Christmas with Snoopy and the Red Baron

I hope you had a pleasant and joyful Christmas. I had the opportunity to spend mine with my brother Nathan, his wife and his relatively new in-laws, having married into a great Polish Catholic family from Queens (lots of meat and a liberal indulgence in spirits). Being a vegetarian, my wife tried her hand at making a delicious new stuffed-pastry dish with phyllo dough and brought along her prized banana bread (her own secret recipe).

The highlight of the evening, besides the 5th of Jack Daniels and two glasses from my brother, was when Father(in-law) Skibinski pulled out Snoopy vs. The Red Baron by the Royal Guardsmen (on original vinyl!) and played the entire thing -- a treasured album from my elementary school days that I had not heard in literally decades, but found myself knowing, and singing(!) every word by heart!

(Listen to "Snoopy's Christmas").

Midnight Mass was excellent as always, the choir ending with the 'Halleluah' chorus from Handel's Messiah -- and the priest's blessing a recently-refurbished tabernacle which they had discovered in the basement and installed in the center, directly behind the alter (motivated by the Holy Father's proclamation of "The Year of the Eucharist"). A move which definitely merits POD recognition.

Perhaps it is only in keeping with the spirit of the season, but for several Sundays in December our typical Eucharist hymn (which is drawn from modern fair and usually serves to bolster the premise of "Why Catholics Can't Sing") has been replaced by "Hidden God, Devoutly I Adore Thee," a translation of the famous hymn Adoro Te Devote by St. Thomas Aquinas.

I've read that there are twenty-five translations, and I'm not sure whether it's a modern or traditional musical rendering, but in any case, after being forced to sing (or sit through) the saccharine-sweet "One Bread, One Body", it's a welcome relief to sing so substantial a hymn, and to marvel at the meaning of the words -- allegedly written by the saint at the request of Pope Pius IV for the feast of Corpus Christi in 1264. I just hope it lasts, although I'm resigned to the possibility that come the transition to "normal time" we'll be returning to more contemporary works.

• Reflections on Eucharist in Light of 'Adoro Te Devote', 1st Advent Sermon of Pontifical Household Preacher, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa.

The Donald and The Troops

. . . That is when I, without any thought, piped in with "Sir, you can talk to him, he's awake." He told the soldier, named Rob, how proud he was of his service. The soldier was in a bit of disbelief, because he couldn't see with one eye patched and the other swollen shut. He said he wanted to talk to Rumsfeld. That's when I said "He's standing right to your left, Rob, that's his voice you hear. You can talk to him." The kid was nervous at that point, but sputtered out how honored he was to talk to him. Mr. Rumsfeld replied, "No, it's an honor for me to talk to you."

Then remarkably, the young soldier, who had just lost his left hand and right eye from an explosion, came to the defense of the Secretary of Defense, stating "Mr. Rumsfeld, I want you to know, that you are doing a fantastic job. I know that you are taking a lot of heat for the problems with getting armor for vehicles. I want you to know that things are vastly improved. Our vehicles are great, and I have never searched through junk piles for scrap metal." . . .

Read more of Captain Dan Mattson's eyewitness account here; via Powerline.

Dry Quicksand On Video

Reports that travelers and even whole vehicles have instantaneously vanished by sand have often been dismissed as products of fantasy. Rightly so? Our latest experiments show that such a dry quicksand may exist, and that objects can sink up to many diameters deep into very loose, fine sand.

Sand supports weight. Force chains are known to play a prominent role therein. We considerably weaken the force chain structure by letting air flow through very fine sand. Even when the air is turned off and the bed has settled, the prepared sand does not support weight: Balls sink into the sand up to five diameters deep. We call this state of sand dry quick sand. The state is not to be confused with the normal quick sand which is a mixture of sand, clay, and water. The final depth the ball reaches scales linearly with its mass and above a threshold mass, a sand jet is formed which shoots sand straight and violently into the air.

-- Dry Quicksand, an experiment of the Department of Science and Technology – University of Twente – The Netherlands. (Via OxBlog).

Earthsea

It's been ages since I've read the Earthsea books, but I recall enjoying them as a child, and so when the SciFi channel announced they were making a miniseries I honestly didn't know what to expect . . . This is bad. Not quite as bad as John Travolta's abomination of a Sci-Fi film, but . . . Ouch. Further reactions on the SciFi Message Board.

Blackfive on "The President you never hear about"

The San Diego Union Tribune reports that "President Bush came to the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base today on the 63rd anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and vowed the United States would triumph over its current enemies." That was probably all you heard about the event -- I heard about it only because John Stewart made light of the President's remarks in his daily television show on the Comedy Channel.

But what you probably didn't know was the fact that our President took the time to meet individually with 170 family members mourning the loss of a loved one. BlackFive posts a stirring eyewitness account of "the President you never hear about".

"The DNA of Literature"

Welcome to the DNA of literature -- over 50 years of literary wisdom rolled up in 300+ Writers-at-Work interviews, now available online -- free. Founder and former Editor George Plimpton dreamed of a day when anyone—a struggling writer in Texas, an English teacher in Amsterdam, even a subscriber in Central Asia—could easily access this vast literary resource; with the establishment of this online archive that day has finally come.

-- The Paris Review

How very cool of them.

Arthur Chrenkoff "loses his innocence"

. . . I was sixteen and a half years old when I arrived in Australia in November 1988. I had so many other things to do with my time (like learn the language, for starters) that the political reality did not hit me straight away. It dawned on me slowly over time: my old Polish world-view was a sham. Or at least half of it was. The part about the overwhelming majority of my fellow residents of the Evil Empire wanting freedom and democracy was still right. The part about the West being full of... well, Westerners, wasn't.

You can imagine my shock and disappointment upon discovering that only a minority of the inhabitants of the Free World were truly committed to the ideas of liberal democracy, capitalism and anti-communism. Another minority was in various shades and degrees opposed to, or critical of, one or more of these concepts, and the group in the middle was largely indifferent and disinterested - not quite alienated from their own society, but too busy or too bored to fight against its enemies.

My innocence was truly lost.

Why are so few truly appreciative of the bounty of freedom and prosperity they're sharing in? I thought to myself. Why are so many hostile to their own society and so open to the visions of the enemies of democracy and liberty? Why do so many think that the West is worse or at least no better than the "prison of the nations" that most of my fellow prisoners wanted to escape from?

Read the further reflections of Arthur Chrenkoff.

Jacques Derrida - "bad reader par excellence"

. . . a primary reason for skepticism about Derrida is that overwhelmingly those who engage in philosophical scholarship on figures like Plato and Nietzsche and Husserl find that Derrida misreads the texts, in careless and often intentionally flippant ways, inventing meanings, lifting passages out of context, misunderstanding philosophical arguments, and on and on. Derrida was the bad reader par excellence, who had the gall to conceal his scholarly recklessness within a theoretical framework. He was the figure who did more violence than any other to what Nietzsche had aptly called "the great, the incomparable art of reading well," "of reading facts without falsifying them by interpretation, without losing caution, patience, delicacy, in the desire to understand" (The Antichrist, sections 59 and 52).

Source: "The Derrida Industry" (www.butterfliesandwheels.com) -- Brian Leiter's fisking of Mark C. Taylor's ode to Derrida (New York Times Oct. 14, 2004).

Nietzsche: Not a delusional kook -- just a kook on an ego-trip.

. . . After explaining that syphilis is a syndrome caused by the ravages of the spirochete Treponema pallidum (the lively, corkscrew-shaped bacterium), Margulis elaborates on her own recent research into spirochetes by weighing in on the long-running debate over Nietzsche's brain. Yes, Nietzsche's madness was undoubtedly caused by paresis, she writes -- but he most likely went crazy quite suddenly, as opposed to over the course of weeks and months. "Nietzsche's brain on January 3, 1889 experienced a transformation," she states -- which means that his books of 1888 weren't written by a delusional kook.

Source: "Bugs in the belfry", by Joshua Glenn. Boston Globe, Nov. 28, 2004.

Iranian bloggers jailed in government crackdown.

We really take our freedom for granted here in the U.S. -- five Iranian webloggers were jailed in a government crackdown. Meanwhile, the blog RegimeChangeIran is requesting assistance for an Iranian Freeper (poster to the Free Republic bulletin board) who was forced to "go underground" and has recently escaped Iran. They are currently seeking a way to get him asylum.

The United Nations' Crisis of Moral Legitimacy

The Diplomad, a blog by employees of the U.S. State Department, on the "United Nations -- "the thirty-year single malt of bureaucracies" -- and why we should regard it as "a massive, expensive hoax that needs to be ended once and for all."

Having actually worked for and with the U.N., they're entitled to make their case. Meanwhile:

• AP reports "The United Nations is investigating about 150 allegations of sexual abuse by U.N. civilian staff and soldiers in the Congo, some of them recorded on videotape." Prompting Patrick Spero to wonder: "why is CNN reporting on it now when the story broke in May?" (via Instapundit).

• Staff revolt gathers pace at UN Times Online, Nov. 20, 2004.

• Fire Kofi, by the editors of National Review Online. Nov. 24, 2004.

Together with the U.N. Oil for Food scandal, I'm continually mystified by the contensions of those who contend that all manner of things will be well if the Bush Administration only learns to "work with the U.N."

Update: Sen. Norm Coleman of the Foreign Relations Committee says Kofi Annan must go.

Belmont Club gives a history lesson ("Bush = Hitler")

This is an easy target and a worthless argument among educated folk, but given the degree to which the "Bush = Hitler" comparison comes up among the MoveOn.org, perhaps Belmont Club's history lesson is necessary:

Oliver Stone portrays Alexander the Great as gay and whether or not that was the case, it illustrates the potential dangers of learning history according to Hollywood. While the Third Reich still remains a potent historical image only the very old have any first hand recollection of it and there is the danger the term 'Nazi' may become just as much a figure of speech as 'working like a Trojan' -- a reference to nothing anyone understands in particular. When people aver that 'Bush is like Hitler', it presumes the speaker has a clear historical knowledge of what Hitler was really like, an assumption which is increasingly invalid.

For one, Hitler would have taken a very dim view of Jesusland, a country which George Bush is said to be in the process of founding, whose geographic location is to the immediate south of the United States of Canada. Martin Bormann said, "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable." Hitler, according to Klaus Fischer's Nazi Germany stated that "one day we want to be in a position where only complete idiots stand in the pulpit and preach to old women." In a concession to popular feeling, however, the Nazis offered the public certain acceptable 'faith traditions' including something called "Gottglaubig", a dished-up creed heavily overladen with ancient Germanic pagan beliefs with versions of rituals for birth, marriage and death.  "By 1938, carols and nativity plays were were forbidden in the schools, and the words 'Christmas' itself was replaced by the word 'Yuletide'." . . . READ MORE

When God says "It's Not Your Time" . . . It's Not Your Time.

A Hindu seer in India's eastern Orissa state was berated by angry crowds when he failed to die after declaring his soul would leave his body at an appointed time, a report said on Friday.

The chief cleric of the Sriguru Ashram in the Kharagaon area of Konark said he would die a natural death on Wednesday between 6am and noon, the Asian Age newspaper said, without naming him.

Elaborate police arrangements were made as a crowd of 15 000 turned up to see the "death by will" miracle. . . . reporters asked the seer what had happened, he replied: "Perhaps the will of God was somewhat different. I am very shocked to have given you so much pain. I wanted to leave my mortal body, but I could not. Please forgive me."

- Mail & Guardian Sapa-AFP. (Via The Revealer).

President George W. Bush - Dissident!

"There is a great difference between politicians and dissidents. Politicians are focused on polls and the press. They are constantly making compromises. But dissidents focus on ideas. They have a message burning inside of them. They would stand up for their convictions no matter what the consequences.'

"In spite of all the polls warning you that talking about spreading democracy in the Middle East might be a losing issue — despite all the critics and the resistance you faced — you kept talking about the importance of free societies and free elections. You kept explaining that democracy is for everybody. You kept saying that only democracy will truly pave the way to peace and security. You, Mr. President, are a dissident among the leaders of the free world."

Natan Sharansky to President George Bush, in a private meeting.

According to the National Review, both the President and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice have read Sharansky's book, The Case for Democracy.

Lounge Against The Machine?!?

"Lounge Against the Machine, by Richard Cheese.

On Lounge Against the Machine, alt-rock hits get the Vegas treatment way before their time. Vocalist Richard Cheese and his piano trio really know how to warp a song. Rage Against the Machine's "Guerilla Radio" sounds smooth as silk, if incredibly schmaltzy, in the hands of this wayward lounge act. The Dead Kennedys' "Holiday in Cambodia" gets completely defanged in Cheese's rendition. And it's definitely strange to hear the rage drained out of Nirvana's "Rape Me" and replaced with bland, mindless enthusiasm. The tone of these covers is so far removed from the originals that at times you forget what you're really listening to. At moments like these, Cheese and the boys sound like some anonymous combo going through the motions. But then you'll hear the singer let loose with some foul language or croon a harsh line and it sounds downright strange and funny. Lounge Against the Machine can be tiresome at times, but it certainly takes the piss out of these songs.

-- Fred Cisterna (Amazon.com)

This is SO WRONG on so many levels . . . but, oddly intriguing just the same.

Of course, Pat Boone did it first, way back in 1997 with the phenomenal "In A Metal Mood".

The light through the darkness . . .

According to Matthew Heidt (Froggy Ruminations):

I can’t say that these Four Horsemen are collaborating or conspiring against us, but the coalescence of these dark forces portends of future disaster not only for us but for them as well. Fear not, because we are defeating these foes where we can, and if we stay the course and make it out the other side, we will be able to bask in the sunlight of our victory. On that day we will have no debtors to repay, and yet we will be bloodied but not bowed.

Sometimes you just gotta laugh.

In Jerusalem, an American female journalist heard about an old rabbi who visited the Wailing Wall to pray, twice a day, everyday, for a long, long time.

In an effort to check out the story, she went to the holy site and there he was. She watched the bearded old man at prayer. After 45 minutes, when he turned to leave, she approached him for an interview.

"I'm Rebecca Smith from CNN, sir, how long have you been coming to the Wailing Wall and praying?" she asked.

"For about 50 years," he said.

"50 years! That's amazing! What do you pray for?" she asked.

"I pray for peace between the Jews and the Arabs. I pray for all the hatred to stop, and I pray for all our children to grow up in safety and friendship," he said.

"And how do you feel, sir, after doing this for 50 years?" she asked.

Without hesitation he said, "Like I'm talking to a f**king wall."

Fayrouz ("Live from Dallas").

Post-Election Blogger Roundup

Just a few of the post-election reflections that I found amusing, interesting, or appealing.

• Jeff Jarvis offers some good advice his fellow Democrats: "suck it up and repeat after me: He's our President, too."

• Mark Shea: explains why the Left is losing hearts and minds: "They don't know what's killing them. They cannot conceive of a world where those who disagree with them are not evil, stupid, or insane."

  Case in point -- this message from John Passacantando, Executive Director of Greenpeace:

  It's hard to know what to say. To see Bush re-elected with the first electoral majority since his father's first election is an emotional blow. He seems to have secured a mandate based on his policies of pre-emptive war, war on the environment, crony capitalism, veiled racism, homophobia and a fundamentalism that would make the Taliban proud. This despite the largest "Get out the Vote" effort in the history of progressive causes in the United States.

• Meanwhile, Instapundit comments on some photos of sore losers voicing their discontent at a post-election rally in San Francisco: "The Democrats are going to have to distance themselves from stuff like this, if they want to carry swing states."

• William Luse: "small blessings, Biblical proportions":
  And the Lord God in His mercy looked down upon the earth and searched in His might from the Ohio River to the shores of Lake Erie, and found stuck somewhere in the midst of the vastness one TS O'Rama, and announced to the assembled heavenly host growing impatient with Ohio's slothfulness at counting votes in a timely manner: "Behold, any man who can pray, drink German beer, and watch election returns at the same time is a man worth saving.

• Prof Bainbridge concludes they really do hate us, and cites a revelatory passage from Christopher Lasch:
  [T]he new elites, the professional classes in particular, regard the masses with mingled scorn and apprehension. In the United States, "Middle America" -- a term that has both geographical and social implications—has come to symbolize everything that stands in the way of progress: "family values," mindless patriotism, religious fundamentalism, racism, homophobia, retrograde views of women. Middle Americans, as they appear to the makers of educated opinion, are hopelessly shabby, unfashionable, and provincial, ill informed about changes in taste or intellectual trends, addicted to trashy novels of romance and adventure, and stupefied by prolonged exposure to television. They are at once absurd and vaguely menacing. (p. 28 Revolt of the Elites).

• Peggy Noonan wants us to savor the moment:
  George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, became the first incumbent president to increase his majority in both the Senate and the House and to increase his own vote (by over 3.5 million) since Franklin D. Roosevelt, political genius of the 20th century, in 1936. This is huge.

• Powerline on Dan Rather's "blame it on the bloggers" remark:
  "This from a guy whose network coordinated an attack on the president, based on forged documents, with the Democratic party and the Kerry campaign?"

• The New Criterion's weblog on the Democratic interpretation of "moral values":
  . . . to draw a line from "moral values" to "gay marriage" is to misread this response completely. "Moral values" do not necessarily represent an "issue" distinct from terrorism, the Iraq war, domestic issues, gay marriage, and so on. Moral values inform the approach one takes to those issues. What voters may have seen in John Kerry is a man without convictions or values--at least, without any he made very clear. Voters may see just the opposite in Bush--and respect what they see, even in cases where Bush's convictions and values lead him to decisions with which they themselves disagree.

• Jeff Miller ("Curt Jester") how to really annoy liberals:
  Since many liberald said that Bush stole the first election and that they had to work to re-defeat Bush I propose we go along with them. Four years from now we have President Bush run again since he first four years were an electoral mulligan.

• Bill Cork responds to Garry Wills and Thomas Friedman's laments on the Bush win with a lesson on the foundation of American freedom.

• Phil Dilon, a self described "prairie apologist, transplanted Bostonian and Kennedy Democrat who has found refuge in the Kansas Flint Hills," provides an excellent roundup of Democrat hand-wringing over Bush's victory, with a focus on their latest epiphany that in order to win the votes of Middle America, they must speak the language of Middle America. Unfortunately, says Mr. Dillon, In Order To Be Sincere, You Must First Really Be Sincere.

• Andrew ("The Backseat Philosopher") writes a letter To My Fellow Democrats. Probably the best advice for Democrats ever offered in a single post on this election. Read it.

Chrenkoff on the next coalition: "A bit more willing this time around?"

For the past few years, the "international community" has built its policy vis-a-vis the United States on an assumption that Bush, that uncomfortable aberration from Texas, would be a one-termer. Walled in inside their own echo chamber, reinforced and amplified by the American mainstream media's anti-Bush stance, foreign governments have managed to convince themselves that no incumbent could survive electoraly the "quagmire" of Iraq abroad and the groundswell of opposition at home. In other words, the leaders from Caracas to Paris, and from Cairo to Kuala Lumpur, made the assumption that since they wouldn't vote for Bush, and the "New York Times" wouldn't vote for Bush, the American people wouldn't either - that is, for all the sophisticates' sneering about America and the Americans, the "unwilling" governments around the world thought that in the end the US voters would behave as "rationally" as the Belgians or the Jordanians would in these circumstances.

It was not to be. George W Bush has been clearly and convincingly re-elected and his policies at home - and most importantly abroad - re-endorsed by the majority of the electorate. And France, Germany, the EU, the UN, and all others are stuck with W in the White House for the next four years. Going back to the good old days of doing nothing and doing it all together is no longer a possibility.

Arthur Chrenkoff, chronicling the congratulatory statements of various nations around the globe (including France, Germany and Russia), who are re-thinking their past hostility and are now cozying up to President Bush.

Certifiably insane?

Eminem/P. Diddy's Youth Vote -- What happened?

Associated Press on the youth-vote (or lack thereof):

This was not the breakout year for young voters that some had anticipated.

Fewer than one in 10 voters Tuesday were 18 to 24, about the same proportion of the electorate as in 2000, exit polls indicated. Still, with voter turnout expected to be higher overall, more young people appeared to have come out.

A vigorous push on college campuses by both parties and national mobilization drives had raised expectations that 2004 would be the year of the youth vote.

This was disappointing but predictable. Just the fact that a 20-something year old digs an Eminem video (much less P. Diddy's "Vote or DIE!" campaign) doesn't necessarily translate into a reliable flood of votes.

Now, were they living in Alaska -- where the legalization of marijuana is on the ballot, you'd see some serious motivatin'.

Tom Wolfe: "The liberal elite hasn't got a clue"

. . . "Here is an example of the situation in America," he says: "Tina Brown wrote in her column that she was at a dinner where a group of media heavyweights were discussing, during dessert, what they could do to stop Bush. Then a waiter announces that he is from the suburbs, and will vote for Bush. And ... Tina's reaction is: 'How can we persuade these people not to vote for Bush?' I draw the opposite lesson: that Tina and her circle in the media do not have a clue about the rest of the United States. You are considered twisted and retarded if you support Bush in this election. I have never come across a candidate who is so reviled. Reagan was sniggered it, but this is personal, real hatred.

"Indeed, I was at a similar dinner, listening to the same conversation, and said: 'If all else fails, you can vote for Bush.' People looked at me as if I had just said: 'Oh, I forgot to tell you, I am a child molester.' I would vote for Bush if for no other reason than to be at the airport waving off all the people who say they are going to London if he wins again. Someone has got to stay behind."

Where does it come from, this endorsement of the most conservative administration within living memory? Of this president who champions the right and the rich, who has taken America into the mire of war, and seeks re-election tomorrow? Wolfe's eyes resume the expression of detached Southern elegance.

"I think support for Bush is about not wanting to be led by East-coast pretensions. It is about not wanting to be led by people who are forever trying to force their twisted sense of morality onto us, which is a non-morality. That is constantly done, and there is real resentment. Support for Bush is about resentment in the so-called 'red states' - a confusing term to Guardian readers, I agree - which here means, literally, middle America. I come from one of those states myself, Virginia. It's the same resentment, indeed, as that against your own newspaper when it sent emails targeting individuals in an American county." Wolfe laughs as he chastises. "No one cares to have outsiders or foreigners butting into their affairs. I'm sure that even many of those Iraqis who were cheering the fall of Saddam now object to our being there. As I said, I do not think the excursion is going well."

And John Kerry? "He is a man no one should worry about, because he has no beliefs at all. He is not going to introduce some manic radical plan, because he is poll-driven, and it is therefore impossible to know where or for what he stands."

Tom Wolfe. "The liberal elite hasn't got a clue" The Guardian Nov. 1, 2004.

Watch Stolen Honor - online, at no cost.

The entire film "Stolen Honor" about Senator Kerry's betrayal of United States P.O.W.'s in Vietnam, together with the mini-documentaries by the Swift Boat Veterans who served with Senator Kerry, can be downloaded and seen for free.

You can read about the background behind the film Stolen Honor here. Stolen Honor features interviews with 17 Vietnam POWs, whose time in prison amounted to 109 years and three months. 

It's not likely you will have the opportunity to see them share their experiences and perspective on John Kerry on any of the mainstream media stations, so watch it while you can, and preferably before the election -- for as much as Senator Kerry is making his military service a plank of his campaign and claiming the support of veterans across the nation, these men deserve a chance to be heard as well.

Will Michael Moore "Document and Deter" Anti-Republican Voter Intimidation?

Michael Moore's "videoarmy" is enlisting members around the nation, according to the following email sent to Ohio's Online Filmmaking Community:

Message from Carl at Michael Moore's office . . . "I am writing to you from the office of filmmaker Michael Moore. We are reaching out to the Ohio Filmmaking community to ask you to volunteer your time and talents to help deter election fraud, voter intimidation and vote suppression, and to document on tape any instances that may occur on November 2nd. If you interested in joining this effort, or are already planning to be present with your camera, please let us know as soon as possible. Please email a telephone number where you can be reached, and indicate what equipment and skills you could bring to bear on this effort. In the subject line of the email, please write your city name. Feel free to circulate this email to others that may be interested. They don't need to be professional filmmakers to help out. Thanks!" -- Carl videoarmy@michaelmoore.com

All very well and good, but I have one question for Mister Moore -- will his videoarmy "document and deter" incidents of anti-Republican voter intimidation as well?

Bush, Bin Laden, and Iraq -- Response to a Sam Miller

I don't get very many commentators on my blog -- hell, it comes as a suprise that people actually read this blog, so when one commentator pipes up, the least I could do is respond. Sam Miller (hey Sam!) responds to an earlier post of mine by asking:

One simple question:

Did Bush get Bin Laden?

[he had 3 years]

Sam elaborates on his commment here, in response to the recent re-appearance of Bin Laden on video.

Bin Laden is back. On tape. But that is bad enough. Bush had three years. The world was willing to help him after 9/11 to get Bin Laden. He could have gotten him. He didn't. He failed us. He said he would smoke him out. He didn't.

9/11 needs a strong reaction: Get the guys who did it, and make sure it never happens. It happened during Bush' watch. . . .

[A]nd, just to be clear: There is NO connection between Iraq and 9/11. Try to find a quote of Bush where he would say that loud and clear what you might have in your head. You will not find anything. Bush suggested it in indirectly often enough. But he never said it, since there was no evidence. There was no evidence because it was not so.

In response to the first point, it is worth noting that General Tommy Franks, former U.S. commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, rebuked Kerry's charge that Bush "let Osama escape" in an op-ed for the New York Times Oct. 19, 2004. Since the Times' article is no longer available online, the Washington Post will suffice:

"I was responsible for the operation at Tora Bora, and I can tell you that the senator's understanding of events doesn't square with reality," . . .

Franks, who has endorsed the Republican president's re-election bid, challenged Kerry's contention that U.S. forces had the fugitive al Qaeda leader surrounded but "outsourced" the job of capturing him to Afghan forces in the rugged Tora Bora region of eastern Afghanistan.

We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001. Some intelligence sources said he was; others indicated he was in Pakistan at the time; still others suggested he was in Kashmir," wrote Franks, who led the invasions of Afghanistan and later Iraq as chief of the U.S. military's Central Command.

"Tora Bora was teeming with Taliban and Qaeda operatives, many of whom were killed or captured, but Mr. bin Laden was never within our gasp."

Franks contended that the American military did not outsource military action, although "we did rely heavily on Afghans because they knew Tora Bora."

(Retired U.S. General Attacks Kerry Over Bin Laden, Reuters. October 19, 2004).

Regarding the "connection between Iraq and 9/11" -- it depends on what one means by such an assertion. While it is true that Saddam Hussein had no direct connection with 9/11, it is a recognized fact that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda had channels of communication, that Iraq provided financial and moral support for terrorism, and that it served as a "safe haven" for Islamic terrorists of all stripes. It is a recognized fact that Iraqi intelligence operatives assisted in the engineering of the first attack on the World Trade Center and it is highly probable that they faciliated a meeting of those who were responsible for the second attack on September 11th, 2001.

Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard has done extensive research into this subject, beginning with an analysis of a memo detailing cooperation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. ("Cased Closed" Weekly Standard Nov. 24, 2003). Dan Darling, another blogger who's analysis and knowledge of this subject I respect, did a six part analysis of this memo and Haye's article, and also believes there was indeed a connection.

Hayes went on to publish The Connection : How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America, which is one of the most thorough books on the subject to date, as well as critiquing the misleading reporting of the media that gives rise to the "Bush lied" meme. (If you don't have time to read the book, most of Hayes' articles are compiled in one place here (scroll down).

So, to Sam, I would say check out the above, read the book, come back and we'll discuss it.

Finally, I would propose that although finding and capturing Bin Laden is indeed a crucial element to the war on terrorism, it will not in the least mean the end of Al Qaeda or militant Islam's jihad on Western civilization. Norman Podhoretz made the excellent case that we are involved in a new kind of war in his article World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win (a rather long article -- see this post for a summary of key points). If Kerry's history as an antiwar activist means anything, I believe his priority is to cut and run more than anything, and his belief that we ought to rely on France and Russia (Friends of Saddam Hussein implicated in the U.N. "Oil For Food" scandal) doesn't exactly instill within me a feeling of confidence.

I don't agree with President Bush on every single issue, but I do have faith that our present Commander in Chief will "stay the course" in this international war on terror.

Ten Worst Media Distortions of Campaign 2004

The Ten Worst Media Distortions of Campaign 2004, by Brent H. Baker, Rich Noyes and Tim Graham. Media Research Center:

No matter who wins or loses this year’s presidential election, Campaign 2004 will be remembered for the unprecedented partisanship of the so-called mainstream media, as the Media Research Center has documented all year. Here are our awards for the ten most-biased episodes in Campaign 2004, along with commendations for those instances when journalists rose above their bias and approached their craft in a fair and balanced way.

Documentary Evidence: Hanoi Directed John Kerry during 60's

Ok, so the 60's were oh, so before-my-time, but do we really want somebody who had a rather cozy relationship with the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War coaching our troops as Commander in Chief?

The first documentary evidence that Vietnamese communists were directly steering John Kerry's antiwar group Vietnam Veterans Against the War has been discovered in a U.S. archive, according to a researcher who spoke with WorldNetDaily.

One freshly unearthed document, captured by the U.S. from Vietnamese communists in 1971 and later translated, indicates the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese delegations to the Paris peace talks that year were used as the communications link to direct the activities of Kerry and other antiwar activists who attended. . . .

World Net Daily has the story.

BlogsOfWar has updates.

Have you seen the Vietnam POW produced documentary "Stolen Honor" yet? -- You can watch it for free online.

Saddam Hussein and Terrorism

HusseinAndTerror.Com.

Pretty much everything you wanted to know -- but didn't -- about the former dictator on Iraq and his ties to international terrorism.

The Truth About Iraq

The Truth About Iraq. A new website to counter the negativity of the mainstream media:

After working in Iraq for nine months doing focus groups and polling and advising Ambassador Bremer on Iraqi public opinion, Steven Moore returned to the United States in May 2003. Upon returning, he was astounded to find how sharply his experience in Iraq differed from that being communicated on television. Even more staggering, were some of the questions being asked by average Americans who genuinely consider themselves, well-informed:

• Aren't we just shoving democracy down the throats of the Iraqis?
• Are all the Iraqis rallying around the "freedom fighters" fighting the US forces?
• Wouldn't things be going much better if we had gotten United Nations support?
• Don't the Iraqis just want to be ruled by clerics?

These were questions asked by well-read, intelligent, middle of the road people. Having spent nine months living among Iraqis, working every single day to understand the Iraqi mindset, Moore believed he had unique insight into the Iraqi people.

In order to help Americans better understand the Iraqi people, Moore began speaking to groups around California and on a variety of radio programs throughout the United States. Though radio is an important medium, television still remains the most effective medium to reach the largest number of people in the shortest possible time.

A team comprised of experts with specific and relevant experience has now been created. Their expertise will ensure the successful achivement of the following goals:

1. raise money to produce and air a 30 second television spot that reminds Americans that they can be proud of the good work being done in Iraq by the US and Coalition Forces, and
2. spread the message via the Internet about this project.

With your help, America can be proud.

Thanks to Arthur Chrenkoff who has certainly done his part to spread good news about Iraq and Afghanistan with his regular updates.

John Edward's Hair [tm]

If you thought the footage of the Bush administration "pre-press conference grooming" was amusing in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911, check out JOHN EDWARD'S HAIR.

Yikes.

Jack Daniels vs. Modern Drunkard

Foreign policy, the war in Iraq, the minimum wage . . . nothing remotely compares to the travesty of this report from Modern Drunkard Magazine that Jack Daniels Distillery is tampering with their traditional recipe by reducing the alcohol content of their whisky from 86 to 80 proof, a scandal which I'd discovered through my daily perusal of The Old Oligarch.

I've always been a Jack Daniels man, and so I dashed off a quick email to Phil Lynch (VP of Corporate Communications and Public Relations at Brown-Forman) to voice my discontent, assuring him that "Until this grievous breach of tradition is repaired, I will be switching my choice of spirits."

So a week later, I recieve the following from Jack Daniels:

Hello Christopher,

We sure appreciate your taking the time to write. The folks at Modern Drunkard Magazine are worked up about our lowering the proof of our Black Label whiskey a little bit. Apparently they're judging our whiskey simply by how much alcohol is in it. We're awfully glad you've given us the opportunity to respond, and to explain how important quality and tradition are here at the Jack Daniel Distillery.

It might interest you to know that we've been bottling Black Label at 80 proof for several years in a number of states and countries. Our number one concern is to make sure our whiskey is of the highest quality. That means starting out with select grains for our mash and the cool, iron-free water that flows from the Cave Spring. It means maturing our whiskey in new white oak barrels. It also means following through with an extra step of mellowing our whiskey drop by drop through 10 feet of charcoal to make it a smooth sipping Tennessee Whiskey.

Look, I'm concerned about quality as much as the next guy, but I grew up with 86 proof. I like 86 proof. You don't mess with a man's whiskey. But Tom Jervis thinks I doth protest too much:

You see, Mr. Jack's whiskey-making tradition is very important to all of us at the Jack Daniel Distillery. That's why we take it to heart when folks suggest that a lower proof whiskey is somehow a lower quality. Fact is everywhere we've been at 80 proof the number of folks enjoying our whiskey is growing. Mr. Jack lowered the proof of his whiskey when he went from selling it by the barrel to selling it by the bottle because he knew that's the way folks actually were drinking it - at a lower proof. The same is true today.

We hope you'll reconsider your decision and stay with our Tennessee Whiskey. We realize that quality and tradition mean a lot to you, just as they have to Jack Daniel's for more than 135 years. So we would like to invite you, if you're ever traveling near Lynchburg, to take the time to drop by the Distillery and enjoy a taste of our Tennessee Whiskey with our team of tasters. We are confident you will agree that our taste and quality have not changed! Please call (931) 759-7822 and ask for Randy Fanning, and he'll make sure you have a personal tasting.

Again, thanks for writing. We hope we'll hear from you again soon.

Regards,

Tom Jervis
Jack Daniel Distillery

Well, Mr. Jervis sounds like a right fine gentleman, and I'd be willing to give him the benefit of a doubt. I'd even like to take up his offer for a personal tasting, but honestly it's going to be some time before I'm in the neighborhood.

So, I'm posting this with the understanding that my readers won't mind giving Randy Fanning a call and sampling the 80 proof in my stead. Anybody game?

TV On The Radio

I've recently discovered TV On The Radio and have been listening to them non-stop. There's not much to see on the website, but I recommend their albums Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes and the Young Liars EP.

Psychedelic, hypnotic, repetitive, innovative, moody, groovy, dark, soothing. To get a feel for them, check out their video to Staring at the Sun, which drew me to explore the rest of their music. Tell me what you think.

Democracy comes to Afghanistan

The Afghan Election in Pictures and The Afghan Election in Words, courtesy of The Argus ("watching central Asia and the Caucasus").

A very fine blog.

Jacques Derrida, R.I.P.

"Postmodernist" philosopher Jacques Derrida died today. He was 74.

• "Deconstructionism Founder Derrida Dies", by Elaine Ganley, Associated Press. Oct. 9, 2004.
• Obituary New York Times Oct. 9, 2004.
• Jack M. Balkan offers a respectful personal tribute.
• Eamonn Fitzgerald has some parting thoughts, and recalls a story of "Derrida Consumed by Crabs."
• "Derrida, Death and Forgiveness", Andrew J. McKenna reviews Derrida's The Gift of Death (First Things 71 (March 1997): 34-37).
• "The Meaninglessness of Meaning", by Rober Kimball. "Jacques Derrida is dead, but his baneful ideas live on." Wall Street Journal Oct. 12, 2004.
• The Remedy has the best one-liner eulogy one could hope for the founder of deconstructionism:
  To paraphrase what Metternich said of the death of Castleraugh: "I wonder what he meant by that?"

David Brooks and Paul Bremer counter liberal distortions

In "The Report That Nails Saddam", New York Times Oct. 9, 2004), David Brooks dismantles the spin and distortion of the Duelfer Report on Iraq:

. . . Duelfer makes clear on the very first page of his report that it is a story. It is a mistake and a distortion, he writes, to pick out a single frame of the movie and isolate it from the rest of the tale.

But that is exactly what has happened. I have never in my life seen a government report so distorted by partisan passions. The fact that Saddam had no W.M.D. in 2001 has been amply reported, but it's been isolated from the more important and complicated fact of Saddam's nature and intent.

But we know where things were headed. Sanctions would have been lifted. Saddam, rich, triumphant and unbalanced, would have reconstituted his W.M.D. Perhaps he would have joined a nuclear arms race with Iran. Perhaps he would have left it all to his pathological heir Qusay.

We can argue about what would have been the best way to depose Saddam, but this report makes it crystal clear that this insatiable tyrant needed to be deposed. He was the menace, and, as the world dithered, he was winning his struggle. He was on the verge of greatness. We would all now be living in his nightmare.

Paul Bremer was also compelled to correct similar distortions of his remarks by the mainstream press ("What I Really Said About Iraq" New York Times Oct. 8, 2004):

In recent days, attention has been focused on some remarks I've made about Iraq. The coverage of these remarks has elicited far more heat than light, so I believe it's important to put my remarks in the correct context.

In my speeches, I have said that the United States paid a price for not stopping the looting in Iraq in the immediate aftermath of major combat operations and that we did not have enough troops on the ground to accomplish that task. The press and critics of the war have seized on these remarks in an effort to undermine President Bush's Iraq policy. . . .

The press has been curiously reluctant to report my constant public support for the president's strategy in Iraq and his policies to fight terrorism. I have been involved in the war on terrorism for two decades, and in my view no world leader has better understood the stakes in this global war than President Bush.

Can we say, "liberal bias in the media"?

The Duelfer Report and Kerry's "Global Test"ers

• Glenn Reynolds lays out the complete collapse of John Kerry's foreign policy case, and the reason for that collapse.
• For those who don't have time to read 1000+ pages of the Duelfer report, Pearly Gates takes some time out of blogging baseball to provide a useful summary of relevant points pertinent to the debate on U.S. foreign policy.
• Turns out Saddam bribed politicians around world to secure an early lifting of sanctions, according to Robin Gedye, Foreign Affairs Writer of the Telegraph. Likewise, according to The Scotsman, Hussein paid off Russia, France and China (three of the five UN Security Council members with the power to veto war) to keep the United States at bay:
  Tariq Aziz, the former Iraqi deputy prime minister, told the ISG that the "primary motive for French co-operation" was to secure lucrative oil deals when UN sanctions were lifted. Total, the French oil giant, had been promised exploration rights.

  Iraqi intelligence officials then "targeted a number of French individuals that Iraq thought had a close relationship to French President Chirac," it said, including two of his "counsellors" and spokesman for his re-election campaign.

  They even assessed the chances for "supporting one of the candidates in an upcoming French presidential election." Chirac is not mentioned by name.

These are the countries John Kerry wants to appeal to for a "global test" concerning the U.S.' credibility to protect itself by preemptive measures?

John Kerry's "Global Test" - Fallout and Feedback

Kerry: No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America.

But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.

Here we have our own secretary of state who has had to apologize to the world for the presentation he made to the United Nations.

Bush: Let me -- I'm not exactly sure what you mean, "passes the global test," you take preemptive action if you pass a global test.

My attitude is you take preemptive action in order to protect the American people, that you act in order to make this country secure.

Transcript Bush - Kerry Presidential Debate, Sept. 30, 2004.

In related news . . .

• "Meet The Graders [of John Kerry's "Global Test"], by Anne Bayefsky. National Review October 4, 2004.
• "Polish President disses Democrat President wannabe", by Arthur Chrenkoff. October 3, 2004.
• "I Didn't See This Question On Kerry's Global Test" Blog "Just One Minute" wonders "Clearly, the UN and the world community will never endorse a US effort to aid the Zionist imperialists. Would Kerry support Israel despite its inability to pass the global test?"
• Transterrestial.com has discovered the Global Test Kerry was referring to. (As one might expect, it's biased towards the French).

John Kerry Has a Strange Way of Boosting Troop Morale

On September 7th, John Kerry accused President Bush of sending U.S. troops to the "wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time" and said he'd try to bring them all home in four years. Bush rebuked him for taking "yet another new position" on the war.

(Source: Associated Press).

Get the POSTCARD!
(previous cartoon)

Good News from Iraq, Part Eleven

Arthur Chrenkoff has posted the latest (eleventh) installment of Good News from Iraq, with all the information you're likely to have missed if your sole source of news is the MSM (Mainstream Media), or listening to John Kerry's presidential campaign.

Take his advice: "Read the stories below in addition to - not to the exclusion of - all the bad news. Only by knowing both sides of the story you can make an informed judgment about how things in Iraq are really going."

David Brooks demolishes "the multilateral approach."

"Another Triumph for the U.N.", by David Brooks. New York Times Sept. 25, 2004.

A simply brilliant piece of writing that utterly demolishes the effectiveness of the U.N. and John Kerry's appeal for a 'multilateral' approach.

Sometimes, you just have to go it alone.

Paul Berman on "The Cult of Che"

The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che's imagination. In the famous essay in which he issued his ringing call for "two, three, many Vietnams," he also spoke about martyrdom and managed to compose a number of chilling phrases: "Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become …"— and so on. He was killed in Bolivia in 1967, leading a guerrilla movement that had failed to enlist a single Bolivian peasant. And yet he succeeded in inspiring tens of thousands of middle class Latin-Americans to exit the universities and organize guerrilla insurgencies of their own. And these insurgencies likewise accomplished nothing, except to bring about the death of hundreds of thousands, and to set back the cause of Latin-American democracy—a tragedy on the hugest scale. . . .

Paul Berman, "The Cult of Che" Slate.com, Sept. 25, 2004.

Berman is author of Terror and Liberalism, which builds a liberal rationale for the war on terror and critiques leftist intellectuals as Noam Chomsky who "who have applauded terrorism and tried to explain it as a rational response to oppression." (Publisher's Weekly). . . Another book to add to my reading list.

I had a Che t-shirt in college; bought it in Ireland, of all places. Haven't worn it in ages.

Update: Ken Wheaton has a good post on this as well, musing:

[Che] fought. And he fought. And he fought. He worshipped war. It would cause one to wonder why American "pacifists" would sport Che shirts and banners ... if one didn't realize that such pacifists, especially college kids, were historically ignorant. And the rich irony here is that Che hated Americans, especially well-meaning middle class Americans.

Update: "The Real Che", by Anthony Daniels. The New Criterion Vol. 23, No. 2. Oct. 2004.

Anti-semitism and the attack on the "neo-cons"

In his magnificent historial survey of terrorism and the development of "The Bush Doctrine" ("World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win", Commentary magazine editor Norman Podhoretz observes that the attack on "neoconservatives" often betrays sentiments of a baser nature:

. . . A cognate count in this indictment held that the invasion of Iraq had been secretly engineered by a cabal of Jewish officials acting not in the interest of their own country but in the service of Israel, and more particularly of Ariel Sharon. At first the framers and early spreaders of this defamatory charge considered it the better part of prudence to identify the conspirators not as Jews but as "neoconservatives." It was a clever tactic, in that Jews did in fact constitute a large proportion of the repentant liberals and leftists who, having some two or three decades earlier broken ranks with the Left and moved rightward, came to be identified as neoconservatives. Everyone in the know knew this, and for those to whom it was news, the point could easily be gotten across by singling out only those neoconservatives who had Jewish-sounding names and to ignore the many other leading members of the group whose clearly non-Jewish names might confuse the picture.

This tactic had been given a trial run by Patrick J. Buchanan in opposing the first Gulf war of 1991. Buchanan had then already denounced the Johnny-come-lately neoconservatives for having hijacked and corrupted the conservative movement, but now he descended deeper into the fever swamps by insisting that there were "only two groups beating the drums . . . for war in the Middle East—the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States." Among those standing in the "amen corner" he subsequently singled out four prominent hawks with Jewish-sounding names, counterposing them to "kids with names like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzales, and Leroy Brown" who would actually do the fighting if these Jews had their way.

Ten years later, in 2001, in the writings of Buchanan and other paleoconservatives within the journalistic fraternity (notably Robert Novak, Arnaud de Borchgrave, and Paul Craig Roberts), one of the four hawks of 1991, Richard Perle, made a return appearance. But Perle was now joined in starring roles by Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, both occupying high positions in the Pentagon, and a large supporting cast of identifiably Jewish intellectuals and commentators outside the government (among them Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, and Robert Kagan). Like their predecessors in 1991, the members of the new ensemble were portrayed as agents of their bellicose counterparts in the Israeli government. But there was also a difference: the new group had managed to infiltrate the upper reaches of the American government. Having pulled this off, they had conspired to manipulate their non-Jewish bosses—Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and George W. Bush himself—into invading Iraq.

Before long, this theory was picked up and circulated by just about everyone in the whole world who was intent on discrediting the Bush Doctrine. And understandably so: for what could suit their purposes better than to "expose" the invasion of Iraq—and by extension the whole of World War IV—as a war started by Jews and being waged solely in the interest of Israel?

To protect themselves against the taint of anti-Semitism, purveyors of this theory sometimes disingenuously continued to pretend that when they said "neoconservative" they did not mean "Jew." Yet the theory inescapably rested on all-too-familiar anti-Semitic canards—principally that Jews were never reliably loyal to the country in which they lived, and that they were always conspiring behind the scenes, often successfully, to manipulate the world for their own nefarious purposes.

"That's my president, hooah!"

President Bush, after a campaign appearance in Bangor, held his plane on the tarmac when he heard an MD-11 carrying 292 Army reservists and National Guard members was about to refuel here. For the troops, grimly heading toward an 18-to-24-month assignment in Iraq, it was a welcome lift. For Bush, who has been accusing his Democratic presidential opponent, Sen. John F. Kerry, of demoralizing the troops in Iraq by criticizing the war effort, it was a chance to demonstrate his devotion to the troops.

"May God bless you all," the commander in chief said over the plane's public address system. "May God keep you safe." As he worked his way up and down the plane's aisles, posing for photographs, signing autographs and shaking hands, the happily surprised troops called out to him.

"That's my president, hooah!" shouted Sgt. Wanda Dabbs, 22, a member of the 230th Area Support Group, a Guard unit from Tennessee. Others seconded her cheer. . . .

Whatever their concerns about the dangers ahead, the troops on the plane were joyous when their commander in chief appeared. "I can guarantee you right now this is the best thing that ever happened to me in my lifetime," said Sgt. 1st Class Bill Freeman of the 230th, a Goodyear Tires worker in Tennessee and a Bush supporter.

Bush Surprises Departing Troops With Gift -- Himself", by Dana Milbank. Washington Post Friday, Sept. 24, 2004.

Chrenkoff brings Kerry down to size.

"Face it, you and your merry company are just a pimple on the ass of an asterisk in a footnote of the history of progress from tyranny to freedom."

Arthur Chrenkoff, commenting on the "only happy when it rains" attitude of Senator Kerry and his comrades towards Iraq, as demonstrated recently by his putdown of Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's speech at the U.N.

Gregory Djerejia ("Belgravia Dispatch") isn't too happy with Kerry, either.

Love it or leave it?

Commenting on Victor Davis Hanson's editorial in the Wall Street Journal ("The U.N.? Who Cares?" Sept. 23, 2004), Thomas Krannawitter has a good suggestion for Kofi Annan:

But nations that don’t know the principles or language of freedom will never achieve freedom. Hanson is right to point out that, “Like the U.N. membership itself, [Kofi Annan] enjoys the freedom, affluence and security of a New York, but never stops to ask why that is so or how it might be extended to others less fortunate.”

If the United Nations does not think of America as a model of freedom to be followed by others around the globe -- if America is merely one among many nations, neither better nor worse but only different -- then maybe the U.N. should seriously consider relocating itself to some place such as…oh, maybe Libya. Any nation responsible enough to chair the United Nations Human Rights Commission should be responsible enough to host the United Nations, right?

Or maybe the United Nations might move to Sudan? It might be instructive: when the Human Rights Commission meets to discuss violations of human rights, they could simply look out the window to witness beatings, gang rapes, and enslavement. What could make their discussions more edifying?

How about it, Kofi? -- It's been said that "absence makes the heart grow fonder."

Rathergate and Postmodernism

Frederick Turner derives a philosophical lesson from 'Rathergate' ("The Blogosphere and the Pajamaheddin"):

For the last thirty years or so academic Humanities departments throughout the country had been teaching writing through the discipline of rhetoric, based on deconstructive theories of the indeterminacy and self-destructiveness of any text. Since words can only be defined by other words, and cannot refer outside the language world to self-sufficient present realities, the only valid speech or writing was that which persuades others, and enacts the power interests of the discourse-community with the highest political ideals. The concept of truth, of the "transcendental signified," had been parsed into absurdity: everything depended on what the meaning of is is, as our former President so ingeniously put it.

Journalists in the mainstream media had imbibed these ideas with their education, and had melded them with the enthusiasm and hero-worship they had lavished on the intrepid reporters of the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals. But in the process, fact-checking, critical editing, and sound research had all begun to erode. . . .

The new tone that entered the blogosphere was a sense of responsibility to the truth. The bloggers looked around themselves and saw that nobody else had the powerful means, the democratic and distributed organization, the robust egalitarian truculence, and the absence of interest conflict to act as the truth's final guardian and court of appeal. The mainstream journalists had abdicated their responsibility, the political parties were obviously willing to bend the truth, the academy had philosophically repudiated the concept of truth, the courts were increasing based on adversarial rhetorical virtuosity, rather than the establishment of fact. So it was up to the bloggers.

Juiced-Up John Kerry in a "Fighting Mood"

Cartoon by yours truly; inspired by blogger Tim Blair.

Quick! Warn your friends! -- buy the postcard!
greeting cards also available).

When Journalism Meets Reality

. . . This is a hard issue for journalists who want to be fair to partisans on both sides of the issue. Perhaps this small but symbolic action is, somehow, linked to the Peterson case. Perhaps it is linked to the growing use 4D ultrasound technology.

Then again, perhaps it is a concession to reality, to the words that people use in real life. This is not politics. It is a matter of simple humanity. Faced with this kind of tragedy, loved ones and public servants do not tell journalists "we lost a fetus."

No, they lost the baby. They lost a child, an "unborn child." It is awkward or even cruel to say anything else.

TMatt, from the blog "Get Religion" (Ghost in the stylebook: Death of an unborn child).

Nice to know we still matter. =)

. . . Queens today is often remembered primarily as the home of All in the Family’s Archie Bunker, the loudmouthed, blue-collar bigot invented by ultra-liberal Norman Lear. Bunker debuted during the Lindsay years, when the liberals looked with horror at how ordinary New Yorkers, especially from Queens’s ethnic neighborhoods, furiously resisted many of the progressive nostrums that Lindsay and his circle tried to force on them. Though Bunker evolved into a sort of genial, cartoonish figure, the show was part of a contemptuous assault against the ideals and values of the country’s blue-collar, family-oriented, ethnic middle class by the liberal elites of the time, who viewed resistance to their agenda as raw bigotry. But the citizens of Queens, for the most part, were not bigots, as Lear depicted them; and they were much wiser than John Lindsay, as the decline and revival of Queens -- and of New York as a whole -- makes clear. Let’s hope that the Manhattan elites don’t try to ride roughshod over the values and interests of the borough again. It won’t be just Queens that suffers.

"Why Queens Matters", by Stephen Malanga.
City Journal Summer 2004.

John Kerry: Please. Shut. Up. About. VIETNAM.

Kimberly Strassel has an amusing editorial on John Kerry's pathetic attempts to suck up to the NRA ("Ready, Aim, Fire . . . Hit Foot" Wall Street Journal Sept. 17, 2004), culminating in this excerpt from an upcoming issue of Outdoor Life:

The October edition of Outdoor Life will feature interviews with both presidential candidates. When asked about their favorite guns, President Bush responds: "My favorite gun is a Weatherby Athena 20 gauge." Mr. Kerry says (reminding us yet again where he was 35 years ago): "My favorite gun is the M-16 that saved my life and that of my crew in Vietnam. I don't own one of those now, but one of my reminders of my service is a Communist Chinese assault rifle." So Mr. Kerry's favorite gun is an "assault" rifle designed for war. Funny talk coming from a guy who just went ballistic over the end of the "assault" weapons ban.

I thought Bill Clinton called you from the hospital and advised you to cease and desist with all references to Vietnam?

Please, it's really getting old.

Kerry Supporter Harasses Three-Year-Old

I don't care how mad you are at the President -- taking out your frustrations on a three-year-old by ripping up her 'Bush/Cheney' sign is bad form. Updates:

• Here is a second photograph of the incident.

• Was it staged as liberal blogger "Rising Hegemon" claims? -- The father, at least, has a habit of showing up at Democratic rallies with Bush/Cheney signs.
• Washington Times has the story.
• Update: Michelle Malkin has refuted the liberal claim that it was a hoax. Amazing how quickly the blog fact-checking machine springs into action. CBS should take lessons.

The U.N. fiddles . . .

. . . as Syria tests chemical weapons on human guinea pigs in Darfur.

Andrew C. McCarthy comments at the National Review:

I should mention the widely reported hypothesizing that Syria may have received chemical weapons from Saddam Hussein's deposed regime in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq; that Syria is undoubtedly assisting the Baathist element of the Iraqi terrorist resistance; that the CIA and international proliferation experts have recently expressed concerns that Syria is actively attempting to develop nuclear weapons to go with its already thriving chemical program; and that, for all the attention grabbed by Hamas and Arafat, it is Syria that may pose the greatest immediate, existential threat to Israel. But if I mentioned those things, I might be taken by unnamed intelligence sources for a Likud-controlled neocon who should be investigated by the FBI on suspicion of believing Iran is dangerous, Saddam cavorted with terrorists, and other equivalent felonies.

I would note this, though: I don't know if I'd be holding my breath waiting for Turtle Bay to plumb the depths of the Syria/Sudan chemical-weapons partnership. Reflecting its deep concern for the human condition, the U.N., you may recall, has an esteemed component it portentously calls the "United Nations Commission on Human Rights." The U.S. was, indeed, a founding member. But a while back, we could not garner enough votes from member nations to maintain our seat. We were replaced by...Syria.

"U.N.: What Is It Good For?", NRO. Sept. 16, 2004

"I am a Republican"

An anonymous individual, describing himself only as "Mr. X.", confesses in the New York Sun:

You know me. If you don't, you've seen me...eating dinner in a midtown restaurant or walking up Broadway on a Saturday morning or sitting at the playground in the park as my child climbs the monkey bars. I take the subway to work every morning like thousands of other New Yorkers. I shop at Fairway and Zabar's. Maybe you've even been sweating on the next treadmill at the gym. I look like a hundred other guys around my age. I dress like them, too. And if you saw me, you would never guess my secret.

I am not gay. That is certainly no reason to hide. I am not a person of color. That prejudice should have been erased from our national consciousness decades ago. I don't carry any disease microbes that I am aware of. I don't even smoke.

But the information that I will now transmit has caused people to shout at me, brought dinner parties to an abrupt end on less then polite terms. It has even ended long friendships.

Here it is. I will just say it. I am a Republican.

The article has provoked quite a response from readers of The New York Sun, resulting in numerous letters to the editor from like-minded sympathizers.

Don Imus: "This is my candidate, and ... I don't know what he's talking about."

Don Imus, host of the famous radio talk show 'Imus in the Morning', had the opportunity to interview Kerry the other day:

IMUS: You said, Senator Kerry, a while back, not that long ago -- and I assume you meant all of the things you're talking about now, but you said knowing what you know now, which would include just what you've been talking about, you would have still voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq, which doesn't make any sense to me.

KERRY: Yes, it actually does make sense.

IMUS: Explain it. Help me out here. . . .

Senator Kerry proceeded to lay his "policy on Iraq" out on the table for the befuddled Imus (transcript). Eventually, things came to a head:

KERRY: I mean, what you ought to be doing and what everybody in America ought to be doing today is not asking me; they ought to be asking the president, What is your plan? What's your plan, Mr. President, to stop these kids from being killed? What's your plan, Mr. President, to get the other countries in there? What's your plan to have 90 percent of the casualties and 90 percent of the cost being carried by America?

IMUS: We're asking you because you want to be president.

Don Imus would later reflect on the occasion (Kerry's Iraq war comments leave backer Imus confuse" Dallas Morning News Sept. 15, 2004):

"I was just back in my office banging my head on the jukebox," Mr. Imus said. "This is my candidate, and ... I don't know what he's talking about."

(Thanks Tim Blair).

Orson Scott Card: "Which terrorists are our enemies?"

Orson Scott Card asks "Which Terrorists Are Our Enemies?"

How many other Science Fiction authors do you know who are this unabashedly Republican?

John Kerry's coercion of Vietnam Vet Steve Pitkin

Wintersoldier.com on John Kerry's manipulation of Vietnam Vet Steve Pitkin:

. . . On the second day of the conference, Pitkin was surrounded by a group of the event's leaders, who said they needed more witnesses and wanted him to speak. Pitkin protested that he didn’t have anything to say. [John] Kerry said, "Surely you had to have seen some of the atrocities." Pitkin insisted that he hadn't, and the group's mood turned menacing. One of the other leaders leaned in and whispered, "It’s a long walk back to Baltimore." Pitkin finally agreed to "testify." The Winter Soldier leaders told Pitkin exactly what they wanted -– stories about rape, brutality, shooting prisoners, and racism. Kerry assured him that "the American people will be grateful for what you have to say."

. . . Pitkin appears several times in the documentary film "Winter Soldier," where he comes across as vague and somewhat stunned, especially while being questioned by John Kerry in a preliminary interview. He seems overwhelmed at having to relive his harrowing experiences in Vietnam. But Steve Pitkin says today that what the film actually shows are his efforts to avoid answering Kerry’s questions at all.

During the formal hearings, Pitkin started to slam the press for misrepresenting what GIs really did in Vietnam, but a woman he believes was Jane Fonda shot him an astonished look and started to stand up. Steve could see other members of the group getting ready to cut him off, so he changed course and made up a few things he thought they would be willing to accept. "Everything I said about atrocities and racism was a lie. My unit never went out with the intention of doing anything but its job. And I never saw black soldiers treated differently, get picked out for the worst or most dangerous jobs, or anything like that. There were some guys, shirkers, who would intentionally injure themselves to get sent home, so I talked about that for a while. But the fact is I lied my ass off, and I'm not proud of it. I didn't think it would ever amount to anything."

Iran - where blogging is a crime.

Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan has a roundup of Iranian crackdown on "reformist" websites, including blogs:

Last week they arrested the father of Sina Motallebi, well-known Iranian blogger who was himself arrested last year for three weeks which created a big splash both in the blogosphere and the mainstream press. After a few months, he fled to Netherlands where he started to write about his horrible situation in detention and described the ugly interrogation methods used by Iranian secret police and judiciary agents in great detail.

It's said that Saaed Mortazavi, the same judiciary officials who has allegedly been directly involved in the death of Canadian photographer, Zahra Kazemi, is leading all this crackdown. It was also him who first ordered to filter the two reformist websites last year.

Meanwhile, the results of a recent poll show that internet is the most trusted medium among Iranians.

I've often wondered the same thing myself.

Still, mere difficulty of text in Aristotle or any other philosopher could be irrelevant to the question of whether he can speak to us, and do it in a way to make us sit up and take serious philosophical notice. The current philosophical scene is dominated by two figures, Martin Heidegger and Ludgwig Wittgenstein. Consider the experience in store for anyone who chances to take a first look at a page in the work of either one. "Gibberish, and pompous gibberish at that!" one might well blurt out at first reading of a page of Heidegger. As for Wittgenstein, what he says is not apparent gibberish, but one might still be utterly baffled, not so much as to what he was saying, but rather as to what possible point there might be in his or in anyone else's ever saying it. Yet such difficulties have not deterred thousands upon thousands of students in Germany, England and America from rushing after one or the other of these two latter-day philosophical piedpipers. What's more, they will spend hours and days and weeks puzzling over what Heidegger could have meant in this passage, or Wittgenstein in that. To a cynic, indeed, it might almost seem as if any truly living and vibrant philosophy must thrive directly in proportion to the opacity and even perversity of the texts in which it is written.

Edward B. Veatch, Aristotle: A Contemporary Appreciation, 1974.

CBS News vs. The Bloggers

• Jay Currie asks "The more basic question is how could a rabble of bloggers, in one day, provide hard core proof of forgery when major news organizations took those documents at face value?"

• Instapundit provides a roundup of the initial skirmish between CBS and the bloggers, and another roundup of Dan Rather's attempt at "damage control".

• The American Spectator reports that the Kerry Campaign might very well be the source of the documents. The Daily Recycler reproduces the article here, the original being shut down by an overload of hits from The Drudge Report.

• FactCheck.org compiles various coverage by the mainstream press -- and warning signals that 60 Minutes might have picked up, if only they weren't so eager to smear the President and chase after a hot story.

• Little Green Footballs is having fun experimenting with Microsoft Word, managing to reproduce what looks to be an very close replica of the documents flaunted on "60 Minutes".

If the CBS execs who approved the running of this story aren't concerned about their job security, they oughtta be. I wonder who's the next Jayson Blair?

* * *

In other news, Iowa Senator Tom Harkin denounced President Bush as a liar for misrepresenting the facts regarding his servince in the National Guard.

But, as Instapundit shows, Harkin's one to talk -- having been exposed as a fake Vietnam Vet himself.

The Kerry Campaign could certainly do a lot better.

Author rebukes The Anarchist Cookbook

The former rap-rock band and expounder of radical political propaganda Rage Against the Machine had the audacity to endorse William Powell's The Anarchist Cookbook in the linear notes of their second album Evil Empire, a move which prompted many anarchists to either shake their heads in dismay or enjoy a good laugh. As a college student and token radical on campus I thought their first album was pretty good, but after pulling a stunt like that, it was hard to take them seriously.

If Rage Against The Machine thought they were doing the teen masses a favor by recommending a book chiefly composed of hastily cobbled together recipes for do-it-yourself explosives, they ought to check out the author's words of wisdom on Amazon.com:

"The Anarchist Cookbook was written during 1968 and part of 1969 soon after I graduated from high school. At the time, I was 19 years old and the Vietnam War and the so-called "counter culture movement" were at their height. I was involved in the anti-war movement and attended numerous peace rallies and demonstrations. The book, in many respects, was a misguided product of my adolescent anger at the prospect of being drafted and sent to Vietnam to fight in a war that I did not believe in.

I conducted the research for the manuscript on my own, primarily at the New York City Public Library. Most of the contents were gleaned from Military and Special Forces Manuals. I was not member of any radical group of either a left or right wing persuasion. . . .

The central idea to the book was that violence is an acceptable means to bring about political change. I no longer agree with this.

During the years that followed its publication, I went to university, married, became a father and a teacher of adolescents. These developments had a profound moral and spiritual effect on me. I found that I no longer agreed with what I had written earlier and I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the ideas that I had put my name to. In 1976 I became a confirmed Anglican Christian and shortly thereafter I wrote to Lyle Stuart Inc. explaining that I no longer held the views that were expressed in the book and requested that The Anarchist Cookbook be taken out of print. The response from the publisher was that the copyright was in his name and therefore such a decision was his to make -- not the author's. In the early 1980's, the rights for the book were sold to another publisher. I have had no contact with that publisher (other than to request that the book be taken out of print) and I receive no royalties.

Unfortunately, the book continues to be in print and with the advent of the Internet several websites dealing with it have emerged. I want to state categorically that I am not in agreement with the contents of The Anarchist Cookbook and I would be very pleased (and relieved) to see its publication discontinued. I consider it to be a misguided and potentially dangerous publication which should be taken out of print.

Douglas Rushkoff on "the real threat" of blogs . . .

. . . What made the early Internet so very threatening to the mainstream media was not just the new opinions being expressed, but the fact that people were spending hours of their lives doing something that didn't involve production or consumption in the traditional market sense. Families with Internet connections were watching an average of nine hours less commercial programming each week.

The threat of rave culture was that it was an alternative economy. The kids were no longer going to the mob-run nightclubs, the police weren't getting their cut, and the liquor distributors weren't making any money. Those of us involved in rave - or at least many of us - didn't realize that's why they were such a threat.

Likewise, I believe the greatest power of the blog is not just its ability to distribute alternative information - a great power, indeed - but its power to demonstrate a mode of engagement that is not based on the profit principle.

Douglas Rushkoff

Das Experiment, Oliver Hirschbiegel

I saw a rather interesting film the other day on the Independent Film Channel -- Das Experiment ["The Experiment"] -- the feature film debut of German TV director Oliver Hirschbiegel. Made in 2001, it was based on the novel Black Box by Mario Giordano, which in turn was loosely based on the original "Stanford Prison Experiment", a psychological experiment that took place at Stanford University in 1971 under the direction of Prof. Philip Zimbardo, investigating "he power of roles, rules, symbols, group identity and situational validation of behavior that would repulse ordinary individuals":

[The Stanford Prison Experiment] offered the world a videotaped demonstration of how ordinary people ­ middle-class college students ­ can do things they would have never believed they were capable of doing. It seemed to say, as Hannah Arendt said of Adolf Eichmann, that normal people can take ghastly actions.

Details of the experiment are well known. . . . In summary:

On Sunday morning, Aug., 17, 1971, nine young men were "arrested" in their homes by Palo Alto police. At least one of those arrested vividly remembers the shock of having his neighbors come out to watch the commotion as TV cameras recorded his hand-cuffing for the nightly news.

The arrestees were among about 70 young men, mostly college students eager to earn $15 a day for two weeks, who volunteered as subjects for an experiment on prison life that had been advertised in the Palo Alto Times. After interviews and a battery of psychological tests, the two dozen judged to be the most normal, average and healthy were selected to participate, assigned randomly either to be guards or prisoners. Those who would be prisoners were booked at a real jail, then blindfolded and driven to campus where they were led into a makeshift prison in the basement of Jordan Hall.

Those assigned to be guards were given uniforms and instructed that they were not to use violence but that their job was to maintain control of the prison.

From the perspective of the researchers, the experiment became exciting on day two when the prisoners staged a revolt. Once the guards had crushed the rebellion, "they steadily increased their coercive aggression tactics, humiliation and dehumanization of the prisoners," Zimbardo recalls. "The staff had to frequently remind the guards to refrain from such tactics," he said, and the worst instances of abuse occurred in the middle of the night when the guards thought the staff was not watching. The guards' treatment of the prisoners ­ such things as forcing them to clean out toilet bowls with their bare hands and act out degrading scenarios, or urging them to become snitches ­ "resulted in extreme stress reactions that forced us to release five prisoners, one a day, prematurely."

Source: "The Stanford Prison Experiment: Still powerful after all these years", by Kathleen O’Toole.

Das Experiment mimics The Stanford Prison Experiment to some degree. Despite it's heightening of the action and clearly exaggerated ending (nobody was kidnapped, raped, or died at Stanford) it comes across as believable and made for a captivating two hours. However, according to Meredith Alexander (article noted below), the movie's fictional exaggerations were lost on the German audience, and Prof. Zimbardo was the recipient of "hundreds of e-mails from Germans asking how he could have allowed such things to happen." In return, Zimbardo, who was never informed of the movie's production, fought to have distribution of Das Experiment blocked in the United States, and is "negotiating for an American made-for-TV movie" to tell his version of events.

Those who found the movie intriguing might enjoy perusing the official website of The Stanford Prison Experiment. The scandalous incidents of Iraqi prisoner abuse by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib have instigated a renewal of interest in The Experiment, and the website has been conveniently updated to address the parallels.

Additional links:

• "Situationist Ethics", by William Saletan, disputing the comparisons btw/ the SPE and Abu Ghraib. Slate May 12, 2004.
• "Thirty years later, Stanford Prison Experiment lives on", by Meredith Alexander. A detailed article on the experient and Zimbardo's reactions to the German film.
• Das Interviews with Star Moritz Bleibtreu and Director Oliver Hirschbiegel (AboutFilm.com).