Q: "What would you like to say to those who want American troops to leave Iraq tomorrow?"
A:
"I can only imagine the tragic consequences that would follow...and the blood... and the price we'd have to pay....a disaster..."
Let's do something about it.
I'm almost ashamed that I did the Lenovo post yesterday...
Dear Mr. Danziger,I apologize that I was not able to return your call earlier this afternoon, we
experienced very high call volumes and I had to lend a hand.I was able to get your order transmitted to our warehouse, and its in the
procurement, development, and configuration stage now. I have also
requested it added to a "critical hot order list", which prioritizes your order
over other customers waiting for the same system. I should have an
updated ESD (Estimated Ship Date) by tomorrow afternoon for you. Once
received, I will give you a call.Once again, I apologize I was not able to give you a call.
Well, that's a good start.
No, it hasn't caught fire, at least...
I'm doing some work for a company that was kind enough to give me one of their laptops when I gave Biggest Guy my old Thinkpad because his noname laptop fell apart. But they use Dells, and I hate the keyboard and generally flimsy feel of the Latitude D600 they give out. Note that it seems to work fine today...
...and they're paying me enough that I can buy my own laptop, and they're getting cheaper and more capable, so I go over to the Lenovo site, and order a T60p widescreen. Dual core processor, 2GB Ram, nice video - seems like a nice upgrade, reasonably priced, etc. Hand over the Amex number and forget about the order...back on February 18.
You'll note that I'm trying this on the company Dell and it's March 29, and I don't have a firm ship date yet.
Abdullah Mohtadi, Secretary General of the reformed and mainstream left Iranian Komala Party
SULEIMANIYA PROVINCE, NORTHERN IRAQ -- One of the roads leading out of the city of Suleimaniya in Iraqi Kurdistan might as well be renamed Revolutionary Road. Two armed compounds inhabited by exiled revolutionary Iranian leftists were built less than a mile away from each other. My colleague Patrick Lasswell and I accidentally found ourselves in the armed camp of the military wing of the Communist faction of the Komalah Party when we intended to meet with the more moderate social democrats up the street. A few days later we returned to the area and met with the right people.
The Communists hosted us warmly and kindly gave us a tour of their camp. But the liberals who split with them in the late 1980s proved to be far and away their intellectual and political superiors.
Secretary General Abdullah Mohtadi and Political Bureau member Abu Baker Modarresi sent two men to pick us up from our hotel -- just to make sure we made it to the right place. They drove us to their safe house under armed guard less than an hour away from the Iranian border. We met over coffee and cigarettes.
MJT: You are both from Iran?
Mohtadi: Yes, yes we are.
MJT: How long have you been here?
Mohtadi: The first time our headquarters came inside Iraqi Kurdistan was in late 1983, when we lost the last liberated area in Iranian Kurdistan. So we moved our headquarters to Iraqi Kurdistan at that time, which was under Saddam Hussein. For some months they were reluctant to accept us, but they realized, okay, we are against the Islamic regime.
MJT: Did you ever have any problems with Saddam's government?
Mohtadi: Yes. They shelled us. Also, we are the only Kurdish Iranian party that has been gassed by Saddam Hussein.
read the rest at michaeltotten.com
I'm about to do a quick media project - not for biz, but for politics - and will need a few helpers. No money in it, but not much time and lots of karma. Here's what I need: a designer - someone with Photoshop and Illustrator skills who can do print design as well as simple web design; a video editor - someone who can do low-level video editing and optimization - no effects or fancy stuff.
There will be more help needed, but two roles are the ones at the head of the list. Drop me an email if you're interested.
...than I ever could:
BILL [Maher]: That's right Ann, you emaciated Eva Braun sideshow freak. By supporting this good citizenship effort, you will ensure that America's outspoken pundit community has the book and TV and speaking contracts we need to pay the critically important mortgages on our Laurel Canyon ranch homes.ANN [Coulter]: And Manhattan apartments! So take it from me and my venereal diseased, dwarf-penis pinko fag colleague Bill - don't be a player hater. Stop the indignation, because there are enough zippy assassination one-liners for everyone. The next time you are repulsed by something we say, remember:
ANN AND BILL: A spleen is a terrible thing to waste.
Check out his cool new ride, too. It's depressing. He's got this bitchin 60's Buick and an astounding show rod. I've got a Honda Civic Hybrid with the licence place identifying me as an 'Eco Fraud'...I'd want his lifestyle, but then again, he's stuck in Chicago...
KOMALAH COMPOUND, NORTHERN IRAQ -- They were supposed to be social democrats, the people Patrick Lasswell and I met yesterday in a compound outside the city of Suleimaniya, the cultural capital of Northern Iraqi Kurdistan. We had it all set up. We were to meet Abu Bakr Mudarisy and his associates for lunch at 11:00 A.M. and learn what we could about the anti-government resistance a few miles away in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Our driver Yusef misunderstood and took us to the wrong place. He did drop us off where we met left-wing dissidents from Iran. But these weren't the moderate English-speaking leftist intellectuals we were looking for. Instead we found ourselves in an armed camp of the military wing of the Iranian Communist Party.
They call themselves the Komalah Party, which is some kind of acronym for the Kurdish Organization of the Iranian Communist Party. Patrick and I were deposited, along with our translator Aso, at the guard house at the gate on the way into the camp.
Aso introduced us to the man whom we later would know as Kamal. Kamal dutifully logged our names in the guest book and said we were welcome to talk to the party leaders. We hadn't yet figured out we were in the wrong place. That would take us a while. But apparently it's perfectly normal, or at least acceptable, to show up unannounced and without an appointment even at this kind of place around here. Unreformed Communists may not be our cup of tea -- and bourgeoisies citizens of the American Empire may not be theirs -- but this is the Middle East at the end of the day. Pretty much everyone except the violent jihadists takes the cultural requirement for hospitality seriously.
read the rest at michaeltotten.com
So the 'Net is -rightly - fluttering with anger on reading Kathy Sierra's post about some - outrageously inappropriate, to put it mildly - posts about her on some sites run by other members of the Internet intelligentsia. Posts which ranged from junior-high-school sexual imagery to what sure read like death threats.
Go check out Technorati on it, and go and browse through her post, the comments, and posts about it.
Most people are very reasonably outraged. The perpetrators are so far silent.
Business as usual, many people say. So what?
Recently an aid to Senator Jim Webb, of Virginia, was arrested for carrying Webb's loaded weapon in a briefcase. Something like this happened to me when I lived in northern Virginia, so I can understand how it can occur. Virginia is an "open carry" state, which means that anyone without a criminal record can carry a handgun openly, as long as you don't mind people staring. However, to carry a concealed handgun (either in a briefcase on on your person) one must take a weapons course and pass a 45 day background check. I had a permit, and had become so used to carrying my weapon that I didn't notice the extra weight or pressure. One day I was on my way to an appointment in DC on the Metro. About the time the train got to Arlington Station (just prior to crossing into DC) I suddenly I realized I still had my handgun!
Went to see "300" on the weekend, which probably helped trigger my "War as Spectator Sport" post yesterdsay. My verdict? Interesting fusion of Japanese style with greek stuff, but personally I wasn't a big fan. Not for the reasons that Matt "I wish America was erased from history, and dig that cool hipster Ahmedinejad" Yglesias and the rest of his ilk might offer, though. Mostly, I thought the film treatment too often got in the way of the real thing's innate excellence. Hollywood dudes, when you feel like messing with this stuff, remember: there's a reason these stories are all-time classics. Remember, also: you haven't written any. Frank Miller, love a lot of your stuff; "The Dark Knight Returns" was something special, but...
Steven Pressfield's masterpiece book "Gates of Fire" beats this treatment by several country miles, and will make a way better movie if Universal get off their asses and gives it even a decent script treatment. There's a reason that an awesome combat leader like Col. Kurilla asked for a Bible and Gates of Fire after he had been shot. Kurilla also demanded that every one of his officers read it upon joining the unit.
Still, "300" is doing big box office, the critics be damned. There's a message in there somewhere, but I'm not going to figure it out. Instead, here's a bunch of real history resources re: Sparta, Xerxes, the war, and Greek combat bad-assery....
A colleague of mine emailed some recent photos from Afghanistan ... thought y'all might enjoy seeing them. We got yer cute kids, we got yer stunning views, we got .... well take a gander and see.
Cute kid #1:
Stunning view 1 (from Gar summit):
Lots more in the rest of the post, including photos of the new Afghan National Military Academy cadets taking their oaths.
Bill Roggio, who has earned deserved respect up to the highest levels of the US military for his coverage of the war from on the scene and from home, writes:
I hope all is well. My apologies in advance for a long email, I believe this is important and requires some explanation.
The media is getting the story of the fighting in Waziristan 100% wrong. The Pakistani government is claiming the fighting is between local tribes and Uzbek al Qaeda. Musharraf has a vested interest in doing so - it wants to promote the Waziristan Accord as a success that can be used elsewhere. The media very rarely looks at what Musharraf says critically.
The real truth is: The fighting began after Uzbeks killed an Arab al Qaeda fighter supported by the Taliban. This is essentially an internal conflict - like a mafia war. Think the Godfather. To settle the conflict, the Taliban sent in senior commanders, including Baitullah Mehsud and Mullah Dadullah Akhund, military leader of the Afghan Taliban, to negotiate a truce between the factions. Digest that for a second, and you'll see who runs the show in Waziristan. And that this so-called 'pro-government tribe' is really just a Taliban group that is angry over the murder of one of their Al Qaeda patrons. I've written on this here.
See also this Roggio article on the larger situation in Pakistan, which is rapidly coming unglued; even guys like Carl Levin are beginning to sound the alarm.
There are significant implications here for NATO's Afghan operation, and indeed for the future course of the global war. Musharraf's phony accord has handed Osama and his Taliban allies a base comparable to pre-2001 Afghanistan. One they've been busy consolidiating; there are reports that America has no human intelligence left in those sanctuaries. Sanctuaries protected by the nuclear weapons Pakistan was unwisely allowed to obtain - and with the potential for future access to those weapons as al Qaeda and the Taliban further consolidate their strength within Pakistan.
Australia's Air Force recently published a revised version of their national airpower doctrine. That's a big deal for Australia, whose geographic position ensures that its air force is the most critical branch of its military. There's a fair bit of controversy surrounding this new doctrine, largely because their Department of Defence seems intent on crafting the doctrine and making multi-billion weapon buys without actually paying attention to trends in their region and the weapons their future air force may face.
Which is interesting, but not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is this excerpt from Chapter 3 [PDF format] of the Royal Australian Air Force's official doctrine documents. The sidebar is titled "War As Spectator Sport?"
"Dan Maraniss of the Washington Post had gone to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where he interviewed seven young men, each either 20 or 21, about the same age as the young men ready to fight in the Gulf. In this southern citadel of traditional patriotism, five of the seven supported the war, but none was willing to fight in it. 'This might sound selfish, but I think it would be a shame to put America's best young minds on the front line', said one young man. Maraniss's piece was unusually telling: it was as if war had turned into a spectator sport, with most American homes immunised from the reality of it all."
He said it doesn't look good he said it looks bad in fact real bad-- "What The Doctor Said", By Ray Carver.
he said I counted thirty-two of them on one lung before
I quit counting them
I said I'm glad I wouldn't want to know
about any more being there than that
he said are you a religious man do you kneel down
in forest groves and let yourself ask for help
when you come to a waterfall
mist blowing against your face and arms
do you stop and ask for understanding at those moments
I said not yet but I intend to start today
he said I'm real sorry he said
I wish I had some other kind of news to give you
I said Amen and he said something else
I didn't catch and not knowing what else to do
and not wanting him to have to repeat it
and me to have to fully digest it
I just looked at him
for a minute and he looked back it was then
I jumped up and shook hands with this man who'd just given me
something no one else on earth had ever given me
I may have even thanked him habit being so strong
I posted this when Warren Zevon died. I thought of it last week, just before Cathy died, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. I hope posting it pushes it aside...
A while ago, writing about our late, great, stand-up mate The Crocodile Hunter, I talked about the deadliest creature in the sea. My colleague, Armed Liberal, has talked about tech companies and responsibility. Which brings me to a recent search on the Alibaba website, that turned up 71 postings by 335 companies listing 169 shark-related products in its B2B section. Head over yourself and see what it's at now. Alibaba.com owns and operates Yahoo! China, which it acquired in October of 2005.
"The explosive growth of the Chinese economy and rapid expansion of trade with the outside world during the 1985 and 1995 created an unprecedented situation. Suddenly there was an insatiable demand for shark fins of almost any size or type. Improvements in shipbuilding and navigational electronics meant that shark fishing boats could now go anywhere in the world, moving from one place to another as local shark populations were destroyed. The fins are now so much more valuable than the rest of the shark that the carcass is often discarded after the fins are removed, to save storage space on the boat. Often the fins are sliced off when the shark is still alive and the mutilated shark is dumped back into the water to die a slow and agonizing death.
Why should we be concerned about this situation? After all, wouldn't the ocean be much safer without sharks? The answer is no. The chance of being attacked by a shark is already less than the chance of being struck by lightning.... In the USA, for example, drowning incidents outnumber shark attacks by 1,000 to I....
But something else would be changed as well -the whole ecology of the ocean.
Andres Martinez explains to the New York Times why it's a good thing he's no longer editing the opinion pages for the LA Times...
"There's a general post-Jayson Blair, post-Staples Center obsession with covering yourself to a fault. I would argue this is taking it too far. The wheels of this bus have come off. There's not strong leadership in the newsroom, and there's a perception that Hiller is trying to suck up to Hollywood and advertisers."
No shit, Andres. Where do you think that 'perception' comes from? When the leadership of the paper is dating the publicists for major advertisers and entertainment induustry figures and handing over the flagship section to one of them?
And I love the notion that anyone in business or politics is expected to dump their hard drives and deliver the results of their blood work for the benefit of the press - but heaven forbit the press itself is scrutinized.
I've felt for a long time that the single best thing we could do to American politics is to make Members of Congress and state legislatures subject to all the regulations they create. I similarly think that making it clear that journalists are themselves subject to the same scrutiny they give others would be a great thing.
I'm getting my suit out for Cathy Seipp's funeral and reading the tributes to her while TG makes sure it's presentable (I don't dress up much any more...).
And read one by Jim Treacher that made me stop for a moment, because it perfectly summed up my feelings.
It's unbelievable that the whole time I knew this woman, she was living on borrowed time. (Not that a single one of us isn't, but she'd been given a specific return-by date. Which of course she ignored 10 times over.) I wish I'd appreciated her more. I wish she wasn't dead.
So do I, Jim, so do I.
I'm not the biggest John Edwards fan; on my desk are fundraising letters from Obama and Richardson that will probably get checks, and I have to deal with the fact that the foreign policy of any Democratic candidate is probably going to repel me. That's a bridge I'll cross in the general election.
But he and his wife are showing great courage in confronting her relapse and the reappearance of the cancer she's fought, and continuing on with their campaign.
I wish her success in her treatment, and both of them the internal resources (I'll believe they have all the external ones they need...) to deal with this and a campaign, too. Think good thoughts for both of them and for their kids.
[Update #4 (the others are below): Martinez has resigned. Well, maybe he does have some modicum of good judgement, after all. I'm sorry that it wasn't in play earlier, and wish him well. We all screw up, and for one, I hope that he and the rest of the Times management - realizing that they've stepped in it - learn from this mess.]
You know, I haven't spent a lot of time angsting about the LA Times since I canceled my subscription (more time!! a perk!!), but I do have parts of the paper in my RSS reader.
So tonight I'm taking a break from work and scanning, and I discover this - thing - from Times Editorial Page Editor Andres Martinez. I know I'm going to kill any chance I have of ever doing an op-ed there...and I'd love to, just so my mom would get all thrilled...but this is the sloppiest [two words denoting a sex act in which one partner is usually kneeling] of a rationalization I've read in a long time. The subject is simple; the Times will this weekend turn management of the editorial pages over to uber-producer and hair gel model Brian Grazer. Grazer is represented by a PR company who employs a woman named Kelly [no last name given] who happens to be ... wait for it ... sleeping with Andres Martinez, who made the decision to give Grazer the keys for a day.
Steve Smith points me at an honest-to-god (or God) great diary at Daily Kos.
The diarist eloquently makes a point I've tried to make a number of times about the left of MLK Jr:
I don't think anyone could seriously make the argument that Dr. King was a sellout,a person of weak moral stamina,
that he compromised with society or accepted marginalization.
Nay, he stood strong - continuously willing to speak out and when necessary suffer for his beliefs. Expecting not exceptions, but real change in the laws and attitudes he challenged, realizing that neither would come lightly.
Yet, significantly Dr. King managed to do something that we too often overlook. He disagreed - strongly. He challenged injustice - but he did not divide.
He drew lines not to exclude others but to demand change. Recognizing change would not come instantly, he still refused to fall into the trap of hating and demeaning his adversaries.
He Did. Not. Divide.
He refused to allow even those who persecuted him to become a "Them." He recognized that whatever the conflict, we will ultimately have to live with those we now oppose and if we are to break the cycle of oppression, not merely change who's in power, then we have to start breaking the cycle in our everyday lives.
Cathy Seipp died today, and as little as she tolerated fools, she's someone who I think would have gotten that point easily. So in her honor, let me suggest that we all remind ourselves of a base truth - "that whatever the conflict, we will ultimately have to live with those we now oppose."
Works for me. Thanks, Cathy, and thanks 'its simple IF you ignore the complexity'...
Abu Aardvark has a post up on the farcical Egyptian elections coming up next week.
This blog's community is - appropriately, I think - concerned about the potential for the violent and radical themes within Islamism to become a truly bloody worldwide movement. The problem of course, is that the ideological engine for that movement is fueled by the politically and culturally repressive governments we support in the Middle East in the name of 'stability'.
One thing I liked about what Bush was doing is that for a moment in time, he made it clear that an unsustainable quasi-stability built on the backs of the citizens of the Middle East - and generating pressure for the movement that risked tearing much of the world apart - was no longer our top priority. That, to me is a feature, not a bug in Bush's policy.
As Bush has been getting his political ass kicked, a new, pro-stability consensus has emerged as we re-engaged Egypt and the Saudis. It looks like 'professionalism' to some, and like disaster to me.
We can't be rid of the shined-shoes Warren Christopher crowd soon enough. They got us into this mess, and if we follow them, we're going to wind up far far deeper in the woods.
I've managed to get a text-file output of my old Armedliberal.com site, and am trying to get it to import into the MT 3.3 instance we're running here.
When I try, I get a 'file too big' error.
When I break the file up into little files and try again - same thing.
Any ideas, anyone?
If you're in the military or have family in the military, you may have received what-on the surface-appears to be an appealing offer, to appear on the Montel Williams show for a sympathetic episode about your perspective as a military family. If you're aware that Montel is himself a veteran, you might feel safe in agreeing to appear on his show.
Don't feel safe. Montel sold out. He's just as bad as any other lying, politically motivated media figure who looks down on the military and thinks of your life and sacrifice as nothing more than a political football and a way to get ratings.
They're lying to you. They're waiting to ambush you with their own agenda, embarrass you on national TV, and make you out to be weak, vulnerable, exploited dopes. They want to use you as a tool to attack your chain of command and our elected leaders. As milblogger airforcewife on military.com's SpouseBuzz tells it, they've already tried it on one brave group of military families, who responded by letting them have it and walked out on the taping. It looks like they haven't given up, and they lack all sense of shame, honor, or dignity-they're trying to round up more unwary, trusting people to feed to the wolves. Don't be Montel's sucker! And let them know exactly what you think of their dishonest tactics. Call producer Michelle Pearson at (800) 987-5446, extension 392, and give her a piece of your mind. Or email her your thoughts at m_pearson@montelshow.com. Do either or both of these things-but the last thing you should do, right after joining the Taliban, is agree to appear on this exploitative liar's show and help his vicious agenda.
Shame on you, Montel Williams.
airforcewife replied to Michelle Pearson of the Montel Williams show by email, in response to her clueless attempt to gather more sheep for the sacrifice in the comments section of the same military blog where her show's shenanigans had already been exposed by a would-be victim who wasn't having any of it. Can you get any more tone-deaf than that? Her reply, and more links, after the jump.
ERBIL, IRAQ -- What a difference a year makes.
Fourteen months ago I flew to Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, from Beirut, Lebanon, on the dubiously named Flying Carpet Airlines. Flying Carpet's entire fleet is one small noisy plane with propellers, cramped seats, and thin cabin pressure. Only nineteen passengers joined me on that once-a-week flight. Everyone but me was a Lebanese businessman. They were paranoid of me and of each other. What kind of crazy person books a flight to Iraq, even if it is to the safe and relatively prosperous Kurdistan region? I felt completely bereft of sense going to Iraq without a gun and without any bodyguards, and it took a week for my on-again off-again twitchiness to subside.
Last week I flew to Erbil from Vienna on Austrian Airlines to work for a few weeks as a private sector consultant with my colleague Patrick Lasswell. This time I didn't feel anything like a fool. Almost half the passengers were women. Children played on their seats and in the aisle with toys handed out by the crew. We watched an in-flight movie and ate the usual airline lunch fare served by an attractive long legged stewardess. The cabin erupted with applause when the wheels touched down on the runway. The pilot announced the weather (sunny and 60) in three languages and cheerfully told us all to have a great day. Have a great day may seem an odd thing to say to people who just arrived in Iraq, but this is Kurdistan. I did, indeed, have a great day.
A man named Hamid picked up me and Patrick just beyond the passport control booth. He was kindly sent by a friend on the Council of Ministers. "Here is your car," he said as he led us to his vehicle out in the parking lot.
As he drove us into the city I felt none of the fear and apprehension I experienced the first time I came here. Instead I saw considerable signs of progress. The first time I drove from the airport into Erbil I felt that I had arrived in a dodgy and ramshackle backwater. This time I felt -- properly, I must say -- that I had arrived in the capital of a serious and rising new power in the Middle East.
read the rest and see the photos at michaeltotten.com
I met Cathy Seipp at one of my first blogger dinners - I was still deep in my pseud, and TG had to introduce herself as "Mrs. Armed Liberal". We went to a booksigning in Brentwood and then off to dinner at one of my fave little Italian places on San Vicente with the cream of the 2002 blogosphere.
I counted myself awed and lucky to get to hang out with such clever, smart, interesting people. And that night, as on many later nights, Cathy Seipp was the center around which the group revolved.
Tonight, Cathy is gravely ill with cancer, and per her daughter Maia, in the hospital receiving palliative care.
That night, after she frisked me (it was in the shoulderbag, Cathy...), Cathy drilled me on my casual assumption that all thinking people were in favor of gay marriage, and when she did that, she didn't only make me think about gay marriage as an issue, but all the other casual assumptions I offhandedly made about what people did and should think. Cathy gave me a zen slap to the head, and it was one of the biggest favors anyone ever did for me. I wrote a post about it... "Why I Support Gay Marriage, and Why I Will Never Be Angry At Those Who Do Not"...but I don't think I really explained the gift - the perspective shift - that Cathy gave me that night.
When I was trying to push Spirit of America into a broader role, the people I reached out to for help started with Cathy, and Cathy reached back to help someone she knew just a little bit - because that's what she seemed to do a lot.
Think good thoughts for her tonight, and for her daughter, and for her loved ones and friends and those - like me - who she reached out to help. If you want to do something for her, reach out and rearrange someone's perceptions and open their eyes to the notion that reasonable people might think they are wrong.
I can't imagine a more fitting memorial - for Cathy, or for anyone at all, to be honest.
By Thomas W. Evans
Every candidate for the Republican presidential nomination does it. Either in the declaration of his candidacy, or in his initial speech before a conservative audience, or in the first two paragraphs of his basic fund-raising letter, he invokes the name of Ronald Reagan. I've written a book about the fortieth president, his vision of America, how he came to develop this vision, and how he managed, once he was elected, to achieve virtually every item on his agenda. I recommend the book to aspiring candidates and to those who are attempting to judge how the aspirants measure up to the standard they have invoked.
In The Education of Ronald Reagan: The General Electric Years and the Untold Story of his Conversion to Conservatism (Columbia University Press, January, 2007), I focus on the eight years (1954-1962) when Reagan worked for GE. He was the host of the highly-rated television show, The General Electric Theater. What is not as well-known is how pivotal this job and its duties were to his future political vision - and to his political career.
"If a person saves a single living soul, it is as if he had saved the world entire."
-- Jewish teaching
Central California is warm these days and we have much less rain than usual, which probably means wildfires later. Coming from Canada, however, the change is welcome. The trees are flowering, and the birds at our balcony feeder buffet row are acting like it's spring. Unfortunately, this also means that the mosquitoes are hatching out. Fortunately, the damselflies and spiders have also hatched out, and there's always the local bat population to pitch in and eat a few of the damned little bloodsuckers.
The tadpoles... they've hatched out, too, but the heat isn't doing them a lot of favours. My sweetie and I were out walking in our area last week, when we spotted a small roadside ditch filled with water. Sure enough, it was full of tadpoles. This much we knew: unless it rained, soon, they were all going to die. "We have to rescue them" she said.
No argument from this amateur herpetologist, especially with global frog mortality serious enough to trigger projects like "Amphibian Ark" from the scientific community. Research for "Operation Reed Sea" began as soon as I got home. UC Berkeley raises them on a large scale, and had a useful set of tips; nice to see that the place isn't a total waste of our tax dollars. Other information was found, some from as far away as Australia. The plan was finalized, and preparations were thorough; by mid-week, we had about 40 tadpoles in a new and fully outfitted 5 gallon tank that sat in the kitchen. I was happy. Sweetie was very happy.
I couldn't stop thinking about the rest of them, though. Friday afternoon, with Shabbat coming, I got in the vehicle and headed out. It was worse than I thought.
Our tadpole collection now stands at a bit over 300 (we just made a count), housed in the aquarium and in a large emergency tank that used to be a plastic Rubbermaid storage bin.
We're scouting spots to let a bunch of the new ones go, and giving a few away to good homes in the Santa Cruz area. Still, I expected to take about 50 tadpoles through metamorphosis, ended up with far more, and don't intend to lose any more than I have to. Tadpoles are popular pets for kids, but delicate - so I decide to compile some of my research and tips for others whose motto is "No Tadpole Left Behind...."
Marc and I have something of a debate going on in another thread about the role of Sparta. Rather than post another comment on a thread that's supposed to be about scientific method and global warming I figured I'd just start a new one. I hope Marc doesn't mind.
I'm also not sure that we really disagree all that much. I just think our purposes in looking at the Spartan culture are very different. Many people have regarded Sparta as an admirable example of citizenship, and since it's a culture centered on the virtue of honor it's quite possible that they got that virtue right. Plato thought so, as have many others. But let me carry on by responding directly to Marc, not only to express my disagreement but to dispel some confusion and misunderstanding:
There's a great Joseph Wilson chronology over at the 'Sweetness and Light' blog...definitely worth a read, even if you don't accept his premise (that Wilson himself outed his wife). It does place Wilson's views in an interesting arc, however...
Wretchard has a couple of posts up here and here, about a case being made by a fellow named Hulme (resemblance to "Hume" is purely ironic), in support of the Global Warming thesis. It involves something called "post-normal science", a term that appears to be a bastardization (or perhaps an ambitious extension) of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn's notion, as you might recall, was that "normal science" is interrupted by paradigm shifts. However Kuhn did have the sense to claim that these shifts were the result of an inability of the conventional theory to deal convincingly with "anomalies". So, basically, we're still within the realm of searching for a truth that isn't simply a social construction (although Kuhn wasn't clear about this until some time after his book was published).
Kevin Drum has gently chided me for not reading and respecting Matt Yglesias more, since he's a very smart guy. Since I respect Kevin, and respect is transitive, I started reading Matt again. (we have a history...)
My first reaction was to his post on "patriotism." Not positive.
Apologies in advance for this...
Or flog, in this case (as in flogging, or selling) - I've ordered a new 2007 Triumph Tiger and want to sell my 2004 KTM 950 Adventure; I'm a wuss and just don't have the time to adventure ride, and I think the Tiger will be a better commuter. (If you don't know what these are, that's OK - you aren't likely to be interested!!)
Drop me a note if you are interested or know someone who might be.
Catching up on the blogs after my conference (about which more later), my OC buddy Kevin Drum cites a Washington Monthly article by Michael Hirsch, titled 'No Time to Go Wobbly, Barak.'
Kevin aptly sums up the article:
Hirsh's piece is long and worth reading completely. He's actually making one of the most difficult kinds of argument of all, an argument that the current system is fine and doesn't really need big changes. The UN is flawed but workable. Muscular diplomacy produces results. Liberal internationalism as practiced by FDR, Eisenhower, Reagan, and Clinton is still workable, even (or maybe especially) in a post-9/11 world.
Wow. You wander around message boards when suddenly you happen upon the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything:
Again, the solution is a simple 2-step process:
1.- Politically, cut ties with Israel; that includes the cash. Leave the ME.
2.- Economically, Find a substitute for ME oil. Either find a substitute for fossil fuel altogether, or, heck, a few million bucks, and we could bribe the Mexican government into turning the Mexican oil production to U.S. enterprises. May even end up solving the immigration problem that way.
That's it. That solves OUR problem.
That's it. A simple 2-step process.
Probably cures cancer and picks the next fifty Super Bowl champions correctly, too.
So easy, even a caveman could do it. In step 3, we buy the world a puppy.
--cross-posted by Murdoc, who remains skeptical.
I want to get on this issue before the other liberal blogs do...
...Milblogger BlackFive has made much of his identity as a Chicago Irishman. In an uncharacteristic slip, today he posted a photograph of the contents of his Irish PalmPilot, in which he made an uncharacteristic error that must force us all to challenge his identity.
Sorry, "Matt", but I know Irishmen, and you're no Irishman. A true Irishman would have written "Get MORE beer".
Further investigation to follow...
From India's point of view, a firm development agreement that helps finance Russia's next-generation plane is one way to restrict Russian cooperation with China along similar lines. See Vijiander K Thakur's "Understanding IAF interest in the MiG fifth generation fighter" for more on the proposal to cooperate with MiG. Even so, India's procurement history is full of dead-ends and "almost weres" - which is why the March 1, 2007 "Advanced Combat Aircraft" release from India's Minister of State for Defence Production Shri Rao Inderjit Singh means very little at this point:
"The co-development of a Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft has been identified as an important area of cooperation between the Indian and Russian governments. Technical discussions to work out the details are in progress. Efforts are on for negotiations and finalization of the draft Inter-Governmental Agreement in this regard."
Which may, or may not, come to funded fruition via Indo-Russian cooperation on a MiG 1.44 (if indeed it was a real project?) or "I-21" type aircraft. Especially given the cost pressures on India's limited defense budget and pressing need to refurbish its existing fleet, modernize its fighters via the MRCA competition, bring the Tejas LCA on line to replace its MiG-21s, and add new platforms to patrol India's vital sea lanes, fulfill naval fighter needs, upgrade its transport aircraft fleet, and extend the IAF's reach. Meanwhile, India's SU-30MKIs remain one of the best 4th generation aircraft in the world, with a comfortable edge over regional rivals, good growth prospects, and superiority over most current and planned US aircraft as well.
Matt Stoller has thoughtfully provided a list of the 'Blue Dog' Democrats who are not firmly on board with Pelosi's micromanagement of the war. He calls them 'saboteurs'. I call them 'Honorable Congressmember' in the emails I'm sending them.
I bet a few encouraging letters from you folks might just help keep them on the right side.
Michael Arcuri (NY-24)
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Matt Yglesias leverages the film 'the 300' to explain that it's based on our sympathy for all people who fight invading empires.
When you see it in a movie that aims to make the defenders out to be heroes, everyone sympathizes with this attitude. It's called "patriotism," it's called "nationalism" and it's the deadly enemy of empire-builders everywhere. People, simply put, don't enjoy submitting to foreign domination, even to foreign domination that presents itself as well-intentioned -- even to foreign domination that is in fact well-intentioned. Bush says America is merely midwifing the birth of a world of liberty, that "freedom is the Almighty God's gift to each man and woman in this world," and American power merely God's servant. Xerxes makes it simpler and says he literally is a God. The movie even gives him a more-than-human voice to prove the point.
I probably would have let this pass except for the scare quotes around "patriotism" and "nationalism", and my belief that this is a handy hook to hang an important point from. Yglesias actually makes a useful (and nuanced) point, and his post is worth reading - I'll try and write about it tomorrow when I talk more about Tom Friedman - but he's someone who seems incapable of saying patriotism without scare quotes, and without making the followup point that there are other patriotisms and that - like being a fan of a NFL team - they are equivalent.
ENGLAND. THE YEAR, 2007.
My name is Adil. I have been born and raised among dutiful and obedient Muslims, and I aim to misbehave.
Already I have fallen from grace. I am no longer one of them, a reason sufficient for their delicately-placed wrath to have me consigned, in this world and the next, to the most grievous of penalties; for what else should the reward be for those who behave like me, they would say if they knew, but disgrace in this life? So no matter where I go in the realms of Islam, I am a hidden traitor to my people, a renegade without honour to be executed. And for them to know of my apostasy is to know of their fear.
Still, now and again I silently walk among the Muslim flock, to observe their incessant bleating and guilty straying, and see how readily they run to the call of their watchful masters, appointees of God who oversee the enjoining of what is good and the forbidding of what is not. And they remind the herd that He is not unmindful of what they do.
Neither am I.
Tariq Ramadan, the so-called "moderate" Islamic "intellectual", was briefly detained and charged for "insulting a public agent" on Sunday at Paris Roissy Charles de Gaulle International Airport, while in transit to London.
From informed police sources, we have learned that when Ramadan tried to enter a prohibited area, a young policewoman stopped him. He began shouting at her and was then taken into police custody; the officer filed a complaint against him.
While in custody, he admitted the offense and was ordered to appear before a criminal court of Bobigny on April 6. Tariq Ramadan faces up to 6 months of imprisonment and 7,500 Euros of penalty.
By Jean-Charles Brisard of the Terror Finance Blog
Sunday's suicide bombing in an Internet Cafe of Casablanca reflects the growing pressure of the Islamist and terrorist networks in Morocco. The ongoing investigation revealed that suicide bombers were planning larger scale attacks, confirming that the country could be the next target of a North African terrorist network under consolidation following the GSPC offensive in Algeria, causing 50 deaths since the beginning of the year and after violence involving GSPC members erupted in Tunisia in December and January.
The suicide bombing in Casablanca came three years after the Madrid bombings of March 11, 2004. It was also in a Cyber cafe where Moroccan authorities arrested last week in Casablanca a key leader of the GICM (Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group), Saad Houssaini, a veteran of Afghanistan and co-founder of the GICM, wanted since the Casablanca bombings of May 2003. Saad Houssaini was also connected to at least one of the Madrid bombers. According to Spanish Court records, in 1996, Hussaini formed in Valencia a radical Islamic group to plan terrorist attacks in Spain and Morocco along with three other activists, including Allekema Lamari. Lamari's remains were positively identified in the Leganes apartment were several 11M bombers blew themselves up after the attacks. DNA traces of Lamari were later recovered in a car used by the bombers to transport bombing devices on the morning of March 11, 2004. Saad Houssaini is also believed to be related to the 9/11 plot. According to the German authorities, he travelled from Istanbul to Karachi (under the name of Abdellah Hosayni) with Said Bahaji, an alleged member of the Hamburg cell, on September 3, 2001.
The arrest of Houssaini, who appeared as the rising figure among the jihadi groups in Morocco following the Casablanca bombings and the killing of Karim Al Mejjati, alleged mastermind of the Madrid bombings, in Saudi Arabia in April 2005, could have triggered the Sunday's bombing in Casablanca.
The bombing is a new indication of the growing threat posed by Al Qaeda affiliates in the region in an effort to reinforce and coordinate their actions under the umbrella organization of "Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb".
The fight against these networks has been active in Algeria and especially Morocco, where at least two separate terrorist networks have been dismantled over the last 6 months. Efforts have also intensified in Europe, where these networks have many supporters and where they are determined to export their violence. But if the European Intelligence and law-enforcement agencies have proven in the past their strong ability and efficiency in identifying terrorist threats and neutralizing terrorist networks, the European legal framework has failed to provide such efficient and preventive actions against the support networks of these groups.
The best example was provided last October, when a combined action of several European countries, including Italy and Switzerland, led to the arrest of several GSPC financial facilitators. The investigation uncovered that the cell has been able to transfer 1.3 million Euros via banks, 320,000 Euros in money transfers and thousands more via cash couriers to Algeria. Most of the cell members, including its leader Djamel Lounici, have already been identified in connection to terrorist networks as early as 1994. Some of them had already been indicted and condemned before being released in recent years. In one of these early warnings, a telephone intercept conducted in 1994 by the Italian authorities, cell members referred to Europe as a "paradise" where "there is no control whatsoever". A key member of the cell claimed that the European governments "pretend to be vigilant, but in the end they do nothing. They only try to impress people".
By Jean-Charles Brisard of the Terror Finance Blog
Oh boy...
I tried, but couldn't improve on BBC Four's own headline for this story. [Correction: as some have noted below, it was "Channel Four" and not "BBC Four". (If you have Adobe Flash Player you can view the entire production here. I've been told this version is slightly out of sync, but still watchable.) I'm not sure why this expose' hasn't been propagated and discussed more in American blogs (let alone media), but the documentary is devastating to the hegemony of the global warming case. It turns out there's a fairly large contingent of environmental scientists who think Al Gore has it backwards--that CO2 ramps follow, rather than lead, warming.
It isn't exactly clear which side has things right, but the fact that the "inconvenient truth" advocates seem to believe there's no possible counter argument suggests that, not only have they hitched their wagons to some questionable science, but that they're employing the tried and true expedient of an ideological shibboleth to guard against the possibility that they might be seen as, well you know, wrong.
I'm at the Corante/Shared Insights 'Community 2.0' conference in Las Vegas, and having an interesting time hanging and meeting the various figures in the Web 2.0 world.
There's an interesting intersection developing between my professional and blogging life developing here.
I've talked for a long time about the political implications of the kinds of 'emergent management' which is represented by the kind of projects these people are engaged in growing. It's also highly relevant to the issues important to the Winds audience, as John Robb points out in his latest post at Global Guerrillas.
Now I'll disagree with some of the more extreme evangelists here in Vegas who believe that everything in business will be dissolved into a soup of community, just as I'll disagree with Robb when he says that the guerilla 'Bazaar of Violence' poses almost insurmountable challenges to traditional states. What I argue will happen is that the Web 2.0 challenge to major businesses - like newspapers - is that newspapers share will decline enough that they can no longer act as a monopoly in setting prices for ads.
Similarly, states will see that their monopoly on legitimacy will be challenged, and states with weak legitimacy will find themselves declining as they can't maintain the level of legitimacy necessary to function.
That's the pivotal question, and it's both an issue I'll be dealing with professionally (in a business environment) and as a citizen and blogger (here).
Nothing comes in the way of Musharraf's political survival. Not least the rule of law.
The actual story is simple. A military dictator wanted to get rid of a judge who began to take his duties a little too seriously. But this story is set in Gen Musharraf's Pakistan, so a whole lot of farce masquerading as constitutional propriety is in order. The manner in which Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, Chief Justice of Pakistan until last Friday, was rendered "non-functional" has thrown the Pakistani legal fraternity, political establishment and news media into a frenzy of activity. The chances are, all this will be to little effect.
Yahoo! brings us a report of a 43-year-old man in the eastern German town of Sonneberg, who decided to settle his imminent divorce by chainsawing a family home in two and making off with his half in a forklift truck.
The trained mason measured his 8m x 6m single-storey summer house as any good craftsman would, then chainsawed through the wooden roof and walls. His half was hauled to his brother's house, where I'm sure it will make a fine addition.
Operation Military Pride is an umbrella organization that claims to coordinate messages and care packages, and provide assistance to others who wish to do so. There's a lot of "get your own volunteer thing started in your area" on the site, plus good info. for people re: what to send, what not to, how to send it (without involving OMP in the sending). Some of you may have heard of it, and I included it in my "How to Support the Troops" compilation way back when.
At the time, I said: "Note that OMP do not appear to be a registered charity, but they are listed on the U.S. Department of Defense America Supports You site and I receive their e-newsletter."
OMP were recently the subject of an injunction from the Illinois courts (Case Number: 2006CH0114 Filed: January 04, 2006), and were ordered to pay back nearly $310,000. They were also ordered to stop accepting funds, which is surely justified in this case.
What happened here? The founder says she was an ordinary person trying to do a good deed, and some folks have written in on other web sites to say she did what she said (matched them with serving personnel) and their materials were received and acknowledged. But she triggered an Attorney-General's investigation in Illinois that basically accused her of fraud, then lost her case in court. There are some worthwhile lessons here about causes and giving - read and decide:
So what was I writing in March 2003?? Damn, I was writing a lot...
In chronological order, with quotes as strike me...
Before we accuse the Maine administrators of 'protecting child abusing teachers', let's prove that the abuse is happening, that it isn't an aberration, but a pattern. If it is, let's root it out.But until we provide some hard evidence, we're the ones out on a limb here.
Periodically it's worth it to show people what I'm reading, both in the hopes that there's something they'll find interesting and in the hopes that people will suggest something else that I might find interesting (plus it's useful, I think, to know what writers are reading to understand what led them to where they are).
So without further ado, here's my Bloglines feed list.
Comment away, and I'd encourage other bloggers to do the same thing.
...opens tonight, and we have tickets at the Bridge theater near the airport.
Based on the comic, I got one for Littlest Guy as well, but on reading the reviews, I'm getting kinda doubtful that it's appropriate for a 10 year old - even a mature one. The family will be discussing that today...
But one interesting thing popped up as I read the available reviews (many linked at www.rottentomatoes.com); the astounding historical and cultural ignorance of most film critics.
Kenneth Turan of the LA Times was the only one who 'got' the historical context of Thermopylae (even though he didn't like the movie). Sheesh. You'd think that people who write about culture for a living would know something about it, wouldn't you?
And the layering of modern politics and political correctness (see the Slate review by Dana Stevens for a pluperfect example) is kind of funny. The war was, after all, factually between the Greeks (pretty much the founders of the West) and the Persians, so yes, more-or-less white people fought more-or-less brown ones. Is that racist? How do we deal with history, then?
The US Air Force has a mini-site up called "Portraits in Courage: Airmen in the Fight." At the moment it profiles 21 exceptional individuals, and tells the stories of what they did to deserve inclusion.
Damn, looks like those jumpsuit guys actually do more than play volleyball and drink. You won't hear much about them in the media, so if you want to understand the kind of people that are putting it on the line, you'll just have to give the site a visit.
I spoke recently with an Israeli Defense Forces intelligence officer about last summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah in South Lebanon. He still serves in the IDF and therefore must remain anonymous. I'll call him David, which isn't his name.
David works in a fire control unit stationed in the Northern Command. During the war he managed intelligence pertaining to Hezbollah rocket fire, selected targets for air and artillery strikes, and occasionally assisted in real-time control of fire. He is familiar with some of the high-level decision-making and hints at some of what he knows that is officially classified.
MJT: Let's start with a general question. What, exactly, did Israel accomplish in the summer war with Hezbollah? Are there any tangible lasting benefits?
David: Well, to understand what was accomplished we need to look at the starting point. Virtually all Israelis were very happy the IDF withdrew from Lebanon -- many think it was foolish to have gotten in there in the first place and even those that don't agree we overstayed our welcome, so to speak. Following the pullout Hezbollah established itself very firmly in South Lebanon -- of particular worry to the military was their ground-ground rocket and missile array, ranging in various calibers and ranges. I cannot go into all the intelligence data, but Hezbollah's capability to hit Israeli population centers was well known for quite some time. So this was the primary problem -- only it was never tackled by any Israeli leadership, not that there was much that could have been done. That remains a problem today, though from what I hear they're having a much more difficult time restoring their abilities. I wouldn't call it a success story, though. The problem's still there. Another worry was Hezbollah's attempts at kidnapping Israeli soldiers.
There have been several attempts made, and each one was more calculated and planned than the last. Apart from the famous instances in which IDF soldiers did in fact die or get kidnapped, there was one memorable attempt that was foiled due to good thinking and alertness in the tactical levels. There were also "anti-aircraft" barrages that hit inside Israel, killing one boy in one instance if I recall correctly. Hopefully, the last conflict sent a message that will make these acts less desirable.
There were also general shows of force at the border, usually organized "demonstrations" or throat-cutting gestures at soldiers from armed persons. There's a road that passes a few meters from the border and they made sure to build a position right on top it with Hezbollah flags, just as a gesture. We no longer have Hezbollah right on the border, and that is the most tangible benefit.
read the rest at michaeltotten.com
Road Trip
So got back yesterday at 3am after driving from Chicago with Biggest Guy after starting Monday at 10am.
A few notes:
1) As BG learned to his dismay, when you're the only car on the road at 1am, even a Valentine One is no defense against instant-on radar.
2) The sauce at Arthur Bryant's is still too vinegary, but the meat is just as damn good as ever (one of the four pictures I took on the trip was of our plates...).
3) You can't help but talk about stuff when you're driving 2,000 miles.
4) I'm too damn old to do four hours of sleep three nights in a row and then walk in and work all day.
Getting caught up at work and here.
At the Examiner, Laurie Byrd has a rueful look at the Libby conviction and the congealing of the fact-defying CW. The Washington Post editorial is well worth reading as well:
Mr. Fitzgerald was, at least, right about one thing: The Wilson-Plame case, and Mr. Libby's conviction, tell us nothing about the war in Iraq.
On March 4, 2007, Jiang Enzhu, the Deputy Secretary General and spokesman for the National People's Congress, announced that China's official military budget would grow 17.8% this year, to $45 billion. This continues a trend DID covered in 2006 and 2005, and will mark the 19th consecutive year of double-digit military budget growth in the "People's Republic" of China.
As in the Soviet Union, however, the official budget and the real budget are not the same thing. Many items are hidden under other ministries, or simply not reported truthfully. RAND's Project Air Force, which has also studied China's arms industry modernization, estimated the 2004 Chinese military budget at $65-79 billion in FY 2001 dollars; at 2% inflation, this would equal $76-86 billion in FY 2006 dollars. Sources discussed in our 2006 article were closer to $100 billion, which is in agreement since increases of 12% and then 14.7% give an FY 2006 range of $96-110 billion with 2% inflation. The FY 2007 range would be $115-130 billion, given another 17.8% increase. Other analysts have placed China's real defense budget at up to 4x official spending, in which case actual Chinese defense spending could be as high as $180 billion for FY 2007.
Regardless of the exact figure, officials from the US Pentagon and from India's RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) intelligence service now agree that the Chinese defense budget is now the second largest in the world. There certainly are a lot of weapons programs underway. For a set of additional links & resources concerning China's socio-economic, geo-political and military plans, challenges, and issues, see: "China's Stresses, Goals, Military Buildups... and Futures" at Winds of Change.NET.
The World Bank released on March 7 its report on the Palestinian Authority. While critical of the PA's lack of transparency and inability and/or unwillingness to account for the hundreds of millions it received from donors, including $100 million in tax revenues given by Israel directly to PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas, the Bank also urges donors to renew funding the Hamas led government.
Last we checked, Hamas is still designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization. Why then the call from the WB, headquartered in Washington DC, a stone's throw from the White House, Treasury and the State Department to fund terrorists?
It's worth noting that the report was completed in February, but was released shortly after Salam Fayyad, the former Finance Minister agreed to resume his task under the Hamas ruled government. Fayyad is a former World Bank employee, who served as the International Monetary Fund representative to the PA from 1995-2001.
It seems that Fayyad's failure to get the PA's finances under control during Arafat and Abbas-led Fatah governments, now qualifies him to do the same under Hamas.
What will it take for the Western donor countries to stop funding this festering terrorist entity? It is the billions of dollars in World Bank, EU, and UN aid since 1993 that facilitated the Palestinians terrorist death culture to flourish. Yet, the WB thinks Hamas could use some extra funds to expand its terrorist agenda.
The U.S., which designated Hamas as a terrorist organization, is the major shareholder in the Bank, with more than 16 percent of the votes. Why was this latest recommendation allowed?
By Rachel Ehrenfeld of the Terror Finance Blog
Sunday night's Discovery Channel show, "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," has disappeared from serious consideration faster than the Iraq Study Group's report did. If you wish to read my takedown, here a link to my own post at donaldsensing.com:
Archeo-porn! Conspiracy Theory! Hallelujah!
In brief, the entire thesis of the show is a conspiracy theory. And like most such theories, it requires it adherents to dismiss historical facts and replace them with enormous conjecture. In this case, the entire thesis rests on completely dismissing Jesus as a first-century Jewish religious figure and recharacterizing him as an anti-Roman revolutionary. That was a claim made explicity on the show. But there is absolutely no evidence for it and no less a figure than Pontius Pilate himself directly contradicted the notion.
And I'd sure like to know how this scene relates to the rest of the show at all; in fact it is more evidence that this show was a decidedly unserious work.
I had intended to post another comment to brother Grim's post on the Joe Klein controversy, but the comment sort of took on a life of its own. Because it represents a significant departure from the thread that developed below I figured I'd make a separate entry. In so doing I hope I'm not completely irrelevant, but this is probably a somewhat different topic.
Strictly speaking, the US has always been an "extremist" country, in the sense that it has always been a political/ideological/religious outlier within the "community of nations". It was, after all, the first representative democracy. (The more conventional term is "exceptional", but extreme fits.) There's been some convergence over time, though most of the research suggests that "they" have been moving in our direction, more than we in theirs.
I have come a bit late to the war between Joel Klein and everyone else, but I think the timing was useful, in that it has suddenly become an interesting conversation. I'm going to enter the fray on Klein's side -- it will probably surprise him to have an ally. I, like Klein, occupy an odd position in American politics, he in being a devoted "centrist," and me in being one of the last of the old-style Southern Democrats.*
Kevin Drum published over the weekend a piece asserting that Klein was essentially of an older generation, and that his understanding of where "extremism" on the left could be found was therefore -- well, if not exactly out of touch or dated, Drum's point was that left wing extremism wasn't currently a force in American politics.
The biggest clue is that the first example of lefty extremism that comes to Klein's mind is an issue that's been all but dead for over a decade, while his examples of righty extremism are alive and well right now today.
I think Klein is the one who is in the right, and the age of the busing example is merely an accident; it happens to be the clearest example of what leftist extremism looks like. I think it is a trend that is alive and well, however, and that there are numerous more recent examples that can be offered.
But let me first say what I think "extremism" is in American politics. I think extremism is related to our domestic (rather than our foreign) policies. I think it is this: the belief that the American Federal Government's extraordinary power should be used to remake society, whether society likes it or not.
Last week, my intellectual betters, Peter Bienert and Bjorn Staerk both posted apologies for their early support of the Iraq war.
So, let me open by suggesting that in spite of my desire to find a way out of this, I'm really unimpressed by both Bienert's and Staerk's posts.
In Bienert's case, it's a national apology; the United States simply isn't good enough, darn it, to be allowed to go around the world and hurt people and change things.
Dean Esmay has a new post up explaining (somewhat) his new stance on Islamophobes, as well as a post directly addressed to me about his decision and my post on it.
He suggests - and I agree - that some dialog around this issue would be a good thing.
I'll reaffirm: I think that the central problem of the current historical moment is the war within Islam. I think that war is between adherents of a traditional religion, and one that has cross-pollinated with some of the less-desirable features of Bad Philosophy to create an inherently dangerous and highly attractive response to modernity in the West and to oppression and hopelessness in much of the Arab world.
If the bad guys win - and they may - Islam will be transformed into what it's enemies today say it is. And we'll have some significant problems.
That hasn't happened yet, and because it hasn't happened yet it's worth doing two things - 1) not treating Muslims as though they are automatically Bad Guys - even if they don't like us and their interests are opposed to ours. Much of human history has involved the ways that cultures that disagree and compete manage to live together without mass slaughter...and 2) figuring out what, if anything, we can do from here that will weaken the Bad Guys and strengthen the good ones.
Yeah, that's Western-centric and implies that we get to decide who's good and bad...and that issue itself will be an interesting topic for discussion.
But I think that Dean is right when he says that Islam is not, itself the problem ... today. And further, when he suggests that going down the path to Islamophobia today is dangerous, because it makes the 'clash of civilizations' more, not less likely. And he's wrong when he fails to recognize that Islam is the locus of the problem, and that finding a way to deal with the changes Islam is going through - and to contain the energy those changes will release - is a central and legitimate task today.
Do I agree with commenter Jim Rockford here when he responds that the root of all our problems in the Middle East today is Islam? No. Do I agree with something I read into Dean's posts (which may not be there) which suggests that it has no part of the problem, and that things in the ummah are hunky-dory? No.
So let's discuss this.
Has anyone ever seen Ann Coulter and Amanda Marcotte in a room together?
Just wondering, you know...
Back when I first started blogging, I titled a post on Coulter "The 'Whoosh' Of Credibility Flying Out The Window".
For some reason the - I'll be gracious - slow-witted bookers at the big conservative 'do invited her to speak.
If I get some time at the airport this weekend, I'll see how many conservative blogs were scathing about Marcotte's Tourettes, and approving of Coulter's.
Yeah, I know, it doesn't prove anything. But I bought a Civic hybrid, not a Prius, and I have to get my smug where I can.
Captain Ed talks sense on this...
In a way that probably carries bigger lessons for us all, I discovered this afternoon (with the help of Evariste, who watched the server while I tried to get connected) that while Thunderbird had in fact updated itself when I launched it this morning, and didn't work after that...
...that the issue was that my IT guys had locked down the two ports I use for SSL mail this morning. At about the same time.
And I presumed - because after all, it was logical to do so - that the update had caused the problem, rather than some exogenous issue (like overzealous IT staff).
So, what do we all think the lesson here is?
See embarassing update, above...
My copy of Thunderbird just upgraded itself to 1.5.0.10 - and now it won't download any mail.
I can't get to the support forums at Mozilla, suggesting that I may not be alone...
So if you haven't upgraded yet, I'd consider disabling auto upgrade on Thunderbird and waiting to see what (if anything) is going on.
On the very day a 'senior administration official' from the Bush administration had lunch with Gen Musharraf, by sheer coincidence, the Pakistanis arrested a senior administration official from the Taliban.
Such antics apart, Pakistan would like nothing better to get the US off its back in Afghanistan. Here's a post that Winds readers must read on this subject.
In the aftermath of World War 2, blimps and tethered balloons found themselves phased out of the US military. That didn't begin to change until the 21st century (see DID April 2005, "USN, DARPA See Blimps & HULAs Rising"). The heavy-lift WALRUS project may have been canceled without explanation; but aerostat programs like JLENS cruise missile defense and its smaller RAID local surveillance derivative, and airships like the HAA/ISIS program, remain. The US Navy is also experimenting with aerostats for communications relay, surveillance, and radar overwatch functions - and this has become a formal program.
What's driving this interest? Four things. One is persistence, in an era where constant surveillance + rapid precision strike = a formidable military asset that some call surveillance-strike complexes. A second is cost, especially in an era of rising fuel prices. A recent US NAVSEA release offers figures that starkly illustrate the gap in surveillance cost per hour between an aerostat and planes or UAVs:
Dean Esmay is taking a stand against Islamophobes. In and of itself, not a bad idea.
But as someone who doesn't consider himself an Islamophobe, but thinks that questions about the future of Islam - as arguably one of the most powerful religious movements in the world, and as one which both has more temporal power (because it is more tightly tied both to state power and the daily lives of its adherents) than most other religions, and whose future is up for grabs - with one set of grabbers people who really do believe that religious wars are a Good Idea - I think that he is, as I've said before, burying his conclusions in his assumptions.
1. The future of Islam matters a lot to all of us. 2. It's far from certain what the future of Islam will be. And that's about the only two 'bright line' statements on the subject that I'll sign on to.
As a matter of personal style and belief, I don't think it's a good idea to make anyone swear that they believe or don't believe anything to associate with you. What matters is behavior, not belief, and I'm sad that Dean doesn't get that.
Peter Bienart has his apologia for his support of the Iraq war in the current TNR.
Obviously it's something I need to think about and respond carefully to...watch this space.
Update: Bjorn Staerk joins him. Boy, is this gonna be a long post...
Many of the storms engulfing our part of the world can be attributed to the fact that the movements practicing politics in the name of "political Islam" are still governed by a coup mentality, still acting as underground movements rather than as modern political institutions that respect and observe the law.
I have an Examiner piece up today on 'The Netroots and the business of American politics'.
I ask a simple question:
Will the rise of the Internet simply bring us a new clique of political consultants, or transform politics by opening it to the wider citizenry?I'd love to see an Internet-based politics that really opened the doors ... and as a nation, we'd be better off if it came to be. Do Bowers and Kos represent that politics? How will we know?
...comment away...
Reading about Al Gore's house clicked something into perspective for me.
The basic facts are simple; Gore uses a lot of energy in his 10,000 sf residence. He's invested in energy-efficiency, but his lifestyle is still energy-lavish.
He's not alone; many of the leading advocates of environmental propriety have both a Prius and an Escalade, to make an automotive metaphor. The Prius makes them feel good about themselves, while the Escalade is both roomy, comfortable, powerful, and enough of a status object that it meets the intangible needs that cars also seem to have to meet.
Gore's response is that a) he's done everything he reasonably can to mitigate his energy use, by
1) Gore's family has taken numerous steps to reduce the carbon footprint of their private residence, including signing up for 100 percent green power through Green Power Switch, installing solar panels, and using compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy saving technology.2) Gore has had a consistent position of purchasing carbon offsets to offset the family's carbon footprint ... a concept the right-wing fails to understand. Gore's office explains:
What Mr. Gore has asked is that every family calculate their carbon footprint and try to reduce it as much as possible. Once they have done so, he then advocates that they purchase offsets, as the Gore's do, to bring their footprint down to zero.
