Musings Archive April 2003
Wednesday, April 30, 2003 ELITES TO BLUE-COLLAR WORKERS: GO AWAY! My friend, Ed Olver, has written several fine articles about free trade and the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs. Check this one out.
Posted by izzy @ 06:11 PM EST [Link]
~ IN DEFENSE OF HARVESTING HUMAN ORGANS: Well, not exactly. Joel Miller questions the conventional wisdom on the kidney market in RazorMouth.
Posted by antle @ 02:25 PM EST [Link]
~ DON'T STOP BEFORE BAGHDAD: Michael Leeden argues today that if the U.S. wants a free Iran and Syria, it's going to have to work hard for it. Not doing so, he writes, is akin to America halting its forces before it got to Baghdad during the first Gulf War.
Life is not often like that. If we want a free Iran and a free Syria — and we must, if we really want to win the war against terror — we will have to fight for it. Not militarily, in these cases, but certainly politically. Even as we prepared to invade Iraq, the Iranian and Syrian dictators increased their bloody repression, desperately trying to stave off their own day of reckoning. And, of course, the Iranians sent contradictory messages, alternately cursing us as agents of the devil, only to turn around and sing sweet songs of "better relations" even as they pursued a nuclear program that is on the verge of fulfillment (Revolutionary Guards officers were recently informed that a nuclear test is in the works later this summer).
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:43 PM EST [Link]
~ EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND, BUT JUDGE REINHOLD IS SO OVER. Robert Bluey of CNS news writes about the O'Keefes and those of us (ahem) who seem to have nothing better to do than critique a sitcom we've never seen. At the least, I want to know why homeschoolers didn't rate A-list actors to play them. Judge Reinhold isn't even a trendy anti-war protestor.
Posted by izzy @ 10:37 AM EST [Link]
~ AND NOW IT'S BAGHDAD BOB WITH THE WEATHER: More news on the former Iraqi information minister. WorldNet Daily is reporting that an Arab news outlet has offered him a job.
Posted by antle @ 09:13 AM EST [Link]
~ IN DEFENSE OF SWEATSHOPS: Well, not really. But Radley Balko does have an interesting take on them in Tech Central Station. Yeah, they're not ideal but moralists need to remember the consequences of taking away what could be the best of a series of bad options for the Third World poor.
Posted by antle @ 08:49 AM EST [Link]
~ A CANDIDATE WHO MAKES AS MUCH SENSE AS THE REST OF THE DEMOCRATS: Is this for real? Via FrontPage Magazine, an open letter to the South Democratic Party urging that Lyndon LaRouche be included in an upcoming presidential candidates' debate, claiming such signatories as former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders.
Posted by antle @ 08:33 AM EST [Link]
~ SHE HAS A NICE FIGURE: I was just looking over some of the preliminary figures for ESR's traffic in April and was surprised. I'd noticed over recent weeks that our Alexa rating, for whatever it's worth, has been moving up extraordinarily fast. Now I know why.
They aren't Yahoo! numbers (or Instapundit numbers for that matter) but ESR on pace (I use the past year's numbers plus this year's numbers to date in this conservative projection) to draw nearly 1 million unique visitors in 2003 and serve a little over 2 million pages. It's a low page to unique visitor ratio, something I'd like to change, but overall I'm reasonably happy. Since December alone, our traffic has risen 63 per cent with strong gains posted each month. Thanks all for continuing to visit this humble little collective effort.
Feel free to use our "Recommend this site to a friend" service on the front page (right side, halfway down).
Posted by steve @ 05:45 AM EST [Link]
~ MS. BUFFY SUMMERS AND HER APPALLING IGNORANCE OF THE LAW (AMONG OTHER THINGS): Our friend Jeremy Lott praises this blog for the creativity of our entry titles and directs his readers to us (if you're someone who works for The American Prospect, you have my condolences). For this, I give him many thanks. With that done, let me now move on to another, even more important topic which Mr. Lott mentions in that exact same blog entry: namely, the televisual creations of Joss Whedon.
Like Mr. Lott, I too caught last night's episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I count myself not as a fan, but more as a morbid cultural critic analyzing popular phenomenom. As such, I have absolutely no objections to applying rigorous, closed-minded logic while watching the show and drily noting some of the more improbable plot devices Mr. Whedon and his writers feel they must subject their viewers to. For example, as Mr. Lott notes, in last night's episode, our eponymous heroine Ms. Buffy Summers was summarily thrown out of house and home through the concerted efforts of a rather large group of various friends, well-wishers, confidantes, and hangers-on. This was, no doubt, a POIGNANT MOMENT for Ms. Summers who, after seven long years of being the moral and physical centre of her group, is now made to realize that perhaps the group has finally outgrown her. This is all very well and good, but as I remarked to my sister just as Sarah Michelle Geller was getting all teary-eyed on us: "Why the heck is she being forced to walk out of her house? After all, it's HER OWN HOUSE!" She inherited it from her dead mother. It's her property. I kept on waiting for Buffy to say something along the lines of this:
DAWN: "This is my house too."
BUFFY: "Yeah, maybe this is your house too, but only on some deep-down metaphorical, emotionally wishy-washy level. In the legal sense (which is only the sense that matters, Dawn, or don't they teach you law in high school anymore?), this is MY house. Whose name do you think is on the ownership papers anyway? So guys, if you don't want me as your leader anymore, that's fine. But don't you think that throwing me off my own property and onto the streets is going a bit too far here? If you guys want Faith as your new leader, then go right ahead. I'm sure that the motel room she's renting will comfortably fit all fifty of you. So (and I'm only going ask this once before I get all violent on you), will you ungrateful bunch of squatters get out of MY house and off MY property NOW!"
Alas, Buffy allowed the squatters to triumph over all sense of her own property rights (I think she would be more aware of them, if she hadn't dropped out of college).
Here's another nitpick for Mr. Lott to ponder over. I have no idea if he watches Angel or not, which immediately follows Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I do. Mr. Whedon and his team have thought of various ways to creatively link the two shows together in order to create some neat moments. One character takes off from Sunnydale in the first hour and we see him or her arriving in Los Angeles in second hour. On one show, an inexplicable phone message is heard; on the other show, a person is seen making that very same phone call. Such a device however creates some improbabilities. As we can see, the episodes of the two shows are supposed to take place in more-or-less simultaneous time-frames. Now, if Mr. Lott had stuck around to watch the second hour, he would have realized that while Buffy and her group of friends had been going through their little emotional crisis, back in Los Angeles, the villain on Angel (the goddess Jasmine) had phoned up the Governor and using her fiendish hypnotic powers, had taken over the entire state of California. Back in Sunnydale, there was nary a peep about this mass transfer of the state government from the secular, incompetant hands of Mr. Gray Davis to the very competant and very evil hands of an other-worldly divine being. Nor do I recall much gnashing of teeth by Buffy and friends, when only a few weeks before, the largest city of their fair state had been plunged into perpetual darkness and demonic creatures had roamed the streets, massacring the population. No wonder Buffy was just deposed as leader of the gang: she's so self-absorbed in her own little emotional world, she doesn't even watch the news.
Now, if you've read up to this, you'll no doubt object that I'm being humourless and literal-minded. After all, these are shows about vampires, for god's sakes! But I am merely asserting my constitutional right to be as humourless and literal-minded as I please. I'm the type of person who worries over the realism of level design in computer games. I'm the type of person who asks questions such as: "if the genius-villain knew I was about to go in and steal this valuable object, why did he disperse his guards instead of grouping them all together in the immediate vicinity of that valuable object?" or "why does this headquarters building I've just stormed into have air shafts that go nowhere, only eight bunkbeds when I count over twenty guards, and no washrooms?" I rather believe such an approach to life has its uses, though personally, I don't think I'll watch too much television anymore for fear of being driven insane.
Posted by Barton @ 03:58 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, April 29, 2003 I SUPPOSE HE WAS ON VACATION IN IRAQ: A member of a terrorist group linked al-Qaida has reportedly been captured in Iraq by U.S. forces.
Posted by steve @ 11:58 PM EST [Link]
~ THIS IS GOOD NEWS...WELL, EXCEPT FOR IBRAHIM SAVED SOLIMAN IBRAHIM: Officials have stated that the Egyptian sailor who died recently did not succumb to anthrax. Nor, apparently, did a mysterious suitcase he picked up on his way to Canada contain anthrax.
Posted by steve @ 11:51 PM EST [Link]
~ CAN YOU SAY JUDGE BORK?: This is the best idea for breaking the judicial stalemate I've heard. Of the Democrats think President Bush's current slate of nominees is too conservative, how would they like recess appointments to their right? Randy Barnett says President Bush should give them the option of choosing that or allowing a vote on his nominees to go foorward in the Senate.
Posted by antle @ 11:05 PM EST [Link]
~
ARREST ME YOU INFIDEL DOGS OR YOUR STOMACHS WILL BROIL IN HELL: My day, which included a snappy new linen sport jacket and a decent haircut, has improved immeasurably. Iraq's former information minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf is alive!
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that al-Sahhaf is hiding out at his aunt's house in Baghdad trying to negotiate his arrest by U.S. forces. The Americans are refusing because he isn't in the deck of their "most wanted" playing cards.
Murad said Sahhaf was in Mosul before going to Baghdad and that some PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan) partisans saw him in the northern city and that he even asked some of them to intervene on his behalf with US troops, but "we told him that we didn't want to be party to this matter", the paper added.
The Kurdish official told the paper that US troops regularly patrolled near Sahhaf's hideout on Palestine Street in the Iraqi capital and that he sent some of his relatives to inform them of his wish to surrender, but they turned him down.
It's said to be bad for you in Hollywood if you can't get arrested, but what happens if your a formerly high profile member of a dictator's cabinet and you can't get arrested? Nothing short of humilating.
Posted by steve @ 07:40 PM EST [Link]
~ DEAR KAREN DE COSTER, I Rock. You don't. Regards, Kyle Williams.
Refreshing your memories: Miss D.C. flamed Master Williams on her blog.
Posted by izzy @ 06:34 PM EST [Link]
~ IT'S KIND OF GOOD NEWS: A report by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts states that law enforcement in the U.S. sought fewer court orders in 2002 for wire taps.
Federal and state judges authorized all but one of the 1,359 wiretap applications submitted in 2002. The requests represented a 9 percent decrease from the 1,491 applications logged the previous year, according to the annual report by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
Federal wiretaps rose by 2 percent, to 497, while the number of applications filed by state officials dropped 14 percent to 861.
Fears that the Bush/Ashcroft White House would unleash a wave of Big Brother surveillance Americans have turned out to be groundless but the money stat is in the first sentence of that quote. "Federal and state judges authorized all but one of the 1,359 wiretap applications submitted in 2002."
It used to be that law enforcement would have to jump through hoops to get a wiretap approved...a 99.9 per cent approval rate doesn't mean that officers are being real careful about who they want to wiretap and how completely they fill out the forms, it means judges are generally just waving through the applications without thinking twice in most situations.
Of course, you could say that 1 359 wiretaps isn't exactly a mass campaign of spying on American citizens...well, if you forget about Echelon anyway. And we have yet to learn how many were approved in the so-called "spy court."
Posted by steve @ 04:00 PM EST [Link]
~ BUT I THOUGHT ALL THE AMERICANS WANTED WAS AN EMPIRE?: U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld has announced that the United States is pulling up stakes from Saudi Arabia. The U.S. will move air command centre from Saudi Arabia to the al-Udeid air base in neighbouring Qatar and close down its remaining operations at the Prince Sultan base by the end of this summer.
This is pretty big. Though both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia says the move isn't over differences between the two, it's hard to believe that Saudi Arabia's refusal to allow flights into Iraq during the recent war didn't play some role in America's decision.
It's going to have some effect on Saudi Arabia's rulers. Although their people see the Americans as occupiers, Saudi Arabia's royal family saw them as protectors against extremist elements and ultimately the people themselves.
Posted by steve @ 03:36 PM EST [Link]
~ IS IT REALLY A PARODY THOUGH?: The Weekly Standard has a funny parody of a November 11, 1781 copy of the New York Times, errr, sorry Ye Newe York Times, decrying the fact that three weeks after Yorktown, there still was no constitution. Make sure to read who's names are in the bylines.
Posted by steve @ 12:04 AM EST [Link]
Monday, April 28, 2003 HE SHOULD HAVE PUT IT IN THE MAIL, IT WOULD HAVE GOTTEN THERE EVENTUALLY: Brazilian police have announced that a crew member of an Egyptian merchant ship has died in northern Brazil, almost certainly from anthrax, after opening a suitcase suspected of containing the deadly bacteria.
Brazil's Castro said Ibrahim had been given the suitcase in Cairo by an unidentified person and was due to deliver it to somebody in Canada. But he doubted Ibrahim knew what the bag contained, otherwise he most likely would not have opened it.
"He opened it because he was curious," Castro said.
The RCMP says that there is no danger to Canadians and they're probably right. That "somebody" in Canada doubtlessly would have smuggled it across the border into the U.S. with little trouble and God knows what would have happened after that. The only reason it wasn't smuggled across is because one sailor got curious and paid the ultimate price for that curiosity. Yup, no reason for you Yanks to be concerned about cross-border security...
Posted by steve @ 11:52 PM EST [Link]
~ WILSON!: Sorry about the light blogging today. I reserve Monday and Tuesday for myself. ESR isn't my life after all. I read and wrote and decided to watch a DVD that came in the mail today. It's one of my favourites, Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks.
It's a movie that should have ended two minutes earlier than it did -- just before Bettina Peterson (Lari White) rolls up in her pick-up truck to tell Chuck Noland (Hanks) where the highways lead -- but other than that is truly a marvel. It influenced in ways I didn't know back when it came out in 2000. While I wasn't the frenetic clockwatcher that Noland was, I loved keeping busy. If I could do something faster, I used the extra time to do something else. In the end, my life was one giant to-do list.
I began to break that cycle a little over a year ago. I started cutting things out of my life that I didn't need to be doing and I started to spend more of that time on things that really matter. It's not like being on an island in the south Pacific, but it's nice that I smell the roses every now and then. There are more important things than working yourself to death.
At any rate, I bought the 2 disc collectors set so I'm looking forward to all the extras, including a featurette on Wilson and another on how to survive if you find yourself in Chuck Noland's predicament.
Chuck: We live and we die by the clock, that's all we have.
I'm glad he learned he was wrong....
Posted by steve @ 11:44 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT EVERY CONSERVATIVE NEEDS NOW IS A GAY BEST FRIEND: I'm not going to bother commenting on the Santorum brouhaha (god knows how Andrew Sullivan has already beaten that particular controversy into the ground and then proceeded to beat the ground he buried the controversy in), but it's interesting to read this Elizabeth "Noblesse Oblige" Nickson column in the light of recent events. I originally read the thing on Friday and I absolutely loathed it. Now it's been posted onto the web in all its smarmy, condescending glory. It begins with this outlandish opening line, "I have a much greater sense of how difficult it is to come out as a gay man or woman since the United States won the war," and goes straight downhill from there. The title of the column is "Coming Out of the Conservative Closet," but from the message Nickson seems to be sending us (in as far as I can piece together anything coherent from Nickson's ramblings), the column could very well be called,
"I MIGHT BE A CONSERVATIVE, BUT I'M NOT A CRAZY HOMOPHOBIC FREAK."
Fine, whatever. But how are we to explain the clueless self-absorption of paragraphs like this:
In desperation for someone to talk to in the last days of the war, I went to the Fraser Institute's [ed. Canada's equivalent of a right-wing think tank] Annual General Meeting, walked into the hotel ballroom and my jaw actually dropped. Yes, really, dropped. So this is where they've been keeping all the incredibly handsome men in really beautiful suits, I mused. It was a little like a room in heaven that God had made especially for me.
Why do I get the feeling that Nickson has been watching too much Sex and the City? Then we get to read Nickson boasting about how tolerant and open-minded she is:
I wouldn't be your average conservative perhaps. For instance, I think gay men and women make a unique contribution, without which my life and yours would be a lot poorer and plainer....I am intensely curious about races other than mine, have several friends with mixed-race children, had a long affair with an Indian (dot not feather), and consider one of my best new friends a Cowichan tribe activist.
Elizabeth Nickson, COMPASSIONATE conservative! Friend to all creeds, races, and sexual preferences. The fact that you can easily substitute the phrase "gay men and women" in the sentence about unique contributions and replace it with any minority group you can think of (heck, even "white, heterosexual males" will do) and the sentence remains true, no matter what, only points to the intellectual paucity of Nickson's sentiments. It's meaningless feel-good bafflegab, worthy of any bureaucrat in our nation's "Multiculturalism" program. And must Nickson really air all those intimate details from her life in order to prove just what an incredibly nice and generous person Elizabeth Nickson really, really is? It's kind of like listening to someone crow about how much money she gives to charity each year. Personally, if I were Nickson's former East Indian lover or her "best new friend," the Cowichan tribe activist, I'd be a touch annoyed at the fact that my name was being used in a national newspaper for the sole purpose of promoting the greater glory of Elizabeth Nickson. Not "your average conservative" indeed!
In any case, coming out as Christian or conservative is terrifying, as is, I'm certain, coming out as gay. You will be discriminated against. The crimes of the past will be held against you. Your income, unless you stick close to your kin, will be threatened. People will frown when they look at you. People will hate you without knowing you, they will call you names if you say anything, they will send you coruscating hate mail, you will suck it up. This will make you crazy and you will understand extremism because you'll see it in your own soul, called up from the depths by the hatred in which you are held....My gay friend told me Monday that three of his friends told him they were fed up by the left, hated being portrayed as victims by the press, and were turning right. Perhaps they can teach us a little about courage.
And there you have it. Coming out of the closet politically is just as frightening as coming out of the closet sexually. Like homophobes everywhere, those damn rascally liberals will threaten your livelihood, say mean things about you, write you horrible letters, and generally make your life a living hell. For all I know, liberals probably go around beating right-wingers to death, just like homophobes did to Matthew Shepherd. Quite frankly, when something like 30 to 45% of voters out there would describe themselves as conservatives, when the political right has a majority in all branches of government in the United States, and when (pace Nickson) most liberals are manifestly not violent ignorant goons, Nickson's self-serving "poor little me" claims of victimhood are morally sickening. This is a woman, you must remember, who lives on British Columbia's Salt Spring Island (island motto: "Arts, crafts, and culture in a spectacular setting"), the closest equivalent Canada has to Martha's Vineyard. The fact that Nickson can draw a vacuous "Movie of the Week"-style lesson about how poor, suffering gays can teach their fellow poor, suffering conservatives "a little about courage" just shows how devoid of intellectual substance Nickson's moralizing puffery really is.
Now, I absolutely despise homophobia (as Elizabeth Nickson might phrase it, "some of my best friends are gay"), especially if it comes from our so-called "allies" on the religious right. I welcome any call for a reconciliation between conservatives and gays in general. I feel that it is the right thing to do both morally and politically. But Nickson's kind of smug, patronizing condescension with its refrain of "aren't we all victims of hatred here?" is the type of attitude which gives moral pomposity a bad name. Gays are not to be treated a kind of nice accessory to have along to be used to justify the right's sense of moral superiority nor are they to be invoked as fellow victims whenever the right feels the need to rehearse its long history of "suffering" at the hands of the "evil" left. Far better the honestly-expressed fear and loathing of a Rick Santorum or a Family Research Council than the treacly, self-aggrandizing "tolerance" of an Elizabeth Nickson.
Posted by Barton @ 06:34 PM EST [Link]
~ WWGD?: David Lewis Schaefer has an interesting piece up over at National Review Online responding to all of those campus posters that plaintively asked, "What Would Gandhi Do?". The U.S., the posters hinted, should emulate India's greatest man and seek the path of piece with Iraq.
The analogy, it should go without saying, overlooks major differences between the two cases. Whereas the 20th-century British were far too benign an imperial power to choose to slaughter peaceful resisters to their rule, there’s no evidence that Saddam Hussein, already responsible for the massacre and torture of hundreds of thousands of his countrymen (to say nothing of the many more who died in his aggressive wars against Iran and Kuwait) would likewise have succumbed to friendly persuasion — Jacques Chirac to the contrary notwithstanding. (It’s not that we didn’t try!)
I know it's popular to diss Ghandi these days but I always have some affection for unarmed people in the midst of a freedom campaign who stride up to figures of authority and dare them to respond.
Posted by steve @ 02:58 PM EST [Link]
Sunday, April 27, 2003 BUSH MAY HAVE TO BE A WRITE-IN: The Washington Post reports that the late Republican National Convention means that President Bush will be renominated after the deadlines for certifying presidential candidates has passed in several states. This means that Bush could end up being a write-in candidate in Alabama, California, West Virigina and the District of Columbia. Alabama and West Virginia are two states Bush carried last time. California is the biggest state in the nation with 54 electoral votes; a recent poll found Bush beating a generic Democrat there 45 percent to 40 percent.
This item raises just two questions:
1. Might vindictive Democrats, who control all three state legislatures and the D.C. city council, decide not to change their deadlines in order to keep the president's name from appearing on the ballot? In 2000, Bush could not have afforded to lose any of the states he carried.
2. Would really benefit the GOP to have its convention as close as possible to the second anniversary of September 11 if in the process it forces Bush to run as a write-in candidate in three states?
Posted by antle @ 09:17 PM EST [Link]
~ WMDs A RUSE?: Over at his blog TheAgitator.com, Radley Balko has been giving some play to this ABC News story.
Essentially, this report argues that the main reason the United States went to war against Iraq was not weapons of mass destruction but to send a message throughout the Middle East. WMDs were emphasized to gain public support and legal justification for the war. This sounds somewhat similar to the argument Josha Micah Marshall made against neoconservative warhawks in the Washington Monthly not that long ago.
Given the rationale behind my "squishiness" on the Iraq war, I obviously would not have found "message-sending" to be an adequate reason for going to war. I myself had wanted stronger evidence of a concrete threat from Saddam's regime. Balko, one of the more thoughtful Iraq doves, views this report as something approaching vindication of his position. But I don't think this report supports his contention that we were "lied into war."
This report does not state that the WMDs were a ruse. It merely states that they were not the sole war aim. If the Bush administration did in fact believe (a) that Iraq had WMDs and (b) that they were inclined to threaten us with them in some fashion, then the war was not waged on false premises. Anytime an administration argues for a policy that it supports for multiple reasons it is going to emphasize the reasons that it thinks will win the most public support. This is only dishonest if the justification used is fabricated; if it is just a question of emphasis, as this report suggests, then you may not like it, but it isn't the same as lying the country into war.
It is also the case that the Bush administration and the intellectuals who have supported it have always to some extent argued that regime change in Iraq would have positive benefits in itself. These benefits were said to include increasing the freedom of the Iraqi people and making Iraq an example that democracy can work in the Middle East. I am very skeptical of this argument, but it is certainly one that was made before and during the war.
Finally, nobody else to my knowledge has picked up this story and nobody has gone on record making these claims. So the report may not be accurate on its own terms.
I do think our credibility will be hurt if we don't ever find any WMDs. But I think declaring that rationale for the war to be a ruse based on flimsy evidence is premature.
Posted by antle @ 08:31 PM EST [Link]
~ BLACK AND REPUBLICAN: George Will has a terrific column on the rising number of leaders who happen to be black Republicans. From Colin Powell and Condolezza Rice to Michael Steele and Ken Blackwell, a new generation of black officials is not beholden to the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton Democrats. This is good for African-Americans, who have not been well-served by the Democratic stranglehold on their voters, and the GOP, which would benefit immensely from even a relatively modest increase their share of the black vote.
It might be premature to predict major inroads among black voters - after all, Ed Brooke's service in the Senate and Gary Franks and J.C. Watts' service in the House did not lead to any lasting increase in the black Republican vote - but this statewide corps of black elected officials does look promising. If Blackwell, a solid conservative, won 50 percent of the black vote running for reelection as Ohio's secretary of state in 2002, think of the potential for 2006 - when he would make an excellent candidate for governor.
Posted by antle @ 06:05 PM EST [Link]
~ I'D BE WORRIED: The Iran Press Service reports that the Iranian regime is real worried about their people expressing so much support for America.
Iranian officials are worried. Worried of the American presence next to their doors, on the East as well as to the West, worried of the invasion of Iraq "with so little popular resistance", worried of the fast fall of the Baghdad regime, worried of the sidelining of the UN, worried of the total disillusion of the Iranian people that, since the beginning of the Iraqi crisis, has resulted in a fierce pro-Americanism of the population... but, especially, worried of the vox populi, that asks for "a change of the regime with the help of the American marines", the daily "Le Monde" wrote.
Noah Feldman observes in his new book, After Jihad, that Arab/Muslim people's real animous towards the US is because of that country's support of autocratic leaders. The reason why Iranians are so in love with the U.S. is because the West won't deal with Iran's mullahs. The lesson? The U.S. should shift it's policies to only support democratic movements in Muslim nations. Feldman was yesterday named head of the constitutional team with the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) in Iraq. It will be the team's responsibility to oversee and advise on drafting the constitution for a democratic Iraq. After Jihad is a really good book...you'll see my review of it Sunday night midnight (EST).
Posted by steve @ 04:50 AM EST [Link]
~ BUT THE DOVES SAID THERE WAS NO LINK: "Documents discovered in the bombed out headquarters of Iraq's intelligence service provide evidence of a direct link between Saddam Hussein's regime and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network, a newspaper reported Sunday."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:39 AM EST [Link]
Saturday, April 26, 2003 IT'S HARD TO BE A FAMOUS LIBERAL: Marni Soupcoff has a marvelous column in The American Enterprise On-Line dissecting some self-absorbed drivel from Tina Brown.
What drivel? Nonsense such as this: “In Republican America you can speak out against the Government — you just have to be willing to risk a cancellation of your concert dates if you are the Dixie Chicks, or an anniversary screening of Bull Durham at the Baseball Hall of Fame if you are ‘dissenting scum’ like its stars Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon. But you can’t smoke a cigarette with a roof over your head.”
This diatribe is what Charles Bloomer has described in these pages as misunderstanding free speech. Freedom is commensurate with responsiblity. The use of freedom, including the freedom of speech, entails responsibility for the consequences of one's actions. Celebrities are perfectly free to speak their minds about issues that concern them. The rest of us are equally free to decide whether we agree with their views and the manner in which they expressed them. We may also decide to vote with our feet and our pocketbooks by deciding whether we will continue to financially support these celebrities. That's the essence of a marketplace of ideas. (By the way, I think liberals should get most of the blame for the anti-smoking stuff.)
Fortunately, when it comes to the whining of wounded celebrity liberals, Soupcoff and Bloomer will have none of it.
Posted by antle @ 11:32 PM EST [Link]
~ I CAUGHT A FISH, AND YOU WON'T BELIEVE ME, THAT WAS THIS BIG!: It appeared a couple of days ago but I only saw it today but there was a funny little article in the New York Times about the mayor of Mount Sterling who wants to ban lying. Jo Hamlett is tired of hearing the whoppers told over a cold beer by hunters and fishers.
There was the guy who killed a dozen deer with a bow and arrow. A dozen!
Just last week, a couple of hunters trapped a mouse in their cabin so fat its tail weighed three pounds. A three-pound tail!
And then there was the boy who, after a bullet whizzed past his head in a field, traced its path through the fog back to the muzzle of the man who shot at him. "We better put him in the Special Forces," Bob Clayman said this morning, laughing over breakfast with his buddies at A.J.'s Bar & Grill.
Liars, all of them, according to Jo Hamlett, the mayor of this tiny Fox River town just north of the Missouri border, who fills many a day soaking up the stories spun around the long table here at A.J.'s. Tired of the extra-tall tales, and always on the lookout for cash to pave the town's roads, Mr. Hamlett has proposed an ordinance to ban lying here.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:25 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT WE'RE UP AGAINST: Here's a gem from the mail bag. A liberal reader responds to an article of mine, though I'm not really sure which one since he did not specify, with an anti-Bush diatribe that would make Michael Moore blush. Among the arguments in his arsenal was a snippet about Bush having "a condo, a dick and a colon" working for him. This is of course a reference to Condi Rice, Dick Cheney and Colin Powell.
This puerile stuff speaks volumes about the loopiest elements of the left.
Posted by antle @ 03:57 PM EST [Link]
~ DON'T GO AGAINST THE BOSS: "Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld demanded U.S. Army Secretary Tom White step down Friday, a senior Pentagon official said, a move that follows two years of contention between the two."
The move to push White out apparently was over the Crusader artillery system, a program that White supported. I can say quite honestly that everything I've read about the Crusader indicated that it was a piece of garbage. Nice going Rummy.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 05:54 AM EST [Link]
~ BY THE WAY: I apologize for the light posting lately. I have had a busy schedule and have been away for the better part of the last week. But I am chastened by Jeremy Lott's admonition that we shouldn't let Steve do all the work, and I will hopefully pick up the posting pace in the coming days.
Posted by antle @ 12:58 AM EST [Link]
~ MOSES COMES DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN: Via Toogood Reports, here's a story about Charlton Heston retiring as NRA president. He has done much to advance the case for gun rights and help his organization, showing courage and strength even after being afflicted with what is apparently Alzheimer's disease.
Heston deserves a great deal of thanks for what he has done for the cause of liberty.
Posted by antle @ 12:55 AM EST [Link]
~ FREE STATE PROJECT IN THE NEWS: Yahoo! and other news outlets have recently covered the Free State Project, about which I wrote an article in fall 2001. A sure sign that Jason Sorens and company are doing something right is the frenzied reaction from the political class. Generally speaking, if politicians don't like it, it is probably good for liberty.
Posted by antle @ 12:50 AM EST [Link]
Friday, April 25, 2003 THIS SHOULD GARNER SOME SIGNATURES: After the success of their last petition, The Federalist has launched its new petition, one calling for the U.S. to leave the U.N. Affix your e-John Hancock here.
Posted by steve @ 03:30 PM EST [Link]
~ Fragrance-Free Zone. Fellow Americans and Canadians, you will find this ridiculous example of political-correctness run amuck most amusing. This town of wimps is a stone's throw from where I live.
Sure to lift you out of your funk, Steve.
Posted by izzy @ 12:31 PM EST [Link]
~ NOT A DITZY CHICK. Melissa Parham, a Smith College student, paints an unflattering portrait of this exclusive school for the ladies. Er, womyn. Whatever. Read her column here. If Melissa didn't learn to write at Smith, where did she acquire this delicious ability to be so bombastic?
Posted by izzy @ 10:50 AM EST [Link]
~ TODAY, I'VE BEEN STRIPPED OF MY MANHOOD: I shouldn't be writing this post because I think Jeremy Lott is already concerned about me given a recent email exchange we had, but I've been going through some up and down cycles since losing my job a couple of weeks ago. Everytime I hand out resumes or sell an article I go up, every day nothing happens I go down.
A couple of minutes ago something happened. I recieved my first unemployment insurance check.
I have to admit I almost cried and not out of happiness. I've been working since I was 11 years old -- a paperboy job -- I worked graveyard shifts during university to help pay for my classes (it's fun to work until 5:00am and then go to class at 8:00am), I was in the army reserves, I've held desk jobs, construction jobs, outdoor jobs, indoor jobs...jobs all of them. I got paid for working. I was proud of that fact. Other people slacked off but I just kept working. To do anything less was dishonourable as a man. You work. That's our lot in life.
I applied for the unemployment insurance benefits a couple of weeks ago and the first direct deposted check went in early this morning. I have money that I didn't work for. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel at this moment. Relief, I suppose, because I can pay my bills for another week. But sadness too. I'm 31 and unemployed and receiving money for something I didn't do.
I won't be in a good mood when I wake up tomorrow. Why did I post this?
Posted by steve @ 02:31 AM EST [Link]
~ YES, BUT WOULD THEY VOTE FOR HIM?: A new poll shows that George W. Bush leads all others in the homeland of the Democrats, New York state. That includes Sen. Hillary Clinton.
Bush's approval rating among New Yorkers rose to 58 percent from 50 percent in February, before the war in Iraq, according to the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute poll released Thursday. About 91 percent of Republicans polled approved of Bush along with 38 percent of the Democrats.
Wouldn't that be a gas to see Dubya take New York in 2004?
Posted by steve @ 02:23 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, April 24, 2003 DIXIE CHICKS SHOW THEIR IQs AND THEN SOME: I'm not sure why this is necessary or what it is supposed to prove. Warning: Nothing too inappropriate is uncovered, but it may be more of the Dixie Chicks than some would like to see.
Posted by antle @ 07:17 PM EST [Link]
~ NICE PINCH LADS: CNN has just reported that Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein's deputy prime minister, has been captured.
No details but apparently the old boy turned himself in.
Posted by steve @ 06:37 PM EST [Link]
~ LOCKE NOW AT TAC: Columnist Robert Locke, who I find to be an interesting read even when I disagree with him, has moved from FrontPage Magazine to The American Conservative. I had the opportunity to work with Locke in his capacity as associate editor of FrontPage during my couple of contributions to the webzines. I'm not sure when this happened, but I wish him luck and look forward to reading his new articles in TAC.
Posted by antle @ 05:56 PM EST [Link]
~ SPEAKING OF SARS...: Alright, everyone here in Toronto is a huffin' and a puffin' about the fact the World Health Organization, in all its transnational wisdom and glory, decided to put Toronto on its list of no-go SARS hotzones, ranking us with such sanitary wastelands as Beijing and Hong Kong. The travel warning came down yesterday. Today, I just heard that our fair city's Chief Medical Officer has declared the SARS outbreak "contained," which is not something you could say about Beijing and Hong Kong. The Canadian media has been none too subtle in its disgust at the WHO's slur against the place from where most of them are based. But then again, we should not be very surprised at this, given that the world media seems intent on portraying Toronto as "Plaguesville." The local news did a round-up of reaction on American news networks to the WHO's travel warning. May I please ask what idiot writer on Fox News International decided it was appropriate to describe Toronto as a "virtual ghost town?" Who am I going to believe: them or my lying eyes?
Posted by Barton @ 01:16 PM EST [Link]
~ GOOGLE MAKES EVERYTHING EASY: Bruce Rolston asks a question (the link does not seem to be working properly, so check out the "Update" to his entry entitled, "Gone, Gone, Gone, Been Gone So Long"), a little over a hour later, I answer it. The title's a take-off from "My Girl" by Chilliwack. Unfortunately, you won't be drawing any tourist dollars from me. I live in Toronto. Heck, I even work at the exact same place Rolston does (putting up little pieces of paper everywhere telling people possibly infected with SARS to stay far, far away from the university, when they've already made the journey there doesn't seem a very smart policy, does it?). And as for the promised pint, I'd preferred a rich, creamy stout myself to anything from Molson or Labatt (and no, not a Guinness, thank you very much).
Posted by Barton @ 12:38 PM EST [Link]
~
UNRULY RULES. A report about the state of public education from Public Agenda, a non-partisan think tank, reveals that students, especially the high school kind, could use a seminar or two from Miss Manners:
Where We Are Now reveals that more than 4 in 10 teachers say that in their schools, teachers spend more time trying to keep order in the classroom than actually teaching. High school students themselves are concerned about school violence - sizeable numbers report that serious fights happen somewhat regularly (40%) and that there is a serious problem with bullying (32%). Majorities also report that their schools have too much cursing (77%), too many people in the hallways (64%) and too many students who abuse drugs or alcohol (62%). Only about a third say students in their own high school treat each other with respect, and only about 1 in 5 say teachers are treated respectfully by students.
P.S. That's the famed Miss Manners in the photo.
Posted by izzy @ 11:13 AM EST [Link]
~ MAY HE BE FOUND ALIVE: U.S. investigators have found a clue which suggests Capt. Michael Scott Speicher, shot down during the first Gulf War over Iraq, may have been captured alive and held into the mid-1990s.
A team of U.S. specialists looking for Capt. Michael Scott Speicher found what appear to be the initials "M.S.S." scratched into a wall of a cell in the Hakmiyah prison in Baghdad, an official tells CNN.
If the initials are Speicher's, they would indicate he was alive in the mid 1990s, the official said, but investigators have still found nothing that indicates he is alive today.
The importance of the find, according to Pentagon officials, is that it appears to corroborate intelligence from an informer who told the United States Speicher had been held at the prison.
Posted by steve @ 12:48 AM EST [Link]
~ SELF-PROMO ALERT: The Christian Science Monitor has run a review I wrote (different from the one running in ESR this week) about All Day Permanent Red: The First Battle Scenes of Homer's Iliad - Rewritten. In all modesty, I have to say that the one I wrote for the CSM was better though after they finished editting it many of my brilliant observations were removed. Oh well. Read it here.
Posted by steve @ 12:29 AM EST [Link]
Wednesday, April 23, 2003 I'D CALL IT A THOUGHT CODE: The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has filed a suit against Shippensburg University over the school's highly restrictive speech code.
The complaint cites what it alleges is unconstitutionally vague or overly broad language in the schools' racism and cultural diversity policy, which cautions among other things against "unconscious attitudes toward individuals which surface through the use of discriminatory semantics."
Given I was in university only a few years ago, I can just imagine the type of clods that came up with that line. "Unconscious attitudes"? Even thinking unpopular thoughts is verbotten?
Posted by steve @ 09:31 PM EST [Link]
~ TIME FOR SOME NUKE MAKING: Los Alamos National Laboratory yesterday announced that it has made its first plutonium pit, the little bit in a nuclear warhead that makes things go boom, in 14 years.
It's the opening trickle in what is scheduled to eventually become a torrent of new nuclear cores. For the next four years, Los Alamos will make about a half-dozen pits per year. After that, capacity will ramp up to 10 pits per year -- and then to as many as 500 new pits annually, as the new U.S. Modern Pit Facility comes online in 2018.
Not all are impressed, however. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 07:28 PM EST [Link]
~ LE DUH....: It would appear that some French are beginning to reconsider whether opposing the American led war against Iraq was a good idea. What changed them? The scenes of jubiliation after the Americans arrived in Baghdad.
''I still think it was right of [French President Jacques] Chirac to say no to the war,'' says the Paris secretary. ''But when I saw how happy the Iraqis were . . . I had to ask myself whether we didn't perhaps make a mistake.''
This sentiment reflects a growing uneasiness in France about Chirac's fierce opposition to the American-led campaign. Until a week ago, finding anyone here who disagreed with the government on the war was as likely as discovering oil in Paris.
But since the symbolic fall of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and scenes of cheering Iraqis, signs have emerged that the antiwar sentiment is softening.
''Chirac was wrong to say no to the war,'' says bartender Georges Chabat. ''The Iraqi people wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein.''
''Since they saw the rapid fall of Saddam's empire, the French are asking themselves if they hadn't perhaps been wrong in making themselves irrelevant to the course of history,'' says Dominique Moisi of the French Institute of International Relations.
Ma'am, France has been irrelevant to the course of history since the late 1800s. Now if only the French would see that.
Posted by steve @ 07:24 PM EST [Link]
~ DID THEY MISS THAT BIT ABOUT "AXIS OF EVIL": It would appear that Iran hasn't learned the ramifications of what happens when you are labelled a member of the Axis of Evil. You get bombed and your regime is overthrown.
The White House today warned Iran not to meddle in the affairs of Iraq after reports that Iranian agents are going to Iraq. Do they think they'd last longer than Iraq?
Posted by steve @ 03:58 PM EST [Link]
~ IRAQ'S PAST: Mark Steyn has a typically good column on the looting of Baghdad's cultural past.
The National Museum fell victim not to general looting but to a heist, if not an inside job, for which the general lawlessness provided cover. Am I sorry it happened? Yes, because it has given the naysayers, who were wrong about the millions of dead civilians, humanitarian catastrophe, environmental devastation, regional conflagration, etc., one solitary surviving itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny twig from their petrified forest with which to whack Rumsfeld and Co. The retrospective armchair generals are now complaining the generals didn't devote enough thought to saving armchairs from the early Calcholithic age. It isn't enough for America to kill hardly any civilians or even terribly many enemy combatants or bomb any buildings or unduly disrupt the water or electric supply, it also has to protect Iraq's heritage from Iraqis.
Posted by steve @ 03:55 PM EST [Link]
~ SHAKING DOWN A DICTATOR?: The Daily Telegraph reports that British Labour MP George Galloway -- whom you'll remember we talked about yesterday -- asked Saddam Hussein for more money to represent for the Iraqis but that the dictator refused, stating he couldn't afford it.
"The letter from Saddam's most senior aide was sent in response to Mr Galloway's reported demand for additional funds. This was outlined in a memorandum from the Iraqi intelligence chief disclosed yesterday in The Daily Telegraph."
Again, if this is true I can't see why treason charges won't be forthcoming. That and one hour alone with some Royal Marines just out of Basra...
Posted by steve @ 12:33 PM EST [Link]
Tuesday, April 22, 2003 I HATE SCREWING UP: I failed to post Jackson Murphy's latest article on Monday...allow me to call notice to it right now. It's about the significance of the looting of the Iraqi National Museum. You can find it here.
Posted by steve @ 07:43 PM EST [Link]
~ TRAITOR?: By now you've doubtless heard that British Labour MP George Galloway may have received between 10 to 15 cents for each barrel of Iraqi oil under the Oil for Food program for allegedly promoting Saddam Hussein's line in Britain. Galloway has been a constant thorn in the side for Prime Minister Tony Blair, criticizing nearly aspect of British foreign policy for years.
In case you missed it, here at the documents British journalists found in Baghdad that allegedly prove Galloway taking money from the Iraqi government while here is Galloway's statement of denial and his vow to sue the Telegraph.
If you read his statement, you find a denial of Clintonian proportions. He doesn't outright deny he received about $800 000 a year, he says "To the best of my knowledge, I have never met an officer of the Iraqi intelligence."
If this is true, Galloway should be tried for treason. He accepted money from an enemy nation and defended it while British soldiers were dying in Basra. It doesn't get any more clear cut then that.
Posted by steve @ 05:37 PM EST [Link]
~ TEKNICKAL MALFUNKSHON: ESR may go up and down over the next bit as Interland, the host service who bought up HostPro -- our original hosting service, moves all of its servers into a central location. Just figured you'd want to know that we aren't gone for good if you can't access the wit and wisdom that makes up Enter Stage Right.
Posted by steve @ 04:37 PM EST [Link]
~ AL-QAIDA DEAD? NOT QUITE: U.S. intelligence agencies have confirmed that a number of terrorist plots, including some from our old friends al-Qaida, aimed at U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf have been busted up in recent weeks.
"There were a number of disruptions to terrorist efforts around the world over the last month or so," a U.S. intelligence official told UPI, adding that some of the efforts were by al-Qaida operatives.
"Rolled up is probably too precise a phrase," the official, who requested anonymity, went on, "If you think of it as someone snuffing out a burning fuse, that's not the case, but people who were planning bad things have ended up getting deported or arrested or detained."
Posted by steve @ 04:32 PM EST [Link]
~ YOU DON'T HAVE ALL DAY: Michael Leeden argues that the United States doesn't have a very big window of time in order to get Iraq's Shiite community on side. If they don't Iraq may well become an Islamist nation regardless...
We have a very narrow window in Iraq to win the support of the Shiite community, which constitutes a majority of the Iraqi people. If we do not manage that in the next month or two, the radical Iranian regime will almost certainly succeed in its ambitious and, thus far, brilliantly managed campaign to mobilize the Iraqi Shiites to discredit the Coalition victory, demand an immediate American withdrawal, and insist on “international” — that is, U.N. and European — supervision of the country. That would leave Iran with a free hand in Iraq, strengthen the regime in Tehran to our detriment, and give a second wind to the terror network. Our victory, as the old saying goes, would turn to ashes in our mouths.
Posted by steve @ 02:47 PM EST [Link]
~ JUST IN TIME FOR LENIN'S BIRTHDAY...I MEAN EARTH DAY: Mark Steyn reprints one of his columns from last year about Earth Day. He warns us, unless we humans change our ways, the Earth is only going to continue to be better off.
Ah, yes. The end of the world's nighness is endlessly deferred but the blame rests where it always has. With us -- with what the UN calls "the current 'markets first' approach." Klaus Toepfer, the UN Environment Program executive director, believes that "under the 'markets first' scenario the environment and humans did not fare well."
Really? The "markets first" approach was notable by its absence in, say, Eastern Europe, where government regulation of every single aspect of life resulted in environmental devastation beyond the wildest fantasies of the sinister Bush-Cheney-Enron axis of excess. Fortunately in Communist Romania there was very little clear-cut logging because Ceausescu had the tree. But in Iraq, the report points out, 30% of arable land has had to be abandoned because of bad irrigation practices. Those crazy speculators on the Baghdad Stock Exchange with their Thatcherite economics will kill you every time, eh?
But what's this? "In richer countries water and air pollution is down, species have been restored to the wild, and forests are increasing in size." So the environment's better in rich countries? Rich countries with ... market economies?
Posted by steve @ 02:20 AM EST [Link]
Monday, April 21, 2003 I THINK THE SENTENCE WAS FAIR: West Virginia's Supreme Court today threw out a prison sentence of at least 1 140 years for a man convicted of sexually assaulting a 7-year-old girl.
"The man, identified by the court only as 'David D.W.,' was convicted in 2000 of multiple counts of sexual assault and sexual abuse. Circuit Judge Charles McCarty set most of the prison terms to run consecutively, resulting in a sentence of 1,140 to 2,660 years."
152 counts related to sexually assaulting a child? 1 140 years sounds pretty generous considering what could happen to him.
Posted by steve @ 06:15 PM EST [Link]
~ HE WON'T LOSE HIS JOB THOUGH: A Canadian health worker may have put hundreds of people at risk at being infected with SARS after he refused to be voluntarily quarantined and became "obnoxious" and "threatening" when questioned.
"The man, whose name officials did not disclose, should not have attended a funeral or church services over the Easter weekend, Dr. Hanif Kassam, medical officer of health for the region of York, just north of Toronto, told a news conference."
This raises some interesting questions...one, will he lose his job as a health care worker for deliberately putting the public at risk? Of course not, the union will argue that he only care about health care while he's being paid to worry about it. Two, what quality of health care does this man provide when he's on the job? I'm sure the union will argue he did his job as well as anyone else does.
Posted by steve @ 06:00 PM EST [Link]
~ NOT AGAIN: After today I am placing a ban on reports on this blog about finds of "suspicious chemicals" in Iraq. Once again, American weapons experts -- thanks to an Iraq scientists -- have found ingredients and equipment that can be used to make a chemical weapon.
"The military officials, involved in the weapons hunt and based at Camp Doha in Kuwait, refused to name the scientist or identify the material which had been buried in the ground. Many chemical weapons ingredients have non-military purposes and officials cautioned that the findings, which are being analyzed, do not confirm the presence of chemical weapons at this particular site."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 05:27 PM EST [Link]
~ HOW DOES THE KOOL-AID TASTE?: The New York Times had an interesting story yesterday about the newest cult they've discovered -- meanwhile the rest of us knew about them three years ago -- TiVo owners.
If your not familiar with the TiVo, or its sister product Replay, it's essentially a hopped up VCR with a hard drive. Instead of recording television onto a tape, you save it to a hard drive. You can time shift your television watching, pause live television, ask it to record every instance of a program throughout the season, skip through commercials...in order words, it's a marvel that changes the way you watch television.
And not for the better.
Now here's where the TiVo owners try and Jim Jones me. They argue that you can watch television more efficiently. A 30 minute sitcom? Try 22 minutes after you blast through the commercials. Want to make sure that you catch every new episode of your favourite program and then watch them when you want? Easy as pie. Fight the power and watch TV when you want!
All true. Except there's a word that keeps popping up everytime I write about TiVo. It's the word "television." Now I know I'm a print and online writer so you might think I have this highbrow bias against television. You're right, I do. Instead of watching television last week (outside of hockey coverage) I read four books. I wrote. I played with my niece. I cooked a meal. I kissed someone. I had random original thoughts pass through my head which I wrote down for future reference. I planned my immediate future.
These are things I wouldn't have done even if I had "efficiently" watched more television. Note what I said, "more television." It turns out that TiVo owners not only watch television efficiently, they watch more television. They save a penny and spend a dollar. Here's an interesting tidbit from the story:
But how successful a racket is it, considering that TiVo owners watch more TV, spend more money and give up more details of their private lives to companies than those without TiVo? It's not a question TiVo users are quick to posit themselves, but in the brief blips between reruns of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," at least some can spot the paradox.
Mr. Hawkins, the technology consultant, remains a TiVo evangelist, but his devotion is not entirely blind. "The freedom that Tivo allows you may be a bit more fleeting when you find yourself glued to the TV for 12 hours straight watching a `Saved by the Bell'-`Fresh Prince of Bel Air' marathon," he said.
I can appreciate why people are such fans of this device. It's the same reason why I fell in love with my PDA a couple of years ago. It does something that markedly changes the way you do things. I'm as much as a technofan as the rest -- I haven't missed an issue of Wired in years and I love drooling at stuff at Gizmodo -- but at some point you have to look at the technology and really ask yourself: Is it helping or hindering? If you love television you'll love the TiVo. If you love television you may be missing out on something else in life. Turn off the television and kiss the person you love. Now that's entertainment.
Posted by steve @ 03:53 PM EST [Link]
~ ALL OR NOTHING: Great post over at Peeve Farm about why no one asks the question "Why do they hate us?" anymore, bring Afghanistan into the modern world and other stuff.
Posted by steve @ 05:23 AM EST [Link]
Sunday, April 20, 2003 THE FIRST MUSLIM SECRETARY OF STATE?: New York Metro has a good story on Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria.
"Would he want the job? Before he can answer, Mort Zuckerman, who’s been having lunch with Ed Kosner, the editor of Zuckerman’s Daily News, heaves into view. Zuckerman praises the young man genuinely, then moves on. But a few feet away, at the top of the restaurant’s stairs, the real-estate developer and media dabbler stops to examine a blowup of the cover of Cosmopolitan, directing guests to an advertiser’s lunch in the Pool Room next door. Zuckerman considers the voluptuous model who seems to be staring at Zakaria with a smoldering look, then delivers his punch line: 'This guy’s so hot even the cover girl wants to meet him.'"
Actually, everyone says that about me...well, okay...they don't.
Posted by steve @ 11:02 PM EST [Link]
~ AS MUCH AS I HATE CARL EVERETT: But there has to be a line. Texas Rangers OF Carl Everett was hit by a fan's cell phone earlier tonight. My cell phone cost an ungodly amount of money, being the trendy idiot that I am, so whoever threw it must be fanatic.
"Luckily I was wearing a hat," Everett said. "If it wasn't for the hat, I'd be cut back there. That fan should be ashamed of himself."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:45 AM EST [Link]
~ LIES LIES LIES: Since no one else is posting anything...a good blog entry by Steven Ben Deste about our lying European allies.
Posted by steve @ 03:24 AM EST [Link]
Friday, April 18, 2003 ED SPEAKS: (Heads up thanks to Steve Lendt) The most preeminent talking head has spoken. That's right, Ed the Sock says he's really angry at anti-war activists.
"Those of us who supported the war had said this all along, and shrill voices on the left told us we were inhumane and insensitive. Well, the Iraqi people have borne us out. Why don’t you hop on a plane to Baghdad and lecture them on how wrong they are? Maybe hold a concert and candle-lighting vigil in the city square and inform the dancing Iraqis that they’re miserable?
"If I sound uncharacteristically angry, it’s because I am. I don’t like being labeled as immoral, bloodthirsty and insensitive to the suffering of others because my opinion is different than yours on this war."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 06:42 PM EST [Link]
~ SELF-PROMO ALERT: I have a piece in today's Vancouver Province about the case of "Nancy", an Iranian woman who will be deported back to her native land because the federal government believes she faces no danger back home. Nancy is a convert to Christianity, something punishable by death in Iran. In any case, she's already been mistreated before fleeing to Canada.
I juxtapose her case with that of holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, currently fighting to avoid deportation to Germany.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:02 PM EST [Link]
~ RESISTING POLITICAL CORRECTNESS can get you assaulted. Another report from the Rome of the Left. This time the star of the story isn't the American flag or a Marine. Nope. It's a pretty co-ed.
Posted by izzy @ 02:49 PM EST [Link]
~ TOO BAD, THEY COULD HAVE BROUGHT HIM TO LAS VEGAS: The Sun reports that Iraqi "Information Minister" Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf killed himself.
"Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, who entertained millions with ridiculous claims of Iraqi victories, is said to have hanged himself as US troops stormed into Baghdad last week."
Pity...think of the money he could have made being an opening act for Paul Anka...
Posted by steve @ 04:49 AM EST [Link]
~ HOW CAN YOU NOT HATE THE LEFT?: Matt Welch takes on a lefty who decides to decry human rights abuses in Cuba by comparing that country to the United States.
What the hell? You can’t even condemn a wretched dictator without comparing him, inaccurately, to the non-dictator John Ashcroft? You can’t condemn Cuba’s illegal, arbitrarily enforced police-state laws without comparing them to the not-remotely-as-horrible PATRIOT Act? And why on earth would you be “sorry” that news of atrocities were emanating from Havana (which is run by a murderous totalitarian) as opposed to Guantanamo, which is run by the U.S. government? I’m sorry, the dictatorship is worse than the democracy I live in … huh?
My family came from a communist tyranny, one where my grandfather -- after he left for Canada -- could never visit the family he knew that wasn't slaughtered during WWII because he would have been put up against a wall for refusing to be a communist. I suspect Marc Cooper has never known that fear.
Posted by steve @ 04:43 AM EST [Link]
~ MICHAEL KELLY'S LAST COLUMN: Enough said. Read on. God rest your soul Michael.
I'll just say this....*$%^ing brilliant as always. I already miss him.
Posted by steve @ 04:25 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, April 17, 2003 ANATOMY OF THE IRAQ WAR: Victor Davis Hanson writes today that the quick victory in Iraq was simply because the U.S. was so capable, more so than that the Iraqi army just plain sucked.
"A fair historical assessment will soon emerge that attributes our victory not to Iraqi weaknesses per se. Rather it was the American ability on the ground and air in a matter of hours to decapitate the command-and-control apparatus of the Baathist regime that alone allowed bridges, oil wells, power plants, and harbors to be saved, and chemical weapons not to be used.
"There were a number of inherent — indeed deadly — risks in the operation. Much is made of having few troops on the ground. But a greater worry was the need to deploy from the rather narrow staging area in Kuwait, once access was denied in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Assembling 300,000-400,000 ground-combat troops in such a small area over such a long period of time in essence would have left half the available aggregate land forces of the United States vulnerable in a few thousand square acres to missile or chemical attacks. And such a Gulf War I-type mobilization — given the deep cuts of the 1990s — would have left the U.S. army scarcely able to have met a sudden attack from North Korea."
Posted by steve @ 12:12 PM EST [Link]
~ THAT WOULD EXPLAIN A FEW THINGS: A colonel in the Republican Guard says most of his men fled as Americans approached Baghdad.
"Demoralised soldiers from Iraq's Republican Guard thought Saddam Hussein was 'mad' and deserted en masse before the first American tanks rolled into Baghdad, according to a colonel in the supposedly elite force.
"Speaking in the shabby family quarters given to Republican Guard officers in Baghdad, Col A T Said explained how the units that Saddam relied on most never had any intention of fighting for his regime."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:59 AM EST [Link]
~ WHY DUBA REALLY CANCELLED HIS TRIP TO CANADA: It's because we didn't support the U.S. on Iraq.
"And Paul Cellucci said Washington's coalition partners will be the first to be consulted on rebuilding a postwar Iraq. Bush was have visited Ottawa on May 5, but cancelled citing the pressures of dealing with the Iraq situation. Just a day after Prime Minister Jean Chretien confirmed the trip was off, Bush announced plans to host Australia's prime minister at his Texas ranch on May 2."
I don't blame him.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:52 AM EST [Link]
~ IS ADDICTION A DISEASE OR A CHOICE?: That's the question the newest John Stossel special on ABC aims to answer. If you've ever watched a Stossel special before, you know he's great. Here's some from the press release:
"Watching television, one might think the whole country is addicted to something: drugs, food, gambling - even sex or shopping. Stanton Peele, author of The Diseasing of America, says, "The United States has elevated addiction to a national icon. It's our symbol, it's our excuse." In his newest special "Help Me, I Can't Help Myself," ABC News Correspondent John Stossel reports on conflicting views about addiction and popular treatments and asks: is addiction really a choice? The ABC News special airs on MONDAY, APRIL 21, (8:00 - 9:00 p.m. ET) on the ABC Television Network.
Stossel interviews Sue Silverman, a self-professed sex addict. "It was such a compulsion that I felt I had to do it over and over and over again." She went to 10 therapists and not one told her to stop having sex, or that it was her fault. Silverman wrote a book about her experience titled Love Sick in which she says TV talk shows loved the idea of sex as an addiction."
Click on "More" to read the rest
[more]Posted by steve @ 02:48 AM EST [Link]
Wednesday, April 16, 2003 AH, COME ON...IT'S FUNNY: Jesse Walker reports that Charleston Post and Courier fell for the "Heywood Jablome" gag. Don't know what it is? Read on.
It's childish but I have to admit I laughed outloud.
Posted by steve @ 07:29 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT? NO ONE REPORTS THIS?: U.S. Marines worked three days to batter a building down in Baghdad this week, not to destroy it but to reach underground bunkers.
"The Marines found 123 prisoners, including five women, barely alive in an underground warren of cells and torture chambers."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:56 PM EST [Link]
~ SPEAKING OF BEING SCARED: America's victory has spooked Russia, who saw Iraq's army as a clone of its own. As you may remember in this space, several retired Russian generals visited Iraq just before the war and predicted good things for Saddam Hussein.
They were obviously wrong. Very wrong. Given that the Russian military would likely fight in the same manner as the Iraqi military -- albeit somewhat better armed -- it's clear that these days the Russian army doesn't pose much of a threat to anyone moderately skilled at warfare.
"Like its Soviet prototype, Iraq's Army was huge but made up mainly of young, poorly trained conscripts. Its battle tactics called for broad frontal warfare, with massed armor and artillery, and a highly centralized command structure. But those forces were trounced in a few days by relatively small numbers of US and British forces, who punched holes in the Iraqi front using precision weapons and seized the country's power centers more rapidly than traditional military thinkers could have imagined.
"'The military paradigm has changed, and luckily we didn't have to learn that lesson firsthand,' says Yevgeny Pashentsev, author of a book on Russian military reform. 'The Americans have rewritten the textbook, and every country had better take note.'"
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:52 PM EST [Link]
~ THINGS HAVE CERTAINLY CHANGED: Daniel Pipes has an interesting little essay in the New York Post about how American victories in Afghanistan and Iraq have completely changed the face of warfare. It means uncomfortable realities for other people.
"In both the Afghanistan war of 2001 and the Iraq one now concluding, traditional features of warfare have been turned upside-down. But it's not just an American phenomenon; the same rewriting also applies in Israel's war against the Palestinians."
I wonder if a certain Asian country named North Korea also came to the same realization. That would explain why they're suddenly very eager to talk to the U.S. rather than rattle their sabre over their nuclear weapons program.
Posted by steve @ 03:43 PM EST [Link]
~ SO WHERE IS SALAM PAX?: (Via Instapundit) The entire blogosphere is wondering that. Salam Pax, in case you don't know, was the blog name de guerre of a chap named Raed who said he lived in Iraq. During the war, until late March, he blogged his observations of the final days of the Iraqi regime, the attacks on Baghdad and what the country was going through. Then he disappeared. Poof. Nothing had been heard from him since March 24.
A lot of people are worried and justifiably so. Raed could have been picked up by Saddam Hussein's intelligence service or police and simply disappeared.
But there was always some questions about him. Was he real? Was he a U.S. government propaganda project?
Musings favourite Steve Den Beste ponders the question about whether Raed is the same Raed who was arrested in New York last month for aiding Iraqi intelligence agents in the U.S. Paul Boutin responds and says that it's not likely they are the same person but nothing can be ruled out at this point.
Posted by steve @ 03:37 PM EST [Link]
~ THE HARD WORK OF BEING A DISSIDENT in the Rome of the Left.
Posted by izzy @ 02:34 PM EST [Link]
~ MORE ABOUT HOW CNN REPORTS THE NEWS: Former CNN reporter Peter Collins tells about his experiences in Iraq during the early 1990s in the Washington Times.
"... I was on the roof of the Ministry of Information, preparing for my first 'live shot' on CNN. A producer came up and handed me a sheet of paper with handwritten notes. 'Tom Johnson wants you to read this on camera,' he said. I glanced at the paper. It was an item-by-item summary of points made by Information Minister Latif Jassim in an interview that morning with [CNN President Tom Johnson] Mr. Johnson and [Eason Jordan] Mr. Jordan.
"The list was so long that there was no time during the live shot to provide context. I read the information minister's points verbatim. Moments later, I was downstairs in the newsroom on the first floor of the Information Ministry. Mr. Johnson approached, having seen my performance on a TV monitor. 'You were a bit flat there, Peter,' he said. Again, I was astonished. The president of CNN was telling me I seemed less-than-enthusiastic reading Saddam Hussein's propaganda."
The more stuff that comes out, the more CNN's already tarnished image takes a blow. And yet the network has yet to do a story on it...
Posted by steve @ 05:16 AM EST [Link]
~ COWARD IS THE WORD I'D USE: Scrappleface has a funny story about Abu Abbas, the terrorist captured in Iraq yesterday.
"Muhammad 'Abu' Abbas, who in 1985 took over an unarmed pleasure boat and ordered the shooting of a handcapped man in a wheelchair, said today he is thrilled with headlines calling him the 'mastermind' of the Achille Lauro hijacking."
Posted by steve @ 02:24 AM EST [Link]
~ LIGHTNING DOES STRIKE TWICE: Scene 2002: Kansas City Royals visit Chicago White Sox. During game, clod father and son attack Royals coach Tom Gamboa.
Scene 2003: Kansas City Royals visit Chicago White Sox. During game, clod fan attacks first base umpire.
"Laz Diaz was attacked by a fan who came out of the stands in an eerie reminder of what happened near the same spot last season at Comiskey Park."
Fortunately Diaz, a former member of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, wasn't hurt and took care of himself...or rather took care of the clod fan.
Something about Comiskey we need to know about? Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:18 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, April 15, 2003 THIS IS GOOD NEWS: The buried labs U.S. troops found last week were not the mobile chemical and biological weapons labs one U.S. Army general suspected, according to the head of an expert team brought in to examine them.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 06:42 PM EST [Link]
~ SERIOUSLY, THERE ARE NO TERRORISTS IN IRAQ: U.S. military personnel in Iraq have arrested Abu Abbas, the Palestinian terrorist who masterminded the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean Sea.
"The hijacking of the ship led to the killing of disabled passenger Leon Klinghoffer, an American Jew. Klinghoffer was shot in his wheelchair and thrown overboard by Abbas' men."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 06:38 PM EST [Link]
~ ASSASSIN HAS THE RIGHT TO TRY AGAIN: (Courtesy of Steve Lendt) Tolerance was the key in the sentencing of the first assassination in the Netherlands since WW2, but not likely the same kind of tolerance the assassin had for Pim Fortuyn's political statements on unrestricted and unregulated immigration. Don't worry, the presiding judge tells us, the environmental nutcase will get a chance to learn how to express his views more sanely. I wonder, how can a murderer carry out a crime "at close range and with deadly precision" and still be considered to have a small "chance of repetition?" Only a euro-judge can hold such fuzzy logic.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 06:12 PM EST [Link]
~ LOVE SHA-A-ACK BABY!: Love and Casino War has a funny parody of the B-52s song "Love Shack" featuring Saddam's swinging bachelor pad that coalition forces discovered a few days ago.
"Everybody's fightin', everybody's lightin' baby
Folks linin' up outside to hit the hookah
Everybody's jammin', Iraqi body be slammin' baby
Funky Saddam's shack, funky Saddam's shack!"Hmmm, reminds me of a party I went to in high school...
Posted by steve @ 03:37 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON AT COLUMBIA?: First Nicholas De Genova and now Edward Said. Tomorrow, Columbia University will celebrate the 25th anniversary of Said's Orientalism. Said, of course, is a professor there and a leading shill for the Palestinians.
"Why would it do this?
"Because Said, although not himself a specialist on the Middle East, has laid down the rules on how the region is studied at his university (and on many other campuses too). His radical leftism, his apologetics for militant Islam, and his advocacy of Palestinian violence have become the norm. So paramount are his ideas at Columbia that an endowed chair has been named after him, virtually canonizing his views."
At this point I wonder if it worth sending my future children to university or college...
Posted by steve @ 03:31 PM EST [Link]
~ LUCKY I'M UNEMPLOYED AND DON'T PAY TAXES: (Via Colby Cosh) Because I'd be plenty angry right about now. The Correctional Service of Canada, which believes in sending cop killers to medium security prisons, has produced a cartoon for children who's fathers are in prison.
I knew the police officer I referenced above, Cst. Joe MacDonald, and I doubt that the two men who murdered him as he pleaded for his life were like Paul's father.
Posted by steve @ 03:26 PM EST [Link]
~ EASON JORDAN RESPONDS: Under fire for his recent editorial in the New York Times about what CNN didn't report during the Saddam Hussein years, CNN executive news chief Eason Jordan has written Media Log to defend himself.
"Some critics complain that the op-ed piece proves CNN withheld vital information from the public and kowtowed to the Saddam Hussein regime to maintain a CNN reporting presence in Iraq. That is nonsense. No news organization in the world had a more contentious relationship with the Iraqi regime than CNN. The Iraqi leadership was so displeased with CNN's Iraq reporting, CNN was expelled from Iraq six times -- five times in previous years and one more time on day three of this Iraq war. Those expulsions lasted as long as six months at a time. CNN's Baghdad bureau chief, Jane Arraf, was banned from the country in response to her reporting on an unprecedented public protest demanding to know what happened to Iraqis who vanished years earlier after being abducted by Iraqi secret police. Christiane Amanpour, Wolf Blitzer, Aaron Brown, Brent Sadler, Nic Robertson, Rym Brahimi, Sheila MacVicar, Ben Wedeman, and Richard Roth were among the other CNN correspondents and anchors banned from Iraq. If CNN were trying to kowtow and maintain its Baghdad presence at any cost, would CNN's reporting have produced a contentious relationship, expulsions, and bannings? No. CNN kept pushing for access in Iraq, while never compromising its journalistic standards in doing so. Withholding information that would get innocent people killed was the right thing to do, not a journalistic sin."
I can sympathize (and believe) Jordan's contention that releasing some information would have led to the imminent deaths of Iraqis. Journalists are sometimes faced with ethical issues that "civilians" never have to consider -- sometimes issues that involve life and death. It's one thing, let's say, to destroy a politician's career because you reported some malfeasance they committed and another thing to report a story that will led to someone's death. Things are rarely cut and dried at that philosophical level.
That said, the blogosphere has exploded about this admission by Jordan. Matt Layne declared all news bureaus in totalitarian nations as "propaganda huts" and that CNN is generally reduced to covering stories which make everybody but a regime in power look bad. People have argued that CNN's coverage of Cuba is monsterously disgusting -- how much reporting did you see about the recent round-ups of dissidents in that country on CNN? -- and it appears that it may be a pattern with its reporting in Iraq merely the latest example.
It's a complex issue but the more that Jordan talks the less I trust CNN's reporting. And considering where I started from, that ain't saying much.
Posted by steve @ 03:15 PM EST [Link]
~ THEY ALSO JOINED UP IN BIG NUMBERS AFTER "TOP GUN" WAS RELEASED: Besides liberating Iraq and stopping Saddam Hussein's mad rush to WMD hell, the war apparently is encouraging Americans to sign up to join the military.
It's not the numbers that are impressive, say recruiters, but the attitudes of the applicants.
"The reason they are coming in to join has changed from wanting adventure or money to wanting to go over and kick butt," said Sgt. Philip Hilton, an Army field recruiter in Kansas City, Kan. "They have more direction. They are more dedicated to what they want to do and want to help out a cause."
The bad news is that the various branches of the military are all meeting their enlistment quotas and don't need any extra soldiers. Still, it's nice to know that people are eager to serve their nation.
Posted by steve @ 04:47 AM EST [Link]
~ THE MEDIA AND IRAQ: Victor Davis Hanson had a good piece in yesterday's NRO discussing his take on the media's performance during the Iraq war.
Although Dan Rather was on CNN tonight and said he believed he and CBS did a good job covering the war, Hanson has some different thoughts.
"All this was lost on our journalistic elite, who like Athenians of old wished to find scapegoats in the midst of undreamed good news. Dan Rather, for example, finished one of his broadcasts from liberated Baghdad with an incredible 'before' and 'after' footage of his entry that should rank as one of the most absurd pieces of the entire war coverage. Tape rolled of his initial drive a few weeks ago to Saddam’s HQ, when the roads were once safe from banditry and free of destruction. Then in glum tones he chronicled his harrowing current arrival into Baghdad amid craters and gunfire.
"Mr. Rather — so unlike a Michael Kelly or David Bloom — forgot that he was now motoring right smack into a war zone. And he seemed oblivious that just a few weeks ago he had just conducted a scripted and choreographed interview with a mass murderer. Consider the sheer historical ignorance of it all: Was Berlin a nicer place in 1939 or 1946? And why and for whom?"
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:41 AM EST [Link]
Monday, April 14, 2003 ISRAEL AMAZED AT AMERICAN VICTORY: (Via Brothers Judd Blog) Our friends in Israel are astounded by the overwhelming victory by the coalition forces against Iraq. Really astounded.
"'I am jealous of them [U.S. military],' Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, head of the Israel military's C4 directorate, said. 'They have advanced in areas that we were leading in only a few years ago. They have the ability to put everything together in command and control. Our navy and air force have systems. But we have to integrate them.'
"Officials and military commanders agreed that the U.S. war in Iraq overshadowed the 1967 Israeli victory over four Arab countries, including Iraq. They said the United States sustained about 100 casualties in three weeks of fighting that resulted in the capture of Baghdad and most Iraqi cities. In contrast, about 600 Israeli soldiers were killed in the six days of the 1967 war, most of them in the ground battle with Egypt in the Sinai Peninsula."
I remember stating this some months ago in this blog and in conversations with doubters that no one truly understands the overwhelming power of the American military machine. Outside of Great Britain -- and their size and lack of comparable resources holds them back -- there is no nation on the planet which could be considered a credible threat in the military sense.
Posted by steve @ 11:20 PM EST [Link]
~ THIS WOULD BE BIG NEWS: Australian PM John Howard says he wants France removed from the UN Security Council.
"He wants Japan, a South American country and India to be represented on the Security Council. France was there only because it was a global power at the end of World War II, he said."
One can only hope that this one day comes true. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 06:34 PM EST [Link]
~ BUT HANS BLIX NEVER FOUND THESE EITHER: So therefore they don't actually exist. American soldiers have found 11 mobile laboratories buried south of Baghdad that are capable of biological and chemical uses.
"There were no chemical or biological weapons with the containerized labs, which measure 20 feet square. But soldiers recovered 'about 1,000 pounds' of documents from inside the labs, and the United States will examine those papers further, said Brig. Gen. Benjamin Freakley of the Army's 101st Airborne Division."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:42 PM EST [Link]
~ YOU'D EXPECT BETTER FROM A PROFESSOR: The Chronicle of Higher Education interviews Columbia University professor Nicholas De Genova -- he of the "a million Mogadishus" fame -- and the man comes across as a total moron.
I used to have a deep respect for professors because I wanted to be one. I was in awe of the knowledge they had command of until I was working on my thesis. One day I made an off-hand remark to one of my advisors and he responded that while profs were smart, the vast majority were only capable in the narrow field they specialized in. With that balloon punctured I began to notice exactly how dumb a majority of these intelligent people really were.
Nicholas De Genova reminds me of them.
Posted by steve @ 03:35 PM EST [Link]
~ FREE SPEECH IGNORANCE
The following short segment from The Washington Times, Sunday 4/13, just reinforces the point about the gross misunderstanding of freedom of speech I make in my column this week on ESR's main page.
Actor says snub violates his freedom
LOS ANGELES — Actor Tim Robbins lashed out at the Baseball Hall of Fame on Friday for scrapping a screening of one of his movies because he publicly criticized the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
Mr. Robbins, 44, who along with his Oscar-winning partner, Susan Sarandon, has been an outspoken critic of the invasion, said the public slap in the face violated his right to freedom of speech.
Mr. Robbins and Miss Sarandon had been invited to attend the 15th anniversary screening of their 1988 baseball movie "Bull Durham" at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., this month.Robbins' understanding of free speech is pure "Bull Durham".
Link to the source.
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 09:19 AM EST [Link]
~
BUT I THOUGHT SADDAM WAS NO ADOLPH HITLER: Time Magazine will go back to the past with its April 21, 2003 issue. It will feature a picture of Saddam Hussein with a red "X" over his face.
"The weekly newsmagazine's cover reprises an issue from 58 years ago, when Adolf Hitler's face appeared on the magazine, complete with red 'X,'" sayeth the Associated Press.
Posted by steve @ 04:14 AM EST [Link]
~ I GOT ME A CAR AS BIG AS A WHALE: American soldiers have found Saddam Hussein's "love shack", a place CNN described as "a playboy's fantasy straight from the 1960s."
It even featured shag carpeting. No word on whether the tin roof was rusted.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:08 AM EST [Link]
Sunday, April 13, 2003 RESCUED POWS IN GOOD SHAPE: "Unexpectedly released by Iraqi troops, seven U.S. POWs basked in a warm welcome Sunday and were declared in good shape after their 22 days of imprisonment."
Read on. What the Iraqi government wasn't, some Iraqi soldiers were: humane.
Posted by steve @ 03:13 PM EST [Link]
~ YUP, NO TERRORISTS IN IRAQ: The Times reports that Saddam Hussein imported hundreds of well-trained terrorists just before the war against the coalition started.
"Documents and captives seized by British troops in Basra reveal that the recruits were arriving in Baghdad from Muslim countries including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Yemen as little as ten days before the war began."
Posted by steve @ 03:43 AM EST [Link]
Saturday, April 12, 2003 SADDAM HUSSEIN, PARAGON OF STYLE- The war against Iraq was a war against Tyranny. It was a war against Terrorism. It was also a war against something else that starts with the letter "T." It was a war against Tastelessness. From Sky News:
SADDAM'S 'LOVE SHACK'
US troops have discovered what they described as Saddam Hussein's "love shack" in Baghdad.Reports said the secret hideaway resembled "a playboy's fantasy straight from the 1960s".
Troops said it reminded them of the Austin Powers spy spoofs.
They yelled Powers' catchphrases "yeah, baaabeee" and "shagadelic" as they went from room to room.
Associated Press reporters with US forces said the split-level, one bedroom house in central Baghdad had a mirrored bedroom and lamps shaped like women.
On the walls were air-brushed paintings of a topless blonde woman and another of a moustached hero battling a crocodile. (snip)
One of the air-brushed paintings depicted a topless blonde woman, with a green demon behind her, pointing a finger at a mythical hero.
From the tip of her finger came a giant serpent, which had wrapped itself around the warrior.
Another showed a buxom woman chained to a barren desert mountain ledge, with a huge dragon diving down to kill her with sharpened talons.
Shudder... (You should also check out the story for its photo of a beefy, bare-chested Saddam and to see just how much weaponry American troops discovered in the vicinity. Saddam definitely likes his "love shacks" to be well-armed.)
Update: Well, I only beat Kathryn Jean Lopez in The Corner on this story by just six minutes. The AP story about Saddam's "Love Shack" which she points to is far more detailed and it even includes a lovely picture (!) for you to feast your eyes on, though I wouldn't say Saddam's decorating is entirely suitable for children.
Posted by Barton @ 07:04 PM EST [Link]
~ A TALE OF TWO PROTESTS: As many of our readers know, April 12th was supposed to be the occasion for yet more big antiwar demonstrations around the world. Well, now that the liberation of Baghdad and the sight of cheering Iraqis has taken the wind of our leftist friends' sails, I tuned into our local news broadcast to gauge their reactions when their protests went ahead as scheduled today. Apparently, the peaceniks are holding an all-day music festival in support of peace in front of City Hall. Sarah Harmer is one of the scheduled performers. According to the news report and the pictures we were shown, a crowd of "hundreds" were gathered there to protest for peace. One woman who was interviewed perked my interest in particular. She claimed that the peace movement had "succeeded" because they had managed to delay the start of the war and they had made the Americans adapt a more humanitarian way of waging war, so when they did begin attacking Iraq, the American military did their best to minimize civilian casualties. I found this interpretation of the events of the last few months to be, well, interesting.
The very next news story was about another rally, held directly across the lake in the lovely town of Niagara-On-The-Lake. This rally was organized by the Canadian Friends of America. It too attracted "hundreds" of people (though to my biased eyes, there were a lot more "hundreds" there, than there were in Toronto). Stockwell Day, horrible party leader, but a fine foreign affairs critic, spoke at the rally. But you know what the oddest thing was? Even though the peace movement had "succeeded," I could have sworn that the people at the pro-America rally seemed a lot more exuberant and seemed to be having a lot more fun than the people at the antiwar rally. As I said above, I find all this...interesting.
Posted by Barton @ 06:56 PM EST [Link]
~ I GUESS SADDAM COULDN'T GET ALL OF IT OVER TO SYRIA: A chemical warhead may have been found in Kirkuk and a "former Iraqi air force colonel claiming to be the former base commander told U.S. military officials he knew of 120 missiles within about an 18 mile radius of the city -- 24 of them carrying chemical munitions."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 05:53 PM EST [Link]
~ I THOUGHT THE U.S. WAS THE GREAT SATAN: Iran's Islamic Republic News Agency reported today that the country is considering restoring diplomatic ties with the United States.
"In an interview with the Rahbord (Strategy) periodical, published by the Center for Strategic Studies, Iran's powerful former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said the two decade-long freeze on relations between Iran and the United States could be resolved either through a popular vote or a decision by Iran's arbitration body, the Expediency Council."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 05:46 PM EST [Link]
~ HE IS A DIPLOMAT AND THEREFORE CAN LIE BUT...: Iraqi ambassador to the UN Mohammed Aldouri had some nice words to say about the US before he left for home to find out how his family was.
"I will see you, I hope, in a peaceful time with a good friendship between Iraq and United States," Aldouri said outside his official residence in New York.
"I hope that our future will be better for the interests of the United States and Iraq. So, I am very hopeful and very confident for the future."
So am I Mr. Aldouri. I hope you mean it.
Posted by steve @ 04:40 AM EST [Link]
~ IRAQ WAS NO AFGHANISTAN: Steven Den Beste has some interesting thoughts about Gulf War II.
Posted by steve @ 03:52 AM EST [Link]
Friday, April 11, 2003 MORE ON EASON JORDAN'S ADMISSION: As you may recall from an earlier blog entry, CNN big wig Eason Jordan admitted in the New York Times today that the network held back reporting on abuses by the Hussein regime because, he maintains, he didn't want to endanger the lives of Iraqis working for CNN.
Eugene Volokh has his own take on the admission (scroll down to the next blog entry for more of his thoughts on the matter).
Posted by steve @ 07:50 PM EST [Link]
~ I'M NOT MUCH OF ONE FOR SPEECHIFYING: Right about now they are handing out awards at the Free Dominion awards banquet in Ottawa. As you may remember, it was announced last month that ESR had won the New Media Award.
I really did want to go but since losing my job means I've now dropped below Canada's poverty line I just couldn't afford it. Oh well.
At any rate, I did send Connie a short speech to deliver on my behalf and I figured I'd reproduce it here:
First, I'd like to offer my apologies for not being here in person to accept the New Media Award. After Connie and Mark informed me of this honour I had planned on being here, if only to meet some of the people in this room that I have known for years online and for that great benefit of being a journalist -- getting a meal out of it. Unfortunately it wasn't meant to be this year.
I've always been a passionate advocate of online media so I'm very honoured that Enter Stage Right is this year's recipient of the New Media Award. When I launched the magazine in June 1996, it was with the aim of participating in a new kind of journalism and debate. If Enter Stage Right has succeeded in influencing debate in conservative circles it because of the hundreds of people, some of whom are in this room, who have had a direct hand in making it what it is today. Although it is my words that you're hearing right now, it is their efforts that have made this award possible.
I'll make this a short speech because there's no reason for me to bore you from half a province away so I'll just once again thank you for this great honour and I promise we'll try to be even better in the future. See you next year!
I meant that thing about you cats being responsible for the award. Although I'm the mouthy idiot who serves as the public face for ESR, it's each one of you that makes it what it is. If this little online effort is any good, it's because of all of you. Thanks.
Posted by steve @ 07:41 PM EST [Link]
~ NOW IF THEY COULD FIND A ROLE FOR CIGARETTES I'D LIVE FOREVER: (via David Janes) A researcher in Texas has found that cocktail made up of a combination of alcohol and coffee may be an effective treatment in preventing brain damage in stroke victims.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:59 PM EST [Link]
~ HITTING THE WALL: Antiwar activist, noted film actress, and (what am I forgetting?), oh yes, music star of some repute, Madonna, gets sliced-and-diced by the Telegraph's pop music critic for her latest album, American Life, an album which according to Neil McCormick has all the charm of the "brook-no-questions tones of a parade-ground sergeant." The opening vignette of McCormick's piece seems right out of a B-grade comedy, so subtle it is:
While Baghdad was falling to US troops on Wednesday, select British journalists were herded to a secret location in central London, plied with drink and briefed by a stern record company executive before listening to a single playback of the new Madonna album, American Life, on a bank of enormous speakers at bone-rattling volume. If these tactics were meant to promote shock and awe, they badly misfired. Asked at the conclusion if we would like to hear any of the tracks again, there was only embarrassed silence.
Madonna's much-discussed musical skills do not come out any better either:
Her singing is disappointing throughout, her delivery switching between the stridency of an S&M madam instructing clients how to behave, and short bursts of girly vulnerability, all breathy sweetness and eyelash-fluttering high notes...Madonna intones twee lyrics of loss over a typical Mirwais track, not so much primal scream as prissy disco. "My mother died when I was five/ And all I did was sit and cry/ I cried and cried and cried all day/ Until the neighbours went away" she reveals. It's excruciating. I can feel her pain. But can she feel mine?
My only hope is that certain Shakira-loving buddies of mine and those of like-minded musical tastes aren't so hypnotized by the Madonna marketing machine, as to waste their beautiful greenbacks in making this album a hit. My friends, it's about time we put this little kitty to sleep.
Posted by Barton @ 03:14 PM EST [Link]
~ LAST CALL!: God I hate that those two words. At any rate, it's your last call to sign the In Our Name petition sponsored by the federalist.
The petition has now collected 80,000 signatures, but they'd like to top 100,000 signatures before releasing the results to George Bush, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the publications of each branch of the U.S. Armed Services.
If you have not already done so, please join fellow Patriots who have signed "In Our Name: A Statement of Justice." Find it at http://www.PatriotPetitions.com/inourname
Posted by steve @ 02:42 PM EST [Link]
~ WOMEN IN COMBAT
The Jessica Lynch capture and rescue have re-ignited the debate on women in combat. World Net Daily has two great opinion pieces today on the issue.
The first is by Robert Knight, the second is by Allen Carlson.
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 01:59 PM EST [Link]
~ I CAN'T HELP BUT SUSPECT THEY HAD SOME HELP: Ten of the major suspects in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole escaped from prison in Yemen this morning.
"The fugitives, including chief suspect Jamal al-Badawi, had been jailed in the port city of Aden since shortly after the destroyer was bombed, killing 17 American sailors."
The Yemeni government has been, to put it politely, instransigent about pursuing any aspect of this case as several people have reported in the past. I'm not saying that the government would help these men escape but I wouldn't be shocked to learn that elements played some small role.
Posted by steve @ 11:02 AM EST [Link]
~ JUST DESSERTS
Bill Clinton Booed at Willie Nelson Concert
(CNSNews.com) - The New York Post's Page Six gossip column reports that former President Bill Clinton was booed Wednesday night when he went on stage at the New York's Beacon Theater at the start of a Willie Nelson concert. A source told Page Six, "The place went wild when [Clinton] was announced. There was loud booing and yelling." The source told Page Six that Clinton "seemed angered" and made a comment about "angry Republicans," which made the crowd boo and yell even more. "There was so much anti-Clinton booing and yelling that when Willie came back out, he asked if everyone was all right," Page Six quoted its source as saying. A Clinton spokesman told Page Six there was some booing, but also "much applauding." The concert is supposed to play on the USA network on Memorial Day.
Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 10:15 AM EST [Link]
~ WHAT CNN DIDN'T REPORT: (Via Brothers Judd Blog) Eason Jordan, CNN's executive news chief, has an interesting op-ed in the New York Times today. During the years that the network sometimes was ambiguous in its reporting about the Iraqi regime and then openly cast doubt about George W. Bush's campaign to disarm Iraq, Jordan had a little secret: He knew exactly how evil the regime really was.
"For example, in the mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq station chief. CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling the world about the torture of one of its employees would almost certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk."
Or how about this?
"We also had to worry that our reporting might endanger Iraqis not on our payroll. I knew that CNN could not report that Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, told me in 1995 that he intended to assassinate two of his brothers-in-law who had defected and also the man giving them asylum, King Hussein of Jordan. If we had gone with the story, I was sure he would have responded by killing the Iraqi translator who was the only other participant in the meeting. After all, secret police thugs brutalized even senior officials of the Information Ministry, just to keep them in line (one such official has long been missing all his fingernails)."
It's been said that watching politics was like watching sausage being made -- and it's true, believe me -- but it's also true about journalism, and perhaps more specifically about CNN. As Orrin Judd points outs, CNN allowed its personnel to be tortured and others to be murdered in its pursuit of reporting about the Iraqi regime, yet it didn't report the stories that would have given that reporting context.
"The gist of this story is that not a single report from Iraq by a Western media source could be considered trustworthy, so why were they there and why were their stories presented as if they were valid?" responds Orrin to Jordan's editorial.
Quite right.
Posted by steve @ 02:52 AM EST [Link]
~ SELF-PROMO ALERT: I have an article up over at the American Spectator asking why anti-war activists haven't taken notice of the horrible carnage taking place in Congo.
"Nearly a thousand people were killed in a massacre earlier this month and aid agencies estimate that millions of people have died in recent years, many from treatable diseases and malnutrition. Those numbers may seem familiar to you given that the same words are often used by people against the American-led war against Iraq. They, however, refer to another trouble spot. The Democratic Republic of Congo has been torn apart by years of tribal warfare, rebellion and incursions by the Ugandan military with little notice by the world."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:14 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, April 10, 2003 JOHNNY APPLE AND CLICHED WRITING: Slate's Jack Shafer once again takes aim at The NY Times' JR.W. "Johnny" Apple Jr.
"Never before has Apple soared to such heights of self-parody! Just two weeks ago, Apple had the United States choking on quicksand; four days ago, the United States' big problem was to know how to define victory. Now, the United States is a latter-day Roman Empire. And he gives a history lesson about U.S. interventions since Vietnam that would not look out of place in Highlights for Children."
Gotta love it. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 11:58 PM EST [Link]
~ PICTURE OF THE DAY: Samantha Sheppard, 28, from Plymouth, a soldier with the 2nd Light Tank Regiment, smiles as she receives a flower from an Iraqi man during a patrol on the streets of east Basra, southern Iraq, April 2003. See it here. (Pop-up, 40kb)
Posted by steve @ 11:29 PM EST [Link]
~ COME ON YOU APES! YOU WANT TO LIVE FOREVER?: Nothing like a quiet night in spent watching a movie. Tonight it was Starship Troopers, a campy movie I've repeatedly described as being one of my favourites. And no, not because Dina Meyer is in it...
Posted by steve @ 10:31 PM EST [Link]
~ SO MUCH FOR BEING "PEACE" PROTESTORS
DoD Warns of Peacenik Threat"(A Department of Defense) family member while driving her vehicle and stuck
in traffic was identified as having a DoD sticker (on her car). At the time
there was an anti-war protest under way. When her vehicle was observed by
the demonstrators, a member of the group yelled out 'war bitch' and her
vehicle was immediately surrounded. While some of the members pounded on
her vehicle with their fists, others 'keyed' it and wrote the word 'peace'
on the paint finish. It is recommended DoD personnel should avoid these
protests at all cost."- Pentagon warning issued by the Army's Criminal Investigation Command
How's that for bravery? Too cowardly to actually fight in a real fight against a real opponent, this gang of ignorant thugs go after a woman military dependent, who was most likely unarmed. Oh yes, I'm impressed. Impressed and sickened by their cowardice.
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 04:00 PM EST [Link]
~ LET'S HAVE SOME PERSPECTIVE ON THE WAR
Less Time
* It will take less time to take Iraq than it took Janet Reno to take the
Branch Davidian compound. That was a 51-day operation.* It took less time to find evidence of chemical weapons in Iraq than it
took Hillary Clinton to find the Rose Law Firm billing records.* It took less time for the 3rd Infantry Division and the Marines to destroy
the Medina Republican Guard than it took Teddy Kennedy to call the police
after his Oldsmobile sunk at Chappaquiddick.* It will take less time to take Iraq than it took to count the votes in
Florida in the year 2000!- Author unknown (via Chuck Muth's News and Views)
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 03:41 PM EST [Link]
~ FRANCE "REJOICES" OVER SADDAM'S DOWNFALL: At least Germany had the good sense to support Saddam Hussein's ouster before it actually happened. French president Jacques Chirac said today that France is "rejoicing" over the downfall of Hussein.
"France, like every democracy, is rejoicing over the collapse of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, and hopes for a quick and effective end to the battle."
I guess it's lucky that there isn't a memorial to Iraqi war dead in France, then the people of France could show much happy they really are.
Posted by steve @ 02:55 PM EST [Link]
~ KUMBAYA, DUDE
Democrat Calls for Department of Peace Again
(CNSNews.com) - Even as coalition forces were wresting control of Baghdad from Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) was introducing a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to create a Cabinet-level Department of Peace. Kucinich, who is a candidate for his party's nomination for president in next year's election, was supported by 47 other Democrats for the concept he first put forth in July 2001. "Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction," Kucinich said Wednesday. "Homelessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Hopelessness is a weapon of mass destruction. No health care is a weapon of mass destruction." The Peace Department would be headed by a Secretary of Peace and other officials whose duties would include domestic and international peace activities, as well as promotion of peaceful coexistence and nonviolent conflict resolution. The bill would also create a Peace Academy as an alternative to military service academies and designate Jan. 1 as Peace Day in the United States. The 2001 legislation died in committee in the Republican-controlled House.
This article failed to point out that the logo for the new department would be a peace symbol and the motto would be kumbaya.
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 08:59 AM EST [Link]
~ TARGET: TIKRIT?: The Pentagon confirmed Wednesday that it has moved a MOAB bomb into the Gulf region.
"As conceived, the MOAB was to be used against large formations of troops and equipment or against hardened above-ground bunkers. The target set has also been expanded to include deeply buried targets."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:37 AM EST [Link]
~ BAGHDAD FALLS! AMERICA TRIUMPHS!: (Entry courtesy of Murray Soupcoff)
April 9, 2003: At last! The whining pessimists, peacelovers, naysayers and nitpickers in the the media have again been chastened by the hard facts of reality. Just as Rummy hoped they would, Saddam's much-celebrated Republican Guard defenses have obligingly folded like the back seat of a politically-incorrect SUV. And just as much-maligned Vice-President Dick Cheney predicted they would, crowds of happy Iraqis have gathered in the center of Baghdad to welcome their American liberators.
For a short while, the world is unfolding as it should. And there is nothing more to say or do, except to once more let Dubyah do his awe-inspiring victory dance:
America's visionary president (and his stalwart Republican administration) deserves it!Murray Soupcoff, The Iconoclast
Posted by steve @ 03:24 AM EST [Link]
~ THE ANTI-WAR FOLKS WERE RIGHT: Just not the way they wanted to be. Christopher Hitchens weighs in on these heady days in Iraq with a masterpiece.
"So it turns out that all the slogans of the anti-war movement were right after all. And their demands were just. 'No War on Iraq,' they said—and there wasn't a war on Iraq. Indeed, there was barely a 'war' at all. 'No Blood for Oil,' they cried, and the oil wealth of Iraq has been duly rescued from attempted sabotage with scarcely a drop spilled. Of the nine oil wells set ablaze by the few desperadoes who obeyed the order, only one is still burning and the rest have been capped and doused without casualties. 'Stop the War' was the call. And the 'war' is indeed stopping. That's not such a bad record. An earlier anti-war demand—'Give the Inspectors More Time'—was also very prescient and is also about to be fulfilled in exquisite detail."
It only picks up steam after this. I often laugh out loud when I read a Hitchens column, not because what he says is necessarily funny, but I marvel at the skill he displays. I have a shortlist of writers I would allow into heaven and Christopher Hitchens is on that list whether he's a socialist or not.
Posted by steve @ 12:04 AM EST [Link]
Wednesday, April 9, 2003 GREAT PARODY OF ANTI-WARRIORS: Via Brothers Judd, a satirical look at what would happen if the antiwar movement were to prevail now:
“I just didn’t want to be viewed as a ‘Hitler’ for the rest of my presidency,” a dour-faced Bush told the American people. “And the more I thought about it, the more I decided that the people calling me a fascist were right. Sending in the military to defeat Saddam Hussein, empty his torture chambers and allow Jews to once again practice their faith in Iraq is exactly what the Nazis would have done. So I stopped.”
As Orrin says, it would be funnier if it didn't so accurately reflect some of these people's beliefs. Read on.
Posted by antle @ 11:58 PM EST [Link]
~ NOT WORTH A SINGLE ONE OF OUR LIVES: Well, David's blog is called Ranting and Roaring for a reason. Mr. Janes is quite angry after learning that a Canadian, Cpl. Bernard Gooden, who had joined the U.S. Marines died in Iraq. He was killed in a gun battle in central Iraq on Friday. Gooden was an immigrant to Canada in 1997.
What has David angry, not perhaps without some justification, is that a Iraqi who had immigrated to Canada during the 1990s is angry at the coalition for invading.
"I can't help but reflect that I've never read, never heard, a single quote from a Muslim living in Canada or the United States that ever expressed any fellow feeling toward another Muslim that didn't have at its root, some sort of blame for the West or for the Jews."
I have to admit that I too have noticed the same thing. It saddens me and I don't believe that all Muslims do what David is saying, but not enough don't. It wasn't a Christian leader in Ottawa who last week called for Iraqis to kill coalition troops...
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 11:40 PM EST [Link]
~ WHOOPS: Here's the link.
Posted by antle @ 10:43 PM EST [Link]
~ ENOUGH OF THE LIBERAL PARTY GOVERNMENT, ALREADY!: The National Post is reporting that Candian forces have been ordered not to turn any Iraqi agents they apprehend over to the United States - not even Saddam Hussein or his sons!
These Liberals have to go.
Posted by antle @ 10:41 PM EST [Link]
~ AT LEAST ONE IRAQI OFFICIAL GETS IT
Iraq's U.N. Ambassador Says 'the Game Is Over'
Wednesday, April 09, 2003
UNITED NATIONS — Iraq's U.N. ambassador said Wednesday "the game is over" and he expressed hope that the Iraqi people will be able to live in peace.
Mohammed Al-Douri's comments to reporters outside his residence were the first admission by an Iraqi official that U.S.-led coalition troops had overwhelmed Iraqi forces.
"My work now is peace," he said. "The game is over and I hope the peace will prevail. I hope the Iraqi people will have a happy life."
Al-Douri said he has had no communications with Iraq for a long time because of the war.
Earlier, the ambassador told Associated Press Television News: "This is a war and there will be a winner and someone who is a loser."
When asked what he thought about the scenes being broadcast from Baghdad, he said, "Well I don't know really, I watch the television like you."
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 04:37 PM EST [Link]
~ IS THIS WHAT WE'RE FIGHTING FOR?
Palo Alto, California (not far from San Francisco) city council is considering a proposal to ban frowning and other irritating body language at council meetings. Read all about it here.
While they are at it, why don't they just ban stupidity?
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 03:48 PM EST [Link]
~ "THE GAME IS OVER": The Iraqi ambassador to the U.S., Mohammed Aldouri, had few words today when questioned by reporters about the war.
"The game is over. At the end of the day I hope for peace for the Iraqi people."
When asked about the fate of his boss, Aldouri merely stated that he had "no relationship to Saddam Hussein."
Posted by steve @ 03:39 PM EST [Link]
~ WELCOME TO FREEDOM, OUR NEW FRIENDS: All day I've been struggling to come up with something to say about the events in Baghdad this morning. Iraqis and Americans working together to tear down a statue of Saddam Hussein. Jubilent Iraqis greeting the "foreign invaders" not as a conquering army, but as liberators. Grown men and women singing and dancing as innocently as children, discovering a new world opening up to them.
The last time I felt like this was when the Berlin Wall fell down and the awakening that led to the silent and rapid dissolution of the Soviet Union. My world changed that day. Half a billion people immediately became our new friends, liberated from Communism. Today, though there is still fighting ahead, some 20 million people are now free from a fascist Ba'athist regime.
Jeff Jarvis has some good thoughts on it.
"The Arab world is watching. They're watching what it is like to be freed from a dictator. They are watching Americans as liberators. They hear the cheers.
"They are jealous. Bet on it: They are jealous.
"They will want their freedom, too."God willing. Allah never meant for his children to be tortured and raped, brutalized by men with no souls. Men who denied their people calls to prayer and imprisoned their children. Men who murdered hundreds of thousands to maintain their control. I hope the rest of the Arab world goes through some serious soul searching and come to realize who their real enemies are. It's not the Great Satan, crusaders or infidels...it's the men who hold the Koran in one hand and a rifle in the other.
Posted by steve @ 02:51 PM EST [Link]
~ MEDIA BIAS WATCH: Outrageous incident showing how NBC has lost its objectivity in covering this war. Tim Russert and Tom Brokaw were mocking the unfortunate Iraqi Information Minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, live on national television!
RUSSERT: And Tom, it's been two hours since that statue fell and the Iraqi Information Minister still hasn't come out and said that what we're seeing wasn't happening.
BROKAW: I expect that he's being measured for a dress somewhere.
RUSSERT: And he's trying to hire a taxi on its way to the north.
(They both laugh.)
Just another example of how the corporate media are simply propagandists for the Bush administration. Making fun of members of a foreign people's legitimately-elected government is typical American arrogance. I demand that Russert and Brokaw deliver a grovelling personal apology to the much calumniated-upon el-Sahaf as soon as they can find out where he's hiding...
Posted by Barton @ 01:32 PM EST [Link]
~ WHY DID WE RESCUE JESSICA LYNCH?
Brian Sewell, writing in the London Evening Standard, argues that the only reason we rescued Pfc. Lynch was because she was a woman. He opines that the US military would not have put so many assets at risk just to rescue a male soldier.
He makes a valid point that women do not belong in war zones, but I disagree with his rescue argument. His position loses credibility when other stories include headlines like "F-15 Fighter Lost, Two Airmen Missing - Rescue efforts under way" that show up on Fox News.
If nothing else, this piece shows that Mr. Sewell has a way with words.
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 11:31 AM EST [Link]
~
National Former Prisoner of War Recognition Day is today.
"As we honor our former POWs, we are reminded of our current POWs, captured in Operation Iraqi Freedom," the declaration said. "We will work to secure their freedom, and we pray for their speedy and safe return." Amen.
Posted by izzy @ 11:18 AM EST [Link]
~ "A PLACE OF EVIL": It was a stone building in Basra that once you went in, you weren't likely to come back out of. It was the jail run by Saddam Hussein's secret police, a place that must have witnessed horrific atrocities over the decades. Iraqi civilians got a look at it yesterday.
"'It was a place of evil,' resident Hamed Fattil said.
"Hamed told British reporters that Iraqi police locked him and his two brothers in a jail dungeon in 1991, and that he was freed after eight months but his brothers were still missing.
"'They used to strap a leather cord around our head, hands and shoulders and hoist us two feet off the ground. Then they would beat us as we hung there,' Hamed said.
"'They did unthinkable things -- electrocution, immersion in a bath of chemicals and ripping off people's finger and toenails.'"
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:09 AM EST [Link]
~ HERE'S WHY THEY'RE RUNNING OUT OF IRAQI SOLDIERS TO KILL: They're all running away.
Posted by steve @ 04:04 AM EST [Link]
~ WELL, THE COALITION IS RUNNING OUT OF IRAQI SOLDIERS TO KILL: 4 500 clods in Egypt have signed up to fight the American-led coalition which steamrollered over the Iraqi army over the last three weeks.
"Sayed Shaaban, the association's official responsible for handling the volunteers, admitted however that no one has yet left for Iraq from Egypt."
Go, believe me you won't be missed. I mean by the coalition soldiers...
Posted by steve @ 02:01 AM EST [Link]
~ THE MEN WHO BUILT THE CHILDREN'S JAIL: I say this often but this time I haven't meant it ever as much as I do now. James Lileks has a masterpiece, this time about the children's jail the U.S. marines found in Baghdad. Like many people, Lileks barely comprehends the nature of a regime that would even consider the logic of a children's jail...
"The end result of a fascist regime is always this: a man who seeks advancement by proposing a children’s jail; a smarter man who sees the political advantage of building one; the men who lock the doors and make the gruel with dead empty hearts, and the man who worries what will happen to him if the jail is found wanting.
"The children, of course, don’t matter at all. In fact they matter least of all, and after a while their jailers come to hate them for what they make the jailers do."
If you only read one thing today, read his essay.
Posted by steve @ 01:03 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, April 8, 2003 MARSHALL VS. KURTZ: Neocon-bashing isn't limited to the pages of such paleo publications as Chronicles and The American Conservative. Prominent liberal writer and blogger Joshua Micah Marshall, originally an Iraq hawk, wrote an article for The Washington Monthly arguing that the war is a neoconservative conspiracy to remake the Middle East. This deceitful cabal, he argues, has stampeded the Bush administration into its present path and made the war no longer worth supporting due to the damage it is inflicting upon the international system.
I have been waiting for a high-profile article-length conservative response. Stanley Kurtz provided it today in a thoughtful, though not comprehensive, piece for National Review On-Line.
Posted by antle @ 10:06 PM EST [Link]
~ THE PLAGARIST: Meryl Yourish has a pretty good roundup of the The Agonist scandal.
"It also doesn't matter that "Big Media" journalists have also been caught plagiarizing. Kelley's plagiarism is a blow to the credibility of the blogosphere. And it should be big news in the blogosphere. The Agonist has been a high-profile, high-visibility blogger since the start of the war. The war has caused his popularity surge. His seemingly uncanny line to information (now revealed to have been lifted whole cloth from Stratfor) helped him achieve that high visibility. And he still has it. The blogosphere has barely mentioned this."
Read on.
Dean Esmay also has some comments about it including this gem:
"I found it amusing when MSNBC said he 'leans left.' This is like saying that Hunter S. Thompson 'likes drugs.' The guy is very left-wing, period."
Posted by steve @ 06:09 PM EST [Link]
~ WHY AMERICA FIGHTS: American soldiers rescued today over 100 prisoners being held in a Baghdad prison. The prisoners? Children.
A marine officer told an AFP correspondent that it appears the children were jailed because they hadn't joined the youth wing of the Ba'ath Party.
"Some of these kids had been in there for five years," he said.
I'd comment on this but why? The picture of the children with a marine says enough. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:44 PM EST [Link]
~ PRAISING A PALEO: Lawrence Auster has announced he will be reducing his blogging to participate in other projects. In all the back and forth between the paleoconservatives and neoconservatives of late, I think Mr. Auster deserves some special recognition. He has steadfastly maintained his commitment to many paleo ideas about immigration, the nation-state and other issues while opposing the anti-American, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic views that have sadly crept into too much of the movement. I have found this drift on the part of some on the right, particularly evident on the web, to be deeply dismaying.
As I've written before, I think David Frum painted some of the writers and publications he mentioned with far too broad a brush, in the process unfairly tarring some respectable people. But I think the criticism he brings up is indisputably true of some paleos. Auster is to be commended as someone who pointed this out and condemned it from within before Frum's National Review cover story was published. I disagree with him on many subjects, but the caliber of debate within the right would be a lot higher if there were more people like him.
Posted by antle @ 10:07 AM EST [Link]
~ EVERYDAY HEROES
Dug Them Up With Their Hands
"You have read of the rescue of PFC Jessica Lynch as recounted by Central
Command briefer Maj. Gen. Gene Renuart on Saturday morning. . . . As moving,
in the retelling, as that scene is, it is nothing compared to how General
Renuart described the recovery of the remains of the soldiers who had been
killed. This has not gotten nearly enough notice:"'At the same time, the team was led to a burial site, where, in fact, they
did find a number of bodies that they believed could be Americans missing in
action. They did not have shovels in order to dig those graves up, so they
dug them up with their hands. And they wanted to do that very rapidly so
that they could race the sun and be off the site before the sun came up; a
great testament to the will and desire of coalition forces to bring their
own home.'"Next time you run into an anti-war protester, just repeat these words:
'They dug them up with their hands, and raced the sun.'"- Rich Galen, Mullings.com, 4/7/03
My eyes tear up when I read things like this.cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 09:17 AM EST [Link]
~ MOHAMMED'S HEROIC DECENCY: Lee Harris has a moving article in Tech Central Station that contains some valueable truths.
"A world in which the wicked use terror to intimidate the decent from acting decently is not a world in which you can expect liberal values to thrive. Someone must be prepared to act to defend these values from those who would eradicate them."
Read the whole piece here.
Posted by antle @ 08:48 AM EST [Link]
~ SELF-PROMO ALERT: I have a column today on Rep. Tom Tancredo's proposed immigration moratorium in Ether Zone.
Posted by antle @ 08:34 AM EST [Link]
~ "BETTER TO DIE THAN TO LIVE WITHOUT KILLING": Relax, I'm not about to go postal. It's a line from Christopher Logue's All Day Permanent Red: The First Battle Scenes of Homer's Iliad - Rewritten. I spent the day reading it after I got a review copy this morning and I was amazed how good it was. I've said on this blog before that I'm not big on poetry but this book could convert me.
Logue's been working since the 1960s to rewrite The Iliad by "reimagining" it and adding and deleting scenes from the traditional story, complete with some modern references. That automatically raises the hair on traditionalists -- I'm one -- but Logue's language is truly remarkable. All Day Permanent Red covers books 5 and 6 of The Iliad.
Here's a taste of a scene where Odysseus prays to Athena to help the Greeks just before battle:
"Brainchild Athena, Holy Girl,
As one you made
As calm and cool as water in a well.
I know that you have cares enough
Other than those of me and mine.
Yet, Daughter of God, without your help
We cannot last."Setting down her topaz saucer heaped with nectarine jelly
Emptying her blood-red mouth set in her ice-white face
Teenaged Athena jumped up and shrieked:
"Kill! Kill for me!
Better to die than to live without killing!"Who says prayer does no good?
Word. I had chills after I read that passage. It's good enough I'll probably use it in my review of the book. I really have to buy his other ones covering The Iliad.
Posted by steve @ 03:49 AM EST [Link]
~ THIS I'D LIKE TO BE AT: Got an email from Chris Lilik stating that Pittsburgh's NAACP President Tim Stevens and conservative celebrity David Horowitz will debate the issue of affirmative action at at the Duquesne University School of Law.
It takes place on April 15, entitled The Legacy of Affirmative Action and Its Uncertain Future, is sponsored by the law school's Federalist Society Chapter and will be moderated by popular WPTT radio personality Jerry Bowyer. The 6:30 event will take place in the Duquesne School of Law room 204. Limited press seating is still available.
The 6:30 debate will begin with an introduction by Duquesne University School of Law Dean, Nicholas Cafardi, and will include questions from Bowyer as well as audience members. "The Duquesne University School of Law is excited to host both Mr. Horowitz and Mr. Stevens for what will certainly be an outstanding event," said Cafardi. "We welcome any program that fosters intelligent discourse on important issues."
If you need to know how to get there, here's where the university is.
Posted by steve @ 12:40 AM EST [Link]
~ RUFFINI TEMPORARILY HOMELESS: Patrick Ruffini is having some problems with his web log so he's temporarily moved over to Blogspot. You can find his blog here until the problems at his old casa are solved.
Posted by steve @ 12:28 AM EST [Link]
~ TAX CUTS AND HISTORY: Reader Don Hagen sent along a couple of links related to the difficulty U.S. President George W. Bush is having over his $700 billion tax cut being passed. Hagen points to a 1996 study carried out by the Cato Institute that uses the Reagan years to show that tax cuts do benefit the economy.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:24 AM EST [Link]
Monday, April 7, 2003 IT WAS A DAMNED GOOD BOOK: Thanks to Orrin Judd for the heads up. Rick Atkinson, who's An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 we reviewed some months back, today won a Pulitzer Prize for that effort. He certainly deserved it.
Here's our review.
Posted by steve @ 07:26 PM EST [Link]
~ I DON'T THINK THEY USE INSECTICIDES IN MISSILES: (via Peeve Farm) Though there is some doubt, it appears that the 1st Marine Division has found a weapons cache complete with chemical weapons.
"NPR, which attributed the report to a top official with the 1st Marine Division, said the rockets, BM-21 missiles, were equipped with sarin and mustard gas and were 'ready to fire.' It quoted the source as saying new U.S. intelligence data showed the chemicals were 'not just trace elements.'"
CNN hasn't said anything about this while I've been watching...has this report already been dismissed?
Posted by steve @ 05:06 PM EST [Link]
~ ALL YOUR IRAQ ARE BELONG TO US: (via Peeve Farm) I guess we shouldn't be surprised that someone has updated the now infamous meme that spread across the Web. The beginning is pretty funny...
Posted by steve @ 05:01 PM EST [Link]
~ IS IT THAT HARD TO PUT "VIA STRATFOR"?: Wired News has reported that Sean-Paul Kelley has admitted to copying material from the web site Stratfor and placing it on his blog The Agonist.
"You got me, I admit it.... I made a mistake," Kelley said. "It was stupid."
Bloody liberals...
Posted by steve @ 03:15 PM EST [Link]
~ DOES IRAQ REFUTE A KEY ARGUMENT FOR GUN RIGHTS?: Timothy Noah, the lib who write's Slate's very readable "Chatterbox" column/snippet, has raised some debate on the blogosphere by citing a New York Times report that the average Iraqi family owns a gun and questioning whether that fact undermines a contention made by gun rights advocates: That widespread private gun ownership is a necessary deterrent to tryanny. You can read this here and here.
He posted some valid reader responses, but I think Noah overlooks something important in his premise. Merely having guns is insufficient to offer protection from tyranny - what is needed is the cultural disposition to use them in defense of freedom. This is something Arab societies, with their traditional preference for a strong "father figure" type ruler, have tended to lack. Gun controllers (and ocassionally their opponents) seem to believe that guns have some magical powers, but they are inanimate objects controlled by people. Whether they are used for good or for evil is determined entirely by the human moral agents who control them.
Noah also ignores the fact that there have been armed uprisings against the Iraqi regime, mainly by the Kurds, but that these have been put down by the government's superior firepower. An armed populace is a crucial component to resisting tyranny, but this does not mean that this resistance will always be successful.
In the last paragraph of his second posting on the subject, Noah approvingly quotes a reader who points out that Great Britain, France and other countries with stricter gun control than the United States have avoided becoming police states. This is certainly true (altough all those countries, and for that matter the U.S., are significantly less free than I would prefer) but it again ignores the importance of culture and political tradition. Moreover, just because gun ownership is necessary for resisting tyranny does not mean that a police state will necessarily emerge (at least instantly) from the lack thereof. It does mean, however, that the populace is less capable of resisting if such a police state were to occur.
Stuart Buck also has some characteristically interesting thoughts on the subject.
Posted by antle @ 11:13 AM EST [Link]
~ THE FRUM NEVER STOPS. Steve Greenhut, a senior writer for the Orange County Register, writes about being a "bad American" and other interesting stuff.
Posted by izzy @ 10:50 AM EST [Link]
~ AS THE FREEPERS WOULD SAY, BARF ALERT: The Nation, via the equally left-wing webzine CommonDreams.org, has provided us with a lecture from George McGovern on wisdom and compassion. If nothing else, this kind of solid strategic thinking ought to remind us why he lost 49 states in his presidential bid over 30 years ago.
Posted by antle @ 10:21 AM EST [Link]
~ KERRY NOT THE FIRST "REGIME CHANGE" ADVOCATE: According to the Drudge Report, John Kerry was not the first liberal to argue that America needed regime change. This line has been used by a virtual rogue's gallery of the left. Via FrontPage.
I forget where I read it, but someone noted Kerry's penchant for mouthing the left's "mantra of the moment." I guess this is just par for the course.
Posted by antle @ 10:01 AM EST [Link]
~ JESSICA LYNCH AND THE FEMINISTS: Toogood Reports Associate Editor Michael Shaw asks why the heroic ex-POW Jessica Lynch isn't a feminist icon, especially compared to some of the dubious heroines they have promoted in recent years. But he already pretty much has the answer.
Posted by antle @ 08:47 AM EST [Link]
~ GREAT STUFF AT THE PROWLER: Two absolutely first-rate pieces by friends of ESR appear in The American Prowler today. Jeremy Lott offers his tribute to Michael Kelly while Lawrence Henry writes movingly about the connection between President Bush and people of faith. Both great reads.
Posted by antle @ 08:09 AM EST [Link]
~ A PETITION FOR CANADIANS TO SIGN: If you couldn't make it to one of the Rallies for America that happened across Canada a couple of days ago, there is another way for my fellow Canadians to show your support. Visit Petition Online and sign a message for U.S. Ambassador to Canada Paul Celluci.
Posted by steve @ 04:35 AM EST [Link]
~ SECRET ROOM, ESCAPE TUNNEL FOUND AT AIRPORT: American soldiers at Baghdad International Airport report finding a secret room and escape tunnel, one possibly created for the use of Saddam Hussein.
"Elaborately appointed, it has a thick hand-carved mahogany door, gold-plated bathroom fixtures and a veranda opening onto a rose garden. But its most intriguing feature is a wood-paneled office with a false door that leads to a basement room. There, troops of Grimsley's Army brigade found weapons, but they believe there is something more: a secret exit."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:29 AM EST [Link]
~ SEE HOW MUCH I LOVE Y'ALL: I had to wait until 4:18am before I could get the new issue up. Me tired. Want sleep now. I had to suffer through two episodes of Elimidate on Fox Rochester before I could FTP the new files...now that's dedication.
Posted by steve @ 04:23 AM EST [Link]
~ POWELL DOES AMERICA PROUD: (Via Little Green Footballs) Colin Powell gave a great interview to ZDF-TV of Germany a few days ago, one where he definately held up the American flag.
QUESTION: I hear what you are saying. What many people in Europe will hear, through your words, is this is how the new partition of labor will be: America is looking for its Allies, is going its course with or without Allies, any number that’s available, and be it zero. And then the U.N.’s role is to go in as a good Samaritan and clean up the mess. That’s all they can do. America is already looking at its next destination.
SECRETARY POWELL: That’s absurd. It’s an absurd, simplistic, shorthand response to what people think we’re doing. In fact, we went to the U.N. in the first place with respect to this problem. It was a problem that belonged to the U.N. for twelve years -- this terrible regime that tortures its people, that developed weapons of mass destruction, that used them against its own people and then invaded its neighbors on two occasions. And we finally said to the United Nations, “If you would be relevant, if the international community would be relevant, we must deal with this.”
This is not a regime that will simply roll over and play dead. It will fight back. It will try to avoid consequences. So we got a very strong resolution passed. Unanimously. Fifteen to zero. And when it became clear to a number of members of the Security Council that it was time to apply those serious consequences, we took it back to the U.N. And the U.N. said, “Well, can’t agree on this.”
But 1441 made it clear – it was more than sufficient authority. Now there were some members of the Council who said, “We’ll veto anything.” And there were others of us who felt we must move forward. We must remove this danger to the world. Especially this regime that developed weapons of mass destruction and might actually allow some of these weapons to fall in the hands of terrorists. We will not apologize for this. We believe that we did what is right and we recognize that there is a great deal of opinion, especially in Europe, that thinks this was not the right approach. But I hope we will change this opinion, when everybody sees that after this conflict we’re not leaving it to be swept up by the United Nations. We are going to work with the United Nations and work with the international community. And guess who will be the major contributor, who will pay the most money to help the Iraqi people to get back on their feet. It will be the United States, as always. Europeans --
It only gets better after that...
Posted by steve @ 04:20 AM EST [Link]
~ IT'S A SHAME HE'S DEAD....I WOULD HAVE GAVE HIM TO THE KURDS AS A PRESENT: A British major has confirmed that the body of Ali Hassan al-Majeed, aka "Chemical Ali", has been found in Basra.
"Maj. Andrew Jackson of the 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment told the AP that his superiors had confirmed the death of al-Majeed, who is also President Saddam Hussein's first cousin. Jackson said the body was found along with that of his bodyguard and the head of Iraqi intelligence services in Iraq's second-largest city, which lies about 250 miles [400 kilometers] southeast of Baghdad."
Al-Majeed butchered his way across northern Iraq killing as many Kurds as possible and in 1988 ordered a chemical attack on Halabja which killed as many as 5 000 men, women and children. Like I said, I wish he had been captured alive and handed over to the Kurds for "trial".
Posted by steve @ 04:11 AM EST [Link]
~ TAKE ACTION: (Courtesy of Murray Soupcoff over at The Iconoclast):
A reminder to the naive among us, quietly relishing the imminent victory of America in Iraq. Your work is not quite done.
Beware the ides of Tony Blair and the career Arabists in the American State Department. As George W. Bush and Tony Blair meet again on the Continent, the ground for the mother of all diplomatic betrayals is being prepared by the subvert-Israel crowd in Washington and abroad:
Let Your Voice Be Heard!As part of a new post-Saddam, appease-the-Arab-world policy, the State Department wants to force Israel to make more suicidal concessions to the PTA -- the Palestine Terrorist Authority. They believe that stability in the post-Saddam Middle East can be purchased through a cynical sell-out of Israel -- and Israeli interests -- and a total reversal of the Bush administration's past supportive policy for America's most loyal ally in the region.
President George W. Bush must stand firm against the treacherous counsel of the same foolish State Department appeasers who opposed the war against Saddam, advised cow-towing to the tin-pot despots who dominate the United Nations, and now wish to subvert America's great victory in Iraq by selling out America's greatest friend in the Middle East.
SAY NO to more of this Chamberlain-type foolishness!
We know what ten months of European-style diplomacy and treachery at the U.N. brought the United States previously -- nothing but backstabbing, betrayal and disparagement.
Enough of the French/German "final solution" for Israel!
Let your voice be heard!To express your concerns about the State Department's plan to sell out Israel, please contact:
President George W. Bush by fax: (202) 456-2461, (Andrew Card, Chief of Staff)
or by e-mail.Dr. Condoleeza Rice, National Security Advisor, FAX (202) 456-2883, PHONE (202) 456-9491
Mr. Elliot Abrams, the Director for Near East and North African Affairs, at FAX (202) 456-9120, and by phone through his secretary Joanna, (202) 456-9121
Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, 1000 Defense Pentagon, Washington, DC 20301-1000 or by e-mail form:
http://www.defenselink.mil/Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense, 1010 Defense Pentagon, Washington, DC 20301-1010 or by e-mail form
http://www.defenselink.milCourtesy Iconoclast.ca
Posted by steve @ 01:06 AM EST [Link]
~ WAR AND DEATH: James Lileks says that the major news media should start showing the bodies of the dead if only to teach us that there is no such thing as a "video game war."
"I think we should see the casualties, but not to serve any particular pedagogical purpose. I get irritated when told that we should see the dead so we understand what war is really like - as if the idea that people die in horrible means would be a surprise. You mean they don’t freeze up, shout AIIEEE, or grimace and crumple over? I saw a T-72 take a hit the other day, and it was one of those classic examples of the flaws of Soviet design - an armor-piercing round set off the munitions, blowing the turret high in the air. If there was anyone inside, the end was fast. But you can imagine the nature of that quarter-second between life and death- and you should. Men died. In the time it takes you to wink the irreplaceable worlds these men held in their heads vanished. One shell, four men, eight parents, 20 siblings, a hundred friends, a thousand details lost for good. One second in war echoes for a decade."
He's also got another money shot paragraph which should be sent as a telegram to every leader in the Middle East.
"But there they are, on the ground, more methodical and efficient than one could have ever imagined, and they are losing one soldier for every 1000 Iraqis they kill. The combination of training, technology, dedication and lethality is worse than the Arab world could have possibly imagined - and the soldiers' primary motivation is getting the job done well so everyone can go home. Imagine what they would do if they were truly, deeply pissed."
Posted by steve @ 12:50 AM EST [Link]
~ TEKNICKEL PRUBLIMS: For some reason I've having difficulty updating the web site with the new issue. Stay tuned.
Posted by steve @ 12:12 AM EST [Link]
~ WOW, ENVIRONMENTALISTS ARE WRONG AGAIN: New research shows that the Middle Ages, you know, that era of industrial activity, were warmer than today.
"This announcement followed research published in 1998, when scientists at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia declared that the 1990s had been hotter than any other period for 1,000 years.
"Such claims have now been sharply contradicted by the most comprehensive study yet of global temperature over the past 1,000 years. A review of more than 240 scientific studies has shown that today's temperatures are neither the warmest over the past millennium, nor are they producing the most extreme weather - in stark contrast to the claims of the environmentalists."
So how many times can the claims of the environmentalist lobby be challenged until the major media begin to treat those claims with some skepticism? Not hostility, mind you, just skepticism?
Posted by steve @ 12:07 AM EST [Link]
Sunday, April 6, 2003 DON'T YOU KNOW ABOUT THE BIRD?: I've caught myself mentally humming "Surfin' Bird" while watching the news lately and for the life of me I couldn't explain why. Every time I saw a scene of battle on CNN I immediately heard the opening line of the Trashmen's only hit...
Well, everybody's heard about the bird...
It finally hit me this afternoon. Full Metal Jacket. In what has to be one of the greatest extended scenes ever filmed, Stanley Kubrick paired a raging battle scene with the surf song classic. It was brilliant...a surf song playing while the camera surfed along the wave of battle.
Along with the scene with the helicopter machine gunner ("How can you shoot women and children?", "Easy... you don't lead 'em so much.") and the soldiers singing the Mickey Mouse Club song theme at the end, the "Surfin' Bird" scene is just kills me.
I'm not going to go on about film school theories about the segment, all I know is that it's always been one of my favourite scenes of any movie.
Posted by steve @ 07:19 PM EST [Link]
~ WE WON'T FIGHT HOUSE TO HOUSE ... WE AREN'T TRYING TO CAPTURE HOUSES: Steve Den Beste has a marvelous post about how siege warfare is being redefined by what the Brits are doing in Basra and the Americans at Baghdad.
Classical seige warfare has changed little since it began. Defenders are encircled by attackers. Though technology occasionally changes the paradigm a little, the basic formula has remained the same. Den Beste says that's why a lot of people think that Baghdad will be a, wait for it!, quagmire for U.S. forces. People seem to think that it's going to be like Stalingrad all over again...Americans locked in vicious combat with the Fedayeen Saddam and the Special Republican Guard room by room, hallway by hallway, home by home...
The problem, as Den Beste notes, for those arm chair analysts is that the British and Americans aren't interested in capturing houses. They're interested in killing as many enemy soldiers as humanly possible.
"The British siege of Basra has already shown how the new book is being written. The defense plan was to let the attackers enter, and to assume that they'd pour troops in and try to occupy the entire city. Then the defenders would fight house-to-house, bleeding the attackers slowly and waiting for their determination to break. Everyone would fight primarily with light weapons, and that would nullify most of the advantages enjoyed by the attackers.
"But that's not what the British are actually doing."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:18 PM EST [Link]
~ IF IT AIN'T BROKE...: I can't believe I missed this on Friday. Brian Tiemann, who although he's a Mac user is a good lad, had a great blog entry about designers who can't seem to realize that some things don't need to be improved because they already are refined or they got it right the first time.
Sometimes I feel as though the designers of everyday products have a sentiment just like this gnawing at their brains. It's the assumption-- nay, the conviction-- that what we have in our cars, our computers, our mixers and blenders just can't be the best possible solution for the problems they address. It's the belief that even though we came up with certain solutions years or even decades or centuries ago, there's no way we could have "gotten it right" way back then.
We were replacing the doorknobs in the doors of the new house last weekend, and I started thinking about the design of doors. How long has the basic shape of the "door" been part of our collective psyche? The knob at waist level, right at the edge opposite the hinge? It seems an obvious design. It makes perfect sense. If the knob is as far as possible from the hinge, you get the optimum leverage when pushing or pulling it open; and if the knob and the latching mechanism is right at the edge, it can interface easily with the strike plate with very little supplementary hardware. Doors in corporate buildings with crash bars and automatic openers and such can get very complex in execution, because they don't follow this model. Push on a crash bar near the hinge, and it's much harder to open than if you push on it near the opening edge. And how do you lock double doors with crash bars? It's got to have a weird vertical bar mechanism to latch it into the ground or the ceiling. But that's the best solution for the problem at hand.
So I look at memes such as Tolkien's hobbit-holes. And it turns out that Tolkien fell prey to the desire to do something "different for the sake of being different", by designing round doors with the knob right in the middle. Sure, it's aesthetically nice. But as far as practicality goes, it's off the map. The set designers of Peter Jackson's LotR movies found that creating a functional hinge for a round door was ass-hard. I mean, think about it. How is a hinge like that supposed to work? It's one of the least practical mechanical interactions I can think of. Sure, the set designers did a marvelous job, and a plausible one for that matter, and that's superhuman of them. But the overall point is that no primitive people would have come up with round doors with center-mounted knobs. It just wouldn't happen.
I've been raging against this particular machine for a while myself. Designers today seem to be adopting the Homer Simpson rule: if you want to make something new, take an existing product and add a clock to it. I prefer elegance...designers today seem to simply want to add more clocks.
Posted by steve @ 03:48 PM EST [Link]
~ PICTURES FROM TORONTO: Courtesy of Instapundit (what, there wasn't one Canadian blog they couldn't have contacted...hint...hint) are some pictures from the Toronto rally expressing Canadians best wishes for America.
Posted by steve @ 05:26 AM EST [Link]
Saturday, April 5, 2003 NO ROLE FOR FRANCE OR THE UN: Mark Steyn argues in The Spectator that neither the French nor the UN should have any role in crafting a new constitution for Iraq.
"Eight decades ago, Britain botched the birth of Iraq because of a general deference to the modish multilateral umbrella of the day — League of Nations ‘Mandates’ — and a particular regard for the feelings of — guess who? — the French. If you read the government memoranda of the day, certain phrases recur: Emir Faisal assures Sir Herbert Samuel, high commissioner for Palestine, that ‘he does not wish to complicate matters between the British and the French’; the Cabinet finance committee instructs Sir Percy Cox, high commissioner for Mesopotamia, to keep the Hashemites on the payroll but to avoid ‘antagonising the French’; Lord Riddell reports that Lloyd George is ‘angry with the French for their attitude concerning Syria ...He continually refers to their greed.’ Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. Or, more to the point, they condemn a bunch of faraway natives to repeat it."
Steyn is God, not Clapton.
Posted by steve @ 07:20 PM EST [Link]
~ THE HOAX: It turns out that our blog entry on April 3, inspired by other blogs, about the selfless soldiers interviewed by Martin Savidge, is a hoax.
According to CNN, quoted by the Urban Legends Reference Pages, says the incident with the four Marines never happened.
"Thank you for your interest in CNN's reporting. Martin Savidge, who is embedded with the 1st battalion, 7th Marines, has been reporting live from Iraq since the beginning of the conflict. However, neither Martin nor any CNN correspondents filed the report you describe. Martin, like many other journalists, has occasionally lent his phone to members of the military so that they could make personal calls from the field, and other news organizations have mentioned these sorts of calls in their reporting."
Hey, I fell for it. You want to know why? Because something like this would actually happen.
Posted by steve @ 06:41 PM EST [Link]
~ THE CENTRAL PARK JOGGER: Tomorrow night, the "Central Park Jogger" who was nearly killed in an infamous wilding spree back when New York City was known as the "ungovernable city" will be interviewd by Katie Couric. Writing in Toogood Reports, Nicholas Stix provides the background on how this attack became a decade-long, politically charged racial controversy.
Posted by antle @ 05:28 PM EST [Link]
~ REMEMBERING MICHAEL KELLY: There have been some wonderful tributes to one of the finest journalists of our time. The Washington Post contributed this moving editorial. Byron York had a fine piece in NRO. Jeremy Lott talked about Kelly's influence on him as a journalist.
But as his editors at the Washington Post knew, there is much to be gained from remembering the man in his own words. And what a wordsmith he was - with evidence of being a fine man shining through.
Posted by antle @ 05:21 PM EST [Link]
~ COMPLETE WITH SHOOTING GALLERY: Coalition soldiers have discovered a "makeshift morgue" in southern Iraq with hundreds of bodies in plastic bags and cheap unsealed coffins.
"The coffins were stacked five deep in a warehouse, and a neighbouring building contained apparent cells and catalogues of photographs of the dead, most of whom had died from gunshot wounds to the head."
How did they die?
"A tiled foot-high plinth stood in a courtyard, with the brickwork riddled with bullets, and a drainage ditch."
The doves were right, there was no reason to go to war with Saddam Hussein. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:06 PM EST [Link]
~ LOOK AT THEIR FEET: "U.S. Marine Cpl. Jim Tomlin has gotten to know the subtle signs that might indicate if an Iraqi man dressed as a civilian might be a soldier or Fedayeen Saddam member. But the sign he saw Friday was anything but subtle."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 05:12 AM EST [Link]
~ I'D BUTCHER THIS GUY LIKE A HOG: "A man was arrested after his wife was found with a 25-foot chain similar to those used for dogs padlocked around her neck, police said."
Read more about this sick jerk here.
Posted by steve @ 05:02 AM EST [Link]
~ ENTER VALHALLA MY FRIENDS: The Pentagon has confirmed that seven out of eight bodies recovered from a hospital from Nasiriya were the bodies of the mates of Pfc. Jessica Lynch.
The soldiers have been identified as:
• Sgt. George E. Buggs, 31, Barnwell, South Carolina, 3rd Division Support Battalion
• Master Sgt. Robert J. Dowdy, 38, Cleveland, Ohio, 507th Maintenance Company
• Pvt. Ruben Estrella-Soto, 18, El Paso, Texas, 507th Maintenance Company
• Spc. James M. Kiehl, 22, Comfort, Texas, 507th Maintenance Company
• Chief Warrant Officer Johnny Villareal Mata, 35, Amarillo, Texas, 507th Maintenance Company
• Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa, 23, Tuba City, Arizona, 507th Maintenance Company
• Pvt. Brandon U. Sloan, 19, Cleveland, Ohio, 507th Maintenance Company
• Sgt. Donald R. Walters, 33, Kansas City, Missouri, 507th Maintenance Company
God rest the soul of the ninth body.
Posted by steve @ 04:14 AM EST [Link]
Friday, April 4, 2003 MICHAEL KELLY, R.I.P.: By now most readers have heard that Michael Kelly was the first embedded journalist killed on assignment. Kelly was simply one of the best op-ed columnists out there and the indispensable Atlantic Monthly improved even further under his editorship.
Kelly wrote great stuff. His status as a leading Clinton critic got him painted as a conservative - and he definitely took some conservative stands - but I agree with Jonah Goldberg's Corner post that he was more of "an old style blue collar Democrat whose B.S. detector pushed him to the right on specific issues." In any event, he will be sorely missed and impossible to replace.
Posted by antle @ 06:01 PM EST [Link]
~ CANADIANS CONTINUE TO DEMONSTRATE: Don't worry America, it's in support of you.
"We're not fair-weather friends of the Americans -- we're their friends in all weather, in war and in peace, even though some of us may disagree with the war," Ray Heard said.
[Update 4:58pm] - Reader Warren Loeppky was at the rally in Toronto as well, stating "[A] large crowd expressed their strong support for the U.S.A. and their anger with the Candian government's decision to not support the U.S.-led war in Iraq. True Canadians love the U.S.A. and our American brothers & sisters!!"
He also sends a link to a CBC news story about the event.
Thanks Warren!
Posted by steve @ 03:09 PM EST [Link]
~ COMRADE, YOU WERE PROBABLY WRONG ABOUT AFGHANISTAN AS WELL: An ex-Soviet Union hardline general today said that the coalition's attack was faltering and that Baghdad would be able to defend against an attack.
"Retired Col. Gen. Vladislav Achalov, a former Soviet deputy defense minister, said he had repeatedly visited Iraq just before the war and had inspected Baghdad's 'multiple defense rings.' He said they were 'impossible to break straight away,' the Interfax-Military News Agency reported."
Achalov and another retired general reportedly helped Saddam Hussein strengthen Iraq's defences. Yet despite that, the Saddam Hussein International Airport has been captured and 2 500 Republican Guard soldiers surrendured today.
Posted by steve @ 03:06 PM EST [Link]
~ AN AMERICAN HERO
When this war is over, there are going to be a TON of new American heroes.
And at the top of the list will be Capt. Chris Carter of Watkinsville,
Georgia - the 3rd Infantry Division Army Ranger who, under fire, rescued
that wounded Iraqi woman from an enemy bridge earlier in the week.Well, as Chris' dad, Mike, is a News & Views reader, I thought we'd reprint
an account of this dramatic rescue from Fox News.'cause we're as proud of
Chris as his dad! And immediately following the account, I'm also including
a link to an article on Chris, his mom and his dad which includes a bit
about the tremendous faith their family has in the power of prayer.
Enjoy..."'We've got to get her off that bridge,' he said.
"Capt. Chris Carter winced at the risks his men would have to take. Engaged
in a lightning-fast raid for this Euphrates River town, they were battling
for a bridge when -- through the smoke -- they saw the elderly woman. She
had tried to race across the bridge when the Americans arrived, but was
caught in the crossfire."At first, peering through their rifle scopes, they thought she was dead,
like the man sprawled in the dust nearby. But then, during breaks in the
gunfire that whizzed over her head, she sat up and waved for help."Carter, a 32-year-old Army Ranger, ordered his Bradley armored vehicle to
pull forward while he and two men ran behind it. They took cover behind the
bridge's iron beams."Carter tossed a smoke grenade for more cover and approached the woman, who
was crying and pointing toward a wound on her hip. She wore the black
chador, common among older women in the countryside. The blood soaked
through the fabric, streaking the pavement around her."Medics placed the woman on a stretcher and into an ambulance; Carter stood
by, providing cover with his M16A4 rifle. Then she was gone, and Monday's
battle for this town of 80,000, 50 miles south of Baghdad, raged on."(For more on Capt. Carter and his family, go to:
http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=15629)From an email newsletter.
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 10:41 AM EST [Link]
~ A VERY BRAVE, HUMANE MAN
Fox News has a marvelous story about the Iraqi lawyer who provided the information that led to the rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch.
I admire the courage this man displayed in order to help a fellow human being. He risked his life and the lives of his wife and daughter to do the right thing. How many of us have that kind of courage?
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 10:21 AM EST [Link]
~ DO THEY WANT TO BE NEXT?
Iran intends to send irregular troops into Iraq after the "regime change" in order to harrass US troops.
I guess they don't believe Dubya when he says "either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." We can to do Teheran what we have done to Baghdad, if that's what they want. A little urban renewal would do wonders for the tyrannical government in Iran.
Read it at UPI.
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 10:05 AM EST [Link]
~ THERE ARE THOSE THAT DO: Samuel G. Freedman says don't blame Jews for the war against Iraq, because there are plenty that do.
"In Buchanan's wake, similarly noxious theories have wafted from the liberal column as well. Rep. James Moran, D-Va., opined, 'If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this.' Gary Hart, the former and perhaps future presidential candidate, warned darkly that the nation 'must not let our role in the world be dictated by . . . Americans who too often find it hard to distinguish their loyalties to their original homelands from their loyalties to America.'"
Gosh, I wonder who they are referring to. For the record, I'm not Jewish or American...
Posted by steve @ 03:34 AM EST [Link]
~ BETTER THAN THE ONION: Most hilarious headline glimpsed on the subway on the way to the university this morning:
"Peace Movement Gathers Steam."
Dudes, don't you think it's a bit too late to be, uh, gathering anything? At this rate, the peaceniks will be protesting this war five years after it's over.
Posted by Barton @ 01:49 AM EST [Link]
~ IS IT RACIST TO NOTICE THINGS LIKE THIS?: No, on the whole, I don't think it is. But still, god knows how certain of our paleoconservative friends are going to use this little bit of information for their own nefarious purposes. Steve Sailer writes that (scroll down to "Richard Lynn reports..."):
Richard Lynn reports a new study that finds that American Jews have an average verbal IQ of 107.5.
"The results provide seven points of interest. First, they confirm the previous studies showing that American Jews have a higher average verbal intelligence level than non-Jewish whites. Second, the 7.5 IQ point Jewish advantage is rather less than that generally proposed and found in the studies reviewed in the introduction finding that Jews have verbal IQs in the range of 110–113 but is closely similar to the figure of 107.8 obtained in the Bachman study which is arguably the most satisfactory of the previous studies in terms of the size and representativeness of the sample."
Posted by Barton @ 01:36 AM EST [Link]
~ INTERROGATING SADDAM: So, say the Great Dictator is alive and skulking in one of his vast, Bond-villainesque underground bunkers and say, when we finally get to him that, unlike Hitler, he doesn't choose the "bullet in the brain" option, but instead allows himself to be captured. The problem becomes this then: how do we go about interrogating the guy? How do we break him down? Make him cry? Well, I was pondering this problem just now and a sudden inspirational brainwave came to me: we lock Saddam up in a room and force-feed him endless loops of selected South Park episodes dubbed into Arabic. No, I'm serious here (well, almost). After all, Saddam is a man who, according to Mark Bowden's superb profile of him in The Atlantic, "sees himself as an immortal figure," who believes that "his name will rank with those of the great men in history...as an established member of the pantheon of great men—conquerors, prophets, kings and presidents, scholars, poets, scientists:"
Saddam champions the simple virtues of a glorious Arab past, and dreams that his kingdom, though universally scorned and defiled, will rise again and triumph. Like the good king, he is vital in a way that will not be fully understood until he is gone. Only then will we all study the words and deeds of this magnificent, defiant soul. He awaits his moment of triumph in a distant, glorious future that mirrors a distant, glorious past.
How would an interrogator go about breaking a man with such a high sense of self-accomplishment, someone so enraptured by his own grand delusions? Why by pricking those delusions, of course. And in the harshest possible way. We must show him what kind of image he has among a good proportion of people in the West. We must reveal to him, that far from being seen as one of the "great men in history" or as even much of a threat, he has become a figure of fun, a joke. And there has been no better joke played on Saddam than his portrayal on South Park. Instead of the obvious "rabid dog" tyrant approach, Saddam is presented on South Park as a murderous, foul-mouthed, gay sex fiend who counts Satan, the Prince of Darkness himself, as one of his lovers. Yes, yes, it's all in very bad taste, but I laugh my head off every time "Saddam" makes an appearance on the show. The two fourth-season episodes in particular "Do the Handicapped Go to Hell?" and its sequel, "Probably" are classics of good, old-fashioned Saddam-bashing. I won't be able to quote my favourite parts from either episode because I think Steve will kill me for violating the anti-obscenity rules on this blog, but I can't resist quoting from the very end of "Probably," when Satan finally tires of Saddam's insatiable sexual appetites and banishes him from Hell:
Saddam: There you are!
Satan: Oh! Not again!
Saddam: You know you can't live without me! NOW GET THAT ASS BACK TO BED!
Satan: Saddam, I told you! I don't need you anymore!
Saddam: You can't leave me, Satan! Nobody leaves me!
Satan: YES I CAN! RAAAR! (throws a ray of fire at Saddam and burns a hole in his torso.)
Saddam: AHAGH! AW, Y'LITTLE PRICK!
Satan: Goodbye forever, Saddam!
Saddam: Cough! What're you talking about?! You can kill me, but I'll be back tomorrow!
Satan: Not this time! I asked a favour of an old friend of mine to let you in!
Saddam: Let me in where?! (disappears in a blaze of fire.)
(Cut to Heaven. Saddam appears.)
Saddam: What the...?! HEY! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS PLACE?!
(The Mormon Angels approach.)
Mormon Angel #4: Hello and welcome!
Mormon Angel #1: We're glad you made it, brother!
Saddam: Hey! Who the hell are you?!
Mormon Angel #5: We're just about to do a play about how much stealing hurts you deep inside! Come join us!
Mormon Angels: Yes! C'mon! Let's go! You're here forever!
(The Mormon Angels carry Saddam off.)
Saddam: NO! N'NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! (his echo is heard way out in the air.)
(CLOSING CREDITSAH! THE ENDDAH!)
Now, imagine you're Saddam and you're being forced to watch this and things like it over and over and over again... Hey, I think it's a splendid way of cutting into his self-esteem.
Posted by Barton @ 01:11 AM EST [Link]
~ THE MAKINGS OF A DISASTER: Just when you thought that the Iraqis had been defeated, this happens. The BBC reports that the British Royal Marines have been decisively routed by the Iraqis during a fierce battle in the fields around Basra. (Via Arts & Letters Daily).
Posted by Barton @ 12:03 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, April 3, 2003 TWO BODIES NOT AMERICANS: The Pentagon has announce that two of the eleven bodies recovered from a hospital near Nasiriya during the operation to rescue Pfc. Jessica Lynch were not American bodies and have been returned to the hospital.
Wait a minute, Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf said this morning that they were all American bodies...I wonder who I believe.
Posted by steve @ 03:58 PM EST [Link]
~ SELF PROMO ALERT: Finally something I wrote appears on a newspaper's web site. Judicial activism, unfortunately, isn't just an American phenomenon. As I wrote for the Vancouver Province today, it's prevalent up here in Canada as well.
"Call it blissful confidence or complete apathy, but there was little reaction to recent comments by the former chief justice of Ontario's Superior Court on the subject of judicial activism.
"A judge's role, said Patrick LeSage, was to right wrongs. Controversial decisions -- such as allowing same-sex marriages -- were not an attempt to create new law, but simply a legal remedy when governments attempt to avoid difficult decisions.
"Judges are criticized for making new law when they are actually determining the constitutionality of existing legislation, he said.
'"We are not proactive. We are purely reactive.'
"Given the partisan nature of selecting judges in Canada -- higher court judges in the U.S. must run the gauntlet of a confirmation process while here they are named by either a federal or provincial government -- it's debatable whether LeSage's belief in the blind impartiality of Canada's judges is merited."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:49 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT IS HE THINKING?: John Keegan of The Telegraph has a great article in today's edition wondering what exactly Saddam Hussein, or whoever is controlling Iraq's armed forces, is doing in this war.
"Saddam, or whoever is in charge, is fighting the strangest war. It is tempting to wonder, on the evidence so far presented, whether the Iraqis have been fighting a war at all.
"Admittedly there has been a certain amount of sniping and loose shooting. Iraqis in civilian clothes have been firing at American and British soldiers. However, that seems about the extent of enemy activity.
"Consider what the Iraqis have not done. They did not defend their frontier with Kuwait. The coalition forces passed through unopposed. They scarcely defended Umm Qasr, Iraq's only and vital port.
"It fell to 40 and 42 Commando after three days. They have not fought any large-scale or even small-scale battles, though the territory of their country is being eaten up day by day. More mysteriously they have neither demolished nor seriously defended any of the bridges over the Tigris or the Euphrates, which are essential to the coalition's movements into the country.
"If Saddam had some great counter-attack force preparing a trap for the coalition in the national heartland, one might fear that the abandonment of the bridges intact was a devilish plot, designed to make all come right for him in one sudden reversal of fortune."
As Keegan points out though, Hussein doesn't have such a force waiting -- or capable -- to pull off that feat. So what the heck is going on?
Posted by steve @ 03:14 PM EST [Link]
~ DUDE, IF YOU'RE ANGLING FOR A JOB, THIS ISN'T THE WAY TO GO ABOUT IT: Ex-CIA director James Woolsey, a possible candidate for a key position in the reconstruction of a post-war Iraq, stated yesterday that the U.S. is fighting World War IV (yeah, I missed one as well) against three different enemies. Dude, you're going to scare the civilians.
"In the address to a group of college students, Woolsey described the Cold War as the third world war and said 'This fourth world war, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us. Hopefully not the full four-plus decades of the Cold War.'"
Ah, there's an ex-spook for you. The Cold War was a war as well.
"He said the new war is actually against three enemies: the religious rulers of Iran, the 'fascists' of Iraq and Syria, and Islamic extremists like al Qaeda."
Here he gets back into reality land and I tend to think he's right. I argued back in the 1980s that we were at war with elements in the Middle East -- not that I was ahead of the curve, I read a great article at the time that convinced me -- but the evil empire was the primary villian back then. Of course, it's different arguing that we are in a war against these three enemies and actually fighting them. I think the impending fall of Iraq sends a signal to the Middle East that perhaps they missed in Afghanistan: it's different these days and we're serious.
We, and for the sake of western unity I'm going to be inclusive, are far stronger militarily, economically and even politically than any nation in the Middle East -- or the combined Middle East for that matter. Issuing us an invitation to war of any kind is simply suicidal for them. If Iraq's army is one of the best in the Middle East (even in its desiccated state) our power is showing in it's currently being demolished in front of the eyes in the world at the cost of several dozen of our lives. They can't win -- whether through military action or terrorism.
Of course, impotence breeds fear and resentment in cultures which value macho action. That's why women are forced to cover themselves and people submit to fools like Saddam Hussein. If we do fight a war against these three foes, and arguably we've taken on elements of two out of the three (al-Qaida and Iraq), we also have to fight with philosophy. It's will be "easy" to reduce the Middle East militarily but much more difficult to change their culture. By that I don't mean their religious culture, though that may need to change as well, but the very fabric of their societies. Right now many of these people have fallen prey to a nihilistic death worshipping culture no different than Nazi Germany's in the 1920s and 30s.
Don't believe me? The Palestinians are the best example of it but there are plenty of people who are members of that club. Welcome to our new world. Same as the old world.
Posted by steve @ 03:01 PM EST [Link]
~ HOMESCHOOLED TROOPS IN IRAQ: As a homeschooling advocate, I get annoyed (ok, I am more crab than "loveable") whenever that socialization argument pops up. Here's the ultimate rebuttal to those that think homeschoolers are little hothouse flowers whose parents keep them under lock-and-key. Click here.
Posted by izzy @ 11:49 AM EST [Link]
~ COALITION FORCES CLOSER: Reuters has just reported that advance elements of the 3rd Infantry Division are now just 6 kilometres south of Baghdad.
Not so fast lads. Let the bombers do their work. One entire Iraqi division of the Republican Guard isn't worth one coalition life.
Posted by steve @ 03:49 AM EST [Link]
~ WHERE DO THEY GET YOUNG MEN LIKE THIS? THE MARINES: CNN's Martin Savidge was speechless and near tears after talking with four young Marines. He offered the use of his video phone so they could call home. He didn't expect the answers he would get.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:33 AM EST [Link]
~ GOD BLESS THE UN!: Over at Icky's Blog, home of none other than our lovable Isabel Lyman, is a picture that might make you sick.
As Izzy wrote about the picture taken at a peace rally, "[It gives] new meaning to the phrase, 'wrapping oneself in the flag.'"
[Update - 2:06am] Grumble...her permalinks don't seem to be working. Just go to http://icky.blogspot.com/ and scroll down until you see the guy with the flag.
Posted by steve @ 02:02 AM EST [Link]
~ LILEKS ON THE WAR: James Lileks has his typically on point views about how the war is going -- with links to satelite images showing how little damage has been done to Baghdad -- and the fate of militant Islam. The money statement?
"Sometimes I think the reason America is so despised in some quarters is that we fail to live up to other peoples’ worst expectations."
I wouldn't have thought that gem up after a day of thinking.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:55 AM EST [Link]
~ UMMM, TOO LATE: German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said yesterday he hoped Saddam Hussein's government would collapse quickly, marking a stark turnaround from Germany's previous opposition to regime change as a goal of the U.S.-led war.
There's nothing like bandwagoning after weeks of war, coalition successes and the inevitable regime change you didn't like, right Mr. Fischer? Go away.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:47 AM EST [Link]
Wednesday, April 2, 2003 AL-QAIDA CAPTURES COALITION TROOPS, REPORT SAYS: A Muslim fundamentalist source announced today that al-Qaida personnel in Iraq captured five coalition soldiers last week in southern Iraq.
He said the "kidnapped troops will be equally treated as al-Qaida prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay."
What, you mean with culture appropriate meals, prayer times and fairly generous treatment?
And I thought there was no link between Iraq and al-Qaida...
Posted by steve @ 07:16 PM EST [Link]
~ HOW DID THEY KNOW WHAT ROOM PFC. LYNCH WAS IN?: (via Brothers Judd Blog) The New York Post reports today that U.S. intelligence was helped by Iraqi civilians -- you know, the ones who hate America -- in precisely locating where Pfc. Jessica Lynch was being held.
"In a twist right out of a Hollywood movie, U.S. intelligence may have pinpointed her exact whereabouts thanks to an Iraqi citizen - who passed a note, apparently written in English by a woman, to a Marine in the area yesterday, NBC reported.
"'She's still alive. She's in room [deleted],' the note said, according to the network.
"An NBC reporter also said he was approached the same day by an Iraqi who told him in English: 'There's a woman in the Saddam Hospital who's an American soldier. Please make sure the people in charge know.'"
Posted by steve @ 05:52 PM EST [Link]
~ EAT MY FRIENDS: U.S. Special Forces and British troops captured a warehouse formerly under the control of the Fedayeen Saddam. Inside? Several hundred tons of food.
"The coalition hopes the material will help alleviate the food shortage problems if and when they take control of Basra. British troops are tightening the ring around Basra in a slow move into the city."
"If and when"? Who's writing this copy? Al-Jazeera? Oh wait, CNN.
Posted by steve @ 05:43 PM EST [Link]
~ IT'S JUST A FISH MATE: Australians working in the Persian Gulf aren't very big fans of the U.S. Navy's dolphin squad, the ones who search for mines using their natural sonar.
"The bottom line, mate, is it's a fish," one diver said.
Posted by steve @ 05:38 PM EST [Link]
~ HMM, SEX OR NEWS?: Lycos, if anyone still uses that search engine anymore, reported today that "Al-Jazeera" became its top search term last week, with three times more searches than "sex."
I don't know which would be worse; searching for sex and pornography or searching for blatant anti-American propaganda.
Posted by steve @ 04:43 PM EST [Link]
~ AND PEOPLE SAY I DRINK TOO MUCH?: Dennis Kucinich, a man who is seeking the Democratic nod to run against Dubya in 2004, made a remarkable statement on the floor of the House of Representatives yesterday. Kucinich is against the war and wants it to stop immediately so that U.N. weapons inspectors can return to Iraq. That's not the amazing part. Read the following sentence:
"Iraq was not responsible for 9/11. Iraq was not responsible for any role al-Qaida may have had in 9/11. Iraq was not responsible for the anthrax attacks on this country."
There are three sentences in this paragraph. Two of them you could make a case for because the administration has never showed any evidence contrary to the statements. One of them, however, should end his bid for the nomination. Can you figure out which one? Okay, you might be tired. I'll even italicize the insane bit:
"Iraq was not responsible for any role al-Qaida may have had in 9/11."
May have? Can you imagine if Dubya had something this stupid?
Posted by steve @ 04:35 PM EST [Link]
~ YEAH, BUT I REALLY DON'T FEEL FOR HIM: The NY Post reports that Columbia University professor Nicholas De Genova isn't showing up to class anymore because of death threats related to his comments that he wanted a "million Mogadishus" in Iraq.
Obviously I don't want the man killed simply for expressing his opinion, despite the fact that he wanted his own nation's soldiers slaughtered, but I really don't have any pity for him. And there's more to the story. Not only did he wish for the deaths of Americans by Iraqis, he wants the deaths of Americans by Americans. During that same March 26 lecture, De Genova also praised Asan Akbar, the army sargeant who killed two of his fellow soldiers during a fragging at a Kuwaiti base.
Matthew Continetti over at NRO also reports that its rumoured that De Genova will speak at New York's Brecht Forum, a Marxist think tank, tomorrow.
Posted by steve @ 04:20 PM EST [Link]
~ UNLEASH THE DOGS OF WAR: (Via HotWired) "You might be able to fool a bunch of soldiers, but it's tough to fool a dog when he knows what he's looking for. And Buster, a 5-year-old British army springer spaniel trained to sniff out explosives, found what the soldiers couldn't on Tuesday, locating a cache of weapons being used by Iraqi militiamen in the southern village of Safwan. Buster's find, which resulted in the arrest of 16 Iraqis and an immediate easing of tension in the area, included several AK-47s, a pistol, six hand grenades, magazines of ammo, grenade fuses and bomb-making equipment, along with suitcases full of cash and a stash of heroin and crack cocaine. Good boy."
I understand the weapons...even the bomb making equipment to a certain extent...but the heroin and crack? Then again, if you've ever eaten army food, you would probably need heroin and crack cocaine to keep fighting. I still remember the Salisbury Steak C-ration and the last time I ate that was in 1989.
Posted by steve @ 04:03 PM EST [Link]
~ IF YOU CAN'T TRUST THE NEWS: The L.A. Times announced today that they have fired a photographer for altering a front page photo of a British soldier with Iraqi civilians.
"In an editor's note in Wednesday editions, the Times said photographer Brian Walski acknowledged in a phone call from Iraq that he had used a computer to combine elements of two photos to improve the composition."
See the pictures here.
Posted by steve @ 03:53 PM EST [Link]
~ HE SOUNDS LIKE AN ACADEMIC: Harlan Ullman, the man who invented "shock and awe", says the coalition isn't doing it right.
Slate's Timothy Noah links to Ullman's op-ed in the Baltimore Sun and discusses the plan vs. the reality.
"Are Ullman's criticisms legitimate, or is he merely protecting his theory from a potentially devastating real-world test?"
How about both?
Posted by steve @ 03:07 PM EST [Link]
~ THE IDIOT OF THE WEEK AWARD GOES TO --
A marine reservist refused to answer the call of duty when his reserve unit was called up for the war in Iraq. His reason? "They don't really advertise that they kill people". Is this guy bright or what!
With his mother holding his hand, the reservist surrendered to military authorities.
Read the story here.
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 09:59 AM EST [Link]
~ BLOGGING IS NEW BECAUSE CNN NEVER HEARD OF IT: CNN just ran a report on the new phenomenon of blogging. The usual suspects were profiled (Glenn Reynolds, Jeff Jarvis). That's right, because Jeff Greenfield just learned of it, blogging has "exploded."
Blogging, of course, actually exploded post-September 11 and has been around since the mid-1990s. I first started reading blogs in 1998 and actually ran my first blog in 2000. Don't worry, it was an anonymous personal blog -- most were back on those days -- that I didn't promote but started in an effort to clear my head about some things going on in my life at the time. It was a nicely designed blog and I updated it by hand...old school baby! I eventually erased all records of it. It was personal after all.
So anyway, getting back to what I'm complaining about, Greenfield seems to believe that because war bloggers are covering the heck out of the Iraqi war, that they've only existed since the middle of March.
Jeff, buy some books and read about the history of blogging.
Posted by steve @ 04:19 AM EST [Link]
~ THE AXIS OF FRIENDS ROARS INTO ACTION: Friends of America Network will be going live soon and it features links to Norwegian, Canadian and German Friends of America.
In case the U.S. media didn't cover it, in Canada, thousands of us have marched over the past few days in support the U.S.A.
You cats aren't alone...even in the countries that have renounced the war in Iraq.
Posted by steve @ 02:18 AM EST [Link]
~ WE MAKE FUN OF. YOU DECIDE: Howard Kurtz relates how Fox News made fun of antiwar protestors outside of their building in Manhattan.
"When antiwar demonstrators gathered outside the Fox News building in Manhattan, the network's outdoor news zipper replaced its headlines with taunts:
"'War protester auditions here today. . . . Thanks for coming!' And: 'How do you keep a war protester in suspense? Ignore them.' And: 'Attention protesters: The Michael Moore Fan Club meets Thursday at a phone booth at Sixth Avenue and 50th Street.'
"Unfair and unbalanced? 'I thought I'd have some fun with it,' says Fox zipper-writer Marvin Himelfarb, a former Hollywood screenwriter. 'I couldn't resist.'"
I especially liked the second one.
Posted by steve @ 02:01 AM EST [Link]
~ A BELATED APRIL FOOL'S DAY BLOG ENTRY: The Museum of Hoaxes announces their list of the 100 all-time best hoaxes. Being a New York Mets fan, I maybe would have fell for number three.
Posted by steve @ 12:15 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, April 1, 2003 POW RESCUED BY AMERICAN TROOPS: The U.S. Department of Defence formally announced that Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch has been rescued by her fellow countrymen.
"Lynch, 19, of Palestine, W.Va., was part of the 507th Maintenance Company, which was ambushed near Nasiriyah after making a wrong turn during early fighting in the invasion of Iraq. Five other members of her unit were later shown on Iraqi television answering questions."
May the Lynch family sleep well tonight. And we're happy to have you back lass!
[Update - 12:10am] (Thanks to Orrin Judd) Man, they rarely looked like her when I was in uniform. Here's a picture of Pfc. Lynch in civilian clothes.
Posted by steve @ 08:18 PM EST [Link]
~ BRITS SAVE KENYANS CAPTURED BY IRAQIS: Members of the Black Watch rescued two men who had been paraded on Iraqi television as American POWs. The men turned out to be a pair of Kenyans hired by the U.S. to deliver food to the troops.
"They kept us there for 10 days. We had no food or water, nothing. We decided because we are Christians we would ask God to save us or take our souls to heaven. We prayed to God every day," said David Shira Mukaria.
We're happy to see you alive lads.
Posted by steve @ 08:11 PM EST [Link]
~ LIFE IN PLAGUE TIME: No, it's not the "Black Death," but living in Toronto, the very centre of the SARS epidemic in North America right now, is just getting weird, especially if you're a person of Asian extraction. My neighbours, who just got back from a vacation in Hong Kong, have been forced to quarantine themselves for ten days at home. A person in class today was consulting with the literary studies professor (!) over whether she should make a sick friend of hers get tested for the disease. And the blanket news coverage is downright surreal. I just tuned into the local news right now and they were doing a comparison of where you could get the best prices for surgical masks (20 masks for $50 seems to be the average, but this is a jump of $30 from last week's prices). They immediately topped that by showing a clip where one of the correspondents proceeded to very slowly and very elaborately demonstrate to us how to properly wash your hands, since according to our medical officers of health, that is the best way to stop the spread of SARS from person-to-person. Two and half thousand years of medical progress and that's what our doctors come up with...
Posted by Barton @ 06:30 PM EST [Link]
~ I'M BEGINNING TO THINK HE DID GET CLIPPED: Saddam Hussein made a stirring speech today calling for a jihad to drive coalition forces out of Iraq.
"Strike at them, fight them," the statement said. "They are aggressors, evil, accursed by God. You shall be victorious and they shall be vanquished.
"Fight them everywhere the way you are fighting them today. And don't give them a chance to catch their breath until they declare it and withdraw from the lands of the Muslims, defeated and cursed in this life and the afterlife."
Good stuff eh? Only one problem. Saddam never made the speech. It was delivered for him on national television by Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf.
The military's command and control has been all but smashed. The Republican Guard isn't able to carry out extensive manuevers to adjust to coalition attacks. The fedayeen is being killed or captured. One by one Iraq's cities are being captured and the population is greeting the coalition forces. If the people of Iraq ever needed a time for their leader to appear in person and rally them against the vile crusaders, now would be the time. So why didn't Saddam appear to deliver the statement? The only logical conclusion is that he was killed that first night in the strike or he's severely wounded.
Posted by steve @ 04:03 PM EST [Link]
~ BRITISH WAR MONUMENT IN FRANCE VANDALIZED: The Commonwealth War Graves Commission reports that a British war memorial was defaced by people opposed to the war in Iraq.
"'The words 'Rosbifs [British] go home! Saddam Hussein will win and spill your blood' were painted in French over the base of the cemetery's main monument - an obelisk topped by a cross.
"On one side was a swastika and the words 'death to the Yankees'.
"Also daubed were the words 'dig up your garbage, it is fouling our soil,' and 'Bush, Blair to the TPI (International Court of Justice)'."
Even a French socialist quoted in the story is angry.
[Update - April 2/2:10am] Here's a picture taken before the vandalism was removed.
Posted by steve @ 03:43 PM EST [Link]
~ MY INITAL CONCLUSIONS WERE RIGHT: (Via NRO's The Corner) "Mohammed Barkir Al-Mohari, a Shiite cleric, tells FNC that the driver outside Najaf yesterday was forced to run that U.S. checkpoint with women and children on board yesterday. He also claims that the same goes for the suicide bomber this weekend—that he was told his family would be killed if he did not do it. He says that the money the regime rewarded the family was actually hush money."
Posted by steve @ 03:38 PM EST [Link]
~ THAT'S WHY HE LOST
New Zealand's anti-war Prime Minister says this war would not have happened had Gore been elected. She is absolutely right. That's why he's not the president.
Read her nutty statements in this piece at CNSNews.
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 11:58 AM EST [Link]
~ TRYING TO GET BACK INTO GOOD GRACES, HMM?: I guess somebody got the message about what people think of him going on TV and badmouthing the war effort.
Posted by antle @ 08:54 AM EST [Link]
~ DO YOU REMEMBER WEIRD TV?: Back in 1995/96 I was unemployed after I finished university and I had a lot of free time on my hands. That means, as the time stamp on this blog entry would indicate, I stay up pretty late puttering around and doing little of value.
Because I got to stay up late, I watched this weird (insanely weird actually) TV show named Weird TV. It was available on about 40 per cent of North American cable systems and was truly memorable. It was hosted by a cat named Chuck Cirino and featured stream of consciousness television programming that was often quite surreal. The talent behind the show was pretty good. The head producer of the show Friends did double duty and helped produced Weird TV. The web site for the show is still up here.
For a taste of their insanity, catch RealVideo or Quicktime clips here. (Yes, if you watch the Shadoevision Promo, that is radio personality and former Hollywood Squares regular Shadoe Stevens...he had a real bent streak.)
It didn't last long and some videos released with the episodes didn't last long in the stores. I have about a dozen episodes on VHS somewhere that I haven't played since 1998 for fear of ruining the tapes. Well, on the off chance that someone was still at the end of the email address on the show's web site, I emailed Chuck (his personal web site here, warning some adult content) tonight with a short note stating that I had interviewed him back in the late 90s for a radio station I used to gig at. Amazingly, he responded and told me he remembered me (nice of him to say, I don't believe it!) and said that Weird TV may be returning!
"We're going to try to relaunch Weird TV soon on digital cable - somewhere in California I think. Since our main executive producer, Todd Stevens, is still on FRIENDS, we've had a little delay."
Chuck goes on to say that the original episodes may be released on DVD one day. I can only hope and pray. I still have my Weird TV T-shirt that Chuck sent me back in 1997 that I haven't worn since that year.
Posted by steve @ 04:00 AM EST [Link]
~ WHERE DID HE GET HIS INFORMATION FROM? Bill Herbert over at Cointelpro does a little investigating and finds out that John Sutherland's Guardian article about Rachel Corrie shares some similarities with a posting made on National Vanguard Network, a neo-Nazi web site.
Note, no one is saying that Sutherland wrote the garbage on NVN, but those comments (with NVN being cited as the source) did appear on Indymedia which he may have seen.
Posted by steve @ 02:23 AM EST [Link]
~ ARNETT SHOULDN'T HAVE BEEN FIRED FOR APPEARING ON IRAQI TV: Says Jack Shafer. Or even giving his opinion because that's what journalists do. I agree. Arnett should have been fired for, he writes, being so stupid.
"If we are to construct a case for Arnett's dismissal, let's use his advanced stupidity and gullibility as the posts and beams, and not the fact that he, like most of us, has opinions and spoke his mind."
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