find out what was going on in the world, and report it back to the public. Within the limitations of their employers’ budgets, the reporters and their editors were given a great deal of independence.

Editorial policies admittedly did not venture far from those of the owners, but within limits, the listening public were served by the competition a number of alternatives and choices in interpretation and points of view. As television technology came into being, it was developed by essentially the same radio broadcast community, and offered ranges of choice similar to those of radio.

The enfeeblement of journalism now approaching crisis has its roots in the world-wide changes caused by the collapse of empires and growing commercial engagement between formerly isolated nations following World War II. A number of corporations, most particularly those involved in energy development and distribution, were increasingly pressured by market fluctuations in basic fossil fuels, to diversify. This led a worldwide surge of acquisitions, mergers, and consolidations among businesses, of which the multi-national corporations are the most conspicuous upshot. [This is a drastic oversimplification--- I’d welcome knowledgeable criticism or comment.]

Here’s the crux of the matter.

In the last four decades, the news organizations that originally were financed by the revenues of their parent organizations, were expected by the conglomerates that had acquired them to start paying their own way. There was enormous pressure to compete, not just with other newscasts, but with the full range of entertainment media.

What we got, instead of sober, reflective, judgment, was big hair, perfect teeth, and implants; cutesy human interest features carefully set off by lame banter among intellectual flyweights, and theatrical sets and logos eating up budgets that used to be sufficient to deliver feature films. We got news readers who think their celebrity equates to infallibility. In 1977 Egyptian President Anwar Sadat used an interview with Walter Cronkite to announce his willingness to meet with then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Many television viewers may have assumed that Mr. Cronkite had somehow, by his journalistic wiles or stature, coaxed this from Sadat. The event, which sent shock waves around the world, certainly enhanced Cronkite's prestige--- he was later discussed quite seriously as a possible Presidential candidate. But it's more likely that Sadat chose that forum precisely so he could later dismiss it as idle chat with a person of no real consequence, in case it were rejected by the Israelis. If he had made the overture through normal diplomatic / political channels, a rejection might have led to an internal challenge to Sadat’s leadership. But Jennings, Rather, Brokaw, and Walters believe they’re the King-makers of our culture.

(By the way, I'm not claiming any deep omniscient insight in suggesting Sadat might have been challenged if his offer was rejected. For those too young to remember, Anwar Sadat was in fact immediately castigated by fundamentalist Egyptian Muslims for making the initiative, and within a few years after the electrifying visit to Jerusalem and the Camp David Meetings with Carter and Begin, he was assassinated by fanatical Muslims who felt he had betrayed them in making peace with Israel.)

So much for the decline of broadcast journalism. It took the misbehavior of Nixon and the Watergate scandal to truly screw up print journalism.

Don’t get me wrong. I know there are a lot of dedicated print journalists out there. But the sense of gleeful triumph that raced through the liberal community at seeing Nixon brought low has had consequences that will reverberate for the next century.

Not the least of those is the missionary zeal of several generations now of self-annointed crusaders who chose journalism for their college degree program after watching Redford and Hoffman in “All the President’s Men.” Combined with the Radical-Left domination of American university faculties, this has produced a tide of counter-cultural primitives steeped since toilet training with the notion that the purpose of journalism is to topple Republican/Fascist presidents. The collection and correlation of facts are only important insofar as they can be used to support the underlying agenda--- Resistance to the oppression of the Conservatives. Inconvenient facts or allegations are to be dismissed, belittled, scorned, and characterized as lacking credibility.

Damn, I’m indulging in the same sort of smearing of liberal journalists that I detest when they do it to conservatives. But there is a lot of truth in there; it is definitely a case of Asymmetric warfare. In the course of my animation career I’ve had occasion to become acquainted with a fair number of print and broadcast journalists, and I can tell you... respect and tolerance for conservatives is exceedingly rare.

I admit I may be leaving out important factors. The fact of the public’s growing dissatisfaction with traditional news media is undeniable. There are certainly dangers and pitfalls in a D-I-Y approach to newsgathering. I certainly have to grit my teeth and hold my nose when I check on sites like democraticunderground.com and MoveOn.org. But I am occasionally surprised, as I’ve mentioned in some of my other posts, to find leftward sites that acknowledge and link to articles, blogs, or information that contradicts their viewpoints.

In the middle ages, scholars, philosophers, and the just-all-around-wise regularly exchanged correspondence, and discussed new discoveries and ancient lore over great distances. I shouldn’t compare myself to those worthies, but their example is a good one, even for us lesser lights. Connecting with other bloggers, and getting involved in the comment streams with other folks who take the time to research and thoughtfully compose their posts--- certainly are mind-stretching exercises.

Often when I’m trying to organize my thoughts even for just a comment, I find myself searching the web for sources. I try to look at a range of sites--- including some I expect to disagree violently with my own preconceptions. (Hey! I always have the option of discounting their junk!)

The thing that keeps coming back to me (and I know some of my readers are darn tired of seeing me dredge this up) is that concept I’ve heard described as fundamental to information theory: The importance of data is inversely proportional to its consistency with your expectations.

Relating that to Mainstream Journalism, it’s vital to remind yourself that the world doesn’t work the way you want it to JUST BECAUSE YOU WANT IT TO. When some nagging fact can’t be hidden, discarded, argued away, or papered over, you finally have to consider you might be wrong and start trying to see things as they are.

You can’t solve a problem if you won’t acknowledge it's a problem.

Separated at Birth!

2004-08-21T03:01:00.000-07:00

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Remember folks— you read it HERE FIRST!

My patient research, which meets Tom Oliphant's highest journalistic standards [meaning I’m not questioning ANY of John Kerry’s wounds, from razor burns to hangnails... NOT EVEN those tiny little holes made by the BOTOX injections!] has established an astounding datum.
[drum roll...]

Separated at Birth:

John Kerry and Herman Munster!

Well, actually, at the risk of being really mean to the memory of a fine actor, John Kerry and Fred Gwynne.

Fred never liked to talk about it during his life. There were a lot of reasons they never were able to be close, despite many eery parallels. Although they each had early lives of privilege and wealth, Fred attended an excellent private school in AMERICA. By stark contrast John ended up in a private school in Switzerland, where they consume too-rich cheeses and every able-bodied male is expected to keep and maintain proficiency with a military assault weapon for the defense of their beloved country. The fiercely maintained political neutrality, the refusal to become involved in the vast contest between good and evil that surged all about them, the constant repetition of the William Tell Overture, the long tradition of secret bank accounts, the myriad cows with their musical bells, the proximity of the Von Trapp Family— all these things must indeed have had a profound effect on young Johnnie, eventually overthrowing what might have become a fine mind.

The briefest comparison shows what Kerry could have achieved, if only he hadn’t been tragically sidetracked.

After attending Groton preparatory school, Fred Gwynne enlisted in U.S. Navy, and spent much of World War II serving on a Sub-chaser. After his discharge, he first attended New York City’s Phoenix School of Design for a time. Then he entered HARVARD on the G.I. Bill. In spite of the distractions of serving as a staffer on the Harvard CRIMSON and as President of the Harvard Lampoon, and performing in many undergraduate theatrical productions, he handily completed the requirements for a degree in English.

Along the way Fred learned the pride that comes in actually earning a living, and took great joy in a number of enterprises--- He acted in motion pictures and TV, wrote advertising copy for J Walter Thompson, wrote and illustrated children’s books that are still available through Amazon.com

Although Fred Gwynne is known frequently to have used heavy theatrical makeup, he was always able to distinguish between reality and “make-believe.”

Although Fred Gwynne served on a United States Navy ship that was designed specifically to destroy submarines that contained other humans, he forebore after his discharge from accusing his shipmates of war crimes and atrocities simply to gain publicity or notoriety and thus possibly advance his career.

Even though he attended Harvard simultaneously with several members of the Incredibly Glamorous Kennedy Clan, Fred Gwynne was always able to keep track of his own identity.

He never served a single term in the Senate or the House of Representatives. Yet in the last ten years of his life, Fred Gwynne’s total of actual legislation that he sponsored and managed to get passed by the U.S. Senate, is only one less than John Kerry’s total for HIS last ten years! (A remarkable achievement!)

Fred Gwynne didn’t do girlie stuff like inject Botox into parts of him to be smooth and young looking.

Fred learned never to insult entire nations at a stroke, such as our allies in rebuilding Iraq— Australia, Italy, Japan, Poland, Bulgaria, South Korea and most of all, Great Britain— by dissing them as a “fraudulent coalition” of the “bribed, the coerced, the bought and the extorted.” At least not in major speeches those nations might be sitting around the radio listening to.

Oh, yeah, and Fred also didn't immediately turn around and claim he would heal the wounds between our allies and ourselves, right after insulting the allies that put themselves in harm's way to help us.

Gee, I could go on, but it is all rather sad.

As more I research the life of Fred Gwynne, so more I realize how much better a candidate and president he would have made than John Kerry. Seriously.

God rest his soul. He was a fine actor, and is much missed.

Open Letter to Chris Matthews

2004-08-20T15:07:00.000-07:00

[This letter was written in response to the August 19th broadcast of "Hardball with Chris Matthews" which had as guests Larry Thurlow, Michael Dobbs, Max Cleland, and Michelle Malkin, among others. The transcript is available online at the URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5765243/]

20 August 2004

Dear Chris Matthews,

The men who served with John Kerry in Vietnam are not suggesting he intentionally shot himself, but that the trivial wound for which he sought his first purple heart commendation was likely caused by his own grenade rather than enemy fire. But of course, you know this. You are simply trying to discredit the allegations by misrepresenting them.

Your exchange with Michael Dobbs of the Washington Post was a particular waste of time. Unless Mr. Dobbs has some specific knowledge of the preparation and scrutiny of after-action reports, and the initiation, deliberations and records-keeping surrounding commendations for combat gallantry, his pronouncements on the questions at issue are pure speculation. You should be asking your questions of someone in the military who has had responsibility for dealing with the documentation processes that are being disputed, NOT with just another media person.

For my own part, I find it far more difficult to believe that 265 decorated veterans have been bought by the Bush Campaign than to believe that John Kerry, a singularly mediocre legislator whose propensity for self-promotion has been amply demonstrated, had exaggerated and finessed the documentation of his life at every stage.

Mr. Matthews, I used to look forward to your appearances and enjoy them because I had a sense that you had some objectivity. Lately I haven’t followed your show, and you seem to have changed, sadly for the worse. Your idea of “hardball” these days seems to consist of nothing more than selectively re-combining bits of their statements, throwing them back in their faces twisted out of their original meanings, then refusing to allow the guest time to respond.

Please consider that in the last four years the American public has been presented with THOUSANDS of news media allegations that George Bush was a coward seeking to avoid combat and shirking in the Texas Air National Guard. In the first place, this is an incendiary insult to the tens of thousands of veterans who honorably elected service in National Guard units, whether they eventually served in combat or not. Secondly, since I grew up in a Navy family, child of an officer serving for decades on aircraft carriers, and friend to many Navy fliers, I have seen that flying fighter jets even in peacetime, is an extremely hazardous undertaking. For someone to dismiss George Bush as a coward reveals an UTTER ignorance of the extreme rigors and dangers of fighter jet operations.

Still, despite the hounding of journalists whose ignorance of the vagaries of governmental record-keeping is as profound as their ignorance of fighter jets, I have not heard of the Bush administration calling for suppression of a single publication for pursuing this. Meanwhile, those same professional journalists have only reluctantly acknowledged questions about John Kerry’s integrity. The decades-long leftward creep of the media is precisely the repellent force that is driving so many Americans to alternative sources of reporting.

But far more significantly than all that, for John Kerry’s campaign to call for the suppression of the SwiftVets’ book is despicable. It underscores the bankruptcy of his leadership. It lays bare a bullying gutlessness more clearly than any allegations by ten thousand fellow decorated veterans could ever have accomplished.

In any case, Mr. Kerry’s focus on his four months in Vietnam seems to be cynically calculated to distract from the pathetic record of his service as a member of our national legislature.

Poor sod. It appears the American electorate are beginning to recognize the barnyard stink wafting from his campaign. Even some of my democratic friends who voted for Clinton are reconsidering their party affiliation.

But to return to “Hardball,” journalistic bias is inevitable; everyone has a point of view. But YOUR behavior--- particularly your intentional abuse of Michelle Malkin--- is beneath contempt, Mr. Matthews.

Maybe you should go back and get some remedial tutoring in journalistic integrity from your betters, starting with say, Jerry Springer.

This is a serious post- Censorship versus Freedom of Speech

2004-08-19T03:08:00.000-07:00

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In researching the disturbing business about the EU laws allowing one of its members to extradite a citizen of another member state for allegations of “hate speech” I came across articles that do show another side to the matter. For instance, as long ago as 1998 Italy resisted Turkey’s government when it demanded extradition of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan whom Turkey claimed was nothing more than a murderer.

The “hate speech” issue here is that Ocalan continued to exhort his followers in Turkey to resist, wherever he stood still long enough to speak to a microphone. The Turkish government was using that as one of many legal strategies for extraditing him.

The European Union presidency (Austria at that time) supported Italy’s refusal to yield up the leader of Kurdish resistance. This was ostensibly on the grounds that the extradition and prosecution would expose him to a possible death sentence. The Kurdish nation had been deliberately divided among Iraq, Turkey, and Syria under the Treaty of Laussane in 1920, and the Kurds have been savagely oppressed in Iraq and Turkey since, which is why Italy and Austria resisted the Turkish demands.

The point is that individuals can make principled stands that resist the corrosive effect of ill-conceived legislation. But the potential for mischief is always present.

I accept the idea that words can do damage. Misinformation and lies can cause people to make bad decisions. Sure. The question is always, “What is the proper response of GOVERNMENT?” Because the definition of “hate speech” is subject to endless interpretation, vicious bastards (even outside of government) can use rules and laws criminalizing “hate speech” to intimidate punish and suppress dissent, which most Americans regard as an irritating but profoundly important fundamental human right.

Here we have to distinguish between GOVERNMENT actions and those of private individuals or even groups of individuals. Most dictionary definitions clearly point to the use of the power of the STATE in criminalizing expressions counter to the state’s interests as censorship. Freedom of speech, and its exercise by individuals and groups, leads inevitably to conflicts that some people want to characterize as censorship. (There is a good analysis of Censorship and Freedom of Speech at this URL: http://www.jerf.org/writings/communicationEthics/node5.html)

For instance, when the Dixie Chicks were being widely criticized for using their concert performances as a platform for their personal feelings about George Bush, a lot of people cried “CENSORSHIP!!” Even good Sir Elton John used that term in expressing his concern for their treatment.

Elton John has always commanded my respect and admiration for his compositions, performances, arrangements, recordings, and the undeniable generosity and gentleness of spirit he has shown repeatedly in the many benefit concerts and efforts he has assisted.

But in his concern about what he is calling "censorship" in America, he should keep in mind that all performers have the right to use the stage and the financial clout their fans have provided for them to promote their personal views, to make political statements, to criticize the government, or anything else they wish. I'm not aware of any governmental abuse or repression or suppression of even the most vulgar, tasteless, ugly, vicious, transparently false, or blatantly biased statement by any entertainer, singer, performer, whatnot.

Well, there was Lenny Bruce, but that was a LONG time ago...

But, by the same sacred set of rights by which any entertainer may without government penalty or restriction express views that are unpopular (or popular), vicious, repugnant, or even DANGEROUS, so does each and every other citizen of the country enjoy the same right.

If I tell everyone that the Dixie Chicks are fine musicians but they can’t think their way out of an open toilet stall, it is as much my sacred right to do this, exercising my freedom of speech, as it is the sacred right of the entertainer, exercising HER freedom of speech, to offend ME.

Freedom of speech is STRONG juju. Establishing it, exercising it, explaining it, and defending it have challenged the finest minds of the past two and a half centuries. Neither the entertainer, who enjoys the benefit of a grand stage from which to broadcast his message, nor I who may have access to talk radio shows, blogs, or newspaper editorial pages, or just my mom's canasta club for an audience... NEITHER of us is CENSORING the other, merely exercising our right to speak freely.

To date I have not heard of a single incident of government goons trying to intimidate Dixie Chicks fans, or of any prosecution of the individual Dixie Chicks for sedition, or termination of their public library privileges, or any such thing.

In the current frenzy of the presidential campaigns, it is good to keep in mind some of these distinctions.

George Bush DOES NOT HAVE THE AUTHORITY OR ANY LEGAL BASIS FOR SUPPRESSING the ads put out by the Swift Boat Veterans who saying John Kerry lied and mis-represented many important details of his military service. By the same token, John Kerry has no authority to prevent ads and news organizations from publishing absurd allegations about George Bush’s attendance records for the Texas Air National Guard.

This leaves us faced with the awful job of just having to do our own damn homework.

What if the stories you accept are a bunch of lies that have been carefully crafted to reinforce what some cynical bastard thinks you already are inclined to believe?

Gee... Could that really happen?